Undone Read online

  I recalled Sol’s two orgasms from the previous night, each one accompanied by quiet, contained grunts. He might have been a different person.

  ‘Ohhhh.’ His noises slid on the downslide of his peak. ‘Oh, holy fucking fuck!’

  He stayed kneeling over me, the two of us frozen.

  ‘Oh!’ He laughed as if embarrassed by his cries. Visibly he sagged, shoulders slumping, body dropping towards mine. I let my legs fall astride him, bare feet on the forest floor, my arse on the crumbled, prickly bed of leaf fall. After a short while, Sol unbuckled my imprisoning belt and rubbed at the redness on my skin. I flexed my arms for the sheer pleasure of doing so. He lay down and rolled towards me, nuzzling into my hair. I flung my arm across him in a lazy embrace. His come slid on my skin. For a long time, we said nothing. I wondered who he was, what he wanted, and whether I would ever see him again. And if I did, under what circumstances. In court? In bed?

  Eventually Sol spoke. ‘We should go back soon. Don’t want anyone getting suspicious about us.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ I flopped on to my back, gazing up at the high dense canopy pierced with vibrant blue. This place was like a huge, beautiful den. We fell silent again, nothing but birdsong around us. I let my hand drift over Sol’s chest, enjoying the springiness of his hair beneath my fingers. ‘I wish we could stay here,’ I said. ‘Wish we didn’t have to face reality.’

  He murmured in agreement, adding, ‘Ain’t that always the way?’ He raised himself up on one elbow, gazing down at me with a resolute expression. ‘So listen, this is what happened. We were chatting. We were all a little drunk. We decided to call it a night. The three of us walked back to the house then we went our separate ways.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ I pushed myself up on both elbows. Sweat and heat slid in the creases below my breasts, and his come trickled over my belly.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘We have to make out we weren’t with him.’

  ‘We can’t. I’d rather no one knew about my private life but … if we get found out … Fuck, we’ll be in deep shit.’

  ‘Then we mustn’t get found out.’

  I shook my head, fear and panic starting to clutch. ‘People will have seen us! We were in the tipi together then we walked across the lawn, arm in arm. We were practically carrying a sign saying, “Yo, threesome ahead.”’

  ‘No we weren’t.’ He spoke through clenched teeth, a frown bunching his forehead. ‘People don’t think like that.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You’re not everyone.’

  ‘Is that a compliment or an insult?’

  ‘Does it matter? The point is, we’ve got to keep schtum about this.’

  ‘It’s too risky,’ I said. ‘Anyway, why? We haven’t done anything wrong. Let’s keep it simple. We can scale down what we did in bed but—’

  ‘Unusual death,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a coroner’s inquest, at the very least. And a strong chance we’d get called to give evidence if we were the last people with him. And that’s ugly and painful. Trust me, we don’t want to go down that route. Let’s just … just sever our ties with him right here.’

  I sighed and lay down flat. I laced my fingers over my eyes, blocking out Sol so I could think straight. It was tempting to try and erase the night. I’d mentioned the threesome to Nicki, but she wouldn’t tell anyone apart from Ian. And she’d understood when I’d explained I didn’t want to disclose the encounter to the police. And no one else knew. Sol and I just needed to get our story straight and be consistent in our lies.

  Lying to others was the easy part. I figured the best way to pretend something hadn’t happened was by trying to convince yourself it hadn’t happened. Get that part correct and the rest is easy. Then again, not so easy when you’re sharing the secret with someone else. Did this mean Sol and I would need to sever our ties too?

  I removed my hands from my eyes and looked up at him. ‘It’s too callous. Unethical. People will want answers, his friends, his family. We might be able to help.’

  ‘How? Neither of us heard him after, you know, everything. He seemed kinda fine. A little weird maybe but we’re not going to be able to offer anything that the toxicology report won’t flag up.’

  ‘Is that what will happen?’

  ‘Yes, post-mortem. I imagine they’ll test for alcohol and substance abuse. The police will submit their findings. It’s not to apportion blame, just to establish the cause of death. Could be suicide for all we know. But if the police suspect foul play, that’s a whole different ball game.’

  ‘Fuck, this is awful.’

  ‘So, let’s keep it simple. We know nothing.’

  ‘But me and you, we walked through the house. Lord knows what time it was but if someone saw—’

  ‘Fuck, yes, you’re right.’ Sol clutched his hair, squeezing his eyes shut for a couple of seconds. ‘So this is our story.’ He sliced a hand at the air. ‘We got hammered. The three of us walked back together. Misha said good night. You and me, we went back to your room. That was the last we saw of him.’

  I wondered whether to mention the damp towel crumpled in the en suite, looking like cheap salmon and smelling of chlorine. Perhaps Sol would have an innocent explanation. ‘But there might be stuff of his in my room,’ I said.

  ‘Then we’ll tidy up.’

  ‘I already did,’ I replied. ‘But I might have missed something.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Anyway, they’re not going to search your room without a reason. And if we said goodbye to him in the corridor – which we sort of did, don’t forget – then what he got up to after that is anyone’s guess.’

  I pinched my lips together, struggling to concentrate and identify the problems we might have overlooked. ‘I don’t like it. Supposing someone saw him coming up to my room?’

  ‘Hardly anyone was around,’ said Sol. ‘Or sober enough to notice. And so what? He was just bumbling about looking for company. If he knocked on our door, we were too busy fucking to hear him.’

  ‘You have all the answers, don’t you?’ My tone was unnecessarily bitchy. His attitude grated because I was tense and scared. I felt as if he wasn’t taking this seriously enough, that he was skimming over problems in his haste to make everything neat and tidy.

  Sol shrugged, not rising to my unkindness. He fell heavily alongside me and I turned my head away from him. ‘Hey, it’ll be OK,’ he said softly. He ran his hand over my belly, where his come was still sticky.

  At length, I said, ‘I’m thirsty.’

  ‘Yeah, a late night.’

  ‘What time did we crash out?’

  ‘Around two, I think. Maybe half past.’

  ‘Not that late, really.’

  ‘No. Must be getting old.’

  I turned to smile at him. ‘Let’s stay here a while longer. I don’t want to go back yet.’

  He returned the smile. ‘Sure thing. Works for me.’

  We edged together and he wrapped his arm behind me, pulling me close. I lay sideways, my head on his chest, and draped a leg across his. He twisted a finger in my hair. I listened to his heartbeat pumping in his ribcage. The filtered sunlight was strengthening, dabbing my skin with warmth. Leaves stirred around us while birdsong fluted and fluttered. After a few minutes, Sol’s breathing slowed. His legs twitched as he drifted towards sleep. He stopped toying with my hair. We dozed for twenty minutes or so. I slipped in and out of consciousness, tired but too uncomfortable to relax fully.

  I’m remembering the scene as I write this, and it’s as if I’m gazing down on a couple of time-travellers who’ve pitched up in another era, naked and lost. The woodland looks so restful, the sleepers so at peace. She’s pale, blonde and slender. He’s dark, broad and powerful, holding her close, even while he sleeps.

  The woman lying there seems a different person to the woman writing this journal. It’s late. I need to stop and try to get some sleep. I swam thirty-six lengths today. It doesn’t seem to have tired me as much as I’d hoped.

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nbsp; Friday 4th July

  I’ve made some good decisions in recent years. Today, I feel the need to remind myself of these as self-recriminations pile up in the wake of too many bad decisions. I swear I can feel Sol on me after Wednesday, still holding me down. It’s been two days since he visited me. He’s become a constant presence in my psyche. Everything I do, even this now, writing my journal in an empty bar, feels like an act of resistance against him, a fight to be free.

  I do not want to be consumed by a man, to be lost in the chaos of lust and love. And yet the pull to abandon myself to such disruption is enormous and terrifying.

  When my divorce settlement was finalised and the marital home was sold, I was faced with the prospect of buying a small apartment in London and continuing in the same job, or seizing the chance to pursue a radically different option. Jonathan and I were craft cocktail enthusiasts who’d long harboured a dream of quitting the rat race and setting up a bar. In idle moments, we’d muse on whether we’d prefer a beachfront shack in South East Asia, or a fancy establishment overlooking the Thames.

  Castles in the air, we knew it, but always a fun conversation and one we had more infrequently as the years went by. The closest we got to our pipe dream was buying a kitsch, 1960s cocktail bar for the corner of our living room, complete with a pineapple ice bucket. Whenever we travelled, we bought obscure liqueurs and quality spirits, and then spent hours poring over recipe books and testing concoctions. We had some fabulous cocktailfuelled arguments at that bar until it, and our marriage, began to gather dust.

  Once I started to seriously contemplate a future without Jonathan, I began questioning everything I had and wanted. After we split, I knew money from the sale of our home wouldn’t go far with property prices having grown so phenomenally high in London; but the trouble was, I needed to be close to Hyde Park for work, or at least on a good transport route. Unless, of course, I didn’t. Unless I decided to downsize and steer my life onto another course. I could quit the job, relocate, and find a more fulfilling means of earning a living. I’d been working as an interior designer for over fifteen years and had begun to feel my creative flair was being stymied by the company’s increasing focus on corporate clients. I’d been weighing up my options for a while. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, whether going freelance and becoming my own boss was viable, or if I should quit the practice for a better one. I just knew I didn’t want to design another sodding coffee shop for the Chinese market.

  Eight months later, living in pricey rental accommodation in London, I was visiting Saltbourne, spending the weekend by the coast with Jenny, an old friend and fellow designer, when we spotted my cocktail bar for sale. That’s how Jenny referred to it. We’d been out for dinner and, walking home, passed an inconspicuous building just off the main drag in Old Town. For Sale/To Let, said the board. ‘Hey, Lana, there’s your dream bar,’ said Jenny.

  It didn’t look like a dream. At street level, a metal shutter concealed much of the building and only a small sign next to a door indicated the presence of a bar above. The bar was named G8Crash, a typographical play on ‘gatecrash’. If it hadn’t been for an intriguing stained-glass window next to the For Sale sign, we might have scoffed and walked by. Instead, we stopped in for a nightcap.

  Upstairs, we found a small, cold, garish venue with, as Jenny said, all the personality of an airport lounge. Many of the original features were obscured in a misguided bid for minimalist modernity, and the stained-glass arch was nowhere in sight. The bartender was too hip to crack a smile, the range of drinks was limited, and you had to shout to converse above the music. Unsurprisingly, the place was empty. From that night on, Jenny and I referred to it as ‘Car Crash’.

  But, oh, the potential. My line of work had given me the ability to walk into the shell of a building and visualise how it should look.

  ‘I can hear the cogs whirring,’ Jenny had said as we sat with our drinks. ‘You’re putting together a design board in your head, aren’t you?’

  And she was spot on. If I’d known then how steep the learning curve ahead of me was, I doubt I’d have taken my dream any further. But I applied for full particulars; embarked on a course to gain an accredited qualification and a drinks licence; crunched some numbers; drew up a business plan; took out a loan and, after chewing off half my fingernails, sank the money I’d gained from the sale of the marital home into my new venture. The business came with an accompanying residence, the ground floor of a cute white-brick town cottage in the cobbled mews to the rear of the property. The place even had a garage. Car Crash became The Blue Bar. And I became happier than I could ever remember.

  Saying goodbye to London and my friends was a wrench, of course, and the financial risk was enormous. But so far, no regrets. Moving here was a good decision, very good. As was transforming the bar’s interior so that the style works with, rather than against, the architecture. My vision for The Blue Bar came together when I learned the building had been a funeral parlour in the nineteenth century. Inspired by that fact, I chose a Victorian gothic aesthetic with a muted, background colour scheme of black, silver and cream. I wanted the room to look like a fucked-up fairy tale, an antechamber in a palace of seductive dangers forever under threat of forest vines encroaching from outside. I think I achieved my goal.

  The walls are cream satin with a faint shimmer of fleurde-lys, and a sleek, stuffed crow in a tall, glass dome watches over events with black, unseeing eyes. A row of booths opposite the bar in dark oak and upholstered black leather are customised church pews, now reminiscent of open compartments on a macabre pleasure train. I like to imagine they once carried satanic day trippers to and fro along the blasted wastelands of an apocalyptic beach.

  I don’t make a big deal of the fact the bar is housed in a former chapel of rest. Sometimes, however, people enquire about the architectural features. Paradoxically, perhaps, given its potential for historic morbidity, the chapel’s stained-glass windows provide a sense of respite and tranquillity. They were my starting point when I conceived the bar’s design. The main windows, at the head of an alcove with a wooden, barrel-vault ceiling, are actually casement doors opening onto a small ironwork balcony. Directly above the two wings of the glass door is a matching stained-glass semi-circle, and the combined effect is of a saintly arch. The glass is formed of small leaded panes, a tiling of coloured squares. Daylight shines through the delicate blues, lilacs and the pale sea-greens, creating a hazy island of beatific calm that would have once fallen onto a gleaming casket or pasty-faced corpse.

  That pool of soft, subaquatic light inspired the actual bar, a cubed LED counter inset with blue luminosity. The combination of enchanted gothic and industrial minimalism could have clashed horribly. Instead, the counter seems to hover like an uncertain mirage, echoing the stained-glass balcony doors and complementing the weird magic of the place.

  I’d hoped to create a sense of the bar being a hub leading to other worlds. My table tops are clear glass while the chairs are reproduction Rococo in black velour and silver. I have an oval vintage mirror framed in cream and fixed at a wonky angle. It’s a looking glass Snow White might have peered into after one gin gimlet too many. ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the drunkest of them all?’

  When I was researching the history of the building, purely out of interest, I learned that the Victorians would drape mirrors in the presence of death, out of fear that the reflective surfaces would trap the spirit of the dear departed. And so, because I am perverse, I decided there and then to incorporate mirrors, transparency and shininess into the design, mixing insubstantiality with the moody weight of leather, velvet and oak. Body and soul. Flesh and flight.

  One of the bar’s talking points is the bathrooms at the far end of the room: the wall of each toilet is inset with a two-way mirror. Once you’re in there, you can see the room full of people and are struck with the conviction that they can see you; that they will turn and gawp when you hitch up your skirt or unzip your flies.

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bsp; I still smile to see women returning wide-eyed to their friends, exclaiming, ‘Oh my God, you’ve got to go to the loo! I’m not saying why! Just go! I almost couldn’t wee!’ The men are generally amused but less fazed. They’re used to pissing in public.

  These features add up.

  The Blue Bar, I like to think, contains portals to transport people elsewhere, an ironic homage to its origins. It is, as a reviewer in the Saltbourne Echo said, ‘a place that intoxicates before you’ve taken your first sip’. That review made me well up with pride.

  So, all in all, a good decision. But on Wednesday, about fifteen minutes before opening time at five, the buzzer from the street-level door blared behind the bar.

  ‘Not open yet,’ I sang out to the empty room as I habitually do when someone wants a drink out of hours. The time I spend prepping is my favourite part of the afternoon. Daylight barely penetrates when the stained-glass windows are closed and the oak-dark, blue-tinged room is a world of stilled-gothic calm. I love the peace before opening when I’m queen of my domain, proud of my achievement and delighted not to be kowtowing to the whims of rich design clients anymore.

  The buzzer sounded again.

  ‘I said not open—’

  I glanced up at the small TV screen relaying video from the security camera trained on the doorway. And there he stood, scruffy, sexy and smouldering. My bad decision. Sol Miller.

  My heart raced. Without taking my eyes from the screen, I wiped my hands, sticky from slicing lemons, on a cloth. I saw the ragged, digital image of him glance around the doorway; then he clocked the camera above his head. He gave a nod of acknowledgement. Stupid, I know, but my fingers shook as I called ‘Hi’ through the entry phone and buzzed him in.

  I was already feeling edgy as this was close to the time Misha would habitually stop by for his weekly Long Island Iced Tea. My Happy Hour is from five till seven, and it’s usually quiet to start with. I do the bar on my own for the first hour; then at six another member of staff joins me. I employ two wonderful, handsome mixologists, Raphael and Bruno, identical Italian twins sporting identical square beards. I also have an enormously talented catering student at the weekend, Sarah-Ann, who dyed her hair blue when she took the job. Good decisions, all three of them.