I ordered the alcopop and a double vodka shot. As soon as the barman’s back was turned and making sure that Melanie couldn’t see what I was doing, I tipped the vodka into the glass of alcopop.
I hurried back to our table. She hadn’t left, that was the first hurdle over with.
She sipped gingerly at her drink. I took a big swallow from my previously untouched glass of beer.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Take a proper swig. It won’t bite you.’
She did so. This was encouraging, I thought.
I was good at talking to kids. Men like me always are. The trick is to be ever so interested in them and totally sympathetic. She’d already told me quite a lot about her life and, like so many teenagers, she wasn’t happy with it.
‘I can understand how hard it must be for you, living with your stepdad, you know,’ I said. ‘I had a stepdad. I hated him.’
She smiled.
‘Jim’s all right really,’ she said. ‘But he’s so strict. He’s stricter than my own dad. It’s like he’s trying to control me all the time and I just think, yeah, right, who are you, anyway, ordering me about like that?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly how I felt.’
She finished her drink quickly. That pleased me.
‘Just one more?’ I asked.
‘I shouldn’t,’ she said.
But she did. And had another. Each time I added a double vodka shot to her alcopop. Once I’d got her going, she couldn’t stop talking. It was like our online exchanges, only more. She gave me the run down on her entire family, her school, her school friends, everything.
The colour rose in her cheeks. Her eyes brightened. She was halfway through her third drink and a detailed account of a disastrous family holiday the previous summer, when she said she had to go to the loo. I hoped she wasn’t going to be sick, but I didn’t think she would be. Not yet. I didn’t care what happened to her later, after I’d finished with her.
I watched her carefully, as she walked across the room. She already seemed unsteady on her feet. If she wasn’t she soon would be. I was going to make sure of that. I nipped to the bar while she was away and ordered another shot, which I swiftly poured into her glass. What a cocktail she now had.
I listened, apparently intently, to more of her silly, childish ramblings, whilst she finished her, now heavily doctored, alcopop.
Then I suggested we leave.
‘Perhaps you’d like to eat something?’ I asked. ‘I know a really good restaurant down the road.’
She giggled.
‘Whatever,’ she said.
Her eyes were becoming glazed. I had to help her to stand. I needed to get her away from this public place, before her condition became noticeable and unwanted attention was drawn to us.
I wrapped one arm around her and steered her outside. She was giggling quite uncontrollably now and when the fresh air hit her she leaned more heavily against me. I adjusted the position of my hand. I could feel the shape and warmth of a firm, young breast beneath my fingers. I had her. Surely, I had her. The question was, what to do with her?
I suppose I hadn’t really thought I would get this far. I don’t know if I had even intended to get this far. I had no idea where I was going to take her. I hadn’t made a plan. I couldn’t take her to a hotel, a kid with an older man, and certainly not in that state. Clearly, I wasn’t going to take her to my home. I had vaguely considered driving my car to our assignation, but I was afraid of CCTV. In any case, I knew I would need a drink to steady my nerves. I had never done anything like this before. Well, not quite like it.
So it was really down to a kind of beginner’s luck that I found myself in this position. I hadn’t expected the silly girl to get quite this drunk this quickly. I suppose I might have done, if I’d thought about it. After all, she wasn’t likely to be a hardened drinker at fourteen, even in this day and age and I’d been pretty liberal with those vodka shots. But I’d imagined her becoming mellow and compliant, not out of her head.
I was wearing a hoody, albeit a rather trendy one, I thought. I now pulled the hood up, and kept my head down as I helped her along the street. Actually, I had to half carry her. I knew what I ought to do next. I ought to just prop her in a doorway or something and do a runner. Anything other than that was so dangerous. But my fingers had found their way inside her flimsy little top. I began to squeeze a small hard nipple. She didn’t protest. I’m not sure if she even noticed.
That other side of me, the side I so often fail to control, began to take over.
I could feel my erection rising and the gnawing, urgent desire take a hold of me.
Her head lolled against my shoulder, her eyes were rolling, the pupils were very big, but she smiled up at me. Or at least I think it was a smile. I leant towards her and kissed her on the lips, thrusting my tongue inside her mouth.
She didn’t actually respond, but neither did she protest.
Nobody took any notice. This was Bristol’s hinterland, a part of the city where it was perfectly usual to see couples walking about, entangled with each other and often one, or both of them, unsteady on their feet. I knew there was a network of shadowy alleyways and cul-de-sacs behind the bars, pubs, restaurants, and providers of sexual titivation, which lined Old Market Street and West Street.
I led her into Stone Lane.
I’d once followed a couple up this cobbled cul-de-sac late at night and watched them have full sex against a wall. A knee trembler, I think they call it. I like to watch. I have already said how much I like to watch. That had been an older man and a girl who’d been little more than a kid, not a lot older than the way I like them. Rough around the edges, though, and probably drugged up. I thought she’d almost certainly been on the game.
They hadn’t seen me. I know how to conceal myself.
I pushed Melanie against the same wall, pulled up her skirt, tore at her knickers and her puerile, already torn tights, opened my fly, lifted her, wrapping her legs around me and prepared to enter her. I had to be quick. Unfortunately, if I am not quick I am inclined to lose the ability. I still have the inclination, but I can only maintain an erection with a woman for seconds, when it comes to actually trying to do something with it. When I am just watching my erections seem to last for ever, achingly so, because I so rarely reach a climax.
It was at that moment that she sprang to life and began to fight me off. Perhaps she wasn’t so drunk after all. Her hands and arms were flailing. She went for my head. I was afraid she might catch me with her fingernails, leaving me with scratch marks on my face or neck, which would be difficult to explain away. I reached to grab her arms. Before I could do so, she started pulling at my hair. I jerked my head away and finally managed to fasten my fingers around her wrists. I smashed her arms back against the wall above her head. She began to scream. I fastened my mouth over hers, which only partially shut her up. She began kicking out with her legs, which seemed to cause her pelvis to move around against me. I found that exciting. But I had to silence her, so I punched her in the face.
She went a bit limp again. Her arms fell to her side. I was able to release her arms then and use my hands to hold her legs around me. The fight had further aroused me. My erection had grown even harder. I tried to manoeuvre myself into her and, of course, as soon as I did so, my penis began to shrink. I had hoped that this time, with a young girl and under these circumstances, I might have been able to keep going, but no. I stepped back, disentangling myself.