Chapter 5

The next morning I woke up early in Sarah's warm, heavy arms. Restlessly, I thought about us, about Ed, about the future. It was so frightening, and yet it was actually possible to visualise a future with Sarah, if we could just wait until she left school. I would plan a trip for us, a big, big trip to the places whose names haunted my atlas. Marrakesh, Nepal, Kashmir, Ceylon ... Sarah would have a gap year to last a lifetime. Wouldn't it seem entirely natural for two young women to go travelling together, for security and companionship? Maybe we would never return, or not until lesbians were treated like normal people. Was there anywhere we could go where life was like that? Berlin ... or Paris ... America. New York, Los Angeles, perhaps San Francisco, if the rumours were right...

I knew was going to have to break it off with Ed, and tell him something close enough to the truth for him to believe while protecting Sarah. I would have to invent a new lover, or a crisis, or ... I realised that I would genuinely miss him. He had opened my eyes to many things, given me a musical education, an appetite for adventurous sex, and despite his typical male chauvinism, he'd always been a pretty considerate lover. The problem was that even though I was very fond of him, and I hated what I would have to do to a man who had given me many good times, I now knew that I didn't really love him, not like I loved Sarah, with every cell of my being.

Just thinking of her obliquely led my hand to stray down to my sex. I parted my legs a little, and toyed with the curls, a tingle of tenderness and the first hint of arousal teasing my nerves. Thinking of Ed with warmth and regret, I remembered again the drugs in the inner pocket of my suitcase. I thought of Ed and I, stoned, fucking crazily, or languorously ... I thought of the Mandrax, and how easily and pleasurably Ed buggered me when I took half a Mandy beforehand. I thought of Sarah's hand ... I stroked it as she slept, and imagined it squeezing into me...

And then, in the peace and calm of that morning, which was really the first chance I had had to reflect upon the vast and sudden changes to my life, I thought of something else very important that had been nudging rudely at the back of my mind since the first afternoon, and long before that too, in an unfocussed sort of way. When Sarah pinned me down, I had found the sensation of helplessness oddly and powerfully erotic. I thought back further, and found there was a pattern I had not pieced together before. When Ed grasped me roughly me and gored me deep in his lust, as he sometimes did, smacking my bottom hard as he took me from behind, or holding my arms or wrists tight to keep me from struggling, which I wasn't actually very likely to do because I liked it like that, it did hurt me, but at the same time - not, because that edge of pain was acting as another erotic spur. It now dawned on me that it was the sensation of helplessness and vulnerability before his overpowering strength that stimulated me most. There were other incidents too, minor but incremental that I now found followed the same pattern, where I sought pain or restriction of movement to achieve more pleasure.