Banker boy cared.

Lana moans and Blake takes his eyes off the road to briefly look at her.

‘Ooh uuugggg  why uuuuuuggggg,’ she says, and covering her face with her hand, mumbles unintelligently.  Blake doesn’t try to talk to her.  When he reaches the apartment block, he takes his keycard from the dashboard and goes out to Lana’s side.  The night porter’s eyes are round with curiosity when he carries Lana through reception towards the lift.  The porter stands up, but Blake shakes his head, and he sits down again.  Blake elbows the lift button.  It opens immediately.  He slots in his card and they are transported up.  The movement of elevator makes Lana stir in his arms.  ‘Sorry, Mummy,’ she says.  ‘Oh it’s you’… more gibberish…then clearly, ‘where’s Mum?’

‘She’s home safe.’

But she appears not to hear, and seems to be trapped in some nightmare of her own.  ‘Don’t die, Mummy.  You promised to come to my wedding.’  He watches her with a frown.  ‘You said you would.’  She begins to cry.  ‘Mum, it’s cold.  I’m so cold.’  Blake curses.  The lift door opens and he carries her into the apartment and deposits her on the bed.

She grasps his arm and looks into his eyes, frowns, and does not seem to recognize him.  ‘Where’s my mother?’  She shivers.  He covers her.  ‘I’ll tell you now.  You won’t break me, Barrington,’ she slurs and turns on her side.  ‘I’ll tell Jack what you did.  He’ll sort you out.’

‘Jaaaaccccckk,’ she wails.

It makes the hair on his neck stand to see her this way.  But it is only when she starts talking gobbledygook in earnest that he gets worried.  He goes into the kitchen and phones his doctor.  After a few minutes he ends the call and stares at the granite top.  He is simmering with anger—with her, for being so careless, so naïve, and with those pigs that thought they could drug a girl and rape her.  His hands clench.  He breathes deeply and lifts his chin.  He closes his eyes.  They didn’t get her.  They didn’t get her.  His hands unclench.  He takes another full breath.  It is not her fault.  She is as innocent as a child.  Grimly, he goes to sit by the bedside and listen to her ramblings.  In all of them, he is the enemy.  The one who wants to use her for sex.  He clasps his hands and says nothing.

The porter brings the doctor up.  Dr. Faulks is very quick with his analysis.  There is nothing much to do.  Wait it out.  Fluids are the key.  Tomorrow will be bad.  She will have memory lapses, most likely won’t remember a thing.  Oh, plastic sheets might be a good idea.  Sometime incontinence can occur.’

After the doctor is gone, Blake undresses Lana.  She sighs elaborately.  ‘Oh! It’s you again.’  She seems confused, sad.  He pulls the duvet over her.  She pushes it away.  ‘I’m hot.  Really hot.  I thought you wanted to fuck me, anyway.’  She grabs his hand and kisses it.  ‘Thank you.  Thank you for what you did for my mother.’  She moans and falls into a stupor.  She sleeps for half an hour and wakes up retching.  He brings a large salad bowl that he finds in the kitchen, but it is only dry heaving.

He lays a cold towel on her forehead.  Her fingers come up to push it away.  She pulls his face towards her.  Her breath smells strange and stale.  He doesn’t care, he kisses her back.  Suddenly she turns away and begins to cry.

For hours he sits beside her as she goes from comatose to babbling idiot to crazed sex fiend, wondering when it would be over.  When the sky is beginning to lighten, purely from exhaustion she finally falls into a restless sleep.  He texts his secretary to reschedule his morning appointments and gets into bed beside her.  He puts his arm around her narrow waist and closes his eyes with relief that her suffering is over for the night and that she will never remember this long and terrible night.  His nose hovers over the crook of her neck and finds the faint but familiar scent of her perfume.  He registers in his tired, tense body a sense of victory that they did not get her, and then, a strong sense of possession. He tightens his hold on her.

She belongs to him.

Twenty five

While they are having dinner on the balcony Lana says, ‘We’ve been invited to a party tomorrow.  Do you want to go?’

Blake looks at her strangely.  ‘It’s my birthday tomorrow.’

‘Oh,’ she says, surprised.  ‘You never said anything.’

‘No, it’s not something I am looking forward to.’

‘You will be thirty.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want to come to the party then?’

‘I can’t.  My family is flying over to be with me.  They’ve arranged something for me in a hotel.  It will be insufferably boring, I’m sure, but I am obliged.’

“Of course, of course.’  Lana tries her best not to show how his news has affected her.  Was he never going to tell her?  ‘That’s OK then.  I’ll go with Billie.’

Only this morning she has tasted the name of Lana Barrington on her tongue. The whisper is her secret.  It felt right.  As Billie would say, so fucking right.  So she said it louder.

Lana Barrington.  Daring the fates.

Mrs. Lana Barrington.  Your husband has been delayed.  Would you like to wait for him at the bar?  The fantasy was so perfect she wanted to cry.  What a fool she has been.  How on earth did she manage to fall in love with such a cold and heartless man, a banker for God’s sake?

‘Let Tom drive you there and back,’ he is saying.

‘I’ll just take a cab.’

“I’ll feel better if Tom drives you, waits for you and brings you back.’

‘Will she be there?’

‘Yes,’ he says very quietly.

‘Well, that’s that then.  I hope you have fun.’  Her voice sounds high and too merry.

‘I won’t,’ he says, but that doesn’t soothe her one bit.

That was yesterday.  Today she is walking into Billie’s bedroom wearing a pair of white shorts, a cut off, sleeveless, white T-shirt that left her midriff bare and white trainers.

‘Wow, you look seriously hot,’ Billie comments.

‘You don’t think it’s too slutty?’

‘Are you kidding?  It’s white.  You look like a wet dream.  Besides, it’s Tom’s party.  It’s always full of working girls.’

Billie is wearing combat boots, a fur trimmed, green beret and a clinging black cat-suit.

‘You look very Miley Cyrus,’ Lana says.

‘Thanks.  I was going for rock chick, but obviously I’m not ever going to say no to Miley,’ Billie replies with a grin.  ‘Now get in front of the mirror.’

Lana sits on the edge of the bed and Billie picks up a curling iron and takes up position behind her.  With meticulous care she begins to put corkscrew curls in Lana’s hair.  She is concentrating so hard she does not speak, so Lana lets her mind wander to Blake.  She wonders about his world.  So entirely different from hers.  At a hotel, he said, careful not to mention the name of the hotel, as if he feared there was a possibility that she might turn up and embarrass him.

In a little while Leticia comes to join them.  She is wearing a plain grey T-shirt, ripped jeans and a surly expression.  Her hair is gelled to spikes around her head.  She is a big, butch girl.

‘How’s it going, Let,’ Lana greets.

Leticia grunts moodily.

Suddenly, an image of Leticia tied spread eagle on her bed with a chocolate bar stuck between her legs pops into Lana’s head.  Lana presses her lips together to hide her amusement.

Leticia turns towards Billie.  ‘You told her, didn’t you?’ she accuses.

Unfazed, Billie takes another small section of Lana’s hair and carefully coils it around the curling iron.  ‘Be thankful I didn’t tell her what I did to you last night,’ she says, and crusty, cross Leticia squirms.

When they are ready, the girls walk over to Tom’s place.  It is such a warm evening they don’t even need coats.