CHAPTER NINE
Kate wore the black dress. The one she’d bought years ago for a faculty dinner and worn twice since. It fit differently now—or she fit differently inside it. Lower cut than she’d normally choose. Daniel had laid it on the bed without comment.
No tights tonight. She’d stood in front of the bedroom mirror and looked at herself and thought, This is a woman going to a party where she will be fucked by someone she hasn’t met yet. The reflection looked back at her, composed, faintly flushed, and offered no objection.
“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?” Kate said.
“No.”
“Not even a hint.”
“No.” Daniel glanced at her. The corner of his mouth twitched. “That’s rather the point.”
Kate looked out the window. Her stomach was tight, but the sensation wasn’t quite nerves. Closer to the feeling before a performance—the knowledge that something was about to begin and all she had to do was show up and let it happen.
The satnav guided them off the motorway, through residential streets she didn’t recognise. Victorian semis giving way to newer builds, a corner shop, a church. Then a street of terraced houses, cars parked bumper to bumper along both kerbs.
Daniel pulled into a space. Cut the engine.
The house looked like every other house on the street. Bay window, wheelie bins, a light on above the front door. Someone had put out a hanging basket, empty for winter. Nothing to suggest what happened inside.
“Ready?” Daniel said.
Kate smoothed the dress over her thighs. “Ready.”
A woman opened the door. Mid-forties, blonde, warm smile, a glass of prosecco in her hand.
“Daniel! Lovely to see you.” She kissed his cheek then turned to Kate. “And you must be Kate. I’m Lisa. Come in, come in. Shoes on or off, I don’t mind, but the floors are cold.”
Kate kept her shoes on.
They stepped into a hallway that smelled of candles and something cooking. Coats on hooks, shoes lined up along the skirting board. A framed print of the Bristol suspension bridge. Someone’s actual home.
The living room held perhaps fifteen people, clustered in the loose, shifting groups of any house party.
Low music—something jazzy Kate didn’t recognise.
A table against the wall with wine bottles, glasses, a bowl of crisps.
A man laughing loudly at something near the bookshelf.
Two women on the sofa in deep conversation.
Kate took a glass of white wine from the table. Sipped it. Looked around.
A man with a beard and a cycling jersey was explaining to anyone who’d listen about a sportive he’d done in the Brecon Beacons.
Kate nodded politely when he caught her eye.
He was stocky, mid-thirties, hands moving constantly as he talked.
Was it him? Would Daniel choose someone like this—earnest, a bit intense, probably talked during sex about his heart rate?
She moved on. A younger man stood near the kitchen doorway, quiet, holding a beer he hadn’t drunk. He watched the room the way Kate was watching it—assessing, careful. Handsome in a lean, underfed way. When their eyes met, he looked away quickly. Too nervous, Kate thought. Or too new.
Then the American.
She’d heard him before she saw him. The voice carried—not loud exactly, but distinct.
A low, confident register that cut through the murmur of British conversation like a different frequency entirely.
Kate turned and found him by the window, talking to Lisa, one hand in his pocket, the other gesturing loosely as he spoke.
Tall. Broad shoulders. Black, close-cropped hair, a smile that came easily. He wore a simple white shirt, untucked, sleeves rolled to the forearms. Something about the way he occupied space—unhurried, comfortable, taking up exactly as much room as he needed.
He caught Kate looking. Held her gaze for a beat. Smiled. Then returned to his conversation.
Kate took a long sip of wine.
Daniel was across the room, talking to a man in a waistcoat Kate vaguely recognised from the munch.
He looked entirely at ease—drink in hand, nodding, laughing at something.
Kate watched him for tells. A glance in a particular direction.
A nod toward someone. Anything that might reveal what he’d arranged.
He gave nothing away.
Kate circled the room. Made conversation. A woman named Jen who worked in NHS administration and talked about her allotment. A couple from Cardiff, both teachers, both slightly drunk already. The bearded cyclist again, who’d moved on from the Brecon Beacons to disc brakes.
Every man she spoke to, the same question flickering beneath the surface. Is it you? Are you one of the two my husband has chosen? And if so, who’s the other?
The American appeared beside her at the drinks table. Close enough that she caught his aftershave—something warm, unfamiliar.
“You look like you’re trying to solve a puzzle,” he said.
Kate almost laughed. “Something like that.”
He picked up a bottle of water, poured it without hurry. “I only say that because you’ve been scanning the room since you walked in. Very methodical. Very British.”
Kate felt herself flush. She hadn’t realised she’d been that transparent.
“Occupational hazard,” she said. “I’m a lecturer. I assess rooms for a living.”
He smiled. Warm, unhurried. “Well, I hope I pass.”
Something tightened in Kate’s stomach. Not unpleasant. The thought arriving unbidden: has he seen the photographs? Does he know what I look like underneath this dress? Has he looked at my body on a screen and decided yes?
He moved on before she could respond. Kate watched him cross the room, stop to shake someone’s hand, lean in to hear something over the music. The same easy confidence. The same unhurried way of moving through space.
She filed him away with the others. The cyclist. The quiet young man. The American. She was pairing them now—the American and the quiet one? The cyclist and someone she hadn’t met yet? Two of these men had seen her body in photographs and agreed to come here tonight. She didn’t know which two.
Kate caught herself doing it again. The quiet young man had moved to the sofa, and she was watching him, cataloguing—his hands, his shoulders, the way he held himself—and she stopped.
Just stopped.
She was standing in the kitchen doorway, half a glass of wine in her hand, and she made a decision. Not a dramatic one. Nothing announced itself. She simply let go of the question.
It didn’t matter who. Daniel had chosen. Daniel knew. And she trusted him—with her body, with her pleasure, with whatever was going to happen in a room she hadn’t seen yet to a woman she was still becoming.
The relief was immediate. Physical. Her shoulders dropped. Her grip on the wine glass loosened.
Jen from the NHS was beside her again, talking about slug pellets and whether they were really as bad for hedgehogs as everyone said.
Kate listened. Actually listened—not scanning over Jen’s shoulder, not cataloguing the men in her peripheral vision.
Just two women at a party, talking about gardens.
“You should try beer traps,” Kate said. “Saucers of cheap lager. The slugs love it.”
“Do they really?”
“They die happy, apparently.”
Jen laughed. Kate laughed, too. A real laugh, loose and surprised. She was at a sex party in Bristol discussing pest control with a community nurse, and she was enjoying herself.
Daniel was somewhere behind her. She could feel him there without looking—the way she always could, after twenty years. He was watching her. She was certain of it. And she was certain he could see the difference. The moment she’d stopped trying to control what was coming and simply let it come.
A hand on her back.
Kate knew it was Daniel before she turned. The weight of his palm, the exact pressure. Twenty years of that hand.
“It’s time,” he said.
Kate set her glass on the kitchen counter. Jen was mid-sentence about something—netting, maybe, or compost—and Kate said, “Excuse me,” with a smile that gave nothing away.
Daniel took her hand. Led her through the living room, past the bookshelf, past the cyclist who was now demonstrating something with his hands, past Lisa refilling someone’s glass. Nobody watched them go. Or if they did, they knew what it meant and had the grace not to stare.
Down a corridor. Past a bathroom, the door ajar, light spilling onto the carpet. Past a closed door with music behind it. To the end of the hall.
A door. Closed.
Daniel stopped. Turned to her. His face was calm, his eyes steady. The same man who’d loaded the dishwasher this morning. The same man who’d laid out her dress.
He squeezed her hand once.
Then he opened the door.
The room was dim. A bedside lamp, turned low. A double bed with a dark duvet. An armchair in the corner.
Two men stood by the window.
The American turned first. That same easy smile, the same unhurried stance. He raised a hand in greeting, as though they were meeting again at the drinks table.
Then Kate saw the other one.
The quiet young man from the kitchen doorway. The one who’d watched the room with careful eyes and looked away when she’d caught him staring. The one she’d dismissed—too nervous, too new.
He wasn’t looking away now. He was looking at her with an expression she recognised but hadn’t expected to find on his face.
Not anxiety. Not inexperience. He was overwhelmed.
By her. The woman from the photographs was standing in front of him, real and breathing, and it was more than he’d prepared for.
Daniel’s hand left the small of her back. He crossed the room, found the armchair. Sat. Settled into it the way he settled into everything—calmly, completely, as though he’d been sitting in that chair his whole life.
“Kate,” he said. “This is Jay. And Liam.” He looked at her. “They’ve been looking forward to meeting you for the last few days.”
“That’s very true,” Jay said. The easy smile again.
Liam nodded. Swallowed.
Jay glanced at him. “You seem a little nervous, Liam.”