Tonight, I Shall Seek Redemption

As the video ended I pointed a finger at the screen. "That's you fucking redemption, Jae Hwa Park... you fucking whore."

Two - Him

I was deliberately late. I wanted her to think I wasn't going to turn up. I wanted her to stew in her own juices and make her pay for what she had done. I thought about telling my mother, but I didn't want her booking flights and turning up out of the blue.

She really would kill the girl. I was still fuming, but I was going to let her speak.

It was almost five-thirty when I walked into the pub and ordered myself a drink. I stood in the doorway to the beer-garden and perused the scene. There were a few older couples enjoying a midweek drink in the afternoon sun.

There was only one table with single occupancy. She had chosen it well. It was in shadow and well away from the others. There was a virtually untouched glass of white wine in front of her and a cigarette smouldered in her right hand.

She had her back to me and all I could see was long, jet-black hair that fell to the small of her back. She glanced at her watch and I could almost sense her frustration. She pulled on the cigarette nervously before grinding it out. From the look of the ashtray, it was not her first. She looked down at her watch again and began to do something with her phone.

Feeling very nervous myself, I walked up to her table, put my beer down and sat opposite her. Her head was still down.

She looked up slowly from her phone and my first reaction was that I dearly hoped she would convince me not to hate her.

She was utterly stunning and if I had a job to try and de-humanise her after the phone-call, it was now going to be doubly difficult.

"Thank you for coming." Her voice was quiet and there was a quiver in it.

"I nearly didn't but you've come a long way."

She nodded. "Shit, this is weird."

She took a gulp from her wineglass and I imagined it must have been the first as she grimaced at the warmth of it.

I pointed to it. "Can I get you a fresh one?"

"No, it's fine, thank you."

She picked up her cigarettes. "Do you mind?"

My mind began racing even faster. Did I mind that she indulged me in one of my biggest guilty secrets? That I love watching women smoke? That I pay women to have sex with me and blow smoke on my erection?

No go ahead, Jae Hwa. You've made a good first impression with the way you look. Now it's down to your powers of persuasion.

She lit it and exhaled. I tried to fight down thoughts of her leaning forward and allowing me to inhale it from her mouth. I don't smoke and never have, but there is something that just turns me on about women smoking. I cannot explain or rationalise it and I don't really want to. It's my little thing.

Well, one of them.

She looked me in the eye. "So, now you are here, may I explain my side of the story? Hopefully get some closure for both us."

"Ok Miss Park. I promise I will only interrupt if I need clarification. Whether I walk away from this table still despising you or otherwise is now in your hands."

I took a long drink. I felt I was going to need another. "I'll give you a moment to gather your thoughts while I get a refill." I pointed to her glass again. "Sure?"

She gave me a tiny smile. "Ok, thanks. It's just the house white."

I returned a few minutes later. She was sitting more upright, a little more confident that we had started with an air of relative civility and I hadn't waded in throwing punches. I placed the wine in front of her.

"Thank you. I half expected to be wearing it."

I wanted to smile at her but didn't dare. "There's still time. Go on then, Miss Park."

"Please, it's Jae."

I shook my head. "No, no. To me you are still three words."

She closed her eyes for a moment. "For good reason. Let's see if I can change your mind." She stubbed out her cigarette and put the packet in her shoulder bag. "Too many in too short a time."

She sat in silence for a long time, her elbows on the table, fingers pointing up, her mouth resting on them.

Finally she spoke, her head down. "Ok, here we go then. I am not going to use emotive words although all my instincts tell me otherwise. I have never told this story to anyone."

She looked up at me and muttered a few words I didn't understand.

"What was that?"

"Wishing myself luck in Korean."

Somehow I found myself wishing her luck as well. She had said very little, but she was getting to me. I could see how my father had fallen for her, although as my mother once said, all it needed for him to fall for someone were two things.

She had a cunt and a pulse.

Miss Jae Hwa Park certainly had a pulse, and I tried to fight down the thought of what her intimate anatomy may look like. "Ok, enough skirting the issue, Miss Park. Say what you have to say."

She held my gaze throughout, which impressed me greatly given what she told me.

"Ok. I started out as a school-leaver in your father's business. I was nobody - an office girl doing menial crap. I was never very academic and never wanted to go to University or anything. The money was ok and it suited me despite being a bit of a shit job."

She took a sip of wine. "I had been there a couple of years when I started a thing with Theo, one of the guys in the office. They always say not to do it, but I did. I was nineteen, he was in his early thirties. We brought out the best and the worst in each other and we went at it like dogs in heat."

I refrained from comment, though I felt distinctly uncomfortable at the thought of this amazing looking girl going at it that hard. She brushed her long, silky hair behind her ear and fixed me with her soft brown eyes.

She had said she was half-Korean, but I would never have guessed. She looked almost other-worldly, with almond-shaped eyes with just a hint of the epicanthic fold of her ancestry. They gave her a mystique. She was exotic and different and once more, I found myself hoping she was genuine.

I felt that she expected a response to her last comment, but I didn't oblige. I took a sip of beer and signalled for her to continue.

"We had been together about a month when things changed. I was with him one night when another man joined us in his apartment." She fixed her gaze somewhere on the table between us. "Care to guess who?"

I snapped at her. "I am not here to play twenty questions, Miss Park. It was obviously a man called Sebastian Turner. Did you go at it like dogs in heat as well?"

Her lip trembled and she nodded her head. "I didn't know who he was at the time. I was... I was blindfolded. It's something I like. Whoever it was, he and Theo used me like a rag-doll. Then a few days later, he called me into his office and showed me pictures of the things I had done. It transpired that Theo was his best buddy and had kept him up-to-date with what we were doing while he was away in the States. When he returned, he wanted a piece of the action. He began to make demands. Threats."

She was silent for a long moment. "Sorry, this is a lot fucking harder than I thought." She picked up her glass and drained it in one hit. "I need another. You?"

I was barely able to respond I was in such turmoil. "Yes, the bitter please. The middle of the three handpumps. Big square clip."

"Ok."

She stood and walked towards the pub and I got my first real look at her. She was over medium height and my mother had once described her as voluptuous, but I could not concur with that assessment. Her hips were wide and her breasts full, and her bottom filled her tight jeans very alluringly but to me everything seemed in perfect proportion.

Add in her sleek hair, her full soft lips, that slightly exotic look and her confession about going for it like dogs in heat and I was seeing Jae Hwa Park in a very different light.

She was gone for a few minutes and I had to fight down my feelings and try and recall the video I had watched the night before to put her back in the box I felt she should inhabit.

Our drinks replenished, she gazed at the table again for a moment. "Sorry, these are very bad memories. Can I go on?"

I wouldn't say my heart was melting, but it was certainly thawing. "Please do."

"To cut a long story short, he told me that he had a lot more compromising pictures of me and experts in his office could have them all over my social media in minutes."

She let out a shuddering sigh. "Your father blackmailed me, Luke. He threatened to destroy me if I didn't do everything he asked of me. I was young, I was stupid."

Her laugh was a mirthless bark. "Fuck it, I still am!" She toyed with her glass, now clearly embarrassed. "What could I do? A twenty-year old girl and one of the most respected businessmen in the UK and Europe?"

For the first time, I interjected. "Respected by all but those who knew him well."

The girl looked at me with genuine sorrow in her eyes. "I had nine months of it. I know it was longer for you and your mother. I am so sorry Luke."

I felt like taking her hand, but I resisted. "Then what?"

She reached into her shoulder-bag. "Sorry, thought I was done with these for a while."

My heart began to hammer in my chest as she lit-up and blew out a huge cloud. She was utterly mesmerising. If she merely recited nursery rhymes for the rest of the afternoon she would have me eating out of her hand.

But was that her intention? Had she really been blackmailed by my father or was the boot on the other foot? Given what the bastard had done to my mother and me, I prayed it was the former.

Her cigarette was half gone before she continued. "So eventually, after being a fuck-toy for a very long time he decided he wanted to take me to Thailand. He said he had friends there who would like me."

As she said the word 'friends', she added inverted commas with her fingers. She drew on the cigarette and went on.

"Well, let's just say they liked me a lot. It all got very out of hand and out of control and something I suspected about him over here came to the fore very quickly."

For once I was ahead of her. "My mother always suspected he was a coke addict."

She took a deep breath. "I wish that had been the extent of it." She hung her head once more, her voice a mere whisper. "The last night... we had been there a month or so. He hit me regularly - usually where no-one could see the marks, but this time was different."

I wanted to hug her as she put her face in her hands. It took her a few minutes to compose herself and I gave her the time. This was not going the way I expected and for some reason, nothing she said really surprised me.

"One night, I found something he thought he had hidden well." When she looked up at me once more, she held her fingers over her left arm and mimed someone injecting something. "His little kit for getting completely out of it."

I felt bile rise in my throat. "Oh fuck, no!"

She took a shuddering breath. "Him, not me thank God. He tried to get me to do it a few times but he was so whacked out, I managed to fight him off. Then he disappeared for a few days and when he came back, I was with someone. I thought he was going to kill me."

She took out her phone. "This is what he did to me, Luke."

When she held her phone up to me I felt so sick, I thought I wanted to die. I had to force myself to look at the girl in the picture. The girl with her puffy eyes almost closed, the huge black rings beneath them, but worst of all, a nose that was spread across her face so far it looked like she had been hit by an oncoming train.

"The fucking bastard. The fucking double-dyed, copper-bottomed, black-enamelled bastard. Oh my God, I knew he was capable of just about anything, but... oh fuck."

"Yeah. Not sure what you just said, but I kinda sums it up really."

"My Grandad used to say it about people he hated."

"It's perfect." She took a last drag of her cigarette but I barely noticed for once. "So, again cutting it short, he tried to apologise, rushed me to hospital on the back of his motorbike and nearly fucking killed us on the way."

It was my turn to close my eyes. "Let me guess. And he killed himself on the way back?"

"As good as, yes. It took him two and a half days, but yes - to all intents and purposes, he killed himself when he ran into a tree head-on." Her body shook as tears welled up in her eyes.

I drained my glass. I had told her on the phone the previous evening she was still guilty until she had proven otherwise. I stood and pointed at her empty glass.

"Would you like another drink... Jae Hwa?"

In answer, she clenched her teeth and held her hand to her mouth. She stood a little unsteadily and raced past me into the pub. Unsure as to what reaction I had elicited, I went to get the drinks. When I returned, there was no sign of her.

Dreading that I had maybe scared her off, I waited for what seemed like an eternity before I saw her emerge back into the garden. Her eyes looked red and raw from crying.

"You ok?"

She sat, sucking on her lower lip. "Thank you, Luke. That was probably the hardest thing I have done in my life, and I have done some fucking strange things. You told me last night I was still three words to you..."

She trailed off, her eyes welling up once more.

This time I did take her hand. "You are still three words to me, but they are different words. You are Jae Hwa Park to me now." For the first time, I smiled at her. "I'm hardly a paragon of virtue, but if you still feel you require redemption, then I am happy to grant it."

She gripped my hand even harder and held it to her lips. They felt soft and warm on the base of my fingers and I longed to feel them somewhere else.

"Thank you, Luke. I was terrified of coming here and even more terrified of not coming. Thank you for hearing me and judging me. It means more than you could ever know."

I pulled her hand towards me and kissed her fingertips. "I know what he could do to people. He was a monster. He never did to me what he did to you, but I'm sorry he did it and I'm glad the bastard isn't in a position to do it anyone else."

"Yeah, it was strange, waking up in a hospital bed with almost no nose left and two cracked ribs to find them thinking they were giving me even worse news that he had no chance of survival."

Her face broke into a smile I thought would melt my soul. "I was so out of it, I laughed so hard I nearly popped a third rib. They thought I was delirious so they gave me morphine. Not so far from the fucking junk he tried to give me."

She shrugged. "I suppose then I saw how easy it was. All the pain just washed away like waves on the shore. It was bliss. I know that if he had succeeded in injecting me, I'd probably still be in Thailand selling myself for a few baht to tourists and rotting from the inside out."

I had to know one more thing. "But Jae - why the inheritance? That's one thing my mother and I could never really understand."

She shook her head. "Simple really. The bike crash did catastrophic damage to him. Broke twenty or more bones and his skull was like an eggshell. His last act of defiance before he gave in to the inevitable was to write me into his will solely with the purpose of inflicting yet more pain on you and your mother."

I had surmised as much, but somehow it was cathartic to hear her say it. "It's a relief to hear you aren't a gold-digger."

Her eyes glazed over again. "I don't want the fucking money, Luke. It's a poisoned chalice. A reminder of a dark time. I only dipped into it for good reason. Once I was out of hospital, I got myself a first-class flight home and spent some more on getting myself a new nose. It took a long time and a lot of operations, but I got there."

Given the devastation I had seen in her photograph, the work she had done was a near miracle. It was impossible to tell she'd had anything done.

"Guy must be a bloody genius. Would never have guessed."

She smiled again. "She's a bloody genius. She cost, but it was all I ever took from the capital amount apart from to buy my flat. I felt I was owed that. I've lived off the interest and never taken another penny from the tainted pile he left me. I don't want the money, Luke. It's why I came back. Once my face was worth looking at again, I spent two months shitting myself about contacting you, but I knew I had to. I want to give it all back. It's not mine - it never was. I used enough to repay his debt to me, but that's it. If I could burn it, I would but it's not mine to burn. It's up to you and your mother what you do with it."

She gave me a shy little smile. "But if I can keep the interest?"

"Yeah, Jae. You can keep the interest."

Somehow I was utterly overjoyed that what had started out as such a potentially toxic exchange had turned out as it had. I was ashamed of my cowardly bastard of a father, but I was also strangely proud that this beautiful girl had summoned the courage to bury her ghosts and sought to redeem herself.

But still, something niggled at me. We had been brutally honest with each other and I needed one more answer.

"Jae, just one thing. If you were having sex with him and his friend, why were things so incriminating? Everyone has sex. You said it was consensual with his friend, so what did he have on you?"

Jae sighed deeply. "Oh fuck, you are so like him in that you never miss a fucking trick. No, don't look at me like that Luke - I can see you are otherwise nothing like him. If you reminded me of him, I'd be on my way back to London by now. It's just that incisive mind that sees everything. Your eyes give away the fact you are nothing else like him. Yours are warm, despite your initial hostility to me. His were dead from the moment I met him until they put ten baht pieces on them."

She picked at some imaginary spots on the tabletop for a moment. "Luke, I've barely eaten for two days knowing I was going to call you and then meet you. I'm not dodging the question - I think I've proved I'm pretty straight. But can we go eat somewhere because I'm bloody starving."

I looked at my watch. It was coming up to six o'clock. The Langdon Hotel would be starting their first service in thirty or so minutes.

"How are you with Michelin-starred gaffs?"

"At the last count, four one-stars, four twos and two nights at a three." She shrugged. "I'll be honest, it did have the odd upside, but I usually paid for it big time."

I called the hotel hoping they would have a table. I had been there with a very special lady a few weeks earlier and the aftermath had been spectacular. Did I dare hope this time?

They had just had a cancellation for the early evening sitting. I felt the stars were aligning.

I stood and held my hand out to her. "Miss Jae Hwa Park. Would you do the honour of dining with me at the Langdon Hotel in thirty minutes?"

She took my proffered hand. "The fucking whore would be delighted, Mr Luke Turner."

I snatched my hand from hers and pointed a finger in her face. "Don't ever call yourself that again, Jae Hwa, because I certainly won't."

She stood and looked down at the chair she had just vacated and with a venomous look in her eye, spat on the ground beneath the seat.

"That was one last cathartic use of it. Sleep well, fucking whore. Burn in hell, Sebastian Turner." She held her hand out to me. "Thank you, Luke. Let's go eat."

Three - Her

We sat in silence during the taxi ride back. Luke gave the driver his address in a village a ten minute drive from the town and suggested it would be a little quicker for me to get the last train back to London from there as it was a few stops further up the line from Amberdown

I was torn. During my hiatus after Sebastian's assault on me and my reconstruction, I had put my life on hold. To say I had been sexually active before that was like saying rabbits occasionally mate. It had only been a few weeks since my final operation, and it had been a long, hard road. I still needed a few more check-ups, which was why I couldn't make his suggested earlier time for our meeting.