Amsterdam

Georgia was taken with him when they first met two years earlier. A well built type with mischievous eyes behind bookish glasses. She went for that look; sporty, academic and a little bit naughty but soon learned that he was snapped up and happily married. Weren’t they all? Harriet, his wife, popular and important in the group, was clearly in charge and enjoyed getting what she wanted. Georgia put them to a corner of her mind where she could admire him from afar and envy her slightly, with very little consequence.

She focused on getting on with her new life in a new city. Restless by nature, she was unable to settle down to the same place, the same people for more than a few years at a time. She’d been on a quest for greener pastures since she first left home at seventeen, moving from city to city and then country to county, until here she was over twenty years later, starting again in Hong Kong.

Perhaps due to an extreme fear of rejection, and certainly because she had not stayed in any one place long enough, intimacy had been distinctly lacking in recent years. She’d been in a relationship of sorts during her Amsterdam stint. Not that you could really call it a relationship, more of an unhealthy fixation. He was eccentric and she was drawn to him in a way she could neither rationalise nor resolve. His weirdness compelled her and she was hell bent on knowing this most unusual man.

Philippe was clever and good with numbers, impulsive with a huge appetite for extravagance. Men who love food usually love sex, but here was a Frenchman who would cosset her and smother her with affection and yet avoid penetration. Emotionally abusive, a boy inside a man’s body; he’d stare icy holes through anyone he didn’t like, but give generously when he wanted something. At times charming and entertaining with an easy Gallic manner, during tantrums he sweated the most fetid odour of vitriol, just like the fumes from the pissoirs that lined the pretty city canals.

The day she heard voices from the upstairs bathroom she knew her suspicions were founded. She’d suspected an affair but without proof what could she do? Tiptoeing gingerly up the narrow staircase, dreading the creak of each aged oak board, she reached the landing and put her ear to the locked door. The words were drowned out by the steady stream of hot running water. Such a waste she noted sardonically as she crouched down to peer through the crack at the bottom of the door through which the steam escaped.

There were his large flat and familiar feet, rocking back and forth on pointed toes, sending droplets splaying as his heels touched down in syncopation with the knocking of the hot water tank. The voices were his alone. One deep and assertive, the other inhaled breathy and submissive.

Unusual gait, vacant stare, nail biting, weird smell, gluttony, deceitfulness.

Google threw up references to schizophrenia, autism and Aspergers’s syndrome but what good did a Google diagnosis really do anyone?

Georgia eventually tired of the emotional abuse, the lack of empathy. She was never going to solve the mystery and he was never going to be anything more than a weirdo with a semi flaccid penis. When opportunity presented itself, she just packed up and bolted to London.