The Green Man was huge, looming; it looked like it could fall at any minute. Or come to life and walk away. Marina always stared at it, she couldn’t help it. A huge statue made of stone and augmented with vegetation, the extravagantly horned forty-foot figure towered over everyone and everything in the area. His features wild, his body overly muscled, the statue rippled with a pagan energy that was simultaneously stimulating and terrifying, a reminder that no matter how humanity tried to fool itself, comfort itself in the belief that it was the dominant species, there were much stronger forces on the planet that needed to be treated with respect and fear.
Or that was how it made Marina feel. But now, taking her place at a table in a coffee house opposite the statue, she knew there were other things – and people – to be feared. Much nearer to home. And much more real.
The Custard Factory was part of the ongoing gentrification of the Digbeth area of Birmingham. Originally the area’s Bird’s custard factory from which it took its name, it was now home to a thriving community of artists and designers, media and charity organisations, with vintage clothes and furniture shops, record shops, bars, cafés and restaurants. Marina found it achingly hip but not uncomfortable.
‘Hello.’
She turned. Hugo Gwilym appeared from a shadowed alcove beside the till, walked towards her, pocketing his phone as if just ending a call. He smiled, sat down. She looked at him. Sunlight from outside the café hit his face full on. He squinted against it. Caught in the bright glare and without the previous night’s make-up ministrations of a TV studio, his features looked older, more worn, dissolute. His skin carried his life’s history of various alcoholic and narcotic abuses like a road map. He gestured back to where he had come from.
‘Can we…?’
‘What?’
‘Go and sit over there. The light’s too bright here.’ He made to rise.
‘Here’s fine for me,’ said Marina, refusing to budge.
Gwilym sat back down again. Marina felt a slight thrill at the little victory but something dark and ugly flapped across Gwilym’s features. He clearly wasn’t used to being answered back. ‘Suit yourself.’ The tone of his voice said anything but.
‘So,’ said Marina, struggling to keep her voice level, not betray the anxiety that was churning inside her, ‘you wanted to see me.’ She kept her back stiff, hands folded in her lap. She didn’t want him to see how much they were shaking.
‘Of course I did. Only natural, considering…’ His features returned to their familiar setting. He smiled.
‘Considering what?’ she said, throat dry.
He leaned forward, head down, voice low, conspiratorial. Back in control now. ‘Considering what we shared last night.’
Marina felt her heart thudding in her chest. Her head was light, vision spinning, spasming. ‘What… what did we share…?’ She had thought about his words over and over on the way there. What he had implied, what he had said. There could be no doubt what he meant.
She had had sex with him.
The thought had made her physically sick and the feeling still hadn’t gone away. In fact it had intensified. The thought of having sex with him was abhorrent enough, especially when she couldn’t remember doing it. But something niggled at her. Something that wasn’t right, that didn’t fit. She had tried to pull it from her memory on the trip into town, but it was no good. Nothing came back to her. Just a sense of unease that something bad had happened. Something awful.
He didn’t answer her straight away. He just smiled once more.
Marina hated that smile. It was the smug smile of a bully, of someone who had got away with so much, had gone unchallenged for so long they no longer had any self-doubt. They felt they could get away with anything.
‘We talked,’ said Marina. ‘That was it.’
Another smile, showing his teeth this time. ‘Let’s order.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘I am.’ He gestured the waitress over, told her what he wanted. She looked at Marina, expectant.
‘I’m not hungry. Just water.’
Gwilym studied the menu. ‘She’ll have the same as me.’ He smiled.
The waitress looked between them.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘She’ll have the same as me.’ He turned to her. ‘You can’t not eat anything. Especially after the amount you drank last night.’
Marina’s head felt like it was about to explode. ‘Whatever.’
The waitress hurried away. Gwilym turned to her, a look of smug triumph on his face. He had managed to get his own way again. He leaned back, comfortable. In control.
‘So. Last night.’
‘Did you fuck me?’ Marina sat back, surprised by the words she had spoken and the vehemence with which she’d expressed them.
Gwilym seemed surprised also. His eyebrows rose. He laughed. ‘Well. I never suspected you possessed such directness.’
‘Just tell me.’
Another smile. She felt like a half-dead mouse being played with by a cat’s paw. That, she suspected, was what he wanted her to feel. His tone, when he spoke, was mocking. ‘We had a… dalliance, yes. Quite enjoyable. Can’t you remember?’
Marina felt the world around her tunnelling in then out again. A Hitchcock Vertigo trombone shot. Her stomach lurched and she thought she might throw up again. She breathed deeply, tried to get her body back in control.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember. I’ve only got your word for it.’
‘Well I assure you, Marina, I am a man of my word. I wouldn’t lie about something like that.’
She felt like she had been cast adrift from her life, like this was all happening to someone else. She looked round the café, saw Gwilym, her own reflection in the glass. This was real.
‘What… what happened?’
‘You were in a terrible state after the restaurant, so I escorted you to a taxi. You couldn’t stand up, so I thought it best to take you home. But once we got into the taxi…’ He laughed. ‘You were a tiger. Oh yes.’
Marina said nothing. Gwilym continued.
‘Couldn’t keep your hands off me. Pulling at my shirt, my trousers. I mean, I don’t know what the taxi driver thought. Seemed a very devout, religious man. A Muslim, judging by all the paraphernalia hanging in his cab. Bet he’d never seen anything like it.’
‘So… what happened?’
‘I took you back to mine.’ She stared at him, eyes wide. ‘What else could I do? You made it quite clear what you wanted to happen.’ He held his hands up, shrugged. ‘How could I resist?’
‘So we… slept together.’
‘Well, there wasn’t much sleep going on. You got what you came for, then I called a cab. And off you went.’ He sat back, gave another smile. ‘And here you are. Back for more.’