'And who made you this way, hmm? Who filled your poor little pussy and arse so full that you can still feel it today? Who did that to you?'
'You . . . did . . .' My breath shortening, agony and ecstasy.
'I did. And I'll do it again and again and again until you get the message.'
'The message?' He was thrusting hard now, the headboard slamming the wall. Poor Mrs Treadway.
'That you . . . should be . . . with me . . . Sophie.'
His hand was on my neck, the other fishing at my clit. The space in front of my eyes looked blue, then purple.
'Do you understand me?'
'Dunno, just keep going!' I screamed. He was pulling my hair. Fuck! I love having my hair pulled when I'm being pounded from behind. How does he know? How does he know me?
He even seemed to know the tiny throaty sound that is the prelude to my climax. His fingers swished across every possible bundle of nerves and I felt the power of his thrust hit hard, hit home, and he held back no longer, clenching momentarily then releasing inside me with a feral cry.
I let him kiss me and coo into my ear ('You see, we're good, aren't we?') before I collapsed back into sleep.
When I woke up, an hour or so later, I was alone beneath the sheets.
I raised my head groggily; had he gone already? In a way, that would make things easier, but there was definitely a pang in there somewhere. Regret? Loss? Well, it didn't matter. I had to be at my grandmother's by midday. I should make a move.
Before I could swing my leg, rather wincingly, over the side of the frame, I heard a noise. Two noises, actually. One was the gurgle of my coffee percolator. The other was . . . coming from my darkroom.
I leapt up, not even stopping to grab a robe, and blundered into the blacked-out room. He was in there. Lloyd was in my darkroom.
'How fucking dare you?' I yelled. 'Get out! Get out now!'
Unfazed, he took a long, slow look at the walls. Papered with photographs of Chase – different versions of the one he let me take for the hotel brochure. A veritable Warhol tribute, made of nobody else but Chase, Chase, Chase. Yes, it made me look obsessed. It made me look like a crazed stalker. But I was not so much embarrassed as enraged at being found out in my pathetic infatuation this way.
'Why are you still here?' I fumed, picking up a tray of developing fluid, preparing to fling it in Lloyd's face.
'Don't waste your time on Chase,' he said, ducking as a wall of red and black Chases were drenched in the liquid. 'He isn't right for you.'
'What are you, match dot com? Fuck off! I never want to see you again. Get back to your poor bitch of a girlfriend and leave me alone.'
I ran to the door and flung it open, then gathered up his coat and boots and hurled them on to the landing. I stood naked in the doorway, ranting and raving, until Lloyd, shaking his head and fixing me with a piercing eye, left the flat. Just as Mrs Treadway's friends-and-relations appeared on the stairwell bearing gifts.
'Merry fucking Christmas!' I shrieked at their stunned faces before slamming the door shut and sobbing on the floor until it was time to leave.
We marched past Lloyd and his odious I-know-better-than-thou smug mug, onward to the lair of Chase.
'Why are you so horrible to him?' Jade asked, despite her imminent unemployed status. 'He really likes you, you know.'
'He does not.'
'How can you say that after that pool party? That was the most chemistry I ever saw since . . . a chemistry lesson,' she finished lamely.
'Never mind chemistry, prepare for an explosion,' I said grimly, knocking on the door of the inner sanctum.
'Enter.' His voice still gave me the shivers. As did his steely under-the-spectacles stare. 'Is this important, Sophie? I'm very busy.'
'I'm afraid so,' I said apologetically. 'Something potentially embarrassing to the brand has happened.'
'Really? Come in.' Chase was fixated on 'the brand' and its image, to the point of issuing long directives concerning what we were and were not allowed to tell outsiders.
The three of us made a sheepish journey over to the desk, where two of us stood wringing our hands.