The leaves above me are still. Not even a whisper rustles through the trees. I’m on my log in the copse smoking a second cigarette. I can’t sleep, of course, but I don’t mind. This time of night is my favourite. Three in the morning. Before dawn, when even the nocturnal creatures are resting and the fields are quiet as death.
Nathan didn’t shout at Alex when he arrived home. He didn’t shout when Alex abandoned his football boots at the kitchen door. If I hadn’t taken Nathan upstairs and given myself to him spontaneously, unscheduled, his mood would have been very different. Until now I hadn’t thought about the way I use sex. I was in denial, finding the concept of using it explicitly to get what I want distasteful and demeaning, but it’s not either of those things.
It’s empowering.
Confronting the fact that I use sex to manipulate and manage my husband should sit awkwardly with me but I’m surprised to discover it doesn’t. Am I rotten inside? I don’t feel rotten. But perhaps I must be. After all, I used Nathan from the start. I exploited his desire so I could keep Cam out of prison. It’s naive to think pleasure is the only permissible reason to have sex. People use sex for myriad reasons and because of this sex is complicated. Especially for women. A quid pro quo for a weekend away. A thank you for a gold necklace beneath the Christmas tree. Sore knees and a grubby ten-pound note to exchange for a hit of crack. Sex is a commodity; men want it, so women trade it.
I was two weeks off my seventeenth birthday when I had sex for the first time. It was with a boy called Ryan. I never knew his surname. Ryan was best mates with Adam, and Adam wanted to go out with Vicky. Vicky fancied Adam back, but would only go on a date with him if I went too. So Adam brought Ryan. Ryan worked in Halfords on the A30 and, between swigs of Diamond White, he told me proudly it paid the same as shifting cement on a building site, but came with a uniform. He was nice looking and smelt clean, and wasn’t awful at kissing, so we ended up having sex in the back of his mum’s Cortina. It was quick and uncomfortable and the smell of Royal Pine air freshener jammed up my throat. I’d be lying if I said I’d been desperate to do it, but the smile on Vicky’s face when she emerged from the other car, red-faced with a love bite the size of a golf ball on her neck, made me happy, and when she threw me a questioning look, I nodded and gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
There were a couple of others before Cam. Nothing special. Drunken fumbles followed by awkward trips to the pub or cinema. It tended to be with the most persistent boys. I wasn’t that bothered by the thought of having sex. If I’d had my way, I’d have been happy to stick to the laughing and drinking and flirting which preceded it. The sex bit was always underwhelming. Until, of course, the first time with Cam, on his boat, in the freezing cold with a musty old tarpaulin pulled over us.
I think of Cam standing at the top of Trevaylor Woods, shoulders slumped forward, beaten by what happened. I recall his lips against mine, tentative, desperate for some sort of reconnection or comfort, perhaps even absolution. But what did I do? I pushed him away. After everything he’d been through? All I had to do was show him I cared, that I hadn’t rejected him, that I understood the enormity of what he’d done for me and its effect on his life. Would it have been so dreadful to show him some affection? Nathan is right. All I do is think about myself. I’m a spoilt cow and Cam didn’t deserve to be pushed away like that.
I grind my cigarette into the dirt and pull my phone out of my pocket. I press the home button and the screen bursts into life. I press my finger to the message icon and bring up a new text box then type the numbers in, carefully and deliberately, before writing my message and pressing send.
I don’t care anymore.
This isn’t over.