Bad Boys of London: The Complete GYPSY HEROES Collection (60 page)

‘Yes, now I have your number,’ she says slowly.

The moment is strange, surreal even. Full of undercurrents and deeper meanings, it doesn’t belong in the middle of a club relentlessly dedicated to the pursuit of the pleasures of the flesh. All the clever words and witty remarks have deserted me. I don’t want to let her go.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I ignore it. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I say.

She nods slowly. ‘Yeah, maybe you will.’

For some odd reason her voice is sad. As if this promise has been made before and never kept, even though I cannot even imagine a scenario where a man takes her number and does not call. She is impossibly intriguing. I resist the temptation to reassure her that I will call. 

‘Well, then. Nice to have met you,’ she says and, turning, begins to walk away.

‘Snow,’ I call.

She turns around, one charcoal eyebrow raised.

‘I will call you,’ I promise. It has never happened to me before. I have never cared to reassure anybody that I will call. If I felt like calling the next day, I called. If I didn’t, well … c’est la fucking vie.

One side of her mouth lifts, and then she turns away and carries on in her path, again an incorruptible fairy tale creature. When she disappears from my sight I can’t stop smiling. I take a triumphant sip of my drink before tilting my body slightly so I have a view of her table.

And that moment is like that video of John Newman’s track, ‘Love Me Again’. Do you know it? Where a boy and a girl meet in a dreary club. They escape from her wannabe gangster boyfriend and run out of the back doors. Hand in hand, full of hope and excitement, thinking they have outrun the bad guys, they get out of a narrow alleyway and dash straight into an oncoming vehicle. The video ends abruptly on a black screen.

I guess you are supposed to infer that they die.

Snow’s table is Lenny the Gent’s table.

The fairy tale takes an unexpected and unwelcome turn. Lenny ‘the Gent’ is not the wannabe variety but a real gangster. What they used to call a mobster. They call him the Gent because he is always so fucking polite. He would say ‘please’ or ‘do you mind’ before he hacked off your face. The Gent is surrounded by beautiful, giggling women vying for his attention, but he gazes at Snow’s approach with the kind of hunger that makes me sick to my stomach.

Fucking hell. Straight into an oncoming vehicle! 

Snow is Lenny’s woman.

When she reaches his table, he stretches out his hand. For a second she hesitates then she opens her bag and gives him her phone. He pockets it, and taking another phone out of his pocket gives that to her. She puts it into her bag and sits down beside him, and he places his hand on her thigh.

I try to make out her expression, but her face is as smooth as a statue. Like a man in a daze I start walking toward her. My mind is blank. Fortunately, I collide with a waitress.

‘Sorry. It was my fault,’ she apologizes.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I tell her, my hypnotic trance broken.

I stop where I am standing and look at Snow. She is staring vacantly into her drink, her numb face the perfect frame for her empty eyes. The emptiness is total. I recognize its significance instantly. Her frozen body and expression are an instinct to survive. She has locked herself away in a place where she cannot be corrupted by the baseness and degradation around her.

A nearly naked woman is writhing her flesh close to Lenny the Gent’s face, but, like mine, his eyes are glued on Snow.

There is only one way this thing is going to end. Badly. But I don’t care. I have always gone where angels fear to tread. The blood expands in the veins of my forearms.

Snow will be mine.

The second mouse will get the cheese.

Three

SNOW

Better keep yourself clean and bright;

you are the window through which you must see the world.

                                                                —Lucien Bernard Shaw

‘A
re you ready to go?’ Lenny asks. As if it is ever my decision to stay or go.

I turn my head in his direction and feel like a deer that has stepped out of cover. It stops and stands, motionless, nose to the air, watching, smelling, ready to flee at the least sound. A million years of evolution has taught it how to sniff out danger.

He looks back at me, his eyes totally blank. It is the thing that I find most unnerving about him: how dead his eyes can be at certain moments. Then he smiles and his face fills with human emotions and I forget that momentary disquiet.

‘Yes, I’m ready to go,’ I reply.

‘I’ll be coming up with you tonight,’ he says, watching me for my reaction.

I become cold inside. The deer would have bolted, but I don’t. My face cracks into a smile. ‘Of course,’ I say quietly.

He stands and holds out his hand. I take it. At the next two tables men are standing up—his minders. We walk out of the club followed by them.

What a mistake it was to talk to that impossibly gorgeous man, to flirt with him and pretend that I could ever go out with one such as him. Shane. Beautiful name. But it was stupid and careless to walk back with some of his warmth still wrapped around my wrist and his cocky smile lighting my eyes.

Lenny knew straight away. He sees everything. Eyes like a hawk. I am his possession. He doesn’t use me too often, usually twice a week, sometimes thrice, but I am his, just as much as the hammock he uses only in the summer is. He will sleep with me tonight because he wants to exercise that ownership over my body.

He is actually furious. 

We get into the rear of his Rolls-Royce and he leans back and runs his hand along my inner thigh. I inhale sharply. It is an involuntary gesture and his hand freezes. My gaze swings nervously to his eyes. With a cold, hard smile on his face, he moves his hand relentlessly upwards.

I suppose it is my fault, really. If I had not allowed the other man into my head. If I had not come back thinking of fireflies. If I had just been a little better hidden, he would not be doing this now.

‘Open your legs,’ he instructs.

I part them slightly. His fingers pull away the material of my panties and brush at the seam of my core. I flinch inwardly. Outwardly, my face is calm. I stare straight ahead as if nothing is happening.

‘Dry,’ he murmurs. ‘You’re always so damn dry.’

I swallow hard. ‘I have lubricant at home.’ My voice sounds suddenly panicked. I don’t know where the instinctive horror of him comes from. He has never hurt me—at least, not yet. Perhaps, the revulsion comes from the frightening emptiness in his eyes, or the smooth hairless skin on his back. Like a reptile. 

‘Hmmm.’ He takes his hand away and I close my legs with relief.

The car stops outside my building and we get out. In the lift, I know he is watching me steadily, but I cannot look at him. Here the lights are too bright, God knows what he will see. The lift doors open and we step out onto plush maroon carpet. We walk down the corridor and he opens the door with his own key. It is a small one-bedroom apartment. I live here. He pays the rent and all the bills.

I put my purse on the sideboard and head for the little table that serves as my bar. If I’m going to have sex I will need a very stiff drink.

‘Would you like a nightcap?’ I ask politely.

‘Yeah, pour me whatever you’re having.’

I require a drink where I can put lots of alcohol into the mix and no one will be the wiser. ‘I’m having vodka and orange juice,’ I throw over my shoulder.

‘That’ll do me,’ he says, and slumps onto the sofa.

I’ve noticed recently that he’s changing right before my eyes. His moods are becoming darker and more frequent. With my back to him I prepare our drinks. Mine is three-quarters vodka and a quarter orange juice. I carry our drinks over to the sofa and hand him his. I sit next to him and take a gulp. Heavens, it is strong.

‘I have some of your favorite caviar. I’ll go and get it,’ I say, attempting to stand.

His hand shoots out and clamps around my wrist. My shocked eyes fly to his face. 

His thin, cruel mouth twitches. ‘I’m not hungry … for that.’

‘Oh, OK,’ I mumble anxiously, and take another gulp of my drink. I steal a glance at him and he is watching me with the kind of coldness that chills me to the bone.

‘Will you need to finish all of that before you can do anything?’ he asks, lighting a cigarette.

I nod and push the ashtray toward him.

He looks at me through swirls of smoke. ‘Go on then. Fucking finish half a bottle of vodka before I fuck you,’ he says. His words are vicious, but his tone excruciatingly courteous.

So I do. I drink the whole thing and it seeps into my limbs and deadens them. My head gets fucked and I no longer care about anything. I put the glass down carefully and look at him expressionlessly. ‘I’m ready,’ I tell him.

He stands and, pulling me up, carries my limp body to the bedroom. As bedrooms go it is unremarkable. All the furniture came with the apartment and I have not added anything to it. But it is clean. Very clean. I couldn’t bear it if it was not.

He helps me undress and when I am naked he lays me on the bed. He doesn’t undress fully. Just his trousers and his underpants. His legs are oddly stick-like compared to his upper half, which is thickly muscled and bull-like. His penis is dark red, erect and ready. The sight gives me a twinge of distaste, but I damp it down quickly.

I know he’s not a good man, but I owe him my life.

I stare up at him dumbly as he opens the first drawer and takes out a condom packet. He rips it open and rolls it on himself. Then he reaches into the drawer again and takes out a tube of KY jelly. I watch him with detachment as he unscrews the tube, chucks the top carelessly behind the bedside cabinet, and squeezes a couple of inches of gel onto his finger. He places the tube back on the cabinet surface, and comes up to me. His finger is gentle as it slides in, but the jelly is cold, and my muscles contract in rejection.

‘Shhh … relax,’ he urges, thrusting his finger deeper into me.

Don’t worry, Snow, the way he tells it, it will not be a long tale of the night. Just a little story. A quick in and out. I turn my face to the side, and he climbs onto the bed and lets his mouth crawl from my neck down to my breasts.

‘You’re so fucking beautiful. So fucking beautiful. Anybody tries to take you away from me, I’ll fucking kill him,’ he mutters as he pushes deep into me.

I don’t make any sound. I start to feel that familiar feeling of being almost weightless. I know it is actually happening to me, but it feels removed as if it is happening to someone else and I am just watching.

As his body slaps against mine, my mind floats away to my childhood days. I am six years old again. My hair is in two long plaits that reach my waist and there are jasmine flowers woven into them. I can smell their strong fragrance. My nanny, Chitra, and I are standing barefoot at the entrance of an Indian temple.

Together we start ringing the big temple bell. We do so because the priest has given us special permission to help. The bell is made of different types of metal. The sound echoes into the distance to welcome the god and goddess.

Chitra and I walk into the temple together with all the other devotees. We stand with our hands clasped and watch the stone statue of the goddess being washed and dressed. A flame is waved around her then brought to us. We hold our cupped hands a few inches above the flame and touch our warm palms to our faces.

The priest, his mouth stained red with beetle juice, smiles indulgently at me, as he offers me half a coconut filled with a small banana and some flowers.

Chitra and I fall to our knees and let our foreheads touch the cool tiles. While she prays, I turn my face to look at her earnest eyes and think how beautiful she is and how much I love her. I love her more than I love anybody else in the whole wide world.

Then we stand and she bends and kisses me. She never lets her lips touch my skin; instead she presses her nose on my cheek and inhales audibly. When she moves her face away, her breath rushes against my skin. That is her way of kissing.

Lenny climaxes, as he always does, with a shrill scream.

His mouth is too close to my ear and the horrible sound startles me out of my dream. Suddenly, I feel the length of his body on mine, all the rough hairs on his legs and belly scratching my skin. He rests on his elbows and looks down at me with heavy-lidded, blank eyes. I stare back at him wordlessly.

‘Poor Snow,’ he says. For some inexplicable reason, his pity breaks the protective numbness.

‘Don’t,’ I whisper, and I feel my eyes fill with tears. They roll down the sides of my cheeks ‘Please don’t.’

‘For fuck’s sake. I’m sorry, OK? Don’t cry. Just fucking don’t cry again, OK?’

But I cannot stop. So he pulls out of me, takes the condom off, ties it, drops it to the side of the bed, and holds me while I cry. He cannot fix me, he knows that, but he is the only one who knows.

He alone knows what happened to me that night in that hotel room.

Four

SNOW

H
e gets out of bed and, standing over me, regards my naked, trembling body. What he is thinking I don’t know, but with a sigh he walks away after a while, and comes back with a cream blanket. He covers me with it and, moving to the other side of the bed, props himself up on three pillows and lights a cigarette.

We don’t talk while he smokes.

Under the blanket my body gradually warms. I start to feel safe and peaceful again. We have a strange relationship, Lenny and I. But then again I don’t know what normal is. My parents had a strange love–hate relationship too. My father loved my mother and she despised him. I don’t despise Lenny. I … am grateful to him. I don’t think of the future. Lenny is forty-two. When he found me I was nineteen. I am now twenty.

He kills the cigarette and turns to me. ‘You all right?’

‘Yeah,’ I say softly.

‘Want me to stay the night?’