Chapter Two

      The first thing I hear after I’ve finished reading is my best friend’s laughter. And the second thing I hear is more laughter – this time with actual tears streaming down her cheeks to accompany it. Apparently, my erotic masterpiece is amusing to her. More than amusing, in fact. After a second she holds a hand up, like she’s begging me to stop the mirth.

      It takes her a while to realise.

      ‘Oh,’ she says, as she wipes away the tears. ‘Oh, you were serious? This is a serious start to a serious novel?’

      I kind of wish it wasn’t, now. But I plunge on, regardless. I mean, I read it with the intention of getting some feedback. It’s probably best if I just brace myself and hear it.

      ‘I know it needs work.’

      ‘Oh, honey, I’m sorry,’ she says, and I can tell she really is. She’s a good friend, Lori. She’s not the type to laugh because she’s a horrid jealous cow – though really, what does she have to be jealous of? She’s blonde, I’m not. She’s tall, I’m not. She’s interesting.

      I am not.

      Which is probably why I’m writing ridiculous stories about kinky things I’d never dare do. She’d probably dare do them, when I really think about it. If she stopped finding them hilarious for five seconds.

      ‘It just wasn’t what I expected, that’s all. I mean, the blindfold … the businessman … I didn’t think you were capable of writing something like that.’

      I flame red, then, thinking of the words I actually dared to speak aloud. How did I do that, again? Typically I can’t even tell a sex partner that I’d like to kiss and cuddle, now. So this seems … suddenly impossible. I’ve somehow made it impossible, after actually doing it.

      ‘It was so graphic.’

      Oh, God, it is. It was. What’s wrong with me?

      ‘And a little …’ She pauses, wincing. But it’s OK, because I’m wincing right along with her. ‘… unrealistic.’

      She clearly doesn’t know that a word like that is a lifeline to me. She looks as though she’s just murdered my grandmother, but the second she says it this weird relief slides through my body. Unrealistic – I can handle that. Hell, she’s probably right.

      After all, what do I know about sex? Nothing. Less than nothing. Every sexual encounter I’ve ever had has occurred beneath the sheets, under a double layer of darkness. Once I started kissing some guy’s elbow, thinking I’d found his cock. And as for the pleasure I’ve just described to her, in my twisted tale of kinky delights …

      Well, I guess that’s disingenuous of me, at best. I should have written:

       Sex for her was sort of like being vaccinated, by a big pink finger.

      ‘You’re not mad, are you?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Because, you know, it’s just … well. People don’t really do those sorts of things, do they? In real life, sex has consequences. And there are all these issues, obviously … especially for women.’

      She’s got a point. So why do I kind of wish she didn’t? I remember being this gawky teenage girl, once, who truly believed in passion and pleasure and crazy thrills. There were no double duvets and fat finger vaccinations in her future, no way, no how. She was going to take sex by storm, and experience delights the likes of which the world had never seen.

      Where did she go, exactly? How did I end up here, with these papers in my hand and the certainty that Lori is correct? People don’t really blindfold each other, down here in mundane reality. And if they did manage to do a thing like that, it would probably end really badly. Someone would stumble into a chair, and accidentally fracture their jaw. Or maybe my kinky businessman would turn out to be a total asshole, who filmed everything on his camera-phone then put it all up on YouTube.

      Are those the kinds of consequences she’s talking about? Because I can absolutely see myself being on YouTube; for wanting something as simple as excitement. In fact, I can imagine worse, when I really put my mind to it.

      Maybe he’ll sell me to slave traders, and I’ll end up in a sex factory – for ever being vaccinated, for the amusement of strangers.

      ‘Here,’ she says, and I know what’s going to happen before she’s even finished fishing through her wallet. She’s finding a card for me, with the name of some expert on it. She did the same thing last year, when I told her I was afraid of spiders – she sent me to a wellness specialist, who made me touch a spider.

      Which doesn’t bode well for this particular scenario.

      I can’t imagine myself fingering a penis, to get over my need for more exciting sex. If anything, the penis fingering is only going to make me crazier – though of course I don’t say that. Mainly because it’s insane, but also because I suspect she’s going to offer me something far more daunting.

      ‘You want realism? You should try this on for size,’ she says, then hands me a square of yellow construction paper with a terrible-sounding title emblazoned across its front. Sexual Healing, it says. As though Marvin Gaye is going to help lower my expectations and make me all normal again. ‘It’s a kind of therapy group for people with sexual … issues.’

      Oh, God, there’s that word again. Issues. And if I’m not mistaken, she seems to think that I have them. This isn’t just a friendly word of advice to help me be more than a librarian.

      This really is her way of making me touch a spider – only the other way around. She wants me to sit in a cold, probably clinical room, with people who think sex is a hideous nightmare. I’m going to come away even more depressed about the whole thing, and probably never do it again.

      Is that the aim here? To make me never do it again?

      ‘Lori, I really don’t think I need to visit a sex issues group,’ I try, but I already know it’s too late. Her eyebrow is raised in that particular pointed way – the one that makes her look like a schoolteacher, who always knows what’s best for me. And once it’s up there, I simply can’t finagle my way out.

      The weight of her one eyebrow is like seven bags of sand, tied too tight around my neck. I’m being dragged down to God knows where, and there’s really nothing I can do. I simply have to take the card, and hope for the best.

      Even if the best is me signing up for a life in a nunnery.

      * * *

      The meeting isn’t held where I thought it would be, in some sterile semi-hospital, set in the middle of endless green grounds. It’s on Becker Street, right in the heart of the city. The front of it reminds me of an old abandoned warehouse, or maybe a crumbling town hall, and it’s sandwiched between a barely surviving video store and a pizza place.

      The flickering pink neon from the latter’s window gives the dark, narrow building a tawdry air – and it’s worse inside. Kind of homey, in one way. But worn and withered, in another. The big heating pipes that run along the hallway remind me of school, as does the wrought-iron banister that lines the staircase – the one that leads to God only knows where. When I dare to duck my head and look up those stone steps, all I can see is the fuzzy, faded darkness that all old buildings seem to have.

      And just past the stairs to hell is a noticeboard, which brings me no more comfort. The signs tacked to the cork surface are gaudy, even jaunty, but the things written on them are not. Anger Management, the first one says. Followed by Violent Outbursts, Night Terrors, and my personal favourite: Inexplicable Rages.

      As opposed