Junction X by Erastes (digital ebook reader .TXT) 📗

“It’s not been going on long, a few weeks.”

I could see his mind working, and I was grateful he wasn’t as privy to my movements as he used to be. There weren’t many places I had the opportunity to meet anyone except for work. Or the wife of a client. Let him think that.

“And?” he demanded. “What’s she, you know, like?”

His skin is hot and when he kisses me he closes his eyes and his fingers curl. I want to see if his toes do too.

I could continue to tell the truth, grateful that the word for fair haired men was the same for fair haired women—if spelled differently. “Blond. Slim. Nice eyes.”

“You have such a thing for blondes,” he laughed. “I bet she’s got no tits and no hips, either. Like Valerie.”

I want to hold his bare hips in my hands. I want to kiss the hollows, trace his hipbones with my fingers

I laughed in spite of myself at that. “No. You are right.”

“And have you?”

 I glared at him.

“Oh come on, don’t go all chivalrous on me. You wouldn’t have told me this much if you didn’t want to tell me it all.”

“No, we haven’t. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Why the hell not?”

“There are…obstacles.”

“Ahhhh.” He sat back, his face suddenly world-weary. “She’s married.”

“There is family to consider, yes.” I was almost proud of myself for not lying to him. I allowed him to lie for me.

“I understand completely. And so you have nowhere to do the deed. There are hotels, old boy. I can give you some names.”

I shrugged.

“Too sordid for you?”

“I don’t like the idea, no.” It was impossible, in fact. No doubt there were grubby little places in London that turned a blind eye to two men for a healthy tip, but I didn’t know which ones and couldn’t ask—and there were none in my town.

“Then it seems to me that you’ll have to get a flat,” he said. “Plenty of them on the market, more expensive in London than round here, obviously, but as I don’t know where this blonde beauty is from…”

It wasn’t something that I’d considered up to that moment. I’d been thinking of stolen moments here and there, but no place was going to be any use, not for what I wanted to do to him. With him. It was still risky, though.

As if Phil had heard my thoughts, he echoed them. “Of course it’s chancy, whichever way you play it. Somewhere you can both go to without being seen, and then there’s the rent. Does Valerie check your accounts?”

I shook my head. It was all spiralling into something sordid. The grimy pub, the leering expressions. A flat just for…assignations. It shouldn’t be like this. Something hidden and backstreet. I’d spoiled it. Spoiled it by telling him.

“Good. Well, the first and most obvious place I can think of is the flats above the station.”

“Are you mad?”

“Not at all. Makes perfect sense to me.”

“It’s the busiest place in the area!”

“Only at certain times. Eddie, use your head. Morning and evening rush hours are busy. So are Saturday morning and evening. That’s about it. The rest of the time…try going down there at eight in the evening or first thing on a Sunday morning. Ideal. Big car park. A train so your lady-love can arrive discreetly, if necessary. The only access to the flats is the door in the tunnel under the tracks; time it right and no one will see you coming or going.”

He winked at me and I felt sick again, guilt and fear poisoning me. I finished my pint and pushed my chair back. I didn’t want to discuss it with him anymore; he was already too smug about it. He was right about the flats—but he knew. He knew where I’d be. I knew I’d made a mistake, telling him.

I led the way out and we drove back in the same brittle silence that we’d arrived in. As we reached his driveway, I pulled up without driving in and braced my arms against the wheel without looking at him.

“Eddie?” I knew my face was revealing my growing annoyance, but I didn’t really care. “Eddie, I’m just trying to help.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I’m flattered, really. And you know I won’t say anything. You know that, right? It makes no difference to us.” He reached across and squeezed my crotch quickly, then let it go.

“Another time.” He believed everything he’d just said; I didn’t doubt it for a minute. But he was deluding himself, and he’d underestimated me for the last time. It made all the difference in the world.

Chapter 12

It is one thing to have a plan and another to effect it. In a day or so, I had pushed aside the thought that it had been Phil who had suggested the station. The image of Alex—that day at the Toy Fair—holding The Junction sign in his fingers and looking so bloody beautiful razed Phil’s leering expression from my mind and I managed to convince myself that it was meant to be. Trains had brought us together, I rationalised, and oh, I was so good at rationalisation.

After a while, I couldn’t think of any other place that would be as perfect, and when I sat down to write a letter to the Railway Board asking about letting a flat, I knew that I’d be disappointed if they turned me down.

My talent for deception entered a new level at this stage. It was at this point that the old Eddie died forever, I think, for there wasn’t a day after this when I wasn’t lying to someone. Perhaps because it was I’d stopped lying to myself.

I wrote on plain notepaper, giving a Post Office address that I had once set up to arrange a secret delivery of a gift for Valerie. I said that I was a travelling salesman who often needed to base his operations in the south of