Lorna spent the day in a glum trance. A thick fog blew in and settled around her when she got Bill’s letter and it was there now, weighing her down. Despite every possible appearance to the contrary, she was still holding onto a tiny nugget of hope that he might want more – why else would she be so willing to degrade herself by meeting him in the woods for a shag like a common teenage slut? As she sat before her dresser mirror, meticulously applying makeup that would undoubtedly end up as a trouser smear, she studied herself. This was the best relationship a woman like her could hope for. She was a tart – nothing more, nothing less. She could swan about town dressed in a nun’s habit and people would still see right through her. This was all she knew how to be.
Bill was starting to panic. Lorna hardly ever rang the house, but he could usually count on at least one steamy conversation on the office phone. He didn’t love her, he never would, but as well as she thought she hid it, it was obvious that Lorna had grown very attached to him. He sat at his desk all day, tapping away at the adding machine, shuffling through reports, going through all the motions of a busy city accountant at the beginning of tax season, keeping himself occupied so that he wouldn’t ring her. If he was going to end things, he needed to be brutal enough to make it final, and the best way to do that was to let her chase after him, then cut her down.
He stayed at the office until nine thirty, half an hour before their usual meeting time, then headed home. He had been gradually winding down the affair for months now, working hard to ensure that each coupling was colder and more distant than the one before. He had refused to kiss her the last time they had sex, and he knew from the look on her face as he put his hand over her mouth that his message was starting to get through. All it would take now would be one unkind word, a single abrupt gesture, and the grave would be dug. He supposed she might have known what he was doing, and that that was why she wasn’t calling, but he doubted it. Samantha was upstairs when he got home, and he went up to tuck her in before sitting down next his wife to settle in for the night. This was where he belonged.
The Mechanic came out of the bedroom, freshly showered, suited and shaven, and was immediately confronted with the sight of his utterly delectable wife. Alice was the sort of girl who blushed when a man brushed up against her in the cue at the cinema, so to see her leaning against the door in a red satin slip caused an involuntary bodily response born more out of shock than anything else.
‘Do you like it? I found those magazines you were hiding under the bed and I thought; if this is what my husband likes…’
He did like it. As a husband, he was disgusted, but as a man, he had never wanted her more. Despite the staggeringly well applied paint and powder, which made her look more like one of his ‘dates’ than the woman who prepared his bacon and eggs every morning, she was still Alice, and he reminded himself of that as he picked her up and carried her over to the settee. But Alice had another surprise in store. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he entered her, gripping on for grim death, and pulled herself up so that she was straddling him. The Mechanic’s face froze in horror. This was not his wife. This was a slut, a common slut who was any man’s for the taking.
This was his mother.
Alice leaned back and smiled, a garish, satisfied grin. The Mechanic couldn’t stand it. He shoved her off his lap without any warning, and she hit the floor so hard she almost bounced. He pulled his pants back on and headed for the door.
‘I’m late.’
Alice clutched his leg.
‘Isn’t this what you want?’
‘No, it isn’t.’ he lied. ‘Take that thing off so I can sling it in the rubbish.’
His hands were still slick with sweat when he got to the car, and it took all his concentration to turn the key in the ignition. She would be crying now. Good. If she had only known what it would do to him, what it would unleash in him to see her that way – what he wanted to do to her - she would never have tried it. He looked at his watch – ten o’clock. There was no time to be selective. The girl he ended up with tonight could consider herself lucky in one respect – it would all be over very quickly. The pub he chose was only a ten minute drive from home, but it didn’t matter; no one he knew went there, and Alice would’t dare go out after dark – especially now.
ns 15.158.61.5da2
