‘Tom?’
Still no reply.
I tried the door handle – it was unlocked. I opened it slowly and peered around the door. Tom had his glorious back to me, freckled and lean, its definition more than adequately visible through the steamed-up glass. My eye travelled irresistibly downward, to his peachy bottom and stupidly long legs. There was a shocker of a bruise on one of his calves, but other than that he seemed to have escaped without too many body blows.
‘Er…Tom?’
He tried to turn too quickly, sighed with pain and put a hand to the wall to support himself.
‘Jesus, Ella. What are you doing?’
‘You went quiet. I was worried.’
‘Worried, eh? As you can see, I’m fine.’
He gestured me out of the room, but I didn’t go.
‘I’m not,’ I said, and without warning the full emotional weight of the evening hit me, and I began to cry.
‘Oh, hey, Foxy,’ he said, and his melting from brusque formality to nickname-using concern made the tears flow even faster. ‘Don’t cry. It’s all right.’
I put an arm over my face and sank on to the toilet lid, sobbing like a fool. He was right. Trying to honeytrap Keane had been an insane thing to do, and now I felt as if I had some kind of trauma. Could you get trauma from consensual sexual activity? And had it really been consensual? He had been like a bulldozer, refusing to take no for an answer. I had been given no option but to play along. Worst of all, I had even enjoyed it at the time, once I was over his lap with all the context hidden in the sharp immediacy of pleasurable pain. How could I admit this to Tom? How could I admit it to myself?
‘Get your kit off and get in here with me.’
Tom’s voice was stern, shocking me out of my weeping woe.
I stared up at him, and he nodded.
‘What are you waiting for? You look as if you could do with a clean-up, anyway.’
He wasn’t wrong there. A fleeting glance in the steamy mirror revealed panda-eye makeup and ratty hair. I stood up and began to undress, but again the corset was my nemesis.
Tom opened the shower door so that spray flew across and touched my skin with its warmth.
‘Come over here. Let me.’
He unlaced it deftly, despite his bruised and torn knuckles.
‘This is the one you got at Louise’s place? It’s very nice.’ He paused. ‘I wish you’d bought it for my eyes, not…’
‘Please don’t,’ I croaked.
He finished unlacing and it fell over my breasts, baring them, and hit the floor. I dealt quickly with the rest of my underwear and stepped into his arms, letting my tears mix with the shower water and flow down his chest and over his abdomen.
‘You’re shaking,’ he said softly, stroking my soaked hair. ‘What have you done to yourself? What did he do to you?’
I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I just wanted to stand there, in his arms, sheltered and warm in the steady flow of water, until the shaking stopped.
‘If he’s hurt you,’ Tom said, still in the same gentle tone, ‘I may have to go back there and kill him.’
I made an enormous effort to catch my shuddering breath, and looked up at him.
‘He hurt you,’ I said, reaching up to touch the bridge of his nose, which was cut rather nastily. Another red gash was high up by his hairline. The crusted blood was gone, but he didn’t look a lot better.
‘Nothing’s broken,’ said Tom. ‘It’s all superficial.’ He reached for a bottle of shower gel. ‘I’m going to clean you up.’
His hands were heavenly, gliding over my skin, turning the silken gel to bubbles as he went. He left no inch untended, giving equal weight and importance to every curve and inlet. I fell into the relief of being cared for, unable yet to find it truly erotic, though I wished I could.