Home

It seemed to take forever to get up the staircase, but when she finally arrived in the bathroom, she decided it was worth the struggle. It was a haven of tiles and marble, with gleaming chrome fittings in a style not dissimilar to those you'd expect to have been originally fitted in a house this age. She dumped the bags he had given her on the floor and hobbled over to the sink, one of two sinks in fact, and grabbed hold of the cold tap. It felt satisfyingly large and heavy in her hand, the four knobby arms extending from it making the perfect grip for slippery, soapy fingers. She had always been in love with taps like that, but could never afford to redo her bathroom. She doubted she could afford anything in this bathroom, not even the towels.

They were next for her attention, hanging on a heated rail. He fingers seemed to sink into the deep, fluffy pile forever and she sighed with bliss. This bathroom was like his secret weapon in the war to keep her here, along with the million bottles of stuff that he'd bought her. It would take her at least a day to work out what they were all for. She perched on the edge of the bath, reading labels and sniffing their contents until she found what she needed. Or what she thought she needed. Up until today she thought some shampoo and some shower gel would pretty much cover it, but someone seemed to have invented a different kind of soap for every part of her body and not told her about it.

She worried momentarily, about having to stand on her bad ankle while she took a shower, until she took a good look at the shower and realised it was probably triple-sized and had a seat in it.

"Oh how the other half live." she muttered, before double-checking the lock on the door and stripping off her dirty clothes.

She didn't think a shower had ever felt as good as that one. It was the first time she had cleaned herself properly in longer than she wanted to think about, and for several minutes the water ran grey as it blasted the dirt from her skin and hair. Not to mention the fact that it was deliciously hot. She hadn't been properly warm in weeks. As she soaped herself down she realised how thin she had become, her ribs visible beneath her skin.

Eventually, she tore herself away from the shower and wrapped herself up in one of the indecently snug towels to dry off. She caught a glimpse of herself then in one of the huge mirrors hanging over the sinks. She had bags under her eyes, darker than she'd ever seen before.

"I wonder if there's something in one of those bottles that can fix that?" she wondered idly.

She had been trying to find a word that described the bathroom since the minute she'd entered it - lavish had come close, but now she decided the actual word she wanted was "decadent". It was a room to indulge yourself in.

"This guy's a hedonist." she mused. She could picture him in the VIP room in some night club surrounded by bodyguards and hangers-on, licking champagne off supermodels. Well, maybe not the last part, unless he was going to blush afterwards and stammer an apology.

She realised that she would have to face her "host" again soon, but figured she ought to tidy up the bathroom a little first, putting the bottles back in their bags and standing, indecisive for a few moments, before throwing her clothes into what was obviously a laundry basket.

Hanging on the back of the door was a large, white toweling robe, which she pulled on before finally unlocking the door and starting her long journey downstairs.