by Kate Davies
‘Obviously I believe everyone has the right to wear leads if they want to. And clothes pegs on their nipples,’ I said, doing a step ball change.
‘Is that a thing?’
‘Apparently,’ I said. ‘Though maybe it was just that one woman? I haven’t been to enough sex parties.’
‘Sounds to me like you’ve been to too many of them.’
Pretty much all of my friends agreed that I should ditch Sam if she refused to break up with Virginie. I felt both strengthened by their opinions and weak for relying so heavily on what they thought. But no one understood what Sam was like when we were alone; the way she looked into my eyes; the way she pretended to be a tiny hippo when she was in the bath, which I realize sounds obnoxious, but was honestly completely adorable; the way she made me come. Let’s not pretend the sex wasn’t a massive part of it.
The days passed, and she didn’t call. I found myself snapping at the people who did call me, because they weren’t her – the poor woman from the local pharmacy didn’t deserve my wrath – and I couldn’t concentrate at work; I’d be writing a letter about working conditions for junior doctors and I’d drift into a daydream about Sam, and my heart would start racing, and the only way I’d be able to calm myself down would be to read old texts or look at photos of us together.
But when my heart was racing, at least I was aware of it beating. I wasn’t comfortable, but I didn’t want to be. I was saving contentment for my retirement. You’re not supposed to be content at 26.
‘You sabotaged yourself,’ Nicky said, at my next session, when I told her about my job interview.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I said.
‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ said Nicky. ‘You’re terrible at taking constructive criticism. Let’s look at the facts: you had weeks to prepare for the interview, and you left it till the night before, and didn’t go to bed until one in the morning.’
‘My head wasn’t in the right place,’ I said. And I explained about Lyon and everything that had happened there.
She stared at me open-mouthed while I was telling her the story, and when I’d finished, she said, ‘So. First you had a threesome.’
‘More like a semi-threesome. Kind of a two-and-a-halfsome.’
‘In public.’
‘In front of other people.’
‘And then the next night she had sex with another woman without you, and you could hear the whole thing through the walls.’
‘Yes.’
‘While you were watching a documentary about AIDS.’
‘HIV.’
‘And did she sound like she was having a good time?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did the noises turn you on?’
‘No!’
She raised her eyebrows at me.
‘I was trying really hard not to be turned on.’
‘You should keep that bit in the story when you tell it. It makes the whole thing much more interesting.’
I thought about that. ‘It is a good story, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Are you kidding? You’re going to be dining out on it for years!’
‘Trying to self-harm with a nipple clamp is pretty funny,’ I said.
She looked at me, suddenly serious. ‘That’s not funny,’ she said.
I started to cry.
‘As your therapist, I advise you to send her a text right now and tell her it’s over.’
‘You’re not supposed to tell me what to do.’
‘I see it as my duty to intervene when my clients make decisions that could lead to them getting hurt.’
‘I won’t get back together with her unless she ends it with Virginie.’
‘But she’s still free to have casual sex with as many anonymous people as she likes.’
‘And so am I!’
‘I can help you decide what to say.’
‘I don’t want to send her a text,’ I said. But I took out my phone. And there on the screen was the green glow of a new WhatsApp message.
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. ‘It’s from her,’ I said.
‘What does it say?’
‘We need to talk. I love and miss you and I am prepared to compromise but you’ll need to compromise too.’
‘How romantic.’
‘I’m asking her to break up with someone she’s been seeing for years. It’s a big deal.’
‘This is going to end in tears.’
‘It won’t!’ I’d had enough of people telling me not to be with Sam. Bloody Cat and self-righteous Alice and now Nicky, who wasn’t even a proper therapist yet—
‘It will, and I’ll have to pick up the pieces. I mean, you’ll need a lot more therapy, which is good from my point of view, but you’re my client and I’m telling you what’s best for you.’
‘She’s what’s best for me.’
‘If what you want from a relationship is a collection of outrageous stories to tell at dinner parties, sure.’
‘She makes me feel alive.’
‘You’re a masochist. You know there are clubs for that sort of thing?’
‘I do. I’ve been to several of them.’
She blinked at me. ‘Tell me everything.’
So I told her, about the slings, and the gimp masks, and the water sports, and the clothes pegs, and the cutlery, and the leads, and the KitKats.
She sat there for a while and then said, ‘Well. That all sounds very interesting.’ A pause. ‘Are your friends jealous?’
‘Envious,’ I said, before I could stop myself.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Nothing. It’s just – you’re jealous of something you have. You’re envious of something you don’t have.’
She wagged her pen at me. ‘You’re my most pedantic client. You know that?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I need to be good at grammar and things, for work.’
She looked at me for a while. ‘Here’s the way I see it.’
‘I don’t really want to know the way you see it.’
‘Then why are you paying me £25 a session?’
‘Because literally every other therapist in London charges four times that much.’
‘The way I see it is this: you find it arousing to be dominated during sex.’
‘Yes. Fine. Definitely think we should talk about something else now.’
‘But Sam is starting to dominate you the rest of the time too.’
‘That is completely untrue.’ I could feel myself getting flushed and agitated, like my mother does when she hears words like ‘steel beam’ and ‘subsidence’.
‘You’re an intelligent woman—’
‘A compliment!’
‘I haven’t finished. You’re an intelligent woman. You claim you want to be independent. But you’re letting your girlfriend control you.’
I stood up. ‘You’re just prejudiced against people who do BDSM. You’re a kink shamer.’
Nicky smiled and crossed her legs. ‘You learned that phrase from Sam.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Are you actually happy with Sam?’
‘Yes. I am.’
‘And what are you going to do about the fact you’re going to be unemployed in a few months?’
‘I’m not thinking about that right now.’
‘I can see that. You’re distracting yourself with lesbian drama. How’s the anxiety?’
‘Fine,’ I said, but my hands were shaking, which slightly gave the game away. I thought I might be about to cry, so I said, ‘I think that’s enough for this week,’ and stood up.
‘Julia. Come back,’ Nicky said.
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I shook my head and shut the door behind me. As I made my wobbly way out into the street, I took my phone out and texted Sam back.
34. ELIMINATION DAY
Sam suggested meeting at The Glory. You could read that in two ways, I decided. It was intimate and welcoming and dark – the perfect spot to tell me how sor
ry she was, vow to break up with Virginie and toast the future of our relationship with a bottle of house red. But it would also be a good place to dump me: the sort of place you could have a serious chat, and small enough that I wouldn’t want to make a scene, not in front of all the trendy queers.
As I walked in, Sam waved at me and gave me a warm, gorgeous, uncomplicated smile and I just wanted to run away from the non-monogamy and the disapproval of my friends and therapist and the voice in my head that said, ‘She’ll never change’ and stare at her forever.
She held my hand as I sat down and said, ‘I’ve missed you so much, babes. I’d forgotten how beautiful you are.’
I hadn’t forgotten how beautiful she was, obviously, because I’d spent so much time watching her Instagram stories, but I had forgotten her charisma, and how completely, hopelessly attracted to her I was.
Sam ordered us a couple of glasses of wine. Large ones. We drank them quickly, asking each other banal questions about work and what we’d been up to over the previous two weeks.
‘Concrete Street are going to represent me!’ Sam told me.
‘That’s great!’ I said.
‘And you? How’s work?’
‘Fine. Still waiting to hear about the Senior Account Manager job, but I know I messed up the interview. Cat’s going to be a famous actress, though. Five-star review in the Scotsman for Menstruation: the Musical.’
‘Are you pleased for her? Or are you secretly a bit bitter? I would be.’
‘Massively bitter,’ I said. It was a relief, being able to admit that. ‘She keeps asking when I’m coming up to see the show but I don’t think I can bear it. I’d probably cry through the whole thing, which wouldn’t be appropriate, seeing as the Guardian called it “hilarious and uplifting”.’
‘They called it “timely”, too. I saw the review.’
‘God. Don’t.’
Sam laughed. And she looked me straight in the eye. And in that moment I didn’t care that Cat was probably going to move to Hollywood and appear on the cover of Vanity Fair in a ball gown, sitting on Glenn Close’s lap, because I had Sam back. Or I would, if this evening went to plan.
We were on our second round before we got down to business.
‘I should have known it was too soon for you to come to Lyon,’ Sam said, fiddling with her glass.
I nodded.
‘That was pretty full on, meeting Virginie for the first time and staying in her house.’
‘While you had sex with her.’
‘Which you knew was going to happen.’
We looked at each other across our glasses of wine. This was starting to feel less like a conversation and more like a negotiation, and I’ve never been much of a negotiator. I actually talked myself into a pay cut when I got my job – the recruitment consultant who sent me for the interview said, ‘Will you take the job for £28,000?’ and I said, ‘I’d take it for less, to be honest.’ So they offered me £25,000, and I hated myself for months, until I decided to do three grands’ less work over the year, turning up late and taking long lunches and looking at Twitter when I should have been answering letters about the IVF postcode lottery.
Sam took my hand. ‘I really don’t want to lose you.’
‘I don’t want to lose you either,’ I said.
‘But I can’t change who I am.’ She gave me a sad smile.
‘I’m not asking you to.’
She laughed. ‘Well. You are. A bit.’
Which was true. But she was asking me to change too, obviously. So I pointed that out.
Sam took a sip of wine. ‘I made a very difficult decision last week,’ she said. She took a deep breath and let it out, looking at me earnestly, letting the tension build, like a reality TV judge preparing to announce a contestant’s elimination. ‘I told Virginie it was over between us.’
I let out a breath. I felt relieved, sure. But I also felt guilty. Much more guilty than I’d anticipated.
‘It wasn’t easy,’ Sam said, looking at her hands. ‘She was very angry with me. Charlotte’s very angry, too.’
‘Mmm.’ Anger. That’s the other thing I was feeling.
‘You should know that I’m going to be grieving for her and I’ll need you to support me.’ She started to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to really miss her.’
It hadn’t occurred to me that seeing Sam cry over breaking up with Virginie would be as painful as listening to them fucking.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, putting my hand on hers.
Sam pulled a tissue from her pocket. ‘I have to be free to have casual sex. Otherwise this will all just end in tears.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘And I want you to have it too! It was fun with Emma in Lyon, wasn’t it?’
I thought back to that night. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘See?’ Sam said. ‘It doesn’t have to be threatening.’
But I was still threatened. ‘Why am I not enough for you?’ I asked.
Sam’s eyes widened. ‘That’s not it,’ she said. ‘That’s not it at all! The fact that I want to have sex with other people is completely separate from the way I feel about you!’
I nodded. ‘It’s hard to feel like I’m not being made a fool of. Nicky really doesn’t get it—’
Sam pulled away from me. ‘You don’t tell your therapist about what we do in bed, do you?’
‘Well – yes,’ I said.
‘She knows you’re into SM?’
‘She knows you’re into SM,’ I said.
‘And what does she think about that?’
‘She has a lot of opinions about everything,’ I said.
‘What does she think about SM and non-monogamy?’ Sam asked again.
‘She thinks SM is fine as long as the power dynamic doesn’t spill over into real life.’
I shouldn’t have told her that. Obviously, obviously, I shouldn’t have told her that.
‘You need to stop seeing her.’
‘I don’t,’ I said, pleading, touching Sam’s arm. ‘She says loads of stupid things. She thinks Alice secretly wants to be a housewife and that’s why she’s having doubts about marrying Dave.’
‘That makes no sense.’
‘Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. You can’t tell me to stop seeing her,’ I said.
‘No,’ Sam said, her voice softer suddenly. ‘No, that’s not what I’m doing. I’m sorry.’ She reached out for my hand again. ‘I just think you should find a counsellor who understands alternative lifestyles. It sounds like she’s a bit judgemental, OK, babes?’
If I stopped seeing Nicky, Sam and I would both have sacrificed something for our relationship. We would be even. So I said, ‘OK. I won’t see her for a while if that’s what you want.’
Sam sighed, her eyes squeezed shut, eyelashes flickering. ‘Thank you,’ she said, taking my hand. ‘Thank you.’
‘She’s controlling you.’
‘She’s not. I just don’t know how useful these sessions are at the moment.’
‘She told you to stop seeing me.’ Nicky did her trick of staring at me until I had to look away.
‘I’m finding it all a bit confusing. You don’t think I should be with Sam. And I want to be with her. So coming to see you isn’t making me feel better.’
‘Therapy isn’t supposed to just make you feel better. It’s meant to be hard work.’
‘I don’t want to work hard,’ I said. ‘I want to be happy. Sam makes me happy.’
And then I started crying, which undermined my point a little bit, and I tried to make myself stop crying, but that only made me cry harder and longer, my mouth turned down in a sort of pantomime of grief.
Nicky passed me the tissues. I glanced up at her, expecting her to be looking at me triumphantly, but she wasn’t. She looked concerned. Which was much worse.
‘Stop looking at me like that,’ I said.
So she looked at her notebook and said, ‘Have you really made up your mind?’
/> I nodded.
Nicky put down her pen. ‘Any time you want to come back,’ she said, ‘just call me. Call me in the middle of the night if you need to. I’ll always pick up. Unless I’m in a compromising position.’
As we said goodbye she hugged me, tight, which probably isn’t the sort of thing a therapist is supposed to do. She was wearing the same perfume as my mum. I pulled away and waved a vague goodbye and ran home down Green Lanes, crying harder than ever.
35. VINDICTIVELY CALM
I thought I’d feel more secure in my relationship with Sam now that Virginie was out of the picture. I thought we’d do the sorts of things really committed couples do – go on shiatsu massage courses, host dinner parties, describe each other as ‘my other half’ – but instead of throwing herself into being with me, Sam pulled away. I’d go for dinner at her flat and she’d open the door in her dressing gown, unsmiling, and put pasta on the hob without attempting to make conversation. I’d try and do enough talking for both of us, but she’d give one-word answers to my questions, and when I asked what was wrong, she’d say, ‘What do you think’s wrong?’
I’d find myself stroking her back and saying, ‘I’m sorry you’re having a bad time.’ She would huff in response, and say something like, ‘Could you not touch me? I’m feeling a bit sensitive right now. I just need some space.’
The trouble is, whenever someone asks me for space I want to spend every waking moment with them. The more monosyllabic and, frankly, unpleasant Sam became, the more I tried to fix her, sending her sweet text messages first thing in the morning, cooking dinners for her, making up little songs about how much I loved her. Some of them even rhymed.
A few weeks after Sam had broken up with Virginie, I persuaded her to meet me for a drink after work. She turned up carrying a large cardboard box. As she sat down, I saw that her eyes were swollen. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t care.’
‘Please tell me,’ I said.
‘Fine,’ she said, like she was doing me a favour. ‘Virginie sent all my things to the studio.’ She put the cardboard box on the table. ‘She sent back all the presents I ever gave her.’ Sam started pulling things out of the box – a silver necklace, small stuffed animals, endless cards. ‘This was the first thing I ever bought for her,’ she said, holding up a small vibrator. ‘I know I’ve hurt her, but she’s being cruel.’
