My Clocking In System

"Mara, "

"No. Keep still. Don’t move."

She sat absolutely still with her eyes shut and his cock halfway in her, and breathed through it while it burned, and then it stopped burning and went dull, and the whole business took maybe 10 seconds and was not, in the end, anything like as bad as 6 years of not doing it had led her to believe.

That’s it? That’s what everybody makes such a,

"Mara."

"I’m all right." She opened her eyes and they were wet at the corners, which was shock and not pain. "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."

He didn’t move for a minute. He put a hand up and pushed her hair off her face and held the side of her neck, and she leaned into his palm with her eyes shut and stayed there with him half inside her, and something went in her chest that had nothing to do with any of the physical business at all.

"Right," she said eventually. "It’s going."

She shifted, testing it, and the shift did something completely different, a slide and a drag inside her with no sharpness in it anywhere.

"Oh."

"There you go."

"Oh. That’s not, that’s, "

Then she sank the whole way down onto his cock and heard both of them make a noise at the same time.

Full. That was the only word she had for it then and it’s the only one she has now. Full enough that she could feel him against something high up inside her she hadn’t known could be reached, and every small movement she made moved that too.

It took her about 4 minutes to work out what to do and then she had it.

She’d been going up and down, chasing something. He put his hands on her hips and showed her once, a roll rather than a lift, so her clit dragged on him at the bottom of it, and the second she did it properly the whole thing changed.

"Ah. Ah. That’s it. That’s, why does nobody tell you, "

"Mara, "

"Why does nobody tell you it’s like this, "

She rode him with her head back and her hair everywhere, and her tits moved with every roll and he had both hands full of them, and she put her own hands over his and pressed them in harder, because she wanted more of everything at once and immediately.

And then somewhere in the middle of it she made the mistake of looking down at him.

He was watching her. Not her body. Her face.

And something came up through her chest that had nothing whatsoever to do with what was happening between her legs, and she had to stop moving and put both hands on his face.

Oh no.

No. Absolutely not. We are not doing this.

You’ve known him four weeks. He has told you there’s somebody else. You made a great performance of not minding.

"Look at me," she said.

He looked at her.

"No. Look at me."

And he did, properly, and she cried, which was humiliating, and kept moving anyway, and got out something about not thinking it would be like this and shut herself up hard before the rest of it escaped.

Don’t say it.

Don’t you dare say it. He’s got a woman and a date on Saturday and you’d never get it back.

She didn’t say it.

She got her rhythm back instead and made the rest of it about her cunt and nothing else, and then his thumb found her clit and she nearly came off him altogether.

"AH! No, that’s, "

"Too much?"

"Don’t take it off."

He didn’t take it off. The second one came up much faster than the first and much harder, and it took her from somewhere completely different, deeper, everything inside her gripping down on his cock in waves she had no control over whatsoever, and for about 2 seconds she couldn’t hear anything at all.

She came down flat on his chest while it was still going and put her mouth against his throat and stayed there.

Then she cried for about 30 seconds and was so angry about it she could have hit something.

This is chemicals. This is a normal physiological response, it’s in all the books, it’s oxytocin.

It is absolutely not the other thing.

She lay on him a long while afterwards, in a bed she’d made that morning, in a flat full of another woman’s furniture, with his hand going up and down her back, and thought: I’ve got about 2 minutes to decide who I’m going to be about this.

She sent him upstairs, which was hers and which she was going to keep.

She’d thought of the mother, on her own at ten past midnight in a flat she was frightened of, and had said so, and had watched him have no answer for it.

At the door she gave him the only line she’d rehearsed that survived the evening. You’ll have to sort it out. Not for me. For her.

And that’s true.

And it’s also the cleverest thing you’ll say all week, because now you’re the one who was decent, and he’ll think about that every time he looks at her.

You are your father’s daughter. God help you.

She shut the door and stood behind it and listened to him not move for 4 seconds before he went.

Then she ran a bath so hot it hurt.

She sat on the edge of it while it filled with a towel round her and her hair stuck to her neck, and there was a small ache low down that she kept noticing and being pleased about, which she suspected said something about her she’d examine later.

Assessment.

She got in and went under to her chin.

One. That was not a mistake. Say it now, before it gets away from you.

It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I can’t tell a single living person.

Which was the actual problem, sat in it. Because ordinarily this was a phone call. 90 minutes with Soph, both of them shrieking, and then what, and THEN what.

But Soph was in Dubai and asleep, and the last time Mara mentioned a man she’d said oh Mar, not another project, and Mara had laughed and agreed and never mentioned one again.

And what would she even say. I slept with the man from 40 who’s got somebody else, and I knew before I went up, and by the way it was my first, at 24, which none of you know either.

Two. He didn’t lie to you. He tried and you stopped him.

Which was clever. And which you’ll have to live with, because you engineered tonight, and now you can’t be cross about the thing you built.

She sat with three for a long time.

Three. You’ve gone and fallen for him, haven’t you.

Somewhere above her head a floorboard went. 40 floors of building and she knew exactly which one, because there was only 1 flat up there and only 1 man in it who couldn’t sleep.

12 days ago you didn’t know his surname.

She stayed in until the water went cold, then got out and put the towel round her hair and stood at her own window with the whole of London out there, one floor lower than his.

Right. Here’s what happens now. You don’t text him tomorrow. You don’t go in that pool at nine. You don’t sit in that lobby buying coffees you don’t drink.

You told him you wouldn’t be a problem. So don’t be a problem.

She looked at her reflection in the black glass at half 12 on a Tuesday and did not entirely believe herself.

You’ll last about 4 days.

Her phone was on the arm of Camilla’s sofa where she’d left it before any of it happened.

She picked it up and opened the notes and scrolled past the shopping list and the flight details and DAD BIRTHDAY IDEAS, down to the one at the bottom she’d started 11 days ago and hadn’t opened since Monday.

THE FORTY PROBLEM

The grey dash in the directory. The company that went round in a circle. The 1-woman solicitor’s practice above a dry cleaner’s on the Clapham Road.

The last line, typed in the lobby on Monday with wet hair: Building manager. Down from 40 in the private lift, 10:25.

Mara sat on the edge of another woman’s sofa with a towel round her head and read it all the way through twice.

Then she put her thumb on it and held it down, and the screen asked if she was sure.

She wasn’t.

She put the phone face down on the coffee table next to the two mugs and went to her bed.