Chapter 13 Mia
MIA
PLAYLIST: UNTIL THE MUSIC FADES – THE VENICE CONNECTION
When I awake, bright light burns my eyes. I stare at a ceiling with a chandelier on it, in a wooden four-poster bed with the whitest and softest bedsheets I have ever seen.
Not a dream, a voice says in my mind.
I lift myself onto my elbows and glance around. The bedside next to me is empty, but it was definitely slept in.
I squint my eyes from the brightness. Although it’s cloudy outside, there are so many huge windows letting in all the brightness.
I am in a bedroom, in a Highlands Manor, Victoria Fitzroy’s manor. Sixty-year-old wealthy lady whom I happened to call “Mistress” last night.
I glance around but cannot see her, so I fall back into the bed and stare at the ceiling as the memory of last night comes back to my mind. Victoria made me come, and I kind of humped her leg. And then she walked me up her on a bloody leash.
I start laughing at the mere thought of it and dig my face into the sheets, because I am repulsed as much as it turns me on.
Okay, I need to get out of bed and wash all the dirty, dirty thoughts from my mind.
I get up and search for a bathroom. There are three wooden doors in the room; the first is a closet, the second, to my relief, a bathroom—A bathroom the size of other people’s living rooms times two.
While I have seen some things about Victoria’s way of life by now, this bathroom is beyond anything I ever thought she would like and be into. My eyes linger on a round bathtub at least ten feet in diameter to the left, in matte black. Everything is held in matte black.
I step into the room, barefoot, and walk over the wooden flooring.
Who would put wood flooring in a bathroom? I ask myself.
I walk past a mirror so long it takes me six steps to pass it. I dislike mirrors, especially when I have to walk by them naked.
The lid of an equally matte-black toilet opens automatically as I walk up to it, and there are more buttons than I’d like on a toilet.
When I’m done, I wash my hands, take a towel from a shelf of carefully folded, extremely soft towels, and step into a glass cubicle in the middle of the room, which happens to be the shower. Like a glass cage.
It takes me several minutes to figure out how to turn on the water, and when I do, it sprays horizontally into my face. I shriek and turn it off. I also recognise I have no shampoo, and tip out of the cubicle with wet feet over the wood.
I open all sorts of drawers, find toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap and every flavour of shower oil, but no shampoo.
Whatever, I tell myself and take the oil and soap. I’ll just use the soap as shampoo. My hair is low-maintenance anyway.
Several more minutes pass until I manage to make the water fall from the round plate-like thing hanging above me. I don’t even have a name for some of the things that seem to be her reality.
“What happened to a good old showerhead?” I ask loudly when I step under the hot water.
If not for the water pelting down on me, I’d still question my sanity. If anyone ever finds out that I am doing certain…things…with Victoria Grace Fitzroy, I’m cooked.
I let my head fall back, and images flash through my mind. Filthy images.
I shudder.
The shower isn't doing what it's supposed to. On the contrary.
I rinse my hair, turn off the shower, wrap my hair and body in separate towels.
I quickly brush my teeth and then get back into the bedroom, only to realise I have no idea where my clothes are, probably still down in the library. But I can’t walk through the house in my towels.
Damn.
There I am, wrapped in towels and now what?
I check the closet.
Maybe I can take something out of it that might work?
Oh gods, I groan in my mind. I don’t want to sneak through anyone’s private closet. But walking through the mansion searching for my clothes in a towel? Hard no. She must have people attending to the house—what if they see me?
No, I can’t risk it.
I close my eyes and blow my cheeks as I struggle with the decision of what to do.
“Looking for these?” asks Victoria behind me, and I spin around.
She leans elegantly against the door frame, fully dressed in a colourful high-neck and wide-leg trousers, holding my underwear in her hands.
“Yes,” I say, flustered and aim to get them.
“Find something fitting in the closet,” she says and drops them to the floor. “Join me for breakfast afterwards. You need to eat,” she says and walks away.
I don’t know what to make of it. What a strange conversation. And maybe I’d expected the morning after to be—different. She was quite formal, wasn't she? I ask myself in my mind.
I stare at the open door. Something doesn’t sit right with me.
Oh gods, what if she thought I was horrible and can’t wait to get me back? My stomach drops with the thought, and I hold onto my towel as if it could protect me.
With crushing dread getting worse by the minute, I walk into the closet and search for something that might fit me. I do find some underpants, but no bra, so I grab mine from the floor and put them back on.
Afterwards, I try almost everything I can find in the closet, and while some things fit, most draw too much attention.
I am close to a mental breakdown when I look at the mess I made.
Clothes are everywhere on the floor because I couldn’t see myself in them in the mirror, or I couldn’t stand the touch of them on my skin.
Victoria must be waiting, and I am so stressed out that I sink to the ground at a wall with only my underwear on and hide my face in my hands.
I hate my body so much.
I hate myself right now for hating my body.
I should know better.
I tell the kids in my class every day that everybody is beautiful and not to judge someone by their looks—and here I am, judging myself every day.
“Okay,” I pep-talk myself, “You need to get a grip on yourself. Take the second-best thing, and the moment you’re home, you can change into your comfort clothes. Get your stupid arse up, right now.”
I indeed get up.
I pick out an oversized black blouse, roll up the sleeves, and take one of the shorter soft-fabric trousers.
I stuff the blouse messily into the pants so it doesn't look like I am one fat ball, remove the hair towel, glance once in the mirror, ruffle my towel-dry hair to loosen it, and get out of the closet before I lose my mind.
I get out of the bedroom and am confronted with a corridor and a thousand doors.
What the hell, I curse as I open door after door—only to find everything but a kitchen or dining room. I dearly miss Bella’s and my two-bedroom flat.
When I’m done on the upper floor, I head down to the first floor, think it over, and decide to check downstairs first.
I peek in the library, find something like a dressing room, and a kitchen, but no Victoria.
I can’t do this. I am done.
I stand in the middle of the entrance hall, cold tiles underneath my bare feet, when I shout, “Victoria, where the hell are you?”
Shall she call me crazy, blatant, or idiotic, but I’m not searching an entire manor.
“Up here,” she says, and when I look up, she leans casually over they banister on the first floor. My hands become fists as I breathe in and out. Breathing.
“You look stressed,” she says.
“I am,” I say as I walk up the stairs. “I am in clothing I do not like, after opening a bazillion doors, my feet are cold, and I couldn’t find you.”
She chuckles and says, “You express your discomfort, good.”
I stop and stare at her.
“You did this on purpose?” I ask.
“I absolutely did,” she says, “You’re growing already.”
I curse under my breath and mumble, “A good morning and tea would’ve been sufficient.”
I still don’t know what to make of it.
Victoria gestures to a door leading to a study with a table by the windows overlooking the grounds.
“Sit down and drink your tea,” she says. I can’t shake the feeling that she seems cold and distant.
“Is something wrong?” I ask her, not sitting down.
“Sit down and have the tea,” she says.
So something is wrong.
A sensation of horror floods through me. She didn’t like it. I must’ve done something wrong—or she dislikes my body after all. Maybe—
“Nothing has changed on my end,” she says as if she read my mind. “Sit and drink.”
I sit, but don’t drink. I can feel something is not right.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Something is going on, and I need to know what.”
She looks at me and takes a sip of her own tea before she speaks.
“You will not freak out,” she says. “You will listen and don’t interrupt until I am done talking, and I assure you I am taking care of the situation.”
“What situation?” I ask in a weak voice, and my heart beats immediately against my chest as if I had just run up five hundred stairs.
“I have my lawyers already on it. While it will not change anything regarding the headlines, I will use every single one of my resources to have your life impacted in the slightest way possible.”
“What situation?” I ask, now harsher.
“Someone photographed us at Hamilton’s,” she says, and I’m spiralling down.
She hands me a tablet with screenshots from tabloids and online magazines.
Gold digger or groomed? The shocking affair between Victoria Fitzroy (60) and a 27-year-old primary school teacher.
From classroom to cashmere: How a primary school teacher, Mia Phillips, slept her way into high-society
Inappropriate! Teachers' secret sex life with Victoria Fitzroy
SCANDAL! Victoria Fitzroy’s plaything teaches your children
I can’t breathe properly. My fingers and nose tingle, and somehow everything is suddenly so far away.
There’s a picture of me with Victoria’s thumb in my mouth during our dinner. I stare at it, read the headlines again, and the only thing I feel is coldness. In my limbs and entire body.
This can’t be happening. It must be a nightmare.
Everyone will read this. My colleagues. Parents of the kids. My mother.
I am ruined.
Crushed.
Destroyed.
I don’t even feel myself as a body right now.
There is only this dreadful horror sucking me into the depths.