It wasn't unusual.  Sally and I spent most nights drunk.  Sometimes, she would become soft and loving if she drank enough.  Occasionally.  Enough to make me hope for it but not enough that I expected it.

Usually, she just became more...  Sally.  And that was good too.  Alive and brittle and sparking and I sometimes thought she'd break when I held her.

I did love her, you see.

But I was talking about that night.  It was only a few weeks after Max - Baron Maximilian von Heune, that is.  Intimate though we undoubtedly were, it was physical intimacy only and that does not give one the right to presume. 

Oh, fuck it.  Max. 

Only a few weeks after Max had...  Well, run away, if we're to be honest.  Only a few weeks after that memorable exchange.

Me, loud and angry.  "Screw Maximilian!"

Sally, quiet and strangely proud.  "I do."

Then that long, incredible moment where the guilt left me.  "So do I."

And, inevitably, the argument but at least it wasn't festering any longer.  The boil had been lanced.

Until a few weeks later, that is.

We were drunk.  I know, I know, I've said it before but it's important.  She might have asked without the alcohol but I wouldn't have answered.

And what did she ask?  A simple question.

"Brian?  How did it start with you and Max?"

A look.  She had to know how he does it.  Or perhaps she didn't.  Perhaps for her it was the money.

"Oh, you know.  Drunk.  That first night at the Kamplinski."

"The first night?  He seduced you the very first night?  You let him seduce you the very first night?"  Tiny hands clutching my arm desperately, begging for me to lie to her.

"No!  Oh, no."

Yes.  Oh, yes.  In the toilets, where else?  I didn't know he was following me, I swear.  I didn't know until he was pressed against my back, his arms reaching round me and holding me, his lips against my jaw, his hips against my arse and, I swear, if I hadn't been so angry with her, I would have pushed him away but I was angry and I leaned back against him, my head on his shoulder, and God, oh God...

"That was the night when it started.  Not when it was..."

"Finished?"

It's still not finished.

"No.  Not finished.  Consummated."

"When was that?"  Her nails were sharp.

"That weekend."

"When?"

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"Of course I'm sure."

I sighed and lit a cigarette.  "I was wet.  He lent me a sweater.  He watched me.  While I changed."

"Just watched you?"

I rubbed her hand.  "You know how he watches."

She frowned for a moment and glanced away.  "I suppose so."

He watched me.  I was expecting him to look at my body and his eyes were on my face and I didn't know whether to be flattered, angry or ashamed.  And then he paid me.  That damned cigarette case.  I didn't want to be bought, I didn't want to be just another thing that wealth brought him.

I didn't want to be another Sally.

"After dinner.  While you were socialising."

She was too loud, too brash, trying too hard to be an enigma, to be something more than what she is.  But she never did her homework and I could see Max laughing at her and her father who was practically an ambassador, darling.

"Tell me."  Her eyes, so huge under all that ridiculous make-up.  I don't think I ever saw her without make-up.  Even when she hadn't applied more, the remains of the old couldn't be dislodged.

"You don't want me to tell you the details.  Really, Sally, you don't."I knew she wouldn't believe me but I had to at least try.

"I do.  I swear, I do."  Her pupils were dilated from the alcohol and she looked so fragile that I couldn't fight the urge to break her.

"He took me to his room.  He kissed me."  The memory of those kisses scalds me even now.  "He stripped me.  Told me I was wearing his clothes and he had every right to take them off me."  Power-hungry.  He'd bought me and he owned me and he made sure I knew it.  "Kissed me again."  She was trembling now, her hand clamped round my forearm.  I'd been trembling that evening and he'd been so damned smug about it.  "Fucked me."  And I remember that the sheets smelled of lemon while he did.

"Did you enjoy it?"

"Yes."

She was biting her lower lip.  "Did you do it again?"

Oh, God, yes.  Again and again and again.  Whenever we could.  Wherever we could.  Even right there in her bed.

But her teeth were digging into her lip and she was trembling and trying so hard to be who she thought she was and I couldn't tell her the truth.

"No.  Just the once."  I rested my hand on hers and she looked away and she wasn't shaking any more.

"Just the once?"

"Just the once."