When I was nine, we went on a skiing holiday with three other families and my mum came home with someone else’s husband.
If she hadn’t pulled the most epically cool stunt ever and upgraded my dad, I suspect I would have ended up like Belle.
Belle One-Point-Oh, I mean.
The Belle she was until earlier this summer.
The Belle who spent her entire time at school, and far too much of her time at uni, being a good girl.
The Belle who listened when the nuns and the priests told her that her body didn’t belong to her, nor did her beliefs, or thoughts, or desires.
The Belle who thought it was normal, if not healthy, to have a domineering, control-freak father running a patriarchal household with a submissive mother who’d either been brainwashed or given up the fight.
It’s never been clear to me which camp Belle’s mum, Lauren, fell into. A bit of both, I suspect.
I get it. No judgement here (well, maybe a little). Belle’s dad, Ben, has always been such an overbearing wanker that I’m sure living with him was like being on the losing side of a war of attrition. It was easier just to put up and shut up.
Anyway, I know now that my own parents’ dynamic was similar, and that, for a while, my mum did put up and shut up. Not that my dad was quite as religiously conservative as Belle’s dad, thank fuck. But he was still a pain in the arse.
One February, four families went off on a half-term ski trip to Megève. All the parents were friends from the golf club, and we kids knew each other through the interminable golf-centric socialising our parents did.
Anyway, we came back from that trip and Mum sat me down and told me she was leaving Dad for Mr Hudson, or Justin, as she skittishly called him. Apparently they’d got on far too well in the hot tub, and the rest is history.
At the time, I was far from sanguine about the entire affair (apt word) and acted up for several years to come. I didn’t like Justin’s fancy house on the Wentworth Estate. I liked his good-girl daughter, Milly, even less. And while Milly, who was two years older than me, conducted herself with dignity and grace during the joining of our families, I was such a hideous little brat that Mum and Justin shipped me off to board with my stepsister at St Cecilia’s aged eleven.
Unlike Belle’s parents, who were and are still staunch Catholics, my mum was more concerned with the school’s focus on discipline and its stellar academic record. She hoped it would be a ‘grounding influence’ on me, and to that I say: grounding influence, my arse.
It most definitely was not.
I acted up. I gave the nuns grief, but, God knows, not as much grief as they gave me. I made my displeasure clear about the stupid bloody rules and the endless force-feeding of nonsensical Catholic doctrine.
But, after a few tough years at school and at home, I settled down. I decided Milly wasn’t terrible. I found friends who grounded me—most notably Belle and our good friend Alice—and I came around to the idea that Mum’s husband upgrade might not have been the worst thing ever.
For her or for me.
Mum stood up for herself, you see. She realised her relationship was utterly shite and she refused to take it. She walked. Even more impressively, she locked in a fantastic new guy before she even took a leap into the unknown with two young kids.
She was unhappy with her circumstances, and she was unhappy with the person those circumstances made her, and she took action to change those circumstances.
And I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty much the most important life lesson she could have taught me.
More life lessons came afterwards, courtesy of my newly liberated mother, bathed in the love of a deserving, adoring guy. They came as Mum grew back into the fullness of the woman she once was and stepped back into her true power, and as I grew older and discovered my own sexuality, and she deemed me mature enough to hear her message.
I mean, sometimes her message has been a little too graphic, but I’m still grateful.
And God, do I wish I was able to make my beautiful Belle hear it, too. Feel it in the very essence of her being. But it took her years longer than me, because the well-meant and impassioned rants of her bestie couldn’t compete against the relentless fucking drip of toxicity she heard from every adult around her.
My mum’s message to me?
My message to Belle?
Nobody gets to tell you what to believe.
Nobody gets to own your mind, your heart or your body.
You own them.
You get to decide.
The power those words gave me, really, was the courage to be my own steward. To choose my own moral path over the empty, dogmatic rhetoric I was fed.
To have faith in the humanist model of the universe I slowly constructed and to forsake the patriarchal one fed to me, that of an old man whose henchmen guarded the gates to his paradise and whose nemesis ruled the underworld.
To measure others by their words and deeds and not by their blind adherence to the rules set down in millennia-old books.
And, most importantly, to trust that the pleasure centres in my body are there for a reason and that I own the right to enjoy my body and its damn fine capabilities with whomever I choose.
I choose to believe that sex is a staggeringly great perk of being a flesh and blood human being, and that I’m entirely justified in doing whatever I please to maximise that perk, as long as my co-conspirators (yes, that’s plural) consent to and enjoy whatever sensual acts we dream up.
Alchemy and Rafe may have helped my best friend to unfurl those parts of herself she’d kept closed off for far too long.
But for a hedonist like me?
Alchemy’s what I imagine when I think of heaven.
My day improves the moment my bestie sweeps into Alchemy’s offices. We all sit in a large, high-ceilinged room separated from the gorgeous meeting space at the front of the building by huge double doors. The Alchemy building is a classic white stucco Georgian townhouse bang in the middle of Mayfair. Its oversized scale and lavish period features make it a gorgeous place to work.
Five of us have desks here.
Rafe, who splits his time between here and the offices of his kind-of hedge fund, Cerulean, where he and his mates manage their own enormous pots of cash.
Gen, who’s COO and also manages memberships.
Cal, head of marketing and promos and therefore kind of my boss. He’s out and about a lot, though.
The Hot Nerd, Zach, who does things with numbers and spreadsheets that I don’t pretend to understand and pays my salary.
And moi. Obviously. Team Alchemy’s newest recruit and self-styled Little Miss Sexy Social Media.
Rafe’s here today. As soon as he spots his beloved, he’s out of his seat like a scalded cat and pulling her into his arms for a kiss that he should probably take to The Playroom, because office-friendly it ain’t. But they’re sweet, dammit. I can’t deny that.
As soon as I laid eyes on Belle’s delicious older neighbour, I knew he was the guy to rid her of her inconvenient little virginity problem. And yes, I take full credit for online stalking him sufficiently to discover his Alchemy links and for urging Belle to ask him about the Unfurl programme.
But even I never saw it going like this. My amazing friend, who’s probably one of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever laid eyes on, had this guy on his knees for her before you could say pop my cherry. He wangled his way into all her Unfurl sessions, he popped that cherry in style in Alchemy’s playground while they role played a client and his expensive hooker (did I mention these two really like role play?), and he fell, hook, line, and sinker. I mean, they both did.
‘Get a room,’ I drawl idly. Rafe releases Belle and cups her face in his hands, searching her gorgeous, green-y hazel eyes with his big brown ones like he’ll find the answers to the universe’s greatest mysteries in their depths.
I assess my friend proudly. She looks cute. My clever girl works for Liebermann’s, which is a seriously heavyweight global art gallery. Their London outpost is nearby, on Albemarle Street. Today she’s every inch the chic art world princess in a grey fit-and-flare Alaïa (one of her signature brands) and grey suede heels. She oozes class, and I approve wholeheartedly.
But the best bit, better than her killer figure and obnoxiously great legs and Bardot-esque hair, which is now looking a little rumpled, is the flush of love and happiness—and probably arousal—on her gorgeous face. The adoration of a good man will do that for you.
Rafe releases her and begrudgingly permits Gen and Zach to come and hug her. Cal’s out today, which I suspect is just as well. All’s fine between him and Rafe, but Cal was in a few of Belle’s early sessions, so he knows her body far better than I’m sure Rafe would like.
Yeah. It can get a little incestuous when you’re all involved with a sex club.
I rise from my desk and grab my handbag. The weather’s still glorious, hence my adorable little denim mini-dress today, but in an ode to autumn I’ve donned my epic over-the-knee suede Gianvito Rossi boots in a soft beige. They’re perfection with the dress, and they show off a nice sliver of still-tanned thigh.
I feel eyes on me as I tug my dress down to a decent level. As I swivel my head in the direction of the French doors at the back of the room, Zach’s dark head jerks down towards his keyboard so quickly he must have whiplash.
Hmm.
Interesting.
I have a burning question for Belle, and I spit it out as soon as I get her outside. Rafe’s pissed off that she’s going for lunch with me and not him, but our Green Park girly lunch dates are sacred, and we’re both determined to make the most of them while the weather’s still this glorious.
‘So,’ I ask, taking the Pret wrap she hands me. ‘Are you getting involved with Slave Night?’
It’s no exaggeration to say I’ve thought of nothing else since Cal brought it up.
Imagine how you feel when you know you have an entire spa day to look forward to today. Or a shopping trip. Or you’ve allocated the day to achieving nothing except a Bridgerton binge.
That’s how I feel about Slave Night.
Not merely excited, but blissful, if that makes sense?
My brain and my heart and my lady parts and my entire nervous system feel swirly and warm and delirious.
It’s the submission factor, I think. The idea that I’ll be participating in an event that’s been choreographed precisely to take care of me and my most elemental desires.
The prospect of standing up there on that stage, exposed and on display in only the most exquisitely delicate, shockingly scanty lingerie.
Being admired, and coveted, and bid for, and fought over, and won.
Being claimed. Enjoyed. Devoured. Engulfed. By a man, or men, high on the power of ownership.
Putting myself unquestioningly into their hands and letting them do what they will.
Being docile. Pliable. Having my body undulate just for them as they bend me over or push me down and spread my legs and claim my mouth and take me every which way.
Being carried away on a tide of yearning, of need, so great it unravels all the strands that make me the person I think I am and puts me back together in an altogether different form.
The warmth, the richness, of the prospect awaiting me has been gathering mass deep inside me. Building. Flourishing, even. But, as I said, it’s not excitement. More a sense of peace. Of certainty that my most primordial needs will be met.
Yes. It’s fair to say my expectations are sky high.
Belle’s a far more recent disciple on the path to owning her body and having her needs met. Her exploratory journey’s been somewhat shorter, given she and Rafe are now a monogamous item.
But I know for a fact their sex life isn’t short on adventure, and I’m also aware that, during her time on the club’s Unfurl programme for virgins or people who wish to expand their experience, she yielded to her own desires to be looked after by multiple guys at a time and that she fucking loved it.
What I’m trying to say is that Unfurl (and, to be fair, Rafe) did such a great job of liberating her from the burden of toxic religious bullshit she bore that I reckon she’d be all over this Slave Night thing if she was single.
Now she gives me a smug side-eye over her wrap while considering my question.
‘Kind of.’ She bites in.
‘Meaning…’
We cross over bustling Piccadilly and head into the sumptuously verdant glory that is Green Park. Given our insistence on wearing ridiculous heels, we’re both walking slowly.
I wait. Belle swallows and relents.
‘Meaning Rafe, obviously, had a total hissy fit at the concept of me being up for grabs and him having the slightest chance of missing out.’
‘You wouldn’t fuck anyone else in any case, would you, though?’ I point out.
‘Exactly. Of course not. But he wants to support Zach, obviously. And let’s say I gave him a little private walk-through of just how hot it could be for us.’
She smiles like the cat who got the cream. I bet she got a lot of cream after that sneak preview. She has that guy wrapped around her little finger.
‘So…’
‘So he, um, came around to the idea. He can’t resist the thought of me being up there and him winning me, basically. You know he likes having other people’s eyes on me.’
I do. I know far too much about it. Not that I don’t love getting the salacious details of Belle’s sex life. God knows I’m playing catch up after years of her having nothing to declare. But yes. In a nutshell, it seems Rafe has a major boner for showing his gorgeous girlfriend off within the confines of the club, making everyone around him super jealous, and then whisking her off to bang the hell out of his glorious prize.
Enough detail for you?
‘Yup,’ I say. ‘So how are you going to work it?’
‘He and the auctioneer will have an agreement. They’ll put me up as a regular lot and let the bidding start, but they’ll fake a phone bid from Rafe. He’s agreed to donate a quarter of a million, and if someone bids higher they’ll just pretend he’s outbid them. That’s the only way I’ll go up there, so I suppose they get an extra few pounds out of it, at least.’ She shrugs prettily.
I give a low whistle. ‘Wowzers. A quarter of a million quid. You’d better put out, babe.’
‘You know I will.’ She grins seductively.
‘Are you excited about it?’ I press. ‘Or nervous?’
‘Excited,’ she says decisively. ‘I mean, at the end of the day it’s just another elaborate set-up for Rafe and I to get our kink on. I know who I’m going to end up with. Yeah, I’m nervous about being up there in front of everyone, but I’ll have underwear on, and I know Rafe won’t let anything bad happen to me. Aren’t you a bit nervous, though?’
Belle and I are always honest, vulnerable, with each other. I’ve never patronised her for having so many sexual and religious hang-ups, and she’s never judged me for having obscene amounts of sex or, more recently, making quite so much use of my Alchemy membership.
And I have to say I’m loving this new dynamic between us, where we both have vibrant sex lives and can share our gossip. So I give her serious question serious consideration.
‘I’m so up for it I might actually wet myself,’ I tell her.
‘But aren’t you worried about who you’ll end up with?’ she presses.
‘You’ve gone in blindfolded before in the programme, not knowing who you were going to end up with,’ I remind her.
‘Yeah, but that was different. Rafe and Gen vetted everyone in that room. This is, like, the whole club.’
I think about how I can explain this to her. ‘That’s the whole thrill of it. It’s less about who it is, or what they look like—and I might not even get to see them, if they keep me blindfolded—and more about what they do to me. I absolutely love the idea that it’s a free-for-all.’
‘You just want to get gang-banged, basically,’ she says, and I can tell she’s trying not to look horrified.
‘Six priests and a bishop,’ I say, not to be a dick but to remind her that she was outnumbered seven to one in the final Adieu of her programme.
‘Fair,’ she says, ‘but only Rafe actually shagged me, and it was all choreographed in advance.’
‘I know, babes.’ I nudge her with my elbow. ‘I’m just messing with you. But I truly believe that if I want to live out these kinds of fantasies, Alchemy’s the best place to do it. It’s a safe space, and everyone’s vetted, and by God do they know how to do these things properly. I know it’ll be atmospheric as hell. And I just want all the guys.’ I spread my arms dramatically while keeping a tight hold on my wrap. ‘Seriously. Gimme.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Honestly, if you ever end up with one guy, I pity him trying to keep you satisfied.’
