Eighty Days Yellow (8 page)

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘OK, good,’ he replied. ‘This really isn’t going to work through frilly knickers. Would you mind if I took those off?’

I held my breath. Christ. What had I got myself into? But I knew this was coming; it wouldn’t be the same, clearly, through thick frilly underwear, and the room was full of nudity, so I would hardly stand out.

‘Sure.’

I turned to face the bench and leaned forward against the padded frame, lifting my weight off my shoes and giving my feet blessed respite. My waist and torso rested against the flat, padded section of the middle of the frame, and there were two further padded sections for me to lay my arms against, and handles to wrap my hands round.

I felt a finger hook round the waistband of my frilled panties and gently pull them down over my thighs and then down my stockinged legs. Mark cradled one foot and then the other in his hands, helping me to step out of them. My legs were spread wide apart and I guessed that, crouching at my feet as he was, he had a clear view of every part of me. My cheeks flushed with warmth, but I could already feel myself begin to surrender, and a pleasant, tingling heat suffused my lower body. He pushed himself up to standing, and Charlotte squeezed my hand.

For a moment, I felt nothing, just the slightest caress of air against my bare buttocks and the imagined gaze of strangers on my naked flesh.

Then a strong palm cupped my right arse cheek, gently circling clockwise, followed by the tiniest of breezes as the hand pulled away into the air, then smacked down again, first on one cheek, then the other.

A sharp sting.

Now the soft touch of his cool hand on my hot flesh, soothing, stroking.

Another brush of air as the hand travelled away from me again.

And a jolt as the hand slapped down on my arse, harder this time.

I gripped the metal bars with my hands, arched my back, pressed my thighs into the padding, felt another blush burn across my face as I realised I was soaking wet and I imagined Mark must be able to see my excitement, must be able to smell it. He would be able to feel that my body was becoming pliant under his touch, the curve in my back deepening so that I could thrust myself closer towards him.

Another smack, this time much harder, genuinely painful. The sharp sting made me jump and for the briefest moment I considered asking him to stop, but then his hand was on me again, resting on the cheek that he’d just hit, taking the sting away and replacing it with a strange sort of warmth that travelled all the way up my spine to the nape of my neck.

Leaving one hand cupping me, he ran the other gently up my back to my neck and into my hair, spreading his fingers, tugging my hair softly at first, then harder.

Now I was somewhere else. The room fell away; the imagined stares of strangers faded; Charlotte disappeared; there was nothing but me and the feeling of his hand pulling my hair as I bucked my body on the bench and moaned as he kept slapping.

Then I was back again. There were two hands on my stinging cheeks, just resting, gently, and Charlotte squeezing my hand. The noise of the room began to filter back into my consciousness. Voices, and music, ice cubes chinking in glasses, and the sound of someone else being slapped.

‘You OK, honey? You still with us? Wow,’ she said, I presumed to Mark, ‘she was gone like a rocket.’

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘she’s a natural.’

I craned my head back to smile at them and then attempted to stand, but found I couldn’t walk. I felt as jittery as a newborn foal, and I was so clearly aroused, my legs were slippery. I was embarrassed by the level of my response, but neither Mark nor Charlotte, nor any of the spectators, seemed the least bothered or surprised. This was a normal weekend (or perhaps everyday) event for them.

‘Easy there, tiger,’ Mark said, wrapping a firm arm round my waist and leading me over to a chair only vacated as the combined gaze of Mark and Charlotte had caused the occupant to leap up and walk away.

I slipped down onto the seat and Mark stroked my hair, holding my head gently against his thigh. His rubber apron felt cool and strange against my face, and one of his paddles pressed uncomfortably against my arm.

I felt myself drifting away again as he ran his hands through my hair, and their voices came to me as though floating through a tunnel.

‘I think you’re going to have to take her home,’ he said to Charlotte. ‘Has she had too much to drink?’

‘Not a thing. Been guzzling mineral water all night. You’ve broken in a virgin.’

‘How wonderful,’ he chuckled.

‘She looked like she was having a pretty good time to me,’ Charlotte remarked, ‘and I didn’t even get to show her the couples’ room.’

I fell asleep on Charlotte’s shoulder in a cab on the way back to her flat and woke up in the morning still wearing the pale-blue corset, though Charlotte had loosened the strings. The pillow was covered in glitter and streaks of black eye make-up. I felt as though I had a hangover, although I definitely hadn’t had a drop to drink.

‘Morning, sunshine,’ Charlotte called from the kitchen. ‘Made you a coffee.’

I stumbled to the kitchen, immediately more alert at the promise of caffeine.

‘Wow,’ said Charlotte, ‘that outfit looked better on you yesterday.’

‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘Can’t say the same for yours.’

Charlotte was standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a small china saucer in one hand and a cup of espresso in the other. She was completely naked.

‘I don’t wear clothes if I can help it,’ she said.

‘And when would that be?’ I asked.

‘When I’m deep-fat frying,’ she replied, ‘or when I have gentlemen callers. I put clothes on so they can take them off again. Blokes seem to like that.’

When she said ‘blokes’, I remembered that Charlotte was from Alice Springs and was amazed again that anyone as cosmopolitan as her had been raised in the outback of Australia.

‘You’re in a good mood.’

‘Made some money already today,’ she said, glancing over at her computer, ‘and I slept well knowing that I expanded your mind last night.’

She was grinning, but I felt a little strange about the whole thing. Nothing, other than music, had ever made me feel that way – that epiphany of both detachment and pleasure filtering its way through the pain. I pushed the feeling out of my mind.

‘Your phone’s been ringing off the hook. You could get a better ringtone.’

‘It’s Vivaldi, you philistine,’ I said. She shrugged.

I fished my phone out of my purse and check the ‘missed call’ list. Darren. Ten times last night, another dozen times this morning. He must have heard about the violin somehow. I glanced at the clock above the oven in the kitchen. It was 3 p.m. I’d slept most of the day.

‘Stay another night,’ Charlotte said. ‘I’ll cook for you. I haven’t even turned the oven on in this place.’

She left me in the apartment to shower and rest, while she went to the shops to buy food for dinner. I had a bath and then spent thirty minutes combing out the knots in my hair. Eventually, I grew tired of waiting and texted Charlotte to check if I could use her computer.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘There’s no password.’

I waved the mouse until the screen appeared. Checked my Gmail account. Ignored the messages from Darren and the inevitable spam. Logged on to Facebook. One message in my inbox. I hovered the mouse over the inbox screen cautiously, expecting it to be yet another missive from Darren, but the message was from a profile that I didn’t recognise with no picture attached.

I clicked on the message with mild curiosity.

A polite introduction.

Then:

I am willing to gift you with a new violin.

Do you accept my challenge and my terms?

I clicked on the profile, but it was almost completely bare, just the location ‘London’ in the personal details. The name of the profile was just one initial: D.

Of course I thought of Darren, but this just wasn’t his style.

What else could the ‘D’ stand for? Derek? Donald? Diablo?

I ran through a mental Rolodex of people who might know I was missing a violin and might be inclined to do something about it, and I came up with nothing. The only person who had all the details of the incident was the fat-handed London transport officer, and he seemed about as romantic as his profession suggested – that is, not at all. If the violin had been stolen, or worse, left strangled on my doorstep, I might have feared that I had an Internet stalker, but the message didn’t appear malevolent to me.

A spark had been lit, and try as I might, I couldn’t extinguish it now.

I stared at the screen for a further ten minutes, none the wiser, until Charlotte burst through the door, her arms full of shopping bags.

‘You better not be vegetarian,’ she called out, ‘because I got nothing but meat.’

I assured her that my predilections were firmly in favour of steak and beckoned her over to read the email.

Charlotte stared at the screen, raised an eyebrow and smirked.

‘What challenge?’ she asked. ‘And what terms?’

‘I don’t know. Should I reply?’

‘Well, that would be a start. Go on – write back to him.’

‘How do you know it’s a him?’

‘Of course it’s a him. It’s got alpha male written all over it. Probably someone who’s seen you playing, got the hots for you.’

I deliberated, then pressed the ‘reply’ button. I rested my fingers gently on the keyboard and replied:

Good evening,

Thank you for your kind words.

What is your challenge? And your terms?

Regards,

Summer Zahova

A reply came back within minutes.

I would be delighted to respond to your queries in full. Meet me.

A question mark was conspicuously absent from his request.

Against my better judgement, and with Charlotte egging me on, I arranged a date with the stranger, for noon precisely the following day.

I was ten minutes late.

He had suggested we meet at an Italian coffee shop in St Katharine Docks. I pretended I knew the place, although I didn’t; it saved me having to suggest a location.

When I arrived, I discovered that it was right in the middle of the water. Walking one way round the boardwalk at the sides of the dock, I realised the path was closed for repairs and had to turn and walk back again the other way. I was the only person on the docks, walking back and forth, lost like an ant who discovers a crumb in its path, and I imagined that the mysterious stranger was watching my movements from the comfort of the cafe all the while. I was wearing the least sexual outfit of Charlotte’s that I could find so as not to give him the wrong impression. I had overslept and hadn’t had time to pop back to my own flat and change.

Charlotte had found me a navy dress, part wool and part stretch, that she had stored from a very brief interlude working as the receptionist at a law firm before she began her career in online poker. It was lined, sat just past the knee and had a very modest scoop neck and four buttons placed evenly over the chest, military style. It was a little tight on the hips, but loose on the waist, and I wore it with a thin cream belt, my lace-up ankle boots, which I had fortunately been wearing the day of the Tube brawl, and a pair of skin-coloured hold-up stockings. The packet read ‘Lightly oiled – bare-legged look’.

‘He’s going to think I want to fuck him if he sees I’m wearing these,’ I said to Charlotte.

‘Well, maybe you will want to fuck him,’ she replied.

Then she told me not to be silly as I would have to be bending all the way over for the split at the back to reveal what I had on underneath. The split was fortunately set low, which meant that it was a little hard to walk, but also meant that hopefully nobody would know that I wasn’t wearing any underwear. As the fabric of the dress immediately highlighted my pantyline, Charlotte had refused to let me leave the house with my knickers on. I surrendered them to her at the door like a soldier surrendering a flag.

She had lent me her cream wool coat also, with a warning not to leave it behind as it was expensive. The coat smelled strongly of perfume, a musky variety that was not of my style, and of cinnamon-flavoured lubricant from the night she’d worn it over the latex dress.

By the time I arrived, I was glad of the coat as it was pouring with rain. Charlotte had also loaned me her red umbrella, and I felt like a scarlet woman as I held it open, as if I were inviting attention, the one spot of colour among a sea of black and grey.

I surveyed the interior of the cafe. Nothing special, but from the look of the Italian man behind the counter, I guessed the coffee would be good. The coffee they serve at airports in the rest of Europe is better than anything you’d find in England. Another fact I wouldn’t mention to anyone English. A nation of tea drinkers.

A counter, a few tables and chairs. A freestanding set of stairs leading upwards into a second area. I looked out of the windows. A clear view across the docks. He had undoubtedly seen me coming, if he was here. I didn’t see anyone downstairs, so I took the steps upwards to the first floor of the cafe. No one there either, just a middle-aged woman with a newspaper and the remains of a cappuccino. My phone buzzed. We’d exchanged numbers in case of any delay or mix-up en route.

‘I’m downstairs,’ said the message.

Dammit. I walked down again, trying not to look flustered, and spotted a table behind the stairs with a clear view running under the open wooden slats. The man sitting at the table, given the right angle and degree of attention, would most likely have had a perfect view up my dress. I felt a stab of arousal at the thought, that I had just given this stranger a vision of me, completely naked under my dress. A flash of shame quickly followed. I had better compose myself, quickly.

He smiled without a hint of displeasure at my tardiness or any indication that he’d just been watching my stocking-tops flash by overhead during my awkward ascent.

‘You’re Summer.’ It wasn’t a question. His eyes glittered, but they gave nothing away.

‘Yes,’ I replied, extending my hand to meet his, businesslike. I remembered the confident air that the corset had given me and purposefully straightened my shoulders.