Isla could feel herself losing control of this situation, if she’d had any to begin with. Was Felicity seriously proposing that Oscar—Isla’s husband—have sex with Clementine—Isla’s best friend?
Felicity was joking … obviously. She told jokes for a living. But Isla saw a glance pass between Clementine and Cole, like she was seeking his permission.
Holy shit, Isla thought. She’s seriously considering this. The betrayal was like a sip of acid, burning all the way down.
Oscar was giving Isla a similar look, trying to gauge her reaction.
‘We’ve all had a bit much to drink,’ Isla said, pointedly lowering her glass to the table.
‘Or just the right amount.’ Felicity winked.
‘Very funny. I’m not loaning my husband out for sex with another woman.’ Isla gave Clementine a pointed look. ‘Not even my oldest friend.’
Oscar’s lip curled. She could guess what he was thinking: if you won’t sleep with me, why can’t I have sex with someone else?
‘What if you got something in return?’ Felicity wondered aloud, giving Cole a sidelong look.
His cheeks reddened, and Isla’s heart fluttered. But no—she couldn’t do this.
She found herself looking to Dom, of all people, for support. But he was smiling. It infuriated her, the way nothing got under his skin.
He acted like high school was a long time ago. They all did. Remember this? Remember that? Isla didn’t have to remember: at any time, she could search Isla kneels before me on Pornhub. And there she would be, seventeen years old. The camera of Dom’s iPhone had been blurry, but it was still recognisably her.
She always clicked report, but it was like pulling up weeds. The video would disappear for a while and then be reuploaded by some other hoarder who had saved it to his hard drive and saw himself as a librarian rather than a pervert. The internet was full of sociopaths who had decided that any man was entitled to see the body of every woman, and who considered it their solemn duty to make this possible. Never mind that it was a crime.
Every time she thought about this, her hand twitched towards her phone. Searching for the video had become a compulsion. But there was no reception up here. It felt as though she’d left the stove on. What if copies of the video were silently proliferating, with her unable to thin the herd?
That first day back at school, everyone seemed to be either looking at her or avoiding her eyes. Some boys made lewd gestures; others were suddenly too friendly, buzzing around her like mosquitoes. The girls stopped inviting her to events, like she was contagious.
It was Cole who told her the bad news, behind the science block. She wanted to throw up. He held her while she cried.
Dom said he hadn’t shown the video to anyone. He’d ‘only told one person’ that it existed. They must have stolen his phone out of his bag and slipped it back in after—
‘Why did you tell anyone?’ Isla screamed.
‘I know, it was stupid. I’m sorry, okay?’ He tried to hug her.
She punched him in the solar plexus, so hard that he couldn’t talk for an hour. She wished the damage was permanent.
Dom grovelled for a month. Long enough that all the other students seemed to think Isla was being petty. After all, wasn’t she partly responsible? She had done the deed and let him film it. And while his face wasn’t visible in the video, his naked body was exposed, and everyone knew it was him. Isla, meanwhile, was fully clothed. Wasn’t Dom the real victim of this unnamed, video-sharing phone thief?
But Dom’s reputation was only enhanced. While Isla frantically tried to make sure her parents and teachers didn’t find out, Dom was the envy of the school for weeks. Then everyone seemed to forget about his role. Now he was a successful financial planner, charging a fortune to tell people to put more money into their super.
For Isla, this would never be over. She eventually caved to the social pressure and pretended to forgive him, but the shame still burned inside her. Her parents wondered why she’d become so withdrawn. After she graduated, she screwed up one job interview after another. She would stammer and sweat as she looked at the recruiter, wondering if they’d somehow seen the video and recognised her.
Oscar missed all this, having gone to high school in Maitland. Meeting him had been an opportunity to reinvent herself. But every time he gave her a strange look, she wondered if he’d finally found out.
Now, Isla saw that Dom wasn’t just unruffled by the prospect of partner swapping: he looked satisfied. He orchestrated this, she realised. He told Felicity to bring this up.
Isla put her drink down and stood. The world spun woozily. ‘We’ve all been friends for a long time,’ she said. ‘Let’s not ruin it. It would be very hard to look someone in the eye after you’ve cheated with them, don’t you think?’
‘It’s not really cheating if you have permission,’ Clementine mused, running a finger around the rim of her water glass. She was the only sober person in the room, and even she seemed to be on board with this. Isla felt like her best friend had been replaced with a body-snatcher.
‘We could turn out the lights,’ Oscar suggested.
‘I don’t follow,’ Isla said coldly.
‘I mean, if we swapped partners in the dark, no one would know for sure who they’ve been with—easier to look them in the eye afterwards then.’
‘Like a game of heads down, bums up,’ Felicity said.
‘That’s not what the game is called,’ Isla said through gritted teeth. ‘You think we can’t tell each other apart with the lights out?’
‘I mean, Dom would need a haircut,’ Oscar said. ‘Cole would have to shave off his beard. We’d all wear the same aftershave, or perfume, or whatever. And there’d be no talking, obviously.’
He’s thought this through, Isla realised. She remembered the condoms; the fact he’d cut his hair short, like Cole’s. He knew this was coming before we left.
A terrible rage stirred in her heart, like a dragon slowly awakening upon its pile of gold.
‘Cole’s taller than you,’ she said. She knew Oscar was insecure about his height, and she wanted to hurt him—to kill him.
But he shrugged it off. ‘Not lying down, he isn’t.’
Isla glanced at Cole, who had gone even redder. The image slipped into her head: his naked body between the sheets. She wondered if he was picturing her, too.
‘As for you three …’ Oscar gestured at the women ‘I guess Clementine’s more athletic, and Felicity might be …’
‘Fatter,’ Felicity put in.
Cole laughed awkwardly.
‘Curvier, babe,’ Dom said.
‘But only a little,’ Oscar continued hastily, turning back to Isla. ‘And you’re about halfway in between. So either one of them could be you, in the dark.’
Heads were nodding all around. Isla couldn’t believe it. Her own husband was acting like she was interchangeable with two other women. But, she realised, he was pretending. They all were. If this went ahead, they would all realise who they were with, darkness or no—they just wanted to be able to act like they didn’t.
‘What if we end up with our own partners?’ Clementine asked.
‘Then I’ll be a very lucky man,’ Dom said.
‘Aw.’ Felicity slapped him playfully.
‘In Secret Santa,’ Oscar began, ‘if you pull your own name out of the hat, you just redraw. Maybe any man who recognises his own wife could—’
Isla glowered at him. ‘Women are not names in hats.’
While Oscar was talking, Dom whispered in his wife’s ear. Isla noticed again Felicity’s red hair, straightened and cut to the same length as her own. Oscar wasn’t the only one who’d come prepared.
Looking around, she could imagine why the others might be keen for this. Oscar hadn’t got laid in months. Clementine seemed sexually unfulfilled. Dom was just sleazy, and Felicity was desperate to please him. But for Isla, the odds were bad. There would be a two-in-three chance she’d end up in bed with a man she held in contempt: Dom or Oscar.
On the other hand, there was a one-in-three chance she’d be with Cole.
She turned to him. He was giving her a searching look. Those veiny hands, clenched around his wineglass. Was he running the same calculation, weighing up the chances he’d find himself in her arms?
Later, she’d wonder how much of her decision had been the alcohol and how much had been anger at her husband. But right then, she was only thinking about Cole and the chance to taste the life she’d missed out on.
And if she ended up with Dom, well, that was an opportunity to live out an entirely different fantasy.
Revenge.