Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You. Nikki Gemmell

like a window by a sudden gust.

      

      I love you, you say, in thanks.

      You used to say it every day, once.

       Lesson 84

       old linen is invaluable

      Over the next few days you try and push the men to the back of your head, you must, for you’ll be swamped by anxiety if you don’t. You’ve got to get yourself in order; you’ve acted appallingly and it’s time to stop the silliness, to tackle your regular life. You book a massage, facial, pedicure. Scrub the flat. Ring some old girlfriends, make dates for coffees and movies and lunch. Clear a space in the study for your laptop and books: you’ve never, yet, bothered to do that.

      You throw out your pill packet.

      

      When you are ready, when the idea of sex doesn’t fill you with dread, you ask your husband to dip his tongue inside you and to curl it round your clitoris; it has taken you four years to ask him to do this, to ask him to do anything specific that you’d like.