The Tied Man

Against every instinct, I looked.  ‘NICE PUPPIES, LILITH!!!’ the headline screamed, and there she was on the front page, wearing the sweater she’d managed to pick up from the hospital and nothing much else, glued to the side of some infant Adonis and caught in the glare of a hundred camera flashes as they made a dash from the doorway of a nightclub.

He was holding Lilith like a man would, if she were his.  One tanned, flawless arm was curled around her shoulder, protecting her from the hordes but also undoubtedly claiming her as his own.

For all her arguments, this was where she belonged.  She fitted into that world like a jigsaw piece and in that boy, with his perfect white teeth and stylist-tousled hair, she had her perfect man.

‘Finn, don’t look at that rubbish.’ Henry tried to take the paper from my hands.

‘Fuck off,’ I snapped, and snatched it back from him.  I began to read.

‘Wild child of the British art world Lilith Bresson was up to her usual antics at last night’s upmarket Helicon Awards Ceremony, held at Neon, the celeb world’s fave Mayfair club.

Lilith, 28, enjoyed a passionate reunion with her toyboy lover and singer of the moment 21-year-old Gabriel James after he confirmed rumours that his smash hit ‘Almost an Angel’ was written for the controversial winner of ‘European Artist of the Year’.  The two have already shared a First Class romp back in June on a  flight from Alicante to Heathrow.

Back then The Herald reported how passengers were left shocked as Lilith and Gabriel had a drunken intimate adventure under a skimpy airline blanket, oblivious to the families – many with toddlers – sitting just feet away.

Stunned observers at last night’s ceremony witnessed Gabriel and a bizarrely dressed Lilith: embrace for the first time since their raunchy flight; share an X-rated kiss after the hunky singer finished the performance of Almost an Angel that he dedicated to his lover; dive into a single cubicle in the ladies’ toilets, only to reappear twenty minutes later, looking flushed and breathless.

A fellow guest said, ‘They couldn’t keep their hands off each other – Lilith didn’t even wait to say thanks for her prize before she was back in Gabriel’s arms.’

The loved-up pair left the club arm-in-arm and unwilling to talk to our reporter, and sped to Gabriel’s luxury Chelsea pad where Lilith spent the night.

This was the shocking artist’s first public appearance since her live-on-air brawl with Herald columnist and people’s favourite, Johnny Buckle.  Neither Lilith nor her agent has ever denied that she checked herself into rehab just weeks after her unprovoked attack.

Time will tell if Gabriel becomes a full-time squeeze for the exhibitionist painter, or just another notch on an impressive bedpost that includes A.C Torino’s star striker Alessandro Bertolli, actor Ben Bateman, and the bi-curious chick-lit writer Carina McGuire.’

‘Tell you what, Finn-boy – you look like you’ve been smacked right in the face!’ Coyle leered.  ‘You reckon she’s really goin’ to haul her skinny arse all the way back here for some sorry little spunk-collector when she’s got that to give her a good pokin’?’

‘Finn, don’t let him…’ Henry began, but before Coyle could even start on his next taunt I threw the paper across the kitchen and staggered from the room.

*****

I sat on the floor of the greenhouse with my knees pulled close to my chest.  I dragged hard on my thirteenth cigarette of the day, listening to the faint crackle of tobacco and paper as it burned down.  I knew exactly when I needed to stop.

Bran, dozing in a pool of glass-filtered sunlight, lazily opened one eye as I pulled up the left sleeve of my hoodie, then settled back to sleep as I turned my arm to inspect the expanse of pale skin between my wrist and the crook of my elbow.  There was a time when I would have struggled to find a clean site, but now there was only this sorry scattering of tiny white dents.  You could feel the slight raise of scar tissue if you ran a light finger down my arm, but it was one of the places on my body where clients didn’t linger.  Anyhow, I healed well.

Ironically, it was Blaine who had broken this habit.  The collection of raw, bloody craters that had spread up my arms and across the backs of my hands when we first met was not, she had coldly informed me, in keeping with the image of Albermarle Hall.

So until today’s forthcoming lapse I had stopped the thing with the cigarettes and put my energy into the thing with the temazepam instead.  I was still fucked, but only on the inside now, and that was far less likely to put a client off.

Inside my head on an endless loop Lilith turned to Gabriel and kissed him hard and laughed at her lucky escape, and I gave one last drag on my cigarette until the tip glowed and then I ground it hard into my skin at a point exactly halfway between wrist and elbow.  Lilith and Gabriel disappeared as the pain surged bright and welcome into the space they had occupied.  I sighed with the closest thing to pleasure I could feel, and Bran wrinkled her nose in her sleep as the slightest scent of burnt flesh drifted over to where she lay.