CHAPTER FOUR
She’d found it within an hour. One evening on the laptop, Daniel reading beside her, and there it was: a monthly social at a pub in Clifton. A calendar on some website she’d never heard of, a Bristol group with over two thousand members. “Newcomers welcome. Casual dress. No play on site.”
A munch, they called it. Kate had looked up the word. Apparently, it meant exactly what it sounded like. People meeting to eat, drink, talk. The kink community’s version of a coffee morning.
“Junction coming up,” Daniel said.
Kate glanced at the satnav. Fifteen minutes.
Her stomach tightened. She’d spent the past week imagining the people they’d meet. Leather. Tattoos. Women in corsets, men with that particular confidence she’d heard through the toilet partition. People who knew what they wanted and how to ask for it. People nothing like her.
“You’re quiet,” Daniel said.
“Thinking.”
“Productive thinking or spiral thinking?”
Kate almost smiled. “Bit of both.”
The drizzle thickened. Daniel turned the wipers up a notch. They passed a lorry, spray fanning across the windscreen.
“What if someone recognizes us?” Kate said.
“Then they’ll be there for the same reason we are.”
“What if it’s a colleague? A student?”
Daniel glanced at her. “Then you’ll have a very awkward tutorial and a mutual agreement never to mention it.”
Kate watched the road. The orange glow of streetlights as they approached the city. This was the car they took to Sainsbury’s. The car they’d driven Sophie to her first day of sixth form. And now they were taking it to a pub to meet people who tied each other up.
“We don’t have to go in,” Daniel said. “We can sit in the car park and drive home if you want.”
“I know.”
“Just saying.”
Kate reached across and put her hand on his thigh. Solid. Warm. Still Daniel.
The satnav directed them off the motorway, through streets she didn’t recognize. Victorian terraces, a parade of shops, a church. Then a pub on a corner, lights glowing through frosted windows. The sign read The Merchants Arms.
Daniel pulled into a space across the street. Turned off the engine.
They sat there. The wipers stopped. Rain beaded on the windscreen, blurring the pub into something impressionistic.
“Ready?” Daniel asked.
Kate looked at the door. Ordinary. A pub door, like a thousand others.
“No,” she said. “But let’s go.”
The back room was smaller than Kate had expected. A dozen people, maybe fifteen, clustered around pushed-together tables. Pint glasses, packets of crisps, a woman’s handbag hanging off a chair. It could have been a book club.
A man near the door spotted them hovering. Mid-fifties, beard going grey, wearing a cardigan that had seen better days.
“New faces! Wonderful.” He stood, extended a hand. “I’m Graham. I organize these. Welcome, welcome. Grab a drink, find a seat. We don’t bite.” He paused. “Well. Some of us do. But not on Wednesdays.”
He laughed at his own joke. Kate smiled politely. Daniel shook his hand.
They got drinks at the bar. Kate ordered a white wine she didn’t want, just to have something to hold. When they returned, Graham had found them seats at the end of the table, next to a woman with a pixie cut and a man in a checked shirt who was already talking.
“—the thing about shibari is it’s really about connection, you know? The rope is just the medium. It’s the energy between the rigger and the bunny that matters.”
Kate sat down. The woman with the pixie cut caught her eye and gave a small, sympathetic smile.
“First time?” she asked.
“That obvious?”
“Everyone looks like that at their first munch. I’m Ravyn with a Y.”
Kate nodded, kept her face neutral. “Kate.”
Ravyn gestured around the table. “That’s Stuart doing the rope lecture. He does that. You learn to tune it out.” She took a sip of her cider. “What brings you two along, then?”
Kate glanced at Daniel.
He raised his eyebrows slightly—your call.
“Curious, I suppose,” Kate said. “We’re … exploring.”
“Aren’t we all?” Ravyn smiled. “Well, you’ve picked the right night. It’s pretty low-key. Third Wednesday is usually the quiet one. You should see it after a play party weekend. Everyone comparing bruises.”
Stuart was still talking to the man beside him. “—and the tension has to be distributed evenly; otherwise, you get nerve damage. I’ve seen it happen. People think they can just watch a YouTube video and—”
Someone at the far end made a joke Kate didn’t catch. Laughter rippled down the table.
“I see what you did there,” Graham called out. “Very clever. We’re all a bit tied up in wordplay tonight.” He paused, waiting. “Tied up? Anyone?”
More groans than laughs.
The evening continued. Kate sipped her wine and watched.
A woman at the far end of the table was telling anyone who’d listen about her recent divorce, how it had freed her to finally explore this side of herself.
A younger couple sat close together, barely speaking, clearly hoping someone would approach them.
An older man in a waistcoat held court about the etiquette of negotiating scenes.
These weren’t the people Kate had imagined. No leather. No dangerous confidence. Just ordinary people in ordinary clothes, drinking ordinary drinks, talking about extraordinary things as if they were discussing garden furniture.
The door to the back room opened around nine. Kate glanced up out of habit and watched a man come in.
Late thirties, maybe. Dark hair, neat beard.
He wore a jacket over a plain shirt, nothing remarkable.
But there was something in the way he moved through the room.
No hesitation at the threshold, no scanning for where to sit.
He just walked in, nodded to Graham, clapped Stuart on the shoulder in passing.
He knew this place. These people.
“That’s Adrian,” Ravyn said, following Kate’s gaze. “He’s been around for years. Doesn’t come to every munch, but he’s at most of the parties.”
Kate watched him settle into a seat at the far end of the table, next to the older man in the waistcoat. They shook hands, exchanged a few words. Adrian laughed at something, easy and genuine.
He wasn’t working the room. Wasn’t making sure everyone noticed him. He was just there, talking to someone he knew, entirely comfortable in his own skin.
Daniel nudged her elbow. “You’re staring.”
“I’m observing,” Kate said. “There’s a difference.”
The evening wound on. Kate talked to Ravyn about nothing in particular.
Daniel got drawn into a conversation about building a spanking bench from IKEA furniture with the man in the waistcoat.
Graham made another terrible joke. Stuart had finally stopped talking about rope and was now talking about suspension frames.
At some point, Adrian moved. Kate didn’t track him consciously, but she was aware of him crossing the room, stopping to exchange a few words here and there. Not circulating exactly. Just present.
Then he was beside their end of the table, reaching past Ravyn for the bowl of crisps.
“Sorry. Excuse me.” He glanced at Kate then Daniel. “New faces. Welcome.”
“Thanks,” Kate said. “First time.”
“Thought so. I’d have remembered.” It could have sounded like a line. From him, it just sounded factual. “I’m Adrian.”
“Kate. This is Daniel.”
Daniel reached across to shake his hand. Adrian took it, unhurried.
“Enjoying yourselves?”
“It’s been interesting,” Daniel said. “Not quite what we expected.”
“Never is, the first time.” Adrian smiled. “The parties are different. This is just …” He gestured at the room. “People being awkward at each other. But it’s a good way to get a sense of things.”
Someone called his name from across the room. He raised a hand in acknowledgment.
“Anyway, nice to meet you both.” He took a handful of crisps and moved on.
Kate watched him go. The way the woman who’d called him leaned in when he sat down. The way he listened, head slightly tilted, giving her his full attention.
“He seems normal,” Daniel said quietly.
“Yes,” Kate said. “He does.”
She filed it away. It didn’t mean anything. He was just a man at a munch, comfortable in a world she was only beginning to glimpse. But she noticed that she’d noticed him. And she noticed that Daniel had, too.
The M4 was darker now, emptier. Kate watched the cat’s eyes flicker past, a steady rhythm marking the miles back to Bath.
“So,” Daniel said.
“So …”
“That was …”
“Awkward?”
“I was going to say educational.” He glanced at her. “But yes, awkward.”
Kate laughed. The first real laugh she’d had all evening. “The rope man.”
“Stuart.”
“Stuart. With his nerve damage warnings. And his damp handshake.”
“And Graham with the puns.”
“God, the puns.” Kate shook her head. “One after another.”
Daniel indicated, changed lanes. A lorry rumbled past in the slow lane. “The woman with the divorce, though. That was something.”
“I think she showed me eleven photos of her cat.”
“Her cat?”
“Apparently, she got the cat in the settlement. She was very pleased about the cat.”
They drove in silence for a moment. The wipers were off now, the drizzle stopped. Just the hum of the engine and the dark road ahead.
“It wasn’t what I expected,” Kate said.
“No.”
“I thought they’d be … I don’t know. More intimidating. More together.”
“More sexy?”
“Yes, honestly.” Kate watched the road. “I thought there’d be people who knew exactly what they wanted. Who had it all figured out. Instead, it was just …”
“People.”
“People.” She let the word sit. “Nervous, awkward people hoping to find something.”
Daniel nodded. The sign for the junction approached, green and glowing in the headlights.
“What are we hoping to find?” he asked. “I realise we haven’t actually said.”
Kate had been avoiding the question. Even in her own head, she’d kept it vague. Exploring. Trying things.
“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “Someone to learn from, maybe? Someone who could show us how it’s supposed to work.”
“A teacher.”
“Something like that.”
“Lord.” Daniel changed lanes. “Are there tutors for this sort of thing?”
“Probably classes. Though I’d wonder about the lecturer’s accreditation.”
“Would we pay someone?”
Kate considered. “I don’t know. Do people do this out of the goodness of their hearts?”
“And if not money, what would they want?”
The question landed differently than Daniel had probably intended. Kate felt it settle in her stomach.
“Wait,” she said. “Back up a bit.”
“Yes?”
“Are we looking for someone to tutor you? Or me?” She paused. “Or are we looking for someone to …”
Daniel was quiet for a moment. “Ah. Yes to …”
“Join?” Kate said. “Is that the right word?”
“It might be.”
The motorway stretched ahead of them, empty and dark. Neither of them spoke.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” Kate said.
It was almost true.
“What about the one who came in late?” Daniel said. “Adrian.”
“Ah yes. Him.” Kate watched the rain start again, a fine mist on the windscreen. “He seemed …”
“Normal.”
“Is that an impolite word in these contexts?”
“We’d have to ask our tutor.”
Kate laughed. Daniel’s mouth twitched as he reached for the wiper stalk.
The blades swept once, twice. Another lorry passed them, spray fanning up from its wheels.
“He wasn’t trying to prove anything,” Kate said. “Did you notice? Everyone else was either nervous or showing off. He just … was.”
“I noticed.”
“So did Ravyn-with-a-Y. And the divorce woman. And basically every woman in the room.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow but kept his eyes on the road. Kate shifted in her seat, tucking one leg beneath her.
“I was observing,” she said.
“You keep saying that.”
The junction for Bath approached, green and glowing in the headlights. Daniel indicated, moved into the left lane.
“I might look him up,” Kate said. “Online. See if he’s got a profile.”
“To tutor us?”
“To … something.” She pulled her coat tighter. “I don’t know yet. But he seemed like someone worth knowing more about.”
Daniel nodded. Took the exit. The slip road curved and Bath opened up ahead of them, streetlights scattered across the dark valley.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
“We said we’d explore. This is exploring.”
Kate reached across and put her hand on his thigh. The familiar shape of him. The man she’d married. Still here. Still with her.
Adrian.
The name sat in her mind as they drove the last miles home.