Catriona

"Then he'd have to accept that, wouldn't he?"

"But he'd also have to be complicit in her drinking. He'd have to drink with her... he might become an alcoholic, too, addicted. She - I mean, if she liked him too - she wouldn't want that."

"Even if he was prepared to take the risk?"

"I don't know. But the other thing is, suppose they both think she's in a spiral she can't get out of, that she's going to drink herself to death, wouldn't he want to stop her?"

"Of course he would, if they thought that. But it's how. It's realpolitik. If she isn't prepared to let go of whisky, he can't try to make her stop, or she won't stay with him. He would have to tempt her away from it, seduce her onto champagne and then onto, I don't know, Lapsang Suchong, something which was equally exciting and interesting but not so destructive. But of course he'd have to start with whisky, if whisky is what she needs."

"OK, but what if whisky wasn't enough? What if he wasn't able to give her enough? What if she found she needed to go to grotty places to drink absinthe with strangers?"

"If she really needed absinthe - I mean, suppose he loved her and she really needed absinthe - he'd have to make sure she had absinthe at home, wouldn't he?"

"Really? Absinthe?"

"If she needed it, and he loved her."

"Oh."

She turned away from me, looking out over the gleaming water, the flocks of little yachts moving across the silver surface like slow starlings. In the distance the black sail of a nuclear submarine was nosing in from the firth. She turned the whip between her hands, jerkily, nervously.

"Mark," she said, "hit me."

I closed my eyes for a moment, drew a breath. There had to be some sort of test. I'd known, at some point, there would be some sort of test. This was it. I hit her, from behind, across her left cheek below her ear, with all my strength. She went down in a heap of tangled limbs, like a puppet with its strings cut. The whip rolled away across the floor with a clatter.

I desperately wanted to get down with her, to check she was OK, to comfort her... but this was a test. This was what I was being tested on. So I didn't. She came up slowly, first onto her elbows, then onto her arms, then kneeling, still facing away from me, rubbing and cradling her jaw.

There was silence in the room. A cloud shadow moved across the floor, dimming the highlights in her hair.

"Ow," she said, shakily. "I didn't think you'd do that."

"You asked me to."

"Yes," she agreed, "I just didn't think you would." She laughed, ruefully, a bit shakily. "I should have said not my face. It's going to bruise horribly."

"I know," I said. "You - we - had to know if I could do it."

Suddenly she came to her feet smoothly, turning to face me. "Are you OK?" she asked, with concern. "Can you do it?"

I shrugged, and grinned sheepishly. "My hand hurts... Catriona, I can. If you need me to. But... if... it wouldn't be like that. It wouldn't just be brutality. It would be - I mean if - in context, in a context of making love. It would be... a much more vigorous caress..."

She nodded, suddenly, trying to smile, her face clearly hurting. "Yes."

"If - I mean - I can caress my lover - I mean, if I had one - how she needs to be caressed, in a context of love. However she needs to be caressed."

She nodded, her eyes thoughtful. She reached for my hand, and laid it gently on her jaw. "Mark, have you got any ice? I have to work tomorrow."

-----

I walked up the tenement stair, and rang the bell. A woman with short, dark hair opened it. "Hi," she said, "I'm Miranda. Are you Mark?" Behind her in the passage was a small pile of boxes and bags.

"I'm Mark," I said. "Where's Catriona? And is that all there is to take?"

"She's in the bedroom."

"OK," I said, "shall I start taking boxes down to the van?"

"No, she wants you to go in to the bedroom. I'm going out, I'll be back in about an hour."

-----

The heavy wooden door opened slowly, framing and revealing the room like a panning camera. Plain white walls, varnished pine floor. A wide bed with a cast iron frame topped with gleaming brass knobs. She knelt on it, naked, her face bowed between her chained, outstretched arms, half hidden in the tumble of her hair; her knees spread obscenely wide by their own fetters. And tied round her, a wide red and gold ribbon, through her crotch and criss crossed around her torso to tie in a bow at the back of her neck. By the chain splaying her left leg, the same box of condoms, still unopened.

"I think you've got the line wrong," I said, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed.

"Oh?" Her voice was nervous.

"It's 'baby's got new clothes', not 'baby's got no clothes'. But I do like your ribbons and your bows..."

"Oh, good... I ache, just like a woman..."

I knew my next line. Very nervously I asked "do you make love just like a woman?"

"Yes, I do. And Mark, if you don't touch me soon I'll break like a little girl."

"Oh, Catriona." I leant forward, taking her shoulders in my hands, nuzzling my face blindly into the perfume of her hair, into the safe dark space behind her ear, feeling for skin, kissing her down the back of her long neck. Suddenly I was trying desperately to control sobs.