Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission (17 page)

“Men!” muttered Anne. “What bastards they are, eh? Can’t live with them, can’t live without them and all that.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You seem to get on pretty well with Andrew.”

Kris’s ploy was successful, and for the next twenty minutes or so Anne listed a litany of complaints, all of them minor
—
some even tender
—
about her partner, a designer on a magazine who, Kris knew, Anne really adored to bits.

After a while of enjoying the distraction, Kris asked in what she hoped was a casual manner: “When you were at Dalrigh, did you ever come across someone called Daniel Logan?”

Anne looked thoughtful for a moment. “Don’t recognise the name,” she said at last. “Mind you, I don’t get up there particularly often, and I can’t say that I’m a particularly active member in the community. They just like to nose in your business. Why?”

“It doesn’t matter. He lives at Comrie.”

Again, Anne looked at her blankly, but something inside
Kris
prodded her to continue. “It’s the old croft, off the road before you reach the cottage.”

“Oh...” at last realisation began to dawn on Anne’s face. “That place. No, no, I don’t know him at all. Apparently some misanthropic old bugger lives there
—
bought up the place a few years ago. He’s not much liked, from what I can tell you. Why, sweetie? Did he give you any trouble?”

“No, not really.” Kris felt herself blushing. “It’s nothing. We had a brief run-in, that’s all.”

Anne immediately began to ask questions and Kris began to back down, realising that, after all, perhaps she didn’t want to share what had happened to her, instead concocting a story about a minor road accident with Daniel.

“You poor love,” Anne said soothingly, placing a kind arm around her shoulder. “You really don’t have much luck, do you.”

“No, I guess not,” Kris replied quietly.

On her way home, Kris popped into a chemist. Despite her embarrassment as she asked for some cream, she could not resist a sly grin. Daniel Logan may well indeed turn out to be a misanthropic bastard, but she had to admit that part of her was
metaphorically
punching the air that she hadn’t been so well and truly shagged since she had been a teenager. Actually, ever.

The mundane tasks she had set herself at home, however, could not entirely help her escape the sense of dread she had about returning to work. She unpacked the rest of her clothes, and for a moment held the pad she had used to sketch while at Comrie. Staring at the rough, dark cover, her fingers hovered over it for a moment but left it closed. One day she would return to it, but not yet.

Catching the tube to work the next morning, Kris’s stomach sank within her. Whatever benefits she had gained from her time away were quickly dissipating. If it had ended as some kind of romantic idyll, with some sort of declaration of their feelings for each other before,
Brief Encounters
style, they had to part forever, perhaps she would have been able to cope with it better. As it was, Kris felt that she had exposed herself completely and utterly to a man who was incapable of reciprocating, who had used her than abandoned her. A one night stand would have been less frustrating even.

And yet, while she thought of him on that final night, holding her down on the bed while he took her forcefully, Kris’s legs trembled and she almost stumbled as she held herself up on the shaking Northern Line. The man next to her, a nondescript, middle-aged city worker dressed in a cheap suit, apologised briefly, thinking that he had knocked her, and as she looked up and he caught her glance he smiled. She blushed and averted her eyes: could he see into her mind, to the images of her being filled in the most intimate and compelling way? Her skin prickled, and her old censor kicked in to preserve her from any further embarrassment.

By the time she arrived at her workplace,
a faceless, stumpy tower block o
n Farringdon
Road
, her self-preservation was in full force. The most impressive thing about the company she worked for was its name, Hardy, Briskin and Sorrell, and even the sight of that made her want to be sick these days. Taking the elevator to the fourth floor, she stepped out into the clean, modern fake chic corridors, and said hello to Janice, the receptionist who was professionally pleasant to everyone who made their way into the building, whether visitors or staff.

“Did you enjoy your holiday?” Janice asked, smiling up at her courteously. The receptionist was in her mid-forties and a pleasant, slightly dumpy looking woman, who covered her plainness with rather thick makeup Kris bitchily observed to herself.

“Yes, thank you,” Kris replied, offering the minimum amount of small talk that would allow her to get past Mark’s
office
and to her own
desk
where, no doubt, the boring pile of work she had left before going on holiday had quadrupled in size.

The office employed just over forty people, and for a while Kris had worked as Mark’s secretary before, mysteriously, she had been downgraded to more mundane clerical work. Actually, she was pretty sure that most of her co-workers understood entirely the circumstances of her sudden demotion, especially as she had been excluded for some time from some of the more spicy gossip that took place around the proverbial water cooler. A couple of her colleagues had viewed her with barely hidden amusement, some of the others with faux compassion. Before she had left, she had not been sure which response she found worse: now, she didn’t care.

“This came in while you were away,” said Frank, one of the main claim handlers. He had been one of those who silently expressed sympathy for Kris, and she was sure that part of the reason for it was that secretly this pudgy, sandy-haired man in his fifties wanted a piece of what Mark Travis had been getting. Well, at least for the moment it meant that she didn’t have to deal with acrimony from another member of staff.

As he placed the piece of paper on her desk, Frank leaned down
—
a little too closely to her ear for her liking
—
and whispered. “You might want to keep your head down. The boss is in a bad mood today. You’re welcome to hide out in my office any time you like.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” she replied, flashing him a fake smile.

She logged onto her computer and stared dismally at the emails that had built up. With a shudder, she saw that a dozen of them were from Mark. When she had not responded to his message, he had obviously decided to leave a time bomb for her to return to. For the moment, however, she decided to ignore them and instead concentrated on entering the details of the claim Frank had handed her into the system.

Her respite was unfortunately brief. After twenty minutes or so, she caught sight of the door to Mark’s office opening and bent her head forward, hoping that by refusing to look at him he might not see her. It didn’t work, of course.

“Good holiday?” he asked, his voice constrained.

She lifted her head. Mark Travis was in his mid forties and stood just under six feet tall. She had thought him tall once, but that mistake would never occur to her again. He was, she had to admit, conventionally good looking, but where his face should have been graced with an easygoing maturity instead it betrayed a petulance that marred his looks more than Daniel Logan’s scars. She also knew that beneath his fancy suits, his body was starting to display the evidence of too many corporate lunches that, unlike his hair, he could not dye away.

“Yes, thank you.”

“What did you get up to?” Well, this was an improvement to the arguments that had taken place a month before, though she could see that any bonhomie on his part was entirely forced. “Anything exciting? I hope you didn’t get up to anything that I wouldn’t have.”

She hoped that her foundation covered the fading
love bite
on her neck, the only one that would have been visible above her tightly buttoned blouse. “Not really,” she said. “I just needed a rest. You know how it is.”

“Yes, of course,” he replied. His eyes flickered to where one of her co-workers was seated nearby, too obviously trying not to betray that she was listening in to the conversation. Kris realised, for the first time, how nervous her employer was. She’d had the evidence before her all the time,
she realised, but it was only
now that she could recognise it so clearly.

“Anyway, a few things came up while you were away. Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment?”

Reluctantly, she followed him into his office and closed the door behind her. The room was the largest on the floor after the glass-fronted meeting room, with the desk before the window that looked out onto the street below. A computer was there and a couple of chairs arranged around a low, black-ash table, with shelves holding Mark’s golfing trophies in one corner.

She stood there while he sat down on one of the comfy chairs and he gestured to the one across from him. She placed herself on the edge of the seat rather primly, her hands folded across her lap.

“Did you read your emails?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I haven’t had chance yet. Frank got me before I could check them all.”

Mark looked at her, placing the tips of his fingers against each other. She knew it was a posture that he thought gave him added gravitas, but now she considered that it merely made him appear ridiculous.

“Never mind,” he replied. “More to the point, you didn’t answer my messages or my calls.”

“I saw one,” she said. “I’m sorry. I... I just needed a break for a little while.”

“Well,” he responded, a little gruffly though also, she thought, somewhat mollified. “I realised by the end of the first week that you weren’t going to respond after I tried to call a couple of times.”

Kris’s ears pricked up at this. “Sorry,” she said. “You tried to get in touch again?”

He frowned at this. “Yeah. Stupid really. Why, what was going on?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she answered quickly
—
a little too quickly, perhaps. For a moment she suddenly remembered that she had not had her phone for a few days. “The reception was really bad up there.” She almost added: That was part of the appeal, but held her tongue.

“How’s it going finding a new PA?” she asked.

“I had a temp in for a while, but... well, it didn’t work out.” He avoided her eyes as he said this. “I suppose I should advertise for the position.”

Kris nodded, slowly. She had a suspicion where this was going, but didn’t want to make things easy for him.

“Anyway.” His eyes were on her now, flickering across her face, trying to read her above his finger tips while his tongue imperceptibly licked his fat lower lip. She, in turn, tried not to shudder as she focused on his wedding ring. What on earth had she ever seen in this man? “No hard feelings, eh? Perhaps we should go for a drink some time. Work things out, eh? What do you say?”

“That would be nice,” she lied. All she wanted to do now was get out of this room. Mark, meanwhile, appeared satisfied with her response. He issued some petty instructions for work, a little loudly she thought, unless it was for Janice’s benefit more than hers. Nonetheless, his mood did not appear as bad as Frank had indicated: perhaps he was genuinely glad to have her back.

She, however, merely wished to
leave his office
as quickly as possible. Returning to her desk, she could feel her old, dull anger and frustration building up, though now there was an added edge to it. What was it with these men? Who the fuck did they think they were, and why did they treat her like some kind of bloody doormat that they could walk all over?

For an hour, she wasted time browsing the internet. She needed another job, that was clear, but times were tough and there wasn’t some golden opportunity for her just around the corner. Eventually, she knew, she would have to end up finding agency work. She had a feeling that as far as Mark was concerned, there was still unfinished business between them. On her own part, there wasn’t even a Mark-shaped hole inside her anymore. The emptiness was far deeper than that.

Over the next few days, she decided that the best plan of action was dull apathy. Real life had set its iron rule over her, and any form of fantasy would turn into punishment. That was a challenge in itself at times, however, and more than once while lying in bed or in her bath, she imagined a pair of strong hands holding her down, a mouth biting and kissing her while she was taken brutally, even a strap across her buttocks. Even masturbation was miserable, however. Her orgasms were a bitter reminder rather than a pleasure, and she soon found herself consuming a bottle of wine each night to help her sleep.

At work, she simply tried to act in as professional a manner as possible, avoiding Mark as much as she could. She sent out a couple of messages to hiring agencies, and realised glumly that any work immediately available would pay even less than the pittance she now received. Twenty-eight years old, she realised, and all she had was a lousy, rented flat and a car, with virtually nothing else to her name.

When the weekend arrived, she had sunk into her old fug all over again. Damn it! she told herself. Forget that bastard. You went away so that you could create again. Remember that!