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Toby Malone hurt Desiree Holloway.
He hurt her mentally.
He hurt her physically.
He hurt her when they made love
He hurt her when they didn’t.
It was all a new experience for Desi. She had become used to calling the shots, to having men and boys chase her, doing her bidding, wooing her, desperate to impress. She had never known anything different.
With Toby Malone, everything was different.
She couldn’t comprehend why he should treat her so badly. He made her cry, worse still; he appeared to glean enjoyment through making her cry. She should have cut him dead.
She didn’t.
She couldn’t.
Like a moth drawn toward the brightest fire, Desi Holloway was entranced. It unnerved her. It made her ill.
For the first time since she was four her education went backwards. That alarmed her, and it alarmed her tutors and sponsors even more.
Her senior tutor, Professor Jack Robertson, wrote a re-appraisal and hastily dispatched it to London, so concerned was he at the retrenchment that had set in. That alarmed Mrs Bloemfontein, and her superiors too. Discussions took place outlining how the watertight contract could be paid off, terminated.
Desi was unaware of all that, and even if she had known, it wouldn’t have made any difference. She couldn’t think of anything else. She went off her food, lost weight, and for a short time the incredible sparkle that was never far from her dark eyes, dimmed and died.
Her friends feared for her.
Their advice was savagely rejected.
Her tutors cajoled her.
She seemed not to notice.
Professor Robertson feared for his reputation after Toby Malone took an interest in Desi Holloway.
Toby was studying aeronautical design. He wanted to be a jet fighter designer, and already had a lucrative contract lined up with British Aerospace up at Preston. That interested Desi too, and she encouraged him completely to follow his dreams, just as she was determined to do.
He was due to escort her to the Autumn College Dinner Dance. It had been a longstanding date, carved into the diary for months. Everyone was going. Everyone was looking forward to it, a chance to dress up and flaunt one’s success, one’s outfit, and one’s partner.
Toby didn’t show, leaving Desi to sit shamefaced across the table from an empty chair, while all those around laughed and joked and felt sorry for Desi Holloway, the girl who could not hold on to a man. They pitied her, and some, behind her back, might have laughed. How the mighty are fallen. The shooting star with seemingly unending supplies of cash had crashed to earth.
Desi had never experienced a setback before, in anything. She had no idea how to deal with it, and imagined that things couldn’t possibly get any worse.
They did.
Toby Malone arrived at the dance with an impossibly beautiful willowy girl on his arm named Fiona Gilkes-Wood. Fiona’s father was the chairman of the second largest Scottish bank. Loaded, they said, multi-millionaire. Whoever married her would be made for life. Fiona Gilkes-Wood had everything, and now she had Toby Malone too.
How could Desi compete with that?
She couldn’t, and didn’t.
Diners and dancers pinched surreptitious glances at her when they imagined she wasn’t looking. She sat there, quite alone, eating slowly, her eyes unblinking, sipping her wine in silence, as if an icy embryo had enclosed her. She spoke to no one, and saw no one, not a soul after that appalling moment when she first spied the incredibly handsome Toby Malone, striding into the hall with the deliriously happy Fiona Gilkes-Wood clutching his arm.
Desi could cope with the violence, the kinky sex, and his ever-stranger demands, but she could not cope with public humiliation.
It would never happen again.
She would never let it happen again.
She finished her meal in silence, grabbed her things together, and slipped away into the night.
Some of the more aware people breathed a sigh of relief and whispered: How embarrassing was that? She did the right thing, getting out of there when she did, though she should have gone sooner. Poor Desiree. That Toby Malone was a bastard, but didn’t everyone know that already?
It seemed not. Or if she did, Desi was unable to accept it.
The mesmerised moth had been damaged.
She went home and to bed alone, took two co-codamol painkillers and blotted out the world.
––––––––
In the days that followed, Toby beat a path to her door.
Apologised profusely.
Sent flowers.
A crate of Desiree’s favourite red wine.
Letters.
Love letters.
Sex letters.
Pleading letters.
Letters detailing how pathetic Fiona was in bed, nothing compared to the passionate Desiree Holloway, and how she must take him back, because he knew that she wanted him even more than he wanted her.
Whether that was true or not was immaterial.
It was too late.
The clock had ticked on.
Ticked forward.
Desiree Holloway had rediscovered her first love.
Science.
She was brilliant at it too, everyone said so.
A shooting star.
Destined for heavenly things.
Everyone knew that.
She shut herself away from the world; away from everything, except her work. It was as if Toby Malone had never existed. She would never date at university again. She would never allow any man to touch her, vowed solemnly against it, and she would maintain that vow for years.
Professor Robertson wrote a hasty re-appraisal re-appraisal and sent it by special courier. Collective sighs of relief could be heard from the Thames to the Mersey.
Toby Malone had hurt Desiree Holloway. That was undeniable.
He didn’t any more.
He couldn’t.
She wouldn’t allow it.
––––––––
At the end of her five-year course she passed out with a double first in Mathematics and Chemistry, with honours, and everyone attended her graduation in Liverpool. Her father and mother, sister Louise, Professor Robertson, and even Mrs Bloemfontein jumped a train, ostensibly to support her protégé, when in reality she possessed Desiree’s instructions as to where she should go, and what she should do next. Desi explained Mrs Bloemfontein’s presence away with flippant remarks, saying she was an advanced careers’ advisor, which in a strange kind of way, she was.
Toby Malone didn’t attend. He couldn’t.
He’d long since disappeared, though he would never be quite forgotten. He was found dead one balmy summer’s morning, bound in fuse wire, secured to his bed, wearing black lace knickers, an orange in his mouth, a ligature around his neck, and three small neat cuts across his hairy chest. They were not deep, just bloody. The cuts hadn’t killed him. The ligature had. No one ever discovered who shared his final tryst, or who tightened that rope. Merseyside Police were still looking into it. The file remained open.
It had nothing to do with Desiree, or so she said.
The morning after her graduation she was busy packing her things away prior to vacating her room. Mrs Bloemfontein appeared at the door. Desi was expecting her and nodded away a neighbour of hers, a distraught young woman who had totally flunked her exams, with a flick of the head and a whispered: ‘I’ll see you later.’
Mrs Bloemfontein sat at the desk without waiting to be invited.
Desi perched on the bed and said, ‘So? What now?’
Mrs Bloemfontein produced a single unmarked brown envelope from her bag. Handed it across to Desi.
‘It’s a beautiful morning,’ she said, ‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in half an hour. Have your questions ready,’ and with that, she let herself out.
––––––––
Desi slipped her finger beneath the flap of the envelope and eased it open. The front sheet was a congratulatory letter from the Scientific Research Organisation. It didn’t say what they did, just an address and telephone number in London.
The next page instructed her to attend Billington Hall near Ludlow in Shropshire when the summer holidays were over. Desi guessed it was one of the crammer colleges that Mrs Bloemfontein had mentioned a while ago. Before that, she was instructed to fly to Tokyo where she should meet a Professor Takanato at Tokyo University, and after that, on to Canberra where an appointment had been arranged for her to see a Professor Jim McClaine.
The tickets, further instructions, and authorization documents would be sent to her within the week. There was a telephone number she should contact if she had any queries. She recognised it, it was the same number Mrs Bloemfontein had given her before, and a firm written reminder that everything regarding her employment was covered by the secrecy clause she had previously signed. The final letter informed her she had qualified for a pay increase, fifty percent, commencing the day she flew to Tokyo.
She read it a second time in case she’d missed anything; in case she’d imagined it all, before replacing the papers back in the envelope.
Mrs Bloemfontein returned ten minutes later.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘How did you get on?’
‘Seems clear enough.’
‘Good. So glad.’
‘It didn’t say exactly what I will be doing.’
‘No, it wouldn’t, but you can be sure it will be an extension of the pioneering work you have been studying. I can’t say any more right now, other than it will be hard, and difficult. You will need to steel yourself. It won’t be easy.’
‘I’d rather guessed that.’
‘Yes, I hoped you had. Any further questions?’
‘No, not at this time.’
‘That’s good.’
Mrs Bloemfontein glanced at her watch.
‘What’s the best way of getting back to Lime Street station?’
‘Taxi.’
‘Is there a phone?’
‘In the hall downstairs.’
Mrs Bloemfontein courteously smiled and bobbed her head and offered her hand.
Desi took it and shook it, and a moment later Mrs B was gone.