Chapter Twenty Five
A lli leaned back against the wall, waiting. Her legs were pleasantly achy. Her stomach muscles hurt from tensing up. And every time she closed her eyes, she could practically taste Bea on her tongue.
Not broken, she thought, as she waited. Nope. Definitely not at all broken. In fact, if anything, she was more working than she’d ever imagined. Who would have thought that number of orgasms possible in just one night?
There would be a second night. And a third. She carried the weight of that thought, the warmth of it, in her stomach. It made her feel… different. More relaxed. In a better mood, maybe. So much so that when Josh walked around the corner, she hooked her arm through his to pull him into the meditation room.
“What?” Josh asked, looking over both shoulders like this might be some kind of trick.
“I just wanted to ask you something,” Alli said. What Bea had told her was weighing on her mind. Maybe because she hated this place, maybe because she thought Bea deserved better. She didn’t know which, and she didn’t want to think about it too hard.
“Fire away,” said Josh, leaning against the windowsill .
“Yesterday, you said that everyone around here was broke.”
“Yeah.” He scratched his head. “Seems like we all are.”
“But surely there are like… minimum wages or something?” She was guessing there. Like she’d ever had a minimum wage job.
“Yeah,” he said again. “But by the time Luke’s taken out money for food and accommodation, that doesn’t add up to much.”
Huh. Same story as Bea then. She frowned. “Have you ever thought that there’s something odd going on around here?”
“Someone been telling ghost stories again?” Josh asked.
“Not that kind of odd. More… I don’t know, something weird about the participants, something like that?”
“You’re all mad as hatters,” he said. “And other than having to carry the odd crazy woman out of a yoga class, no, I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.”
“What about anything else?” she pressed.
He shrugged. “I don’t know what you want from me. I keep my head down and do my job, that’s it. I’m not going around looking for trouble.”
She held up both hands. “Okay, okay, just asking.” She paused, waiting for the familiar warmth of the anger to boil up in her stomach, waiting to move into professional mode, waiting to demand answers. But nothing.
Josh sniffed. “If anything, I’d say we all work hard and don’t get paid enough. Even Daria, before she, um, left.”
“Except Luke,” Alli said.
Josh cocked his head to one side. “He’s in his office a lot.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s working, does it?”
“S’pose not.”
She nodded. That was all she needed, not like it had been particularly helpful. “Thanks.”
“Oh, by the way, here you go.” He handed over a small slip of paper with a phone number on it. “Charles.”
“Cheers.” She put the paper in her pocket and went off to continue her investigation .
LUKE MIGHT BE shut up in his office a lot, but he didn’t miss lunch. Ever. Well, not for the few days that Alli had been there. She waited around the corner until she heard his office door close and then she peeked around, seeing Luke disappearing toward the dining room.
Her stomach rumbled as she sneaked into the office. She’d have to hurry. She didn’t want to miss lunch completely.
Looking around, she didn’t know where to start. There were no papers on the desk, just a slim laptop and an old landline phone. There were two filing cabinets by the window. The top drawer of one was open, but it held nothing other than a set of emergency phone numbers and an empty whisky bottle.
She rattled the next drawer down. Locked. So were all the others. The laptop on the desk was open, but the screen was blank. When she pressed a key, a password slot popped up.
Right. A place to hide a filing cabinet key, or a place to write down a password.
She picked up the brass paperweight on the desk. Nothing there. The desk didn’t even have any drawers.
She was so busy trying to think of hiding places that she didn’t hear the door open. One minute she was alone, the next, she felt eyes on her. She spun around.
Leslie was standing in the doorway.
“I’m not… I wasn’t…” Alli started.
Leslie shrugged and held the door open wider.
“Right, yeah… Um…” Alli slid through the door and out into the corridor. “I was just, um, looking for Luke and… Yeah…” She started to walk backward. Leslie just stared at her.
Then she turned and made her escape. So much for that. She’d found out precisely nothing. But when she looked back, Leslie was still standing in front of Luke’s office door, watching her go. Weird .
“DO YOU THINK there’s anything weird about us?” Alli asked, as she took a late seat at the lunch table.
“Like what?” asked Izzy.
“Dunno,” said Alli. “Something… not quite right.”
“We’re all full of anger and seeking to control something that currently controls us,” Marcus said. Alli stared at him. He blushed. “Well, that’s what they said in the introductory meeting.”
“Anything else?” asked Alli.
“I shouldn’t think so, dear,” Julia said. “I mean, we all have our foibles, don’t we? Look at poor Leslie, barely utters a word.” She frowned and looked around the table. “Where is she, now that I think of her?”
“Probably busy,” Alli said hurriedly. She didn’t want to admit where she last saw the strange, silent woman. “Um, doing extra yoga or something. So nothing odd about us?”
“Not as a group, I don’t think,” Julia smiled. “In fact, I think we’re all getting along quite well after a few hiccups, don’t you?”
“I suppose,” Alli said. But she was thinking. She picked up her sandwich, then put it down. “We don’t get angry a lot though, do we?”
“What?” asked Marcus, his mouth full, spraying crumbs.
“You said we’re all here to try and control the beast that’s controlling us or whatever,” said Alli.
“Seeking to control something that currently controls us,” Marcus said after he’d swallowed.
“Right. But given that… Well, we don’t seem to get angry a lot, do we?”
“You do,” Izzy said. “You got carried out of yoga class yesterday.”
“Right, I know I do. But I meant us as a group.”
“Charles did,” offered Julia. “Well, at the end, he did.”
Alli sighed. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Her stomach rumbled again. She was starving. She bit into her sandwich. It wasn’t like she was getting any answers anyway, was it?
THE PHONE WAS under her mattress, exactly where she’d left it. Not that Alli would know, not having slept in her own bed last night. Not that she was planning to sleep in her own bed tonight.
It was getting on toward evening. She wouldn’t have to wait long now. But every time she saw Bea, every look they shared, every word that came out of Bea’s mouth… Alli burned with wanting her.
She hadn’t known it was going to be like this. So all-consuming. In fact, Bea might have been the only thing she thought of all day, or she would have been if she hadn’t mentioned her suspicions the night before.
Not that anything had come from that. Alli had decided that investigating was not for her. St. Hilda’s was weird, but then she supposed most places like this were weird. She’d asked around and found out nothing odd. Okay, so the staff weren’t getting paid well, but that seemed like their problem.
She was just picking up her phone, about to check her messages, when it started to vibrate in her hand. She picked it up automatically.
“Hello.”
“Alli? Is that you?”
“Darren?”
There was a short crackling on the other line. “I, uh, I was going to leave a voicemail.”
“About what?” She started flicking through her suitcase, trying to decide if wearing fancy underwear would be too much for tonight.
“I just haven’t heard from you for a while. I mean, I usually get at least one call a day begging me to break you out of there, so I thought I’d better check that you haven’t been locked up in a padded room or anything.”
“Tactful,” said Alli, deciding just regular undies would have to do. It wasn’t like she’d be wearing them for long .
“Yeah, right, sorry. I, uh, I was just trying to make light of the situation. Probably not very tactful, you’re right.” He cleared his throat. “So, um, are you alright then?”
“Mmm.” What about a change of clothes? Or would that be too obvious?
He sighed through the phone. “I know it must be horrible for you there, Al. I’m really sorry. But I really do hope that they’re helping you. I hope that you’re learning something.”
“Right.” Not a change of clothes. Way too obvious. She’d just show up. Like she had the night before. Her legs quivered with anticipation.
“Al?”
She stopped, standing upright. He sounded serious. “What?”
“Is it really terrible?”
She sniffed. “It’s… it’s alright.”
He chuckled. “So you don’t need a rescue mission, then?”
One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. She could hear what he was offering, could hear that he was starting to feel guilty, that he was beginning to think that she’d paid her price. But… But Bea.
“Actually…” Was she really going to say this? “Actually, it’s quite calming. Restful.”
“Ah. Right. So… you might stay then?”
Outside, the evening was dark now, the grounds of the house wreathed in shadows. Twenty-four hours ago, she’d have ripped Darren’s head off for an opportunity like this. And now? Now things had all turned upside down.
“I’m thinking of it like a retreat,” she said softly, looking out of the window into the darkness. “Like a place to chill out, calm down, you know?” Not that she had an anger problem. “You might have been right that I needed a break,” she conceded.
“Nothing wrong with taking a holiday,” he said, sounding relieved and happier.
“Yeah, right. A holiday.”
“Great. Well, have fun, I suppose. I’ll see you in a week or so.”
She hung up and, for a second, was paralyzed with what she’d just done. Then she remembered Bea’s warm, dark eyes, the touch of her hands, and began to shiver. The decision was made. And weirdly, she thought it was quite a good one. She was staying.