Eighty Days White (22 page)

I sighed. Had I been right to unveil my base nature to someone who had once been a friend? Open Pandora’s Box?

‘At the ball,’ Neil continued, ‘I saw you playing with others, it was as if you shone. And in the pit of my stomach I was aching to become one of those men who were just bound and waiting for your touch, and had you noticed me, I would have fallen straight to my knees and volunteered to become your slave, your dog, and accept any treatment, however degrading and humiliating, if only to become part of your life, Lily. I wanted to be owned by you, even if part of me rebelled against the very idea.

‘But then I saw you kiss him. The other man. And that was something that you never gave me and I couldn’t watch. That’s why I ran away at the ball, Lily. I felt as if I no longer knew myself. Didn’t know whether I wanted you to beat me or to make love to me. I didn’t know what I wanted. I don’t know what I want. It’s scary.’

He looked away, a genuine sense of confusion colouring his features. I could see how torn he was between his feelings for me and the submissive instincts I had somehow unveiled. It seemed I had inadvertently opened a door and he was increasingly uncertain whether he actually wanted to close it.

‘What do you want me say?’

I was angry at Neil now. And at myself.

Leonard.

Dagur.

Grayson.

She.

Why had life become so complicated?

Life goes on.

I was beginning to understand my nature better, but I knew I still had much to learn.

She’s lessons in life, the way she uncannily homed in on those desires that lay at the core of me, a budding friendship with the lovely Lauralynn, my increasingly rare nights with Dagur when he was in town and not on the road with Viggo and the band, the awkward attentions of Neil, the ambiguous nature of my dealings with Grayson and the still sharp, painful memories of Leonard all buzzed around inside my mind until things made neither head nor tail.

I felt I was no longer the same girl who had come to London straight from university, but I was still not the finished article. I was a work in progress, struggling with a welter of contradictions. As a teenager, I had of course dreamed of a happy ever after, even if deep down I already guessed it was either an illusion or anything but the panacea commonly advertised in countless movies, books and songs. But still it remained like a ghost at the back of my mind, nagging away.

On one hand, I was joyful that my sexuality now had meaning and focus, but on the other I still yearned for a form of intimacy that I hadn’t managed to find. Yet.

Under She and Lauralynn’s careful tutelage, I became even more involved at the club, no longer hovering full of curiosity and concern or practising my rope-tying skills on chair legs or my whip-cracking talents on thin air. I became actively involved as a domme, yet during the day I worked at the music store. Living a double life still came so naturally.

I hadn’t heard from Liana for months and felt guilty about it. We had once been so close and maybe the knowledge I had acquired of her submissive nature was coloured by the fact that I hadn’t quite reconciled myself to the way that I treated the male subs I would punish and play with in the evenings.

In my more private interactions, I played only with subs that I had some sort of personal connection with. Although it wasn’t love, far from it, I gained some satisfaction from the knowledge that I was giving them pleasure and that outweighed the idea that I was being cruel. But working at the club I was required to occasionally beat slaves that I didn’t know well or didn’t particularly like and sometimes I despised them for their weakness and servility, and I knew that I was treating them more harshly because of it. They loved my cruelty, but I couldn’t forgive myself for abusing a person out of anger or spite instead of mutual pleasure. This dark shadow inside me – wanting to forget all the logic about what was right and what was wrong and behave like an animal – persisted. I recognised the same chord in Liana, but she had accepted it within herself and I hadn’t.

Over the course of a week, I tried to call Liana a few times, but she never picked up. I left a couple of messages. Remembering what we had spoken about the last time we had talked in earnest, I was worried about her.

But then life took over, and I briefly, if shamefully, put her out of my mind. Maybe she was the one who wished to steer clear of me.

It was a few weeks before she made contact.

‘Hi, slut!’

I was in Denmark Street on a quiet day in the shop and had only sold a few sets of guitar strings all morning.

The sparkle in her voice told me immediately that the Liana of old had returned.

‘Liana!’ I was so loud that Jonno turned quizzically towards me, with an expression of disapproval that made him look like an irascible librarian.

‘It’s been ages, I know,’ she apologised.

‘No matter. You’ve called me back, that’s the main thing.’

‘There’s been a lot happening,’ she said.

‘Talk to me.’ I was so chuffed to hear her again.

‘Well … I’ve moved to Amsterdam,’ she announced triumphantly.

This left me speechless.

‘Really?’ I finally managed to say. ‘Tell me all about it.’

I’d caught the train from Schiphol airport and twenty minutes later it drew up at Centraal Station. It was a grey day, a thin drizzle falling like thin mist, ripples flowing across the ever-present canals crisscrossing the city centre. It was only my second visit to the Dutch capital and my initial impression as I walked out into the open space beyond the station’s vast portico, past the file of waiting cabs and a mess of noisy construction work, was of a savanna of bicycles, twisting and turning in every possible direction, skipping between tramlines, crisscrossing roads with both serenity
and alacrity. I hadn’t been on a bike since I was fourteen, but Liana had told me she would put a spare one at my disposal when I visited. The first time I had been here, Leonard had been waiting for me at the airport and had whisked me straight into town by cab and we hadn’t ventured further east than the Dam Square where he was staying at the opulent and old-world Krasnapolsky Hotel.

I had a simple map that Liana had emailed me before I left London explaining how best I could reach the house where she was staying. It wouldn’t take me more than twenty to thirty minutes to walk to her place and all I was carrying was a rucksack with some spare clothes. I pulled up my hood and unfolded the sheet of paper with Liana’s directions, trying to shield it from the rain.

It was just a question of locating the right canal and then a group of parallel bridges, although I’d never been very good at reading maps at the best of times.

As I wandered along the cobbled paths by the canals, I was struck by the reassuring quietness of the city which settled all around you from the moment you moved off any of the few main roads. This was so unlike London’s frantic rhythm, pedestrians ambling with no sense of urgency, windows with no curtains at eye-level everywhere I walked, as if there was no need for privacy. A city with no secrets. Yes, I thought, this was the sort of place I could find it easy to live in, and felt unsurprised that Liana, with whom I had so much in common, should have come here.

She’d mentioned that she would be working until mid-afternoon at the flower market, a temporary job but one she enjoyed, and had made arrangements for me to pick up the
key to her flat from a downstairs neighbour, so I wasn’t in any rush.

I stopped for a coffee in a small bar whose stone steps led partly underground to a vaulted area full of comforting warmth and a seductive blend of smells, in which sweet alcohol, cinnamon and a faint trace of tobacco lingered. I felt sleepy and fully relaxed.

The building where Liana lived was a tall three-storeyed one carved out of ancient stone, squat and imposing. From the outside, as I looked up, the windows on every floor seemed huge. Liana’s flat was situated at the top, and could be reached through a steep, circular wooden staircase.

The old woman who lived on the ground floor and appeared to be the building’s owner, looked and dressed like a stereotypical granny. She flashed me a twinkly smile when she opened the door and complimented me on my appearance, mentioning that I looked just like Liana’s sister. Liana didn’t have a sister. We were both only children. But this was not the first time such a remark had been made, despite the differences in our appearances.

Once inside, I dropped my rucksack to the parquet floor and slipped out of my lightweight coat, rivulets of rain still dripping off it as I searched for a cupboard or convenient recess where I could hang it up.

It was a large, airy room, with wide, high windows through which the outside light bathed the flat in a warm glow. I looked out and gazed at the peaceful flow of the small canal and the orderly lines of bicycles parked alongside it. Beyond the roofs of the buildings on the other side of the canal, I could see the broken crest of a line of trees where Oosterpark lay.

I found somewhere to sit, a small, narrow sofa covered by a lemon-yellow patchwork spread, and lost myself in contemplation. The silence was eerie. Normally, in any city, there would always be a distinct rumour of noises, voices, traffic in the distance, but here the afternoon was altogether cleansed of sounds. At first, it was an unsettling feeling but soon, as I relaxed, I allowed the peacefulness of the mood to flow over me until I was almost dozing. I was just content to sit there, vaguely daydreaming, staring at the room’s walls or the fading light outside through the windows, purposefully keeping my mind empty of any significant thoughts. Normally, I would have been on my feet, seeking something to do, aching for a coffee or something to read or an excuse to stay active. I was shaken out of my torpor by the buzz of my mobile phone.

It was a text from Liana: she was on her way home and would be with me soon.

‘So what happened?’ I finally asked. We’d greeted each other affectionately and then strolled down to a neighbouring cafe where everyone seemed to know her. She was wearing a shapeless grey cardigan at least one size too large, a pair of denim shorts over her black tights and a pair of ankle-high boots.

Her pale cheeks were flushed and a healthy sense of radiance spread appealingly across her face. She genuinely appeared happy, so unlike the last time we had met when she had been so visibly torn and anguished.

‘I left him.’

‘Your Brighton dom?’

She had always refused point blank to reveal his name.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. He sounded like a dickhead. But why Amsterdam?’

‘It was as good a place as any,’ she replied. ‘I once had a pen pal here when I was still at school and I had fond memories of the place. And it’s cheap and easy to travel to London.’

‘How long have you been here already?’

She considered. ‘Just over four months.’

I was taken aback. I knew we had fallen out of touch while I was still preoccupied with my own discoveries and minor adventures, but it just hadn’t felt that long. What sort of friend was I?

‘Time flies, eh?’

‘Certainly does.’

She took a sip from her cup of herbal tea. Out of habit, I’d opted for coffee. It felt uncommonly bitter and lukewarm to my tongue. Liana was looking at me intently, as if about to burst into confession. I kicked my shoes off under the table. Distant strains of music ebbed and flowed in the distance, although the coffee shop didn’t have a jukebox or the radio on, and the thump of the bass fading in and out felt like the beat of my heart on standby.

‘Things just kept getting worse,’ Liana explained. ‘With the guy in Brighton. I know I’m submissive and I like to be dominated. But there’s a difference, you know, between being a sub and being a doormat. Between being a dom and being an arsehole. And this guy was an arsehole. It just took me a while to work that out. He was very charismatic and I so desperately wanted that level of intimacy that I’d shared with Alyss, before him, and so I did things that I wasn’t
comfortable with, thinking that if I pleased him enough I could make it work.

‘But eventually I realised that he didn’t really care about me. He liked a power trip and having a pretty young girlfriend and that was it. So I dumped him. But I had to leave, to make sure that I didn’t get pulled into it again. Some things are intoxicating, even when you know they’re bad for you.’

My mouth opened. I was curious to hear all the sordid details and to relate them to my own situation, although I also knew they would affect me badly if she disclosed them. Liana was my friend and I was angry that she’d been hurt, but the dilemma sounded all too familiar as I was still in the process of assuming my own dominant nature and understanding the dynamic of how it affected my relationships with men.

I knew that I didn’t really care about most of the subs that I beat at the club and I knew that they were aware of that and got off on it all the same. Sometimes I felt terribly guilty about hurting them, even when they begged me for it. I wondered whether I would be able to hurt someone that I truly loved, or if I would want to hurt someone that I loved even more than those I didn’t care about. Push the physical extremes even further to increase the emotional extremes. I longed for the sort of bond that Liana described. The sort that She and Grayson shared, and Lauralynn and her unknown man. But I feared what would happen if I got it. What sort of person I might become.

Sometimes, when the men I was domming were so servile and ridiculous and begged for me to punish them, despite my efforts to the contrary I couldn’t help the scorn
I felt as I played with them, superficially wounding their bodies and their feelings, degrading them even as they pleaded with me to push them even further. But, inside, I was waiting for the day when I would have an emotional connection with one man, when there would be life beyond the play, the scenes. These men were part of a crowd, anonymous. It was the day one of them would turn out to have a face that would prove a turning point.

‘I understand,’ I muttered. ‘I hope I do, Liana.’