She got that he had cheated on her with a teenager. It was a rock star cliché. Boring, trite, predictable, unworthy of him, but … She could have forgiven it, in time.
But to cheat on her with a fat girl! It was an insult. It was beyond the pale.
You used to be the same size as her, he’d said.
‘I was never that big!’ she protested, but actually she had been. A British size 12 when they met, three sizes bigger than she was now.
‘It’s not even big!’ Deano had said. ‘It’s a healthy size. Jesus, Jenna, you’re as bad as the rest of them.’
She didn’t know who ‘the rest of them’ were, but she wasn’t sticking around to take the blame for her own husband’s inability to keep his dick in his pants.
She ran her hand along her arm, checking for spare flesh. Nothing to pinch. Nothing but firm, taut, brown skin. Breasts, small but still high. Thighs supple and yoga-flexible.
If she was awake at this time of night, she might as well make use of it.
She stood by the window and began to warm up, jogging on the spot in bare feet.
Nothing stops me. I am unstoppable. One thing marks out the success from the failure, and that is how much they want success. Make it your hunger, make it your thirst, make it your lust, subvert all your appetites into this one drive.
The mantras calmed and focused her.
She worked out until she was dizzy and her head pounded, then she fell back on the mattress and took a long drink from her flask.
Still only 4 a.m.
She was physically tired, but her brain ticked on. What would trick it back into sleep? What could she think about?
Lawrence Harville. She thought of that creamy-coffee voice telling her to do things. ‘Take off your clothes, Jenna.’
He would be sitting, legs astride a wooden chair, shirt undone, tie loose around his neck, looking louche and lecherous after perhaps a couple of brandies. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his face a mask of sensuality and desire.
He would make her take off her cocktail dress, and underneath she would be wearing something daring. What would it be? Stockings and suspenders, and a tight bustier that lifted her breasts almost into her face. A tiny wisp of a thong. He would be able to see through the sheer lace triangle and, when she twirled for him, her bare bottom would be exposed, bisected by taut black elastic.
‘Come and stand in front of me,’ he’d say, and she’d pose, hands on hips, feet planted wide on the floor, trying to look insolently insouciant while his gaze raked her up and down and side to side.
Without warning, he would clamp a hand between her thighs, smacking down on her sex lips, holding them in an iron grip.
‘What’s this?’ he’d whisper.
‘None of your business,’ she’d say, defiant, pretending not to want it.
‘No? What if I pay for it?’
‘You couldn’t afford it.’
But he’d take a roll of banknotes from his inner jacket pocket and stuff them into the cups of her bustier.
‘Now?’
Her knees trembled at the thought of being bought, of being property to be used.
She nodded, looked down, instantly humbled.
‘OK,’ she whispered.
‘Money talks,’ he said, pushing stubby fingertips inside the gauzy thong to rub at her clit. ‘And money gets you wet, doesn’t it?’
She nodded, all her defiance knocked out of her by this accurate assessment of who and what she was.