Chapter Two
Katherine paused in the corridor outside the room. Quietly observing that no one was about, she knocked on the door and walked in as the summons to enter were yelled. She found Rob sitting at his desk, seemingly in the middle of writing an essay.
"Fancy some distraction?" she asked, perching against the radiator, and unzipping her coat, trying to channel some heat into her body. The day outside was cold and grey with a threatening sky that promised rain.
"Always," Rob faced her and smiled. "What can I do for you?"
"Would you like to go for a walk?" His face fell at her suggestion and he turned to stare pointedly at the unappealing weather through the window.
"With a bit of sunbathing thrown in perhaps?" he suggested.
"No you goon," Katherine laughed. "I just want to talk to you, well, need some advice really and you know…" she trailed off.
"But why this desire for fresh air? We could just talk in here, or go to the pub."
"Ugh, no thanks, I don't think my liver could handle anymore alcohol. I've rather overdone it with Eric the past week. He always wants to go out."
"And you don't want to bump into him?" Rob suggested, standing up. "You want to talk to me about Eric don't you?"
"Well, yeah," Katherine admitted with a hesitant smile. "Rob, I'm confused and you probably know him the best out of anyone here, which is not saying much I realise. I just thought we could compare notes that's all."
"You are lucky that I am so in touch with my feminine side," her friend answered gruffly, picking up his jacket and keys. "Would you like me to check that the coast is clear?" The hint of sarcasm in his voice did not go unnoticed by Katherine, but knowing that she was on safe ground with her friend she simply smiled at him.
"Come on," she opened the door and paused for a moment, feeling a rush of trepidation as she heard the sound of some students approaching down the corridor. With a shake of her head, she stood aside to let them pass, realising that Eric did not make such a racket as he moved.
It did not take them long to leave the grounds behind and wander down to the riverbank. It was an unappealing sight, the water swollen with winter rain and brown in colour, echoing the damp muddy grass. Rob walked, shoulders hunched against the cold, looking at his friend. "So what is so important about Eric that it mitigates leaving a vaguely warm building to walk in the freezing cold?"
"I don't know," Katherine began with a sigh. "I'm just really confused Rob and I need a sounding board." Her friend remained silent, waiting for her to elaborate, realising that she was struggling for words. "I've seen it you know," she finally said, by way of introduction. "His face I mean. I've seen it. Have you?"
Rob let out a snort of laughter. "What do you think, he charges for private viewings or something?" He paused, "well sort of, not properly. I just walked in on him one day and he had his mask off, but clapped it on pretty quickly."
"And what do you think?"
"Can't really say," Rob answered non-committally, but a glance at Katherine made him realise that this was not an adequate answer. "Well from the little I saw, I didn't think it was that bad."
"No, it isn't that bad," Katherine answered quietly. "But his reaction is. I mean it was wrong of me I suppose, but I pulled it off."
"You did what?" Rob sounded shocked.
"Last week, when we were both so hungover, I walked into his room and I pulled his mask off. I wasn't really sure what I was doing, but we had this really great evening together and talked and talked for ages and then kissed and I felt so positive about everything. But then I thought, he isn't going to show me his face and I will never get to know him fully unless I see it and so I removed it."
"I'm surprised he didn't hurt you." Rob commented with an intake of breath at the thought. "I saw a couple of guys try to take it off, first week here. They were drunk and being stupid and they grabbed him and tried to pull the mask off. He's one bloody strong guy I tell you. Punched them, split one chap's lip and broke the other's thumb. Winded them both."
"And you stood there watching?"
"Well there wasn't much for me to do really; he seemed to be handling the situation okay. I just went into his room and checked on him afterwards and that is when I saw him with his mask off."
"And he was polite to you about it?" Katherine asked, amazed to hear about this new side to Eric.
"No, I think he said something like 'stay out my fucking way, I don't need your help' or words to that effect. So I invited him out for a drink instead." Rob's down to earth tone made Katherine smile, it was so understated, yet his words truly reflected the situation.
They wandered along in continued silence, the breeze stinging their faces and blowing Katherine's hair in a fan around her head. "He is amazing," she finally offered, continuing the conversation. "I mean really amazing, he can do so many things, but at the same time has this childlike innocence about him. I don't understand Rob; I don't understand why he hides his face. I've seen people with much worse features and illnesses and they don't go around wearing masks. Yet, when I tried to take it off, I felt as if I was trying to tame a wild animal!" She laughed rather harshly. "That is what it is like you know; he is exactly like a wild animal. You think you have them secure and eating out of your hand and they suddenly turn and strike out at you. Remember that cat that Dad bought back from the surgery, the one I adopted?"
"Oh, you mean Tigger," Rob confirmed.
"Yes and do you remember how I claimed he hadn't been loved and if I loved him enough he would love me back? And how I use to feed him treats and sometimes he would take them, but if I approached him the wrong way he would just lash out and scratch me? I guess he felt threatened. Anyway…" she paused and shook her head. "Is Eric just another stray that I'm trying to adopt?"
Rob snorted at the thought. "Well, I don't see him curled up sleeping on the end of your bed."
"Not yet," Katherine agreed.
"Not yet?" Rob echoed, with disbelief. "Katie, this is a man we're talking about, not another of your Father's rescue projects."
"But he needs rescuing," Katherine interjected sadly, wiping the hair out of her mouth.
"How can you tell?"
"I've seen his face twice," Katherine admitted. "The first time I pulled the mask off, the second, well I took it off with his permission, but I could tell that it was difficult for him. It is almost as if he is a different person with it off you know." She turned and looked at her friend, seeking reassurance. "Have you ever noticed how Eric exudes, a sort of; well, power - I don't know if that's the right word or not. But when he has the mask on, when you see him around campus he is in control, you see what he wants you to see. But when you take the mask off he is like a little child, lost and scared and pleading."
"Do you think that's why he reacts so badly if anyone tries to remove it?" Rob asked, thinking of the situation he had witnessed.
"I think it might," Katherine agreed. "If you say we started seeing each other last Monday, then in a week and a half he has not chosen to remove his mask in front of me; once."
"What does he do when he goes to sleep?" Rob asked curiously.
"I don't know, we haven't got that far." Katherine's mouth twisted into a wry smile. "Anyway, I've been out with Eric every single night and yet we have never been alone together since that first day. We always go to the pub, or the bar, even though I don't think he always enjoys it. And I seriously think it is due to the fact that he doesn't want to remove his mask and face up to what is behind it. Do you agree?"
"Oh to be a fly on the wall."
"Rob, I'm serious here," she elbowed her friend in the ribs. "So come on; tell me what you know about Eric, for I'm really on the edge of doing something serious."
"More serious then walking in and ripping his mask off?" Rob deadpanned.
"I wasn't really thinking," Katherine admitted. "It was more instinct and that nearly went very wrong. He was so angry."
"You should me careful Katie, that is a hell of a temper he has you know."
"Oh Eric would never hurt me," Katherine scoffed at the warning.
"I'm serious here. I doubt he would ever hurt you, not intentionally at least, but at the same time, his lose of temper tends to go with a loss of rationality. Like you say, I'm his friend but there are times he can barely say a civil word to me."
"So you agree with me that there are different sides to him? There is so much I don't know about him and he won't tell me, won't open up." Her frustration was evident in her voice and she fell silent for a moment. "So tell me Rob, what do you know, for he must have told you something?"
"He has mentioned some stuff, but it's very little. Best friend status doesn't mean much to him. I hate to think how he treats his enemies, put it that way. Please don't get your hopes up."
"I promise I won't," Katherine agreed. They paused in their strolling, as they came to a small footbridge crossing the river. Climbing up onto the wooden planks they rested in the middle, gazing out onto the sluggishly flowing water beneath them.
"He wasn't burnt," Rob started. "I know that's the popular rumour around campus, but he was not trapped in a burning car or a burning building or anything of the kind. He was born with facial deformities. It is something like congenital haemangioma. I think that's what he called it. Anyway, apparently his mother can't stand the sight of him and has made him wear that mask since birth. She won't look at him without it. Weird I know, but I guess that's why you notice these two sides to his personality. He has grown up hiding his face."
"How can someone be so cruel?" Katherine whispered. "How can someone hate their own child so much that they can't even look at them?"
"That's the bit I don't know," Rob said. "It is obviously very complex, but he didn't go into any detail." Katherine just shook her head slowly, her eyes never leaving the water. Rob peered at her in worry and saw that they were full of tears. "Don't pity him Katie," he said placing a reassuring hand on her back. "He doesn't want or need your pity."
"That's what Eric said to me," Katherine said sniffing hard and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "And I don't pity him, but I still can't understand how a mother can treat her child like that."
"Are you scared of spiders?"
"Am I scared of, what?" Katherine asked, straightening and frowning at her friend's strange question.
"Spiders, are you scared of them?"
"Well, no," confusion echoed in her voice. "I mean I doubt I would like to keep them as pets and I probably wouldn't be too happy if one ran across me, but I don't think so."
"So you're not one of these girls who stands on a chair and screams when she sees a little spider crossing the floor?
"Rob, you have known me almost all my life. Have you ever seen me stand on a chair and scream at anything?"
"Yes, when I tried to make you hold that night crawler." Rob chuckled.
"But spiders, no."
"I still don't see what this has to do with anything," Katherine commented crossly. "We were talking about Eric and you switch the subject to spiders."
"Eric once said that he saw himself as a spider. That people could not see past the ugliness. Spiders are in fact very useful creatures with their own form of beauty. I think that is what he said. And if people hate spiders then the same principles apply to him, for he is ugly to look at."
"Interesting theory," she frowned. "Slightly melodramatic but interesting."
"Yeah, well your boyfriend is all about melodrama, I've never met anyone with such good timing when it comes to having an audience. Spends far too much time listening to opera I think."
"Instead of your delightful choices of music?" Katherine questioned cheekily. Rob answered her with a smile.
"Come on, let's head back, I can't feel my toes anymore." They turned and cut back across the meadows to their halls.
"He was shocked when I said that I had never been to an opera," Katherine mused, as they trudged their way back. "Said that I'd never really understand true love and passion until I understood opera." She laughed. "Never had the time for it myself, although I do like that one with the song dum de de da de dum, da de de da de dum, the one they used in Pretty Woman. What's it called?"
"La Traviata," Rob said solemnly as they walked back to his room. Katherine raised her eyebrows at him. "My sister made me watch it during the holidays, that's how I know," he defended himself against her unasked question. "However, if I were you, I would read up on it, or listen to the CD. Just a thought." They paused outside the two doors.
"Well, I'll just see if he's in" Katherine said, giving her friend a hesitant smile. On impulse she turned round and hugged him. "Thank you," she whispered as he went into his room.
She knocked on Eric's door and waited. Hearing no reply she tried the handle, but the door was locked, he was clearly out. Not sure if she was relieved or not, she went upstairs to her room, her head full of the conversation she had just had, musing over all she had learnt. Pulling her keys out of her pocket she put them in the lock and tried turning, but they refused. With a frown she turned the handle and pushed the door open. It moved with ease, obviously unlocked, allowing her entry.
"Oh, what are you doing here?" The words fell from her lips in surprise as she walked in, for Eric was sitting at her desk, innocently reading her maths assignment.
"You've messed this lot up completely," he returned in greeting.
"How did you get in?" Katherine queried, shrugging off her coat, still surprised to see him in her room.
"You left the door open, so I thought you couldn't have gone far and decided to come in and wait for you." His voice was calm as he turned and looked at her. Katherine let her gaze drop to her hand, in which she still clutched her bunch of keys, rolling their weight between her fingers. She could have sworn that she had locked her room as she had left. Looking up, she realised that Eric was watching her intently, as if reading her thoughts, his eyes dark shadows in the mask. "Actually I picked the lock," he admitted, as if it was of no coincidence.
"Eric!"
"Well, it was very easy. A child of five could have done it." He turned back to her work and changed the subject. "You know you've used totally the wrong formula in this whole question." Katherine went and looked over his shoulder at the paper, where he was busy scoring lines through her equations and doodling on the edge of the pad. The margin was filled with small drawings, an eye gazing back from the page, the rough sketch of a cat, and the outline of a woman's body.
"Thank you for defacing my work," Katherine said tetchily, annoyed at his assumptions. Despite her conversation with Rob, she was cross with his behaviour. Eric noticed her tone of voice and glanced at her, his eyes filled with a wariness that she had never seen before.
"I'm sorry," his voice was quiet and full of a pleading apology. "I didn't mean to." His words stopped Katherine in her tracks, for they were touched with a note of childlike fear, suggesting that he was expecting reprimand, making her anger vanish.
"Don't worry," she placed a reassuring hand on his back, worried at his reaction to her show of anger. "It was looking scruffy anyway". She paused and watched as he effortlessly corrected another answer, realising that there was so much more to him then he let on. She turned away, trying to find a way of approaching the situation. "Do you feel like doing anything tonight?" she asked, waiting for his suggestion. "Eric?" she questioned, spinning around when he did not answer.
"Hmm, what did you say?" he murmured as if had not heard her. Katherine looked closely at the back of his head, noticing that his ears were pink.
"You heard what I said" she replied, trusting her instinct that he was avoiding the inevitable. "What do you want to do tonight? I am rather tired and will have to get up early to recopy my work, so I was going to have an early, lazy evening. Do you want to join me?"
"And do what?" he turned in the chair and folded his arms, leaning back as if waiting for her ideas.
"I don't know, get a movie out," Katherine suggested. "Get in some munchies, watch a video, just chill. Life doesn't have to be on continual party, especially on a Wednesday evening." She watched as Eric clenched his jaw, obviously mulling the idea over in his mind. Yet his gaze remained bland and his body relaxed, to the outside observer he seemed totally calm.
"Okay" he agreed. "Shall we go choose a film? I think it is going to rain by the way." Getting use to his lightening changes in the topic of conversation, she simply gathered her coat.
"Come on then" she said by way of agreement. You can help choose as long as it does not contain unnecessary gratuitous violence or sex."
"Totally uncalled for in most cases anyway," Eric agreed as they left.
Half an hour later saw them back in the room, watching the latest big blockbuster release. "Crap," Eric said for what struck Katherine as the fourteenth time. She sighed, realising that he obviously didn't like such movies. He picked the plot line to pieces, pointed out all the mistakes and criticised most of the acting. She was actually glad to reach the end of the movie, as she had had enough of listening to Eric's comments for most of the film.
"You are impossible," she turned the video off and settled back on the bed, where they sat side by side, with their backs against the wall. "I'm not saying that it's the finest acting in the world, but it is entertainment."
"With unnecessary explosions, bad dialogue and a plot line that crumbles under interrogation," Eric filled in. "Having not been bought up on a diet of television, I'm more aware of inferior programming. Much better forms of entertainment around."
"So what did you do if you weren't allowed to watch television?" Katherine asked coyly, realising that he had just handed her an opening. "I mean how did you fill the holidays, what did you do with yourself?"
"Not just the holidays," Eric snapped. Katherine realised that the conversation was about to end, as it always had so far when she has tried to bring up the subject of his past. She knelt back on the bed, moving away from him but never letting her gaze leave his face, waiting for him to say more.
Eric sighed, realising that she wanted to know the reasoning behind his outburst. Leaning his head back against the wall he swallowed hard, his emotions torn in half. The habit of hiding everything about his life against the pull of trusting this woman that he was falling in love with. The past week and a half with her had been wonderful; he enjoyed having someone to talk to, to be with. Having someone who put herself out for him and cared after his feelings. But he also realised that in return he had to share himself and his emotions with her.
Before he was even aware of consciously making a decision he had shuffled off the bed and stood up, his instinct urging him to run back to his room and hide, before she could demand any more explanations, any more soul searching.
"Eric." Her voice was gentle and unthreatening. It stopped him in his tracks and made him turn. He stared at her realising that if he left the room then the relationship would go no further. All his dreams and fantasies about finding the most special woman would crumble into dust, for he could not meet her even a quarter of the way.
He stood still for a moment, debating the results of what might happen and realised that he had to trust her. Without that move on his behalf he would never achieve what he dreamt of. With another sigh that came straight from the heart he reached up and untied the strings to his mask. Hesitantly he placed it on the bed next to her, as if it were an offering and sat down again, his eyes never leaving Katherine's face.
"What do you want to know?" he said gruffly, his voice having lost all its usual resonance and power.
"Everything," Katherine stated.
"Everything about the whole world?" Eric's sense of humour surfaced through his distress.
"Everything about you," Katherine confirmed, wriggling over to him, so that their legs were touching. "From the beginning. I want to know the real Eric, not the campus rumour."
"Campus rumour. I didn't realise that I was popular enough to have rumours about me."
"Trapped in a burning car, all that."
"No, I guess that I haven't been paying enough attention to gossip." He laughed softly. "Do you mind if I smoke?" Digging into his pocket he pulled out a small tin, obviously not containing cigarettes. "It helps me relax." Katherine nodded in agreement and Eric rolled a joint with ease, lighting it and inhaling deeply before leaning back against the wall and blowing the scented smoke out into the room." You know that my last name is Reighland?" he questioned, passing her the joint.
"Yeah," Katherine said, taking a drag. "Yes, you told me the other evening, your family were originally from," she paused trying to remember what he had said, "Somewhere in Germany, wasn't that it?"
"A very long time ago, almost two centuries, but yes. Hence being lumbered with such an old fashioned first name as well."
"It could have been worse," Katherine laughed slightly.
"True. Anyway, have you heard of the store Empire? In London?"
"Yeah, the one on Oxford Street," she confirmed, frowning at the change in subject. "And they have another in Birmingham and one in Edinburgh."
"Mmmm that's right. Well the stores, actually the whole company, belong to my family. My mother's family."
"You're the family behind Empire? Katherine could not hide the amazement in her voice.
"Behind the whole of the Reighland Group which owns them," Eric confirmed, plucking the cigarette from her hand and inhaling again. "My grandfather is CEO and chairman of the board, my mother the only child of the family and I, in turn her only child."
"And your father?" Katherine saw him flinch as she asked the question.
"My father is dead," he said tonelessly. "He died the day I was born."
"I'm sorry," her voice was quiet as she realised that the telling of the story would be an emotional roller coaster for the both of them. He inhaled again, holding the smoke in his mouth, and breathing in through his nose, seeking the freedom that it bought. He exhaled with a small but bitter laugh.
"Yeah, so am I, my life might have been very different if he had been alive."
"Why?" Katherine asked, wriggling around, so her head was leaning against his legs and she was gazing up at him.
"The stores were started by my great-great grandfather in the middle of last century," he explained. "So fast-forward about one hundred and twenty years and my grandparents are very wealthy, very influential people with an only child, my mother." He paused realising the bitterness that tinged his words and looked down at Katherine. He gently ran his hand over her hair, stroking its softness, savouring the sensation. "As you can imagine," he continued, "she was very spoilt and indulged. Never had to do a days work in her life, her only duty was to marry well. Marry someone that would have the knowledge and social standing to run the company when my grandfather decided to retire."
"So who was your Father?"
"Well, that's the thing. My mother met my father at a Christmas staff party. He had just started to work at the store as a junior-executive. She was twenty; he was twenty-two, fresh out of university, alone in the world as both his parents were dead. It is a story of true love, apparently they could not bear to be apart and everything that my Grandfather did to make them split up just drove them closer together, to the point that my mother was ready to renounce her inheritance and the family name. My grandfather realised that he couldn't win, and decided to go along with my mother's wishes, as he had always given in to her. They realised that my Father was actually very clever and had the ability to take over the company, so with the nepotism that comes with a family owned business he was promoted and was being groomed to run it.
"Everyone says that my parents were the perfect couple, - my father was the only one who was able to put up with my mother's spoilt behaviour and control her whims." He paused and put the joint to Katherine's lips so that she could smoke the drug before leaning forward and chasing the smoke with a kiss, inhaling it back from her.
"Where was I," he continued, mellowed by the drug's potency. "Yeah, well for my parents first anniversary they went on holiday to Africa and she fell seriously ill, not realising that she was pregnant with me, got rushed into hospital where they treated her for what they thought was malaria, although it wasn't. They never knew if it was the disease, the drugs or just some rogue gene that did what it did to my face."
Katherine opened her mouth, questions tumbling from her lips, but closed it again, realising that it was unwise to interrupt at the stage they had reached. What he was telling her was so unique and quite unlike anything she had heard round campus.
"On the night I was born," Eric continued, "the weather was awful. I mean November isn't known for being clement. My father, in his rush to get to the hospital was involved in a five-car pile up on the motorway, trying to get back down to Kent, where they lived. He died instantly. Apparently all throughout her labour my mother kept calling for him, asking where he was and they wouldn't tell her, for they thought she would give up trying!
"Anyway, I was finally born by Caesarean, with a horrific face and my mother woke up to find her child deformed and her husband dead." Eric's voice was harsh and toneless as he detached himself from the situation, in an attempt to explain. "Well, she flipped out, although my grandparents, not wanting it to be general knowledge that they had a freak for a grandson had us discharged and sent back to my parents house, where they made her take care of me otherwise she would have rejected me completely.
"They didn't want to hire a nurse for they were worried about gossip and they paid off the hospital staff in order to buy their silence. The only way my mother would look at me is if I wore the mask, and she didn't look at me that often. It was the first thing I remember wearing." He paused as the memories overwhelmed him, searching for the joint in an attempt to shield himself against the emotions that threatened to rise to the surface. His fingers closed around the burnt out stub and he gazed at it in stoned horror. "Bugger," he swore, dropping the butt in an empty glass.
"It's okay," Katherine spoke softly and reaching up gently ran the back of her hand down the side of his face, touching his face for the first time.
His skin was very smooth and fine, with the bumps of thread scars, running under the skin. She moved her hands to his other cheek and touched the raised weld. Moving his head, Eric let her hand come to rest on his mouth, realising that he was stoned as he grabbed one of her fingers with his teeth, holding it gently in his mouth and sucking on it. Katherine let out a low laugh, aware, that like her boyfriend she was not sober.
"She never touched me, you know," he whispered, dropping her hand. "She went out of her way to not touch me. She stopped helping me to get dressed when I was three; she never hugged me or kissed me. Do you know what it's like to be starved of the sense of touch?" He placed his long lean fingered hand against Katherine's, palm to palm, wrapping his fingers over hers and squeezing tightly, trying to make her understand.
"So how come you are here? How did you have an education? Do you see your grandparents?" The questions tumbled from Katherine's lips.
"My grandparents saw me for the first six years of my life," Eric nodded, recalling his youth. "When I was little they would come every Friday. They would greet Momma in the hall. She lives in an old farmhouse, so it is very open and I used to hide upstairs and look through the banisters. My grandfather always used to look up and wink at me as he came in. Then Momma would call me down and we would all go into the living room.
'Have you been a good boy?' he would ask me and I would reply 'Yes Sir' and then Momma would interrupt and say how bad I had been, not making my bed, not getting dressed properly, not finishing my food. There were hundreds of little things, even though I was very young at the time. So my grandfather would say 'that's a shame' and ask me what I had done that was good, at which point I would reply with a list of all that I felt showed me in a good light and he would tell me that I deserved a reward. He would give me drawing paper, pens and pencils, sweets, comics all sort of things. Yet, he never saw me without the mask on, but I was convinced that he was so kind that he wouldn't mind.
So one day when I was called down, I removed my mask and went into the living room. My grandfather went as white as a sheet, but he still asked me if I had been a good boy. Unfortunately my mother didn't react quite so well. She totally lost her self-control, starting hitting me in front of my grandparents, before locking me in my room. That was the last I ever saw of them."
"How did you survive a life like that?" Katherine whispered, dropping a kiss into the palm of the hand before her. "You must have been very brave."
"Not brave no," he shook his head. "Foolish maybe, twisted; probably, scared; definitely. But not brave." A snort of laughter escaped his lips. "I don't think I would have survived if it hadn't been for Anne-Marie. She was my mother's best friend."
"Was?"
"Well is I suppose. They went to school together and were apparently inseparable. Chalk and Cheese in personalities, but that is why friendships sometimes work so well I guess." He lifted his shoulders in a graceful shrug. "Anyway, from the very first Anne-Marie was my guardian-angel, she looked after me, protected me from the worst of my mothers excessive outbursts. She cared about me and was the one who discovered that I found things easy, had talents if you wish to call them that. She arranged for me to have a tutor, a friend of hers called Dave. He opened up a whole world to me through books, music, and art. You must understand that I never saw a television until I was ten, my mother wouldn't let me watch it." His voice rose a pitch as he grappled with the emotions of his past. "I spent a lot of time locked in my room and it gives you great scope for broadening your mind. I was never allowed to leave the confines of the house and the gardens unless I was going to the specialist. When I had operations on my face I was in a private room. From about the age of seven, I always seemed to either be waiting for an operation or recovering from one."
"Didn't the social services do anything, if you mother mistreated you so? How did your Grandparents get away with it?"
"I wasn't mistreated," Eric explained slowly. "My mother was very ill. A breakdown coupled with some serious post-natal depression. We just don't like each other and it's very hard to live together when that is the case. But I had a roof over my head, food to eat, and clothes to wear. And if my childhood was harsh and disciplined, then how different to many other children does that make me?" He felt Katherine tense across his knee and realised that he needed to explain further. "But yes, I hated my childhood and I hate my mother. I try to accept the situation, but it is not easy," he swallowed hard, the emotion trembling through his body. "Anyway when I was fourteen I realised that I couldn't take it anymore, so I ran away - nicked some money from my mother's purse, picked the lock on my door - yes it's a talent I honed from an early age…" He looked down at Katherine and saw the trace of a smile on her lips. "I caught a train to Anne-Marie's house. It was the scariest thing I had ever done, people kept staring at me and I got totally lost, finally reached her house about midnight. She opened the door and found me there, took me in. She and my grandparents agreed that it was best that I stayed with her, well she persuaded them it was, that my mother was really not well enough to look after me.
"That - I think, was when my life really started. Anne-Marie treated me like any normal fourteen-year-old boy. For the first time in my life I was allowed to do things that other people take for granted. I received my first allowance; I got my first grounding because I actually broke a reasonable rule. Dave continued to educate me and we were able to go to museums, galleries, plays, and the opera. Things that I had only dreamt of. I've crammed fourteen years of life into the past five years, but I was in the strange position of knowing an awful lot but at the same time, very little.
"What do you mean?" Katherine interrupted, pushing herself into a sitting position.
"Well" Eric said slowly trying to think of an example. "How do you use a cash machine?"
"Easy" She opened her mouth to give a detailed explanation.
"I know how to work one Kat," he said with humour. "But the thing is I didn't know for a long time. I didn't know how to buy a ticket for a train, how to pay for anything, order a meal in a restaurant. All those sort of things that you take for granted as you learnt them through life; I had to learn since I went to live with Anne-Marie." He picked up the mask and looked at it. "The bitter irony is that at the end of the day, if I didn't wear the mask I would have to put up with a lot more then curiosity."
"What exactly is wrong with your skin?" she asked hoping to get more of a detailed description then the one that Rob offered her.
"They are Haemangioma," Eric explained. "No one knows what causes them. I am just unlikely enough to be one of the small percentage that have them when they are born, have more then one and have them as permanent features. Usually they fade and go away as you grow; but most of mine didn't and so I've been gradually having them removed since I was seven years old. This is the last one," he lightly touched his cheek. "Pressure sometimes helps with scaring and the like, so my Mother used it as yet another excuse for me to wear the mask."
"Have you tried not wearing it?" Katherine suggested bravely, hoping that he would not react badly to the suggestion.
"Tried not wearing it? You think it is some piece of clothing that I take a fancy to when I get up in the morning?" Eric spat out, stunned by her audacity and scared to face the question.
"I didn't mean it like that."
"I know you didn't," he sighed and hung his head in shame. "I am sorry, I have a truly awful temper, no control whatsoever. I get it from my mother. But Katherine, please try and understand, I am naked without this," his hand tightened on the leather. "I tried once, when I first went to Anne-Marie's. I got as far as the end of the road. I prefer curiosity to disgust and indifference to pity."
"I don't care what you look like," Katherine said quietly, rising to her knees and holding his face in her hands. "I care if you're happy or not, but I don't care what you look like."
"Honestly?" His voice was shaky as it dawned on him how much faith she had in him and how gigantic the leap was that she was persuading him to make.
"Honestly. You can wear the mask if you need to, but between us there are no secrets and no lies. Take it off for me because I want to look at your face, but I promise I will only ask you to do it when we are alone. Do you think you could agree?"
"Yes," his voice was barely a shaky whisper and he closed his eyes, seeking her hand with his and grasping it. He raised it to his lips and planted a kiss in the palm. "I promise I'll try."
"Good," she whispered back, as if their promises were too serious to be spoken loudly. She put her mouth to his and kissed him on the lips, the tip of his nose and his forehead, before letting him go. "Good," she said again quietly.
"Kat," he murmured, opening his eyes and seeking contact with hers. "I think I love you."