Master of the House
Justine Elyot

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

More from Mischief

About Mischief

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

A village fete. That was the best they could find for me.

‘It’s being opened by a celebrity,’ the editor had said, as if this made it more like a summit of world leaders.

‘Who?’

‘Forget his name – bloke off that talent show, the one with the mad sideburns.’

‘Right.’

So there I was, with a photographer who looked about twelve, interviewing people who were betting on which would be the first ferret to pop its head out of a length of plastic piping. Me, Lucy Miles, who once had a byline on the international news pages of the Correspondent.

The elderberry fizz I was sipping from a paper cup might have won a prize, but as far as I was concerned it tasted of abject failure.

‘I need a proper drink,’ I told teen-snapper, eyeing up the bunting-strewn beer tent. ‘Before I go insane.’

He happily went along with this, shambling after me into the sanctuary.

‘Not what you’re used to, I s’pose,’ he offered, by way of conversation, once we had our plastic half-pints of Randy Old Shagger, or whatever it was called.

‘Hardly. Back in Hungary I was covering human rights abuses, anti-government protests, racially-motivated murders, political skulduggery and intrigue.’ I enumerated these shiny nuggets on my fingers, then sighed. What was the point of dwelling on it?

‘Shame they cut your budget,’ offered teen-snapper.

‘Yeah. Hungary got lumped in with Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic and they gave oversight of the lot to the Prague guy. Even though Prague is nothing like Budapest, and even less like Bucharest. But they don’t care about cultural nuance, so back to the Vale for me.’

‘The Vale of Tears.’ Teen-snapper did a sort of snuffly chuckle at the hoary old local joke. I fished a wasp out of my beer.

‘Vale of Tylney versus Budapest. Not comparable at all. Still, I don’t really envy the guy in Prague. He’s got his work cut out for him with the way everything’s going over there.’

‘You’re better off at the Vale Voice,’ said – was his name Kai? – with a wink.

I didn’t want tiny little boys winking at me, so I gave him a hard look and pushed the rather over-treacly beer aside.

‘Whatever,’ I said. Ugh, there was a lump in my throat. An accordion struck up outside, closely followed by the jingle of bells and clatter of batons. Just what I needed to cheer me up. Fucking morris dancing.

Kai got busy with the camera while I stood at the beer-tent flap, trying so hard not to cry that I gave myself a headache.

I’m twenty-seven and my life is over. Living with my mum in the town that time forgot, back at the paper I did my work experience for. And I hope Károly is having a nice time with that bitch he was shagging behind my back. Fuck him, fuck her, fuck everything.

The morris music mocked me and I stormed away over the grass, intent on hiding out in the car until the prize draw was announced.

‘Lucy! Lucy Miles!’

It took me a moment to work out where the voice was coming from, but eventually I traced it to a bric-a-brac stall, presided over by an old schoolfriend.

‘Jamila. What are you doing in … what’s this place called?’

‘Fossey Bassett,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m teaching at the village school here now, Key Stage Two. I can’t believe it’s you. Haven’t seen you since A levels.’

‘Ahh, Stalag Tylney. I heard they turned it into an academy.’

‘Yeah. Same building, same teachers, same everything, different name.’

‘So how are you?’

We chatted, in-between serving customers with knitted egg cosies and the like, for a good half-hour. I kept my side of the story light, swerving questions by asking plenty of my own. Jamila was engaged to be married to a doctor, still living in Tylney, still seeing a lot of the old crowd.

‘Aren’t you in touch with anyone any more?’ she asked.

‘Nah. I stayed in London during university holidays and then got the gig in Budapest pretty much straight after graduation.’

‘Your mum must have missed you,’ she said, with a sideways look.

‘My mum? Are you kidding? I don’t think she noticed I was gone until I rang her up to ask her to send on some books.’

‘Is she still …?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t know what I was going to ask!’

‘Well, she’s still a tree-hugging hippy, if that was it.’

‘No, it wasn’t. I was going to ask if she still had that cleaning job up at the Hall.’

I stopped, picked up a china dog and examined it minutely, catching a breath.

‘No, no, she quit that years ago. She’s got a stall in Tylney market now. Crystals, tarot cards, all that kind of thing.’

‘Oh, right. Doesn’t she live in Willingham any more?’

‘No, no. She moved about a year after I went to uni. Why?’

‘Well, you’re a journalist, aren’t you?’ Jamila looked painfully furtive. She was never good at discretion.

‘Yes.’

‘You might know something about what’s going on up there … maybe?’

I put the china dog down. My hands were shaking.

‘At … the Hall?’

‘Dad says it’s been leased to somebody. A very rich person, maybe a famous person. And it’s being used for –’ she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘– something dodgy.’

‘Dodgy? What sort of dodgy?’

‘You don’t know?’ Disappointment weighted her voice.

‘Give me a chance, Jam, I’ve only been back three weeks.’

‘Dad doesn’t know for sure, of course. But he’s heard so many rumours. Drugs, sex, porn, prostitution, all kinds!’

‘What? Are the family still living there?’

‘You knew Lord Lethbridge died last year, right?’

‘No. Shit. No. I had no idea.’

‘Well …’

The tannoy blasted into life, announcing the prize draw.

I cursed under my breath.

‘Sorry, Jam, got to cover this. Are you free for coffee afterwards?’

She shook her head, her dark eyes sad.

‘No, I’ve got house-hunting appointments with Akram. Really sorry. Can we catch up another time?’

‘Sure.’ I grabbed a business card from my handbag and waved it at her. ‘Sorry to be official. Got to dash though.’

I couldn’t think straight. I wrote the draw winner’s name as Sandy when it was Sadie and got all my shorthand symbols mixed up to buggery. I called the Church of England vicar ‘Father’ and dropped a complimentary scone smeared with award-nabbing jam on the grass.

After kicking Kai out of the scoopmobile (aka 2003 model Fiat Cinquecento) in Tylney, I found myself driving over to the other side of town, back out into the Vale. The road wound past field after field of bursting ripe fruit and vegetables, bordered by high green hedges. Pick-Your-Own signs flourished like native plants beside wooden five-barred gates. Every few miles, a half-timbered village punctuated the lushness, all the schools and church halls turned into holiday cottages and second homes while the local families were priced out to Tylney and, ultimately, Birmingham.

In the distance, high blue hills surrounded the fertile basin, a barrier to be crossed if you ever wanted to look beyond the Vale. But some never did. And then some came back.

‘Willingham’, read the black and white sign, then, ‘Best Kept Village 2010’. It was still looking pretty spruce, the green bordered with summer flowers, even the ducks on the pond exceptionally well-groomed. The little flat-roofed bunker where I learned to read and write still functioned as a school, apparently, and a huge banner across the railings proclaimed that Ofsted had rated it Outstanding.

The Feathers was a gastro-pub now and there was a small estate of new-built houses right on the edge of the village, still dusty from construction and with stickers on some of the windows.

Leaving the village, the grass verge on the right gave way to a high red-brick wall, following the road for more than a mile. The Hall. I passed the gated entrance, catching my quick glimpse of the driveway until it bent to the right, cheating the viewer of any sighting of the house itself. The stone stags still stood atop the gatepost pillars and the little lodge was still occupied, judging by its tidy state of repair.

More wall again, yard after yard after yard, bending round with the road until I came upon the river, sparkling and replete with anglers on both banks and then, beyond it, the caravan site where I grew up.

I pulled into a lay-by near the entrance and got out, breathing in the air with its ever-present whiff of fertiliser. The blank wall of Willingham Hall faced me and I faced it. If I walked on another half-mile, I would come to the secret way in through the woods. Was I ready for that?

I walked up anyway. The road was quiet – it didn’t really lead anywhere except to the hills. The late-afternoon sun went behind a cloud and the swish of the trees in a little gust of wind was almost more unnerving than total silence would have been. More unnerving and much more evocative.

Here, a little way after the wall ended, was the broken section of wire fence. If I squeezed through the gap, I would be in the woods behind the house. I looked into the dark tangle of bark and branch and saw myself there, twenty years ago, allowed to play there while mum cleaned in the school holidays. I was against a tree, a captured squaw. The game was exhilarating and I enjoyed being caught and marched to my doom, until he broke off a section of branch and whipped my legs with it.

I shut my eyes tight as the memory flashed through; the pain, then the fear, then his sneering face right up against mine. I was seven, he was nine.

I can do what I like to you.

When mum had asked about the marks, I said I got caught on some brambles.

That holiday, and for all those that followed, I did everything I could to avoid having to go with mum to the Hall. I invited myself to Jamila’s; I offered to help Mrs Wragg, the caravan site owner, with all her errands; I even joined the church summer holiday club. Oh, how many brasses did I rub, all in the name of avoiding Joss Lethbridge.

Of course, I couldn’t get away with it every time. At least once a week I’d have to pack a bag with books and toys and trudge with mum up the long, long driveway. I’d follow her and her vacuum cleaner from room to room until, inevitably, Joss would track us down and ask if I was coming to play.

I’d say I was feeling sick, or I had hay fever, or was coming down with chickenpox, but mum never seemed to cotton on.

‘He’s trying to be friendly, Lucy-In-The-Sky-With-Diamonds.’ (Yes, that is my full registered name.) ‘Don’t mind her, Joss, she’s in a mood. It’s very kind of you to ask her.’

He didn’t always hurt me. Sometimes he was even quite nice. But that seemed all part of the game with him. I suppose he thought it kept me on my toes.

Whatever he thought, it was an occasion of major rejoicing when I left primary school and was deemed old enough to take care of myself in the summer holidays.

I tried to put a foot forward, to place it on that old ground, but a rush of something both bitter and sweet prevented me and I turned away, blinking out tears.

I thought about going to the caravans and looking up Mrs Wragg, but I wasn’t really fit for conversation and ended up driving back home.

When I say ‘home’, I mean the tiny one-bedroomed flat above Tylney Pet Supplies that mum occupied.

I fell into a coughing fit halfway through announcing my presence, my throat clogged by a cloud of patchouli joss-stick smoke, entwined with something a little less legal.

Mum was lying back on her collection of kilims and cushions with a guy in a New Model Army T-shirt. They had matching nose rings, which was nice.

‘How was the fete?’ asked the guy, I think he was known as Animal, more because he was a drummer in a band than because of any anti-social habits.

It was an innocuous enough question, but it sent both of them into paroxysms of giggles.

‘Great. Mum, do you know who’s taken the lease at Willingham Hall?’

She tried to focus, but the effort required was too great.

‘What? Dunno. Hey, did you know Lord Lethy … bridge … died?’

‘I just found out. Joss’s not living there, I suppose?’

She shrugged.

‘Put a brew on, will you?’

That was Animal.

‘Do it yourself.’

I huffed into the bedroom, which was not mine, but the only place I could get a bit of peace and quiet and breathable air. I opened the window wide, replacing fragrant smoke with dry dog food and hamster bedding. Not much better, to be honest. I shut it again.

Lying flat on the bed, I looked up at the mobiles on the ceiling.

The room was sparsely furnished – a wicker bookcase, a reclaimed dresser covered in cheap beaded knick-knacks, a spider plant. It wasn’t much to show for a life, I thought. Mum was nearly fifty and this was everything she owned. But she was happy. Perhaps I should take a leaf from her book, travel light, live for the moment.

You’re so serious, Lucy-in-the-Sky. How did I make such a square?

Whenever I was around mum, I felt like a teenager again. My rebellion had taken a mirror-image form from the usual. No trying to get into nightclubs with a bottle of smuggled cider for me. I’d joined the Vale Operatic Society and spent my spare time reading about the politics of central Europe.

But at night, in my bed, I’d been less sober and sensible. At night, I’d thought about Joss and the cold look in his eye when he laughed at my distress.

I can do what I like to you became something other than a threat in those lonely bewildering nights. It was a dark promise, a hint of unspeakable pleasures that I could only guess at. I would remember how it felt when Joss twisted my arm behind my back and the recollection of my helplessness reached a pitch of such intensity that it seemed natural to put my fingers between my thighs and rub.

I hated myself for seeing his face when I came, but it was his face I always saw and his name I always spoke in the drugged aftermath of orgasm. It wasn’t exactly pleasurable – it was too guilty and furtive for that – but there was nothing I could do to change it.

I tried to tell myself I wasn’t mad for feeling this way, but I had my doubts. In reality, I hated him for everything he had done to me. The Joss in my head was not the Joss of flesh and blood but a fantasy creature I could warp to my will. I suppose, looking back, it was my way of dealing with how badly he had hurt me. Perhaps it wasn’t the most emotionally healthy way of processing it, though.

I sat up. I didn’t want to be thinking this. I wanted to know what was going on at the Hall. I didn’t want to sit through mum’s bloody Chumbawumba album either. I still had the general office number for Willingham Estates on my mobile phone.

I took a deep breath and dialled.

Obviously half past five on a Saturday afternoon in June wasn’t going to find the place manned, and I resigned myself to having to leave a voicemail message, but I was surprised when the ringing was cut off after two beeps and a female voice answered.

‘Willingham Estates, hello.’

‘Oh. Hello. You’re in.’

‘Yes. May I help you?’

‘Well, I was just wondering if Lord Lethbridge was available. I need to ask him something.’

A pause.

‘Who is this, please?’

‘So he is still living at the Hall?’ I could barely speak and I had to hold the phone tight to prevent it slipping from my sweaty fingers.

‘Who is this?’

‘Lucy Miles. Can you tell him Lucy Miles would like to talk to him?’

‘Lucy Miles?’

There was a kerfuffle and the next voice I heard knocked all the breath out of my body.

‘Lucy? Is that you?’

‘Joss.’

‘Aren’t you in Poland or something?’

‘Hungary. No. I’m back. You’re still there.’ My words came out in stupid monosyllables while the laconic drawl I’d been aiming for whirled somewhere out of reach.

‘Of course. You heard about the old man?’

‘Yes, just now. I’m sorry.’

‘Thanks.’

To call the silence that followed awkward would be like calling Antarctica a bit nippy.

‘So, er, to what do I owe the pleasure?’ he said, saving me from having to blurt some nonsense.

‘I’m just … you know … got back from Hungary and thought I’d say hi.’ It sounded lame and I thought perhaps I should return my journalism qualification to the college that so mistakenly conferred it on me. ‘Wondered if you might like to …’

‘Meet up?’ he said. He sounded quite eager, for some reason. ‘Yes. We should have dinner. Catch up with each other. When are you free?’

Well, this was surprisingly easy.

‘Oh, any time, really.’

‘Tonight? What about the Feathers at eight? I know it’s short notice but I’m busy tomorrow and it looks as if I’ll have to go to London next week so –’

‘No, tonight’s fine. I can do tonight. The Feathers.’

‘It’s changed a lot since you left. I’m not some cheapskate trying to fob you off with a microwaved pie and crinkle-cut chips.’

I laughed.

‘I know – I went past it earlier. Where will I go now for my Vimto and crisps?’

It was his turn to laugh, and the genuine warmth of it, with a little hint of regret, snagged at my heart like a fish hook.

‘Oh, Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Vimto,’ he said.

Stop it or I’ll cry.

‘Eight in the Feathers, then,’ I said, determined to sound businesslike. ‘Will you book?’

‘Leave it with me. See you later then.’

‘Yes. Goodbye.’

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ he said softly before hanging up.

What a bombshell to leave me with. But it was all just veneer, I told myself sternly, simply the standard-issue Lethbridge charm, taught on the playing fields of Eton and showered over all and sundry.

More importantly, what was I going to wear?

Chapter Two

I went for the snake-print shift with the shoulder ruffle. It was vital that I looked grown-up and sophisticated, a woman in control of her destiny. I wanted the traces of what I was before I left Willingham to be completely erased, so that he had to double-take and harbour some doubt that I was the same person.

At least I was driving, so there was no chance of overdoing the wine and getting maudlin or antagonistic or, worst of all, amorous.

Mum had gone to watch Animal take part in a Battle of the Bands, and it was a relief to have this excuse not to join her. You need some fun, Luce. I hadn’t dared tell her who I was meeting. ‘An old school friend’. Not exactly.

I didn’t want to be kept waiting at the bar, so I lurked in the car park until I was ten minutes late, obsessing about that time we’d met here before, nine years ago.

There was nothing sleek about me then. I stood at the bar with Mrs Wragg’s cousin’s daughter, Minna, drinking Vimto through a straw, wearing a vintagey daisy-patterned dress and a crochet cardigan that made my arms droop.

‘Seriously, you haven’t been here before?’ Minna had spent all day making fun of me and the fact that I’d been eighteen for three months and still hadn’t had an alcoholic drink or a speeding ticket or a kiss. It was starting to get really annoying.

‘No, except in the garden, to play on the swings. A long time ago, of course. Not, like, last week or anything.’

She laughed, spluttering on her Malibu and coke.

‘You want to live a bit, Luce. Back at home, I’d be getting ready to hit the clubs. Couple of Breezers in the bedroom with my girls, music on, makeover time.’

Irritated, I had a go at trying to shock her. ‘I usually spend my Saturday nights skinning up in the van with the local biker crew,’ I said.

It was blatantly untrue. I’d had one toke of a joint, once, a few months back, and disliked the aftertaste so much that I never did it again. Besides, what it did to mum and her friends bored me. Why would I want to spend hours staring vacantly into space or giggling at the cartoon on a fucking crisp packet? No, thanks.

‘What, you’re on drugs?’ she said, wide-eyed, then, ‘Know where we can get some?’

I did, as it happened, but I shrugged and said, ‘Nobody’s holding this week.’

I could tell she was impressed by my knowledge of the terminology, though, and she was appropriately respectful when she asked if I’d mind her going and playing the slots for a bit.

I gave her my permission and watched her making the lights flash and the jingle-jangle until something terrible happened and I nearly ran out of the bar and into the lounge.

Joss Lethbridge walked in, with a contingent of preppy floppy-haired fools. His friends took a table while he came in to order the round. He didn’t seem to notice me at first, and I’d turned my back on him, but half a minute after he pitched up, I heard his voice at my shoulder.

‘Lucy, isn’t it?’

I couldn’t exactly ignore him, much as I wanted to, so I turned around and gave him a stony look.

He’d been twelve the last time I’d seen him. Of course, mum had filled me in, quite unnecessarily, with the saga of his doings and his goings-on and his Eton triumphs and polo-playing prowess, but I had never actually caught a glimpse of him in the eight years that had passed.

He had changed. As a boy, he’d been heavier-set with chubby cheeks and hair that wouldn’t sit neatly on his head. Now, at twenty, he had been chiselled and straightened and stood in front of me sickeningly tall and handsome. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t representative of the vileness within, and I felt sorry for all the girls who would be taken in by it. His eyes were the same, though, huge and dark brown and far too intense for comfort. At any minute, the sadistic smile I remembered would break through the wall of effortless aristo bonhomie and the real Joss would be out of his civilised box.

Worst of all, I knew I was blushing because of the way my skin prickled, and I was blushing because I couldn’t stop thinking about all the times I’d fantasised about him. God, what if he could read minds? What if he could see?

‘Well, I suppose I don’t deserve a smile,’ he said, and there was something in his eyes I’d never seen before. It reminded me of sadness. Perhaps it was.

‘No,’ I agreed.

‘I was a complete shit to you. You should slap my face. Go on.’

He brought his cheek close to mine, so that I had to jerk back to avoid his breath on my skin.

‘And get myself barred? Yeah, right.’

He straightened up.

‘At least let me buy you a drink. As a token of apology, though I owe you much more. What are you drinking?’

I didn’t want to tell him but something about him compelled me, even now.

‘Vimto,’ I admitted, and he burst out laughing.

‘I’m not sure I even know what that is,’ he said. ‘It sounds quite dangerous. Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Vimto.’

‘It’s a secret blend of fruit juices, herbs and spices,’ I told him, hating myself for getting lured into conversation like this but somehow unable to shut my stupid mouth.

‘How exotic. No alcohol?’

‘Nope.’

‘I can slip a vodka in there if you’d like.’

‘I wouldn’t like.’

‘Fine. As Madam wishes.’ The barman approached and Joss gave his rather extensive order. ‘Anyway,’ Joss resumed, turning back to me while the barman pulled the pints, ‘how are you?’

I shrugged. From the corner of my eye I could see, to my considerable chagrin, that Minna was flirting with the table full of toffs.

‘Left school, I take it?’ He was dogged in his pursuit.

‘Just finished A levels.’

‘Going to university?’

‘Yeah.’

He looked at me with this ‘I need a fuller answer than that’ look. Again, I was compelled.

‘London. English.’

‘Damn. I was hoping you’d say Oxford. I could show you around.’

‘I couldn’t be bothered with all the Oxbridge crap.’ Because I knew you were there.

‘Well, I’m sure you had better things to do. Come over to our table. Is she a friend of yours?’

He glanced at Minna as he put his legion of pint glasses on a tray to carry across the room.

‘Not really. Somebody’s visiting niece, that’s all.’

I narrowed my eyes at her. She was leaning over some Hooray Henry, giving him a faceful of her cleavage in its tight, skimpy vest top. It was plain that Joss’s friends had about as much respect for her as they had for the pub dog stretched out by the fireplace, but she was an amusement for them, so they tolerated her.

‘Minna, we should go,’ I said, avoiding taking my place beside Joss on the oak settle.

‘What the fuck?’ she whined. ‘Don’t be such a killjoy, Luce. Sit down and have a drink. You might even enjoy yourself.’

She looked around the group, lapping up their approval and their nodding heads and eager grins.

I wanted to kill the lot of them.

But I sat down.

It was one of the most excruciating half-hours of my life. Minna and I were exhibits in a zoo – look at the Local Girls in their Natural Habitat. They asked us questions and laughed at our answers, no matter how dull or ordinary they might be. Within five minutes, one guy had his hand on Minna’s thigh. We were just there to provide a bit of entertainment, like tavern wenches in ages gone by when the men of quality deigned to refresh themselves.

Joss, though, didn’t seem to be joining in with the heavily veiled barbs and slights. He tried to temper his friends’ increasingly drunken enthusiasm, remonstrating with them when they approached the verge of Going Too Far, and he defended me from all questioning with a flat ‘Lucy’s got more sense than to talk to the likes of you oiks. Leave her alone.’

The pint glasses emptied, one by one.

‘Would you ladies care to accompany us back to the Hall? We’ve got more beer and wine than you could imagine in your wildest dreams, and the lord and lady are on a yacht somewhere, so the place is ours?’

‘Yeah?’ Minna was wide-eyed and breathless. ‘Like, for real?’

‘No, thanks,’ I said.

Joss and his friends spent the next ten minutes trying to persuade me but I held out.

‘Well, we’ll walk you home, anyway,’ he decreed. ‘Come on, gents.’

They walked ahead with Minna while Joss hung back, not letting me away from his side.

‘I can understand why you don’t want to,’ he said.

‘Good.’

He looked up at the darkening sky. He was carrying a stick, broken off from a hazel bush, and he whacked it into the hedgerow as we walked, as if it helped release some nameless tension.

‘I’ve grown-up, you know, Lucy. I’m not the same person.’

‘Congratulations.’

A sigh and a pause.

‘How’s your mother?’

‘Same as ever. Don’t you see her, at the Hall?’

‘Oh, I don’t get up till midday. She’s long gone by then.’

‘Well, next time, get up a bit earlier and ask her yourself.’

‘Perhaps I will.’ We were walking along the edge of the caravan park now, in crepuscular light. ‘“She dwelt among the untrodden ways/Beside the springs of Dove,/A Maid whom there were none to praise/And very few to love.”’

‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘Don’t quote those poems to me.’

‘Why not? When we read them at school, I always thought of you.’

‘You had no right.’ We were at the entrance of the park. Minna was snogging one of the toffs, laughing as he slid his hand under her vest top.

‘No, I didn’t, you’re right, but Lucy, can’t we start afresh? As friends?’

‘Fuck off.’

I ran away from the lot of them – from the braying laughter of some of his chums, the smacking sound of Minna and the toff joined at the lips, the sickening memories in my head and most of all the desire to fall horribly in love with Joss for no better reason than that he knew a few lines of poetry and could use them like a deadly weapon.

‘You cheap fucking date,’ I railed at myself, slamming the van door behind it all. ‘He’s a bastard and a bully and you hate him, and you’ll always hate him.’

I fell on the bed and cried myself to sleep.

* * *

I was hoping, then, for a less traumatic encounter when I got out of the car and made a cautious way over the Feathers’ gravel.

His back was to me as I entered; he was talking to one of the villagers. Of course, they all fawned over him. Lord of the Manor and all that. He was broader, perhaps a little weightier than he had been. Nearly thirty with swept-back hair and one of those uncommitted beards that don’t know whether to be stubble or full-on growth. It looked good, all the same. He looked good. The sight of him made me feel ill and I had to clench everything to stay upright.

The villager had seen me, and Joss took his cue from the shift in his gaze and turned around.

‘Lucy,’ he said, very warmly, too warmly, holding out his hands.

‘Did you book?’ I asked, looking past him to what was once the Lounge Bar, now the restaurant.

‘No need. They always fit me in. Come on, let’s go and sit down.’

He nodded a goodbye at the villager and led me out to the patio tables, overlooking the newly landscaped garden. No more rusty old swing set. Now there was a pretty pond full of koi carp, and a fountain. Overhead was a trellis gazebo festooned with climbing roses and each table held scented candles in artisan-decorated glass jars.

‘I bet they don’t even serve Vimto any more,’ I said, pulling out my own chair before he could try and do it for me. ‘All bloody elderflower cordial and cloudy pink lemonade now.’

‘You haven’t lost that chip on your shoulder, then?’ he said, quite politely but with a glint of challenge in his eye. ‘Always ranting against anything remotely poncey or posh.’

‘Actually, I’ve developed a few poncey, posh tastes over the years,’ I confessed, fidgeting with the menu. ‘I’m very snobby about sausages now, for example, having lived in Hungary where the sausage is taken very seriously.’

Joss chuckled, his eyes brightening.

‘You have to be snobby about your sausages,’ he said. ‘Inferior sausages are quite intolerable.’

‘Well, yes.’

We ordered drinks and then sat, looking at each other until the tension almost cracked the artisan glass candle-holder.

‘So,’ he said, at the same time as I said, ‘Well.’

I looked away.

‘You aren’t here to reminisce about old times, are you, Lucy?’ he said softly, drawing my attention straight back to him.

‘My memories aren’t exactly fond,’ I snapped.

‘No. So why are you here?’

‘It’s been nine years. Perhaps it’s time to let bygones be –’

‘You’re a journalist, aren’t you?’ It was so abrupt, I started.

‘Cut to the chase, why don’t you?’ I said.

‘I didn’t want all that bygones crap to drag on,’ he said, accepting his champagne cocktail from the waiter while I took my, yes, elderflower fizz. ‘I know why you’re here.’

‘Do you? Please enlighten me.’

‘You’ve scented a story and you want to use your old connection with me to get at the heart of it.’

Very nicely deduced. I had to hand it to him, along with his scalpel of truth.

‘You’re not denying it,’ he said after a pause.

‘Why bother?’ I said. ‘If that’s what you want to think.’

‘It isn’t, actually. What I want to think is completely different.’

‘What, that I’ve come running back into your arms, ready for you to stab me in the back again? What do you take me for?’

‘Are you ready to order?’ the waiter asked.

We pinched our lips and muttered our food orders with flaming cheeks.

‘So you heard about somebody leasing the Hall,’ said Joss once the waiter was out of earshot.

‘Everybody’s talking about it. Of course I did.’

‘And you want to know who?’

‘And why.’

‘Of course, why. Lots of rumours out there, I hear.’

‘Tons. Are you going to put a stop to them? By telling me the truth of it?’

I sipped at my elderflower fizz, waiting for Joss to pull one of his trademark petulant strops. I guessed we’d be going Dutch on the meal now a shag was out of the question.

Instead he surprised me. After stroking his beard-thing for a moment or two, he said, ‘I can do better than that.’

‘Really?’

‘I can get you in there. Exclusive access to the Hall – and its mysterious lessee. And he’s a big fish, Lucy, a very big fish. This’ll be the scoop of your life.’

‘Who is he?’

Joss shook his head, peering fearfully around as if scouting for eavesdroppers.

‘If I tell you that you’ll be straight on the phone to your editors. No, you have to come into the Hall and see it for yourself.’

‘That’s an invitation, then? As simple as that. Why would you let me?’

‘Let’s say I’m not entirely happy with the situation. A big press exposé might blow the whole thing apart and give me back my birthright.’

‘Birthright,’ I scoffed. ‘You’re such a little prince.’

‘Do you want this or not?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure. I wanted – needed – something that would get me off the Village Fete Desk, but this sounded risky and strange.

‘Right. Come into the estate office on Monday morning and we’ll discuss it further.’

‘Why not now?’

‘Are you wearing a wire?’

I burst out laughing.

‘Joss, this isn’t a spy drama! Wearing a wire! For God’s sake!’

He looked discomfited by my mirth, and knocked back his champagne cocktail until he fell into a coughing fit.

I took advantage of it to click off my mobile phone’s ‘Record’ setting in my handbag.

‘So, can you give me a clue?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘I’ll tell you on Monday.’ He paused, looking at me too intently for comfort. ‘You aren’t married or anything, are you?’

‘God forbid. You?’

He shook his head.

‘Came close, last year,’ he said. ‘Until she saw my bank statements and ran a mile.’

‘Oh, dear. Did she break your heart? What a shame.’

If there was more sarcasm than sympathy in my tone, I figured he’d understand.

He looked at me for a long time then, until the waiter came with our starters, forcing him to drop the eye contact. Just as well, because I was starting to feel giddy.

‘You still aren’t over it, are you?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘What happened between us. It still hurts you.’

‘No, it doesn’t. I don’t let it.’ I stabbed at a disc of mozzarella, sloshing it around in its basil jus.

‘If only life were that easy. Life and love. I half hoped you’d have met someone else, settled down, found happiness.’

‘Only half?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, and it was more a breath than a word, floating over the candle flame. ‘Only half.’

‘I did meet someone else. In Hungary. But it didn’t work out.’

He smiled then.

‘Tell me about Hungary. I’ve never been there.’

He had given me the floor and I took it, relieved to have control of a conversation that had almost lurched beyond the boundaries I had set myself. No talking about old times. No recriminations. Definitely no flirting.

He played the perfect gent for the rest of the evening and no more reference was made to our common past.

In the car park, he offered to walk me home, and I had to remind him that I didn’t live at the caravan site any more.

‘I’m in Tylney,’ I said. ‘I drove here tonight.’

‘Oh, is that why you didn’t drink?’

‘No. I didn’t drink because I wanted to keep my head.’

He looked slightly furtive at that, a little guilty.

‘Well, I’ll see you on Monday, at the office,’ he said. He leaned forwards, a little awkwardly, aiming for my cheek, but I dodged out of the way.

‘About nine?’

‘Perfect.’

He didn’t set off for the Hall immediately but watched me get into the car and drive away. I felt the burn of his eyes on me as I belted up and chose a CD to listen to.

Go away, I thought, but at the same time a treacherous second voice chanted, Come back to me.

Chapter Three

‘I’ll tell you what, I didn’t realise how dirty posh boys are.’

Minna was full of her escapade at the Hall that next morning after we’d bumped into Joss at the Feathers.

‘Really?’ I said with a yawn, frowning at the wall my hairdrier was plugged into. The electricity kept cutting out and I had an idea that the way the socket was coming away from its moorings might not be helping.

‘God, yeah. Filthy, they are.’

I didn’t want to hear it. If she’d kissed Joss, or gone further with him, I didn’t want to know.

‘It’s all that repression, shut away at Eton. They go wild when they get a sniff of a woman, probably.’

‘Do you think so? Mmm, what a night. Three sexy boys and me in a four-poster bed.’ She was lying full-length on the sofa and she arched her back like a cat.

I had to know. I spat it out.

‘Was Joss one of them?’

‘No, Joss was boring. He went to bed, left us to it with a crate of beer and a multipack of condoms.’

‘And they say romance is dead.’ But my heart leaped up. Joss hadn’t touched Minna. Perhaps gangbanging just wasn’t his scene.

Or perhaps he was gay.

I shouldn’t care, either way.

‘Fuck this piece of shit,’ I fumed, throwing the hairdrier down and wrenching out the plug. ‘I’m going to see your aunt, get her to send the handyman over to fix this socket.’

It was going to be a hot day, the sun already high and so bright that I was a little dazzled as I climbed down the steps from the van.

It seemed like a holy vision, consequently, when Joss pitched up in front of me, illuminated from behind.

‘Am I hallucinating?’ I muttered, a little dismayed to be caught like this, barefoot in towelling shorts and a halter-neck top with my half-dried hair like wild rats’ tails down my back.

‘Lucy. I was just coming to see you,’ he said.

God, he looked like sex on a plate. Snake-hipped in blue jeans and a check shirt, unbuttoned far enough to give a glimpse of dark chest hair.

‘Why?’

He was carrying a small antique-looking book with a tooled leather cover, and he held this out to me.

‘I wanted to give you this. As a token of apology and … perhaps friendship?’

His eyes would put a doe’s to shame and his perfect lips were wet and a little pouty. He was stupidly beautiful. It was ridiculous. Why the hell would he care what I thought of him?

I took the book – Wordsworth’s Lucy poems.

Fuck it. I was doomed.

‘Will you come for a walk with me?’ he asked.

‘You aren’t hung over then?’

‘No, I left them to it. Wanted to keep a clear head so I could come down here and see you …’ He smiled, a little self-consciously, his eyes peering out from lowered lids.

‘Right. That’s … weird.’

‘Is it?’

I nodded.

‘Well, perhaps I’m weird. Will you? Come for a walk with me?’

The spell was cast and I couldn’t resist him.

‘You won’t tie me to a tree or anything like that, will you?’

He let out a quick burst of a laugh and his eyes flashed in a way that made my stomach turn over.

‘Not unless you want me to,’ he said, then he held out his hand and I took it.

* * *

On the way to Willingham Hall, I parked at the caravan site and took a walk along the river first, wanting to remember that day and the enchantment that lay upon it. If I could keep the memory alive, it might protect me against getting too close to Joss again. I didn’t know what he had in mind – he had made it sound strictly business, nothing social at all – but it was always wise to guard against the unexpected with Joss.

The same weeping willows and anglers were there along the towpath, like props in our drama. We had wandered past them all, talking about literature and schooldays and music, snatching at the little things we had in common as if they were treasures to be stored away.

Before half a mile had been covered, I was deeply lost. When we sat on the bank and he made his move to kiss me, I could no more have denied him than I could have called up a river god from the shining depths before us.

I kicked the grass at that place, then turned towards Willingham and the Hall.

The gatekeeper was surprised to see me come in on foot, but he let me pass and I walked on under the canopy of trees, enjoying the shade they afforded on this hot summer day.

The estate office, I recalled, was first left once you were through the door. I rang the bell, looking at the relevant window and wondered if Joss was waiting in there for me.

At a corner of the east wing I could see scaffolding and men on it, working to restore the somewhat neglected exterior of the Hall. This must be what the millionaire’s money was paying for. I watched them filling the peeling plasterwork, until the door opened and Joss stood in front of me.

‘Come in,’ he said, ushering me to his office. ‘Can I get you anything? A drink?’

‘Coffee, I guess.’

‘Coffee it is.’ He went over to a percolator in the corner and poured me a cup. ‘You won’t mind if I indulge in something a little stronger?’

He turned around, brandishing a half-bottle of whisky.

‘Joss,’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s nine o’clock in the morning.’

He shrugged, pulled out a chair for me and sat down at his desk.

‘Thanks for that – now I don’t have to ring the speaking clock.’ With an air of defiance, he uncapped the bottle and put it to his lips.

‘So you’re an alcoholic,’ I said, recalling how he had had a bottle to himself at the meal last night, plus his champagne cocktail and a liqueur in place of pudding. I’d thought nothing of it – he had always been a bon vivant. But whisky at this time of day was a different proposition.

‘I do what I have to to get through the day,’ he said, putting the bottle aside. ‘I’ve had some disappointments in my life, Lucy. It’s medication.’

‘You mean having to let the Hall?’

He gave me a chilly little smile.

‘That’s right,’ he said.

‘What happened?’

‘Pa left me this pile, but he didn’t leave me anything else. Not a bean. He spent the lot on yachts, apparently.’

‘You could sell up.’

‘No, I bloody couldn’t.’ Joss nearly spat the whisky over me. ‘Willingham Hall has to stay in the family. It has to. I can’t be the one who flogs it to a Russian oligarch, Lucy. I just can’t.’

‘You’re attached to this place.’

‘Well, I see that you might not understand having a sense of home, but I do. This is my place, my domain. But it costs a fucking fortune to maintain. The heating bills alone are probably more than your annual salary. Or they would be, if I ever turned the heating on. I keep it just high enough to stop the pipes freezing, because I’m not going through that nightmare again. You should have seen me last winter, Lulu. Three jumpers, five pairs of socks. I got through half the peat stocks of the Highlands in whisky.’

‘So it’s expensive, and that’s why you’ve let it. Not much of a story there, really.’ His catty remark about my upbringing, coupled with his use of his pet name for me, had turned me into Ms Uber-Professional Bitch like a charm.

‘No, but the story’s in what it’s being used for,’ he said, lowering his voice. Again, he looked around the office as if he thought it might be bugged. ‘And by whom.’

‘So? Is he here now?’

‘No. He comes here one weekend a month. He brings … friends … with him.’

I shook my head, still not seeing the whole picture.

‘Hookers?’ I hazarded.

‘No, not hookers. He uses the place for extravagant parties. Catering to a particular kind of guest.’

‘Swingers, then?’

‘Do you always think in tabloid-speak these days, Lucy? It’s so unrefined.’

‘I do beg your pardon.’ We gave each other bitter smiles. ‘Go on then. Tell me how elegant and sophisticated it all really is. I’m sure it’s not just rich people shagging on luxury furnishings.’

‘The thing is, Lucy, I’ve never been to one of these parties. I’ve never been invited.’

‘How rude.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? But he likes to keep me in my place. He says he’ll invite me when I have a … guest … of my own to bring.’

‘Joss, could you stop talking in riddles and get to the point? Please?’ I looked at my watch. I was supposed to be in an editorial meeting in an hour.

‘You know, perhaps you should call me Lord Lethbridge. It is my name now, after all.’

‘Might I enquire when His Lordship intends to spill the precious bloody beans?’

Joss hesitated. Actually, I think he was nervous. He was talking to a journalist about something he shouldn’t, after all. He always went all stiff and princely when he was nervous.

‘Please?’ I said, more softly. ‘I promise I won’t blab. It’ll be our secret.’

‘This is serious,’ he said, entreating me with his darkest look.

‘I know. I know it is.’

‘Willingham Hall is at stake. And that’s not all. My life might depend on your discretion.’

‘Wow.’

He sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.

‘I met … this person … at a party. The kind of party he likes to throw, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. It was in London. At a dungeon.’

‘The London Dungeon?’ I said, a little confused. Were they all mad-keen on grisly murders?

‘No, Jesus, Lucy, are you being deliberately dim? A dungeon. In London. Not the London Dungeon.’

Light dawned, albeit of a murky nature.

‘You mean a kinky fetish type of thing?’

‘That’s what I mean.’

I paused and stared at him.

‘Oh.’ It was all I could think of to say.

‘Yes,’ he said, inspecting his fingernails, with the odd surreptitious glance at my expression.

Joss in a dungeon. Was it such an outlandish thought? I mean, there had been nothing weird or fetishy going on when we were together, but we were young, and … actually, looking back, perhaps there had been signs.

A memory popped into my head, of him pushing me up against the tree he had used to tie me to in childhood, holding my wrists above my head, thrusting into me, his eyes like coals. Always that tree. Every time.

‘Whips and chains?’ I said, just for clarification.

‘Whips and, indeed, chains,’ he confirmed. ‘Although I prefer a more subtle approach myself.’

‘You do?’

He looked a little touched by my bemusement and he leaned forwards.

‘Dear sweet innocent Lucy,’ he said softly. ‘Did you never think?’

‘I … you were a bit … I suppose, looking back, it makes a kind of sense. But I never framed it that way. For me you were just on the slightly domineering edge of normal … slap and tickle … I didn’t think it went any deeper than that.’

‘Normal.’ He sat back again. ‘That would be you, would it?’

‘I’ve never been normal.’

He liked that answer.

‘I know. I’m surprised that you’re surprised, to be honest. I always thought you had a touch of that tendency in you.’

‘What … whips and chains?’

‘God, shall we cut the tabloid-speak now, please? I’m talking about dominance and submission. You loved being told what to do and made to do it. In bed, I mean, not out of it.’

I looked down at my lap, remembering the lurid adolescent fantasies I used to have about him. I wanted to deny his assertion, but it was at least half true. It struck me that every time we had made love, he had been doing what he wanted to me, and I had been letting him. And finding the skewed dynamic endlessly arousing.

It probably wasn’t normal. But I wasn’t here to discuss the minutiae of our dead sex life. I made an effort to stay on track.

‘I don’t know why you think that, or what the hell it has to do with this alleged scoop you claim to be offering me.’

‘It has everything to do with it,’ he said.

I pushed my chair back and half-rose from it.

‘I’m not sure I like the sound of that,’ I said, scanning his face intently. ‘If you think I have the slightest idea of getting tangled up with you again –’

‘Sit down,’ he said, and the commanding tone I knew so well did its fatal work on me. ‘Hear me out.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’m not vain or stupid enough to believe that you will ever fall for my bullshit again, Lucy. I’m not out to mess with your heart. But there’s a way to get invited into the inner circle of our loaded friend which will involve our at least seeming to be attached to one another.’

Fuck that, then, was on the tip of my tongue, but I was too intrigued to dismiss him out of hand. I wanted to at least hear what preposterous non-starter he had in mind before I emptied his oak-aged Macallan all over his unnecessarily attractive head.

‘It would be a charade, Lulu. A performance. An undercover job, that’s all.’

‘What would?’

‘My lessee has always said he would invite me to one of his parties if I got myself a collared submissive.’

A sip of coffee went down the wrong way and I spent the next few minutes trying not to choke.

‘Are you OK?’ said Joss anxiously.

I nodded.

‘“Collared submissive”,’ I coughed out by way of explanation for my fit. ‘What?’

‘Come on, you aren’t slow. I’m sure you can work it out for yourself.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of. That I have. What you’re saying is that, if I pretend to be your, your collared submissive, you and I will be invited to Mr Mysterious’s dodgy parties. I will gain an explosive story for the national press and you will possibly get your Hall back? Right?’

‘Right,’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘So, what do you think?’

‘I think you’re insane. The alcohol’s rotted away what little you had in the way of brain cells.’

‘Give it to me straight, Lulu.’

‘And stop calling me Lulu. It’s Ms Miles to you.’

‘Don’t dismiss it out of hand,’ he said, leaning forwards again, all intensity. ‘It could work for both of us. And, really, don’t you remember how good we were together? Would it be such a chore?’

‘Chore?’ How could he not see that this would be absolute torture – probably literally? ‘Fuck you and your stupid house. I hope it gets bought up and turned into a theme park.’

Damn, my voice was wobbling all over the shop. I had to get out of there, and fast.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve approached this in the wrong way,’ he said, standing and trying to stop me running out of the door. ‘Lucy, I’m a tactless bastard, but please …’

I opened the door.

‘I miss you,’ he said.

I slammed it in his face.

Chapter Four

Don’t you remember how good we were together? The words rattled in my head all the way through the editorial meeting, winding round and round the strands of council meetings and hosepipe bans and air displays and smothering them until I had no idea what had been said at all.

Of course I remembered. How could I forget?

We had spent the whole summer in bed, or if we weren’t in bed we were out in the grounds, on the lake or in a summerhouse, just for a change of scene.

He was inventive, passionate and outrageously horny all the time.

Luckily enough, I was the same.

What happened to me?

I thought of Károly’s parting words for me.

‘It doesn’t feel like losing you. I never felt I had you. You never gave yourself to me.’

He was right, I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not after Joss. After Joss, I had played everything safe, and safety meant keeping my heart to myself. So, when Károly had cheated on me, it hadn’t really touched me, except as a blow to my pride and confirmation that I was quite right not to bother with love.

Now that the initial shock of our meeting was wearing off, I thought more about Joss and how things were with him. The alcohol thing was sobering – so to speak – as was his general air of dejection and defeat. If he wasn’t careful, he might find that it was the tip of a steep decline. Within a few years, the beautiful young man with the world at his feet I had known and loved might be a puffy-faced and red-eyed waster.

I shouldn’t care, but I did.

I spent half a minute doodling on my notepad before I realised that the meeting was over.

‘Oh,’ I said, standing up to find only me and the editor still in the stuffy little room. ‘Right. Better get on then.’

‘Yes,’ she said, giving me a crooked look. ‘Sorry, Lucy, but … do you know what you’re covering today? You seem a bit … distant.’

‘It’s the heat,’ I told her. ‘Goes to my head sometimes. Would you mind …?’

‘Open day at the fire station,’ she said, a tad wearily. ‘Look, I know it’s not international politics here, but …’

‘It’s not that, I promise. I’m happy here. I love working for the Voice.’

‘Good. OK. Well, say hi to those hunky firefighters for me, won’t you? Everyone wanted this job. Don’t say I never do anything for you.’

She winked and I smiled back.

If only the hunky firefighters had the power to lure my mind away from Joss and his absurd proposition.

With dull, mechanical attention I watched them go down their poles and wield their hoses, while in the forefront of my mind phrases like collared submissive and we were good together tormented me like an out-of-control earworm.

I filed my copy then I went home and Googled ‘dominance and submission’ until the sun went down and my eyelids needed propping up.

My dreams plaited themselves with my thoughts and I spent the night in a psychic shimmer of shiny black latex and gimp masks and riding crops. They became senselessly entwined, my waking thoughts continuing from my dreams and my dreams seeming more like waking thoughts until the early hours when Joss broke into them. He was with me, beside me, holding my hand, talking in gentle hypnotic tones about how it wouldn’t hurt when he whipped me, how it would feel more like a kiss. The kiss he gave me, so real, so warm, so much what I wanted and needed and couldn’t live without …

I woke up in a sweat and nearly sobbed out loud when I found that he wasn’t there.

Mum and Animal were sprawled on the living-room floor, last night’s full ashtrays and empty bottles all around them.

I stepped over them, went downstairs to the yard and called Joss.

‘Lulu,’ he said, sounding sleepy and warm and in bed.

‘I’ll do it,’ I told him. ‘But I have conditions.’

‘Of course,’ he said, totally alert now. ‘Just name them. Are you free later? We should meet.’

‘Lunch?’

‘Lunch. The Trout?’

‘You’re paying.’

He sighed. ‘All right.’

‘And I don’t necessarily mean for the meal.’

‘Woah,’ he said, and I hung up.

The Trout was a picturesque black-and-white pub on the river, with a mill wheel and a popular garden. Narrowboats and cruisers drifted by while I waited for Joss at one of the white-painted wrought-iron tables with a bottle of Vimto.

How many of those boating couples were happy? Any of them? All of them?

They had taken that chance, given their hearts, and now they cut through the waters of life with such ease, leaving only the smallest of ripples in their wake.

‘Am I late?’

He looked mouth-watering in a white linen shirt and trousers in a darker cream shade – perhaps a size bigger than they used to be, but a little extra weight suited him, gave him a more solid presence.

‘No, I was early,’ I said, sucking on my straw.

‘Oh, God, the ubiquitous Vimto,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get a beer – can I get you anything?’

‘No, you’re not,’ I said. ‘You can have a lemonade or a posh fizzy water or something. I won’t talk to you if you drink.’

He looked tight-lipped and furious for a moment, then he shrugged.

‘Whatever you say,’ he said, then he stomped off to the bar.

Oh, why did I have this awful backwash of emotion for a man who sulked and threw strops?

His little fit of pique was forgotten, though, by the time he came back with a tall glass of something transparent and carbonated, and two laminated menus.

‘Give us a sip,’ I said, reaching for his glass.

‘I didn’t put vodka in it, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ he said, but he was lying. He had.

I emptied it on to the grass while he swiped at it, growling, ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re not my mother,’ under his breath.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘My mother was the opposite. “Just have a drink, Luce, lighten up and have a drink.” But I spent more of my teenage years than I care to remember cleaning up her vomit and her spilled cans of cider from the floor of the van. So, y’know.’

I bit my cheek and looked away.

He sat down.

‘I know,’ he said, all quiet and sympathetic now.

‘I’ll get you another,’ I said, and took my empty bottle and his glass back to the bar with me.

‘That’s one of my conditions,’ I said, returning with two San Pellegrinos. ‘Sorry, I didn’t ask if you wanted ice and lemon, but you’ve got them.’

‘Fine. I’ll pretend it’s gin. What’s one of your conditions?’

He took a sip of the water and grimaced.

‘You don’t drink when you’re with me.’

‘Lulu, I don’t need a saviour,’ he said.

‘Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not that I care about you. I just hate the company of stinking, slobbering drunks. OK?’

‘That hurt,’ he said, bringing out the big-gun puppy-dog eyes.

I laughed.

‘Considering what you’ve got in store for me, that’s a bit rich,’ I remarked.

His cartoon sad-face turned into a lecherous smirk.

‘Mmm, fair point,’ he said, and I wished I could see what he was thinking. Or perhaps I didn’t.

‘So, do you agree to my condition?’ I said, hopefully knocking any visions of me locked into a pillory or whatever out of his mind.

He did the pensive gazing into the river thing for a few moments.

‘I can try,’ he said.

‘I’m serious. If you drink, no deal.’

‘You’re a tough negotiator.’

‘You haven’t heard the half of it yet.’

‘Oh, God.’

While at the bar I’d ordered a cheddar ploughman’s for us to share – they were legendarily huge at the Trout – and this arrived with due efficiency.

Joss buttered his roll and loaded it with cheese and pickle while I continued.

‘I spent a lot of time researching all this dominance and submission stuff last night,’ I said. ‘Some of it looked easy, some of it looked terrifying. It’s not something to enter into lightly.’

‘No,’ said Joss, swallowing his first bite. ‘I know that. I’m not suggesting that we throw ourselves straight on to the scene. I’d ease you into it – take it slowly.’

‘So it would be a while before I got my story?’

‘Some journalists spend years setting up their victims.’

I humphed at ‘victims’, but he was right.

‘I’d aim to be on our enigmatic friend’s guest list by Christmas,’ he said.

‘Christmas?’

‘’Tis the season to be kinky,’ said Joss with that crooked, wolfish smile I remembered so well. Well enough for it to have its traditional effect between my legs.

‘OK. A few months isn’t so long, I suppose.’

‘I’ll verse you in our ways. I’ll show you how it’s done,’ he said, his voice soaked in seduction.

‘I know how it’s done,’ I said, but my bolshy confidence was leaking out of me with every softly spoken word.

‘You’ve seen pictures. You’ve read accounts. That’s no preparation at all,’ he said. ‘You need to feel it – to know what it does to your head. There’s nothing like it, Lulu – the rush, the intensity of it.’

‘How do you know?’

I halved a pickled onion, thinking what an odd conversation this was to be having over a ploughman’s on a sunny day by the river.

‘What do you mean, how do I know?’ My question seemed to have thrown him.

‘You’ve been a submissive? You know how that feels?’

‘No. Obviously I’m talking about it from my side. The dominant side.’

‘All right, then that leads us to another of my conditions.’ I crunched on the pickled onion. No kissing for me today – the vinegary little chap was my protection against any foolish rushing of blood to the head later.

He seemed to know what I was thinking, because he took the other half of the onion and bit into it himself. Damn. That neutralised the situation. Kissing might still happen. Especially if I didn’t stop staring at his long slender fingers as if hypnotised. What those fingers had done to me … what they still might do to me …

‘Well, you’ve had no booze, so what’s next?’ he said snippily. ‘No sex?’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ I said severely.

‘You’d sign up for the pain but not the pleasure? I can’t see how that would work.’

‘Wait, you’re getting ahead of yourself,’ I said. ‘My condition isn’t that.’

‘Good.’

So he expects us to have sex. I filed the thought for further discussion later. First I needed him to agree to my next little stipulation.

‘I want you to feel what you’re going to make me feel,’ I said.

His eyes widened.

‘I’m not with you.’

I took a breath.

‘When we were together – before – I hated myself for being with you.’

He blinked.

‘Did you?’

‘Of course I did. After everything you’d done to me when we were kids, I’d just fallen into your arms like some idiot in a Mills and Boon. I felt like I betrayed myself, over and over, every time I let you touch me.’

He contemplated a crust of bread in a stormy manner.

‘Look,’ he muttered, ‘this is old ground. I’ve apologised for the way I treated you when I was a boy. I apologise again. Unreservedly. All right?’

‘Not really,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t think it’ll ever be all right. But I’m telling you this because it’s relevant to what I’m going to ask of you.’

‘OK.’

‘Every time we get involved with each other, you hurt me,’ I said. ‘You hurt me when we played together as children. You hurt me when we had our … summer thing … And now you want to hurt me again.’

‘But this is different,’ he said eagerly. ‘This is a contract. A proposition. Not an affair of the heart or a messed-up thing like the bullying.’

‘I know, but I don’t want to spend the next five months in a state of acute self-loathing and paranoia. I’ve done that. I’m not doing it again. So before I let you hurt me, I want to hurt you.’

‘You mean literally?’

‘Yes, I mean literally. I want you to know how it feels to be hurt.’

‘I do know.’

‘By me.’

‘Ah.’

He sat back, chewing on a slice of tomato.

‘Revenge,’ he said, once it was gone. ‘You want revenge.’

‘No, that’s not what I mean. I want you to feel something like empathy. And I think it would help me to trust you – because on all those sites I surfed last night, the main thing everyone ended up banging on about was the importance of trust. Without it, there can’t be a D/s relationship, they say. And how can I trust you, given our history?’

‘You know, that’s a very fair point,’ he said. ‘Very fair. All right.’

He stood up, holding out a hand.

‘Take my body and use it as you will,’ he said with a flourish.

People must have heard us, and I felt like an idiot, glancing around to see how many eyes were levelled in our direction.

‘What, now?’ I said.

‘Why not? No time like the present. I’ve got the afternoon free – have you?’

‘I, uh.’ My mind was in no fit state to be fabricating pressing engagements. I had the only man I had ever loved standing right in front of me, looking more delicious than anything on the Trout’s menu, telling me I had carte blanche to do as I wanted with him. It was bound to knock me a bit off course.

‘Come on then. Or have you lost your nerve now? Did you only mention it to put me off and put an end to the whole scheme? Well, I’m calling your bluff. You have to put your money where your mouth is.’

‘Right. Put my money …’ I stood up, haltingly.

‘Though, I have to admit, I’d rather you put your mouth where my mouth is,’ he said, devilishly low.

He wasn’t playing fair. Seduction was not on the menu. It was strictly an arrangement, nothing more. Perhaps I should have some kind of contract drawn up. No cutting the skin, no plastic bags over heads, no thieving of hearts.

‘Don’t do that.’

‘What?’

‘Flirt. It isn’t fair. It’s unkind. And it creeps me out.’

Actually, it didn’t. But I thought it might stop him if I implied that I found his oh-so-charming attentions repellent.

He had the grace to look a bit crushed, and tossed his hair.

‘Are you going to sit there taking pot shots at me all day or are you going to come home with me and beat me into submission?’ he demanded.

‘You don’t want pudding then?’

He shook his head and slapped his stomach.

‘Bad for the waistline,’ he said. ‘Got to look the part if I’m going to be getting the old leather trousers out of the wardrobe.’

‘God, you aren’t, are you?’

He grew impatient of waiting for me to stand up and reached down for my hand, grabbed it and yanked me out of my chair.

‘To be honest,’ he said, once I was standing close enough for him to murmur into my ear, ‘I usually prefer a well-cut suit. But you’ll be wearing leather for me. And feeling it, too.’

Jesus. A flash of pure electrical sensation lit me up, starting at my crotch. This was really on the cards. A realisation of the danger I was in blared in my head like a siren. Run, Lucy, run.

But I didn’t run. I followed him to his car, leaving mine on the gravel.

Chapter Five

The scaffolders were still at work on the east wing when we entered the Hall through the back-kitchen door.

‘Don’t want Fran to know I’m back,’ muttered Joss, leading the way through the hanging copper pots and pans and wooden worktops. ‘She’ll waylay me with a VAT registration form or something. I’m taking the afternoon off, as far as she’s concerned.’

‘Fran Woolley?’

‘You know her?’

‘Willingham isn’t exactly the metropolis, Joss, people do tend to know everyone in the village.’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’

‘Nearly thirty and still clueless about real life, aren’t you?’

He looked over his shoulder at me, frowning.

‘Are you saying that my life isn’t real?’ he said.

‘No. But, for God’s sake, don’t ever check your privilege. You’d never get to the end of it.’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you do. Look, I’m only joking. I’m nervous.’

I was pretty close to vomiting, actually, and after all the pickles I’d consumed this wasn’t an appealing prospect.

The back stairs were like old friends with whom I’d been unexpectedly reunited and, in just the same way, they brought a lot of memories to the fore as I climbed them behind Joss.

Chief among them was that first time, treading cautiously on the creaking boards, feeling that I was being allowed inside a sacred inner sanctum. And knowing that, by the time I came down, I would no longer be a virgin.

Joss had been holding my hand that day, looking down at me from time to time with ardent eyes. Oh, how I missed those ardent eyes.

He’d asked me at the bedroom door if I was sure. I wasn’t, but I said I was.

Certainty came when we fell together on the bed, all wrapped up in each other’s heat and scent, kissing as if we’d never get the chance again.

He was so sweet with me, so gentle and kind. He wasn’t the same person who’d whipped my legs with a bramble, he just couldn’t be.

I was so stupid, but at least I’d had the excuse of youth.

What excuse did I have now?

The upstairs landing was just as I remembered it, but shabbier. Everything had a faded, regretful look. Outside Joss’s bedroom door was a recycling box full of bottles.

‘Nice touch,’ I said. ‘Classy.’

‘Fuck off,’ he said, quite reflexively and without real malice, then he spun around to face me and said, ‘God, sorry. I don’t mean that. Don’t fuck off. Please.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, with a little grin. ‘I’ll make you pay for it.’

He smiled back, but nervously.

‘I’m sure you will. Anyway – enter the palace of delights.’

The palace of delights, also known as Joss’s bedroom, had seen better days. The four-poster bed was still splendid and glamorous, but the duvet was on the floor and the antique bedside table overflowed with clutter.

I picked my way over a discarded dressing gown and slippers, aiming for the window.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said, snatching them up as I negotiated my path. ‘I would have cleared up if I’d thought … well, I wasn’t expecting us to end up here. Not yet.’

‘Does he use this room?’ I asked, looking out over the park. ‘You know – your Mystery Man.’

‘No. He uses the east wing. Had it all done up to his tastes when he signed the lease.’

‘I’d like to take a look.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’

He was embarrassed. He was smiling too much.

‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s had a security door put in and, to tell you the truth, I don’t have a key.’

‘He’s locked you out of your own house?’

Joss shrugged.

‘It’s only the east wing. I didn’t use it much anyway.’

‘No wonder you want him out.’

Joss said nothing but stood behind me at the window, so that I felt his shadow falling over me. He was close enough for me to smell his aftershave. Too close.

‘What if it works, Joss?’ I said. In the distance, a deer streaked through trees.

‘What?’

‘Your hare-brained scheme. What if it works and I get my scoop and he abandons this place and releases you from the contract? You’re back to square one. You can’t afford this house. You’ll end up at Wragg’s Caravan Park.’

‘There are other ways,’ he said. ‘Tourism. Opening up the grounds. There has to be a better way than this. I didn’t realise when I signed up for it quite how –’ he swallowed, ‘– humiliating, yes, humiliating, this was going to be.’

‘How are the mighty fallen,’ I said.

‘I haven’t reached rock bottom yet,’ he said. He put his fingers very lightly on my arm, just a whisper of a touch but it made me quiver like a bowstring.

‘Speaking of bottoms,’ I said, pulling away from him and stepping back, unable to resist an evil smile. ‘Wasn’t there something we were going to do?’

There was a slightly manic quality to his answering tightening of the lips.

‘Let me show you my box of tricks,’ he said, crouching down to pull something out from under the bed.

It was a battered old suitcase.

‘Of course,’ he said, fiddling with the snap locks, ‘my collection has nothing on his. He has everything, the most expensive, the best, the latest. Mine is a bit of a ragbag in comparison. But …’

He opened it. It didn’t look like a ragbag, it really didn’t.

My skin prickled and I clamped my thighs together, noticing how my pussy tightened in response.

He looked up at me and his face crumpled in sympathy.

‘Oh, darling,’ he said. ‘You’re pale. Don’t be scared.’

He put out a hand. I took it and knelt down beside him.

‘I’m not scared,’ I lied. Whips and chains were all very good in principle, pretty sexy in the imagination, but when you saw them up close and full-sized it was somehow extremely intimidating.

‘Think of them as toys,’ he said, picking up a cat-o’-nine-tails-type affair with a red leather handle. ‘It’s all they are, really. Feel the strands – they’re soft as anything.’

‘You’re trying to tell me this wouldn’t hurt?’ I said, running my fingers through them. It was rather pleasurable and they felt lighter than air.

‘It depends on how it’s used,’ he said. ‘It can stroke you like a lover or it can sting. A bit of both is usually best, I find.’

‘When did you get into all this? You weren’t when …’

‘Oh, I was. But I wouldn’t have touched you, Lulu. You were far too sweet and innocent.’

‘Is that what you thought? Is that why you ended it? Is it?’

‘Perhaps it had a little to do with it.’

‘You twat. You had no idea who or what I was. I was just some kind of archetype to you – the naïve little village girl who would adore and worship you.’

He stared at me.

‘You’re still very angry about all that, aren’t you?’

‘Damn right I am.’ I took a breath. I was trembling. ‘You had no idea,’ I repeated, working hard to get myself back under control. ‘No fucking idea at all.’

‘I know. It’s OK. I know that.’

‘Because I would have … for you. For me, too. I would have done all of this, and more. You say you couldn’t have touched me – what you did to me was far worse. Infinitely more painful.’

He put the flogger into my hand and curled my fingers around the handle.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Take it out on me.’

Suddenly I really wanted to kiss him. I wanted to offer to forget everything that had gone before and just push him down on the carpet and get him inside me. He reached a part of me nobody else ever had and I knew I would never be free of him. Why not just acknowledge it and throw my pride and all my fears to the wind?

Just as my grip loosened on the whip handle, preparatory to putting my fingertips to his cheek, he broke our eye contact and replaced it with a nervous chuckle.

‘So, how do you want me?’

‘I don’t follow. I don’t know the form – you do. You’re going to have to help me out here.’

‘The point is, Lulu, you tell me what to do.’

‘Yes, but I don’t know how to do it.’

He sighed.

‘Think of me, think of what I was like when I was nine. Be like that.’

I really wasn’t sure I could do it, then all my memories of that time came rushing in at once and I knew I could. I owed it to that shivering, scared seven-year-old girl to make her bully understand the effect he’d had on her.

‘Get on your knees,’ I said, and he dropped at my feet before I’d even finished speaking. I looked down at the crown of his head, at his luxuriant dark hair. He wouldn’t be thinning any time soon. ‘I’m going to hurt you.’

He said nothing, but bowed his head a little in acquiescence.

‘I’m going to do it,’ I continued, letting the strands drape over his shoulder before dragging them up his cheek, ‘but first I want to hear you beg me for mercy. Really beg me, even though it won’t have the slightest effect on what I do to you. I just want to hear it. No, don’t look at me,’ I said hurriedly, for he had raised his eyes to mine. ‘I can’t do this if you look at me. Keep your eyes on the floor.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, then he cleared his throat. ‘Erm. Please spare me, ma’am,’ he said. But he wasn’t taking it seriously enough, his manner overly theatrical.

‘That won’t do,’ I told him. ‘Plead.’

‘OK.’ He seemed to steady himself, furrowing his brow in thought. ‘What about … I beg you not to hurt me. I promise I’ll be good now. I’ll behave myself. I’ll do anything you want, anything you say.’

‘You’re not feeling it yet,’ I said. ‘You’ve forgotten, I suppose, how I used to cry and beg you to let me go. Have you?’

‘No. Of course I haven’t.’

His voice was whisper-quiet.

‘So?’

‘So perhaps that place is too dark for me to go back to,’ he said.

I gasped.

‘Too … are you serious? Too dark for you to go back to? Did you actually say that? Too dark for you?’

‘OK,’ he said, standing up. ‘I’m sorry. This wasn’t a good idea. There’s too much –’

‘Shut up,’ I said, lashing out to grab him by the wrist. ‘Shut up and bend over the bed. Now.’

He thought he could get away with this, but he was dead wrong. I was going to calm my troubled spirit by thrashing his gorgeous arse until he begged me properly. I deserved this. I owed it to myself – and to him.

He obeyed straightaway, kneeling at the foot of the bed with his upper torso pressed against the mattress. The cream linen trousers strained a little over a backside slightly more generous than I remembered, but still splendidly peachy and firm.

‘I want those trousers down,’ I said.

He said nothing but his breathing was hectic as he fumbled with the fastening then lowered the trousers over his bottom.

‘Boxers too.’

‘Lulu,’ he said, and I could tell by the quiver in his voice that he hadn’t realised until now what he had let himself in for.

‘Don’t you dare call me that,’ I shouted. I brought the flogger down with a swish on his perfect buttocks and he sucked in a breath. ‘Don’t you ever!’ I lashed again. ‘Call me.’ Again. ‘By that name.’ Again. ‘Again.’ And again.

A pink glow was spreading across his skin. Men’s bottoms were too hairy for this, I thought, trying to picture mine in the same condition. It gave me a weak, dizzy feeling to imagine our roles reversed; Joss with the whip, me bent over for chastisement.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ he said, sounding so subdued that my whip hand wavered.

‘You don’t flinch,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you flinch?’

‘It doesn’t really hurt,’ he said. ‘Not as much as you might think.’

This was at once both disappointing and satisfying.

‘What would I have to do to really hurt you? Use a cane or something?’

‘Yeah, the cane would hurt, but I don’t … I can’t really explain it, Lu–, sorry, ma’am, but I don’t really …’

‘What?’

‘I’m good at cutting myself off from pain,’ he said. ‘I’m good at not letting anything touch me.’

I wound a leather thong round and round my finger, taking this in.

‘That’s weird,’ I said. ‘How the hell do you do it? I wish I could.’

‘No, you don’t.’ He was still bent over the bed, talking to the pillows at its head. ‘It’s an overrated skill. But you’d have to pretty much kill me to get a real reaction from me.’

Why did this make me want to run over and hold him in my arms, why? After everything he had done, he could still wrap me round his little finger.

‘Do you have any kind of explanation for that?’ I asked, coming to sit on the side of the bed, so I could see his face. I put the flogger down. This clearly wasn’t going anywhere.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But you said you didn’t want to get involved. So it wouldn’t be fair to tell you.’

‘You’re a bastard,’ I said, outmanoeuvred again. He had made me do what I had vowed not to. He had made me care about him again.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Don’t you want to hit me some more?’

‘No. There’s no point.’

‘But you’re still up for the collaring plan?’

‘Yes. About that … oh, for God’s sake, get up, pull your pants up. I feel like bloody Cruella de Vil.’

‘I’d never confuse the two of you.’ He hitched up his trousers and the little trace of blush on his cheeks was enchanting.

‘Great hair, though,’ I remarked.

‘I prefer yours.’

‘Shut up.’ That interval of eye contact had gone on far too long and needed a rude interruption of some kind.

‘So, anyway,’ he said, throwing himself into an armchair and inviting me to do the same in its opposite number. ‘What did you want to say to me? About the collaring?’

I took a breath.

‘I want to make sure you’re clear about what’s on the table,’ I said.

He looked over at his dressing table, as if that was what I was talking about. He had a great collection of after-shaves and colognes scattered across it, plus a not-so-impressive collection of miniature spirits bottles.

‘Not that table,’ I said, rolling my eyes.

‘Maybe the long table in the great hall?’ he suggested. ‘You can get a hell of a lot on that.’

‘No, not that one either,’ I said severely. ‘It’s a metaphorical table and it’s really rather small. More of an occasional table – the one at the bottom of the nest that you can fit maybe a cup of coffee and a small side plate on.’

‘What’s on the side plate?’

‘A scone. I don’t know. Stop it. I don’t want you making me laugh right now.’

‘Sorry. You’re making my mouth water, though. Strawberry jam and clotted cream. Could we discuss this over a cream tea?’

‘No.’

I was becoming a little agitated at his derailing of my serious conversation and he could see it. He looked down at his crossed legs then shot me a contrite look from beneath lowered lashes.

‘Sorry. You should have whipped me harder. Go on, then. The floor’s yours. And the table.’ His humble apology was spoiled somewhat by the little snort of mirth that accompanied his final words, but I chose to ignore it.

‘I want to make it crystal clear that I don’t expect us to have sex.’

That wiped the grin off his face.

‘What? But I don’t know how that’s …?’

‘Possible? Of course it is.’

‘But if we’re going to convince His Nibs that we have a true bond …’

‘Orgasm denial? Chastity devices? You must have heard of them. Tell him that’s what we practise.’

Momentarily lost for words, he merely stared at me. I began to feel intimidated.

‘No,’ he said, his senses at last catching up with his shock. ‘No, that wouldn’t work. The sub can be denied orgasms – but not the dom. Orgasm denial is a challenge – you still have to have sex with me, you just don’t get to come.’

‘How dull. Still, it takes all sorts, I suppose. Chastity belts, then?’

‘You really want to go there?’

‘No, I don’t really want to, but I don’t think you deserve to get your grubby little mitts on me and so …’

‘OK.’ He swallowed. ‘I understand why … I really do. I just don’t think this can work without sex … look, Lu, I’ve no right to ask this of you but …’

He broke off. I had a bad feeling, and I was bracing myself to shout ‘No’ over the howling gale of ‘Yes, yes, take me, yes’ that would be howling in my head.

‘Can I try and prove myself worthy of you?’

It was not what I’d expected and I sat up, a strange swoony feeling in my head.

‘Prove yourself worthy of me? How? What do you mean?’

‘Like, I don’t know, a quest. Something my mediaeval descendants might have known all about. If only I could get advice from them. But I get the feeling I’ll need to do more than slay dragons or triumph at the joust to win your favours.’

‘You’re insane,’ I said, after a pause for consideration, but I couldn’t let him see the melting core of me so I made my voice as hard as I could.

‘No, I think it would restore my sanity, actually,’ he said eagerly. ‘For example, you’ve already demanded that I deal with my drinking. That’s a hell of a quest on its own. I wouldn’t do it for anybody – but I’m prepared to do it for you.’

‘You should do it for you,’ I muttered, but this was all taking me a long way past my ability to be tough and uncompromising. It was a stretch trying to find any response that wasn’t a dreamy sigh of ‘Oh, Joss’.

‘Doing it for you is doing it for me.’ He pursued the point with bright eyes, a puppy dog jumping up at me for some positive attention. ‘You have something I want. I’ll climb mountains and cross rivers to get it. It’s pretty simple, really.’

‘You’ll … let me think about what you’re saying. You want something from me – the means to get this unwanted lodger off your back.’

‘More than that,’ he said, but I shushed him.

‘And you’re prepared to do whatever it takes to keep me.’

‘Yes.’ His nod was impatient, as if he had spent hours explaining a simple maths concept to me.

‘But then it’ll all be over. Once I get my story, I walk away. So this seems a bit over the top for such a temporary arrangement. Do you see why I’m a little … confused?’

He chewed on his lip and looked out of the window for a while.

‘Perhaps I’m hoping,’ he said with a cough, ‘for too much.’

I tried to be gentle. ‘It sounds like it.’ Inside, I screamed, No, you aren’t. You can have it.

‘But look,’ he said, driven and persuasive once more, making my every resolve bend into a dangerous shape by sheer power of eye contact. ‘Let’s take things a step at a time. I need to be convincing as your dom. Therefore I need you to commit to a bit more than a chastity belt. We can take it as slowly as you like, but we have to make progress.’

‘The trust issue,’ I faltered.

‘Yes, yes.’ He took this up enthusiastically. He had an answer for me. He wasn’t going to let me get away. I felt like a target, marked out. My defeat at his hands was inevitable. ‘That’s what all this is about. You give me tasks, I complete them, your confidence in me is raised. Little by little, perhaps, but ultimately …’

‘You think you can make me trust you?’

‘I think I can try. I think I have to try. Please, Lulu. Will you let me try?’

Chapter Six

‘What’s all this about, though, Luce?’

I checked my watch and peered across the Feathers’ garden to the lane beyond. Would he drive or walk? Either way, it was still five minutes until eight o’clock.

‘Can’t a daughter take her mum out for a nice evening drink in the countryside?’

I took a sip of my shandy while mum chugged on her pint of scrumpy and black.

‘I just don’t know why you were so anti bringing Animal along. He’s at a loose end tonight. No gigs, no rehearsals. We were going to have a night in and watch The Lost Boys on DVD.’

‘Gawd, how many times have you watched that film? I bet you could quote the script word for word.’

She grinned. ‘Probably could.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, Jason Patric. Wish he’d come to Tylney.’

‘Perhaps he will one day. Anyway, I just wanted to have a bit of time with you, just us. You worked so hard when I was a kid to get food on the table and I want to say thanks for all you did for me.’

‘Aw, babe. I wasn’t exactly the perfect parent.’

‘Who is?’

She ruffled my hair.

‘It’s good to have you back,’ she said.

That was the moment he sauntered out of the French doors, carrying a tall glass of what I hoped was lemonade.

‘Is that …?’ Mum squinted, leaning forwards.

‘Joss, yeah.’

‘Shit, he’s coming over. Babe, are you all right with this?’

‘Fine, fine,’ I said tersely.

‘’Cos I know there’s history –’

‘Shh!’

He was within hearing range now, making a beeline for us.

He stopped at the table, directed his most charming smile at mum and said, ‘Ms Miles. Would you mind awfully if I joined you?’

Mum looked so thunderstruck I wanted to laugh.

‘What’s all this “Ms Miles”?’ she said, after a moment of stunned silence. ‘You know my name’s Karen. That’s what you always called me.’

‘Yes, but I feel I ought to pay my respects to you, if that doesn’t sound too pompous. May I?’

He waved his hand at the empty seat.

‘Oh. Of course.’ Mum was still thoroughly discombobulated and she kept giving me anxious little glances.

He sat down and took a mouthful of his drink.

‘When life gives you lemons,’ he said, with a covert little half-wink at me.

Yes. Lemonade. I restrained myself from giving him the thumbs-up.

‘Sorry to hear about your dad last year,’ said Mum.

‘Thank you. But I’m the one who ought to be saying sorry.’

‘What, to Lucy?’

‘No, or rather, yes, to Lucy, but also to you.’

He launched into a very sincere-sounding apology for the way he had treated her when she had been his parents’ cleaner. He had spoken to her dismissively, often left messes for her to clear up, made the extent of his privilege and her lowliness abundantly clear in every exchange they had had. I listened, impressed at how fully he detailed his every transgression. I had feared he might try to elude responsibility by invoking his youth or his parents’ influence, but he didn’t. He accepted blame for his own behaviour and begged her forgiveness for it in the most touching terms.

He had to mean it? Didn’t he?

My mother certainly thought so.

‘Oh, look, it was years ago,’ she said warmly. ‘You were just a kid and you didn’t know any better. I thought nothing of it.’

‘Thank you,’ said Joss. ‘But I know it’s always bothered Lucy, and it was important to me that I make my peace with you, and her.’

Mum laughed. ‘Make your peace? I think you’ve got a few years in you yet.’

‘I hope so.’ He laughed back. ‘But you know what I mean, I think.’

‘Yes, I do. You’ve really changed. You’re a really decent bloke now. I hope your dad’d be proud of you.’

His smile wavered then returned to full beam.

‘Thanks.’ He finished the last of the lemonade and stood. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I’m afraid I must be going.’

‘Oh, dear, all ready?’ Mum was in two-pints-down flirtation mode and she batted her eyelashes quite shamelessly.

‘I’m afraid so. Thank you again, Ms Miles, for being so understanding. It means a great deal to me.’

With that, he left. Or rather, with a parting glance at me, the meaning of which was absolutely clear.

I’ve done what you asked. Now it’s your turn.

‘Well,’ said Mum, staring after him. ‘What a turn-up.’

‘Yes. Have you finished that? I’m ready to go.’

‘What? But the night is young.’

‘I know, but I have things I have to do.’

Back in the car on the way to drop mum in Tylney, the expected interrogation began.

‘So, tell me, Luce, you’re not getting involved with him again, are you?’

‘Not in that way.’

‘I bloody well hope not. It’s his fault you buggered off to Hungary for seven years and I only got to see you once in a blue moon.’

‘No, it isn’t. I wanted to work in Hungary.’

‘You wanted to run away from him.’

‘How could I run away from somebody who wasn’t chasing me?’

‘There was more to that than met the eye. I’d put good money on it. I don’t think he wanted to treat you the way he did.’

‘Mum, just because he’s smooth-talked you tonight doesn’t mean you can rewrite history. He treated me like a doll. No two ways about it.’

I needed to calm down a bit. I was well over the speed limit. I relaxed my foot on the pedal and tried to breathe.

‘I bet he was under pressure. Boys from his background can’t just see who they like, you know.’

‘Mum, this is the twenty-first century. Everybody can see exactly who they like. And if they can’t, then they can do the other person the favour of steering well fucking clear.’

Mum sighed and fidgeted with her friendship bands as we passed the ‘Welcome to Tylney: Historic Heart of the Vale’ signpost.

‘I wish you’d told me at the time what was going on,’ she said.

‘He made me keep it a secret. What an idiot I was. As if that didn’t tell me everything I needed to know about our future.’

‘You live, you learn,’ said Mum, but I was in no mood for philosophical insights. I stopped the car in the alleyway behind Tylney Pet Supplies.

‘Aren’t you coming in?’ she asked, halfway out of the door, having noticed that I hadn’t turned off the engine.

‘No. I’ve got to see a man about a dog.’

She gave me a long look.

‘That man wouldn’t happen to be a lord, would he?’

‘Mum, it’s OK. It’s business. He wants to work on a story with me, that’s all.’

That’s all.

I knew, and I think she knew, that there was a lot more to it than that.

But she contented herself with a ‘Be careful’ before shutting the car door and skipping up the fire escape to the flat.

When I parked the car at Willingham Hall, I could see a dark figure sitting on the front steps. He was waiting for me.

He hurried across the gravel and intercepted me before I could change my mind.

‘Was that what you wanted?’ he asked breathlessly. His shirt collar and two top buttons were undone, taunting my efforts to keep a level head.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, it was exactly right. Thank you. I just hope you meant it.’

‘I did. I do,’ he said, leading me to the door. ‘Every word. I know I used to be a dick, Lulu. It’s not pleasant to have to confess to it in public, but it’s no more than I deserve.’

‘I’m glad you see it that way.’

We were inside the house now, standing a little awkwardly in the splendid but dusty reception hall. It needed mum’s touch. Perhaps he could re-hire her.

‘So,’ he said, after a heavy pause. ‘I think we should stay out of the bedroom to begin with. My office?’

‘Where you work? Where Fran works?’

‘OK, perhaps not. The breakfast room isn’t looking too disastrous and there’s plenty of space in there.’

The breakfast room. Where he had bent me over the table and had me until the silver plate rattled on the cloth.

‘Lead on.’

His smile lingered a little too long.

‘Exactly,’ he said.

The morning room was one of my favourites in the whole house, spacious, airy and with a beautiful view out over the back terrace and the gardens beyond. Even in darkness, it had a friendly, cheerful sort of vibe for which I was grateful.

‘You’ve done a bit of research, I know,’ he said, perching his backside on the breakfast table while I took a seat by the windows. ‘So I imagine you’ve read up on submissive training. I don’t think I can proceed in the standard kind of way, though, because I don’t think you’re a submissive.’

‘Don’t you indeed?’ I was fascinated, and slightly offended by this claim. How could he say he knew me that well? ‘And why’s that then?’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong. I think you like most of the aspects of submission. But my guess is, when it comes down to it, you’re a bottom.’

‘Are you calling me an arse?’

‘Lucy,’ he said sternly. ‘I thought you said you’d researched this.’

‘OK, OK, I know what you mean. Joke. Nervous. Weirded out.’

He nodded, the steel core less in evidence. ‘I get that,’ he said. ‘And actually I don’t much care for the term “bottom” in this context. It does sound like, well, as you say …’

We both smiled at each other, conspirators caught out in low-minded thoughts.

‘The difference between the two,’ he continued, ‘is that I have full control over a scene with a submissive. But with a bottom, we have to agree what happens first. Bottoms hate not knowing what’s going to happen – submissives enjoy it. Well, that’s a bit crude, but you see what I’m driving at?’

I nodded, rather relieved by his assessment. I wasn’t ready to just place myself in his hands and let him go to town on me … yet. But if we could negotiate what he would do to me beforehand, then it wasn’t so scary.

‘So, with that in mind, I think what I have to do is go through the sorts of things that would be expected of you at one of His Nibs’ parties and practise them. I’m not going to make you “my submissive” because you don’t want that. Unfortunately.’

He paused, looking sideways at me. I gave him my blankest face.

‘But I’m going to make you able to play the part,’ he continued after a sad-eyed pause.

‘Right. So what’s first?’

‘Positions,’ he said, standing up and snapping his fingers. I was so startled by the sudden change in tone that I stood up too, which seemed to delight him. ‘Posture.’

‘Books on the head?’

‘If necessary, but probably not. There are nine positions that he will expect you to know. Tonight I’m going to teach them to you. It’ll be up to you to practise and learn them before our next session.’

‘Sexual positions?’ I asked warily.

‘No. Just ways of presenting yourself to emphasise your submission.’

‘Right. So …?’

‘So,’ he said, coming closer and giving me a greedy up-and-down inspection. ‘Would you take off your clothes, please?’

‘Really?’

He tilted his head, his eyes boring into me.

‘I’ll put that another way,’ he said. ‘Take off your clothes.’

If I’d thought properly about this, I wouldn’t have worn the skinny biker-style jeans. There was no point fighting it. It was going to happen and, if I was honest with myself, I wanted it to. It was fair and equitable; he had laid himself open and now it was my turn.

Besides, something about the tone of his voice …

I let a door slide in my mind and convinced myself that I was acting under compulsion, powerless to disobey any command he gave. It was easier that way – just to switch off my sentient twenty-first-century feminist self and let the ragged, primitive stuff underneath it have its way.

It was easy enough to slide off my high-heeled pumps and unbutton my sleeveless white shirt. The jeans needed to be peeled though, and I half-turned away from him to do it, my hair hiding my face.

‘No, that won’t do,’ said Joss softly. ‘Stand up straight and look me in the eye.’

I wanted to moan, but I contented myself with shaking my hair out of my eyes in an aggressive manner and keeping my expression stony.

‘His Nibs likes to watch the submissives undress,’ said Joss. ‘And he expects it to be done in a certain spirit. Nothing hidden, everything on display. He considers that respectful. Trying to conceal yourself in any way is against his rules.’

‘I don’t know his rules,’ I remind him.

‘I know. I’ll help you. Look, what you did with the shoes and the shirt was fine, but you have to keep your eyes to the front while you take off the jeans and don’t try to hide anything. There’s more, but we’ll come to that.’

I shrugged and continued pushing the tight denim over my hips. I had to concentrate hard on not pushing my thong down with it, but I managed it somehow.

‘Look,’ I said, once they were at my knees. ‘I have to bend now, to get them off properly. Am I supposed to still keep my head up?’

‘If possible. Try it. And think graceful. Think swanlike.’

I gave a little huff of laughter at that. Swanlike I was not.

I managed to get them around my ankles without falling over, but a fit of mortified giggles was bubbling up inside me and it burst forth when I found myself hopping wildly to one side, contorted like the losing player in a hardcore game of Twister. Not so much swan as reef knot.

Joss rushed forward to catch me before I fell heavily on one side. By that time, I was squealing and cackling like a kid on a rollercoaster. He nudged me upright again. It was the lightest touch, nothing really intimate about it, but it shocked me.

‘Steady, girl,’ he said. One hand was still on my shoulder. ‘These weren’t made for stripteasing in, were they?’

He was close, warm, solid beside me. I felt the way a reformed addict might feel, presented with a handful of their former nemesis. The tiniest movement towards him could change everything …

‘I’m OK now,’ I managed to say. ‘Can we assume I won’t be wearing skinny jeans next time and just let me sit down to get them all the way off?’

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