Page 33 of Demonic Delights

I stop paying attention to her. I already got all the information I wanted from her, and I couldn’t care less for her unsolicited advice. I fix my gaze on the golden rose pinned to her blouse.

“That’s a lovely brooch!” I interrupt her.

I don’t mean it, of course, the brooch is tacky as shit. But I need to get going, and nothing stops people from blathering on quite like making them realise you’re not listening to them, but in a way that makes it impossible for them to be outright angry with you. Like paying them a compliment. Ideally, on something that holds sentimental value for them.

“Thank you. It used to be my mother’s,” Goodwoman Stubbs says, touching the rose delicately with her fingers. “I only wear it on special occasions, like her birthday today. She would have been ninety.”

I’m barely able to stop a smug smirk from forming on my face.

“How lovely,” I say with an intentionally insincere smile.

And just as I intended, she’s mumbling something about needing to go. She washes the mugs in the small sink in the corner, and then we both head for the door.

“After you,” I tell her in an insistent tone of voice when we reach the top of that steep, spiral staircase, and I don’t budge until she relents and starts walking down the stairs in front of me.

Soon afterwards, I’m rushing through the corridors, hoping to go unnoticed. I quickly abandon the thought of visiting the campus pharmacy. I would surely be recognised, and word could get back to Silas. Instead, I trot back home, my heels sinking into the water-saturated ground as I take a shortcut across the lawn. I hop into our car and drive all the way to Keswick.

14

SILAS

I’m frozen to the bone by the time I get home after my last lecture of the day, and yet I hesitate on our doorstep as soon as I open our front door, staring vacantly at the frayed, beige fibres of our doormat.

Do not enter without wine, it says in black cursive.

Roxana and I argued incessantly over this particular purchase of hers. As per usual, she was deaf to my protests that I needed to be able to invite my colleagues without feeling embarrassed.

But the doormat isn’t the cause of my hesitation. Nor do I have any particular desire to keep looking at it. No, it’s the smell. That absolutely delicious smell that is making my mouth water and my stomach rumble.

Lamb chops.

The last time Roxana made them was after discovering that gynaecologist Woodrow and not me was Mia Campbell’s secret lover. And prior to that, we hadn’t had them for at least a year, not since she guilt-tripped me into spending a small fortune on her publishing venture.

Can I really be blamed for wondering what sort of petty marital victory she achieved this time?

Alas, there’s nothing for it but to go inside and find out.

No sooner do I close the door behind me than I’m undoing my coat. It’s swelteringly hot in the antechamber.

“Darling!” Roxana marches in to welcome me, a red-dot apron tied over one of her little black dresses.

Except for the somewhat hard rolled ‘r’, she pronounces the word almost like a native, if with something close to theatricality—an exaggerated Britishness of expression, similar to that of American actors portraying English characters. She didn’t sound this way when we first met, oh no, her accent was all Eastern Europe back then. I haven’t remembered it for years, and as I do now, I feel myself blush bright red because I get so hard I’m bursting through the zipper of my trousers.

“How was your day?” she asks as I hang my coat, turning away from her so that she doesn’t notice my excitement.

A thing like that has been happening more and more recently, just another one of my complaints. My body doesn’t feel like my own anymore.

“Horrible,” I reply to her. “I feel like I’m coming down with something. Tired. Spacey. I’ll probably need to go lie down after dinner.”

Meanwhile, I get rid of my erection by forcing myself to think about Beatrice Stubbs, her uptight bun of thin mousy hair and the creases in her dry skin.

“Oh, sure, honey.”

She says it sweetly enough, but there is just the faintest hint of condescension in her voice. Does she think I’m exaggerating my symptoms?

I don’t know, but something in the way she’s looking at me leaves me unsettled, even if I cannot explain why exactly. I’m still trying to figure it out as I let her lead me to the table by the elbow. Obediently, I sink into the upholstered chair.

“How about a nice cup of tea?” she offers with a smile that I don’t find the least bit reassuring.