Unfurl: Chapter 4

‘So they’re gone?’ Maddy asks.

‘Yeah.’ I lift my glass of champagne. ‘Thank God.’

‘Good riddance,’ she echoes, and I smirk guiltily. Because, yep. That pretty much sums it up.

I’m in the Jean-Georges restaurant at The Connaught Hotel in Mayfair with my oldest friends, Maddy and Alice, toasting my parents’ departure and my incredible, if temporary, new pad. And boy, is the decadence of this place the perfect way to draw a line under my tense and dysfunctional relationship with my folks, even if just for a few blissful months.

There were two kinds of girls at St Cecilia’s, an exclusive, conservative and exceedingly strict convent boarding school run by the Dominican order of nuns. The first were like Alice and me. Outwardly compliant. Inwardly compliant, for the most part.

The victims of that particular form of persistent Stockholm Syndrome Catholicism cultivates so well.

The ones who didn’t get the memo that they could actually think for themselves, because questioning things was not a life skill honed at St Cecilia’s. No thank you.

Happily for us, the school boasted a generous measure of the other kind of girl. Girls who, for some murky reason, seemed to have an innate ability to judge the teachings of the school, and of the Church, and to decide for themselves whether they were sensible or bullshit. Helpful or unhelpful. Healthy or unhealthy.

Girls who worked out for themselves that everything we were taught there about spirituality and life and sex was, at best, questionable and at worst harmful. Who decided to own their bodies and their decisions about their bodies.

Girls like Maddy.

She’s my idol. I mean that. For the past ten years, I’ve lived vicariously through her, watching her girlhood misdemeanours and her adult mistakes and triumphs and wishing that, just once, I had a tenth of the balls she had.

The balls to flash her bra to our ancient English teacher, Sister Agnes, when we were studying the poetry of Seamus Heaney and she said, ‘Right, girls. Seamus.’ Which, of course, sounded like an invitation to shame us.

Yeah.

Or the balls to sneak down to the pub on multiple occasions and kiss the local boys. She got suspended once and got away with it a million other times. Maddy would call that an outright victory.

Or the balls to harness the, I don’t know, courage and desire and initiative to go down on boys long before we left school.

In fact, Maddy lost her virginity long before we left school, too. And the unbelievable thing, from my and Alice’s perspective, was that the sky did not fall. She did not get immediately dragged down to hell by Lucifer himself or explode in a cloud of black smoke.

The most unbelievable thing, to be honest, was that, for Maddy, having sex was normal. Not forbidden. Not sinful. Not a sign of wicked weakness.

No.

It was an expression of a perfectly natural physical urge between two consenting adults.

And that’s what still gets me, to this day: that Maddy has the strength and innate wisdom and inner compass and self-belief to be able to burrow out from under the weight of the tonnes and tonnes of bullshit we were fed day in, day out, for most of our adolescence. She has the wherewithal to think for herself.

I’ve judged her for it, of course, something I’ve tearily admitted to her several times in recent years. Because it’s hard to emerge from a formative experience like fourteen years of convent education without being a judgemental little bitch who’s terrified of crossing the line and contemptuous of anyone who dares. And the reason for that, in turn, is the holy terror those nuns instilled in us of erring from what is right. From what is God’s will.

I might have got better academic scores than Maddy the whole way through school, but I wish to God I’d paid more attention to her when she tried to show me, through words and actions, that I was allowed to think for myself. That all the nuns and priests and parents in the world could not demand jurisdiction over my brain or my body.

I didn’t work that out till I got to uni, and I’m still unravelling years and years of crap. Sometimes I think I’m the slowest person there ever was.

But enough of my miserable whining about missed opportunities and still-lingering moral hangovers. My parents have cleared out for the summer, I’ve bagged their beautiful pad for three delightful months, and I’m sitting here, on a powder-blue velvet banquette in one of my favourite places in London, with my favourite girls.

The soft jazz music is pretty much completely drowned out by the buzz of beautiful people talking excitedly in every language from Italian to Mandarin. That we’re eating truffled pizza and being hit on left, right and centre by businessmen with plenty of swagger and the looks to back it up is the icing on the cake.

Maddy is regaling us with far too much detail about some guy she ‘fucked’ in the empty private room of a bar last weekend (her word; I don’t swear except in my head, and I definitely wouldn’t use that word as a verb).

The dynamic is the same as usual.

Alice and I sit there, shocked and tickled pink by her antics, because, as usual, we have nothing at all to contribute to any conversation about sex. Alice actually has a serious boyfriend. They got together in her final year of uni and he’s the only person she’s slept with, but once the dastardly deed was completed for the first time, she stopped giving us any details. Which I totally get. Talking about it too much would be disrespectful to George, her boyfriend.

Not so Maddy.

‘And then,’ she says, leaning forward, ‘he actually got down on his knees, and pushed up my skirt, and pulled my thong aside, and ate me right there, up against the wall. It was so fucking amazing, I can’t tell you.’ She takes a gleeful sip of her Pisco Sour and shimmies on the banquette.

My neck stains, as usual, and a heat flashes between my carefully crossed legs. There’s a clench, a pull, that’s welcome and unwelcome in equal measure, and I mentally add that image to my spank bank.

Not Maddy.

Ugh.

But the idea of a man, a living, red-blooded man, so overcome with desire for me that he would push me up against the wall and drop to his knees and pull aside my panties and put his face there?

I swallow.

I can’t even imagine what that might feel like.

Except I can, kind of.

And I want to know for sure how it feels to have the arousal I manage by myself with the shower head treated to the rough friction of a man’s actual tongue on my most intimate parts.

Maybe even one particular man’s tongue.

‘God, Mads,’ I mutter faintly, willing my flush under control.

‘Belle.’

A male voice has me jerking my head up. And I swear to God, I’ve conjured up the very guy whose tongue just infiltrated my fantasies. The guy whose looks and masculinity and striking confidence I’ve been shyly, slyly, thinking about when I touch myself at night in the past few days since my parents’ party.

The guy I was just about to mention to Maddy and Alice, actually. Except that it’s hard to top Maddy’s story about, you know, that with a story where I spoke to a guy and nothing else happened.

Now here he is.

And he’s as beautiful as I remember. So beautiful. That seems like a ridiculous word to use for a man, but I know Michelangelo would have agreed with me. Would have insisted on immortalising the planes of his face and the lines of his body in marble, if he’d been around today.

I stand to greet him. His brown eyes are crinkled, his mouth pursed with amusement, because I’m sure he and everyone else in this bar can see how flustered I am.

‘Rafe! Hi!’ I say in the gauchest manner ever and tuck a strand of hair behind my ear as I lean in to kiss him hello. I wouldn’t have the nerve to do it if he hadn’t kissed me goodbye the other night, an act I’ve replayed ad nauseam in my head. He smells the same this evening. Expensive and herbal and male. Delicious. I’m conscious of the slightest brush of his stubble against mine as we graze cheeks.

‘I thought that was you,’ he says as I pull back. His hands go lightly to my forearms and his gaze rakes down my body in a way that’s too open to be polite.

I’m suddenly thrilled I wore my favourite new Valentino dress to work today. It’s baby pink and perfectly tasteful, but its fit-and-flare silhouette—my favourite—is definitely flattering. Maddy instantly pronounced it my come to Daddy dress and predicted it would make me the target of a devastatingly handsome and bedroom-confident silver fox who’d play my unprofaned body like a fucking Stradivarius (her words. Obviously).

For the record, I would like to state that Maddy has zero clairvoyant abilities and Rafe has zero grey hairs.

Just so we’re clear.

He releases me from that warm, strong, confident grip (seriously, is this man confident in absolutely everything?), and I duck to grab my champagne flute. Dutch-courage-slash-social lubrication is desperately needed in his presence.

‘Um, Rafe. Meet my friends, Maddy and Alice. Girls, this is Rafe.’

Maddy and Alice, for what it’s worth, have already leaned so far forward towards him that they may as well be human sunflowers and he the fiery orb itself. Honestly. Maddy’s grinning at him like the cat who got the cream, and a sudden flash of nauseous dread twists in my stomach.

Because of course these two would be well suited. Maddy is gorgeous, glossy, and accomplished, and above all, she’s experienced. I bet these two could speak a language I’ve never even heard. But I couldn’t bear it. I really couldn’t.

Anyone but him, Maddy. Anyone.

I realise he’s not my property. I’ve met him once, for Pete’s sake, and his being my parents’ neighbour, and my own very temporary neighbour, does not give me any rights to him.

But still.

I want his eyes on me.

I want the light of admiration to spark in them when he looks down my fully-clothed body.

I want those hands on me and no one else.

Oh, golly.

‘Ladies,’ Rafe says, turning to them with a debonair grin. He shakes their hands, and they simper in a way that would be pathetic if it wasn’t so close to how I suspect I acted just then, when he kissed me.

Ugh.

I hate my life.

‘Rafe is my parents’ neighbour,’ I tell the girls. ‘He lives above their flat.’

Maddy smirks. ‘Penthouse, eh? Very nice.’ And while I’m cringing, she adds, ‘I hope that means you’ll be looking out for our girl while Ben and Lauren are away?’

He smiles directly at me, like, properly smiles, and it’s a truly beautiful thing. ‘From where I’m standing, you look like you’re doing just fine by yourself. But you know where I am if you need me.’

I do a nerdy little nod, flustered as heck.

What is it about this guy and my complete inability to act remotely cool around him?

And with that, he wishes us a good evening and takes his leave.

He’s barely out of earshot when Maddy lurches forward, her fingers fastening around my knee like claws. ‘He’s the one,’ she hisses.

‘The one what?’ I ask. I genuinely have no idea what she means, but I’m also intent on deflecting whatever crazy ideas she’s about to unleash. I know Maddy, and I’ve learnt not to encourage her when she gets something into her head.

‘The one. You know.’ She gestures indelicately at my crotch area. ‘The one who’ll take care of your little problem for you.’

No matter how great an inconvenience I find my virginity, Maddy finds it even more affronting. She’s been on a mission for some time to procure a willing male to relieve me of it, so I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s honed in on poor, unsuspecting Rafe.

‘No.’ No. Oh my God. I’ve blown the entire loss of my virginity up so much in my mind that not only have I put the fear of God into myself—which is obviously the Catholic Church’s main objective—but no one will ever live up to the standards I’ve set in my head.

Rafe would, obviously, smash those standards into oblivion, because, come on, the guy is smoking hot. But the merest suggestion from Maddy that I should consider him in that context is enough to make my neck flush and my thighs press together and my body shudder, because he’s so intimidating.

I’ve grown up around wealthy people. Influential. Powerful. I’m not easily intimidated. With Rafe, it’s not his social or professional stature that has me baulking.

It’s him.

His obscene good looks. His confidence in his own skin. The fact that he’s clearly a man who’d expect a lot from his girlfriends or… sexual partners. I bet he goes for women who are just as confident as him. Just as experienced. Women who know their way around his body as well as he, I’m convinced, would know his way around theirs.

All I’m saying is that he’s obviously a total catch, probably one of the most eligible bachelors in London, if indeed he is actually single, and there’s no way he’d even contemplate taking pity on a pathetic little virgin like me.

And there’s no way I’d ever have the courage to let him.

‘Belle. You beautiful, frustrating creature. If I didn’t love you so much, I’d strangle you. Actually, if I didn’t love you so much, I’d be dragging that delicious man straight into the disabled loos, because he is hot. As. Fuck.

‘But, instead, I’m sitting here, cockblocking myself because he was looking at you like you were supper, and you’ve been complaining for months now that you can’t find the right guy to show you how it’s done. So, for the love of God, please tell me what the fuck kind of excuse you’re making up in that tiny pea brain right now?’

She sits back, frustration written all over her face. And I know how she feels, because I’ve been pathetic these past few months. I made it my New Year’s resolution to have sex once and for all this year, and I’ve turned down every single man who’s crossed my path.

‘He hasn’t exactly offered,’ I say, crossing my legs defensively.

‘You’ve only just met him, right? And he came up to you just now. He’s interested.’

‘Mads,’ Alice protests. ‘Give her a break.’

I huff out a breath. ‘He’s too scary, okay?’

Maddy arches a perfect eyebrow. She’s not giving me an inch. ‘How so?’

‘Because…’ I pick at an imaginary speck of fluff on my dress. ‘Because he looks like that, okay? And he’s older. Like, a lot older. Can you imagine how many women he’s been with? It would be so intimidating. I wouldn’t be able to relax.’

It’s true. I wouldn’t. Being with a guy like Rafe would be absolutely terrifying. Except that doesn’t explain why the fantasy of him backing me up against a wall and burying his face in my neck while I run my fingers through that tousled hair sends goosebumps trailing all over my body.

I need someone I find seriously attractive. Obviously.

Rafe ticks that box. Obviously.

But I also want someone who’ll keep things straightforward. Who’ll be caring and considerate and gentle and patient. Who won’t mind that I’ll be totally crap in bed the first time. That I might be in pain. That I might bleed.

There is no way on earth Rafe is that guy.

I know he’d want things on his terms. He’s the kind of man who devours. Consumes.

Or so I imagine, anyway.