This started out as part of my Conversations universe, but turned out a much longer story than I usually write. I do not apologise for its length, however, having received several emails complaining that I just write flash stories and offer nothing that readers can really get their teeth into.

If you're not keen on long stories -- don't read it. If you're looking for a wank-spank, don't read it -- there's some sex, but that's not what this is about. If you don't like dialogue, then definitely don't read it.

So, on the basis that you can't please everyone, so you might as well please yourself -- and that my professional pride has been wounded by those questioning my skills -- here goes...

CHASING THE LAST ROAD TO STOCKHOLM

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He comes for everything
Even love's gotta die
But make him take it on the wing
Baby let it fly.
Skull shine, skull shine...
Reaper Man (B. Lake) 2012

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ZERO HOUR

"No sudden movements and don't say a fuckin' word! Gimme the keys and walk away. And don't look back if you want to keep your face!"

Not the most polite introduction, but I guess carjackers don't have the opportunity to read Miss Manners too often. Well... if you think about it, they're probably driving most of the time.

I'd never been jacked before, and despite the very explicit instructions that had been grunt-hissed at my back while something dug into it very pointedly, I really didn't know what to do. Should I put my hands up? How did I then give them my car keys? I didn't want to reach into my pocket for them, in case it sparked off some sort of reaction; maybe they'd think I was going for a weapon of some sort.

If I walked away without giving them the keys, it seemed I was dead. If I went into my pocket for them, it seemed I'd probably be dead. If I tried to explain my dilemma I'd probably be dead as well; the sheer venom in that voice stated loud and clear that its owner was just looking for an excuse.

All in all, it was a very weird situation in which to find myself. I had parked on the side of the road in an ocean of wheat fields, miles from any sign of human habitation, and had been just about to unzip to relieve the strain on my bladder, when the weapon was poked in my back. I mean, how ridiculous was that? When did carjackers start hanging about in fields on the ridiculously faint chance that some traveller might stop right there to take a piss?

The weirdest thing of all -- the part I just couldn't really come to grips with -- was that I wasn't panicked into just throwing a wobbly right there and then. My mind seemed to be clear, and as I was standing next to my car, it directed me to raise my hands and lean slightly to my right to take a glance in the wing mirror.

The part of the weapon I could see in the reflection looked to be camouflaged; shades of green and brown in various splotches. The barrel looked to be slightly bent and I couldn't really see much of a hammer... or slide... or even a grip held in that small hand. What the hell type of gun was that? I didn't know what to do with the information, until suddenly the whole thing came into focus in my mind.

I twisted suddenly, my right arm flying out backwards in a desperate attempt to throw them off balance for a second or two while I made a jinking run for the dubious safety of the wheat. I felt a pain in the back of my hand, heard the very distinct sound of teeth knocking together, and gathered my feet under me to run.

Unfortunately the jacker was quicker, grabbing me around the waist and then sliding down to clutch my thighs, then knees and finally my feet. What the fuck?

I leapt out of the encircling arms and desperately looked around as I started to run. Then I pulled to a halt. There was only one of them. And he was flat out and face down on the floor.

In the errant hand was... a stick.

As a weapon, it had a few drawbacks. It had no trigger, no magazine, and no sights. It didn't even sport a sharp edge. But its main drawback was that it was... a stick! And not even a very big one, at that!

The attacker had a few drawbacks as well. These were obvious; such as the fact that they were unconscious, or passed out; and that it was actually a girl, or a really underdeveloped boy. No, the ratio of chest to waist to hips pointed to it being a small girl -- a small, half-naked girl; dressed only in a man's shirt, some plain, off-white panties covering a round little butt, and some sort of knitted grey hat, all of which were distinctly grubby. A panel of the cotton panties had pulled away from the waistband at one hip and left a hole. My ex had a pair like that, claiming that they were just too comfortable to throw out. These looked like they were all too ready to give up and throw themselves out, begging for the sweet relief of the rubbish heap.

I gazed down at the prone figure, the chest rising and falling to offer proof of life, while the faint whistling noise from the unseen face offered proof of a tendency to snore, and tried to work out just what the hell was going on. I realised my adrenaline levels were about ten feet higher than I was tall, and I was actually panting with fear. My heart was only then starting to wind down from Defcon 1 status.

I got angry.

Some midget female had tried to carjack me by threatening me with a twig, and I had very seriously considered giving in to that threat. How very fucking dare she‽ Okay, I was no Hulk or even a Thor, but I was pretty sure I didn't look like some pushover, either. At five foot eleven and seven eighths, I was actually taller than some of the other Avengers... Black Widow and Scarlet Witch were both shorter than me.

Yes, I do have my Nerdling badge, but that still didn't explain why a grubby munchkin thought she could rob me at stick-point.

I pissed on the back wheel of my car while I thought about it. I disarmed her by snapping the twig in two. I nudged her none-too-gently with my foot until she grunted and raised her head. Her face was as grubby as the rest of her.

"Get up!"

"Fuck you, asshole!"

My mouth fell open in surprise. I couldn't believe I was getting cheek from some kid -- a kid who'd just failed to rob me, mind you.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" I growled

"No. But you can kiss my ass with yours!"

"I wouldn't kiss your grubby arse with my worst enemy's mouth!" I retorted.

"Only because your dick would probably be too deep in his mouth," she came back, and I had to admit, she had some chops when it came to insults. "You faggots are all the same!"

"Well, when faced with you, I reckon being gay would probably be a better choice."

"You better not touch me, or I'll rip your dick off through your asshole." Jeez, just the thought of that made my eyes water.

"Like I said, being gay would be a better choice." I held my hand up to stop the flow of her vituperation. She cowered for a moment and then came back snarling.

"You tried to carjack me!" I accused before she could get back into full flow.

"So what?"

"So what? What do you mean, so what? You can't just say so what! It doesn't work like that. So what? So ... it's not only illegal on so many levels, it's fucking rude!" My mind wasn't running particularly smoothly, what with it being inundated by fear, adrenaline, relief and anger all at the same time, and it was all I could come up with.

"Oh, grow a pair!"

I stared at her. She stared back. She probably won the staring contest as it seemed she had sheer hatred on her side, while I had to make do with plain old common or garden anger. For a moment I wondered if she had been coached by my ex-wife.

"Oh, now I get it. I've just realised, you're an actual, real live goblin sent from hell to torment me."

"Was it the teeth and claws that gave me away?" she sneered.

"Nope. It was more you being small, dirty and really fugly!"

To my surprise, she burst into tears, her shoulders shaking from her sobbing and her face back in the dirt.

And we were getting along so well. What a shame.

I did what men do so well in situations like this. I looked around at everything except her, while trying not to frown in guilty confusion and not kick at the dirt with the point of my shoe. I also resisted the urge to polish those same shoes on the back of my pants leg. I mean, I'm not even American and I still felt an urgent need to say 'Aw shucks.'

I took a photo of her with my phone.

"I'm reporting this to the police," I said.

Her head rose once again. "You hit me!"

"Yes."

"You shouldn't hit girls. That's assault!"

"Not when they are trying to rob you with a deadly weapon, it isn't."

"It was a stick, you pussy!"

"You told me you'd blow my face off with it, you miniaturised uber-bitch."

"Well, between the two of us, which of us has an actual injury, huh? Who do you think the cops are gonna believe? You, a big strong he-man type, or me -- a small, frightened crying girl with a bruise on her face?"

"You think I'm a he-man type?" I was still considering her threat, so I think I was a bit nonplussed, and might have come across as a touch needy. She had a point about the credibility of the two claims.

"That's what you took from that? Of course I don't think that! You think I need a psychiatrist to comprehend reality? He-man... hah!"

"Actually, I think you need a shrink to keep you in a strait-jacket."

"I am not crazy!" Spit actually flew from her mouth and I saw real rage in her eyes.

"Oh, well, that's all right then. I just needed to hear you say it, and now that you have, well... you've certainly convinced me!" I came back, unable to stop myself, despite starting to seriously worry once more. She really was looking a bit crazy. "I mean, almost all sane people try to shoot people with a stick... when they're five fucking years old!"

I shouted that last part, tapping my temple meaningfully. I knew she was just a kid with a foul mouth and I - in my adrenaline rush - had responded very inappropriately, but she'd not only made me think I was going to die, her constant insults were getting to me. She just wouldn't shut up and let me think. If she would only shut the fuck up! I should make her shut up!

Oh hell, now I sounded loony, as well -- even to my own mind. That was exactly what all the crazies said just before they hauled out the butcher's knife and went all Janet-Leigh-in-the-shower on everyone. I seriously considered for a moment that her lunacy might be infectious.

"Don't call me crazy!" she reiterated, her scream so loud it broke halfway through, as if something had snapped in her throat. She rose to her feet, panting hard.

"Then don't act like it!" I shouted back. "And at the same time, stop acting like a fucking toddler! You're what... eleven, twelve maybe? A foul mouth doesn't make you a grown up. Act your age, not your fucking shoe size! Even if you are a psychotic, insane goblin."

I couldn't resist throwing that last part in -- it seemed to press her buttons, and despite me being the adult, right at that moment I was all for jamming on those buttons like they were the working parts of an orgasmatron.

"I'm twenty, you sizeist, misogynistic pig!" she yelled and darted straight at me. Sizeist! Misogynistic! Me? I marvelled that even dwarf chicks were using those pejoratives now. I didn't believe for a moment that she was any older than fourteen. Maybe fifteen, tops.

Her claws were aimed at my face and I realised, perhaps for the first time since I'd laid her out, that she could truly be a threat. Despite the fear and the anger within me, I also realised that I had perversely enjoyed our exchange of insults and had thrown myself into it. It had been a chance to vent some of the poison that had built up in my system since...

Her shirt flapped open as she came at me and I realised, as well, that, by the small but significant bulges on her chest, I had indeed been mistaken about her being a child. As her fingers drove towards my eyes, I yelled in fear and grabbed for her wrists, catching them more by luck than judgement. We struggled for control of her hands for a moment, but she was too small and had little chance of getting them free to do me damage.

She tried to knee me in the balls, but I managed to twist and took it on the thigh. While her knee was raised and she was off-balance, I pushed and we both fell to the ground, me on top of her skinny body, holding her arms down alongside her head.

She wriggled and fought viciously, and then suddenly went so limp that I was taken by surprise, almost releasing her. But I wasn't falling for that! Her lips moved as if she was inviting me to kiss her and I drew my head back sharply, repulsed. Then I understood that she was whispering something. I leaned down close enough to hear, while carefully remaining out of range of her teeth -- I wasn't going to trust this little troll for a moment.

"Please don't. Please don't do it to me anymore. I'll be good." It was so faint, it was almost inaudible. But it was there.

I felt the hairs on my forearms and the back of my neck all instantly stand to attention as if they were on parade, and I think I somehow managed to levitate to a standing position without actually moving.

Then it got worse as, with my weight gone, she simply drew herself up into a foetal position with her eyes firmly closed, put her thumb into her mouth and began to suck on it.

Christ! This was bad. Very bad.

I stared around, searching the huge horizons of the Mid-West for inspiration as to what to do. My first instinct was to get back in the car and get the fuck out of Dodge, before the Earps herded me into the OK Corral and gunned me down like a dog.

Just leave. Yes, that was the sensible thing to do. Of course it was! She was a carjacker, a criminal, and that was all I needed to know. Anything else was out of my jurisdiction. Just leave her there and drive away. She could hijack the next guy who needed to strangle the weasel within her hunting grounds.

And... And fuck! I couldn't do that. I have White Knight Syndrome. It's real - you can look it up. I'm irresistibly drawn to women who are damaged.

Oh, it sounds great - riding to the rescue of fair maidens and reaping the rewards of fame, fortune and free fucking. Who wouldn't want that?

Well, I don't, for one. It causes me to make some really bad life choices. It makes me think I can fix things that can't be fixed. It makes me want to try and help the helpless, mend the irretrievably broken, heal the mortally wounded. Hold that in your mind and look around you. See the wilfully stupid, the eternal addicts, and the perpetually obstinate who just won't help themselves? And now watch yourself ride in and try anyway. Fun!

I've been told that it's much more common than most people think, and that it could be a symptom of low self-esteem, hoping that someone with even lower self-esteem would love me. That it might be me trying to create a debt that would bind someone to me. That I am possibly trying to use rescue tactics to dominate a weaker person for my own ends. Or that I could just be a big-headed cunt showing off -- although that's my ex-wife's diagnosis and she might be biased.

Admittedly, those are the dire characteristics of the syndrome. There are some kinder attributes as well, but they're all bad in my opinion.

The thing is, of course, I'm not actually a knight! I don't have the courage, the know-how or the derring-do to swoop in and actually fix anyone. All I have is the stubbornness to stick around and keep using my unerringly wrong self-belief and emotional need to keep trying, until even I can see that there's no hope -- usually just before the going-down-for-the-third-time bit. Try staying through the self-destruction, the insistence on self-medication, the never-ending mourning for a lost love, the complete and utter lack of any self-esteem, or the addiction that will be instantly cured ... starting tomorrow, I promise! All of those things grind people into fine dust, and, inevitably, those around them are pulverised as well.

Not such a wonderful thing to have, then.

A shrink had explained it all to me -- the idea being that if I knew I had the problem, I could somehow avoid it. I would like to think it's all bollocks, and that I just empathise with sad people... well, sad women. But, unfortunately, there is a truth there. Somewhere within me is a trigger, and if someone pulls that trigger, then the gun goes off. It's inevitable. Therefore, when faced with a possibly wounded bird, I use the shrink's advice; I turn around and walk away before they can pull that trigger. With so many women damaged in some way or another, it makes life pretty lonely at times, but it's better than the alternative.

And here it was again.

Expecting her to suddenly come to life and attack me again at any moment, I gingerly leaned down and gathered her up. Then I put her down again, thought some more and sighed deeply. I fetched a travel blanket from the car, wrapped her in it and picked her up again, sliding her onto the back seat. Sweating now, I fastened a seat belt around her with some difficulty, closed the door and climbed in behind the wheel to have a think.

What the hell was I going to do with her?

Okay, it wouldn't be right to just leave her out in this enormous, rural farming wilderness where she could be attacked and devoured by a roaming band of voles, or something equally horrific - especially as she was dressed only in a disgustingly filthy woolly hat, a shirt and a pair of tatty knickers. I mean, a passing hedgehog might just get it into his mind to take advantage of her. It could happen! Well... probably not. I had no idea whether there were hedgehogs and voles in the USA. They're tiny, probably nasty, British predators -- mostly of slugs and worms -- and I don't know what the American equivalents are. Probably politicians of some ilk.

In the rearview mirror, I caught sight of my face and the sardonic grin plastered on it, and relaxed my mouth. I didn't need my weird sense of humour getting me into trouble. Not now.

I had to go somewhere, so I decided to just go forward. The hire car that I'd picked up at the airport in Kansas City had managed to go into a complete snit and sulk when I pressed a few buttons to see what it could do, so now the GPS system wasn't working at all, and my phone wasn't doing a great job of covering the load -- or any load at all, in fact. I determinedly didn't use it much, so it was probably my fault. That morning I'd been heading towards Wichita on something called the 77, and then discovered that somehow I'd apparently meandered off-route and was now on the 56 and had to get back on the 77. According to those numbers, I had apparently wandered across 21 national highways without noticing anything amiss. I think American roads might be numbered by the same people who train British council planners, as there was no apparent logic to them. Whatever the number, when I turned off the highway to seek enlightenment, I was instantly lost.

Being lost in the USA is very different to being lost in Britain. In my homeland, if you are lost you just find a reasonably-sized road and follow it to the next garage -- five minutes, at most. If you got lost off the main highways in America, all signs and filling stations immediately seem to take shelter underground and can't be found for love or money, and you can end up travelling a hundred miles before you find a living being to ask directions. And usually, that being will speak only Spanish.

I continued down the road, surrounded by enough wheat to drown the world in breadcrumbs. My thoughts drifted, imagining soft, white, puffy crumbs of bread drifting down from the sky. They would bounce off the bonnet -- no, this was an American Ford, not a German-built one, so it would bounce off the hood and...
"Where are we going?"

I looked in the rearview mirror as a dirty face slowly hove into view as she sat up.

"I'm going to stop at the next police station. I won't say anything..."

She sniggered. "The next police station. Right. And what... you're expecting there'll be some guy in blue, with a dome head helmet, saying something like, ''Ello, 'ello, 'ello! What's goin' on 'ere then?' Dream on!"

Her Cockney accent was abysmal and it sounded as if she'd been dropped on her head as a baby. Even Dick van Dyke did it better. Her stereotyping riled me.

"No, I'm expecting some fat guy in khakis and a 200 gallon hat, with an M1 strapped on each hip inspecting us to make sure we're the right colour and saying something like 'What y'all hidin' there, boy?'"

"Ouch, that hurt," she sneered, but I saw a grin flash across her face. "This is not the Deep South, you know."

"How would I know that? I'm lost, the GPS isn't working, and I haven't seen another person in the last half hour apart from you. I can't ask for directions, and for all I know, we're about to cross the border into darkest Peru."

"You talk funny. Even for a gay English guy, you talk funny."

"No, I talk perfectly normally. You speak funny." Any moment now, we were going to get into 'your mother' insults. I eyed her in the mirror. Her face was really dirty, but her eyes were very green -- a dark green, almost emerald. Attractive really. "And I am not gay."

There was a moment's silence, then, "So how come you didn't fuck me when you had the chance then?"

I was gobsmacked, unable even to string a sentence together. The words had been thrown out offhandedly, but listening was a big part of my job and I could hear echo after echo of tension, anguish and fear. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment in despair at the ridiculous situation I'd got myself into. Then I remembered I was driving and opened them again.

I had two options here. I could tell her the truth; that she looked like she'd been slow-rolled across a heap of coal, smelled like a Gorgonzola-addicted badger and was on a par with a fifty year old heroin addict when it came to being sexually attractive; or I could be polite.

"I was a little tired," I said. I can't help it. I'm English. It's what we do. In Britain, every girl would immediately know what I meant by that was that she was a minger and had more chance of falling pregnant by email than getting fucked by me. I guess we speak in some sort of code of politeness at home. It avoids violence. Underneath that imperturbable exterior, the British are, by and large, a violent race, and even our children -- on learning that we as a people have been almost constantly at war with each other and the rest of the world for almost two thousand years -- take on that fact with equanimity and an attitude of 'Legend! Get stuck in there! Lemme at 'em!'

It was her turn to look nonplussed. I ignored her, too busy trying to ignore the smell, which seemed to be permeating through the car like treacle -- an inevitable flow that stuck to everything it touched.

I finally gave up, pulled off the road and turned off the engine. "You look as if you've had a long and very exciting day, running from... whomever or whatever it is that you're running from -- possibly a bar of soap. I have water in the boot. Why don't we rig up some sort of shower thing so you can at least feel clean again?"

"You think I'm running from something?" she demanded angrily. Her tone pressed a few of my buttons.

"Good Lord, no. I would never think that. No, I knew instantly that you're obviously doing some kind of super-long marathon dressed as a bag lady in order to entertain the massed spectators watching you every step of the way -- probably for some worthwhile charity like Save All Priests From Kids. And when you saw you'd fallen behind, you thought you'd just politely borrow a car to catch up again. Stupid of me really, not to immediately commend you on your efforts. I do beg your pardon!"

Hah! We're polite, but we do sarcasm to Olympic standards.

"You're mean," she declared after a moment. I maintained a dignified silence.

There was a long pause while she considered my earlier offer. "You have water in your boots?"

I sighed. "The trunk. In the trunk."

I got out and retrieved a plastic gallon jug of water that I had stowed there against breakdowns. I'd been warned when I picked up the rental that, where I was going, mobile phone coverage was patchy, at best, and the heat was ever-present. I opened her door and held up the jug invitingly.

"You'll feel better."

"Nuh-uh," she grumbled into the blanket that she held around her like a shield. "You'll drive off and leave me here."

"I wouldn't. It would be rude. Besides, I didn't think you wanted to be in the car with me."

"I wanted your car. You weren't supposed to be part of the deal."

I thought about that and took the keys from the ignition, pocketing them. I might have just put an idea into her head and didn't want to find myself stranded.

"Come on," I ordered. "Out!"

"Not a chance!"

I lost my temper. "Get out of the car and wash! You stink like a fox in heat, dressed in a heavy fur coat that was used to clean the decks of the ark -- after all the animals disembarked! My nose is trying to crawl down the back of my shirt in defence. Now move!"

I grabbed the woolly hat off her head and threw it onto the ground at my feet, half expecting that the bugs I was sure had made their home in there would promptly lift it up over their heads and race off through the grass with it.

I wasn't expecting the mass of golden-red hair that dropped from beneath it as I dragged it away. Okay, the hair was matted and dull, and probably as filthy as the rest of her, but the colour and volume of it was certainly unexpected, to say the least. I'd never seen hair that colour before. It was a melange of copper, bronze and gold. She had precious metals for hair. No wonder I was stunned.

"That's my fucking hat!" she yelled, abandoning the blanket and clambering out to grab the filthy scrap. I quickly slammed the door closed behind her and pressed the button on the fob.

She heard the security beep from the car and turned to grab the handle, only to find it locked. Then she looked at me, tears collecting in her eyes.

"Please don't leave me here," she begged.

"Oh for Gods' sakes," I grumbled. "I won't leave you here. I wouldn't do that. But I'm not taking you a single centimetre further until you clean off a little -- it doesn't have to be a lot, just something a little more profound than a cat-lick with a wet wipe."

"You're just trying to get me naked!" she accused. She had a hair-trigger temper. Shit! Another one!

"Oh, be still my heart! The prospect of seeing a scarecrow with no clothes on has me all a-shiver, my lady. Us farmyard peasants just can't control ourselves when faced with temptations like that! It's just not fair on us, yer worship!" I frowned at her and offered her the jug once more. "Hold that. Don't let your smell melt the plastic."

I wasn't sure whether she was more offended at my crack about her smell, or the scarecrow bit. I wasn't a woman, so I had no idea of how the ranking of insults worked in the little black book of 'things men do and say that really piss us off.'

I opened my suitcase, dragged out a pair of shorts and two tee-shirts and tossed them to her. She had been taking a long drink from the bottle, and had to juggle things a little to catch them while not spilling, but it did distract her from trying to kill me with venomous bolts of lightning from her eyes. At least that's what I imagined she'd been attempting by the way her frown screwed up her face.

"Use one of the shirts to wash yourself clean. You can wear the other. And wear the shorts as well. Those knickers are not coming within twenty feet of this car from now on."

"Do you have any shampoo?" she asked, as if we were in a hotel bathroom. I started laughing at the incongruity. What else could I do?

"You'll have to wait until we get to a police station," I smiled.

She gave me a snarky grin. "I don't think that the Sheriff normally lets the public use the showers in the Station House."

I let that one go. Hey this wasn't Rome, so I didn't have to do as the Romans do. Or say.

"You'll have to wait then."

There was a long, pregnant pause which seemed to get closer to term the longer it went on.

"So... Turn around!" she said.

I thought about that for all of a split second. "Not a chance. The last time you were behind me you threatened to shoot me in the face. With a stick. A stick! Hah!"

I sniggered and she glared at me, and then flounced around to the other side of the car, dumping the jug and clothes on the boot. When she was as far out of my view as she could get, she peeled off the shirt and bent over, drawing off her panties.

I couldn't help it.

"The driver of that car's probably appreciating the view," I mentioned, nodding my head towards the road.

She gave a little squeak and raced back around to my side of the car, crouching down and bobbing up every now and again to try to see which direction the mythical car was coming from.

Her figure was... unexpected. She had small, round, slightly freckled breasts, so pale that I could see the minute blue veins beneath the skin. Her areolae were small and coral coloured, with bulls-eyes of petite, slightly darker nipples the hue of demerara sugar, which were as perky as the day is long. Her chest narrowed to a trim waist and then widened to hips that drew the eye around to the back where a bum as pert as her nipples was on display, bringing to mind the apple that Paris gave to Aphrodite, and which promptly kicked off the Trojan War. All things considered; a bit skinny and way too dirty for my tastes, but still superb.

I then caught a glimpse of that magical colour at the junction of her thighs and felt a shiver run through me.

Somewhat shame-facedly, I cleared my throat. "Sorry. That was a stupid joke. I wasn't..."

I stopped short. I was. I couldn't deny it.

I held my hands out to the side. "Sorry."

"Pervert!" she declared. Crouching there, she looked at me for an infinite moment and evidently came to a decision. She heaved a long sigh. "Fine."

With that one word, I seemed to have been dismissed as a threat. She stood up in all her glory, retrieved the clothes and water and blithely began to wash herself off in front of me. The shirt she chose as a wash cloth was a fine white Lacoste polo shirt that had set me back almost a ton in Regent Street. I'd meant for her to wear that one, and I think that's why she chose it and kept the cheaper Asics generic to wear -- just to piss me off. You try and be nice to people and... ah, what the hell. I never wore it, anyway. I never went anywhere posh enough to need it.

Making clear my intentions were not those of a cad and a bounder, I circled around well away from her as I went to the boot, scratched around in my suitcase and drew out a bottle of my favourite shower gel. I sighed. It was exclusive to one London shop, and if it ran out I would have to use the local stuff, which didn't show much promise, by what I had seen in the shops so far.

"Here," I said, stretching out my arm to keep the rest of me as far away and non-threatening as possible. Her whisper still haunted me. There'd been serious damage done to her at some stage, and while I didn't mind insulting her, I didn't want to actually spook her into running off completely naked into the wild blue yonder. Then I'd be forced to follow her and somehow get her back -- and knowing her even as little as I did, I guessed that it would probably mean carrying her over my shoulder. "If you want to use that on your hair, it should be fine. I hope so, anyway."

She nodded at me with a neutral expression, splodged some liquid soap into the palm of one hand and tried to tip water onto her hair with the other. A gallon is quite heavy and her wrists seemed finely boned. I took it from her and began to pour.

"Thank you."

When her hair was a mass of soap bubbles and she'd rubbed, scratched and finger-combed through it to her heart's content, I rinsed it off, marvelling at the nasty colour of the water. On the plus side, as it ran down over her face, it washed away what I'd thought was a bruise from my wild swing. I guess she wasn't as delicate as I'd imagined, and my poorly aimed blow had seemingly just smudged the dirt together into one place, rather than doing any real damage; which was a relief to my self-image as a gentleman and a scholar. To be honest, it was a fairly solitary image that was evinced only by me, and my sister Janie had even invented the word Moronerd -- combining moron and nerd -- to describe me more succinctly; at least whenever I was in earshot. She loved me, and that's what sisters do to show their affection -- insult and belittle their brothers as much as humanly possible. That and sometimes give me surprise hugs and a kiss on the cheek when no one could see her with her facade dropped. Naturally, I loved her in return and spent probably far too many hours trying to come up with insults that would cut her down to size. It was almost universally a waste of time.

"So what's your name? I can't keep thinking of you as my private goblin," I half-joked. I hadn't forgotten the threat to shoot my face off.

"Summer," she said after a moment, still bent over and her voice muffled as she worked the dirt out of her locks. I pursed my lips in thought. It was a pretty, if fairly uncommon name. It could be the work of overly hippy and feminist-orientated parents. Or she could be some sort of nature worshipper in disguise. How could I know? It probably wasn't her real name anyway.

"What's yours?" she asked after a few minutes more effort on her amazing hair.

"Bryn," I said, annoyed as I heard that note of anxiety in my voice that sometimes popped in when I introduced myself to strangers. It was an echo from my youth, when all the other kids had made it out to be the weirdest and silliest name in the world, and kindly let me know their feelings on the matter in no uncertain terms.

"Brian?" she asked, still hidden behind the veil of hair.

"Bryn, with a 'y'," I explained. "It rhymes with tin."

"Ah, Bran."

"Bryn like tin, not Bran like can," I averred. I'd heard it all before and had the answers on the tip of my tongue.

For a moment, I wasn't sure what the noise was that came from behind the copper-gold curtain. But then I recognised it.

She had giggled. I hadn't expected that.

She squeezed out her hair when it was finally rinsed, then jerked her head up and sent the whole lot swinging up and over her head to settle all the way down her back, reminding me of that photograph of a woman surfacing from the sea with her hair captured in a wide fan for posterity.

"Towel?" she asked hopefully.

"Sorry, milady. The maid hasn't yet brought them through from the laundry room." I used my best Parker voice, the puppet butler and driver to Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds. It went down like a loud fart during that tense silence surrounding a serve for match point at Wimbledon.

She raised her eyebrows and shook her head slightly in question. I didn't feel the need to explain the joys of my childhood television experiences.

"Sorry, drip dry service only, today," I said.



"Okay," she replied. I noticed that she was still watching me carefully from the corner of her eye. She was prepared to trust me, but only to a point. She poured soap onto my sopping designer polo shirt and washed the rest of her body, sighing with relief as great swathes of dirt were shifted back to the earth where they belonged.

"How did you get so dirty," I asked, eventually. I'd tried to keep my syndrome at bay as much as possible, desperately not wanting to know anything about her at all. It had sneaked up and mugged me when I wasn't watching, apparently with far more success than she had managed.

She paused in scrubbing at her left hip and thigh to consider the question, obviously not wanting to give me too much detail. I tried not to look at the area she was washing, but that colour kept drawing my eyes back, like some sort of golden-copper optical magnet.

"I slept in the fields," she said finally.

"When you say that, do you mean you took a nap, or that you were in permanent residence?"

"I slept several nights in the fields."

I felt my eyebrows shoot up. "Wow, now that's some pretty hardcore survivalist stuff."

It actually was. I'd been told that days in June were hot in Kansas, but that nights could get fairly chilly. I had no idea of what predators infested wheat fields, but I guessed there had to be some. Rats were the first thing that came to mind.

"I dug a hole and covered myself with leaves, to prevent sunburn, and keep warm at night. I think they'd sprayed fertiliser recently, so I kinda stink."

That explained the smell and dirt then.

"No fire?"

She gave a rueful snort. "Nothing to light a fire with -- and lighting a fire in a field of dry wheat is a quick way to get really toasty... really toasty!"

I nodded, and then thought of something.

"So what did you eat?"

There was another of those pauses. "Well, not much really. The wheat isn't ripe, and I didn't have a millstone handy anyway."

"Shit, Summer, how long since you last ate?" I asked, disturbed.

"What's today?"

"Tuesday."

"Four days."

"Christ!" I said, aghast. With my history, going without food for that long was anathema. "And water?"

"I found a hose -- part of a sprinkler system, I think -- that still had some in it. It was pretty warm and rank, but it was wet."

Fuck, she'd yanked on that trigger within me like it was set on full auto. I had to fight the urge to gather her into my arms, but I recognised it for what it was, and managed to quash it.

"Damn! Look, never mind the washing bit, just drink the water -- as much as you need. Drink it all."

"I'm okay," she smiled. "Don't worry. I drank some earlier."

As she rinsed off the soap, I couldn't help fussing. I just couldn't stop myself. For some reason, I became convinced that if she bent over too much she would probably keel over from lack of food and water. I unlocked the car and made her sit on the passenger seat with her legs out of the door. Then I took the cloth and washed her feet and lower legs, rinsing them carefully. She watched me with an odd look on her face.

"There you go, love," I said, capping the water bottle to keep the last few mouthfuls safe. I leaned forward towards her knees and sniffed. "All nice and clean."

She burst into laughter. "Did you just smell my pussy?"

I felt my face ignite into flame. I hadn't even thought about it. I'd just wanted to check that the awful smell had gone and leaned forward to do it.

"You did! You smelled my pussy." The more crimson I got with embarrassment, the more her laughter ramped up.

"No! I didn't... I didn't mean to... I mean I wasn't trying... ah, shit."

Her laughter continued, slowly growing louder and morphing into what sounded like the genesis of hysteria, and then suddenly she was crying -- great heaving sobs that racked her chest and shook her whole body.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I muttered, absolutely mortified, although I did realise that it wasn't my apparent truffle hunting in the wrong area that had caused this.

Tears were streaming down her face and dripping off her chin, her cheeks shining wet in the sunlight. I patted her shoulder and she blindly held her arms out to me.

Again, it was the trigger. I knew it was wrong, but I could no more leave her like that than I could suffocate myself by simply trying not to breathe.

I took her hands and drew her towards me. As I did so, she leapt forward out of the car and wrapped her arms around me, holding me impossibly tightly for someone so small, and crying so hard it felt as if things were breaking, tearing and shattering inside her.
There I was in Kansas, the start of the road to Oz, somehow standing by the side of a lane through a desert of golden wheat, holding on tightly to a small naked woman who had recently tried to mug me. This wasn't who I was. I knew that. I'm British, and we don't do that sort of thing; at least not in public.

I knew it didn't mean anything to her, it was just a need for comfort -- a human touch in a time of desperation. I still had no idea of what and why and how, but the last few days must have been a nightmare for her. I knew that she had been hiding out from someone or something, that much was blatantly obvious, but why she hadn't gone straight to the authorities was anyone's guess at this stage. Perhaps a rabid boyfriend or stalker, or possibly criminals of some sort were after her -- or maybe she was the criminal and was hiding out from the authorities. All that was apart from the fact that she'd been abused in some way.

Desperate not to send any messages of weirdness, I just held her tightly to me with one arm, and simply stroked her wet hair with the other hand; combing my fingers through it very slowly and gently from her scalp all the way down her back.

The problem started when she began to gently rock, as if subconsciously longing for a return to infancy, to a time when being rocked in a cradle, a mother's arms, or on a father's lap meant comfort and peace. That was her need.

However, my need was quite different. In my reality my cock was urgently trying to alert me to the fact that a naked woman with a fairly stunning body was pressed firmly against me from my knees to my chest. That was one thing. The rocking was quite another -- it was a simulacrum of sex.

I wasn't filthy rich, but I was comfortably well off, despite all my ex-wife's efforts to the contrary. I wasn't ugly, overweight, particularly stupid or trying to hide baldness, so I hadn't been practicing to be a virgin recently, either. I'd had a few short-term relationships in the past from those wounded birds I couldn't resist, and I wasn't desperate. Besides, I was my own right-hand man.

In that moment, however, I felt like a man who had been locked away from every aspect of the fairer sex for the past ten years, while forced to continually wear boxing gloves. I felt an extreme anxiety within me -- a desperation almost -- to simply take this woman, throw her to the ground and use her, and for her to use me, for a long, hard time.

Somehow -- I don't know how -- I knew she would have allowed that; she might have hated it, but wouldn't have fought me; perhaps because I was trying to be nice, despite us getting off on the wrong foot, but more likely because she had been forced to react that way to an authority figure, and right now, that was me.

My erection felt like someone had attached a crowbar to my scrotum and drawn a happy face on the front end of it. It felt as if it was alive within my jeans, straining and struggling to find an opening within the material -- even just a few loose threads that it could peremptorily break through, bursting into the light and then onward, into the contrasting, welcoming darkness within her.

She looked up at me, her face still wet and streaked with tears. Her eyes were steady on mine, wider than normal, the pupils seeming hugely dilated. Those eyes contained a message -- a ciphered message I was desperate to read but didn't dare decode. At that moment, with the dirt that had muddied my view of her now washed away, I thought that she was quite lovely. However, naked women often look beautiful to the men they are pressed up against, and I knew I had to fight against the Knighthood within me.

"Summer," I whispered helplessly. I had met her less than an hour before, but it felt as if we had spent a lifetime in conflict together; an aeon of emotion. She didn't blink, her eyes still locked on mine.

I have no idea why I did it, except for the fact that I didn't know what else to do.

I sang to her.

"Out of my depth, in too deep / drowning in the rolling waves / I call to you / I call your name."

The words seem stark and trite when written down on paper, but the tune was a pretty one and despite my voice, seemed to carry my feelings of confusion and fear, desire and desperation. I made the shift into the minor key.

"In the dark deeps / sinking into the blue / I look to the light above / I call out to you."

Trite or not, they seemed to have an effect on her. Her lips parted, the tip of a pink tongue just touching the centre of a generous bottom lip, before darting back into hiding.

"What was that called?" she whispered.

"Wavelength," I replied.

The answer seemed to satisfy her. She seemed to consider for a moment, and then she kissed me, very lightly, her lips unmoving against mine. We held that position for what seemed an age, while in actuality just a few seconds strolled by relentlessly. Then she drew back and placed a tiny hand to my cheek.

"Told you -- a pervert!" she whispered. A smile flashed across her face, and a wave of gladness swept through me that no matter what she had gone through, she wasn't completely broken, and I hadn't added to that injury.

"Goblin!" I whispered back, and with sheer force of will, let my arms fall to my sides. "Get some clothes on before you get us both arrested."

She sniggered. "They won't arrest me. I'll tell them you threw water all over me, got me naked and then wouldn't let me in the car after using me most grievously."

"I hardly consider a hug to be grievous usage," I protested mildly, and then snorted. "As for the rest: no fair using partial truths to lie through your teeth. And grievously? Do people really talk like that here?"

She smirked, and didn't answer. I turned away, again having to force myself to do it. Then I thought of something and went to the boot. When I returned, she had the all-too-big shorts on and was using some kind of feminine magic to cinch and knot them tight around her waist. Her still naked breasts bobbled like delicious jellies as she struggled to draw the knot tight, and she finally had to clap her hands to break my attention away from them.

"Oh, right. Sorry," I said automatically, willing myself not to blush again. I held out the hairbrush I had in my hand. "I thought you might need this."

She took it, faking a frown. "This is yours. You got cooties?"

"I don't even know what cooties are," I confessed. "I guess they're a type of what... an American disease? Nits? Fleas?"

"I'll risk it," she said, her tone offhand but her expression showing pleasure at the gift.

"Got a cap?" she asked as she started to brush the waves of still-damp hair. "I need a cap. Or I could..."

She glanced pointedly at the scrap of filthy wool on the ground where I had thrown it. I shuddered. "No way! Not a chance! That's never coming back in this car."

"Then I need a cap."

"You don't want to leave your hair to dry?" I asked, reluctant to see that gorgeous mane hidden away.

"No, I need a cap. Give me a cap. Or I take the hat." Her mood had grown dark again, very quickly.

Okay -- that was strange, but then the whole day was more than strange. Two complete strangers, each knowing nothing whatsoever about the other, having an emotional moment after being locked in battle, viciously cursing each other. Her insistence on covering her beautiful hair was perfectly logica,l in comparison.

I thought for a moment, and then it was back to the boot once more for another search-dive into my suitcase. Successful, I handed it to her and she unfolded the square of silk.

"It's a handkerchief. My sister gave it to me as a joke. She says she's determined to transform me into a gentleman. I don't think she's backed a winner on that one."

Summer held it up, the pale blue almost transparent in the afternoon sunlight.

"It's beautiful," she said quietly. She gathered her hair together, made what looked like mystical movements over her head, and suddenly her hair was bound up in a bun. She covered it with the handkerchief, knotting it at the back.

"Ooh, fifties chic," I commented. "Very classy."

She struggled into the oversized shirt I'd given her, looking amused at my comment. I was less pleased, as her actions meant those pretty little breasts were now hidden from view. I had really enjoyed feasting my eyes on those whenever she hadn't been looking.

"We need to talk," I said after a moment. The irony that it was me saying that made my stomach clench up, and I put it off. "We need to do it while finding you something to eat. Let's go!"

She looked more than relieved when I ran around, threw the trash in the boot, slammed it shut, and got in behind the wheel. As I swung back on to the road and accelerated up, I got a glimpse of her face and the expression there made it seem like she'd just been granted a reprieve, rather than a ride.

We drove for a while, the tension seeming to build up between us once more, her mood now bleak and cold.

"So, where's the nearest reasonably good place to eat?" I asked, trying to break the silence.

"Dunno. I'm not from around here."

"Oh. Where're you from?"

She waved a hand towards my side window, but pointedly said nothing.

Okay, that went well.

"Got a surname?"

"No!"

"Ah, bar sinister then," I sighed. She turned and stared at me.

"I'm not going into any bars," she said sternly.

"No, that's not... It means illegitimate. It's from heraldry. You know, the left-handed bar across the shield..."

I stumbled into silence; strike two - or two wickets down in the first over, depending on your place of birth.

I tried to think of something neutral to say.

"So, you hang out and hijack cars around here often? Is it a local custom?"

"What? Stop asking me questions! Especially stupid ones." Her tone was hostile. So was mine.

"An hour ago you were trying to hijack me, and now I'm actually giving you a lift to get food. I think I'm owed an answer or two, don't you?"

"Fine!" she said, her voice carrying a flounce that couldn't have been plainer if she'd stamped her foot, crossed her legs and arms and glared at me. She didn't actually do those, but it was all there in what was left unsaid.

"Fine!" I shot back. "What's your real name? Why are you a fugitive and from whom? And how the hell did I end up giving you a lift after you threatened to kill me?"

"Nothing to do with you!" she yelled.

"It has everything to do with me!" I shouted back, losing it once again. "For all I know a convoy of police cars could tuck onto my tail any moment now -- threatening to shoot me if I didn't hand you over. Or even worse, some wise-guy with a toothpick in his mouth and an ice pick in his hand could invite me to go somewhere quiet for a special conversation. And I don't even know your real fucking name!"

She hesitated and then sagged into the seat. "Fine! But you tell me something about you first. All I know about you is that you managed to fight me off and then kind of abducted me. Oh, and your name rhymes with tin. For all I know you could be some kind of rapist and murderer!"

"No, because then I'd be wearing a cap with the words 'rapist and murderer' written on it, wouldn't I?" I came back, with a silent apology to Marty Feldman for stealing part of his joke.

She stared at me in bewilderment. To be fair, she certainly wasn't the first girl to give me that look. There was a long line of girls who'd worn that same expression when faced by my sense of humour, all the way back to Angela Fowler in primary school.

I shook my head. "Sorry, it's something my family do. We take parts of comedy routines and adlib them into situations. You have to be in on the joke to get it. If you were part of my family, you'd be rolling in the aisles by now."

"I can only imagine," she said dryly.

I sighed. "Okay, my name is Bryn Idris Lake, I was born in England, I'm divorced and I'm here for a business meeting in Wichita, with a little sight-seeing along the way."

"How's that working for you?" she asked, her expression neutral.

I knew she was talking about the sight-seeing, but I was still a little pissed at her. "The name is a pain in the arse -- my mother had some pretty Welsh names picked out for her little girl when she arrived, and when I disappointingly turned out to be a boy, she just stuck with the Celtic. I'm very happy being English, and very unhappy at having an ex-wife. The business meeting is a formality, and so far, all the sights I've seen have been related to wheat or corn in some way. There! Happy now?"

She digested that for a few minutes.

"You're divorced?"

"Oh no. I told you things about me. Your turn."

"My name is Charlotte Kennedy," she said grudgingly, watching me carefully as if to catch my reaction. The name meant nothing to me, so my reaction was self-limiting.

I waited. "That's it? That's all you're giving me?"

"I only asked you to tell me one thing," she said blithely. "You volunteered the rest. You don't look old enough to be married. Tell me about your ex-wife."

I sank down into my seat. "I'm almost twenty eight. I've known her since I was at school. We got together at university. She fell pregnant. I married her. She turned into the bitch from hell. I divorced her."

"You have a child?"

"No. She had a miscarriage. Except she didn't."

"That doesn't make sense."

"No, it didn't to me either. Where are you from?"

"California."

"North or South?"

"North. Sacramento."

"You're a long way from home," I said, trying to get a conversation going that included more than four words.

"I guess. What did you mean about the miscarriage?"

"She told me she was pregnant. Shortly after we were married -- when she was four months along and about to have ultrasound scans done, she told me she'd miscarried. A couple of years later, I found out that she'd never been pregnant. It had all been a lie."

She stared at me. "Wow! That must have really hurt, both when she told you and when you found out the truth."

"Yes."

There was another thoughtful pause.

"Why?"

"Why did she lie? I think it was economics. I do okay financially, and looking back, I think she just wanted an easy ride after she graduated university."

"You loved her?"

"Everybody loved Phoebe. Loving her was my mistake."

"So what happened?"

"We married and were happy as pigs in blankets, until a little piece of refuse disguised as a small, weedy, low-life human being came along and convinced her that she had a better future with him than with me. Think foul, but smaller."

"Shit."

"Ah, that's the word I was looking for. Thank you. He was a little shit, and he shat all over my life."

There was a long silence while she considered this.

"I need more detail than that."

I sighed.

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Loose arrow, fly

Sight on sight

Let murder by

Into the night

Of war.

Hold back the Horde (B. Lake) 2008

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

INTERLUDE

To understand why Phoebe did what she did, crushing my soul and leaving me barren of feelings, someone would have to understand a little more about me than I'm usually comfortable in revealing.

When I got my first laptop, I used to write songs in the woods behind the village. My song writing was my private thing, and I definitely didn't want that to get around, so it was better to do it far away from human earshot. I'd played something for my grandma once, and she'd said how proud she was that I had a nice little hobby; which was patronising, at best. I'd later heard my parents agreeing with her, and wishing that I could get interested in doing something useful -- something they could be proud of, which, I have to admit, hurt a lot.

None of my family was musical, and none of them really understood or took my ambitions seriously; not even Janie, my sister. If she ever heard me playing one of my own compositions, she'd memorise the words and then sing them back to me in front of other people, pulling faces and singing it wrong until everyone was laughing. She could be mean at times, could Janie. At least she didn't tell people I wrote the words and composed the tune. Her meanness only went so far.

Janie was the world's worst music critic. Well, she used to be. Now -- not so much. Not since...

As a twelve-year-old kid, I was the most miserable person in the world. I was huge. I was so huge that I had my own gravity system -- little kids getting pulled into orbit around me and circling endlessly until rescued by an adult. My belly appeared around corners before the rest of me, and my arse remained in view when the rest of me had already negotiated that corner.

I got hit a lot. Not hit on. Just hit -- especially on my gut or my arse. Oh, and my moobs were an especially favoured target for some of the nastier kids. Believe me, it's hard to impress a girl even enough to get them not to sneer at you when some kids half your size are grabbing at your man-boobs and comparing them to hers. No friends at all then; never mind dates. Not ever. My size seemed to bring out the bully in everyone -- even the nicer kids. It was as if my bulk alone offended them on some very basic level.

Even my own mother would look at me and tut, usually when I needed bigger clothes, and she was a large part of the problem.

Mum came from a really poor family, and I found out later -- when I was adult enough to have really honest conversations with her -- that they often went without food, usually when her dad had drunk his way through his wage packet as soon as he got it, and then pissed away the proceeds of that up against a wall in some alley. When she had me, she was more than determined that her first-born would never go hungry.

Right from the start, I was almost force fed. Even Italian families, who in my experience try to feed everyone who steps foot in their house with at least twice as much food as they need or want, would have been shocked by the amount of food she shovelled into me. And the food itself? Well, my mother seemed to consider anything in the salad family an invitation by the devil to starve her family to death, and any vegetable was treated with extreme suspicion. If it wasn't rich with butter and cream, fats and carbohydrates, then it wasn't worth the effort of eating it. Over-compensation of course - it was obvious to anyone who knew her history. Not a lot of people did.

It's astonishing that I didn't end up with at least one of the premier forms of diabetes. I mean, I'd heard her in full-on rows with the local doctor about my weight -- her trying to convince him about the size of my bones, he trying to convince her that I was becoming a danger to an orderly solar system -- and both of them ending up angry and frustrated. She'd whisk me back home and make a special lunch or dinner for me -- heavy with great tasting but wildly unhealthy food. If I ever said I wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat, she would turn on the water works. Let's face it; no boy wants to make his mother cry.

When I turned ten and was the size of a sixteen-year-old, Mum calmed down, mostly because my seven year old sister would very loudly and determinedly refuse to eat any more than she wanted -- and still remained alarmingly healthy, despite all Mum's fears. Her relaxing was partly because my dad did pretty well at work and none of us were ever in danger of going without, and partly because she finally learned from Janie's blithe disregard that it was okay not to stuff kids like they were geese and you fancied some really good pâté. She gave up on her mission objectives to give me the status of a moon, but it was too late for me by then. I had established patterns of eating, and seemed determined to hit the grave before I hit the legal driving age. Biscuits and crisps at bed time after a big pasta meal, hot salted chips with pizza for lunch, a chocolate bar or three for dessert after a rich breakfast, and a bag of sweets to nibble on throughout the day -- all with Mum's tacit and explicit approval.
Part of my growing up was the realisation that she lied to me non-stop. Everyday... Everyday! I would head for the front door on my way to school, and she would grab me for a hug and a kiss, and tell me I was her beautiful boy. Over her shoulder, in the full-length hall mirror, I could see the back of her, and parts of me hanging out on each side of her. How could she possibly consider me beautiful?

Of course, I was miserable from the time I woke up to the time I fell asleep -- sometimes halfway through a snack. Because inevitably, the fatter I got, the more miserable I became -- and the more unhappy I became, the more I would turn to food to try and find even the smallest measure of pleasure I craved in my bleak life.

By thirteen I'd turned completely inward, staying silent unless absolutely compelled to say something to someone at school. I still needed to release my inner voice somewhere, anywhere, so I began to write poetry -- which was awful, and then songs -- which were better. I loved writing those. Somehow, when I wrote the words down, I would hear voices singing the tune behind them -- clear and pure and clean in my head. They were usually women's voices, and I sometimes wondered about those women, but allowed that they were probably muses. Those were the easiest to remember, and I'd carefully pick out the notes on my guitar. After a while, all I needed was a trusty hound, and I could have been a tramp and busked for food -- although I would have needed to busk 24/7 in order to keep me fed. I don't know how the dog would have survived.

I was solitary, so I turned to my second great love; my little magic box, which sat on my desk and hummed quietly to itself 24 hours a day, no matter what Dad said about his electric bill. I'd discovered that most computer equipment failures happened during the powering up and down stages, so the hell with doing that! It was too valuable to me. I mean, who wants to lose their one and only friend just because of a few pennies on an electric bill?

Being a loner, of course I got into every aspect of programming. I mean, I was truly alone but for my sister, and she could only stand having a boy around her for limited periods at that stage of her life. Besides, what else was I going to do -- nip out for a game of football, or do a few laps at the local swimming baths? I could have been effective as a goalkeeper, the opposition would probably never have the space to squeeze the ball past me, as I probably could have filled that goal from side to side. In the pool, I stood a good chance of being harpooned. I was sentenced to the worst of nerd lives.

To combine my two hobbies, I wrote a program. I ran it and tried singing and playing one of my compositions to my electronic friend. Dissatisfied, I tried again, and the program got bigger and bigger as I rewrote the code three more times, importing and adapting free code posted online by other programmers. The next time I played my guitar to it -- as badly as ever -- it faithfully recorded the sound and then allowed me to alter just about everything about it until my playing sounded almost as good as Knopfler, Page, either of the Hawkins, or Santana -- and I was still trying to step it up to try and get even near to Hendrix. I kept at it and added whole sections to the program to allow me to artificially add other instruments; strings, brass, percussion -- pretty much anything I wanted.

I became a keyboard player -- even if it was only a computer keyboard. I kept improving the program, spending days writing and rewriting code, and even more time with headphones clamped on tight, playing and perfecting music I'd composed.

It was around my sixteenth birthday that I finally accepted that with my voice, I was never going to make it as a singer. Britain's Got Talent would just have to eat its heart out when I didn't turn up to audition. I was a bit sad about that: I'd seen a video of a duo called Jonathon and Charlotte on that programme and if he'd had a lot less hair, a couple of pounds more fat, and a much worse voice -- he could have been me. She was hot! If he could get together with a girl like that with just his voice, perhaps even I could. That is, except for one thing: his voice could grace any opera hall in the world and mine sounded more like a goose farting in a colander.

I had needs! Basically, I just really, really wanted to be with a girl I wasn't related to at some stage -- just to see what they actually felt like, even in a non-sexual way. I had the idea that they probably felt smooth and soft underneath those clothes. I knew most of them were pretty and all of them were mostly mean, but they usually smelt really good -- I knew that as my sister had friends who would call round, although I would hibernate in my room whenever they did to try and avoid offence.

I was writing songs that I would never sing, until one Sunday morning, I woke up with a strange notion rattling around in my head. I watched a whole lot of YouTube videos that day to get things right in my mind, and carefully rewrote one of my songs, changing the key and the tempo. I added a few cellos and a marimba to the opening backing track, and then recorded it, adding full orchestral background to the chorus and adjusting the words to fit the need as I went along.

On Monday I posted a CD and an accompanying letter through the local letter box on the way to school, and settled down to my miserable life once more.

I know now that it was an idiotic thing to do. It was never going to be heard. Not a chance in a million would anyone take any notice of a CD from an unknown source.

It turned out I was number one million and one.

I discovered later that the secretary whose job it was to open unwanted mail and chuck it in the bin, misread my odd name and confused me with Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. With him in mind, she listened to the CD and then forwarded it to the music editor whose job it was to evaluate new possibilities. The secretary had done her research and attached a memo, noting that she thought it was a decent ballad, and that Greg Lake had had success writing some pretty good songs in the past, after he separated from ELP. She'd also noted the recommendation in my letter as to whom the song was designed and written for. The editor took a listen and agreed, forwarding the CD on to Robbie Williams' agents. They listened to it in turn, realised that it was a good fit for him and -- with the now-absent Gary Barlow being the main song-writing contributor to most of Take That's hits -- decided that my composition might help keep his solo career at the top of the hit parade, or at least out there and being taken seriously.

It turns out that it was the accounts department who first discovered the error. They had gone back and checked my letter to confirm the address of Greg Lake's agent, so they could send out the standard contract and a cheque to lock it down. That's when the shit hit the fan -- of a jet engine! Who the fuck was this Bryn Lake guy?

They'd already spent a whole lot of money and time on studios, musicians and backup singers, as well as engineers and a producer. Hell, the music video was almost completed -- and the budget for that was already spent!

The studio, the label reps and Mr Williams' agency got together in a panic for an emergency meeting. They'd spent all this money on the assumption that they were operating under a standard music agency agreement with someone they had worked with before -- even if it was a long time ago. Now they had to talk to some unknown wild card, without even a contract signed. Of course, it didn't help that Robbie liked the song and didn't want to discard it. The label had signed him in the biggest music deal ever seen in Britain up until then, and knew they would have to treat him with kid gloves for a while until they got their investment back. The blame went round and around that meeting table a couple of dozen times, before they gingerly decided to go with it and see what came out the other end.

When I got a contract in the post a few months later -- at best expecting an automatic rejection slip of some sort -- read it, and eventually woke up again, I turned to my electronic friend for advice. In the end, online research led me to phone a Mr Paul 'Call-me-Lappies' Labuschagne and ask him to represent me in the matter. Once he understood what I was saying and that there was already a contract out there for me to sign and -- even better -- that no further effort was required from him on my behalf to get it sold, he set aside his disbelief and became really enthusiastic about adding me to the string of songwriters and musicians on his books.

Lappies was a South African ex-pat, who had moved to Britain in the nineties and started up a small, but very effective agency. Initially, he signed up everyone that had a shred of talent in the entertainment industry, but quickly refined it to music -- his first love -- although happy to keep representing those in other fields that he had already signed up. He was a big Afrikaner with a strong accent, a huge smile and the ability to get people to like him very quickly. Behind the smile, he was intelligent, trustworthy, honourable and very, very crafty. His business quickly became successful.

I signed with him, although I didn't sign that particular contract with the record label in the end. Lappies had a meeting with them and -- having discovered through contacts that the song was all done and dusted, part of an album ready to ship out and hit the music stores and internet within the week -- he basically sneered at their contract and settled down to negotiate something far better for the two of us.

I signed a better contract, instead. For him it was a cut of a higher percentage. For me, it was my name as sole writer on a song which quickly climbed up the hit parade. I didn't get paid an option, and had to wait almost a year before I saw any real money, but then the automatic royalties system kicked in and cheques rolled in regularly each month. Lappies loved it. So did I.

My sister, whom I'd sworn to secrecy on pain of death and telling everyone she still wore My Little Pony onesies to bed each night, stopped taking the mickey out of my songs and even promised me her first born if I would just introduce her to Robbie Williams. Sadly for her, I never met him -- or anyone else at his label. Unfairly, I was put on some shit list with them for several years until my folio of hit songs grew too big to ignore.

Despite their desire to broadcast the success of their strange lonely son to family and friends, my parents were sworn to secrecy, as well, much to their chagrin. They understood the reason. They could see from any newspaper they cared to read that fame tended to do weird stuff to people when it first happened, and knew that I was both too young and too locked inside myself to handle that sort of nonsense. I got to see that up-close way better than I ever wished.

I wanted to keep my songs to myself.

I'd listen to girls singing it at school, or dancing to it while sharing it on their iPods or phones, and keep a small smile of satisfaction to myself. The success of that song gave me some self-belief, self-confidence and self-awareness. Not a lot, but enough that when combined with the money I got when the royalty payments started coming in every month, it got me masses of gym time with a personal trainer and dietician. Over the next two years, I cried a lot when I was alone -- from the pain throughout my body, from exhaustion and from loneliness. However, the fat melted away to be replaced by a modicum of muscle, and when the trainer finally gave me a nod of respect, I was ready for university and a degree in computer sciences -- although I was still not really ready for girls.

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Take the burden

Carry the weight

Dodging the eye

Away from the light

Make it work hard

Keep it sightless of fate

Pay it dear and precious

Always, (always, always) out of that sight

Rings (B. Lake) 2005

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Zero hour +1

Summer and I were lost in a crossword. At least that's how it felt. Intersections would appear every couple of miles, forming a never-ending grid of regimented crops with no sign of civilisation on either side. I guessed that even wheat needed roads to get to mills, feed stores and bakeries, but I couldn't swear to it as there was no sign of any of those as we drove on and on.

Summer, or more correctly Charlotte, had lapsed into a sullen silence after I regaled her with the story of how I first got a date with Phoebe; her hearing me working on a song in the woods, stopping to chat -- and to my astonishment, admiring my work. I had persuaded her to sing along and recorded her voice, and as a reward promised her pizza. I'd stopped at that point -- getting lost in memory.

More worryingly than Summer's attitude, I realised that she was sliding her butt forward and slumping down in the seat whenever a car or truck came towards us. When on one occasion we were overtaken, she slid off the seat altogether to crouch in the footwell. I raised one eyebrow and she scowled up at me, her lips screwed up tightly into a little bud that looked alarmingly kissable. As the truck breezed past us, I saw what seemed to me to be a very ordinary man, wearing a checked shirt and a cowboy hat. He glanced over and then concentrated on his driving.

When I described him to Summer, she seemed relieved, but refused to say who she was watching out for, turning her head away and looking out of the window, keeping her thoughts to herself. For a while I thought about how she refused to tell me who was chasing her, and the words in my head seemed to flow like tributaries of a river. As the scenery slowly rolled past, they all came together into a delta to form the song that would eventually become Chasing the Fast Road.

Aiding the composition of that was the fact that we were travelling on what I would normally consider a gravel road -- a farm road -- a seemingly infinite off-white path that simply went straight for mile after mile, crunching under the tyres as it unwound in a continually direct uniform strip. I kept the speed down to thirty miles an hour, all too used to the sudden inexplicable bends that appeared in British roads solely to challenge a driver's skill at getting around a corner while going too fast. I didn't want to face that on a surface made of stones kept together only by the force of gravity, but other drivers seemed to regard it as perfectly normal, sweeping past us at much greater speeds.

Gravel seemed to be fairly standard for the area, and little heaps of grit appeared on the verge from time to time, probably for top up or repair purposes. One of my main concerns was that this would turn out to be the grit that I'd been instructed to try when I visited Nashville, the next stop on the tour that Lappies' personal assistant had strung together for me: a tour of icons, musical greats, and the offices of their agents. My preferred ideal of seeing America would be from the upper deck of one of those luxury trains I'd seen in movies -- hopefully in first class -- with some excellent catering. I also wanted to see the real America behind the shadows on movie screens, so I guess it was my own fault.

Now I was here, it felt a bit weird. It was all too a bit too big for my liking, and I felt almost itchy within my skin. The whole country was too big, with too much sky. I was seated next to a pretty, albeit goblin-tempered woman, in a huge car that effortlessly swallowed every bump in the road, surrounded by wheat as far as the eye could see. This was not what I'd expected this trip to be. I missed my little corner of the world. I needed to see more people, more buildings, more hills, more rain. One day out of London, and I was already homesick.

I was also in trouble. I had the gnawing certainty that this thing with Summer, whatever it was, would turn out badly. Not for the first time in my life, I mentally swore at the part of me that forced me to remain with her. It had been bad before, but after she'd hugged me, my oh-so-wonderful syndrome was buzzing along merrily like a Japanese Shinkansen -- a bullet train -- seemingly unstoppable and moving too quickly to ever halt, or even slow down enough for me to jump off.

I sighed, and then brightened a little as houses came into view and we drove into a town... a village... a roadside camp? I had no idea what to call it. The houses were an almost uniform white with very little to differentiate between them -- apart from some having grey roofs and some red -- with huge spaces of bare land between them. Little huddles of these were gathered together here and there, and the sum of those clusters was more like a clot on the landscape than anything else I'd ever experienced.

Some had cars -- or fridges, stoves or sofas, or all of the above -- in the front and back yards; which couldn't be called gardens by even the most enthusiastic stretch of the imagination. The surrounding fields were a rich, emerald green or a bright, shining gold -- while the yards and public grassed areas were a lifeless brown. There were way more basketball hoops than the flagpoles proudly flying the Stars and Stripes that I'd been led to expect. To be honest, I couldn't help comparing it to the remnants of a gypsy camp I'd seen once, after the caravans and trailers had moved on.

More promising for Summer's empty belly were the bigger houses and neater yards that appeared a few blocks further into what turned out to be the township of Lincolnville. In the distance, I spotted the first sparse signs of life with a few people moving in and out of what was obviously some sort of trading store. My hopes were dashed once again, when I got closer and realised it sold auto parts. Okay, it was mid-afternoon and most of the residents were probably either working in the fields, or somewhere with a few more enterprises, but this looked like a ghost town.

I let out a noise of annoyance. How could anywhere with more than a dozen houses sell auto parts but not food?

"What's bugging you?" Summer asked.

"I can't find a place to eat," I complained.

"You passed a diner a few blocks back. I thought you weren't going to stop so I didn't say anything."

I cocked my head at her, askance. I sighed. "Okay, I'll turn around."

I retraced the route until she pointed out what I'd previously taken to be a double-length garage with a couple of small windows in the side. It looked very similar to some of the houses: four metal covered walls and two plain roof sections leaning against each other. It reminded me of photos of the old prefabricated houses they churned out by the thousand after the war for the hordes of returning soldiers and their families.

"That's a diner?" I asked, disappointed at the shredding of my movie-inspired expectations.

"It's not where Harry met Sally," she agreed, picking up on my dismay. "But it's food."

I parked and she fussed with the handkerchief on her head. I realised that she was making sure it covered her hair completely. Yep, she was being followed all right, and that being the case, that magical hair would draw attention like a lighthouse in the middle of Trafalgar Square. In my imagination, I placed a huge rotating lamp on the top of Nelson's head and sniggered at the incongruity.

She glared at me, and I did my best to look innocent. After a moment she sat back and looked at the diner.

"I don't have any money," she said finally.

"I kinda guessed that, I've pretty much seen everywhere a pocket might be expected."
She snorted her annoyance. "Jeez, you're not going to give me a break, are you?"

"Well, apart from not going mediaeval on your arse when you tried to mug me, not leaving that same arse for the children of the corn to munch on, then helping you shower, giving you a ride and now about to fill that growling belly of yours -- no. No breaks from me. You pretty much hit that nail bang on the head."

Her hands formed those claws again, and my throat definitely felt threatened.

Wanting to forestall any more physical animosity, I climbed out of the car, went around and opened her door. "After you, milady."

Even barefoot and clad in clothes that threatened to drown her, she entered the diner as if she owned it, and I found myself smiling at her manner.

Lunch, dinner, or tea -- depending on how you regarded that meal -- was interesting. She ordered a burger and chips, which order I doubled, and then ordered a coffee with milk and some pecan pie for myself. When the food arrived, I immediately regretted doubling up on her order, and stared aghast at the massive size of the patties, the sheer bulk of the bacon, cheese and other sundry items within the buns, and just shook my head. In the end, however, she somehow managed to munch her way through both burgers, all the chips and then stole half my pecan pie -- which was almost sublime it was so good -- before finally giving up. I had to tap her knuckles with my spoon before she gave up trying to snaffle the ice cream as well. I realised it was true: everything was bigger in America, and I had to learn to think in those terms.

"Damn, I needed that!" she said, reclining in the cane back chair and slurping noisily at the huge glass of soda, the top of the straw only just managing to break the surface when it was served.

"How much was it?" she asked when the bill arrived, then looked completely blank when I told her.

"What the hell's a pony got to do with it?"

"A pony, my poor uninformed colonial lass, is twenty-five pounds, although this time I'm talking dollars. How much should I leave?"

"Leave five dollars for the tip." She frowned at my raised eyebrows. "Twenty per cent, cheapskate! They need the tips!"

"Don't they pay their staff properly?" I asked, dropping thirty-five dollars on the table. Her comment had stung. I wasn't a cheapskate by any means, but I thought a surcharge of twenty per cent for simply taking an order and bringing the food to the table was still a bit steep. I wondered if I was supposed to tip the cashiers and shelf-packers in the shops, and mentally shrugged; perhaps that was just how it worked here.

I checked our bearings with the cook behind the counter, who was wearing a rather grubby apron and a white... whitish hat of some sort. Disappointingly, and contrary to my expectations, he was quite thin, wasn't sweating hugely and was clean-shaven. He gave the information I needed, but when he pointed out directions for me, he waved his spatula in wide arcs. I felt redeemed. To my mind, that was how a short-order cook was supposed to act.

"Head toward the silos over that way. Turn onto 6^th and keep going till you hit 56."

"But I need to be on 77," I protested.

He sniggered. "Same thing..."

I could hear the word 'dummy' unsaid in that sentence. At least it explained how I'd got so lost while never deviating from the right road.

"Aah. Thank you," I said, and after a few more questions, returned to the car.

"There's no sheriff in this place," I commented to Summer. "We can find one in Wichita, I guess, although I don't think we really need to."

There was a silence between us as we passed an attractive brick church and a few rather more upmarket houses. The local council or its US equivalent should put in a one-way system to ensure that all visitors had to go through this part first, I thought.

We reached the highway, and turned south towards the I35, the silence stretching out to uncomfortable levels. I was about to make some inane remark, when she turned to me.

"Tell me a joke."

"Really?" I had definitely not expected that.

"Why not, we're both on edge. It couldn't hurt."

"Okay." I put on a West Country accent. "Near my house there's a little office park with just two offices. One is a genealogist and the other is a gynaecologist. A friend asked me what the difference was. I explained that one looks up the family tree and the other looks up the family bush."

Summer stared at me for the longest moment, while I kept my face absolutely straight. I was about to apologise to her and berate myself for the inappropriateness of the joke in her circumstances -- although she hadn't actually told me of them, so how was I to tell her I'd guessed? Then her mouth twitched and her nostrils flared a couple of times. She snorted, then giggled and then loudly gave one of the sweetest and yet filthiest belly-laughs I'd ever heard. Soon we were both laughing - her at the stupid joke, me with pleasure at the sound of her mirth. Damn, she had a sexy laugh.

The rest of the journey passed very pleasantly with both of us telling jokes, and silences suddenly broken by a cry of, "I know one, I've got one! Listen to this..." The jokes ranged from pre-school all the way to filthy, with both of us rocking from side to side with laughter.

I made my way hesitantly through the toll and the interchange, remembering to drive on the wrong side of the road at all times and brutally suppressing every instinct to move to the left, and in no time, we reached the eastern approaches to Wichita. I followed the signs and soon parked up alongside a humungous mall, finding a shady spot in the parking area.

"Please stay here," I said as I switched the engine off. "I promise I won't be long. I'm going to put your seat back and you can take a nap. Nobody will see you unless they walk right past the car. I'll lock the doors, but you can open them from the inside if you absolutely have to."

She looked worried.

"I'm not going to report anything to any policeman, okay? No harm, no foul I guess, so don't worry about that. If you leave the car dressed like you are, they may very well pick you up as a tramp -- as a vagrant, I mean not a... and either move you on or put you up for the night. If you go into the mall, ten to one they'll think you're a shoplifter and put your face on video -- without that bonnet you're wearing. Now, I don't know who you're running from, but I'm guessing you don't want your picture flashed around."

She gave a tiny nod.

"I'll be back soon," I said, looking at her steadily. "Please stay safe!"

Another tiny nod. I reached over her, ignoring the way her body suddenly stiffened up, and used the backrest lever to lower the back of her seat so she could lie down.

"Do you want the blanket?" I asked quietly as I sat back.

Yet another nod. Her eyes were locked on mine, questioning my motives and actions within their depths. I ignored the question, reached back and dragged the travel blanket to the front. She curled up, looking for all the world like a little girl after a long outing, and I spread it over her, unable to resist tucking it under her here and there.

She gave a deep sigh, and drifted off to sleep.

I stared at her. How did anyone drift off that quickly? Actually, she hadn't 'drifted' off at all; it was more like the start of a Formula 1 race, she was away so fast.

I locked the doors, pocketed the keys and hurried into the mall. I found the right shop and began to make guesses as to what would be best to buy. Then it was onto the huge store nearby for basic essentials. There, I discovered that Summer wouldn't have been out of place at all, and that some people seemed to dress up to go shopping in pretty much anything they'd found in a bargain bin at a charity shop. One woman was actually wearing pyjamas as she herded a small group of children from aisle to aisle -- pushing three trolleys full of bulk-buy items between them.

It took almost forty-five minutes in the end, partially due to my standing and gawping at the passing parade, but when I hurried back I found I could have taken my time. Summer was still fast asleep, and didn't seem to have moved at all since I'd left.

Cognisant of the fact that she wasn't wearing a seat belt, I drove very slowly and carefully through the car park -- which could have contained Wembley Stadium within its perimeter -- to the other side of the mall and repeated the exercise in different shops, returning to stow new bags on the back seat alongside those I'd already left there. The rear half of the car was becoming very congested. I put the two bog-standard suitcases I'd bought for her in the boot alongside mine.

I carefully wafted the contents of one of those bags under her nose and sat back, watching her. Her nose wrinkled and her chin lifted slightly. I gave the bag another waft and her eyes popped open.

"Panda's orange chicken?"

I stared. "How the hell could you know that just from the smell?"

She clicked her tongue dismissively. "I'd know that scent anywhere. When I was little, my grandma used to take me to Panda every time I visited her. It was the best scent in the world to me."

"Duly noted. I shall try never to get between you and a box of this stuff for fear of being steamrollered flat."

She sat up, keeping the blanket over her, took the carton out of my hands and proceeded to demolish the contents at a rate of knots.

"Oh, did you want some?" she said as she finished the last scrap, having the grace to look slightly embarrassed.

"I wouldn't have dared to ask," I said. "I try never to risk having a hand bitten off just for the sake of fast food."

She sighed contentedly as she peered around to see if there was anything else that might be edible. I passed her the bag of spring rolls I'd bought for myself, and she dove right in.

"You have good taste," she muttered through a mouthful.

"Good to know."

"You ate already?" she asked as she withdrew another spring roll and contemplated it.

"Yes." I'd eaten a really early breakfast on the plane, and with my background I was always careful about what I indulged in. The diet plan I'd taken on was simple -- eat little, but eat the best. Take-away Chinese food didn't really fit into that plan, and I'd only ordered the spring rolls so that she wouldn't feel awkward at eating alone. Her diet, on the other hand, seemed to be to eat everything edible at the earliest opportunity at the fastest possible speed, and after what she'd been through -- if she was telling the truth -- then I couldn't fault her on it.

The thought of my airborne breakfast brought me to marvelling how everything had happened so quickly. That morning I'd been over the Atlantic, and before much more than half the day was up, I was in a car with a runaway of some sort who had threatened to kill me, helping to hide her from pursuit while watching her demolish Chinese takeaway.

In fact, I rather enjoyed watching her eat. She didn't take enormous mouthfuls, quite the opposite. The food still seemed to disappear at an astonishing rate.

She noticed me watching her and paused in her efforts to get the Panda Group a top-100 rating on Wall Street by doubling their turnover in one sitting.

"So, what's in the bags?" she asked, still chewing, and nodding towards the back seat.

"That's just a few things so that you don't draw attention to yourself. I mean, my shirt and shorts somehow look better on you than me, but you still look like you got dressed in the dark... in your Dad's wardrobe."

She looked a little sad for a moment, but she was completely woman, and in seconds was diving in, delving through the bags to look at the clothes I'd bought for her, little noises of approval or approbation coming from her as she investigated each article in turn.

Holding up a small crop top, she smiled sardonically. "Really?"

"I thought that if you wore that, people might be looking more at your... your figure, rather than your face." I offered in my defence. "I know it's all cheap as chips, but I wasn't sure of your sizes, so I got a bit carried away in the store. Look, we can get you better stuff when we get into the city itself and find you a boutique and—"

I broke off as she took a quick look around the car park and then calmly whipped the tee-shirt off. I heard a noise emanate from deep within my throat as those wonderful little round creations came back into view and Mr Happy gave a little leap of joy. So perky!

Sadly, within seconds they were covered up again by the plain white crop top, which somehow managed to make her look every bit as attractive as she'd been while topless. It wasn't low cut, but it fit her tightly enough that I could clearly see the shape and texture of every inch of those breasts. The garment was sleeveless and as she adjusted the thin shoulder straps, her tits jiggled and shook slightly, which was more than enough to make old Mr Happy salute her once again.

I noticed she was watching me out of the corner of her eye. Still no complete trust there. Fair enough.

"I got some underwear as well, although I wasn't sure of your bra size, so..."

"You didn't just show your cupped hands to the assistant and ask for one that size?" she asked seriously, and then grinned.

"I've never had my hands on yours, so how would I know?" I came back at her.

"I thought all men were pretty good at judging size when it came to tits."

"We are, but women are equally good at making them look bigger, so we always get it wrong."

She grunted noncommittally and delved into another bag. Then she burst out laughing.

"Seriously?" she giggled. "Pink panties with a teddy bear on them? You still think I'm twelve?"

"I like teddy bears. I still have mine from when I was a baby," I said, stalwart in my self-defence, while wishing I hadn't mentioned it at all.

"Let me guess; you were hoping to see me in these to bring back childhood memories, and not because you're a pervert?"

I stammered a denial. The thought had never crossed my mind. I'd simply bought a dozen different pairs and hoped that one of that volley would hit the target size.

"Relax! How does someone your age still blush?" she demanded.

I frowned at her, which she simply ignored.

"Watch out for me," she instructed, and swept her shorts off, pulling the pink teddy bear panties up over her legs and arching up to draw them tightly over her hips. Once again, I got a flash of that wonderful colour at the isthmus of her thighs. Then I saw the resultant camel toe with the teddy bear now comfortably ensconced just above it, and realised that it was almost as sexy. There was definitely something to the idea that hiding and hinting was sometimes better than all out in the open. I just couldn't decide which I preferred.

She started pulling on a pair of jeans. "When I said watch out for me, I meant outside the car."

I started guiltily. I'd known what she meant, but hadn't been able to even blink, while my eyes were fixed on every movement she made. I looked around, but there was nobody close enough to the car to see her.

When she was finally settled, after pulling on socks and the lone pair of sneakers that actually fit of the three pairs I'd thrown in the shopping trolley, she adjusted the mirror on the visor to try and see how she looked. She chose one of the two baseball caps I'd got, and substituted it for the handkerchief. It was black with quite a long peak that I hoped would help hide her face, and the word 'London' across the forehead in order to throw out the suggestion that she was a tourist.

"You look good," I offered. "Like a university student."

"I am a university student," she replied. "Or I was until..."

She broke off abruptly. "So? Now that I'm respectable, is this the moment you hand me over to the police?"

I pulled an exasperated face. "No! Why do you keep asking that? I already said that I wasn't going to do that. I'll take you wherever you need to go, or I can book you into a hotel if you want to lay low for a while. Whatever you want."

"My Good Samaritan, huh?"

I shrugged. "No, but I can't just dump you on the street and drive away. That wouldn't be right."

"And you always do the right thing!"

I laughed bitterly at that thought, which actually sounded more like a bark -- not a pleasant sound. She drew back slightly.

"God no! I fuck up all the time!" Sad Alice, who enjoyed constantly mourning her last lover; Rosalynn, who was the life and soul of every party -- with a lot of chemical assistance; Dinah, who was oh-so determined she had no worth, and needed to sleep with every man in the world to try and prove it; and, of course -- Phoebe, my over-ambitious and ever-angry ex-wife. They could all attest to the truth of that statement.

Her head tilted to one side slightly as she considered my words, her eyes locked on mine. Then she sighed.

"Where are you headed?" she asked, seeming to want to change the topic.

"Some hotel called the Drury Plaza."

"Can I come with you to get a real shower and clean up, and then I'll get out of your hair."

I thought for a moment, and realised the White Knight didn't want her to go yet; but I couldn't allow it to take over my decisions.

She noticed my hesitation. "Never mind. I shouldn't have asked. Just drop me wherever's convenient."

"No, I was just thinking of something," I said. "Of course you can. We could both do with a real shower. You also need to sort out the stuff on the back seat before you go, and it will let you do it in peace while keeping you out of sight. And I promised to take you to a proper clothes shop. I'd be glad to help."

"I still don't have any money—" she started.

"Oh stop!" I said, grumpily. "I know that. You're broke, you're being chased by someone, and you need help. I get it. So let me do that for you!"

I pulled up the map app on my phone with some difficulty, and handed it over to her. "In fact, you can help me by directing me to the hotel. You pointing the way would be better than a voice trying to talk me through it. It's somewhere near a river. And keep an eye on my driving! Don't let me turn onto the correct side of the road."

She sniggered softly. "Jackass!"

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Drifting on down the winds of the sea

Hiding away from your blatant decree

Seeking the deepest trenches of time

For the infinite pressures of deep blue brine

Shades of Blue (B. Lake) 2015

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

ZERO HOUR +3

We set off from the mall, and within fifteen minutes I drew up outside a big square red-brick building. One of the staff brought out a trolley and loaded the cases and Summer's shopping bags onto it, before leading us towards the reception desk.

A little niggle in my brain suddenly came to the fore and I drew her to one side. "I only have one room booked. I'm going to have to tell them that we're a couple. Are you okay with that?"

"It's all right. Don't worry about it. I do know how hotels work," she replied. "I haven't been trying to be anonymous my whole life. Show them your passport."

Summer fussed with the bags as I presented my passport and sapphire credit card at the same time, which seemed to create bigger smiles all round, and do away with any questions while the receptionist booked us in.

"What's the round building over there?" I asked, trying to distract her from asking for ID from Summer. I wasn't sure how it worked here, but in Europe everybody booking in had to show ID.

"That's the Century Two," she said, returning my credit card and handing me a room card with it. "It's one of Wichita's landmarks. Would you like a brochure?"

"Please," I said, turning and giving the room card to Summer. "Why don't you head up to the room, love. I want to find a place we can go this evening."
She looked a little puzzled until I winked at her.

"Okay," she said, and kissed my cheek, which made that part of my face surprisingly happy.

I watched her butt as she followed the baggage trolley to the lift, then turned back to the clerk once more, who was holding out a brochure.

"There's a guest appearance by an Eastern European youth orchestra playing tonight sir, if you enjoy the classics. They've had very good reviews."

"I do," I said, reading the name on her badge. "What's your opinion, Miss Arthern?"

"That's Annie-May, sir. And I really enjoyed them -- they were very good."

"Can you book me two tickets?"

"Of course, sir. I'll put it on your account and send the tickets to your room as soon as they arrive."

I wasn't actually planning on going, but it had distracted Annie-May from asking about Summer -- even if it was an expensive ploy.

"What's the dress code?" I asked.

She pursed her lips. "Whatever you're comfortable with, I guess. A lot of ladies go in cocktail dresses."

"Is there a fashion boutique nearby? I think my girlfriend might want a new dress for that." I'd deliberately gone out to emphasize that we were a couple

She glanced at her watch. "I think most stores will be closed by now."

She bit her lip, considering. "I have a friend who owns a dress store that she might open up again if I ask. Or she might bring some dresses here. What size is your partner?"

"English sizes and American sizes are different, aren't they?" I asked, and she nodded. "And you're a woman, Annie-May, so you probably know better than me. Tell you what. If you wouldn't mind, would you ask your friend to bring some examples of her wares, evening and daywear -- if she would be okay with that, of course?"

"I'll do so, Mr Lake. Oh, and if I might say so, I really enjoy your music. I especially loved the one you wrote for Sam Smith."

I was gratified that at least someone knew my work. Songwriters are on the whole very much like scriptwriters at the Oscars -- more likely to draw a 'who the fuck is that' than cheers, approbation and the throwing on stage of panties by screaming groupies. Writing is perforce a dark and lonely existence -- no matter the medium.

"Thank you. That's very kind of you to say so."

She smiled as I confirmed her guess as to who I was, and got on the phone. While I was waiting for the lift, I overheard the words, "... and such a cute accent!" which made me smile.

On the way up to my room on the top floor, I thought of something and couldn't help smiling again. Perhaps we could actually go to the concert, if Summer wanted to. God knows, she needed something to distract her from her troubles.

When I entered the room, I tipped the bellboy and looked around. It was large, airy and well-appointed, with two big king-sized beds -- probably enough sleeping room for six adults or seventeen kids by British standards. They were completely covered in a gay profusion of colours -- courtesy of Summer's new clothes

I grinned and shook my head. It had taken just two minutes for Summer to turn a luxury suite into an unreasonable facsimile of my sister's room back at home. Hearing a shower running at full tilt from behind a door, which I presumed led to the bathroom, I sat at the desk and called down to reception.

"Yes, Mr Lake?"

"How did your friend respond, Annie-May?" I asked.

"She was very happy to help, sir. She'll be here within an hour with a selection of her ranges."

"Could I ask a favour? Would you call her and ask her to bring along any mantillas she might have in stock?"

There was a pause, then, "I've texted her your request, sir. Oh, and I'll send your tickets for the concert up as soon as they arrive. It was fifty-two dollars and will appear on your bill with us."

"Thank you. That's excellent service."

She sounded pleased when she thanked me in return. Good service -- I'd been told to expect that in America. Thank god that was one thing that Britain had imported from the States. Remembering some of the tales I'd heard of service at home back in the eighties, I could only cringe at how tourists must have seen us in those days. Hopefully, they had put it down to England being too busy swinging to the latest hits to care about that. Music -- now that was something where Britain could stand up and hold its own in any company.

All of which drew me back to thinking of Chasing The Fast Road -- the song I'd composed in my head earlier. I quickly wrote down the lyrics on some hotel stationary, and above the words made little symbols I'd invented for myself which would remind me of how the tune went when I'd heard it in my mind.

As I finished, the noise of the shower stopped and the sound of a hair drier took its place. I took some bottled water from the mini bar and sipped at it while looking down over the river that ran through this part of the city. The sun was setting, the view was peaceful and pretty, and as the evening rush hour tailed off, the noise from the streets was muted. All was apparently well in my world.

Except, of course, it wasn't. My common sense and white knight were still at war; one side claiming that Summer's presence was a disaster waiting to happen on just so many levels -- anything from jail time to permanent residence beneath American soil; while the other side claimed that she was lost and alone and needed my help, and besides which, she was just so perky!

The debate raged on and on within me and in an effort to turn down the volume on that internal argument, I eventually perched on the end of one of the beds and switched on the television. I flicked through channel after channel of talking heads discussing a variety of subjects which included the latest political scandals from Washington that were dragging on day after day under the banner of breaking news; the latest trends; the latest medications for various diseases and illnesses that seemed mostly to focus on weight, limp penises and burst arseholes; and a massive variety of things that I needed to buy now, Now, NOW! -- Before they ran out of stock! I thumbed the remote and turned it off again, feeling restless and wishing Summer would come out of the bathroom.

Finally, she did and part of me wished she would go back in again -- as she was pressing a whole different raft of buttons. She was dressed in a simple, sleeveless frock in swirls of primary colours, that finished halfway up her thighs and immediately reminded me of my washing her legs. The dress had been inexpensive, but she still somehow made it look like haute couture.

Her face was clean, her eyes bright and shining, and her confidence seemingly restored to a natural default as she bent slightly forward to brush her hair; still using my brush, I noticed. I guessed I wasn't going to get that back anytime soon.

I'd stood when she entered the room, and promptly had to sit down again before Mr Happy's antics embarrassed both of us.

"Hungry?" I asked.

"I could eat," was the simple reply. I could only marvel at the storage capacity of her small body, no matter how shapely it was.

I got onto room service and in a short time, we were both munching on hot beef sandwiches with a sauce that constantly threatened to leak over everything in sight; my shirt and trousers, her dress, the bed covers, the carpet and probably the walls and ceiling. The porter delivered the tickets at the same time. I offered them to Summer.

She looked at them curiously, looked interested, and then her face dropped. "I can't. My hair draws too much attention."

She looked pensive. "I suppose I should cut it off."

My face must have shown my horror at that suggestion, as Summer sniggered. I hastened to dispel that idea. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. There might be a way for us to hit the concert unnoticed -- even with your mane."

"What way?"

"I'm waiting for a delivery. We can decide then."

Summer shrugged and settled back, tucking one foot under the other thigh and swinging the dangling leg off the side of the bed. The towel never looked in danger of slipping for a moment, although my eyes were ready to do their sworn duty and swivel towards her at the slightest provocation.

Dammit! Get yourself under control, man!

"What happened after that first date with Phoebe," she asked after a few moments of silence. Her tone said boredom, but her eyes flashed with curiosity.

"Ah..." I said, after swallowing the final remnant of my sandwich. "That..."

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Mini skirt

Open shirt

Wild flirt

Dirt Alert

We're on the prowl tonight

We're on the prowl tonight

Girls' night (B. Lake) 2014

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

ZERO HOUR +4



I took a moment to gather my thoughts about Phoebe.

"On that first date I treated her to a pizza in return for her singing on a sampler I was putting together. We had a good time, and I surprised myself by being able to speak without stuttering and stammering every time she looked at me. When I mentioned I had two tickets to a Take That concert the following week and offered to take her, she agreed to go with me. I must admit I was lying to her right then -- as I didn't actually have any tickets and up until that moment, no plans to go to the concert. However, I consoled myself with the knowledge that it would be true in a few hours, as I knew a couple of scalpers and could get tickets with a phone call, although at eye-watering prices. She was worth every penny, and more.

"The next date was to the movies, and the one after that, we went to the Victoria and Albert and then the Tate, catching the train into London. We kissed in front of Rodin's sculpture of The Kiss until moved on by security, although Phoebe wanted to stay and argue the point with the guard.

"You see, the thing about Phoebe was her temper. Most people, when they get cross, sort of build up to it. But Phoebe could go from calm to all-out rage in an instant. So I dragged her out of there before she exploded, and let her rant at me, instead."

Summer cocked her head. "Was she always like that? You said you knew her at school."

"I think so, although I didn't realise it at the time. How could I? I never spoke two words to her, or anyone else."

She looked at me and an expression of sympathy drifted across her face. I hurried on, not wanting to get into my past. Even Phoebe was a safer topic than that.

"I did notice something weird; I must admit. When we were on lunch or break time, she would always either be in a group or on her own. I didn't know why, and I certainly didn't ask, but she never seemed to have any one-on-one time with anybody. She had lots of friends, but none of them were really a best friend type thing. Everybody else had a friend that they always hung out with, and the two would join a group or drift away, and sometimes they would be with a boyfriend or girlfriend, but you always knew who their school buddy was -- their real friend. Phoebe didn't have that, which was pretty sad."

"What was your buddy like?" she asked.

The question took me by surprise and I admitted more than I'd wanted to. "I didn't have one."

The earlier look of sympathy returned, now as one of real concern. I hated that look and stared at my feet, forcing a laugh.

"Hah, yeah, I was that kid. There's always one in every school."

"How," she asked quietly. "I mean, why?"

Bitterly regretting starting this line of conversation, I stumbled through the story of my weight difficulty -- although calling it a difficulty was a bit like calling the collapse of the Twin Towers a slight design defect.

Luckily, I was interrupted by a knock on the door. Summer squeaked and promptly hid in the bathroom. When I opened it, I discovered an attractive blond woman in her mid-forties, flanked by three rails of hanging garments, all carefully covered in plastic.

"Mr. Lake," she said with a pleasant breathiness to her voice. "I'm Debbie Wanamaker. Annie-May called to say you needed some clothes."

I shook her hand and waved her in.

"Summer, the lady from the boutique is here for you."

The little redhead exited the bathroom in a flash and soon the two women were going through every dress, blouse and pant-suit with appropriate noises of approval and admiration.

Debbie pulled me aside, speaking quietly. "The way Annie-May spoke, I'm guessing that you're footing the bill. What's the budget here?"

I checked a few tags, the prices clearly but discreetly marked. "Whatever she wants," I said.

"She's a lucky girl," Debbie whispered.

I'd thought about the situation while waiting for Summer to leave the bathroom earlier, and had come up with an idea for a cover story. It wouldn't hold up against any real investigation, but might pass casual interest. I raised my voice slightly so that my little goblin could hear me.

"Summer and I grew up near each other in England. Her family emigrated to California when we were teenagers, and we only recently found each other again. Now we're a couple, and I want her to know how much I still love her, which is why I requested your assistance. However, I am trying to train her out of that awful accent she picked up while she was over here."

Summer didn't seem to notice, but I noted how still she became while I was establishing our faintly ridiculous cover story.

Debbie was delighted. "Oh, that's so romantic! So how did you find each other again?"

"Facebook," Summer piped up, before I could say anything. "My mother divorced my dad, remarried and I took my step-father's name, which meant that Bryn couldn't find me. But I kept an eye on him, and when I discovered that he'd been divorced, I messaged him. He came over here to meet me, we clicked again, and now we're touring a little so he can see America."

Wow, she was such a good little liar!

"Yeah, things just developed from there," I mumbled.

She gave Summer a hug. "Right, let's get started."

It turned out that Annie-May had a good eye for sizes, which made things easier. Summer would go into the bathroom and change, and then give Debbie and me a little fashion show. Mr. Happy really enjoyed it, as she chose outfits that revealed a modestly exciting amount of cleavage, a very pleasant amount of thigh, or both. Finally, she came out in a long black evening dress which covered only one shoulder and was slit almost all the way up to her hip on one side.

"Beautiful!" exclaimed Debbie. "You look wonderful!"

She turned to me for agreement and all I could do was nod very enthusiastically.

"Oh, he likes it," Debbie smiled. Then she drew a long white shawl from a hanging bag.

"Ah, that's lovely," I said quickly. "You will be the most beautiful woman at the concert tonight, even if the other members of the audience won't get to appreciate that wonderful hair."

As the couturier wound the red locks into a bun and then settled the mantilla over her head, turning the LBD into a Spanish noblewoman's court dress, Summer's eyes grew bigger as she realised what I was saying, and let out a whisper. "A real date."

Debbie looked confused for a moment, so I pulled out my wallet to distract her.

"Would you prefer cash or plastic," I asked her. Avarice took the place of curiosity as I settled the bill. Debbie offered a ten percent discount on the volume of items we'd chosen, which I returned as a thank you for her after-hours service. I was getting the hang of this tipping thing.

Finally, with thanks echoing from both sides of the transaction, Debbie left -- her rails a lot emptier than they were when she arrived. Summer stared at the cupboard where they hung.

"Jesus, Bryn. This is a lot of stuff. You can't keep doing this. How much do I owe you now?"

I laughed and shook my head. "It's a gift. Now, what do you think? Do we go to the concert or not? It's up to you. If you don't feel safe, then we stay here."

"Don't change the subject. This is a lot of clothes. I'm in your debt."

I walked over and took her hand. "No. You're not. When you leave, you simply pack it in the cases I got you and walk away. No debt, no ties. Nothing owed."

She seemed a little put out.

"The concert?" I prompted.

"Well, I am dressed for it," she said. "It would be a shame to waste the tickets..."

Summer broke off, considering. She stepped to one side and looked at herself in the mirror, fussing with the mantilla, the shawl's folds of pale, delicate lace patterns drifting down over her shoulders -- reminiscent of a nun's wimple -- and hiding her hair very effectively. Her bun even made it look as if she had a comb in her hair, which is how it is normally worn.

"... And nobody can see my hair." She bit her lip. "Let's do it!"

It was a delightful evening, Summer seeming to relax into her role as my English girlfriend transplanted to America, trying out various things she'd heard me say as we sat in the auditorium waiting for the music to start.

"So taking the piss is one thing, and taking the mickey is another?" she whispered, her breath sweet and warm on my ear.

"No, they both mean the same thing - teasing or mocking someone. Taking the mickey comes from taking the Mickey Bliss -- rhyming slang."

"I'm never going to get used to this."

"There are a lot of expressions about piss," I said. "Getting pissed is different from being pissed off, which is different to pissing it down or pissing around."

She stared at me, and I could tell she was wondering whether I was indeed taking the piss.

"You guys are weird. Why are there so many sayings about piss? This is not the conversation I ever imagined at an evening of classical music," she said finally.

"So let's talk about you," I suggested.

"Let's not," she countered. "You seem to know music, talk to me about that."

I started to tell her about aspects of my musical life, but of course that brought Phoebe into it and I ended up telling her how we had married instead.

At the time it had made sense. We were in love, and she loved me as much as I loved her -- at least I'd thought so. We'd been hitting the mattresses and making love at every possible opportunity, so when she told me she was pregnant towards the end of my master's degree year, probably due to taking antibiotics for a bout of thrush, it never crossed my mind to question it and she accepted my immediate offer of marriage with a charming display of loving me up at the restaurant where I popped the question and offered a ring. I'd bought it a month earlier, waiting for the right moment.

Her kissing me as frantically as she did might have caused a problem -- as her short dress rose up almost to her waist due to her straddling my lap -- but it was a family-owned Italian restaurant and, true to the romantic soul of that nation, we were serenaded instead of sent packing.

We were married within a month.

Now in the know about my secret career and income, she chose a house for us to buy. I chose a much smaller one, and we compromised on the one she chose. Then we compromised once again on something between the two, and after the echoes of Phoebe's screaming outburst died away, I put up with a week of frosty silence.

Three months later she told me she'd miscarried.

I cried.

"That's so sad," whispered Summer. Remembering my grief, I could only nod at her, glad that the orchestra chose that moment to start tuning up, following the traditional lead of the oboe.

The concert was superb, opening with Smetana's The Moldau, and closing with Saint-Seans' Dans Macabre. The percussionists playing the xylophone, vibraphone and marimba on the latter piece brought ducks swimming to mind -- the music smooth and even on the surface, but them working like mad underneath it to propel the music along as they bent, sweating over their instruments. I made a mental note to add those instruments to my music program.
Summer took my arm as we walked back to the hotel.

As we walked, my White Knight spent time pointlessly wondering what she was going to do, and trying to convince me I could allow myself to go a little further without becoming hopelessly ensnared. The logical part of my brain, however, was shouting that as soon as we reached the hotel, I was going to simply pack her bags, shake her by the hand and wish her well with the rest of her life. I had a meeting in the morning, and was due in Nashville the evening of the next day, with a stop of my choice somewhere in between so I could get a taste of the real small-town America. I hoped it wouldn't be Lincolnville. My immediate future was clearly mapped out, and didn't include her on any part of that map -- not even in the margins. I decided that that was what I was going to do -- be tough! Break off whatever this was cleanly and clearly, give her the bags and some money, and say goodbye. Despite how good she smelt, there would be no more allowing her to pull that trig...

"Hungry?" I heard myself ask. What the fuck was wrong with me?

"I could eat," she said.

Cursing myself for my weakness, I checked with reception as to restaurants in the area. Annie-May was off-duty, but the night porter gave us a few recommendations, and suggested we try the restaurant next to the hotel. I ended up eating a really good trout, while Summer went all-in over seven rounds with something called a Mahi-Mahi. After my face must have showed my shock and horror, it turned out not to be dolphin, which is what I thought the waiter had said. Even so, I politely turned down an offer to taste anything called dolphinfish. Summer had no problems tasting my trout, however, and once again I had to rap her on the knuckles in order to stop her trying to snaffle the linguine from under my fish after she had ploughed through hers.

For a large part of the time, I'd watched her eat, fascinated by the unwieldy process of her cutting something with a knife and fork, then putting down the knife, transferring the fork to the other hand to impale a piece of the fish, and then starting the procedure all over again.

When she sat back after demolishing two portions of chocolate cake, to sip daintily at the brandy liqueurs I'd ordered, she raised the question I'd been struggling to pose.

"So, what are we going to do with me now?"

The question was simple and there was no shading in her tone to indicate a preference. Our dinner conversation had stayed strictly away from that, concentrating on the concert. I'd tried to entertain her by sticking two forks into bread rolls to make them dance, in imitation of Charlie Chaplin's famous scene. However, where he'd made it a charming interlude, I managed to flick one clear off the table onto the foot of a passing waitress who, to her credit, didn't turn a hair -- simply picking it up and bringing me a fresh one. She and Summer had giggled all the way through my stumbling, embarrassed apology.

Now we were at the nub of it.

"What do you want to do?" I asked. She knew what I meant.

"You're in charge," she said quietly. "You're the one who kidnapped me and brought me here."

I looked at my watch. "It's too late for you to hit the road at this time of night. I could see if they have a room open here..."

"No! I can't let you keep spending money on me all the time. Shit, I hate owing people for anything."

"Well, I'm not letting you wander the streets alone at this time of night. Maybe a taxi..."

"Again, more money! Stop it! I'll stay with you. You've already booked a room, so it's not going to cost you anything more."

I was a bit startled, and I heard the Knight chuckling in the back of my head. I opened my mouth and then shut it again. She leaned towards me.

"Just to be clear here. There's more chance of me checking myself back into that institute... nuthouse... whatever it was, than climbing into bed with you. You understand? Tell me you understand!"

"Rude, but clear. You weren't invited, so the warning was a little over-the-top. But clear."

"Just as long as we're clear." Despite her words, she seemed a little taken aback at my rebuttal, and lapsed into silence. I couldn't think of anything to say either, and the meal that had started with conversation and laughter, ended in a moody hush. I called for the bill, tipped twenty five percent just to make sure, and held her seat for her as she rose.

The trip back to the room was as quiet as the grave on a day the cemetery was closed and the grave-diggers and mourners had all gone on strike in order to watch England play Germany at football.

Despite my saying I needed to pee, she dived into the bathroom as soon as we got to the room, the lock being pushed across very loudly and the shower starting up once again. I was beginning to regret agreeing to this room-sharing, and then reflected that I hadn't actually agreed at all. I had simply been told what was going to happen. With my background, that didn't settle very well on me. Plus I really needed to pee. It had been a long time since conducting my last stand at the toilet and I'd drunk quite a bit of fluid since then.

"Don't take all night in there," I called. There was no reply. Five minutes later, despite channel surfing once again in an attempt to take my mind off it, my bladder urged me to the bathroom door, where the shower was still happily burbling.

I knocked. Then I knocked again. There was no reply. Another knock was successful only in me being further ignored.

"Oy!" I yelled. "Get out of the fucking shower! I need the loo -- and even you don't need three showers in a day! Despite those horrible, noisome memories."

I kicked the door in frustration.

Five minutes later the door cracked open slightly.

"What do you want?"

I stared at the one eye I could see.

"What do I want? Oh, let me see now, hmm. Access to a loo would be pleasant, a shower I could use would be nice, or just being allowed into my own bathroom! How about that? Unreasonable?"

"I'll be finished in ten minutes."

"No, you won't," I said. "You'll be finished in one minute or you'll be on your arse on the pavement in two. You may be rich bitch in your world, but in mine you're just an impolite, often obnoxious goblin. Get your butt covered up and out of that bathroom. Now!"

The door slammed shut. I started a very loud countdown.

"Fifty-nine ... fifty-eight ... fifty-seven ... "

It went all the way down to three before the door opened and she exited in a mist of steam and exotic scents. She had a towel around her chest, another around her waist and a third on her head as the inevitable turban. She clutched a hand-towel, dabbing at her face and shoulders.

I looked inside. There were two more towels on the floor, sopping wet. And that was the sum total of towels. I was pissed off.

"You used all the towels, and just left them on the floor."

"And...?"

"What am I supposed to use?"

"Ring down for some more."

I stared at her. She sat on the far bed and began to look uncomfortable as the silence drew out.

"What?"

"I just realised. You're not a goblin. That would be unkind to goblins. You've promoted yourself to a hobgoblin -- the worst kind. Solid hobgoblin -- all the way through. Let me guess, you're an only child and have lots of servants. So ... some kind of rich-bitch?"

"What's your problem?"

"You're my problem, hobgoblin!" I spat. "You've been through a tough time, I get it. I don't know the details, but it's been tough on you. And I guess you had some sort of shitty upbringing where you weren't taught to share anything. But I wasn't brought up like that. If I wandered into someone else's house and simply emptied their fridge, or rearranged their furniture for my comfort, or used all their stuff without leaving anything for them, I would have felt my dad's belt across my arse. It's rude! Were you never taught that?"

"It's just towels," she protested. "Call down and ask for more."

"That's not the point," I said. "There are two of us here, and one of us is just thinking about herself, which pisses the other one off. It's called being selfish. So, you ring down and organise more towels while I go and spend an hour in the shower. Then do whatever you want to do."

I pointedly picked up my wallet, passport and car keys, showed them to her and took them with me into the bathroom, locking the door and then peeing with enormous relief, and climbing into the shower with a sigh of satisfaction.

It had been a fucking long day!

In fact, it had been a long year. I soaped myself up, and couldn't help remembering Summer doing the same thing alongside my car. Mr. Happy certainly enjoyed the memory. We shook hands.

Summer faded and was replaced by an image of Phoebe stretched along the back of the sofa, her naked body and glistening vulva open and ready for me to enter her. In my imagination, I paused to gently claw my fingers down her back, making her shiver, her muscled butt quivering with impatient pleasure, but she'd told me in no uncertain terms that she was too wet to wait any more for that long, slow, steady push into her; the swollen outer lips bracketing the inner lips, which were pink and smooth and so wet -- more than ready to guide me straight to her entrance and then accompany me inside. Whenever I drew back, they reappeared to do that duty all over again.

Phoebe faded and Summer returned to push her naked hips high and pull her panties on once again. That memory was locked very firmly in my memory.

Once those panties were in place, her image was replaced by a memory of Alice, a leggy brunette who had drawn me into her life with her tragic, liquid eyes, and into her bed with her remarkably firm tits. A messy blow-job, which was cut short, was replaced by her kneeling between my legs with her tits pressed firmly against and around my cock, her saliva providing more than sufficient lubrication as it slipped and slithered up and down between them. I had cum against her chin, throat and chest, and she had growled very convincingly in pleasure at her success. Of course, that pleasure would only last until she remembered her ex-boyfriend, and she would be drawn back into the cycle of moping and weeping for him. I'd heard that she switched to moping and weeping about me after I left her.

Sad Alice's eyes were replaced by Summer's tits as she drew that crop top down over them, covering all and concealing nothing. I loved that blouse. In turn, those perky little apples were replaced with Dinah's big, beautiful, bouncing babies -- a pair of breasts that should quite rightly be sculpted to be shown in the Louvre. Hers were bigger than Alice's by far, and yet the dark-haired girl had been so much better at using them. Dinah's trick was to use them to attract a guy, find a place that was at least semi-private and then fuck him righteously well. My problem was her doing that trick when we were supposed to be an exclusive couple. Seeing her bent over the stove in the kitchen at a house party we went to while at university was a pleasant sight -- especially as her naked tits flopped back and forth with wild abandon. Most unpleasant was the sight of some guy I'd never seen before ploughing into her from behind, groping those humungous hemispheres whenever he could find the time.

Mr. Happy didn't like that memory, and softened to my touch. We don't like sharing our toys. We don't play well with others, apparently.

Rosalynn was proof of that -- tall, slim and dainty with an air of fragility about her -- and yet a tiger between the sheets. During her time on coke, she had introduced me to the joys of anal sex, which I hadn't really given much consideration to before. Ros' slim body, tanned with no tan lines, stretched out on crisp, clean white sheets, looked like a model from a photographer's studio, or a fine artist's easel. She would look over her shoulder at me, give me a little wink, tell me she was all ready, and then raise her hips. The butt would seem to widen as her vulva came into view, both that and the little pucker so nearby glistening with lubrication. She would wait until I'd squeezed the head of my cock inside her, pause for a long moment, and then slam her hips back, forcing every millimetre of me into her. From then on it was a non-stop rush as she squeezed and massaged me throughout each thrust until both of us would come, shouting and laughing at the pleasure.

Ros would do that for her dealer as well, to pay for the heroin she injected into herself when she found she needed the rush no matter what.

In comparison, Phoebe's mistakes seemed almost mild, until you considered I wasn't married to the others.

Mr. Happy was now Mr. Mournful, so I switched back to memories of Summer. It hadn't been 24 hours, so they were still fresh and bright in my memory.

Those perky nipples that I imagined nibbling upon, the round breasts against my palms, my cheek against her belly, my hands squeezing her butt, my tongue on her cunt and clitoris, a finger cautiously exploring that sweet little puckered exit, my cock in her hands, her mouth, her belly.

An image of her eyes fixed firmly on mine suddenly came to the fore and stayed there, along with the memorised taste of her lips. I was helpless against those, and within moments, my cum baptised the walls of the shower while I panted with heaving lungs at the incredibly powerful orgasm those memories had caused.

I leaned back against the shower wall, my chest heaving.

Fuck me, I was as daft as a brush!

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Alphabet woman

(Looking for an Alpha male)

Alpha ray purse

(No beta man just an Alpha on sale)

Alpha Centauri girl

(Gonna fly you to the stars, all the way)

Alpha wave slave

(He'll keep you in chains, all the lonely, long day)

Alpha Beta Games (B. Lake)

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

ZERO HOUR +20

I came to, the soft buzzing of my phone alerting me that it was time to get up and prepare for my meeting with the record label execs whose offices were nearby. It was just a meet-and-greet, but Lappies reckoned it might open a few doors, and have them consider buying the rights to some of my songs, for bands on their label. What the hell, it couldn't hurt.

I twisted to reach my phone and turn off the alarm, when I realised my other arm was pinned down.

I turned back and was confronted with a mass of red hair that spilled across the adjacent pillow and half my chest. It smelt wonderful.

As quietly and gently as possible I pulled my arm -- which at that moment felt more like a lump of clay that had spun off the potter's wheel, rather than an appendage that was still attached to me -- from beneath her neck. Summer mumbled and muttered and curled up tighter.

As I sat on the bed, I could only stare at her and shake my head. She looked like a normal twelve-year-old, dreaming of things both childlike from her past and a mysterious adult future, not the grown woman who had given me the silent treatment the previous night. When I'd cracked open the bathroom door after sluicing away the sweat, worries, troubles and semen of the day, I'd found a small pile of soft white towels waiting for me. The rest of the room was in darkness. I'd dried off, hung up the towels, searched around by the light of my phone until I found a pair of shorts, then crawled into bed.

"You could at least say thank you," her voice had drifted over from the other bed. "For arranging fresh towels for you."

"Go to sleep, Summer," I kept my tone conversational.

"A thank you isn't a lot to ask for, you know!"

"Go to sleep, Summer."

"Common decency, that's all. I'm just saying."

"Go to sleep, Summer."

"It's not much to expect..."

"Shut the fuck up, Summer." My voice was still carefully neutral.

There had been a noise suspiciously reminiscent of a raspberry, and then a soft giggle.

Sometime during the night she'd moved over to my bed in order to use my arm as a neck rest. The way it felt, at the same time she may very well have pounded it into a shape that was more comfortable for her.

When I got out of bed and looked down at her as she slept, she looked all pink and lovely, and for a moment I had the urge to touch her arm. I shook it off with difficulty and headed for the bathroom. I had to think about the events of the night. Sense and nonsense were once again warring in my head.

Despite the dead arm, and the agonising tingling when it came back to life, I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and then dressed quietly. I wrote a quick note explaining I'd be back in a couple of hours, but to order room service if she got hungry. Heh. If she got hungry?

I headed down to the reception, wished the ever-smiling Annie-May a good morning -- who arranged a taxi for me in return, and left for my meeting.

After all that travelling, in the end it was a bit of a let-down, to be quite honest. I had no clear expectations of what I thought it would be like, but I'd hoped for a little more than a well-carpeted suite of offices, with cubicles of worker bees droning quietly in the background on phones or computers.

The label execs were nice enough and, although they offered tea, we shared a pot of coffee as we went through the little introduction dance of polite chit-chat, and got down to business. I presented them with a show-reel on DVD that Lappies had knocked together for me, and the four of us watched it, as various well-known music stars serenaded, crooned or belted out my songs on various videos they'd produced. The suits were a little more enthusiastic at that point, and I could almost see the little dollar signs circling their heads, like old-time cartoons.

They in turn presented me with one of their DVDs, and we watched many of their stable of singers and bands do pretty much the same thing that mine had. It gave me a good idea of their individual styles and ranges, which meant that I could tailor songs specifically for them, and that was one of the main points in me being there in the first place. All good then.

Finally, we were through, and with promises of keeping each other in mind echoing between us, I made my way back to the hotel, my mind more occupied with Summer and her presence in my bed that morning, than on the pleasant hour or so of business.

What had she indicated by crawling into bed with me?

It wasn't for sex; that was for sure. She was dressed in a tee-shirt -- one of mine, now I came to think of it -- and a pair of loose-fitting jogging pants. I couldn't remember buying those at the mall, but I suppose I must have. There was no way that Debbie would have presented that rather ratty looking item amongst her array of dazzling creations.

Was it for comfort? Warmth? Security? All of those, or some other mysterious reason? Perhaps it was indeed to torment me, and live up to my nickname for her.

I shook my head. How the hell could I know what was going on in the brain of a woman I'd met less than twenty-four hours earlier? Or any woman if it came to that? I wasn't stupid, but when it came to women, I was thicker than two short planks. My Knight simply threw me into the fray willy-nilly. It certainly didn't provide any great insights, or anything else I could usefully wield in my fight to save the princess in the tower.

I flashed back to Phoebe at school. She hadn't been damaged. So why...

It suddenly came to me. Other kids sat with her at school, but they always approached her in a group, not on their own.

My mouth actually dropped open.

They were afraid of her -- too afraid to be alone with her to face that incredible temper if they did or said the wrong thing. That's why she was always either alone or in a group -- and why she had no real close friends.
My White Knight had fucked me over with her, as well. I'd subconsciously felt sorry for her, and remembered that feeling -- below the radar -- when I'd met her again in my slimmer, more confident guise. That sympathy had pushed me straight at her -- although, admittedly, her looks hadn't exactly made me run screaming for the hills.

"You fucking stupid bastard!" I swore at myself. The cabbie looked at me in the mirror, and I hurriedly pretended to be muttering at my phone until he settled back to driving once more. I noticed he did keep glancing in his mirror at me, giving me the stink-eye.

At the hotel, Annie-May was busy booking in a couple and their kids, so I simply waved and went up to the room. In the lift, I began to wonder at the reception I was going to get. Fuck, life was so confusing sometimes!

When I opened the door, Summer was seated cross-legged on my bed. It had been made up to an extent and she was dressed in a long-sleeved jersey and jeans.

"Hi," I said, trying to suss out her mood. I was glad to see her, not knowing whether she would have just headed out on her own. After all, there was nothing keeping her here.

After my internal revelation about my attraction to Phoebe, I really wasn't sure whether Summer being here was a good thing or not, despite my gladness that she hadn't run off without saying goodbye. No matter how I felt, she was dangerous. She was holding secrets that might or might not be potentially lethal. I was going to have to make a decision about her soon, and unless she started to come clean and give me the information I needed in order to make that decision, she would have to hit the road.

Relieved that I'd managed to come up with some sort of plan that made sense, I sat on the end of the bed and gave her a smile. In return she promptly dismantled my resolve.

She leaned forward and took my hand, hers so small in my great paw.

"Bryn, I have to apologise to you. You've done nothing but help me all the way, and in return I've treated you very badly. I wasn't raised to be a bitch. My parents always taught me right."

She sighed deeply, making her chest do interesting things. I kept my eyes firmly on hers, noting that her eyes had become a little wet as she spoke.

"Last night, after you fell asleep, I thought about what had happened and how you handled the situation. And you were right. I've been a selfish, thoughtless bitch, and honestly -- that's not who I am. At least, it's not how I see myself. I have problems, but you didn't cause them. All you did was try and help me as much as possible. You were my knight in shining armour, riding to my rescue."

I felt a sense of panic start to rise in my gut. Had she guessed about the knighthood within me? If so, how was she going to use it against me? Every single woman I'd ever been with -- which was admittedly a very small number and if they all got together, they probably wouldn't be cramped in a taxi -- had seen through me and turned it into a weapon they could use. So what would Summer do with that knowledge?

I tried to keep my face calm and my breathing steady.

"I don't think I did more than any other guy would do," I suggested.

"Bullshit!" she said, those amazingly bright eyes locking mine to her. "You are a really nice guy -- a special person. I think we both know you could have easily taken advantage of my situation. I know I'm small and skinny -- a goblin, as you said -- but most men would still have tried to fuck me. Some would have forced it. I know you're not gay -- not with that reaction I felt when we hugged after my 'shower,' but you still didn't take advantage of me. I was naked and vulnerable, but you were a perfect gentleman.

"You're a rare commodity, Bryn Lake. A good man. So please, accept my apologies and my thanks for everything you've done for me."

My face was blushing. I could feel the heat coming off it, and for a surreal moment wondered whether I could actually toast bread with my cheeks -- and that I was hungry.

Sometimes your mind just skitters around from random thought to an even more random thought. So I simply said, "Breakfast?"

I knew what she was going to say.

"I could eat," she smiled, fulfilling my silent prophecy.

Breakfast at the restaurant was very different affair to the dinner we'd shared the night before. Summer seemed to have broken down some of the barriers she had put up, and we chatted and laughed through the meal, although both of us carefully avoiding any sensitive topics.

Finally, as we shared another pot of coffee, I broached the subject we'd both been avoiding.

"What are your plans now?" I asked.

She looked at me for a moment, and then gave a little shrug. I really liked it when she did that. She still wasn't wearing a bra -- and actually had none to wear anyway, which made the point moot -- and those little marvels did that lovely little dance for me again.

"It kinda depends on your plans. Are you staying here?"

"What? In Wichita? No, I have to head over to Nashville. I have a couple of meetings set up there for the day after tomorrow."

"Nashville, Tennessee," she muttered. "I've never been there."

The hint was as broad as it was long, and I smiled and gave a little snort. She grinned back.

"Then would you care to join me on my journey, then?"

"Oh my. I'll have to think about that," she said playfully. "Getting in a car with a stranger and heading off to the home of country music? You could turn a girl's head with an offer just out of the blue like that. And yes, I'll accept your kind invitation, sir"

She had switched accents and sounded a lot more like Annie-May than her normal Californian. I liked this playful side of her.

"Okay," I said. "I'll settle the bill now then and we can head off when you're ready."

"I'll pack up and get the luggage down," she offered.

Annie-May gave me her bright smile as I approached.

"Good morning, Mr. Lake," she said. "I have the keys for your replacement car here. You can leave the ones for the other car with me and I'll make sure they get back to the rental company."

"Wow," I enthused. "That was fast! And please, call me Bryn. When you say Mr. Lake, I keep thinking that my dad's caught up with me for not tidying my room."

On my way to the meeting that morning, I'd phoned the rental company and complained politely about the antics of the GPS system in their car. In the back of my mind, I had also had the niggling thought that if someone was chasing Summer, then my changing cars wouldn't hurt to throw off any pursuit. It had felt all very dramatic and television-world type stuff, but I'd enjoyed the idea anyway. I hadn't expected such quick service however.

We exchanged keys, I signed the chit for the account and then offered an envelope to Annie-May. She looked at her name on the envelope, and opened it with a puzzled look. Her eyes opened wider as she saw the contents.

"You've given us wonderful service, Annie-May. I wanted to say thank you."

For the first time, she seemed a little flustered. I guess being given a couple of monkeys as a tip for an overnight stay wasn't common, even in America. "Bryn, thank you. That's a very generous gesture."

"No more than you deserve, love. Enjoy it."

I took the keys for the new car and discovered it parked near the entrance. It was a shade of white and looked pretty much the same as most of the other cars there, which suited me just fine. I was never much of a car fan, and for me they were just a way to get from one place to another in comfort. Others enthuse and even name their cars, but for me they're just tools of transport, and my only real concern is that they don't break down. If they do, I'm completely lost.

I'd just unlocked it, when Summer appeared with a porter, pushing one of those little trolleys with all our gear on it. He helped me load it into the car, smiled at the tip, and we were off.

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Big beautiful woman, living it large

Shaking that ass, keeping you in charge

Pulling the men, whenever you feel

The need to pose, just keeping it real

(Chorus)

Big Mama, Big lass

Big-wig, Big ass

Big bang, big head

Big talk, big bed.

BBW (B. Lake) 2012

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

ZERO HOUR +21

The police car blipped its siren, and I reluctantly pulled over to the side of the road.

It was an unfortunate end to what had been a mostly pleasant evening, a somewhat nervous night and a lovely, sunny morning.

When requested, I handed over my passport, international driving licence and the registration papers for the rental. He looked at them carefully.

"What's this about, constable... sheriff... officer. I'm sorry, we've just arrived for our holiday, and we're not used to—"

"'E's an hofficer," Summer interrupted me. She sounded very different. "S'right innit?"

"Officer is fine," the policeman said, looking at my passport carefully and then back up at us both. "So, you're British. Can I see your passport ma'am?"

"Yes, from Buckinghamshire," I said. I resisted the urge to stare at Summer.

"An' I'm from Lunnun," Summer chipped in, peering at him through her sunglasses. She unfastened her seatbelt. "Well, originally I was. Until Bryn and I found each other -- so romantic an' all, and then we moved in together and I got a job near 'is place. Look 'ere, I've left me passport in me case ... in the boot, so I'll 'ave to fish it out for you, orlright? 'Alf a mo!"

"Lovely hair colour, ma'am," the officer commented, seeming very interested in the errant curls that had crept out from beneath her cap.

"Fanks," she replied calmly, settling back in her seat and sounding pleased at the compliment. "I told that woman back at the 'airdressers in Wichita that I wanted summat different, like. I was tired of 'aving to bleach me roots all the time to keep it blond. So I just told 'er I wanted summat completely different to enjoy on our 'oliday. She suggested this colour, and I fought, Sally, why not just go for it. Treat yerself -- you deserve it, innit? So I did. You like it? I weren't really sure wevver it actually suits me, but me friend Sue -- she's me best friend, like, ever since school -- she says it don't 'alf go with me complexion and reckons it's the dog's bollocks. I texted 'er and sent 'er a picture, and she showed it all round in the grocers where I work -- great shop it is, if yer ever in the area and want to pop in for a cuppa char, feel free. Anyway, they all said it was bleeding brilliant! Even me mum liked it, an' she don't often like my choices. We've 'ad words, 'er an' me, in the past an' we don't always get on, especially after our Sharon's wedding, when me Auntie Tracy -- Mum's sister -- said what she did about our Kevin an' our Effie, and we 'ad a bit of a barney about that, that's for sure, but—"

"That's fine sir ... ma'am. You carry on and have a nice day. Drive carefully." I think he just wanted her to shut up. Even I felt beaten down by the non-stop torrent of vaguely-Essex-like chatter. She buckled up her seatbelt again.

"Well, I never! The cheek of it! I fought you wanted to see me passport," she called out to the officer in an aggrieved tone as I accelerated gently away, leaving the man shaking his head and trudging back to his car.

"What the fuck just happened?" I asked after a few long, tense moments as I watched the police car in my rearview mirror, while simultaneously trying to watch the road ahead and not stare at her in astonishment at the same time.

She began to giggle, and then came that laugh that sent out an all-points alert to Mr. Happy once again.

"Where did that awful train smash come from," I said, smiling helplessly. "Did you hit your head?"

"I thought it was bloody good, like," she said. Oh my god! She had gone from a bad caricature of an Essex girl, to a 1950's East End washer-woman to a Welsh accent that would get any comedian booed offstage for being racist.

"Agh! No more. Stop, please! It's like listening to some soap opera about working class slags from fifty years ago, played backwards."

"I'm offended," she said, pouting. "I got the accent from the servants in Downton Abbey, Eurotrash and that Brad Pitt movie, Snatch. I don't know why I did it. I just panicked."

"How did you know he would believe it?"

"I didn't, but let's face it - he's a Kansas cop. What are the chances that he's met that many British people that he would know whether I was from London or Scotland or even Australia or Nigeria for that matter?"

I nodded, guessing she was right.

"Well Netflix has a lot to answer for," I said. "But despite the horrible arbitrary mangling of my home language, it seems it was exactly the right thing to do. Hopefully he has a fix on two gormless British tourists, and not me and some mysterious fugitive running from..."

I paused for a moment, checking the rear-view mirror once again, and hoping she would fill in the blank.

"Nothing to do with you." I felt a wave of cold from her.

I shook my head, frustrated beyond words.

"Look, you're running from something or somebody, and I'm pretty sure by what just happened back there that the police are definitely interested. I'm trying to help you. But I can't if I don't know what to look out for."

She chewed on that luscious lower lip for a few moments. I saw her face sag slightly and knew she'd decided to come clean. The barriers had dropped.

"Okay. My name is Charlotte Anne Kennedy."

There was a long pause while I waited for her to continue.

Finally, I frowned at her. "And?"

"Charlotte Anne Kennedy!" She stressed each word.

After another pause, I shook my head questioningly. "Er... How do you do?"

She stared at me as if I was incredibly stupid.

"Of the Sacramento Kennedys," she expanded.

"Ooh," I said as if that explained everything. Sarcasm to the fore. "The Sacramento Kennedys. Right. Of course. How did I not put that together immediately?"

"You have no idea who they are, do you?" she asked accusingly.

"No. Sorry love, no clue. I've got nothing. You related to JFK? John and Robert?"

She gave a sound of impatience. "No, of course not. They're Massachusetts Kennedys."

I grew impatient. "Look, if I told you I was part of the Duke of Norfolk's family, how much would that mean to you?"

"You're related to royalty?" she asked, her eyes widening a little.

"Absolutely," I replied. "We're all related to each other in Britain. He's my second cousin once removed."

"Really? Wow!"

"No! Of course not! Or at least I don't think so -- I must admit, there have seen some real surprises come up recently when it comes to royal blood links. But what I'm trying to point out is that you know nothing of them, and I know nothing of the Sacramento Kennedys. Up until the time you told me different, I always thought Sacramento was in Texas or Arizona. Somewhere round there. Then you told me you were from California."

"Sacramento is in California."

"You live, you learn..." I sang.

"Okay," she sighed. "My family has money. I'm Charlotte Anne Kennedy."

"You keep repeating that as if you expect precise repetition to somehow give you a different result. That never works. God, it would make my life so much easier if it did. Programming would be a piece of piss."

She looked blank.

"Piece of piss -- really easy," I clarified. Despite her grovelling in the murky depths of the English language on television, she really wasn't clued up on the slang.

She paused for a long time, and when she spoke again, her voice seemed very small. "My parents died four months ago. I'd had a stupid argument with Dad, a really bad one about a date -- an all-night date -- that I'd been on, and then felt really guilty the next morning when I refused to say goodbye as he and Mom left for Washington. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, that I loved him no matter what. So I drove to the airport in a rush but got there too late. I was just in time to see their plane take off -- and then drop into the ground."

She released an awful sound -- full of loss and heartache and terror. Tears streamed down her face, and I silently squeezed her hand for a long, long moment.

"They didn't survive. The last time I spoke to my parents it was in anger, and I couldn't handle it. I went on a drinks and drugs binge, and when I came out of it, I was in an institution."

I nodded in understanding. All of my family were still alive and kicking, so I didn't know the pain, but I could imagine loss with no problem. I could easily remember loss.

"I have a large trust fund..." She let that trail off.

I nodded again. I'd known trust fund babies. To my mind they were normally associated with self-indulgent assholes who thought they bore no responsibility to anyone. Of course, that could be just the ones I'd met. She didn't seem like any of them.

"Over ten million dollars," she said in a tone that seemed to suggest I should be flat on my back with astonishment at her words. I wasn't that impressed. I had money -- not as much as her trust fund -- but more than enough for a single man, and more coming in each month. After a certain point, it's just numbers.

"Uh-huh," I said flatly in response.

She seemed taken aback by my lack of enthusiasm at her announcement.

"That's a lot," she pointed out.

"Eight million pounds," I mused. "Not bad."

"Not bad?" she shouted. "Not bad? Well, it was more than enough to get someone to have me committed, and then moved to a private institution here in Kansas, which effectively hid me from anyone who knew me. And it was more than enough to get me beaten and raped again and again and again as M-M-Murdoch tried to get me completely under his control. I don't think anyone knows or cares that I'm missing, and I don't think anyone will find me if they get me back there. Nobody knows what's going on. I'm not even sure that I do. Oh God, what if it's all in my mind? What if I really am crazy?"

She was sobbing now, her knees drawn right up to her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around them.

I placed my hand on her arm. She didn't acknowledge it, but she didn't throw it off.

"Summer, I'm so sorry," I whispered.

"Yeah, well your sympathy and five dollars will get me a cup of coffee."

"Shit, coffee costs that much round here?"

She stared at me for a long moment, and then a weak smile broke through the tears. "You're an asshole, you know that."

Mentally, I breathed a sigh of relief that it had worked. I may very well be an asshole -- my ex-wife would be more than eager to agree with that -- but I had learned something in my ongoing crusade to rescue the wounded. Distraction can sometimes be better than confrontation.

She reached to my hand on her arm, and snuggled her hand in beneath it, holding on tight.

"I don't know whether Kerry, my godmother, knows where I was taken or whether she organised it, or who else is involved. I don't know anything! I can only presume that it's about control of my family's money.

"They kept me sedated a lot of the time, but I learned to slip those damn pills out of my mouth before they dissolved. Last week, when Murdoch came in for another of those fucking nightly 'training' sessions, I was waiting with the tray they served the evening meal on. I swung it at him side-on, and caught him across the throat and he went down, choking. I raged and kept kicking him, but after a while I realised it was more important to get out of there. He'd passed out, and his breathing sounded like a deflating balloon with someone stretching the nozzle wide -- you know, like kids do to really annoy every adult in the room. I didn't have a plan, or even an idea of what to do. I just stole his keys and sneaked out. I managed to grab a shirt out of a laundry trolley that had been left in the passage and a hat off a hook on the wall. I was so frightened I thought I was going to have a heart attack, but wearing something helped just a tiny bit."
I squeezed her hand, and she returned it gratefully.

"It was like being in a nightmare or one of those cheap-shit horror movies -- wandering around in the dark halls of that place, knowing I was going to be discovered at any moment. But then I found an emergency exit. It was just there! I know there are probably dozens all through that place, but at that moment it felt like I'd found a magic doorway.

"I used the keys to unlock it, then just pushed it, ran down the steps and away. An alarm sounded, but I didn't hear any pursuit. I saw the wheat fields and just ran. When I reached them, I kept running for a while, but kept tripping over in the dark. So I hid.

"After a while, in the distance, I saw a couple of police cars drive up to the institute... hospital... whatever it was. I started towards them, and then realised that they would in all likelihood see me not as someone held illegally against their will, but as a patient -- a dangerous, violent patient -- escaping from an insane asylum. Why would they believe that Murdoch was raping and beating me every day, trying to break me and gain control over me so he could loot everything I had? What evidence did I have? Nothing! While they probably had papers to prove I should be there and wasn't in my right mind! If Murdoch was still alive, he would be able to prove I was violent and if he wasn't... What if I killed him? What if I killed a man? I never wanted to kill someone, but I did want to kill him. What if I did? What does that make me?"

She broke off for a moment, her face against her knees, lost in terrible memory. I thought about what she said, and found myself hoping she had indeed killed him. He deserved it -- and more. She was now clutching my hand against her chest like a shield. I pulled the car off the road and stroked her hair with the other one.

Eventually, she sniffed and looked at me again. "I stayed hidden, digging in at night, and moving only a little each day, until I came across a road -- which I didn't dare cross in case I was seen."

"And then I came along," I said.

She nodded and the tears began to flow once more. "And then you came along and... you know."

"I understand."

She squeezed my hand hard.

"If you hadn't stopped... Thank you for stopping!"

"My bladder deserves the thanks," I smiled.

"I'm sorry I treated you like shit," she said quietly.

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing. I'd reached a stage where, in my mind, all men would hurt me. Murdoch had got me to the point that I was starting to give in to him. That Stockholm Syndrome thing. It's crazy. I'm crazy. I'm fucked up in my head. He would hurt me badly, and then bring me a soda or something. And I'd be grateful to him. He'd ask me to kiss the ass of the massive dragon tattoo on his chest, and I'd be happy to do that for him. I was grateful, for fuck's sake! Towards the end he would tell me to do things ... stupid or nasty things ... and I found myself wanting to do them. I wanted to please him -- which horrifies me more than anything. I can't go back! I can't!"

She was taking huge gulps of air, and I began to worry she might pass out. "Jesus, Summer. I wish I'd known earlier."

"I didn't know if I could trust you. I don't really know why I trust you now, although I do... a little. Maybe I'm tired of not trusting people. I've certainly never really felt able to trust strangers before, or even people I knew. Dad warned me when I was still young that guys would want me for my money. Even if they liked me, they would always want the money, which meant that dating anyone sucked, big time. How can you get to like someone if you don't trust them?"

"Well, please don't feel you need to worry about money from my side," I said. "I do okay for myself."

"Really, because you don't really look... well off?" she said hesitantly, the question in her voice. "I don't even know what you do, although you've hinted that you know something about computers."

"I, er... I write songs," I said, starting the engine and swinging back out onto the road and realised I was doing it to avoid answering. I found myself reluctant to explain more, and realised that Phoebe had damaged me more than I'd realised. Certainly not as badly as Summer had been, but significantly enough.

She stared at me, and I glimpsed a look of understanding come into her eyes before I fixed my eyes on the road again. "When you sang to me -- that was your song!"

"Yes."

"It was very pretty. Did you just make it up on the spot?"

"Not really," I said, still reluctant. "I wrote it a few months ago."

"You should finish it and get it out there!" she stated firmly.

I wanted to tell her that Shades of Blue was already finished and that Little Mix would be releasing it in three months' time when their new album was scheduled to go live. It was the first I'd done for a girl group, but it needed the complex counter-harmonies that they would bring to it so well.

I wanted to tell her, but I couldn't. I felt like shit. She trusted me with her story, and yet I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth of mine. Fuck you, Phoebe!

"So that's who you're hiding from," I changed the subject. "The police?"

"The police, Murdoch, possibly Kerry, and God knows who else wants me in their hands. Public Health, the FBI... even the fucking dog catcher, for all I know."

She sounded crushed and exhausted. "We were lucky back there. That cop was on the lookout for me. I could see it when he was looking at my hair."

"I'm not sure they're actively searching," I remarked. "I watched the TV news and you weren't on it, so it's not like they're going door-to-door -- more like you're on a watch list of some sort. I don't think this Murdoch character can be dead, as there'd be more kerfuffle about it."

"Kerfuffle?" She actually giggled. She was going from tears to laughter and back way too quickly. Her mental balance was shot. But laughter was better than bitter fear and devastating memory.

I pretended indignation.

"Yes, kerfuffle! It's a perfectly good English word. Like hullabaloo, or williwaw. It means the same thing."

"Williwaw?" She was laughing hard now, but it had no note of hysteria or fear. It was a good laugh.

"There's no such word! You made that up!" she accused.

"No, no, no!" I denied, putting on my best John Cleese impression. "Just because you Americans might not 'ave heard of it, don't mean it's not real. I'll 'ave you know, my girl, that it's a perfectly good noun, and is in common usage by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Bolingbroke and the Marquis De Sade!"

Smiling, she put a hand to my cheek. "You're a very strange man... in a good way, I think."

"Thank you. Such effusive praise deserves a reward. As Lappies would say, 'so 'n bek moet jam kry!' Which I believe translates as -- a mouth like that should be given jam. He's my agent, from South Africa originally. He trots out these little sayings all the time. Half the time, I think he's talking bollocks and just swearing at me on the quiet."

As I spoke, I drew out a chocolate bar from a little paper bag I had at my feet, having shopped at the kiosk near the hotel before we left, and handed it to her. She liked food a lot, and seemed to need feeding whenever possible, so...

She seemed delighted, opening it quickly and nibbling at a corner. She looked at me slyly. "Ooh. Ta. Much obliged, guvnor!"

"Oh God," I moaned, despair in my voice. "She's back into washer-woman mode."

"I think I need to phone my lawyers," she said after a while. "I don't know what's going on, but I think them knowing I'm alive and the circumstances of my recent... confinement... is a good place to start. If nothing else, they can at least make sure that nobody is dipping their hand into the cookie jar. My cookie jar. They control the trust, but I don't how that is affected by my parents... Well, they need to know."

I nodded. It made sense.

"Are you going to tell them where you are?" I asked. "I mean, if the police are looking for you as a mental patient escaped from an asylum, wouldn't they be required to inform them? I don't know how it works here in America."

She bit her lip. "Yeah, I suppose they would. So I'm not going to tell them. All they need to know is I'm alive and that allowing anyone else to get control of my family's money would be a very bad thing in the long run. I think I also need to find a friendly shrink who can certify that I'm not actually crazy."

"If nothing else, they could at least help you with that," I agreed. "And give you some help on... what happened to you."

Her face froze, and I quickly changed the subject. Neither of us wanted her to dwell on that maniac and what he'd done to her.

"I think we should also stay off the highways," I mused, thinking out loud. "If the police have your picture -- and with that last cop pulling us over just to have a look-see, we have to assume that they do -- then we have to keep you tucked away. Unfortunately, and believe me, this is the last thing I want you to do, I think we're going to have to do something about your hair. It's just too obvious, the way it shines out like a golden pearl in a pile of mud, or a roaring fire in a snowy landscape, or..."

She twirled a little lock of her hair around her fingers, examining it closely and then looking at me.

"You really like my hair, don't you?"

I thought about denying it, trying to keep everything on a neutral level, trying to avoid any sign of emotion between us, but I couldn't deny it. I nodded.

"I do. Quite frankly, I've never seen anything quite like it. The thought of you cutting it off makes me feel very sad. Honestly, I'd rather you made it green or blue or pink, rather than cut it off. But your safety is more important."

Her eyes widened and she shot me that wonderful smile, nodding her head.

"Brilliant idea. Let's do that at the next stop!"

"Do what?"

"Cosplay!"

I was about to make a sarcastic remark, when I realised the genius of her idea. Cosplay allowed people -- and for people read slightly weird types -- to dress up as fantasy or comic characters.

"Don't you need to have a costume for that?" I asked.

"Pah," she said blithely. "With all those clothes you bought me? I can mix and match, and if anyone asks, I'll make up a character and pretend it's a brand new comic. I could be Fantasiala, or Pudding Girl, or even a character dressed in her normal daily disguise -- like Clark Kent or Diana Prince."

I sniggered. "Pudding Girl! Be Pudding Girl! Oh, please be Pudding Girl!"

"What? Why?"

"Everybody likes pudding. Mmm, treacle tart or sticky toffee pudding and custard. No -- pavlova! I love pavlova with double cream. That's a good name for Pudding Girl -- Wantsomemoreova Pavlova. It even sounds Russian, like Black Widow."

"Those are desserts, not pudding."

I shot her a look. "Pudding, dessert -- same thing."

"Pudding is a smooth, creamy dessert."

"You guys are weird. That's like saying dinner is a hot, tasty dinner."

We fell into a spirited argument, and for the first time, it felt good to be talking and laughing with her -- without the shadows of our damaged pasts darkening the mood.

She made a couple of phone calls on my phone. When she slowly said and very clearly said several words that made no sense together, I came to the conclusion that they were code words to identify her. After that I tried really hard not to listen, wanting to give her privacy.

We stopped at the next town and after rummaging in her suitcases, Summer drew me into a large store that seemed to sell just about everything, from toothpaste to televisions. The long aisles proved no problem for her, however, and within minutes she had purchased what she wanted and found the toilets. Glancing around and seeing nobody looking, she popped into a disabled loo and locked me out to stand guard. Of course, with my luck, within two minutes a guy in a wheelchair appeared.

"Somebody in there, mate," I offered lamely, which I guess was appropriate. "She has disabled ... er, hair."

He stared at me, laughed and began chatting amicably, asking me where I was from. There was a flush and, thank God, a woman in a wheelchair exited the adjacent toilet, relieving me of having to explain my statement and giving me a reprieve from the feeling of guilt at guarding the door for Summer, against people who actually needed it.

It took ten minutes before she opened the door and allowed me to see the results of her efforts.

I was gob-smacked. In front of me stood a small, fairy-like creature with purple hair that hung down to her butt. A sparkly red dress showed a little cleavage and a lot of thigh. In the middle of Summer's forehead was a large red diamond. It took me a moment to realise that it was painted on, with glitter stuck to the paint. Her eyes were made up darkly, extended from the corners, giving her a slightly Asian look. Her legs were wrapped in what looked like leather thongs, which criss-crossed all the way up from a pair of black heels.

She dropped a deep curtsey as I gawped at her.

The guy in the wheelchair chose that moment to exit his bathroom. He raised his eyebrows at Summer, then waggled them at me and gave me a thumbs up, before rolling off into the shop. I smiled.

"Well?"

"I get to escort the Fairy Queen to the destination of her choice. How could I deny such a charming and powerful creature anything?" I gave her a deep bow with a sweep of an imaginary hat.

"Say beautiful or I'll turn you into a frog, and forbid any maidens from kissing you!" she warned, a smile in her voice at me playing up to her.

"There are real, live maidens in this land -- actual maidenly maidens with maidenly attributes still present and correct?" I said, pretending to be astonished. "Who knew?"

"Beautiful! Say it!" she repeated.

"My queen is exquisite, delicate, fragile, wondrous..."

"You've been warned!"

"...and beautiful beyond words."

"You have a way with words, puny human. I shall not magic your favourite body parts away to the deepest depths of the ocean."

"Gasp! No!" I said. "Not my absolute favourite part!"

I clutched both hands to my left ear, and she burst out laughing.

"Idiot!"

"Guilty on all charges, m'lud!"

Laughing, we joked all the way back to the car, pausing only to buy her a large pizza as a road-snack.

Three hours later, as we headed towards Springfield, she gave a great sigh of satisfaction as she finished off the last slice in the box, uncaring that it was stone cold and defending it to the last -- having allowed me to have two slices before smacking at my hand when it crept to take another piece and declaring that they were hers for later.

My phone rang.

Before I could do anything interesting, the car picked up the call and I found myself saying hello to the dashboard.

"Mr. Lake? Bryn?" I recognised that voice.

"Is that Annie-May?" I asked.

"It is. Two things. First to thank you again for that gratuity -- it was more than generous. And secondly just to let you know that a man with a badge came in showing your friend's picture around, and saying she was a person of interest to the authorities."

I was silent for a moment, trying to think of what best to say.

"Bryn?"

"Sorry Annie-May, I was just thinking. Was it a policeman?"

"I don't think so, he just flashed the badge and then put it away. He didn't show me identification or anything. He could have been from one of the alphabet agencies, I suppose."

It took me a moment to realise what she was referring to. It was a clever description, and I filed it away to use later as a throwaway line.

"And what did you tell this person?" I asked.

"Well, I couldn't lie, so I said I hadn't noticed anyone who looked like the photograph. I mean, it was flat and glossy, and I certainly hadn't seen anyone who fit that description. Your friend isn't flat and square."

"Annie-May?"

"Yes."

"Worth every penny and a whole lot more."

"Really...? Well, I really like Riley Green, and I really like your songs, so..."

I laughed. "Annie-May, I don't think I could swing that. I know nothing about trucks and I wouldn't know a hound-dog from a Siamese cat."

"Ah, that's a shame. It could have been a match made in heaven. Well, you have a good trip and a great day! It was nice talking to you."

"You too, Annie-May. Bye."

I was grinning when I pressed the switch on the wheel to disconnect the call.

"You like her!"

"Sure, what's not to like?" I asked.

Summer flounced in her seat. I stared.

After a moment she turned to me. "Don't you know it's not polite to try and charm a girl while you're with another woman?"

I did the goldfish impression. "I wasn't trying to charm her. She's nice! And more importantly, she told us about that investigator looking for you."

"She didn't say anything to him. Tell me more about your songs that she really likes so much, and no hiding things this time!"

Ah, shit!

"I didn't hide anything. I told you I was a songwriter."

"You told her that?"

"Well, no. She recognised my name, I think."

"I didn't recognise your name!"

"Maybe she listens to the radio more than you," I retorted, feeling defensive and not understanding why.

Her eyes widened. "You have songs on the radio?"

"You sang along to a couple yesterday," I laughed.

Those eyes -- normally so big -- grew even wider. I felt for a moment I could simply dive into them and find myself in paradise.

"Which ones?" she demanded.

I told her and she looked puzzled until I clarified it. "They sang them, I wrote them. Nobody would pay to hear me sing."

"But why didn't you tell me?"

"I have a problem with telling people about my work," I confessed.

"Why?" she asked in confusion, then her face changed. "No, let me guess! Fucking Phoebe!"

I snorted. It was a good nickname. I nodded and explained.

"She sang on one of my songs. It was picked up and over time it became the norm for her to perform some of the songs on my submissions. It was a bit of a problem actually, because I create songs for specific singers, and she insisted on singing them on the demos. And when Phoebe insisted... well, I usually gave in just to get some peace and to stop her from destroying the house, or at least from blowing up my studio.

"But a lot of those I didn't even send out, and just stored them away on backup. They were no good for the people they were actually designed for, so I just let her do her thing and think they hadn't made the grade because of my song-writing rather than her voice. It was frustrating not to keep getting my songs out there, but we weren't short of cash, I loved her, and it made her happy, so...

"Then the shitweasel entered the picture."

Summer looked taken aback.

"A shitweasel: a creature so sly and slimy that it can sneak up your arse without you knowing about it and then eat you away from the inside. It's not a saying; it just describes that little prick perfectly.

"The first I knew about it was when she came home one day and announced that she now had an agent -- which was pretty weird as she wasn't doing anything in particular, so why would she need an agent? As far as I knew, there was no call for housewives to get themselves an agent. And even if she was planning to do something where she would need one, what agent would take her with no skill set?"

Summer was staring at my hands on the wheel, and I realised my fingers were drumming and tapping against it loudly in agitation. I took a firm grip to keep them still.

"So why did your wife need an agent?" she asked.

"She didn't. But he made her think that she did; that dog-snot, pox-infested mole-fucker!"

Summer's brows were raised high. "Hey, tell me how you really feel," she said lightly, and I realised she was playing my own game against me, using humour to calm the situation.
"It turns out he had heard her sing on one of my submissions, done some snooping and then approached Phoebe with an offer she was never going to refuse. With her voice and looks, and his brilliant talents as a deal-maker, he was going to make her a star -- with me writing songs for her.

"I tried to be gentle, pointing out that we -- and by we, I meant me -- already had an agent and couldn't just go off and sign with someone else and besides, I didn't want to. I also didn't want to say that although she had a pleasant voice, and my own version of software -- similar to Auto-Tune -- could make it sound better, she still didn't have what it takes. She just didn't have the range, the purity or the timbre to make it big in the music industry. At best she could have been a jobbing back-up singer. But how do you tell the woman you love that she just isn't good enough?"

I sighed and gave Summer another chocolate bar. Apart from a quiet 'thank you', she didn't comment, waiting expectantly.

"So I fudged around the subject, putting her off. But shitweasel was already gnawing at her, urging her to get me to write for her. So in the end I gave in. She recorded it and it did reasonably well, making the top 100 in a couple of countries. I think he must have told her that it was my fault it didn't hit number one -- after all, he'd done everything with the video to make her look like a whore working her way through every dancer on the set; male and female. In his opinion that was better than anything Beyonce, Gaga, Rihanna or Shakira ever did. So if it wasn't her fault or his fault, it must have been my fault.

I looked at Summer, her face showing sympathy, and shrugged.

"By that time, I really hated that guy. He was constantly whispering in her ear and destroying my life. Then came a wake-up call, when my agent -- who was pretty pissed off himself at shitweasel's continual efforts to get me to change agencies -- called me in and showed me a couple of videos. Lappies was annoyed enough at the little shit's efforts to poach talent from him, that he had a PI follow him around. It turns out the miniature bastard wasn't only talking Phoebe into dead-end ambitions; he had talked her into bed with him as well. She was fucking the snake in my Garden of Eden! He was the source of the disease that was killing the two of us -- Patient Zero -- and here she was snuggling in as tightly as possible to him at every opportunity. I had to watch as he fucked her -- a scabrous rat riding on the back of a pedigree Persian cat. The rat on the cat. It sounds like a Dr. Seuss book."

Summer squeezed my arm. I looked out of the window so she wouldn't see the tears that always fell when I was forced to remember her beautiful body lying there with her legs spread wide, while he bounced up and down on top of her, trying to plumb her depths with what appeared to be a very average cock. The rat on the cat came from one video where he had her bent over a desk, her skirt up around her waist and her panties around one ankle, while he struggled on tip-toe to force his dick inside her. In the end, she had had to almost crouch so he could do the deed, lying against her back as his arse pounded back and forth like a metronome on full speed while hanging on tightly to her perfect tits. I didn't see any love there, just lust, ambition and opportunity.

"I loved that cheating bitch so much, that I threw her out -- did all the lock-changing and protection measure things to keep them out and at a distance from me; a restraining order, I guess you'd call it. I got to stay in the house because my studio was there, and the court agreed it wouldn't be fair to exclude me from my work place."

"You loved her, but couldn't forgive her?" Summer asked quietly.

I shook my head.

"I threw her out because I loved her. If I kept seeing her, day after day, while knowing what she'd done -- still was doing as far as I knew -- I would end up despising her as much as I hated him. I couldn't forgive her, because I'd told her again and again what he was up to -- that he was looking for a quick way into her knickers and my wallet, but she always knew better and pooh-poohed it every time. Or maybe she just chose to ignore me and everything I said, because he was offering her a dream, where all I could give her was reality. Whatever! It happened, and it was the end. There was no way back. So I divorced her."

"What did she say at the end," Summer asked, which I thought at first was a strange question. Then I realised that it made sense. Anything Phoebe had said before that didn't matter -- it was just talk.

"She was sorry. She hadn't meant it to happen. She didn't realise it was happening until it was too late. And so on. All bullshit. Lies, more lies and great gobs of bullshit!"

"Have you seen her since?"

"Oh yes, unfortunately. Well, unfortunately for her too, I guess. It turns out that Lappies is on his third wife, and knows all the tricks that his ex-wives lawyers tried to pull on him. Phoebe was expecting to get half my income but, on his advice, I'd put all my songs through a company of which I was the only shareholder. That protected everything I'd done before we married. And when she sang on my samplers, Lappies had paid her well for her singing gigs. She got ten grand for each one -- a very decent fee for something which was never going to be a finished product. But that fee excluded her from any further income from them. In the end, I only sold two that she hadn't earned a fee on, and neither of those had reached the top forty. She gets a share of those.

"There wasn't much equity on the house -- we'd only had it two years -- so she ended up with very little. A few thousand from that, the six-monthly divisions of income from her two shared songs, her car and clothes, and a grand a month from me. The judge felt that with all the hype the malingering dwarf had put out there, she was likely to earn a decent income from her 'singing career', and limited that to two years. My lawyer handed over a cheque and I walked away. Not what she was expecting at all.

"I guess the judge didn't think much of the fuckweasel's attempted theft of my life. I'd sued him simultaneously, for the court costs of the divorce. It didn't put any money in my pocket, but it did extract some from his. More important, it did put his name out there, which didn't do his reputation any good in the divorce court, or in the music industry either.

"She's still with him, as far as I know -- I think more in desperation than anything else. She certainly hasn't gone on to any musical stardom, or any music at all, in fact."

I shook my head, which had started to ache. I didn't want to think about it anymore.

"Can we talk about something else, please? What about this investigator back at the hotel?"

She thought for a moment. "I don't know what to think. That Annie-May woman said she didn't see the badge clearly, so there's no telling what agency he's from."

I thought for a moment. Then I thumbed my phone until I found the call from Annie-May and hit the call back button to phone her mobile. That took a long longer than it should have, but I was pleased that I hadn't screwed it up.

The speakers in the car echoed the ring tones, and then her rich, southern belle voice came on. "Hello? Who is calling?"

"It's Bryn Lake, Annie-May. You've done a lot for us, and I hate to ask you to do more, but could I ask a favour of you?"

"You betcha. What do you need..."

For a moment, my imagination put the word 'sugar' on the end of her question and I smiled. Some things were just so American that they represented the country to the rest of the world. Her accent was one of those good things.

"I was wondering if there might be any photographs or video of that investigator. I'm not sure what that badge indicated. Or whether it actually meant anything."

"You think he might have been pulling a fast one?"

"Well, it's possible. I just need to cover all the bases."

"I don't know if we have anything on camera, but I'll see what I can do for you." Was there a silent 'honey' on the end of that.

"If you can, my next song will be called 'Annie-May', and I'll get my agent to talk to Chris Lane about singing it." I'd heard Lappies talking to another agency about the singer, so he had to be able to contact him somehow.

There was a long, wistful sigh. "I'll get back to you."

We hung up, and I glanced at Summer, who was staring at me with a very frosty look on her face.

"Hey, here's an idea," she said, her accent suddenly almost as southern as Annie-May's. "How 'bout we just turn right on around and go back to that hotel so you can fuck her fat ass right on that front desk? Now wouldn't that be a thing?"

"Summer!"

"My name is Charlotte." She smiled sweetly. "But you can call me Miss Kennedy."

"Summer, come on!" I couldn't believe it. Sure, we played silly games, but this wasn't the time. There were more important things to discuss.

She turned away and looked out of the side window.

There was silence for another couple of hours until, in the distance, we saw a motorway services -- a truckstop, I suppose. It seemed bigger than most, so I suppose it could be a mini-mall. I'd heard of them, but had no idea what they looked like.

I'd spent the silent time thinking about Murdoch and his actions with Summer; what he might want, and more importantly, what he might do. My stomach felt clenched in a way I hadn't experienced since my worst days at school. Even Phoebe hadn't managed to wind me up this tight.

"Let me out here," she said blankly.

"Summer..." I started.

"Ms. Kennedy. I'd appreciate it if you'd use my correct name."

Suddenly I felt a wave of anger swell up within me, to beach and break upon my tongue. I tasted copper in my mouth.

"You know what? Fuck this! Enough of this shit! I had enough of this from my ex, and I certainly don't need to take it from you as well. Yes, your life has been shit for the past few weeks. Well mine was like that for twenty years! So suck it up, sweet-arse! Tough fucking titty! It's life! But whatever that means to you, it doesn't give you the right to shit all over me on a whim! I've had enough! So you want to get out here, then get out!"

I pulled over in the car park, leaned over and pushed her door open. "Don't let it hit you in the arse on your way out!"

"Bryn..."

"Just go!"

"But..."

"GO!" I was so angry, I could feel my hands shaking, and clamped them to the wheel. I stared ahead, not wanting to look at her.

The door closed, and I drove away.

I'd almost reached the exit, my eyes stinging for no particular reason, when I realised something and my heart dropped. I still had her luggage in the boot.

"Fuck!" I yelled and pounded at the steering wheel. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuckity-Fuck!"

I couldn't leave her there with nothing. That wasn't going to happen.

I swung the car around, and drove back to the entrance to the mini-mall, and my heart dropped to my shoes.

Summer was sitting on the kerb, weeping -- a tiny fairy with purple hair, crying on the side of the road. My heart twisted once again. I was a fucking monster.

I parked and walked over to her, dropping down to sit next to her. We sat there in near-silence for a long time as she cried. Several passers-by gave me an evil look, which I blithely ignored. I gave her the blue silk handkerchief back, and she sniffed and snivelled into it for a while.

"I only meant for you to stop here so I could go to the bathroom," she wept. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah," I sighed. "I'm sorry too. I flashed back to the bitch -- fucking Phoebe."

"Can I still go with you?" she asked timidly, after another long silence. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

Bang. She'd pulled the trigger again. I knew that wasn't her direct intent, although she may have done it subconsciously, but it achieved its aim either way.

"Yes, of course. Do you still need to pee?"

She nodded.

"Go find a bathroom then, wash your face, whatever you need. Take your time -- I'll wait for you in the car."

"Okay," she said, still using that tiny voice. "You'll be here when I get back, won't you?"

I gathered her to me. "Summer, you drive me absolutely bonkers at times, but I'll be here for you."

She gave me a squeeze, blew her nose and then offered the handkerchief back to me. The look on my face as I contemplated the now-damp and crumpled cloth made her giggle weakly, which made me smile in turn.

"Ah... consider it a gift," I said, waving it away.

"Thank you," she said and walked into the mall.

I sighed again, realised that recently I'd been doing that more often than the front row of a Magic Mike performance, and decided to try and limit them for a while. The car was heating up in the sun, and I let down the windows as I got in very gingerly and breathed the baked air, sitting and watching the people coming and going.

I made two phone calls, and then sat back to wait some more. She was a woman, so any trip to a room with a toilet and a mirror was sure to take a long time.

After a short while, my phone gave a gurgle to indicate the arrival of a text and after a sharp argument, opened it for me.

*This is all I could get. Hope it helps. Remember me to Chris. Xoxo*

There was a video attached. I managed to open it and watched the investigator approach the front desk. He was wearing a black cap with something written on it that I couldn't quite make out, a black plastic-looking windcheater, and nondescript pants. He flashed the badge, and I realised why Annie-May hadn't recognised the agency. The prick was holding it in such a way that a finger was looped across the front.

The view changed to that from a camera in the parking lot. The investigator was now talking to the porter and the car park attendant, and showing them a photograph. My heart dropped as they nodded and waved their hands, pointing out directions.

Ah fuck!

I rewound the video slightly, paused it and then slid my fingers across the screen, making it work properly for once, and expanding the view. The man didn't look like anything out of the ordinary, apart from a birth mark on one side of his neck, visible when he turned and the neck of his shirt pulled open slightly. I cocked my head to one side, looking at the birthmark. It looked almost like...

My eyes shot wide and I sat bolt upright as I realised what I was looking at -- the snout of a dragon, with flame coming from it -- up and around his lower neck. It was Murdoch! Phoebe had talked about him having a huge tattoo of a dragon on his chest, and that was what I was looking at.

Then I froze as I realised I'd seen that face recently -- entering the mall! While I was sitting in the car, he had simply walked past me, just two rows away.

"Summer! ..."

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Running from you, this running man

Getting away, travel any way I can

Don't need you no more, I'm over and done

Not my problem no more, not my woman

Time Out (B. Lake) 2017

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

ZERO HOUR +27

I rushed towards the entrance, and then changed to a sort of crouching sidle as I tried to disguise myself amongst a group of travellers from a large camper van. They looked at me as if I'd pissed on their state flag, and pointedly moved away from me. But by that time, I was into the long, wide hall, with its hedgerows of shop fronts. Trying to rack my brains to try and remember what the body beneath that face had been wearing when he walked past me, threatened to give me a headache. I knew that it hadn't been the black jacket and trousers I'd seen in the video, but my memory kept morphing him back into wearing those, which made it as unreliable as a market trader fronting a display of suspiciously unidentifiable DVD players.

I spotted the signs for the toilets, and did my sidling move once more, which quite honestly would have given me free passage to the disabled loos if anyone had cared enough to notice. They were down a passage that echoed to the feet of its patrons, and smelled of pine and bleach.

I crept into the men's bathroom, peering under the stall doors to try and see if Summer was there, then berated myself for being an idiot. The ladies lavatory was a lot more difficult. When I entered, there were several women at the hand basins, washing their hands or checking their make-up in the mirrors. All eyes swung towards me.

"Left luggage check. Left luggage check," I chanted repeatedly, shielding my eyes more to hide my face than their private bits. One of the stall doors opened unexpectedly, a woman still determinedly yanking leggings up over a little girl's plump legs, the girl's feet leaving the ground completely at the zenith of each tug. The woman looked at me suspiciously.

"Don't leave unattended luggage," I said. "Report anything suspicious."

The woman's eyes grew wide and she hustled the girl out quickly. Once again, I checked under the stall doors, but unless Summer had found a pair of old flats, some tatty flip-flops, brand new Nikes or some sparkling red dance shoes, she wasn't in the bathroom.

My heart was beating like Taylor Hawkins was having a hissy fit. Where the hell was she? Where was Murdoch? Why was I still in the women's bathroom?

I stepped out into the passage and almost collided with a door as it swung open in front of me. Purple hair swirled and I grabbed Summer's arm. She squeaked in surprise.

"He's here," I whispered, swinging her in close so I could put my mouth to her ear. "Murdoch. He was the one checking up at the hotel. I saw him walking into this place."

Her eyes opened so wide the whites of her eyes were clear around the pupils. I felt her start to shake.

"We need to go!" I whispered and she nodded.

Trying to watch every person in the centre at the same time, I drew her out into the main hall, the scent of coffee, fried food and Mexican spices strong once again. We moved steadily towards the exit, until I looked into a book shop, and saw Murdoch's reflection in the shop window. He was following behind us, his perfectly ordinary features half hidden behind the ubiquitous cap that seemed to cover the top half of his head.

I felt a snowy avalanche stream down my whole body, as if I'd done an impromptu ice bucket challenge. Then I realised he was looking around and not concentrating on us. With Summer's arm held tight against me, I drew her to one side, trying to seem casual -- just two ordinary people going about their daily lives -- nothing to see here!

When we were out of the main traffic flow, she just couldn't resist. She looked over her shoulder and froze. She'd seen him. Panic distorted her features and her mouth opened to scream, to shout, to cry... I didn't know which. It didn't matter -- I couldn't let her draw attention to us.

I span her around to face me and kissed her, my hands pressed to her cheeks to hide her face, and trying not to knock the ever-present cap from her head. What is it about caps that excite Americans so?

Summer's eyes opened even wider, and for a long moment she was as stiff as a sheet left out on a washing line during mid-winter, and then she softened into my arms. Her eyes were locked on mine, although mine were darting everywhere, trying to spot Murdoch within a sudden surge in the pedestrian traffic. I saw his back for a moment as he passed us, then he disappeared behind a pair of bloated shoppers dressed in shorts and loose tee shirts who were big enough to remind me of myself when I was fifteen. When he reappeared from behind them, he was striding out through the exit.

The ice over my body released its hold and I sagged with relief, and realised suddenly that I was no longer kissing Summer -- she was kissing me.
Her mouth tasted faintly of cherries and honey, and her breath was sweet with a passing scent of autumnal air. Her lips were soft; so soft they felt almost insubstantial, and I couldn't help pressing mine more firmly against them. I felt her teeth slowly close on my lower lip to nibble for a moment, and then my tongue was pressing between them to seek out hers. I was no more in control of my actions than the pilot of an airbus after the wings had fallen off.

We kissed for an instant that lasted a lifetime. No more, no less.

My heart pounded and melted into a small blob within my chest. The knight cheered loudly in my head, knowing he'd won the internal battle. I would no longer be able to walk away from her, away from this situation, and go back to my normal life -- such as it was. I was hers to do with as she wished; to love and cherish, to ignore and leave, or to betray and ruin -- it was all in her hands.

There was a series of giggles and laughter, a hiss of disgust, a snort of acknowledgement, and I realised the passing parade were very aware of our actions, and felt themselves completely at liberty to comment on our embrace.

She drew back, and I recognised on her face the slightly stunned look that mine had to be wearing. We both knew that something had changed forever. Our lives had suddenly been diverted onto a new track -- destination unknown.

All my fears suddenly rushed back in. This was a girl from a different country -- a different continent -- whom I had known for just a day. She was damaged, sought by the authorities, and she knew my intimate weaknesses. She was danger personified. Walk away, Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!

And yet all I wanted was to be near her. Well, not actually all... My heart knew it was desperate for her to feel the same way about me; my body craved her slightest touch; and Mr. Happy had reappeared to post a claim on what he wanted as well.

I hadn't felt like this since the first days with Phoebe.

No -- that was wrong! What I had felt then was the faintest echo of this; like the grumble of a distant thunder storm compared to the noise and violence of that storm letting loose right above me, with lightning turning nearby trees into badly shaped matchsticks.

Our eyes were locked together.

"We need to go," I mumbled, not making any move whatsoever.

"Yes," she agreed, seemingly equally paralysed.

"Get a room," said a passerby, sounding disgruntled and more than a little jealous.

It broke us out of the immobility spell that those sudden surges of emotion had cast over us. I took her hand and we crept to the exit, peered out for several minutes, and then dashed for the car, running stooped over like a pair of really old pensioners who had been given a hefty dose of cocaine with their creamed corn and vitamins.

Within minutes we were exiting the services and getting back on the highway, me cursing at myself for not following the earlier plan and using the back roads. I handed her the phone.

"Find us a route to Nashville that keeps us off the highways," I said.

She fiddled with the phone with an expertise that made mine look like that of a caveman finding a Rubik's cube -- probably able to solve it, but just as likely to break it in the process. My skill with programming hadn't migrated to using a phone, as those teenage years largely spent in my room, with no friends, meant no need for social media. Besides, I was always at my computer, so why bother with a small screen. To be honest, I would have been quite happy with a flip-phone, but Lappies had felt that would put out the wrong message to potential clients. In the end he'd presented me with an Android phone as a gift. I'd taken it apart to examine the workings, put it back together, and discovered that the phone and I were members of a mutual hate society. I detested trying to type anything on those idiot keys. In return it hated me enough to make sure everything I typed came out wrong.

"We're coming up to an intersection, so take the next left," she said after a long while. We had passed several others already, but I trusted her to find us the shortest indirect route.

Half of my attention was on the mirror, searching for any sign that we were being followed. Summer directed me to the north with her hand, and then screamed as I turned and automatically swung onto the left side of the road, facing oncoming traffic. I yanked the wheel over, thankful I hadn't been able to hear the abuse the people in the hooting cars were bellowing at me and my heart rate began to settle down.


"Sorry," I said. "My attention slipped for a moment."

She squeezed my hand. The back of my shirt felt damp, and when I put my hand back to feel, I realised I was sweating up a storm. The air con was doing its job, but my body was responding to the tension.

This part of Missouri was a little hillier and a whole lot more arboreal than Kansas, which was nice. It was even a little like England, if you discounted the heat and the foreign trees everywhere. We were in the Mark Twain National Forest, apparently, which sounded more impressive than it looked. It seemed a little sparse to be a forest, and if Robin Hood had tried hiding out there, he would have been found on day one in my estimation. Maybe we were still in the undergrowth and it would build up to a proper forest as we went on.

I had to overtake a couple of logging trucks on the road, which was a bit hairy -- each one seemingly with a hundred wheels on each side, and an equal amount of tree trunks. Combine that with a trailer half the size of the truck being dragged along behind, and loaded up with even more dead trees, and you can understand why I had to take a long run up with a good clear view.

The problem came when I managed to find the perfect conditions, overtook the truck and immediately had to slow right down as a line of orange cones blocked the road ahead. A small sign indicated a diversion, which meant us turning onto a much narrower road. I wondered how the logging truck was going to get down the twisting, winding road but then concentrated on negotiating it myself.

"Where are we?" I asked.

Summer was trying to make the map even bigger, and apparently not having any luck.

"It's not on the map," she said, with a sound of annoyance.

"Bugger," was my succinct reply. I didn't want to get caught there when the sun went down. It would be like trying to negotiate some of those Somerset lanes at night, with their tall banks and high hedges that blocked every view. Besides, I'd seen Deliverance, and didn't want to disturb any of the locals in a deep forest at night -- just in case. I've been told by a couple of girls that after losing all that weight I now have a lovely arse, and wanted to keep it that way.

It was the hi-visibility chest that did us in.

The road maintenance man was standing in front of another set of cones across the road, a hard hat on his head, huge sunglasses covering half his face, and his chest covered by the familiar orange vest with the grey and yellow stripes down the front.

He waved at us to stop, and walked over to the passenger side. I lowered the window.

"Sorry to inconvenience you folk," he said. "But we've got a logging truck broken down a little way ahead. Can you pull over onto that track there, to ensure you don't get rear-ended by other traffic coming down the track? Especially the logging trucks. Those mothers don't stop easy."

There was a little track, no more than two grooves through the undergrowth, to one side.

"I wouldn't think those trucks could get down here," I remarked, lowering the window and leaning over Summer to talk to him face to face. As I did so, I caught sight of Summer's face, which had gone so pale, it seemed almost transparent. Her eyes were bulging with fear.

I looked back at the road worker, and recognised him at last. Murdoch. Of course it was. How the hell had he found us?

He smiled, and brought a gun around from his back, pointing it at me with both hands.

"So you're the asshole causing so much shit in my life," he said. "Now, this is what we're going to do. The bitch is going to step out of the car, and you're going to drive it down to the shack just back there. She and I are going to be walking right behind you, so don't rush. Don't pull any shit like trying to back up on me, because she'll be the one under the car, and you'll be bleeding out inside it.

I made a movement and he waggled the gun, keeping it aimed steady on my chest.

"Ah-ah!" he laughed. He found amusement in this, the prick! "You're only alive because it would be a pain in the ass to clean up the mess when you die."

He transferred his attention to Summer, although the gun didn't waver in the slightest.

"Hey, honey. I'm going to take you back home. You like it there, don't you? Your friends and your television and the little pills you enjoy so much. They're all waiting for you. So step out, or the cab driver is going to bleed all over you. Or is he your boyfriend? You know, I think he is. I saw you back at the mall, making out like it was prom night."

He laughed, although it sounded alarmingly like a giggle.

"You cheating on me, darlin'? You putting horns on your honey?"

Summer turned to me, and I saw misery, hopelessness and agony in her face. I grabbed her hand.

"Don't get out of the car," I whispered. "I love you."

Those emerald green pools stared into my soul as I squeezed her hand.

"Hands off my property!" Murdoch said, and waggled the gun again.

Summer mouthed a few words at me and opened the door. He pulled her out, snatched my phone out of her hands, dragged her alongside him and took hold of her dress at the back of her neck with his free hand, hoisting it upward so that she had to stand on tip-toe. It was an effective way of preventing her from trying to suddenly bolt away. He kicked the door shut and put the gun to her thigh.

"Try any shit, and I'll shoot her in the leg. Then I'll shoot her in the other leg and drag her to the shack by the hair. Won't bother you though, you'll be dead by then."

As he kicked the cones off the road into the brush, I slipped my wallet and passport into the gap between the back and the squab of the driver's seat, hoping they wouldn't fall through into the rear foot well. For some reason, it felt necessary to hide them from him, perhaps just as a small token of resistance against complete defeat.

Murdoch gestured at me with the gun.

I watched them in the mirror, tears flowing down my cheeks as I slowly rolled the car down the track, pulling to a halt by a wooden shack that was there for god knows what reason. It almost looked organic, as if it had grown there by itself, and then started to die there as well. There were a couple of rickety wooden steps leading up to a veranda of sorts, the roof over it unbalanced and leaning, the support post broken in two and lying in the grass nearby. A white truck was parked alongside it.

Murdoch and Summer were right behind me as promised.

"Keys," he demanded. I handed them over. He pocketed them, drew Summer's hands behind her and did something to them. When he stepped back I could see he'd fastened them together with cable ties, one on each wrist and one linking them together. He turned back to me.

"Now, you might be thinking of running away, and maybe imagining that you might actually not die in the attempt. So I'm not going to waste my breath with threats. I'm just going to tell you the same as I did before. You run, she gets a bullet in each leg. Ain't no doctors out here. Think about it."

I had no intention of running from this knob-jockey. I had no skills as a Knight, but I was never going to run away. Not from her, not from him. I felt a strange peace settle over me. If I was fated to die in some hillbilly backwoods like the shit-head character in a bad horror movie, then that was fine with me. Life had never been a bed of roses except for a couple of years, and then Phoebe had made sure that my life was hell once again from then on.

"Fuck you, tosspot!"

He seemed a little taken aback. He turned to Phoebe. "Who is this jerk?"

She shook her head, looking at the ground. "Nobody. He's a nobody; just someone to get me from A to B."

He stared at her. After a few moments, his smile grew.

"Yeah, right! So you two have something going on? You really are cheating on me, aren't you -- just like every other slut in the world."

He looked at me and waggled the gun at Summer. "Out of the car!"

I shut my eyes for a moment. My life wasn't worth that much in the long run, but hers was. At least, it was to me.

I got out and he did the same trick with the cable ties on my wrists. They were tight and uncomfortable, but my hands weren't going to fall off from gangrene.

We were herded into the shack, and the interior held no more promise than the exterior had: a rickety table and a couple of chairs on one side of the room, a broken sink and an old stove on the other. There was a staircase at the far end, missing several steps, which I guessed lead up to some small room under the roof, and a door leading to the other half of the house.

Holding the gun on me, he pushed Summer towards the old, cast-iron pot-bellied stove or heater, I wasn't sure which, fiddled with something for a moment and then walked back to me. She tried to move and I could see a couple more of those ties now bound her to the stove.

He pulled a heavy wooden chair to the centre of the room and made me sit on it, sliding my linked arms down behind the upright back of it and then linking each hand to a rear leg with yet more ties. Even more were linked together and wrapped around my waist and the chair back. Did he have shares in the cable tie production company? Either way, I wasn't going anywhere, not unless I could run with a heavy chair strapped to me. He pulled the other chair in front of me and sat on it carefully, holding the gun pointing down between his knees, staying beyond my reach even if my hands were free.

"So who are you, mystery man?" he said conversationally. "Who are you to try and take Charlotte from me? Tell me."

I decided at that moment that I wasn't going to answer any questions. It would make him mad at me, but at least it would keep him from Summer.

I shook my head, so he punched it.

It hurt like a bastard. His knuckles had caught me across my left cheek and the corner of my eye, which was now watering like God had called for another flood. After a moment, he hit me again -- this time just below my sternum.

The pain in my face disappeared beneath the sudden, more urgent need to breathe. The punch had caught me unprepared and shocked my system into shutting down for a while. The punch had forced all the air from my lungs, and I could no longer inhale. Nothing was working. I knew I was going to die, but my stomach muscles were slowly getting it together again and fighting for me, and after what seemed like forever, I was able to draw a very small breath. My heart steadied as I drew in deeper and deeper gasps until I could fill my lungs once more.

Okay, that was more than painful, but next time I would be ready.

I wasn't. This time it was the butt of the gun down onto my forehead and I was out like a light.

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Through the valley of death

Through the fires of hell

Through the drifting of time

I will find you. I will find you.

Looking Out For You (B. Lake) 2018

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

ZERO HOUR +32



I awoke with the top of my head cut off.

At least, that's what it felt like. I couldn't move my hands enough to check, although I was pretty sure there would be an egg-shaped lump on my forehead, and my cheek felt like I'd run into the side of a bus -- or one had run into me.

My hands were getting pretty numb, and my shoulders were really starting to burn at the way my arms were locked behind me. There was something gluing my left eye closed.

I shook my head to try and dislodge whatever was covering my eye, and discovered just what a bad idea that was when my skull split open and my brain fell out and landed in my lap. Fair enough, I obviously wasn't using it.

I waited until the Anvil Chorus finished, and gingerly opened my right eye. It felt sore, but at least it worked. My ears worked too -- although I couldn't hear enough of anything to prove it, apart from the creaking of old wood now and again as the shack muttered in its dotage.

Summer was gone, no longer tied to the stove, a couple of pieces of sliced curved plastic dangling from a handle the only evidence she had ever been there. Her face flashed into my mind and I felt my heart start to pound once again. Had the bastard taken her and left me here to die? I had no idea how much time had passed while I was out. Anything could have happened.

Panic started to get a grip. Nobody knew we were here, so there would be no last-minute rescue. I knew Murdoch wanted Summer, and I was just unwanted baggage. He wasn't going to include me in his future plans -- that was a given, so I would in all likelihood simply starve to death in this deserted shit-hole. Or, if he was feeling generous, he would come back, shoot me in the head and just walk away. I pushed the rising wave of fear back down again. Not helpful!

I twisted my neck to try and see out of the window behind me -- trying to see whether the white truck was still there. My gummed-up eye prevented that, and I spent a few minutes screwing my face up and then raising my eyebrows as high as possible. At last my facial antics shifted the glue slightly, and my eyelid raised enough for me to get a blurred view. It was with mixed feelings that I saw a blurred white shape in my peripheral vision. I twisted my head around a little further, feeling a severe strain on my neck muscles and confirmed that it was the truck.

So where had Murdoch taken Summer?

The answer came a few minutes later. From the other room, came a deep sigh and I heard a mattress spring protesting at movement compressing it.

"Wake up. More playtime!" Murdoch's voice was thick and heavy with sleep and something else -- lust.

I screwed my eyes closed tight and wished I could do the same with my ears.

But I couldn't.

The springs made their noise and I heard a deep mutter of pleasure. And I heard a higher-pitched noise from Summer. Then the springs began to squeak with a regular rhythm.

Everything within me seemed to ignite at once -- every emotion I possessed; rage, violence, pity, sorrow, fear, sadness, guilt, jealousy, revenge, murder. They seemed to swirl inside me like a whirlpool, each bobbing to the surface to allow me to take a good, long look at it, before slipping under once again to allow another emotion to take its place.

I fought my bindings until my shoulders burned, my arms tightened into unbearable knots, and my wrists bled -- red pools appearing on the floor alongside the back legs of the chair. The chair rocked from side to side, and my feet drummed on the floorboards as I kicked out helplessly.

Finally, my voice got in on the action, as the raw emotions inexorably climbed my throat and forced their way out. I screamed and roared, yelled and bawled -- anything to block out the sound. And anything to unhear the sound she had made.

It might have been protest. Or it might have been pleasure. As she had exited the car after my confession of loving her, she had turned her face to me and mouthed that she loved me, too. Then she was gone and in his arms.

What did that mean?

And the sounds she made now -- what did they mean?

I guess the racket I was making must have pissed Murdoch off enough for him to stop fucking Summer for a while. He appeared at the door, dressed only in his jeans and just the button at the waistband fastened. The two ends of his belt hung loose, down alongside the open zipper.
He smirked at me from the doorway.

"What's the matter, you don't like some stranger fucking your girlfriend? Get used to it. You're the stranger here. I'm just giving her what she wants. She loves my cock more than she loves breathing. She knows it. I know it, and now you know it."

"I know who you are Murdoch," I spat. "I know who you are, I know who you're working with, and I know what you're trying to do. You're no stranger. You're an open book. A really bad book about a creepy little fuck who likes to rape girls, because he can't get over the fact that he couldn't fuck his mother -- because she couldn't stand the sight of him."

It was true to some extent. I knew who he was and what he wanted. And I had worked out who he was working with. It had suddenly struck me while I was yelling. I didn't know anything about him and his mother however. That was just to piss him off enough to concentrate on me and leave Summer alone.

"Is that right? Bad for you then, because you just discovered a world new world of hurt for yourself."

He moved to my side, took a knife from the hip pocket of his jeans, opened it and prodded it towards my face. I felt the point touch just below my open eye, which was now firmly shut.

"I know what you're trying to do, you slimy limey fuck. You think I don't recognise that you're trying to piss me off on purpose? I got a degree in psychology, you fuckwit. So don't try mind games with me."

He moved the knife point down my side, and I shivered, anticipating the thrust of the blade into my chest, my kidney, my belly...

"And while I majored in that, I also took other courses... medical courses."

His arm moved and I felt the tie that fastened my right arm to the chair leg suddenly fall away, while my left arm remained trapped in place. I tried to move the freed arm and grunted with pain. That limb had been twisted back for what could have been hours, and was now repaying the insult.

Murdoch tucked away the knife -- a small, red-handled Swiss army knife -- and lifted my arm to the horizontal, still talking. Trying to hide my fear, I avoided his eyes and stared at a dark mark on his throat, belatedly recognising it was a bruise. It had been covered with some sort of make-up, but that had faded or worn away. Summer had really got a good shot in when she escaped from him the previous time.

"Anatomy, osteology, neurology... Those courses all helped me understand psychology so much better; how physical events affecting the body can affect the mind, the chemistry of injury, the consequences of pain and pleasure and how they all work together to alter the brain."

My arm was now raised to the vertical, straight up. My shoulder, after being trapped and held still in an abnormal position for so long, protested further at this movement by lighting a fire within the joint. There was too much pain to fight his grip.

Murdoch took my wrist in one hand and suddenly pulled it towards him while giving a lightning-fast palm-strike to my elbow.

"Pain has an amazing effect on the brain," he marvelled in a conversational tone as my body jerked as if touched by high-voltage wires. I had heard the breaking of bone very clearly, like the snapping of a green twig, an instant before the rest of my senses caught up with events and alerted me that something had gone wrong by flooding me with agony.

I screamed. I screamed long and loud. When I ran out of breath and felt the room begin to circle around me, I just whimpered until he simply let go of my arm. Then I screamed again as it dropped uselessly to my side.

"It actually rewrites the brain, to teach us a lesson; to teach us not to do it again. Not to get into that position again. Not to mess with things that don't concern us. And especially not to fuck with people who can cause you pain. Like your little girlfriend, who is actually my little girlfriend and who is waiting patiently for me back there so we can finish fucking up a storm."

"Not my girlfriend," I muttered painfully, my lips feeling thick and unwieldy. "Just a fucking goblin."

He laughed delightedly; as he'd only needed to give one lesson and I'd learned it well. I now knew who belonged to whom.

"Okay. Now we've got that out of the way, I'll get back to the matter at hand. I'll see you later. Then we can have a little talk as to who you are and how you're involved with Charlotte; you know, the why's and the wherefore's.

He patted the dangling arm, just hard enough to make me yell in agony once more

He padded back into the other room, and I heard the rustle of shedding clothes, and then the bed springs creak once more. There were flashes and little sparks wandering across my vision, and a singing in my ears, so I couldn't hear what was said, just his lower tones, followed by her lighter voice. Neither of them sounded particularly bothered about my condition, so I tried to tune them out as the springs started to chorus once more.

It was more than obvious now that Murdoch wasn't just a man with a plan, he was a full-blown, all-out, balls-to-the-wall psychopath. What's worse, if such a thing was possible, he was also a narcissistic, sadistic, sociopath - a fully-loaded, all optional extras included, nut job!

I could feel myself sweating, and was shivery cold at the same time, and guessed I was going into shock. So when I started to develop tunnel vision, the edges creeping inward and drawing soft black curtains in towards the centre, I welcomed the encroaching darkness.

In my long, drifting dream I was flying, surrounded by choruses of voices in perfect eight-part harmony. The bass notes would soar, the melody then taken over by altos as the basses and baritones duelled softly below, with the sopranos and tenors alternating in a sharp, punching vocal that interjected into the music and punctuated the tune as it dipped and soared through the heavens. Violins broke in to accompany the high notes, while woodwinds trilled and tweeted above them, before the cellos grounded the whole piece, bringing depth and meaning to the melody. Kettle drums pounded and massed drummers marched to...

"Stop sleeping on the job!" The unwelcome wake-up call was accompanied by a splash of water across my face, making me start and then groan at the pain of the sudden movement. The disappointment of being wakened from that dream to the grim reality almost made me cry.

Murdoch was crouched in front of me, grinning as he squeezed a plastic bottle of water, playing the spray across my face and making me splutter and snort as it went up my nose.

Once again, he was naked apart from the loosely fastened jeans. In my dazed state, my mind fixed on his naked toes as they splayed across the boards, which were darkened from the water runoff. The scent of male and female sex pheromones, lubrication and sperm rose from him in a miasma of betrayal. At least he'd shut the door on Summer, and I wouldn't be subjected to possibly seeing her.

"Time for a chat. Charlotte tells me you're some sort of whizz-kid in the motor industry. That you inherited it from your parents, and that you're worth a pot of money."

I heard the words, but didn't understand what he was saying. It didn't make sense. Summer had lied. That was important somehow -- I just couldn't put it together.

He prodded my arm and I gasped in pain, seeing the curtains start to draw closed once again.

"Is that right, you're some rich kid?"

"Rolls-Royce," I gasped. With the various pains hammering at me from every part of my body, it was the only car I could think of.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You're a limey. They were sold to the Germans."

Fuck. Was he a piston-head? Did he know the motor industry? Because I certainly didn't! I wasn't even sure if piston-head was the right term for car fanatics. Engine head? Metal-head? Wing-nut?

I grinned at my own thoughts and he looked taken aback. I tried to whip my brain into gear.

"Share swop. I got cash and shares in their company for mine. Now I'm in production for them."

"You build cars?"

"No, I design robots. They build the cars."

His eyes widened. I had surprised him. Good.

"So you're worth money to the right people."

I shrugged, trying to use only my left shoulder to do so. I knew that giving myself a cash value might help to keep Summer and I alive. Although he was working on her for a different pot of money, I didn't think Murdoch would be completely immune to the idea of holding me to ransom. From what Summer had told me, and from the way he'd acted and spoken so far, he was the cleverest guy in the room in his estimation. The way he'd started to train Summer in an established institute without being challenged, how he'd followed and tracked us, the thing with the traffic cones, fucking Summer so I'd hear them together; all of that meant that he was enjoying the game a whole lot because he knew with absolute certainty that he was the one with the brains -- the one man with the plan.

"Good to know," he said finally.

I shrugged again.

"But we still have a problem, don't we?" he continued. "Charlotte..."

He let it drift off.

"A hitchhiker."

"So you being with her is just a coincidence then, not because she's rich, not because you want her?"

"She's just a goblin with a bad luck geas on her."

"You keep calling her that. So I'm guessing you play fantasy games a lot. Yeah, I've seen a lot of your type over the years. You like to bring your fantasy creations into the real world. It gives you a sense of importance to replace your impotence; a way to cover your weakness and cowardice, a means to disguise your frightened little lives -- by using a language other people don't fully comprehend. In the end, you're just a geek with a need.

"My need is very different however. You mentioned something about knowing who I'm working with? So how would you know anything about my business?"

Ah shit. I'd screwed up. I gathered what strength I had left to face the coming storm.

I shook my head, my lips pressed firmly together. He understood at once, and punched my broken elbow. I screamed. I didn't care that I sounded like a spoiled little girl whose favourite doll had been thrown in the dustbin. I screamed again as he repeated the punch, and passed out.

I liked passing out. It was so much more pleasant than being awake.

He woke me up and we went through the same routine until I passed out again.

The water spray brought me around once more.

"This time we'll try something different," he said. "I'm not going to keep letting you escape into unconsciousness. That would be too easy, and wouldn't give me what I need."

He rose to his feet and patted me on the head, smirking at me. "Let's see if she really does mean nothing to you."

"Oh Charlotte," he called out as he went to the door and opened it. He looked at me and giggled. "You've been a bad little goblin, Charlotte, so I'm going to have to punish you."

I heard the sound of a series of blows, the thud of fists on flesh, and her cries of pain were worse than anything from my arm. I squeezed my eyes shut. My choices were limited. I could tell him what I knew -- which wasn't a whole lot and would probably sign my death warrant, as well as leave Summer in his hands, to mould with her pain into something she detested. Or I could allow him to torment and abuse her, which might keep me safe and potentially reach a point where I could bring the authorities down on him. Or... There was no more 'or'. There was no choice.

"Stop! I'll tell you!" I yelled. "Stop!"

He appeared in the doorway. He had taken off his pants and was now naked, his erection all too obvious.

"Good. Keep those good thoughts in mind and I'll get back to you in a while!"

He gave me a smile of superiority and turned into the room.

"Charlotte, dear. I think you want to suck my cock, don't you!"

"Yes, of course!" Her voice stabbed me through the heart. I knew she had to say them to survive, but it still hurt.

"You know how much you love doing that!"

"Yes!"

She owed me nothing. She wasn't mine. So why did it hurt so bad?

I thought I'd cried myself out. I was wrong.

I found myself humming a tune, and then singing out loud to try and drown out the noises of their pleasure as she sucked him to completion, and then continued doing it until she got him hard enough for another fuck -- the springs singing their appalling chorus once more.

Finally, the continual, infinite series of pain and pleasure came to an end with apparent joyful cries all round -- except from me. I was out of the white knight business for good. Never again! The girls in my life were damaged -- all of them. But I was the most damaged of all -- too damaged.

Murdoch appeared in the doorway in his usual half-fastened jeans, his sex stink in my nostrils once again. I looked at him blankly. I couldn't feel excited enough to show any expression at all. Now I just had to look after me.

During their fucking and my singing, I'd remembered an incident at school. It just popped into my brain and I'd watched the replay of that memory with a nasty satisfaction.

Some of the boys were messing around in the school dining hall during lunch break, doing some kind of dance. Mostly it seemed to consist of throwing themselves around and sliding on their knees while holding an invisible microphone -- pretending to be on Top of the Pops, I guess. The dining tables were sturdy, wooden things, their legs angling down diagonally to an inch high foot.

From my table for one, I'd silently watched their antics, until one of the boys -- Eric Caterham -- had dropped to his knees in high drama, right onto the foot of one the tables. His knee had caught the corner of the foot support and his weight on that edge had pushed his kneecap up and out of position. He had sat up and then fainted clean away -- which was an interesting intermission in the ongoing drama that was school. He'd been off school for a week, and on crutches for a month.

As Murdoch ambled towards me, I tried the same thing.

He'd tied my arms back and secured me around the waist, but hadn't bothered with my feet -- I was tied to a solid chair, so where was I going to go?

For only the second time in my life, I got lucky. With all the strength I could put into it, the point of my shoe caught the lower edge of his kneecap as he started to put weight on it and his other foot lifted off the floor. Through the thin leather of my shoe, I felt the softness around the small bone give way and the whole area shift up and to one side.

He screamed and dropped like a stone alongside me, doubling up and rolling from side to side as he clutched the damaged knee. He was down, but not out. Not with that gun around somewhere.

Desperately, I rocked the chair towards him -- causing my elbow to burst into flame once again. On the third try, it reached the tipping point and I was looking down on Murdoch. His eyes were shut tight and he was cursing up a storm. Desperately, I swung my broken arm out to the side, and that proved to be just enough to topple things sideways. As gravity took hold, I turned my face away, and judging the moment by guesswork, flung my head back as I landed across him. Pain blossomed through me once more as my dangling, useless arm was crushed beneath the side of my chair and it was back to la-la land all over again. I'd knocked myself out.

Coming to this time was infinitely worse than any of the previous risings to consciousness.

My arm was a solid block of agony, and my head was pounding like I'd been on a week-long bender with some very determined bachelor party-goers. And my toes were sore.

Slowly, despite the pounding in my skull, my brain rebooted and I started to take stock.

I was lying on my right side, still fastened to the chair, but with most of my body propped up across Murdoch. I suddenly realised that he must be unconscious to have left me lying on top of him. There was a small opportunity to do something ... anything ... before he came to.

Adrenalin flowed once more, and I began to rock and jerk, and then caught sight of his face, and chose to throw up instead.

In agony and with his eyes shut tight, he'd had no warning of my sudden unexpected arrival. His face was ...

For a long moment, I didn't recognise it as a face. When I'd thrown my head back, I'd done a whole lot more damage than I could ever have imagined. My skull had moved downwards in an ever-quickening arc from four feet above him, and accelerated by the muscles in my neck and shoulders, had pounded around five kilos, eleven pounds, of my thick head right into his face.

I threw up again. There was no doubt he was dead; his face was almost concave and had few discernible features. If he started moving now, it would have to be the start of a zombie invasion. I didn't dare even think about what had to be matted on the back of my head.

For a moment, I felt a drift of horror at what I had caused to happen. I had not only killed a man -- robbed him of everything he ever was and ever would be -- I had done it deliberately and eagerly. Was I a psychotic narcissist in the same way he had been? I pushed the thought out of my mind -- there would be time later to feel those things, but not now.

"Summer," I called. There was silence. "Summer. He's dead. I need your help."

There was a faint sound, almost a sigh, then silence.

"Summer? Summer!"

A faint twang from a bed spring was the only response, and after a long sad wait, I realised I was on my own in this situation.

I knew he had a knife on him somewhere -- that Swiss army knife, which meant I would have to search his pants, while praying to all the gods of the pantheons that he hadn't removed it while he was in the room with Summer. There was no way I could get all the way across to that door.

I considered my situation and realised I was going to have to, somehow, turn over. My broken arm, which had by then swollen to an alarming size, was pinned down by the chair -- and the longer it was compressed, the worse the damage would be. Some cold factual part of my mind pointed out that I could lose it altogether.

The chair, with me stuck in it, was on its right side. I managed to wiggle my right foot down to touch the floorboards and tried to build up a mind-map of my situation. It turned out the chair was balanced precariously on one leg, with most of the weight resting across Murdoch's body. All I could use was my legs.

I heard myself whimpering really low in my throat, as it dawned on me how much this was going to hurt. My will power alone would have to fight my brain and body to get this done. Desperately, as if to take my mind by surprise, I swung both legs to the right and then shot them over to the left. The chair shifted, balanced, and then toppled onto its back with a wooden thump. At least I wasn't lying on Murdoch's cooling body any more.

I screamed, and then settled for simply sobbing helplessly as I tried to let the white hot spear points cool down to plain old stabbing and slicing once more.

The back of the chair had been constructed in such a way as to angle slightly backward to provide a minimum of lumbar support, which meant it -- and I -- was resting on the top rail and the tips of the rear legs. The next problem was to drag my right arm out of the gap it created.

I could no longer feel any sensation anywhere below my right elbow, apart from a never-ending throbbing pain, and I had no idea whether any part was caught under me, the chair or Murdoch's body. I was going to have to pull it out anyway.

I took several huge gulps of air, gritted my teeth and screamed through it as I forced my arm to respond to my demands. The arm pulled, caught and then pulled free, the ends of the bones grating together almost audibly. It finished up lying alongside me -- as dead as if it belonged to someone else. I snorted through my tears, wishing the pain was being felt by that bugger instead of me.
I still had to get the chair back against Murdoch to try and find the knife with my left arm, which meant more twisting and shuffling. It was too much. I couldn't do it. I'd just lie here for a while and...

When I came to again, the shack was as silent as ever. Through the syncopated throbbing from my head and arm, I could hear only silence. I looked up at the roughly cut ceiling boards, and the dangling wire that had at one time been a light fitting, and wondered what the fuck I'd ever done to deserve this.

After a short while, I heard a creak from somewhere between my feet, over by the door to the other room. Was it Summer? Was she back in the game? Had she managed to throw off the clouds of darkness to which Murdoch had reintroduced her?

The sudden roar seemed so loud it made me start violently, jiggling things that really weren't up to jiggling any more. A second roar; but the first had deafened me enough that it seemed muted and I realised it was a gun shot. What the fuck was going on?

With the sudden conviction that Murdoch had somehow been resurrected and was taking his revenge at gunpoint, I twisted my head sharply to the right, the thumping in my head making my vision grey out for a moment. When it cleared, I could see the body was there, still lying in the same position -- on his back with his legs spread and arms at his side. I tried not to look at the face.

Three more of those enormous bangs went off in quick succession, and I saw thumps from an invisible fist to his naked chest as his torso jerked. There was no blood spray that I could see. Not a zombie then -- although still possibly a vampire. I heard a giggle in my mind and realised with real fear that I was starting to slide off the edge of sanity.

The smell of faeces became even more powerful. He'd voided his bladder and bowels when he died, and the bullet holes were providing an exit point for the gases that were building up inside him.

There was the sound of quick footsteps, and I groaned as I realised they were going away from me, into the far room.

"Summer!" I tried to make my voice work. My throat felt like a long-deserted beach, full of sand that soaked up every hint of moisture; raw from the screaming and moaning. I could hardly hear the rasping words myself. I tried to work up some saliva and swallowed. "Summer, you did good! But I need your help. Please! Summer! Come on, dammit!"

There was no reply. I guessed she had taken her revenge of sorts and simply gone back to her torture chamber to hide from life.

So it was still up to me. Without thinking about it, I swung my legs again, turning the chair and me onto our left sides, my damaged arm swinging down across my chest. I refused the pain any admittance to my thoughts, and ignored the cries and squeals and the constant stream of foul curses that were forced out of me, driving as hard as I could with the sides of my feet to push the chair back across those floorboards. Finally, on the verge of giving up, I felt my trapped left hand press up against Murdoch's body.

My chest was heaving, each breath wheezing out as if I'd had an attack of asthma, but my 'good' hand was against his hip. I fumbled as best as I could, squeezed my fingers beneath him and with my fingertips against his buttock, discovered the back pocket to be empty. Praying to any deity that cared to listen, and using the slight play my bonds allowed, I walked my fingers back up over his hip. The material here was damp, making it more slippery, and I simply refused to contemplate what might have caused the clamminess. I found a gap in the material, hooked a finger into it, and refused to release it. Using that precarious hold, combined with twisting my hips and driving my knees against the floorboards, I managed to turn the chair a little more and made another half inch of progress. I could feel the difference in materials as the outer denim became the inner cotton, and accepted that it was indeed a pocket.

And then I felt a rill of excitement, as if a spring of fresh water had suddenly been diverted over me, as my fingertips touched a hard, smooth object -- one end of a pocket knife! I could feel the curved grooves of the various blades. I had freedom at my fingertips!

No matter what I did, however, I couldn't get two fingers far enough around the knife to extract it from its soggy nest. Crying with frustration, I tried to tear the pocket open, yanking and tugging at the material in nigh-helpless rage.

I couldn't tear it. These were good old jeans, designed originally as tough clothing for tough working men, and although these were very different in their style and fit, the original model held true. I gave up and cried some more for a while.

With little hope, I tried again, regaining a finger hold on the pocket. Then my heart began to race. Just inside the lip of the pocket was the knife. It must have moved slightly during my hissy-fit. Holding my breath, which made the ache in my head pound even harder, I slid two fingers in alongside the body of the knife, slowly clamped them against it as carefully as possible, and then drew it out.

I could hear myself making little 'ooh-ooh-ooh' noises of excitement as I clamped it within my fist.

It took me another hour, but I finally managed to open a blade without dropping the knife -- not easy to do using just a finger, a thumb and a fingernail, especially when the blades just kept slipping and snapping back into place at every tremble of my fingers.

Seconds later, I was finally free of that fucking chair!

It took a further half an hour to get my left arm working again and useful enough to be able to sit up, one arm cradling the other.

Avoiding looking at the remains of Murdoch, I picked up the water bottle, flipped open the cap and took a drink, holding the bottle in my teeth and tilting my head back to get some of the nectar of the gods it contained. I wasn't letting go of my broken arm for love or money.

Awkwardly, I managed to hold the bottle in the crook of my good arm and shuffled through to the other room, pausing only to lean over and throw up a few mouthfuls of bile along the way.

She was lying naked, curled up in a ball, her back towards me. I could see almost every one of the little knobs of her spine, and could easily have counted her ribs. There were fresh bruises across her buttocks, and livid marks of fingers across her upper arm. She seemed to have shrunk and faded. His gun -- some sort of revolver, I guessed -- lay innocently on the foot of the mattress, just a small metal object once more, rather than an active threat of imminent death.

"Summer," I croaked. "Here's water."

I dropped the bottle onto the grungy mattress, not really wanting to look at it, or her tortured body.

I turned away to where the bastard's hi-viz jacket and shirt hung from a nail in the wall. Trying really hard not to think about what I was doing, I used my teeth to drag them off the hook and drop them to the floor. My feet were a lot more use to me than my arms at that moment, and I kicked and moved the jacket around until I felt it.

Murdoch had taken my phone away from Summer as soon as she got out of the car and slipped it into a pocket of his vest. The point of my shoe managed to knock it out of the pocket, and I very slowly and carefully bent towards it.

"Okay Google," I said clearly as I could, and waited for the little sound. "Call 9-9-9."

Nothing happened. I tried again with the same result, and then snorted at my stupidity.

"Okay Google, call 9-1-1."

I heard the bedsprings creak.

"Police, fire or medical?" The operator answered immediately, running the three words together.

"Police and medical," I said. Summer slid off the bed.

"There's been a kidnapping, rape, a death. There's a gun..."

"No!" Summer screamed. "You can't call them!"

"My name is Bryn Lake," I said with more urgency. "I don't know where I am. There's me and a girl here. The kidnapper is dead." I was almost shouting, moving around the phone to stay between it and Summer.

"Stop it," she yelled, trying to get at the phone. "They'll send me back!"

"Send you back to what?" I shouted. "He's dead! I killed him."

"No," she cried, shaking her head and sending the violet locks swinging. "I shot him!"

"He was already dead."

She stared at me. "You killed him?"

I nodded, and she put her arms around my neck and put her face close to mine. I could smell him on her, the scent of their sex, and had to turn away. If she tried to kiss me, so soon after...

I shook her off and turned back to the phone. I could hear the operator trying to get more information.

"Sir, did you say there was a rape and a murder? Did someone get shot?"

"Yes, we were kidnapped and my friend was raped and..."

That broke the spell of the short interlude, and Summer resumed her panicked quest to get to the phone and turn it off, whispering frantically that I should end the call, that she couldn't be taken, she couldn't go back -- as if she'd completely forgotten once again about Murdoch being dead not ten feet away. I couldn't let her do that. They had to find us.

"Someone was raped? Was anyone else injured? Are you in imminent danger?"

"Yes and yes," I cried, dropping to my knees and sticking my butt towards Summer, crouching over the phone and trying to protect it from her. "And no, he's dead now."

"I have your location, sir. Someone will be there shortly. We have an ambulance on route as well. Stay on the line, please sir. Please remain where you are if it's safe."

I snorted, feeling hysteria rise through me. Chance that we could go anywhere else would be a fine thing. I could hear the operator's voice continuing to speak calmly, and I knew I probably wasn't making much sense to her, but I just couldn't work out how to explain things more clearly. Everything seemed to be garbled in my mind. My eyes weren't focussing properly either.

Summer grabbed my right arm and yanked at it, crying loudly and trying to pull me out of the way. I screamed as the bones ground together yet again, and was out like a light once more. 'They're going to start calling you a Nancy boy -- fainting all over the place like that', was my last drifting thought.

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Where was your heart then,

My love, my soul, my one desire?

Where is your heart now

Still hidden away, locked and secure?

Where will your heart be tomorrow?

Don't abandon it, mine is there too.

Loving on Annie-May (B. Lake) 2019

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

ZERO HOUR +68

I awoke in Pong, an old arcade game, the soft electronic noise of the ball striking the bat regular and steady in the darkness behind my closed eyes. The pain from my arm had muted to a dull ache, and the hammer pounding my brain had been switched from a jackhammer to a rubber mallet. Either way, it was still trying to ring the bell on the High Striker.

There was the scent of antiseptic and fresh, crisp linen, and I sighed with relief as I realised I was in a hospital, the arcade game noises coming from a monitor of some sort.

I opened my eyes, slowly focussing in on the white and grey ceiling panels above my bed.

Without thinking, I tried to raise my right arm, and found it held solid in a crooked pink cast. It was supported by a sling from a gallows-like contraption that loomed over the right side of the bed.

My left arm was supported by handcuffs that locked me to the low railings.

I jiggled it, unbelieving.

The wrist was bandaged neatly, the cuffs snug but not tight around the dressing.

Unfounded panic began to rise in me. Was this really a hospital? Had Murdoch risen to take revenge? Had his fellow-conspirators got me? Was this all a dream created by a maddened brain?

I jiggled the handcuffs frantically, causing the drip plugged into that arm to lash back and forth, and the arcade noise of the monitor to beat faster and faster. Then I heard the swishing susurration of a uniform and stockings and a nurse trotted into the room.

"Mr. Lake. You're awake again. Welcome back."

"Where am I?"

"Forest Drive Hospital," she said brightly. "You've been here for almost a whole day. You were kinda messed up when you arrived, but the doctors sorted out your arm and your head. Are you in any pain?"

"My head hurts. Not as badly as it was, but it's still pounding. What about Summer? Is she alright?"

The nurse looked blank. "Ah damn, I mean Charlotte ..."

I couldn't remember her surname for a moment.

"Kennedy," I said after a long pause. "Charlotte Kennedy. Is she okay?"

"I'm not allowed to comment on other patients, Mr. Lake. Sorry."

"Is she in the hospital? Can you tell me that?"

"...She was."

"Was? Where is she now?" I felt panic rising.

"I really can't say, Mr. Lake. Now, look at the light please." She flicked a penlight on and aimed it at each of my eyes in turn. "Oh that's much better. Your pupil is back to normal."

"It was abnormal?" I asked.

"You had a severe concussion when you were brought in, and one of the signs is uneven pupil size. Your left one was so big, the emergency staff hustled you down for an MRI as soon as the medics brought you in. They wanted to check your eye socket for fractures as well, although that turned out okay. Then you were taken to surgery to get your arm sorted out. On the good side, it should be as good as new within six weeks. On the bad side, you're going to set off the alarm whenever you go through a security check at airports from now on. They had to do an open reduction and put some extensive metal work in there -- plates and pins. The surgeon was quite happy with how it turned out."

She fussed around for a few moments, and then jotted down notes on my chart. Tapping her pen against her bottom lip, she frowned.

"I have to get your insurance details."

"What insurance?"

"Your medical insurance."

"I'm from Britain. We don't have medical insurance."

She frowned again. By all indications, this was a very bad thing. Very bad.

"We have the NHS," I explained.

"Will they pay?"

"I dunno. I've never been in hospital outside Britain before. I know Americans get treated free there, so ... possibly."

She looked troubled. "I'll check with the office."

"Look," I said. "If someone can get my wallet from my car, I can sort it out. And my passport."

She looked slightly embarrassed. "The police are holding your passport."

I rattled the handcuffs. "So that's why these are here. Is there someone I can speak to, or a phone I can use?"

"Let me check."

She left the room and I heard her speaking to someone outside in the passage. When she came back, she was holding my phone.

"You can make one phone call, but I have to call the number for you. They want me to tell them who you called." She said the last part in a whisper.

"I need to call my agent. He's in the address book under Lappies."

In seconds she had dialled the number and pressed the phone to my ear. It seemed everyone in the world was better at using a phone than I was. I felt like I belonged in an old-age home.

Karen answered the phone. "Hello, I'm afraid the agency is closed. Please call back tomor..."

"Karen!" I screamed. "It's Bryn Lake, please don't hang up! Karen!"

"Bryn?" she said after a moment, and I sighed with relief. Karen was a sweetheart in her late fifties who had a tendency to mother the more lost amongst the agency's signings.

"Karen, I'm in a lot of trouble here in America. A whole lot. Please can you contact Lappies and..."

"I'll put you straight through, Bryn. He's still here, he just didn't want to take any more calls. You talk to him and then he can give me the details. If needs be, I'll catch a later train if we need to get things sorted out for you. Look after yourself!"

"Ja? Bryn? What's up?"

I was so relieved to hear his voice that I had to take a couple of deep breaths before explaining the situation.

"Jislaik!" he said when I finished the long, sorry tale and he'd taken down all the details. His accent grew thicker as he mentally geared himself up. "You don't mess about when you get yourself into problems, hey? Okay, sit vas ou kerel, and I'll get things moving for you. I was wondering why the hell you didn't turn up to those meetings in Nashville. Those bliksems were real snotty when they phoned to complain about you wasting their precious time. But don't hassle about it, boetie. I'll make a plan."

"You might have a problem getting in contact with me," I confessed, looking at the handcuffs again.

"Ja-well-no-fine. Don't worry about it. Like I said, I've got you covered, my china. I'm all over it like white on rice."

In that moment, I truly loved that guy. He rang off and I nodded to the nurse. "Thanks."

I settled back onto the pillow and tried to take stock. I was seemingly under arrest on god-knows how many charges -- and with a dead body involved, those could be very extensive -- and Summer was lost in the wind. The police were holding my passport, and probably my wallet, and there was no way of knowing when I'd get them back. I'd used up the one phone call I was allowed, if the movies were correct. And I had no idea where my car or luggage was.

I knew nothing, and could do nothing. I was pretty useless when it came down to it. Summer's face swam before me, and guilt flushed through my whole body. Once again, I hadn't been able to save anyone.

The nurse adjusted the drip, and I fell asleep, thankful to stop the never-ending merry-go-round of my thoughts.

When I awoke, the world had turned some more, and my wallet, passport and phone were stacked up neatly on the locker alongside my bed. I also had two visitors; a finely groomed older woman, who wouldn't have looked out of place on the cover of Vogue, and a younger, more nervous woman, who probably wouldn't make a cover, but very possibly a centrefold.

I rattled my hand-cuff, only to feel its absence. The older woman noticed my surprise.

"I got the police to take them off. Such a silly thing for them to do in the circumstances. You were clearly a victim, and besides, where were you going to run to -- even if you could?"

She stood and moved to my bedside. At an estimate, she was in her mid-fifties, but looked forties. She was short, with a blond coiffure and a figure that made you think of pictures of cheerleaders from the eighties. Nice.

"I'd shake your hand, but I'm not sure that would be painless for you in your condition."

I didn't offer a foot.

"Adelaide Morgan," she said. "I'm your lawyer. This is Beth. She'll be your assistant, minder, and general dogsbody for the rest of your time in our country."

Beth pushed a chair closer for Adelaide to sit on, and drew another up alongside for herself. She was taller, slimmer, with straight dark hair, round glasses and an astonishing pair of norks for her figure -- hence the centrefold.

"May I call you Bryn?" Adelaide asked. I nodded. Her whole attitude shouted power and supreme self-confidence. She must charge an absolute fortune, I thought. I hoped Lappies had negotiated a good deal, and then discarded the thought. Money was not part of this calculation.

"Let's deal with things one at a time. First of all, Mr. Labuschagne ensured that you were fully insured on your travels, so your medical bills are fully covered, and the hospital has been informed." I was surprised. She'd pronounced Lappies' surname correctly, as Lab-oo-skag-knee with the 'g' formed in the back of the throat like the 'ch' in the Scottish loch. And she did it without sounding as if she was clearing her throat to hoik out a gob of phlegm. A classy lady.

"Next, the police have acknowledged that you are no longer a murder suspect and are no longer under arrest -- which was quite frankly ridiculous all along. Your medical records show that the collision with Mr. Murdoch's head -- the cause of his death -- was with the back of yours, and the biological evidence from the back of your head proves that. The evidence in the photographs I've seen show that you were unwillingly restrained and bound to a piece of furniture.
"Doctors are also firmly of the opinion that, because of the manner in which the broken bones occurred, the fracture to your arm was done by a deliberate act, which constitutes assault and battery on you, and therefore fulfils all the requirements for you to have acted purely in self-defence.

"With all that in hand, I persuaded the police to lift the arrest and free you immediately."

"I'm not worried about that," I said urgently. "I'm worried about Summer ... Charlotte Kennedy. She was with me when Murdoch took us."

She pursed her lips and her voice grew sympathetic. "Miss Kennedy suffered a sexual assault. When she was brought to the hospital, the staff used a rape kit and established that she had undergone violent intercourse, and that, along with her severe bruising, has established that she was definitely raped."

It sounded as if she was telling me something I was unprepared for.

"I know," I said. "I was there. I could hear everything. But there's something you have to know..."

I related the whole sorry tale of Summer's abduction and torture. Adelaide looked shocked, and Beth was almost in tears.

"I'm pretty sure it was carefully calculated -- a campaign of terror to try and push Charlotte into Stockholm Syndrome, where she'd form a bond with Murdoch, cooperate with her captors and allow them free use of her fortune and her inheritance."

"I've heard of the syndrome, but I've never heard of it being deliberately employed," Adelaide commented. "Not in this fashion."

"Well, I heard the results of it," I said, hearing the pain in my voice. "Summer -- my nickname for her -- got away from him, and when I met her, she was absolutely terrified of being put back in his control. When that did happen, he was incredibly cruel, then kind, then cruel again. You get the picture. He was constantly building up dependence within her, creating a need to please him in order to survive.

"At one point, not knowing he was already dead, she shot him five times. I think that was one of the most courageous things I've ever seen. And now I hear she's been moved from a hospital once again, possibly by the same people who had her moved to the institute in Kansas in the first place. They are not going to want her talking!"

"But you said she had no idea who put her there in the first place," said Beth, and then looked guiltily at Adelaide.

"That's a good point," the older woman agreed, and Beth relaxed again to the point where she merely looked on edge.

"I know who did it," I said. "Well, I know how to identify them."

I explained how after I met Summer, I'd used my phone only twice -- both times to call Annie-May, and Summer had used my phone once, and yet Murdoch had somehow found and intercepted us in a forest.

"They tracked your GPS," Adelaide breathed.

"Yes, and I'll give you a million-to-one odds that it wasn't a hotel receptionist that put this whole nasty shit together," I offered.

"You can track that phone call," Beth put in.

"I think so. All I have to do is find it in the log and press redial."

They both looked at me expectantly. I pointed to my cast.

"I'll do it," offered Beth.

She took my phone, her fingers whizzing across the screen as if it had been created specifically for her.

Adelaide frowned. "Your phone wasn't password secured?"

"I rarely use it," I offered in explanation. I didn't want to point out that my fingers were more like toes when it came to using smart phones.

"You must either be the most innocent or the most naive phone user in the world," the blond smiled, which was nice. She was pretty when she smiled. Some prettiness in my world was a welcome change after the events of the previous day.

Beth was talking quietly while making rapid notes on a spiral-bound pad.

"Thank you," she said and thumbed the phone off.

"Rylings, Cooper, Peese and Skeit," she announced. "A law firm in Los Angeles."

Adelaide pulled a face. "I know them by reputation; solid, reputable and old school. Not really ones you'd expect to pull this sort of crime."

Beth hauled a tablet out of her bag and began working on it rapidly. Her fingers tapped the virtual keys as fast as mine did on a keyboard. She paused for a moment to take a photo of the tablet with her phone, and then started drumming away on the tablet once more, looking over at her phone now and again.

While her assistant beavered away, Adelaide and I made small talk, in which she first gained my confidence and then access to my musical history. She was delighted to discover that she'd danced to one or two of my songs. I in turn, discovered from her that my car had been released from the police pound, had been cleaned and detailed and driven to a nearby hotel, where mine and Summer's suitcases had been safely stored pending my release from hospital. They'd even sorted out clothes for my eventual release, packed them into a little gym bag she'd obtained, and brought it with them, storing it under my hospital bed.

"Beth's work. She's absolutely the best assistant I ever had," whispered Adelaide. "And she's single."

What is it about women and their need to try and hook up every unmarried person they know with each other? Three days before, I might... no, I definitely would have been interested. But Summer had taken over my life by storm.

I thought about that storm. How we met, how we'd somehow bonded in the strangest of ways, how we'd fought, laughed, cried, raged, loved and lost -- all in a non-stop maelstrom over two days. It didn't make any sense, and it wasn't logical or sensible by anyone's standards, but somehow we'd packed months of getting to know each other into just 48 hours, and it was true -- I loved that impossible little red-haired girl -- my goblin. I just didn't know what that meant for the future.

Beth gave a sudden cry of satisfaction that made both Adelaide and I jump. She looked guilty for a moment, but then couldn't resist crowing at her findings.

"Look at this," she urged, turning the tablet towards us. It was a picture of Murdoch, looking younger, but just as superior. She switched her attention to the phone. "This info is from police records and social media. Christopher Murdoch: studied psychology at UCLA, but didn't finish his degree, dropping out in his final year. He was seen as highly intelligent and he was almost guaranteed that degree, but he simply dropped out of sight. There's nothing concrete, but social media at the time shows a definite discomfort with him. Just whispers and hints, but something had to have happened that he was involved in.

"He's also in police records later on a domestic violence charge, although it was dropped when the victim declined to press any charges."

She swiped the tablet screen to show a picture of a woman, probably in her late thirties. She was plain -- someone you would pass in the street every day without a second glance.

"Melanie Scorby, she was the alleged victim in a 10-16 call from a neighbour, but refused point-blank to testify. The alleged perpetrator -- the victim's fiancé, Christopher Murdoch.

Adelaide lifted her hands in the universal gesture to mean, 'so?'

"Miss Scorby is currently a paralegal, working at ... duh, duh, daa ... Rylings, Cooper!"

Adelaide sat up.

Beth wasn't yet finished, delighting in her little detective reveal show.

"And..." She slipped the tablet screen across once more to reveal a new photograph. "Meet Timothy Fisher, who was employed by Rylings, Cooper last year, and this year was assigned to handle a new case -- the Trust Fund of ..."

Another swipe. I knew what the screen would show before Summer's face appeared.

"...Charlotte Anne Kennedy."

Adelaide and I both found ourselves nodding.

"But wait, there's more!" announced Beth as if she was in an infomercial. She touched the screen and a Facebook page popped up. "Six months ago, Melanie Scorby announced that she was engaged to be married to Timothy Fisher, who just happened to share student accommodation at UCLA with..."

The screen returned to the start of its journey, completing the circle.

"Christopher Murdoch."

The three of us sat and stared at each other.

I signalled Beth to come closer, taking her hand and drawing her close to kiss her cheek.

"I want you to have my children," I joked. "Seriously, you're an incredible detective."

Beth blushed and started to protest that it was nothing, while Adelaide looked at the two of us speculatively.

"Does this make any sense," I asked. "Apart from the obvious connections, I mean. Is it possible that my theory actually holds water?"

Adelaide chewed on her lip. "I think you may have nailed it. I can't see any of the senior partners being involved, but a junior in the firm? It's possible. He was allocated the Kennedy Trust, so he would have got to know what Charlotte was doing almost on a weekly basis. He wouldn't have been involved in handling the parents' estate, as that would have been way above his pay grade, but he would have been close enough to know exactly how much it was worth.

"When Charlotte was committed by her Godmother, they may have come up with the plan and called Murdoch in, or perhaps he was in on it from the start. Murdoch was trained in psychology, certainly enough to know what buttons to press, and had possibly practiced that black art on Scorby, which lead to the neighbour calling in the police. Beth, I need more information on the relationship between Murdoch and Scorby -- and when she first got together with Fisher. Did one of them get the other one the job at Rylings, Cooper? I wonder how long this has been in the planning."

Adelaide had risen from her seat and was walking around the room as she mused. In my imagination I could see her in a court room -- one depicted by Hollywood -- stalking the legal arena and seeming to work it out on the fly as she revealed the dire plot to the jury.

"Murdoch uses fake credentials -- Beth, we need a check on those please -- and persuades the Godmother to allow the transfer away from California so he can start torturing her under the guise of helping her recover from her problem with drink and drugs."

"I don't think she actually has a problem with alcohol," I cut in. "We had dinner together and had a liqueur. She didn't seem to need it in any way. And it's possible that he used the excuse of not wanting her to be reminded of her parents' death in order to get her transferred out of California and away from anything that might remind her of it -- which effectively isolated her from everyone who might want to physically check on her progress."

"So how did he get appointed as her psychiatrist?" Adelaide asked rhetorically. "There has to be a link there somehow. Should we call in George Todd and his merry men to do a little PI snooping for us?"

"If it's a question of money, I'll cover it!" I stated. "We need to find her, fast!"

"Bryn, don't start volunteering money too soon. This is already going to cost you a small fortune. Beth, ask Carla to start getting an injunction on this hospital to release the details on Charlotte's transfer -- where she was taken. They'll have the destination in their records, but will probably get sticky about telling us. Although... it's a criminal case, and they won't want adverse publicity. After all, sending off an abused patient into more abuse is not on their mission statement. The injunction can be used to settle their nerves and cover them for the future, but I think I can possibly press them to reveal things early.

"That transfer order will also show who organised it, which -- if we're right -- will tie in the conspirators even more tightly. In which case we might need Todd's men to go and get her immediately. I'm going to have to call in a favour or two, in order to get the paperwork to have her released from wherever she is now."

"You can do that?" I asked, my heart beating faster at the thought. The monitor was showing my excitement. Adelaide glanced at it and smiled at me.

"I think so," she said. "There are a lot of ifs and maybes in this affair, but there are also a whole lot of improbable and high-smelling coincidences, on top of some very evident facts. I think that if that transfer order shows what we expect it to, I can get a judge to give us a release order into our care."

"I don't want you to get into trouble," I said, trying to be polite and offer her an out, although I desperately wanted her to go for it. "After all, you hardly know me."

She gave a little trill of laugher. "Oh honey, I'm a contracts expert. I spend all day on paperwork and trying to deal with people who are all trying to steal from each other. This morning I was ready to do the same old thing yet again. Then I got a call from a man in England I've worked with before, and now I'm Nancy Drew and a paid-up member of the Scooby Doo team. I haven't had this much fun with my clothes on for over a decade."

She laughed and then blushed deeply as she replayed what she'd just said. Beth snorted, trying to mask uncontrollable giggles.

"Everybody deserves to have fun," I said with a straight face. "Clothes are purely optional when it comes to fun."

She seemed more than a little flustered. "You stay here and heal up. Beth, you know what to do. I'm going to have a chat with the hospital administrator."

She swept out on a hurried wave of gracious gentility, expensive perfume and red cheeks.

Beth put away her tablet and handed my phone back.

"Call me when you want to talk some more about those babies," she said with a sly smile and exited the room, grinning.

I lay there for a while, but no matter what I tried to think about, it always turned back into visions of Summer. Eventually, I came to a decision and pressed the call button for the nurse. When she appeared I asked her to call the doctor as soon as possible, as I'd be leaving the hospital.

It felt like hours, but eventually a doctor appeared to tell me I couldn't possibly leave for at least a week. I explained that I couldn't possibly stay for another hour, and that we needed to work together to make this possible.

"Take this drip out, give me some sort of sling, and I'll be out of your hair. According to my notes my head's fine, apart from a headache, which just leaves the arm. Thousands of people every day must break bones. They don't all stay in hospital for a week -- every clinic and hospital in the country would be packed to the gills."

"The only way for you to leave is for you to sign a form acknowledging you are being discharged AMA."

"Against medical advice, I get it. So if I don't do that, you're going to lock me up?"

"Well... no. Okay. But I'm going to mark you down as AMA."

"Gonna help me get sorted first?"

"Yes."

"AMA it is."

Just over an hour later, Adelaide and Beth returned to my room to find me seated on the visitor's chair, fully dressed. They were both excited and had the air of cats in a bed of catnip.

"We found her," gushed Adelaide excitedly. "She's in a medical facility in a little private clinic half an hour south of here. My guys are picking up the release from the judge's chambers. They'll meet us there."

I stood up. "We need to go, now!"

Adelaide and Beth gave each other a sideways look, and Beth gave a tiny shrug.

Outside the hospital, they both helped me into the back seat of a funny-looking silver Cadillac with a growly front end. Beth got behind the wheel and, to my surprise, Adelaide slid in alongside me.

"Here, let me," she said, taking the seat belt and carefully wrapping it across me, avoiding my cast. It was a simple gesture, but in that moment, I wanted so badly for my Mum to be there for me, her plump features and large bust the perfect place to hide from a world I didn't want to be in for a while. I turned away so that the two women wouldn't see the pain and homesickness in my face.

Adelaide took hold of my hand and just held it lightly for the rest of the journey.

"I spoke to one of the assistant DA's in Los Angeles," she said after a few miles of silence. "We were at Harvard at the same time and shared a few courses. We weren't really friends, but were on nodding terms -- enough that she remembered me when I called. We had a long chat, and I sent over everything we had on this case so far - police reports, social media links, testimonies -- everything. She checked it out and agreed there's a prima facie case against Fisher and Scorby. She understands what you and Charlotte have faced, and that you could both still potentially be in danger. So she's moving along as fast as she can on this."

I was shocked. It had never crossed my mind that there could be other thugs out there besides Murdock. It did make sense, however. Summer was going to be coming into a huge inheritance, a pot of gold that would tempt a lot of people into daring to dig at the end of the rainbow.

Adelaide took a long phone call, that seemed to consist mainly of 'uh-huh' and 'no'.

As we pulled into a small parking lot outside a flat, two-storey building that looked more like a stationery outlet than a hospital, the blond lawyer broke the silence at last.

"Bryn, she's gone through so much over the last six weeks," she said. Her voice told me she was reluctant but determined to speak her mind. "I've never met her, but from what you've told us, from the testimonies... It's going to be difficult."

I nodded. It would be tough, but this was Summer and me! We'd shared that weird bond that had knotted our lives together, locked them together.

"Yes, I understand," I said.

At that moment, Summer appeared in the doorway of the hospital, accompanied by three rather large men. I struggled, but managed to get out of the car, facing her across the parking area.

My heart was pumping so hard, I could hear the beat within my ears. My smile threatened to split my face in half. I knew it was going to be hard work, but it would all be worth it.

One of the men with Summer split away and came to the boot of Adelaide's car, pulling Summers's cases out of it. When he started walking away, I didn't know how to respond.

"No! Hey, wait! We need to decide where..."

The suitcases were put into the back of a grey car. I stared at Summer, little wisps of her purple hair drifting out sideways as it was caught by the wind. I didn't know what was happening, and her face was completely blank, showing no emotion whatsoever. I lifted my hand, held it out to her, silently begging her to join me, asking her to allow she and me to become an 'us' against the world. We had a history. Admittedly, it was short -- but it was incredibly intense; the melting of iron and carbon in a violent shower of heat and light and sparks on its way to becoming steel.

The expression on her face was icy-cold, denying my hopes and dreams. It never changed an iota as she shook her head, turned and got into the car with the three men.

It drove away.

She didn't look back.

I stood there, lost in that small parking lot, a tiny cog in a huge continental machine. People went to and fro as their lives went on with things, events, people that were important to them. My life no longer seemed to have any of those; didn't seem to have any direction for it to go towards. The future had slipped sideways and the past had become the choice destination -- it was now more important than anything that was yet to come.

I was numb. I could find within me no emotion whatsoever; no anger, no disappointment, no shame, no sense of loss. Nothing.

I felt an arm slip through mine; Beth gently urging me back to the car, where Adelaide reached over to help me back in.

I sat there, not moving; staring wide-eyed at nothing.

"Where should we take you, Bryn?" Adelaide asked eventually. "Where do you want to go?"

Her voice was gentle, soft and warm, rich with sympathy. And once again it evoked that one need in me.
"I want to go home," I said. Life had become a huge graffiti-despoiled disappointment that loomed over me like a cliff -- a place in which there was no opening for me; an event in which I couldn't take part, an exile from my own self. I was tired of fighting everything, everyone, every time. So tired.

"I just want my mum."

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

He had broken the locked doors of time all suspended

He had smashed through all barriers of hard disbelief

He stood, cap in hand, before the Fairy Queen, pleading

And she laughed, took wing, flew away

Dancing with the Fairy Queen! (B. Lake) 2019

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

ZERO HOUR +10156

Boots started yapping at the door, announcing the arrival of the postman for their daily tussle over bills, flyers and the occasional letter.

I shook my head, smiling. Boots was one year old -- a present from my sister as an apology after confessing she just might have let slip to Phoebe about me making good money from song-writing. It seemed that there had been a little party, a modicum of wine had been imbibed, a few secrets were spilled, a couple of boyfriends got pissed off, a few punches were thrown and in the aftermath of all the excitement, Phoebe had somehow become part of their group and was told about my song-writing. Apart from that -- a good time was had by all.

Janie hadn't been able to resist bragging about my skills. She loved me, she was proud of me, and her girlfriends needed to stop putting me down. I got it. At least it finally put to bed the reason why Phoebe had got together with me in the first place. It also explained why the silly cow had come up with the fake pregnancy and miscarriage.

My only sibling had felt guilty ever since Phoebe and I had got together, worried that her sister-in-law would turn out to be some gold-digging bitch, and was horrified when her fears turned out to be well-founded.

Janie, by then married and looking to offer me a niece or nephew when it finally happened, had turned up on my doorstep two months after I'd returned from that disastrous trip to the USA, annoyed that I wasn't returning calls from any of the family. She didn't bother knocking, just walked in, looked around and immediately called my mother.

There was no discussion of what was going to happen. Nobody asked my opinion or involved me in any decision making. Between the two of them they threw out my precious collection of empty liquor bottles, confiscated all of the even more precious full ones, emptied my fridge and pantry of mysterious things covered in green mould, cleaned the house from top to bottom, washed and rewashed every stitch of clothing I owned, refilled the fridge with healthy stuff, made me shower several times, and then sat me down for a long, long, really long 'casual chat, just to catch up on things.'

Sometime during that week, Phoebe made the almost fatal error of 'popping around' to see if I'd remembered where I'd stored those songs she'd sung on but hadn't sold -- 'just out of casual interest, mind you.' It was something she did regularly -- usually dressed in something very tempting. She'd been paid for singing on them, and had no claim, but the fuckweasel was convinced they would be worth a fortune if they could just get their hands on them, and hadn't yet given up hope. I think he was even hoping I'd fuck her if it helped him get those songs.

It was honestly fascinating to hear my own mother -- a sweet, plump little woman in her late forties with the kindest and happiest nature I could ever hope to enjoy -- utter the words, "Phoebe, if I ever see your face around here again, I will fuck you up so bad your ancestors will feel the pain!"

Everyone has roots, and Mum's were buried deep in the rough tough mining towns of the north.

It was equally fascinating to see my ex-wife reverse out of my driveway so quickly that the car did a backward 360 in the middle of the road before she got it under control once again.

During those 'casual chats', which would probably have impressed the Spanish Inquisition, of course, the whole story of Summer was finally aired.

Despite my words to Adelaide, when I got back to England, I hadn't wanted to talk about it with anyone. It was too new, too raw; a wound not even starting to scab. I'd barricaded myself in my house with the excuse that my arm was painful; ordered fast food and alcohol from a supermarket nearby that did home-delivery, and then proceeded to try and kill as many brain cells as possible, usually sitting in my underpants and vest on the settee while staring uncomprehendingly at some or other Netflix serial. I didn't bathe often enough to have to worry about getting my cast wet. Which was good -- and oh so bad.

I got some sympathy from my mum and sister, but it was time-limited, and they went into 'get back on the horse' mode after two days of my self-pity, with the subject of Summer finally dropped. Phoebe's visit actually helped, although purely on an entertainment level, with a lot of the fun coming from teasing my mum about her threat. Janie and I were both secretly impressed, and I know mum enjoyed the give-and-take of our teasing.

At the end of the week Janie presented me with a large box and an ultimatum. When I opened the box, I found a tiny black and white Border Collie pup looking up at me with wary interest. When Janie presented the ultimatum, she made no bones about it.

"She's seven weeks old. If you don't feed her, she will die. If you don't give her water she will die. She needs exercise -- if she doesn't get it, she will grow fat while destroying your furniture. She needs training, if she doesn't get it, she will grow fat while destroying your every mood. If you don't get up first thing in the morning, she will shit on your carpets and piss in your shoes. If you stay out late drinking, she will chew on your laptop and play fetch with your guitar. I feel guilty about letting slip to Phoebe about your earning power, and this is a gift of love and apology. But it's also a curse -- because now you have to love something that will love you back -- forever."

She wept loudly when I lifted her up and span her around in the air like I'd done when she was small. She knew then that I forgave her.

That done, I picked up a very small, rather bewildered dog, and started my life-long love affair with a lady I call Mrs. Boots, after a character from one of Janie's books back when she was three or four. I had no idea why I chose that name, but it stuck, shortened to Boots.

Boots was smart -- probably smarter than me. Between her, Mum and Janie, they dragged me out of the doldrums and back into real life.

I took Janie's advice to heart. A year on, Boots was fit and healthy with a shining coat and a wet nose that she liked to shove under the blankets and touch to some random part on my body to wake me up screaming in the mornings. She was well-trained and incredibly bright, and she'd even coaxed me into running with her twice a day, which was not only fun, it gave me actual muscles in my legs. She was always loving and had the kindest heart for everyone -- except the postman, who was actually a woman. Jana was Eastern European, loved to chat, always wore the uniform shorts and had very nice legs, but Boots never took to her messing with the letter box. That little bitch would take great delight in grabbing a mouthful of the mail as it appeared through the slot in the front door, and yanking it out of Jana's hands with a loud growl, startling her. I swear Boots laughed for the rest of the day, whenever she could get Jana to squeal with alarm.

The weird thing was, if Boots was in the garden when Jana came around with the mail, the two played together and had a fun time. Females -- how are we to understand them? There just aren't enough hours in a lifetime.

Boots was still yapping when the doorbell rang, and I realised that Jana must have a parcel for me, otherwise she would just shovel the rubbish through the letter box.

I put down the breadknife, tapping it on the crust of the loaf just to enjoy hearing the slight crackle of its freshness, and went to the door.

Opening it, I saw a small figure standing there with their back to me, wrapped in a raincoat and hood. I hadn't even realised it was raining. The figure turned and my peaceful world exploded.

Summer.

As always when she was near, my thoughts somehow became as tangled and confused as they had before. Was it really Summer? How could she be here? How did she find me? What did she want with me? How could she be so beautiful?

Her face wore the same neutral expression it had when I'd last seen her, turning away from me at that hospital.

"Hello Bryn."

"I thought you were the postman," I said after a moment. "But she's taller."

That nonsense reflected my thought patterns perfectly. It seemed to be infectious, as her mouth worked for a moment before she managed an answer. "I can't be the postman then."

"No," I said, and my brain finally kicked into gear. "Would you like to come in out of the rain?"

She nodded and I stepped aside. Boots stalked over and sniffed at Summer's legs, and she reached down and scratched behind the pricked-up ears. Boots seemed to smile, her tongue hanging out to one side. Traitorous bitch!

Summer entered, wiping her feet on the doormat. She looked around curiously and then askance at me, as I waited with my hands up.

"Your coat?" I murmured.

"Oh. Oh right. Yeah, thanks."

She removed the coat and, as I hung it up on a peg, I got my first look at her in over a year.

I found myself surprised that she looked the same as the Summer of those two days when we were together. Somehow, I had supposed that she would have changed because of what happened. It didn't make any sense, I guess, but seeing that long, red hair flowing down to her waist, her eyes still that same dark violet, her figure just as trim and neat as ever in a short blue dress and warm black leggings, it all seemed... wrong. How could she not have been as affected as I was?

I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror. The face that stared back was thinner, even a little gaunt. The hair was shorter, while the chest had bulked out a little, and the legs had bulked up a lot. The eyes were more wary. To me, I looked older, and hopefully wiser.

"Tea?" I asked. It was the universal social lubricant, and was the first question normally posed when a visitor came to my house, as it probably was in every other home in Britain.

"Yes, thank you."

"Breakfast tea, Earl Grey, or cherry and cinnamon?"

"Er... whatever you're having."

"Okay, breakfast tea it is. Milk and sugar?"

"Er..."

"I'll make it and you can decide then. Come through."

She kicked off her shoes and trailed after me into the kitchen. One of the reasons I'd fought Phoebe to a standstill on buying this house was because of the wide half-height wall that demarcated it from the lounge. My parents had one, so I'd grown up with it, and I'd always appreciated that being in the kitchen didn't mean you were excluded from events or conversations going on in the lounge.

Summer looked around, nodding slightly. "You have a lovely home."

I smiled, assuming she was being polite.

"I like it."

There was a silence as I got the kettle going and popped tea bags into a couple of mugs. Boots whined for a treat, looking as cute as possible until I got a few from the bag in the overhead cupboard; then she just looked ready, and when I tossed one into the air, she was on it in a flash, jumping straight up to snatch it in midair.

"Lovely dog," Summer commented. "What breed is she?"

I was thankful for that conversational lubricant as well, as my mind kept going blank while I tried to work out why Summer was there, right in front of me. I launched into introducing her to Boots who, seeing no more treats forthcoming, lay down and rolled onto her back so that Summer could scratch her chest.

By the time I'd explained about her being a gift from Janie, and where her name had come from, the kettle was boiling. I poured it, enjoying the first scent of the tea as the water shocked it into releasing its oils, then added a splash of milk and a teaspoon of sugar to one of the cups, gave them both a stir and drew out the teabags.

"Try them both and decide which one you want."

She sipped at them carefully, looked surprised and then drew the lighter-coloured one towards her. I made the other one the same and we stood for a moment, sipping and watching each other.

I almost broke first, but she spotted something on the mantelpiece over the hearth.

"Is that..." she muttered, crossing the room to look at it closely. "It is. This is the Brit Award you won."

"Yes."

"I saw you there."

"What?"

"I saw you at the award ceremony. You looked beautiful in that suit."

"But that category wasn't televised. How did you..."

"I was in the audience."

I closed my eyes tight for a moment.

"You were here in England and dropped in to watch the awards?"

"I flew in specifically to watch the awards."

"You could have said hi, perhaps. Or just given me a wave," I said, my voice tight. "I mean, even if you were someone's guest, you could have waved. Even a nod would have been appreciated."

"I had a bodyguard with me, but I was on my own. I went to see you. I wanted to know if I still had the same problem that I had when I last saw you, in Missouri."

"What kind of problem prevents you from saying hello or goodbye to a friend?" I asked.

She wandered into the lounge and sat on the sofa, patting it to get me to sit near, but not next to her.

"If you were a friend, it wouldn't be a problem," she said.

"I get it. I do. It was just two days. I thought it meant more. I'm sorry. I'm not good at understanding things like that. I don't have enough practice."

She reached and took my hand. "You thought it meant more?"

"Of course. I thought we were friends, but..." I gestured helplessly with my free hand. The break had healed cleanly and the plates and pins didn't bother me at all.

"We were more than friends. You told me you loved me. You said it."

I squirmed. "I know I did. I thought you said it, too, but things were going crazy and I misread it. I mean, we only ever kissed that one time and we were trying to hide at the time, so it probably doesn't count. Like I said, I'm a mutt when it comes to things like that."

"I said it, too," she said. "And I meant it. That's my problem, don't you see? Murdoch was doing that crazy shit to me, and I didn't know what I was doing, and then I fell in love with you. But was it real, or was it because of his... actions? I didn't know. I couldn't know.

"When I came out of that hospital at the end, and you were standing there -- so pale, so hurt, with that huge cast on your arm -- all I wanted to do was fall on my knees at your feet and beg for your forgiveness. At the same time, I wanted to chain myself to you, or put a saddle on your back and let you carry me around with you. You were my knight, my hero, and I knew I loved you no matter what -- but at the same time, I had no idea if it was real."

"Why..." I started. I stopped and tried again. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand. If you loved me, then why didn't we work on it together? I don't know why you wanted my forgiveness -- although I'd have given it to you anyway, no matter what. Why didn't you say something then? Why did you just drive away?"

I tried to slow my breathing -- this had been thrown into my lap so unexpectedly, like a hand-grenade out of the darkness. It had taken so long to get to a place where I was at least okay with the fact that I would never see her again. Now this comes up and all that work might as well never have happened.

She was crying softly, searching for a tissue in her handbag. I gave her a handkerchief. It wasn't the same one, but it was the same colour. She looked at it and began to weep really hard, just holding it in both hands against her eyes.

"You were so nice to me, despite everything I did," she sobbed. "You picked me up and looked after me. You fed and clothed me. You guarded and protected me, and in the end you had to kill a man to shield me. You did all that despite my being a constant bitch -- a selfish, spiteful bitch. I never thanked you or appreciated you, and in return for everything you did for me, I got you hurt so badly -- tortured and maimed -- and yet I still felt it more important to sort out my feelings than to talk to you. How could you ever forgive all that? I'm an awful person. Even my psychiatrist thinks so, I'm sure.

"He says you might have a good knight syndrome or something, to do all that and still tell me you love me."

"It's White Knight -- and I don't do that anymore. I'm a lot more careful now."

"You see -- I've destroyed even that," she was crying really loudly now. Boots was sitting at our feet, looking very disturbed. "After my parents... and then you -- you could have all died thinking I didn't care."

I decided to give her a hug. It wasn't a White Knight thing, not anymore. It was just one human feeling empathy for another. I drew her in, and all five of my senses lit up with pleasure. Shit!

"Summer..." I started.

"Oh, I really miss you calling me that," she sniffled against my shoulder.

I smiled. "Summer, if we don't both have PTSD, I'd be astonished. I think that earns us a little leeway, although I really don't think you need any. Bad things happen, even to good people. People we love will die, and when it's too early we have to learn how to cope with it. If you couldn't cope with being with me, or while being with me, I understand. I didn't before, but now I do. So I appreciate you coming here to tell me that. There's nothing to forgive, believe me."

She was holding on really tightly, and I couldn't resist lifting her onto my lap so that we could hug properly, without having to lean and twist. She snuggled into my neck, and I felt Mr. Happy respond.

"I can't believe how jealous I got over poor Annie-May," she said quietly. "One moment I was fine, and then it was like you flicked a switch and I was so jealous I felt physically ill."

She seemed to have claimed my lap as a seat, showing no desire to settle back on the couch again.

"I heard the song you wrote for her, and it was so lovely. She deserved everything you put into that. Did you warn her it was going to be released?"

I snorted softly. "No. I figured if she was a fan of Chris Lane and her name was in the title, she would probably hear it, and be pleasantly surprised."

"Pleasantly surprised." She sniggered and dropped into that Southern accent again. "She probably creamed her pretty pink panties."

I swallowed heavily at that image. I wasn't sure how it was happening, but the last twelve months seemed to be slipping away quickly, each of them feeling lighter and less consequential, the longer Summer sat on my lap. The heat from her thighs and bum were causing Mr. Happy to feel a little frisky, as he cared not a jot about broken or mending hearts, and gave not a toss about trying to understand everything that was being left unsaid between Summer and me.

"I wrote a song for you, too," I whispered.

Her head shot back and those violet eyes stared into my soul.

"You did?" she whispered back.

I nodded.

"Why isn't it playing right now, this very minute, this very second?" she demanded. "And how come I heard Annie-May's song on the radio, but haven't heard one word about mine?"

"What is this thing you have about Annie-May?" I asked.

She looked gloomy. "Are you kidding? She's tall and statuesque, with legs that go on forever, and tits that even I want to play with. She's beautiful, sweet as sugar mice, and has that whole Southern Belle thing going for her. She doesn't have one thing that I'm not jealous about."
"And yet I'm here with you."

She considered that for a long moment, and finally gave a fist pump. "A win for Kennedy. The crowd goes wild! Now -- we were talking about my song."

"Your song only came out this week."

"Huh, I want to hear it."

I smiled to myself and gave myself a little mental hug of pleasure. She'd been through so much, and yet she was still the same person.

"In a moment. I don't want to cast a pall of gloom over this, but I do need to tell you. I understood what you did back at the shack -- when you told him I was in the car industry. You were telling me that you were still in control of your thoughts, no matter what he was doing to you."

Her eyes were wide. "You understood that? Because I thought I understood that that's what you were doing by subtly prompting him to call me goblin. You were saying that I was still yours."

Tears suddenly appeared in her eyes again. "But then I realised I was wrong when you turned away and didn't want to kiss me. You were disgusted at me for doing..."

I shook her. She looked startled. "No! He forced you. I wasn't disgusted by you! I just didn't want to kiss you. Not right then. He'd ... you'd ... He'd made you give him a blowjob just before that. It would have been too much at that moment."

"Oh, God! I hadn't even considered that. Now I understand. I wasn't thinking, and then you turned away and I thought you were... I felt so disgusted at myself."

"It was never your fault!" I reiterated.

She nodded. "I know. I know now. My shrink has worked with me a lot on that. It's just, now and again, those feelings creep through the cracks."

We both sat very quietly for a while, the ebullient mood gone for the moment.

"Wait here," I said, lifting her again and putting her alongside me on the couch. She really was very easy to cart around.

I went to the entertainment centre at one end of the lounge and drew out a cd, the box still sealed in its plastic wrapper. I slipped the disc into the player and dialled in the right track.

A harp began to play a simple riff. A cello joined in, an oboe and flute following it.

Loreena McKennitt's strong, pure voice drifted in, intertwining with the melody and then leaving it to soar above in perfect harmony. After I'd written the song for Summer, I knew hers would be the perfect voice, the only voice for it. I was so happy she'd agreed.

Summer was entranced as the song wound through the tale of a bard who had drifted off to sleep as he wandered in a forest, only to find himself faced with the Fairy Queen when he awoke. Facing death, he wooed her with his songs, danced with her in the moonlight, and they fell in love. When she found herself having to choose between him and her kingdom, she turned her back on him and broke his heart. But stories are told that sometimes late at night, wonderful music can be heard in the forest, and people know that two lovers have snatched a precious interlude from their lives to be together once again, to celebrate the birth of a new royal heir in the realm of the Fairy Queen.

Summer was snuffling into the handkerchief once again when the last notes of the harp finally died away.

"Am I your Fairy Queen?" she asked, as I pulled her onto my lap once more.

"You are."

"And you are my bard, my lover?"

"I am."

"And I broke your heart?"

I hesitated and then nodded.

"I'm so sorry!" she wept. "I love my song. Thank you, thank you."

She pulled herself together and gave a deep sigh, snuggling a little tighter against me.

"My song's better than Annie-May's crappy song!" she declared suddenly.

That non-sequiter came out of nowhere and I barked with laughter. "Oy, less of the crappy bit. I did write that one as well!"

"Sorry, it's a wonderful song and she deserves every word."

There was another long pause.

"I'm still glad you didn't fuck her fat arse on the reception desk!"

"Summer!"

"Okay, I'm not still glad you didn't fuck her fat arse on the reception desk."

"Summer!"

"Huh!"

"Poor Annie-May!"

"Huh! Show me where you work. Please."

I tried to lift her to one side, but she hung around my neck like a limpet.

"I have to carry you?" I asked. She nodded, her eyes fixed on mine.

Somehow I struggled to my feet, still with her in my arms. Those new leg muscles helped a lot. She cooed appreciatively at my Herculean display of strength -- Herculean for me, anyway.

I'd moved my studio to what had been the conservatory before I shook loose of Phoebe. All glass but for where it butted up against the main house, the play of light within the room -- even while it was raining, as now -- was delightful.

"Oh." Summer gasped. "This wasn't how I saw you in my head. I was expecting some dark little studio in the basement -- all artificial light and electronic gear."

She wriggled out of my arms and wandered around the room. Her fingers trailed lightly over the back of the sofa and the old, overstuffed wing-backed armchair that I'd picked up at a car boot sale. I'd had to call Janie to bring her SUV to get that one home, but it was worth it to be able to sink into its depths and let my mind run free, while grand concertos played in my head.

She touched the neck of my guitar, still plugged into the amp, and took in the cables that linked it to my computer. My desk, an old solid piece of pre-war craftsmanship that showed wear where my arms had scrubbed over it while working at the keyboard, had a large oversized monitor perched on it. That was the extent of my studio. The rest was open space apart from Boots' rug and water-bowl, and the pot plants that reminded me daily that life went on.

From the front of the conservatory, a well-tended expanse of grass stretched away down to the back fence; flower beds, shrubs and the odd fruit tree punctuating the smooth, emerald-green billiard table surface that was the lawn. Beyond the fence, fields dotted with black and white cows stretched towards distant hills.

This was where I came to write, to play, to compose and to heal.

Summer tapped the guitar. "Play for me, please."

I smiled, shrugged and slung the strap of the guitar around my neck. Perching on the corner of the desk, I tapped on the keyboard and began to play the harp intro to her song. Hidden speakers played in the other instruments as the monitor scrolled the musical notation of the piece across its face. I didn't try and sing it -- that wasn't going to work -- but, standing next to me at the desk, she read the words as they appeared on the screen, and I know she was hearing them in her head.

Softly at first, she began to sing along, and as she became more confident with the tune, her contralto voice rose and soared, taking my heart with it.

When the last note died away, she looked at me, and her eyes seemed infinitely deep, and dark with a desire I hadn't seen before.

Summer drew my head down and kissed me for only the second time, but it somehow felt as if I'd come home at last after a long exhausting journey. Her soft lips pressed insistently to mine, her tongue darting out to taste me and then explore -- mine mimicking her actions. Without breaking the kiss, I unhooked the strap, put the guitar aside and she drew me towards the sofa.

I was still hesitant, not knowing her boundaries and reluctant to overstep into an area where she would be uncomfortable. She seemed to have no such worries, however, drawing my hand up and placing it firmly on her breast. It was soft and firm at the same time, in that timeless mystery of womanhood, and seemed to fit into my hand perfectly. I felt the hardening of her nipple against my palm, and realised that she wasn't wearing a bra beneath the dress. I felt a shiver run through me, a desire I hadn't felt for over a year -- a year that had been a stretch of lifeless desert in my journey through the universe.

Now, I had either reached the other side of that desert, or found a rich oasis within it. Either way, I was determined to enjoy it to the full.

Summer seemed to have a similar agenda, and wasted no time in drawing my shirt up over my head and tossing it aside. Her lips trailed down over my chest, little noises of pleasure and appreciation drifting up, while her hands busied themselves at my jeans. She nipped at one of my nipples and I gasped at the sudden burst of pleasure.

I found the zip on the back of her dress, drew it down, and lifted the silky garment up and off her in one continual movement. I picked her up and put her on her back on the sofa, in order to look down on her and revel in this sudden feast that had been served up so unexpectedly. I was right -- she hadn't worn a bra, and those glorious little tits stared me right in the eye as I drank in her almost naked glory.

I reached for her panties, stopped, and then looked up to see the smile on her face. She giggled.

"Really," I muttered. "The teddy bear pants?"

She nodded vigorously. "I know how much you like them."

"So you planned to seduce me, then?"

She nodded again with even more enthusiasm, and then drew me down on top of her, her eyes locked on mine. They grew serious once more.

"I knew how much damage I'd done," she whispered. "I got you hurt so badly and then just left you behind. I'm so sorry -- so sorry! I've regretted that every day since. I knew that if I was going to have any chance of winning you back, then I'd have to use every weapon in the arsenal. So the teddy bear had to play its part."

"Hey," I said. "You never lost me. I think I've been yours ever since you poked me in the back and threatened to kill me."

She blushed.

"The way I acted, I'm surprised you didn't just drop me in a river somewhere."

"Well..." I said. "I was tempted once or twice..."

"You didn't. You never wavered, not even once. You are my Knight." She was using her hands and feet to get my jeans down and off. At some point she'd managed to make the panties disappear.

"Retired knight."

"Retired maybe, but still upstanding and ready to go into action. I have the evidence right here!" She squeezed my cock with both hands and giggled when I groaned.

"I need you now," she whispered, serious once more. "We can play later, but right now, I need you inside me, to take me -- to show me that you forgive me, that you still love me despite..."

She moaned long and low as I slowly pushed forward and entered her, feeling the slick tightness of her body squeeze even more and then relax to welcome me to my new home. I didn't even know that it was physically possible, but somehow the muscles surrounding her vagina seemed to drag me deeper and deeper into her body until there was no part of Mr. Happy that was outside her.

Time seemed to both expand and contract simultaneously, as we began to move together in that timeless dance. Our mouths were locked together, hands roaming over each other, exploring and discovering new mysteries, new pleasures. I found a tiny place on her neck that made her whole body shiver in ecstasy whenever I nibbled at it. She discovered my intense delight when she wrapped her legs around mine to intertwine us like vines. I discerned the angle to penetrate her that drew her clitoris down just enough to become involved in the action. She found that digging her nails into my arse made me buck even harder.

"Mine!" I cried out suddenly, surprising even myself. "You're mine! I can't go through that again!"

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes. Never again. I'm yours. I will always be yours."

"Summer..." I gasped, feeling that little spasm across my groin which indicated that things had gone past the point of no return.

"Yes, baby. Yes!" she cried. "Now, now, now..."

As my sperm pumped into her again and again, it felt as if my spirit left my body as well, spasming and filling her, my mouth wide open in a rictus of ecstasy. For a moment I could actually hear the wild beating of my heart echoing through my open mouth.

She'd taken a part of my soul, just as I'd taken a part of hers; an exchanged promise.

Her head was tilted back, her eyes screwed tightly closed, her mouth as wide open as mine. Her moan of delight grew louder and louder, ending in a series of screams.

"Oh my god! Sorry. I'm sorry."

I was looking at Summer, and she hadn't said that.

I glanced over my shoulder to see Janie staring at us, her eyes huge and wide, a hand to her mouth. In an agony of embarrassment, she turned and ran off.

Perhaps predictably, Summer began to laugh.

"Who was that?" she giggled.

"Janie, my sister," I panted in reply. "She has a key. She's been kind of looking after me, since..."

Summer pulled me close and hugged me hard. "I understand. Get your pants on and go and talk to her. We will have later!"

Reluctantly, I did so, padding through the house until I found Janie in the kitchen, making a cup of tea.

As soon as she saw me, she blushed and burst out into a series of apologies. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know you had company. I didn't see anything, honestly."

I laughed. "Oh, you little liar. I know you saw us. You okay?"

She took a sip of tea and nodded. "Yeah. Just, taken aback, I suppose. It was kind of unexpected. I didn't know you were seeing anyone."

I made two more cups of tea, and then leaned back against the counter.

"I wasn't -- well, not until today, I guess."

Her eyes widened, and she glanced down at my bare chest.

"You just met a girl and you did the nasty with her already. What are you, some kind of superstud?"

I laughed again. "No..."

"Yes, he is."

I looked around. Summer had thrown her dress on and found her shoes. She looked as if she'd just stepped out of a beauty salon. She held her hand out to Janie, who shook it.

"I'm Charlotte. I knocked on the door just half an hour ago, and I couldn't resist him. So he had his wicked way with me, as you saw."

Janie's eyes were huge. I was her brother -- the fat kid who was often annoying and sometimes loveable -- not some Lothario who could seduce women at the snap of his fingers. The two images just wouldn't match up in her mind.

"Summer!" I said, my tone admonishing.

Janie's eyes changed as soon as she heard the name, growing colder and harder. She turned to look at her. "So you're that Summer."

"It's what he calls me," my little redhead admitted. "Except when he calls me his goblin."

She turned to me. "Honey, why don't you go and write a song, or something. Janie and I need to chat."

"Indeed we do," said my sister, a look in her eye that promised violence if she didn't get the right answers to the hard questions that were going to be thrown out there. I knew I wasn't needed or wanted for this.

"Both of you play nice!" I said, giving them both a hug and then heading back to the conservatory. "Love you."

"Love you, too," they both chorused, which drew a sharp glance from Janie as well. More questions would be asked.

I didn't write a song. I sat in my armchair and gazed out at the landscape, idly scratching Boots' ears and thinking of what had just happened. My life was some sort of runaway train, set on a track only to be violently switched across to another track at the whim of some hidden controller. Once the train got settled in that direction, it would once again rock across some points onto a whole different track. Perhaps, if I was really lucky, there were no more points ahead.

After a while, I heard feminine laughter -- my sister's light, infectious hoot, and Summer's wonderful filthy belly-laugh. Realising that violence probably wasn't in the offing I started back up.

"...Fucking Phoebe," I heard Summer say, laughter in her voice.

"Ugh, the perfect name for that bitch," agreed Janie.

That gave me an idea. I picked up my laptop and joined them.

They had apparently pooh-poohed my stock of tea bags, and opened a bottle of wine to share. Janie gave me a hug, and Summer grabbed my hand and held on tight.

"I was telling her about Phoebe, and warning Summer about how she just won't stay away," Janie said when she released me.

"Well, she and the fuckweasel won't be bothering us anymore," I said, opening the laptop and setting it on the counter. I clicked several keys and a video began to play.

"What are we looking at," asked Summer.

"I got tired of Phoebe and the shitweasel fucking with my life, so I approached Lappies and asked him to put out a rumour that I was storing all my unpublished songs on a PC at a separate address to hide them.

"I hired a flat for a couple of months and set up a PC to video record everything that moved, but disabled the light on the camera built into the monitor so it wasn't apparent. I didn't want to take the chance of cameras being spotted, so I didn't put any remote ones up, but I did put a separate camera on top of the screen, pointing off to one side.

"This is what the camera saw."

The video at first seemed to just show a static, wide-angle picture of the interior of an apartment, a passage leading away to the front door on the left, a view into a kitchen on the right, and the foreground cluttered with lounge furniture clustered around a television set.

There was a mirror on the wall between the kitchen and the hall passage, and a head bobbed into view for a moment and then disappeared again.

"Who was that?" Janie asked, as the head slowly came back into view.

I pointed at the screen. "That mirror is showing the door to the balcony, which is behind and to one side of the computer. And that head belongs to an accomplice that the shitweasel brought in to help them burgle the flat."

The head grew more adventurous and a body appeared behind it as the man slunk over the railing and onto the balcony. He crouched at the glass door and fiddled with the lock until it suddenly opened. The man looked pleased with himself and proceeded into the lounge. He reached over and snatched the camera from the top of the screen, pointing it away from himself, and carefully unplugging it.

Still holding the camera in his hand, and obviously a lot more confident, he walked to the front door, unbolted it, and then shook it when it still didn't open. He took something from his pocket and when that didn't work he took out a small jimmy, and slipped it into the gap in the door. There was a sharp crack and the door swung open.

"Oh my god!" said Janie. "Phoebe!"

My cheating ex-wife and the man she had chosen over me, slipped into the flat and pushed the door to. It swung open again slightly, and the shitweasel pushed the coat rack up against it to keep it closed. They spoke and the burglar showed them the camera he'd taken.

The first man wandered around the flat, trying drawers and cupboards, obviously looking for loot of some kind. Phoebe and her partner clustered around the screen, which brought them within the range of the built-in mike.

"You going to take the whole computer?" Phoebe asked.

"Yes, but I want to make sure that those songs are on there first. You're sure you remember the names?"

"Most of them. I'll recognise them if I see them."

"Okay, let's ... What just happened?" Shitweasel sat back, his stupid little goatee beard and moustache making him look as if he had a cunt plastered sideways on his face where his mouth should be. Of course, I might be biased somewhat on that observation.

I pressed a key and a little picture-in-picture appeared in the top corner of the laptop screen. Summer and Janie squeezed in a little closer.

"This is what they saw on the computer in the flat," I said.

"How are they not seeing the monitor camera," asked Summer.

I grinned. "I glued little grilles over the camera to make it look like built in speakers. With the grille so close to the lens, you can't see the wires. It's like taking a photo close up to a fence -- if the camera's within a certain distance and the focus is a lot further away, they blur out of the picture."
The PIP showed a menu on the screen that my ex and the fuckweasel were looking at. It was a bog-standard view of the Windows file explorer. Several files were just jumbles of letters, others were standard features of Bill Gates' finest. One stood out -- all in capitals. 'SONGS BACKUP'.

"Copy that one," Phoebe said, excitement and delight clear in her voice.

"There's no mouse!" complained the shitweasel.

"So use the keyboard - the arrow keys."

Both pairs of eyes looked down, and then back up again as a series of clicks could be heard.

"There they are!" Phoebe was beside herself with excitement. "I'm going to be a star -- a rich star!"

The PIP changed as a submenu appeared.

Janie moved restlessly beside me. "I can't read that, what does it say?"

I pressed a key and the two screens swopped, the excited faces becoming smaller while the screenshot grew to take its place.

"View, sort, group... that's a standard options menu," said Janie.

"Not quite," I said. "Watch."

The highlight bar on the menu clicked down several lines.

"What are you doing?" Phoebe said through the laptop speakers, alarm in her voice. "Don't pick that one!"

"I'm not doing anything!"

"No! No! You pressed it. You pressed it. You fucking idiot!"

"I never touched it!"

The highlight hovering over the word Format darkened, the menu disappeared and a new screen took its place.

*1. Aren't you not sure you really don't want to delete

none of the contents on the secondary drive?*

*2. Aren't you not sure you really don't want to delete

none of the contents on the primary drive?*

Below it, a timer was counting down from 30 seconds. I swapped the two views again to get a good look at their faces.

"Stop it! Don't let it do that!" moaned Phoebe.

"What the fuck does that even mean?" roared fuckweasel. "Shut your face and let me work it out!"

"Twenty-five seconds. Stop it!"

"I don't know which one to choose, you stupid bitch."

"You started it, so stop it."

"I never touched it."

"Well I didn't! And there's only the two of us here."

A third face, belonging to their pet burglar, peered over their shoulders, contradicting Phoebe's assertion.

"Problem?"

"It's going to delete everything," cried shitweasel, panic in his voice.

"So turn it off," said the burglar.

Phoebe and the weasel both launched themselves forward, disappearing off camera. There was a loud click, and they settled back into view.

"How is it still counting down?" said Phoebe suddenly, her eyes wide with panic.

"How the fuck do I know?" the shitweasel roared.

Phoebe began pounding on the keyboard. "Stop! Stop!"

I switched views again. The counter hit zero and the screen began to dissolve into blackness. A final message appeared.

*You chose... poorly*

Phoebe began to slap at the shitweasel's head, screaming at him. He'd picked up the keyboard and was hitting it on the PC case.

None of them saw the front door being forced open and the four security men entering, until the burglar caught sight of them and immediately darted out onto the balcony. In the mirror, his hand was seen to slip on the rail, and a wail of despair was heard as he slipped and fell the twenty feet to the lawn outside. One of the security men laughed and spoke into a walkie-talkie while the other three secured Phoebe and the shitweasel, my ex kicking out at him once her arms were secured and she could no longer slap him.

I sighed as the two women stared at me.

"What?" I said after a moment. "It's my favourite video clip at the moment. I'm thinking it would look good on YouTube.

"You did all that?" asked Summer.

"I didn't make them break into the flat," I said, a little defensively, and then sniggered. "They chose poorly. I chose wisely and didn't tell them about the silent alarm and security service I subscribed to."

Janie was laughing silently, her shoulders shaking. Finally, she had to let it free. "The look on their faces."

Summer began to laugh as well. "You had to go Indiana Jones on them? Seriously? I fell in love with a nerd?"

"He always has been, always will be," Janie laughed, a little breathless. "He's an absolute whizz-kid on the computer. Did he not tell you about the time he cracked into the school computer and changed the history exam paper so that the first noun in every question came out as 'Hairy Pussy'?"

"You knew that was me?" I asked, astounded. I didn't tell anyone about that. Hell, there was no one to tell.

"Of course I knew. Jeez that question about the Magna Carta! 'Describe the hairy pussy of King John and the Barons' role within it.' That was superb."

Summer stared at me, then took my arm and kissed me soundly. "So my White Knight can play Black Knight as well? Good to know. Every girl wants a bad boy sometimes."

"That bad boy just put three people in jail," chortled Janie.

I shook my head. "No, they just got a fine, a warning and community service. Nothing much was damaged or taken. I didn't press charges."

"I thought you wanted revenge," my sister said.

"Oh, I did, but then I realised that the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. I love Summer, and I just don't care enough about Phoebe anymore to feel vengeful. I did get a protection order out of it. They have to stay at least a kilometre away from here. Mostly I did it for Mum. I couldn't have her thrown in the clink for brawling in the street."

There was a thoughtful silence.

"She would have wiped Phoebe's clock for her, though," mused Janie.

"Oh, absolutely," I agreed. "She was probably bare-knuckle champion of Wakefield when she was younger."

Summer stared at us, looking alarmed, until Janie caved. "We're just taking the piss, love. You'll never meet anyone gentler than Mum."

"She can threaten up a storm with the best of them, though," I pointed out.

"Absolutely," agreed Janie.

"I'm scared," said Summer, cuddling into me, which was nice.

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Bad Dog, bad dog, checking your lipstick
Tryin' to make a cowlick, could be a matchstick
Could be a broomstick, be glad it's not a yardstick
Maybe it's a joystick, so just give it a flick
Cos you're superslick.
Bad dog, bad dog. What we gonna do with you?

Bad Dog (B. Lake) 2019

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

EPILOGUE



ZERO HOUR (+RESET+)

It surprised everyone when Summer took a seat at the drum kit and sat quietly. For a moment, I waited, guitar hanging weightily around my neck and the lights hot and heavy on my skin, watching the crowd watching us -- enjoying the moment. Then I started that incredible seven note bass riff, and on the third pass she came in right on time with the simple, but compulsive drum beat. Seven Nation Army, done our way -- with my gruff voice growling the lyrics and Summer coming in on the chorus to sweeten things up considerably.

We were playing at the wedding of two close friends. Along with Summer, who had moved in, I had actually acquired friends. All due to her influence, obviously, but it still surprised me that they seemed to like me as well.

Once the wedding guests got over their surprise -- this was a country pub, after all - it almost turned into a riot as everyone scrambled to get into the swing of it. I think every type of dancing possible took place as dancing couples -- as well as trios, foursomes and every other combination -- then overflowed into all parts of both bars. All I could see was heads bobbing to the beat.

I don't think many people there knew the words to the song, but most had at least heard the tune somewhere. The visceral riff and beat was now a big part of the sports world, unifying fans of many nations into one huge voice. As a song-writer and a musician, I loved that aspect of it -- a whole world singing the same song.

It certainly brought the wedding party to life.

I watched the bride and groom swinging through steps of some dance they'd made up on the spot. Grandparents clutched each other and slow-danced, or picked up a small grandchild and swung around them around and around, much to their delight.

The bridesmaids got into it, spontaneously forming a chorus line, kicking their legs high and flashing their knickers. Others guests were waltzing, doing a salsa or just standing and grinding on each other. A few were even trying to get a Gay Gordons going.

It was a triumph and when I signalled to Summer to extend it for two more choruses, she just smiled. We were going to leave these people pumped and needing a break.

The applause that came spontaneously was huge. A hundred and twenty people or so made enough noise that you'd have thought it was an arena.

We then swung into The Chain by Fleetwood Mac, my magic pedal allowing the bass to really boom out as the break and change came towards the end of the intro, Summer fading in the drum beat alongside my riff.

We really belted out the lyrics, Summer's sweet contralto seeming to curl around my rough tenor and lift the whole thing to new heights. I still had to marvel how my sweetly determined girlfriend had persuaded me to come out of the closet as a singer, so to speak.

She joined me at the front, clutching a tambourine, and we started in on Bad Dog to give the dancers a rest. Some didn't need it, others ignored it, but several were tapping their feet and laughing at the lyrics, which were short, choppy and simple.

Bad dog, bad dog, you did it, you did.
You flipped your lid, went into a skid
Made your bid, got things rigid
Things got candid, tho' it's not all sordid
But you were off grid. Bad dog, bad dog,
What we gonna do, with you?

We got them dancing again, and Summer lead the bridesmaids into shuffle dancing, solo and in pairs to a ramped up Cheap Thrills by Sia, which then swung into an electronic melody that I'd composed, changing it on the fly to keep it interesting and allowing a lot of people to free dance as they wished. Summer then managed to solo Shake It Off by Taylor Swift with aplomb, while still keeping the beat on her drums, which got everybody else dancing once again, any way they wanted to.

To end the set, I dedicated a song to the bride and sang I'm Not In Love by 10cc, perhaps the best love song of all time, in my opinion. Summer sang the ethereal back-up parts and still kept the timing perfectly, and I must admit I had tears in my eyes. As the last note rang on and on, I set down the guitar, turned to Summer and held out an engagement ring. She, in turn, leapt on me, clinging to me with her arms and legs wrapped tightly around me, and kissing me like she was underwater and I had all the oxygen.

It had been a long, long road. We'd taken a lot of damage along the way, but we'd emerged, scathed but still functioning at the destination. It had been worth every note of the song I sent via Lappies to Alter Bridge, to see if they wanted Chasing the Last Road.

They said yes.

More importantly, so did Summer -- my own little Goblin.