Actually there is a degree of love in Dasha's decision to bed her employer. The relationship between them is one of varying states of powers – he vies for ownership over her body while she uses him to manipulate her own memories of lost love. There is no tenderness in the way she approaches this arrangement and the affection he lavishes upon her comes from an almost fatherly desire to please and control. There could be nothing further from love than the link between these two characters. They are anti-love: not merely the absence of love but the state that is found on the other side.
I haven't yet written the section when they first meet but I know how it's going to go. An interview, her honest abilities and his slick acceptance of a new apprentice. Dasha is a striking woman but he is the only man in her life, those in the past included, who won't look past her beauty. He doesn't even try. He loves how she appears on his arm but doesn't consider what incredible insight she has into his business. It would be like employing a recovered heroin addict as a drug counsellor because they spoke in a calming tone. You're missing the point!
I made this post part of a series because understanding Dasha's loves is an integral part to understanding why she ends up in such an unenviable position in the second half of the book. To be so bereft of happy memories that artificial implantation is the only answer feels to me an extremely sorry state of affairs. But there's a growing niggle in the back of my head that tells me this isn't why Dasha is considering the treatment. Until I figure out the real reason I'll just have to give life to her men.
Lara S.
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