Unfurl: Chapter 5

When I check my phone at work, I have seven WhatsApp messages from Maddy. That girl is like a dog with a bone, so I can only suppose she’s continuing last night’s campaign in the name of getting me laid. She should have been a lobbyist. I roll my eyes and click.

Dear Lord. To stop the onslaught, I message her back.

I hit send and flounce back to the gallery’s reception desk. I’m not interested in what Maddy’s found.

Not remotely.

She’s probably discovered his net worth or something equally ridiculous. I’m as high-maintenance as her, but my healthy respect for money doesn’t extend to accommodating the penis attached to that money.

Twenty minutes later, I await Maddy at the entrance to Green Park. It’s no coincidence that the hedge fund she’s been temping at since she graduated is only a couple of streets away from our Dover Street gallery. The galleries locate themselves where the money is, and Mayfair is hedge fund heaven (or hell, depending on your perspective).

Let’s just say that Ventrix, where Maddy’s working, has provided rich male pickings for her. She’s working her way through the guys in the office and their mates and loving every second. Probably explains her reluctance to decide what she actually wants to do with her life, which is a shame. She’s super smart and could definitely get on a good graduate programme if she committed to finance.

She appears in a red sheath that looks incredible on her. How any of the straight men in her office can focus on their trades with her around, I do not know. She beams at me and hands me a chicken and avocado wrap.

‘Thanks,’ I mumble. ‘This had better be good.’

‘It’s more than good.’ She hugs herself with delight as we begin to stroll. ‘Seriously, babes, it’s fucking awesome. It’s like fate has taken our favourite little virgin under its wing.’

I stiffen as I unpeel the cellophane from my wrap. ‘Dear God,’ I groan. I start walking away from her, but she’s by my side a second later.

‘So guess what?’

‘What.’ I can’t even be bothered to make it a question.

‘Do you know what your friend Rafe does for a living?’

I consider the question, ignoring the coquettish way she says your friend Rafe. ‘Finance? Investments, I think? He and Daddy were talking about foreign exchange the other night.’ I’d tuned out and admired the view of his face instead.

‘Yep. And he also owns a club.’ Her face is glowing with the delight that comes from imparting delicious tidbits of gossip.

‘Right,’ I say cautiously. I can’t escape the feeling that I’m about to regret humouring her with this conversation.

‘Do you know what kind of club the lovely Mr Charlton owns?’

I raise my wrap to my mouth. ‘Probably not.’

She leans in. ‘A sex club.’

That has my attention. I stop and turn to stare at her, my wrap frozen comically between my teeth.

Maddy, unsurprisingly, takes advantage of my enforced silence to press on. ‘It’s a very discreet, very exclusive members’ club called Alchemy, just off Grosvenor Square. But it’s definitely an adults’ club, and it looks pretty kinky, from what I can find out.’

I swallow and recover sufficiently to ask, ‘And you know this how?’

‘Started with LinkedIn and fell down a rabbit hole,’ she admits cheerfully. ‘He doesn’t make a song and dance about it, but he’s one of the founders. Told you he’d be a good person to take that pesky virginity off your hands.’

That makes me laugh. I start walking again. ‘You’ve just confirmed exactly what I suspected—that he’s the last person I’d trust with such a… delicate problem. He owns a sex club, for God’s sake. He’s probably with a different woman every night. Ew.’

‘Don’t go slut-shaming him, you judgy little horror,’ Maddy huffs. ‘Just because you’re too scared to dip your toe in the water doesn’t mean everyone else has to abstain.’

‘You’re right,’ I say, chastened. This is the problem with an upbringing and an education where you’re constantly told all the fun stuff is wrong and wicked. You do indeed end up becoming a judgy little horror.

It’s just that—I don’t know. I feel disappointed, somehow. Like Rafe was my own personal little fantasy in the safety of my bedroom. He’s my neighbour. For now, at least. Last night I was scared he’d hit on Maddy. And now she’s telling me that he’s not only the total playboy I suspected he was, but he owns a bloody sex club, for Pete’s sake.

It just seems so… blatant.

And it makes him even more intimidating, somehow, if I consider that he indulges so casually in the very act that terrifies and tantalises me more than anything else. Ugh. He probably went straight there after our pedestrian little soiree and banged a beautiful model-like woman.

Or maybe even several beautiful women.

All while I slunk home to my flat, and lay alone in my bed, and touched myself, and imagined it was him touching me.

Double ugh.

‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘I know you’re not really judgy. You’re just fucked up. I am too—I just have other ways of dealing with it. Like fucking everything that moves.’

I shrug. That seems a fair summary of both of us.

‘But I haven’t got to my point yet,’ she continues.

I sigh. ‘Then please get to it.’

‘The club has a full suite of services. Very extensive.’ She smirks and lowers her voice. ‘And one of them is a programme for virgins.’

My eyes widen, and she seizes her advantage.

‘Yeah, missy. They actually have this thing for, as they put it, people who have little experience and wish to awaken their sexuality in style, or something like that. It sounds hot as fuck.’

I’m still staring at her. I swallow my bite of wrap with difficulty, because my nervous system has gone into straight fight-or-flight mode, and my stomach feels like it’s about to evacuate whatever way it can.

‘Seriously?’ I manage.

‘Deadly. Honestly, Belle, you should take a look at it. Or have a chat with your sexy new neighbour about it. I’m telling you, babes. You always moan about how it needs to be special, but hot, and you don’t want to throw it away on some shitty fumble that’s awkward as hell. This is your chance to make the whole thing exactly what you want it to be.’

I swallow. I don’t want to give Maddy an inch right now, but I already can’t wait to finish work today and lock myself in my parents’ flat and pore over this Alchemy website. I don’t know why, because entrusting my ‘issue’ to strangers is insane, and paying for sex is morally repugnant to me.

Even so.

If sex in general is the forbidden fruit, this is presumably the meth-laced fruit.

And, predictably, my brain immediately shuts down the merest thought of such debauchery while my heart rate picks up and all sorts of unwelcome sensations course beneath my skin.

She nods confidently. ‘Seriously. Check it out. The programme’s called Unfurl.’