They had been together for four months now, long enough to swap sexual histories. He told her about Helena and how they met at a barbecue in Henley, he told her about Helena's drinking but left the rest of it out. Anya had loved a boy at home but he'd died, sadly, when she was out of town on business for the shop (she worked in an aunt's clothes shop at home – top class, designer things like Dior and Chanel and Versace). She had only had one boyfriend since she came to London, Johnny, who wasn't nice to her. Phil wanted to ask her outright, did he hit you? But he didn't want to sound outraged or disapproving. Part of the grooming was never to talk about it in other than positive terms: there are worse things you can do, at least he loved you enough to do that, he didn't mean it. Set up excuses for himself in the future. Johnny had been very rich but she didn't see him anymore. She didn't miss him at all.
Helena was rattling the bathroom door, cursing him for locking it. Phil ignored her, running the warm water into his basin to wash his face. She kicked it, he could hear her grunting as she did.
He could imagine Anya working in a designer shop at home, the most beautiful girl in her small, mud-encrusted town. It was a shame he couldn't tell the boys in the office about her, but a few of their wives knew Helena from Christmas parties. It was a shame. If he groomed her properly, if it worked out right, Anya could turn out to be sustainable, the woman he could come home to every night, want every night and have. It could work. Russian women had different expectations.
He didn't know where she was from or why she had come here. She told him the name of the place several times and he would play act, shrugging, watching her lips, making her say it again. She finished by smirking and saying, 'It near Siberia, Pheel, you don't know Russia's towns.' He didn't have to engage with her personal history. She was twenty-three and living in a flat in Soho and working for her cousin Fat Eugene in a champagne bar. Fat Eugene had the flat in payment for some debt and let her use it exclusively because she was family.
Helena kicked the door. 'Let me in, you fucker.'
Every night they went through this charade now, Helena trying to get attention from him by behaving badly and then he'd come bursting out of the bath-room and leather her, slap and punch. 'Is this what you want?' He'd fall on his knees by her side and take out the pocket knife, nick her skin with the business end of the bottle opener. He sharpened it for her, to make the cuts uniform. Helena lay on the floor and took it, groaning like a whore in ecstasy, climbing slowly into bed after him, sorry for all the mess she'd caused.
She kicked the door again. 'Let me in, you fucker. Let me in and I'll fucking kill you. I'll mark you and then we'll see what your friends at work think about it.'
She stood back, waiting for him to open the door and go for her. Her complicity was pathetic to him now, role play, even hardcore role play, wasn't what he wanted, not after Anya's horror and fright. Poor Anya, so shocked by the change of mood in him. He snapped the lock off the door and let it swing open. Helena stood outside, staggered back a little step, bracing herself for the first blow.
'Do what you like,' said Phil, 'I don't give a shit.'
He brushed past her on the way to bed, and as he passed she gave a little inadvertent cry.
'For fucksake, I didn't touch you.' He turned and saw that her eyes were fixed on the back of his hand. Helena's knees buckled. She slid to the floor, seeming to whither as she did so, still staring. He had fresh cuts on his knuckles. She crumpled to the floor, real tears in her eyes. He had cut the back of his hand on someone else. Phil was embarrassed.
He tutted hard and covered the cut hand with the other, muttering 'for fucksake' and 'just a cut' as he busied himself taking off his rings and his watch. He stripped down to his boxers and hung his clothes up, ignoring Helena. He saw her in the reflection of the window, sitting in the shaft of harsh light from the hall. Her hands were clasped to her chest and, even in a reflection, Phil could see a hundred tiny white scars, each a centimetre long, criss-crossing her face and hands, intersecting her eyebrows and lids, crawling over her lips like a hundred tiny worms.
When he met Helena she was young and pert and game for anything. She said something cheeky to him in front of all the men gathered round the barbecue, something about her needing a good slap. They became inseparable. They travelled when they could take holidays, went to visit her cold parents in Paris and bought the house after the wedding. It began in this house, drunken arm-twisting and small hits, getting bigger and closer to her face until she couldn't go to work for more than a day a week and they sacked her. But now it was no more than a hollow ritual, a reminder of when she'd really had something worth taking away.
'Goodnight, Helena.' He climbed into bed and turned off the light.
She stayed on the floor in the shaft of light, sobbing while her energy lasted, ending up sniffing and lonely on the big white floor.
Phil lay in the bed facing the windows with his eyes shut. He pulled the sheets up to his mouth and felt, for the first time in years, a little guilty. He listened as she cried quietly. He listened as she tried to get up, her feet scrabbling on silk nightie against the woollen carpet, looking for purchase, trying hard to get up but failing, like a spider caught in the bath.
He didn't want to ring too early in the evening. He wanted her to wait and get desperate, to reach the stage where she expected him not to phone but dearly wanted him to. Helena had told him how she'd waited by the phone the day after the first real beating, praying for his call, wishing, wishing. He ordered a steak sandwich at the bar and another pint of Stella. The pub was at Charing Cross, an anonymous theme bar less than half a mile from Anya's flat. He didn't know anyone in there and mingled happily with the other commuters relaxing with the paper on their way home. He flicked through the Evening Standard, skimming the articles, thinking about the bracelet in his pocket.
They had been seeing each other for four months, all of it very nice, out to dinners or staying in, having a good time while he waited. When he saw the charm bracelet dangling from the tree he knew that now was the time. She was attached enough. He would give the bracelet to her afterwards, pretend he had bought it in a flurry of remorse.
It looked like something a Russian girl would like, gold and rich, vulgar and an obvious antique. It had individual charms hanging off it; a tiger, two dice, a little steam train with wheels that spun, all heavy and expensive. Not designer, not pretty, she wouldn't necessarily like the thing but she'd feel the weight of it and know how much it was worth, and that alone would endear him to her. And then, when she had calculated how much it was worth and what he would have spent retail (she knew he didn't have any contacts in wholesale, they'd had that conversation when he bought her the watch), when she was already pliable and forgiving, then he'd give her the smaller box in matching green velvet with the pink egg inside.
The bracelet was dun and stuck with leaves and mould when he found it. It had been left hanging in a branch like a child's lost glove, advertising itself to passers-by. The sun passed overhead and he caught a glint of it. He was sitting on the bench in the overgrown path, phoning her. He told her he was thinking about her and touching himself (he wasn't) and wanted to kiss her all over and look after her (he didn't). On the other end of the phone Anya was saying that she'd got a hundred quid tip from a handsome man the night before.