Sloane Whitlock

Not scared. It's chilly.

That's what I tell myself as I pick my way down the alley in platform boots that were never designed for cobbles, wet or otherwise. It's the end of a long, ridiculous evening. The cab driver took one look at the street and refused to enter it, with the unmistakable air of a man who values his insurance. My phone's map gave up three blocks ago and announced, in a cheerful, sexless voice, that I had "reached my destination," which turned out to be a dumpster. I'd like to speak to the manager of every single thing in this city.

Hair. Posture. Chin. Smile. You've done harder rooms than this one.

Rain drips off a drainpipe onto my shoulder. I flick it away with a manicured finger. A neon sign two doors down flickers, buzzes, and gives up. Steam coils out of a grate like something breathing. I'm in a cropped tee with sheer mesh sleeves, three layered chokers, a chain pendant, a black pleated wrap skirt, and fishnets I paid a disgraceful amount of money to have distressed. It's my favourite outfit. It says "I'm not here to be bullied," and it has never once been wrong.

I light a cigarette. My hands need something to do. I tell myself it's style.

The truth, if I'm honest, and I'm not in the habit, is simple. Last month I bought a handbag with a waiting list and a small ceremony, a diamond cuff that made the sales assistant gasp, and a deposit on a villa on an island I couldn't find on a map. It was a very good week. I put the lot on terms with a man who knew a man who knew a jeweller, and I signed with a flourish, and I didn't read a word of it. Why would I? I never pay. Something always turns up. Daddy's money always turns up.

Except three days later, it didn't.

I got the message in a restaurant. "Your accounts are closed. We will discuss your future when you come home. — Father." Not a call. Not even a full sentence. It was signed, like a memo. I read it twice, ordered another champagne, and thought about my father for exactly four seconds, which is three more than he's ever thought about me.

Don't. We don't do that. Next.

The payment fell due on Monday. I didn't have it. On Tuesday, a very polite envelope arrived at my flat with an address, a time, and no signature at all. I've been told about the man at the other end of that address. Everyone has, in the particular tone that people use when the words "careful" and "don't" are doing a great deal of work. A debt collector, says one friend. A fixer, says another. A man who owns three companies and has never been photographed, says the third, and he refilled his glass with a hand that wasn't quite steady.

Fine. A man. I've handled men before. They're all the same animal in different shoes.

I have a plan. I always have a plan. Smile. Hair flip. A very small pout, just enough to say "oh dear." A little, rueful, charming laugh, and a sentence that begins with "I'm so sorry" and contains no actual apology. If he's difficult, a touch on the sleeve. If he's very difficult, I'll let the conversation drift toward ways I might "make it up to him," and leave it deliciously unspecified. I've never had to follow through. I've never needed to. People get so busy being flattered that they forget what they came for.

I reach the end of the alley, and I stop.

It's not what I expected. I'd imagined something with a sign. A name in gold. A doorman, at the very least. Instead there's a plain steel door set into the brick, with a small camera tucked into the frame, a blinking red light, and a brass plate no bigger than a playing card that says only a number. The rain runs down it in thin, steady lines. There's nothing else. No bell, no handle, no welcome.

My pulse does something rude. It's quick, and it's high, and it's in my throat, and I tell it to behave.

Not scared. Chilly. It's chilly, it's an alley, and I've had two glasses of champagne on an empty stomach.

I drop the cigarette, grind it out under a platform heel, and check my reflection in the dark shine of the brass plate. Lips, perfect. Hair, a golden curtain, exactly where I want it. I shift my weight to one hip, and twist the silver ring on my thumb, once, twice. I lift my chin to the angle that has ended arguments in four countries.

Smile.

I smile. It looks like a woman without a care in the world. It almost fools me.

I raise my hand and knock three times on the steel, sharp and bright, the knock of a woman who has never in her life been refused a door.

The sound echoes down the alley. Somewhere above me, a gutter drips.

I hold the smile, and wait.

I'm early. I'd like it on the record that I'm never early.

It's ten to eight on a Friday, and I'm sitting alone at a corner table in the most expensive restaurant in the city, with a linen napkin that I've folded into a swan, a crystal glass of water I'm very deliberately not replacing with something stronger, and a candle flickering at the exact centre of the tablecloth like a very elegant interrogation lamp. The waiter has asked me twice if I'd like to order a drink while I wait. I said no, twice. I said it so politely that I startled myself.

Look at you. Sitting there. Waiting. Like a person.

I twist the silver ring on my thumb. I straighten the cutlery. I check my phone, and turn it face-down, and check it again. I'm in a dress I chose on purpose, which is a very strange sentence. It's black, and it's simple, and it's the first thing I've worn in a year that wasn't designed to get me thrown out of somewhere. My hair is down, shoulder-length and straight and perfectly behaved. My nails are not black. I scrubbed them off this afternoon, and I couldn't tell you why.

I find this wildly funny, if I'm honest. I've been trying not to laugh for ten minutes.

Because it's absurd. The last time I saw him, I was standing in an alley in distressed fishnets, trying to charm my way out of a debt that could've bought a small yacht. I was haughty. I was ridiculous. I thought I was invincible. And now, a few months later, and after a repayment plan that I somehow, against every instinct in my body, stuck to, I'm sitting in a restaurant with a swan on the table, waiting for the man I owed.

It was my idea. I'd like that noted.

It was, too. It was the day I made the final payment, in an envelope, handed over with a flourish and a face I'd practised in the mirror. I'd walked out of his office, stopped at the door, turned around, and said, before I could talk myself out of it: "Friday. Eight o'clock. You're buying. Don't be boring." Then I left before he could answer.

He didn't answer. That's the thing. I've spent six days not knowing if he'll turn up.

I take a sip of water, and put the glass down too carefully. I look at the door. I look at the clock. I look at the little brass candlestick as though it might have an opinion. A couple at the next table are murmuring over a bottle of wine, and the woman laughs at something, a low, easy sound that I've never made in my life.

What if he doesn't come? What if he does? What do you say to a man you've been that rude to?

I fix a smile on my face, and it wobbles, and I let it. For once, I don't know what I'm doing. It's a strange, hot, uncomfortable feeling, and it's rather exhilarating.

Eight o'clock. The door opens, and I look up, and my heart gives a small, undignified thump.

I jumped on him. I'd like that noted. I'd like it noted and framed.

It's past midnight, and the rain is hammering the skylight of his office like a crowd demanding an encore. A single lamp burns on the desk. The leather chair is on its side. His shirt's half-undone, the buttons gone in two places where I got impatient, and I'm up on the edge of the desk with my legs wrapped hard around his hips and my arms around his neck, and I've never in my life felt less like the girl who walked in here a few months ago.

The debt was paid six weeks ago. I have the receipt on my fridge, held up with a magnet shaped like a lobster, out of pure spite.

So there's nothing. There's no reason I'm here. I stopped by "to drop off a bottle." I said it in the doorway, with a smirk and an expensive bottle of something amber and an excuse so transparent that a child could have seen through it. Neither of us has mentioned the bottle since.

I drag my nails down his chest, hard, and feel it ripple under my hand. A ragged sound tears out of me before I can stop it. I'm sweating. My hair is stuck to my neck, my mascara's gone to ruin, my top is somewhere on the other side of the room, and my breath is coming out in short, shaky bursts that I'd never admit to in daylight.

How twisted is this? Honestly. How completely, disgracefully twisted. I came into this building terrified. I was shaking so hard in that alley that I dropped my cigarette.

And now I'm biting my lip so I don't beg.

It should be unforgivable. A man I owed more money than I'd ever seen. A man the entire street whispered about. I should be disgusted with myself. I should have a boundary or a conscience or at the very least a plan.

I have nothing. I have a pulse like a drum, and a pair of hands that can't stop moving, and a feeling I can't put a name to. It's hot and bright and alarming, and I'd walk through that alley a hundred times to get it.

I rake my nails across his shoulders, and a shudder runs through me, and I bury my face in his neck for one traitorous second, breathing him in. He smells like rain and old paper and something dark and warm. It undoes me every time.

I love it. That's the worst part. I love every second of it.

I pull back, slowly, my forehead nearly touching his, and my breath comes in ragged gasps between us. My eyes are huge. My lipstick is gone. I try for the smirk, the old one, the armour, and it doesn't quite hold.

"Don't," I say, low and unsteady. "Don't you dare look smug. It's incredibly rude."

I'm drinking lime and soda, and I'm very proud of it, and nobody here could possibly care less.

It's a club on the wrong side of midnight, with a bass line that rattles my ribs and a dance floor full of faces I used to know. Four months ago, I'd have been up on that bar by now, in a skirt the length of a threat, telling the bouncer exactly where to put his clipboard. Tonight, I'm in jeans and a plain black top, with my hair tied back, nursing a glass of fizzy water with a wedge of lime, and wondering what on earth I came here to prove.

It's a trial run. I'm testing myself. That's what the therapist would call it, if I'd stayed longer than two sessions.

It's not working. I'm bored, and I'm restless, and the music sounds like a hammer on a tin tray. The old Sloane would have loved it. The new one, whoever she is, wants to go home, and put the kettle on, and fall asleep with the radio on. I've paid off the debt. I've cut my cards in half. I've stopped answering my father's messages, and stopped waiting for them. I'm trying. I'm trying so hard that it hurts.

I put down my glass. I check my phone. I decide, finally, that I've proved enough.

Right. Home.

I weave through the crowd, toward the exit, past a row of sticky booths and a group of girls screaming over a table of shots, and a hand lands on my shoulder.

"Where d'you think you're going?"

It's a man. Early twenties, broad, a wide grin and a very expensive shirt. Two others are behind him, one grinning, one not. They've been at the end of the bar for an hour, I realise, watching. I give him the smile that used to open doors.

"Home," I say, brightly. "Lovely to meet you. Goodnight."

I step around him. His arm shoots out, and rests against the wall, and the other two close in, and suddenly I'm in a pocket of space made of three bodies and a very small gap.

"Nah," says the one with the grin. "It's early. Have one more."

"I'm fine, thank you."

"Come on. Don't be rude." He picks at the sleeve of my top, between two fingers, like it's something he's considering buying. "Wasn't it you on the bar last spring? The blonde one? Thought so."

My stomach drops straight through my boots.

I know this move. I've used this move. The charm, the eyelash, the laugh. Do it. Say something clever.

"I think you've mistaken me for someone more fun," I say, and my voice sounds thin and high, and I can't make it do the thing. "Excuse me."

Nobody moves. The music pounds. The one who isn't grinning has a hand in his pocket, and he's looking at the exit, not at me, which is so much worse. I look for a bouncer. There isn't one. I look for the girls from the shot table, and they've gone. I look at the dance floor, a hundred bodies, none of them mine, none of them looking.

Not scared. Not scared. Don't be stupid. It's a club. It's full of people.

My hands are shaking. I put them behind my back, and twist the silver ring on my thumb so hard that it hurts.

I scan the room, as fast as I can, for a face. Any face.