Under His Influence

“Because you’re too conscientious. You need to rest, and I need to know that you are resting. Just for today. Come on.” He stretched a hand out, the fingers flicking the command. Bemused, Anna reached into her handbag and handed over the phone. He came around the table to sit beside her on the bench, clamping her to his side with an arm, ruffling her hair. “Good girl,” he crooned. “Have sweet dreams while I’m out, won’t you? Preferably about me. I’ll be back before you know it.” Despite herself, Anna dismissed the tiny niggle of anxiety that had blossomed in her stomach and let him kiss her into total acquiescence once more.

“Oh, by the way,” he said, stopping at the kitchen door before taking himself and his briefcase off to the City. “I presume you are on the pill, are you?”

Anna stared into her greasy plate, hating practical talk to intrude on her Huge Romance. “Yeah.”

“Right. Just so we’re clear. Goodbye, darling. Take care of yourself.”

Chapter Five

Barefoot and draped in one of John’s shirts, Anna wandered through each cavernous room of the house, imagining herself here, its mistress. The furnishings were too austere for her taste; she listed the feminine touches she would add as she made her inventory of each chamber. Vases of long-stemmed roses on each table, she thought, and photographs on the wall—those big portraits, blown up. Perhaps there would be wedding photographs… No, Anna. This is all too unreal anyway. Don’t go adding the big white dress and the society wedding to a brew already more potent than you could have dreamed. She paused, holding on to a pillar for support. Oh, her legs ached and her eyelids were so heavy. She would have to lie down. Lie down and think of that dark, rapt night just past. The avidity of him, his unerring intuition for how she should be touched and what made her melt or burn—where did it come from? It was as if she had called him up from a place beyond Earth—a perfect man, fashioned to pleasure her, to love her, to give her everything she had ever wanted. It was almost too uncanny. She shivered, hugged the John-smelling shirt tighter around her depleted body and blanked into sleep once more.

John had been expecting the call, and when the Recorder’s number flashed up on his screen, he allowed himself a smile.

“John Stone.”

“Mr. Stone, hello. I expect your secretary told you—”

“Yes, she did. You want an interview?”

“Just a bit of background for the article Mr. Prendergast has commissioned on your new projects. The ‘man behind the machine’ kind of thing. Would you be willing?”

“It’s short notice, isn’t it? The article is going to be in Wednesday’s technology supplement, I thought.” John tapped the desk with a digital pen, waiting to enter the details in his electronic notepad, not particularly interested in what the girl’s lame rationale might be, but wanting to make her work anyway.

“I can get it written up by the end of play today, if you’re free for lunch. I only need an hour.”

“An hour represents a considerable investment of my time, Ms…?”

“Leblanc. Miranda. And yes, I do understand that. I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible. Say, the King of Ludgate, at one?”

“The King of Ludgate. One. Don’t be late, now.”

“I won’t. Goodbye, Mr. Stone. Thank you.”

“See you later.”

Anna was bathed in confetti, a froth of tulle swishing around her ankles, which were cross-strapped in something by Monsieur Louboutin. She was so happy that she was floating a few inches above the ground, looking down to find the person she wanted to aim her bouquet at. Where was she? Smiling faces stretched for miles on every side, upturned, calling out well wishes, and John was standing in the distance, beside a coach and four, calling to her, “Come on, come on, it’s time to go, just throw it, Anna, and let’s go.”

But she couldn’t find the one she wanted, so she threw the spray of roses willy-nilly, above the heads of the crowd. A pair of hands with grotesquely long false nails shot up and caught the flowers. Anna clapped, shouted “Mimi!” But Mimi’s face was warped and decayed, and she cackled as the roses landed and, on contact, withered. The petals, now brown, fell from the stalks, and Mimi took the thorny stems and hurled them back, fast, heading straight for Anna’s eyes…

She screamed and woke up, sweating, clutching at cushions, looking instinctively for John.

It was only eleven-forty in the morning. He was still at work. He wouldn’t be back for a long time. She stumbled to the kitchen and chopped up some fruit for a smoothie, and stared out at the heavily cultivated back garden. Would all this be hers? Was it meant to be?

The King of Ludgate had stood on the same corner of Ludgate Circus for hundreds of years, though for most of that time it had not been quite as full of men in suits as it was now.

Mimi was not sure she would recognise John Stone, having in her mind only an impression of a generic City gent. She trod a careful path through the throng of expensively dressed City boys, checking every table for likely candidates, fending off various rude remarks or offers of drinks en route. Oh, yes, there, feeding coins into the slot machine in a frenzy, banging on the buttons, that was him. How could she have thought she would not know him? There was that indefinable something about him, the thing that must have sucked Anna in so quickly and efficiently. She held back for a while, waiting for the game to end, which it did in a jingling waterfall of coin. Stone, aggressive in victory, scooped it all up and pocketed it before swinging around to face her unexpectedly.

“Mimi.”

She caught her breath, suddenly fearful.

“M-Miranda,” she reminded him, uncertainly holding out her hand. “From The Recorder.”

“But they call you Mimi,” he countered, failing to reciprocate her gesture. “I’ll find a table. Mine’s a still mineral water.”

Mimi felt nauseated all the way to the bar, and all the way back with their two bottles of overpriced water. He must know she was here to ask about Anna. To warn him off, if necessary. She was going to have to play it tough, really tough, or he would make mincemeat of her. She could see he had that potential, and everybody had said he was not a man to mess with. Why did he have to choose her sweet, vulnerable, ditsy friend to prey on, then? Why poor orphaned Anna?

He was counting his winnings at the corner table he had secured for them.