Thirteen Stops Read online

  Thirteen

  Stops

  SANDRA HARRIS

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, businesses, organisations and incidents portrayed in it are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published 2020

  by Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle,

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  Email: [email protected]

  © Sandra Harris 2020

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  © Poolbeg Press Ltd. 2020, copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design, ebook

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978178199-748-2

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.poolbeg.com

  About the author

  Sandra Harris is a Dublin writer, poet, film-blogger, autism mom, animal lover, serial eavesdropper, horror fan, history buff and self-confessed bookworm. She always knew she was going to be a writer, having made various mad Viking-style dashes at it over the years before settling down to it properly in 2009.

  She lives with her two children, her favourite books and the unassailable notion that, somehow, everything is still going to work out fine.

  Thirteen Stops is her debut novel.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Lisa for all the cups of tea and technical assistance, and to Reuben for the pats of encouragement on the shoulder.

  Thanks to Orla and the Kevin Street Writers’ Group for giving me my start.

  Thanks to my wonderful agent Jonathan Williams, a gentleman to his fingertips and meticulous in his edits, for believing in me and the book.

  Thanks to Paula Campbell of Poolbeg Press, the original Superwoman (I’ve seen how much she accomplishes in a day!), for taking a chance on me, and to my editor Gaye Shortland, a cool customer who’s seen it all and who professed herself only mildly bemused when it transpired I was unfamiliar, to say the least, with the concept of track editing.

  And last, but definitely not least, thanks to my fantastic Facebook friends who, over the years, have read my stories, my poems, my reviews and my blog posts and unstintingly dispensed encouragement, consolation (after the many rejections!), advice, suggestions for improvement, technical help and praise in equal measures.

  I literally couldn’t have done this without you all.

  To Lisa and Reuben, my greatest achievements, and the gang of twelve

  Autumn 2016

  STOP 1: SANDYFORD

  Laura

  Laura Brennan stepped off the Luas at the Sandyford stop, as she did every morning, Monday to Friday. She quivered with excitement at the thought of seeing him again shortly. It was a cool clear day, so she would arrive in work with no damage to her long blonde hair, lovingly blow-dried poker-straight that morning. That was the trouble with straightening your hair. The least little upset in the weather and it all went to shite. Still, there was a price to be paid for beauty and sometimes the price was not being able to go out in the rain. Or the heat. Or when the sun was shining but it had just been raining and the air was still chock-full of sneaky old precipitation. That was the real killer. That gave you hair like Monica from Friends in ‘The One in Barbados’.

  Laura flipped her hair back over her shoulders and bent down to adjust her skirt, conscious as she did so that some perv was watching her, a dark-haired sleazebag with a wedding ring you could spot a mile off. Spoken for, so you can’t have me, but always up for some no-strings-attached sex, it seemed to scream. Christ Almighty. Guys were such assholes. Laura shot him a filthy look and then clip-clopped off down the platform and out onto the road, pleased with the nice tappy noise her new black-velvet high heels were making.

  Most of the other girls didn’t put on their fancy high-heeled shoes until they reached the office, but Laura believed in making an impression and starting as she meant to go on, so she usually slipped into her good office shoes on the Luas. There was always some disapproving old biddy to scrunch up her nose in distaste at the sight of someone taking off their shoes publicly, but sod ’em, Laura always said. She’d bloody well change her shoes on the Luas, and put on her make-up and perfume as well, if it suited her. Everyone else could bloody well bugger off.

  With her feet pinching only a little (later they’d be pinching a lot), Laura reached Phelan & Co. Warehousing Ltd with a few minutes to spare. His car, the nearly new 2015 Peugeot, was in its usual parking space in the big yard.

  She went straight to the Ladies’, as she always did first thing, to check her appearance, even though she was sure it was perfect. A quick selfie wouldn’t go amiss either. No point wasting all this effort unless there was someone to see it, preferably a couple of hundred someones like the followers she had painstakingly amassed on her Instagram account. She expertly added another coat of mascara to her lashes and an extra dab of lip gloss to her mouth. It wouldn’t do to look too tarty, so she didn’t bother with any more powder over her foundation. The other girls disliked her enough as it was, for fussing so much about her looks. She did fuss – but you didn’t catch a man with sweatpants and a shiny face.

  Laura knew this full well. It was practically her mantra. She wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the world, but she made the most of what she had and that was how she’d bagged Him-with-a-capital-H. Maybe the other girls should take note, instead of constantly bitching about her behind her back like she knew they did. They’d be laughing on the other side of their faces when they found out the identity of the man she was dating. She wished they could know now but telling anyone was strictly off-limits. Paul would have a fit if he thought anyone knew about their ‘little fling’, as he’d made the mistake of calling it once. He hadn’t made it a second time – Laura had seen to that.

  As it happened, she didn’t get near him until quarter past eleven, by which time she was all agitated and hot under the collar. From her own desk, she had an unimpeded view of his office. All the junior managers in Phelan’s had glass offices, not much bigger than toilet cubicles, which you could see into, and today the three or four junior managers were in and out of one another’s offices for some reason, like the bloody cuckoo in a cuckoo clock gone haywire. It was always the same when she was desperate to see him. It was as if Fate was laughing at her. No, openly taking the piss out of her.

  “I’ve missed you,” she whispered, when she eventually got to enter his office on the pretext of needing his signature for something. She leaned over his desk, pretending to look at the papers she’d brought in with her but making sure he got a good look down her silky top and that her long, naturally blonde hair (one up on the bottle blondes anyway) brushed against his face.

  “I’ve missed you too, Miss Brennan,” he whispered back as he squeezed her thigh, making sure to keep his hand out of sight of anyone who might be watching.

  The other junior managers had dispersed for now and the girls in the outer office, or the ‘typing pool’ as they still jokingly called it, were all clustered around the water cooler looking at something on someone’s phone and laughing u
proariously.

  “I love that you take the time and trouble to wear these to work,” Paul said, running his fingers up over her stocking tops and the bit of soft flesh between them and her high-cut lacy knickers.

  Laura smirked at his praise. She well knew that he hated what he referred to as “those god-awful black woolly tights women wear the minute the weather turns a bit nippy”. He had told her often enough. To have to wear sheer stockings and sexy undies to work was a pain in the backside – pun definitely intended. They cost more than regular underwear and were not designed for comfort by any stretch of the imagination, but the extra effort certainly paid off. Laura prided herself on the effect she had on Paul. He had an erection already under his pricey pinstripe trousers as he groaned and cursed the fact that they wouldn’t be alone together until later on that evening, when he would come to her flat off St. Stephen’s Green after work.

  “Don’t worry,” she giggled, turning her head so that anyone looking in from outside wouldn’t see her laughing. “I’ll take good care of you tonight, my sweet.”

  “I wish you could take care of me now,” he grumbled, indicating his tumescence. “What the fuck am I supposed to do about this?”

  “You could always slip into the lads’ loo and do-it-yourself,” Laura sniggered before picking up her papers and swanning out of his office, making sure to give her backside in the tight skirt a little wiggle as she did so because she knew he’d be watching her.

  Back behind her own desk, she shifted and fidgeted in her chair for the rest of the day, impatient for the evening to come so that she and Paul could be together. From where she sat, she was able to watch him at work. She was glad that he was spending most of the day at his desk under her watchful eye, although she frowned a little when he was taking phone calls, in case any of them were from Barbara. Barbara called him constantly, the needy cow. Paul, the electricity’s gone off. Paul, the school rang to say that Jessie has a stomach-ache – can you go and pick her up? Paul, I need money for shopping. Paul, your mother wants you to call out to the house after work today – your dad’s had a fall and there’s nobody to bring the coal in from the shed. Paul this, Paul that, Paul Paul Paul all day long.

  It drove Paul nuts. He told her so every time they met up. He always made a big show of putting his phone on silent whenever he arrived at Laura’s flat. He never quite managed to turn it off though, she noticed, and she frequently caught him sneaking a glance at it during the evening, especially when they’d finished having sex and he was trying to leave without seeming to be rushing. That was an art few men had ever bothered to perfect, or even managed to carry off with any degree of panache. Laura tried her absolute hardest not to comment on it, because then she’d have been no better than Barbara the nag, Barbara the ball-and-chain, Barbara the big fat pain in the bloody arse, but sometimes she couldn’t help it. She’d say something and then he’d get all defensive and claim that he was only checking what time his first meeting was in the morning. It might even end up in a row, and then Laura would blame herself for the rest of the week until she saw him privately again. Seeing him at work didn’t really count. And she couldn’t always manage to get to see him on his own.

  They couldn’t afford to have any more rows, Laura thought as she typed up a boring old invoice for a customer while keeping what she hoped was a discreet eye on Paul from her desk. He was so good-looking, with that strong jaw and the dark-brown Hugh-Grant-style hair that was always falling over his forehead. Laura loved to sit on his lap and push it out of his eyes, only to have it immediately flop straight back down again. But they’d fought a lot lately, argued quite bitterly, in fact, and mostly about that bitch Barbara. When will you tell her? When are you going to talk to her? Are you just stringing me along, Paul, keeping me as your bit on the side while the whole time you’re playing Happy Families with her? Why should I stay home alone all the time while you’ve got Barbara and Jessie and Lucy? You must take me for all kinds of a fool, Paul! Answer me, Paul!

  Laura hadn’t really known before that it was possible to feel such black, all-consuming hatred towards another human being, especially another woman, a woman who had done nothing to harm her except marry the man that she, Laura, loved, and long before Laura had met him too, which made her hatred all the more unreasonable. For the thousandth time, Laura wished that she’d met Paul before his wife had. Paul was always saying stuff like that too. If I’d only met you first, my love, my Laura, he’d comment sadly with a beautifully mournful smile, there would have been no contest. I would’ve married you and we’d have been together for always. We wouldn’t have had to sneak around behind people’s backs. We could have shown our love for each other openly.

  Laura always felt like her heart would break when he talked like this. It was nice to hear it, sure, but didn’t he realise how hurtful it was, hearing him say stuff like that just before he went home, as happy as Larry after all their sex, to climb into bed beside Barbara? She, Laura, had feelings too, hadn’t she? At least he wasn’t sleeping with Barbara, that was one good thing about the situation. He slept beside her all right, but it was like sleeping next to a sibling or a mate, he’d assured Laura numerous times. There was nothing remotely sexual about it, if that was what was worrying Laura. Of course that was what was worrying her; what else would be? That side of things has been over between us for a long time now, he said every time Laura brought it up, which was more often than she should, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. We haven’t had sex since Lucy was born. Any time I went near her, she freaked out and went all frosty on me, so I just left it and it sort of died a natural death, that side of things. Laura wanted to believe him, she really did. And it was such a believable story as well. Women did go off sex during and after pregnancy, everyone knew that. But little Lucy was two years old now. How likely was it that Barbara was really still off sex? Never having been pregnant herself, thanks mainly to blind luck (blind drunk luck, more like, she thought wryly) and a sweet little invention called the morning-after pill, Laura wished she knew. According to Paul, Barbara was still playing the Ice Queen towards him a full two years after Lucy’s birth. He was so sincere when he said it too. Laura always felt like a total heel for not fully believing him.

  Just then her phone vibrated in the desk drawer with a text from him.

  Can’t wait to see you later, he’d typed in. What colour are your knickers? with a smiley face attached.

  Cheeky! Laura immediately texted back, before relenting and adding the words, Pink, if you must know.

  Oh, I must, I must! he texted back, with a huge smiley face attached. Are you touching yourself under the desk and thinking of me? Are those little pink knickers nice and wet yet?

  You’ll get me sacked, Laura texted back, adding a smiley face to take the sting out of her words. He must be out of his mind if he thought she found their distinctly unsexy workplace a turn-on.

  Will you touch yourself for me later?

  Maybe, if you’re a good boy, Laura replied, conscious now that she was getting nosey looks from some of the other girls, who’d seen her texting and smiling like a simpleton at her phone. But now get back to work, okay?

  Yes, ma’am, whatever you say!

  Laura sighed and dragged her attention back to her work, putting her phone firmly back in her desk drawer. Paul had a sexually submissive side to him which she hated. He liked a woman to take charge of him in bed, be assertive, put him in his place. It’s something all powerful men like to do, so that they can switch off in their personal lives, he’d say in explanation and, even besotted with him as she was, Laura always had to suppress a giggle at the thought of one of the junior managers in their piddly little warehousing company referring to himself as a ‘powerful man’! Who the hell did he think he was – Richard Branson or Bill Gates or someone like that?

  At first, two years before when they’d started their affair, this side of Paul had been something new, something exciting and kinky to look forward to, but now Laura was
sick and tired of having to wear high heels and suspenders whenever he called to her flat and ‘dominating’ him in bed the way he liked. This could mean slapping his face or his backside, calling him names like ‘a bad boy’ or ‘a dirty little gurrier’ or ‘a filthy maggot’, sitting astride him during sex and being verbally or physically assertive, walloping him across the face or pinching and tweaking his nipples, which always made him yowl like a cat whose tail had just been trodden on and put Laura off her stride. Not so hard, Jesus! he’d whinge at her while she rolled her eyes. I’ll be deformed!

  Then he’d brought over a cane with him which folded up in his briefcase like a blind person’s stick and asked her to hit him on the arse with it.

  “Good and hard now. Don’t be afraid. I won’t break, you know.”

  She’d felt ridiculous doing it, but he’d enjoyed it so much that she hadn’t had the heart to tell him how much she’d hated it and how degraded and silly she’d felt while doing it.

  “Where’d you get this?” she’d asked him curiously.

  “On the Internet,” he’d replied with a shrug that seemed to imply, where else? “Isn’t it great? It folds up neatly for discretion purposes. It says so on the box. That’s what swung it for me.”

  “Yes, it’s, erm, great.” She’d tried her hardest to appear interested and excited and not to let her face show that her stomach was sinking all the way to her feet.

  Once, she’d asked him if they could just have sex ‘the normal way,’ with no slapping or name-calling or kinky stuff, and if he could just lie on top of her for a change, instead of the other way round. He’d done as she asked, but with such a bad grace and a sulky puss on him that she hadn’t dared to ask him again. Now she was stuck in her role as Paul’s private, unpaid dominatrix. She couldn’t possibly say now, after all this time had elapsed, that she hated dominating him and that she just wanted to have ordinary sex with him, where they kissed, cuddled, made love and whispered sweet nothings to each other, just like normal couples.