The Girl in the Mirror(51)
“Mm, come in, I’m all soapy,” I say, opening the shower door. I’m trying to set a different tone.
A hand gropes at me, and I’m turned and slammed against the shower wall.
Not this again. Once more, I have the fleeting fear that he knows, but I force myself not to panic. This is role-play. I just need the safe word.
“Babe, I’m not in the mood . . .” I begin.
“Shut up, you sexy bitch,” he says. His fingers push inside me. “I can tell you’re in the mood, all right. I saw the way you were flirting with my cousins. How many of us do you want at once?”
What’s his obsession with me doing other men? I want to laugh, but now he’s pushing inside me again, and a hot blush spreads all over me. Everything is against me. Even my body seems to join with him, making him think that I want this.
His hands wrap around me, pinning my arms to my sides, gripping my breasts. The water courses over us both, too hot. The dirty words already sound tired—to think that they turned Summer on—but soon they give way to grunts. As if he weren’t a bad enough lover, Adam is also a two-minute wonder.
But I can’t just go limp in his arms. I make some Summer-ish little-girl moans. I try to move with him, but he’s pinned me so tightly that I can’t. And now it’s happening again. My body’s on fire, and a sound escapes me that I’ve never made before. It’s like a seizure. There’s no way he didn’t feel that.
I’m still shuddering as he rinses off and grabs a towel. He mutters some compliment, “You’re so gorgeous, sunshine,” while running his hand down my spine, then he leaves me alone in the bathroom. It’s weird how the rapey shoving gives way to tenderness the moment he’s satisfied. It was the same yesterday; he was all, Sorry and I love you moments after jamming me against that damned washing machine.
I step out of the shower and rub the condensation off one of the mirrors with my towel. Summer appears before me, her breasts still showing red finger marks. Her eyebrows are two neat dark arches, and the curvy red line on her inner thigh is a trail leading to paradise. She’s still skinny from her ordeal at sea, with protruding ribs and visible abs, but she’s beautiful. No wonder Adam can’t keep his hands off her.
Daniel turns up soon afterward. We’re leaving Bathsheba in his hands, so Adam shows him around the yacht while I walk up and down the marina. When Summer invited me to Thailand, I longed to be in a grand marina with rich men, but now Bathsheba’s berth seems confining. It feels wrong to be leaving her here, not knowing when I’ll return. She is unnaturally still, bound fore and aft to the pontoon. A yacht ought to be swinging at anchor, gracefully aligning herself with wind and tide.
It’s not too late. I could evade Adam, steer Bathsheba out into the open harbor and head for the ocean. Who cares where I would go? They would know, instantly, when they saw the yacht departing, her sails flying in the free air, that it was Iris on board. With twins, it’s always behavior, not appearance, that gives you away.
By afternoon, we’re on the plane, flying toward the night. In a few short hours, weeks of sailing are undone. In Colombo, we’re whisked by taxi to a glorious hotel, where I’m relieved to find that, despite the luxury, we share a room with Tarquin. No sexyrape tonight. The next day we board a flight home.
Flying first class contrasts starkly with steering a boat across an ocean. It’s lavish, even if you have to pretend to be someone else. I’m starting to relax into my role. Adam’s the only person I need to fool, and he is blessedly distracted. Most of our conversation is about the here-and-now: is Tarquin hungry, where is a taxi, do you have the boarding passes? I don’t need to know much to keep up my end of the conversation, but I have to remember not to be surprised by the exquisite service. No doubt Summer was used to not having to queue, having everything done for her, and being greeted by name by a dedicated flight attendant. I try to ignore another passenger who is turning everybody’s head, a stunning redhead who seems to be flying with an entourage. She must be a model or an actress; I bet Summer would recognize her.
I also have to feign an interest in my son’s biological rhythms. Do I really need to monitor the kid’s fluid intake? Surely he would grab the sippy cup that we keep within constant reach, rather than die of thirst? Hell, if we didn’t anticipate his every whim, he might even learn to speak. How hard is it to say “cup”?
When Adam talks about the past, it’s a little more challenging. He reminisces about the friends we left in Phuket, but I barely need to get straight whether Brian was the boozer and Greg the groper or the other way round. If anything, I mustn’t be too attentive. I’m a tired, grieving, pregnant woman traveling with a young child. Vacant smiles and nods are all anybody could expect.
Tarquin is a handful, though. I can change a nappy without gagging now, but I forgot to pack any in carry-on, so I have to stealthily scrounge a few from a flight attendant. Adam raises an eyebrow when I offer Tarquin a glass of water instead of his sippy cup of special toddler juice.
The hardest part is the pretense that I find joy in observing the kid’s antics. I realize a beat too late that the way he cocks his head to the side while stuffing food in his gob is the sort of thing Summer found cute. I gush, but it sounds phony. I’ve always secretly doubted that Summer did find Tarky so adorable, but now I know that she must have. Keeping up this level of enthusiasm is exhausting.