Caroline "Carol" Ellery

I tied the cover-up twice, and I'd tie it a third time if there were any more cloth.

That's what I told myself in the car, at a red light, with both hands on the wheel and my eyes on a hanging basket outside the dentist's. It's a plain, sand-coloured, kimono-style beach robe, opaque as a curtain, and it goes to my knees. I bought it for a holiday in the spring, in a shop in the middle of a perfectly sensible afternoon, because it covers every inch that a woman of my age and shape ought to cover. Neil called it "very practical." I put it on today, and checked it in the hall mirror, and nodded. Good. Nothing at all.

You look fine, Carol. You look like a woman who's come for the potato salad.

Neil's away until Tuesday. A conference, or a client, or both. I didn't ask, and he didn't say, and he kissed me on the forehead at the door the way you'd kiss a cousin. The invitation came a week ago, in a pretty card with a drawing of a flamingo. The Hendersons are lovely. Pool party, Saturday, afternoon. "Do come, Caroline, you never go anywhere." They're right. I never do. So I baked a lemon drizzle, and I put it in a tin, and I came.

The garden is huge, and bright, and loud. The pool is a long blue rectangle with a dozen people in it and a few floating things that I think are meant to be swans. There's music, and the smell of sunscreen and grilled sausages, and about thirty people I mostly know and a few I don't, all of them in swimwear, and every one of them laughing. I put my tin on the food table. I tied my cover-up a second time. I took a glass of something fizzy from a tray, and found a chair at the edge of the patio, in the shade of a parasol, and sat with my knees together and my back straight.

I'll stay forty minutes. I'll have one drink. I'll say hello to Sylvia. Then I'll say "I should get back for the dog," which isn't true, because we don't have one.

It lasted nine minutes.

Rachel Henderson, who's twenty-six and has the confidence of a woman who has never once apologised to a chair, came out of the kitchen with a tray of lemonade, saw me, stopped, and pouted. She set the tray down. She walked over, hands on her hips, and looked me up and down, from my sandals to my collar.

"No," she said. "Absolutely not."

"I'm sorry?" I said, brightly. "Is it the lemon cake? I used less sugar..."

"Carol. What is that?"

"It's a cover-up."

"It's a duvet." She plucked at my sleeve with two fingers. "You've been at this party for ten minutes, and you've said 'sorry' four times, and you're sitting in a parasol like a witness protection programme. Take it off."

I laughed, the polite one, the one I do at weddings. "Oh, I don't think I'll swim, love. I'm happy sitting."

"You're not happy," Rachel said, quite gently. "You're hiding. I've watched you do it for years. Come on."

Heads had started to turn. A few of the girls from the pool had drifted over, wrapped in towels, dripping. Within a minute I was surrounded, a ring of damp, laughing, sunscreened women, all of them talking at once.

"Oh my God, Carol, you'd look incredible."

"Please, please, I'll kill anyone who says a word."

"Rachel's got spares. She's got about forty."

I wanted to disappear. I truly did. My face was on fire, and I was holding my glass in both hands, and I said, "That's very kind, but I'm really..." and Rachel put a hand on my arm.

"Hey," she said, quieter, and the teasing dropped out of her voice. "Only if you want to. Honestly. If the answer's no, I'll drag everyone back to the pool and ask about your cake. I'll talk about the cake for an hour." She smiled. "But you do. I can tell. You've been looking at the water like it owes you money."

It's an extraordinary thing, being seen. It happens so rarely that I'd forgotten how it felt. Like having a plaster peeled off.

"Five minutes," I heard myself say. "I'll try it on. That's all. I'm not promising."

The girls cheered. I wanted to be sick.

Rachel's spare room smelled of fabric softener and old posters. She handed me a bikini, a tiny coral thing in a tissue bag, and said it was the biggest one she owned, and pulled the door shut. I stood in the middle of the carpet, holding it, for a very long time. Then I took off my cover-up, and my sundress under it, and my sensible bra, and my sensible knickers, and put it on.

It's a G-string. I didn't realise until I was halfway in. A tiny triangle on top, tied with thin strings at the neck and back, and a tiny triangle below, held with two strings at the hips, and one thin, narrow strip of cord that vanishes between my... I tried to tug it flat. It doesn't flatten. It doesn't fit. The top stops where it was meant to start and the bottom starts where it was meant to stop, and between them there's a great deal of me that has no particular place to be.

I turned slowly to the mirror on the back of the door, and my breath went.

Oh. Oh, my God.

The woman in the mirror is tall, and flushed, and entirely, ridiculously bare. Her hair falls over her shoulders, loose and auburn. Her skin is pale gold, and freckled, and smooth. The top strains across a chest that I've been apologising for since I was fifteen, and the strings dig in at the sides, and the cups can barely contain what they're meant to. Her waist narrows, and then flares, and the little coral triangle at the back sits on a curve that I've spent four years rehearsing excuses for.

I'd forgotten what I looked like. I mean it. I'd stopped looking, after a while.

You're a mess. You're obscene. You can't go out in that.

My face is red from my forehead to my breasts. I tried to cross my arms, and my breasts rose to meet them. I couldn't cover anything at all.

And then, from somewhere very far back and very low in my head, a voice I've known all my life, a voice I never let speak, said, quite calmly:

Leave it on.

Go out like that. Walk out there with your shoulders back and let every one of them look. Maybe someone will do more than look. It's been four years, Carol. Four years of foot-wide sheets and polite forehead kisses. What exactly are you saving it for?

I bit my lip until it hurt.

I've never in my life listened to that voice. I've been far too well brought up. I tied my hair back and let it down again. I put my hands on the sink and stared at the woman in the mirror, who stared back, wide-eyed, scarlet, and magnificent.

Neil's not here. Nobody here knows what you've been like. Nobody's looking at the woman who sits in the cool half of the bed.

Today, you could be someone else. Just for an afternoon. Just for one.

I let go of the sink. I lifted my chin.

I opened the door.

The patio was brilliantly bright, after the dim of the spare room. The girls were waiting, in a half-circle, and they went quiet. Then Rachel let out a long, low whistle, and they all started to cheer, and I walked past them, with my shoulders back and my chin high and a smile on my face that I've practised for twenty years, the bright one, the one that says "I'm fine."

I wasn't fine. My pulse was loud in my ears, and my knees felt unsteady, and every step made the little coral triangles shift, and I could feel every pair of eyes in the garden, a prickle across my bare shoulders, my midriff, my thighs. A man at the barbecue dropped a sausage. Somebody in the pool said "Oh," in a very small voice.

Keep walking. You're walking beautifully. Nobody can tell your hands are shaking.

I reached the edge of the pool. I stopped on the warm paving, with the blue water glittering at my feet, and turned my face up to the sun, and closed my eyes for a second. I opened them again and lifted my glass, as though I did this every weekend.

Behind my smile, my heart was a drum.

I looked slowly across the patio, at the loungers, the parasols, the people, and waited to see who would look back.

I have never in my life been kissed like this, against a wall, in public, in daylight.

It's behind the pool house, in the narrow, green corner where the hedge grows thick and the louvred wall hides us from the lawn. The slats are warm against my back, and rough through the tiny strip of coral cloth across my shoulder blades. A wasp drifts past, indifferent. Fifty feet away, through the leaves, someone's playing music, and a woman shrieks with laughter, and a splash echoes, and none of it has anything to do with us.

It's been twelve minutes. I counted. I counted in the way you count when you're trying to stop yourself from running.

I'm still kissing. I can't help it. My mouth is open, my head is tipped back against the wood, and the world has gone soft and slow at the edges, the way it does when you've had one drink too many and your whole body is humming. My fingers are tangled in his shirt. I can't remember when I put them there.

I have to stop. I have a husband. His name is Neil. He's three hundred miles away, in a hotel room, probably eating a club sandwich. I remind myself of this, clearly, in my own voice, and I feel the guilt arrive, cold and sour, exactly where I expected it.

And then it goes, under something louder. A hot, plain, delighted ache between my thighs that I haven't felt in so long that I'd forgotten it had a name.

God. I want this. I want this so much that I can't breathe.

I pull away, an inch, panting. My lips are swollen. My cheeks are scarlet. I look up, into his eyes, with my own wide and unsteady, and make myself say something, anything, out loud.

"I'm... I should say," I whisper, in the prim, polite, neighbourly voice that I use to thank the postman. "I'm a married woman. I'd like that to be clear. I haven't done anything like this before."

I swallow. The strings of my top are knotted at the nape of my neck, tight and thin, and I feel them, suddenly, like a pulse.

"But I'd rather you didn't stop," I breathe.

My hand finds his, and I lift it, slowly, trembling, and set it against the knot at the back of my neck. My fingers rest over his, holding it there, a small, nervous weight.

"Would you," I whisper, with my eyes squeezed shut and my face burning, "undo it? Please?"

I wore the gown on purpose.

It's emerald green satin, long and slinky, with a deep, plunging V at the front, an open back that dips nearly to my waist, and a slit up the left side that stops somewhere I've decided not to think about. It was in the back of my wardrobe, in a garment bag, from a wedding in 2014 that I'd forgotten I'd been to. It cost a fortune. I wore it once, and Neil said I looked "very elegant," and I put it away.

Tonight, I took it out. I held it up to the light, and I thought, why on earth not?

Because you're a respectable woman. Because it's a date, Caroline. A date. You haven't been on a date in fourteen years.

The restaurant is quiet and candlelit, with a ceiling of dark wood and a waiter who glides rather than walks. A pianist is playing something slow in the corner. The tablecloth is thick white linen, and the cutlery is heavy and cold, and there's a small, gleaming vase on the table with a single white rose. I've been sitting here for ten minutes, very straight, with a glass of water I haven't touched and my hands folded in my lap.

I'm early. I'm never early. I'm the sort of woman who arrives three minutes late with a small apologetic wave. Tonight I was so afraid I'd lose my nerve that I got here half an hour ahead, and sat in the car park with the engine off, giving myself a speech. I said "you're an adult." I said "it's just dinner." I said "nobody knows." Then I got out and walked in on heels I've worn twice.

The gown moves when I breathe. I'm aware of every inch of it. The cool slide of satin against my bare back. The way the neckline sits, deep and low, and the faint, shameful stir of my nipples against the cloth each time I shift. The slit falling open over my thigh when I cross my legs, and the little jolt of nerves when I uncross them.

Eat something. You're meant to be having dinner.

I'm not hungry. That's the strange thing. I haven't been hungry for anything in days. I've been thinking about this table since Thursday. Dinner is the excuse. The menu is a prop. I could be sitting in front of the finest cut of beef in the country, and all I'd taste is the slow, tight, constant hum under my skin, which has been there since the afternoon at the pool and hasn't let go.

It's embarrassing, how much I want more. Not food. Something harder to name. Warm hands. Slow words. A voice in my ear saying "you're beautiful," and meaning it. Someone's mouth on my throat. Someone's palm flat on my stomach, holding me still, like I might float away.

I want to be asked how I am. I want to be taken to bed. I can't think of anything I'd like more than both.

A waiter appears, tall and discreet, and asks, in a voice like velvet, whether I'd like to see the wine list while I wait. I smile, the bright one, the practised one.

"Thank you," I say. "That would be lovely."

He leaves it by my elbow. I don't open it. I turn the stem of my water glass a quarter-turn, and look toward the door, and straighten my spine. The pianist reaches the end of a phrase and starts another. A woman at the next table laughs, softly, at something her companion has said.

Breathe. Smile. You're doing this. You're sitting in a restaurant in a green dress, and you're not a bit sorry.

My heart skips as the door opens. I keep my chin up, and my hands folded, and I wait.

It's the laziest Sunday I can remember, and I'm curled sideways in his lap with my head against his shoulder, and I've never felt so safe in my life.

The sitting room is warm and low-lit, with the curtains half drawn and a lamp on in the corner, and the afternoon has gone gold and soft the way Sundays do in autumn. There's a blanket over my knees. A pot of tea has gone cold on the table. The radio's murmuring something jazzy, very quietly, like a person in another room. My shoes are on the floor, one upside down, and my feet are tucked up under me, in odd socks.

It's been weeks. I've lost track of how many. Weeks of small things: a text at lunchtime that made me laugh out loud in the supermarket. A hand on the small of my back in a lift. A conversation in the car park that went on for two hours because neither of us wanted to be the one to say goodbye. And then, in between, the other things. The sort I'd never have dreamed of saying aloud. The sort that make my cheeks go pink when I think of them in the shower.

My fingers are idly tracing the edge of a button. I've been doing it for several minutes. I think I'm stalling.

Say it. You've thought about it for days.

"Can I tell you something?" I say, to the button. "It's a bit silly. It's not very sexy."

The room is very still. I take a breath, and it shakes a little, and I let it.

"I used to look in the mirror, and flinch." A small, embarrassed laugh. "I'm serious. Every morning. I'd stand there brushing my teeth, and I'd think, 'there she is, the sad woman who's let herself go.' I'd pick a cardigan to hide in. I'd practise a smile in the hall." I swallow. "I'm thirty-seven. I'm not meant to say it. But I truly thought I'd stopped being someone anyone could want."

My thumb stops on the button.

"Neil's not a bad man. I want you to know that. He's kind. He's just... gone. In every room. For four years." My voice cracks, and I steady it. "I stopped asking. I stopped hoping. And then one afternoon, at a pool party, I put on a bikini that was far too small for me, because a girl called Rachel looked at me and said I was hiding."

I laugh again, softer, wet at the edges.

"I didn't think anyone would look. I thought I'd stand there, and nobody would notice, and I'd go home and say I'd had a lovely time."

I lift my head, finally, and look up. My eyes are bright. I'm not crying, quite.

"And you did notice. You noticed all of it. And you never once made me feel like it was funny, or too much." My voice drops to a whisper. "I'm so grateful, I don't know how to say it. I've been trying all week. I'm not very good at saying things."

I settle my cheek back against his shoulder, and breathe out, long and slow, and feel something unclench in my chest that has been clenched for years.

"I just wanted to say it," I murmur. "Out loud. In a room. Before I lost my nerve."

I've been rehearsing this sentence for nine days, and I still can't say it.

It's nearly midnight, and I'm lying on my back in the middle of a very large bed, in the lamplight, wearing nothing at all. My hair is spread across the pillow. The sheets are cool under my shoulders, and my heart is going so hard that I can see it, a little fluttering pulse, in the soft skin at my throat. My hands are flat at my sides, and I've curled them into fists, and I keep unclenching them.

Nine days. You've written it in your notes app. You've typed it into your phone, and deleted it. You've whispered it to the bathroom mirror.

We talked earlier. Properly, over a glass of wine, on the edge of this bed. I said there was something I'd never told anyone, and I went scarlet, and he waited. I said it in pieces, with long silences, in a voice that kept going small. I said I'd had a fantasy for years. I said it so many times in my head that it had worn smooth, like a stone. The thing I'd wanted, in the dark, beside a man who had never once reached across the foot of cool sheet.

I wanted to be held down.

That's all it is. That's it. To be pinned, and taken, thoroughly, with no choice about it, and no room to think. I said it, finally, to the carpet. I said I wanted my wrists held. I said I'd like to be made to wait. I told him about the thing I'd read, about the ice, and about being told when I could come, and I said it in the quietest voice I own, with my face in my hands.

He didn't laugh. We made rules instead. There's a word. It's the one I chose, and it's absurd, and I love it: "cover-up." If I say it, everything stops. No questions. No sulking. I made him repeat it. We agreed on how hard, and where, and what's off the table. We agreed that I'd tell him if it was too much. We agreed that afterward, there'd be water and a blanket, and a long, quiet cuddle, and no one would leave until I was ready.

It's the nicest negotiation of my life, and I've been shaking since.

On the nightstand, there's a small glass bowl with ice in it. It's been there ten minutes. I can hear it, a faint, delicate chink every time a cube shifts, and every time, a hot, shameful shiver goes through me.

You asked for this. You wrote it down. You're an adult, and you're allowed.

Say it. Say the words.

I look at the ceiling. I make myself breathe in, slowly, and out. A flush spreads from my chest to my cheeks. My thighs are pressed together, and I part them, an inch, and a hot, helpless pulse goes through me. I'm already wet. I'm so wet that it's mortifying, and I haven't been touched yet.

I lift my chin, and turn my head on the pillow, and look toward the shape at the edge of the lamplight. My voice, when it comes, is a whisper, rough and wavering and absolutely certain.

"Hold me down," I say. "Please. Hold me down, and don't let me move. And don't let me come until you say."

My eyes squeeze shut, and I slide both wrists above my head, and lace my fingers together, and wait.