Beauty and the Dark Read online

  It makes me sad to think of Andrew hanging around with that crowd, because it’s only a matter of time before he becomes one of them. I like Andrew. He’s an intelligent and sweet boy. I see that Jack has noticed too, because he is scowling as he hits the elevator button.

  “Is your house in this block too?’ Jack asks as we wait for the elevator.

  “Number sixty-four,” he calls as the elevator doors open.

  Jack nods and we hurry inside. Inside it smells of piss. We get off at the fourth floor. Lori leads the way to a green door down the corridor. She puts her key in and opens it. The stench that comes out is vomit inducing.

  “This way,” she says, and we are led to a cold bedroom with the curtains pulled shut. A pale woman is under the covers.

  “Mama. I’ve brought some people to help you.” Lori sobs.

  Her mother is so weak she is barely able to open her eyes. She breathes with difficulty. “Lori,” she groans feebly, then begins speaking to her in a foreign language.

  “Mama, they’re not going to tell Papa. I know them. They’re good people,” Lori says.

  Jack moves forward. “Can your mother speak English?” he asks Lori.

  “A little bit.”

  “Tell me her symptoms. What’s wrong with her?”

  “She has a fever and a stomach ache and she is tired all the time. And she cannot eat.”

  “For how long?”

  “Two weeks, but she is getting worse.”

  Jack moves the bedclothes. Instead of trying to unzip her he pulls her dress up over her legs to expose her stomach. He touches her lower abdomen close to her belly button and she groans. He touches another area to the right and she screams in agony.

  He looks up at Lori. “Lori, go and call the elevator. Then ask Robert to bring the car as close to the front door as possible.”

  “What’s wrong with Mama?” she asks in a small, frightened voice.

  “We don’t have time to talk now. Hurry up and do what I asked you to. We can talk later.”

  With a sob Lori turns around and runs out of the room.

  He wraps Lori’s mother up in the blankets and slips his arms under her head and her knees.

  “Leave the front door wedged open and go and hold the elevator doors open for me, Sofia,” he says, heaving her up.

  I quickly do his bidding. The elevator comes quickly so I have to keep on jamming it open. He kicks away the chair I left to keep the doors open and walks towards me.

  Lori’s mother is mumbling incoherently.

  I get in and press the ground floor button.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I ask once we’re inside the lift.

  “I think she has a ruptured appendix.”

  I stare at him in shock. I have heard of people who die from burst appendixes. The doors groan open and I walk on ahead and hold the entrance door open. Andrew is still hanging around and comes running up to us.

  “Want some help, Jack?” he asks.

  “Thanks, Andrew. I got this one.”

  Carefully, Jack lays the woman in the backseat. Then he asks Robert to get out of the car and instructs Lori to hold her mother’s head and comfort her because it will be a difficult journey for her. Then he tells me to get into the front passenger seat.

  He slides into the driver’s seat and starts the car.

  Thirty-three

  Sofia

  “What’s wrong with my mother?” Lori asks in a frightened little voice.

  “It looks like your mother’s appendix might have ruptured, but the good news is I think we got to her in time. She just needs to have it removed so that she will feel better.”

  As Jack had predicted, the journey was very difficult for Lori’s mother. The vibration of the car causes her to grimace, and every tiny bump makes her cry out in agony. There is not a thing I can do.

  Once at the hospital, Lori’s mother is immediately wheeled away. While Lori and I are in the Waiting Room, Jack goes off to see what help he can give. He comes back to tell us that she has to have emergency surgery.

  Later he pulls me aside and tells me that her burst appendix went gangrenous. “The appendix and all evidence of gangrene were removed, and the area irrigated and inspected. Luckily, scans indicate no other organs, especially her intestines, were effected. She will be on heavy administration of antibiotics to help clear the infection.”

  “Will she make it?” I whisper, horrified.

  He nods. “I think so.”

  Lori’s mother is in the theater for ages. Finally, she is wheeled out. The operation is a success, but she will have to stay at the hospital for some time.

  That night Lori stays with us. I put her in the nanny’s room. When I go to tuck her into bed she looks at me sadly.

  “She will be all right, won’t she?”

  “Yes. The worst is over now. In a few weeks she should be ready to come home.”

  She looks worried. “A few weeks?”

  “I’m afraid so, sweetie.”

  “After tonight I could go back and stay at my house, couldn’t I?”

  I stare at her. “What? Alone?”

  She nods bravely.

  “What about your dad? Wouldn’t you like to stay with him?”

  She shrinks from me. Fear flashes into her eyes. “You won’t tell my father will you?”

  “No, no, not if you don’t want us to,” I assure her hurriedly.

  She shakes her head. “You mustn’t. Please.”

  “Okay. I won’t.”

  She nods.

  “Are you and your mother running away from him?” I ask softly.

  “Yes. He used to beat us. We ran away from Romania. We’ve been hiding here for the last year, but he went to my Nan’s house and said he knew we are in England and that he would find us.”

  “Is that why you don’t talk to anybody?”

  “Yes. Mama says the more people who know where we are the easier it will be for him to find us.”

  “You and your mother are very brave,” I tell her.

  “My mother is,” she says simply. I think of my own mother. If only she had had the courage to do what Lori’s mother had done. Run away with all of us. How different life would have been for all of us. But that is the past and cannot be changed.

  “Shouldn’t we tell your grandmother? Wouldn’t she want to know?”

  “Yes, we should tell her.”

  “Do you know how to contact her?”

  “I have her phone number.”

  “Good. We can call her tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “Does she live alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Perhaps we can invite her to come over.”

  “She won’t be able to afford it,” she says sadly.

  “I will pay for her. She will come as my guest. You can stay with us until she comes. Then if you want, you can even go up to the castle and stay the night in the tower with your grandmother. Would you like that?”

  Her eyes light up. “Really?”

  “Tomorrow we’ll send someone to clean your house so that when your grandmother comes it will be sparkling clean.”

  She looks shamefaced. “I did try to clean it.”

  “Hey, you did amazing.”

  “Thank you, Sofia.”

  “Oh, little sweetheart. I did nothing. Like you I wouldn’t have known what to do. It was all Jack.”

  She shakes her head, making her hair tumble about on the pillow. “No, it was you. I would not have been brave enough to go to anyone else.”

  “Well, thankfully, it’s all in the past. How about we say that Jack, you and me together saved the day?”

  She nods.

  I smile at her. “Now, time to close these cute little eyes and go to sleep now, don’t you think?”

  “Can Mika stay with me tonight?”

  I touch her little button nose. “Of course she can.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Up ,Mika,” I say, and she immedia
tely jumps on the bed.

  “Stay and guard little Lori tonight, okay,” I say stroking her silky head. She licks my hand and I kiss the top of her head.

  “Goodnight both of you,” I say, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  I walk down the corridor and into my bedroom. Jack is going through the messages on his phone. I close the door and lean against it.

  He puts his phone down and smiles. “Everything okay?”

  I nod.

  “Lock that door and come here,” he says.

  ‘We’ll have to be very quiet tonight,” I tell him.

  “Fuck being quiet,” he says, picking something up from the bed and letting it swing from his pointer finger.”

  I giggle. “You bought a gag?”

  “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

  Thirty-four

  Jack

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNc278W45ck

  One day after Lori and her grandmother return from Sofia’s tower at the castle and return to her mother’s apartment, I get home from work and find Guy in the living room. He walks up to me, puts one hand on my shoulder, grabs my other hand and shakes it firmly.

  “I was wrong about you. No matter what happens in the future, you’ve done more for Sofia than I would have thought possible. She’s a new person,” he says sincerely.

  I shrug casually, but I can’t help the glow of pride I feel inside. I know I have been good for her.

  “No, really,” he insists. “Every day I see her blossom and become more and more radiant. Sometimes I look at her and she doesn’t even seem to be the same person anymore.”

  I smile, and don’t tell him about my deepest concern. Yes, her body is repaired, but that may be just one battle won. The war is far from over. The real problem is Sofia and I have sex, we laugh, we eat, we dance, but we never talk about her past. Nothing. Even when I have tried to tell her about mine, she leans forward and listens eagerly, absorbing every little detail greedily, then instead of offering even the smallest tit bit about herself, she’ll say something like, “Guess what I’m wearing underneath this dress,” or “God, I’d love to have you inside me now.”

  That’s like waving a red rag at a bull. Action guaranteed. We’ll have sex and the moment will pass. Of course, I don’t want to hear about all those men. Even the thought is enough to make me feel sick to my stomach and want to kill someone, but I don’t want her whole past to be a no-go area.

  I know she is keenly aware of how possessive and jealous I am, but how would it hurt to throw a little scrap about her childhood in my direction. I know her father was a cruel and sadistic man, but we can’t go through our lives never referring to him.

  Sometimes I’m even tempted to ask Lena to tell me what really happened. Just so I understand. Just so I have a picture of her as a child. I want to understand. I know I own her body, but that is not enough. I want it all. Mind, body and soul.

  “Have a drink with me?” Guy offers.

  “Sure. I’ll have a beer.”

  He takes a bottle out of the mini fridge under the bar for me and pours himself a whiskey.

  “Glass?” he asks.

  “Nah.”

  He brings my bottle to me. I smile my thanks and take a swig. “So where are the girls?”

  “Lena is helping Sofia dress.”

  I frown. “Why?’

  “It’s kind of a surprise.”

  I look at him warily. “Right.”

  “Here they are now.”

  Lena comes in first and she is grinning like a Cheshire cat. Then Sofia comes in and it is like a punch in the gut. My eyes widen and my jaw actually drops. Jesus! She is wearing a red dress made from some kind of slinky material. And she is wearing high heels. And her hair has been styled in waves that flow down her back. She is fucking stunning.

  “Hi,” she says softly.

  “Wow! Just wow,” I reply. My voice sounds gruff. She has never dressed up for me before.

  She blushes and looks even more beautiful.

  “Well, we’ll be off then,” Lena says.

  “Bye,” I say, and I don’t even turn my head to watch them leave.

  The front door shuts and suddenly the apartment is too quiet.

  I walk up to her, take her hand and twirl her around slowly. “How can a woman be so beautiful,” I whisper.

  “I’m not beautiful. My sister is the beauty in our fami-.”

  I place my finger on her lips. “Don’t. Don’t spit in our good fortune. We are the luckiest people on earth.”

  A smile trembles on her lips.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, lifting my finger away from her lips.

  “We are going to a classical concert.”

  I groan. “Don’t tell me you’re taking me to a place where I have to sit in the dark next to you with a hard on for an hour.”

  She giggles.

  My goodness. How beautiful is my girl.

  “You’ll survive. I wanted to treat you with my first bit of money. It’s the rent from my apartment. Guy and Lena gave it to me so I’d have my own money.”

  “In that case, I am honored.”

  She takes me to see Vanessa Mae, and I have to admit the woman was amazing. She looks good and is as buzzed and energetic as any rock star, and played the violin like an electric dream.

  Afterwards, we go for a meal in a fancy restaurant. We have our first argument when the bill comes. I’m glad she has her own money and that it makes her feel happy, but I’m damned if my woman is going to pay the restaurant bill. We end our disagreement in the car park with my tongue in her mouth.

  I’ll never forget the strip show she put on until my dying day.

  Thirty-five

  Sofia

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJSik6ejkr0

  (Running)

  I move into Jack’s apartment ten days after my surgery. Every day I stand in front of the mirror and turn around to look at my back. Every day I see it improving. The redness is going. The swelling will take six months to completely go away but it is slowly coming down.

  Sometimes I’ll leave my hair down and walk around naked. I could never do that before because my hair would get stuck in the uneven bits of flesh and irritate me, reminding me of my scar.

  This is without doubt the happiest time of my life. One day we attend the wedding of an acquaintance of Jack, Noah Abramovich, to his startlingly beautiful bride.

  “We’re just going to show our faces, then disappear,” Jack tells me, but when we get there we are treated as honored guests and invited to sit at the very front. The famous pianist Alexander Malenkov is there. I nearly die when he comes forward to shake my hand. I’m so flustered by the encounter Jack gets jealous.

  “Do I need to go punch his lights out?” he growls.

  I laugh. “I don’t fancy him. I just think he’s incredibly talented.”

  “Well, don’t keep looking at him as if you do then.”

  “I’m not. I’ve got eyes for no one but you, babe.”

  He snorts.

  On the home front, Mika is growing fast. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and find she is taller. She has grown overnight. Like me she has fallen in love with Jack. You should see the madhouse we have here when Jack comes home from work. There is barking, wailing, whining, jumping, sloppy kisses, and too many hugs.

  On the fifth day something goes wrong with the heating and the apartment becomes cold. Lena tells me to go to the Kensington apartment, but I tell her I will wait for Jack to come home, and if he doesn’t know what’s wrong with it, we will go together. I convince her that it’s not that cold since I’ve switched the oven on and left the door open.

  However, after I put the phone down, I walk into the living room and notice a definite nip in the air, so I decide to get some blankets out and curl up with a book.

  I go into the bedroom which is already freezing cold and open the cupboard. I have seen blankets stored on the bottom shelf. I squat down and pull three out at the same
time. Something hard falls with a soft thud on the floor. I pull the blankets away to see what has fallen out and notice that it is a photo album. Midnight blue with the brown cardboard showing at the edges of the cover, scratches, and finger marks.

  For a few frozen seconds, I can only stare at it as if it is some alien object from outer space. Instinctively, I know it is not an ordinary album. Nobody rolls up an album in blankets and pushes it to the back of their cupboard. I can hear my ragged breathing as I bend down to pick it up.

  I hold it in my hand, but I don’t open it. Instead I place my finger on the finger marks. They are his. I can tell just by the size. They belong to my lover. To the man I would die for. I run my thumb along the spine.

  Would it be wrong to open it?

  It’s not like it’s a diary. It’s just an album. If I owned a photo album would I be okay with him seeing it? Why not? It would only contain pictures of my family.

  I grasp the cover. My heart is pounding in my chest. Thump. Thump. Thump. I lift the cover. The breath I am holding comes out in a whoosh.

  Oh sweet Jesus!

  I turn the pages slowly. Page by page. In a daze. Disbelief rolling in my veins. How stupid I’ve been. How blind. Of course. It was there for all to see. I just didn’t want to. A ripple of disgust runs through me. My hands are shaking with shock as I turn the last page and close the album.

  I sit on the floor and carefully roll the album back in the blanket. Then I put it back exactly where I found it. I place the other clothes back onto the shelf on top of it. I look at it. Hmmm … the red blanket was on top of the blue one. I restore the order of it. Yes, that is how I found it.

  I close the cupboard door and stand up.

  The sense of loss is so acute that for an instant I feel faint, but it passes. I wipe my hands down my jeans. As if they are sweaty or dirty. They are neither. They are like icicles, but I don’t feel cold.

  My mind is whirling in the way a gust of wind will carry a few leaves round and round. Oh God. Oh God. My sister’s trigger was seeing my burnt flesh. Here is my trigger. Looking into Jack’s past.

  I walk out of the bedroom and go into the living room. My heart hurts. So fucking bad. I never felt this even when I was Valdislav’s whore. Then I felt nothing. Nothing. I was empty. Nothing could touch me. Time had stopped then. I want to feel that way again. I want time to stop again. This is unbearable. I can’t take this pain. It hurts too much. I need it to stop. I run out of the apartment without a coat.