Beautiful Beast (Gypsy Heroes)

I switch off the light and lie on my bed staring at the ceiling.

Even though I try to keep my mind blank, a face floats into my head. Such beautiful eyes. So blue and so bright. I liked him as well. Something delightfully cheeky and cocky about him. I imagine him to be fun and sexy. I circle my wrist the way he did. He had such massive, strong hands. When he held my wrist I actually didn’t want him to let go. I stroke my skin the way he did silkily, as if he was already making love to me.

‘Shane,’ I whisper into the darkness.

He was gorgeous, but I will never see him again. I feel a ribbon of sadness curl around my heart and I take a deep breath. No, I shouldn’t allow myself to get silly. He was not just gorgeous. He was too gorgeous. Too young. Too carefree.

It’s not a lost opportunity. He just wanted to have some fun. You can’t trust a man you find in a strip-dancing club. Anyway, I am too mangled and broken for him. He wouldn’t have the patience to put up with my drama. In the end he would shatter my heart. I try to convince myself that it is a very good thing that his number is gone. A blessing in disguise that I will never see those beautiful blue eyes again.

For almost an hour I try to fall asleep. But sleep refuses to come.

Maybe I should take a pill. I go into the bathroom and take one of my little pills. After a while I feel relaxed and floaty. Nothing matters anymore. I no longer feel sad that I will never again see Shane, or Saumur, or the magical fireflies.

Five

SNOW

When I wake up, the sun is filtering in through the gap I left in the curtains. I sit up and hug my knees. What shall I do today? Last month, for the first time since Lenny installed me in this apartment, I woke up and thought, I have nothing to do. I need a job. I need to meet new people.

But Lenny doesn’t like me to meet people. He says I am a bad judge of character. ‘Look what happened to you the last time you made a friend,’ he points out.

But, more and more, I feel I am fading away within these walls.

After I have brushed my teeth and dressed, I sit in the kitchen and have a bowl of cereal. The apartment is so still I can hear the sound of my teeth crunching the flakes of corn.

The letter flap clatters and I leave my bowl and run to the front door. I pick up three envelopes from the floor. A bill, a menu/leaflet from a local Chinese takeaway, and a letter from one of the boutiques where Lenny has opened an account for me.

The letter I am waiting for did not arrive.

With a heavy heart I put the bill aside for Lenny to give to his secretary, and I open the le

tter from the boutique. There is a sale this weekend and they are writing to invite me to arrive an hour earlier and join the champagne pre-sale party. I throw the invitation away with the leaflet.

Then I sit down to finish the rest of my solitary breakfast.

When I have washed the bowl and spoon and put away the breakfast things, I walk over to the drawer that I swept the money into last night. I take out the wad and count it. Two hundred pounds. Wow! My tears must have moved him.

He is not usually so generous with cash. He prefers to open accounts for me in different shops that he pays for at the end of the month. I don’t know what limits I have in those stores but I haven’t yet come across one, even though once, in a state of deep depression, I unthinkingly picked up a dress worth three thousand. However, my credit card has only a two hundred and fifty pound limit.

I keep aside forty pounds. The rest I neatly arrange so that all the heads face upwards. Then I get down to the side of the mattress and gently unpick the slash I have sewn up. I add the new notes to the growing brick of money. It makes me happy to see it. I have more than half of what I need. Quickly, I sew it back up so it is almost impossible to tell that my mattress is my piggy bank.

Afterwards, I do what I do every day.

I set about thoroughly cleaning the apartment. I vacuum, I brush, I wipe, I wash, I shine and finally I walk around plumping and smoothing the cushions on the sofas so that there is not a single wrinkle in any of them.

The doorbell rings and I look out of the peephole and see the girl from the local florist holding a large bunch of long-stemmed red roses. I open the door and thank her for the flowers. I close the door and I put my nose to them. There is no scent. I take them into the kitchen and remove the wrapping.

There is no card. Cards are not necessary.

I get a bouquet every time Lenny fucks me.

I put them in water and carry the vase to the coffee table in the living room. They are not what I would have chosen, but they brighten up the place. Later I will pop by the florist on my way back from lunch and get myself a fragrant mix of gardenia, honeysuckle and sweet pea.

I glance at the clock. It is lunchtime. So I get into my jeans and a gray sweatshirt with a hood and go out into the bright sunshine. Usually I buy myself a sandwich and go down to the park and eat it on one of the benches. But today I feel more lost and homesick than I normally do, so I walk the down the road, and turn into a little side road.

At the end of it is a small Indian restaurant. I open the nondescript door and enter it. It is a small place with grand ideas borrowed from India before colonial times. Checkerboard black and inky blue floor tiles, fans hanging from a dark-lacquered oak ceiling, an aged brass bar in one corner, cut-glass wall lamps, hunting trophies from the days of the Majarajahs and bitter chocolate, leather love booths and banquettes.

Muted classical Indian music is playing in the background. The smell of cardamom, spices and curry fill the air and I breathe in the familiar scent. The restaurant is deserted. It almost always is at lunchtime. I used to worry that the business was going to go bust, but Raja, the solitary waiter they have working during the lunch shift, assured me that they get very busy at night.