Human Conditioning (28 page)

Mr Baker finally came, his
moan reflecting his contentment. When he pulled himself from her, she turned
slowly into a seated position. Her legs were stiff and aching, and, without
thinking, she began to knead them.

“Would you like a massage?” Mr
Baker jested as he pulled on his suit trousers, commando, and fastened them.

“No, thank you,” she replied,
smiling to herself. “Sorry, you are just very strong.”

He sat beside her and placed
his hand upon her knee. Moving it upwards slightly, he squeezed her leg. “I’ve
never had a massage before,” he whispered.

“Oh... would you like one? I’m
pretty good!”

“Later,” he replied, adding, “We
have to choose our next location.”

Aiden puffed loudly as he pushed a bar loaded with 95kg in
the spare room of Reggie’s flat. When he finished his final set, he set the bar
back in its rack and sauntered off into the bathroom next door, whistling cheerfully.
Reggie had been cooking his favourite jerk chicken before he’d gone out and left
him to his own devices. The aroma filled the bathroom and he inhaled the
familiar smell and smiled. He was famished, and a generous helping of Reggie’s
best was just what he needed right now.

He turned and admired himself
in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. He had always known
he was a handsome man, and every year he got better and better looking, more
and more solid, defined and, more importantly, strong. 

Deep in self-satisfied thought,
he almost missed the sound of the creaking floorboard at the top of the stairs.
Silencing his breath, he listened for a moment and heard nothing of Reggie’s
usual clambering about. He hadn’t come home.

He was immediately poised for
action. It was his job to expect the unexpected, and he and Reggie were always
going to be in danger of potential trouble. However much they were feared,
there was always going to be some arsehole who thought they could seek revenge
over punishment for an unpaid debt or some drug-related issue that wasn’t
really their problem. 

He opened the bathroom door
slowly and cautiously stepped onto the landing. When he passed the spare room,
he saw Gina sitting cross-legged on the weights bench and he discreetly sighed
with relief. However much he could handle himself, he never enjoyed unplanned
confrontation. “Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you for a couple of weeks,” he
said brusquely.  

Gina ignored his natural
incivility and took in his shiny, bare chest and his oblique muscles,
exquisitely carved beneath the waist band of his grey baggy jogging bottoms.
She smiled, and there was a twinge of smugness there when she replied, “Mr
Baker has been keeping me busy, as you well know.”

She looked different. She had
cut her hair. It was layered, so that its natural kinks gave even more body to
it, and her face was made up with expert precision: her large, green eyes were enhanced
by thick eyeliner and brown eyeshadow. She was dressed smartly too, in a sleek
and expensive ivy-green chiffon dress.

Aiden noticed these subtle
changes. She almost resembled the well-to-do women who frequented the cocktail
bars up the West End, the middle-aged wives of the wealthy who he frequently
bedded after a night out, as and when he took it upon himself to be sociable. But
Gina did not affect him as much as she used to. He had so much skirt tossed at
him nowadays – mature, rich and experienced skirt – that Gina did not have the
same allure she once had.

“So, what you doing here,
then?” he asked, making no attempt to hide his indifference.

Gina tried to disguise the
pang of hurt she felt from his aloofness and plastered on a large smile, but it
didn’t touch her eyes. “Ash sent me to find you. He had the last of our money
from the videos.”

“Where is it?”

Smirking seductively, she
swung one long leg over the bench and spread her legs apart. “I’ve put some of it
somewhere I think you might like to find it... the rest is in the bag,” she
glanced down at the black sports bag beside her.

Aiden took a half-smoked joint
and an ashtray from the shelf by the door and slumped down on a wicker chair opposite
the weights bench. Lighting up, he balanced the ashtray on the arm of the chair
and inhaled deeply. He held onto his breath for a few long seconds before
exhaling, all the while watching Gina as she eyed him lustfully.   

His eyes fell to the black lace
of her knickers showing beneath her dress and, placing his smoking joint in the
ashtray, he stepped over to the bench and sat open-legged opposite her. Pulling
her roughly to him, his hand moved up her back to her neck and gripped a clump
of her hair, tugging her head back. Plunging his free hand deep inside the
front of her dress, he slid his fingers into her bra and pulled out a large wad
of fifty-pound notes.

Gina’s breath hitched. The
sensation of his fingers brushing over her nipple generated the usual need in
her and she wanted him to take her, then and there. But he immediately pulled
his hand out from her dress and, releasing her hair, stuffed the notes into the
pocket of his jogging bottoms and slid off the bench. He stepped back over to
the wicker chair, slumped back down and relit his joint.

“What’s your problem?” Gina
spat, feeling the impact of rejection as hard as if he had just whacked her
across the face. “So, I’m used up now, am I? Everyone else has been there, so
you’re not interested in me anymore? Is that it?”

Aiden didn’t answer her. He
rarely did when she had a point to prove. It was one of the many things about
Aiden that lit the flame of her fiery temper. “
That’s it, isn’t it
?” she
screeched. “
Now that you’ve got me on the bash, you don’t want me anymore
!”

Gina felt hot tears sting her
eyes as she stared at Aiden in disbelief. Her heart pounded and sank all at
once. He wasn’t looking at her now. He simply concentrated on the sizzling end
of his joint as he sucked on it casually. It was as if she wasn’t even in the
room with him. 

“
You bastard
!” she
screamed, standing up in her rage, fists clenched as she tried to stop herself grabbing
the heaviest object in the room and launching it at his head.

“Don’t lose your temper, now, G,”
he instructed impassively, flicking his ash into the ashtray. “It’s just
business... ‘Do not consume your own product’,” he muttered dispassionately,
reiterating the mantra that Reggie frequently preached and something he had
learned, over time, to take on board.

If he wanted success, he had
to stop abusing his own products. He had already stopped consuming the drugs he
collected debts for. He would stop racing around in his own stolen cars, and he
would stop sleeping with Gina. She was now a product of his. It was too
personal. Sleeping with her was like shitting on his own doorstep. 

Gina was too involved with him, always had been. He
needed to sever that connection sooner rather than later, like he had attempted
to do once before. He needed his and, more importantly,
her
head to be
straight. He couldn’t have her dropping in on him all the time as if they were
some kind of partnership. He
owned
her now. There was no mutual
relationship left – if there ever had been one.

Anguish enveloped Gina. All of
a sudden she felt dirty and used. Aiden had just torn her limited self-respect
into shreds. He had called attention to what she was, what she had become: a
pawn, a thespian on the grand stage of Aiden’s world... an
employee
, not
a partner and contributor to his
wealth, not a master of her own self.
She was a number, a convenient subordinate. Ultimately, she was a nobody.

She snivelled and, mustering
the strength to speak, she blubbed. “I don’t have to do this anymore, you
know... remember, you need
me
!” She stabbed her chest with her index
finger. “Me, Aiden.
I’m
the one who’s enabled you to have what you’ve
always wanted...” she whimpered, wiping her eyes with her trembling fingers.

Aiden stared at her intently.
He did not like where she was going with this because, deep down, he knew she
was right in many ways. The money he had earned from Gina far exceeded the
money he earned from Reggie, Kamal and the cars put together. That Gina was
conscious of this fact did not sit well with him.

Gina felt the pain of his
silence. She wanted him to embrace her, thank her, acknowledge that her
partnership was to be recognised and celebrated. She had done it all for him,
for them, so they could live the lives they’d both only dreamed about a few
years ago. But he was a proud and selfish fool and she wasn’t going to stand
for it any longer.

“You can shove your job and
all the money up your arse, Aiden. I’m out of here!” she bellowed and stormed
over to the door.

“You’ll go to Mr Baker’s
tonight, G...” Aiden announced from his chair as he stubbed out his joint in
the ashtray, distracting her from her escape.

She turned to look at him and exclaimed,
“I don’t think so!”

He stood, slowly, like a lion
stalking its prey. “You
will
go,” he reiterated.

Gina couldn’t bear the unyielding
authority in his tone. The cheek of him made her want to laugh, but the fierce
look in his eyes told her that it was no joke. Aiden had a lot of money riding
on her performance tonight, and he wasn’t going to let her ruin it for him.

Despite his threatening demeanour,
she found herself lingering at the doorway, holding onto one last shred of hope
that he would display his beautiful smile, wrap his arms around her and tell
her that he had just had a bad day, yet deep down she knew she was deluding
herself. Their whole relationship had been a delusion from day one. That he
could ever adore her as much as she adored him had always been in doubt, yet
she had pinned all her hope on that changing over time. She had dreamed of the
moment he proved that he was hers once and for all.

Anger and an aching pain of
rejection grew inside her now that she finally understood that it had all been
a lie: that Aiden had never loved her, however much he had told her he did in
the past. He’d never planned to spend his future with her. He’d used her to
make money. He’d blatantly informed her that she was merely a product that he
could sell and resell as much as he wanted. And all he’d had to do to get her
to comply was hold her and tell her what she wanted to hear.

She shook her head, and with
clear-cut malice, whispered, “
I ain’t going
.”

Aiden stepped up to her. Even
through the wall of tension that had materialised between them, Gina still felt
the familiar suffocating energy he exuded as a result of his fury and what came
next took the breath from her. Taking a handful of her hair, Aiden dragged her
back into the room. “Aiden, no!” she pleaded, knowing exactly what was to come,
but her pleas were cut short as the wind was punched out of her by a powerful blow
to the stomach, and within seconds she found herself on the floor and having to
endure the full force of his wrath as he kicked her about the room until she
could endure no more. She lay still and breathless, curled into a foetal
position, her vision blurred from the tears that streamed down her cheeks.

Aiden stepped back and glared
down at her battered body, breathless from his exertions. He felt not one ounce
of remorse, just anger. He announced, “You’ll be at Mr Baker’s at eleven, even
if I have to drag you there meself...”

It was the last thing she
heard him say to her before she closed her eyes and surrendered to the
darkness.

************

“G... G... can you hear me, love?”

Shelly Matthews had given up
the videos not long after Gina had begun, but a girl still needed to earn and
she had no other prospects, so Aiden had put her in touch with Mr Baker. Then,
when Gina had recently been employed under Mr Baker, she and Jackie Mansfield
had been put in charge of looking after her. Now, as Shelly knelt down and
placed her hand over Gina’s burning forehead, she wondered how the hell she had
ended up on Mr Baker’s bathroom floor, totally out of it, and she knew if Gina
couldn’t work tonight, Mr Baker wouldn’t be happy. An MP was arriving at 11:30pm,
having specifically asked for Gina, and he was worth thousands.

Shelly started when the door
creaked open, but sighed with relief when she saw that it was Jackie. When
Jackie noticed that Gina was sprawled out on the tiled floor, her expression transformed
from indifference to one of fear. “What’s the matter with her?” she asked
urgently, her wide, brown eyes beseeching Shelly to give her good news rather
than bad.

“She’s out of it... I don’t
know what to do with her. And look...” Shelly pulled up Gina’s vest to show
Jackie the extensive bruising across her stomach and rib cage.

Jackie gasped. “Who...?”

“Who do you think?” Shelly interrupted
sourly.

Jackie sighed. “I’ll ask Mr
Baker to have a word with him. It isn’t good for business if she can’t bloody
move from pain... and the punters won’t like her bashed up all the time.” She
sighed again and added sarcastically, “Should I bring it up before or after he
kills us both for letting her get in this state?” Yet she couldn’t deny her
pounding heart.

Gina suddenly howled as if she
were in immense pain and curled up into a foetal position. Her eyes shot open,
suddenly alert and darting around the bathroom frantically, with no idea where
she had awoken. Shelly began to pull Gina’s arms away from where they were
wrapped tightly around her stomach, and Jackie stared down at the scene in
horror. “Oh... Jesus!” she quavered.

“What?” Shelly turned to face
her, but Jackie’s stare was fixed to the floor. When Shelly turned back, she
saw the pool of blood. “Oh, shit!”