S. Watson - Second Life

He smiles. It’s bitter, resentful. ‘Relax. I don’t know what you think is going on, but let me tell you, you’re wrong on every count.’ He pauses. ‘Anna’s upstairs,’ he says. ‘I left her in the shower.’ He grins. I wonder if I’m supposed to find his comment suggestive, sexual. Titillating. Is this the game he’s playing? The three of us, upstairs, naked.

‘She knows I’m here. She sent me. She’s sorry about losing her temper. She wants you to come up and have a drink with us. Sort things out.’ He shrugs. ‘So how about it?’

I want to believe him, but I don’t. How can I? Anna thinks I’ve met him for the first time tonight.

‘Who are you? Tell me what you want.’ He ignores me.

‘No? Didn’t think so.’ He turns. ‘Look. Anna’s a big girl. She can look after herself. I don’t know why you want to come and interfere.’

‘Interfere?’

‘Warning her away? Telling her I’m not who she thinks I am? Maybe I’m exactly who she thinks I am, just not who you thought I was.’ He looks thoughtful. ‘Maybe it’s you who doesn’t know anything about me. Not her.’ He leans towards me. ‘Anna trusts me, you know? She tells me everything…’

I think of the printout I have in my bag. I should’ve given it to her when I had the chance.

‘Maybe, for now—’ I begin, but he moves abruptly. He grabs my arm, twisting it as he does so. It’s sudden, and brutal. I cry out, a scream of shock and pain, and then I’m silenced.

‘You know,’ he hisses, still holding my arm, still digging in his fingers, ‘I don’t like little tarts like you who come between me and my fun. So, this is what’s going to happen…’ He twists my arm further. I struggle, but he holds me. He’s using only one hand yet still it seems easy for him. It feels as if he could snap my arm with hardly any effort at all, as if that’s exactly what he’d like to do. I gasp once more; again I remember his hands on me, how once they’d caressed the very skin that now screams with pain. ‘You’re going to get the fuck out of my life,’ he says. ‘You’re going to leave Anna alone, and you’re not going to interfere. Get it?’

I gather all my strength. I turn to him; finally I manage to wrench my arm from his. ‘Or what? I saw you, you know. Earlier. Getting into the lift. You didn’t look that in love to me. I don’t know what you’re doing, but she doesn’t deserve it. She’s done nothing to you. She really thinks you love her.’

I feel his resolve waver, just slightly. I’ve hit a nerve. But then he speaks. ‘It makes no difference to me what you think you saw.’ His smile is sickly, thin. ‘And you are going to leave us alone.’

He seems so certain. Dread fills me.

‘Or what?’

‘Or I might just make my private archive a little bit more public…’

I don’t understand what he’s saying, yet I feel myself tense. It’s as if my body has already worked it out while my mind lags behind.

‘Your what—?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’ve got some very interesting photos in my collection. Videos, too. Want to see?’

I feel myself falling. He seems so totally confident. I’m no one, nothing. He could destroy me, without even having to try.

I shake my head. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through some screens. ‘Ah. This is a good one.’

He selects a photograph, and the glow from the screen briefly illuminates the dark interior of the car, then he angles the screen so that I can see the picture. It’s a woman, taken from the waist up. She’s naked.

It takes me a moment to realize it’s me.

I gasp. ‘This is…’ I begin, but the words catch in my mouth and I can’t get them out.

‘This is from that first time…’ he says. ‘The first time you turned your camera on. D’you remember?’

I do. I’d been in my studio, the door locked. I’d angled my camera, stood up. I felt stupid, at first, but then I’d become swept up in it until there was just me, and him, and the rest of the world had faded to nothing.

The betrayal seems absolute. I can’t look at it any more, but neither do I want to look at him.

‘You took it… you kept it?’

‘I like having an archive.’ He shrugs, as if it’s nothing. ‘For when I’m bored, you know?’

‘How dare you!’ Fury is rising in my chest, but something else, too. A new fear, cold and hard and piercing. If he has this, I think, then he’ll have more.

He begins to scroll through his phone. ‘I have plenty of others,’ he’s saying. ‘This, for example? Or this?’

He shows me image after image. A rerun of the past few months, the edited highlights. Almost every time I’d stripped for him, because he was bored, or horny, and I missed him and wanted to please him. With each picture I sink lower, until I feel I’m drowning. The water is closing over me, invading me, until I can’t breathe.

‘Oh, and this.’ This one is different, taken in the hotel after we’d had sex. In it I’m standing up, smiling at the camera; he’s caught me as I was dressing. I remember the day he took it. I’d been flattered at the time; he wanted a memento, some reminder of the day.

I’d been glad, yet I remember I’d asked him to delete it. ‘I just feel uncomfortable,’ I’d said. He told me I was beautiful, that he wanted a picture. ‘Please, Lukas,’ I said. ‘Delete it?’

Clearly, he hadn’t. Now, as I look at it, I’m horrified. It’s like one version of me looking at another. Julia, looking at Jayne. I’d thought I could keep them separate, in boxes, locked away, but I was wrong. Things have a habit of escaping.

Another wave of despair hits. None of it was real. From the beginning it was based on a lie, an illusion of love.

‘Anyway, you get the general idea.’

‘You bastard…’ I whisper. Even this word feels wholly inadequate, after what he’s taken from me.

‘Oh, come on now. These pictures are great! You should know. It’d be very selfish of me not to share…’ His hand goes to his pocket again. When he takes it out he’s holding a memory stick. He holds it up. ‘Here’s your copy, for example.’ I stare at it but refuse to take it from him. ‘No? You might as well have it. There are plenty more…’ He smiles, then puts it between us on the dashboard.

‘But you’re in half of these photographs. Why would you share them?’

‘I’m in some of them, yes. But not all. And, in any case, I don’t have a child. I’m not married to a surgeon. I think I’d just about get away with it.’ He smiles. ‘Just think…’ He shakes his head, tutting. ‘Imagine what the press would say. The Mail ? TOP SURGEON’S WIFE IN SEX SCANDAL? It might even go viral. Don’t you think?’

I don’t reply. He’s right. The future collapses in slow motion. On top of the complaint against Hugh, it would be too much. I see the scandal, our friends turning away from us. Maria, Carla – all of his colleagues. I imagine myself walking down the street, feeling people’s eyes burning into me, not knowing what they’d seen, what gossip they’d believed.

He’s won, I think, and there’s nothing I can do. He has Anna, he will get his hands on my sister’s money, and then he’ll abuse and mistreat Anna the way he has me.

He hasn’t finished, though. ‘There’s Hugh’s boss at the hospital, too. All his colleagues. Can’t be good for business. For his reputation. There’s Connor’s school, all those parents. I can’t imagine it’d be too difficult to get hold of their email addresses. Oh,’ he says, as if something’s just occurred to him, ‘I just remembered. There’s all those porn websites I can upload these to. “Hot amateur.”’ He looks at me, watching for my reaction. ‘“Older woman fucks young stud.”’