to see order in the chaos. Breathing in the scent of jasmine and clary sage she allowed herself to relax and reflect.
* * *
The day started out so well. The scent of autumn cutting through the frayed ends of summer met her as she left the house for work. She wore a scarf and a light jumper, a combination that pleased her. It reminded her of childhood walks and crunchy leaves, of firelight, laughter and burnished reds and golds. She was doused in optimism until she looked in her post box and read the printing on the outside of a letter. A slow nausea crept over her as she slipped a finger along the crease and opened the envelope.
It was a fine notice – a fine of hundreds of pounds for not renewing her car tax, which she had had the money to pay but had not. What made her flood with guilt was that she had sworn to him, with wide and believable eyes, that she had paid it. She had even persuaded herself that she had done so. It had just been one of those dull little jobs that she did not want to do; spending money on a stupid piece of paper seemed such a waste. She had ignored it at first and then lied to make herself seem more efficient and then, when she remembered it in the dead of night, she just hoped somehow that she could ignore it and be let off.
When she was a child her father used to lend her money all the time and not once had she to repay it. It seemed so unfair to have to learn now that the world was not her benevolent father. Therein lay the problem, and it had led to this horrid, officious, formal telling-off, with barbs on.
She knew the issue would not be the money. If she needed that amount for something there would be no problem. The problem was the needless expense and the twenty-something different lies she had told to cover it up. Just moments before, she had felt so good, so on top of it all, but the letter made her feel fed up and useless. She felt stupid and that was so much worse than being in trouble.
All day she kept up the rhetoric of petty recrimination. The sustained and personal attack left her sad and strained by the end of the day and so when her beloved rang to suggest dinner she felt humbled by his offer and his ability to love such a fool and a failure.
She drove home and allowed a plan to gather, like birds flocking on telephone wires to await the flight from winter. She had made a mistake, she reasoned, and more than that she had chosen to lie, which was a blow to their relationship and was disapproved of by both of them. Except that his disapproval led to her being upended over his lap and dealt with in ways that made sitting a horrid experience and embarrassed her for days after. She simply would not tell him what had happened.
Her reasons were simple, considerate and mostly about him. He would be tired after a long day and would not wish to have another problem to deal with. A loving girlfriend meets her beloved with cheerful countenance. She had beaten herself up all day in ways that he would never dream of and so had paid for all her wrongdoing. She felt rubbish and unhappy and he wanted her to be happy, so that was what she should be.
She lay in the bath trying to reconcile her self-recrimination with an intention of feeling good and confident and in control.
The water had gone tepid while she was lost in her reverie, and she shook herself and then smoothed soap over her buffed skin to bring a delicate scent to every pore, disguising the turmoil just beneath the surface. She needed to reinvent herself, for him, for both of them.
The theatre of lotions and potions, their scent and the motion of application convinced her that it was possible to transform herself from total stuff-up and useless failure to fabulous lady, with only lotions and potions and creams and some terribly expensive underwear for her tools.
Towel-dried, she picked up her most treasured body lotion (price, a girl secret) and as she slicked it all over she did indeed feel different. She breathed in a scent of grown-up confidence. Her legs were so smooth that the stockings glided up them as if they knew their place, the seams taking only moments to straighten as she did her Betty Grable pose in the mirror, smiling over her shoulder.
Her nails, painted scarlet before her bath, looked shocking against the cups of her bra. She ran her fingers along the lace edge to ensure perfect placement, imagining that they were his possessive fingers, and then smoothed her hands back over the black silk knickers that clung to her round bottom. She continued to think of smooth, fragrant skin as she felt herself grow into her accustomed role and click smoothly into her rightful place and demeanour.
She smiled and applied make-up, the delicate shading and highlighting, relieved that she could put a little more shadow on her eyes now that the dark nights had gathered in. She felt competent while she tipped her head left and right to check her mascara, imagining an evening when she could flirt and laugh and tease. She stood back from her dressing table, her whispering conscience blowing gently at the dusts of powder she left behind, and reached for a simple black dress.
Understated and graceful, it slid over her perfumed body and hid the secretive lace of her underwear beneath flowing lines. Her shoes were satin and slightly too high for her to feel relaxed going down the carpeted stairs so she carried them with her purse when she heard the sound of the door. She slipped them on as she turned the corner to greet the man she adored, the man for whom she had spent hours in preparation.
He smiled when he saw her and breathed her in, resting his lips on her head while she filled the space beneath him. He stroked her shiny long hair and noted the brightest of red nails moments before he kissed her. Then, because she looked so sad when he drew away, he kissed her again.
Finally he straightened his arms to hold her away just far enough that he could have a proper look, and within a heartbeat he saw it. Something was off. He took his time and looked beneath the creams and the shading, past the costume and the charade.
His blue eyes probed, and she kept silent, letting him search, sure that he could not find what was no longer there. She smiled with longing, and when he took her hand and pulled her towards the kitchen chair she licked her bottom lip in anticipation.
Her eyebrows drew in sharply when he pulled her onto his lap. She looked at the floor in silent offering, her knees quivery at the thought of kneeling before him in the way they both enjoyed so much. She frowned in disappointment, and decided that he had broken a man law when he ignored what she was so eager to give.
He looked deeply into her face as if it were a page of fine print, and she wondered what sort of answers he would find there. So she told him the truth – that they had dinner reservations and that she was starving, and then gave him several reasons for their immediate departure, but when she paused to recall the exact nutritional content of her lunch her speech faltered and she fell into the silence that he laid before her like a rug.
He sighed and cleared his throat. ‘Are you going to tell me?’
He remained patient while she explained that there was nothing to say, and did he like her nails? And he had no idea how hard it was to get seamed stockings to go straight up the back of a leg. Her delicately constructed façade of gloss and flirtation crumbled, to her great annoyance, and she almost said how mean he was to shatter her good mood. But then she saw such love and consideration in his eyes that she forgot to say anything, and settled into silence once more.
When she started to trace the line of his shirtfront with her finger he knew she was ready to listen.
Her ankles lightly swayed back and forth while he talked, and her teeth gently bit her lower lip. His deep, steady voice stilled her, and despite her fear and shame she felt calm and safe for the first time that day. Truth bobbed up, desperate for air, and her hands reached for it too slowly to hide it from him.
With one finger tracing the buttons on his shirt and her eyes never higher than his collar she told him all of it. It spilt out of her
