Bound to You Read online

  She had been a handsome, rather than a ravishingly beautiful woman, ‘always getting her knees out’, I remember my late grandma once saying as she tutted over a picture of Lillian that I later ended up with. According to family rumour she was supposed to marry Albert’s brother, but he committed suicide shortly before the wedding. Did that mean she’d lost her first true love, I would often wonder. When she died, among her possessions was a jewellery box full of other people’s wedding rings, both men’s and women’s. I had heard vague stories of how she had acquired or been bequeathed them by her dancing partners.

  There was never any suggestion that Auntie Lillian had been unfaithful to Uncle Albert, but she clearly had an allure for men that she wasn’t afraid to exert. The rest of the family dismissed her air of innate superiority and thirst for adventure as arrogance. But her boldness in an age when women rarely escaped the apron strings of motherhood, let alone secured their own financial future, established her as a subversive figure of admiration to me. Plus, she had encouraged me to write letters to her all the way through my childhood, which meant that I owed her, in part, my love of language. There was no question of me not going.

  On the morning of the funeral, I stood in a damp towel and examined my wardrobe. I dragged out a dark, double-layered dress with an overlay of off-white polka dots. Then the only smart black jacket I possessed, which was chic but cheap, meaning it was cut a little too tightly about the chest. Black stilettos. I examined a pair of black chiffon knickers. Was it disrespectful to wear sexy underwear to my great-great-aunt’s funeral? Or commemorative? I decided it was commemorative and put them on.

  I took a train from London Paddington to Taunton, and a cab from there to the crematorium.

  My mum had warned me that there were unlikely to be many attendees at the funeral but as I pulled up in front of the chapel I was still startled. This couldn’t be right. Could it? A distant family friend I had never met but recognised from photographs, and a representative from the care home Auntie Lillian had been living in for the past fifteen years or so, exchanged pleasantries. They were only waiting for me. One hundred and three years old, and only three people at your funeral, not counting the vicar. Already I felt like weeping for her.

  The service was short, and the hymns traditional parting psalms that I had learnt at school. ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’, ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, forgive our foolish ways’. I sang as loudly and as brightly as if I were leading hymn practice in assembly, as I sometimes did when I was music prefect. I powered through the higher notes, only occasionally quavering. Mine was the only voice filling the airy, sunlit hall.

  Though he was sweet enough, the vicar failed to say anything of genuine relevance or poignancy. He hadn’t known Auntie Lillian. And neither, really, had the care-home worker, or the family friend. To be honest, I only knew her through distant, distilled memories, passed on to me by others and herself as an old woman. The real Lillian was the energetic girl from St John’s dairy who had dreamed of escaping south and running her own B&B, the tease with just the tiniest hint of coquette about her, the dancer, the antiques collector, and the indomitable lady who had only given up driving her precious silver Beetle in her eighties.

  As the service came to a close, the vicar announced that we would now hear her favourite song. It was a rendition of the old tune, ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’. Sometimes I passed through the real Berkeley Square on my way to my internship. As the muted brass swelled, I cried properly for her, for a life that had once brimmed with verve and fun. With nobody to recollect them, the memories of her life shrank in on themselves.

  I looked back around the empty crematorium. ‘Don’t end up like Auntie Lillian!’ was the familiar cry whenever I told a relative that marriage and children were not my priorities. Was this what was going to happen to me now that I had lost Christos? I imagined myself holed up in a poky little flat, with only my yellowing books and a couple of geriatric sausage dogs for company, lingering by the window every weekday afternoon as I watched young mothers shepherd their children home from school, wondering whether I had missed my chance.

  Well, if so, there was nothing I could do about it. Even if you had children it didn’t mean they would turn up when you died, did it? And Auntie Lillian had been married, after all. No, this was simply what happened when you outlived all those that had loved you, the result of having enjoyed your life so that you weren’t entirely run into the ground and only fit to pop your clogs by retirement age.

  On the train back home I reflected on my own situation. Funerals should be live-affirming; so how was I to usher in the next positive phase of my life? By focusing on my career, I decided. I have always found salvation in work, not the futile grind (which I’ve done plenty of) but the creative kind; the work that you would do whether they paid you or not, if you could only magic away the bills. I thought again about Auntie Lillian and the social expectations she faced. There were no such strictures on me. I was lucky enough to have the opportunities and liberty to do what I liked. So I had better get on with it.

  No sooner had I made my resolution than Lady Fortune’s wheel stopped on an unusual proposition. Life had forked before my eyes.

  I got through to the final round of the travel magazine job but was rejected in favour of the other graduate applicant. It would have been a fun and rewarding position but as much as I admired her writing style, I couldn’t honestly claim to want to be the next Martha Gellhorn.

  I rang Susan at the hospital and asked her if there was any work. ‘For you, Nichi, of course. Just let me know when you want to come back.’ That was reassuring news. But it was also stultifying. It made me feel defiant. There had to be another way to make money in a city crawling with opportunity.

  On Friday, Gina texted to ask if I wanted to go to a Halloween Party that night. Jesus, it was the end of October already. Christmas would be here before I knew it, and before I knew it I would have absolutely no money to buy anybody’s Christmas presents. It looked like I was just going to have to bite on my frustration and return to temping. Tonight though, I was going to dress up and dance and forget about it.

  I met Gina in Kensington at 8 p.m. Kensington was a pretty unlikely place for a house party. Well, unlikely considering the kinds of people we usually hung out with. They certainly couldn’t afford to live in Kensington.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said when I raised it with her. ‘We’re going to the seedy part of W-something, not the slick!’

  Costume was optional but encouraged, so Gina and I had struck a compromise and decided to only wear clothes that we already owned, and not to go for Gothic overkill, lest the party was dire enough to force us into town instead. Gina was therefore wearing a black jumpsuit accessorised with flat leopard-print boots, while I had opted for red heels and a pinstripe pinafore dress with a plunging neckline and massive tie-behind bow.

  For a girl that stands at just five feet and half an inch tall, I have to say, I have inherited a rather generous chest, which the dress certainly enhanced. At my thinnest I had absolutely nothing to fill a bra at all. There is a Van Gogh sketch called ‘Sorrow’ that depicts the artist’s mistress, Sien, allegedly a prostitute, hunched over her distended stomach and tiny shrivelled breasts. For a long time I had it stuck above my desk to remind myself of how I must never mutilate my body again. One of the great things about learning to eat once more was getting my boobs back, and whenever I was feeling anxious about my weight, which sometimes did still happen now that I was no longer the size of a ten-year-old child, I made a point of flaunting my cleavage to reassure myself.

  We walked for ten minutes past Holland Park. The area didn’t seem that sleazy to me. Slightly past-its-best decadent, perhaps? Suddenly, I knew where we were. Wasn’t this where sixties seductress Christine Keeler first lived with her West Indian lover, before she moved in on John Profumo? I’d been reading a book about it only the previous week. I told Gina about it.

  Gina laughed. ‘You
and your wayward anti-heroines, Nichi!’

  ‘Well, you should read about her! She’s sort of like a proto-feminist! And she didn’t care if anyone thought she was a whore, which was pretty impressive for the time.’

  ‘If you say so!’ Gina replied. ‘But she didn’t sell sex, did she?’

  ‘Well, no, I don’t think so. But she was an erotic dancer.’

  ‘That’s not the same as being a prostitute,’ Gina reprimanded me.

  ‘It’s still making money out of your sexuality,’ I replied. ‘And she clearly knew how to get what she wanted out of feckless men.’

  I surprised myself. Did I really think that Christine Keeler was admirable? Well, yes, I supposed I did.

  Gina and I turned into a neat cul-de-sac.

  ‘Number twenty-three,’ Gina pointed. The front door was flaking purple, with William Morris-style panelled glass above the frame. It must once have looked pretty opulent.

  Inside, the flat was disappointingly mundane but it had been very well bedevilled for Halloween. Black billowing sheets drowned the walls and the only illumination in the main room came from a few church candles and strings of iridescent paper skulls, which one of the attendant art students had cleverly interwoven with fairy lights.

  ‘Hey, Gina, glad you could make it!’ A buxom blonde girl dressed like a bloodied Little Red Riding Hood approached us. Behind her was a rangily handsome wolf, who I took to be her boyfriend.

  ‘Tina, Jamie!’

  Red Riding Hood and her wolf came forward. I saw now that he had a realistically gory wound painted on his furry neck and his head was encased in what was effectively a metal bear trap.

  ‘Brilliant!’ I said, gesturing at the wolf’s neck.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Tina cackled back. ‘And here’s the most brilliant part.’ She held up her hand to demonstrate that she was carrying a lead affixed to the trap, which essentially functioned as a collar. Wolfboy, then, was her prey ensnared, rather than the other way round. ‘I do like a bit of feminist revisionism,’ she said, with a wink. ‘Help yourself to drinks, ladies. There’s some kind of punch, or else wine and spirits on the table over there.’

  As we went over to fetch drinks, Gina and I continued the conversation we’d been having outside.

  ‘I’ve got a friend who put herself through a Masters by pole dancing. She says she’s not a sex worker, but a sexy worker.’

  I burst out laughing and shook my head. ‘Well, if that makes her feel better! Isn’t the cock just on the wrong side of the trousers?’

  ‘Oh, I’d say so,’ offered a knowing voice.

  The interjection came from a startlingly made-up woman with glorious bright red hair wearing an elegant black halterneck dress and patent-leather kitten heels. The dress exposed an intricate Japanese tattoo that crept down her back like clematis.

  I glanced at Gina. Was this one of her friends? Gina seemed to be shrugging her eyes at me.

  The woman immediately sensed our unease, tittered to herself and swept forward, hand outstretched in friendly greeting. ‘I’m Sapphire. Lovely to meet you both. Great party! Haven’t they fixed it up freakily?’

  She had a low, contralto voice and spoke with an odd cadence. I couldn’t place the accent. English with a hint of something else. Or maybe that was just her quirky glamour tricking me. I couldn’t tell how old she was either. Something told me early thirties. She had a poise rare among women of my and Gina’s age.

  ‘I’m Nichi,’ I smiled back, ‘and this is Gina.’ Gina looked at Sapphire warily.

  ‘So,’ I pressed on, ‘Sapphire . . . that’s an unusual name. Siren-like!’

  ‘Oh,’ she laughed blithely. ‘It’s not my real name. It’s my domme name.’

  Domme name? I could see that she had caught the consternation cross my face. ‘Domme. As in dominatrix. I sexually dominate men for a living.’

  ‘Ahhh!’ I replied, dropping my intonation so as not to sound too clueless. I knew what dominatrixes, er, no, what was the plural? – dominatrices – I knew what dominatrices did. For a very tidy sum they tied up overweight businessmen who fantasised about being punished for their capitalist sins, didn’t they?

  ‘How do you find it?’ I asked casually. I wasn’t particularly interested in the mechanics. Besides, she must get sick of being asked inane questions by giggling men and women desperate for lascivious detail.

  ‘Beats working in an office all day. And for The Man.’ She gave me another, more effusive smile. It was the smile of a cream-fed cat. I couldn’t decide whether I found her pretty or not. I found her something else, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.

  Gina eyed Sapphire suspiciously. I could tell that she didn’t think too much of her. Having seen that I seemed relaxed, she made her excuses and slipped away. But I stayed. I was intrigued.

  ‘I used to work in the spa industry, you see,’ she explained. ‘In Paris. Serving a lot of very prissy, spoilt women all day long. I’m an excellent service provider so one day I figured there had to be a more lucrative way of making money out of the fact that I enjoy indulging people.’

  Service provider. That was an odd way to put it. Weren’t dominatrices usually duped man-haters, or women that had been abused by demonic father figures as little girls?

  ‘That’s interesting.’ I replied. ‘I thought you had to enjoy beating up men to be a dominatrix.’

  ‘Oh, well, don’t get me wrong – the beating comes later. I’m not a natural sadist, though. It’s really more about mind games. I mean, I do tie them up, spank them, use CBT on them . . .’

  ‘CBT?’ I asked. The only CBT I knew was cognitive behavioural therapy, the technique the eating disorder clinic had used to try to get me to believe I wasn’t fat when I weighed less than six stone.

  ‘Cock and ball torture,’ Sapphire said. ‘Basically, tying pretty ribbons around their private parts. Or clipping on weights. Just makes the area more sensitive.’

  ‘So you touch them?’

  ‘Only minimally. Usually not with my hands. With a cane or a crop or something. She glanced down. ‘Or my shoe. And you? What do you do?’ she enquired.

  ‘Oh, I’m a journalist. Well, I’m trying to be a journalist. I’ve been interning but the magazine I was working for couldn’t pay me so I’m probably going to temp again.’ I could have lied but she’d only ask me what publication I worked for. And besides, you never knew who you were going to meet at one of these parties, and what contacts they might have. It paid to be honest.

  ‘Where do you temp?’

  ‘At a hospital. As a medical secretary. It’s an odd use of my degree, but at least it’s helping people.’

  She smiled, nodded, lit a cigarette. Then said, ‘You have a great figure, you know.’ She gestured to my chest.

  ‘Oh, well, no, I don’t.’ I blushed. ‘A decent rack is just one of the perks of not being skinny.’ I could see that she was pretty lean herself, with a small bosom. ‘But I’m comfortable in my own skin,’ I continued. ‘Sex appeal doesn’t have much to do with dress size. I learned that the hard way.’

  She stared at me thoughtfully, as if totting something up to herself. But she didn’t ask me any more questions.

  ‘Nice shoes, too. Not that I ever get to wear open-toes myself these days!’

  I was puzzled. I looked again at the acute triangular toes of her patent kitten heels. I’d always had a curious contempt for patent leather ever since my mum had bought me some shiny black sandals as a child. I had refused them because I thought they were too tarty. I must only have been six. How could I have known what tarty was? But I did. Then I went to a party where a classmate of mine was wearing the same sandals and I remember feeling regretfully covetous.

  This time my curiosity got the better of me. ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m just so busy. I can’t keep up with the clients, so I’m nearly always dressed for work! And you can’t wear open-toed shoes for my job. I’ve a late booking after this, in fact. He’s picking me up.
Here, take my business card. Have a look at my website over the weekend. Do you have a card?’

  I shook my head regretfully.

  ‘What’s your mobile number?’

  I reeled it off unthinkingly, then scolded myself. Why hadn’t I asked what she wanted it for? Did she want me to interview her or something? God knows who would take that as a pitch. Domination wasn’t unusual enough to elicit a news story but neither was it acceptable enough for a feature on alternative career women, for example. Sapphire was a sex worker. And who ever wanted a piece about sex workers unless it was a report on punter violence or police miscarriages of justice?

  ‘I’m going to call you,’ she said. ‘How do you fancy being my vanilla girl?’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘All you have to do is sit there and stare at the clients as I dominate them. Not every session, but two or three times a week, just for an hour. You don’t have to wear anything special and you don’t have to say a word. And I’ll pay you for your time, of course. It’ll be a lot more than your hourly rate at the hospital.’

  I hesitated. I felt out of my depth. Christine Keeler aside, I knew virtually nothing about the sex industry, past or present, except that it was something proper feminists were supposed to be very anti. But I needed money and the petite demon in me longed for mischief. I was curious. And above all, I needed a distraction. I couldn’t keep dwelling on the Greek tragedy that had become mine and Christos’s shattered future.

  ‘Well, that sounds great. I’ll look at your website.’ But I did have one immediate question. ‘What’s in it for them if I’m, er, vanilla?’

  ‘The thrill of seeing your first-timer’s face react spontaneously to their submission. It’s such a turn-on for them.’

  So it was my vanilla-girl virginity they were after. My first time to be faked again and again. Hmm. I wasn’t used to being a faker! But I was a good actress. I wondered how long you could stay vanilla, though.

  ‘You’re going to be fabulous,’ she told me. ‘I can’t wait!’ And with that she wrapped her red lacquered fingers around my arm, then swept out.