Ms Talbert,’ she says.
It isn’t a question. She brooks no refusal. I’m in this for real, now.
The trouble, I suppose, is that I don’t know what this is. ‘Assignation’ implies a meeting of some type, but it has other connotations too. Nerve-wracking, impossible, problematic sorts of connotations that I don’t quite know how to deal with.
So I don’t. I put them out of my mind as I climb the winding staircase, still marvelling at the air of utter luxury. I’m almost afraid to trail my hand over the banister, in case I get my sticky, plebeian fingerprints all over it. And at the top is a hall lined with doors, each one glossier than the next. The wood is so dense and dark I’m certain it must have a smell, but when I lean in close there’s nothing.
There’s just the odour of sheer, intense class – more class than Lucy could have possibly afforded. She earned the same as me, which puts this place out of reach. But then I think over that confidence she had, again, and my mind goes back and forth on the matter.
True, she didn’t have the money for a place like this.
But she had the chutzpah.
And that thought pushes a sudden pang of loss through me. She’ll probably never tell me some shocking story again. She’ll never persuade me to do daring things. If I want anything above a simple life of simple pleasures again, I’ll have to persuade myself.
Which seems unlikely, until I get to the door on my room key: One-One-One. And then despite my pounding heart, and that impulse in me to always turn back at the point of no return, I’m somehow putting the key in the lock. I’m compelled to, by the look of the thing. It isn’t one of those modern card-type affairs with a light that turns green when you’re allowed in. It’s a proper brass key with an ornate and shadowy hole to slide it into, and, when I turn it, it creates such a solid sound.
Just to make everything that little bit more final. I’ve come to a hotel with a name that isn’t mine for an assignation I didn’t arrange, and now I’m in a room I didn’t pay for. A room that hasn’t been paid for, if I know Lucy. She was probably going to meet someone here and then finagle them into footing the bill, but of course I don’t know how to do that.
I’m not even sure how to stand in a room like this. The luxury downstairs was bad enough, but in such a closed space it’s almost oppressive. I feel as though I’m being mugged by expensive furniture and artwork, and there’s nothing I can do to get away. The three-foot-deep carpet has me mired, like quicksand.
And then I see what awaits me on the bed, and the effect gets worse. I’m smothered in shock and anxiety, to the point where I can’t breathe, for a long moment – though I do understand how silly that is. I’m sure this is all perfectly normal and ordinary to someone who isn’t as dull as me.
People are probably using handcuffs on each other all the time, in all the places I’m not. It’s not even a big deal to have kinky sex any more. It’s old news, it’s beyond boring, it’s passé. Those glittering gunmetal loops on the bed are simply a sign of how out of date I am.
As is the leather strap next to it, and the puddle of red silk like spilt blood, and the thin silver cane that makes me think of the kind of school I never went to. This is the dusty place of my Enid Blyton imagination, filled with answers you can’t give to questions that don’t make sense and professors in tweed with icy eyes.
Professors who might be very angry to find me trespassing where I don’t belong. I’ve somehow slipped into Bluebeard’s cupboard without knowing it, and now I’m dancing amidst the dead girls. I’m seeing things I shouldn’t and feeling things I’m not prepared for, and it’s at this moment of supreme confusion that the door handle starts to turn.
I hear it before I see it. I hear old metal grind against old metal, and then I move without thinking. I don’t even stop to consider how insane this is. I simply step backwards into the double-door closet behind me, and pull the doors closed with every bit of grace I didn’t think I possessed. I’m almost proud of myself for the sound they make: soft as a sigh. And for the stillness I sink into, the second I’m cocooned in sultry darkness. Usually I trip, I stumble, I knock something over. I’ve never been known for my stealth.
But I feel stealthy here. I’ve erased myself from the room, as though this is actually the reverse of that Bluebeard tale. I took myself out of the equation, before he could do it for me. I guessed and found my sanctuary behind some secret door, somewhere to hide while he does whatever he’s going to do outside it.
Oh, God, I know he’s going to do something. All the hairs on my arms have stood up, before I’m even aware it’s a him. And then once I’ve heard his heavy footsteps – somehow thudding, despite the plush carpet – and understood that it definitely is a man, the sensation gets worse. The prickling, bristling, squirming sensation, as though I’ve done something to be ashamed of, despite knowing I haven’t.
I’ve only pretended to be Lucy, I think at the heavy presence outside the doors. Please don’t be a Russian mobster, hell-bent on killing me.
Because that idea, though ridiculous, has a ring of truth about it. This is the moment in the movie when the heroine hopes she’s safe. She holds her breath, waiting and waiting for the drift of shadows through the gap between the doors. Hearing the creak of leather shoes, the thud of heavy footfalls …
And then just when she’s sure she’s safe …
Just when she breathes a sigh of relief …
That’s when he drags her, screaming, from her hiding place. That’s when he does whatever Russian mobsters do – teeth-pulling and eye-puncturing and lots of shouting about treasure that I have no knowledge of. Any second, I think. Any second.
Only the second never comes. It just goes on and on until it’s practically a whole minute, torturing me endlessly with its refusal to end. If this moment goes on much longer I swear I’m going to burst out and make a run for it, and the only thing that stops me is my need to check first. I just have to look.
And then I lean forward, trembling, and peer through the gap between the doors. I see who he really is, in a rush of breathless bravery.
It’s the man from downstairs.
The man in the suit, with the inescapable face.
Apparently he had such an impact on me I can recognise him in parts and in pieces. I see a sliver of black and know that it’s his big, burly right arm. And that flash of gunmetal grey … that’s the hint of stubble on his great granite face.
Though I think I try to pretend otherwise, at first. I turn him into a jigsaw, and rearrange each tiny bit I can see into something else – that’s a leg, not an arm, and it’s far too small to be his. That flash of dark hair I can see? It’s not dark enough to equal the black pelt I saw a little while ago. It’s not him, I think, it’s not him, and even if it was I wouldn’t care.
Only he chooses that moment to speak, and after he has I have to face the fact that I do care, after all. I care a lot. I want to slump against something, but of course I can’t. If I do, he’ll hear me. He’ll know I’m here, and worse – he’ll see the effect his silken voice is having on my usually reasonable behaviour.
My breath actually catches in my throat, when he speaks words into his phone. And I can’t blame what he might be saying, either, because I don’t know what it is. It could be ‘I’m going to kill her,’ thus justifying my bizarre shivering reaction to the sound of him. But it could just as easily be dry-cleaning instructions for his assistant.
Because he says it in another language.
He speaks in a different language with a voice that’s already like sand shifting over metal, and my insides just flip out. He’s inadvertently flicked some weird switch inside me, and there’s no turning it back once it’s there. Apparently, I really like hearing someone speak in Hungarian or Polish or Russian or whatever it is he’s speaking, while trapped in a closet. I’m