Deceiving D'Artagnan by Fi Whyms

Author:Fi Whyms
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fi Whyms
Published: 2023-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Anger is a funny thing. Once that first cell had formed, the cell of anger at my adult self for avoiding rather than dealing with the conundrum, it started to replicate itself, dividing into two and then four and then eight and so on, until anger gradually replaced fear and despair.

Whenever I thought about bastard Guillaume – Satan – I no longer felt helpless and afraid. Now I felt anger, and that tight fist of burning anger didn’t feel as if it existed behind Plexiglas; it existed in my solar plexus.

I was angry with myself, too, for having allowed it to happen.

By the time I was twenty-six, I knew how the world worked, and I knew what men were like. I didn’t have a boyfriend and I had little desire for one: if I wanted sex with someone (and I rarely did), I had it on my terms. I was a hard bitch – or at least I thought I was. And I knew about drugs; I knew about date-rape drugs.

On the last night of Milan Fashion Week that fateful February, I was feeling good. I was on top of my game and my agent was happy because I was booked months ahead. When one of the make-up artists, a woman with a wicked sense of humour who had been making me laugh all week, suggested that I come to an after-party with her and her boyfriend, I didn’t hesitate for a moment.

The image of Satan standing at the other side of the crowded room staring at me as I partied with the make-up artist and her boyfriend was very clear in my mind now. He crossed the room and chatted to the make-up artist, whom he seemed to know, and then to the make-up artist’s boyfriend, who was bopping about quite wildly. The boyfriend bumped into me, I turned to push him away, and when I turned back Satan was right next to me. He was standing next to my hand, in which I was holding a glass of Champagne.

Now that my brain had decided to let me remember all that, I realised that nothing that night had happened by chance. I’d gathered from D’Artagnan that Guillaume was working for an investment bank in Milan at that time, and he’d decided to do a little shopping at Milan Fashion Week. Only he hadn’t been shopping for clothes, he’d been shopping for a victim and he’d selected me from the runway catalogue.

I wondered when he’d made his selection, because now I realised that the make-up artist had been super-friendly to me for most of the week. She and her boyfriend had set me up; that was what Satan had meant when he said, ‘I paid for those eyes.’

I was surprised at how furious I was at myself for only just having realised it.

***

The following week, I had the unexpected pleasure of being able to channel some of that anger.

It was a swelteringly hot summer day and I’d driven to the supermarket in Cognac to buy some essentials.

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