Mirrors

Chapter one

“How had it come to this?”
She always wondered what lay beyond the mirror and what it would be like to smash it. Smash it and be rid of it forever.
Her sister had broken a mirror and used the sharp shards to slash her wrists. She was still angry at her selfish sister, who as usual took the easy way out.
She was now alone. Alone to deal with the bitterness her mother had showed her, alone to feel the guilt for being born, for wrecking her mother’s life.
As always her sister had taken the effortless option to leave her with the guilt that still hurt her so much every time she looked into a mirror. She would never forgive her sister for leaving her to be on her own to face her life that seemed also to be shattered into a hundred pieces.
How had her life that to the outsider seemed so perfect become so painful? Why was every day filled with the fear of what laid ahead? Would she ever find the answer to these questions.? Was he, this relative stranger the answer to all her problems? How she hoped he was but in reality she knew nothing could change or could it?
After all these years why did she still feel so on her own after so much success? She was at the top of her game, a leader that others came to for guidance. At work people looked up to her for leadership and she was confident in the advice she gave and the hard decisions she took, but she felt so incapable of making simple decisions in her own life.
When she did make decisions in her own life she would always question herself, spending sleepless nights fretting that she was taking the wrong path. She could never relax, never be happy with her lot in life.
The gold platted cage had grown around her without her noticing, without her caring. It was only now that the limited liberty this comfortable cage gave her was becoming a problem, restricting her in her search to find what was missing, what she needed to make it all worthwhile, to make life a little less scary.
Only now was it a setback, only now did she regret allowing herself to be caged. She wanted to be free, wanted to be young again and to be able to live life on her own terms
She felt so empty. Others would judge her as selfish as her mother had done from the earliest times she could remember. Now she tried not to judge anyone least alone herself, but she constantly did and hated herself for it.
“Do not judge others unless you will be judged” were the words running though her head. She still could hear the words coming from her mother’s mouth. Only now was she starting to really understand what her mother meant.
There she was sitting in one of her most favourite places on the planet, and she had travelled to a lot of places over the years. Business trips constantly moving from one luxury hotel to another, living off room service menus as she worked late into the night not noticing her life slipping by because she was so busy.
Holidays were short but pampered. She could never turn the Blackberry off and she would always take the call. There was always a call, always at the wrong time but she could not say no.
She was sat on the terrace of the bar, overlooking the bay as the sun set over the calm sea. As the light of the day faded a warm breeze blew in bringing with it the smell of the harbour that was laid out like a model village below her.
Small brightly coloured boats bobbed lazily at their moorings, their nets drying in the night air illuminated by a festoon of small lights that were so common in this part of the world but would look cheap and tacky anywhere else.
The harbour was still a working dock for the local fishermen. Not the large commercial dock you would find in a modern fishing port but a flash back to when every village on the coast would have a dock like this. It served the local fishermen, gave them a living but would never make them rich.
This flash back to less complicated times was a pocket of reality in a make believe world that was the modern resort that had now grown up around it. Normally long ago such a resort would have moved the working boats out, replacing them with a fleet of floating gin palace’s but this place was different and that is why she loved it so.
The sound of holiday makers having fun, walking and laughing, dressed in their brightly coloured and ill matching clothes was the constant accompanying sound track of the night. She would never look so uncoordinated.
Ten days on holiday and ten different outfits for the night time, a range of day gear that could be mixed and matched to give different effects, never to been in the same outfit twice. She might make people laugh but she had her standards and she would not let them slip.
Twenty two kilograms of baggage allowance and she would use it all.
No doubt these brightly coloured drones, that to her looked like worker ants on their day off, were on package holidays from one of the large hotels on the head land. Their hotels were like a random collection of oddly shaped boxes dropped into random locations.
These hotels could belong anywhere, sharp even ugly and with no respect to the beauty of the environment they inhabited they where simply built to serve a purpose, built to be cheap and simple and to cater for a market she escaped years ago.
Years of holidays sharing a room with her mother and her sister on the cheapest holiday her mother could find. It was not her mother’s fault that they were poor but she would never let herself go back to that way of living.
She could never face having to budget ever again, always living from pay day to pay day. Yes she knew this was how most of the world lived and worse. At least as kids they had holidays she should be grateful.
If the price for now being financially secure was to sacrifice some of her happiness, to accept the fact that she lived in a marriage with no passion she thought it was worthwhile, or at least she tried to convince herself it was worthwhile.
What were the words she had been told by one of the richest men she had ever met after she asked him if his wealth made him happy?
“Twenty percent of the world population worries about how they are going to spend their money and eighty percent worry about what they are going to eat tomorrow”.
Now she was not even part of the twenty percent, she was part of the very privileged fraction of one percent who did not really worry about money. There was always enough to pay the bills, always enough to have fun, as long as they were sensible that is.
What would life be like to have a bottomless pit of money? Not to have to work, not have to play by the rules?
The holiday drones filled the narrow cobbled walk way that linked the relatively quiet harbour to the busy main drag and its day glow night life. What a difference between the two spaces, only separated by a natural outcrop of sharp cold bare rock, a natural barrier that made and protected the place from change.
She gazed at the tower of the largest hotel and thought how very different it was from their boutique hotel with their private plunge pool, marble bathroom, and individually designed room that was larger than needed but not as large as she expected. A point she made to the manager, without thinking, when they checked in.
Before dinner they had had a quick drink in their hotels’ chic bar which was full of what she could only guess were all Home Counties stock broker types.
She knew the type only too well, over weight with a look about them that said they did not see the light of day very often and certainly were not used to the heat of the sun. A heat that she loved.
Pink faced and lost in a pool of sweat as soon as they moved lugubriously away from the comfort of air conditioned rooms. These were the people she was forced to mix with because she was now one of them and she hated it.
What made her loathe this part of her life even more was being forced to mix with the pampered ‘wives who lunched.’ Huddled together in groups chatting as their men folk did the same. Unlike her these women she was obliged to mix with, did not have a life of their own and they bored her.
These over dressed women lived off the efforts of their husbands and saw nothing wrong with that kind of shallow life style. Half of them had no idea what their husbands actually did to give them the lives they had.
What annoyed her even more was that this type of women did not care about the reality of their lives. They simply kept their side of the bargain by keeping slim, making the most of their looks, dressing as he liked and giving him kids.
That was the contract, which was also their job. It was a simple job of being the dutiful wife, to help entertain, to make their husbands life more comfortable and certainly not to ask too many questions. This contract was very clear and they stuck to it but in return they expected to be rewarded handsomely for doing so.
The conversation in these bars was always the same, boring and self centred.
‘We have done this, been there.’ She found herself ocassionally competing in this game and hated herself that little bit more for doing so.
Nic her husband was in sales, very successfully working for one of the top business software houses and making good money. He was in sales not in a ‘profession’, and because she also chose to work and not waste her life, they were both looked down upon.
They were trade, they were not in the ‘professions’ they did not play golf at Coombe Wood, they were not members of Rotary Club and she did not attend the endless local social and charity meetings that filled the empty lives of these non-working women. Somehow, from behind their fake smiles, the other women always made sure she knew it
She knew that she would never be welcome in their world. She would never ever fit in. When she returned home she would never get asked to join their closed shop clubs. Clubs these women had so carefully built up over the years. Clubs that were so well protected from the likes of her
She found herself half apologising to these vacuous women for wanting to work, to be her own person to pay her own way.
The sound of children playing cut through the calm of the warm night air like a cold sharp knife.
She sighed to herself. Children playing at this time of night. She could never relax when she heard the sound of children. It made no difference, a child laughing, a child crying or just a child playing like tonight. It was the one sound she could not block out. It brought back too much pain, too many lost dreams.
Worst of all it reminded her of the maternal clock ticking in her head. The clock telling her she was getting old. It was too late to change now, she had had her chance and had blown it.

Chapter Two

In reality she could have been sat in any exclusive bar, on any private terrace, overlooking any sea. But as she watched the last hot disk of the sun disappear into the heat haze that was neither sea nor sky she thought that was ‘our’ sun.
He had joked on the phone just last night about sharing the moon, “Look at the moon and I will also be watching it and I will be with you.”
He was always like that. Always romantic, always trying to make her happy but it was a new moon that night, and she had told him so. As always spoiling the moment.
She always would bring life back to reality. She felt uncomfortable in his reality, his fantasy, and the way the future could look, could change, but never really would. At times his words frightened her making her feel she was losing control.
“Typical that you would know that.” he laughed “Ok then we will just have to settle for the sun then”.
Now their sun was fading into the sea as her need for him was growing. With the deepening darkness came a shadow of loneliness that would not lift from her until she was able to see him again, if not him at least his sun.
The sun would rise at six in the morning and she would rise as she always did to go swimming. Even on holiday she could not drop all of her routines. She would go to the pool early and only have the cleaners and pool staff as company.
It was a twenty metre long infinity pool, curved at both ends, which was not perfect. It was also too warm to swim hard in and not sweat. The important thing was its length, twenty meters, the same as the pool that she was used to. She could lose herself in her routine and this is why she chose this hotel over so many others.
She swam endless lengths in her own perfectly safe world whilst around her the smartly dressed staff were getting the fake world around her ready.
The neat rows of sun beds and parasols where laid out inch perfect. Each bed dressed with an over sized padded mattresses complete with a white towelling cover that was neatly folded to match its neighbour. A fresh Turkish bath towel with the hotel crest woven into the deep luxury weave and a bottle of water was placed at the head of each bed. Yet again like every day the picture was complete.
As she swam, unseen by her, the staff continued their well practiced routines. She was there to swim to escape for a short time. The staff were there to work and to get the pool ready for those guests who were happy to waste their lives by sitting and doing nothing all day. Why should she notice?
When the sun broke the darkness of the night it would also lift the darkness from her heart. A new day and a chance to speak to him, and if not speak then a quick text and a chance to feel close to him, all this would come with the sun.
“How can I be here in this man made paradise and be so lost?” she said silently, half to the darkening sky and half to her inner self.
She turned her head away from the gaze of her husband. Nic sat across the table from her, a table set with imported cut glass, the finest china, a single orchid and a scented candle in an over ornate holder that protected it from the breeze.
All this was displayed on the whitest table cloth she could ever remember seeing, a whiteness that made her freshly moisturised tan stand out out even stronger.
As she turned, a lock of her carefully curled, dark brown hair fell across her shoulder. Its feel instantly reminded her of his gentle caress as they lay in bed together the night before she left for her holiday.
Never before had any man, and there had been a few, touched her like that. Nic gave her fantastic shoulder massages. His hands would pummel her back easing the tension, but he did not have the gentle touch. Not like him. No man before had made her skin run with excitement and burn with the anticipation that he would simply touch her again. As he had touched her on their first night.
An unwanted shiver ran through her body, a shiver that if he was there, would be the first stirring of her body, preparing her for what lay ahead. How she needed to be loved by him, to be made to feel special but most of all to be made to feel feminine and sexy.
She closed her eyes for a second and she could feel him, see him in her mind’s eye behind her in front of the fully mirrored wall in their over sized bed room. She could see herself so clearly stood naked with him, the doors of the balcony wide open so that she could feel the cooling evening breeze on her naked skin.
She loved to watch herself making love in the mirror. How she loved leaning on the back of a chair as he took her from behind. She could watch him move in her, watch his body, watch her own body as they worked as one.
It was not the first time this happy dance had been played out.
The second night they had together was in Bristol. It was a warm summer’s day and he had booked a suite at the Hotel du Vin. The room had its own balcony and French doors connecting this private outdoor space with the bedroom.
After a simple lunch at Fishers Restaurant in Clifton village accompanied by the most refreshing bottle of Muscadet sevre et Maine she could ever remember drinking, they had walked back to the hotel chatting, arm in arm.
He had checked in and they were shown to the room. A suite on the third floor. As usual he had talked the hotel into giving him a special rate, with dinner thrown in, at a price they assured him no one else would get.
She had unpacked her case and hung up the dress she was going to wear and seduce him with that night. A tight all in one knitted dress. A simple cut but it showed off her body. She matched it with underwear that was shockingly expensive but worth every penny. She would also wear the ‘come fuck me boots’ she had just brought that day.
As she turned round he was there right behind her and without a word he pulled her towards him.
Skilfully he undressed her and sat her in the cool leather single Chesterfield arm chair by the French doors. There surrounded by the cool red studded leather he had made love to her with his tongue. How she loved his tongue. Slowly he had built her up. The leather walls that surrounded her and focused her attentions solely on to him seemed to tighten around her as her body responded to his touch.
Eventually she closed her eyes and slowly came. It seemed like he had been between her legs forever, but in reality it was only twenty minutes. He slowed his motions to allow her body to twitch and shake as he continued to stare at her with those deep blue eyes.
She could not move. So instead she pushed herself further into the soft leather of the chair, her breath heavy as pleasure continued to course though her lower body. Refusing to stop and take his turn, he gently forced her back into the chair and started to build the pleasure again, not allowing her to taste him, not allowing her to please him. He would take his turn, but not then. He would take his turn after dinner. The dress had done its job. The underwear was worth every penny.

This is how they spent that summer’s afternoon, her taking and him giving her pleasure. The cool breeze blowing in through the half open doors as his hands stroked her firm breasts, as his tongue found places so many had failed to do before.
He was not kinky but somehow he knew what she liked and he knew how to give it to her. Sadly this would not happen tonight as he was hundreds, no thousands of miles away.
She opened her eyes and turned back to see her husband still looking at her.
He would never sit across the table from me like Nic was so content to do she thought. How many times had he joked and got his own way, with that smile and blue eyed grin, the maitre d’ reorganising the restaurant so he could sit next to her.
The arrogant bastard, how did he get away with it? Why did he not care that everyone watched him play his little games. He liked his games.
He would do anything not to pay for car parking. He always got the maximum discount available but still would tip a waiter twenty percent for doing a good job. She would never tip a waiter, why should she pay for something twice. The service charge was there to take care of that.
Did he not realise that people would watch them both, as he suggested a better location for them to sit in the restaurant the head waiter telling him it was impossible before quietly acquiescing as he got his own way.
He would always get served first at the bar without having to make a fuss. Only then, as he was about to order step back to allow some younger man, obviously nervous and out on a hot date, to get his drink order first.
Was this his way, his idle little game, and his trick to give himself a short stolen moment in time so he could flirt with the younger’s man young date.
“He looks like he needs a drink be gentle with him” he would turn to the girl and say as he smiled that smile. Her smile the smile he used on her.
Was he really saying to the girl you should be with me you would have more fun with me.
Did he not know the rules? How did he get away with it, at times he was far too close to the bone, too flirty with his comments but she never accused him of chatting up other girls in front of her.
To him it was just innocent fun and he got away with it, to her it just made her want him even more.
After getting his way yet again a table would be re-laid specially for them. So they could sit side by side, facing out into the room as he always liked. Then they would be walked to the table by the maitre d’ and he would turn and whisper in her ear, close enough so she felt his hot breath.
“You are not my mother you are my lover. We will sit side by side so we can talk properly.”
When was it that he first played his games with her? It was over a year ago on their first date? Date! No not a date it was their first encounter.
She found him on the ‘Illicit Encounters’ married dating web site. How had she stooped so low to be trawling around on a site like that? She was good looking, slim even athletic in her build and looked five years younger than she was.
It was only a few years ago, but she could not remember exactly how many years, when she could walk into a room and every man would turn to look at her, even the gay ones.
She still got those looks from men but now it was the pot bellied brigade who would stare at her that little bit too long and make her feel self conscious.
She was increasingly sure that she did not get, at best did not see the looks she used to get from the young bucks. If she did it would save her from having to trawl the web sites she now found herself on.
Why did the younger guys not show interest in her and make her feel sexy. Could they not tell she was interested in them? They offered her the chance to meet an apt lover to fill the vacuous holes in her life.
She did not only care if these younger guys were not to take her as a lover. She just wanted them to show her enough attention to make all the effort she had made to be so well turned out feel worthwhile?
What had changed, what invisible line had she crossed to deserve this new lack of attention. It was their loss she thought but in turn it was also her loss because she badly needed what they could offer her. It upset her that she could not accept she had lost the power over men she had once had. She felt she was one step nearer turning into her mother and that scared her.
There are two sides to every coin and using a web site to find a lover was no different. The web site allowed her to contact men who were outside her normal circle of friends and so the chances of getting caught out, if she was sensible and followed her rules, were minimal.
On the web site she was in control. She needed to be in control, and by being in control she could be whoever she wanted to be.
She could lay down the law and meet men on her terms for a change rather than having to comply with the laws of society. She could demand that everyone lived up to her expectations and she would not have to settle for second best. Not from anyone.
In this non physical word she could bury her past with a click of the key board and change her history to be what she wanted it to be. She could become her own avatar in a reality created by her own mind. She could create her own second life. She could be free to be what she wanted to be rather than be tied to the painful past that haunted her first life. Her real life.
In cyber space she could escape reality, and in truth this was more important to her now. More important than anything. It was imperative that she had this escape, a chance to breathe fresh air and live an exciting life once again. She had come to realise this was far more important than the craving that first drove her out there onto the World Wide Web. The most basic of all her instincts, sex.