The Straith and Narrow

By Jaime Davenport

Dr Abigail Straith is not a happy woman. In fairness, she has every reason to feel so.
As a former Oxford don, the twenty-seven year-old Abigail isn’t even sure how she ended up working in the bowels of the Schillermann Institute in Munich. She does know that she is generally reviled by her peers.
It is in Munich that she encounters two people who are to change her life.
Englishman Christopher Hathersage is a young and somewhat naive artist, who whilst ineptly wooing Abigail, is seen as an ideal target for her often-acerbic tongue.
Viktor Shirokov, nephew of a Russian Oligarch, exploits Abigail’s complex communal predilections. It is Viktor who pays for Abigail’s membership to an exclusive nightclub where she might satisfy her hedonistic fantasies. Such are Abigail’s talents that Viktor sees a business opportunity.
Upon returning unexpectedly to England, private investigator Stephen Gallagher and his assistant Cora Adebayo are asked by a member of a prominent family to look into Abigail’s past.
It becomes clear that Abigail Straith is not the person she is assumed to be. Stephen Gallagher’s enquiries provide a link between Abigail and an infamous serial killer, little suspecting that the investigation will lead to Abigail being subsequently arrested for murder.
It falls upon Stephen and Cora to make sense of the complex network of familial ties. Ultimately, it is upon single-mother Cora’s fragile shoulders that proving Abigail’s innocence falls. Of course, that very much depends on whether Abigail is guiltless.
This fantasy novel contains recurrent episodes of overt sexual practices that are fundamental to revealing the personalities of those involved. Hence, they have not been brushed over. For that reason, this book is unsuitable for anyone sensitive to permissive issues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jaime Davenport
• Release date: Mar 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463978467

Jaime Davenport

Writing should be fun.We all love a story, don't we?I am English. Or should that be British? Either way, I write in English, although the Queen may question whether I represent her particular take on the language. Who knows, she might have actually read some of work and I might be destined for a peerage?Ah yes, writers are dreamers and I am no exception.If you happen to be reading this, then good for you! If you are reading this and have read some of work, then even better for you! I hope that I haven't offended you, although that is perhaps preferable to having bored you.Thanks for stopping by.Happy reading!

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Author’s Note.

This novel is a fantasy and it should be read as such. That is not to say that the issues raised don’t contain a germ of veracity. The intentionally compressed time scale, as well as the plot, goes some way to creating an air of implausible whimsy.

The two parts of the novel reflect the experiences of Dr Abigail Straith. As the reader, it is up to you to decide if she is a perpetrator or victim. Perhaps as in real life, she is both and neither.

Part 1 is set in Munich and the prose principally relates to Abigail’s sexploits whilst working there.

Part 2 is based in England and concerns the consequences triggered by the events that took place in Munich, which precipitates the involvement of Gallagher and Associates.

As will become clear, for better or worse, sexuality is the cornerstone of the tale and there is a good deal of interaction included in the narrative. Such episodes could have been glossed over, yet that might have failed to convey the depth of the character’s involved.

My apologies for the use of any vernacular British English, it is after all my native tongue. The psychological terms used in this tale are for the most part genuine paraphilias.

PART ONE

Prologue - A Persuasive Argument.

Tuesday, 17th June 2014.

She could have chosen the interview suite with the soft furnishings and the ambience of a Seattle coffee lounge. Instead, she opted for the austere room with its clinical detachment, which she felt more in keeping with the patient’s psychopathy.

For the tape, the date is the seventeenth of June, 2014. The time is 10:17. This is Dr Steffi Lisicki interviewing Dr Abigail Hathersage... How are you today, Abigail?

Much better, Dr Lisicki.

That’s good to hear. How have you been sleeping?

So-so.

That’s understandable... Before we have our little chat, could you just confirm your full name for the record?

Doctor Abigail Felicity Hathersage.

And your date of birth?

Ten, five, eighty-six.

Very good... So that makes you recently twenty-eight years of age. Your place of birth?

Bristol.

You are aware of why you’re here?

Yes, Dr Lisicki.

It’s my duty to remind you that you have been remanded here having been charged with murder in order to conduct a psychiatric evaluation. Dr Burridge is the physician who has been appointed by the Criminal Prosecution Service. I’m here at the behest of your defence team. Do you understand?

Yes, Dr Lisicki...

Excellent... Tell me, Abigail, do you have any siblings?

A sister. Susan is two years my junior.

And your parents?

We were raised by my mother, if she can be so credited with such an accolade. I think you’re aware of the absence of any father figure.

She was a bad mother?

She was incompetent... And by that I mean financially and emotionally. The best that can be said of her was that she fed and clothed us.

And yet you went to Oxford University.

That was all down to Miss Davis. She was the one who saw my potential and nurtured me.

We’ll come back to your family later... Do you recall your recent months in Munich?

Yes, Dr Lisicki.

Did you know that male patients especially are seemingly seldom disturbed when they are told that they suffer from psychopathic inclinations, yet when told they may have issues regarding their sexuality, they tend to clam up? Why do you think that is?

Men or humans in general?

The latter, if you like.

Because in polite, professional, and familial society, sex isn’t discussed.

And why do you suppose that is, Abigail?

I don’t know... Convention, perceived mores with regard to acceptable behaviour, perhaps? Nobody wants to hear about anyone else’s sexual experiences unless they want to get off on it, in which case, it would fall outside the norms of acceptable conduct.

Interesting... Do you consider you enjoy a healthy sex life?

What has sex to do with being erroneously charged with murder?

Please just answer my questions, Abigail.

Depends on what you call healthy.

You recently married. Some might say hurriedly?

If you meet the right person, time is irrelevant.

And you’d like to have children?

I have no burning desire to reproduce, if that’s what you mean.

In the past, you’ve had some interesting relationships; including the man you stand accused of murdering. You loved Paul Durringford?

Did I...? Depends upon one’s perception of love. I suppose I loved his attentiveness when we were together... It’s history now.

His attentiveness?

We both enjoyed and took from the relationship.

But you would’ve liked more from it?

I think I acquired more than enough...

And before Durringford, you enjoyed a long-term relationship with a married man.

That was a different sort of relationship.

How so?

I did love Jeremy, or believed that I did. He said he was going to leave his wife for me.

And he was thirty years your senior...

Age is unimportant in a spiritual relationship. In any case, Paul was twenty years my senior.

You mentioned Paul again... You refer to many things as being irrelevant... When you say spiritual apropos your relationship with Jeremy, I’m assuming you’re using that term in place of physical.

Your words, not mine.

So it wasn’t physical?

It was physical in as far as I allowed it to go. I might have been more so had I known that it was what Jeremy wanted.

He wanted more?

Yes... I only realised that when it was too late. I was more focused upon my career, gaining a professorship.

A professorship that many might say you would have been granted because of your relationship with Professor Jeremy Hunt.

Then they’d be wrong. I worked hard for that position... Academically speaking.

And the relationship broke up when he became involved with another woman?

Yes...

Tell me, Abigail. How old were you when you had your first sexual experience?

What’s that got to do with allegedly murdering Paul?

Please answer the question, Abigail.

I take it you mean penetrative intercourse.

I suppose I do.

Twenty-three.

Don’t you think that was rather late?

Is there a ‘best before date’ on one’s genitalia? I had to study hard for my doctorate. Men were a distraction.

But you had suitors?

There were plenty who wanted to screw me but not I them.

Do you consider your period of homosexuality a reaction to male demands?

I wasn’t a very good lesbian. I simply preferred to spend my undergraduate days in the company of other girls. Less distracting than associating with boys.

You were arrested on two occasions.

Cautioned, actually.

For assaulting a man outside a strip club.

He assaulted me... We were taking photographs, threatening to ‘out’ them for the pervs they were.

Pervs? You consider men attending strip clubs perverts?

It was more than just a strip club...

And yet you went from being an ardent bra-burning feminist to engaging in sex acts at a sex club with multiple male partners, including an alfresco episode in a Munich alleyway.

"Two things, Dr Lisicki... I never burnt any bras. That was so last century, and I never had enough bras to burn. My tits were too big to go bouncing around unfettered... And just because it was an alleyway, the sex I engaged in wasn’t a public spectacle."

"Why are you prepared to graphically discuss events that took place as the club called Aquila, yet not what occurred in the alleyway?"

That’s my business.

Okay... Given your participation at a sex club, to what can we attribute your radicalisation?

You’re the psychiatrist.

So you don’t lay the blame at the door of Paul Durringford?

Blame? I don’t blame Paul for anything. He opened my eyes to possibilities I never thought existed.

And then you killed him.

I did not kill Paul...

Unlike Dr Bronwen, I do not believe you are a delusionist or a sociopathic psychopath.

I would like to go home.

And I’m here to help you achieve that. To that end, I’d like to ask you about Paul. How did you first meet him?

He called around to my apartment.

On what pretext?

He claimed he knew of an Anglo-Saxon manuscript in private hands that he wanted an expert to verify.

And he asked you specifically?

He must have asked around Oxford and my name cropped up.

And so you agreed to help him?

Not initially. I pretended to be Abigail Straith’s flatmate.

And he believed you?

No...

And what were your first impressions of him?

I thought him boorish and a man who didn’t act his age. He was almost fifty.

You didn’t recognise him?

Not specifically.

Meaning?

He had one of those faces, the sort of handsomely plain features that makes you think you’ve seen him before somewhere.

But not as your mother’s ex-boyfriend?

He might have borne a slight resemblance but to supposedly recognise a man one hasn’t seen since one was a pre-teen is asking a great deal.

Would you still have become lovers if you knew he’d been your mother’s lover?

It would be inappropriate for me to answer that.

I’m part of your defence team, not the opposition.

You want me to say I would’ve...? Okay, I would’ve, because Paul was there with me, not my mother.

And so what eventually happened between you and Paul? To end the affair?

Nothing eventually happened between me and Paul. After however many heady months it was, he stopped coming to see me. Job done, I suppose.

What job?

The creation of the woman you see before you.

And how did that happen?

* * *

May 2013 – Oxford.

Thirteen months earlier...

Why did you lie to me? he asked. By the glint in her eye, he knew he had her hooked. She looked at him, seemingly unmoved by his challenge.

"I would call it subterfuge rather than a lie. How was I to know you were to be trusted? I wasn’t going to admit to being me to anybody."

So you’re interested in viewing the manuscript?

I think that by having you around to my apartment for a third time must make you aware that you’ve aroused my interest... Paul laughed at Abigail’s reply, his apparent mirth riling her. What’s so funny?

She knew little of life outside the world of academia; she had travelled and met many people. However, they were all from her sphere of experience.

If the hidebound term living in a bubble could be applied to anyone then she was as good a contender for that title as anyone. Her life had been channelled according to the rules and expectations of the Oxbridge elite.

Paul Durringford’s entry into her life and his business proposition had seemed like a Godsend, a heaven sent impetus to her stalling career. Hence, it was no surprise that she should embrace his proposal unconditionally. The discovery of an unseen Dark Age manuscript did not happen every day.

His enthusiasm was empowering; he made her feel that anything and everything was possible, totally at odds with her pre-Durringford state.

She found the physicality of his nature intimidating, although perhaps only to be expected by a life shaped by a career in investigative journalism. His ruthlessness disturbed her yet such were his convictions and powers of persuasion that she found herself attracted to him in an unfathomable and hitherto unknown manner.

He oozed charisma to an extent that it cowed into submission any shortfall with regard to his volatile temperament.

You are..., replied Paul, answering her question as to what was amusing him. You Oxford types make me laugh, so full of your convoluted vagueness. You never call a spade a spade, you talk around the subject.

And how many ‘Oxford types’ do you know?

I’ve met a few... Admittedly no one quite like you.

What’s that supposed to mean?

You reek of Oxford but there is something about you, Abigail...

Many people might have assumed that Abigail would react angrily to his insinuations, yet she was intrigued as to where he was leading the conversation. He was the first person in many months to take any notice of her and some ill-defined part of her psyche relished the attention.

And what’s that? she asked coyly.

You remind me so much of me...

I’m nothing like you! she barked animatedly.

Paul laughed again. Oh, but I think you are, Dr Straith. Your ambition drives you and like me, you have reached a nadir in your fortunes. I think there are things you are in need of and something particular you’ll find invigorating.

Like what...? She drained her fourth glass of wine.

You’re certainly in need of a makeover, which I can sort out. I reckon beneath that dowdy exterior there’s a swan bursting to get out.

Dowdy exterior!

Come on, darlin’. You could do with losing more than a few pounds and your hair’s a bloody mess, in need of cutting and styling. You could do with being shown how to use make-up. No man had ever spoken to her so candidly and yet how many men in recent times had actually cared about her enough to pass comment?

You bastard! She issued the words with a feline purr. He could imagine her preparing to unleash her claws upon him.

The truth hurts, sweetness... I think you’d look good if you tried making the effort.

You shit!

Abigail hurled the contents of her glass over the man sitting opposite her at the breakfast bar. The merlot landed full in his face and he slowly blinked away the red liquid from his left eye, making no attempt to mop up the wine. He permitted the liquid to drip from his face like diluted blood, stigmata to his suffering.

You know..., he said in a soft, almost playful voice, his head shaking from side to side with apparent disbelief. It never ceases to amaze me the number of fillies who think nothing of punching a guy or assaulting him with a cheap merlot. And yet they would shriek in horror if a guy laid a finger on them in return. Do you think that’s fair? Why do girls resort to violence when they know they can’t win?

Abigail was thrown by his challenge. She possessed a vile temper although it seldom surfaced in public. In her professional life, she customarily came across as quietly assertive and non-confrontational. She was known to argue her case vociferously in academic circles where the weapon of choice was the cutting turn of phrase and putdown.

She had never punched anyone or resorted to hurling glasses of wine and was shocked by her action. She could only account for her aggression by laying the blame firmly at Paul Durringford’s door and the personal affront she had suffered. She said nothing and chose instead to stare defiantly back at him.

Paul sighed. I can see that you haven’t received any form of discipline for a good while. You display an extreme lack of self-control...

I have self-control! she declared, although admitted to herself that the alcohol she had already consumed, ignoring the glass that still dripped from his face onto his white shirt, had robbed her of a good deal of equanimity.

I think you require educating, Dr Straith, he announced sombrely as though announcing they had run out of milk.

She glared at him before a grin lit up her face. "I think you require educating..." She repeated the phrase in the hard to place but distinct vocal accent of Paul. She laughed, re-charged her glass, and took a gleeful swig of merlot.

Abigail Straith was astonished by the rapidity of the forty-nine-year-old’s movements.

She had only just placed her glass back on top of the breakfast bar when she found herself effortlessly bundled to sprawl face down upon the worktop. Her glass fell and shattered, spilling what was left of the wine upon the laminate flooring. She was vaguely aware of screaming but her attention was absorbed by her ridiculous and improbable posture atop the kitchen fixture.

Paul may have insisted that she required a makeover. However, he was not to know that by her dress code of late, her apparel that evening was positively avant-garde. That she wore denims along with her loose fitting black knitted jumper was only because she had purchased the said garments the previous weekend, prompted by a desire to impress the only person in her life to whom she currently listened, the man now responsible for her preposterous deportment.

The blow to her backside, delivered by the palm of his hand, stifled her protestations. Only the third slap, considerably firmer than the previous two, solicited a subsequent shriek of alarm. She flinched in anticipation but waited in vain for the next slap.

Hush now, Abigail! ordered her assailant. We don’t want you disturbing your neighbour....

She found her voice when attempting to wriggle off the breakfast bar, her writhing stymied by a powerful hand pressed between her shoulders. Her vision was obscured by her long mousy hair (as Paul referred to her natural colour of blah) that flayed around her face. Get... Off... Me! I’ll have you arrested, you bastard! she exclaimed with admirable defiance.

Holding her in place with only one hand, he spanked her again and she winced. After a further flurry of blows against her right cheek, the denim was already stinging his hand. Abigail heard his verbalised discomfort and subsequently sneered and laughed at the man.

Suddenly, the force against her shoulder vanished, affording her the opportunity to roll off the bar and stumble shakily to her feet, her head spinning from the effects of the alcohol and her astonishment at being thrashed.

She was leaning against the worktop, regaining her equilibrium, and remained teetering on tremulous bare feet when beneficiary of the next shock.

Paul had grabbed a wooden spoon from the utensil jar sitting beside the cooker. The implement wasn’t as rewarding as the use of his hand but it at least permitted him to continue the convivial chastisement of the doctor.

From her perspective, the blows he rained down upon her weren’t as smarting as those inflicted by the palm of his hand. She became aware of a perverse acknowledgment that the inanimate object was not as satisfying. Whilst she grappled with her conflicting thoughts, the alleged journalist was afforded the opportunity to mete out a flurry of wild swipes with the cooking utensil.

There was no way on earth Abigail Straith was going to stand by and allow the onslaught to continue unchallenged, even if she was reservedly enjoying the experience. Pride demanded retribution. She spun around and delivered a hard slap to his left cheek.

The blow was fortuitously served and she flinched with disguised delight at the sound of the blow that twisted his head aside. With the strike came the tacit understanding that she had further escalated the stakes, which dignity aside, suited her desires. She wanted the heady excitement of the charade to continue.

His reaction was perhaps predictable.

He grinned, his expression for the first time suggesting a degree of lasciviousness. His finger dabbed at the corner of his mouth and he examined the digit before licking it clean of blood with his tongue.

Abigail shivered, she found herself in a ridiculous yet utterly enthralling situation. There was no way she could fight off the powerful Durringford should he choose to continue his offensive. Her hazel eyes widened and her mouth gaped, all of which he could have interpreted as symptoms of trepidation.

In reality, Paul knew he did not frighten her, for if he had, she would have attempted to flee the scene of the assault irrespective of the outcome, or more likely attempt to knee him in the groin.

What wasn’t disclosed by her expression was the sense of novel anticipation that fermented within her, a feeling so alien that she was utterly unaware of how it should be harnessed.

The journalist took the initiative. He was a practiced practitioner at such games. Her bewilderment only inflamed his passion, driving him on.

Again, his haste took her unawares, which was perhaps just as well, for it precluded any retaliatory response on her part. With remarkable dexterity, he spun her on the spot, presenting her hunched back to his chest.

His hands burrowed beneath her jumper, their destination the top of her high-waisted jeans where they adroitly unfastened the stud button. With sustained fluidity, he drew down the zipped fly. Only at that point did she gather what was about to befall her.

Her hands scrabbled at his, impeded by her jumper that blanketed his fingers from hers. By now, Paul’s hands were once again around her waist where they grasped the waistband of her denims. It felt a peculiar response to Abigail’s academic mind that she should attempt to counter the drawing down on her jeans by intuitively bending at the waist.

Insistently tugging at the material and countering her squirming defence, he gathered the bunched denim about her thighs. Despite wearing her favoured shorts, Abigail had never felt so exposed in her all life and was consumed by a moment of submissive acquiescence that robbed her of any motor coordination. She stood like a seized-up automaton, the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz ridiculously coming to mind.

Paul was certainly no dawdler.

He cajoled Abigail, pushing her bowed torso over the breakfast bar where her arms moved by their own volition to support her body. Thrusting at her shoulders, he watched her head collapse upon the table, cushioned by her folded arms.

Abigail found herself incapable of cognitive reasoning when she felt his hands tugging down her shorts. If she had felt vulnerable before his most recent act, how was she to vindicate her current shame other than by instinctive endorsement?

The slap when it came was not unexpected.

It was gentler than his earlier ministrations and utterly different in context and effect.

His bare skin against hers was disgustingly intimate. The pain was piquant, no more than a warm stinging sensation and not disagreeable to the enquiring but sexually naive mind of the academic. He alternated his blows from cheek to cheek and grinned with pleasure when her backside turned a blushing cerise.

Aside from reflexive cries, she lay passively upon the worktop and took his alleged disciplining without complaint, as he knew she would. He recognised the pertinent sexual repression encased within the academic’s fleshy but virginally delectable body.

He had discovered that aside from the Professor known as Jeremy, Abigail had taken no other lover of which the Oxford clique was aware. Those in the know had suggested that as an undergraduate she had been involved in an all-girl relationship, though few considered her to be out and out gay, simply an enthusiastic supporter of women’s rights and anti-male.

As an experienced seducer, he could read her like a book. His intention was solely to uncork the genie for his own gratification. He had every intention of claiming Dr Straith as a trophy, a virtual twenty-something virgin. Aware of her inherited potential, it was his desire to transform her into something very different from the dusty intellectual she purported to be.

That he was to succeed beyond his wildest dreams was testimony to his interpretational skills where the doctor was concerned but also to his limitations. For in his haste, Paul Durringford had only scanned the preface of Abigail’s biography and only flitted through the introductory chapters. The Book of Straith was a far more substantial read than he grasped.

The act that set Dr Abigail Straith on the road that ultimately led to her being charged with murder took place whilst she stood with her hands against the wall as though she were about to be searched for a concealed weapon. It was indeed a body search but not one for martial devices.

He had tugged her baggy jumper up over her head so that anyone peering in via the intentionally unshielded window might consider that he had decapitated her.

Any voyeur in the apartments across the square in the Oxford town houses would have had a clear view of Paul’s back with his legs placed between hers, his trainers pressed against her bare feet, his flexed knees prising her thighs apart, denim against flesh.

His hands swiftly dealt with the hooks of the ill-fitting brassier and his pawing fingers grasped her unfettered breasts that presented a bountiful handful that exceeded his expectations.

Paul squeezed and tugged in a manner to which she had never been subjected. Never had Jeremy exhibited such carnal viciousness and sheer physicality. Such was her state of bewilderment that she obediently remained still, acceding to his every whim.

Her backside was already exposed. With one hand, he unbuttoned his beltless jeans and tugged them down; that he was going commando was a measure of his expectations that evening.

His probing hand discovered the hirsute Abigail, her pubic hair having been allowed to flourish unchecked for months. That revelation only inflamed his desire and he bore into her with such controlled insistence that it felt to Abi as if she were accommodating his entire body, not just the overwhelming appendage that proved to be so much more substantial than Jeremy’s offering, inconceivably so from her inexpert perspective.

Paul momentarily doubted that she would be able to accommodate his girth let alone his length, but she felt undeniably slick and her body had little choice but to stretch against his indomitable incursion. Her repeated gasps as he slowly impaled her mustered perverse images of inverse childbirth in her frazzled mind.

Paul Durringford abandoned his assault upon her breasts; his whole attention now set upon satisfying his coital imperative.

His free hand pushed down on her neck and she surrendered to the pressure by bending at the waist. His other hand parted the cheeks of her bottom creating space for deeper incursion and affording him a voyeur’s perspective of her debasement.

She amazed him by taking his entirety; he languished in her burning embrace as she yelped with head-bowed invectives at the enormity of his intrusion. And there he remained so embedded for a seeming eternity, peering down at the spectacle of his disappearance into that which he had long coveted.

It seemed to Abigail, in her dark world of mixed fifty percent polyester and wool, as if they were conjoined by so much more than a few ounces of sinew and flesh. She was enthralled by the naturalness and sheer totality of their coupling and felt no humiliation in what she might have previously considered to be her abject susceptibility, defiled as she was against her kitchen wall.

No, she felt utterly invigorated, empowered by his visceral demands that she was satisfying. Without her, he was nothing. She had reduced him to a corporeal entity intent upon only one thing.

He was only the third man she had accommodated, one of them only once. Her sole point of reference with regard to lovemaking had been Jeremy. It was like comparing Jeremy’s school band to Paul’s full philharmonic orchestra.

She submitted to his forceful intent, his hand pressing against her flabby belly, holding her steady whilst he pounded into her, jarring her whole being.

Abigail pulled at her jumper, allowing her head to re-emerge, there to hang from her buffeted shoulders, a groan accompanying each of his thrusts. She was aware of being on the cusp of encountering something extraordinary and fought her body’s impatience to attain fulfilment as his fingers brushed her clitoris. Her desire was to bask in the sustained uniqueness of her situation.

A bewildered Abigail Straith found herself the recipient of his effusive praise. She may have been a dyed in the wool feminist and his eulogising in any other situation might have sounded utterly demeaning.

Nonetheless, in her state of excessive arousal, she found his words overwhelmingly masculine and delicious, imagining how it might be to receive praise from her absent father had she enjoyed paternal nurturing.

The world changed irredeemably when she felt him tense and utter crude expletives.

They shared the crescendo of his exploits and in the minutes that followed, soothed by Paul Durringford’s continuing unreserved praise, she stood contentedly held in his strong embrace.

Never had she felt quite so safe, so divinely at peace with the world. Her euphoria was one in an initiate, one who was taking their first faltering steps into a world of enchanting artifice that flew in the face of sensibility.

Such was the first realisation that there existed a world of love manifestly different from that garnered from Jeremy. This wasn’t cerebral; this was a beastly adoration of sublime difference.

She became sentient to the reality of physical sex as a heady cocktail of chemicals in her mind that she knew she would need to embrace again. It was nothing to do with falling in love; it was the bestial act of fucking that had so enraptured her.

The session became an apocalyptic moment that was to live with Abigail Straith forever and with it came the recognition that her life would never be quite the same again.

Chapter 1 - Encounters and Demands.

Monday, 28th April 2014.

Twelve months later in Munich...

It had been a dreary day at the Schillermann Institute. Professor Klimt had behaved at his imperious worse, belittling everything Abigail had suggested with regards to the scrutiny of the artefacts recovered from a dig in southern Bavaria.

The point had been reached whereby she had become tired of arguing her case, of being derided in front of her colleagues, accused of being an impetuous woman with an overactive imagination.

Well, fuck him!

She was bored and although loathed to admit it, feeling incredibly sorry for herself, her mood tinged with regretful melancholy. She had given up her life in Oxford academia, a closeted and predictable existence where she knew the rules, even if she had not agreed with them, for a life in corporate archaeology.

Had she not set her heart on the professorship then she might not have been rent by bitter disappointment and beset by aggravated resentment. If she’d been willing to participate in Jeremy’s hardly deviant sexual practices then the professorship would have been hers.

The irony of course was that after splitting with Jeremy she had met Paul, the man who had groomed her in the very arts in which Jeremy had been so desperate to engage and had consequently looked for elsewhere.

After she had lost Paul, she abandoned staid Oxford, the only real home she had ever known, for cosmopolitan adventure in Munich. There she had somehow found herself cast into the bowels of the Schillermann Institute, gathering dust along with the stored relics of antiquity.

In four weeks she would celebrate, although thinking about it, perhaps mourn might be a better word, her twenty-eighth birthday. Had her career reached its zenith? Was it downhill hereafter? Could there be any place lower on the planet than the bowels of the Schillermann Institute?

If she did but realise it, she was in the first throes of clinical depression.

The only thing that saved her from the misery of despair was her refusal to lie down and stifle her ambitious nature and innate belligerence. That life was tough was no excuse for self-pity. Her life had always been tough.

Dr Abigail Straith was the first to admit that she could be difficult. Having said that, if others thought she treated them with critical derision, it was nothing when compared with how she dealt with herself.

She had been in the habit of working her lunch break. When she had first arrived, the lunch hour had been spent exploring Munich but then the harshness of the continental winter had kicked in. Far from the sea and close to the Alps, the city was prone to cold snaps.

Now at last, as winter finally deferred to spring, the April day had yielded balmy high-teens temperatures and what with the morning she had endured, she corralled herself into walking to a nearby coffee house and take simple succour from the warm sunshine, refuting her troglodyte existence.

"Sitzt hier jemand?" enquired the male voice in an atrocious High German accent that suggested the solicitor was no native of Bavaria but of Great Britain.

Abigail deigned to look up and peer speculatively around her at the two adjacent empty tables as though that was an answer in itself. The young man decided to rephrase his question.

"Darf ich mit dir sitzen? Although not as uncommon as it had once been, she found his use of dir as opposed to Sie" overfamiliar.

"Nein...," she stated bluntly, refusing his request for company.

"Eine schöne Frau sollte nicht allein sitzen..."

Abigail considered that translation apps had a lot to answer for, hypothesising that the interloper had memorised the chat-up line in advance. Maybe it was a glowing testament to the mood-enhancing effect of the spring sunshine that she acceded to his request. She would enjoy taunting the audacious flatterer.

"Bitte...," she said with a smile whilst pointing to the seat opposite her.

His frown implied that he could not quite believe his flirting had paid off. She noted his youthful face as it morphed into a grimace of apprehension, so revealing that he had reached the limits of his conversational Deutsch.

"Ich finde, dass die Schwankungen im Welchselkurs bereiten uns Schwierigkeiten..." Her statement expressed the difficulties encountered by fluctuating exchange rates, which was not exactly an oft-used conversational phrase. The utterance had the desired mollifying effect upon the lunchtime interloper.

Studying him for the first time since his intrusion, she placed him as a young twenty-something. He had student written all over him, intimated by the intentional rips in his jeans and his patchy designer stubble.

He projected the aura of a student who was unprepared for the real world. His black woollen beanie was seasonally unwarranted and worn as a fashion statement.

In his favour, his reasonably handsome face, and particularly his eyes, emoted friendliness, or should that be a lack of threat? Either way, it was a pretty spurious judgment call.

"Ich bin ein Künstler..." Anyone other than Abi might have grinned at his stated response when declaring himself to be an artist.

"Wirklich...? Was malst do?"

"Straβenkünstler..."

She was surprised by his apparent understanding of her enquiry. Really...? A street artist like Costard?

You’re British? asked the stunned man.

Well, I usually describe myself as English but that’s just me... Disappointed?

Hell no! There’re lots of Brits about but not very many- His words tailed off abruptly.

Single women drinking alone at a cafe? You never answered my question.

In his opinion, he was batting way above his station. She was superficially attractive, as borne out by her seemingly flawless skin and the lustre of her auburn hair that cascaded about her shoulders with engineered flippancy. In addition, the manner of her speech projected an aura of intelligent competency, to which he doubted his