Frisky Business (28 page)

He arrived at Romy’s place–his place now, he reminded himself – intending to have a bath and crawl into bed. However, he got to the house to find Romy up a ladder wrapped up in an enormous parka doing something to the guttering.

‘Hello.’ She turned to smile at him as he pushed open the gate, brushing muck off her gloved hand. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Hell,’ he said, looking up at her. She looked so fresh and wholesome – vibrant and energetic, and completely in tune with the world, as if she was part of this crisp, clean morning. She looked how he wanted to feel.

‘Well
, you look like you could do with a cup of coffee,’ she said, starting to climb down the ladder.

He was aware of how he must look and that she was being kind by putting it so mildly. He probably looked like he needed a shot of adrenaline and a blood transfusion. ‘Thanks, I’d love a coffee. What are you doing?’ he asked, nodding at the roof as she folded up the ladder and laid it against the wall.

‘Just clearing leaves out of the gutter,’ she said, removing her thick gardening gloves. ‘They cause havoc if you let them build up.’

‘Do you want a hand?’

‘No, thanks. Luke will be due a feed soon, and I could do with a break myself. Anyway, I have something to show you. I’ve drawn up a plan for the house and done up some figures.’

She seemed really excited about it. He could tell from her tone and the light in her eyes that she wanted to do it, and his heart leapt. He was going to start turning his life around.

In the kitchen, Romy took off her coat and put the coffee machine on. ‘Wait here,’ she said to Kit, ‘I’ll just go check on Luke and get the plans.’

When she left, Kit mooched around the kitchen aimlessly. He stood for a while looking out the window to the garden. Then he decided to make himself useful by getting out mugs for their coffee. As he searched through the cupboards, his eyes lit on a pile of books lying on the worktop. He picked up the top one idly – something called
The Loving Dominant
– and turned it over to read the blurb, surprised to discover it was a kind of manual for sadomasochistic couples – not what he would have expected Romy’s reading material to be. Why would she be reading something like that anyway? She wasn’t even
with anyone. He turned over the next book and read the back cover. From what he could make out, it seemed to be some sort of guide to becoming a sex slave. Jesus!

His curiosity aroused, he picked up the well-thumbed paperback beneath it. It fell open at a section on genital bondage, complete with detailed instructions and – oh God – illustrations. He winced at the picture of a bound penis, dropping the book as if it had burned him. That wasn’t an image he would forget in a hurry! His eyes ran over the rest of the titles –
SM101, The Compleat Slave, The Story of O–
even he had heard of that notorious erotic novel. There was a definite theme developing here. A photograph album lay at the bottom of the pile and he pulled it out and opened it. It was full of black and white photographs of a man and woman engaged in various sex games – the woman bound, gagged, blindfolded, bent over benches and suspended from the ceiling while the man brandished whips, canes and … a rather impressive boner.

Kit was shocked. Romy was the last person on earth he’d have figured for being interested in this sort of stuff. Obviously, she wasn’t as wholesome as she appeared. And then another thought struck him. This was why she didn’t know who Thingummyjig’s father was! He remembered her telling him she had got pregnant at a party where everyone was wearing masks and she was blindfolded. Obviously little Whatsisface had been conceived at some kind of orgy and his father was just a nameless, faceless, gimp-masked stranger. He was flabbergasted. It was like discovering Snow White was on the game.

And then a thought occurred to him – was this why she wanted to talk about what happened at David’s party? Was she looking for someone she could try these things with? Did she want him to do this stuff … with her? God, poor Romy!

He
jumped guiltily, snapping the book shut as he heard Romy coming back towards the kitchen. He started opening cupboard doors randomly.

‘Here we are!’ She faltered in the doorway, her eyes darting to the books and she blushed bright red.

‘I was just looking for some mugs,’ Kit said, hoping she hadn’t seen him looking at her books. She clearly hadn’t intended to leave them lying around, and he didn’t want to embarrass her.

‘Oh, I’ll get those. You sit down,’ she said, waving him to the table.

He sat with his back to her and heard cupboard doors opening and closing.

‘Here we go,’ she said. He turned to see her approaching the table with two mugs and a pot of coffee. He noticed the books had disappeared from the counter.

‘So here’s my idea for the house,’ she said, grabbing a folder from the counter and placing it on the table in front of Kit. He opened the folder while Romy poured them both coffee. He was impressed by how thorough and professional it was as he flicked through the pages. There were floor plans showing various proposed layouts with spreadsheets of the budget for each, as well as a detailed description of each proposal.

‘Wow, this looks great!’ he said as she sat down opposite him. ‘You’ve put a lot of thought into it.’

‘Well, it is what I do for a living. There’s no point in going into something like this half-cocked and just hoping for the best.’ She leaned over and flicked to one of the spreadsheets. ‘This is the absolute minimum we could bring it in at, realistically,’ she said, pointing to the total. ‘And at that, we’d have to do as much as we can ourselves.’

Kit ran his eyes down the column. He had no idea what

project managers normally earned, but the figure Romy had included for her own services seemed low to him. ‘Is this what you usually charge?’ he asked, pointing to the amount allocated for project management fees. ‘I thought it would be more.’

She smiled. ‘I’ve given you a discount. If you make way over the odds, you can give me a bonus if you like.’

‘I will.’

‘So what do you think? Could you manage that?’

‘Yeah, I could just about cover it. But do you think it will work?’

‘If we do a really high-end spec that would work as a country house hotel or something like that, yes. I’ve spoken to some estate agents and they think it has potential.’

She grabbed a thick envelope from the counter and pulled out a sheaf of glossy brochures. ‘These are some similar properties,’ she said, fanning the brochures out on the table in front of Kit. ‘Just to give you an idea of what the end result could look like.’

The houses were amazing, grand and palatial with majestic staircases and sumptuous decor, the majestic gardens boasting well-manicured lawns and mature trees. He couldn’t imagine his aunt’s house ever looking like this. But what really caught Kit’s eye was the price.

‘Seriously?’ he said, pointing to the figure. ‘We could get
that
much for it?’

‘Well, that’s just the asking price,’ Romy cautioned. ‘It might not sell for that. It might not sell at all.’

‘But it’s possible?’

‘Yes,’ she said with a smile. ‘It’s possible.’

‘Great! So when do we start?’

‘We really need to spend some time down there first to make more detailed plans, and decide exactly what way we want to go.’

‘Okay.
When do you want to do that?’

‘The sooner the better.’

‘Well, I have Tank’s stag do next weekend.’

‘Oh yeah. Have you found out what it is yet?’

‘Yes.’ Kit sighed, looking morose. ‘It’s some kind of survival weekend bollocks. We get dropped out in the middle of nowhere, like we’re survivors of a plane crash. Then we have to build our own shelters and do orienteering to find our way home again. Brilliant fun, according to Wedgie.’

‘God, what happened to the simple days of just getting wasted?’

‘I know. So anyway, next weekend is out. And the following weekend there’s the wedding.’

‘Well, why don’t we wait until all that’s out of the way and then maybe we could spend a few days there, camp out in the gate lodge and really get a feel for the place. In the meantime, we can get the electricity reconnected and I’ll order a few skips and arrange for the chimney to be swept. That way we can get started right away on clearing the place out and getting the gate lodge into shape. It shouldn’t take much to make that liveable, and then it’ll be ready to move into as soon as work starts.’

‘Wait – move into? You’re planning to live down there? In the cottage?’

‘Oh yeah.’ Romy nodded. ‘You really need to live on-site to keep control of a project like this. It will be easier than driving up and down from Dublin all the time anyway. It will speed things up a lot.’

‘Okay,’ he said uncertainly.

‘You don’t sound too sure.’

‘No, it’s fine. I just hadn’t considered it, that’s all.’

‘It’s not just a matter of managing the project. This budget is really tight and you can’t afford to pay for anything you can possibly do yourself. We’re going to have to get stuck in.’

‘That’s
fine,’ Kit said. He hadn’t considered living in the property, but now that he thought about it, he decided a move to the country was just what he needed. He’d be out of harm’s way in the middle of nowhere – no sleazy clubs and strangers’ apartments. He would work hard, breathe clean air and go to bed early. He could see himself now, clear-eyed and ruddy-faced in some sort of healthy rustic wood-chopping scenario. ‘Actually, it’s great,’ he said to Romy. ‘I was just thinking this morning that I needed to get some discipline back in my life.’

‘Discipline?’ Romy seemed surprised by his use of the word – he couldn’t blame her, considering the state he had turned up in this morning. He must look like he didn’t know the meaning of the word. ‘You had more … discipline in your life in New York?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, I did actually, believe it or not. I miss it.’

‘So, we’re on then?’ she asked, grinning excitedly.

‘We’re on,’ he said, holding out his hand. She grasped it and they shook.

‘This is the basic position the submissive usually adopts at the start of a session or whenever her master commands her to kneel,’ May said later as she knelt on Romy’s floor, while Lesley and Romy observed her from the sofa. To Romy’s relief, May had arrived dressed as if she was going to a yoga class, in loose-fitting drawstring trousers and a tight white T-shirt. ‘Sit back on your heels, legs wide apart, hands resting lightly on your legs, palms down,’ she said, as if she was talking them through a yoga posture. ‘The chin is slightly lowered and the eyes are down.’