One of Us by Iain Rowan Page B

But you might be. Every day. Making him think...you feel differently.”
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
    He shrugged. “Said my piece. Don’t want to get you cross.” He took a long drink of wine, smiled. “After all, I’ve heard what you’re like when you’re cross.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Been talking to Fat Paul, haven’t I? The driver. He was telling me you were banging on his car, shouting the odds, demanding to see Corgan, all over some tart.”
    I stared at him. He looked confused. I stared more. He looked puzzled, then the lightbulb switched on and he looked apologetic.
    “Some woman,” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t mean anything, just what she does, you know.”
    “What he makes her do,” I said.
    He shrugged, drank some more wine. “I dunno. Bit of both, I reckon. Good money for her, isn’t it? She isn’t kept on a leash, from what I hear, she can come and go if she pleases. If she wanted to run, she could.”
    “And you say I am the child lost in the woods,” I said.
    “You what?” He had drunk quite a lot. I did not bother explaining myself.
    “He hurt me, you know,” I said after a little while. “Corgan.”
    Daniel looked horrified. “Shit, I told you, I warned you. Fuck, I didn’t know. You’re lucky you’ve still got a face, Anna. Don’t push it again with him. Trust me.”
    “Thank you for your sympathy.”
    He flung his arms out wide, nearly knocked the bottle off the table. “What do you expect me to do? Go round to his now and challenge him to a duel?”
    “No,” I said. “I am not expecting you to do anything.”
    “Look, if I could, I would,” Daniel said. “For you, I would. You know, I really like you Anna.”
    “Does he have many like her?” I asked. “Like Elena?” I did not want the conversation to turn to drunken declarations of feeling. What people say when they are drunk does not mean much, anyway. And also, I had drunk a lot too, although not as much as Daniel, and I was not used to it. And I did not want to say anything that I did not mean, either. Or would not mean after, when I was sober. What is it you want from me, Daniel, I thought. But I knew, deep down. And I think that I liked what it was that I knew.
    “There’s lots of girls,” Daniel said. “What Corgan does. Moves people from here to there, there to here, him and his right-hand men. Like Nicky, you met him? He’s a fucking twat, he is. Thinks he’s it. Arse. Always putting me down. Shit, I thought there was enough for another glass in there. Hey, mate, can we get a pair of brandies, please?”
    “Not for me,” I said. “I have to work later. And you are not driving, not with what you have drunk.”
    “Ah, go on, live a little,” Daniel said. “Loosen up. We’re having a nice time, roll with it.”
    “No, no brandy.”
    “Whatever, let ’em bring two anyway. If you don’t drink it, I will. Anyway, like I say, Corgan doesn’t get involved with the girls. But Elena, she’s different. You picked the wrong girl there, Anna my darling, from what I’ve been hearing. Couldn’t have made a worse choice to wind up Corgan.”
    “He has feelings for her?” I could not believe that Corgan would have feelings for anyone. He did not feel, only existed, only fed. I could not think of him as a person. But then I thought: that is what he does. He does not think of anyone as a person, just as profit, or an obstacle, or a stepping stone. Do not be like him, Anna.
    Daniel laughed. “Some skanky...sorry, sorry, yeah. But come on, course he isn’t interested in her like that. If he was, he’d have her, end of. Simple as that. No, it’s much more than that. He values her much more than that, from what I hear.” The brandies came, and he tossed one back, said ahh, smacked his lips as if he was kissing air, and then started on the second without offering it to me.
    “Why?” I had to stay focused. It would have been so easy just to give myself over to this lazy