I am British. The spell-checker on this site keeps underlining all my U.K. variant spellings.
I've spent far too long working on this story and it is still by no means perfect -- but it is time to set it free, slap it on the bum and push it out into the world.
I do not have an editor, or even someone to just read over my stuff, so if there is anyone out there who would like to work with me as an editor, please send an email.
A final note: no darlings have been harmed in the writing of this story.
*****
Part 1
Abbi was twenty at the time all this happened. I'd married her only two years earlier but, looking back, eighteen was far too young for her to have become my bride. Anyway, turned out she was just not the settling down type. Three year after I slipped the ring on to her finger she left me.
We might still be together today if I had not encouraged her to live out the dream. And even though I know she did what she did willingly -- whether to illuminate some dark corner of her own soul, or for her own pleasure, I don't know -- but perhaps she never would have gone down that road if not for my leading her the way, step by step. What a stupid young man I was to have asked her to realise such a perverse fantasy.
Even before this all kicked off, Abbi received a lot of attention from blokes. Hardly surprising, she was an exceptionally pretty girl. But it was something more than the little-girl-lost looks she affected which drew men to her. Her openness, her endearing unsophisticated breeziness could just as easily snare a man, just like a sweet-sap-sticky carnivorous pitcher plant could insects. It was not as if she trapped them by some devious hinged intent of hers. Drawn by her winsome allure, men would let down their guard and, little by little, find themselves in a reverie of amative obsession. I would watch rationality slowly dissolved by the viscoelastic fluid of her beauty.
If she took a liking to you, her warmth towards you and interest in you would be immediate and genuine; you could even say intense -- at first. She would listen to what you had to say, and had the knack of saying the things back to you that you wanted to hear her say. Also, she was a very tactile person and liked to touch her friends in small affectionate ways. But for some, it might have been better if she had never shown them any interest at all.
But her baby-faced prettiness and waif-like frame belied a hidden sexual voracity. Some men sensed there was far more to her than her butter-wouldn't-melt cuteness. The more astute male intuited the sexual lava-flow that ran beneath her butter-wouldn't melt facade. Maybe it was in her eyes, or maybe it was how she wore her flesh about herself. Maybe it was in the way her fairness of skin and slightness of frame made everything else in her proximity appear obtuse, gross.
When a guy had it real bad for her, their need for her might begin to impinge on our relationship as a couple, then it was up to me to sort out the mess. Things often got ugly.
But she could never understand why men floundered at her feet:
"Oh, what have I done, Martin? Have I encouraged him?" she once asked me about a poor sod in our social circle who'd gone all tragic over her. His name was Sean. What a pratt.
"Abbi," I said. "You don't have to do a thing. You just have to be Abbi."
She was perhaps her own worst enemy, her need to be liked by others her undoing. And when her easily bestowed friendship elicited more than she intended, she could never bring herself to hurt someone's feeling by rejecting them outright.
For example: it was a Saturday night and we were out clubbing with a bunch of our friends. We were supposed to be enjoying ourselves but Sean and Abbi had sequestered themselves away together in the dark corner of the alcove our clique was in the habit of using to touch base with each other during those heady, early morning hours. They were having this big heart to heart. She loved all that probing of other people's psychological garbage heaps.
I was sitting close, talking to someone else, and overheard her say to Sean, "We can never be like that with each other, Sean -- but I do love you -- I love you like a brother."
Jeeez!
Then there were the phone calls at ridiculous hours. The unexpected ringing of our doorbell just as we were sitting down for tea -- or looking out of our bedroom window at midnight and seeing his car parked in the street, the windows foggy, him hunched inside with phone in palm.
Sean was not the first, nor would he be the last. Sometimes It was like she wasn't married to me, as if she had become public domain. When it got too much I would have to play the heavy husband, let them know they were trespassing on private property and were pissing me off.
Of course, this was all before I had my dream. Things were different after my dream.
So yes, Abbi was that certain type of girl deadly to a certain kind of male. Princess-pretty as she was, her nature really was guileless. I think she had not yet discovered herself, still needed the feedback loop of other people's attention to make herself feel a valid person. God, how I tried to satisfy that need.
As for those who fell at her feet: I suppose she presented a blank canvas for the strange needs some men harbour. She was not in anyway conceited about her looks, her charm. Far from it: she didn't have a clue just how easily a glance from her enormous manga-eyes could unhinge a man.
Reading this back I have made her sound, perhaps, less than bright. She was anything but empty-headed. At the time of this story she was doing all sorts of courses to get her accountancy qualifications. The last I heard from her after our divorce was she had become a partner in some important London firm that handled the financial affairs of A-list celebrities. Tax evasion and all that.
Although I hate psychobabble, I'd always put her need for attention down to her parents divorce when she was seven.
