How to Kill Men and Get Away With It(17)

Looking back, there were obviously so many red flags. The barrage of messages, the reminder of how important he was, the fact he’d obviously asked for my number without my permission. But as I said, I was young. Hindsight is a bastard. And I was really fucking flattered. It was the days before Instagram had fully taken off and, while I was obviously living a wealthy and healthy life in Chelsea, the only people who paid much attention to me were the people I already knew. And now there was this successful, young, gorgeous writer who wanted to see me again. So yes, I was flattered. Flattered and stupid.

I texted back a day or so later.

Hey Adam. Sure it would be great to meet you properly when you’re not tied up being so busy and important. Please feel free to text when you’re around next xx



Urgh. The fucking kisses. I’d slap twenty-two-year-old me if I could.

Our first date was to see a play written by a friend of his. Somehow it had got a run at the Old Vic, which baffled me because it was absolute toss. Afterwards, he trotted me around the bar, introducing me to various horrible friends like a trophy wife. All women. All literary types. All desperate to prove, in front of Adam, how uneducated I must be by asking me questions about books, hoping to trip me up.

‘So, who are you reading right now, Kitty?’ asked one blonde with features too small for her moon face, a sneer making her look even less attractive. She asked it in the same kind of way I’d ask Maisie who she was wearing. She was very clearly a smug bitch.

‘Actually, I can’t read. Not a word. Totally illiterate.’ I smiled and exited stage left.

I absolutely refuse to be around anyone who thinks they’re better than me because a) who has the time to waste hanging out with anyone you just will never get along with and b) no one is better than me. Storming out of places is not really my style though, but Adam was clearly into the sass and as I walked down Waterloo Road, I heard him call my name. I stopped, not turning around, waiting for him to catch up with me.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, eyes dripping with concern, which seemed genuine. ‘Saskia can be a bit of a twat. Well, a lot of a twat actually. Expensive education and yet not one solitary manner, I’m afraid. Are you okay?’ He gently brushed my cheek with the tips of his fingers. The same fingers I’d later stare at, mesmerised, watching them dance across his keyboard as he wrote. The same fingers that would pull orgasm after orgasm out of me.

‘I’m fine,’ I’d said, curtly. ‘I’m just above hanging out with people who act like pretentious dickheads.’

Adam caught my face in his hands. ‘They are pretentious dickheads.’ He laughed and then kissed me. Hard and purposeful. I was caught off guard as his lips crushed against mine. Intoxicated by the taste of whisky and the smell of cigarettes, which at the time seemed dark and necessary rather than just grim. With my face cupped in his hands, under the shadow of Waterloo station, I melted into him.

When we finally broke apart and flagged down a black cab, we couldn’t get to mine fast enough. Even in the lift, we were clawing at each other’s clothes, his shirt half unbuttoned and my dress around my waist by the time we fell through the door. We bit and pulled and tore all the way to my living room where he pushed me hard down onto my sofa. I was writhing with my need for him as his mouth made its way down my body. He fucked me with his tongue first, making me gasp, before pulling out and pushing my thighs apart and kneeling in front of me, totally exposed to him. And these were the days before I made expensive monthly appointments to have painful lasers destroy my pubic hair.

‘You have the most beautiful cunt,’ he said and instead of recoiling at the word, I felt that, from his lips, it made me wetter. Then his mouth was on mine and I could taste myself on his tongue as it pushed into me, while his cock pushed into me too. ‘Keep your eyes open. I want to watch you come.’

I remember thinking it was very bold of him to assume he could make me come with just his dick, but as he pushed my knees up against my chest and started moving inside me at an angle I’d never felt, I soon discovered I was very wrong. I could feel every inch of him as he moved in and out, hitting that spot buried inside me with each thrust. Soon I felt my entire body begin to clench around him.

‘Keep your eyes open,’ he said again as I came, with a shuddering climax that felt even more intense because of our locked gaze. He stroked my hair, kissed me deeply and let himself release inside me, before falling on top of me, sweaty, spent. ‘Don’t let a drop spill out,’ he whispered as we lay there. I didn’t want to. From that moment I wanted to keep every bit of him inside me.

Our relationship was a heady mix of sex, alcohol, parties and drugs. We spent weeks, months, in our own world where nothing existed except each other and our pleasure. My friends began to annoy me, whining over text that they didn’t see me anymore. I didn’t care. All I wanted was Adam. Anyway, even when I did see them while he was away doing book tours and book talks and meetings about his ‘difficult second book’, they just complained that I only saw them when Adam was busy. Which was true. But I couldn’t help myself. He was addictive. He’d burst into my apartment, which he’d semi-moved into after about three months, and tell me to pack a bag. And then we’d suddenly be in Cannes or Paris or Barcelona, drinking Champagne, chopping lines of coke and having that urgent, intense sex.

‘I love you, Kitty Collins,’ he’d breathe into my mouth as our bodies, orgasms now perfectly synchronised, heaved in post-passion bliss. ‘I fucking love you.’