Chapter 23: Bind - the action of pressuring or enveloping the adversary's blade in order to make an opening

Sydney and Vaughn were out shopping. She preferred it to being alone with him at her home, among the jostle of other people she could for whole seconds at a time make believe that she was by herself and that they weren't a couple.

She'd been behaving badly all day and she knew it. Dragging him from shop to shop and stall to stall. Leaving him to him carry her purchases in her wake, like some sherpa or servant. She knew what her little trick was and didn't admire herself for it, she was secretly hoping that if she just treated him badly enough then maybe she wouldn't have to dump him, maybe he'd leave her.

Telling herself that maybe she ought to try and make a go of it with Vaughn was one thing, doing it was quite another.

But it's not Vaughn's fault – he's only guilty of loving you! protested her conscience. She squirmed away from the thought.

They'd washed up at a little market: second-hand books, flowers, vintage clothing. The day was so warm and sunny, the place so full of bustling people, that the scene was almost Parisian. Vaughn was a little way off. She felt freed from him for the instant and then hated herself for feeling like that

In the bustle of the market place she closed her eyes, trying to find her own private space – oh God she was in such a mess about Sark.

As if to taunt her, when browsing a second-hand bookstall her eye had immediately fallen upon a copy of Webster's The White Devil. Her breath had hitched with a little jolt of shock, seeing it right in front of her had felt like some strange omen.

She had almost back-pedalled away from it.

Webster had never been a favourite of hers, too dark, too bloody; the man's plays seethed with barely trammelled passions. The White Devil was a typical, intensely drawn panoply of Websterian themes: insanely possessive sexual jealousy, passions unstoppable when unleashed, power abused in the destructive pursuit of supremacy and vengefulness and desire. She didn't suppose Webster's plays were called Revenge Tragedies for nothing.

She supposed it said something about Sark that he seemed to have picked it for himself, or had it picked for him.

She'd stumbled out of the book area, past the racks of vintage dresses, and into the flower stalls.

And there she saw them.

The red flowers were so deeply coloured they were purple, so purple, they were almost black. Thick, velvety petals, inviting to the touch, but poised atop stems with sharp leaves and thorns.

Put them in any room and they would compel attention.

There was a whole body of them, all sitting in buckets, an island by themselves, just waiting to be bought.

She had approached the seller and asked the price.

"Honey you can have a discount. No-one seems to want 'em. People admire them enough, but they're all nervous of buying. I think they're too strong for most people's sense of décor."

Sydney wanted armfuls of them.

She bought bouquet after bouquet of them.

Vaughn appeared over her shoulder.

"Syd, don't you think you'd better ease off? I mean, they're going to dominate your house. Wouldn't you want something a little lighter? A little more like - you know – flowers?"

At that word, with a slightly nervous grin he whisked from behind his back a bouquet he had just bought her of daisies and forget-me-nots: pretty flowers, inoffensive flowers, little girl's flowers.

"Don't you prefer something like these instead, Syd?"

How could she explain it, how could she explain to this man that no, she didn't?