15

‘So you’re banned from Kew?’ Darren asks me, laughing into his cocktail.

‘Well, not the town of Kew but I suspect we won’t be going back to the Queen’s Royal Gardens any time soon.’

‘Only you could get yourself into that sort of trouble, eh?’

‘Not me, the whole fam.’

Fam. That’s a new word I’ve learnt from the past decade that seems to be a part of modern vernacular. My fam. My bloody awesome fam. After I burst a slide, showed a bunch of families my nipple and everyone laughed, Meg was threatened by a balding man in a Barbour coat (whatever), we all shouted our best insults and the babies learnt many new words. It was the best birthday present I’ve ever received bar the time Beth gifted me her old Reebok pumps. But then the crowd dispersed, we all found a pub garden and had a merry dinner almost as some sort of victory feast for taking on the playground bullies of Kew.

When the last pint was ordered, we then did what we’ve apparently been doing for years, we went back into our corners of the world, to live the different strands of our lives in different houses, with all our new extra family members. It was the saddest of times but we masked the sadness with alcohol and the knowledge that we’d just lived through another family anecdote to wheel out in years to come. I won’t lose them all. Beth is still on maternity leave so is going to stick around and Meg says she’ll pop down on the train every so often but the girl band are embarking on solo projects for now. They will rise through the charts once more, no doubt, and come together for the odd reunion tour.

‘You do like flashing. It’s your thing. I’ve seen your boobs more times than is really necessary and we’ve only been intimate once,’ Darren informs me.

‘What did we do?’ I ask curiously.

‘We had drunken half sex where you don’t even know if it counts towards your numbers because you’re so pissed and you don’t even know if it went in properly.’

I knock my head back in laughter at him recalling it so frankly. I like Darren. Not in that way but he’s been round to Mum’s occasionally to have a cup of tea and he seems invested in me and my life and wanting to get it back on track. But also not in that way as, since my accident, he and Cass seemed to have formed a relationship. From the sounds of it, the trauma of potentially losing me forced them together one evening and they’ve been inseparable since. Presently, they’re at the night-away stage of their relationship where they shared a bathroom and didn’t freak out at hearing the other poo.

‘So you and me never did more than that?’ I ask.

‘Oh, I was so in love with you at one point but you are an uncontainable force, Lucy Callaghan. It would take a larger-than-life man to be able to fit into that orb.’

‘Like Madonna?’ I ask.

‘Yes, I’d have been a rubbish Guy Ritchie.’

Cass comes back to the table with a tray of shots and drinks and puts an arm around me.

‘So… I guess we should say happy belated birthday?’ Cass says, holding a shot glass aloft.

I pick up a glass and toast them both. ‘To thirty…’ I down the sambuca shot and let it scorch the inside of my throat. This should be bigger, shouldn’t it? It was supposed to be drinking, dancing and general carnage in a field until the sun came up on my thirtieth year. But it was all scrapped because of that blinking bus. Instead we replaced celebrations with family picnics and I’ve opted for quiet drinks with a select few. However, Darren and Cass serve a different purpose here too.

‘So, is she coming?’ Cass asks, looking at her watch.

‘I told her eight.’

‘She was never very reliable,’ Darren adds with a hint of disdain in his voice.

‘One would think you didn’t like her?’ I ask. Cass laughs.

Tonight, I’m meeting Imogen, who I apparently had been half seeing before the bus. Well, that was my impression from the many times we’d shared pictures of our genitalia with each other but, according to Darren, it was more of a friends-with-benefits arrangement. I’ve been doing this a lot recently, having casual drinks and coffees with people from my contacts list who I believe I’ve slept with. Leo was the Batman fella I shagged in Emma’s utility room at Beth’s birthday party. Apparently, I threw a cake at Emma that evening. Leo was lovely and, apparently, we had three months of wild healing sex before I broke it off in the nicest possible way by setting him up profiles on many dating sites through which he found his current girlfriend, Natalie, who works in marketing and whose only flaw seems to be that she doesn’t like baked beans.

There have been other meet-ups. There was a man who cried because my situation made him think about the fragility of life and everything he hasn’t achieved in his own, and a banker who apparently was heavily into his kink and left me with a business card saying he’d love to come round and clean my house while I shout abuse at him. I live with my mother, I thought. Mum might like that though, especially if it gave her a break from the dusting.

‘She’s just a flake, an unsociable one at that. Bloody hard work. And she just shags you and leaves…’ Darren says.

‘I did the same with a lot of people…?’ I say.

‘I don’t think so. You were never cold with people.’

‘She’s just not that fun, Luce,’ Cass says, hooking her arm into his. ‘Oh crap, she’s here. Don’t turn around…’

I turn around. Obviously. Imogen has arrived in a suit, to a bar. It’s very fresh from work and her work is in the City, automatically feeling more important than mine.

‘Lucy?’ she says, examining my head. ‘Wow, that’s a look. How are you?’ Immediately, the tone of her voice grates. She comes over for a double air kiss. I was attracted to this?

‘Imogen?’

‘Yeah?’

Yeah, she’s not Tony. I liked Tony immensely. She’s aloof, if attractive. Her hair is black, slicked-back, she’s got a stud to each ear. She’s so preened to the point of nearly being boring.

‘There’s a spare drink going here if you want, Imogen,’ Cass says, waving at her.

‘We’ve met, right? Sorry, I’m terrible with names.’

‘Darren and Cass.’

‘Yeah. So I didn’t really get your message? You were in an accident?’

‘A bike accident.’

‘And now you don’t remember a thing? I’m not sure that’s how amnesia works, is it?’

‘Are you a doctor?’ Darren asks her.

‘No, actually. But I’ve seen documentaries.’

This isn’t awkward. At all. There’s a very conservative look to her and she reaches to take the White Russian offered, sips it and then flinches.

‘I’ve been meeting a lot of people recently, trying to fill in the gaps,’ I say.

Darren smirks and I kick him under the table.

‘So, did you want to get out of here?’ she says, looking at Darren and Cass dismissively.

‘Oh no. God, I meant I have no idea who I became over the last ten years. It’s all a mystery so I’ve been trying to work out who I am. Who I went out with.’

‘We didn’t really go out,’ she mumbles. ‘We just slept together for a while. It was open.’

‘Didn’t we go away together?’

‘Well, yeah… look, I can’t drink this. I’m going to get some wine,’ she says bluntly, not offering to buy anything for anyone else and taking her bag with her like we might steal it.

As she walks away I lean into Darren and Cass. ‘What the hell? She is awful? I slept with her? She’s so shiny and cold.’

‘It’s why we called her the Fridge.’

Having not drunk huge amounts in the past months, the shot I had earlier forces quite a loud laugh out of me and Imogen turns from the bar to look at me. She’s in a suit. I’m in a cropped top and jeans. This is a very weird mismatch but at the same time I’m semi-intrigued how we fell into bed together.

‘You used to say she was very skilled. I always thought you were just addicted to the orgasms. The mismatch in personalities was interesting to you, a challenge. Apparently, she was very good at making you…’

‘Come?’ I say.

‘And more,’ Cass says, whispering but not.

Darren puts a finger to his lips and looks up to the ceiling. All I know is at seventeen, I didn’t even know an orgasm was a thing, at least not something you experience with another person. It was something I did by myself, for myself, not even knowing what that sensation was really. I scrunch my face up in reply.

‘Surely I could have done that myself without having to interact with her, or even found someone a bit warmer.’

‘We often questioned your decisions when it came to your sexual partners. You had sex with a fifty-year-old hot yoga instructor once. He’d come for drinks in leggings.’

‘I did?’

‘His name was Roger. Bendy as fuck, saggy balls,’ Darren tells me.

‘We’d get school reports on them all, Luce. They gave us life.’

Imogen suddenly appears back at the table. ‘The wine selection here is horrific. Not sure how long this has been lingering in their fridge.’ She puts her bag down on the table, blocking Cass out of view. ‘What were we talking about?’

‘Yoga,’ I reply. ‘Do you do yoga?’

‘I’m not into that hippy shit,’ she says blankly.

‘Oh. So remind me why we slept together?’ I say bluntly. I have no idea who I am but I have a feeling I’m not the sort of person who’s going to fake a whole evening of conversation for the sake of it. She seems perturbed to have to speak so openly about it in front of my friends.

‘It was fun?’ she says, not looking too entirely sure.

‘Your face is really reading fun right now.’

‘I don’t do sarcasm.’

‘I do.’

Darren and Cass sit that much closer to each other to take this all in, hoping I might do us all a favour and just get rid.

‘I don’t get why I’m here then? You said it was your birthday? Is this it? Is this the party?’

‘Yeah?’

She looks around. Was she expecting balloons? Vol-au-vents? She seems upset that she even had to buy her own drink. She studies my face, disappointment framed in her impeccably groomed eyebrows.

‘You’ve changed,’ she mutters.

‘Getting hit by a bus will do that. I was under the impression we maybe cared about each other so you might give a damn that I nearly died or that it is my birthday…’

‘Happy birthday?’

‘No card?’

‘People don’t do cards any more.’

‘These two got me a card.’

Darren identifies himself as the card-giver by putting his hand in the air. It had a monkey on the front wearing lipstick and a beret.

‘Look, what we had was just casual,’ she adds. ‘I don’t even know your last name. We’d have sex and that was it, you were never so uptight about it before?’

Darren and Cass look at each other with bated breath, waiting for my response.

‘In fact, you were more fun. If you’ve had some accident and some sort of lightbulb moment about what we were then I can’t sign up to that. I’m sorry.’

I’m unnaturally quiet for a moment as I study her face. She’s pretty, there is no doubt about that, but I can’t quite tell where the sexual attraction is here. Why you? Why women? This still confuses me. I was always under the impression that people knew about their sexuality from a young age. But at seventeen, those feelings were still deeply embedded somewhere. I don’t want you. I don’t want to kiss you, see your boobs or have your fingers anywhere near my bits. So what I do is just nudge my drink forward and have it spill in her general direction, over what looks like quite an expensive handbag.

‘Fuck. Lucy. Grow up,’ she says, picking up the bag and trying to wipe it down with her hand. ‘This is bloody Prada.’

I sit there and cock my head to the side, staring into space.

‘Well? You’re not going to at least apologise?’ she demands.

‘No, I’m having a lightbulb moment that maybe you’re a bit of a bitch and I’m disappointed in my older self that I would have ever gone near someone like you.’

And with a smile, she picks up her sodden Prada and leans into me. ‘Bye, Lucy.’

‘Piss off, Imogen.’

And she departs, not even acknowledging my friends but at least leaving us with a full glass of red to share. My eyes follow her as she vacates the bar, not even bothering to turn and give me a second glance.

‘That was what I was into?’ I ask Darren and Cass, still a bit silent from the confrontation.

‘Drama fuelled your soul. I think you thought it made the sex better. Who knows?’ Cass replies and she comes over to kiss me on the cheek, noting my unusually pensive look. ‘Hey, you know where we should go tonight? Velvet Boulevard.’ Darren gives Cass a strange look at the suggestion. ‘C’mon… Not for any other reason but just for the fun? To see who’s working?’

‘Is that a new Tube station I don’t know about?’ I ask innocently.

Darren still doesn’t look convinced. ‘It’s a sex club that you and Cass used to work at,’ he explains, my eyes widening. ‘Not like that, you used to do bar work there, it paid very well. Even if you did have to serve drinks in your underwear.’

‘Nice underwear though,’ Cass tells me. ‘They’d give us vouchers to go buy our knickers from Agent Provocateur – we were in mostly for those sorts of perks. We could go. To bring back your memory and all that…’

‘What’s the other option?’ I ask.

‘We get ratted here and then we have to carry Darren home.’

‘Then let’s go, bitches.’

‘LUCY! YOU BLOODY DIAMOND! COME HERE, GIRL!’ I don’t know who this man is but he’s twice the size of me with a very square head and the tailoring of his suit is immaculate. ‘I heard what happened, look at your hair? You look like me!’

‘I do… And you are?’ I feel knowing his name is important given he literally has me in a bear hug with my toes scraping off the floor.

‘Are you serious?’ he tells me, looking slightly insulted.

‘Kyle, she lost her memory in the accident, remember?’ Cass tells him.

‘I thought you were pulling my leg. Really?’ he says in deep East London tones, putting me down. ‘Then what if I told you I was your husband and you were totally in love with me.’

‘I’d ask you how I take my tea…’

‘Milk, no sugar, ’cause you’re sweet enough…’ I wink at him and he roars with laughter, lifting up a red velvet rope and letting us all inside the club. ‘Any trouble, girls… you come get me. Let yourselves through to the back.’

Cass gives him a kiss on the cheek and we enter the club, heading for a side door next to a cloakroom operated by someone in bunny ears and a corset. I used to work here? I guess it would beat an evening shift at Sainsbury’s. Darren and Cass have explained the many side hustles we were all involved in to keep us alive and in London rents. We all did the princess party scene as that was decent money, cash in hand, and there was everything else from back-up dancing and pantomimes, to bar work and private ballet lessons, to bored expat housewives in West London’s Holland Park. This bar work paid very well but Cass and I drew the line at being in the rooms at the back. Stuff happened in there that people spoke about in whispers. All we know is that the rooms have to be deep-cleaned every night. The club must get through a lot of Dettol.

Darren and Cass lead me through to a large dark dressing room that has a window that I will assume is one-way as one girl sits there with her boobs out, corset undone and eating a packet of smoky bacon crisps. Do we talk about what’s beyond the window? There’s the bar I obviously used to work behind and Cass wasn’t joking, the current girls there are in PVC thigh-high boots and masquerade masks. But around the place, people are just scattered enjoying sexual endeavours of varying descriptions. There’s two people shagging on a sofa, looking very enthusiastic about it all. Is the balding fella in the cage all right? Can we check on him? Is he locked in there? What is also bizarre is that we can’t hear any of it, only see, so it’s like when we’d watch porn at a sleepover with the volume right down so someone’s parents in the next room couldn’t tell what we were doing. Seeing this through my inexperienced eyes makes me stop in my tracks though, as does Darren, who I suspect is not very into this scene.

‘You girls used to tell me about this and I never quite believed you. It really is a thing, eh?’ he says, putting his head to one side to study the angles by which one man is suspended off a wall. An older busty woman in a velour tracksuit and flip-flops sits there staring out of the window and turns to look at us. As soon as she sees my face, she jumps up in shock.

‘As I live and breathe, it’s Miss Juicy Lucy,’ she says in a squawking London accent. She comes over and wraps her arms around me, holding me tightly in an embrace. Luckily a gold chain with her name gives me a clue as to who she is.

‘Tia?’

‘See, she’s only remembered the important people in life,’ she says to Cass. ‘How are you, girl?’

‘Confused?’

She roars with laughter and urges me to come and sit down next to her.

‘I can’t tell you what a treat it is to see you. When I heard what happened, no word of a lie, I sobbed.’

‘So, I worked here?’ I ask her.

‘You did. One of my best girls behind the bar. You and Cass did the occasional shift for me.’

The way my eyes keep catching what’s behind the mirror amuses her. I suppose I was never so prudish when I was mixing people’s cocktails. Darren and Cass escape to get some drinks and possibly wash his eyes out with vinegar.

‘I never partook in the…’

She shakes her head. ‘That’s what Olive does.’ She gestures to the girl with the corset undone, still demolishing her crisps and sitting there with her boobs out, staring into space. She puts a hand up to acknowledge me.

‘So, all these people…’ I ask, craning my head around to see four people all at different angles to each other like some sort of puzzle of flesh.

‘It’s all kink, babes. High-end Mayfair kink. I’m the manager here. I check everyone is behaving themselves and keeping to the rules. I look after my girls. I looked after you.’

‘Thank you,’ I reply, bemused.

‘Oh, you were always a dream to work with. Bloody hilarious. We used to sit here well into the night and chat shit, watching the punters.’

‘Is the guy in the cage all right?’ I ask.

‘Gareth? Oh, that’s his thing. He’ll sit there all night. We just have to bring him drinks and, later, someone like Olive will go shout at him and he’ll lick her shoes. It’s his thing.’

I grimace but look over. It’s not right to kink-shame but I do worry about the tummy bugs he could contract. Still, I’m glad he’s happy.

‘The foursome come here about once a month, like date night. They order the chicken wings in advance, arrive separately, get it on and go back to their townhouses in Hampstead like it never happened. Him on the rack is Larry. He’s into his pain especially when it comes to his nipples…’ She then lifts a walkie-talkie to her mouth. ‘Can we watch out for Mr Smith in the leather mask for inappropriate touching, please…’

I turn my head to her. Inappropriate? Here? It’s all a bit inappropriate, isn’t it?

‘We’re big on consent and boundaries. Safe words for days,’ Tia informs me. ‘They’re new though…’ she continues, gesturing over to a couple in the corner. ‘Bless them… we get a lot like that…’

The couple in question sit in the corner of a sofa, looking as confused as me, wide-eyed and lost.

‘They’re married and want to spice things up but it’s possibly a step too far. Nice as a fantasy but a bit more in your face in real life,’ Tia explains. They both literally don’t know where to look, she’s working out if she should be crossing her legs. He looks like he’s trying desperately hard to suck his tummy in. ‘And someone get some complimentary drinks over to the new couple, please…’ she continues, mumbling into her walkie-talkie.

‘And so you just orchestrate things from the back here?’ I ask.

‘I manage it all, babes. I give people what they want within reason and then I send them home. No judgement, all smiles… Olive, can you go to the blue room. Mr Hussain has asked for you.’

Olive salutes, pouring crisp crumbs into her mouth before she does and pulling a wedgie out of her arse. As she laces up her corset, she grabs a flogging tool from her make-up desk. OK, then. She leaves the area, as another girl walks in. She has nipple tassels, which jiggle as she walks, and a very high-cut see-through bodysuit on. As she sees me though, she stops and looks to almost tear up, running over to embrace me.

‘No bloody way! Luce!’ I think I know who this is from social media and I think she may have messaged me.

‘Hayley?’ I guess.

‘Yes, you silly bitch.’ Her embrace is warm and familiar and I realise she may be more of a Darren/Cass mate as opposed to Imogen. ‘I was there that day when you got squished by the bus. I’m made up you’re here. You’re not working, right?’ she asks, shocked.

‘No, just a brief birthday visit.’

Darren and Cass re-enter the room with a tray of drinks, and she waves at them.

‘I forgot your birthday? I’m an awful friend. We’ll remedy that later. Of all the places to bring her though, Cass.’ Cass shrugs as Hayley walks over to her make-up station and pulls off her nipple tassels without even flinching. She then throws on a hoodie and comes to sit down next to us, grabbing a bottle of beer.

‘Tia, they said to bring you tea?’ Darren says quizzically, handing out the other drinks.

‘Yep. I don’t drink on this job. Tea all the way. I hope them bastards got it the right colour.’

‘They also…’ Darren pulls out some biscuits from his coat pocket. ‘…said you’d go ape without these.’

She puts a palm to the air in praise. ‘I likes your new fella, Cass. I like a man who knows to spoil his girl.’

She winks at him and it’s clear Darren doesn’t know whether to be scared or flattered. She grabs the packet of Jaffa Cakes and puts her feet up, completely undeterred by the people in the background performing some pretty energetic gymnastic moves to get the angles desired.

‘We thought it’d be a good way for Lucy to see what this place used to be to her…’ Cass says, offering me a cocktail. ‘Despite how it looks, you used to love working here. Behind the scenes, it’s pretty close-knit, almost like family. We had such a laugh.’

Tia offers Cass a hug, who, in turn, raises her mug of tea to me.

‘And you work in the back rooms?’ I ask, turning to Hayley.

‘But in a non-contact form. Olive and I have personas, it’s all very dominatrix-led. I like it, it’s very cathartic.’

Hayley then does what the majority have done of late which is to study my face. You don’t remember me, do you? she’s thinking. And there’s a look of disappointment. We were mates. We used to sit here, chat and share bottles of Jäger into the night,

‘So this amnesia thing. How long do they think it’ll last, lovely?’ Hayley asks, swigging on her beer.

‘Who knows? I’ve tried everything. I’m tracking down most of the people I’ve ever slept with. We paid for me to go to a hypnotherapist. I even got all my sisters to live with me in my family home but nada…’

Hayley reaches over and grabs my hand. ‘Oh love… we miss you. You know that…’

Darren puts his arm around me. ‘She’s still here. She poured a drink on Imogen before. It was quite a thing. Proper shades of old Lucy…’

‘The Fridge?’ Hayley says. ‘Thank god, she really was hard work, that girl…’

I pause for a moment to take that in. The idea that these people know my life better than I know myself is disconcerting but they make me feel safe, that I’m part of this bubble and I feel loved, cared for. Family. Even within the confines of this very unique place. The sound of a man part screaming, part calling out in pleasure, rings through the corridor behind this room and I’ll assume Mr Hussain is in good if very firm hands.

Hayley catches me looking at the mirror again, watching a couple peruse through a bowl of sex toys and lube like they’re rifling through a tub of Halloween sweets. ‘How many people had you slept with at seventeen then?’ she asks.

‘Three and a half, really…’

Darren sniggers, knowing somewhere down the line he became a half figure too.

‘This must be an education then?’

‘Like a bloody intensive course. I’m told this was my scene though, I didn’t shy away from this part of sex.’

‘It’s probably why you and I were friends, allies maybe?’

In that case, I feel I need to sit here with a notepad and pen and re-learn all of this, quickly. To make up for lost memories. Not just ten years gone but over a decade of sexual experience and endeavour just vanished. I probably lay in so many wet patches and learnt so much in that time about my body, my likes, my orgasms and now I have to learn that again. I’ll have to reset my counter, no? Like, where has that woman got her…? Oh. That’s new.

The door of the backstage area we seem to be in suddenly swings open and Kyle from the front door comes in.

‘Did someone say birthday?’ he says, with a cake in hand.

‘Yes, Kyle!’ Tia says. ‘We do this properly if we’re celebrating our Lucy. Cass, babes… there’s candles in Olive’s make-up station.’

I don’t want to think why Olive has candles but everyone hustles to attention, clearing spaces on tables as Cass side-hugs me.

‘You bake quick, Kyle…’ I laugh.

‘Nah, it was Darren here. Mentioned it at the bar and we always have cake in stock.’

‘For customer birthdays?’ I ask.

They all look at me smugly. Oh, people do stuff with the cakes. That would be sticky, with massive potential for getting fondant in your crack.

‘This hasn’t been touched, right?’ I ask.

‘Straight out the box, you dirty mare,’ he cackles. ‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty.’

‘Dirty thirty,’ Hayley says, grinning.

Or maybe some version of it. Everyone starts singing, which is surprisingly tuneful and there’s a touch of harmonising at the end as a treat. I see it all, the smiles and the love in their voices, the reflection of my candles in the mirror of the room perfectly illuminating that foursome, still going strong, changing positions so they won’t get cramp. And a shade of my own reflection in that mirror. Lucy Callaghan, she belonged here once.

‘Come on, blow out them candles, girl,’ Tia squeals.

‘Make a wish,’ Darren whispers.

I wish for it all back. That’s what I wish for. All of it. And I close my eyes and blow.

But as the candles go out in a shadow of smoke, we all get distracted by the thud of a pair of pale middle-aged butt cheeks getting pushed and squished against the window. Christ, they’re hairy. They’re squeaking as they move up and down. Squeak, squeak like a mouse. We all burst into hysterics. I certainly did not wish for them.