*This part of the story contains one character's recollections of sexual abuse and exploitation.*
I stepped out of the French windows. All the familiar features of the garden -- the beech hedge, the rose bush near the pool, the tall poplar trees -- were just vague shadows, different degrees of dark. There was barely any moon, but the stars were out. A few high clouds -- fast moving -- were drifting across the sky to shroud bits of one constellation after the other.
Where was Anabelle? Things were only growing stranger and more uncomfortable with Sofia. If I spent much more time alone with her, I'd end up doing something that would be impossible to undo. Even without meaning to I seemed to be escalating things. And the part of me that wanted that, that had every intention of escalating things, felt like it was growing more muscular all the time.
My wife had disappeared and rather than worrying about her I'd spent almost every moment thinking about Sofia. I had sat down at my desk to write up the results of an experiment on the impact of noradrenaline on time perception in rats. Three hours later I'd managed to write the title of the article, and that would need revising. My mind had kept looping back to those defining moments of the afternoon: looking through the window to see her quivering with pleasure on her bed, the touch of her hand on my chest in the kitchen.
And now I felt flooded with lust. It felt like it was sheer force of will keeping me standing out there in the dark, rather than storming back inside to fling Sofia against the wall and bury my face in her cunt. That image was a strong one at that moment; I saw myself on my knees in front of her, her dress ruined, my tongue inside her. I wasn't even totally sure that she would have resisted if I had done it. I'd been rude, unpredictable, a total prick, frankly. She should have detested me. Everything in me was twisted and contorted by my desire for her. Just then in the sitting room it was almost entirely out in the open - she was sitting inside now surrounded by the shards of the glass I'd smashed at her feet -- but the way she'd looked at me...I'd felt almost sure she wanted me to take that final step.
It was fucked up on every level. Of course, I was married. But it wasn't really that. Adultery - your common or garden variety adultery -- doesn't have the glamour it once did nor the same capacity to shock. I loved Anabelle and I'd never cheated on her, but if some well-meaning time traveller had turned up on our wedding day to inform me that he had it on good authority that I would one day violate the sixth commandment, it wouldn't have induced any deep existential crisis. But the fact that I'd spent most of the past few hours not just fantasising about but seriously contemplating fucking Anabelle's cousin, who was living in our house, who was fifteen years my junior, who was barely out of her teens? That gave more pause. That would be worm-like behaviour. Did I really have so few scruples that I was willing to fuck with everyone's lives to that extent, just to get my rocks off?
But, even then, I knew really that it couldn't be just some casual affair; once I started it, it wouldn't be some take-it-or-leave-it thing. For brief moments at my desk I'd let myself acknowledge that I could very easily fall in love with Sofia. She was a dangerous bundle of all the things I was most drawn to: fine, almost classical, beauty; the wide curiosity of a youthful intelligence; that strange play of carelessness and depth in her manner. Seeing her just then in the sitting room, just then, talking to her again, there had been moments when I'd been almost on the verge of acknowledging to myself that it was too late, that I had already fallen in love with her. Looking back, those were the moment when I'd been driven to real nastiness; so much easier to bury it all in arrogance and brutality.
And what was worst was that I knew Sofia's history. Or rather, I didn't. But I knew enough. I knew what I'd read in her diary. She was wounded. She was a very vulnerable person. She was a young woman who had not only recently lost both her parents but who had been through some more terrible, shadowy ordeal. Knowing all that I should have been stockading myself in my study until October, ordering drones to drop food parcels down the chimney so I wouldn't have to go anywhere near her. Someone who'd been through all she'd been through, it wouldn't be fair to pull them into the chaos that would be unleashed if anything really happened between us.
And it wouldn't be fair to start something with her knowing the way I wanted her, knowing my sexuality in the way that I did. It could never be ok to approach someone like her with all my hunger and my kinks. Sex and power -- love, tenderness and the urge to take and dominate -- are all wound up in one exquisite Gordian Knot in my psyche. The urge to worship her and to savage her -- to be brutal, demanding, domineering, to overpower her sexually -- were equally strong or -- rather -- were really all one impulse. For some women that kind of loving might be a gift. But for someone who'd been through what she'd experience it could only be an affliction, an endless salting of her wounds.
I'd walked down to the bottom of the garden and sat myself down on one of the raised roots at the base of the old weeping willow. I took out my phone. No messages from Anabelle.
I flicked across to my photo gallery, and brought up the snapshots that Anabelle had taken of those pages from Sofia's diary. Perhaps reading them again would do the trick? Surely re-reading those pages -- absorbing all the implications of those tortured memories -- would vaccinate me against desire for her. Inoculated against lust for her I could be what I should be; a caring, protective, friend, almost an uncle.
And so, for maybe the twentieth time, I read what she'd never meant anyone but herself to read.
**********************
12th May 2020
It's just after 4am. Another nightmare. I woke up about 15 minutes ago feeling like I was about to die. I was almost hyperventilating. A panic attack, I guess. It was pretty horrible. I'm calmer now, I guess. My breathing is almost back to normal, anyway.
It's the second time since I arrived at Anabelle's that I've had a nightmare that took me back to those times. I don't know why it's happening. Maybe being in a new place.
The other night -- not last night, but the night before -- I dreamt I was in some laboratory. They were trying to find a cure for some disease -- I'm not sure which one -- and I'd volunteered to be a subject. I was in some waiting room. All around the walls there were glass cabinets, they looked like fish tanks, but they all contained white mice with red eyes, who were running -- constantly running, they never stopped -- on their wheels. After a while a nurse came to fetch me, and I had to follow her down a long corridor. At the end there were large doors. They swung open and there was an operating room, but huge, more like an indoor stadium. And there was a crowd, like at a football match. We had to fight our way through the crowd, all the way to the centre of the room, which is where the operating table was.
There were doctors there waiting for me, three or four of them. I lay down on the table and there were clamps, like medical stirrups, for my legs. And there were loops so they could tie my wrists to the bed too. I didn't want them to do it, but they said that they had to do it. It was the procedure.
They tied me down and then I looked up at the lead doctor and noticed his face for the first time. It was Khalid. He looked as alive as he ever did, with those hollow cheeks and his weird deep-set eyes. But he was even taller than in real life, he was towering over me, he must have been 8 or 9 feet tall.
He recognised me, of course. He'd been waiting for me. He smiled that awful smile he always saved for when he had something truly horrible planned. He called me Sharmuta, like he used to. He said something filmy and melodramatic like: "we've been waiting for you for so long, Sharmuta." It was a shock to see him, but somehow I wasn't surprised that he was alive, even though I remembered perfectly how his rigid body had looked that morning with the early sun shining across it. I tried to tell him that my name wasn't Sharmuta, that it had never been Sharmuta. But when I moved my lips, no sound came out, and I realised that he'd done something to my throat, to my voice box, so that it wouldn't work anymore. I was mute. And when he saw me trying to talk, he just laughed.
And then he called out to the crowd, asking them if they were ready to see the show. They all cheered. I knew what the show was going to be. I was struggling against the hand and foot holds the bound me, but they got tighter the more I struggled. He went to stand between my legs. I remember I'd been wearing some kind of surgical dress before, a blue one, but now I was naked.
I looked around me for help. I thought maybe the other doctors who were there would help. But then I realised they weren't really doctors at all. I recognised their faces, all of them were from that time, though I don't remember all of their names. One was definitely Kerim. There were lots of them and they were all wearing the same dark suits. And then I realised that they all had their penises in their hands, sticking out through the zips in their suit trousers. All of them were huge, impossibly big. I thought -- they'll kill me, if they put those inside me, they'll rip me apart and I'll die. I started to scream, still soundlessly.
And that must have woken me up. I think I might have started screaming for real, but I stopped as soon as I realised I'd been dreaming. I was really worried that Anabelle and Toby might have heard and would come running and I'd have to explain it away somehow. But they must have been deeply asleep or maybe I wasn't that loud.
I didn't go back to sleep, I just sat up reading until daylight. I was exhausted at work, felt like I was dead. Luckily I was so tired that night that I didn't have any problem getting to sleep, and I don't think I had any dreams. At least there are none I can remember. But tonight, I was thinking about the nightmare whilst I was lying in bed, worrying that it would happen again, so it took me ages to get to sleep. And then it did happen.
I was at Brakespear, at the detention centre, in the big seminar room. I was talking to Sammy about football. Or rather he was talking at me. He kept asking if I supported Liverpool or Chelsea. I kept saying that I didn't support anyone, but he'd just laugh and a minute later he'd ask again. It started to get really annoying and somehow I decided that the only way to shut him up would be to kiss him. I did and it was actually really nice. And it made him so happy, it was really sweet. We were making out for a while and I felt myself getting quite turned on, and started to wonder if he'd try and have sex with me. I thought: I shouldn't, it wouldn't be very professional. But then I thought about how long it's been since I've had sex, and I decided I'd let him if he'd try.
