Chapter 71: Mara
"What?"
"Come here."
I got her on top of me.
She made a startled noise and then she was sat astride my hips with her hair falling round both our faces and all that warm weight settling onto me, and I put my hands on her waist and left them there.
"Like this," I said. "You do it. You stop when you want, you go as slow as you want, and I can’t get it wrong."
She looked down at me.
"You’ve thought about this."
"About four minutes."
"That’s not what I meant." Something gave in her face and she came down and kissed me, and it was different from every one downstairs. "That’s not what I meant at all."
She sat back up, reached down between us and got hold of me, and her hand shook, and she swore under her breath and did it anyway.
She’s terrified.
She’s terrified and she’s doing it anyway and she’d take my head off if I said so.
"Slow," I said. "You’re in charge. Nothing happens that you don’t do."
"I know."
"An inch. Then stop."
She came down an inch and her mouth came open.
"Oh."
"All right?"
"Yes. It’s a lot. Give me a second."
I gave her a second. Both hands on her waist, and I did not move one muscle, and the second went on a good while, and I let it.
"More," she said.
She took more.
Halfway there her face changed and she went completely still and made a small noise that wasn’t a good one.
"Mara, "
"No. Keep still. Don’t move." Eyes shut. "It’s fine. It’s just, "
She stayed exactly where she was for about ten seconds and I didn’t breathe for any of them.
"Mara."
"I’m all right." Her eyes opened, wet at the corners. "That’s the bit, isn’t it. That’s the actual bit."
"Do you want to stop."
"No." Straight away. "Don’t you dare. Just don’t move for a minute."
So I didn’t move for a minute.
I got a hand up and pushed her hair back off her face and held the side of her neck, and she leaned into my palm and shut her eyes, and we stayed there, me half inside her, the city going on out there in the dark.
"Right," she said eventually. "It’s going."
"Sure?"
"It’s going. It’s, " She shifted, testing it, and made a completely different sound. "Oh."
"There you go."
"Oh. That’s not, that’s, "
Then she sank all the way down onto me and we both made a noise at the same time.
She learned it in about four minutes and I’ve never seen anything like it.
No rhythm at all to start with, chasing it, going up and down when she wanted to roll. I put my hands on her hips and showed her once, and she caught it and made it hers.
And once she had it she was gone.
"Ah. Ah. That’s it. That’s, why does nobody tell you, "
"Mara, "
"Why does nobody tell you it’s like this, "
Her tits moved with every roll of her hips and I got my hands full of them and she put her own hands over mine and pressed them in harder.
Then somewhere in the middle of it she stopped moving and put both hands on my face.
"Look at me."
I looked at her.
"No. Look at me."
So I did. And she was crying and still on top of me and absolutely furious about the crying.
"I didn’t think it would be like this," she said. "I thought it was a thing that happened to you. I didn’t think you’d, "
"Mara, "
"Don’t say anything." She started moving again, slow. "I just need you looking at me while it happens."
This is going to cost somebody everything.
And you’re doing it anyway.
I put a hand up into her hair and she turned her face into my palm and kept going.
Then she got her rhythm back and it stopped being gentle at all.
I got a thumb onto her clit and she nearly came off me.
"AH! No, that’s, "
"Too much?"
"Don’t take it off."
So I didn’t take it off. I worked her clit with my thumb while she rode me, faster now, that made bed going under us and the whole room full of the noise she was making, and about a minute later I felt it start coming up through her again.
"Danny. It’s happening again, it’s, I can’t, "
"You can."
"It’s too, "
"Look at me."
She looked at me and came apart on top of me with her mouth wide open and nothing coming out for two full seconds and then all of it at once, loud enough that if Camilla’s flat had thinner walls the whole of 39 would have known about it, and her cunt clamped down on my cock so hard I lost the ability to think.
And that was me finished.
"Mara, I’m, "
"In me."
"Are you sure, "
"In me, Danny. I’m on the pill, I’ve been on it since I was 19. Don’t you dare."
I came inside her, deep, with her still going round me, and she came down flat on my chest while it was still happening and put her mouth against my throat and stayed there.
She cried for about thirty seconds afterwards and was furious about it the whole time.
"This is not, don’t you dare think this is, "
"I don’t think anything."
"There’s just a lot of things happening at once and I’ve got nowhere to put any of them."
"I know."
"You don’t know."
"No," I said. "Probably not."
She lay on me a long time after that, in a bed she’d made that morning, in a flat full of another woman’s furniture. All that hair. All that weight. My hand going up and down her back, and neither of us saying anything, and it wasn’t awkward, which surprised me more than anything else that happened.
Then she propped up on one elbow with her chin in her hand.
"Right. Two things, then I’m having a bath, and I’m going to be in it for about an hour."
"Go on."
"One. That was, " She stopped. "No. Not saying it. You’ll get a big head."
"Fair."
"Two." Her face changed. "You should go up."
"Mara, "
"Your mum’s up there on her own in a flat she’s frightened of, and it’s, " she looked at the clock on the bedside table, "it’s ten past midnight, and if she wakes up and you’re not in it she’ll worry, and I’m not having that on me as well."
I didn’t have anything for that either.
"Go on." She got off me and pulled the duvet round herself and sat back against the headboard, entirely composed, at ten past midnight, with her hair everywhere. "Go up."
I got dressed in her bedroom with her watching me from the bed, which was somehow worse than any of it.
At the door she said, "Danny."
"Yeah."
"I’m not going to be a problem." She had the duvet up round her shoulders. "I’m not going to text you tomorrow, and I’m not going to be in the pool at nine on purpose, and I’m not going to sit down here waiting for a decision like a parcel." A breath. "But you’ll have to sort it out. Not for me. For her. Because whatever she is, she’s not been told any of this, and one of us has been honest all night and it isn’t you."
Then she shut the door.
The corridor on 39 looks exactly like the corridor on any floor. Grey carpet. A fire door. A print on the wall of something abstract in a frame.
I stood in it for a bit.
Then I got the lift.
Eleven seconds. That’s how long it takes to do one floor in that building. I checked, because I stood in a bronze box and watched the number go from 39 to 40 and could not look at the wall, because there’s a man in it.
The doors opened straight into my own flat.
The lamp was on by the sofa. Her glass was on the island where she’d left it before we went down, with about an inch of water still in it.
And on the marble next to it, a plate, and a mug, and a note in biro on the back of a shopping receipt in my mother’s handwriting.
Made you a sandwich, it’s in the fridge. You want to get that fridge sorted, there’s nothing in it. Woke up and you weren’t here and I had a nice look at the view on my own. It’s very high up isn’t it. Night love. Mum x
The fridge was the size of a wardrobe.
There was a sandwich in it on a plate with a bit of cling film over the top, ham and butter, cut into two triangles the way she’s cut sandwiches my entire life.
I stood in that kitchen at twenty past midnight and looked at it for a long time.
Then I shut the fridge without taking it out, and went and stood at the glass, and forty floors down the whole city carried on doing what it does.
Down the hall, in the second bedroom, my mother turned over in a bed that had never been slept in until yesterday.
And one floor underneath my feet, Mara Doyle ran a bath.