I am British. The spell-checker on this site keeps underlining all my U.K. variant spellings.
I've spent far too long working on this story and it is still by no means perfect -- but it is time to set it free, slap it on the bum and push it out into the world.
I do not have an editor, or even someone to just read over my stuff, so if there is anyone out there who would like to work with me as an editor, please send an email.
A final note: no darlings have been harmed in the writing of this story.
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Part 1
Abbi was twenty at the time all this happened. I'd married her only two years earlier but, looking back, eighteen was far too young for her to have become my bride. Anyway, turned out she was just not the settling down type. Three year after I slipped the ring on to her finger she left me.
We might still be together today if I had not encouraged her to live out the dream. And even though I know she did what she did willingly -- whether to illuminate some dark corner of her own soul, or for her own pleasure, I don't know -- but perhaps she never would have gone down that road if not for my leading her the way, step by step. What a stupid young man I was to have asked her to realise such a perverse fantasy.
Even before this all kicked off, Abbi received a lot of attention from blokes. Hardly surprising, she was an exceptionally pretty girl. But it was something more than the little-girl-lost looks she affected which drew men to her. Her openness, her endearing unsophisticated breeziness could just as easily snare a man, just like a sweet-sap-sticky carnivorous pitcher plant could insects. It was not as if she trapped them by some devious hinged intent of hers. Drawn by her winsome allure, men would let down their guard and, little by little, find themselves in a reverie of amative obsession. I would watch rationality slowly dissolved by the viscoelastic fluid of her beauty.
If she took a liking to you, her warmth towards you and interest in you would be immediate and genuine; you could even say intense -- at first. She would listen to what you had to say, and had the knack of saying the things back to you that you wanted to hear her say. Also, she was a very tactile person and liked to touch her friends in small affectionate ways. But for some, it might have been better if she had never shown them any interest at all.
But her baby-faced prettiness and waif-like frame belied a hidden sexual voracity. Some men sensed there was far more to her than her butter-wouldn't-melt cuteness. The more astute male intuited the sexual lava-flow that ran beneath her butter-wouldn't melt facade. Maybe it was in her eyes, or maybe it was how she wore her flesh about herself. Maybe it was in the way her fairness of skin and slightness of frame made everything else in her proximity appear obtuse, gross.
When a guy had it real bad for her, their need for her might begin to impinge on our relationship as a couple, then it was up to me to sort out the mess. Things often got ugly.
But she could never understand why men floundered at her feet:
"Oh, what have I done, Martin? Have I encouraged him?" she once asked me about a poor sod in our social circle who'd gone all tragic over her. His name was Sean. What a pratt.
"Abbi," I said. "You don't have to do a thing. You just have to be Abbi."
She was perhaps her own worst enemy, her need to be liked by others her undoing. And when her easily bestowed friendship elicited more than she intended, she could never bring herself to hurt someone's feeling by rejecting them outright.
For example: it was a Saturday night and we were out clubbing with a bunch of our friends. We were supposed to be enjoying ourselves but Sean and Abbi had sequestered themselves away together in the dark corner of the alcove our clique was in the habit of using to touch base with each other during those heady, early morning hours. They were having this big heart to heart. She loved all that probing of other people's psychological garbage heaps.
I was sitting close, talking to someone else, and overheard her say to Sean, "We can never be like that with each other, Sean -- but I do love you -- I love you like a brother."
Jeeez!
Then there were the phone calls at ridiculous hours. The unexpected ringing of our doorbell just as we were sitting down for tea -- or looking out of our bedroom window at midnight and seeing his car parked in the street, the windows foggy, him hunched inside with phone in palm.
Sean was not the first, nor would he be the last. Sometimes It was like she wasn't married to me, as if she had become public domain. When it got too much I would have to play the heavy husband, let them know they were trespassing on private property and were pissing me off.
Of course, this was all before I had my dream. Things were different after my dream.
So yes, Abbi was that certain type of girl deadly to a certain kind of male. Princess-pretty as she was, her nature really was guileless. I think she had not yet discovered herself, still needed the feedback loop of other people's attention to make herself feel a valid person. God, how I tried to satisfy that need.
As for those who fell at her feet: I suppose she presented a blank canvas for the strange needs some men harbour. She was not in anyway conceited about her looks, her charm. Far from it: she didn't have a clue just how easily a glance from her enormous manga-eyes could unhinge a man.
Reading this back I have made her sound, perhaps, less than bright. She was anything but empty-headed. At the time of this story she was doing all sorts of courses to get her accountancy qualifications. The last I heard from her after our divorce was she had become a partner in some important London firm that handled the financial affairs of A-list celebrities. Tax evasion and all that.
Although I hate psychobabble, I'd always put her need for attention down to her parents divorce when she was seven.
Mostly I didn't have to worry too much about the poor saps she captivated. The fools kept me amused. There was one guy, though, whose interest in Abbi meant I had to keep my wits about me. He showed her far more attention than was proper, sometimes outright salacious. He was totally unlike the love sick idiots she usually drew into her orbit. A different beast completely. The problem was, he was not the sort of bloke I could intimidate. Tall and muscular, he had a reputation as the hard man of our neighbourhood. So sure of himself, he had that air of self-satisfaction only a congenitally handsome man could wear without looking a complete buffoon. Full of hubris, he had yet to suffer a nemesis.
The stuff he used to say to her made me squirm sometimes. I wouldn't say he was keener than any of the others, the ones who thought of Abbi as their soul-mate. He was more pushy, his interest uncouth, blatantly sexual.
His name was Nathan, the husband of Abbi's best friend, Belinda. Nathan and Belinda were not part of our weekend social crowd. Belinda was Abbi's old friend from school. They got on well together: Nathan and I barley suffered each other.
Before Belinda gave birth to her first baby, the four of us would occasionally go out together, usually just the local boozer. On those occasions Nathan sometimes made comments about how gorgeous Abbi looked and how she was wasted on me.
He would call her Princess -- she hated that. One time he affected a joking tone and asked when she was going to join him and Belinda in a threesome.
When he came out and asked her that, asked her to her face, Abbi raised an eye brow and fixed Belinda with an incredulous look of disbelief. "Is he being serious?" she asked.
"He hadn't better be," was all Belinda said.
I often wonder what Abbi would have said If Belinda had said she was up for a threesome too. I'd never seen any signs of Abbi having an interest in women in all the time I knew her -- but that night when she asked Belinda if Nathan was being serious about a threesome, I saw something in her eyes I'd not seen before. The finding of a door, the possibility of it opening.
As for me, I didn't think anything of his wise-cracks, saw them as laddish-bullshit tinged with Nathan's unique humour of the gutter. I'd always enjoyed watching moths burn their wings on Abbi's bright-angel flame. Most men like to think his girl is desired by other blokes -- especially when there is no chance the other man will ever get to taste what he alone enjoys. And apart from that one comment about a threesome that got her hackles up, Belinda seems not have to minded her husband's bawdy banter. She was a lovely girl but not the most astute.
Abbi and I could talk about stuff like this; her admirers and the crap they would tell her confidentially. I would laugh and she would say I was cruel and to laugh because it was so sad for them.
And of course I asked her if Nathan's attention bothered her. "No it didn't," she said. I asked if she fancied him. After all, he was as good a looking bloke as any woman could hope to meet: six-three, worked out most nights at the local gym, his body a walking commercial for the benefits of weight training, he had the swagger of Achilles.
She said she didn't fancy him, said she loved me and never thought of any other man in a sexual way. But I had my doubts. I'd seen how her eyes followed Nathan. At twenty-seven, he was seven years older than Abbi, four years older than me. If he hadn't been my wife's friend's husband I wouldn't have had anything to do with him. I thought him a real grunt.
After Belinda finally gave birth to their first child, Nathan started coming round ours a couple of evenings a week. He'd drink my beer and moan about the chaos in his own house. He'd go on about how he couldn't put up with the mess, the nappies everywhere, the baby's constant bawling.
