Chapter 2

Zoe

The rain wasn't as bad as I had first thought. Still, I wished I had a coat or even an umbrella. So I was hurrying through the drizzle, glad that I was wearing my old trainers and not the pumps I had brought - quite unnecessarily - along for the presentation. As if a bunch of mathematicians would notice what kind of shoes I was wearing. As if I cared myself.

I pushed back a strand of moist hair and made way for a woman which was obviously lost in thoughts and not paying attention to her surroundings, thinking that the coat she was wearing would serve me perfectly now, much better than my worn old leather jacket. But then again, it was my leather jacket and every crease was a memory and every wrinkle told a little story and I wouldn't even think of exchanging it for all the coats in this world. I looked at the woman as I passed her, almost greeting her, like I learned to do in my childhood. Except in the village where I grew up everybody knew everybody and not greeting someone was considered extremely rude and not normal behaviour as I soon learned was the case in cities when I left home for university.

Briskly walking on I had that feeling of somebody watching me. But it was not the same feeling I knew from Zurich, where I felt it a few times when walking past a group of blokes in my neighborhood, sometimes even catching a word or two of what they were saying, feeling, or knowing rather, that they were scaling me on their fuck-o-meters. I took some comfort in the fact that I probably didn't score higher than maybe a six out of ten, mostly because I didn't dress like a whore and preferred my hair in it's naturally auburn shade and didn't use hydrogen peroxide on it.

No, that wasn't what I felt and the mere fact that I sensed it at all was surprising enough. Usually I didn't pay much attention to the world around me to notice such things, at least not without making a deliberate effort.

At last I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the woman in the coat was still standing there, still looking after me. I self-consciously wondered whether there was something wrong, glanced down at my jeans and patted my bottom, but everything seemed to be as it should and so I walked on, pulling up the collar against the drizzle, already forgetting about her.

I left work early to go to the market and shop for groceries and then I treated myself to a long shower until the water turned cold. I even took my time to shave my legs and armpits before I put on my most comfy clothes and went to the kitchen to cook. I'm not much of a cook, not at all, but every now and then I like to use my hands instead of my brains. Plus it's nice to actually see the result of my work. Well, I usually see the result of my work, but as much as I love numbers and formulae, you can't really compare a plate of vegetables and risotto with a row of numbers and formulae.

The next day was uneventful. At least until I was sitting on my bicycle after work, riding home through the twilight of a foggy early evening. A mile from my street my phone started to ring. Being the careful person I usually am, I stopped to get it.

It was Karin who told me that she had given birth to a healthy baby girl and that they were all fine. I talked to her for a few minutes, wished them all the best, promised to call the next day and kept the conversation short because she sounded very tired. When I put the phone back in my bag I realized that tears were rolling down my cheeks. They weren't only tears of happiness for my best friend.

I wiped them away, took a deep breath, climbed on the bike again and turned the next corner, completely forgetting that I was in England and therefore should keep to the left side. It was much too late to do anything to avoid the car. There was a loud noise and then the ground came rushing towards me worryingly fast.

Eventually the ground and I met and I remember that I was surprised that it didn't hurt at all. Then everything went black. When I came to I was lying on my back and where a minute before I had been experiencing a discomforting mixture of happiness for Karin and sadness for myself there was now only pain left. Pain and darkness. To my relief the darkness lifted when I opened my eyes, but the pain didn't.

Something warm and liquid covered my left eye and trickled down my cheek. I blinked my eyes a couple of times but it didn't go away and the pain that seemed to be everywhere only got worse. Probably the adrenaline losing its effect, I thought and was glad that I still could think such a thought.

Closing my eyes again I concentrated on moving my limbs, but that hurt too much so I laid still and looked up at the sky again.

Except that this time I didn't see the dirty grey of the evening sky. Instead I looked into the worried and vaguely familiar face of a beautiful woman.

Ann

Thirty six hours. Only later did I realise I had discovered the speed of fate. Thirty six hours that at the time seemed both a fleeting moment and an eternity. The dream had been so vivid the memory even now is still crystal clear, yet dreams are supposed to be transitory, vague and ethereal. Those eyes, those emerald pools of promise, seeing her, right there in the street, walking towards me, the shock leaving me rigid, only my eyes moving, following her. Now the dream made sense, now I knew she existed, right here, right now, the personification of my dream-like premonition.

Unfortunately, whilst I understood the meaning and accepted it as fate, there was no way I could expect her to know, to understand, now was not the time, now I could only watch her walk away, watch her pause to look back at me, those eyes still dazzling my senses even as she turned away and continued walking, following an unseen path that I knew led to our future.

If this were a story I would have slept serene whilst dreaming of my emerald eyed beauty. The reality was a long night of coffee and restless thoughts. Finally my subconscious conspired with the music and whilst Meridith Brooks sang I found myself singing along with the chorus...

"I'm your Domme,

you're my lover,

together,

we'll discover,

every pleasure,

every pain,

and you will feel no shame.

I'm your hell,

I'm your dream,

innocent and so obscene.

You'll beg to serve in every single way."

The following morning I walked into the gallery to find Dee ensconced behind the counter sucking on a cock. Only Dee would chose a mini dildo as a pencil ornament and deem it an appropriate way to provoke a response intended to both raise my spirits and interrogate me for the cause of my monochrome mood. Not a bad plan, except that today was technicolour, the full spectrum from infra-ready to ultra-violently ecstatic.

"When the safe sex lecturer said to use a rubber, they meant a prophylactic, not an eraser ... Kettle wench... !! Then perhaps I'll forget you owe me for all those prints you made yesterday..." I fired the broadside without breaking step, the last salvo shredding her sails as I disappeared into the studio, heaving to alongside the computer whilst Dee headed for galley slave duties, preparing Earl Grey tea with a puzzled smile whilst I read through the details of the next commission, a nautical theme for a private collector.

Happily engrossed in my work the time slipped by unnoticed, only Dee's appearances with further supplies of the ubiquitous 'EG' provided brief breaks as I worked my way through the backlog of emails and enquiries, requests for further prints of past shoots and bookings for new ones. As Dee's duties do not officially include being my personal tea girl I bought us both lunch, which Dee fetched from the cafe around the corner, prawn salad baguettes and a bottle of non-alcoholic wine as a change from fruit juice.

After lunch I spent some time preparing the dungeon, tidying up and listing the props I'd need for the nautical shoot. Dee delivered a final EG before closing the gallery and locking up, leaving me to sip my tea and put the finishing touches to the shooting plan, trying hard to avoid the clichÄd stereotypical sailor suits and piratical wet dreams. Satisfied with my plan I doused the lights and donned my trench-coat before setting the alarm and letting myself out onto the darkening street.

Heels clicking along the stone pavement, my mind picturing GI Jane bent over a barrel as the cat's tails shredded her uniform the angry squeal of tires on damp tarmac wrenched me back it the present. The cyclist caught in the headlights of the car, the sickening plunge as the swerving car's bumper clipped the rider who was thrown down to slide along the wet tarmac until head and curb met with enough force to crack the riders helmet. The bike wedged beneath the car, rear wheel still turning, the clicking of the freewheel gear the only sound...

The driver, eyes wide, knuckles white on the steering wheel, lips quivering, presumably offering up a prayer was not going to be of immediate use. I ran to where the rider lay unmoving, kneeling down I reached for my phone to dial an ambulance whilst my other hand reached to check the vital signs, next to gently trace each limb, as the operator assured me that help was on the way. A soft moan announced the cyclist was conscious, I looked up to see blood trickling from beneath the helmet, spreading out and pooling over one eye. Head wounds bleed profusely, but a trickle was not a concern right now, more important was to keep the head immobile in case of a spinal injury, so I moved to hold her still, looking down at her face for the first time, the features as my hands moved to cradle her head, she opened her eyes...

One emerald eye gazed up at me, the dilated pupil slowly focusing as I knelt there bowed protectively over my future. Meridith Brooks was wrong I decided, fate is a cast-iron bitch...

Zoe

The whole time I laid there on the wet tarmac, feeling the cold creep slowly into my bones, I looked up into that woman's face, wondering where I had seen her before.

Feeling a bit better after a couple of minutes I tried to sit up, but found that my head was immobilized. For a second I panicked, but then realized that it was the woman's hands that kept me in a firm yet tender grip. Apparently she was smarter than I was, knowing that one shouldn't move until you were sure that there's no spinal injury. But then again, she wasn't the one lying shocked and hurting on the cold ground.

"Don't move, the ambulance will be here any minute now," she said, her eyes fixed on mine.

I moved my lips to say something to let her know that I'm fine, or at least as fine as could be expected, but I fell back into Swiss German so I guess she didn't understand a lot.