Page 13 of Taming the Beast (Fairy Tales of New York)

“Why the flaming cheeks then?” asked Faith. “What is there to be embarrassed about? Seems like a pretty decent thing to do to me.”

“And why have you never mentioned it before now?” added Zelda.

Mercy felt a bead of sweat trickle between her breasts and wished someone would switch on the damn air conditioning. “Well…I…you know…” she said, sounding so pathetically unconvincing she wanted to kick herself. “I didn’t think he’d listened to me…I thought I’d failed…”

“There’s something else, though, isn’t there?” said Dawn.

“No,” said Mercy, widening her eyes in a stab at innocence. “Why? What else would there be?”

“I’m not sure,” said Dawn.

“Must have been a pretty short conversation,” said Zelda. “The name of the clinic was pretty much all Seb knew. He didn’t know about anything else I’d been up to. Not in great detail anyway. And he didn’t know about you pulling me out of that squat in the Pigalle. He didn’t know much actually.”

“No. Well. You’re right,” said Mercy, panic fluttering inside her. “It was a short conversation. Very short. He was busy, I was busy, you know how it is… And I was in New York on business anyway. Not a lot of effort had to be made.”

“Hmm. Well. I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Dawn dryly, “but I’m sensing evasion.”

“So am I,” said Zel. “Any idea why?”

“Nope,” said Dawn. “But let’s just keep going until we find out.”

“I like that plan,” said Faith.

And beneath the penetrating gazes of her three friends, who, she knew, wouldn’t relent until they’d gotten to the truth, Mercy finally gave in. “OK, fine,” she said in exasperation. “You win. I give up. The reason our conversation was so short was because we got sidetracked by sex.”

At that bombshell there was a stunned silence and Mercy instantly wished she’d put it a bit more delicately. Or not at all.

“Sex?” said Faith, the first to recover.

“You and Seb?” said Dawn.

“It’s not what it sounds like,” said Mercy, backtracking, although really, what was the point?

Dawn gave her a look. “How can it not be what it sounds like?”

“Seb distracted me,” said Mercy, feeling a bit sick as she turned to Zelda, willing her n

ot to hate her for what she’d done. “He seduced me. Deliberately, I now know. I went to talk to him because I couldn’t believe what you said about him not being interested in what you got up to. I thought that it was just because you’d been out of touch and he didn’t know. I thought that if he knew you’d gone into rehab, that you were sorting yourself out he’d help. But he shut the discussion down before it even started.”

“With the sex?” said Faith.

“Yes.”

“Bastard,” said Dawn.

“No,” said Mercy, swivelling round and shaking her head. “Well, yes, maybe. I mean, he started it. But I wasn’t exactly an unwilling participant.” Far from it. She’d been very willing indeed. Mortifyingly so.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” said Zelda, no longer looking quite as stunned as she was a minute ago.

“It was hardly my finest moment, Zel. I’d gone to talk about you and ended up in bed with him. I felt terribly guilty. I was disgusted by my behavior, and then appalled at his when I realized some time later that it must have been nothing more than a diversionary tactic. I just wanted to forget about it. Besides, I couldn’t tell you at the time. You had enough to be dealing with. And then later I thought that maybe you’d be horrified if you knew, betrayed most likely, and I didn’t want to lose you.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“You wouldn’t have. Really.”

“There’s something else,” said Mercy, feeling even more sick. “Seb had a nightmare about the accident the night we spent together. It made me wonder whether he blamed himself and think that maybe he did. I should have told you. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

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