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‘What kind of party is an Orchid Blue party?’ Amy asked, although she had a horrible feeling she could guess.

Paul Halsall, a.k.a. TooledUp, hooked the key of Amy’s motorbike off her finger.

‘I want the ownership document too, you know, the V5C. Proper deal, this. You’ve got my address. You can post it to me.’

‘What kind of party?’ she repeated, and TooledUp laughed.

‘Damn, we look good. Smile, babe!’

Kath puts her arm around me, and holds out her camera phone in front of her to capture us both in our finery. She’s not wrong – we look great. I snatch the phone off her to examine the photograph, and it’s lovely. We’re pouty and glossy and look nothing at all like teachers and everything like the sort of women we’re presenting ourselves as – beautiful and sophisticated. To be honest, I’d been worried that we wouldn’t fit in, that we’d look somehow dowdy or frumpy next to the
real
classy birds. But now that I see us in our slinky cocktail dresses and killer heels, our hair freshly coloured and blow-dried, gel nails in place, our tender skin still smarting from the Brazilian waxes we had earlier, I can relax. We’ll fit in perfectly.

With a final squirt of perfume, much giggling and the addition of a few last-minute accessories from her wardrobe (a black feather boa for Katherine, and one of her glittery evening bags for me as it’s smarter than my black satin one), we’re ready, ten minutes before the cab is due to arrive. Suddenly we hear the sound of a key in the front door.

‘Shit!’ Kath hisses. ‘Clive said he was out at band practice till late! Where do I tell him we’re going?’

‘Charity ball,’ I hiss back. ‘Be vague about where.’

Kath calls down over the banisters: ‘That you, darling? Becky and I are just off out.’

I hear Clive’s feet on the stairs, and his exclamation of surprise when he sees Katherine’s outfit. ‘Bloody hell! Where are you going? You look—’

‘Gorgeous?’ preens Katherine, giving him a twirl. The soft chiffon folds of her short dress lift up in a puff, showing her stocking tops and a flash of lace knicker.

He appears on the landing and gives me the evils, as the kids at school would say, before turning his attention back to her. ‘Tarty,’ he says, wrinkling his nose, and I see Katherine’s face fall. She’s being massively, hideously, disloyal to him by going to this party – it was her idea, she registered us on the website and booked the tickets; but even so, I still feel a bit sorry for her. Perhaps if she had a boyfriend who told her she was beautiful instead of tarty, she wouldn’t feel the need to get her kicks among strangers. I’m not sure why they decided to give their relationship another go, since neither of them seems at all happy. Secretly, I think that Clive’s a sap for taking her back when he knows she’s been on dating websites.

‘Charity ball, sweetie, remember? I told you about it a few weeks ago. Becky’s friend is on the organizing committee. It’ll probably be really boring – you know, charity auction, we’ll probably be on a table with a load of deaf old buffers trying to feel our knees under the table; but hey, it’s good to have an excuse to dress up and have a night out, eh?’

Clive looks suspicious. ‘You’ll give the deaf old buffers heart attacks dressed like that,’ he says.

‘What are you doing home, anyway?’ Katherine licks her finger and rubs a tiny mark off the front of her patent-leather stilettos.

‘Forgot that I’d told Jerry he could borrow my bass amp. I’m going straight back.’

Clive vanishes into their spare room/office and comes out with his arms full of a black box trailing cables.

‘I’ll stay at Becky’s tonight, so don’t wait up,’ Katherine says, blowing him a kiss as he stomps back downstairs, the amp’s plug banging on the steps behind him. There is a pause at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Kath? Can I have a quick word?’

Katherine makes a face at me. She kicks off her shoes and runs down the stairs. I hear frantic whispering, mostly from Clive, and I go for a final pee so that I’m not tempted to eavesdrop. I know that Katherine will tell me anyway.

‘What did he say?’ I emerge from the bathroom to hear the front door shut, and Katherine is back in the room, spraying hairspray vigorously all over her curls.

‘It was a close one!’ she crows. ‘He’s been so bloody clingy since that big row. For a minute there, I thought he was going to insist on coming with us, can you imagine? He made me promise that we’re not “up to anything”. Honestly, it’s quite pathetic.’ She gives me a hug. ‘I’m so excited, Becks! Just think of all the sexy rich guys we’re about to meet. That reminds me – have you got condoms?’

She is completely shameless. At the thought of what we’re potentially about to do, my stomach gives a nervous flip. I quash down the thought of what the other teachers at school would say if they knew. Worse – what
Amy
would say.

I wonder, too, what Amy would say about some of the other stuff I’ve been doing … Like the encounter with that guy Paul, the one who called himself TooledUp. He’s so not my type … not the type the old Becky would have gone anywhere near. But since all this started, just a few months ago, it’s as if this new Becky has been born – a kind of dark twin, a part of me I never knew existed. There is something seductive and addictive about losing yourself, about going far beyond what you would normally do, casting off the shackles, going wild … In those moments, in the bedroom with Paul and Kath, I became another person, sexy and crazy and free.

But afterwards, I felt dirty, ill at ease in my skin. I’m not like Kath, who has embraced this side of herself as if it’s the true her, what with the drugs and the cheating and all the stuff she gets up to with these men. I know she had quite a repressed upbringing and it sounds as if her sexual relationship with Clive has been far too vanilla. Now she’s like a girl who wants to gorge herself on every flavour in the ice-cream parlour.

Maybe I’m becoming addicted to it like her. Because a couple of days after an encounter that leaves me feeling tawdry, I get the itch again. That’s why I’m going to this party with her. It’s not just because I promised and I know I’ll never hear the end of it if I don’t go.

It’s new. It’s different. It’s exciting. And God knows, my life lacked excitement until recently.

‘At the price we’re being charged for this evening, I can’t believe that they won’t have a few condoms lying around. I bet they’re everywhere, in bowls on tables like sweets,’ I say, draining my second glass of Dutch courage Prosecco. There’s a tremor in my voice, like when I have to speak in public. ‘I hope you’re right, I hope they are sexy. Imagine if we walk in and there’s creepy Greg Stainsbury playing pocket billiards and drooling.’

Kath laughs at the idea that the dishevelled, square chemistry teacher with a comb-over would ever think of attending an upmarket swingers’ party. ‘In his lab coat with those awful scuffed Cornish-pasty shoes of his,’ she agrees. ‘We’d demand our money back. Instantly.’

The doorbell rings and we both jump. ‘Cab’s here!’ Katherine says, looking out of the window.

When Amy woke up, after a journey home from Epsom the night before that had encompassed buses, trams, trains and several frustrating directional blunders, the first thing she saw was her helmet lying upturned like a beetle on its back in the corner of the room. She burst into tears, the full impact of what she had done finally sinking in. It felt like a bereavement – whenever she closed her eyes, all she could see were her Triumph’s chrome curves and the warmth of its leather saddle, like her own second skin.

She sat in bed with her arms around her knees, sobbing and bereft, for a full ten minutes. It was as if Becky and the bike had merged into one huge loss and, at that moment, Amy felt like giving up. When the tears finally stopped she took a shuddering breath, and got up.

Giving up now just wasn’t an option.

Right at the back of her wardrobe she found a suit with a short skirt she hadn’t worn for five years, not since she last worked in an office. It was a little tight around the waist and hips, but not embarrassingly so. She paired it with sheer stockings, heels, and more make-up than her face had seen since she went to speak at that conference about digital start-ups two years before. Looking in the mirror as she put her hair up, she didn’t recognize the woman gazing back at her.

‘Too corporate, Boris? I don’t want to look like a legal secretary.’

Amy added a quirky silver-and-beaded Aztec necklace and switched the medium-height heels for her absolute killer heels, the black patent six-inchers. She’d have to take a pair of flat pumps for the journey, though.

‘That’s better,’ she said, putting on far more lip gloss than she would usually contemplate. ‘More tarty, but still professional.’

An hour later, she was on the Tube, clutching an A4 printout with directions on it, the sharp points of her stilettos digging into her ribs like daggers through the sides of her bag. She got out at Regent’s Park and headed south, glad at every step for her ballet pumps. It was another cloudless summer’s day, and sweat prickled at her armpits. It had taken her fifty-five minutes by public transport, for a journey that would have taken her twenty on the bike.

Outside a tall, imposing, Georgian terraced house in Devonshire Place, she switched her pumps for the stilettos, powdered her nose, then rang the bell below a brass plaque bearing the name
ORCHID BLUE EVENTS
. Her heart was racing, mostly because she still didn’t know exactly what she was going to say.
Excuse me, I’m enquiring about one of the sex parties you threw
. She noted the company didn’t advertise what it did on the plaque. Orgy organizers. Once again, she felt stunned by her discovery of what Becky had been doing before she vanished.

The door buzzed, and somehow that made Amy feel more nervous than if someone had quizzed her through the intercom. She stepped inside, her heels clicking briskly on the tiled floor, and walked up to the first floor.

When she reached the office, Amy was relieved to see a lone young girl sitting behind a reception desk. Rather than the bored insouciance of the confident PA, this girl, although stunningly beautiful, appeared more rabbit-in-headlights terrified than Amy herself felt. She only looked about seventeen, and might as well have had
WORK EXPERIENCE
tattooed on her flawless forehead.

‘Can I help you?’ she squeaked, her nerves immediately putting Amy at ease.

‘I’m a prospective client, and I’d like some information please,’ she said, smiling at the girl, who didn’t smile back, but immediately started ferreting in her desk drawer. She pulled out a large glossy cardboard folder and handed it to Amy, gabbling in a stream of consciousness at her:

‘Take a seat please our MD is out at the moment but she’ll be back soon and she approves all the applications there’s a form inside for you to fill in if you want to but we’ll also need some photos although since you’re here we could take them here if you want and we need some proof of ID and a deposit on membership and the next party is on Thursday if you’re based in London or there’s one in Cheltenham—’

Amy held up a hand to stop her. It sounded as though she was parroting every bit of information imparted to her when she’d started that morning – because surely she had only started that morning. It made her want to smile, that the girl wouldn’t meet her eyes. Perhaps she was imagining her, Amy, naked in a mask at one of the parties, writhing around. ‘Thanks! I’ll just read this lot, if that’s OK, and yes, I’d like to wait for your MD. What’s her name?’

‘Mariel Freestone. She won’t be long. Um, would you like a coffee?’

Amy accepted the offer of coffee and studied the cover of the glossy file. It was midnight blue, with an artful shaded orchid, photographed to look like genitalia, the way Georgia O’Keeffe used to do in her paintings, and the slogan
ELITE CASUAL DATING
under the company name. Inside the file were pages of glowing testimonials, arty photos from the parties, an application form and a direct-debit mandate.

Amy started filling in the application form, and had just paused at the ‘Occupation’ box when the door opened and an intimidating-looking woman in her early fifties – or mid-sixties with a lot of work done – walked in and dropped her big green Marc Jacobs bag on the reception desk.

‘Hello, Auntie Mariel,’ said the girl. ‘Someone to see you.’

‘
Miss Freestone
while we’re at work, darling,’ she replied, her tones clipped and businesslike. She came over to Amy and held out a hand weighed down with large, odd-sized gemstones set in gold. ‘Mariel Freestone. How may I help you?’

Amy got up and shook her hand. ‘I wondered if we could have a little chat, about membership?’

Mariel Freestone looked at her watch with a flourish. ‘I’m afraid I have another meeting in twenty minutes – I just popped in here to pick something up – but if it’s quick …’

‘I’ll be quick,’ Amy said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Coffees, please, Gemma,’ instructed Mariel, leading Amy into a room off the side of the office.

‘Kettle’s already on,’ Gemma said sulkily.

It was a beautiful high-ceilinged room, stuffed with antique office furniture and a huge Gabbeh rug on the floor. Orchid Blue Events must be doing very well, thought Amy, taking a seat in a shiny leather wingback armchair opposite Mariel’s desk.

‘So, you’re hoping to join?’ Mariel scrutinized her so thoroughly that Amy blushed. She paused, still teetering on the verge of lying. But when she opened her mouth, she thought it would just be so much simpler to tell the truth.

‘Actually – no. But my sister recently has.’

‘Oh?’ This came out very frostily, as if Mariel was bracing herself for some sort of complaint.

‘I believe she attended an Orchid Blue party in London with her friend Katherine, not long ago – a month, perhaps?’

Mariel tipped her head to one side and made a moue of displeasure with her coral-painted lips. ‘I’m sorry – I don’t understand why you’re here.’