Not All Women

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“I’m not like other girls.”

It’s what I said to him, Marc, right at the start of the evening. He can’t complain I didn’t warn him. It’s not my fault he thought he knew what that meant. If he’d wondered, if he’d asked, maybe I would even have told him.

Not the whole truth, obviously.

But enough to give him a sporting chance.

He thinks I don’t see, when he slips something into my drink. I’m on my way to the bathroom, across the other side of the dancefloor, but there are mirrors everywhere in this place. It doesn’t take James Bond to notice. Mistake number one for him. Sloppy. Impatient. Two more minutes and he’d have been safely out of my sightline. Not that it would have made a difference, obviously. The drink, leaving it with him, was a test. One that he’s just failed spectacularly.

Don’t worry. It’s still recoverable. I’m nothing if not scrupulously fair.

The end stall’s taken but its door is open wide – a tiny brunette is kneeling on the dirty tiles retching into the bowl, her hair trailing damply while her friend tries ineffectually to hold it out of the way. I don’t judge because I don’t know – to each her own demons. I ignore the drama and move to the mirrored tiles above the basins. Time for an adjustment.

The blonde staring back at me across the reflective squares is cut up into pieces, like a children’s puzzle you have to squint to fit together. Blonde hair in a carefully messy chignon, tendrils trailing down just so. Too perfect. I wet my hands under the tap and plaster the stray strands to my neck, as though with sweat.

Next, I take a tissue from my purse and dampen it, then rub it across my eyelashes. Not too much, no need to go full panda. Just enough to smudge a bit. Just enough to suggest I might be beginning to lose control. I use the tissue to blot my lip-gloss, delicately, so the colour mostly stays, but the lipliner at the edges begins to show darker. It’s subtle. If you asked most men, they wouldn’t even notice, not consciously at least. A woman would, of course.

But a man would be oblivious. Except that something would tell him there was a softening. A loss of grip. A slight erosion of defences. A good man would be aware of it, vaguely, at the edge of his senses. Something in him would switch into protector mode.

Marc is, I suspect, not a good man.

I wind my way back to him, around the dancefloor where the night has started to work its spell, spilling pheromones like a siren song that pulls singles into pairs, strangers dancing intimately close. Smoothing my skirt self-consciously as I have watched other women do a hundred times, I circle the mass of bodies, wobbling a little, carefully, not too much. This is not pantomime.

“Hey babe,” he breathes, the words steeped in vodka and heat. “Drink up and let’s dance!” He glances furtively away from the concoction he’s prepared for me.

I smile, lift it to my lips, barely allowing the liquid to touch them. As I tilt it, I twist on my heel and stumble into him, gently, just enough so that I can grip his shirt, rest my head against his chest. I can feel his hot breath in my hair as he looks down at me, and I know he’s smiling. The glass in my other hand tips, the liquid trickling under the tall table, out of sight.

I giggle, my hand flat on his chest, make a show of pushing myself away from him.

“Oh wow, I’m so sorry,” I murmur from under lowered lashes, then I lift the empty glass to my lips and throw it back, as if I’m downing my drink in one. “Wooh!” I gasp, laughing. “Come on then! Dance with me!”

I clasp his hand and pull him toward the dancefloor, but he resists, takes hold of my wrist.

“Actually, babe, I think we should get you home.” His voice is all concern. Maybe this is a test he’ll pass. Maybe.

He’s doing so well as he shepherds me to the cloakroom and wraps my coat around my shoulders. When we walk out of the club, his arm is around my waist and it’s steadying, not creepy. I almost begin to have hope for him. There are tiny stirrings of disappointment, I’ll admit, but rules are rules. Maybe he’ll win our little game after all.

In the cab I raise the stakes. When he asks my address, I gaze up at him, slur a little, my eyes unfocused. It’s a trick I learned a long time ago, by accident. You sort of click an invisible switch in your head and let your vision relax, as if you’re looking at something else, far away or deep inside. Blurrily, I see him smile. My head droops onto his shoulder.

His hand comes to rest on my thigh. It doesn’t move. Yet. He’s still in the game, but only just.

“This it, mate?” asks the driver, and Marc nods and passes him a twenty.

“Keep the change.”

As the cab putters off into the darkness, I make a show of holding on to the iron railings that lead up the steps to the front door of the Air B’n’B I’ve rented under another name. He follows, too close, his hands on my shoulders now a shade too heavy, controlling. Deliberately, I fumble in my purse for the keys, my other hand careful in my pocket.

“Well,” I murmur, “this is me.”

He leans in for a kiss and I let him take it, passively. His hands snake around my waist, clinch me into him, possessive.

“This was nice,” I tell him, pulling back from the kiss and turning the key. “Thank you.” My smile is sweet, disarming.

“You’re not going to invite me in?” he presses, and his smile is something else. A challenge. A threat.

“Oh, I have work in the morning. But maybe I can see you again?” Last chance, Marc. I almost want him to take it.

“C’mon babe,” he urges, “just one coffee, I swear. We can talk. Get to know each other. Nothing more, I promise.”

“Ok,” my voice falters, “just a coffee though.”

“Pinkie promise,” he says, but as I turn the key in the lock, he’s on me, pushing me into the dark hallway, pinning me against the wall and kissing me again as he pulls the door shut behind us.

“Mmmppph!” I squeal against his lips, squirming ineffectively as his hands start to roam, groping and squeezing. I free an arm, and the slap rings out in the quiet flat.

“Stop!”

“Oh no, princess,” he growls, grabbing my wrist, “it’s too late for that.”

There are a lot of other things he says, as he presses himself against me, tearing at my clothes, but I won’t bore you with them. You’ve heard them before, I’m sure; if not yourself, in the accounts of other women; friends, colleagues, family. They have the same gist – I’ve brought this upon myself. Asking for it.

Oh dear, Marc. You can’t say I didn’t give you a chance. Enough rope to hang yourself.

With one hand, he unzips his trousers, with the other he grabs my hair, forces us both to the floor. He fumbles at my skirt, then stops.

Looks at me, his eyes wide. The pupils are black with anger and shock. And the first traces of something else.

We both stare down at his chest, where the syringe is dangling, the needle still deep in his flesh.

“You lose,” I breathe softly against his ear. “Now we play my game.”

When the police find him, what’s left of him, I’m in a different city. A different flat, under a different name. There’s a coffee mug warming my fingers, its steam drifting fragrantly upward in a sinuous curl that reminds me of Marc’s smile at the start of the evening.

Of one of the prettier patterns that I cut into his skin at the end.

I sigh, recalling the delicious swelling of his fear as he moved from disbelief to horror.

“You’re sick!” he gasped at one point, through broken teeth and bubbles of blood. “A freak! A fuck up!”

“I told you,” I reminded him, “I’m not like other girls.”

Not all women are the way he thought. There are some like me. Not many, perhaps. Rare, like diamonds formed under pressure. But the pressure is growing. And there are more of us every day.

The problem is, you can’t tell which ones we are.