Confessions of a Kinky Wife (9 page)

‘Your idea,’ he said casually. ‘And I know what you’re like on car journeys. Thought it might come in handy.’

‘OK, I’ll drive,’ I said, although I loathed driving and avoided it at all costs.

‘No need for that,’ he said, swooping on the iPod when he saw it on the kitchen shelf. ‘It’s only an hour down the motorway. I’m happy to take the wheel.’

Take the wheel
. Something about the way he said it sounded both sinister and exciting. I could tell he had some kind of agenda in mind, and the cane might well be part of it.

‘Have you programmed the SatNav?’

Most of our vehicle-bound fallings-out involved directions wrongly or hastily given. The SatNav had saved our marriage on more than one occasion.

‘We won’t need it,’ he said briskly. ‘It’s motorway all the way, then downhill to the beach. Easy as pie.’

‘Have you ever made a pie?’ I grumbled. ‘They’re actually quite complicated.’

He laughed, then clapped his hands.

‘Got the towels? Picnic basket? Sunblock? Come on. The sun’ll go in.’

I eyed the cane on the back seat as Dan hit the motorway slip road, singing along to a rock track I didn’t much like. I supposed it was there to warn me. He wouldn’t actually use the thing. All the same, it added ice to my veins, seeing it lying there like a lithe brown snake.

Better a brown snake than Whitesnake, though, I thought crossly, wishing Dan would turn off the CD player.

Once we were in the middle lane of the road, he began really belting the song out and I found myself both irritated and fearful. Because my own driving is so bad, it always makes me anxious to think that Dan might not be giving the road his full attention.

‘Watch out!’ I kept shouting, every time a car in another lane indicated in front of us, no matter how far ahead they were.

‘I have eyes,’ he said. ‘I can see.’

He went back to singing.

I snapped off the CD player.

‘Hey, what’s up? I was listening to that.’

‘It’s horrible.’

‘Then all you have to do is say, “Darling husband, I’m not enjoying this music – shall we change it to something we both like?”
Et voilà
. Problem solved.’

‘You were yelling your head off. You wouldn’t have heard me.’

‘
Yelling
? I was singing, Pip. Singing.’

‘You’d never have changed the CD.’

‘You’d never have asked. You just go straight for the off button. No “I don’t like this”, no “what about a different CD?” Just nought to pissed off, with nothing in between. It’s … look.’

He hit the indicator, to my surprise, and then I saw that we were leaving the motorway and heading towards a roadside service area.

‘We don’t need petrol,’ I said with alarm, suddenly awfully conscious of that cane in the back seat.

‘I’m not getting petrol.’ He parked at the edge of the services, near a pine wood, and turned to me. ‘Isn’t this what we’re trying to change?’ he said. ‘Bad temper, flying off the handle, overreacting?’

‘All I did was turn off the CD player.’ But I knew he had a valid point. I could have mentioned that I didn’t like the music. He wasn’t so unreasonable that he would have carried on listening to it. Why hadn’t I done that?

He smiled at me and tickled my cheek. I tried to duck away, tried to hide my shame and dread and … my God, I must be blushing fit to light up the dark forest behind us.

‘All you did was turn off the CD player
with attitude
,’ he said. ‘If I let this pass, you won’t thank me for it. You’ll think you’ve got one over on me and congratulate yourself and push things further and further until we fall out seriously. Do you want me to let that happen?’

I swallowed. I didn’t. Actually, I really didn’t. But I couldn’t tell him that – my pride stood in the way.

‘It’s so trivial,’ I muttered.

‘Come on, Philippa, be fair. This is exactly what you wanted. You can’t pick it up and put it down when it suits you. I wouldn’t be doing this properly if I let it go. And you know I want to do this properly. Don’t you?’

This was much too deep a question to be asked in a motorway service area on a hot day with lazy summer grooves blaring out of a car window in the next row of parking spaces. It felt so unreal, I couldn’t even work out how I felt.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘What are you going to do? You
are
going to wait till we get home, aren’t you?’

‘The book recommends that discipline be administered swiftly. It says that letting a lot of time pass reduces the effectiveness of the punishment. And I can see that. It pisses me off that the villains I catch don’t go to trial for months on end. Makes me wonder if they even remember what they did by then, let alone feel guilt. But now I don’t have to complain about the justice system. I
am
the justice system. And justice will be done.’

His smile was dazzling. You’d think I’d just given him a blowjob, rather than bickered over Whitesnake on the M3.

‘Here?’ I stammered, for clarification. ‘In the car?’

I tried to imagine how that would be possible.

‘No, not in the car. Come on. Let’s go for a walk.’

He got out and opened my door for me.

Outside, the sun was fierce and I looked around at all the hot, grumpy, burger-eating people in the car park. What the hell did Dan have in mind? And could it be achieved in Burger King or WH Smith’s?

Apparently not, because he took my hand and led me into the pine wood. A few picnic tables hosted families squabbling over food and squirrels lurking hopefully at their feet. There was a small swing park and beyond that – just trees and the soft, needle-strewn ground.

‘You’re seriously going to do this?’

Pine needles prickled my feet in their flip-flops. We were deeper in and the light was half-gone.

‘Yes, seriously. And that’s how you have to take me, Pip. Seriously.’

‘I do.’

‘No, you don’t. You think of this as something you can do when you’re in the mood. The rest of the time you can be as huffy and passive-aggressive – or aggressive-aggressive – as you like. No, Philippa. You’re going to learn that this is going to be done wholeheartedly or not at all. You can’t blow hot and cold with me.’

He stopped in a clearing. Even on this blazing hot day it was cold and forbidding there. When he turned to me, he looked so darkly intent that I was momentarily scared.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ I said. ‘I want you to be wholehearted. I want that. But … this is a public place.’

He waved an arm.

‘There’s nobody here. We’re far enough from the car park, so we won’t be heard.’

‘What if I scream blue murder?’

‘What if you do?’

He patted his thigh.

‘Come to me, Philippa.’

His lips were curling upwards and I had the distinct impression that he was more concerned with getting my cut-off jeans down than actual punishment. All the same, I felt that same set of contradictory tingles his stern face always triggered.

There was nothing for it. Neither fight nor flight was an option. Only surrender.

I wasn’t sure how he meant to do this. There were no convenient tree stumps or logs for him to sit on, just row after row of spookily symmetrically arranged firs.

I went to stand before him and he pulled me against him, then pushed me into a bending position, bracing one of his arms beneath my stomach so that I was cinched around the waist by it. I could only see his back view and I tried to kick, to see if I could bring him to the ground, but his grip was firm enough to hold me in place.

‘Keep still,’ he warned, when I tried to reach for the nearest tree for something to hang on to.

The inability to see what he was doing or guess what would come next was intensely disorientating. Added to this was a nagging worry that somebody might stumble across us thus engaged.

Dan seemed to have no qualms, though, and his hand fell heavily on my tightly denim-covered bottom. The sound it made was loud and querulous, and so was the yelp that came from my mouth. He laid on more, punctuating each with a word.

‘You.’ Smack.

‘Will.’ Smack.

‘Show.’ Smack.

‘Me.’ Smack.

‘More.’ Smack.

‘Respect.’ Smack.

‘Won’t.’ Smack.

‘You?’ Smack.

It seemed an answer was required.

‘Yes,’ I mewed. ‘Oh, my God, someone’s coming!’

They weren’t. But the way Dan dropped me like a hot rock was enough to make me forget my sore bottom and roll around in the needles, cackling for joy.

‘Fuck’s sake, Pip!’ he said, clutching his brow. ‘You’ll get me the sack.’

‘Your face.’ I laughed some more.

‘You’ve asked for it,’ he said, lunging for me.

We wrestled in the pine grove, shrieking and giggling, until he had me pinned to the ground on my stomach, straddling my hips.

‘Now you’re for it,’ he promised, reaching underneath to unbutton my shorts.

‘Dan,’ I whispered urgently. ‘Somebody really might come.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said gravely. ‘Somebody might.’

I got more spanking on my thong-clad bare bottom, but it wasn’t hard and by the time he’d warmed me, stranger danger was the last thing on my mind.

The first thing on my mind glided up inside me, the thong pulled rudely aside. I pushed my bottom back to help him get deeper, breathing in the forest scent and the smell of him on top.

‘You don’t get to wear shorts like that and make it through the journey unfucked,’ he growled into my ear, thrusting hard.

I was very glad to hear it, and the tetchy tempers and impromptu punishments mutated into a glorious bone-melting shag.

I had needles stuck to my hands and knees, a stinging bum and a hot, sticky gusset for the rest of the motorway trip, but I was pretty happy with that. We listened to a CD we both liked and we were both in bloody good moods, all the way to the sea.

Which was where things went a bit wrong again.

I swear, that town is like Looking-Glass World. You follow a sign for the town centre and find yourself on some arid stretch of suburban road, logjammed between massive retail parks.

Sans SatNav, we had to rely on the road map, and I’m not a big fan of road maps, especially when they are twelve years out of date and don’t show which streets are one-way.

‘Shit, where’s that junction come from? It’s not on the map.’

Dan made it to the other side of the traffic lights without a collision, but it was close enough.

‘You said there was a roundabout there!’

‘There … was. It’s gone.’

‘Look, where do I go now? Left or right?’

‘Um, left, I think. Shit, no, that’s a dead end. Bugger. Too late.’

This went on for a very long time. Neither of us was at fault exactly, but the combined effects of confusion and panic and being cooped up in a small, hot tin box burned our wicks right down to the fuses.

‘For fuck’s sake,
there. That way.
’ I flapped my hand at a brown signpost perched precariously on a traffic island.

‘There’s no need to swear at me,’ said Dan between gritted teeth. ‘Next layby I see, I’m going to pull over, bend you over the bonnet and give that cane a good workout.’

‘Shut up!’

‘You don’t think I’m serious? Try me.’

But before I could (although I was inclined not to), heaven arranged for a perfect view of the beach, the sea and the way down to it, and we concentrated our combined attention on achieving our mission of finding a parking space.

The sunshine and the blue surf evened out all rough edges of temper. We were there to have a good time, and we had it, lazing on the beach until it was time to find our friends for the promised barbecue party. The cane lay, neglected and forgotten, baking on the back seat.

Kez and Ginnie are friends of mine, dating back to a chaotic flatshare at university. They stayed down here in the sun, living the bohemian life, while I moved up to the city and met Dan. They always tease me that I’m their big sister, growing up and doing all the adult stuff like getting married and taking on a responsible job and mortgage while they still hang around bars picking up surfer dudes and smoking spliff into the early hours before going to their ever-changing jobs in art galleries and tapas bars and what have you. Kez is a vigorous member of the local alternative political scene while Ginnie is more an unreconstructed party girl. They both disapprove of Dan (whose presence will severely limit their drug consumption tonight) but put up with him for my sake.

‘Time for me to say a little prayer,’ said Dan, eyes fixed on the setting sun, having finally found a parking space in the district of winding hills and jumbled cottages in which my friends had made their home.

‘Oh, don’t. They like you.’

‘They hate me. But they like you too much to show it.’

‘Just smile and nod, smile and nod,’ I said, the usual advice in these scenarios.

Dan sniffed the air as we got out of the car.

‘Is that a home-grown blend I scent?’

‘No, you knob, it’s sausages.’

They didn’t have much of a garden – just a tiny patch of walled-in gravel parallel to and behind the kitchen – but they had made the most of it, filling it with bunting and fairylights and all sorts while the barbecue smoked merrily in one corner. The kitchen and living room and hallway and stairs all heaved with bodies, so it was difficult at first to locate either Kez or Gin.

A few old faces, the names of which I’d mainly forgotten, appeared during the search. They greeted me effusively, then switched to guarded mode when they noticed Dan at my shoulder. Once we had passed, I kept feeling eyes boring into my back and hearing – though it was mostly my imagination – the words
She’s the one that married the copper. That’s him!

Shifty looks and hands unconsciously patting pockets and purses were the order of the day. The heavy, distinctively sweet smoke of weed wafted on the outside air, and I heard someone hiss, ‘Put it out!’ then Kez loomed in front of me, in a batik turban and massive earrings, smiling all over her face.

‘Pip, wow, so good to see you again, how’ve you been?’

All my anxieties dissolved in her enthusiastic bear hug and I felt twenty-one again, ready for a night of red wine and flirting to heavy bass jams.