Another ping.
I could meet you in the city this time? I’m at drinks. Come! x
So, Nick is drunk. He wants a booty call. He doesn’t want a quiet drink to talk about my past or who I really am. Maybe that’s just as well. You wouldn’t get drunk before you saw me, and you would love a quiet corner to discuss my past as a victim. That was your favourite topic, after all—me as a victim of my parents’ capitalist, shallow lives. You never thought I was your victim.
I shouldn’t see Nick now, not after these last few days, and not with that letter in my handbag. But I also have a fantasy that always makes me feel better, and I’ve never properly enacted it. Nick looks like you, as close as I could find across several dating apps. Maybe there’s another way to exorcise you without having to see you again. What is it that Rhiannon always says?If you can’t get rid of him, how does it feel to bring him close instead?
It might feel good.
On the way to the tube, I buy a half-bottle of vodka from the off-licence and swig until I start to feel pleasantly numb, a little like how it used to be, back in the old days of the bars and the men. I keep Nick’s message open as I walk, then reply.
What are you wearing? Don’t suppose it’s a dirty old shirt and boots?
I laugh at what comes back.
Role play? I can do that.
Plenty of women have fantasies of being tied up, dominated. What I want isn’t so new. Besides, if I use my imagination, it could be you texting back to me, couldn’t it?
Kidnap me. Do it like you mean it.
I don’t feel weak, the way I do when I talk with Mum, or Dad, or even Rhiannon. Perhaps it’s the wine and the vodka, or the breakdown with Mum, or perhaps it’s just a new kind of desperation that comes from knowing your parole date. Whatever it is, I get a thrill when I read Nick’s next words.
Where are you?
I’m buzzing all over, bees under my skin. I haven’t felt like this for years.
It won’t take me long to get ready.
My chest tightens. I still don’t know Nick that well. But if this goes wrong, I could ignore him, I could block him entirely.
Hammersmith and City. Just on.
I share my phone location. I’m still a needle in a haystack, a gem in a stone. But you could find me in this city. It wouldn’t take you long to work out my routine, to know to watch me at Mum’s from the park across the street, to follow me on this line. People pile into the train—too many people, too little space. But you kidnapped me in a busier place than this and got away with it. And if you did it again? If I saw you here? You’d look older, and rougher. I hear prison isn’t kind to kidnappers of teenage girls. But you would have tried to keep to yourself, stay out of fights, keep fit. The thudding inside me builds, and now it feels like I am glowing, like you really are here.
I jump when my phone pings again.
I’m coming.
Then again.
I’m close.
I share my new location.
Everything is pinging and buzzing, and maybe this is enough: you being here like this.
I look up at each new station. Only a few more and I’ll be off at Liverpool Street and changing to the Central Line. Could you find me before I get to my flat? My head spins as I imagine how many trains there are on this line right now, how many carriages, how many thousands of chances there are of you not finding me at all. It’s impossible. It can’t happen, I know.
But you are there when I get off. Right there on the platform where the door of my carriage opens. You are nervous, I can tell. My breaths catches as I wait one second before you meet my eyes, two, as the doors open. I gasp as I step out. You look different, of course. Cleaner. No older. But you have come for me. Found me again.
Invite him into your life—Rhiannon in my head with her psychiatrist permission—see what it might be like.
‘Ready?’
I give a slight nod. This isn’t quite how it’s meant to be; I should be struggling, and you chasing.
You start talking about how you had to buy a checked shirt from some late-night shop in Soho, asking how I like it, but I ignore that, turning away.