Hosting Andrew by John Lawrance

Author:John Lawrance
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: suspense fiction; psychological thriller; medico-thriller
Publisher: Troubador Publishing
Published: 2022-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

I am naked astride a terrified woman on a double bed. We are in a dull room, but bright sunlight searches beyond heavy, mauve curtains. Her face is shrouded in the gloom, like a media image preserving anonymity, but I can just make out moist tears, streaks of mascara and smudged lipstick, like a tragic clown’s face hiding in the shadows of a macabre circus.

My hands grip her wrists in a tight vice, pressing each one on either side of her body with harsh brutality, deep into the fabric of the black, silk quilt beneath us. A crushed dress in disarray around her hips is torn, revealing breasts and red marks on the skin where a bra has been pushed up, roughly, under her chin. Her head shakes in denial beside an ornate, brass headboard, and whimpering sobs protest that she has changed her mind and does not want this. The stench of alcohol pervades her stale breath, and I have an uncanny sense of a loving husband, children and hidden eyes that plead no more, for their sake, please, no more.

I know it is wrong. A moment of sanity brings this clarity of thought. My mind and conscience urge me to pull back at the last before it is too late, heed her desperate appeals and atone for my shameful behaviour. But it is as though another person controls my actions: I am a spectator watching from above, a perverted voyeur, as he forces himself into her without mercy in a frenzy of rabid excitement, her body throughout the ordeal limp and unresponsive, like a ragdoll with an obscured face I can only imagine must convey despair and misery.

Eventually, when I finally roll off her and gaze down at my body in disgust, it is not my own slight frame that I see, of course, but Matthew’s satiated broad torso and stomach paunch. I feel disorientated and confused, wondering who this woman might be and where I am. The image of the room and the broken ragdoll beside me begin to fade and warp into my own bedroom at Cheltenham Avenue. There are the familiar chintz curtains, the Victorian dressing table, the soft touch of Cathy’s warm body asleep in my embrace.

And then I am torn from her in a sudden flash of violence. I shudder at the thunderous bang of what seems to be a single gunshot, after which I wake with a jolt, and what had seemed so real dissolves into the fantasy of dreams. For a fleeting moment, I still expect that reassuring bedroom in Cheltenham Avenue and my old life. Instead, I am slouched on a sofa, my neck creaking with pain as I sit up straight to scan strange shapes and furniture through bleary eyes. Then I focus on Helen in a blue summer dress, watching me from across a vast room, and it is the sight of her that brings me back to my new reality, here in Matthew’s house.

Following my release this morning, I had caught the train, arriving back at about 1.

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