‘Why can’t I look at you?’ He groped blindly and found hips still covered in fleecy fabric.
‘Sssh. Finish undressing me,’ Sarah said, pulling him to her.
Jamie had been worried about nothing. Even blind, there was no mistaking who he was making love to. Sarah was unique in every way, but especially in the way she made him feel. Out in the world Jamie always felt inadequate. He was too small, too thin, too anxious, too passive. He felt terrified that someone would catch on to the fact that he was too weak and hesitant to be a husband and father; at any given moment he was sure he would slip up and expose himself as a fake. But when he was making love to Sarah he felt that everything was as it should be. Jamie was as he should be. Nothing was awkward or uncomfortable or frightening. It was Sarah and Jamie, and it was easy and perfect and right.
‘Sar?’ he said afterwards, when she was lying with her head on his chest. ‘You’d tell me if something was wrong wouldn’t you?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Is that a yes?’
Sarah mumbled something into his chest.
‘I can’t understand you.’
She sighed, lifting her head up enough to plant a kiss on his chin. ‘Can’t a girl have a few minutes of peace to enjoy the afterglow of her mind-blowing orgasm?’
Jamie knew she was avoiding something, but he couldn’t stop smiling anyway. Shelley didn’t even have orgasms from intercourse and here was Sarah having mind-blowing ones. He gave her the requested few minutes of silence and then tried again. ‘Did you end up staying at the pub till stumps?’
‘No, I left not long after you.’
‘I hope you didn’t walk home alone.’
‘Don’t stress, Mum.’ She touched his face with her fingers, tracing his cheekbone and the ridge of his nose. ‘I got a lift.’
‘With a bloke?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it Mike? Because you said you weren’t going to see him anymore.’
Cold air rushed over him as she sat up. ‘Don’t start, please.’
Jamie sat up and faced her although it was so dark he could not really see her face. ‘I’m not starting anything, Sarah. I’m just trying to talk to you and you’re being all secretive.’
‘I can’t do this with you, Jamie, I really can’t. Just leave if you’re going to be an arsehole.’
Jamie had the sudden realisation that they were fighting. He hadn’t seen it coming, but here he was smack bang in the middle of a fight with Sarah. He reached for her arm. ‘You’ve always told me everything, and now you’re holding back. I feel like I’m losing you.’
Sarah pulled her arm away. ‘I didn’t realise you’d won me.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t.’
Jamie felt sick to the stomach at the coldness in her voice. He was undoubtedly losing her, but everything he said was making the situation worse. He had to pull way, way back before she withdrew from him all together.
‘Forget it, Sarah. I’m sorry. Let’s go get something to eat, heh?’
‘That would be good,’ she said, in a marginally warmer tone.
Crisis over, Jamie stood up and turned the light on. He began to get dressed, thinking only of how painful it had been to have her angry with him, and how he would have to be much more careful about what he said in the future.
‘Will we go to the pub or–’ Jamie looked up from buttoning his shirt and caught sight of Sarah. If he had looked up a second later her tracksuit pants would have been pulled up, but as it was she was bent at the waist with her arse in the air and her pants around her calves. Jamie stared. From the backs of her knees to where the curve of her buttocks met her thighs, her skin was purple. Sarah stared at the floor for a second then slowly straightened up, turning so her back was to the wall. Although he could no longer see the backs of her thighs, he couldn’t look away from the space they had just occupied.
‘Stop staring.’ Sarah pulled up her pants, bent over again and retrieved her bra, then her T-shirt.
Jamie couldn’t look away from where those battered bits of flesh had been. No wonder she’d been feverish and distracted. But why didn’t she tell him? How could she keep something like this from him? It was horrific to think of her lying beneath him, pretending to be having a good time, when the whole experience must have been agonising for her.
‘What happened?’ he managed to ask when she was sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on her socks.
‘Nothing for you to worry about.’
Nothing for him to… had she really just said it was nothing for him to worry about? He asked her to repeat what she’d said. And yes, that was what it was: It’s nothing you need to worry about.
He started to cry. ‘You being raped and beaten is something I don’t need to worry about?’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Sarah stood and wrapped her arms around his chest. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, pulling him down on to the bed. ‘Oh, no, Jamie. I can’t believe you’d think that. I wasn’t… it was nothing like that. Oh, God. I’m sorry to scare you, I didn’t want you to…’ she kissed his cheek. ‘This is why I didn’t want you to see. You always think the worst.’
Jamie felt a wave of relief. Then rapidly, disgust. ‘You let someone do that to you?’
‘It looks worse than it is.’ Sarah looked at her hands. ‘They’re just love bites. You know I bruise easily.’
Just love bites. Bruise easily. Not to worry. How comforting. Sarah let someone bite her legs hard enough, and for long enough, to cause blanket bruising. What kind of sicko did that to a girl, with or without permission?
‘Was it Mike?’
Sarah shook her head. Her lips were pressed together so hard they were turning white. White lips in a red face. Her colours were all reversed, like on a negative.
‘I need to know who did this to you.’
Sarah opened her mouth wide, the colour flooding back into her lips as she stretched them into an O. ‘You don’t need to know anything. I appreciate you were concerned, but now that I have told you there is nothing to be concerned about it is time for you to drop it.’
Jamie tried to drop it. He lasted eight seconds. ‘Is this something you enjoy then? Being beaten during sex?’
Sarah walked out of the room. Jamie hit himself in the forehead several times and then followed her. She was sitting at the kitchen table smoking and pretending to read a book.
‘I only asked because I thought maybe next time we do it you might want me to slap you around or something. I just think it can’t be very satisfying for you to have me trying to be gentle and thinking of your pleasure, when what you really want is a good beating.’ Jamie hated himself. He sounded like a nagging, hysterical woman. Seeing her purple thighs had tripped some switch in his brain and he didn’t know how to switch it off again.
She didn’t look up from her book. ‘Our sexual encounters are perfectly satisfying to me, Jamie.’
Encounters? She made it sound like an accident. Like they bumped into each other when they were naked and just happened to have sex while they were there. Was that all it meant to her? Was he just another dick to get her off? And if that was what Jamie was then what was this other man? Was the act that resulted in her bruises just another encounter?
‘I hope you at least used a condom. A bloke who’d do that to a girl is probably–’
‘Nope, no condom.’ Sarah looked up and smiled before returning to her reading.
Jamie walked over and ripped the book from her hands. Sarah blinked three times, then her face settled back into its placid mask.
‘You didn’t use a condom?’
‘Wasn’t necessary. I didn’t fuck him.’
‘You didn’t… what did you do then?’
Sarah took her book back from his hand, opened it, inserted her bookmark and placed it on the table. ‘That is none of your business.’
‘If you’re having unsafe sex then it’s my business.’
Sarah laughed without a hint of humour. ‘
You’re quite welcome to slap a rubber on before you risk contamination by screwing me. Better yet, how about we just don’t do it at all anymore.’
This was very bad. Not just that she’d said it, but that she’d said it so calmly. Like she didn’t care one way or the other. This was so, so bad. He sat in the chair beside her and took her hands. ‘If I shut up right now will you forgive me for being such a dickhead?’
Sarah looked over his shoulder. He noticed how red her eyes were, and that the always present under-eye circles were darker than he’d seen them in a long time. He had to literally bite down on his tongue to stop from interrogating her.
‘You’re not a dickhead.’ Sarah returned her gaze to his face. ‘What you are is a nagging pain in the bum.’
‘I’ll stop, I swear.’
‘No you won’t. You’ve been nagging me since the day I met you.’ She smiled. ‘Just stop taking everything so personally, okay?’
He had never felt such immense gratitude. He would be happy forever just on the strength of that smile. ‘I’ll try.’
‘I know you will.’ She kissed him then, and all the bitterness of the last half hour dissolved. After that she was normal again, laughing and telling rude jokes and smoking too much. Jamie tried to be normal too, and on the surface he succeeded. But underneath it all his heart was stained purple. Like the circles under her eyes. Like the bruises on her legs.
*
Sarah was sorry she’d asked Jamie to come over. She had thought his presence would be a comfort; that his gentle attention would be the perfect antidote to the memory of Daniel’s teeth. Usually when Jamie made love to her she felt warm and peaceful, but today his shy, hesitant kisses and cautious thrusting made her feel smothered and lonely. She wanted to shout at him to not be so careful, so bloody controlled.
She gritted her teeth and concentrated on the stinging of her thighs as they chafed against the sheets. She thought about Daniel’s teeth. Daniel’s mean, sharp, little teeth. Then she thought about the pink gums they lived in and the lips that hid them. She thought of his wet, red mouth, with its mean, white teeth, and its rough, hot tongue, and how one day soon that cruel, beautiful mouth would kiss and lick and bite her all over. Jamie kept fucking her politely, and Sarah kept thinking about Daniel. After they had both come – Sarah first with her head full of Daniel’s mouth, and then Jamie with his mouth full of Sarah’s name – she felt that she had stolen something from Jamie, and she knew in that moment that she would never be able to have them both.
She had no idea what she was going to do. Daniel Carr got her so she couldn’t think straight. Since he had reappeared in her life, wet heat seeped from every pore and drowned out sense. Last night, she would have done whatever he asked, but he barely asked anything at all. Today, she was sobered by pain and frightened by the strength of her longing. Today, she was profoundly unsure of herself.
For a third of her life she had held him in her mind and heart as the only man she could ever love. Each one of the hundreds of men she had been with was compared to him, and none measured up. Her choice of university course was inspired by a barely admitted fantasy that he would come back and she would impress him with how well-read she was. Even her desire to travel had its seed in his long ago assertion that seeing the world was the best education a person could get.
And yet, she was much more than a self-styled Eliza Doolittle. The intensity of her initiation into sex, and the deep loss she felt when he left her, had forced introspection worthy of a mid-life crisis when she was still a child. It had made her strong and self-aware and independent. And although her sexual precociousness was initially sparked by her need to find a replacement for Daniel, she had realised quickly that she had a real talent for sex. In exploring and expanding that natural talent she had found real joy. Her life was what it was because of him, but it was still very much hers.
Giving in to Daniel would be throwing it all away. Like picking up a needle and plunging it into her arm and saying: Hey, this is it. I want to be a junkie and I want the rest of my days on this earth to be junk filled days and I don’t mind if I die or am defiled or destroyed, as long as I feel like this. I am never going to travel to the four corners of the earth or have a family or a career or see my parents again. I am not a ball of fiery potential just waiting to find my niche in the world. I am nothing, and I want nothing except this bliss and this pain and this nothingness, emptiness, love.
And giving herself to Daniel would mean sacrificing Jamie. Was it even possible to live without Jamie? Since she was an adolescent he had been there to shelter her from the worst storms and to soften the sharp edges of life. Without friends, without boyfriends, without parents, she had survived just fine because Jamie picked up all the slack. She didn’t even know who she was without him. She had no concept of what it would be like to live in a Jamie-free world.
But she had lived without Daniel Carr and didn’t like it at all.
He called at three o’clock to tell her he would pick her up at eight. She looked over her shoulder at Jamie, who was pretending not to listen.
‘I have to work.’
‘Don’t you want to see me?’
Jesus! He had a wonderful voice, and if Jamie wasn’t in the room she would’ve told him so. ‘I already took last night off. I have to go or they’ll–’
‘Fine, I’ll pick you up. What time do you finish?’
Sarah pressed her hand to her lips. She should tell him to leave her alone; she’d call him when she was free. She should tell him that he had real guts ringing her today after the mess he made out of her legs last night. She should tell him that she couldn’t see him anymore because he made her lose every scrap of ambition she’d ever had.
She told him she finished at ten and gave him the address. Conscious of Jamie’s ears turning red with effort, she whispered that she couldn’t wait to see him. It was a pathetic thing to say and as soon as it was out she wished it back, but he liked it.
‘I’ll be early then,’ he said.
3
Daniel came into the restaurant at nine-thirty, sat at the bar and ordered a scotch. Sarah smiled, her heart lurching as it always did when she set eyes on him. He nodded but did not smile or wave. Sarah didn’t care. He was here and he was beautiful.
She finished her shift in a cloud of self-consciousness. She had worked at the steakhouse for six years but having him watch her made everything feel new and complex. It was hard to get her voice, or her gait, or her balance right. It was hard not to giggle and toss her hair. Hard not to feel as though she was just playing a part in the movie where the waitress is rescued from her dull, degrading existence by the handsome older man who spies her from across the room and falls in love with the way her hair falls, just so, over her eyes.
When the clock hit ten, Sarah had her bag over her shoulder and was motioning to Daniel to follow. She did not get changed, or chat to the guys in the kitchen or have a beer with the other waitresses as she usually did after a shift. When they were in the car park she stopped and gave him a kiss, which he received impatiently before pushing her into the car with a grunt. He drove at a frightening speed and ignored every traffic light. He drove so recklessly that Sarah, who had little fear of physical injury, begged him to stop.
He pulled off the road and down a steep dirt track, coming to a screeching halt in the middle of bushland. Sarah could hear water running, which indicated a river, but they had driven too long for this to be the Parramatta River, and if it had been Toongabbie Creek she would’ve recognised the track.
‘Where are we?’ She unclasped her seat belt and turned to him.
‘Look at you!’ Daniel said, and then he was kissing her hard on the lips. Sarah almost lost consciousness such was the force with which he kissed her. Her head was smashed back into the seat, her nose mashed against his cheekbone. He kissed her with his whole face, but when she tried to pull his body onto hers he withdrew.
‘I loved watching you at work,’ he said, panting.
‘I’ve been hard for forty minutes.’
‘Seeing me clearing tables got you hard?’
‘Oh, yes. You in that tight little dress and those ugly shoes. And a name badge for God’s sake! I had never pictured you like that before. A name badge girl.’
She stared down at the flat white sandshoes. He was right: they were ugly and made her legs look even skinnier and shorter than usual. She should have taken the time to change.
Daniel tugged at her collar. ‘I’ve always had a thing about these dresses. I lost my virginity to a waitress, you know?’
Sarah cleared her throat. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘All the boys lost it to her; she was the town tramp. I remember pulling her name badge right off once… Paula. I don’t think I’d even remember her name if it wasn’t for that badge.’
‘If you’re trying to insult me in some way I’d prefer it if you came straight out with it. I’m extremely bored by middle-aged ramblings about how wild you were when you were a lad.’ Sarah sunk into the seat and looked out the window.
‘Oh, dear,’ he said in the warmest, sweetest voice she had ever heard. ‘I’ve offended you when I meant to compliment you.’
He was good at switching his voice around. It was part of his method of controlling her. Going from hot to cold to sweet to angry to cruel to kind and back again. Sarah was even-tempered by nature and such vacillation disoriented her, which was exactly why he did it: to lower her defences. As if she even had defences when it came to him.
‘What I meant to say,’ he continued, ‘was that even in that ugly outfit, with your hair all lank and your skin all greasy – even looking your worst – which you certainly do – you are still the most desirable woman in the world.’