‘Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.’
Nancy is as relentless as an alarm clock. If alarm clocks came with hands that shoved at your shoulder while they bleated your name. There’s no denying it’s an effective combination. I roll onto my back in defeat and find only empty space on my other side.
Wow. Looks like Stel managed a full night in her own bed.
Jesus Christ. It’s seven-ten. Looks like I managed a full night. I’ve had almost seven hours of uninterrupted sleep—I don’t even remember Nance crawling in beside me.
Three orgasms at someone else’s hands will do that for you.
I quickly shrug off the white-hot flashes of memory from last night. I’m definitely not entertaining those while I lie in bed with my seven-year-old daughter.
‘What are we doing today, Daddy?’ said daughter asks with the perkiness that can only come of being seven.
I drag a hand over my stubble. ‘No idea, baby. Oh, actually, you have Kitty’s party this afternoon.’ I swear, their social lives are far better than mine. Stel has a play date later while Nancy’s at her classmate’s party, and they both have my goddaughter’s party tomorrow. I’m ashamed at the stab of relief I feel knowing I’m not solely responsible for making this weekend a win. Cake and entertainers and other kids will take on a good chunk of that burden.
She punches the air. ‘Yes! Can I watch TV now?’
‘Why not?’ I say wearily. ‘I’ll be down in a sec to make you some toast, okay?’ I’d give anything to roll over and get another hour’s kip, but at least we lasted till after seven. I’ll take the win.
She clambers up onto her knees. ‘Can we watch Mummy?’
My heart twinges. We’re in the habit of watching old family videos together on Saturday mornings. It makes us all feel as though Claire’s still with us. ‘Let’s wait till Stel’s awake. You can stick on Bluey till then,’ I tell her.
‘Okay. Love you.’ She plants the sweetest kiss on my nose and then she’s gone, her footsteps making uneven little thumps on the stairs as she skips down them in a way that’s definitely not safe. I consider roaring at her to descend properly, but I won’t risk waking Stel.
Instead, I stretch, yawn, and dig my fingertips into my eye sockets.
Jesus fuck. Maddy.
Last night plays out in my mind like a porn movie, or like the life of some guy who is certainly not me. Alchemy lived up to its name last night, transforming me into some sex-crazed predator who could not get his fill of the young woman he bid on and won, and who came inside her body three times.
I was bewitched, completely caught up in the overt carnality of the setting. Still, I can’t quite believe the catalogue of debauched behaviour I racked up.
Joining and winning a bidding frenzy because I was driven half mad with lust at seeing her up there on stage with that guy warming her up.
Ordering her to her knees almost as soon as I’d won her.
Trussing her up on the cross and commandeering a crew to help me to go town on her.
And fucking her from behind, twice, just as I’ve imagined doing since I ate her in Alchemy and just as I’ve tried very hard not to imagine doing for far, far longer than that.
I blow out a breath. Jesus. I’m so out of my depth here. My body feels knackered, but in a really good way. Not like the usual physical toll emotional exhaustion takes. I had a fucking ball with Mads. It was an out-of-body experience and probably an out-of-mind one, too, because that wasn’t me.
But what man can resist a woman like that, with her smoking body, and her filthy mouth, and her endless appetites for kink and, seemingly, for my cock.
She consumed me in the best possible way, and I was here for every second of it, and I suspect it was just what I needed.
However.
Lying here, the indent my little daughter made beside me still warm, it all feels… I don’t know. Sordid. Like I allowed myself to get pulled downwards into the darkness last night, into a pit of depravity and base urges, when really I should be trying my damnedest to cling to the light.
To what is wholesome.
Real.
To parenting my daughters to the best of my ability, and focusing all my efforts on fostering their innocence and showing them the world can be a good, bright place, even without their mother in it.
This is where real, sustained happiness and peace lie. Not in the brief flashes of ecstasy I’ll find in the pleasures of the flesh.
There was nothing wrong with what I did last night—I know that. I understand intellectually that I’ve long thrown off those moral shackles the monks served us up at school. That I reject the Church’s teachings on sex.
And, most importantly, I know that everything we did at Alchemy last night was between consenting adults who were having the times of their lives.
I know all this to be true, and yet I can’t shake off the guilt and shame that cling to me, turning my stomach. Like I let myself and my daughters and my wife down by fucking a much younger woman over and over again like a bloody ravenous beast.
I pride myself on my control. On my ability to keep my shit together. My discipline and stoicism are the only reason we’ve survived this long and I’m not lying in a darkened room day after day while the girls subsist on cereal straight out of the box.
I should have been strong enough to withstand her allure. Steadfast enough to drown out her siren’s call.
There’s only one thing for it.
I need to get it off my chest.
I need to confess.
Once I’ve dispatched the girls to their various social appointments, ushering up a silent prayer of thanks to Ruth who left all necessary birthday presents neatly gift-wrapped and clearly addressed to the relevant kids on the kitchen island, I head to the sanctuary of St Monica’s in Ladbroke Grove.
I haven’t been able to shake off the guilt and shame all day. It reminds me of the uneasiness I used to feel at uni when I’d crawled out of the bed of some random girl I’d shagged the previous night while absolutely hammered. This is worse, though, because every memory is crystal clear. There’s no blessed ambiguity, and I only have myself to blame for what was a pre-meditated and utterly out-of-character lapse in judgement.
I went there last night knowing I intended to win Maddy. To gorge myself on her body till I forgot every single problem in my life. And it fucking worked.
Still, sitting through half an hour of footage with my girls wasn’t the bittersweet experience it usually is. It was devastating. I streamed video after video from my phone to our big TV screen in the den, sandwiched between them as we all veered from laughter to tears and back again a million times.
But instead of the righteous outrage that I felt against God for taking Claire too early, I had a debilitating bout of self-loathing. It was impossible not to juxtapose the view of my beautiful wife, laughing on-screen with my beautiful daughters as she attempted to teach them the Macarena with the searing, intoxicating and totally fucking degenerate memories of licking Maddy’s soaking pussy while she was cuffed to a cross.
The contrast between light and dark was too great, as was the irony that the acts that so consumed and enraptured me last night were the same acts that rendered my ability to grieve my wife, honestly and open-heartedly, so much harder.
St Monica’s is a pretty uninspiring Victorian church at the more impoverished northerly end of Notting Hill, but the moment I’m inside the nave I feel that familiar stillness like a benediction. It’s silent except for the distant sound of humans and traffic, the scent of incense and candle wax hanging heavy in the air.
Some sinners feel judged when they enter a church.
I feel held.
Cradled.
Whatever my sins.
The light in the confessional is on above a wooden plaque that reads Fr John Murray. The penitents’ door is open, so I step inside and kneel.
‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned.’ I steeple my fingers in front of my face. ‘It has been a million years since my last confession.’
There’s a soft chuckle from the other side of the wooden grille that separates me from my confessor. ‘Well, well, well. If you’ve come to confess that you own a sex club, it’s about time.’
My laugh is pained. ‘I heard it was never too late to unburden myself to God.’
‘That it’s not. Might this confession be better heard over a pint?’
I look up, though I can’t see him properly through the fretwork. ‘Can you get away?’
‘No one’s come in all morning, and I’m thirsty. Besides, it’s not every day Zachary French blesses us with his presence.’
‘I’m surprised I haven’t gone up in a ball of flames,’ I confess.
He laughs. God, I’ve missed his laugh. It’s warm and rich, the laugh of a man who sleeps soundly at night.
‘The Lord may choose another way to show you the light. Come on. You’re buying.’
