A GIRL TO DIE FOR

LUCY WILD

Contents

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR

KEPT SAFE (SNEAK PEEK)

LUCY WILD

You never forget your first...

Holly Simpson has decided to give internet dating a try. After all, what's the worst that could happen?

It's not long before she finds a match, a man who's as charming as he is handsome. Best of all, he's looking for love, same as her.

Sure, there's a serial predator out there somewhere, a man known only as The Matchmaker, a killer who targets online daters, continuing to elude capture as victims pile up across the country. But Holly's not the type to let the scare stories in the tabloids worry her.

In this nailbiting horror thriller Holly has no idea that by the end of her very first date, she might become a girl to die for... 

© Copyright 2017 Lucy Wild

All characters in this book exist only in the imagination of the author and bear no relation to anyone with the same name or names. They are not inspired by any individual and all incidents are pure invention.

All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part. Excepting in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or distributed without the express permission of the author.

This book is intended for mature audiences and may contain explicit language and scenes which some readers may find disturbing.

Sign up to my newsletter and get the novel, Don’t Touch, for free.

Goodreads: Author page

Twitter: @misslucywild

Facebook: lucywildromance

Instagram: misslucywild

Amazon: Author page

Bookbub: Follow me

PROLOGUE

HE’D LOWERED THE LIGHTS and closed the curtains before he began. The cruel wind outside howled as loudly as it could but inside the bedroom, it could barely be heard, the thickness of the glass keeping the winter out and the warm in.

The roaring fire helped, not that Karen could see it through her blindfold. She could hear it though, the wood snapping and crackling as he continued to poke at the inferno. She could hear him too, the gentle in out of his breathing whenever he paused. She pictured him over there. Standing up. Turning to look at her. Seeing how her body looked in the flickering glow of the fire. Were the bruises already forming? Was he looking at the marks he’d made? Was it worth begging again? Would it make any difference? Would he just cut her again?

Her wrists ached from being bound in place above her head but she was too terrified to care. What she cared about was what he was going to do to her next and unless he removed her blindfold, she wouldn’t even know about it until it happened. Like the first punch. It had been such a shock, all the air forced out of her lungs when his fist slammed into her gut. That had been an hour ago and he’d done so much more since then. That first punch was a walk in the park in comparison to what he’d done to her.

She heard a slight hissing sound next to her ear and despite the pain, despite the terror, she knew what it was he was holding. It gave out a heat that radiated towards her skin. It couldn’t be anything else. “Please,” she muttered between sobs. “Please, don’t.”

She tried to move her body away from the burning hot poker, not easy with her limbs bound so tightly in place.

“I’m guessing this isn’t your first time,” she’d said, giggling when he’d connected the cuffs to her wrists. It felt like a lifetime since she’d willingly let him attach her to the bed posts. If only she’d known what he had planned for her.

How had she got there? Her thoughts raced back through the terror to earlier in the evening. Had there been signs he would be like this? When should she have guessed?

She’d felt dizzy after her first drink. Had he slipped something into it? Or was it just because she hadn’t eaten all day, too nervous about her upcoming date with Mr Suave?

Her first internet date. A night at a wine bar with such a handsome man. So witty. So charming. He made her laugh for hours, provided her with glass after glass until all her inhibitions had melted away. She remembered climbing into his car, too happy to care where they were going, just wanting to know if he looked as good out of his suit as he looked in it.

His house, set back from the road. “You like your privacy?” she’d said with a giggle as they drove up to the door, the gates automatically swinging shut behind them.

He’d nodded in response. “I need my privacy.”

“Ooh, what for?” she asked, leaning on his shoulder.

“You’ll see.” That smile of his, the one that made her insides melt.

More drink inside. Then up to his bedroom. Wood panelled, four poster bed, a fire that he lit while she watched. Everything a romantic girl could ask for. A single perfect kiss. Then he suggested she might like to try something new. He’d brought out the handcuffs and she’d been excited beyond measure. It was going to happen. Sleeping with a stranger on the first date. A scandal if anyone found out. But she wasn’t going to be telling, this would be just between them. She hadn’t even told anyone she had a date, not wanting to boast before she knew whether or not it was going anywhere. The handcuffs told her it was definitely going somewhere.

She should have seen the warning signs. She might have been all right if she’d been paying more attention. The way he’d snapped at the barman for bringing the wrong drink, the angry sigh he’d not bothered to hide when her shoe fell off on the way to the car, the way his smile faded when he closed the curtains and turned to look at her, prone and vulnerable in his bed. But she had brushed her qualms away like an irritating fly, gone, forgotten, easy to ignore when he was busy running his hand up her thigh.

“Let’s make it interesting,” he said as she lay on the bed, handcuffs around her wrists, ropes around her ankles.

“I’m listening,” she said, her eagerness spilling out of her mouth as she grinned at him through a drunken haze.

He brandished a blindfold like a magician pulling a bunch of flowers from his sleeve. “Makes it more intense,” he said, tying it in place, tying it too tightly.

She realised then but it was already too late. The look on his face told her, the way his mask slipped, revealing the real him. “I’m not sure about this.”

“I am,” he replied, smiling coldly.

“Let me go,” she demanded, trying to sit up. In response, he leaned down and licked her cheek.

“Where would be the fun in that?” he asked. And then he began.

The pain started almost immediately. By the time he waved the poker towards her, she was utterly exhausted, her throat sore from screaming, from sobbing, from begging.

She tried begging yet again, twisting her head away, the hissing growing louder. Panic raced through her and she wrenched at the handcuffs, trying to force her wrists through them, crying out in pain as they dug into her skin but getting nowhere in her escape attempt.

“Please, why are you doing this?”

“I don’t want to do it,” he said, his voice by her ear, whispering as if he was afraid someone might overhear him. “I don’t have a choice.”

“You do,” she cried. “You do have a choice. You could let me go.”

“I can’t,” he replied, pulling the blindfold from her and tossing it into the fire. She looked up at him as the poker moved closer towards her. “No,” he muttered, shaking his head as she twisted away. “Not yet.”

He turned from her, shoving the poker back into the fire.

“Please,” she tried again. “Please let me go.”

She looked at him as he turned back to her but it was like he’d become a different person. The warmth was long gone, the humanity had vanished. His face was devoid of emotion. He took a step across the room, pausing to pick a knife up on the way, the knife he’d already used to cut her clothes away from her, the knife that had made that wicked, still stinging deep slice across her chest. “I love your eyes,” he said, moving closer as she flinched away. “I think I’ll keep them.”

She screamed as he lunged with the knife, her head thrashing from side to side. He climbed onto the bed, kneeling on her chest, crushing the air out of her as he slid forwards until his knees were by her ears, gripping her head tightly in place.

“Please,” she muttered.

“You can scream if you like,” he said, lowering the knife towards her.

She did.

It made no difference. He worked at her until he was done. By then her screams had long since died away. She had been silent for over an hour.

ONE

HOLLY WAS GLAD THAT the first question he asked wasn’t, how many dates have you been on? She’d already said she had no intention of lying so that meant she would have had to answer with the truth. And the truth was she’d been on a grand total of none.

She’d always assumed that by the age of twenty-one, she’d have been settling down, maybe even thinking about marriage. Her friends might like sleeping around but that wasn’t for her. She wanted a man, a husband, a family, a house, all the things that would prove she was a settled person.

She’d never felt settled before. Born into a family that kept moving, forever chasing her father’s job, she barely had time to get used to one house before they moved to the next. He worked on the railway, each promotion taking him to a different station, his family going with him, upping sticks every time, losing the friends she’d acquired. Sure, they said they’d write to each other, email too. Occasionally one or two would fly back and forth but they soon fizzled out. They were there, she was not. When you knew you’d never see each other again, was it worth keeping in touch? Especially when you had games to play and sweets to buy.

By the time she was ten, she was an expert at packing boxes, but had given up on trying to make friends. Between her birth (nine months after the first showing of Showgirls at the cinemas, as her mother often pointed out with a wink) and when she turned sixteen, she had moved home twelve times. From the south to the north and back again, criss-crossing the country three times, hating every single move. It did not make it easy to get to know the other kids in school when she knew she’d most likely be gone by the end of the year.

When she reached sixteen, full of the exuberance of the teenage years, she decided to move out of the family home, leaving her father, mother, and baby sister wondering what they’d done to offend her.

She worded it as best she could. She’d had enough of moving. She just wanted to be in one place for long enough to get to know people, to try and make friends. And yes, she was aware of the irony of moving in order to stop moving anymore, so they didn’t need to point that out to her.

She managed to make real friends within a week of starting at college, having moved into a houseshare with Brian, who kept to himself, with Caroline who kept waking her at night to talk about Brian, and with Fiona who was the only one still her friend by the time she moved on to university. Together, the two of them ended up in a tiny terraced house in the student area of York, the rooms surrounded by too thin walls, the house surrounded with too thin undergraduates.

Studying English literature was one more way for her to try and feel settled. Books that didn’t change year after year, even if her perspective on them might. She enjoyed the first two years of study, thoughts of settling permanently in York starting to soak into her bones. She liked the lake that ran through the campus, the wildfowl that noisily accompanied her to morning lectures. She liked the course too, and the tutors, particularly Dr Gibson who took her and the other doe eyed girls through Jane Eyre with such passion, it sometimes felt possible that if she closed her eyes, she might be up on the windswept moor, his arm around her shoulder, her the governess of his heart. But she knew it was just a crush. She’d had plenty before and no doubt she’d have plenty more. She had moved on by her third year, trying to concentrate on her final essays, not men, so close to graduating that she could taste it. And that was when Fiona thought it would be a good idea to sign her up for an online dating app.

Fiona never had trouble with men, never had an issue finding one to date. Holly had no idea how she did it. They would sit in the pub at the corner of their road or in the student union bar, both of them dressed up but only Fiona centre of attention. One time, a man in a rugby shirt actually shoved Holly out of the way to get to her housemate, like she was a particularly weedy opposition player. She didn’t bother protesting. There didn’t seem much point.

She had talked about dating, trying to get tips from Fiona. Back in college, Fi had laughed, telling her not to get worked up about having never kissed a guy. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said. “Any man’ll kiss you. It’s getting them to leave you alone afterwards that’s the challenging part.”

Holly didn’t care what it might be like. Or how hard it might be to get them to leave her alone afterwards. She just wanted to know what it would feel like to be kissed. The last man who kissed her was her father and he’d stopped embracing both his daughters on the lips way before they’d started at pre-school. Since then, he’d always gone for the cheek or if he was feeling particularly confused with the expected mores of society, a firm handshake and a slap on the back. Holly just wanted to know what it would be like, to be kissed, to be held, to be looked after. Just once. Then she could work on the next stage, marriage and family.

“It’ll happen,” Fiona had said. “You just wait. You’re beautiful, you’re cleverer than me, and you’ve got all your own teeth. Just wait until you start uni’. They’ll be all over you.”

But she was wrong. They weren’t. Fiona’s men came and went but for Holly, there came none. She tried to flirt. She tried to make conversation. She tried different make up, different outfits, different opinions. But she got the impression her efforts came across as desperate as they felt.

“Maybe I should just hang a sign out of my window. “Virginity here. Please enter and remove. No charge.”

Fiona had smiled like she always did. “That might not attract the best kind of man. You know what you need?”

“To move to a country where arranged marriages are the norm?”

“You could do that. But maybe first, you might consider online dating.”

“Oh, come on, Fi. The internet’s full of weirdos.”

“Not all of them. My cousin got married to someone she met online.”

“She got lucky.”

“So could you.”

Holly thought about Rob Whittaker. Age eight, he’d taken her to the top field behind the school, far away from the sight of anyone who might disapprove. Behind the clump of dying elm trees, he’d tried to persuade her to lift her skirt. “You do it first then I’ll show you mine,” he’d said, his face earnest.

Holly had been too scared. She remembered racing away into the arms of a dinner lady, on the verge of tears. If she’d known that would be the only time a member of the opposite sex would proposition her, she might not have run quite so fast.

It wasn’t that she had anything against showing hers. Not now more than a decade had passed since that initial and only request. Nor did she have anything against the internet. It had educated her in quite a lot of the ways people might lock their bodies together. She’d read stories online that had left her glad she’d locked her bedroom door. She’d seen pictures and videos that led her straight to the delete history button afterwards. She’d learned all about the different things you could do to spice things up in the bedroom. Spanking, roleplay, uniforms. All of it for people bored of normal sex. But what about people who hadn’t even tried normal sex?

How many dates have you been on? How many times have you had sex?

Same answer for both. None. Zero. Zip. Not a single time had anyone looked at her and thought, yes, that’s someone I want to know better. Not since Rob Whittaker. Maybe she should look him up, see if the offer still stood.

It didn’t help to know that Fiona’s cousin was married. It didn’t help to know that her sister was about to get married. Pregnant with their first. If it was the days of Jane Eyre, that might have been quite the scandal, the bride to be already with child. But the only issue when the news broke was whether the dress would need taking out by the time of the ceremony, now only two months away. Holly ached to have a date to take to the wedding. She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Lizzie’s bulging bump whilst not even knowing what it felt like to be kissed. Baby sister too. Three years younger. It was so unfair.

But the internet wasn’t the way to go about getting a date. Somehow, that felt like cheating. The world was designed for you to meet someone real, out there. Going online to bypass that rule, well that left a sour taste in her mouth.

So when she went off to the bathroom and returned to the lounge to find Fiona holding her phone, she did not feel good. Fiona was smiling in that devious way that said she was up to something. “What are you doing?” she asked, already suspecting the answer.

“I might have signed you up to Match Up.”

She at least had the decency to look guilty, Holly thought. “And why might you have done that?”

“Because I know for a fact Lizzie’s wedding is coming up. I also know that if you’re going to have a date for it, you’re going to need to practise. What better way than with this hunk of beefcake who is…two hundred miles away. And gay. Never mind, we’ll keep looking.”

It was hard to be angry with her. It was because of Fiona that she’d been able to put up with Caroline at college. It was because of Fiona that she learned how to get around I.D checks when buying alcohol (the trick being to show enough cleavage to keep their focus on your chest, not your age). It was because of Fiona that she didn’t drop out in the first year of university when she failed her first assignment and saw no point in continuing, ready to resign herself to a life as a checkout girl.

Fiona had held her hair when she threw up after her first experiment in buying alcohol at seventeen, two bottles of wine that stayed down for an hour but came back up in under a minute. Fiona had been a good friend on the weighing scales of life.

Holly had been a good friend too. She’d held Fiona’s hair out of the toilet far more often, both at home and at the nightclubs that she pretended to hate visiting. She’d comforted her through each and every one of her break ups, often with the cliché of ice cream and cheesy music. But they were clichés because they worked. And their friendship worked.

Which was why when Holly found out that an account had been created for her at Match Up, she couldn’t stay cross for long. Maybe she really would find her perfect match on there, like the advert said. We match you up so you spark together. The slogan alongside the logo, a flaming match in silhouette, filled her screen as she took the phone from her friend and sank onto the sofa. “So, what do I do now?” she asked.

“Now,” Fiona replied, tapping her on the knee. “We find a guy who’ll ravish you, a man with the looks of Heathcliff, the manners of Darcy, and the huge cock of Christian Grey.”

Holly blushed, giggling as she did so. “That easy, huh?”

“By this time next week, I guarantee you’ll not only have your first date, it will be perfect.”

She was half right. Holly did have a date lined up within a week. But it was a very long way from perfect.

TWO

SHE’D LEFT HER PHONE in the living room because it was charging. The only free plug was next to Fiona’s chair but that didn’t matter because she was only going to be gone for a minute. The battery was so low because she’d spent the last hour watching online videos, the perfect lesson in procrastination.

She had one essay left to complete, only two hundred words to go. But it had felt like every assignment had throughout her degree. She began each piece of work like a mountain climber, slowly and steadily edging her way up the lower slopes. But there was this invisible elastic band tied to her waist as she climbed. It was slack at first, making the going all too easy. But the longer she worked, the higher she climbed, the tighter it got until by the time she could see the peak, she was at a complete standstill, every word a struggle, every paragraph requiring longer and longer breaks to catch her breath before she could try again, the band threatening to wrench her backwards the entire time.

The only thing that kept her from throwing the laptop out of the window was knowing that once this essay was done, she’d never have to write another one ever again. Sure this was a dissertation, not just an essay, not just an assignment. That was another tightening of the band around her waist, tugging her back. Knowing it was twenty percent of her final grade was another tightening. Then there was the fact that if she failed this, all the hard work of the last three years would be for nought, her chance of a first would vanish like Fiona did whenever the washing up needed doing.

Her laptop sat on the side of the sofa, open, blinking vertical line ready for her to start typing, to get the thing finished, to tidy up the formatting, submit it, get it done.

She still had a fortnight to go until the final deadline. It should have been easy. Two hundred words in fourteen days. She had done the maths. That was fourteen words a day. But she didn’t see it as easy. It was like looking at the sun, it was too bright to stare at, she had to glance at it from side angles with her eyes half closed. Because whenever she tried to look directly at it, she got the horrible feeling that the whole thing needed rewriting. And she did not have time for that. Because 20,000 words redone in a fortnight from scratch was a hell of a lot more than fourteen words a day.

She headed to the bathroom without looking at the laptop. The lounge didn’t connect directly to the bathroom. First she had to pass through the kitchen, wincing at the cold of the tiles on her feet. No matter how hot the house got, and it got far too hot in the heat of July, the chipped kitchen floor remained barely above freezing. Unlike the fridge which never got anywhere near freezing, the motor at the back groaning as she passed it, struggling in the heat as much as she did. She knew for a fact her wine would be warming up in there. The chicken should probably be thrown too. In fact, maybe it was time to defrost the thing, see if that helped.

Later, she told herself. There’s a thousand things that she had managed to ignore all year that suddenly seemed more urgent than finishing the essay. The blinds needed the flecks of mould cleaning off them, the sink needed regrouting, she could do that. The dripping tap. She could look up an online video and learn how to do it. The ukulele Fiona got her for Christmas. When had she last tried to learn a tune on it?

She paused by the fridge, ignoring the noise of it, looking closely at one of the photos, the one stuck on with two magnets. The magnets were memories in themselves, one of Cornwall, the last holiday she took with Fiona, back during the Easter break. It showed the chimney of Botallock Tin Mine next to a few strokes of blue meant to represent the sea. Someone in China had sat and painted hundreds of those a day without ever seeing the place in person. It was a strange thought.

The other magnet was a pineapple, another present from Fiona, this one to congratulate her on passing her first year, a pointed reference to their friendship and to her knowledge of Holly’s love of Spongebob Squarepants, a love that extended to the pyjamas she was wearing, the pyjamas she’d practically lived in for the last three days while she’d been trying to force herself to get the essay done.

No going out, not even for food. Just concentrate on the work. Get it finished. Don’t think about needing to rewrite the whole thing. Go to the bathroom and then get back to it.

The other photos were of nights out at uni, groups of laughing drunken faces, the time she’d danced on that podium, refusing to believe it until the evidence was in front of her on 6 by 4 matt paper, printed out for the world to see.

She looked at the photo attached by the magnets. Her family, her at the back scowling. She knew when it was taken without reading the writing on the reverse side. 1995. She was nine, unhappy at being photographed, wanting to get on with playing in the river behind her. She was halfway through building an enclosed pool to try and hold in the tadpoles that were being swept away by the current. She could still remember the photo being taken. Her father putting the timer on the camera, pre digital, not wanting to waste film, yelling at her to come quickly. Counting down the seconds.

There was her dad, more hair than he had now, fewer wrinkles, the smile the same, the eyes looking tired. It was the last day of the trip and when they got back, he’d tell them he was moving. Maybe that was why her mum looked strained in her joy, her eyes narrowed, though she always said it was because of the sun shining in her face when the photo was taken.

Looking at the photo was like looking at her laptop with the essay waiting to be finished. It was too bright to look at it for long. Do that and she felt a sense of unrealistic nostalgia, a yearning for a past that never really existed, a past where her biggest responsibility was in choosing which cereal to have for breakfast. Be like her mum and have muesli or be like her dad and have whatever sugary chocotastic box he’d brought home that week.

Was she more like her mum or her dad? She had her mother’s eyes. Above them was her father’s unmanageable hair, fine and prone to falling out if she brushed it too hard. Stop it, she told herself, walking away from the fridge with conviction. She could do all the thinking she wanted in a fortnight. Get the essay done first.

When she was finished in the bathroom, she washed her hands, the smell of lavender rising from the bottle on the edge of the sink, still lingering on her fingertips when she returned to the lounge.

“You’re so easily distracted,” Fiona had said to her more than once. “You’re like a little kid.”

She blew a raspberry every time, one more private joke amongst all the others that the two of them had, the shared secrets of a friendship that she worried might not last beyond graduation. Fiona had already said she would have to go back to Berwick, where her family lived. Sure, it was reachable in a day trip but could that compare to living across the landing from each other? A single knock away from a conversation at any time of night or day? She couldn’t do that with Fiona in Berwick and her in York.

Holly shook her head as she walked into the lounge. It was just like her to get distracted by thinking about how easily she was distracted. She saw Fiona holding her phone, looking guilty.

Why does she have my phone? Holly thought.

A minute later she had her phone back, the laptop still open, easy to ignore as she listened to Fiona explaining how Match Up worked.

“So you can change the settings but it’s linked to your online stuff.”

“Where did you get these photos of me?”

“Off my Facebook profile, you tagged me in them, remember?”

Holly looked down at the first image of herself. She did look kind of pretty in that one, her hair hidden by the straw hat she was wearing. She flicked to the next. Rowing on the river. “Lucky you didn’t use the one where I fell in.”

“I thought about it but we might find some drowning fetishist and you know what that would mean?”

Holly shrugged. “No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You’d sink into his arms.”

“Ouch.”

“You love me really.”

“Despite the quality of your jokes.”

“It’s because of them, be honest.”

Holly had already forgotten about the essay. She’d moved down to her profile, reading things about herself that she would never have written.

“I’m up for trying anything once? I love doing new things? I’m a vixen in the sack? Tell me people haven’t been seeing all this. Oh my God, Fi. I like being tied down. You didn’t.”

Fiona nodded. “Trust me, this is how to do it.”

“But all we’ll get are perverts who are only after one thing.”

“How many have you got?”

“You know what I mean. I don’t just want some guy who wants to make me a notch on his bedpost.”

“That’s the beauty of the internet. We weed out the ones who are clearly mental, or still live with their mothers.”

“Didn’t your last one live with his mum?”

“That’s not the point. The point is you write that to get interest, then you narrow them down until you pick one to meet. Or more than one if you’re so inclined.”

“I’ve never been kissed, Fi. I don’t think I’m quite ready for a threesome just yet.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant you could see a few people at the same time, see who you like the most. Look, pass it here.”

She moved from her chair to sit next to Holly on the sofa, curling her legs under her, taking the phone and holding it so they could both see the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ve already picked a few possibles for you. See, if you press here, it brings up the ones you’ve said yes to.”

“What does saying yes mean?”

“It means they can send you messages. Richie, aged twenty-five. “Hi, want to see my cock? Okay, so we can delete him.”

“Are you sure? He sounds like perfect marriage material. Tell me that little paperclip doesn’t mean he’s sent a picture.”

Fiona nodded. “You’ll get that from some of them. Just delete them.”

“Well, hold on. There’s no harm in having a little look, is there?”

“You dark horse!” Fiona giggled as she pressed open and the screen filled with an image that made them both wince.

“That’s not pleasant,” Holly said. “I take it back, delete him, block him, send him to the seventh circle of internet hell.”

“It’s done, it’s done,” Fiona said, swiping at the screen. “He’s gone.”

“It bent in the middle, did you notice it bent in the middle?”

“I was too busy worrying about the colour. Who takes a photo of their genitalia and then diligently chooses which filter to apply?”

“Richie does, apparently.”

The next man was more polite. He’d asked how she was. “What do I put?” Holly asked but Fiona had already deleted him. “What did you do that for?”

“A few rules to live by, Hols. If they can’t think of a good opening line, they’re not worth your time. You’ll get a million of them saying hey, how are you? How are you is the dull person’s mantra. You want someone with a bit of life to them, a bit of spark. Like this guy” A notification popped onto the screen, the app vanishing as MUM appeared in its place in big green letters, taking the place of the image Holly had just seen, the image of a guy who looked pretty good. Under his photo the message symbol had been flashing. She would have hit it to open and read but that would have to wait.

“I better take it,” Holly said, grabbing the phone and hitting answer. “Hi, Mum, how are you?”

THREE

HOLLY’S MOTHER RANG HER once a week like clockwork. She had ever since her daughter left home. Sometimes Holly didn’t answer but those were the rare times. She would only have to handle a panicking parent when she finally got back to her, Anne Simpson being one of those people who assume if a phone isn’t answered, it’s because the person at the other end is in the middle of a coronary episode, rather than a TV show episode. Holly had quickly learned that no matter how busy she was, it was best to answer when her mother rang. She couldn’t handle the tears otherwise. “I thought you were dead,” Anne would cry out when she finally got through. “I was about to call the police.”

“I was in a lecture, Mum. You know I can’t answer in a lecture.”

“You could step out to speak to your mother, they wouldn’t stop you doing that, would they?”

By the Christmas holiday in her second year at university, Holly had been forced to impose rules. She gave her mother a timetable during her festive visit home, showing when she would be busy. “Ring during those free times and I’ll answer,” she said, pointing at the light blue blocks she’d coloured in on the timetable. “Okay?”

It worked, for the most part. Anne only picked up the phone during the blue periods as she took to calling them, though whenever Holly answered, she would have to spend the first couple of minutes reminding her mother that, yes, of course she still loved her despite not being able to answer the every any minute of the day. Yes she was safe. Yes she was eating well.

It was a small price to pay to ensure the rest of her study time was left uninterrupted.

“How are you?” Anne parroted back to Holly. “You want to know how I am? Your father is still in the garage. Does that answer your question? I swear he loves that ship more than me. He didn’t even bother coming in for lunch today.”

“How’s he getting on with the rigging?”

“How should I know? I just know I’ll be glad when the thing’s done.”

It had been like that for as long as Holly could remember. Anne would be furious while her husband worked on his latest model, a ship, a blimp, a working version of Stephenson’s Rocket. But then he’d be back in the house and she’d complain he was under her feet and end up buying him another model to send him back out to the garage.

She loved him. Holly could tell. The anger in her voice wasn’t real. Holly had only heard her being truly angry a couple of times in her life, once when Holly, aged four, had found a bottle of bleach under the sink with the lid loose and decided to take a swig to see what it tasted like. It tasted like a trip to hospital that she could still remember seventeen years later. Her mother hadn’t been cross with her but with her father for not tightening the bottle lid properly, ignoring the fact that she was the only one in the house that used the bleach.

The other time was when Holly had slipped out of her armbands in the pool and begun to slowly sink to the bottom, her mouth filling with water. She could remember that clearly too, sitting on the side of the pool and coughing up a lungful of foaming chlorinated water while her mother sat beside her, furious once again with Martin. “He should have blown them up so they couldn’t come off.” Her father had not come to the swimming pool with them, him being at work. Anne Simpson had blown up the armbands.

She deflected her own guilt at her husband but it bounced off with negligible effect. All he cared about was making her feel good and if she had to berate him to do it, so be it. Their dynamic might not have been the healthiest but Holly had to admit it worked. They’d been together twenty-five years and showed no signs of going their separate ways. Love was a funny thing, Holly reasoned. She could only hope she’d find someone to spend twenty-five years with, twenty-five minutes would be a start.

“Do you think he’ll have it finished by the time you move?” she asked when her mother finally paused for breath. They were relocating yet again over the summer. The house already had a buyer, they just needed to sort out the paperwork.

“He bloody better have. If he thinks I’m packing up all those tiny bits of wood and unpacking them at the other end, he’s got another thing coming. What about you though? Are you going to get back here before we go?”

It was a loaded question. Holly had left a number of possessions with her parents when she’d moved out and they’d duly taken the boxes with them whenever they moved, though with more hints each time that she needed to come and sort through it all, decide what she had to keep and what could go to charity. She kept planning to do it but the thought was more scary than she liked to admit. It would mean letting go of part of her childhood, throwing out the old dolls, the old books, not something she was ready to contemplate just yet.

“I’ll try and come over once I’ve got my dissertation out of the way, okay?”

“Great, I’m sure Lizzie would love to see you. She’s getting pretty big now.”

“I know, but I’ll see her at the wedding won’t I?”

“That’s two months away, Holly.”

“I know that, Mum.”

“I just thought we’d see you before then, that’s all.”

“How’re the plans coming along?” she asked, changing the subject quickly.

“Well there was a nightmare with the caterers. Did Lizzie tell you they had double booked with another wedding?”

“She put it on Facebook. But it’s sorted now, right?”

“Until the next thing crops up. It’s so stressful, Holly.” Anne sighed down the phone, sounding suddenly very old. “Who organises a house move and a wedding at the same time? Only your father would do something that stupid.”

Holly didn’t point out that the move was taking place in August and the wedding at the end of September. She also didn’t point out that Lizzie had chosen the date for her wedding, not Martin. “I’ll be through as soon as I can,” she said instead. “Look, Mum, I need to get on with this essay. Can I call you in a couple of days?”

“Too busy for me? Everyone’s too busy for me.”

“It’s not that, Mum. I just need to get this done.”

“I know what that means. You need to go partying.”

Holly rolled her eyes, Fiona was back on her chair, glancing up from her own phone in time to catch the look. “Mothers,” she mouthed. Holly nodded back at her.

“I’ll call you tonight, okay? A couple of hours and we’ll have a chat then.”

But by that evening, Holly had forgotten all about calling her mother back. She was too busy having a conversation with someone else, someone whose first message was still blinking at her when she hung up the phone and flicked back to the Match Up screen. “Everything all right?” Fiona asked as Holly tapped the message to open it.

“Same as ever,” Holly replied, reading quickly. “I’m going to have to go and see her before she has a heart attack or a stroke or something.”

“Not until you have a date sorted, you’re not getting out of it that easily.”

“I might have a date lined up by the looks of this. Hello sailor.”

“Oh, really?” Fiona stood up and came back over to the sofa, peering down at the phone in Holly’s hand, the message still open. “If you want to try something new, maybe try me. Now that’s more my kind of message. What does he look like?”

Holly scrolled back up to the photo. “Like that.”

“A black suit, a black tie, a white shirt. He’s a funeral director, right?”

“It says he runs his own business.”

“Take that with a pinch of salt, Hols. He is hot though.”

“Is he? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes you had, you little liar. Are you going to reply then or what?”

“I don’t know. What should I say?”

“Tell him you’re naked and ready for him.” She was already reaching for the phone.

Holly snatched it away. “I am not putting that.”

“I’m kidding. Just ask him if he fancies meeting up sometime.”

“But I don’t know anything about him.”

“You know he’s rich, you know he’s got eyes that look like they could melt your panties at five hundred feet. You also know he’s into you.”

“How do I know that?”

“Because he wouldn’t have matched with you if he didn’t.”

Holly noticed her laptop, still open, still accusing her of ignoring it. “I’ve got to get some work done,” she said, switching off her phone’s screen. “I’ll reply to that later.”

“You better,” Fiona said, leaning over to the coffee table to grab the remote control. “Or I’ll do it for you.”

Holly waited until she was in bed to read the message again. She had gotten two paragraphs done by then, deleted, then done again. She wasn’t happy with them but at least they were done, the references formatted in the proper style ready to go in the appendix at the end. That was the one thing she hated about her choice of degree. She wasn’t free to have her own opinion on anything. She always had to reference someone else who’d thought it first. It wasn’t quite the freedom of expression she had expected from undergraduate level education. But none of that seemed very important when she opened the app and saw a second message from her match.

Playing hard to get?

She lay in bed, the curtains tightly shut, the door closed. Her bedside light was on, illuminating a pile of battered paperbacks, old friends each and every one. She composed and deleted her reply four times, none of the responses sounding right. In the end, she settled for, maybe, her heart pounding as she hit send and watched the single word vanish and then reappear in a speech bubble. It was sent. She had begun to talk to him. Now all she had to do was get him to agree to go on a date with her. She told herself she’d only sent the message to keep Fiona from doing it for her. But she knew the truth, the truth that made her smile as she closed her eyes to sleep later that night, smile despite the flicker of nervous anxiety as a question whispered inside her. What if he was the one?

FOUR

THE QUESTION WAS ON her lips because of the conversation she’d just had with him. Two hours laid in bed, messages travelling back and forth.

She hadn’t expected any of them. She’d sent the word, maybe, and then put the phone down on her bedside table, picking up the top paperback. It was a charity shop purchase, one that she’d told herself she’d get round to reading eventually. It was hard going but it took a truly awful book for Holly to give up without finishing. The Rake and His Ruin wasn’t a truly awful book, just quite bad.

If she was asked what she was reading, Holly would always have an answer ready, something related to the course. It was true but it wasn’t true at the same time. She would work through the required reading for her degree for most of the time but late at night, when sleep wouldn’t come, that’s when she would turn to her guilty pleasures, the romances where the plot was as familiar as the characters. The Rake had just lost his fortune to his nefarious brother Thaddeus, all was lost. Cue the entry of the stunningly beautiful and yet somehow still spotlessly clean servant girl.

Holly might roll her eyes as she read but it didn’t stop her reading. A chapter or two of one of her charity shop purchases, (three for a pound, the most she was willing to pay for her equivalent of sleeping pills) she would be asleep without fail.

But she was only halfway through chapter eighteen when her phone vibrated, the buzzing sound confusing her at first. She thought it might be Fiona, too lazy to come and speak to her, sending a message instead to check if she’d contacted her match like she’d promised.

It wasn’t from Fiona.

Delete it, Holly. Online dating isn’t for you. Nothing good will come of this. She knew that was on the money but she still picked up her phone and opened the message.

She lay back on her pillows, the duvet tucked around her, the clock ticking quietly on the fall wall, next to the poster of Darcy emerging from the lake.

Girls who play hard to get end up in trouble.

She read the message and reread the message, feeling a tiny little spark of something inside her, something exciting, something she’d not felt before. Her heart suddenly started beating faster and she glanced across at the poster, picturing that pose with her match’s face stuck on top. What would he look like coming out of the lake? Or going off to war? Or dragging her into the bedroom?

Promises, promises.

She almost didn’t send the reply. The two words sat in the box on the screen, looking up at her, daring her to do it. She put the phone down, picking up the book instead. Don’t appear too keen, she thought. Make him think she wasn’t the kind of woman who would just reply at once, the kind of woman who clearly had nothing else on. The kind of woman who was just desperate for a man, any man.

She wasn’t desperate. Not really. She wanted the right person, not just any person. But the message he’d sent held a hint of excitement. He was flirting with her, she needed to flirt back. But was her message too leading? Did it suggest a slut? Someone who’d jump into bed with the first person who came along?

What would Fiona do? She’d just send it. She wouldn’t even stop to think about it. Screw it, she thought, hitting send a moment later. She sat looking at the screen, counting off the seconds. He must have read it by now. Why hasn’t he replied? He’s turned his phone off, He’s busy sleeping with someone else. Why did she feel jealous? She didn’t know anything about him beyond his first name and his age and those might be made up. How could she be jealous of someone she didn’t even know?

He’s not going to reply. Just give it up as a bad job and look for more matches. There’ll be plenty of others. You came on too strong and it didn’t work. Never mind. It doesn’t matter.

Which was true but did nothing to explain why she had a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She looked at his profile again. Joseph, twenty-six. Business owner. Just one photo but it was enough. Taken indoors, the background gave little away, a plain white wall with the corner of a photo frame peeping into shot, the frame dark wood, new looking.

The picture was cropped at his waist. She could see his chest in the suit, white shirt, black tie, nothing that stood out there other than to say he was formally dressed. But his face spoke of power. It spoke of a man who was used to getting his own way. Thin lips with the slightest hint of a smile, as if he’d just finished laughing and was back to serious mode. His eyes were dark, the brows hooded, shading them enough to make him look brooding. He had dark brown hair that was swept tidily across his head. No messing about, not a haircut that said he spent a lot of time preening. She liked that about him.

The next message came through while she was looking and she almost dropped her phone in shock, feeling without reason as if he’d caught her looking at him. She opened the message at once.

You sound like someone who’s looking for trouble.

She giggled out loud when she read it. She hadn’t come on too strong. It was definitely flirting. Fiona had been right. This was far easier online. She felt more confident, less like her. It helped that she could turn the phone off any time, she could block him, delete the app. If he said the wrong thing, she could end it whenever she liked.

This isn’t you, she thought. You should stop. You’ll never get your dissertation done if you start getting a crush on a boy. What are you, twelve?

Maybe I am.

She sent it at once, holding her breath as it vanished from the screen, reappearing a second later in the speech bubble that already felt familiar.

Then you came to the right place.

He had sent the reply right away. Her hands shook as she read it. Trouble. What could he mean by trouble? She thought back through the things she’d learned on the internet, the things she’d talked about with Fiona. Fi telling her she was naturally submissive, as if that meant something when she had no one to submit to. She wasn’t even sure what it meant, only that it meant Fi could sign her up for Match Up and she barely grumbled.

Was that why she was so excited? Too excited to even think about sleeping? She looked at her photos on the app. Did he really find her appealing? Attractive? Desirable?

Maybe we should meet.

She regretted sending it almost at once. It was too soon. She still didn’t know anything about him. He could be anyone.

Maybe we should.

She let out a long breath that seemed as if it had been held in for a very long time. She took another look at his photo. Maybe they should meet. After all, as long as she was careful, there was only so much that could go wrong.

She went to sleep with a smile on her lips, feeling like she used to on Christmas Eve. She had a date lined up. Holly Simpson had a date with an actual man in two days time. What if he was the one? No, that was too much to hope for. But still, it was a thought enough to keep her smile lingering long after she fell asleep that night.

FIVE

THE NEXT DAY SEEMED to last for at least a week. It began with Holly waking up to the sound of Fiona singing off-key in the shower downstairs. She sat up in bed, turning on her own tunes to drown out the noise. Picking up her phone to load the first song, she felt a strange sense of disappointment that he hadn’t sent another message overnight. Twice she’d woken up and checked her phone, despite the conclusion of their conversation.

She scrolled back through the previous messages, reading them all again. She hardly recognised the person who’d written those things. She’d flirted, she’d actually flirted, properly. It had worked too. The date was arranged for the next evening. That meant she had an entire day to concentrate on nothing but her dissertation.

The layout of the house was dictated from when it was built. The landlord had added the bathroom onto the back of the kitchen, the Victorian builders neglecting to include any upstairs plumbing in what, at the time, was a slum area of the city. It meant Holly’s bedroom was above the bathroom which was why she often woke to the sound of Fiona singing away directly below her, the sound floating up along with a hint of the steam from the shower.

Holly climbed out of bed when she heard Fiona heading back upstairs. Making her own way down a minute later, she ignored her laptop, passing straight through to the bathroom. She had to wipe the steam off the mirror in order to see her own face. Fi was continuing to sing upstairs, the sound permeating down until she turned on the shower, finding her housemate far too cheery for that time in the morning. Holly needed coffee before she was able to function with  a modicum of energy before noon. There was something wrong with her housemate, always chirpy in the mornings from the moment she woke up. Holly had never understood it. She always needed two cups before she was even capable of holding a conversation without wanting to murder the entire population of the country, maybe even the planet.

She showered and cleaned her teeth before returning to her bedroom to dress. Choosing a grey Give Quiche a Chance tee-shirt with the ubiquitous Spongebob pyjama trousers, she headed downstairs once more, switching on the kettle and preparing to really blast her assignment.

“So?” Fiona asked from behind her, appearing in the doorway as she dug the coffee tin out of the cupboard next to the toaster.

“So what?” Holly replied, holding up a second mug.

Fiona nodded at the sight. “God, yes, make it a strong one.” She sank into the chair by the tiny little table in the corner. “So did you send him a message or what?”

“I did a little better than that,” she said with a smile. “I have a date.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope. Tomorrow night. He is taking me to Melchett’s.”

“Ooh, very posh.”

Melchett’s was a wine bar in the middle of York. It had been open just under a year and in that time had built up a reputation amongst the students of the city. If you wanted to get drunk, you went to one of the chain pubs, if you wanted to burn through your student loan in one night, you went to Melchett’s. You might be penniless come the morning but you’d have a hell of a good time doing it.

The kettle clicked off. Holly filled both mugs before fetching the milk from the fridge. Once they both had their drinks, they went through to the lounge, Fiona settling in her chair and Holly on the sofa. “So what are you going to wear?”

“I don’t know. I’m not thinking about it until I’ve got this done.”

Holly picked up the laptop, determined to get as much work done as possible. She spent all day staring at it, trying to will the words to appear on the screen, her pile of books growing larger as the hours passed. Fiona seemed to realise it was best to leave her to it, announcing she was heading out a little after twelve. Holly had been certain she’d been working for at least ten hours by then, feeling crushed when she checked the time. So long to go until the date. Stop it, think about the work. Concentrate on this.

For a spell, she hated Fiona for signing her up, making it even harder for her to focus on her essay, her mind drawn again and again to that image of him, the one she’d already memorised. She only had to close her eyes to see what he looked like. Would he look like that in person? Should she try to find him online somewhere, see if he had a social media profile? Some other photos she could spy on? No, leave it alone. That’s what stalkers do. Just wait and see what happens. Don’t even think about it.

She had deliberately left her phone in her bedroom, knowing if it was beside her, she’d constantly be checking it to see if he’d messaged again. She was proud of the fact that she didn’t go to collect it until the evening, though finding he hadn’t written to her again left her once again strangely disappointed.

She did her best to ignore the feeling. She could always send him a message, after all. But she didn’t. Somehow she felt that would be breaking the unwritten rule. She couldn’t seem too eager. Why did it even matter anyway? It wasn’t as if she needed him to get in touch. She had plenty to be concentrating on without the distraction. There was a message on the phone from her mother along with three missed calls. She rang her back, another hour away from the essay.

When Fiona came home, she found Holly wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa, staring at a cat video on her laptop. “Working hard?” she asked, dumping her handbag on the coffee table.

“I had to go over the last section again and I think it’s shit, Fi. What if it’s all shit?”

“It’s not shit. You just need to get it finished.”

“I’m going to fail.”

“No you’re not. Now come with me. I’ve a bottle in the fridge and you’re going to help me drink it while we decide what you’re going to wear tomorrow night.”

“He hasn’t sent me a single message today.”

“Was he supposed to?”

“I don’t know. You’re the expert in such things, you tell me.”

“What was the last thing you said to each other?”

“He said he’d see me at Melchett’s at seven on Friday.”

“And did you reply?”

“I said I was looking forward to it.”

“Well, there you go then.”

“There I go then what? What am I missing?”

Fiona headed to the kitchen, returning with a bottle and two glasses. “You need to relax, Hols. Drink this, choose an outfit and get ready to knock his socks off tomorrow night. Trust me, you’re worrying about nothing, it’ll be absolutely fine.”

SIX

HOLLY HAD ONLY BEEN in Melchett’s once and that was back in her first year, when she cared a lot less about making her money last. She’d had one drink in there, realising as she paid that the cost meant her budget for the night was gone. She hadn’t been back since but when she walked in ready for her date she saw that it hadn’t changed from how she remembered it.

Situated a stone’s throw from the enormous Gothic Minster, she had an excuse to walk past the cathedral she loved so much on the way, marvelling at the sheer scale of the place as she did every time she was in the city centre. This time though, her attention was distracted. She had chosen to walk to the bar, something she was regretting already as her the straps of her shoes rubbed painfully on her feet. Still, they made her look hot, according to Fiona and who was she to argue?

It was warm enough not to need tights, her bare legs enjoying the evening sunshine. Already the evening revellers were out in force, hen parties passing her by, screeching as they went. She ignored them, too busy hoping that her night would go well to care about anyone else’s. Fiona had talked her through what to do. Be herself but not too much herself. Be open but not too much, be flirty but not too much. “So in essence do everything but not too much of it?” she said when the panoply of advice was finally over.

“Exactly,” Fiona replied.

That was what she intended to do. Her dress wasn’t too much, cut halfway between thigh and knee, clingy in the right places, loose in the important ones, giving just a hint of cleavage, one more not too much to add to the collection.

She’d tied her hair back, not wanting the chaotic nature of it to ruin her first impression. It also meant she wouldn’t be tempted to fiddle with it like she normally did when she was nervous.

The bar was busy but not heaving but she couldn’t spot him. Fashionably late? She glanced at the time on her phone, ignoring the message from Fiona asking how it was going. It wasn’t going yet and it was already five past seven. He could be there by then of course, there were plenty of people and she only had one photo to go on. Would she even recognise him?

What if it was a joke? A set up with her as the punchline? That would make sense. No one would really want to date her, after all. Suddenly she needed the bathroom. She crossed the bar, weaving her way through the laughing crowds to push open the door to the ladies. Once inside the cubicle, she sat with her head in her hands, muttering to herself. “Just relax, relax, relax.”

Easier said than done. Her hands were still shaking when she emerged three minutes later. Still no sign of him. She approached the bar, thinking what the hell, she might as well get a drink seeing as she was there.

“Good evening,” a voice said behind her as she tried to get the bartender’s attention. “You must be Holly.”

The voice was warm, deep but non-threatening. Holly turned around slowly, not sure what to expect, her heart thudding in her chest, a bead of sweat running unhelpfully down the middle of her back. She found herself looking into the face of the man from the internet. The face was different, a little, not too much. In real life his skin was more tanned, the picture perhaps taken in the winter. His hair was as tidy though and he was wearing the same black suit. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked, waving to the bartender who appeared immediately.

Holly couldn’t say anything. Something inside her had snapped, shutting down all external faculties. How had someone who looked as good as him chosen to spend the evening with her? It defied all reason. She couldn’t stop staring at him as he looked back at her, that hint of a smile on his lips. Maybe he was used to this reaction from women.

Her brain was screaming at her to say something, to say anything but still she just stood there, staring at him, those eyes, that firm chin, those cheekbones, the way his brow wrinkled slightly.

“How about wine?” he asked. “Do you think they do that here?”

She barked out a laugh that was far too loud, wincing at the sound of it. “I think maybe they do,” she said, her voice a squeak.

“Red for us both,” he said to the bartender. “Dealer’s choice.”

The bartender nodded and turned away. Holly was glad when the drink came, it gave her something else to concentrate on rather than just how good her date looked. She drank it too quickly, before they’d even left the bar. With a second glass in hand, she was a little less shaky, managing to follow him to a table over by the back, nestled in between a bookcase she would have loved to have explored if she was there alone and a pile of kitsch boardgames that looked battered and unloved.

She sat facing him, running her fingers up and down the stem of the glass, waiting for the words to come. They had to be in there somewhere, she couldn’t have forgotten all the words. That was madness.

This is why, she thought, glancing up at him as he leaned back in his seat, as calm as she was panicked. This was why she hadn’t dated. Whenever the slightest hint of it came up, she panicked, the difficulty only growing more pronounced as she got older. She should just give up and go home, what was the point in even trying?

She looked up, realising he’d said something she hadn’t heard. Should she bluff her way through or admit she hadn’t been listening? He answered for her.

“Take a breath,” he said, that hint of a smile growing broader, lighting up his eyes. “You look like you’re about to hyperventilate.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just, it’s been a long time since I was on a date. I’m sorry, you didn’t need to know that. God, this is going great, right? I should go? Should I go?”

“No,” he said, a rumble coming from deep in his throat. Was that his laugh? “I’m very much enjoying your discomfort.”

“Thanks,” she said, picking up the glass and taking a sip. “Thanks a lot.”

“Tell me something about yourself, Holly.”

She loved how her name sounded when he said it, a tiny shudder running through her. Keep it cool, don’t appear desperate.

“I’m a student.” Well done, that was a sophisticated thing to say. She cringed internally but could think of nothing else to say, not a single thing.

“Studying what?”

“English Literature.”

“Interesting. Who’s your favourite writer?”

“Charlotte Bronte.”

“Not Emily?”

“No, definitely Charlotte.”

“Interesting. Explain.”

Holly finally found herself relaxing. Another glass of wine helped but primarily it was being able to talk about her favourite subject to someone who seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. Whenever she tried to talk about such things with Fiona, a glazed expression would gradually spread across her face. But Joseph (not Joe as he’d pointed out when she’d tried that name) knew all the right questions to ask. By the time they got around to talking about him, half the night had gone by and she hadn’t even noticed. The place got louder but the corner he’d picked was a good one, enough space between them and the bar to prevent drunken revellers from bumping into them as they talked.

“Look at the time,” Holly said, glancing up at the clock. “I’ve been talking about Jane Eyre for forty-five minutes. You must be bored out of your skull.”

He shook his head. “I like listening to you.”

“Well enough about me and my books. What about you? How’d you end up on Match Up?”

A flare of sadness appeared momentarily on his face but it vanished almost the same instant that it appeared. “My last girlfriend passed away.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked, you don’t-”

“It’s fine,” he interrupted. “It was a long time ago. I decided it was about time I stopped mourning and started living.”

“A good philosophy.”

“Thank you. I joined up to see what was out there and there you were. What about you? Anyone in your life I should know about?”

“Like who?”

“Like a husband waiting at home?”

“God no, nothing like that. Do people really do things like that?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Well, there’s no skeletons in my closet, I can assure you of that.”

“That’s good to know.”

The conversation moved on. Holly wasn’t quite sure how but somehow they ended the evening talking about their mutual love of Urbex or urban exploration. She’d always had an interest in abandoned places but had never met anyone who felt the same. “How’d you get into that?” he asked, looking as intrigued as he had by everything she’d said so far.

“When I was about ten, we moved next to an old farmhouse. I went up there one day with my sister. She thought the place was creepy but I loved it. There were still newspapers on the windowsills from the sixties, the carpet was still there, just covered in dust. It was like the owners might come back any minute. I don’t know, it just felt romantic. I know that sounds silly-”

“It sounds eminently sensible to me,” he replied. “The oldest places can be the most romantic. They’re full of history, full of the stories of people’s lives.”

“Exactly! I tried telling Fiona that but she just looked at me like I needed committing.”

“Fiona is your sister?”

“No, Lizzie is my sister. Fiona’s my housemate.”

“I see.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry to do this but I need to get going.”

“Oh,” she tried not to let the disappointment show on her face. “Of course, I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologising.”

“Sorry, I mean…I know what you mean. I should be getting back anyway.”

“That dissertation,” he said as he stood up, brushing down the front of his tie.

“Exactly.”

They walked across to the exit, him in front. Holly looked at his back, wanting him to change his mind. She didn’t want to go home. She knew the exhilaration would crumble as soon as she was in her bedroom.

He pushed open the plate glass door, seeing the torrential rain that had appeared from nowhere before dipping back inside. “It’s pouring,” he said, looking at Holly. “Have you got far to go?”

“Not too far,” she lied, looking past him at the deluge outside. “I’ll be fine.”

“My car’s around the corner. Can I offer you a lift?”

“No, it’s fine, I’ll get the night bus. It’s only the other side of the Minster.”

“I’m not having you walking that far and getting soaked on my account. Wait here, I’ll get the car.”

He was gone before she could protest leaving her standing in the doorway and looking back in at the bar. Was it safe to get in his car? She hardly knew him. He could be anyone.

While she was still thinking, a sleek black vehicle pulled up directly outside. “What the hell,” she muttered, pulling open the door and running through the rain to dive into the passenger seat.

“Glad you could make it,” he said, turning to look at her. “Now, where can I take you?”

SEVEN

THE CAR ROLLED AWAY from Melchett’s, the wipers working at full speed as the rain continued to pour down. Holly looked out through the water as it trickled down the passenger window. When it rained when she was little, she used to conduct races, the commentary running through her head as she chose two specimens from the drops on the car window. It was quite the decision at the time, making sure they were two fairly evenly matched raindrops at the top of the window.

Her commentary would begin as the drops rolled slowly downwards. The drops would be named. The race would begin. Two raindrops slowly moving down the outside of the glass as she tried to predict which would hit the bottom of the window first, vanishing from sight and leaving her to choose the next two contestants.

She remembered that as she looked out of her window while Joseph drove slowly through the crowds of people racing from one bar to the next. She remembered too the way the shadows fell across the car as they passed each streetlight. A yellowy orange glow would hit the dashboard, rolling towards her, over her, then darkness, then the light again as they passed the next lamppost. It was a soothing sight, putting her at ease, making her feel safe.

She felt perfectly safe next to Joseph. She knew she shouldn’t. He was a complete stranger and she was in his car. He could take her anywhere, do anything. But the feeling didn’t scare her, not with the rain drops rolling slowly down and the lights rolling over her, the music gently drifting out of the speakers, Beethoven she thought, recognising a couple of the notes.

She still hadn’t answered him. Where did she want to go? Did she want him to take her home? Not really, not if she was honest with herself. She wanted to spend more time with him, make sure he was real, that she wasn’t dreaming this whole thing. He loosely gripped the steering wheel with one hand, the other hovering over the gearstick as they stopped at a red light at the edge of the city centre. “Nearly onto the proper roads,” he said. “Which way should I go?”

“Would you mind just driving for a while?” she asked. “At least until it stops raining.”

“Pretty heavy for June,” he said, glancing at her before turning back to the front in time for the light to turn green.

Holly dug out her phone from her handbag, seeing another message from Fiona was waiting for her.

So, is he everything you dreamed of?

Holly kept a grip on her smile as she looked across at him, his face lit up by the lights of the Pizza Hut outside the window. Maybe, she thought, we’ll see.

I’m in his car, what do I do now?

She sent the message and waited, hoping Fiona had her phone nearby. She closed her eyes briefly, thinking how lucky she was. A perfect date, if it wasn’t for her rambling or her nerves or her desperate need for the bathroom halfway through. Her phone shook in her hand and she opened her eyes, looking down to read Fiona’s reply.

Unzip his trousers and get to work.

Holly stifled a giggle. Fiona probably would do something like that. It would be just like her. A second message appeared a second later.

Only kidding. I’m guessing it’s going well?

V well.

Then go back to his.

You’re not serious?!?

Why not?

Because.

Suit yourself but you’ll regret it.

Holly put her phone away, zipping up her handbag before setting it down in the footwell. It was all well and good for Fiona to suggest going back to his house but she couldn’t do that. It was too forward. If she slept with him on the first date, he’d get the wrong impression of her. She wasn’t the type of person to do that.

Besides there was no guarantee he wanted to do that anyway. He’d not tried to kiss her. He’d not even touched her. That was what the articles said. If they were into you, they’d make sure to brush your shoulder or stroke your arm or something like that and he’d-

His hand tapped her knee, lingering for just a second. “Earth to Holly,” he said, tapping her again.

“Huh? Sorry, did I miss something?”

“The rain’s slowing down. I asked where you wanted to go?”

Where did she want to go? Home? His house? The two raindrops were trickling down and she had to pick a winner. Which horse was she going to back? Home or his house?

“Where do you want to go?” she asked, abdicating the decision. Let him choose. His answer would tell her everything she needed to know. Although it would also lead to a whole new round of questions.

“I think I should drop you off at home. I don’t like the thought of you getting a bus this late at night. It might not be safe.”

My hero, she thought. Thoughtful and not so lust filled as to drag her caveman style into his bedroom. “All right,” she said, surprised by the disappointment in her voice. She hadn’t expected to sound disappointed. “You don’t have to though.”

“I want to. What’s your address?”

“Do you know where the university is?”

“Yep.”

“Head that way and I’ll guide you in.”

“Past the barracks right?”

“Right.”

He swung a left, heading over the river and past the old swimming pool, the scaffolding skeleton surrounding it the only sign of it’s conversion into flats. “I went in there,” he said as they drove by. “About a year after it closed.”

“Oh, wow, really. I wasn’t even here then. What was it like?”

“They’re drained the pool but the rest of it was just like it was. The seats were all still there, even the bottles behind the bar.”

“That sounds so cool. I’d have loved to have seen that.”

“Well I took some photos. They’re demolishing it soon and I wanted a memento of the place. I can show you next time if you like.”

“So there’s going to be a next time?” Holly tried to keep the excitement out of her voice but she failed and she didn’t really care too much. It was hard to keep things casual when she was ridiculously happy about his suggestion.

“Up to you. What do you think?”

“I think maybe yes. Take a right here.”

They turned onto a dead end street, parked cars lining both sides of the road. “How do you tell which is yours?” he asked, looking at row after row of identical terraces.”

“I just try each door until my key works.”

Hey, what do you know, she thought. You managed to make a joke.

The end of the street was fast approaching, blocked off by a brick wall that separated the street from the playing field on the other side. “I’m running out of road,” he said, slowing down to a crawl.

“Just turn round at the end there, by that alleyway. That’s what everyone does down here. Hold on, I’ll jump out now, make it easier.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. Listen, thanks for the lift, Joseph. I really appreciate it.”

“My pleasure. I’ll be in touch.”

“Well, good night then.” She waited for just a second to see if he might try and give her a goodnight kiss but he just looked at her, that hint of a smile once again playing on his lips. When she was certain he wasn’t going to try, she opened the door and stepped out into the last of the rain. Giving him a tiny wave, she pushed the door closed and hopped up onto the pavement, walking the few feet to her front door. By the time she got the key in the lock, he’d turned the car around and was already driving back past. He let out a little beep of his horn as he went and Holly waved after him before heading inside.

Fiona was in the kitchen, making herself a hot chocolate. She held up a mug as Holly entered. “Only if you tell me everything,” she said.

Holly pulled out the chair in the corner and sat down, watching her housemate make her drink. “There’s not much to tell,” she said, trying not to think about the fact he hadn’t attempted a goodnight kiss.

“You’re back in rather than admiring his leopard print bedsheets. Something must have gone wrong. What was it?”

“Nothing went wrong. He gave me a lift home and here I am.”

“Here you are indeed. But why are you here? Did you not like him?”

“He was great. Look, I’m tired, Fi. Can I undergo the interrogation tomorrow?”

“I guess so. At least tell me if you like him.”

A grin spread involuntarily across Holly’s features. “Maybe.”

She carried her drink upstairs to her bedroom, setting it down next to the pile of books on the bedside table. All of a sudden the man on the cover of The Rake and His Ruin didn’t seem as exciting. Not compared to someone in real life, someone who wanted a second date with her, someone who wanted to see her again. Okay, so he might not have kissed her yet. But she got the feeling he would next time he saw her. She also got the feeling that as long as she didn’t screw it up, he might do a lot more than just kiss her. She had no idea what he had planned for her, no idea at all.

EIGHT

THE NEXT DATE WAS arranged for Sunday afternoon. Holly had woken up on Saturday morning to the buzzing of her phone. She’d smacked it away without opening her eyes, thinking it was her alarm. But it wasn’t. It was her mother calling.

She kept calling until Holly finally woke up properly half an hour later. She glanced at the time as the phone buzzed again. Four missed calls. “Hi, Mum,” she said, her mouth feeling desert dry as she sat up in bed, the wine from the previous evening weighing heavy, making her wish mobile phones hadn’t been invented.

There was no house phone. Neither her nor Fiona saw the need for one. The internet was provided as part of their TV package but to have added a house phone would have cost an extra twenty pounds a month, an expense they felt they could live without given the amount of free minutes available on their mobiles.

Without a house phone or a mobile, her mother would have just had to wait until she called. She wouldn’t be woken up at seven in the morning on a Saturday. “You said you’d come today,” Anne said down the phone. “I was just checking what time because I need to pop out this morning. I don’t want to be out when you arrive. Are you on your way?”

“Mum, I’ve just woken up,” Holly said, trying to remember if she had agreed to visit them. The memory returned a moment later. She’d said it as a throwaway comment, I’ll try and pop through on Saturday. Not a definite.

But her mother seemed so sad whenever she disappointed her. She didn’t have the heart to say anything other than yes, she would be setting off shortly.

She drove out of the city as all the tourists were starting to drive in, not looking forward to the return journey. The worst part of living in York was making her way around the ring-road, fighting her way through the cars on their way to the seaside.

The current family home was in Hull , just over an hour’s drive from York. They’d bought a house on the outskirts, her father able to ride a bike in to work each day rather than drive. His car was on the driveway when she arrived just after ten. Her mother was watching for her from the front room window.

“He’s had to go in today,” she said. “Can’t get cover apparently. He said to apologise.”

“It’s fine, Mum,” Holly said, looking at the piles of cardboard boxes in the hallway. “How long to go?”

“Another few weeks. I just wanted to get a headstart. Tea?”

“Yes, please.”

“Go through to the lounge. I’ll bring it to you.”

Holly passed through the hallway and into the front room. She looked at the sofa, the flowers more faded than last time. How long had they had it? Ten years? Twenty? It had survived a lot of moves, more loyal than her, she thought as she sat down and felt instantly younger. It was an odd feeling, like she was regressing. If her mother had come in with a pile of homework for her, asking why it hadn’t been done yet, she wouldn’t have been that surprised.

“Lizzie’s on her way,” Anne said as she reappeared with a tray containing two mugs, a teapot, a jug of milk and a plate of bourbon biscuits. “I told her you were here. She’s excited to see you.”

Lizzie arrived just before noon. Holly could see how much she’d changed, the pregnancy making her whole face glow. “That’s not glowing,” she said when Holly mentioned it. “That’s me trying not to throw up in the car on the way here.”

“Where’s Adrian?” Anne asked. “Did he not come with you?”

“He had to work, Mum, remember,” Lizzie said.

“Such a nice boy,” Anne said. “So well mannered.”

“I’ll tell him that,” Lizzie replied. “Twenty-four and still being called a boy. He’ll appreciate that.” She turned to face Holly. “What about you? Anyone taken your fancy yet?”

Holly wasn’t surprised by the question. Every time she saw her sister, the conversation seemed to move towards her lack of a boyfriend. She was never sure if Lizzie was genuinely interested or if it was her way of passive-aggressively referencing her own happy life. She was only marrying the deputy manager of a convenience shop, it wasn’t exactly moving into the Royal family. But, Holly reasoned whenever she thought about it for long enough, it was marriage. She felt a flare of jealousy as she looked at Lizzie and before she knew it, she’d answered, “There is actually.”

Lizzie at least had the decency to control her expression. Their mother’s surprise was far more evident. “Really?” Anne asked, the half eaten biscuit in her hand temporarily forgotten. “Who is he?”

“His name’s Joseph and I’m seeing him tomorrow afternoon.”

“Seeing him? Seeing him how? Like a date seeing him?” Lizzie asked.

“Our second date.”

“Well good for you, big sis.”

“How did you meet him?” Anne asked. “Do we know him? Is he a student?”

“Nope, he owns his own business.”

“Doing what?”

Holly realised she didn’t actually know. “Web design,” she lied, hoping they wouldn’t ask any follow up questions. It was better than admitting the truth, that she hadn’t as yet remembered to ask him. They’d want to know why not and she didn’t want to have to tell them it was because their first date had been spent talking about her love of Jane Eyre at the expense of any other subjects.

“Where’s he taking you?” Lizzie asked to Holly’s relief.

“We’re going for a walk. There’s an old mansion he wants to show me.”

“That’s so you,” Lizzie said as Anne spoke at the same time.

“I hope it’s not dangerous,” she said, looking at her daughter as if she was made of porcelain. “I don’t want you going somewhere you might get hurt.”

Holly wasn’t sure who to answer first. Lizzie was right, it was so her but that didn’t make the comment seem any less of an insult. And if her mother knew some of the empty places she’d already explored, she might explode. Better to play it down, better to keep good relations with both of them, no need to cause an argument.

“It’s very safe,” she said, facing her mother before turning to her sister. “And thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

She stayed for another hour, trying to look interested while they told her all the machinations with the wedding plans. Finally, as the clock rolled around to one, she made her excuses. “I’ve got to get my dissertation finished,” she said, promising to return once it was done. “As soon as it’s over, I’ll have a proper visit and I’ll go through my old stuff too.”

Driving back felt surprisingly painful. She realised that she missed spending time with the two of them, especially Lizzie. They had been very close growing up, though they fought viciously at times. And she missed her mum too, even her neurotic anxiety and inability to last more than fifteen minutes without another cup of tea. She would make more of an effort to see them, once the work was finished. When the baby was born, Lizzie would be constantly busy, this might be her last chance for some quality time with her, have a proper catch up. Next time, she thought.

Her sadness had faded by the time she was approaching home. She’d begun to think about the next day, about her date. Hopefully the weather would be good. Hopefully she’d get to know what it was that Joseph really did for a living. She already knew what he did for fun. Or at least, she thought she did.

NINE

HOLLY WOKE UP STUPIDLY early on Sunday morning, glancing at the time before closing her eyes with a groan. Quarter past six. No student should be up at quarter past six unless they hadn’t been to bed yet.

She lay on her side with her eyes closed for nearly ten minutes, doing her best to get back to sleep, cursing the thinness of her curtains, the light penetrating through them enough to illuminate the room and make it impossible for her to do anything other than sit up and accept the inevitable. She was awake. After rubbing her eyes and yawning loudly, she picked up her phone, surprised to find a message waiting from Joseph.

Half two. I’ll be outside. Be ready.

When had he sent that? Two in the morning? What was he doing up at that time? She felt a flash of jealousy, picturing him out at some nightclub somewhere, girls hanging on both arms, laughing at his jokes. Stop it, she told herself. He was going on a date with her, what more did she want?

She sat up, propping her head on the pillows behind her, wondering whether to reply. No, it was too early. If he’d been up at two, he’d definitely be asleep by six. She pictured him with his eyes closed, laid on an enormous bed, her snuggled in under his arm. The thought made her sigh as she shuffled slowly downwards, drifting off into a pleasant daydream that gradually became a catnap. She jolted awake again a little after seven, feeling that was a little more respectable even if it was still early for a Sunday.

Not wanting to disturb Fiona, she tiptoed downstairs in her dressing gown, waiting for the kettle to boil whilst looking at the photos on the fridge, shuffling on the cold tiles to keep her feet from freezing. Her family looked back at her as she looked at them. The younger her looked out too, still scowling. She wanted to speak to that little version of herself, tell her it would be all right, she’d get a date eventually.

Once she had a coffee made, she went through to the lounge and opened her laptop, loading her essay and telling herself that she wouldn’t move until she had at least fifty words done. She got thirty finished by the time Fiona came down at a little after ten, leaving her feeling proud of herself even if she knew she’d probably delete them all after her date.

“Good morning,” Fiona said, sinking into her chair. “You’re up early.”

“Am I?”

“Don’t think I don’t know why. You’re seeing him again later, aren’t you? What time are you going?”

“He said he’d pick me up here at half two.”

“Does that mean I get to meet him?”

“No it does not. You are to remain glued to that chair or I’ll never speak to you again.”

Fiona protested but when it came round to the afternoon, she stopped teasing, promising to remain out of sight in return for all the gory details when Holly got back. “Good luck,” she said as Holly watched out of the window as his car drove past to the end of the street, already starting to turn round as she grabbed her handbag.

“Enjoy yourself,” Fiona shouted after her as she headed outside, pulling the door closed after her.

He stopped in the middle of the road and she jumped in next to him. “Good afternoon,” he said, nodding imperiously. “Your chauffeur is here.”

“That’s a pity,” Holly replied as she fiddled with her seatbelt. “I was hoping for my date.”

“He couldn’t come. Will I do?”

“I suppose so. Where are we headed?”

“Remember I was going to show you that mansion I found?”

“Oh yes, whereabouts is it?”

“About ten miles north, heading towards Thirsk.”

It didn’t take long to drive out of York and the conversation flowed easily enough. All it took was for Joseph to ask her what she was reading at the moment and she was off, getting into the murky territory of telling him the truth, giving him more detail about The Rake and His Ruin than anyone could ever possibly need.

When they turned off the main road, Holly finally fell silent, looking at the trees around them, lush and green in the summer sun. She had to get out of the city more. She missed the woods, the peace, the way the light hit the ground, flickering and changing as the breeze moved the branches.

They turned again, this time onto an even narrower road before finally stopping on a forestry track in front of an old wooden gate that was secured by a rusty chain and padlock.

“Are we allowed in here?” Holly asked as they climbed out of the car.

“As far as I know,” Joseph replied, already swinging his leg over the gate. “Want to take a risk?”

Holly shrugged, “I can always blame you if we get done for trespassing.”

“Yes, you can.”

He held his hand out, helping her over the gate. As she landed, she thought he’d let go but he continued to hold her hand, a minor gesture yet at the same time overwhelmingly significant. She tried her best not to read too much into it as he led her along the track, looking forwards, not at her. She kept glancing down at his hand, grinning as she looked at his fingers wrapped around hers. She liked how her hand fitted so easily into his. It was a good feeling, one that made her feel warm inside and increasingly tense, like she shouldn’t be this lucky.

“How far is it?” she asked as the track curved round to the left, starting to descend deeper into the trees.

“About five minutes,” he replied. “Think you can make it?”

“It’s a marathon kind of distance but I think I’ll manage,” she said, looking around her at the trees, trying not to think about her hand being held so tightly, worried she might pass out if she thought any harder about it, the feeling was already so intense. His skin felt rough but warm, just like his voice.

Had anyone ever held her hand? Don’t think about it, just look at the trees.

“I did a bit of research,” he said, glancing across at her as she tried to wipe the vacant grin from her lips. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she replied too quickly. “You were saying?”

“I did some research after I found the place. It turned out it was a Victorian hunting lodge. Built in 1865 by a Jacob Rawlinson. The forest wasn’t here then. All these trees were planted after the first world war. It was all his land and he wanted somewhere private. Apparently after he died, the family sold the estate and the house was just left to crumble. Too far from civilisation for anyone to move here.”

“Interesting.”

“Wait until you see it. I’d move in tomorrow if I could.”

“You’d live somewhere like this? In the middle of nowhere?”

“Does that sound odd to you?”

“No,” Holly said with a broadening smile. “It sounds perfect.”

As they turned the next corner, the remains of a drive came into view. It headed to the left and about fifty yards along it, Holly could see the corner of a building. “Is that it?” she asked, already impressed.

“What do you think?”

It came into view gradually, the trees falling away to leave a space in front and to the sides of the building. Made of dark stone, the walls had a slightly foreboding look, several of the windows broken and ivy covered. The curling branches suffocated most of the frontage, climbing in through the gaps in the rotten frames, avoiding the jagged edges of glass. The grounds had grown wild around the building, as if grass had tried to swallow it up but had been defeated in its attempt, knocked back and cursing from the ground, ready to attempt again in a few years.

“I think someone must own it,” Joseph said, coming to a stop and looking up at the stonework. “It looks like the weeds have been treated and can you see how it’s worn down on the way over to the porch?”

“How did you find this place? I never even knew it existed.”

“I went for a walk,” he said bluntly. “Want to go inside? There’s something I’ve got to show you.”

Holly followed him over to the front door, the grass rustling against her feet, the only sound apart from that of her own breathing.

“Close your eyes,” Joseph said, taking her hand in his again. “It’s a surprise.”

“What? What is it?”

“Hold on, step up. You’ll see in a second. I promise it’ll be worth it.”

Holly let herself be guided up over a stone step, the sound and feel under her feet changing as she crossed from the grass into the building, the light fading. She could smell the age of the place, her other senses enhanced by the lack of sight.

“Okay, stop there. Now, open your eyes.”

Holly did as he said. “Oh my God,” she said, taking a single step backwards, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. “What have you done?”

TEN

THROUGH THE REMAINS OF the front door was a large room, the plaster on the walls cracked but still attached for the most part. What debris had fallen, was swept to the left, piled up against the wall, leaving the floor clear. In the middle of the room, a table had been set up, draped in a red cloth. At either side of the table were wooden chairs facing each other. The table was laid out with plates and wine glasses, silver cutlery perfectly positioned. In the middle was a vase containing a bouquet of flowers.

“Did you do this?” Holly asked, taking a disbelieving step forwards. “When did you do this?”

“Take a seat,” Joseph said, pulling out a chair and holding it until she sat down. “Back in a moment.”

He walked over to the corner of the room and pushed open a door which squealed in protest. Vanishing through it, he left Holly alone, looking around her at the room.

It was a surreal sight. The place looked like it might collapse at any minute but as she looked closer she could see it was more solid than it looked. There were a couple of cracks in the wall and the floorboards were warped in places but other than that, little damage seemed to have been done.

He must have set this up before he came to get me, she thought as she waited. She checked her phone, planning on sending a photo of the set up to Fiona. No signal. It would have to wait until she was back. Her thoughts returned to him. How had she been so lucky as to meet someone who would do something so romantic for her? She was still thinking about that question when he reappeared, carrying a tray in his arms. “Luncheon is served,” he said, bringing the tray over and setting it down on the edge of the table. “Cheese sandwich or jam?”

He held up two plastic tubs as Holly pointed at one. “Surprise me.”

“Strawberry jam for you, how continental. I have wine too if you’d like to indulge?”

“Always.”

He pulled a corkscrew from his jacket pocket, pushing it into the top of the wine bottle as Holly took the other tubs from the tray. “Chocolate and crisps, you’re quite the chef.”

“Well, it had to be things I could leave here. The cooking facilities, I’m not going to lie, they need some work.”

The cork popped out of the bottle a second later and she watched as he poured them both generous quantities. “Won’t you join me?” she asked as he passed her glass over to her.

“Don’t mind if I do.” He took his seat, picking up the first half of his sandwich. “What do you think of my place?”

“It needs a bit of TLC,” she replied. “So, is this where you bring all your girls?”

“No. Just you.”

“That’s good to know.”

“I take the rest of them bowling.”

She glared at him across the table. “I’m not sure that’s funny.”

“Jealous?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Then it’s lucky for you I’m not seeing anyone else. In fact, I’ve deleted my Match Up account.”

“Really?”

He nodded, biting into his sandwich and chewing slowly before swallowing. “I get the feeling I don’t need to keep looking for the right woman. You seem very much like the right woman, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I don’t know. It depends what you’re looking for.”

“I’m looking for someone who’s willing to submit to me.”

Holly almost choked on her sandwich. “Excuse me?”

“Come on, Holly. I can tell just by looking at you, that’s what you want to do. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong.”

“It’s all right, you don’t need to pretend. There’s only us two here and I already know the truth about you.”

“The truth? What truth?”

He placed his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his hands. “That you want to be forced into submitting to me. You want me to do the things to you that all women want.”

He said it like he was talking about the weather, the tone of his voice light, carefree. But Holly didn’t feel carefree. She didn’t know what to say. Could she tell him he was wrong about her? That she didn’t want that? That she wanted to get the hell out of there? But she couldn’t. She was in the middle of a wood, miles from anywhere with his car the only way of getting home. He was looking at her with a calm expectation, as if he was just waiting for her to agree. But behind his eyes was something else, something she didn’t like the look of one bit.

She had to talk her way out of it. How had the date gone so wrong so quickly? Hold on, she thought. Was she reading too much into what he said? “What kind of things are you talking about?” she asked, her voice as calm as she could manage.

“Come on, are you going to make me say it?”

She waited, watching him closely.

“You really want me to say it? Fine. You want to be raped. It’s there in your eyes. The excitement at the idea. There’s no need to be ashamed. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

The room felt as if it had turned to ice. Her heart thudded in her chest and the food weighed heavy in her stomach, threatening to come back up any second. She thought frantically, trying not to let her fear show on her face. Alone with a virtual stranger. What did she really know about him? Nothing, not really. She had to get somewhere safe, then she could deal with this. She could block him on the app, report him to the site administrators, maybe even the police if he tried to get in touch again. Was he insane? Telling her she wanted to be raped? But if she raised the issue, what would he do? Play along for now, she thought. It’s the only option.

“Maybe next time,” she said, forcing the words out. She picked up the glass before looking at the contents closely. Would he have drugged it?

“Could you take me home,” she said, trying her best to keep her voice casual. “I don’t feel too great.”

“Oh, really?” he said, concern spreading across his features. “I hope it wasn’t something you ate.”

No, it was something you said, she thought, the words screaming in her head. Who the hell do you think you are?

She was up and out of the chair quickly, crossing to the door and out into the open, taking deep breaths of air, trying to warm her skin in the sunlight, unable to believe it was just a few minutes since she’d arrived. He thought she wanted to submit? Did he really think that?

“Come on,” he said, slipping his hand into his. “You look pale. Let’s get you home.”

He didn’t mention what he’d said to her for the entire drive home. Instead he let the radio play, occasionally asking if she needed to stop, his concern nothing more than a sick parody to her.

Holly somehow managed to last the journey back without bringing up what little of her lunch she’d eaten. The entire time, she kept her arm near the door handle, ready to grab it and dive out if he made a lunge for her or if he tried to drive anyway but back to York. When she’d first climbed into his car, she had felt suddenly trapped, as if he might grab her there and then. But he didn’t, he just set off as if the date had gone perfectly. Maybe he thought it had.

When they finally got to York, she made him stop at the end of the street, still on the main road. “I’ll walk this bit,” she said, already fumbling for the door. “The fresh air should help.”

“Of course,” he said, leaning over as she climbed out. “I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

No fucking way, she thought, managing a half smile. “Yeah, maybe.”

She managed not to run, checking behind her a few seconds later to make sure he had driven away. She wanted to talk to Fiona, find out if what had happened was normal, was that something people talked about on dates, was that what men were really like when you got them in private? Were they all like that or was it just him?

Fiona wasn’t home. Holly sat on the sofa with her phone in her hand, trying to decide whether or not to phone the police. But then, what would she tell them?

He hadn’t actually done anything to her. He had only told her she wanted it to happen. Would they even believe her? What if they spoke to him and he denied it? What then?

She tapped the phone, running her finger down the screen. There was no point. Block him. That was the first thing. What was it Fiona had called it? Ghosting. That was it. She would ghost him. She would block him, she would delete him, she would ghost him. She would never speak to him again. What had she done to make him think that? No, don’t do that. She hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d got the idea into his head all by himself. For all she knew, he felt like that all the time, about all women.

But to go from so charming to saying something like that. It didn’t add up.

She sat there, closing her eyes and thinking hard. She remembered one drunken night with Fiona, sitting up watching music videos from the 1980s, talking in that nonsense way about themselves and each other. “I need sex,” she had said, giggling loudly as she said it, Fiona nodding sagely from her chair.

“Yes, you do. You need ravishing.”

“Yes, ravishing. On a moortop, preferably.”

“You might get heather up your bum.”

“Who’s Heather?”

They had both collapsed into laughter, the conversation an abstract thing, a talk about something so distant that it didn’t matter what they said. Fiona had whispered about being held down, how good it felt.

“I wouldn’t mind trying,” Holly had replied, thinking excited thoughts to herself.

But the reality was a long way from a drunken talk. To think of him forcing himself onto her, the idea was disgusting. She shuddered as she sat there, unable to connect herself to the drunken conversation she’d had, what? Six months ago? No, longer. It was Christmas of their second year. That made it eighteen months ago, give or take.

It didn’t make sense. He’d been so nice to her. What had made him flip like that? Or had he always been thinking about her in that way? Maybe from the moment he saw her profile, that was what he wanted to do. But why not do it at the mansion then? How close had she been to danger? The thought terrified her. Delete him. Don’t think about him anymore. And send Fiona a message, find out where the hell she is.

ELEVEN

HOLLY STRUGGLED TO GET to sleep. She had laid in the dark, wishing Fiona wasn’t on an impromptu date of her own. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to beg her housemate to come home, to tell her she didn’t want to be alone. In the end, she just sent her a message that read, It didn’t go well.

Fiona promised they’d talk tomorrow but she was at the coast, eating fish and chips and watching the seagulls fight over the scraps on the beach next to a man she called ‘sex on legs.’

Holly had calmed down a little. He hadn’t come hammering on the door. He hadn’t sent her any more messages, not surprising since she’d blocked his number.

You want to be raped.

Just thinking about it chilled her blood. Every time she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, the words came back to her. She picked up her book, switching on the lamp, but the adventures of the Rake seemed unimportant. When she’d reread the same sentence five times, she gave up, putting the book down again, trying to sleep once more.

She’d felt exhausted all afternoon, the adrenaline slowly draining out of her, leaving her limbs feeling heavy. She tried to lose herself in TV, wondering whether to call her mother. No, she’d know something was wrong. Just sweep it under the rug, pretend it didn’t happen. She wished with all heart that Fiona was home, though.

Before climbing into bed, she checked both doors were locked and then checked again. After going to the bathroom, she checked for a third time, not noticing that the kitchen window was unlocked, the latch just out of line, just enough to be opened from the outside of the house.

It was just after midnight when she heard a noise on the landing. “Fi,” she called out. “Is that you?” It was the creak of the top step, there was definitely someone out there. Or was there? It could just be the house settling. Was she being paranoid?

She reached across to the bedside table, grabbing her phone and pulling it under the covers, listening hard, trying to keep her breathing under control. Nothing. No sound out there. She thought about calling out again but what if it wasn’t Fiona? What then?

Call the police, she thought. No, don’t be stupid. She knew she’d be wasting their time if there was nothing out there.

Get up and check.

But she couldn’t do it. Her legs felt like lead. There was no rational reason to think it but she was certain there was someone out there. Somehow, she managed to sit up, doing her best to slow her breathing as she stood up, phone gripped tightly in her hand, still listening. The only sound was her own heart, thumping in her chest.

She crossed to the door and pulled it open, slowly, tentatively. Peering out, she could see nothing. She reached her hand for the lightswitch and turned it on, staring left and right. There was no one out there.

Leaving the light on, she stepped back, still listening. She was being paranoid. Slowly, she closed the door, pressing her ear to it, just in case. Nothing.

She climbed back into bed, pulling the covers tightly around her, telling herself to calm down. The phone sat in arm’s reach, ready for her to grab if she heard the slightest noise.

She never heard him.

She listened for a long time but in the end, she decided it was nothing, her eyes slowly closing despite her belief that she wouldn’t sleep at all.

She drifted off a little after midnight and as she moved onto her right side ten minutes later, the door handle began to turn ever so slowly, the door itself easing silently open. The kitchen window remained unlocked downstairs. He was planning to leave quickly once he was done.

She dreamed she was back in the mansion, only it was back when it was lived in. She was at the dining room table, sitting opposite Joseph who was holding forth to the assembled guests. “It is what all women want,” he was saying as they all nodded, dozens of them, all men, all turning to look at her.

She felt a hand on her wrist, one of the men was holding her in her seat, stopping her from leaving. She tried to twist but it didn’t work, he just gripped harder, making her wince. “Let me go,” she muttered.

“You know you want this,” he replied, his lips not moving as the dream faded.

She blinked awake, her head groggy. She had not slept long. The pain on her wrist was still there and she looked down. A shadowy thing was wrapped around it. She blinked again and the room came into focus. Someone was standing over her. Someone who was holding her wrist. “Fi?” she asked, moving to sit up.

“Guess again,” the figure said in a voice she recognised.

She jolted upright but as she did so, he grabbed her other wrist, pushing her back onto the bed.

“Get off me,” she said, trying to twist herself free.

“Not a chance,” he said, suddenly leaping onto her, shoving her shoulders into the pillow, leaning down so his head was near hers, his hand moving from her wrist to her mouth, squeezing her cheeks between his fingers. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

He leaned down, pushing his tongue into her mouth, making her gag as she fell still, so afraid she was unable to move. Would he kill her?

His tongue slid over hers before he sat up, his knees still either side of her waist. “Keep still,” he said, grabbing her pyjama top and yanking it apart, sending buttons flying. He grabbed hold of her breasts in both hands, pushing them together, tugging at her nipples.

“You know you want this,” he said, his voice thick with menace. “Look how hard they’re getting. I bet you’re soaked, aren’t you, you little slut?”

She wanted to tell him to get off her but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. It was too much for her brain to take and it drifted off as if she was no longer inside herself. His hands moved lower, rough with her as he shuffled down the bed, tugging at her pyjama bottoms, sliding them down her legs whilst growling at her, “Keep still.” Her mind floated up somewhere near the ceiling. He was going to kill her and she’d watch it happening to herself. She wasn’t there anymore.

He threw her pyjama bottoms to the floor, turning back to leer at her naked body. As he stared at her, he pushed the palm of his hand between her legs. She couldn’t scream. There was no air inside her. But when he tried to push a finger into her, she came to life, as if she was waking up from the dream for a second time. Her legs moved of their own accord, sliding up the bed away from him. Suddenly, she had control of herself again. She had to act now or he’d be on her again, trapping her under him. He was already getting ready, shifting his weight forwards.

She moved quickly, twisting to one side as he leapt after her. He grabbed her hair, trying to pull her back as she got to her feet. She lashed out with her leg behind her, catching him a glancing blow, the shock enough to make him loosen his grip. She ran, getting to the door and yanking it open, the sound of his roar spurring her on. She made it to the landing and was about to sprint downstairs when he caught her, his hand descending on her shoulder. She turned, dipping under his arm, making her way to Fiona’s room, hoping she could get to the window in there, jump down to the ground below. “Come back here,” he said, lunging for her. She turned again but he was blocking her path. She had nowhere left to run.

TWELVE

HE LEAPT FORWARDS. SOMEHOW she was able to turn her body to one side so he overbalanced, his forwards momentum propelling him onto the rug. He skidded, tripping over his ankle as she leaned back against the wall, watching as he fell forwards. His head hit the wall an inch from Fiona’s door, slamming into it with a thud that made her wince.

He slumped downwards, falling still, flat on his front.

For a long time, she couldn’t move. At first due to the still lingering panic racing through her and then because she became strangely certain it was a trick. If she got any closer, he’d leap up and grab her, drag her into her room. She shivered, aware of the cold on her naked skin for the first time. Her heart was still pounding, her throat dry, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she stared at him, not even daring to blink. But he still hadn’t moved. There was a dent in the wall where his head had struck it.

How many times had she tripped over that rug? How many times had she asked Fiona to get rid of it? Donate it to charity? But if it wasn’t for that, she dreaded to think what he might have done to her. What if Fiona didn’t come back at all? What if she stayed the night with her date? She could have been dead for hours by then. That was how these things happened. She’d have been one more news story. She’d never get to see her sister’s wedding, never get to see her niece. All of a sudden she was crying, deep wracking sobs that shook her entire body, starting from nowhere, her hands shaking as she slumped down to the floor, looking at the unmoving form of her date.

He might have killed her. He still might. That thought crept in through her tears and slowly brought them to a halt. Sniffing loudly, she looked across the landing. He might wake up. How long would it take the police to get there? There, look. His arm. Moving already.

He groaned deeply, a gurgling sound that faded away as he fell still once more. She ran to her room, grabbing her phone and punching in three nines.

“Emergency, which service do you require?”

“I…” she began, pausing as she realised she didn’t know. Police? Ambulance? Both? “There’s a man, he broke in. I think he’s hurt. Please, send someone.”

“Connecting, hold on.” There was a couple of clicks and then the line came back to live.

“Police,” a new voice said. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

“A man,” she said, feeling the tears start to build again. She had to keep them under control. She couldn’t lose it, not yet. “A man broke in. He…he tried to rape me.”

“Okay, keep calm. Where are you?”

“I’m at home.” She heard another groan coming from the landing, this one louder. Slowly, not wanting to, she walked over to the bedroom door and peered out. His arm had moved again. He wasn’t going to be out for much longer.

“Where is home?”

She didn’t hear the question, too busy trying to keep her bowels from opening as she watched him trying to turn over.

“Are you there, miss?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she said, lowering her voice.

“Where do you live? Where are you?”

“Seventeen Milburn Street.”

“And where’s that?”

“In York. Please come quickly.”

“We’ve a car on the way now. You said a man broke in and assaulted you? Where is he now? Do you know?”

“He…he fell.”

She hung up as Joseph groaned again, his leg raising and lowering to the ground. Time was running out. She ran out onto the landing, hoping she was strong enough. With a deep breath, she leaned down and grabbed his ankle, dragging him along the landing, moving him on willpower alone. The muscles in her arms strained as she tugged him, the rug underneath him helping his body to slide across the polished wood.

“Wh…” he muttered, twisting his head slightly, blinking as he did so, not focussing on her yet.

Quickly, she told herself as his arm turned, his fingers stretching out towards her. As she crossed the landing he began to sit up, still blinking, rubbing his eyes and groaning again. “What are you doing?” he asked, getting slowly to his feet, his legs unsteady as Holly moved around him.

She took another deep breath. Do it now, she thought, before he realises. Biting her bottom lip so hard, it bled, she shoved him in the small of the back. He teetered at once, leaning alarmingly towards the stairs. It wasn’t enough, he was going to regain his balance. It wasn’t enough.

But then he passed his centre of gravity, his arms beginning to flail as he fell forwards through the air, realising too late what was happening. He vanished from sight as he thudded down the stairs, the bizarre sight of his feet the last thing Holly saw before she heard the thud of him slamming into the wall at the bottom of the steps, where the last three treads twisted into the hallway. She walked forwards, wincing as she saw his body bent awkwardly around the corner, his head still. This time he didn’t move.

Holly sat down on the top step, all her strength gone. She’d used every last ounce in dragging him across the landing and she felt incredibly tired. She looked down at him for a long time, her head in her hands until the sight of flickering lights made her look up. Through the living room window, red and blue lights were flashing and she began to cry again. She was safe. It was over. He’d never hurt anyone again.

THIRTEEN

AN AMBULANCE ARRIVED SHORTLY after the first police car. Holly sat on the sofa with an ignored mug of tea on the coffee table in front of her. A detective sat on Fiona’s chair. Another was standing in the hallway, watching the paramedics working on Joseph. He went outside when they did, watching them carry the body out on a stretcher. She heard his question as he went. “Any hope?” and the paramedic’s reply, “Think this one’s going to be DOA.”

Holly’s tea grew colder. She stared at the far wall, a looped video playing over and over again in her head. Joseph tearing her pyjama top open, the buttons scattering. Then his arms as they spun in circles, trying to stop him from falling down the stairs. Buttons. Stairs. Buttons. Scatter. The sound of them landing all over the bedroom. They’d be up there. She’d need to find them. Arms spinning. Buttons. Arms.

The detective flicked back to the first page of his notes. “I think I’ve got everything for now,” he said, his voice penetrating the looping video from a great distance. Holly looked up at him, surprised to see him still there.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“They need confirmation but between me and you I don’t think he’s coming back. Strictly off the record of course.”

Holly’s bottom lip stung from where she’d bitten it. She sat wrapped up in her dressing gown, given to her by the constable who’d first walked in. She’d still been sat on the top step, naked, shivering, her skin covered in goosebumps. Two of them had come in. The woman had come upstairs, stepping over the body, leaving her colleague downstairs while she stood on the step below Holly. “Are you all right?” she asked, clicking her fingers to try and get Holly’s attention as she continued to stare into space.

She hadn’t answered. The constable had gone past her into her room, bringing the dressing gown back out with her and wrapping it around Holly’s shoulders. “Here,” she said, passing her a tissue from a packet in her trouser pocket. “Come and sit downstairs.”

Holly had to step over Joseph, wincing as she did so, expecting him to reach up and grab her at any moment. The officer stayed with her until the two detectives arrived a minute later. One of them came to her, the other joined the constables in the hallway, talking quietly to them both before dismissing them.

“If I can just run over it one more time,” the detective said as more people walked into the hallway from outside. “You met online, is that right?”

“Match Up,” Holly said, wondering who they were. “It was on Match Up.”

“And your profile name is Spongebob lover.”

Holly nodded, too tired to feel embarrassed. “What’s going on out there?”

“Forensic’s just having a look.”

“What for?”

“Anything relevant that might corroborate or contradict your story. Anything you want to tell me before they get started?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“I’m not suggesting you have. We just have to follow all the correct procedures. Now, the date you went on. He took you to a derelict house where he threatened you in an attempt to coerce you into sex.”

Holly nodded again.

“You were driven home by him, feigning illness. You blocked his phone number and then around midnight, he broke in and assaulted you. There was a struggle and during that struggle he fell down the stairs.”

“It was an accident.”

“Of course it was. And if he’s the guy we’ve been looking for then it was an accident that did the world a favour.”

“Sorry, what?”

“There’s been someone targeting online daters, did you not read about it in the papers? They’re calling him the Matchmaker.”

“I guess I must have missed that one.”

“Well, I get the feeling we might have closed that case with this accident. Now I have to ask, how far did his attempt to assault you go?”

“He stripped me.”

“I can wait until a female colleague is available to ask the next question if you prefer?”

“I’m fine. What do you need to know?”

“Did he penetrate you in any way?”

“No, nothing like that. I ran before he had chance.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Good?”

“It means you don’t need to have a physical. Now, have you got anyone who can look after you tonight? We can’t leave you here alone.”

“My housemate. She’s on her way back from Scarborough. She shouldn’t be much longer.”

“How long?”

“About ten minutes according to her last message.”

“Well, we’ll stay until she arrives, make sure you’re okay.”

The other detective stuck his head in from the hallway. “Done out here, boss. Looks like he came in the kitchen window, it was hanging open.”

“Locked it?”

“Will do.”

“Forensics?”

“Already outside.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.” He turned back to Holly. “I’ll stay until your housemate gets back.”

“I’ll be fine. Please, I just want to get some rest. You don’t have to worry..”

It took a few minutes but she was finally able to persuade him to leave. He stood on the doorstep, still looking reticent about leaving her alone. “I’ll be all right,” she said, forcing a smile onto her lips, a cramp hitting her stomach. She felt like she was going to be sick any moment. “Fiona’ll be home soon.”

“I’ll check on you personally tomorrow,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

He nodded, satisfied at last. Another cramp hit Holly as he walked away and she had to run to the bathroom, sinking to her knees by the toilet and throwing up until her throat burned and her stomach hurt. The cramps continued long after she leaned against the wall with her eyes closed. She groped for the flush with her eyes closed, hitting it firmly, the sound of the water draining loud but not loud enough to drown out the video that began looping again in her head. Buttons. Arms. Buttons. Arms. In the background, the echoing question, did he penetrate you?

Getting slowly to her feet ten minutes later, she made her way through the kitchen, stopping to look at the photo on the fridge. “I’m sorry,” she said out loud to her family. “I’m so sorry.” She ran her finger over the picture, touching each of her family members in turn. Then with fresh tears forming on her cheeks she went through to the living room. She couldn’t bring herself to go upstairs. The rug would be rucked up and it would need straightening. Her bed would be a mess, her pyjama trousers on the floor, the buttons scattered across the carpet.

Lying on her side on the sofa, she curled her legs up under her, closing her eyes and trying anything to make the video stop. You had to do it, she told herself.

The detective had warned her she might need to give a more formal statement. She could understand why. They might suspect she’d killed him. No, if they had, they wouldn’t have left her at home. She’d seen enough crime shows to know what would have happened. Her nails would have been scraped for DNA, she’d have been interviewed at the station. They didn’t suspect her. It would be all right.

That might have been true but it didn’t stop the waves of guilt washing over her. He was dead. She had pushed him. Buttons. Arms. Buttons. Arms.

She was still awake when Fiona arrived the next day. She hadn’t messaged her. She hadn’t wanted to ruin her date. She’d only told the detective that to make him leave. What was his name? He’d told her when he first arrived but it had gone from her mind. The only thing in her mind were buttons and arms. When the front door opened, she shot up, not sure at first where she was. Then it came back to her.

She must have slept, not much sleep though, enough to make her headachy and groggy as she bolted upright, somehow sure it was him, he’d come back for her.

When Fiona appeared in the doorway, Holly didn’t say a thing, she just burst into tears once more, unable to even start telling her housemate what had happened. Fiona sat next to her, holding her, waiting.

FOURTEEN

THE NEXT DAY, HOLLY woke up just before two in the afternoon. She was in Fiona’s room, taking a second to work out the change of location. For a brief second, she felt fine and then the reason why she was there came back and the familiar heavy dread returned with it. She sat up slowly, another headache already building behind her eyes.

Fiona had sat up with her until four in the morning, listening to her story with increasing horror. Once it was done, Fi was silent, just holding onto her and not saying anything for a long time. “Let’s put you to bed,” she said at last, holding Holly’s hand and leading her upstairs. “In my room tonight. You bunk with me as Lurleen Lumpkin would say.”

Holly closed her eyes, not wanting to look at the rug. She didn’t open them again until Fiona’s bedroom door was closed. “Get in,” Fiona said, pointing at the bed.

She was as easy to manoeuvre as a doll, climbing in when she was told, lying on her side, listening to Fiona undress. She was certain she wouldn’t sleep at all but she must have done eventually, though she had no idea when. All she could think about was buttons and arms, again and again. She thought she might never think of anything else again.

When she woke up, she wondered where Fiona was, then she heard her downstairs, the noise of crockery rattling in the kitchen. She was washing up.

Holly was still wrapped up in her dressing gown. She climbed out of Fiona’s bed and walked across to the door which was half open. She stepped out onto the landing, treating it like tearing off a plaster, do it at once, don’t drag it out.

The rug was still there, back in place. Fiona must have realigned it. She stepped around it, pushing open the door to her room and looking in, trying not to hyperventilate.

It was like he was still there, or that he was about to come back. She didn’t feel safe even just looking in. Taking a deep breath as if she was plunging under a pool of water, she held it as she darted across to the chest of drawers by the window. Don’t look at the pyjamas. Don’t look at the bed. She grabbed the first things she found, carrying them out onto the landing and only taking a breath when she was on the top of the stairs. She gasped for air, feeling suddenly dizzy. Then she shucked off the dressing gown and stepped into the shorts and tee-shirt, wrapping the gown back around her before heading downstairs.

Fiona was sitting her chair, looking pale. “I need to tell you something,” she said as Holly walked in. “Can I tell you something?”

“What?” Holly asked, sitting on the sofa, curling her legs under her. “What’s the matter?”

Fiona looked at her, leaning forwards as she did so, her eyes widening. “It’s all my fault.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Holly asked with a growing sense of dread. Why did Fiona look so upset?

“Oh, God, where do I start? I…I hooked you up with Joseph.”

“No, you didn’t-”

“I did,” Fiona interrupted. “I matched him six months ago and I’m not even sure how to say this. I asked him to date you.”

“You did what?”

“Look, it didn’t work out between us and I hated seeing you so unhappy about no one wanting to date you so I gave him a ring and asked him to match up with you.”

“You…asked him to date me?”

“I’m sorry, Hols. I didn’t know he’d turn out to be like that. I’m so sorry.”

Holly didn’t know what to say. Her mind couldn’t take it. She leaned back on the sofa and sighed loudly, rubbing her eyes as she did so.

“Say something,” Fiona pleaded. “Say anything. Hit me or something. I deserve it.”

“I’m not going to hit you.”

“I thought I was doing you a favour. I was the one who wrote that you liked being tied down, I told him you liked submitting, that you were quite shy. I thought it would help, have him tell you what to do. He was supposed to roleplay with you, make you think you were being forced. I told him to tell you if it went too far, not to hurt you. I didn’t know he’d take it so seriously.” She took a breath before continuing. “I was going to keep it to myself but I can’t. I’m so sorry, Hols. If I’d known, I’d never have set it up. It’s all my fault.”

Holly closed her eyes, the headache making her temple throb. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice sounding like it was coming from very far away. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

The two of them were silent for a long time before Holly got to her feet. “I’m going back to bed.”

She walked slowly upstairs. The rug didn’t seem as important anymore. She’d been lied to. Fiona had acted so surprised to find out she had a date, so excited for her. And all the while, she’d already met the guy. But even as she wondered if she should care more, she found it hard to summon up any real anger. It didn’t matter. What mattered was finding all the buttons on her floor and sewing them back onto the front of her pyjamas.

It took her an hour but she managed it eventually. Once she had them collected on her dressing table, she felt a strange relief washing over her. She stripped the bedding, tossing it down the stairs. Buttons, arms. The video played once but she shook her head, refusing to engage. She was going to sew the buttons on, not watch that infernal loop. Nor was she going to think about him. She was going to finish her book. She was going to lay in bed in fresh bedding and it was going to be all right. She was going to be fine.

The worst part, she thought when she sat sewing the buttons back onto her pyjama top, was that she was glad. That made her feel more guilty than anything else. She was glad he was dead. That wasn’t right, was it? He had only been acting, according to Fiona. She shouldn’t be happy to have killed him. But he didn’t look like he was acting. He looked like he meant it. It was wrong though. Murder was wrong. She shouldn’t have been happy to kill a human being. But she was.

FIFTEEN

HOLLY LASTED A WEEK before telling her parents what had happened. The story had appeared in the local newspaper by then and although her name hadn’t been used, she knew it was only a matter of time before the information got out there. She had hoped to keep it from them, as if by doing so, she might be able to deny it happened at all, sweep it under the rug, the rug that had saved her. But once it was in the newspaper, she knew it would probably get picked up by the nationals, and then they’d know anyway. Better they heard it from her.

They cried, both of them. Anne first and then Martin when he came on the phone. They told her they would come and visit, come and bring her home, she told them not to, using the dissertation as the perfect excuse. It still needed to be finished and by concentrating all her efforts on it, she was able to distract herself from the trauma that was still weighing heavily on her mind. She wondered at night, as she lay staring at the ceiling and listening hard for any sounds on the landing, whether or not she would ever sleep easily again.

With three days until the dissertation deadline, she was almost finished. The thing was virtually completed. But then what would she concentrate on? Fiona’s duplicity?

Fiona was already done. She’d packed and headed back to Berwick. Their friendship had cracked, the seemingly thick ice of it turning out to be razor thin, far more delicate than she would ever had guessed. They had talked in detail about staying in touch, getting together, perhaps even doing a Master’s at the same university. But Holly saw the truth in Fiona’s eyes as she climbed into her car with the boxes all crammed into the back. Her eyes didn’t lie. They would keep in touch, for a while. But over time, they would talk less until eventually their interactions would consist of nothing but seeing each other’s photos posted on Facebook. Holly didn’t mind. She couldn’t look at Fiona without feeling a niggling sense of betrayal.

It was probably for the best anyway. Realistically, when would they have got together? She needed to focus on getting her work done, then her sister’s wedding, the birth that was coming up all too quickly. And she needed to decide what she was going to do next.

Knowing Joseph’s funeral had been held made her feel more secure. She finally felt certain he wouldn’t come back to the house. She still listened at night though, without Fiona there, she was more on edge than she liked to admit. But during the day, those feelings were easy to forget.

With a day to go until the deadline, Holly was sure she’d get her dissertation done. She was working late into the night when someone knocked on her front door.

She looked at the time. Quarter past eleven. Who would come round that late at night?

“Miss Simpson,” a man’s voice said from outside. “It’s D.C.I Wyman. Would you mind opening the door?”

Holly got up, trying to keep calm. Why was he here so late? She pulled open the door to find him standing there in a black suit. “Mind if I come inside?”

He stepped forwards and she automatically moved back, doing her best not to panic. Why was he here?

“How have you been?” he asked, stopping in the middle of the living room, turning to face her.

“Coping,” she replied.

“I know what you did,” he said bluntly, pulling out a pair of handcuffs. “Would you mind keeping still for a moment.”

Holly froze as he took her right arm, clicking the handcuff around her wrist before doing the same to her left arm. “Take a seat,” he said, pushing her down onto the sofa. She sat with her heart pounding, not wanting to speak, worrying she would immediately confess.

“Am I under arrest?” she asked after he said nothing for more than a minute.

“Not yet. I want to know the truth though. Did he fall down the stairs or did you push him?”

“What? What kind of question is that? Why are you asking me that?”

“I understand, Miss Simpson. A man like that, running at you, I’d be scared too, he was a big guy.”

“Why are you here so late?”

“Well, I’m here to make you an offer, better than you’d get from any judge.”

“An offer? What offer?”

“You and me go upstairs to your bedroom. Then I keep what you just said to myself. Not a word goes beyond us two. What do you say?”

Holly was stunned. Was he really suggesting she sleep with him to avoid being arrested? “You’re coming upstairs with me,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “The only question is whether you do so willingly or I drag you up there.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You’re in handcuffs, Holly. I saw your body. Even in that dressing gown, you couldn’t hide it. You wanted me to see it, I know you did, letting it come loose like that. Now get up those stairs or this will get very unpleasant.”

Holly stood up slowly, her legs weak. Could she run? Scream? Would the neighbours hear? No, they were students, same as her. They’d already gone home. “Fiona will be back in ten minutes,” she said.

“Nice try,” he smiled. “But I’ve been waiting for her to go back to Berwick. I do my research, Holly. You have to when you’re in my position. Can’t be too careful. Now,” he paused, grabbing her cuffs and pulling her towards him. “Upstairs.”

She walked in front of him, each step feeling like it was taking her closer to her doom. She stopped in the hallway, looking back over her shoulder at him. He was right behind her.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he said, running his hand over her cheek. “I knew a woman once with eyes just like yours, I’d love to compare them.”

She walked slowly upstairs. She was carried downstairs a week later when she failed to answer the phone to her mother one too many times. Her mother turned up at the house, hammering on the door. The police turned up shortly afterwards, D.C.I Wyman breaking down the door and finding the body in the bedroom. D.S Hills came up after him, shocked by the sight of her corpse with its dark holes where her eyes had been. For Wyman, the sight wasn’t as disturbing, for him it brought back pleasant memories of a perfect date night.

Thank you for reading. I would love it if you left me a review, I’m grateful for every single one.

Sign up to my mailing list and receive the novel, Don’t Touch, completely free.

ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Contemporary titles

Daddy Dom – Billionaire Age Play

Daddy’s Here – Bad Boy Age Play

Daddy Play – Millionaire Age Play

Don’t Touch – Dominant Age Play

Kept Safe – Dark Romance

Last Week – Billionaire Alpha

Playing Games – Dominant Alpha

Saving Hope – Billionaire Secret Baby

Taboo – 75 Erotic Shorts

Historical titles

A Little Wager – Victorian Submission

Little Conspiracy – Spanking Age Play

Obedience – Five Age Play Stories

Pretty Little Rose – Victorian Spanking

The Sting of Pleasure – Fifteen Spanking Romances

If you enjoyed this, you may also like Kept Safe. Turn the page to sample the first few chapters for free.

KEPT SAFE

(SNEAK PEEK)

PROLOGUE

JACK

She was waiting for me. I had to be quick. I didn’t want to leave her alone for too long. I picked up the knife and sliced through the sandwich, dividing it into quarters, the way she used to like them. I hoped she still did. Two types of cheese, grated, not sliced, ketchup not mayo, no butter. I made the same for myself but left mine on the counter. I’d eat after I’d made sure she’d had hers.

I walked through the house, thinking how different it was now I had her company. It looked the same as ever, there was no sign of another person anywhere. But I knew she was there, and that was what mattered. She was there with me, where she was meant to be. The loneliness I’d felt for so long was gone, vanished as if it had never been. I had a purpose for the first time in years. It was my job to keep her safe.

I carried the plate carefully, balancing it in my left hand while I rummaged in my pocket with my right. I found what I was looking for after a few seconds.

Sliding the key into the lock, I turned it slowly. With a quiet click, the door opened. The stairs on the other side descended into the darkness. I felt a sense of excitement. She was down there. In the dark. Waiting for me.

I had barely taken a single step down before she began to scream. I quickly shut the door behind me, locking the sound in the cellar with us where no one else would hear it. As I began to walk down the steps, her screams grew in volume and pitch, muffled in the bag but still loud enough to make my ears ring.

“Cut that out,” I said as I reached the bottom of the stairs. She was there on the bed, just where I’d left her, making such a racket. Naked, limbs bound, bag over her head, squirming and fighting to free herself. She continued to scream, thrashing about like a fish out of water, her delicious ass pointing towards me. She looked sexy as hell. “I said cut that out.”

A new pitch to her screams.

“You either stop screaming or there’ll be trouble.”

She ignored me. What choice did I have? Sighing, I put the plate down on the cabinet next to the bed. Twisting on my feet, I raised my hand and brought it slapping down onto her ass. It sure stung my hand so it must have stung the hell out of her. At once, two things happened. A bright red palm print appeared on her buttock. She also stopped screaming.

It was only a momentary silence but it was enough to tell me she was starting to pay attention. She began with the noise again, tugging at her bonds, as if she’d be able to get free from my knotwork. I spanked her harder, whipping my hand down on her ass as she struggled to get away. Sinking onto the bed, I knelt on the back of her legs, holding her in place so I could swat her ass more easily. Then I went to work.

By the time she finally stopped screaming, my hand was aching from spanking her for so long. Her ass was burning hot, something I could easily tell as I let my fingers remain on her for a few more seconds, brushing downwards towards her thighs, my cock hardening at the slight flash of what dwelt between her legs.

I wanted her so badly.

I wanted to shove her legs apart with my knees and ram myself into her. Then she could scream all she liked. Instead, I stood up. “That’s better,” I said, taking advantage of the bag over her head to stare at her body without her knowing I was doing it. She looked incredible. Her legs were slender, pale in the sickly glow of the cellar light. Her ass was perfect, curved and flawless. I wanted to kiss my way up her back, twist her round and make her mine.

She was in more danger than she realised. The first time I’d seen her, she was in danger too.  She was three years old then, playing in her backyard without a care in the world. It was the middle of the day. The sun was high in the sky, not a cloud to be seen anywhere. But to me when I arrived, she looked like was playing in the dark, an oncoming storm rumbling in the distance that she couldn’t see but I could. She was blind to the danger, oblivious to what was building around her.

I could hear her mother and father arguing through the open window. Could she hear them too? Or was she concentrating so hard on lining up her dolls that it washed over her, the yelling growing louder as their fight grew more vicious? She was singing quietly to herself. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word…”

I knew she was in danger, that much was obvious. I didn’t know that fifteen years later, to keep her safe, I’d abduct her from her house, carry her naked to the boot of a car, bring her here, tie her up in the cellar, leave her screaming for her freedom. Back then, I had no idea any of that was going to happen.

All I’d wanted to do back then was protect her from what was happening in the house. I usually didn’t give a shit about kids. But there was something about her. I still remember the argument. Her mother was demanding he back off, yelling at him for wanting to take her away. “You can’t stop me seeing my own daughter.”

“I can if you’re drunk when you turn up. You stink of booze, Zoe.”

“Fuck you. You don’t get to tell me how to live my life anymore. I’m taking her.”

“Try it.”

It wasn’t my place to take sides. I knelt beside her in the garden. “Hi,” she said, smiling up at me. “Want to play?”

From playing in the grass to bound in my basement in fifteen years. Life is pretty strange sometimes.

She began to scream again, bringing my attention back to the present. “If you keep quiet, I’ll take the bag off,” I said. “Scream and I’ll spank you again. I can do this all day to an ass like yours.”

She kept quiet. She might have been crying. It was hard to tell. Her shoulders were hitching but she was silent. I reached down and took hold of the bag on her head, pulling it upwards, sliding it off her messed up hair.

She twisted her neck round as her head came into view, glaring at me with such venom that I almost fell backwards. She hated me. Sheer, unadulterated hatred. I didn’t mind. When she realised why I’d brought her here, she wouldn’t hate me, she’d thank me.

She looked beautiful, even with her features twisted in a mixture of rage and fear. The fear enhanced her innocence. The rage made her look sexy. It was an intoxicating mix. As I looked at her, her eyes widened, her brow furrowing as she opened her mouth and said quietly, “I know you.”

ONE

BELLA

When I first set eyes on him, I was naked. It feels strange now to think that my first reaction wasn’t fear. But then, why would it be? I had no reason to suspect what he was going to do to me, that he was going to kidnap me and do all of those things to me.

It was another beautifully sunny day. The spring had been hotter than usual and it had turned into the hottest summer in as long as anyone could remember. By the time August came around, the grass in my garden was dying, yellowed and parched, no matter how often it was watered. The flowers were wilting and so was I. I’d been inside all morning, working on my book.

Procrastinating would be a better way of putting it. The work had consisted of everything but typing. I’d rearranged my desk, organised the bedside drawers, swept the kitchen floor, the open laptop shouting at me to come and start actually hitting the keys. I finally succumbed after every item of crockery I owned had been washed up, dried, and put away.

I managed to get halfway through chapter seven before the heat inside the house got too much for me. “Just an hour,” I told myself as I went upstairs to change into my bikini. It wouldn’t kill me to sunbathe for an hour. I’d get the rest of chapter seven done afterwards. What was the point of working from home if you couldn’t enjoy the sun from time to time?

I was in my bedroom when he arrived. Having removed my clothes, I was just reaching down to pick up my bikini top when I caught sight of movement out of the window. It was a removals van. I paused to look, watching as it pulled up outside next door. Behind the van, a red car stopped and a man climbed out of it, arching his back before he turned towards the van. He glanced my way and I ducked out of sight, not wanting the first impression I gave my new neighbour to be that of my tits flashing him through the window.

He had to be my new neighbour. The way he was directing the removals men couldn’t be interpreted any other way. A new neighbour. And a handsome one at that. Once my top was on, I looked out less shyly, watching as he walked up the path to the front door and unlocked it. He looked hot, very hot. Six foot at least, solid looking, tidy black suit, dark brown hair over a face that screamed mature, confident, all the things a man should be. I felt a fluttering deep inside me and I became very aware that I was wearing nothing on my bottom half.

The height of the window meant at least no one outside could tell but I felt as if he knew. Even without him looking my way, I felt he was judging me, seeing me as nothing more than an underdressed child. I shook my head. Why did I even care what this stranger thought? I was eighteen. I was an adult. If I wanted to bend over and moon him, I could. He wasn’t the boss of me. No one was. Apart from my agent. I could flash my ass and press it against the window. Now that would be a way to break the ice. And the window.

He did look my way just as I thought that and I found myself blushing. Our eyes locked for the briefest of seconds before he vanished inside the house. I was frozen to the spot for a long time afterwards. He had looked so damned sexy, the way he’d looked at me, in that second, I thought I’d happily flash him if he told me to. I’d have done anything he told me to.

Not that it mattered. He was about twenty years older than me. Probably married. No doubt the wife and kids would be following on to join him. The house was far too big for one man on his own, especially with a removals van that size. It was a family moving in. It had to be.

The word family caught in my mind, sticking in place as if it was coated in glue. I felt a flare of jealousy. I had never had a proper family, not really. An aunt doesn’t count.

I turned away from the window and began tying my bikini bottom in place. Once it was done, I grabbed a towel and the sun cream and then headed out into the garden. The sun lounger was waiting for me in the middle of the lawn and I sank onto it, enjoying the feeling of heat soaking into my skin already. Bees droned in the flowerbeds, somewhere in the distance a lawnmower was starting up.

I rubbed sun cream into my arms, humming quietly to myself as I did so. Once I was sufficiently covered, I closed my eyes and lay back, letting my mind wander.

It wandered back to him. My new neighbour. What was he like? Would he be friendly? The suit he’d worn told me he was a professional, maybe a lawyer. The car looked expensive. The house was expensive. He had to be earning enough to pay for both. Would he hate living next door to a creative type like me? Would he even notice that I existed? Or would he be too busy making big bucks and screwing his secretary?

As I thought about him, my mind drifted in on itself until I was daydreaming. I was upstairs again only this time I didn’t put the bikini on. I came down and went out into the garden naked, feeling him watching me from his house. I laid down and he tiptoed over, staring silently whilst I pretended to sleep.

I felt myself getting hotter, though I told myself it was just the effect of the sun’s rays on me. He’d watch me. I’d let my legs slide apart and feel his eyes on me, staring hungrily as I flashed him, pretending I didn’t know he was there. Then he’d…

God, I was like a schoolgirl with a crush on one of her teachers. I had seen him for about ten seconds and already I was fantasising about him. It was ridiculous. I told myself to stop. No one that old would be interested in someone like me. No money, no prospects. Just her aunt’s house and a quarter finished book that would probably get panned anyway. If it wasn’t for the last dribbles of my advance, I’d have been working for minimum wage somewhere, not sunbathing. I should get back to work. I should get the bloody book finished and stop mucking about. How many eighteen year olds managed to even get a publishing deal? But then how many eighteen year olds have an aunt working for the publisher in question? I should be grateful for the opportunity and get to work.

In a minute, I thought to myself. The sun felt just too nice to leave. I didn’t want to sit inside in the gloom and until someone invented a laptop screen that worked outside without turning into a mirror, I couldn’t sit in the garden and type.

I think I drifted off for a while. If I’d been awake, I’m sure I would have heard him approaching. But the first I knew of his presence was when a deep voice next to my ear said, “Good afternoon.”

I bolted upright, blinking away the fuzz from my brain as I turned in the direction of the voice.

There he was, further away than I’d thought, leaning on the top of his fence, smiling over at me, the leaves of the trees behind him waving lazily as if they were saying hello as well.

“Hi,” I said, thinking again how hot he looked. “Hi.” I cursed myself for sounding like a parrot, wanting to remove the grin from my lips but being unable to. “I’m Annabelle. Bella.”

“Good afternoon Annabelle Bella.”

 His voice was like honey and gravel combined, the kind of voice that wrapped around you like a warm hug. It made my insides melt.

“Just Bella,” I said with a giggle.

“Enjoying the sunshine just Bella?”

“Yep.” My mind went completely blank. I could not think of a single thing to say. My mouth opened but all that came out was a strangled nothing. My toes curled as I fought with my brain. All the while he stared at me with an amused expression on his face, though his eyes spoke of something else, something that at that time, I didn’t understand. I understood later what it was, though of course by then it was too late to realise it was hunger. He wanted me.

TWO

JACK

I wasn’t moving far but it was still a hassle. Moving always is. The problem with a quiet life is that you tend to accumulate things. An empty house and an empty life were more my style but both those things would invite suspicion. The last thing I needed was anyone starting to wonder about me. They’d find out far more than they needed to know if they began to look. Under every stone is darkness, down there you find a lot of things that only grow in the shadows, things nobody wants to see, things nobody needs to know about, things that would get me locked up for a very long time if they were found out.

So I had stuff. Stuff was normal. Stuff kept everyone thinking good things about me. It was stuff that no one needed. I had ornaments and pictures in frames, I had a perfectly ordinary house full of perfectly ordinary things, things that said nothing about who I really was. And now I had to shift them all.

All of the things I owned were crammed into the truck in front of me. Boxing it all up had taken far too long even with the removal firm helping but at last I was on the move. It felt like a very long drive, the air conditioning doing its best to battle the overwhelming heat of the day as I crawled away from Griffin Street for the last time.

Traffic lightened as the truck headed out of the centre and into the suburbs and I followed, glancing around me at all the other quiet houses, the low fences, the neat lawns. What secrets were hidden behind those doors? Was everyone like me? How many of them were hiding things? I’d learned long ago that no one is what they appear on the surface. Everyone has darkness lurking inside them. I’m only different in that I admit it to myself, I don’t lie and pretend to be all good and pure and all that bullshit.

I’m good at hiding it though. Very good. That’s why I’ve been able to settle into this life for so long, stay out of trouble. That’s why I was able to have a perfectly civil conversation with the removal men when we arrived. None of them knew what I had planned. None of them knew that I’d chosen this house for a reason, a reason that had a lot to do with the cellar under the kitchen, a cellar ready to use.

I had barely stepped out of the car when I saw her. The bright sun meant she was almost entirely in shadow but when I glanced up at the house next door, I saw movement in the upstairs window. A young girl, no more than eighteen. A smile flickered across my lips. Just what I wanted to see. She would give me just what I needed.

I headed inside, pausing on the doorstep to look up again. She was still there. She was watching me. This was going to be easy. Once I was in, I began sending boxes to one room and then another before leaving the men in overalls to get on with their job. I had other things to think about.

Some people might have been excited to be in their new house for the first time but there was something far more exciting for me to mull over. The girl next door.

I headed upstairs and checked in each room, nodding to the man making his way back down for the next box. From the back bedroom, I could see into next door’s garden and there she was, catching my eye and keeping it.

The sight of her took my breath away. Laid on her back with her eyes closed, wearing only a bikini. I was hard in an instant. I stood and stared at her, my eyes moving down her body, taking in the swell of her chest, those flawless tits trapped in stretched fabric that would come off so easily if it was grabbed. One twist of my hand and it would be gone. Then the v between her legs, the triangle of cloth protecting the place my cock yearned to be. It had been only a few seconds of looking at her body but already I wanted her, I needed her, I had to take her. She would be mine. She would be safe from a world that might hurt her. I’d protect her. I’d only hurt her if she deserved it. If she asked for it.

“Where do you want this lot?”

I looked back over my shoulder and there was one of the removals men holding an armful of shirts. “The box split,” he said, a slightly sheepish expression on his face.

“Through there,” I replied. “And be more careful with the rest.”

When he was gone I walked back downstairs, heading into the back garden. I wouldn’t be disturbed out there. I crossed the dying lawn to the fence, leaning over it and taking a closer look at her. She really was beautiful. So innocent she had no idea of the risk of sunbathing in so little with me next door. She had no idea what I was already planning for her, punishment for flaunting her body like that. She looked as if she was asleep but there was only one way to find out.

“Good afternoon,” I said and she bolted upright as if she’d suffered an electric shock.

“Hi,” she said, smiling so sweetly it made my cock throb with need. “Hi. I’m Annabelle. Bella.”

“Good afternoon Annabelle Bella.”

That made her laugh and it was an infectious giggle that warmed my entire being.

“Just Bella.”

“Enjoying the sunshine just Bella?”

“Yep.” She looked like she was going to say something else but then she just froze like a child asked a particularly difficult question by a terrifying teacher. It was something I was used to. A lot of women did that when I looked at them. It was amusing to watch her struggle with herself. I let it last for a few more seconds before ending her torture.

“I’m Jack, Jack Rutherford.”

I held out my hand over the fence and she got up, walking across towards me. Christ, that body. It was lucky she couldn’t see how hard I was, the fence hiding the bulge in my trousers as I let my eyes trail down her and then back up to her eyes in time for her to take my hand. The feel of her skin made every nerve inside me stand on edge, rigid and ready to spring, like electricity had passed between us in that touch. Her skin was so soft, warmed by the sun, with a weak grip in her handshake, a grip that told me she’d submit easily. Perfectly. She wouldn’t fight me. I was almost disappointed by how easy this was going to be.

“Hi Jack,” she said, looking down at my hand, waiting for silent permission to let go. I gripped her fingers for a few more seconds before letting her hand slip free.

“Live with your parents, Bella?”

“No,” her eyes narrowed as she answered. “It’s my house.” She sounded slightly annoyed, a tone of voice that would earn her a spanking if she was under my roof. No one spoke to me without showing respect.

A voice called me from the house. I swore under my breath as they shouted, “Where do you want these, Mr Rutherford?”

“Would you excuse me, Bella?” I asked. “I won’t keep you from your sunbathing any longer.”

“I should really be getting on anyway,” she said. “My book won’t write itself. It was nice to meet you, Mr Rutherford.”

She turned and walked away and I didn’t move until she was inside her house, I couldn’t tear my eyes from that ass of hers as she sashayed, her hips swaying across the lawn to her door. Only when she was out of sight did I twist my head round towards the removals man. It might have looked as if I was paying attention to what he was asking me but my mind was still fixed on her. The image of her in her bikini tormented me. It was the way she’d walked away from me, teasing me, begging me to take her. I would, soon.

THREE

BELLA

I was halfway through my workout when Claudia rang. I paused long enough to answer and say, “I’ll ring you back,” as I panted down the phone.

“Are you having sex?” she replied. “You sound like you’re having sex.”

“No!” I squawked. “How likely is that?”

“It’s not often I get someone breathing so heavily down the phone.”

“I’m in the middle of my squats.”

“I bet you are.”

“I’m going now.” I hung up before she could say anything else and got back to it. I’d eaten most of a tub of chocolate fudge ice cream for supper the night before and I was regretting it, hence the workout being more intense than usual. I’d binged on the ice cream whilst binging on season three of my favourite show. I’d say what show but it’s too embarrassing to admit. I hadn’t planned to eat so much but my mind had wandered as I stared at the TV, my focus shifting to my neighbour. I’d found myself wondering what he was up to. Was he unpacking over there? On the phone to his wife? Wishing his kids a good night?

Maybe he’d done all those things. Maybe he was in the shower, stripped naked, water running down his rippling chest, trickling down to his…

That was how I ended up eating so much ice cream and watching TV for so long. It meant I had extra calories that needed burning. I ended my session with half an hour on the exercise bike in the corner of my bedroom, looking out into the garden and definitely not hoping he’d appear in his kitchen and look up at me. His window was directly across and down from mine and if he went in there to make himself a coffee, he’d see the svelte gym bunny hard at work, sweating up a storm. He’d seen me from that window last night, the memory of that was enough to make me blush and pedal faster to distract myself. I still couldn’t believe what I’d done.

I rang Claudia back when my alarm beeped the end of my thirty minutes. I leaned over the handlebar, letting my breath return to normal as I waited for her to answer. “Finished being fucked?” she asked as soon as the call connected.

“I am fucked,” I gasped. “Just not in that way.”

She laughed. “So, are you coming out to play tonight?”

“If you’re buying the drinks.”

“Sod that. We’ll get the men to buy the drinks. You bring that booty of yours.”

“You’re just jealous because at least I have an ass.”

“Yeah, well, my tits are bigger than yours.”

“No they’re not.”

“They will be in a couple of weeks.”

“Wow, you’re actually going through with it then?” I asked, glancing down at my chest. What would my boobs look like pumped full of silicone?

“Uh huh. I’ll be pneumatically enhanced in time for the beach. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You can’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”

“Nope.”

“Bullshit.”

“I haven’t, genuinely.”

“Don’t you want them a bit bigger?”

“They’re thirty four double D, that’s big enough for anyone. If they keep growing, I won’t be able to walk by the time I’m thirty.”

“Some men won’t look at anything below an F cup.”

“Yeah, well some men looked pretty happy when they saw mine last night.”

“I knew it!” she screamed. “You did get fucked.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then what are you talking about? What guy saw your puppies?”

“My new neighbour.” I blushed again as I remembered last night.

“You’ve got a new neighbour?”

“I have and he’s fucking sexy.”

“And you showed him your tits? Was this before or after he’d unpacked?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

She growled. “Stop teasing and tell me what happened. I’m your best friend, I have a right to know.”

“It’s nothing really. I was getting ready for bed and I hadn’t shut the curtains.”

“You don’t shut your curtains at night?”

“No one’s lived next door for ages. I just forgot.” It was a lie but she didn’t know that. She didn’t need to know that I’d seen him in the kitchen before I began to undress, that I’d deliberately stood by the window, slipping off my top and hoping he’d look up and see me.

“So what happened?”

“He saw me.”

“He saw your what?”

“He saw me topless.”

“You should be careful Bella. What if he’s a rapist or something?”

“Don’t worry. He couldn’t have looked more shocked if he’d tried. He just turned away. I don’t think he’s going to come over and ravish me.”

“I wouldn’t mind being ravished.”

“Me neither.” We descended into a fit of giggles, my laughter stopping abruptly when I heard a noise downstairs. “Hang on,” I said, listening hard.

“What? What is it? Has he come to spank you for teasing him?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call you back.” I hung up, keeping the phone in my hand as I went downstairs. It had sounded like someone was in the house. I walked into the living room, ready to ring the police if there was any more noise. Had I locked the back door? I wasn’t sure. I gave it a rattle and it remained firmly in place. The front door was the same. A creak of a floorboard behind me. I spun round but there was nothing. Tiptoeing to the cupboard under the stairs, I grabbed the lamp from the table next to it, yanking the door open, ready to smash the head in of whoever might be hiding from me. The only thing in there was the vacuum cleaner. It looked accusingly up at me but I ignored the glare that said you should try using me from time to time.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the stairs, nearly jumping out of my skin when the alarm on my phone went off. Shit, I was going to be late for work if I didn’t get a move on. I still had to shower and have breakfast. I felt on edge as I walked back upstairs but there was no sign of anyone in my room or the spare room. Finally satisfied that I was alone I headed into the bathroom and stripped out of my work out gear. I hit play on my phone and left the music filling the air as I glanced at my face in the mirror. No spots. That wasn’t something I could say every day.

I climbed into the shower and spun the dial, letting the hot water cascade down onto me, humming along to the song. I ran my fingers through my hair. My eyes were closed when it happened.

The shower curtain was wrenched to the side and I was grabbed. Before I even had a chance to scream, a hand was over my mouth. I lost my balance on the wet surface under my feet, stumbling and falling to one side. I caught a single blurred glance at a shadowy figure behind me, water dripping in my eyes and stopping me from seeing properly. The hand clamped on my face shifted just enough for a cloth to be crammed in between my lips. It tasted of chemicals and I did my best to spit it out as a bag was shoved over my head.

All the time that was happening, I was lashing out, clawing with my nails, doing my best to break free from the insanely strong grip of whoever had grabbed me. A drawstring on the bag over my head was tugged tight and I found myself fighting for breath, half choked as I was dragged out of the bathroom onto the landing. I was thrown to the floor, landing with a heavy thud. I twisted to crawl away but whoever it was leapt on me, wrapping something cold and plastic round my wrists. There was a clicking sound and then my hands were stuck together. No amount of pulling could separate my arms.

The same was done to my thrashing ankles. They were tied in plastic something that clicked tighter until I was trussed up and unable to fight. Ten seconds ago I’d been humming in the shower. The song hadn’t even finished. Now I was bound in two places, unable to see, barely able to breathe, being dragged naked down the stairs into the hallway, my skin stinging from where the carpet rubbed along it. It was all I could do to breathe, my nostrils pressed against the bag, bile rising up inside me as the pain of the blow wracked my body.

I was still fighting to catch any kind of breath when I was moved again. I had no idea what was happening at the time but afterwards I was able to work out what he’d done. He took me through the door in the kitchen that led into my garage. Then he bundled me into the boot of my own car. As the boot slammed shut and I was left alone in a silent darkness, any hope that I had vanished. I was being kidnapped from my own house and no one would know where I was.

In the muffled coffin-like prison I was trapped inside, I could do nothing but rock my feet to thud against the side of the boot over and over until I fell onto my back, exhausted, in pain, terrified beyond belief. I was so scared I couldn’t even cry. But as the engine of the car rumbled into life, tears began to fall of their own accord, soaking the cloth of the bag. With a shuddering motion, the car began to move, driving out of the garage and onto the street, leaving my house, my phone, my hope, all far behind me.

End of Preview

Enjoyed it? Click here to buy now.

LUCY WILD

Lucy Wild is an author living in Yorkshire with her partner and their border collie in a house full of books, sweets and more books.

Find her most recent books on her author page

Join her private fan club on Facebook

Follow her on Twitter

Check out her Instagram

Sign up for her newsletter

Please consider leaving a review to support the author’s hard work.