Slave to love

I could forgive her anything.

What choice did I have? I was completely in love, enthralled, captivated to the point of obsession. I was her slave.

It began in all innocence. That day in the park when I was looking out over the lake, watching the coots and the moorhens bickering, the Egyptian geese gliding by in their watery domain. She walked past me, almost brushing my arm, dressed for anything but a walk in the park. Black coat, black skirt, black sheer stocking and black stiletto boots, like the bride of Dracula. She walked right by me and said: “hello handsome.”

It wasn’t a greeting I was used to hearing, so I looked back at her, wondering who she could have been talking to. She fixed me with her stare and I had to cast my eyes down, her look was so intense. We ended up talking and had a coffee in that awful park café, and then… well, you know.

We had been together for almost a year when I began to have my doubts. The furtive looks as she said she was meeting a friend. The little smiles she made when she was looking intently at her cell phone. The “sorry, I have to meet an old friend. she is in town just for the evening…”

Cracking her passwords was a cinch. I felt like a louse doing it but what I found justified the intrusion. The Tinder account, the filthy, flirty, exchange of messages. I almost wished I had let it go by.

I could have forgiven her the first time. I could have understood the need for something… well dangerous, or exciting, or not the humdrum relationship we had settled into. I could have let it go but… well, it happened more than once. It happened again and again.

“Where are you going?”

“Darling, don’t be such a bore. Must we be joined at the hip?”

I felt like I was becoming a control freak, prying into her affairs but… I didn’t know what to think. The funny thing was that she stayed with me. Why? With all her multiple affairs with guys much better looking, more interesting, exciting… energetic? Why would she bother to stay with me? Did she need something stable, reliable? Was I her steady guy she could always come back to? I thought about leaving her but… well, how could I? I would never find a girl like her again.

When we grappled, naked, sweating, I would look into her eyes and see something beyond human. Her eyes were green and aflame, like a cat’s eyes, with a liquid fire that defied comprehension. Her lips were like a burst of blood from a severed vein, her teeth predatory. She reminded me of the dark-haired female vampires from a Hammer horror film. When she moved to kiss me I half expected her to bury her fangs in my throat. I didn’t care. I had never felt like this with anyone else.

After a while she stopped trying to cover her tracks. She would go out in the evening with the flimsiest of excuses, knowing that I knew, not caring, daring me to say something, mocking me with her sidelong smile. She would come back in a state of euphoria and I wouldn’t complain because I would feel the benefit. She would tear at my clothing in her urgency for satisfaction. Hers of course, but inevitably mine into the bargain. At times, I half expected her to pull out a dagger and slit my throat as she climaxed. I wouldn’t have cared if she had, I was so far under her spell. What could I do?

Each time she went out and each time she came back I knew that she had stolen a life, taken a man away from himself, eaten him up and spat him out. And yet I was still here and every time she came back to me, and every morning I awoke, astonished that I was still there beside her.

I could forgive her anything but she had to be stopped.

That last night, I logged into her account and saw that she had set up a liaison in a bar in Soho. His name was Geoff and they had arranged to meet in the Nellie Dean pub in Dean Street. I messaged, pretending to be Delilah.

“Sorry,” I said. “Change of plan. Can we meet at the Blue Posts instead?”

It didn’t matter what pub, I couldn’t let her get away with it again. I called the police.

“If you want to catch the Soho bar killer, be at the Nellie Dean, Dean Street at 7.30pm. She will be looking for a man called Geoff. Please don’t let her get away.”

I could forgive her anything. But I couldn’t allow her to take yet another man’s life. I already had at least seven on my conscience, to my eternal shame.

It had to end.

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