Dani

Chantal strutted onto the patio, glided down the stone steps, threw her lady-bundle onto the sun lounger, and faced the camera. The sun lit up her burnt sienna hair, accentuating her crème caramel extensions. She raised her arms and clawed at her shocking mane. A stray kiss-curl brushed her lips.

Raising her brows, fluttering her lashes, she let an arm hang around the full curve of her bum, her slim fingers scratching the backs of her greatest assets, her faintly-tanned thighs. Chantal was modelling sexy lingerie: a candy apple red bra, a crotch-hugging red thong, sheer black tights fringed with delicate lacy bits, classic rhubarb stilettoes. She purred like a contented cat,

‘What do you think, Dani, good?’

‘Very good, Chantal. Can you just turn to face me? That’s it. Legs slightly apart. Lovely.’

Dani took five consecutive shots of her muse, then nodded, watching avidly as she stripped off her bra and thong.

Beautiful, quite beautiful.

Chantal squatted on her tummy. Dani felt her smooth skin as she reclined on the sun lounger sipping pink gin, closing her eyes, gently caressing her muse’s breasts, the dimples in the small of her back, her pert buttocks. Finding the girl’s intimacy overwhelming. Barely able to contain her excitement. The divine thrill of Chantal’s naked body, rubbing, gently, against hers in the heat of the torrid afternoon.

She wiped the sun-tears from her eyes. The sea’s glare made her cry. Her muse raked her shock of caramel in a thick drape, so that her bulk hung heavily down one side of her blushing face. Fascinating, the way Chantal’s act of facial exposure made her blush in a rash over her cheeks, neck, chest, breasts, tummy, thighs, heightening the delicate fawn in her freckles. Fascinating, how her intimate exposé gave her face colour, her thin neck, the gilded look of a swan.

Dani fantasized, feeling her girl’s tongue probe her mouth, gagging her with an obscene desire. Chantal stopped rubbing herself on her lady’s tummy, stood up, and put on her swimsuit. 

The hooped bullring, crudely torn through her left earlobe, gave her the appearance of a gypsy, a sultry private dancer in the closed court of her lady. She bared her teeth, her cheeky gap, gave Dani a fierce snarl, breathed in at her midriff, let her arms hang freely, flaunting her bold egg yolk yellow swimsuit, its plunging neckline, swivelling her hips to the left. Crying out for her,

‘Chanteuse!’

She heard the camera click.

‘How was that, Dani?’ she cooed.

Chantal knew full well that she was picture-perfect, an undiscovered talent about to go viral. Picardie had her fame arranged at a grand internet auction of Chantal Merlin to fashion houses, modelling agencies, journals, magazines, webcams, individual clients around the world. Such was the promise of stardom, the share of the spoils, that she never thought to question Dani’s background, or motives.

Her cot was an insult, the room tiny, but she could live with her minor discomforts in the pursuit of wealth. There was little else for her to do at the beach house but clean, launder, serve food, and shop. Other than please her,

‘Perfect!’ Dani affirmed, ‘Have you prepared our picnic for this afternoon?’

Chantal crossed her arms behind her back and counted her fingers.

Ham, brie, fromage bleu, pâte, anchovies, eggs, baguette, olives, vine tomatoes, grapes. Oh, and champagne! Mustn’t forget the champagne!

‘Yes! Everything is ready.’

‘I think I shall wear a dress today, Dani,’ she added, pronouncing her name darn-e as in a curse or mend in a holed sock, ‘If I may? Please? It would be so lovely to wear my dress.’

Dani’s cheeks sagged, like the cheeks of a face struck with severe Bell’s Palsy,

‘Of course, Cheri, but be careful not to get your hem wet when we go rowing.’

After she had changed out of her swimsuit, Chantal assembled the picnic hamper and loaded it into the boot of the artist’s splendid pea-green, yellow-wheeled, Citroën 2CV. They set off in high spirits, Dani driving carefully round the hairpin bends, taking a narrow, winding track, high up into the vertiginous no-man’s land.

Every so often, they spotted a memorial headstone standing in the straw-dry grass by the roadside; marking the place where unsuspecting tourists inadvertently motored too close to the edge, and tumbled down the steep slope. Occasionally, when the road veered to the right, Chantal caught sight of the acres of charcoaled trees decimated by the frequent forest fires. She thought of the flume Dani pointed out to her, burning on the inaccessible mountainside, their eternal burning flame.

After an hour, the road widened and wound downhill, through shady olive and lemon groves, to a line of pine trees. Dani pulled over, drove down a dusty track, and parked the 2CV in the shade. Chantal carried the hamper down to a short strip of brown sand, punctuated with dead cones, and spread the blanket. They picnicked under the pines dressed in wide-brim straw hats to keep the sun out of their eyes. The artist didn’t drink,

‘Drinking, rowing and driving don’t mix,’ she opined, eating sparingly: a few vine tomatoes, some olives, a sprig of grapes.

It was left to Chantal to eat the lion’s share. Her hostess showed her the dregs of the champagne,

‘Come on, Cheri. Such a shame to waste it.’

After Chantal had finished quaffing and packing the hamper, they went off to find the boat.

‘I think I may have drunk too much champers,’ she slurred dreamily. ‘It’s so calm and peaceful out here on the lake, don’t you think Dani?’

‘I do! The glare of the sun off the water, the slop of water against our little boat, the stir of my oars in the cool, clear lake. I find it all so soporific. See how clear the water is! Can you see the carp, grazing in the streamer weeds?’

Dani stopped rowing, letting the boat glide to a halt in one of the secluded bays that gave the grand lake its irregular shape. It was impossible to see all of the bays from one vantage point, or, indeed, to be seen. They were alone where no-one could find them. Dani had planned the day, Tuesday, and time: siesta time, to perfection. There were no other boaters. They wouldn’t be disturbed.

Chantal leaned against the side of the boat, peering into the crystal-clear water. She could see right down to the streamer weed, huge fish grazing, heads down. The view reminded her of an aquarium. She blinked her stiffened eyelashes, turning her head away: the transparency made her feel queasy. Her head span.

The water must be at least five metres deep here, she estimated. 

‘You must be tired out, after your labours this morning,’ Dani observed, ‘Why don’t you have a cat nap, Cheri? I am happy to stay here and rest awhile, to sit, and dream.’

‘Mm!’ Chantal stretched her arms, and sighed. ‘You make the lake sound so romantic. I shall! I shall sleep while you rest on the lake, watching over me.’

She closed her eyes, bowed her head, her chin flopping onto her chest, and fell asleep.

‘Sweet dreams, Chantal,’ whispered Dani, ‘Sweet dreams.’

She couldn’t take her eyes off of her muse, slumped on the seat facing her, dozing in her boat. The sun lit up her burnt sienna hair. She wiped a wisp of gold off of her brow, letting her fingers brush her lips. Chantal smiled, resting her arms on her legs, her slim hands drawing up the hem of her navy floral print dress, revealing her lightly-tanned thighs, holding her legs slightly apart.

Dani gasped at the sight of her blueberry-patterned cotton briefs, her well-moulded shape. She reached forward and pushed both her hands firmly up the soft insides of the girl’s thighs, her fingertips, placed, within easy touching distance. 

‘What do you think, Dani, good?’ the girl murmured.

‘Very good. Can you come a little closer? That’s it. Legs apart. Lovely.’

She leaned forward and slipped her fingers inside Chantal’s damp briefs, relishing the lush feel of her fine hair. Chantal gasped pleasurably, surprised by the intimacy of her lady’s inspection.

‘Perhaps I should take my dress off for you,’ she purred, ‘Would you like me to take off my dress?’

Dani inhaled deeply and nodded, watching her muse stand unsteadily and strip in front of her.

Beautiful, quite beautiful.

Chantal gave her a fierce snarl, letting her arms hang freely, woozily flaunting her small breasts, swivelling her bare hips to the left. She brushed her lips against her lady’s face, relishing the sensation of her tingle-touch, her lambent tongue licking her out as if she were the residue of a pink ice cream coupe glace. She felt the boat rock. Felt the boat tilt,

‘Dani!’ 

Then she was floating in the ice-cold water. The crystal-clear water. Staring at the carp. Kicking and screaming. Her burnt sienna hair splayed. Her liquid mane of caramel wrapped around her frozen face.

Beautiful, quite beautiful.

Floating, like a freefall foetus, drifting in her full womb.

Dani relaxed, slitting her eyes, barely able to contain her excitement at the sight of Chantal, drowning in the ice-cold water. In the scalding heat of the afternoon. Her muse, rolling on her front, a Nyad, a nude mermaid without a tail. Turning barrel-shapes like a pared woman-carrot, for her, in the water.

Look at the froth coming out of her pink mouth! See her body, roll, wash and tumble!

‘Oh, my dear, you can doggy-paddle, can you.’ she remarked, ‘swim to me, that’s a good girl.’

‘Huurgh! Help me! I can’t swim! Huurgh!’

‘What a shame, Cheri. Neither can I.’

Desperate to stay alive, Chantal clawed the rim of Dani’s little rowing boat. Gripping the side with her white digits. Breaking her fingernails. Chantal was tipping her boat over!

Can’t have that!

‘Huurgh! Help me into the boat!’

‘I’m sorry, Chantal. I can’t help you. You’ll tip the boat over, you see. Then what’ll I do?’

Chantal gawped in horror as Dani forcibly prised her fingers from the rim of the boat, then pushed her startled head underwater with her bare hands, launching her, like the world’s first woman torpedo. Her blue head bobbed up, barely an oar’s length out.

An oar’s length?

Dani wielded, brandished, the oar like a sword, like King Slayer in Game of Thrones! Chantal’s eyes bulged, salted, red, with horror. Her mouth frothed and screamed. Dani pushed the blade of the oar into her navel, the sexy bull’s eye in Chantal’s slim tummy, forcing her arms and legs to pump like a jellyfish. Chantal wouldn’t drown! Pumping and pulsing, a jellyfish in the clear water. Dani freed her, let her blurt, and spurt, and spew out water so that she could scream. On the grand lake where no-one can hear you scream.  

‘Huurgh! No!’

Then, she raised the blade of the oar and spliced her muse’s beautiful neck,

‘Au Revoir Chantal!’

*****

Faith’s fuzzy features appeared behind the frosted partition to the bedroom. As it was her first day as Dani’s muse, she was reluctant to disturb her. She tapped sharply on the rough plate glass,

‘It’s only me, Faith? Please may I come in?’

Dani looked up from her painting. She was having difficulty with the cloudy grey sky. Grey skies presented her with turmoil, a conflict between the dark and light. It was raining heavily outside, tiny meteorites of distilled water splashed and fractured on the four stone steps that led to the churning sea.

She had set her easel on a spattered groundsheet in front of the window on the pink tiled floor, not wishing to soil her bobble rug. The art was her landscape: the sky, the mountains and sea, her patio, the grey divan.

Faith had arrived in the middle of the night, bedraggled after a lengthy hike from the nearest village, unable to find a taxi. Dani had undressed her, put her to bed, and let her sleep on in the morning, before she officially became her companion. It was nearly lunch time.

‘Of course, you can come in. You don’t have to ask. My poor girl, you must be exhausted.’

Faith slid the door open, padded barefoot up to the artist, and stood at her shoulder, admiring the watercolour, its drab, dull scene matching perfectly the gloomy vista outside.

‘I am exhausted,’ she stated, throwing an arm, ‘A joker launched a drone over Stansted.’

‘Oh dear! Well, you’re here with me now, and that’s all that matters. Did you sleep well in your cot?’

‘Yes, thank you. I made you a tuna fish salad and freshly baked cob with iced mineral water.’

Dani glanced over her shoulder, ‘You have it Faith.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said: you have it. I seldom eat.’

You must eat, Faith thought but didn’t say, you’ll fade away. ‘At least drink some water?’

Dani placed her brush on the palette and twisted upon her pow wow to face her,

‘I never drink water. It makes me ill. Please, take it away.’

Faith tutted, turned on her heels, and marched off to the kitchen. When she returned, the artist was painting the olive-green mountains. She spotted a void at the centre of the canvas,

‘You haven’t painted in the sea?’

Dani shied away from her, ‘I never do. The thought of water appals me.’

‘I’ve cleaned the bath, toilet, hall and kitchen,’ Faith confirmed, ‘I think I’ll go and rest in my cot now, and read my book, if that’s alright?’

Dani leered at her, ‘Of course, dear, mustn’t let those bleary eyes spoil your looks, must we?’

Faith nodded, curtsied, tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. She left the room.

The hall was dark and dingy, lit only by the half-light dulling through the frosted front door. A whole wall was devoted to paintings of rainy scenes in Paris: a drab street in Montmartre, a crowded flea market near Notre Dame, a packed river boat gliding under Pont Neuf, shoppers braving the rain outside the Moulin Rouge.

She studied the prints more carefully, a restaurant: Le Consulat, a patisserie, a brasserie: Le Palmier. An artists’ market was closing down: the artists were covering their art, folding their wooden easels, scurrying to the nearest shelter. The art came to life before her eyes. Faith heard mothers scolding their children for splashing in puddles. Shoppers groaning as their brollies were blown inside-out by gusty winds. Old men greeting each other in rain-soaked streets. Everybody huddled under shelter, fleeing the pouring, driving rain, the seeping spouts of water.

The prints were framed in olive-green: the colour of the mountains, or flame-red: the burning flume, the eternal flame. She thought of the woman fading away, shrinking, dying. Her urgent message:

You must come now, Faith.

Each painting bore an inscription:

Paris: Il va pleuvoir! Daniela Picardie.

There was no upstairs at the beach house. Other than the entrance, which opened onto a narrow country lane, and the door to her lady’s boudoir, the hall had two solid oak doors with wrought-iron handles.

The door on the right led to the kitchen, a throwback to the Fifties with an enamelled cooker, deep marbled sink, draining board, and old-fashioned larder. No mod cons. Propped against one white-washed wall was a wonky wooden chair and pine table. A table for one: Faith. The kitchen ended in a dark cubby-hole crammed with pails, mops, bric-a-brac from the patio, pots, pans, more paintings of Paris in the rain. Daniela’s obsession with water: negative, depressing, images of water, bordered on the bizarre.

Faith shook herself out of the daze. To the left of the hall a half-sized door led to her room. She stooped, bent double at the waist, and stumbled inside. Her bedroom was like a cupboard. There was barely enough room for the small chest of drawers, a little basket-weave corner chair, and her cot. She slid down the wooden frame, climbed atop the mattress, snuggled her head in the soft child’s pillow, curled up in the foetal position, and fell asleep. Faith dreamed of her knight in shining armour, galloping to her side on his gleaming white charger, gathering her up in his strong arms, rescuing her. Felt her body lift towards a distant beacon of white light. Read the kindly look on the knight’s face.

Faith woke with a shock, pouring with sweat. She checked the Tom & Jerry clock on her pillow. No time had passed at all. She rolled her head to the left. Saw her phone by her face. Faith had a new message, from him. He’d be here for her, to rescue her one fine day in time. She fell into a dreamless sleep.

Falling asleep, hunched up in a baby’s cot inside a hot cupboard, dressed in tee-shirt and shorts was a daft idea. She woke drenched in sweat. They say men sweat and women perspire. Faith sweated because she had the physique of a man built through her sheer graft and persistence into the body of an eighteen-year old gymnast, the antithesis of the debilitated Dani.

She swung her legs out of the bed and tried to stand up straight, feeling the warmth of the bare wood floor percolate through the soles of her feet, finding that she couldn’t. The white-washed ceiling was too low. To her intense irritation, she realised she would have to dress in the hall.

Her clothing was strewn over the basket-chair after her stressful arrival. Faith had literally crashed out in the cot, woken, and started her unusual role as artist’s companion. She reflected on how far she had come in her troubled life:

Faith Geatish was abandoned as a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and dumped next to the food bank behind Haughton supermarket. She had never managed to trace her mum. Or her dad, who was rumoured by the locals to have run off with a part-time cleaning supervisor from Aigburth. In her heart she knew her mum died that snowy night in January.

Her loving foster parents, Esther and Jonas, raised the little girl like their real daughter, Claire. The girls attended the local infant, junior, and secondary modern schools. Claire was a bright spark, always top of the class at maths, physics, chemistry and biology: subjects Faith couldn’t understand. She preferred sport, winning the school cross country race three years running, excelling at field and track events, joining the nearest running club, Myrtlesham AC.

Opposites attract. The teenage girls became lifelong friends. Or so Faith thought. At the age of sixteen, Claire won an academic scholarship to a boarding school, East Dene High in Sussex. They drifted apart. Claire changed; became distant, aloof. She mixed with a different social clique, dare she say, different class of girl. Her life was transformed. She rarely came home to see her parents, preferring to while her time away at all-nighters, rock festivals, wild parties.

Faith felt confused, insecure, worthless. She began to binge eat, and put on excessive weight. She hated herself every time she stared in the bedroom mirror at her folds of flab, her drooping boobs, her fat bum, the bloated tummy, her chef’s arms, and pig’s thighs.

The atomic bomb dropped on her seventeenth birthday when Esther and Jonas sat down with her on the threadbare sofa and broke the news. She wasn’t their daughter. Faith burst into tears, fled the room, went upstairs, locked herself in and stayed there, refusing food or drink, swearing at her false mum, wishing her crazy world would go away.

On the third night, she self-harmed, trying to cut out her puppy fat with a carpet knife. Jonas burst in just in time to save his daughter’s life. There was blood everywhere: thick, congealed, soaking, steaming blood, saturating the candy-striped duvet, the crimson bedsheet, her pillows.

Need-to-buy-my-princess-new-bed, Jonas’s brain check-listed, his mind’s default method for coping with the abject bloody horror. He swept up his blonde-haired girl, patching her up as best he could with torn strips of bloodied sheet, gathered her in his loving arms, and ran past Esther. She was screaming, dialling 999. He bundled his girl’s limp body into his sidecar, then shot off down the A414 towards Princess Alexandra Hospital on his Harley motorcycle, a bat out of hell.

Dad, guardian dad: who cared who he was, or what he was? Jonas saved his just-as-loved, just-as-precious-as-Claire, just-as I love you, kid, now don’t you die on me, hold on, kid, as Claire. He and the A&E Superstars saved Faith’s life that night.

The wasted young adult spent the next six months in and out of a psychiatric ward. Some bright spark had the common sense, the human decency, to keep the poor girl off Lithium, ECT and Risperidone. To give her half a chance to rehabilitate, and help her start afresh.

Claire came home. Fuck her academic career. Claire came home to be with her kid sister.

At the age of seventeen years and nine months, Faith Geatish accompanied her doting dad to the gym. There she met a stunning brunette with a big heart and can-do attitude, who burned her out till her bones ached, who worked the gross slabs of fat off her gym-flailed body until the muscles bled out of her torso. They became best friends, and fell in love.

From the day she met Kirsty, Faith Geatish never looked back.

*****

The beach house was stifling hot, humid. The rain stopped falling. Images of wisps of steam, rising off a warm patio, came to mind. Faith scooped up her sports bra, red fitness pants, towel, postcards and pen, and bolted for the kitchen.

There was no sign of Dani, she must be having a cat-nap. The wasting caused intense wearying in the artist’s joints. She routinely took three hours sleep in the morning on her divan, four hours siesta in the afternoon, and liked to be in bed by dusk.

Faith suddenly felt guilty, arriving in the early hours: the drone at Stansted: her feeble excuse for missing the flight. Truth be told, she was in the gym pumping iron and just forgot the time. Dani’s face was a picture, drained of all colour, blanc like the sea in her paintings, when she arrived. What was that all about?

She changed and left her dirty clothes in a neat pile on the floor for hand-washing after the lady retired for the night. There was no washing powder under the sink, no linen basket, or pegs. Even the stale, damp atmosphere felt temporary, as if time was running out.

Her informal au pair agreement expired in mid-September, when she hoped to return home and commence training as a PE instructor with Kirsty. Faith doubted Dani would last that long; the woman hardly ate or drank. She went to the larder, found a beaker, poured herself some water.

The gymnast sat at the kitchen table and stared at the picture on the first postcard: a panoramic beach scene from Port Grimaud. She had camped in a tent a shell’s throw from the sandy beach when she was sixteen with Claire, Esther and Jonas. Her first and only holiday abroad. The happiest time of her life.

She recognised the grade II listed players, as Esther laughingly called them, at leisure. The Germans in their power boats. The French on water skis, jet-skis, wind-surfing. Les Anglais squatting in the sand. Basting their roasted fat. Stuffing their faces: beignets de pommes, glâces de citron, frites. Succumbing to the charms, necklaces, and bracelets of the tall lookie-lookie men who arrived in droves from northern Africa to sell their wares. The jet-set on the other hand, Esther elaborated, lived on floating gin palaces off St Tropez, dancing the night away in exclusive clubs, dining in the Michelin-starred restaurants scattered around the harbour. Faith turned the card over, filled in the address, and wrote:

Dear Esther, Jonas and Claire, arrived late last night, my fault! Beach house is beautiful, overlooks a pretty bay, surrounded by mountains? Room’s a bit small! I’ll get used to it! Guess what? It rained today! Mme Picardie seems like a nice lady. Think I’ll enjoy my stay. Wish you were here? Ha! Ha! Miss you lots. Faith x  

She made a note to visit the village in the morning to buy baguettes, brie, pâte, olives, wine, and stamps. She checked her phone. There was only 2% power remaining. She hadn’t brought a charger. Perhaps she would find one in the village.

Dani didn’t appear to communicate. There was no telephone or tv set, not even a radio in the kitchen. Faith picked up the other card, a seedy-looking print of a mermaid, and wrote:

Darling Kirsty, dreamed of you last night, lying in my arms. Miss you beyond words! Beach house is beautiful, overlooks a pretty bay, surrounded by mountains. Room’s a shit-hole. I’ll get used to it. Guess what? It rained, yay! Picardie’s weird, clingy, makes my flesh creep. Still, I haven’t been forced to pose yet. Miss you so much, you’re in my heart, I love you, Faith xxx  

Faith left the postcards on the kitchen table, took her towel, and padded over to the larder. One of the cold stone shelves was filled with stoppered bottles of mineral water. She grabbed a neck and entered the hall, surprised to see a framed picture of a young woman resting against a beige stone wall, in the shade of an olive tree, among the paintings.

She inspected the photo. The hair was definitely different: a cascade of lush burnt sienna flowed from her harsh central rift, over her shoulders, and kissed her pancake-flat chest. But there was no mistaking the gaunt facial features: the pallid complexion, hollow cheeks, dry-chapped lips, or the tiny head. Her arms and legs were bone-thin, her joints jutting through the parchment skin of her elbows and knees. The unflattering iris print dress, its tight red sash and knee-length hem, bore testimony to the skeletal figure that barely lived inside.

Faith gasped at the signature, scrawled recklessly across the portrait:

Dani, June 2018.

Last month! The woman’s inked-in irises had been gouged with the tip of a biro? What kind of sick mind did that? Her body shivered, involuntarily, as she approached the frosted glass door,

‘Dani? May I come in, please? It’s only me?’

There was no answer.

Faith let out a long sigh of relief and slid back the heavy partition. The artist was lying huddled one side of the Joelle facing the mirror. She made out her tiny face, hooked nose, sleeping eyes,

Ah, she’s away with the fairies! You sleep on, Dani!

She tip-toed to the sliding glass, inched it open, held her breath, praying she wouldn’t conjure up a draught, and glanced backwards. The skeleton stirred, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

Faith exhaled as her feet hit the hot flagstones chiding herself for her own stupidity:

Geatish! What’s got into you?

She examined her nails. They were chewed to the quick. Carefully, Faith slid the door closed, sat on the divan, and guzzled down half a litre of water. Her left eye wandered, squinting to the right; she was nervous. She brought it under control. She slid her fingers inside her fitness pants and scratched the irritating itch in her groin.

Stop it, girl! Pull yourself together. Why the stress all of a sudden?

Faith looked out across the bay. The sea was royal blue spattered with olive green where the trees reflected off the clear water. Far away in the distance she saw a yacht in full sail.

Her knight in shining armour, come to save her?

She snapped out of her dream and hit the deck. Working her body to the limit Faith completed a hundred press-ups, squat thrusts, cobras, planks, half-planks, pelvic thrusts, more press-ups. Jogging-on-the-spot. Pushing her muscles until they ached. Thrilling to her rush of adrenalin under the hazy sun. She collapsed on the divan exhausted, mopped off her slick body sweat with her towel, sipped lukewarm water, until she relaxed, and felt herself cool, slightly,

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Faith felt her scalp burning under her thin blonde hair, her pale beige skin blistering sore, blood-blush red. Hot, sticky and sunburnt, she crept as far as the glass, and looked inside. Dani was still asleep. Relieved, Faith crossed the bedroom, turned a ceramic door knob, stepped inside, and locked the door securely behind her.

If her cot room was small, the toilet-come-washroom was miniscule. Its white-washed roof, complete with dusty cobwebs and garden spiders, sloped in a similar slant to her cage, making it impossible for her to stand up. There was a grubby portal high up on the outer wall, covered in mould. No daylight. A snarled-up wall fan. No air.

She switched on the light to the doll’s house room, instantly struck by the stench of stale sweat, urine, faeces. The previous occupant, none other than charming Dani, hadn’t flushed the loo which gaped like a black hole in front of her. The left wall was bare, devoid of features. To the right there was a dirty wash basin with a pine shelf hung under a smeared cracked glass mirror.

Cracked! Seven years bad luck!

Coo, sarked Faith, this is nice!

She flushed the toilet. Ugh!

Faith turned to study the fascinating collection of face flannels that her host had laid on for her, to cats lick herself clean with. Picked them up, one at a time. Inspected them. Sniffed them. She even came up with a rhyme to describe them:

This little flannel has curled hairs, this little flannel has one, this little flannel has stale sweat, this little flannel has none, and this little flannel went wee, wee, wee, wee, all the way home.

She giggled. On the pine shelf, between the pink toothbrush and the red toothbrush, stood a sensitive male roll-on deodorant.

No way!

Other than a rolled-up tube of toothpaste, that was the washroom.

The shit-hole from hell, Faith opined. She’d come across worse, not.

She struggled for breath, dreading the approaching wodge of claustrophobia that pressed at her nostrils. Her hair was soaking wet, her head and body bubbling, oozing sweat. She felt heavy, felt the urge, pulled down her fitness pants and undies, crouched and peed, sighing with relief as she emptied her bladder. Faith fumbled with the empty cardboard loo roll, gave up, then waddled across to the wash basin. Now, which flannel? Her ears popped at the sound of a gentle knock. She heard her mouth rasp against the door.

Dani!

‘Are you alright in there, Cheri?’

Faith squirmed, ‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’

If I can find a clean flannel to wipe my arse with.

‘Why?’

‘It’s just that you’ve been in there for ages and I wanted to tell you about tomorrow.’

‘What about tomorrow?’ the muse snapped, grabbing any flannel, the first, red one, any one.

‘I’d like you to pose for me. Can I interest you in my garden furniture?’

Faith turned on the tap, the rusty lukewarm water, took off her sports bra, and washed her armpits clean, down there, grabbed the second flannel, and cats-licked herself from head to toe,

‘Sorry?’

‘My little joke,’ Dani sneered, ‘Once you’ve visited the village shop and stocked up on toilet tissue…’ she paused for effect, ‘I’d like you to pose for me. You will pose for me, won’t you?’

Pouring with sweat, Faith gathered her things and prepared to make a dash for it,

‘Of course.’

‘Good! Then I thought we might go for a picnic. I keep a little rowing boat on a lake near here.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Faith crowed, ‘Dani?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Would you mind looking the other way, please?’

Faith streaked past the artist, clutching her damp sports gear to her breasts, then went to collect the postcards. Only to find they had disappeared.

*****

She was floating in ice-cold crystal-clear water like a foetus in a womb. Froth was coming out of her pink mouth. She clawed the rim, gripping the side of the boat with her white fingers, her broken nails. Staring in horror. As her fingers were prised off. As her startled head was pushed underwater with bare hands. Her blue head bobbed barely an oar’s length out. Dani wielded, brandished, the oar, like a sword, like King Slayer. Her eyes bulged blood red with fury. She screamed…

Faith woke up, dripping with sweat, clasping the clock in her hands. She unfurled herself and sat up in her cot. A warm jet of liquid rinsed her cleft and buttocks. She’d wet the bed. Wet the bed for the first time since she was a child. Faith heard Esther’s voice, scolding her,

‘Naughty girl! You wet the bed. You mustn’t ever wet the bed!’

Feeling miserable, a child once more, sitting in her cot, wondering about her, a light came on in her brain. She cast her mind back to the night when the girls sat on her bed, laughing and playing around as if they were children…

‘I put this finger here,’ Claire giggled, tracing her forefinger across the creased paper map, ‘I put that finger… there!’

‘Oh, stop it! Stop it!’ Faith howled, ‘You know I don’t like it when you play games with me.’

The young woman smiled benignly at her. She loved her dearly. She was going to miss her.

‘I found an advert on the ’net,’ she fessed.

Faith was busy painting her toenails lurid tangerine,

‘What kind of advert?’

‘An advert for a holiday job.’

Her sister struggled to conceal the thrill in her voice.

‘A modelling assignment,’ she added, eagerly.

Faith stopped painting and looked at Claire’s face.

Beautiful, quite beautiful.

She watched her rake the shock of caramel in a thick drape over her ear. Her hair hung down one side of her face.

Fascinating, the way her act of exposure made her blush, heightening the fawn in her feint freckles.

Claire bared her teeth, her cheeky gap, gave her a loving smile – and gripped her wrist.

‘I’m going to model lingerie and swimsuits, Faith! This could be my big break!’

‘I’m so excited for you! Where?’

Claire pointed at the old Michelin Carte Routière et Touristique, spread out over the bed.

‘Here!’

*****

Faith climbed out of her tiny cot, and felt the bedding. It was sopping wet. Her manger would have to be stripped and all her swaddling hand-washed. She stared at her Tom and Jerry clock. The time was 3am. The dreams always came to her at 3am. Dreams of her beloved Claire, her darling Kirsty. How she missed her tender embrace. Her divine touch. Her kiss. Their intimacy. She began to envy the girls their freedom, yearning for a return to the mundane routine of life at home, away from the luxury that was the beach house.

Away from Dani, the artist who would finally paint her nude, spread, no draped, over her luxury divan in the glary sunshine, her honey bee, her flapping butterfly, her Pink Lady. Today, Dani would expect her to spread her wings. Increasingly, Faith felt the woman with the tiny head, wasted figure, and big hairdo was sick in the head, not just her decrepit body. The way she treated her, like a child, a little girl.

Then there was the cupboard she lived in, her disgusting cot. She’d seen stray dogs kennelled in more sanitary conditions. And the male deodorant in the dirty toilet. What was that all about?

She wondered if Claire finished her modelling assignment, furious with herself for forgetting her phone charger. She hoped her big sister, her best friend, was happy, successful. Claire, who had given up her brilliant academic career, leaving university to be at her sister’s side in her darkest hour, who had suggested that Faith took the bizarre holiday job in The South of France.

Had she known Dani’s requirements, written into contract, with the benefit of hindsight she wouldn’t have touched Picardie with a barge pole. The thought of her lying, posing, naked for her disturbed her. But there was no easy way out: no homeward flight booked, or money in the bank, at least until Dani deigned to pay her. Faith was trapped, a Pink Lady caught in an artist’s net, waiting to have her wings pinned.

She gathered her soiled bed linen and crept out into the hall, the half-light of dawn, leaving the mess in an unsightly pile on the kitchen floor, then tiptoed her way, silently, to the sliding door, inching it aside. Dani was huddled on the Joelle, facing the mirror. Faith gasped at the sight of her bald head, the port wine stain discernible on her lady’s pate, and hurried into the black hole, to wash herself with one of the artist’s putrid-smelling flannels. Once inside the lavatory room, she purged herself clean, like the nun who has sinned and seeks redemption.

Her only ticket to a temporary reprieve, her only escape, was the shopping list indelibly printed in her mind: ham, brie, fromage bleu, pâte, anchovies, eggs, baguette, olives, vine tomatoes, grapes, champagne.

Outside the beach house there was a bumpy stony track, bordered by flagstone walls. The air was fresh. The morning sun rose, casting its rays across the land. Faith, dressed in a fresh black sports bra, fitness pants and trainers, eased the glass door closed, took to her heels, and ran.

Invigorated by her release from captivity, thrilled to stretch her cramped muscles, she ran her heart out, up the winding track, past olive groves, vineyards, farmyards, white-stone cottages with red-tiled rooves, sleeping villagers. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Reaching the centre of the village, she found the square, a sun-warmed wooden bench beside a sandy boules pitch, checked her watch: 5am, curled up, and fell asleep. Faith dreamed of him, her knight in shining armour, the white sails of the yacht set against azure blue sea, a delicious smile of satisfaction creeping, like wildfire, across her becalmed face.

Refreshed by her catnap, she walked into the village store, amazed at the size of the fruit and vegetables on display, twice the size of the produce in her local supermarket. Faith entered the shop. The whole cheeses on the counter and netted hams swinging from the ceiling reminded her of a delicatessen that Esther took her and Claire to see in Spitalfields when they were little. Only everything was so much larger than life here, the air filled with pungent aromas, the array of groceries bewildering.

A portly lady with greying hair in a bun and rosy-peach soft cheeks tapped her on the shoulder,

‘Like some help?’

Faith’s heart leapt at the sound of English being spoken, crisply with a French inflection, none of the sickly, guttural drone that characterized Dani’s lazy elocution,

‘You speak English?’

‘Un peu, madam!’ the woman laughed, ‘Et vous?’

Faith shook her head, ‘Rien.’

‘Rien!’ the lady exclaimed, ‘I own this shop. Let me help you with your shopping.’

It wasn’t until she went to pay, her paniers crammed with the picnic, that Faith noticed the local paper lying on the counter. Naturally, the news report was written in French. There was a black-and-white photograph of a dead girl’s face. Reeling from shock, she asked if the lady would translate for her. François Gourd shivered as she explained. The badly decomposed body was recovered from the great lake. The young woman was identified as Chantal Merlin by the name tattooed in italics on her left wrist. Faith collapsed into François’ open arms.

*****

Can I interest you in my luxury outside furniture?

Well, as an ice-breaker, a chat-up line, an invitation to love her, the phrase sounded original. She’d had worse propositions and today, the most important day of her life, she needed love and compassion more than ever.

Dani was lonely without her muse to love and care for her. Faith’s sudden disappearance had left a gaping hole in her heart. She sat alone in her room on her pink pow wow, pining for her.

The bedroom was her centre of activity in the beach house, looking out on her red sand-covered promontory, the rocky high point of her stretch of coast, that jutted out into the turquoise sea. A short flight of stone steps led to her small, private sandy beach. Dani never visited the beach.

Her bedroom was sparsely furnished. In the middle lay her statement piece, the Joelle double bed with a rose quartz headboard in clever deep velvet. The bed, with its matching scattered cushions, lazy daze bed linen, and grey-stripe blanket, were her creature comforts. Until her knight arrived to put her out of her misery.

To the left of the bed, on her sleeping side, stood the Mimi bedside table, where she stored the medications, lotions and ointments that she took every evening in a vain bid to sustain her life. The bed stood upon a pink bobble rug, facing a full-wall glass partition. From her bed she could see the sandy patio, its luxury garden furniture, and further afield, the rippling turquoise sea.

Dani rarely slept in her Joelle for fear of rekindling memories of their last night together. During the summer months, she slept under the stars wrapped in her tasselled blanket, as-snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug. She loved to recline on her luxury padded divan and watch the flume spout from the mountainside where forked lightning had set a large patch of dry scrub on fire. Unlike her life, the flume was inaccessible and couldn’t be extinguished. Its flame would burn for many nights. But her flame would flicker, fade, and go out, like a candlelight caught by a sea breeze.

To the left of the bedside table was a tall flotsam mirror. She stood in front of her looking glass and appraised herself. If anything, her head had shrunk even smaller. The shock of peroxide-blonde hair sat uncomfortably on her scalp, hanging in unkempt drapes over her shoulders. Her sad brown eyes were red and sore from crying. The shiny skin over her cheekbones was drawn taut, an upset masque relieved by her hooked nose. Beneath her set-square jaw sagged a scraggy turkey neck, stretched, and pulled.

Dani raised her weary arms and locked her fingers over her head, hating the hairy growths sprouting from her armpits, her boyish flat chest, the teak curls growing out of her pink pinched rosebuds. Her skin was dry, cracked, and sore. She lightly dabbed herself with soothing balm, massaging her skin until she felt supple, wiping her fingertips on the coarse blanket. Her hand slid down her exposed rib cage, her hollow stomach, rubbing her shallow navel, tinkering with the flaps of loose skin under her baby-knot.

She collapsed on the Joelle, sinking her head in the pile of pillows until her face was smothered with scent. Drew her knees to her chest and imagined Faith’s ruby red lips, her wonderful body. Closed her eyes and concentrated on her features. The face was blurred. Dani had forgotten her muse’s face.

‘Oh God!’ she cried, ‘Oh God, no!’

*****

Picardie’s body was wasted. The illness overwhelmed her. She entered the critically dangerous degeneration phase. Her psychiatrist, Menten, felt that her bodily degeneration was due to self-induced psychosomatic trauma. Her physicians, Haile and Maigre, disagreed, declaring that her decay was clinical. She was highly unstable, distrait. The endless desiccations decimated her, pulverising her mind and body into abject submission. Quite simply, she had lost the will to live. The woman hated water. Menten described her negative reaction when he offered her a beaker of mineral water, as ‘like an amoeba in a desert’. His mind stretched. Supposing Picardie suffered from a severe allergic reaction to water, hydrophobia even?

The problem with theories was that they did nothing to alleviate her mental scars, her physical suffering. Picardie was emotionally distraught. Outwardly, the wasting decimated her, leaving her in permanent lassitude, shattered, pulverised into submission. Inside her head, the morbid stone of despair fell, a sad cushion of hopelessness, pressing on her will to live.

Life without Faith lost all sense of purpose. Her sole raison d’être was callously removed, like an unwanted tumour, into a flip-bin of wasted love. To think, they’d connected so closely. She had befriended her muse, fallen in love with her, only for Faith to vanish on a local shopping spree, leaving her to endure this torment. What had possessed her to do such a thing? By leaving her like that, could Faith conceivably have made Dani’s last remaining hours any worse?   

She entered the final phase of her illness. The weather turned increasingly oppressive: a sordid mixture of sweltering humid days, cool, breezy evenings, and thundery nights. The dark night of death was about to descend on her.

Such a release from pain: a blissful end to a life filled with greed, deceit, envy, lust, and murder.

Dani pulled up her red y-fronts, drew the blanket round her emaciated body, and went outside to lie on her luxury divan. To wait for her knight in shining armour to arrive, and set her free.

He came for her at twilight. He was nervous. His hands trembled with fear and apprehension at the daunting task that awaited him. He dropped anchor, pulling down the sails, wrapping the mainsail round the boom, trying to stay focused. The ropes seemed to wind themselves round the cleats, such was the depth of his remorse. He wailed, a deep animalistic wail of grief, as he stood at the bow of his white charger. Then he took a deep breath, and dived into the cold water.

He thought of his daughter, fighting for her life, in the crystal-clear water of the lake. Thinking of her gave him strength. Steadily, he swam to the beach, his face set like granite, determined. He hauled himself out of the water. She was waiting for him. Lying on her luxury divan. Glowing in the twilight. She spoke first:

‘Hello, my name is Dani. I am seventy-years old and lonely. I am flat-chested, but that doesn’t make me less of a woman, does it? As you can see, I have beautiful blonde hair which tumbles down my back, high cheekbones, a lovely Roman nose. I have no breasts, but my sun-tanned body is slim and tender to touch, my legs deliciously long and slender. I’m wearing my chain, see?’

She reached down and touched her ankle.

‘It means: I am available to you, tonight.’ 

He watched revolted, as she took a full slurp of gin and tonic from a crystal-cut glass tumbler and threw open the blanket, revealing her wasted breasts, her chicken’s legs, scrawny neck and knock knees,

‘Take it off!’

Dani took off her wig, revealing the glowing, spattered-egg-yolk-shaped, port wine stain,

‘Won’t be needing that where I’m going,’ she hissed, ‘Make love to me under the stars, won’t you? Make an old bird happy before she dies.’

Shaking with fury, the knight lifted his lady out of her blanket and carried her to the water’s edge, cradled in his arms. With a measured stride, he entered the rippling surf, until the waters lapped at his stomach. He stared at the flume, burning in the night, his eternal flame, the flame they created in her memory, then he lowered Dani into the water.

She squirmed and spurted, squirting jets of seawater into his face:

‘From the waters of my mother’s womb…’ she spat.

‘Die!’ the knight cried, pushing down on her chest as she flailed her arms and legs.

‘… I was born…’

He felt a thrill akin to sexual arousal as he pushed down on her stomach, her hairy groin, making her arms and legs pulse like a jellyfish. But Dani resurfaced, momentarily, gasping for air:

‘And to the waters… of my mummy’s womb… shall I return…’

Then Faith was standing by his side in her navy swimsuit, standing over Dani, as his red-salty eyes bulged with horror. As his muse raised the blade, its steel gleaming in the moonlight, and sliced off the artist’s ugly head.

Jonas and his adopted daughter clasped their hands in prayer and gazed at the starry night sky, their faces streaming tears even as Daniel Picardie’s vile, evil blood spread in a crimson bloom through the briny water.

In Loving Memory of Claire Geatish

 The audio file is too large to load! Meet all of my sensuous characters in Dani free, live at: Dani | Living Stories / https://www.isittodayhjfurl.com – thank you, harriet-jacqui xx