Page 28 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
I was wearing Cherry Tree when it happened.
Sometimes I think about that night—I think about sitting in front of the mirror in my tiny room at the Grange. I think of all the other lip colors I could have chosen instead. The ones that would have been ironic—999 by Dior, maybe, or Tom Ford’s Bruised Plum; the ones with talismanic names, like MAC’s Angel or Heroine; the ones that would have been restrained and sweet: Jolly Molly or Georgie Girl or Christian Dior’s Grege 1947.
I have a therapist, and I know what she would say about my fixation on lipsticks, I know, I know. And it’s not like I think of Cherry Tree in the what was she wearing, did she smile at him, how much did she have to drink kind of way. It’s not like I needed to be wearing a peachy-nude lipstick to prove to myself and everyone else that I didn’t deserve to be raped.
It’s more like—well—just—one never knows when the worst moment of one’s life is going to happen and so one never knows what tiny details are going to be etched into one’s memories forever. And sometimes it’s hard not to feel like everything would be so much easier if one could only go back and make this one tiny thing different. Because maybe I would have forgotten Angel or Georgie Girl. Maybe I would be able to think of the night with a wryly sophisticated distance if I’d been wearing 999.
But I wasn’t able to forget Cherry Tree, and now sometimes I have to send back drinks if they have cherries in them. Once two years ago, I burst into tears at a dinner party with my parents, right there at the table, just because the dessert was cherries jubilee. Someone once gave me a cherry blossom scent, and then spritzed me with it without asking, and I spent the rest of the evening being ill in my cousin’s lavatory.
At Girton, there was another girl living in the Grange whose favorite pair of knickers—delicate, silk, practically doll-sized—were embroidered with cherries, and she’d drape them over the radiator to dry after she washed them in the bathroom sink, because they were too fragile for the washing machine or the dryer. Which meant there was a solid year where I had to pretend the radiator didn’t exist, just in case I accidentally looked and saw cherries there inside of bare metal and had to think cherry — Cherry Tree — that night in Audra’s garden.
Sometimes, even just the word cherry gives me that feeling of—of inside rain, like it’s raining inside my body as my stomach falls to my feet and my thoughts go a little dizzy-fuzzy and my skin is tingly, but in, like, big tingles, not little needly ones—like there’s more than one Delphine inside me, there’re lots of Delphines crowding inside my skin, and they’re tapping and kicking trying to find a way out. And I just keep thinking—no way would I be like this if I’d worn Grege 1947 that night. No way would it be this hard. No way would I be like Florence’s embroidered knickers, and be too fragile for ordinary life. Ready to unravel at the slightest touch.
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nbsp; I’m wearing Pirate by Chanel as I follow Rebecca into her stylish Peckham flat. We set our bags on the floor, and she turns and looks at me.
“Are you ready?” she asks. Behind her is a wall of windows, and behind those is a cloudy, purply twilight, with low cloud bellies underlit with every lamp, sign, and glowing window in London. She’s still in her trench coat—a sort of sand-colored thing, narrow and belted at the waist—and her braids are pulled up into a high bun. She looks like she just strode in from a chic London office—and I have a terrible moment where I think: this isn’t real, this isn’t real, this is all a joke, this is an elaborate lie. Rebecca is too disciplined, she’s too good, her cheekbones are too high, and her IQ is even higher—why is she wasting her time with me?
Who could want me? asks the Greek chorus chanting behind these thoughts. Who?
I swallow. I swallow the thoughts down like they’re knives and hope they don’t slice me open. I don’t want these knife-thoughts at all, but I especially don’t want them right now, when I’m finally here, when I’m finally Rebecca’s. I don’t want my new Domme to know that inside her chirpy submissive is a girl who questions her own worth and sometimes flinches at cherries.
It’s the literal last thing I want.
“I’m ready,” I whisper.
Rebecca smiles, but it’s a small smile, and there’s something in it I don’t entirely understand. Almost like disquiet, but that can’t be right, because Rebecca is never uneasy about anything, ever. I’ve watched her stand inches away from landscaping machines that would liquefy her bones if they rolled over her foot; I’ve seen her sit composed and eyebrow-archy through chats about orgies and human sacrifice.
No, she’s not anxious. She can’t be. It’s Rebecca.
She doesn’t ask me to kneel yet; she doesn’t even take off her coat. Instead, she crosses her arms and walks over to one of the large windows, peering down onto the damp street below. “Do you remember the first time you came here?” she asks, not looking at me.
I don’t know if we’re in a scene or not, and so I stay standing where I am. But I do let my eyes rove around the box of glass and brick, thinking back. Skylights puncture the ceiling at intervals, letting in views of the lavender haze above, and I have a faint memory of watching rain fall like silver pearls on those skylights. Pinging like beads from a broken necklace and then sliding off to the side, jittery as mercury.
“Yes,” I answer. “I remember.”
“The flat was brand new,” Rebecca murmurs. “I’d only just moved in.”
I almost wish she didn’t remember that week, that undeniable proof that I am not a living sunbeam made of long eyelashes and inspirational captions. And I wish I remembered more of it, just so I could know how embarrassed to feel right now.
“You helped me,” I say, because that’s what I remember for sure. “Even though you hated me.”
She looks over her shoulder, but not at me. Her stare is pinned to the floor, her lower lip caught in her teeth for a brief instant. “I wonder,” she says softly, as if to herself, “I wonder if maybe . . . I didn’t hate you like I thought I did.”
“Didn’t you?”
She doesn’t answer, and I think it’s because she has no more answer to that than I do. Instead, she raises her gaze to mine, and she’s beautiful, she’s so beautiful, she’s all liquid eyes and delicate jawline. And my heart is crashing against my ribs because I want her, I am parched for anything from her, any drop of affection and attention, and suddenly it’s no longer a choice. I can feel her across the room, I can feel every inch and foot between us, and the distance is pulling me apart like a cheap sweater, row by row by row, until I’m just a pile of limp, grotty yarn, and the only way to make it stop is to kneel.
The moment my knees touch the floor, everything stills. The fears, the gnawing insecurities with their vicious little teeth. Because nothing has ever made more sense than kneeling in front of Rebecca.
For a moment, there is nothing. Nothing but the sounds of the street below—the clang and whirr of the mechanic’s shop, the obnoxious din of an art gallery party full of guests who are clearly very proud of themselves for being at an art gallery next to a mechanic’s. I stare at the floor, an old knotty wood that’s been refinished in such a way that one can still see the ghosts of old nails and paint, and hope I haven’t done wrong by kneeling when I’m not supposed to. And maybe hope a little that I have done wrong, and Rebecca will punish me for it.
And then she walks to me, a deliberate pace that sends shivers chasing up and down my spine. She wore flats for the trip from Devon, but she might as well be in stilettos for how devastating and dramatic her footsteps are, and when she comes before me, all I want to do is press my face to her ankles and tell her I adore her, I worship her, I love her.
I love her?
I think about this as I stare at her feet in front of me. Her flats are sensible and ethical wool things that are comfortable and quality, but a little bit ugly, and I have the fleeting thought that if she’d just let me, if she’d splurge just a little, I could find shoes that were equally comfortable and ethical, but that actually deserved to be on her gorgeous feet.
