Being a Girl (14 page)

This, I thought, was where the script started to go off course. Amanda is a shrewd and sensual woman. She would not make it so obvious that she wants to be seduced. I thought it cleverer if after the Driver says: Sorry, filthy night, it cuts to Ricky trying to control his elation, as well as his bladder: here is this gorgeous 20-year-old girl (well, 18) and she's just gagging for it.

The taxi arrives at a big old house where Amanda shares an apartment. Her mates are away, of course. They go in, and Ricky rushes to the loo. While he's peeing, his mobile phone rings again and as he takes the machine from his pocket, he drops it down the lavatory pan. This slightly comical turn is to make Ricky endearing, David explained, even though he is about to betray Older Amanda and sleep with the young girl.

‘Brilliant,' I said.

Ricky fishes the phone out of the loo and it is Older Amanda telling him she had a safe trip to Paris and the production company has put her up in a swish hotel. He speaks softly and hurriedly and, after drying his phone on Young Amanda's towel, he turns the mobile off and goes to join her.

AMANDA
has changed into a short red kimono.

David nodded appreciatively as I read the line. I was in character.

His head spins. It's the wine, the champagne, the hour.
I mean really pay him back
. What did she mean by that? Little bitch! He swallows hard. Drains his glass. He should go home. Text Amanda.
His
Amanda. But the girl is a gift, fresh as the dew, all legs and breasts, pink pouting lips, neat little ankles in pointy red shoes. She is Eve and he is the first man, Adam at the gate of temptation. He just wants to carve another notch on the gun. Put another deposit in the memory banks. Just be there. It has nothing to do with sex, betrayal, lust. He wants to be himself. Be the old Ricky Simmons vanishing under the weight of time and disappointment. And what does that bitch Imogen Black mean by
You don't get ahead by getting behind
? He's not getting behind. He's getting there. He's making it.
You Get A Good Rum For Your Money
! Just one more good fuck.

He goes to look for the Girl and finds her in the bedroom. Young Amanda has removed the kimono and stands motionless in a red bra and knickers. She glances at the bed and says ‘wait for me', then disappears into the bathroom. Ricky undresses and climbs into bed. There is a satisfied smile on his face. Then we cut to the denouement. The twist.

I flicked through the script, reading the end, then looked into David's eyes.

‘Why is she wearing underwear?' I asked.

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, she is seducing him, isn't she?'

‘Yes.'

‘But then she'd be naked, wouldn't she?'

‘I don't know.'

I glanced around the flat. ‘David, let's try it,' I said. ‘See how it works.'

His doubtful expression showed that he was going along with something he wasn't sure about. David had set out to write a revenge story, but Jean-Luc must have seen the themes of sexual supremacy and frustration coiling like snakes beneath the surface. Writers don't always know what they have written until after they have written it, and readers interpret things according to their own experience. A month before while I was doing my A levels, I would have seen the story in the way David saw it. But Mr Cartier had opened my eyes to new vistas and it was clear to me now waltzing through David's flat in Mummy's Agent Provocateur underwear that
Cheats
was not about Ricky trying to pull a young girl, it was about Amanda Marshall destroying Older Amanda's relationship with Ricky thoroughly and forever. She was not a sweet girl who had been corrupted. She was the corrupter, a complete and absolute bitch. It was a great role.

David may have thought he had been in command of the situation up until this point, but there was a definite lift in his director's baritone as we played out the scene. I did the
I won't be a minute
line and wound my way through the hall to the bedroom. The bed was at the far end of the room, a four-poster veiled in sweeps of material like a sailing ship in the dim light. I lit the bedside lamp and doused the glare with the red silk knickers. David took ages to come and,
when he did, my clothes were tossed about the floor. I was naked.

‘Wow,' he said.

‘It's a surprise?'

‘Yes . . .'

‘Then it will be a surprise for the audience.'

‘That's true, but . . . would she really do that? I mean, be so brazen?'

‘I wouldn't. But Amanda Marshall would,' I replied. ‘She's like a snake mesmerising her prey. She is punishing Ricky. She wants him to see and desire what he will never have.'

‘Character drives plot,' he said, as if quoting from a book.

‘The story seems to be about Ricky, but it's not. It's about the girl. Everything that happens, she makes happen.'

He stood there nodding his head and I stood there all bashful in my girlie nakedness.

David's eyes drifted down to my breasts, my rib cage, the indentation of my tummy button, the curly little creature nestling between my legs.

I let my head fall to one side as he approached. He put his arms around me as if he were hugging a tree and I wilted, the air escaping in a long sigh from my body. David wasn't Jean-Luc Cartier. He would need help. His arms circled my waist and his palms strayed cautiously down to cup my bottom. I pushed against his hands, just slightly, rocking my pussy against the swelling in his jeans. I sighed and trembled. David sucked at my lips, he kissed my chin and I thrust back my neck like a kitten waiting to be stroked.

He stood back and dragged off his T-shirt. He was fit without being too muscular and had soft skin with no hair on his chest. His hands moved away from my
proffered bottom and, as he circled my waist in his arms, he looked at me more closely, at my eyes and nose, my pink lips.

Had he found his leading lady?

I felt like a virgin and I was in a way. David was a real boy. I felt feverish, so hot and nervous it was like a flame was burning inside me. All the things the girls said about boys at convent school skipped through my mind like the pages of an encyclopaedia, a manual, a novel by Anaïs Nin. My heart was beating like a drum. I ran my tongue over his collar bone and bit his neck.

‘You're not a vampire?'

‘Different genre,' I replied, and he smiled.

As he unbuckled his belt I had a sudden vision of the shiny black leather uncoiling across my backside and the thought released a loose bead of liquid that leaked into my pubic hair. Was David a spanker? I'm sure he wasn't. But I was sure he would learn. He unbuttoned his jeans, stripped them off and stood there shyly in his boxers. I took the wide band in two fingers and pulled back the elastic to peep inside. It was stirring restlessly in the folds of cotton like a snake waking in the desert.

‘He's getting up,' I said.

He pulled his shorts down and his cock jumped out playfully and poked me in the belly. It was straight and smooth with a shiny pink cap and I knelt automatically to kiss its little nose. I ran my tongue around the eye and looked up at him as it slid into my open mouth. Up and down, up and down. His skin was as soft as velvet. The head of his cock swelled in my throat. I looked up at him as if he were a god on a plinth. His eyes were goggling . . .

Then: disaster.

He came immediately, a gush of foamy sperm that filled my throat and ran out from the corners of my lips, dripping on my shoulders, forming little pools in the hollow of my collar bones, warm and sticky like melted ice cream.

‘I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,' he said, and I sucked out every drop as his cock shrank into a little marshmallow in my mouth. I rose from my haunches and as we kissed it was so romantic sharing his bittersweet milkshake on our lips.

‘That's never happened before,' he said.

‘It's all Amanda's fault.'

‘You must hate me.'

‘Not yet,' I said playfully, and he smiled.

As we looked down at his shrivelled penis, I noticed the leather belt threaded through the loops of his jeans and a shiver of adrenaline ran like an ice cube up my spine. I unthreaded the belt and wrapped the buckle around my hand. I gave a practice swing and, as I brought the belt down on the bed, it made a nice crisp snap like a yacht sail in a stiff wind. I tried again, a bit harder, and his limp cock quivered with anticipation, with new life. His eyes were glowing.

‘Here.' I gave him the belt and looked deep into his eyes. ‘Hard, but not too hard,' I said.

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. ‘You mean . . .' he asked, and his voice trailed off.

I raised my shoulders in an innocent shrug. We remained still for several seconds. I could hear the beat of his alarm clock on the bedside table. His bottom lip was trembling. I reached up and took his bottom lip between my teeth and bit down until he flinched with pain. I then pulled back the curtain swags from the end of the bed and made myself
comfortable, spreading my legs, leaning forward over the mattress and pushing out my bum. It seemed as if an entire lifetime had gone by since Jean-Luc and Tara Scott-Wallace had disciplined my bottom and in the shadowy light the pink stripes were invisible.

‘Are you ready?' he asked.

‘And willing,' I replied.

There was
another
pause. ‘I've never done this before,' he added and I looked back at him over my shoulder.

‘Neither have I.'

He waited a few moments, revving himself up. I closed my eyes. I heard a swish of air and took a big breath through gritted teeth. The belt crackled like lightning as it uncoiled over my protruding bottom and I realised that dead leather had more of a bite than a live hand, a sting like a branding iron as it scolded across the mounds of soft yielding flesh. I gripped the bedcover in my fists, I went up on my toes and pushed out my bum, waiting for the second.

‘Again?' he asked.

‘Yes please.'

Crack. Down it came again in an overlapping stitch, the belt like a saw biting into my soft parts and I thought next time I have Binky tied to the bed I'm going to use the belt to beat her. She deserves it. I screamed and buried my head in the bedclothes, pushing out my backside still further, spreading my thighs and opening myself up in the most intimate way possible.

Binky had asked me why I liked being beaten. It had been hard to find the right words at that moment and now it came to me like a revelation: when you're naked and sweaty and your bum is receiving attention
you feel utterly and overpoweringly alive. You are living that moment before it drifts away. There is just you, stripped to your essence, naked as Eve, sharp as a razor, every nerve end sparkling with verve and feeling. Your bottom is the sun around which the universe turns.

Crack. It was delicious. Delectable. I could feel all the liquids in my body boiling and bubbling, seeping from my wet pussy, rising from my scalding flesh in showers of sweet-smelling perspiration. The pain was like no pain I had ever felt before. I adored corporal punishment. I needed a master and even though David Trevellick was a mere novice he clearly had a feeling for the role.

Down the belt came again, the leather biting into my bottom. My knees were shaking, but I held myself steady and absorbed the pain, bringing it into me, up through my stomach and chest, my breasts quivered and my nipples felt as if they were burning. That was four. Two more, I thought. That should wake him up. I gritted my teeth and raised my chin, my back was arched in a bow, flexed and ready, and down the leather came once more, uncurling like a tongue of flame, searing my bottom and sending a wave of heat up my spine, across my shoulders and down to my tingling fingertips.