Free Eat My Heart Out by Zoe Pilger

love was acting on me as I made my way back, groping blindly and ecstatically to a place that I could call home.
    It would have to do.
    I walked all the way from the ASH Hotel to Russell Square. Then I got a bus to Chalk Farm. The pub where Vic and I had fallen in love stood empty and dark in the dawn. The last hedonists of that Saturday night were slouched around Camden Lock, staring at their own shattered reflections in the water. Men and women wearing rainbow-coloured wool were splashing Red Stripe onto the tongues of their panting dogs. The Wetherspoon’s was closed; it was too early to get a breakfast meal deal. The bongs and Che Guevara berets and sets of rubber underwear looked terrifyingly sticky, as though nothing had ever been wiped down anywhere in the world.
    Finally, I found Vic’s terraced house. It was dark inside.
    I picked up a stone from a nearby water feature and threw it at a first floor window. It rebounded.
    There was silence.
    I called Vic’s phone; he didn’t pick up. I called a further seven times.
    Then I texted: I’m outside .
    A light came on.
    Vic opened the door, thumbing his eyes further into his face. He was wearing a pair of crisp khaki pyjamas. ‘What are you doing here, Ann-Marie?’
    â€˜You remembered my name,’ I swooned.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Can I come in?’
    â€˜No.’
    I barged in anyway, and shut the door behind me. ‘Why didn’t you reply to any of my emails, Vic?’
    â€˜You’re a bunny-boiler, that’s why.’
    â€˜Those were fucking messages in a bottle, Vic,’ I said. ‘Do you know what a message in a bottle is? It’s sent in faith , Vic, faith . Do you know what faith is?’
    â€˜Quiet,’ he said. ‘You’ll wake the operators.’
    Light fell through the front door and illuminated his ghastly feet. I got down on my knees and tried to kiss them.
    â€˜Get off.’ He kicked my cheek by accident.
    I gripped my cheek and stood up. I made my eyes look stricken. Then I slid down the wall until I was squatting on the floor.
    â€˜Hey.’ Vic knelt down in front of me. ‘Sorry.’ He tried to move my hand away, but I wouldn’t let him.
    â€˜So you’re a woman-beater as well as a war criminal?’ I said. ‘Goes with the territory does it, using women as a weapon of war?’
    He stood up again.
    I pulled down his khaki pyjama bottoms. He tried to pull them back up but I was already sucking his flaccid penis. He pushed my head back but I made my mouth into a black hole of suction.
    â€˜Stop it,’ Vic was saying. ‘Stop it.’ His penis rose, in spite of himself.
    I sucked more vigorously.
    Vic pulled my hair hard until I couldn’t take the pain any more; I let his penis go. He came, volcanically, all over my face. His semen felt like warm rain.
    When I opened my eyes, he was staring down at me in disgust.
    â€˜Because I love you,’ I said.
    He released my hair and disappeared down the hall into the kitchen.
    I followed him.
    Three tampons were laid out on the draining board.
    â€˜Whose are those?’ I demanded.
    Vic threw me a wad of kitchen towel, but I didn’t wipe my face. ‘The operators,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to bed now. It’s the middle of the night.’
    â€˜No, Vic, no.’ I pointed to the sky beyond their sorry substitute for a conservatory. It was split with hot yellow light. ‘It’s early. It’s now, Vic! Now!!!’
    I tried to corner him beside the fridge, but he slipped around me. I picked up one of the tampons and demanded: ‘What kind of woman leaves their private business right here for all the world to see?’
    â€˜It’s for the guinea fowl.’ Vic was washing his hands with the same government-certified antiseptic gel that we use in the restaurant.
    â€˜Is that your pet name for her?’
    Now I dropped the tampon and drew a knife out of the