Then – 1st March
There it was, predictably, a few seconds after she slipped into an empty seat near the window. The feeling of eyes on her.
Ella hated using public transport. Always had but even more so now that she’d graduated from generic female to be stared at just because to a specific, occasionally recognisable female to be photographed and tweeted/instagrammed/whatever while she sat on the bus or stood on the Tube.
She fought the urge to hunch down lower in the hard seat, not wanting to give whoever was watching her the satisfaction of knowing she felt uncomfortable.
It didn’t make her feel any safer, though. So far she’d been lucky and the hate she’d faced had been contained online, aside from the odd aggressive heckler at an event. And at those there would always be someone nearby to shield her if they crossed the line from throwing insults to physical intimidation. But Ella knew it was only a matter of time before one of her critics cornered her.
And then what would she do?
Her father had raised her to stand up for herself, trained her to find an opponent’s softest spots, hammer their weakness until they were laid out flat at her feet. Because he knew better than anyone how dangerous the world was for girls and he wouldn’t send her into it ill-equipped.
You couldn’t do that, though, not in her position. Better to be the bloodied and defiant victim than defend yourself and let your enemies paint you as the aggressor. Even if it went against all her instincts and principles.
Ella shook herself out of the thought. This was happening more often lately: she’d convince herself she was being followed or bugged or that the person trying to be her new best friend had some dark, ulterior motive. It was natural, she knew that. She’d been warned how this business twisted your perceptions and that some of the time you were actually right so it was always best to assume the worst.
You couldn’t publicly slam the police without picking up more attention from them. You couldn’t attack major developers and their corrupt friends in local government and expect them not to retaliate. Surveillance was a given, she’d been told. Accept it and ignore it. Unless you’re meeting someone you need to protect.
Like today.
The Tube would be pulling into Tottenham Court Road station within the minute. She needed to know if she was being followed. Start to work out how best to lose them.
Ella dragged her rucksack on to her shoulder and stood up, making a quick sweep of the carriage as she started towards the doors. Four people. An elderly couple in matching trench coats. A suited young woman engrossed in a paperback and, next to her, a man in a leather bomber jacket and wool hat, hiding behind a paper. Not reading it, actively hiding behind it.
The couple gathered up their bags and umbrellas, the woman steadier on her feet than her husband, who she held under the arm, supporting him as they shuffled out of their seats. They were blocking Ella’s view of the man, but they were shielding her too, and when the train stopped and the doors opened she bolted for the escalator, weaving through the sparse post-commuter crowd, running up the steps until she was stopped by a family laden down with luggage, two small boys attached to their father’s wrist by springy leads, the mother with a baby in a sling across her chest.
Turning to check behind her, she saw no sign of the man and relaxed a little. She smiled at one of the boys, who looked blankly at her and began to chew on the bright orange lead that tethered him to his father.
A fine rain hit her face as she emerged on to the street and she pulled the hood of her parka over her head, rounded her shoulders and started down Charing Cross Road. She skirted slow-moving shoppers and tourists, ducking under their umbrellas to stay hidden, until she slipped into Foyles and quickly made her way to the glass lift, feeling, as the doors slid shut, that she was finally free of her unseen, possibly unreal, pursuer.
The cafe was bustling as usual. Waiting for her drink she studied the customers, wondering if the person she was expecting was here yet. She didn’t know what the woman looked like and wouldn’t usually go into a meeting with so little information, but Molly had introduced her and Ella trusted her ability to weed out all but the most reliable sources.
‘You were here last month,’ the guy behind the counter said, as he placed Ella’s green tea on the tray. ‘The Martin Sinclair event, right?’
She nodded. ‘Are you a fan of his?’
‘I don’t think he goes far enough.’
Ella found a table and sat down facing the stairs, checked on her Kickstarter page for the third time today. It was getting to be a nervous tic, worse than waiting for a message from a lover, more desperate and more thrilling when she saw that someone had taken the last £200 sponsorship – the most expensive package, strictly limited to twenty donors.
They were less than £300 short now, with a week to go, and she was sure they would hit the target before the deadline. A piece she’d written about online harassment was running tomorrow and that was bound to bring a few more people out in support, even if it was only the £10 e-books.
She tried not to think about all the work still to do and the rate it was piling up at. Copy to chase, more to edit, her own introduction stubbornly refusing to sparkle on the page.
‘Is anyone sitting here?’
‘I’m waiting for—’ She looked up and immediately scowled at the face smiling down at her. ‘I’m meeting a friend.’
Dylan pulled out the seat opposite. ‘I’ve only got an espresso; I’ll be gone in a minute.’
He snatched his hat off and ran his fingers through his greying hair, straightening it into some better shape; vain as ever. She should have recognised him on the Tube, but there was no reason for him to be there, except that he was following her and why would he do that?
Suddenly the neighbouring tables felt very close and she was sure the conversations had dimmed, the people angling their bodies to listen to what would be said here. Because it must be obvious, the thrum between them, the strings tying them together, knotted tighter than she could stand.
Ella sipped her tea, eyeing him across the rim of the cup, but he was concentrating on sugaring his coffee, looking around the cafe, like any normal person awkwardly sharing a table with a stranger.
Her contact was already running late, could be here any moment. Ella refused to let Dylan encroach on that. Knew exactly how he would behave, the charm bordering on obsequiousness he always pulled out for women. Women other than her.
‘You’ve been ignoring me,’ he said finally, leaning across the table in a pose that would look like fascination from a distance, until you got close enough to see the anger in his eyes and the hardness around his mouth.
‘I’ve been busy.’ She glanced up from her phone. ‘You can’t expect me to come running whenever it suits you.’
‘I understand how important your “work” is, Ella.’ Under the table his knee struck hers and she drew back sharply. ‘But it’s no excuse for leaving me hanging around waiting for you when you’ve got no intention of showing up.’
‘Pretty sure I texted you,’ she said, trying to lighten her tone.
‘Who are you meeting?’ Dylan asked, fingers steepled around his cup. Those fingers, which had twisted her hair and stroked her throat, dipped inside her and teased and kneaded and come out glistening to smear the taste of her across her open mouth.
He grinned at her, like he’d seen the images in her eyes. He was too good at this, could always read her.
‘Just a friend,’ she said.
‘A “friend”?’ His brows went up. ‘A work friend or a personal friend?’
She knew where this was going.
‘Work.’
‘Well, you’d better call them and cancel.’ He threw back his espresso, swiped his mobile off the table as he stood up and gave her the barest nod before he walked away, cutting confidently through the tables, moving aside with a smile to let a woman pass with a precariously loaded tray.
Ella watched him until he disappeared, knowing how perkily he would go down the stairs, how obscenely satisfied he must be with himself right now. She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, aiming for some small pool of calm. Then she saw it, peeking out from under his cup and saucer.
A slip of paper folded around a plastic keycard, a room number written on it. She saw the name of the hotel on the card and recognised it as one he’d taken her to before. A place he reserved for the times he sensed her dedication wavering. Last summer: an afternoon of sweltering sex and cooling showers and circular conversation, which turned into an argument, then a full-blown fight.
If she could have ended it that day she would have.
There was no walking away from him, though.
Ella tapped out a quick apology as she left Foyles, certain she would be able to draw the woman back into conversation. She hadn’t seemed particularly skittish, not like some of the people Ella dealt with, and Ella’s excuse had been a good one. If there was one thing she’d learned from Dylan, it was the art of lying to women.
She felt exposed as she turned on to Moor Street; too many people hanging around, eyeing everything, smokers outside the pubs and cafes, a taxi idling in front of the hotel’s discreet black entrance. More people in the courtyard when she went in, a man drinking a smoothie under the canopy, a woman vaping with her face turned to the sky, staring up at the glass walkways and wood cladding and all of that polished steel.
The room was on the second floor and Ella ran quickly up the spiral staircase, her fingers gliding through the raindrops beading the handrail, feeling her anger already becoming arousal and then anger again, at herself, for letting him manipulate her like this.
He was naked when she opened the door, didn’t even flinch, and she knew what he was doing, making this about sex so she wouldn’t challenge his behaviour. She resolved not to fall for it this time, even if her body was already reacting.
‘That was an important meeting you just wrecked,’ she said.
‘Another journalist?’ he asked. ‘Keeping your profile up?’
Ella glared at him. ‘Actually she’s a librarian.’
Dylan turned away from her, opened the bottle of water on the table and drank from it long enough to signal his complete disinterest in what she was saying.
‘She’s organising a direct action against the company who won the contract for her borough. The library staff are all being laid off, so she’s looking to do something pretty serious,’ Ella said, the colour rising in her cheeks as he kept his back to her. Disinterest beginning to feel more like disdain and she couldn’t stop herself explaining, hearing the excitement infecting her voice, wanting him to feel it too. ‘She’s been heavily involved in animal rights for years, so she’s capable of anything. This could be big.’
‘Big enough to justify ignoring me?’ His voice remained even, but she saw the tension tightening his shoulders and the way he planted his feet wide on the blackwood floor. There was something more going on, though, she thought. A slight moue, a twitchiness about him that she rarely saw.
Was this what it looked like when Dylan’s feelings were bruised?
Ella knew she’d been neglecting him but she thought they’d reached an agreement. A tacit understanding that things were different now and he couldn’t just click his fingers and have her snap to attention for him.
‘Is that why you were following me?’ she asked, more curious than angry. ‘Because I’ve been ignoring you?’
‘I wasn’t following you.’ He shrugged, a faint hint of embarrassment on his face. ‘You were leaving the house as I got there and I decided to see how long it’d take you to spot me.’
‘I spotted you on the Tube.’
He smiled slightly. ‘No, I don’t think you did.’
‘I could feel you watching me.’
‘And it felt good?’ he asked, the smile becoming deeper and dirtier.
‘Creepy, actually.’
‘I always know when you’re lying, Ella.’ He crossed the tiny room in two steps and slipped her coat off her shoulders. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t like it.’
Ella could feel the heat coming off him, sensed the desperation too. It had been a month or more since she’d seen him last. The longest they’d gone without meeting and she realised she was desperate as well. There had been other men in between, but not like him.
‘You know what I was thinking, while I was looking at you?’ He unbuttoned her denim shirtdress and Ella watched his fingers working, wanting to bite them. ‘I was thinking about everything I was going to do to you once I’d got you here.’
‘And what are you going to do?’
Dylan described it all as he slowly stripped her, and Ella let go of the anger she’d walked in with and the old annoyances that had kept her away from him for so long.
She stumbled as he tried to unroll her thick, black tights, fell backwards on to the bed and he was on her instantly, pulling them the rest of the way down, laughing at the size of her sensible knickers and batting away her offer to leave if they weren’t sexy enough for him. Then he flipped her over and there was no more laughter.
He pinned her down and slipped into her, but not all the way before he pulled out, while she shouted at him to just fuck her. Deeper and slower and he pulled out again, as she gripped the pillows and arched her back where his mouth grazed her skin. Five times, six, and she was raging and aching, wanting to get on top and finish this, but she couldn’t move from under him. She pressed her face into the mattress, cursing him and moaning, as he whispered in her ear, telling her no other man could make her feel like he did, no one would ever fuck her like this. Would they? Would they, Ella?
‘Nobody knows you like I do.’
She came, bucking and gasping, and for a few seconds there was nothing but the white noise of her orgasm and the starched cotton rough under her open mouth as her breath slowed again. He slapped her thigh and climbed off her, headed straight for the shower.
Ella snagged his T-shirt from the floor and dried herself with it. The self-loathing a distant note but already humming as she listened to the shower running and a vacuum cleaner going in the next room. He hadn’t paid for this, she realised, probably just bunged the receptionist a few quid so they could slip in between the previous night’s guest and housekeeping. He had fucked her on sheets that hadn’t been changed yet.
Ella pulled her clothes on quickly, stamped her feet into her Chelsea boots.
‘You’re not going already?’ Dylan asked, emerging from the shower with a towel around his waist and his wet hair slicked back.
‘I’ve got stuff to do,’ she said, rebuttoning her dress.
He started drying his back, the muscles in his arms flexing as he reached behind him, watching her all the while as if he was waiting for the moment when she would change her mind, decide that the rest of her day was better spent here with him. As if neither of them had other responsibilities.
‘Why were you coming to the flat?’ Ella asked. ‘You never come to mine.’
‘You weren’t taking my calls, so you didn’t leave me much option.’
She knew what he was doing: making her wait, wanting her to ask. Beg him, if he could get her to. But he’d come this far to tell her and Ella forced herself to stay silent.
‘I wanted to tell you in person,’ he said, as she was zipping up her parka. ‘It’s about Quinn. . .’
Ella froze.
The white room, the code words, the smell of kerosene and burning wires and charred confetti raining down on a predawn street.
‘What about him?’
Dylan tossed the towel on to the bed. ‘He’s wangled an early release, apparently. He’ll be out next week.’
Ella fell back against the door, saw his mouth moving, his serious expression, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Blood was rushing in her ears, a sound like fire raging out of control, the sound she would always associate with Quinn.