‘Didn’t he interview you?’
‘No. It was a woman, his secretary or PA or something. He was in France, filming. Well, he still is. Anyway, why did you say that we’d get on?’
‘That thing you said. It was a bit kinky.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Shut up apologising, you daft ha’p’orth. Absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of kink. It was quite a turn-on, as it goes.’
I exhaled gratefully. I hadn’t made such a prize exhibition of myself after all. Though I could still see, in the corner of my mind, a little mental film reel of Will down at the local pub regaling his mates with the story.
‘Thanks. So?’
‘So. Jasper Jay and you might have a little something in common.’
‘What do you mean? He’s into …?’
‘Get your kit back on,’ whispered Will, ‘or not, as you choose, and I’ll show you.’
I couldn’t really be bothered with all the jeans and bra palaver, so I borrowed a threadbare towelling robe of Will’s and followed my half-dressed lover out of the bedroom.
‘He hired you to catalogue his collections,’ said Will, creeping barefoot down the back stairs. ‘But I wonder if he meant you to see this one.’
‘A collection?’ I whispered. Why was I whispering? Why were we creeping? It all felt deeply illicit.
We tiptoed past the library, with its vast collection of first editions, some of which I’d managed to list. Past the drawing room and the morning room and all the other rooms, chock-full of antiques and artefacts. Up the main stairs to the first floor bedrooms, past my little bolthole and into …
‘Oh, I don’t think we should go into his room.’
‘Why not? He isn’t here. He’ll never know. Here, have a swig.’
He passed me the bottle of expensive red wine, but I was too wary of spilling it, and besides, my mind was occupied with taking in the huge four-poster bed and the dark oak furnishings and the gigantic chest that took up at least a fifth of the large room’s space.
Will took a key from his jeans back pocket and fitted it into the chest’s lock.
‘This is his private stuff,’ I agonised. ‘I don’t think we should.’
Too late, though, because the lid was raised and I stared down into an abyss of deviance.
‘God,’ I whispered, lowering myself to my knees and peering inside. It was all so neatly compartmentalised, boxes within boxes, but some of the contents were in long fabric bags. For instance, the whips. And canes. And riding crops.
‘Is this what you’re into?’ asked Will, opening one of the boxes and showing me a selection of cuffs – leather, metal, fur-lined, velcro, you name it.
‘This is … I mean. Wow. It’s a collection. Does he just collect the stuff or does he use it?’
I opened another box, my curiosity overwhelming my caution now, and found a selection of first-edition titles, some of which – like The Story of O – were familiar to me, others not so well known.
‘The Harem of the Flagellants,’ I read, my finger hovering over a cheaply but sturdily bound Victorian tome. I shivered.
It was one thing to fantasise about these things, but quite another to see them in real life. I felt a strange kind of fear, as if I had skimmed a surface and been dragged underneath it. Now I was here in the underworld, could I get out again?
Will hadn’t answered my question, so I asked it again.
‘Does any of this stuff get used?’
‘I don’t know. He hasn’t had anyone here for a while. When he stays here, he just buries himself. Doesn’t go out. It’s like hibernation.’
‘I guess his work is quite intense. Ever since he won the Palme d’Or.’
Will shrugged.
‘Don’t ask me. I’ve worked here for four years but I wouldn’t say I knew him. This is the closest I’ve got to knowing anything about him. This here.’ He waved his hand at the boxes.
I had opened another. It contained things I had never seen in my life before, silicone things that were a little bit like dildoes but with an outward flare halfway along the length.
‘What the hell are these?’
Will snorted.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I’ve never done anything kinky,’ I defended myself.
‘Butt plugs, my love,’ he said, picking one up.
‘Oh, don’t touch it!’
‘Why not?’
I shook my head. I knew I was panicking, but I couldn’t seem to rein myself in.
‘Fingerprints,’ I mumbled.
He burst out laughing at that, waving the butt plug in the air.
‘You’re funny,’ he said, between fresh gusts of mirth.
‘You’ll have to share the joke.’ A third voice spoke from the doorway.
I fell backwards on to my arse, my hand clamping my mouth so hard and fast I almost knocked a couple of teeth out.
I watched through wide-stretched eyes as everything seeming to crash into slo-mo. Will dropped the butt plug and raised himself to his feet, shoulders back, squared for combat.
The man in the door was, presumably, Jasper Jay, though he wasn’t the way I remembered him from that medical soap he used to be in when I was a girl. Of course, a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then – fifteen years’ worth. He wasn’t a fresh-faced bright-eyed youth in a white coat now. He stood with one arm braced against the doorframe, in an expensive suit, its light biscuit colour accentuating his dark looks. He had that famous-person thing of looking somehow bigger and shinier and brighter than a real man. I hadn’t fancied him in the medical soap, or in the many news clips of him accepting the Palme d’Or, but now I could almost see the vortex of charisma inside which he existed.
But now wasn’t a good time to be ogling my boss.
Now was about the worst time ever for that kind of thing.
‘Shit, I thought you were in France,’ was Will’s pretty dreadful attempt at defending his actions.
I remained silent, cowering on a Turkish rug of early nineteenth-century vintage, concentrating on keeping Will’s bathrobe tightly wrapped around me.
‘Shit, you’re fired,’ replied Jay laconically.
‘You can’t just –’
‘Yes, I can. Pack your things. Load up your car. Get out of here.’
‘But my rights …’
‘In what universe isn’t this gross misconduct?’ He stepped into the room, unfolding his arm grandly to usher Will through the door. ‘Not ours, at least. Goodbye. I’ll forward any holiday entitlement you had outstanding on to you.’
‘Mr Jay, please … four years of good service.’
‘Ruined in the space of one night.’ Jay shook his head. ‘Like a film script, isn’t it?’ There was a pause. ‘I can’t help noticing that you’re still here.’
Will looked at me, as if expecting me to leap to his passionate defence. Seeing this wasn’t about to happen, he made as dignified an exit as he could muster.
I watched the knots between his shoulder blades, the