Lord of London Town

Of Mum. Come here, she said, arms out. I walked to her and she pulled me onto the couch. She kissed my head. Let’s watch TV. It won’t be long until you won’t want to hang around with your old mum anymore.

I couldn’t fucking take it. The pain, all the fucking pain in my chest. I couldn’t look at Dad. Couldn’t think of the video I’d just seen. I backed out of the room until I was back in the hallway. I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t fucking breathe!

But my heart wasn’t done fucking torturing me. Instead it showed me Cheska’s face as I told her to get off me. That I was like this because of her. I saw the agony in her green-brown eyes. The trembling of her bottom lip. I closed my eyes, back slamming against the hallway wall, and I saw her above me, riding me, head thrown back and lips parted. Saw her walking down to the pit, leather on her legs and fucking hellfire in her stare.

Saw her stand before me and drag the queen down my chest. I am your queen.

Your queen … your queen … your queen …

My fucking broken queen.

I scrambled off the floor, pictures slamming to the ground as I used my hands to steady me. I burst through the door to my bedroom. She wasn’t there.

My heart started pounding in dread. I had to find her. The fucking ache in my chest only stopped aching when she was with me. When she was next to me, when my mouth was on hers, when I was inside her.

“Cheska!” I said, slamming open doors. My family stared at me when I found only them inside the rooms. I raced down the hallway, the whisky blurring my vision, robbing me of balance.

“Cheska!” I shouted, knocking vases and other crap off shelves as I bounced off the walls. I needed to find her.

I love you … Her voice played in my head, threatening to bring me to my fucking knees. Her face. Her face when I told her to get off me, her arms wrapped around her waist like I’d stabbed her in the fucking heart.

I may as well have.

I love you, Arthur …

“CHESKA!” I slammed open the study door. Betsy jumped to her feet. “Get out,” I said to my cousin, seeing Cheska sat on the armchair behind her. “Cheska,” I said again, the ache in my chest numbing some as I saw the top of her head, her brown hair.

She was still here.

I pushed into the room. Betsy brushed past me. I felt her burning, narrowed eyes on me, but I didn’t look at her. This had fuck all to do with her.

The fire was climbing, and as I rounded the chair, there she was. There she fucking was … my broken queen. Her eyes were fixated on the chessboard between the two armchairs. I stared down at it to see she had moved the pieces, played the game alone. The queen was off the board, the king fucking wide open, ready to be taken down by his enemies.

His most treasured piece had been defeated.

I dropped to my knees. Cheska didn’t move. It was like she was paralysed, numbed to anything around her but that motherfucking chessboard.

I looked at Cheska’s eyes. They were dead, fucking blank. This time, my gut twisted not because of the fracture in my chest that was sending an army of suffocating feelings raining down on me like bullets, but because of the dead stare on Cheska’s face.

I’d never seen her look like this. Not even when she’d collapsed on my office floor in the nightclub. Not even when she’d woken up and the truth of what had happened had hit home again.

I’d destroyed her, like I always knew I would.

Ruined her.

In my mind’s eye, I saw her as a kid on her Chelsea home’s stairs, the first time I ever met her, all olive skin and huge eyes. I saw her in that fucking bikini on her yacht in Marbella when we were just eighteen. I saw her face when she realised who had docked beside her, the fucking obsessed look in her eyes that had never faded.

Until now.

“Cheska,” I said hoarsely, my voice cutting out. I dropped my head, feeling all the fight drain out of me. When I looked up, she was blurred, tears fucking blocking her out of my sight. “They were killed,” I said, and when my eyes cleared I saw something like pain flicker across her face.

Cheska stayed looking down at the chessboard, at the vulnerable king and his queen stuck on the sidelines. “They killed them,” I said again, and I stopped fighting the fucking feelings that had been battling to get through to me, to fucking take up every inch of my flesh and bones.