I wake up with the duvet pulled over my naked body, but alone. I turn my head and gaze at the vast expanse of bed that is spread out on one side of me and the unused pillows and sigh. Pushing my legs free of the duvet I dangle them out of the bed and savor the cool air. Then I slip out of bed. I can hear the fain sounds of Francesca, Blake’s personal shopper, rummaging around in the kitchen. She is always as silent as a mouse. I pull on some clothes, brush my teeth, and go to the kitchen. She is updating her list on her iPad.
‘Ciao,’ she greets brightly. She is from Naples. ‘I remember, you like jam and I bring you two extra bottles.’ She holds them up in her expressive hands. ‘You like?’
I go forward and take them in my hands. ‘I like. Very much. Grazia, Francesca.’
She dimples prettily.
Tom drives Billie, Sorab, and me to The Royal China in Bayswater. We find a table and order our dim sums.
I take the bottles of jam out of my rucksack and stuff them into the back of Sorab’s pram and Billie grins. ‘The perks of pimping you out,’ she says. ‘By the way, Jack called mr looking for you. Your mobile must have been switched off.’
‘Oh! What did you tell him?’
‘The truth, of course. You were with Blake.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He went dead silent for a while, and then he asked me if I thought you were safe. I said I didn’t know, but that you thought you would be. Then he hung up.’
I bite my bottom lip.
‘You should call him. He worries about you.’
‘I will. This afternoon.’
‘So how’s it going at casa Blake?’
I expel my breath in a rush. ‘I don’t know, Billie. I might as well be a blow-up doll for all the use I am to him. It’s really just sex. He’s so remote, so angry, and so hurt. I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to reach him. He wants revenge, but he doesn’t have the stomach for it.’
‘What kind of revenge?’ An edge has crept into Billie’s voice.
‘Sexual humiliation. Last night he used a…vibrator on me.’ I flush bright red. The words were almost impossible for me to get out.
Billie laughs. ‘You are so weird. That’s not sexual humiliation. Everybody uses them. If anyone offers to use one on me I’m going to lie back, open my legs as wide as they will go and ask them to knock themselves out.’
‘You don’t understand, Billie. He did it because he understands that I’m sexually repressed.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake. You cried, didn’t you?’
I nod and play with a chopstick. ‘What would you do if you were me, Billie?’
‘First off, I’m not you. I don’t think I could ever be in such a fucked up situation.’
‘But if you were,’ I insist.
‘Then I would drink at least half a bottle of vodka and challenge him to do his worst. Press all his buttons and push him mercilessly until he loses his tightly reined sense of control. And then it would all be over and done with. Mind you, I wouldn’t if I thought he was capable of truly hurting me. But you’re a thousand percent sure Blake is not, right?’
‘A thousand percent. He is cold, not cruel.’
I pay the bill with the new Platinum credit card that I have not applied for, but arrived for me this morning. Billie raises an impressed eyebrow but says nothing.
Afterwards we spend a pleasant afternoon in Whiteley’s Shopping Centre. There is nothing I want, but I treat Billie to a really cool pair of cowboy boots, which she adored, and we buy some divinely soft bedding for Sorab. Stuff I could never afford before.
Everything goes on the new card. It has a ninety thousand pounds credit limit on it.
After Tom drops Billie and Sorab off I phone Jack.
‘Are you all right?’ is the first thing that Jack utters.
‘He’s not capable of hurting me, Jack,’ I reply.
‘It’s not him I’m worried about.’
‘Victoria won’t do anything to me.’
‘Lana, she paid you two hundred thousand pounds to get lost. You took her money and now you’re back with her guy and you don’t think she’s going to retaliate?’
Oh God! Put like that it did seem I was being stupid in the extreme. ‘I didn’t go looking for him, Jack. He found me. Besides it’s only for 42 days.’
‘42 days?’
‘He just wants me to finish my contract. There’s 42 days left of it. Well, forty-one now.’
‘Lana, I’m a man and I’m telling you no man wants a woman for just 42 days. It’s not going to end in 42 days. I can give that to you in blood right now. You’re going to be his mistress until the day comes when he is finally bored with your body. Is that what you want for yourself?’
That feels like a low blow and yet it is the truth. ‘I don’t know what I want anymore, Jack. All I know is at the moment I am with Blake for forty-one days. I’m playing it by ear.’
Jack sighs heavily. ‘All right, Lana, but promise me you will take care of yourself, though. The first smallest sign that something is not right you will call me.’
‘I promise. Jack?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Please don’t worry about me. I’m a big girl now. I can take care of myself.’
‘Just be careful, OK,’ he says gruffly, and then he is gone. I lean back, but I do not think of Jack and his warning. Something else is bothering me.
As soon as I get into the apartment I go to my computer. Into the browser I type in the word cunt.
And I am shocked to learn that the word cunt is the most offensive word in the English language with the highest power to shock, but that it only became obscene around the time of Shakespeare. Before that it was actually the root word for the words queen and cuneiform, the most ancient form of writing. The word itself derives from kunta meaning female genitalia in Sumerian.
So: when a man calls a woman a cunt he is actually calling her the queen who invented writing and numerals—one of the finest compliments a woman can be given. The Irish apparently even use it as an endearment!
I also learn that cunt is the only word in the English language that describes the whole of the female genitalia. Vagina refers only to the inner entrance and vulva to the clitoris, outer labia majora and minora. To talk about a woman’s entire incredible sexual orchestra in all its stupendous glory one needs the word cunt!
At that moment I claim the dreaded word for myself.
When Blake called me a cunt I had only pretended to be offended. The real truth is that years of avoiding the word, and despising others for allowing something so foul and disgusting to sit on their tongues, fled and all I felt was its raw sexual pull. Yes, I am a cunt and I want your rigid hot dick deep inside my cunt. I realize that no matter what Blake said his actions were teaching me that my body is my temple. That between my legs is an altar called cunt where he comes to worship.
And now I have a plan. A plan that involves my cunt.