Forward Slash

Part of me wants to take her now. Grab her and carry her home, across the threshold and into the darkness. Knowing she’s out there now, living her life, unaware of my plans for us to be together, is a kind of delicious torture. But the time is not quite right. For now, I will have to continue to keep an eye on her. Everything about her ticks my boxes. She has the blonde hair, the blue eyes, the right proportions. As important as that, is the way she carries herself, the words she chooses to use. She is not coarse or tacky or trivial. She is intelligent and sensitive. She feels things strongly. I also sense that she has been wounded in the past, although by whom or what I don’t know. I picture her lying on my bed, happily secured, gazing up at me with respect and love, telling me all her secrets. I can’t wait to share my secrets with her too.

To whisper in her ear as she exhales her final breath, to bathe in her blood and kiss her silent mouth.

Sitting in the hotel room, aroused by this lovely fantasy that will soon be reality, I reminisced about my first Internet date, turning the corset over to its clean side and imagining it splashed with blood along with my come.

I started using the Internet in the mid-nineties. Online dating already existed then but it was primitive and there was hardly anybody using it. There were very slim pickings. But I met a beautiful girl through one of those early sites.

Her name was Diane. She was a northerner living in London in a pathetic bedsit. Lonely. Trying to make it as an actress. Extraordinarily pretty. Incredible tits – the ideal shape and size. In the perfect woman, her nipples should sit at 45 degrees from the top and point skywards. Plus, she should have a curvy hip-to-waist ratio of 0.7 and the distance between her eyes and mouth should be 36 per cent of the overall length of her face.

Luckily, I’m not quite so fussy. I only want the perfect woman for me. But Diane could have been put in a museum as an example of physical perfection.

She had a lovely vagina too. I still have it somewhere.

I was Diane’s first Internet date, she said. I told her we were pioneers. She liked that. She had this chiming laugh that I’ve read can be highly appealing, so I ticked that off as a positive even though the sound made my brain throb.

I took her out on a couple of dates. Traditional. I wined and dined her. I dazzled her with treats. She was a poor actress, living off Cup-a-Soup and thin white bread. Over dinner, I could tell she really liked me. She ticked all the boxes. She played with her hair, twirling it between her fingers, stroked the rim of her glass with her fingertips, pushed items on the table towards me, fiddled with the cheap necklace she was wearing. She looked at me then looked away before returning her gaze to me.

Yes, she definitely liked me.

She wanted to sleep with me on the second date. I was disappointed. The perfect woman waits until the third date. She was too easy. I was almost willing to give her another chance, as she was clearly overpowered by my masculinity, but I refuse to settle for anything less than perfection.

It was a shame.

But we were never meant to be. Every time I eliminate a girl, I see it as progress. One fewer possibility. Another step closer to The One.

At first light, I checked out of the hotel and went in search of a minicab. I’d been checking Katherine’s Twitter feed and Facebook page through the night, taking a little bump or two of coke to keep me awake, not that I really needed it as the adrenaline was keeping my heart pounding, even after my second orgasm. She hadn’t updated it, so I didn’t know if she had stayed over with City Boy or whether he’d chucked her out once he’d finished having his fun with her. But it didn’t matter too much.

I found a minicab office, said I wanted a cab to Herne Hill and was accompanied outside by the weary Middle Eastern driver to a heap of junk on four wheels.

‘Where in Herne Hill?’ he asked. When he got in, I held open his driver door and leaned down to him through the gap.

‘How would you like to earn a hundred pounds?’

He looked up at me with disgust.

‘No, no – not that. I’m not a fucking homo. I want you to deliver something for me.’ I showed him the slim box with the Agent Provocateur logo scripted across its pink lid. ‘This needs to go to a young lady in SE24. If she’s not in, please put it through the letter box.’

‘You pay up front,’ he said.

‘Sure, of course. Here’s the address. And if I hear it didn’t get there, I’ll be back looking for you.’ I smiled, man to man. ‘This is for a very special lady. It’s very important.’

I winked.

‘OK, no problem,’ he said. And with that, he drove off, audibly crunching into second gear as he turned the corner and disappeared.

Katherine was going to be thrilled to pieces with her gift. I just wish I could be there to see it.

Bang bang bang.

Katherine had been dreaming about her ex again – though not Clive. Funnily enough, she didn’t miss Clive at all; the early times, back when it was all so thrilling and the bed – and the carpet and the sofa and the toilets on the 22.37 out of London Bridge – drew them like magnets. Sexy magnets. She giggled in the dream, her laughter drowned out by loud banging. She pulled the pillow over her head, but the banging was insistent. Someone was knocking at the door.

She opened one eye and lifted her phone from the bedside table. Eight a.m. She’d only been asleep for ninety minutes. She’d made a sharp exit just before dawn when Fraser started pawing at her bum and asking her if she liked anal sex, and got back just as the birds were waking up in Brockwell Park.

Ordinarily, she would have ignored the banging and gone back to sleep, but she was expecting a delivery from Asos and she didn’t want to miss it. Knowing she could come straight back to bed – God bless the summer holidays – she got up, pulled on a long T-shirt and made her way to the front door.

The man on her doorstep didn’t look like a delivery man. He held up a little pink box. His eyes widened when he saw her and she realized what she must look like, with her hair sticking up like a fright wig and mascara all round her eyes.

‘It won’t fit through the letter box,’ he said.

She took it, perplexed. ‘What is it?’

‘A man asked me to deliver it to you. He said it was very important.’ He turned to go.

She scrutinized the box. Agent Provocateur. Much too expensive for her with her teacher’s wages. She’d tried to get something in the sale once but everything sold out within seconds. ‘Who’s it from?’

He shrugged. ‘He didn’t tell me his name.’

After he’d gone, she went inside and sat on the bed. She opened the box and gasped. Inside was a lovely pink-and-black slip, in a size 12, just right, and a couple of naughty little items: some black discs with little tassels, which she realized were meant for her nipples, and a small black patent-leather paddle. And beneath the slip, a special little present. A bag of coke.

She squealed with delight and grabbed her phone, finding Fraser in her contacts.

Hi Fraser – I just got your gift. Thanks so much! You naughty boy;) See you soon – if you’re lucky … xxxxxxxx

She stripped and held the slip against her. It was beautiful, but she didn’t want to make it dirty by putting it on her smelly body. The tassels looked fun, though, and after working out how to attach them, she stuck them over her nipples and admired them in the mirror, laughing. What silly things. She peeled them off and put them back into the box.

She was wide awake now – well, not wide awake. She could do with a lift. Her eyes fell on the bag of coke on the bed. It was a ridiculous hour to snort coke, but it wasn’t like she had any plans for the day. She felt like taking a couple of bumps and having a bath.

She went into the bathroom – it needed redecorating, but she couldn’t be bothered with such mundane things these days, not with Clive gone. He used to take care of all that boring stuff. She turned on the taps and sat on the closed toilet, grabbing a hand mirror, which she balanced on her lap. She shook a couple of lines out of the bag. Then shook out a little more to make two fat lines.

What a star Fraser was. Maybe she’d go back and shag him again.

9 (#ulink_e122d27f-6bfb-5293-9767-6b725fd19654)

Amy (#ulink_e122d27f-6bfb-5293-9767-6b725fd19654)

Monday, 22 July

Amy’s phone pinged at just after nine a.m. It was a text from Gary:

My friend, Lewis, the social networking expert, said he can meet you for lunch today to give you some advise. Is that OK? x

She smiled at the spelling mistake and texted back: Sure. Thanks. Can you send me the where and when?

His reply came back immediately: His name’s Lewis Vine. He said he can meet you at Azzurro outside Waterloo at 12.30. Good luck x

She wondered briefly how she was supposed to recognize him but decided she’d figure it out when she got there. She wasn’t keen on going to meet someone she didn’t know in order to talk about Twitter, but if there was any likelihood at all that it would help her find Becky, she had to do it.

As it was, she figured out who Lewis Vine was the moment she walked into the pizza restaurant. She had been here before, with Nathan, when they had just started seeing each other. In the evenings, the upstairs area was dark and quiet, making it a favourite haunt for couples who wanted to kiss more than they wanted to eat. Gary’s friend was sitting downstairs by the entrance, a copy of Wired magazine on the table in front of him, an iPhone in his hand. He had dark brown hair that touched the collar of his expensive-looking white shirt and when she opened the door he looked up and gave her a quizzical look.