Twenty
Victor put the kettle on to boil. ‘You want to ask me a question?’
Laura sat down on the sofa. ‘Can you guess why?’
Victor was mystified. Laura’s attractive face was unreadable. It seemed as if she had some secret of her own to reveal. He spooned coffee into a pair of mugs. ‘OK, fire away.’
‘We find ourselves in this situation, but we don’t know one another, do we?’
‘My name’s Victor Brodman, age thirty-five, the island ranger. I live here, the former chauffeur’s apartment at White Lodge Farm, Siluria.’
‘Great, just great.’ Laura spoke politely. ‘You’ve given me information I could find in one of your educational handouts.’
‘Am I missing something?’ He frowned.
‘My name is Laura Parris. My parents ran a care home for the elderly. When I was seven I found one of the residents, a man of eighty, lying dead in the greenhouse. He told me often that he loved the smell of tomato plants. The day I found him he’d taken a drug overdose. I’ve never told anyone this before outside my family. My first boyfriend liked to massage oil into my breasts as he made love. He was horrified when I suggested oral sex might be nice. When—’
‘Whoa, Laura. Why on earth are you telling me this?’
‘When I qualified as a nurse I got the job of preparing corpses before they went to the morgue. I used to go back to the nurses’ accommodation block every night and wondered how I could deal with it. You know, moving the arms and legs of dead people like they were just the plastic limbs of a doll. Those noises they made after death? They made you want to rip your own ears off. I started to drink vodka. It works best with sugary drinks. Pow! A liquid right hook. But you know how I stopped going mad from handling dead men and women? Like pushing my fingers into mouths to pull out their false teeth? You know how, Victor? I discovered a taste for erotica. I read sex stories in magazines. Then I graduated to reading erotic novels. I haven’t told anyone else about that, either. No . . . don’t make the coffee yet. I want you to listen.’ She spoke in a cool, purposeful way. ‘Reading about people having sex – full penetration, lots of different positions – it all helped. People enjoying the act of creating life chased away this fog of death that surrounded me. Before that I’d look into a mirror, then all those dead faces, with staring eyes and blue lips, would flow through my reflection. Reminding me I’m mortal, that we all die anyway.’ She took a breath. ‘I haven’t told anyone else this either: Before I met you I hadn’t had sex for fifteen months.’
‘Oh.’ Victor didn’t know what to say.
‘There, I’ve put my trust in you with all these facts.’ She tilted her head. ‘You’ve given me your biographical details that appear on the handout. Funny that, hmm?’
‘It’s been a difficult couple of days.’
‘Difficult in what? About Jay or what Solomon told us? Or difficult that you haven’t been able to give me even one sentence about what attracted you to me? Or that we made love, or maybe it was just sex? I don’t sleep around, Victor. But you’ve made me feel disposable. Now you expect me to trust you with everything I know about Jay, or what we should do with him, or to him when he’s my responsibility. I don’t even know you, Victor. You know nothing about me. Even though you took a heck of a lot of pleasure in screwing me.’
‘Hey, that’s not fair. We haven’t had time to—’
‘What was wrong with making a time just to say you feel something for me, and that being in bed with me was at least OK.’
‘Laura—’
‘You’ve made me feel like a piece of gum that’s had the flavour chewed out.’
‘Laura, you’re wrong about that. You’re wrong to take this attitude, too.’
‘I thought you’d repressed all memory of us being together.’
‘Laura, you’re exhausted . . .’
‘I’m angry. Incredibly angry. You don’t want to even make a start about discussing us.’
Victor shoved the cups into the sink. ‘You better go back to your room.’
‘I trusted you. I came here tonight to see if there’s the start of a relationship we could develop. But you’ve built this great big wall around Victor Brodman – no one can see the real man. What we get is an island ranger, with a sunny disposition, but with less heart than one of those little lizards you stand guard over here.’
‘Laura, this isn’t—’
‘Working. You’re so dead right.’
‘Laura—’
‘Good night, Victor. I hope you’re so damn well pleased with yourself.’
She left without slamming the door. For some reason that sudden silence was an even more eloquent expression of her contempt for him than words or noise ever could be.