Suzie and the Monsters (16 page)

I could kill her, I suppose. Or leave her here to die. Or phone for an ambulance.

Or I could do what she wanted, what I have secretly wanted too, but dared not hope for, for the past few days.

‘What mischiefs she would do, if she should live!’ says the voice within. The words are spoken as a warning, powerful, but ambiguous.

This time I know the answer: ‘Yet she must live, and live that I may prove whether this strange disorder here be love.’

And aloud to Cleo: ‘Divine, divinest maid!’ I slice along my wrist with the blade of the knife, and let her blood, transformed, drip into her mouth. From her expression, it’s clear she doesn’t enjoy the taste, but she swallows a few mouthfuls until my wrist heals. My poor, poor Cleo. She’s about to go through hell, because I’m too selfish to deny her.

I clean the blood from her pale skin, and my own, and cut my wrist again to feed her some more, a few more mouthfuls, then I take her out and dry her and wrap her warmly in the duvet before taking care of myself.

I phone Alia. ‘I need you.’

*

She’s furious with me, of course, and I deserve it.

‘She stuck a knife in my heart,’ I complain, like a guilty teenager confronted by her angry mother.

‘She what?’ Alia is momentarily startled out of her rage. I start to explain, but Alia’s shouting again. ‘She’s just a child, for God’s sake. How could you do this to her?’

‘I’m lonely.’

Alia takes a deep breath, tries to calm down. ‘I know, Suzie, but she can’t go home. Her family will look for her. They’ll look for her for the rest of their lives, wondering what terrible thing could have happened. I guess it’s a blessing that they’ll never suspect this.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, shut up. Don’t apologise to me. And you can stop crying too.’ I can’t help it, I’m vulnerable to Alia’s wrath. She screams with frustration and throws a cushion at me. She glares at me until I control my tears. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.

‘I need to get her somewhere secluded for a few days, perhaps a few weeks.’

‘What do you need from me?’

‘I need you to find me a house in the country, somewhere by itself, and I need to move in today.’

‘Jamie can do that faster.’ Jamie’s into property development.

‘Tell her she’ll never see me again if she does.’

Alia laughs. ‘I hope you’re not including me in that promise. Just because I’m pissed off with you doesn’t mean I don’t still love you.’

‘I know, but everything’s different now.’

While Alia phones her girlfriend, I take my suitcase to Reception. I’m dressed smartly in Cleo’s jeans and shirt, my long hair falling sleek and black behind me. I ask them to bring my car round. ‘My sister’s very ill,’ I explain so that there’s no panic when they see Cleo. ‘My friend and I are taking her to the hospital.’ They offer to phone for a doctor, but I tell them that I have already spoken to my sister’s doctor and that this has happened before.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard Jamie sound so happy,’ Alia tells me with a grin when I return to the room. Together we dress Cleo in my red velvet dress and her underwear and Truffles. She looks to me like a crack-addict stripper, but her general similarity to me is still apparent. We take an arm each and guide her through the hotel. Cleo’s awake enough to put one foot in front of the other, but is too weak to stand unaided, let alone walk unaided.

Several hotel staff hover around us when we pass through Reception, offering to help, but I decline and reassure them that my sister will be fine. The Mini is parked outside the front entrance and the porter is packing my suitcase in the trunk. Alia and I manoeuvre Cleo onto the back seat. I thank and tip the porter, then climb in with Cleo while Alia gets behind the wheel and starts the car.

‘Harmony on Oxford Street,’ I tell her as we pull away.

‘Is this really the best time to be buying lingerie?’ Alia jokes, but I ignore her. I cut my wrist for the third time, and Cleo accepts the blood eagerly, drinking deeply. After a few mouthfuls she pulls away with a snarl. ‘It’s bitter!’

‘I know, honey. So is yours now.’

‘Fuck,’ she says and laughs, then falls asleep.

A short time later, Alia parks round the corner from Harmony, and I race through the shop looking for heavy duty restraints, emerging a few minutes later with a shopping bag full of leather and steel wrist and ankle cuffs. I remember about Cleo’s phone, which I switched off at the hotel, but now I clean it of prints and drop it into a drain.

We head north through the city while we wait for Jamie to get back to us. We stop at a B&Q so that I can buy padlocks, pliers and several metres of chain, then at a Tesco where I buy everything I can think I might need: duvet, bed sheets, polythene sheets, buckets, bandages, antiseptic, soap, shampoo, bottled water, coffee, tea, sugar, a cafetière with a filter funnel, and filters of course, fresh orange juice, biscuits. By the time I finish squeezing all this into the Mini there’s hardly room for me to sit with Cleo.

Alia spots the biscuits and juice and helps herself. ‘Jamie’s found a bungalow for rent, just north of London. About a hundred metres from the nearest neighbour, and you can move in straight away, but you need to sign an agreement for one year, and pay ten thousand up front.’

‘Did you get the cash from Peony yet?’

‘No, but I just called her and she says she can get ten for us within the hour.’

‘Good. Give Jamie my love and ask her to sort out the rental. We’ll pay cash on arrival. Let’s go and see the queen of the underworld.’

*

The bungalow is just outside Broxbourne, set back from a cross-country road that’s quite busy, nine or ten cars passing every minute. There are walls and trees around the large garden shielding the house from view of the neighbours and the road. The agent arrives shortly after we do, driving a silver Mercedes. She is an attractive redhead in her forties and dressed, elegant yet formal, in Karen Millen, and introduces herself as Lauren Carter. She’s clearly a little confused by us, Alia old enough to be my mother and yet obviously not, and then after I introduce myself as Suzie Kew she is reluctant to rent the house to someone so young.

But I am well-dressed and well-spoken, and as she shows me around the house she gradually relaxes. I am relieved to discover that the place is at least partly furnished. The double beds in the two large bedrooms have mattresses, there’s a table and chairs in the dining room, and a sofa and armchair in the living room. There’s a fridge and a washing machine, no kettle, but at least the electricity is still connected. Alia stays outside to keep an eye on Cleo while I sit with Lauren in the dining room and go through the rental agreement, and then we drive to the bank where I give Lauren the ten thousand cash and we wait while the cashier counts it and provides a receipt.

Lauren relaxes, and smiles with real warmth for the first time. ‘I don’t like dealing with so much cash,’ she confesses.

‘It is a lot of money,’ I agree, ‘although it’s surprising how quickly you can burn through it when shopping. These shoes alone cost over eight hundred.’

She stares at my feet for a moment. ‘They do look fantastic,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I’ll need the remainder by the end of next week.’

‘Of course. I’ll phone you when I have it.’

She drops me back at the bungalow and hands me the keys. I wave goodbye as she drives off.

‘Made a new friend?’ Alia asks with a grin.

‘No,’ I laugh. ‘She’s full of questions she isn’t asking. She probably thinks I’m the daughter of a Mafia don, or something. More money than sense.’

Alia helps me unpack the car, starting with Cleo who is still in a deep sleep. We lay her on the sofa for now. In one of the bedrooms, I cover the floor around the bed, and the bed itself, with polythene sheets, create loops of chain around the legs of the bed, and place the buckets next to the bed, and a bottle of water also. Finally, I spread a fitted sheet over the polythene-covered mattress, and we bring Cleo into the bedroom.

I lock Cleo’s wrists together around one chain with one set of leather cuffs, and lock her ankles together around the chain at the bottom of the bed with another set of leather cuffs. It’s a loose enough arrangement to allow her to move about a little, find new positions, but it will keep her on the bed. Her temperature has dropped and she is trembling, shivering. I cover her with a duvet and we leave her to sleep.

‘What happens next?’ Alia asks.

‘She has already started changing,’ I explain. ‘Soon her body will start tearing itself apart and remaking itself, and then she’ll get hungry. Very hungry. You mustn’t come near us, Alia.’

‘I understand. But you know where I am, if you need me.’

I hug her. ‘Alia, my love. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.’

She kisses me, on the lips for the first time in ten years. ‘I’ll miss you, little Suzie.’

*

After taking Alia back to her flat in the city, I head back out to B&Q for more chain, heavier stuff that will hold nearly a tonne. It comes in nine metre lengths and I buy all three that they have in stock. I also get more padlocks and a bunch of galvanised steel rings on plates. One of the staff, an old guy called Tom, gives me lots of advice on what screws and so on I need, and recommends a drill as well. Part of me thinks it’s hilariously wrong for a girl to be doing DIY, but it’s also fantastic that I don’t need a man just to drill a few holes in a wall.

Then Tesco again for more orange juice and biscuits, also a few bottles of Saint-Émilion Grand Cru, the Château Lapelletrie. The kitchen in the bungalow has some mixed cutlery and crockery, but I don’t remember seeing a corkscrew so I add one to the trolley, and some wine glasses and a kettle as well.

Red wine will take the edge off, but I really need some proper food. I’ve been feeling dizzy and hungry all day. Back in the Mini I pop Schumann’s Kreisleriana into the CD player, a set of pieces that always makes me imagine the Tomcat Murr pouncing playfully up and down the keyboard, and drive across town to a singles bar called Sauce.

‘Wednesday Night Is Pole-Dancing Night!’ the sign outside the bar claims, and indeed there is a pole, but there’s no one using it, and I’d be surprised if it has ever seen a real pole dance rather than drunk girls having a laugh. It’s nearly eight o’clock and there are about sixty people here, an even mix of men and women, mostly in their thirties or early forties. There are a couple of women on the dance floor, some song I don’t recognise, and I think all the women here are in groups of twos or threes, and many of the men also, although several look like they’re by themselves.

The general dress sense here is smart but quite cheap, overdone, underdone, mismatched. I stand out already in my Burberry and Armani, but plan to make a real impact. I scroll through the jukebox, and select Fever from Madonna’s Erotica, and a couple of other tracks from the same album. Climbing onto the podium with the pole, I swing around and up, and up, before spinning back down. Since I’m not wearing any underwear, and not prepared to pole-dance naked, I dance in my jeans and shirt, which limits what I can do. Skin contact is important. Even so, I am dancing with an easy elegance that I imagine this place has never seen before, and never will again.

I love being in the air like this, forgetting for a few precious minutes who I am and why I am here, and what is going to happen. But I am also watching the way people move around, who they’re with, and by the time I finish dancing I’m fairly certain about who is here alone.

I make my way around the bar chatting with my potential targets, all male. ‘Hi, my name’s Helen,’ I start. ‘What did you think of my pole-dance?’ Also: ‘Are you here with anyone?’ I’m mostly interested in the way they smell. Are they clean and healthy? A couple of men fail that initial test. Another is a lot skinnier than I originally thought. They’ve all been drinking, and one guy can barely talk. One of my targets is actually here with his wife. She is chatting to a couple of men a short distance away while her husband watches, and he’s obviously turned on. It’s a shame, because he was definitely the nicest of the bunch.

But I do find myself a couple of victims. Danny practically hands himself to me. ‘I loved your dance!’ he enthuses, merry with alcohol and having such an attractive young girl to talk to.

‘I love your emerald green eyes,’ I tell him, opening my eyes wide to invite a compliment in return.

He obliges. ‘You have beautiful eyes. Like liquid honey.’

‘Nonsense,’ I laugh. ‘My eyes are hazel-green!’ He leans closer to study them, and drowns inside them. ‘Give me your phone,’ I ask, and he obeys, taking it out and offering it to me. ‘Drop it in your beer,’ I order, and he does. Wow. ‘Danny, have you ever been in love? Truly, madly, deeply in love?’ I ask.

‘Yes.’ He looks and sounds sad about this.

‘I want you to think about that time and remember the happiness,’ I tell him, and gradually he starts to smile. ‘I want you to hold on to that feeling, and whenever you see me I want you to feel that happiness again. I am a goddess in human form, Danny. What makes me happy makes you happy also. Obeying me makes you happy. When I give you an order, you will say “Yes, Goddess,” and will feel again the happiness of being in love.’

I wake him up, and he looks at me and smiles with open delight, but this fades into a wide-eyed puzzlement. ‘I’d like to take you home with me tonight, Danny.’ He grins. I press my hand to his crotch and feel him harden inside his pants. ‘You and another man,’ I add.

‘Oh,’ he says, crestfallen, but I stroke his hardness for a minute.

‘Wait for me outside the bar,’ I order him.

‘Yes, Goddess.’

My second victim, Adam, tall, dark, but not handsome, wearing a suit, resists being entranced, but is nonetheless happy to come home with me. ‘It’s not just me,’ I tell him. ‘It’s my identical twin sister, Lucy, who has broken her leg and is stuck at home and very horny, and that’s why Danny’s coming with us, but, you know, if you feel up to a threesome, or even a foursome...’ He certainly looks up for it. I walk out of the bar, leaving him to run to collect his jacket and then chase after me.