Harry stopped washing the dishes and went to switch the radio off. He chewed his tongue while he mulled over the latest bulletin: the police had found Trinny. The news worried him, although Trinny wouldn’t tell them anything. She might have a loud mouth, but she would keep it shut for him. Still, it might be sensible to stay away from town. At least for a while. To let things calm down. He would cancel some of his appointments, say he was sick. Which he was. Very. Anyway, he had the new girl to deal with. He couldn’t leave her all on her own day after day. She would get lonely.
When he had got her back to his place she was already unconscious so he stripped her naked and laid her out to examine her. Perfection in a little over five feet. Beautiful. Mind you they all appeared so. At first.
Emma would be different, he knew she would. Just the name caused butterflies in his stomach.
Not her real name of course, but she wouldn’t be using that again. Emma was her special name. Harry’s name. He had written it in big letters on the first page of the luxurious black leather notebook he had bought for her. All the other pages remained blank. White, virginal and untouched. If things worked out between them he would write nice things in the book and they could look over it together. If things didn’t work out he knew he had to write down all the nasty stuff he discovered. The nitty-gritty-shitty stuff that Emma didn’t want anyone to know about: The dirty habits, the spots and blemishes, the bad language, the conceits, deceptions and lies, the broken promises, the filthy thoughts that came when she turned off the light, the …
Hell, he was getting ahead of himself. Emma hadn’t been given a chance yet. He was condemning her without a fair trial.
Trinny had been given a fair trial. She had a chance but failed. Two whole weeks of cleaning and she had still been too desirable. Desire turned love into lust and flesh into the apple of corruption. The Bible said so and the Bible couldn’t be wrong, could it? He recalled the leather-bound copy his mother had pressed into his hands every evening as she made him kneel next to the bed and pray. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost … The unholy trinity of his family, his mother the ghost, ethereal both in her presence and in her pitiful attempts to control his father’s cravings. All she could do was wash the sheets, wash her hands, repeat the mantra that ‘your father loves you’. It didn’t make sense but then neither did the Bible. Suffer little children …
Love, desire, lust. He remembered when he had been little Trinny held him and he felt nothing but warmth. When he held the new Trinny he wanted her. The sensation repulsed him. If you fucked somebody you didn’t love them. He learnt that the hard way as a kid, and Mitchell showed him too. The lesson had to be applied to his search for his angel. Angels were pure. Spotless.
He walked back to the sink and plunged his hands into the foam. The water scalded, but it needed to be hot to eat away at the dirt. This was the second time he had washed the plates. Once more after this should be enough. Rinse, wash, rinse, wash, rinse, wash, rinse. Back at his flat in town he would simply run the dishwasher cycle a few times, but out here he had no mod cons so keeping things clean proved difficult.
Trinny hadn’t been clean from the start but it wasn’t her fault. Her boyfriend, a half-wit from the slums, contaminated her and the seed spread, decomposing her from within, spoiling her before Harry had ever met her. But Harry hadn’t known about the boyfriend so he couldn’t have guessed the trouble Trinny would cause.
The selection took longer with Lucy but it hadn’t worked out perfectly with her either. He had made copious notes, observing her before he ever went near her, but always knowing a more hands-on approach would be needed. Satisfied everything looked right he collected her. Then he used the spy hole into the little room to watch some more as she went through his detox routine. Finally he examined her properly. He hadn’t liked the procedure and neither had she. She screamed when he touched her. The problems started then.
Harry finished the plates, giving them a final rinse to make sure. Poor Lucy, she had failed. Like Trinny before her, she was not the one he wished to choose and she would have to leave as well.
Emma wouldn’t be leaving though, she would stay. And hopefully she would live.