Now that we have briefly met Mr Drewer and the teaser of a prologue, time to introduce our protagonist. Her name is Helen and she is about to have a very bad morning...
File #1 – Introducing Helen - The Morning After
Helen groaned as the alarm clock stung her head into as close a form a consciousness as her decidedly hung over head would allow. Except it didn’t sound like her alarm clock.
Groggily she looked up at the bedside table…except the bedside table wasn’t there.
It had been there when she went to bed.
In fact she couldn’t remember drinking last night, and certainly not as much as the pounding in her head or the taste in her mouth was telling her she had. Confused she rolled over…
She certainly didn’t remember anything about the naked man lying next to her.
It looked for all the world like her ex-boyfriend Marcus, but he was very much ex last time she had checked and didn’t have bleached blond hair. Rubbing her eyes she glanced out across her bedroom, except, in what was becoming an alarming trend already; it wasn’t quite the bedroom she recalled going to sleep in the night before. It had the same walls, height and dimensions certainly, but the walls had somehow changed colour and someone had painted over her adorable teak stained wooden floorboards with white emulsion.
She definitely hadn’t put that full-length poster of a scantily clad Britney Spears on the far wall either. Thoroughly confused she pulled herself up on the bed and noticed various items of her clubbing clothes…her little red dress that always had the desired effect and more worryingly her nice black lace bra strewn across the floor. She looked down at herself…she was naked. Which was odd considering she was absolutely certain she had gone to bed early, not to mention alone, and in her nice snug Winnie the pooh pyjamas with a steaming mug of hot chocolate.
This had to be a dream…a bad ‘what if’ type of dream she thought to herself.
She closed her eyes and opened them tentatively. The blond and now snoring version of her odious ex boyfriend was still there though.
Dazed and more then a little more confused Helen leant down and looked for her dressing gown. No dressing gown to be found. In fact, apart from the obviously hastily discarded party dress and underwear none of her clothes were there, not even the pile of dirty laundry she always left to accumulate for too long in the far corner.
Her wardrobe was missing too.
This was a very odd dream she thought to herself even if she did feel quite awake. Gingerly she pulled herself out the bed and reached down for her dress and pulled it on quickly, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable at being naked in the presence of the person she had come of late to see as a particularly loathsome specimen of a man. Although taking all the signs into account she hadn’t found him that loathsome last night, or at least in the last night that had preceded the ‘this morning’ she found herself in, despite the fact that none of this bore any resemblance to the ‘this morning’ she had been expecting.
“Snap out of it for Christ’s sake” she mused to herself, “I need to wake up.”
Instead it was her sleeping bedfellow that stirred. He turned around groaning and lazily opened an eye, glancing at Helen before slumping back in his pillow.
“Man I was hoping it had been a bad dream.” He muttered, “you need to go.”
Helen sat at the edge of the bed and just looked at him blankly for a second.
“I need to go? This is my flat!” She stammered.
He rolled over and raised an eyebrow, “Your flat? Jesus, I know some women can be clingy, but a one night stand does not give you residence.” He mumbled, rubbing his stubble slowly.
“A one night stand? Is that what you call it after all this time Marcus?”
“Pardon?” he looked at her quizzically, “when I go out for a night out with the lads and pull a total stranger for some not so great sex, yeah, I’d call that a one night stand.”
Helen wasn’t sure whether being labelled a total stranger or ‘not so great’ was worse.
“Look,” he continued, “I’m sorry ok, I used you, I wanted it, you were there and willing, I’m a bastard ok, lesson learnt, now get outta my flat.”
Whoever ‘this’ Marcus was he wasn’t any more of a morning person than she remembered him being.
“You really don’t know me do you?”
“What was your name again? Can’t say I remember last night much, no, I don’t know you.”
Helen glared at him, “we were together almost three years? Met on Holiday in Greece? You hate my sister? Any of this ringing any bells?” Marcus sat himself up and stared at her. “I think you have me mistaken for someone else lady, I really don’t know you.”
“You think I am in the business of going out and bedding total strangers after a boozy night?”
He glanced around the room before looking back at her, “I think that’s your bra hanging from my ceiling fan.”
Helen looked up and quickly snatched her underwear back down suddenly blushing profusely. “I’m really not like this…I don’t understand what’s going on…Marcus is this some kind of sick joke? This is my flat god damn it! I dumped you three months ago.”
“You dumped me?” he laughed, “you have lost it lady, look we met for the first time last night, you found me attractive and came home with me and were only too glad to rip my clothes off, beginning and end of story. Now please leave.”
Helen couldn’t help it, but started to sob into her hands.
“Christ woman, don’t turn on the waterworks now, look just leave and feel free to tell your friends you pulled a total pig, who turned you out in the morning and you never want to see me again.” He was right about the last part at least Helen thought to herself, “but this is my flat.” She sobbed.
“You’re getting on my nerves now,” Marcus got up and stomped round the room picking up the rest of Helen’s things and tossed them at her abruptly, “I won’t ask again, GET OUT!”
With that he unceremoniously grabbed her by the arm and lead her to the door. “I won’t ask again, OUT! You are seriously freaking me out lady”
Helen couldn’t keep up, Still crying, she couldn’t even bring herself to resist as he pushed her out into the hallway outside his flat and slammed the door behind her. She turned and started hammering on the door, “Marcus you bastard let me back in, this is my flat, I’ll call the police.”
She screamed.
Silence.
Apart that was, from the creaking of a door down the hall opening. “Are you alright young lady?” a voice inquired from the next door down.
“Thank god!” Helen thought to herself, it was Mrs Hudson, her neighbour, she would remember her and sort this whole mess out.
“Mrs Hudson, please my ex-boyfriend has stolen my flat somehow, please help me, call the police.”
“How do you know my name?” The old lady asked.
“Mrs Hudson? It’s me Helen, I’ve lived next door to you for two years now. You must remember me, I look after your cats when you go away to visit your son in Cornwall?”
“I don’t have a cat,” she said thinking for a moment, “or a son for that matter.”
“You don’t remember me either do you?”
The old lady looked at her strangely, “do you want me to call someone love? You look distressed.”
“No, I don’t think it would help.” Helen replied trying hard not to burst into tears again.
“If you’re sure,” shrugged the lady that might or might not have been Mrs Hudson, and closed her door.
Helen slumped down in the hallway and looked at the pile of stuff Marcus had ditched out with her. A black silk neck scarf, her bra, which she quickly slipped back on under her dress, a pair of Gucci shoes she didn’t remember owning, a small denim jacket and a small black leather handbag were all she had to go on.
The Gucci shoes were nice though.
Sighing she rummaged through the handbag hoping to find something, anything, that might tell her what the hell was going on. Much to her relief her mobile phone was there, and it was the mobile phone she remembered having. This had to be a dream she grumbled to herself as she made her way outside hoping to get some reception on her phone.
As the big black doors to the apartment block swung closed behind her she scanned the street, everything looked pretty normal. Everything looked like she had expected it to look like, although she couldn’t help shake the feeling that a tree or two had disappeared overnight as well from the row of neatly kept saplings that lined the pavement opposite.
She sat herself down on the sandstone steps and turned the phone on. Helen wasn’t totally surprised by the fact that her address book wasn’t on this phone, but at least she knew her mother’s number off by heart, it was as good a place as any to start. She dialled the number only to be met by a very formal female voice advising her that there were insufficient funds on her phone and she could top her credit up by pressing ‘1’.
“’My phone isn’t even pay-as-you-go” she muttered to herself as she flipped the mobile closed dejectedly and really hoped she was going to wake up soon.
“It gets easier don’t worry.” A coarse Irish accent sounded from behind her.
She looked up to see a slightly bedraggled looking man standing a few feet away. His dirty red spiked hair looked like it was in dire need of washing and shaving clearly wasn’t something he had done in a while. “Oh great,” Helen sighed, “now the vagrants want to chat me up, look I don’t have any change and can’t give you a cigarette so just piss off ok? I’m having a bad morning.” She snapped.
“Ow touchy this morning aren’t we?”
“Didn’t I just tell you to piss off?”
“Well, if you hadn’t noticed this is a public street, was just being polite.”
Helen glared at him with the type of ‘don’t fuck with me’ stare that suggested he might want to consider backing off, but the Irishman didn’t seem phased.
“Tobias Gordon at your service Helen.” He said making a lame attempt at a bow.
“For the last time piss off!”
“As you wish,” he shrugged and turned to leave.
Then it hit her, “Wait! How the hell did you know my name?”
Tobias stopped and looked round slowly with just the slightest hint of a devilish grin. “You just told me to piss off.”
Helen stood up and marched after him, “How did you know my name?” she demanded. Tobias faced her and she took a good look at him, his clothing wasn’t doing any more for him then his hair, a long dark leather jacket fell loosely to his ankles hiding beneath it a green woollen jumper that looked like it hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in some time. His worn blue jeans and a pair of heavy looking Doc Martens didn’t look any better.
“How do you know my name?”
“Someone told me.”
“Who?”
“Someone who knew you would be here, someone that knew you’d be turfed out of that apartment as a bad one night stand, and someone that has something to offer you.”
“You gonna tell me who this someone is or do I have to play twenty questions all morning with a tramp?”
“Good one, you’re handling this better then most, you gonna come with me or do I have to stand here and play twenty questions with someone doing a good impression of a prostitute?”
Helen self-consciously pulled the denim jacket up over her shoulders quickly and sighed. “Come with you where?”
“Just for coffee.”
“Just for coffee!”
“Is there an echo out here? That’s right, coffee is good first thing in the morning after the kind of night you’ve had.”
“I really don’t remember the kind of night I’m supposed to have had.”
“No, you won’t since you didn’t actually have the kind of night that you have found yourself having had this morning.”
Helen stared at him for a moment. If this was a dream it was the strangest dream she had ever had.
“Look, I know who you think you are, and those people obviously don’t. I know you think that’s clearly your flat, and whilst to you it is clearly your flat, it clearly isn’t at the same time. You don’t have any identification to show the police, and I can guarantee they won’t believe you,” he elaborated, “all I’m asking for is an hour of your time. Heaven knows you’ll have enough of that, and I’ll even pay for the coffees, so what do you say?”
Helen stared at him blankly.
“It’s just an hour, what have you got to lose? We can go to that nice place with the seats outside just down the street, plenty of people around, public and all that”
She shrugged, and was struggling to take it all in, she didn’t see that she had much choice but to join the bedraggled Irishman for a coffee. She wasn’t certain but something seemed to nag at her from the inside that she was supposed to follow him. Whatever it was didn’t explain why.
File #1 – Introducing Helen - The Morning After
Helen groaned as the alarm clock stung her head into as close a form a consciousness as her decidedly hung over head would allow. Except it didn’t sound like her alarm clock.
Groggily she looked up at the bedside table…except the bedside table wasn’t there.
It had been there when she went to bed.
In fact she couldn’t remember drinking last night, and certainly not as much as the pounding in her head or the taste in her mouth was telling her she had. Confused she rolled over…
She certainly didn’t remember anything about the naked man lying next to her.
It looked for all the world like her ex-boyfriend Marcus, but he was very much ex last time she had checked and didn’t have bleached blond hair. Rubbing her eyes she glanced out across her bedroom, except, in what was becoming an alarming trend already; it wasn’t quite the bedroom she recalled going to sleep in the night before. It had the same walls, height and dimensions certainly, but the walls had somehow changed colour and someone had painted over her adorable teak stained wooden floorboards with white emulsion.
She definitely hadn’t put that full-length poster of a scantily clad Britney Spears on the far wall either. Thoroughly confused she pulled herself up on the bed and noticed various items of her clubbing clothes…her little red dress that always had the desired effect and more worryingly her nice black lace bra strewn across the floor. She looked down at herself…she was naked. Which was odd considering she was absolutely certain she had gone to bed early, not to mention alone, and in her nice snug Winnie the pooh pyjamas with a steaming mug of hot chocolate.
This had to be a dream…a bad ‘what if’ type of dream she thought to herself.
She closed her eyes and opened them tentatively. The blond and now snoring version of her odious ex boyfriend was still there though.
Dazed and more then a little more confused Helen leant down and looked for her dressing gown. No dressing gown to be found. In fact, apart from the obviously hastily discarded party dress and underwear none of her clothes were there, not even the pile of dirty laundry she always left to accumulate for too long in the far corner.
Her wardrobe was missing too.
This was a very odd dream she thought to herself even if she did feel quite awake. Gingerly she pulled herself out the bed and reached down for her dress and pulled it on quickly, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable at being naked in the presence of the person she had come of late to see as a particularly loathsome specimen of a man. Although taking all the signs into account she hadn’t found him that loathsome last night, or at least in the last night that had preceded the ‘this morning’ she found herself in, despite the fact that none of this bore any resemblance to the ‘this morning’ she had been expecting.
“Snap out of it for Christ’s sake” she mused to herself, “I need to wake up.”
Instead it was her sleeping bedfellow that stirred. He turned around groaning and lazily opened an eye, glancing at Helen before slumping back in his pillow.
“Man I was hoping it had been a bad dream.” He muttered, “you need to go.”
Helen sat at the edge of the bed and just looked at him blankly for a second.
“I need to go? This is my flat!” She stammered.
He rolled over and raised an eyebrow, “Your flat? Jesus, I know some women can be clingy, but a one night stand does not give you residence.” He mumbled, rubbing his stubble slowly.
“A one night stand? Is that what you call it after all this time Marcus?”
“Pardon?” he looked at her quizzically, “when I go out for a night out with the lads and pull a total stranger for some not so great sex, yeah, I’d call that a one night stand.”
Helen wasn’t sure whether being labelled a total stranger or ‘not so great’ was worse.
“Look,” he continued, “I’m sorry ok, I used you, I wanted it, you were there and willing, I’m a bastard ok, lesson learnt, now get outta my flat.”
Whoever ‘this’ Marcus was he wasn’t any more of a morning person than she remembered him being.
“You really don’t know me do you?”
“What was your name again? Can’t say I remember last night much, no, I don’t know you.”
Helen glared at him, “we were together almost three years? Met on Holiday in Greece? You hate my sister? Any of this ringing any bells?” Marcus sat himself up and stared at her. “I think you have me mistaken for someone else lady, I really don’t know you.”
“You think I am in the business of going out and bedding total strangers after a boozy night?”
He glanced around the room before looking back at her, “I think that’s your bra hanging from my ceiling fan.”
Helen looked up and quickly snatched her underwear back down suddenly blushing profusely. “I’m really not like this…I don’t understand what’s going on…Marcus is this some kind of sick joke? This is my flat god damn it! I dumped you three months ago.”
“You dumped me?” he laughed, “you have lost it lady, look we met for the first time last night, you found me attractive and came home with me and were only too glad to rip my clothes off, beginning and end of story. Now please leave.”
Helen couldn’t help it, but started to sob into her hands.
“Christ woman, don’t turn on the waterworks now, look just leave and feel free to tell your friends you pulled a total pig, who turned you out in the morning and you never want to see me again.” He was right about the last part at least Helen thought to herself, “but this is my flat.” She sobbed.
“You’re getting on my nerves now,” Marcus got up and stomped round the room picking up the rest of Helen’s things and tossed them at her abruptly, “I won’t ask again, GET OUT!”
With that he unceremoniously grabbed her by the arm and lead her to the door. “I won’t ask again, OUT! You are seriously freaking me out lady”
Helen couldn’t keep up, Still crying, she couldn’t even bring herself to resist as he pushed her out into the hallway outside his flat and slammed the door behind her. She turned and started hammering on the door, “Marcus you bastard let me back in, this is my flat, I’ll call the police.”
She screamed.
Silence.
Apart that was, from the creaking of a door down the hall opening. “Are you alright young lady?” a voice inquired from the next door down.
“Thank god!” Helen thought to herself, it was Mrs Hudson, her neighbour, she would remember her and sort this whole mess out.
“Mrs Hudson, please my ex-boyfriend has stolen my flat somehow, please help me, call the police.”
“How do you know my name?” The old lady asked.
“Mrs Hudson? It’s me Helen, I’ve lived next door to you for two years now. You must remember me, I look after your cats when you go away to visit your son in Cornwall?”
“I don’t have a cat,” she said thinking for a moment, “or a son for that matter.”
“You don’t remember me either do you?”
The old lady looked at her strangely, “do you want me to call someone love? You look distressed.”
“No, I don’t think it would help.” Helen replied trying hard not to burst into tears again.
“If you’re sure,” shrugged the lady that might or might not have been Mrs Hudson, and closed her door.
Helen slumped down in the hallway and looked at the pile of stuff Marcus had ditched out with her. A black silk neck scarf, her bra, which she quickly slipped back on under her dress, a pair of Gucci shoes she didn’t remember owning, a small denim jacket and a small black leather handbag were all she had to go on.
The Gucci shoes were nice though.
Sighing she rummaged through the handbag hoping to find something, anything, that might tell her what the hell was going on. Much to her relief her mobile phone was there, and it was the mobile phone she remembered having. This had to be a dream she grumbled to herself as she made her way outside hoping to get some reception on her phone.
As the big black doors to the apartment block swung closed behind her she scanned the street, everything looked pretty normal. Everything looked like she had expected it to look like, although she couldn’t help shake the feeling that a tree or two had disappeared overnight as well from the row of neatly kept saplings that lined the pavement opposite.
She sat herself down on the sandstone steps and turned the phone on. Helen wasn’t totally surprised by the fact that her address book wasn’t on this phone, but at least she knew her mother’s number off by heart, it was as good a place as any to start. She dialled the number only to be met by a very formal female voice advising her that there were insufficient funds on her phone and she could top her credit up by pressing ‘1’.
“’My phone isn’t even pay-as-you-go” she muttered to herself as she flipped the mobile closed dejectedly and really hoped she was going to wake up soon.
“It gets easier don’t worry.” A coarse Irish accent sounded from behind her.
She looked up to see a slightly bedraggled looking man standing a few feet away. His dirty red spiked hair looked like it was in dire need of washing and shaving clearly wasn’t something he had done in a while. “Oh great,” Helen sighed, “now the vagrants want to chat me up, look I don’t have any change and can’t give you a cigarette so just piss off ok? I’m having a bad morning.” She snapped.
“Ow touchy this morning aren’t we?”
“Didn’t I just tell you to piss off?”
“Well, if you hadn’t noticed this is a public street, was just being polite.”
Helen glared at him with the type of ‘don’t fuck with me’ stare that suggested he might want to consider backing off, but the Irishman didn’t seem phased.
“Tobias Gordon at your service Helen.” He said making a lame attempt at a bow.
“For the last time piss off!”
“As you wish,” he shrugged and turned to leave.
Then it hit her, “Wait! How the hell did you know my name?”
Tobias stopped and looked round slowly with just the slightest hint of a devilish grin. “You just told me to piss off.”
Helen stood up and marched after him, “How did you know my name?” she demanded. Tobias faced her and she took a good look at him, his clothing wasn’t doing any more for him then his hair, a long dark leather jacket fell loosely to his ankles hiding beneath it a green woollen jumper that looked like it hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in some time. His worn blue jeans and a pair of heavy looking Doc Martens didn’t look any better.
“How do you know my name?”
“Someone told me.”
“Who?”
“Someone who knew you would be here, someone that knew you’d be turfed out of that apartment as a bad one night stand, and someone that has something to offer you.”
“You gonna tell me who this someone is or do I have to play twenty questions all morning with a tramp?”
“Good one, you’re handling this better then most, you gonna come with me or do I have to stand here and play twenty questions with someone doing a good impression of a prostitute?”
Helen self-consciously pulled the denim jacket up over her shoulders quickly and sighed. “Come with you where?”
“Just for coffee.”
“Just for coffee!”
“Is there an echo out here? That’s right, coffee is good first thing in the morning after the kind of night you’ve had.”
“I really don’t remember the kind of night I’m supposed to have had.”
“No, you won’t since you didn’t actually have the kind of night that you have found yourself having had this morning.”
Helen stared at him for a moment. If this was a dream it was the strangest dream she had ever had.
“Look, I know who you think you are, and those people obviously don’t. I know you think that’s clearly your flat, and whilst to you it is clearly your flat, it clearly isn’t at the same time. You don’t have any identification to show the police, and I can guarantee they won’t believe you,” he elaborated, “all I’m asking for is an hour of your time. Heaven knows you’ll have enough of that, and I’ll even pay for the coffees, so what do you say?”
Helen stared at him blankly.
“It’s just an hour, what have you got to lose? We can go to that nice place with the seats outside just down the street, plenty of people around, public and all that”
She shrugged, and was struggling to take it all in, she didn’t see that she had much choice but to join the bedraggled Irishman for a coffee. She wasn’t certain but something seemed to nag at her from the inside that she was supposed to follow him. Whatever it was didn’t explain why.
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