When she asked me what I thought, I told her I still wanted to know how to get to Harley’s Tavern.
She told me I was definitely batshit if I could be even slightly interested in that crap.
I’m interested in all of it, because I’m interested in all of him. I watched it as though it was one of those prize-winning memory games they show on TV, where you have to memorise every single item for recall, because to really stand a chance with Alexander Henley I need to stand a chance of knowing exactly who Alexander Henley is.
And exactly what Alexander Henley likes.
Those videos showed me three constants:
The first being that these women get fucked until they are utterly exhausted. Until they’re nothing but a broken, sweaty, whimpering, cum-splattered mess at the end.
The second being that these women are always like puppets, doing exactly as they’re told without hesitation. There’s this obedience to them that I can’t really put into words, I just felt it. I felt it everywhere.
And lastly, on every single video without fail, these women get… strangled. Hands-around-the-throat until they choke. Like properly choke. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they have these glassy eyes without any fight in them at all, and sometimes they cry. Sometimes they even smile. Sometimes they cry as they smile.
It made me hurt inside. A weird, tender kind of hurt.
The kind of hurt I’ve tried to close away since the night my life was taken away from me. But this time it was different, this time it was… beautiful…
Peaceful.
I can’t even begin to explain how fucked up I must be to feel like this. You can’t understand until you’re in these shoes. Not unless you’ve lost everything. Not unless every day is a fight you’re not sure you want to be fighting.
Not unless there is one single dream in life you’re grasping onto with every tiny part of your broken soul, not unless laying yourself before him and offering up your everything is the only destination at the end of a really painful road.
Cindy told me she’s pretty sure Mr Henley is into it in real life, asphyxiation. She told me this shit is dangerous and fucked up, and if there was any truth in the things his wife told her that I’d be crazy to risk finding out.
I’m crazy, alright.
I didn’t tell Cindy that Mr Henley’s browsing history made me burn up. Made me flush hot and cold and shiver all over. I didn’t tell her that I had to clench my thighs all the way through, unsure whether I wanted to faint or play with myself right then and there.
I didn’t tell her he is my final destination.
The thing that keeps my soul alive enough to care for Joseph and keep on breathing.
My breaths are borrowed. Loving him gives them to me. Loving him keeps me hoping.
He can take them away.
Literally if he wants.
I guess I passed her craziness test anyway, because Cindy put the TV back to standby and carried on with the rest of her tour. A tour which ended in Mr Henley’s actual bedroom, and Mr Henley’s cases full of sex toys.
She wasn’t lying about those either. Some of those toys could never be used, at least I don’t think so, you’d have to be… loose… to take some of them. Like real loose.
Maybe I’m not the best judge since I’ve never done any of it before, but I know enough to know what might fit and what might not.
I told Cindy that and she laughed and said I should scroll further back through his browser history and I might change my mind on that.
We’d cleaned the whole house before she finally beckoned me over to Mr Henley’s bedside table. I held my breath as she eased open the top drawer, peeking inside as she so carefully flipped through some paperwork and pulled out a business card.
“This is your gateway to Harley’s Tavern,” she told me.
The card looked innocent enough. I turned it over in shaky fingers, looking for more, but if there was any meaning it was lost on me.
Claude Finch, senior auctioneer. Finch Hamilton.
The address listed one of those posh auction houses in Chelsea.
“That’s who hooks him up,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“He has a private email address, some random account under the name Ted Brown. It was open on his screen one day, there were loads of emails there from CF. Emails showing women with all the usual tick-boxes underneath.”
“So you don’t know it’s definitely this Claude guy?”
She rolled her eyes. “CF. In the bedside drawer with all the dodgy paperwork. He’s an auctioneer.”
“Yeah, but…”
“No buts,” she said. “It’s him.”
“And if it’s not?”
She shrugs. “Pretend you dialled the wrong number.”
The idea of actually calling this guy launched my heart into my throat. I wrote his number in my little notepad and slipped that business card straight back into the drawer, exactly as it had been.