I wanted to ask him what he was going to do with me, since the words hung so agonisingly and tantalisingly between us, but I did as I was told instead, running up the stairs two at a time and flinging the bags on the bed.
Anything could happen, I told myself, racing back down. Anything could happen and I want it to!
The plates were on the table and he was already digging into his food.
‘You look like you could do with a square meal,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing in the cupboards. What have you been living on?’
‘Soup, mainly,’ I said, sliding into the chair opposite him.
‘Not that foul packet stuff I saw on the shelf?’
‘Yeah.’ I felt guilty for my consumption of powdered soup. Obviously it was the Wrong Thing to do.
‘That won’t do. You’re going to need your strength, my girl.’
Jesus, what was happening to me? Lightning bolts, electricity up and down my spine and all over my skin. As for my crotch, I could barely sit still, it felt so full of sparks.
‘Am I? For … what you’re going to do with me?’
‘All that cataloguing,’ he said, deadpan. ‘Takes it out of you, I imagine.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to … make me pay … can you tell me how?’
‘Later,’ he said. ‘Eat your eggs. You need protein.’
He refused to refer to the subject again, questioning me instead on my background and education until the food and the mugs of strong tea were all gone.
I wanted to talk about him, since his experiences were so much more interesting than mine, but I sensed that he didn’t take well to interrogation and would dispense information at his own pace. I watched him speak, watched the light and shade fall across his face, followed the expressive motions of his hands. All his animation seemed to be channelled into them, while his facial expressions remained serene and controlled. He is master of himself, I thought, and that made me want to squirm even more.
‘Finished?’ he asked when I laid down my knife and fork.
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘You’d better get to work then. Go on. I’ll wash up.’
I hesitated. Wasn’t he going to mention the strop débâcle?
‘What room are you working in at the moment?’ he asked.
‘The, uh, the one with the piano.’
‘The drawing room,’ he corrected me. ‘I’ll be in the study. Come and wait outside in, shall we say, two hours? That’ll give me enough time to devise something suitable.’
Instant shivers. Something suitable.
‘Run along then, Sarah,’ he said with a ghoulish smile. ‘We mustn’t neglect our work, must we?’
But I’m afraid I did neglect my work.
Over and over again I came to with a start, some ornament or other in my hand, after drifting into reverie. If I carried on like that, something was going to get broken. And then what might be my fate? I kept going to the door and looking around it, towards the study, listening. Sometimes I could hear his voice, faintly, making telephone calls, or the tap of a keyboard.
While he worked, he was thinking of me. Thinking of what was to be done with me, for my shameless behaviour with his property.
And while I worked, I was thinking of him. Thinking of how he compelled and disturbed and attracted and repelled me. I had never met a man who could do all those things simultaneously before. Perhaps there was no other man in the world who could.
The hands of all the antique clocks made their slow progress through time until the two hours had elapsed and I put down my clipboard and pencil, patted down my skirt and left the room.
I could keep walking, walk to the front door, walk to the car, get in the car, drive away.