It was a year later and I was now living with Eleanor. It was a year during which I had been Clemency free. Well, I say free, but there had been a few very minor incidents. For example, Eleanor had found me staring at the long mirror in her hallway. “What?” she asked.

“She was behind me as I brushed my hair, just for a second.”

“It’s probably just your mind. Don’t fret. She’s gone.” But she couldn’t hide the concern in her eyes.

Then there was the incident with the locket. We’d gone out to dinner and, sitting at a table, Eleanor suddenly reached across and touched it. The problem was that I had no recollection of having put it on. She opened it and there was a hank of black hair curled neatly inside it.

I’d also had a couple of dreams about her but they were milder, less terrifying. In one she had whispered her mantra, “Mystery, different, fear.” Her lips had been close to my ear and I felt the warmth of her breath. In another, she had taken my hand and kissed it, her tongue working between my fingers, licking the webbing as she might have licked between my legs. Eleanor had, later, touched the front of my nightdress where it was wet. “I see our mutual friend paid you a visit?” Somehow, her apparently casual attitude to it made me feel safer, less disturbed, and gradually, through that year, I returned to a semblance of normality. But, I realised later, that her attitude was far less casual than I had realised.

It became apparent to me slowly, that Eleanor was a very powerful woman herself. I do not mean politically, although that was certainly true. I mean in terms of our relationship. It was the Mayoral Ball that Saturday night. You may remember that we’d missed it the previous year thanks to Clemency and the dreadful scene in my dream of Eleanor behind the glass screen as the Witch, as we now called her, had fucked me.

I’d been working in the library that Saturday. We were open to the public between nine and five and after we closed, I’d had to do a few jobs: stacking shelves, completing a return to the council, shit like that. I got home and showered while Eleanor was dressing. When I emerged from the bathroom, she called me from the sitting room. She was sitting in her favourite leather armchair, dressed in black trousers with a white tuxedo over a crisp white shirt, a red bow tie at her throat.

“You’re wearing the grey dress tonight. The one you didn’t get to wear last year.”

“Yes, okay, fine.”

“Go and get it and everything else you intend to wear and bring it here. I am going to watch you dress.” There was steel in her green eyes. It seemed like a bit of fun, so I did as she said.

When I got back to her carrying my clothes, a pale blue dildo was poking from the open fly of her trousers. “Give me your stockings.” I handed them to her. “These are silk.” Admitting they were, I told her I wanted to be special for her. She smiled. “Very good but go back and get a nylon pair. No, leave the silk ones here.” Once again, I returned to the bedroom and took a pair of black nylons from the drawer and went back. She was standing. “Give me the stockings.” I did and she draped them over her dildo so they hung there for whatever reason she had. She then directed me to dress. First, the suspender belt, then the stockings, then the sheer purple knickers, then, finally, the gunmetal grey dress with the low back and the V neck with purple lace trim. “Give me your wrists.” I offered them to her and, to my surprise, she took a stocking from her cock and tied them. The second stocking she draped around the front of my throat, the toe and top hanging behind me on the bare skin of my back. I had no idea what was going on.

Smiling, she led me to the back of the chair, bent me over it, and hefted my dress up and my knickers down. Taking the stocking around my neck like reins, she fucked me. It was hard, not rough; vigorous, not frenzied. She didn’t tie the stocking, just held the ends and, well, rode me. This wasn’t for me, I realised, but for her. She just fucked me until she came, noisily.

Reader, so did I.

I loved the Ball too, even though there was another Clemency moment when I discovered a small, red silk hankie in my bag, in that little pocket that I almost never used. The zip was open and the hint of red caught my eye. I was careful not to let Eleanor see it. I knew these moments, infrequent though they had become, frightened her too, and so I had resolved not to let her be aware of them.

When we got home, as soon as we were through the door, Eleanor told me to go and find the stockings she had used to tie my wrists. They were on the sofa in the sitting room. She had followed me into the room and took them from me. She took my hand and led me to her bedroom.

“Undress.” With her standing, leaning against the closed door, I stripped off until I was completely naked. “Lie on the bed.” When I had done so she advanced and, taking one wrist, tied it to the bed with one stocking. She walked slowly around the bed, running the other stocking through her fingers, and then tied the other wrist to the headboard. Satisfied I was secure, she kissed me and then stood where I could see her and slowly divested herself of her clothes. The red bow tie was a real one, not a clip-on and when she took it off she placed it over my mouth. She took her time. The tux came off, the shirt, the shoes, the trousers until she stood, naked beside the bed. She moved the tie so she could kiss me, then put it back.

I had to turn my head to watch as she opened a bedside drawer and extracted a purple Feeldoe. Lifting one leg onto the bed, she worked it slowly into herself until it stood proud in front of her, contrasting beautifully with her wild bush of grey pubic hair.

She tied the red tie around my eyes. The bed dipped and she knelt between my open legs. “Lift your arse.” I did so and she pushed a pillow under it. The dildo entered me, slowly, her mouth on mine. She let out a small sigh as she filled me, then stayed motionless inside me while her tongue probed into my mouth. "I like you like this, vulnerable, open to me. I’ve been wanting to fuck you all evening.”

And then she did, gently, rhythmically at first, her mouth moving between my lips, my tits, my neck until, it seemed hours later, she orgasmed. It was sudden, unanticipated and I loved how I felt the warm fluids running from her onto me. She rested, deep inside me, her mouth close to mine as her breathing recovered to normal.

Later, she opened the drawer to put the Feeldoe away and gasped. I looked, and there, there was that bloody scrap of silk. Her eyes were wide, she looked terrified so I grabbed it and ran to the toilet and flushed it away.

I held her when we were in bed, soothing her.

It was a Saturday, a few weeks later, and we had decided to go out for a meal. Walking down the street, Eleanor suddenly stopped and touched her chest, between her breasts. Then she fumbled inside her shirt and, looking totally bemused, pulled out my silver locket, THE silver locket. I went to say, don’t open it but she did and put a hand over her mouth as if to suppress a scream. I knew instantly that it was a picture of Clemency.

Eleanor took the picture out and turned it over and let out a small moan of dread. I took it from her. There were three words, written in tiny capitals: “Mystery, Different, Fear.” She was shaking, clearly petrified. I knew, though she didn’t say, that she was afraid she was going mad, just as I had feared that I had been. If you could have seen the terror in her eyes, you’d have done what I did. I wrapped my arm around her, held her close, and took her home.

I sat her at the kitchen table. I got her a cup of tea, just as she had for me all that time before.

The knife was on the worktop so I took it and pushed it into her back. I was surprised how easily it went in. She made a sort of gasp of surprise. I know you’ll understand why I did it. I had to protect her from the terror that I knew was starting for her as it had for me. I couldn’t bear the thought of her going through that. I held her, calming her with words as she expired. I told her that I loved her, that she was safe. “I won't let her harm you.”

When she was still, I called the Police and told them what I had done.

I heard the sirens moments later. I opened the door and a young policewoman started gabbling at me but it made no sense. I stepped back to let her in and then there were paramedics and more police. They put handcuffs on me and, in my bloodied dress, they sat me on her sofa while their frantic work continued. I know there will have been a lot of noise but I heard nothing.

I don’t remember much about what happened then. I know I was taken to a police station, where I was stripped and put into a paper suit and then locked in a cell. I slept, sure in the knowledge that I had saved her from the ordeal I had gone through. I knew I was stronger than she and that it could, would have made her kill herself eventually. I had to spare her that.

They called a solicitor for me. I told her the story. I could tell she didn’t believe me. I said it wasn’t murder, it was protection and she said something like, you’ll have to do better than that.

I answered all their questions honestly. They didn’t believe me either, so I told them about my notebook. They said there was no notebook, but they had found my locket, buried under my underwear in a bedroom drawer. It was, they said, empty but, we know better, don’t we?

It was crazy. Everyone kept asking me why I had done it. I explained to them, as if they were children but they simply couldn’t accept I was being absolutely truthful.

I went to prison. My lawyer said I was ‘on remand’ and that very soon I’d have to go to court. I enjoyed her visits because it was a distraction from the dull routine and also because she was obviously flirting with me. I hadn’t been aware of it until the voice, Clemency’s voice said, “Look at her, how she lowers her eyelids when she speaks about me. She’s almost jealous.”

I was taken to court, allowed for the first time for ages to wear my own clothes, which was nice. I wore blue because, since being arrested, all I’d worn was grey and Eleanor had always said that blue suited me.

“Are you guilty or not guilty of murder?” That was intoned in a bored voice by a court official. I started to say, that, no, of course, I wasn’t guilty of murder. I was saving her, but I was told to be quiet, so I was.

The court was led through the case against me by the prosecutor, a tall, arrogant man in the silly costume that barristers wear in British courts. He interviewed the pathologist who talked about the knife and blood patterns. He called a forensics expert who told the court my fingerprints were the only ones on the knife, but of course, they were because I did most of the cooking. And, anyway, I had never said I hadn’t stabbed her so what was all the fuss about. He also talked about the match of Eleanor’s blood with the blood on my dress. Who else’s could it have been? I mean, it wasn’t as if I were a serial killer.

The police told the court about what I had told them, played the tapes of my interviews with them.

Then I was told to go to the witness box. My defence barrister took me slowly through it all, from my first encounter with Clemency, the conjuring tricks, the full glass, the locket, the silk square. She took me through my dreams and even then, with the darkness of them, I was strong enough to keep going through it, re-living it. I told her the event with the locket as we walked to the restaurant was the last straw. I couldn’t, I said, let Clemency drive her mad. I had to protect her. That was when I broke down.

The prosecutor cross-examined me. He sneered at my story. Did I expect anyone to believe it? Why on Earth would I? Did I believe it myself? Well, of course I did.

It was no surprise when the Judge asked for psychiatric reports, after all, I had considered myself mad. I was examined by two psychiatrists or psychologists (I wasn’t sure of the difference). Whatever, they both decided I was crazy although they used more professional language but, interestingly, they identified different ‘syndromes’ to which I was a victim. That must prove something. But, different diagnoses notwithstanding, I was sent to a secure mental facility for an undetermined period.

I was pretty scared on arrival. It was, I was told, better than prison. For a start, it was all women, and most of the staff were women too. I was also allowed to wear my own clothes except nothing with belts or laces and no tights. The food varied between execrable and edible. My ‘room’ (no cells there) was small with a narrow cot and a high window but I was allowed a television and books.

I bore the almost daily conversations with the resident psychologists with fortitude until they eventually got bored with me. I never told them that Clemency came to my room a few times.

She told me one night, “I said Eleanor seemed to have won, didn’t I but we both knew she never would.”

“I protected her from you, from your mystery, your different, your fear.” I said this even as she penetrated me, hard and deep, with me on my knees on my cot. She fucked me a few times, but she seemed to lose interest as well. It was almost as if she had taken me to the point where her mantra no longer held me in thrall.

I was seen, I think, as a bit unusual. I wasn’t given medication and, I am sure, they had assessed that I presented no threat to the other patients. I wandered freely in the communal areas and the grounds, daydreaming, sometimes holding hands with Clemency when she could be bothered to accompany me.

Then, one day, I was asked if I would like to get involved in the hospital library. I leapt at the chance. God, but it was in a mess. There was no system, books were missing and mis-shelved. So, I threw myself into it. I conducted a full inventory, catalogued everything, re-shelved, and when that was complete, I cleaned the place from top to bottom and started to register library users; first names only of course with numerals after where there was more than one. Thus, the first Kate to register was Kate, the next Kate was Kate 2. Follow? Some patients couldn’t read and so I began reading classes, just as I had at Grange Street library.

I missed Clemency even though she had led me to kill my lover. Oh, she spoke to me sometimes, but I never saw her. She said, one time, “Eleanor was too close to you. I couldn’t have that. You needed to see that for yourself.”

I hoped Eleanor would come but she never did.

It was a year later. I’d been having dreams, nasty, not at all like the admittedly scary night-time adventures with Clemency. These led to my waking, sweaty and afraid. Then the headaches started, sporadically at first, but becoming more and more frequent. I decided eventually to speak to the doctor. She examined me carefully and decided, as a precaution, to send me for a scan. That meant I had to be escorted by two of the ‘nurses’ who, may have been medically trained but were, in reality, wardens.

I was led to a scanner and lay on the sliding platform that slowly moved me into the huge doughnut-shaped apparatus. The operator told me, via a speaker built into the thing, to lie very still.

Then another voice, Clemency’s! “Wait for me, Maggie. It’s time we were together, isn’t it?”

“I thought you had abandoned me.”

“Just do as I say.”

The scan completed, one of the hospital staff told me to lie on a trolley and rest. Another came, I couldn’t see her, and she pushed me down a long, long corridor and into a side room. “They won’t know you’ve gone for an hour or so.” There she was, sitting on a chair in that room, dressed in a long, black leather dress. Her hair was loose, her eyes blue.

She stood and came to me, bent over me, and kissed my mouth. I remembered her taste. I felt the heat, the reality of her.

“We’re going now. Just follow me.”

I got off the trolley and followed her, her arse swayed, making the leather swing. “Where are we going?”

She stopped, turned, and looked at me? “Do you care?”

“As long as I am with you, no.”

She smiled. She stopped, turned to face me, and, as if it were a medal, slipped the silver locket around my neck. She kissed me again.