Autobiography

Robert left not long after they got back to the cottage. Margaux listened to the van's engine rumbling out of earshot with a growing sense of dread.

Bill locked the front door, and walked down the hall to the sitting room without looking at her. 

Margaux sat at the table, cradling her mug of tea, and couldn't help but watch him as he left. There was something fascinating about him -- like watching a deadly animal at a zoo... except that she was on the same side of the glass as this one.

She heard the soft creak of him sitting down on the sofa, then the murmur of the television coming on. Was it the news?

She listened for a while, trying to see if she could make out what the news reader was saying, and savoured the sweet, slightly bitter warmth of her tea. She felt a strange compulsion to go into the sitting room, and it wasn't anything to do with the news report. What was wrong with her? Was she so desperate for company that she would follow that sociopath around like an abused and lonely puppy?

This wouldn't do. She needed some time to think, somewhere private and safe. 

She could have used a wash, too.

She'd have to ask. Would he let her? He had to -- hadn't he spoken earlier about the rewards of good behaviour? There was no logical reason for him to refuse... though logic didn't always seem to matter.

Margaux rinsed out her empty mug beneath the tap, set it on the draining board, and headed down the hallway.

"Um..."

Bill looked up at her. He seemed to be dividing his attention between the news broadcast and the laptop on his knee.

"If you don't mind, I was going to have a bath."

He looked back at the television screen with an air of disinterest.

"Go ahead."

"...Do you think I could have my razor?"

"What do you want it for?"

"I'm not going to attack you with it."

"I was more concerned about you doing yourself some harm."

He closed the laptop and stood abruptly. Margaux found herself backed up against the wall in the hallway.

"L-living with the two of you isn't that unbearable."

"That's good to know."

He turned from her and walked down the hall to the middle door -- the one which was always locked. After a few moments he emerged from the room and held out her razor. For a moment all she could do was blink at it. That had almost been too easy.

"Thank you."

She took the blue-handled razor from his hand and turned to go.

"Margaux? Don't lock the door."

"I know."

*

The water was heaven.

After running the taps for a while, she couldn't seem to get the water as hot as she would have liked, but at this point she believed she would have accepted any temperature above freezing.

Margaux reclined against the pale enamel of the bath -- flinching at first as the cold surface touched her back -- and let her head loll back. This was the closest she had come to feeling relaxed in days. She let out a quiet sigh. Actually, that wasn't really accurate. This was the most relaxed she had been in weeks. Now there was some true absurdity.

She held her breath and let herself slip down into the warm water to soak her hair.

*

He had no particular intention of interrupting the moment of privacy he had afforded her, but there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that he could.

Bill watched Margaux's pale limbs in the bath as they moved in a slow dance of lather.

She knew about the cameras -- he had seen her look directly into more than one of them -- but had she noticed this one? She had never once acknowledged it, but equally possible was that she was simply accustomed to the cameras' presence, and had stopped caring whether they watched her.

She rinsed the foam from her upper body and sat upright, kneeling up out of the water. The resolution of the camera feed was too low to make out the details of her form -- the delicate tattoos that illustrated a quarter of her back were nothing more than a dark blur, and her hands as they moved up to the generous swell of her chest seemed to jump from position to position -- but the image she presented was enough to feed the imagination.

This display, if it could be called that, was hardly in keeping with the meek, reserved nature of the little creature he had been living with.

As she rinsed off once more, and moved to sit on the edge of the bath -- presumably to shave her legs -- Bill resolved to make a copy of tonight's footage before he deleted it. 

She definitely hadn't seen the camera.

*

Author's Note:

I know, not much happened. Actual plot next chapter, I promise. x