‘Blaine told him, naturally. Just after dictating a couple of letters to me, and just before working on her VAT return. As you might imagine, he decided to come straight downstairs and make his feelings known.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘With Blaine. She requested his company for the rest of the morning. Accounts bore her.’
Disgust tightened my face. ‘After this?’
‘Because of this,’ Henry corrected me.
‘I’m sorry, Henry – I’m being a little slow on the uptake, but what the fuck does that mean?’
Henry dropped the carrier bag full of broken fragments into the bin. ‘It’s because his despair arouses her beyond measure.’
*****
Minutes passed before I felt able to speak again. ‘Why does she do it?’
‘Because she can. Because she enjoys wielding sex as power in the same way that her father did, and just about every generation of her accursed family before that. Even the most rudimentary research will dig up a tawdry detail about a Lord or Lady Albermarle entwined in some society scandal or other. You’ve never read about it?’
‘No.’ I gave a humourless laugh. ‘I’ve had enough of that with my own family.’
‘It’s almost funny – Blaine’s meant to be the one responsible for rehabilitating the family name: a respectable businesswoman, tireless charity worker, devoted mother...’
‘Whoa.’ I held up a hand. ‘She bred? You mean some mad bastard actually impregnated her?’
‘Married her and gave her two children, before he saw sense and snuffed it from a brain aneurism. Michael’s at Oxford, Emily’s working for a senator in Washington DC. Sweet girl, amazingly. Mummy offered her Finn as an eighteenth birthday present, and that was the last we saw. If I’m honest, Michael would have been the far more grateful recipient. Now there’s a young man destined to go into the family business.’
Finn
In my long and illustrious career I had been fucked by a procession of evil bastards, but none ever quite matched the sublime cruelty of Blaine. We lay side by side in the vast expanse of her bed and she ran a perfect fingernail in languid circles around my left nipple.
‘You know, I really can’t find the energy to do anything right now, darling,’ she purred in my ear. ‘Shall we just talk for a while?’ She moved her hand down my stomach and stroked my chemically-induced erection. ‘Why don’t you tell me the story of your first time?’
I felt the familiar darkness close in. Lying wasn’t an option; neither was skimping on the worst of it. Blaine knew too much for that.
Only the truth in all its sordid, bleak detail was ever going to satisfy her. I closed my eyes and began to tell my lover her tale.
Lilith
I left Henry to his preparations for dinner and trudged back to my studio. I tried to drown myself in my work, but when that work involved surrounding myself with a dozen detailed sketches of the woman who was the cause of my problems in the first place, I was always going to struggle. Everywhere I turned she stared up at me with that same supercilious expression.
Eventually I gave up on Blaine and stacked the drawings face-down on my desk before busying myself with a sketch of a background flower arrangement. I was working on this when the studio door creaked open just wide enough for Finn to peer around.
‘Um, can I? I mean, if it’s not...’ He tailed off. Each word was an effort and his voice was sandpaper rough.
‘Sure. You all right if I keep working, though?’
A tense nod in reply. I would have stopped and talked to him if I thought it would help, but this way he had a reason to be silent, and could just curl up in the chair in the bay window, his grey hooded jersey pulled around him like a comfort blanket, until he felt like communicating.
It was over an hour before he spoke again. ‘You want a coffee? I could go to the kitchen. Do us coffee. If you want.’
If I was working, I tried to avoid it; I couldn’t risk the slight shake I would get from the caffeine, but that wasn’t the point. Finn was desperate for something to do with his hands, and I reckoned coffee-making was a better option than using his skin to stub out the next cigarette. ‘Yeah, that would be good.’
*****
Ten minutes later Finn handed me a dark, sweet black coffee and returned to his seat, cradling his own mug close to his chest to absorb the warmth. He had not looked at me once.