‘I see.’
‘Those who do are added to our database. They submit their fantasies, and we match them with people who have similar interests.’
I stare up at him as he doctors his coffee, adds one, two, three sugars. This is the boy who grew up next door to me. The skinny boy who liked maths and dinosaurs and spent his weekends tramping round the abandoned quarry looking for fossils.
The man staring back at me is not that boy. I’m not sure who he is. And for the first time in weeks, I realise that I’ve stopped thinking about myself. ‘And they pay you for this?’
He nods. ‘Yes, they do.’ He takes a sip of his coffee, and I find myself turning to the one he made for me. It’s milky, sweet, the way I drank it when I was eighteen. I take a sip before I remember that I don’t drink it like that any more, and set it back down. ‘Something wrong?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I lie, not wanting to get into a conversation about how I need to watch my weight.
‘So how did you get into…this?’ I gesture around his office.
‘A friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go into business with him.’
‘Oh.’ I’m desperate to ask what sort of friend would set up a business like this, but I bite my tongue.
‘The database is my baby,’ he continues. ‘I designed it, I maintain it.’
‘And the rest?’
‘John takes care of that.’
‘John?’
‘My partner,’ he says. ‘You’ll be able to meet him later. I think you’ll like him. Are you hungry?’
I say yes, only because I don’t want to say no and have him argue. I can’t breathe in here. It’s too hot, too claustrophobic, and I can’t stop myself wondering about what I saw on the screen. I keep glancing at it, even though it’s turned off. ‘Are you supposed to watch people?’ I ask. ‘Isn’t that an invasion of their privacy?’
‘That particular couple asked for a recording of the session,’ Theo says. ‘That means they agreed that John or I could check to make sure everything was working properly.’
‘That doesn’t mean you should have showed it to me!’
‘Are you going to tell anyone?’
‘Well no, but…’
‘Jules,’ Theo says gently. ‘It’s OK. Come on. I can see we’ve got a lot to talk about, and I’m hungry.’ He leads me out of his office, locking the door behind us. We move past more closed doors. Each one has a brass nameplate, with a word cut into it in scrolling letters. ‘I suppose you have a red room of pain somewhere,’ I say, only half joking.
‘We offer that, if it’s what a client wants,’ he says.
‘Do you…’ I falter. I can’t ask.
‘Indulge?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sometimes.’
I can’t think of anything else to say after that, so I follow him in silence as he leads me outside. I blink in the light, feeling a strange sense of confusion. I’m not quite sure where I am, but fortunately Theo does. On the other side of the road is an upmarket organic cafe, the kind that sells exquisite coffee and foraged salads. I find a table and let him order for me.
I pick at my bruschetta and goat’s cheese. Theo watches, but doesn’t comment on it. ‘Tell me about your ex,’ he says.
‘There’s not much to tell,’ I say. ‘We were together, and now we’re not.’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s a pretty personal question.’
‘You phoned me up in the middle of the night,’ he reminds me. ‘This wasn’t some easy, mutual breakup, Jules.’
I break my food into little pieces. ‘We broke up because of me.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I couldn’t be the girlfriend he needed.’
‘I see. So did he end it, or did you?’
‘This time? I did.’
‘There were other times?’
‘A few.’
‘Sounds exhausting.’
I think about that. ‘It was.’
‘So what do you want, Jules? Do you want to get back together with him?’
‘No.’ I don’t let myself think about that. I won’t. I’ve made my decision, and I’m not going to go back on it. ‘It’s over. Permanently.’
‘You don’t sound entirely sure.’
‘It has to be over,’ I tell him. ‘I can’t go back to that. I won’t.’
‘Then what do you want?’
‘I want to eat,’ I say, staring at the food I only played with. ‘Drink lattes with hazelnut syrup. Wear red.’ I look at him, take a moment to find my courage. I didn’t know what drove me to call him. I didn’t know what I was looking for, until I walked through the door of that club and found it. ‘I don’t know who I am any more, Theo, and I need to find out. And I want to have sex,’ I say. ‘Lots and lots of uncomplicated sex. You said that the club lets women explore their fantasies. I want to explore mine.’
Theo folds his arms, leans back in his chair. ‘You can’t fix yourself with sex,’ he says.
All the courage I’d pulled together folds in, shrinks, shrivels up inside me and dies. He’s right. Of course I can’t. My inability to fix anything with sex is part of the reason I’m so broken in the first place. ‘You’re right.’ I pick up my paper napkin, fold it in half, smooth the crease. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘That’s the second time you’ve apologised,’ Theo points out.
‘Sorry.’
‘That’s the third.’
This time, I bite my tongue.
‘OK,’ he says, as if he’s come to a decision. ‘This is how it’s going to work.’ He picks up his cup, drains it. ‘I’m going to give you thirty days’ membership of the club.’
‘I thought you said I couldn’t fix myself with sex.’
‘This isn’t about sex,’ he says. ‘This is about you. This is about finding out who you are, what makes you tick. You agree to visit the club at least once a week, starting tonight.’
‘To do what?’
‘Whatever you want,’ he says.
‘Whatever I want,’ I repeat softly.
‘Yes,’ he says, a slight smile catching the corners of his mouth. ‘Whatever you want.’
‘Starting tonight?’
‘Starting tonight.’
I pull in some air, let it out again. ‘The problem is that I don’t know what I want,’ I tell him.
Theo leans forward, props his elbows on the table. ‘That’s why I’m giving you thirty days,’ he says. ‘So that you can find out.’
He takes me back to his flat, then, which is a lovely second-floor apartment in Knightsbridge that tells me the club is either extremely expensive, or extremely successful. I suspect a little of both. He shows me around