Never Tell Read online

  Abruptly he pulled away, grabbed the pink-haired girl and pulled her over to us.

  ‘Rose, meet Lena,’ and I smiled, and my legs felt a bit trembly in my very high heels, higher than I’d ever worn, and I went to shake her hand but Dalziel said, ‘Don’t be silly. Kiss her.’ I hesitated because I really didn’t like girls, not in that way, but Lena wasn’t so reserved; she leaned in and kissed me, and I just thought her mouth was very soft where a man’s is normally harder and there was no stubble, only soft skin, but it wasn’t so bad. I was starting to feel very strange, like the whole room was moving away and I was growing very tiny and then big again and then Lena was putting her hand on my breast and I pulled away because I felt a bit sick.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Dalziel grinned; he’d been watching us lazily, ‘you’re just coming up. You’ll be fine in a sec.’

  I stumbled to the French windows to breathe in the cold autumn air and after a moment or two the music started to overwhelm me. It had changed from Hendrix to something tribal, the beat of the drums pulsing through my veins, and I was beginning to feel like I was flying. I was ecstatic, in fact I was surely about to lift off the ground like a bird. The music was inside me, and outside me and then James was there and he held me and we danced and he got nearer and I pushed myself against him and I never wanted to let go.

  ‘This is amazing.’ I smiled and smiled, feeling my limbs were like liquid and so strange. I tried to articulate it but I couldn’t. ‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ I shouted over the music.

  ‘No, well,’ he smiled back, ‘you’ve probably never taken Ecstasy before, have you?’

  ‘God, no. Is that what it is?’ I forgot even to feel fear; I just felt amazed.

  ‘It is indeed. It’s gonna break down society’s barriers.’ His eyes were slightly glazed. ‘We will all love each other for ever and indiscriminately.’

  And I felt decadent and cool and amazing, and then James was kissing me and I felt so odd, like I actually loved him and I kind of wanted to say that to him but I didn’t, I just kept kissing him. The music had changed to banging house and I wanted to dance now. The beat was in me, I was the beat and I was dancing now, writhing and turning, and I felt like everyone was watching me.

  And then Dalziel was talking, far more dishevelled than earlier, his jacket was off and his shirt was unbuttoned, flowing loose from his trousers, exposing his smooth chest, his ribs that jutted out. He stood on the small table and he was asking for quiet and people were complaining, ‘Don’t turn the music off’ but he said it was time, time to do the seventh thing.

  I didn’t know what he meant and I didn’t care.

  A girl was led in wearing a strapless black dress, very fitted around her voluptuous curves. She was short, elegant, olive-skinned, with almond-shaped eyes, long dark hair in a French plait, a year or two older than us, perhaps. She was beautiful in a soft, rounded way. I smiled at her, but she ignored me, and I realised after a second that she was not quite here with us. Her eyes were unfocused and she stumbled slightly. At first glance she looked quite beatific but the longer I looked at her, the more it became apparent that she was in some kind of trance.

  Lena stepped forward and blindfolded the girl, who appeared to acquiesce willingly, staggering slightly in her stilettos, a red satin scarf tied around her eyes. Lena ran her hands down the girl, slowly across her breasts, a lascivious smile spreading across Lena’s face. The music was put back on and the girl was led to the divan, her hands held before her as if in supplication or prayer. I wanted to dance again and I grabbed James’s hand, but he was distracted, I could feel that he was waiting for something. He watched Dalziel, who had a spray-can in his hand. In his great looping script he wrote on the wall. I thought that was quite amazing, writing on his own wall.

  ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ he scrawled, and then he turned triumphantly to us. ‘This is Huriyyah. She is the lover of someone I know well,’ he proclaimed, ‘very well indeed’. He looked around at his minions, challenge in his eyes. ‘And I have –’ he paused momentarily – ‘I have, let us say, persuaded her to help my fallen angels celebrate tonight. So – who will be the lucky taker?’

  I was thoroughly confused.

  ‘Or the first, should I say?’

  ‘Christ,’ James muttered beside me, and then the door was flung open and someone wearing a demonic goat-mask stood there, horns curling up to heaven like a devil.

  ‘Azazel, my dear friend, come in,’ Dalziel purred. ‘Join the rest of your clan.’

  ‘Who the fuck’s Azazel?’ a girl behind us muttered.

  ‘Goat-demon, seducer of men and women.’ Dalziel gestured to him. ‘Cast out by the Archangels to abide in darkness for all time.’

  Whoever he was, he stepped forward. ‘I am ready,’ he said in a gruff tight voice. ‘Please.’

  And he approached the young woman, who was being held down now, lying on her back, seemingly insensate, one arm thrown elegantly back, her suspenders showing. The smooth skin above her stockings glistened in the candlelight and on her inner arm were bruises and what I supposed could only be track marks from a needle.

  ‘Is she up for this?’ I asked James nervously, not feeling absolutely as high as I had moments ago.

  ‘Looks like it,’ James shrugged.

  ‘But –’ I licked my dry lips – ‘but why would she be here if she’s someone else’s lover?’

  ‘I don’t know. Who knows what goes on between people?’

  The girl was being helped by two of Dalziel’s boys to peel her pink knickers off, raising her hips off the divan so a dark triangle of pubic hair was visible. Despite my misgivings I felt the excitement in the room, the murmur as the air thickened with lust, the music pulsating so I felt it in my breastbone, wreaths of smoke from cigarettes and joints and God knows what else hanging in the air around us, and the drug already in my veins surged through me again.

  ‘Place her in the crucifix position,’ Dalziel ordered. They did it. She was almost frighteningly floppy and acquiescent.

  Azazel removed the goat-head and we saw it was a boy with a head like a bullet and hair like a brush; a boy who looked somewhat out of place amongst all the beautiful people. He was sweating and red-faced, and his eyes glinted with excitement as he undid his trousers.

  ‘Form a queue,’ Dalziel drawled from behind the divan where he was stroking the naked arse of a tall dark boy. Then the short boy was between the girl’s legs and pulling her dress down, sucking on a dark nipple he had freed and fumbling with his trousers, and then with a great groan he was in her and she was turning her head back and forth as if she was indeed enjoying it, or perhaps she was just delirious. Then Dalziel and the dark boy were kissing and Dalziel bent the boy forwards over the divan and was biting his neck, grinding into him. Someone turned the music up louder still and couples were pairing off. Lena and another girl writhed against the wall together, and James took me by the hand and led me out through the French window.

  He pulled me into him and kissed me again, and although the night was freezing I didn’t seem to feel it and he untied my halter neck impatiently and pulled my catsuit down. He hiked me up onto a small wrought-iron table and we fucked right there in the garden. He was only the second boy I had ever had sex with but I felt so fluid right now, made of air, I might do it with anyone. At one point a light in the upstairs window of the house next door went on and I didn’t even care.

  ‘Someone’s watching us,’ I murmured in James’s ear and he just thrust harder.

  ‘Let them,’ he whispered, and I moaned with pleasure.

  Afterwards we went back inside to find the girl had gone. Only the silk scarf lying on the floor showed that she had been there. Dalziel and the boy were on the divan now themselves. They looked like they were sleeping, wrapped round each other, and suddenly I felt very cold.

  ‘You’re OK,’ James said, ‘you’re just coming down a bit,’ and he gave me his jacket; someone else offered me a line of white p
owder chopped out on the table but actually I didn’t want it. Lena was so out of it she was crawling on the floor, laughing in her knickers and bra, occasionally barking like a dog, much to the hilarity of various bystanders.

  ‘That was full on, wasn’t it?’ a dishevelled boy said to James, his eyes like saucers, his nose streaming from the drug he’d just snorted.

  James lit a cigarette. ‘Too busy having my own fun, mate.’ He kissed my shoulder and I smiled decadently. ‘What was?’

  ‘When the girl started to come round.’

  ‘What girl?’ I said.

  ‘The druggie. She was about to change her mind, I swear.’

  My stomach plunged, and I felt icy. ‘Change her mind?’

  ‘Yeah. She changed her mind for a minute there.’ The boy looked dazed, a little rueful, perhaps. ‘But Dalziel soon sorted her out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I looked around for my coat. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He sorted her some more smack. She was OK in the end. Could have been ugly, though, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Ugly?’ I intoned stupidly. I wanted to leave now.

  ‘Yeah. Less adultery. More like …’ He glanced round nervously.

  ‘More like what?’ James prompted.

  ‘You know what I mean. More like rape. Specially with bloody Brian.’

  ‘Brian?’

  ‘Azazel. The goat-demon. Very apt. He gets out of control, that boy. Dalziel wants to watch that.’ The boy zipped his trousers up. ‘That’s the trouble with oiks.’

  I thought of the girl, all floppy and blank, and I winced. I thought of my little room in the halls of residence and all my things there, even the green lampshade from home, and I wanted to be there now.

  ‘Do you think she’s all right?’ I asked the boy, and he shrugged.

  ‘Happy as Larry last time I saw her. Once she’d stopped crying and the new smack kicked in.’

  I grabbed James’s hand. ‘Can we go?’ I asked him. ‘Please. Now.’

  We left.

  ‘God, I’m freezing,’ I said out in the street. ‘I can’t warm up.’

  James put his arm round me, and we went back to my room and I stripped off and put on my pyjamas, socks, my warmest jumper, but still I was freezing. He held me as we listened to Massive Attack and got into my single bed, drinking tea and talking into the dawn. We didn’t mention Huriyyah but I knew we were both thinking of her. And somehow, James never left.

  In the cold light of day I didn’t feel so proud of my behaviour, in fact I felt ashamed.

  ‘So that was Society X?’ I asked James as we walked into Brown’s coffee-shop the next day.

  ‘Yes, it was. Just for the privileged few,’ he said – which apparently included me now. James explained that it was Dalziel’s brainchild, his pet project. Was I a pet? I saw myself out in the garden half-dressed; I kept thinking of the girl’s vacant face and her eyes that were so glazed and unseeing. I didn’t understand what had got into me. Apart from James, and illegal substances, of course. I felt strange. Somehow different – and older.

  It was all about breaking the Ten Commandments apparently, James explained, hence X, the Roman numeral for ten. Dalziel was writing a dissertation on it for his theology module, James said, and he apparently wanted to prove that you can have free will and choice and still live in the confines of civilised life but outside organised religion. It all sounded very peculiar to me – far more about decadence and doing exactly what you liked than any aspect of religion. And although there was a part of me that was hugely flattered by Dalziel’s attentions, the truth was, last night was beginning to feel more than a little sordid. I had enjoyed the Ecstasy at the time but it scared me too; how consumed I felt whilst I was on it. Society X felt dangerous and exciting, but also out of my league entirely. Over the next few weeks, it began to feel nasty and puerile too.

  I made a few enquiries about Huriyyah but no one seemed to know her. I scanned the newspapers, but I never heard anything about her. I started to forget: I busied myself with my new life at Oxford. My father sent me money for a push-bike and I marched against the Kosovan conflict.

  I found that I was enjoying my lectures. I finally shook Moira and met Jen and Liz, who were more like me: we became inseparable. I got on with my work. And James and I were sort of dating; he was sweet and seemed keen, and I found that I liked sex, I liked it a lot – it was liberating. But I was worried by Society X and the lure it had for him. I tried to fight the feelings that were emerging for him, his big brown eyes, his funny smile, his protective air. I would not go to any of the X meets that he asked me to, and this annoyed him though he tried to hide it. I could see the attraction but it repelled me too. I was not that kind of girl. I felt very grown-up when I made this decision.

  I read a lot of Hardy and I thought of Jude’s words: ‘this city of light and lore’. I worked hard and started to embrace the fact that I was part of this ancient institution. Some of the confidence of the kids there rubbed off on me; I became less shy and slowly I began to inhabit my own style. Occasionally I felt confined – the tourists in their cagoules and with their big maps, snapping us through the railings, like animals in the zoo – but mostly I just felt proud to be here.

  I still found myself looking for Dalziel when I was out, but it wasn’t with the same desperation of those first few weeks, and I was uncomfortable with the memory of Huriyyah, who

  I never saw again. I resigned myself to the fact that the party was an amazing experience, but a one-off. I told myself that if she had been in any way unhappy about it, she would have come forward by now and I was content to leave it at that.

  Chapter Four

  GLOUCESTERSHIRE, MARCH 2008

  As we rounded the bend in the long snaking drive, the floodlit manor house finally came into view between the great oak trees.

  ‘Christ.’ James stopped the car and, for a moment, we simply stared in awe.

  For all my doubts about the Cotswolds, my own butter-coloured house was undeniably beautiful, the stone warm and inviting, a much-loved well-lived-in home. The great mansion that stood before us was not in the least inviting; majestic maybe, but somehow unsettling. Its dark stone spoke of antique grandeur rather than home and hearth. Gargoyles screeched wordlessly from the roof as we neared, the huge front door lit by flaming torches on either side, a line of expensive-looking cars parked neatly on the right.

  ‘I like the flames. Nice idea for the club,’ James said, driving up to the gatehouse, where a man with a clipboard stepped from the shadows.

  James had only agreed to come because he thought there might be something in it for him. He always had an eye on the main chance, my loving husband, and I’d understood in the last few days that although the record label was still doing well, and his properties in New York and Europe were still ticking over nicely, the London club had just lost a major investor, meaning its relaunch was hanging in the balance. James was on the prowl for more backing, and fast.

  At the top of the huge stone stairs we were handed champagne and shown through the dark-panelled hall, hung with tapestries of archers and deer, into a great drawing room, humming with polite conversation, the décor a peculiar clash of Gothic splendour and Arabic glamour. Small tables inlaid with gold sat between a leather three-piece suite and huge marble ashtrays festooned the antique sideboards, whilst the mantelpiece groaned with expensively framed photographs of family, a few of a grinning polo team and a huge white yacht in glittering blue seas.

  The walls were hung with exquisite art that looked like it would be wasted on the majority of the guests, a mixture of portly middle-aged men and impeccable women with skinny ankles and expensive hair who basked in the heat of a great log fire.

  ‘Fuck,’ James muttered, downing his drink in two gulps. ‘Wake me up when the party begins. I thought you said this would be fun.’

  ‘Shh, J,’ I warned. ‘Be nice, please.’ My heart sank as I spotted the local MP, Eddie Johnson, in the corner. Thankfully
Johnson’s wife was nowhere to be seen.

  Tina and her bespectacled husband approached us now and they began to discuss the last series of The Wire with James whilst I eyed the photographs behind them. I’d just picked up a heavy gold frame housing the picture of a dark-haired doe-eyed teenage girl when a low voice made me jump.

  ‘Mrs Miller, I presume?’

  ‘Yes.’ I replaced the photograph quickly and turned, composing my face as my brain caught up with fact. ‘You must be Mr Kattan?’

  ‘Indeed.’ The elegant dark-haired man inclined his head politely. ‘Charmed to meet you.’

  Involuntarily I looked back at the picture of the girl. The waterlogged girl from the petrol station, the girl from the protest in the newspaper. Kattan followed my eyes.

  ‘I believe you met my daughter the other night.’

  ‘Ah.’ The all-seeing eye. ‘Yes, I think I did.’

  ‘She was having a very bad day.’

  ‘A bad day.’ You could say that again. ‘She seemed a little – confused.’

  ‘Yes. She was taken ill on her way home from London. A bad oyster, I believe.’

  ‘Poor thing. Is she all right now?’

  ‘Yes, thank God. Salmonella can make you quite delirious, her doctor tells me.’

  ‘Sounds horrible. Is she here?’

  He sighed. ‘I was sincerely hoping that she would be, Mrs Miller, but …’ His Middle Eastern accent was almost imperceptible. ‘The party would help her, I think. Meet some local people, make some new friends. But I am afraid she has gone – how do you say it? – walkabout?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The image of her wailing face spun through my head; the contorted face in the newspaper. ‘Doesn’t she like parties?’

  ‘Usually. But she has had some … some trouble recently with a young man.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ I was intrigued.

  ‘Oh, the usual, you know.’ He inspected his fingernails briefly. ‘I think the boyfriend is what the films might term a “heart-breaker.”‘