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21
February 2017
Rachel and Michael honeymooned in the Seychelles two months after Michael’s proposal. ‘I’m not getting any younger’ had been his rationale for a short engagement. They had a small wooden house on stilts over an azure sea filled with colourful coral and ribboning fish, a private plunge pool on the deck and a double-ended bath with a glass bottom. They drank champagne every morning with their breakfasts of fresh fruit and fish and slept the days away on hammocks and loungers. And, as any good honeymooners, should – particularly honeymooners who have known each other only a few months – they spent quite a lot of their time having sex.
Sex with Michael had always been calmer than Rachel had anticipated during those heady few days of expectation before their first date. She had appreciated this at the outset as it hadhelped build her trust in him, helped her to feel safe and secure with a man who’d appeared in her life from nowhere. But now, three months into their relationship, with a ring on her finger and actual paradise on their doorstep, Rachel had hoped that things might start to develop into something more …complex, something that more met her needs. Because Rachel was fine with vanilla sex on the whole, but she did not want to spend the rest of her life having sex only one way. And yes, she should probably have had this conversation with Michael before she agreed to marry him, but things had still been so sweet then, in those early days, so precious and delicate. And then her focus had switched to the exact filigree of her antique-lace wedding dress, the last inch she wanted to carve off her hips, the precise cut of the yellow diamond of her engagement ring and the carat count of Michael’s wedding band. It had been on scouring the internet for the most perfect Seychellois resort and trying to find shoes in a size nine to fit Dominique’s late-pregnancy-swollen feet. Sex had been an afterthought, a nice thing that she and Michael did at the end of every day that soothed and reassured them both that they weren’t doing anything stupid, marrying so soon after meeting.
But now there was nothing left to think about other than sex. Sex and food. And she was bored now, bored of the soft thrusting and gentle caresses and his face buried lovingly in her hair. She thought about the man she’d seen on the internet, the man in the photo who looked as though he expected to be in control of everything and she thought that surely he would like to be in control of her. Sometimes. Not all the time. But sometimes.
After dinner on their third day, Rachel felt the bottom of her suitcase for the package she had brought with her from London.The silken ropes. The switch. The underwear that didn’t come from Victoria’s Secret. She took out the objects – all brand new – and she laid them by the side of the bed.
Then she waited for Michael to appear from the shower. His gaze didn’t alight upon the objects for a few moments and there was a messy episode of banal conversation that threatened to deaden the mood. But then his gaze found the objects and she watched him closely to gauge his reaction. First of all, an uncertain smile; then a small burst of laughter. Then a wide-eyed glare of recognition, followed by a ‘Whoa!’
Rachel couldn’t tell what the whoa meant. She waited a beat.
‘Are you …?’ He looked from the objects to Rachel and back again. ‘Is that …?’
‘I just thought … I mean … Is it something you’d like to try?’
Michael put a hand against his chest. ‘Me? You mean, you tie me?’
‘No. You tie me.’
‘And then I—?’ He picked up the switch and ran it across the palm of his hand. ‘I do this?’ He swished it against his hand, once, then twice. ‘To you?’
‘Erm. Yeah.’
‘Whoa,’ he said again, before unleashing a throaty laugh. ‘Well, my goodness me.’
Rachel held her breath. She could not tell where this was heading but she knew that it would end up somewhere different to anywhere they’d ever been before and that there’d be no going back to the innocence of earlier days.
‘Have you ever …?’
‘Er, no. No, no. Never. I never have.’ He shook his head decisively. ‘Nope.’
‘And how would you feel? If I were to put that on?’ Rachel glanced at the underwear. ‘And we could just give it a try? See if it’s something you like?’
Immediately, Rachel felt something in the atmosphere curdle and warp. She watched as Michael lifted the underwear, dangled it on his fingertips and examined it warily. ‘You wear this?’ he said. But it wasn’t a casual enquiry.
‘Yes. If you’d like it.’
‘And … have you? I mean, is this something you’ve done before?’
The question landed between them like a thrown dagger. Rachel knew what she should say. She should say no, this would be my first time. Because she knew, in every atom of emotional energy in the room at that moment, that Michael did not want to know about her doing this with other men. And that Michael was not what she’d thought he was. But she could not lie. Rachel was incapable of lying. And so she said, ‘Well, yes. Once or twice. Not often. But yeah.’
‘And you liked it? You liked being tied up? And being …what? I don’t know – spanked?’
‘It’s not spanking. It doesn’t hurt. It tickles.’ She tried to add lightness to the situation, but she already knew it was too late.
‘Wow. Rachel. Fuck. I mean …’ He dropped the piece of underwear and paced back and forth across the wide teak floorboards for a moment or two. ‘I feel – Jesus. I feel like I don’t know you, Rachel. I feel like I married afucking stranger.’
There followed a moment that was so darkly silent and so tense that Rachel could almost taste it.
She attempted to lighten it. ‘Ah well. Just a thought. No biggie.’
‘Well, I’d say it clearlyisa “biggie”, Rachel. I mean’ – he gestured at the objects – ‘these came all the way from the UK. On to our honeymoon. That took some forethought. Some planning.’
‘No. Really. It was nothing, I brought a million things I don’t need, just in case. I even brought a cardigan.’ She laughed, but it sounded hollow. ‘Seriously. Just forget it. Forget this ever happened.’
She strode across the room and started to gather the objects that she now wished to douse in petrol and set alight. She hoped that Michael might touch her as she passed him, might grab her arm and pull her to him and say something to ameliorate the situation. But he stood, rod-straight, pinched-faced, hard. She took the objects to her suitcase in the dressing area and zipped them tightly into an inside pocket. When she turned back, Michael was no longer in the room and the door to the terrace rattled gently on its hinges.
The rest of the honeymoon was tainted, ruined. They still talked over cocktails at dinner, they still held hands to walk along the beach, they still took photos of each other and selfies in front of sunsets. But there was no more sex. No more sex at all. Bright, aqua days faded darkly into moody nights of rejection and cold shoulders. Each night Rachel fell asleep tucked into herself on her side of the bed, swamped with sadness, and resentful of the sound of his snores, snores that should have been post-coital, blissed, the result of a spent libido, but instead were merely the snores of a middle-aged man who’d had a big dinner and too much beer.
They got home to the frozen tail end of February and spent the night at Michael’s place in Fulham. Still no sex. The following day was Sunday. They had lunch at an Italian where the proprietor forced complimentary champagne on them when he learned they’d just returned from their honeymoon and made unwelcome jokes about babies coming now, yes? and as darkness drew over the afternoon and turned it into evening, Rachel said to Michael, ‘You know, I have a huge day at work tomorrow, I’ll want to be in early. I might just spend the night at my place.’
She chewed the inside of her cheek and held her breath, waiting for him to thaw, to melt, to say, no, no, please, stay, I want you. I’m sorry.
But he did not look up before saying, ‘Sure, baby. Sure. Makes sense.’
She wheeled her honeymoon case out on to the pavement and lifted it into the boot of an Uber, cast her eyes up to the balcony of Michael’s apartment, searching out the familiar solid shape of him, maybe waiting to wave her off or even to call her back. Her gaze searched the windows for a blur of movement, a waft of hitched-back curtain, but nothing; the façade of Michael’s apartment remained still and cold. She clicked her seatbelt locked and held on to her tears until thirty minutes later, when she closed her apartment door behind her and wept.
