The Plus One

by Sophia Money-Coutts

  13

  ON FRIDAY EVENING, WHEN I arrived at the address Ana had sent over, there was no sign of Lala. She’d said she was already here but the only person I could see when I squinted along the dark street was an old man with a cane walking a large, fat spaniel. He definitely didn’t look as if he was on his way to a sex party. Although animals do it for some people, don’t they? I shivered in my catsuit.

  ‘Evening,’ I said, as he walked past me.

  He nodded back.

  ‘Boo,’ said a voice in my ear.

  It was Lala, but no wonder I hadn’t seen her. She was wearing an extraordinary cloak. A hood pulled up over her head, folds of it billowing around her legs.

  ‘Nice cape!’

  ‘I know it’s good, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I got it from Versace so I can’t get anything on it.’

  ‘No semen stains?’

  ‘No, ideally not,’ she laughed. ‘Come on, let’s go in, I’m freezing.’

  As we walked into a marble hall lit with dozens of flickering candles, two men in suits offered to take our coats. They looked like David Gandy’s twin brothers, with dark, slicked-back hair.

  ‘Sure,’ said Lala, slipping off her Little Red Riding Hood and immediately revealing the reason she had been so cold outside. Underneath, she was basically naked. Black lace bra, black lace knickers, suspenders running down from her thigh, black stilettos.

  ‘You forgot your dress?’ I said, raising my eyebrows.

  ‘I saw Eyes Wide Shut, Pols,’ she said, handing David Gandy 1 her cloak. ‘This is the sort of thing you’re supposed to wear.’

  ‘Rrrrrrright,’ I said. ‘Do you feel awkward? Being in your knickers at a party?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not really. It’s like wearing a bikini to the beach. And anyway, I had a few shots of vodka before leaving home.’

  She looked phenomenal. Blonde hair piled up on her head, thick winged eyeliner, a body as taut as a teenager’s, which came pretty exclusively from a diet of black coffee, cigarettes and the odd packet of Jelly Babies.

  ‘Fucking hell, Pols, that looks wild!’ she said, her eyes widening at the catsuit as I handed my coat to David Gandy 2.

  ‘In a… good way?’

  ‘In a great way. I love it. Is it comfortable?’

  ‘Nope, I’m either too cold or too hot and it took me half an hour to get into,’ I said. ‘So I quite need a drink.’

  ‘Everyone is in the drawing room at present,’ said one of the Gandys, indicating his head along the corridor. I could hear a general burble of noise.

  ‘Here goes, La,’ I said nervously, as we walked towards it.

  I’m bad at guessing numbers. Like when someone tells you there were 53,000 people at a gig and I’m like ‘Oh, it looked like a few hundred to me.’ But I reckon inside this room were a few dozen people. And Lala was right. Most were in their underwear.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she said, taking a champagne flute from a waiter and passing it to me. Then she took another one for herself.

  ‘Can we go and stand in the corner and check everyone out,’ I said quietly to her.

  ‘We don’t need to hide, Pols.’

  ‘No, but I just mean I don’t go out in latex much and I quite want to stand with my bum to the wall somewhere.’

  ‘Your bottom looks delicious,’ she said. ‘But sure, let’s go hang over there and drink these. Then I might need to go have a fag outside.’

  ‘OK.’

  We walked across the room, me, self-consciously holding my stomach in; Lala as if parading the catwalk in a Victoria’s Secret show.

  It looked like a rough balance of men and women. But, I quickly realized, it was easier for women to dress up in fetish kit than the guys. I glanced at a blonde in a cream camisole and pair of French knickers, and another woman who was wearing a pair of slinky pink pyjama trousers but nothing up top apart from a couple of silver nipple tassels. Standing on the edge of the room, I felt like a spectator at the circus.

  The men looked less at ease. One, a short chap, was wearing a pair of leather trousers and a gimp mask. Another was wearing leather lederhosen and a military cap. A tall, dark man standing with his back to us was wearing a kilt, a pair of leather ankle boots and that was it. It was all very different to a Friday night in the pub. Could there really be cabinet ministers and judges underneath those masks?

  ‘Fag?’ said Lala.

  ‘No, but I’ll come stand with you, I’m not sure loitering on your own is a good idea in here.’

  Outside, on a terrace, there were several heaters. They’d obviously planned ahead for the guests that evening who wouldn’t be bothering with clothes.

  ‘I’d better not sit directly under one, La, I might melt,’ I said.

  ‘When does this all go on till then?’

  ‘Around six in the morning, Ana said in her email.’

  ‘Is she here?’

  ‘She said she would be somewhere. We should go and have a look when we’re back inside.’

  ‘Do you think we can snoop around the house?’

  ‘Yes, definitely. Let’s get another drink and go for a wander.’

  ‘Are you going to… do anything?’

  ‘No! La, this is work. Plus, I feel like “doing anything” at a fetish party would probably count as cheating.’

  She smiled. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Fine, good. Down this weekend.’

  ‘What’s it been now?’ she said, exhaling smoke into the air.

  ‘What’s what been?’

  ‘You and Jaz.’

  ‘Erm, three months or so.’

  ‘Not bad for him.’

  ‘Can we not?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Talk about it right now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just always feel a bit awkward with you, talking about it, I mean. Especially dressed like two extras from a porn film.’

  ‘Don’t feel awkward, you muppet. It’s fine. Weird at first, now fine. You just have to make me godmother to your firstborn. That’s all I ask.’

  ‘Fine. Done. Come on, let’s go inside.’

  It was the smell as we climbed the stairs that hit me at first. The hot smell of bodies, of sex, of rubber. And the noise, the odd thwack and the panting and the sound of doors closing and opening. It was dim, with the light from various candles flickering off the walls.

  There were more David Gandys upstairs too, standing at strategic intervals along the corridor. The house was enormous. Bigger than Jasper’s, if such a thing were possible.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ I whispered at Lala’s back as she walked ahead of me and up another flight of stairs.

  At the top of that was a big, open-plan room which spanned the entire floor, darkly lit with red velvet curtains pulled across the windows. And more candles. Also, it was filled with what looked like the kind of apparatus that was used in Fifties gymnasiums. Pommel horses, springboards, that sort of thing.

  It definitely wasn’t a gym lesson though. As Peregrine had implied, it was an orgy. With various figures writhing away. The room was surrounded by benches, so Lala and I took another champagne glass each from a side table and sat down on one of them.

  ‘Are we allowed to just watch?’ I said.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it’s encouraged,’ she said, her eyes fixed on a table in front of us on which a woman lay on her back, legs open, a man in a pair of leather shorts licking up her thigh. Could that be an MP? Maybe they were both MPs? She was making an awful lot of noise.

  On the other side of the room, I could vaguely make out a couple having sex, she sitting on top of him, rocking backwards and forwards.

  ‘Jesus, the smell, La!’ I said, wrinkling my nose. Hot wafts of bodies and hormones kept hitting me.

  ‘Bit yeasty, isn’t it?’ she replied.

  Then a man appeared in front of us. He had a studded collar around his neck, with a leather dog’s lead that ran off it, clipped brown hair and he was wearing tight leather trousers. />
  ‘Hello, I’m Rupert and I’d like to be your slave tonight,’ he said, handing me the lead.

  ‘Oh, Rupert, that’s so kind but actually I’m just having a drink with my…’

  ‘Get down on your hands and knees, Rupert,’ said Lala, snatching the lead from my hand.

  I looked at her and my mouth fell open, but I couldn’t think what exactly to say.

  Rupert looked ecstatic. He instantly dropped to his knees.

  ‘And your hands on the floor,’ instructed Lala.

  He put his hands down.

  ‘Rupes, you’re going to be our table,’ said Lala, ‘Come on, Pols, put your legs on Rupert’s back.’

  ‘La, I’ve got heels on, I’ll hurt him.’

  ‘Don’t be so feeble, he wants to be hurt, don’t you, Rupes?’

  Rupert, on the floor, nodded his head. So, I lifted my legs and gently laid them on his back. Lala did the same, less gently.

  A waiter appeared with another tray of champagne, so we each took another glass. ‘I’ve taken one for you, Rupert, you can have it later,’ said Lala, putting his glass on the floor underneath our legs.

  The screaming woman in front of us had now finished and she and her friend had vacated the table. There was a man strapped to a bench on the other side of the room being given a blow job by another man, though, so we weren’t short of things to watch.

  ‘This is fun,’ said Lala, leaning back against the wall. ‘I never thought it would be this much fun.’

  ‘We could always have more fun, girls,’ said Rupert, from the floor.

  ‘Oh, er, thanks, but I just want to watch for a bit,’ I said quickly. ‘So have you been to many of these then?’ I didn’t want this human table to touch me but I did quite need him to give me some details about the sort of people who went to these parties.

  ‘A few,’ came Rupert’s muffled voice from the floor.

  ‘And do you know many others here?’

  Still on his hands and knees, he waggled his head up and down like a nodding dog. ‘Some. But it’s a circle of trust.’

  ‘Should we let you get up?’ I said, suddenly feeling him twitch underneath my feet. ‘He’s probably got sore knees, La, we should let him get up.’

  Lala sighed. ‘Go on then, Rupert, up you get, and here’s your champagne.’ He leant back on his knees and she handed him the glass.

  ‘So what do you, er, do then?’ I asked, as he stood up.

  ‘I’m in shipping,’ he said, sitting beside me, holding his champagne glass in one hand, his lead in the other.

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said politely. I felt like I was at some kind of extreme dinner party.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m a writer,’ I said quickly. I thought the word ‘journalist’ might alarm him. But I needed Rupert to tell me more. ‘So, I know you said it’s a circle of trust, but I’m, intrigued. Do you get lots of… famous people here?’

  He leant in conspiratorially towards me. ‘Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but rumours are one of the princes came once.’

  ‘What? When? How did he not get spotted?’

  ‘Wore a mask,’ said Rupert. ‘It was for a stag do, I think.’

  ‘And did he… do anything?’

  ‘Circle of trust,’ he said again, tapping his nose.

  ‘Yes, sorry, ’course,’ I said.

  ‘Pols, will you come with me outside? I need some fresh air and another fag,’ said Lala, from the other side of me.

  ‘Go on then.’ We told Rupert we’d see him later and went back downstairs, past a couple fingering one another on the landing.

  ‘I’m quite up for being spanked,’ Lala said outside, exhaling smoke into the air.

  ‘By a total stranger?’

  ‘Yeah, why not?’

  I shrugged. ‘No. No, go for it. It’s, you know, the right place for it. I’m sure Rupert would oblige.’

  ‘Not by him.’

  Which is how, half an hour later, we were back in the apparatus room, me sitting on the bench again, watching Lala approach a tall man wearing a balaclava and a pair of latex Y-fronts. He had a leather bag slung across his shoulder and looked like a member of the IRA who’d only bothered getting half-dressed that morning. She introduced herself and they started chatting. Then both of them nodded vigorously and he gestured at a bench in front of him.

  Lala dropped to her knees on to the bench, but got her weight distribution wrong so the bench reared up in her face. A couple grinding into one another against the wall stopped to watch. Lala’s friend in the balaclava pointed out that she should put her knees higher up and rest her arms down to steady the bench. In position, her bottom primed behind her, she turned to me and winked. Then she put her head back down on top of her forearms.

  The man reached into his bag and pulled out a whip.

  ‘That’s called a flogger,’ said Rupert, materializing beside me and sitting down. ‘A leather one. Hurts less than rubber.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Do they leave marks?’

  ‘No, not really,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not unless you use the one with wire in it.’

  ‘Wire?!’ I shuddered. How do you work out you’re into being spanked with wire? I wondered to myself. Like, what’s the process? Start with the damp corner of a tea towel at home? Work up from there?

  ‘I’m not a fan myself,’ said Rupert.

  Lala’s inquisitor stood behind her and started flicking the leather strands at her bottom. She wriggled it. He started flicking it a bit harder. Every time he struck her bottom, Lala would clench it. But he continued, flick, flick, flick. Until he stopped and leant forward, whispering something in her ear. She nodded.

  He reached into his bag and pulled out a different whip.

  ‘Ah, that’s a rubber one,’ said Rupert. ‘This might sting a bit.’

  He went at her bottom again, flicking the flogger backwards and forwards, brushing her with the tips of the rubber strands.

  ‘Fuck,’ I heard her exclaim through clenched teeth. I squinted at her bum. Red lines were starting to come up on her skin.

  ‘Do you think she’s all right?’ I said to Rupert. I felt like I was losing control of the evening.

  ‘Yes, don’t worry. He’s a pro.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Not really. But I’ve seen him here before. I don’t think he’ll hurt her.’

  Lala twisted her head over her shoulder to try to look at her bottom. The balaclava man said something to her and she nodded her head, then she put one leg down on the floor and stood up, rubbing one bum cheek with her hand. She was laughing with him, luckily, even though the welts on her arse cheeks looked like something you’d see in a medieval documentary on the History Channel.

  Then he pulled off his balaclava and my stomach lurched. It was Hamish. Lala laughed again and turned to point at me. Then his face fell. And what is the right thing to do at this point? What does one do when you’re at a fetish party and you realize your friend has just been spanked by another friend’s fiancé? What do you say?

  I stared at him as he walked towards me.

  ‘Hi,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘I’m Rupert,’ said Rupert, twirling his lead in his hand.

  ‘Rupert, er, hello,’ said Hamish.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘You’re… you’re here? You come to these?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ replied Hamish. ‘I haven’t been to that many.’

  ‘You were here just before Christmas, weren’t you?’ said Rupert.

  Hamish looked at Rupert as if he’d rather he wasn’t there.

  ‘Has Lex been?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he replied quickly. ‘Not her thing.’

  ‘Oh my God, you know each other?’ said Lala, who’d been hovering on the sidelines of this conversation, still rubbing her bottom.

  ‘He’s my friend Lex’s fiancé, so yes, I do,’ I said.

  ‘Listen,’ Hamish started, ‘can we not
make a big deal about this? It’s just a thing I do. Sometimes. Not often.’

  ‘Where does she think you are?’

  ‘Rugby night out,’ he said, looking embarrassed. ‘Please, Pols. Please don’t say anything.’

  I looked at him, standing in front of me, in his silly, shiny knickers. Rubber flogger still in his hand.

  ‘Dude, I think honestly that’s a conversation you need to have with her. Before you get married.’

  He looked at the ground.

  ‘Right, La, I think we should make a move,’ I said. ‘It’s all got a bit weird.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Or we could all have another drink?’ said Rupert, quite optimistically given the circumstances.

  I shook my head. ‘Home time,’ I said. ‘But lovely to meet you. And Hamish… I don’t even want to look at you.’

  And then, with as much dignity as one can muster in a latex catsuit accompanied by someone in their underwear, I turned and walked out with Lala, who was still massaging her bum. We left Hamish standing with his flogger in one hand and his balaclava in the other.

  As luck would have it, or not, I was hanging out with Lex the following day. Quite literally hanging out actually as I was reviewing a new spa in Notting Hill for Posh!’s beauty pages and it required the wearing of my least favourite item of clothing: a bikini. Lex had said she’d come with me because she said she was up for anything that would help her lose ten or twenty stone before the wedding.

  ‘What is this place and will it make me thin?’ she said, when she met me outside the Tube station that afternoon.

  ‘It’s called a banya,’ I said, ‘a Russian thing. Did you bring your bikini?’

  ‘Yes, it’s in my bag.’

  ‘OK, let’s find it and then they can explain.’

  The spa was in a mews house a few streets away from the station.

  ‘What did you get up to last night?’ she asked me, as we walked there. I hadn’t mentioned that I was going to an orgy for work. And I certainly wasn’t feeling like going into details now. So I lied.