Sweet Convictions (15 page)

“That was fucking
insanely awesome. I loved it. Thank fuck cameras aren’t permitted in here,” I say as I re-dress. “I definitely want some more of that!”

Mike
smiles. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

Fantasy number,
er, I don’t quite remember = CHECK!! 

Chapter 8

             
The following day, I’m woken by the usual daily knock at the door.

             
“Mmmmmmmmrgh...mmmmmyesssssss,” I manage to force out. I’m not sure I’m quite up for much today. There’s an annoyingly chirpy voice on the other side.

“
Good morning Ms Bentley, it’s Lesley, your host for today. Would you like some breakfast brought up to your room?”

“Thanks, but not today. I’m having a bit of a lie in.”
I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself, and really guilty and dirty.

“Oh. I hope you’re ok?” Lesley
asks in a less chirpy, more concerned manner.

“I’m fine thank you
, just ignore me. I’ll have a later start today if that’s ok?”
Like I need her permission!

“Not a problem at all Ms Bentley
. Would you like me to come back up later?”
Oh for the love of God and me, leave me the hell alooone!

“Thank you Lesley
. I think I’ll just make my way to the gym this morning and decide later.”

“Ok
ay, enjoy your day and you know where to get in touch if you need anything.”

“
Mmmrph,” I grumble throwing the pillow over my head.

After half an hour of tossing and turning, I gather there
’s no way I was going back to sleep. All the merriment of that woman keeps repeating in my head like heartburn.

I can’t help
but think of how sleezy I’m being at the moment. From being a forward-planning, ritualistic, humdrum woman to ripping my clothes off and jumping into bed with anyone and everyone in the room is really making my belly churn. I talk myself out of the guilt that’s consuming me and remind myself why I am the way I am and why I find myself in this very place and moment.

I immigrated to London
in 2001 from South Africa and my husband at the time obviously came with me. I chose to replace the sun, sea and open roads for cold, grey, wet and overly chaotic London. I just got to a point where I felt like I was going nowhere. I needed a makeover and I’m not talking about the one that requires a bit of colour on my face or hair dye; I mean the sort of transformation of a seriously colossal kind. I needed to relight my existence, so to say.

I flew here just a month after
the 911 attacks took place; needless to say, I just about shat myself the entire ten and a half hour flight. I mean I crap myself at flying as it is. I love the take-off because it’s exciting and sends the butterflies in my jelly belly insane, but then I hate it ‘cause I start to imagine getting into the air, the engines failing, we crash and die in a scorching death. But then I love the landing because I’m grateful we made it to the ground safely, and hate it because all I can think of is that we’re going to touch ground, hit a huge stone on the runway, spin out of control, topple over, crash and die. Ridiculous, I know.

Sometimes,
I think back to how insane it is that you can love someone so immensely for so long; how they can be your all and then there’s a drastically abrupt turn of events and you utterly despise them with all you have inside. Well, as difficult as it is to comprehend, I thank God it did, or I may not even be here today.

             
Back then I was a very different person to who I am today. I had low self-esteem and no friends. I was subdued and lacked any form of self-assurance. Yet, I was pretty much the perfect, most accommodatingly obliging wife.

From sixteen years old all I wanted was a loving and everlasting marriage
—to have the most adoring and protective husband and raise two gorgeous children and grow old together. So by the time he and I met, I honestly thought that is what I would have. That was of course, until the psychopath started to demonstrate his truly deranged side.

             
Towards the end of '96 I started a job, having just embarked on my new journey after recently splitting from my fiancé of six years. Unfortunately and surprisingly, I had fallen out of love with him. It was the worst feeling I had ever felt in my entire life. We had been together since I was sixteen and still in high school; my first true love. The guy I was sure I would marry and almost did. Not really realising it; or perhaps it was me choosing not to see or accept it; but during our last five months together, it seemed that somewhere along the line the communication had stopped, the laughs had become few, if at all and I wanted to spend time alone rather than be sociable in any way. I tried fighting the feeling from about two months prior to us splitting but I just couldn‘t bring back the love I once felt for him. I was guilt-ridden. Thinking back on it now, he probably would have given me my happy dream of living in wedded bliss. Deservingly however, he eventually found that with someone else. No regrets though. As wonderful as he was, we were not meant to be forever.

             
I enjoyed the new company and my role. The people were really sociable and I made a few friends over the next year. For once I even liked my boss. Well, let’s just say he was tolerable. I was a Controller of a technical team within a communications company based in a cold, echoing warehouse. Not glamorous in any way and certainly not what I wanted to do as a long-term career but I was a good at it. I dealt with all the engineers; all men. I was one of only three females in the office. Actually, working with a group of guys was really pleasant—no gossiping, bitchiness or backstabbing—satisfyingly refreshing. I’d much rather have an uncouth male colleague shout across the room, “get ya tits out luv”, than deal with a nasty two-faced cowbag!

The guys were always taking the piss and playing jokes which always got me laughing. Work was hard but a good
giggle which, these days, after a number of years of working in a variety of companies, with cocks for bosses and two-faced, sniggering, back-stabbing, bullying bitches for colleagues, I’ve learned is pretty darn essential to my sanity. I mean come on, we’re there giving away majority of our time from our very short lives for organisations to make huge profits and for seniority to live financially stress-free ones, whilst dictating how much we’re worth only to receive endless criticism—and not all constructive or beneficial—and the utmost un-appreciation for anything we do. We’re looked at like filth if we dare leave on time or take a lunch break, albeit ten minutes of our legally entitled one hour; our high spirits crumbled;, our dreams made insignificant and all this only to take home just enough money to get us by each month. Yes, sadly this is life but no, I do not accept it. Not now anyway.

             
It was at my new job that I met the heartless, life-draining, soul-crushing, confidence-sucking, harassing asshole for an ex-husband. A guy who was and probably still is the epitome of a micro mite; an ugly, dirty, creepy and literal skin-crawling parasite! The single equivalent of an entire infestation of demodicosis! A mangey bastarding fuck-head!

Although, i
t took a fair few years before I’d started to ascertain who he truly was. To this day, I still cannot figure out why or how he lost his demented mind. He went from being absolutely amazing to me, to completely breaking me.

Just one of many
evenings we got into a screaming match about something really trivial. We had started to argue a lot about silly insignificant things. I had never before seen such hate and rage in his eyes. Many a time I honestly thought he was going to kill me. I would turn freezing cold from fear and had no idea what was about to happen.

That specific evening he
had come over to my apartment for a romantic dinner, unfortunately no food was eaten. Instead he picked an argument with me, yanked me off the sofa, dragged me along the floor from the lounge to the bedroom by my hair gripped firmly in his strangling hands and slapped me across my face. He then took his tool box, of course filled with weighty tools and swung it across my head.

Now
from a young age, having been diagnosed with Epilepsy, the last thing an epileptic needs is something as profound as a tool box, or anything for that matter, being whacked across their head possibly triggering an attack. Of course I screamed and begged him to stop, but it was more like a heartless Matador pleading to a pissed off bull in a ring to cuddle up to him. Eventually I managed to struggle out of his grip and run into the kitchen. Although, only god knows what was going through my head at the time. I mean what in the kitchen was going to protect me – a knife? Yes, perhaps, but I wasn’t about to stab my own fiancé.

He stormed through the doorway,
abruptly stopping dead in his tracks. It was as if the film of red just cleared from in front of his eyes. Suddenly he was riddled with guilt and turned the anger on himself. He began to walk out the door, but rather than gladly assisting him out with my foot, I panicked and instead, I grabbed his arm as he started to leave. He just shoved me out of his way. He went to pull open the door and again I tried to shut it, but as I did, my arm went through the stained glass and was sliced wide open. It took that moment for him to realise what a mental cock he was being; well that time anyway.

S
o that’s all I had to do! Sever my arm and bleed everywhere! This whole time, all I needed to have happen was to lose three fingertips and be left with two permanent scars along my arm. How silly of me!

Unfortunately, no lessons were learned that night
—not by him and pathetically, not even by me. These types of situations continued, almost becoming the norm. Another night of his momentary relapse, he threw an entire plate of food at my face before storming out. And on a different occasion, he locked me in our apartment where he almost strangled me as I tried to leave.

The
biggest regret of my life was marrying that evil bastard. He just had this reckless need for confrontation and I should have picked that up a lot earlier than from when I chose to start noticing it.
Damn it, it just grates my butt cheeks thinking of how naive and desperate I was to hold onto someone who wasn’t worth holding onto.

I guess it just goes to show how weak, timid and self-loathing I used to be. Foolishly, I disbelieved that anybody else would love me the way he did, when of course he wasn’t too busy throttling and battering me over the head or smearing my face with mashed potato and fish.

Eventually it got so bad that
I tried on more than one occasion to take my own life—even that I couldn’t get right. Thankfully, the experience has taught me to be a lot stronger, more independent and a real ass-kicker.

There isn’t a hope in hell that
I’d allow myself to be with a guy as low and as worthless as a vile prick like that. Certainly, if I were that deluded for even a short period of time because, let’s say, the sex was out of this world, well then I’d get what I wanted out of it and in that very brief space of time, I’d most definitely drop him hard to the ground, kick his balls until they were crushed into teeny little rat sized droppings and reduce him to high-pitched girly tears.

Oh
god, I’m so worked up now. I need to burn off some of the steam I’ve just built up thinking about that wanker.

I roll
out of bed; eyes still closed, and make my way to the bathroom. I tug down my PJs and lower myself onto the posh heated toilet seat to pee.
Oh dear, bad hangover belly!

After some rather agonising
loo time, I grab a quick shower and change into my workout gear and head to the fitness centre. After all, three days in with great yet extremely naughty food and no exercise will only risk turning me into a whale.
Oh hold on. Of course I’ve worked out. Insane sex is counted as a fat-burner isn’t it?!
I giggle to myself.

             
I amble over to the fitness room. The sign on the door says: ‘STRICTLY NO SEX’.
Now there’s something you don’t see at your local gym
.

The
typical gym goers are there – the stupidly sized grunters in the weights section, the ones who look like they’re about to burst not only a blood vessel but their entire neck. Then there’s the tangoed pigtail girls squeaking in the corner on the stepper. And dear god we have the cougars, or better suited would be wolves, with their pitch black dyed hair, ice pink lip-sticked, eyeliner-drowned, foundation-caked women trying overly hard not to make obvious their hunger for the cute, young personal trainers.

             
Me, I go to the gym for the reason we’re meant to go to the gym. No time or interest in the surroundings or the people, other than to have a laugh at them after a crappy week at work. I do love a bit of people watching.

In go the earphones and on go the
dance tunes whilst I work up a tormenting sweat on the cross trainer.
Fuck it hurts!
But I want to be thin! Must keep pushing! Push bitch, push.

I close my eyes and lo
se myself in the music blaring down my vibrating eardrums. A few minutes gone and I re-open them. Slightly dizzy, I notice long icy blonde and dark brown, almost black dreadlocks appear in front of me. The girl wearing them is slim and beautifully trimmed.
What the hell is she even in the gym for? Other than to make people like me look like moving mountains!
She ascends onto the treadmill. She has the tiniest ass I’ve ever seen. Her entire bum is the size of my one ass cheek! She’s wearing a skimpy gym vest. Her arms are elegantly toned and she has a small dark tattoo on her left shoulder blade. I love tattoos. They’re so sexy. I’ve wanted one for over four years now and still haven’t decided on what exactly I want. I can’t stand having the same as anyone else and I want true meaning behind the ink I’m going to have welded into my skin for life. I can’t quite make it out but it looks like a spider.