Chapter One
So okay. Let me just start by saying that this was not how I expected my Tuesday night in whatever-this-coastal-village-was-called to go.
I’d been walking all day. Like, genuinely all day, up and down rocky paths with my pack on my back, sweating through my sports bra, stopping for a lukewarm espresso at a little bar where nobody spoke English and I smiled like an idiot for twenty minutes. My feet hurt. My shoulders hurt. Everything hurt.
So by the time I’d found the little wooden cabin I’d booked through some app, with its peeling blue shutters and its view of the dark Mediterranean just visible between the pine trees, I was basically dead on my feet. I didn’t care that the shower was tepid. I didn’t care that the WiFi was nonexistent. I didn’t care about anything except getting some food in me and horizontal.
I was making pasta.
That’s the whole context, really. Diana Ellis, twenty-three, independent traveller, very capable woman who has been backpacking solo through four countries, standing at a tiny two-ring gas stove in her cotton sleep shorts and a thin vest top with no bra underneath, stirring spaghetti into bubbling water and feeling very pleased with herself.
I’d found half a lemon in the little fridge. Some olive oil. A heel of hard cheese. I was going to eat well tonight.
I mean. That was the plan.
I heard the voices at about half ten.
At first I thought it was the television from somewhere, because the cabin walls were thin and the village was close and sometimes you just heard things drifting. But these voices were low. Really low. Almost a whisper. And they had a quality to them, I don’t know, like they were trying to be quiet on purpose, which is different to just being quiet.
I turned off the gas ring. Stood there in the small kitchen with the wooden spoon in my hand and just listened.
There. Again.
Two voices. Female, I thought. Talking to each other in something that wasn’t Italian, wasn’t French, wasn’t Spanish. Something else. Something with different sounds, harder sounds maybe, that I couldn’t place at all.
I went to the window.
I want to be clear that I’m not a paranoid person. I travel alone. I’ve slept in hostels, in tents, in a car once when everything went wrong in northern Portugal. I’m sensible. I carry a personal alarm and I keep my valuables close and I don’t take stupid risks.
But I also crouched down and peered around the edge of the curtain like a complete idiot.
They were by the pine tree at the edge of the little yard. That’s all I could tell at first. Two figures, small, dark against the dark, crouching down behind the trunk. Both of them in black, I think, dark trousers and dark hoodies with the hoods up. And they were very close together, these two. Like, really close. The kind of close that isn’t just tactical or conspiratorial, it’s something else.
I watched them move and it caught something in my chest, actually. The way one of them put a hand on the other’s arm. Not gripping, just resting. The way they leaned in to whisper into each other’s ear and the other one turned her face toward the voice like a flower or something. You know?
I mean. Not the point. They might be about to break into my cabin. Focus, Diana.
They were moving closer. Slowly. Crouched low, picking their way through the scrubby grass at the edge of the yard, and one of them said something very soft to the other and the other one replied and they both went still for a second.
And then.
And then they kissed.
Just like that. Right there, crouched in my yard at half ten at night apparently planning God knows what, and one of them reached out and took the other’s face in both hands and kissed her. And it wasn’t a quick nervous peck, it was a real kiss, long and slow and with intention, and the other girl’s hands went to her girlfriend’s hips and gripped there and they stayed like that for what felt like much longer than it probably was.
I didn’t move.
I was scared. I should tell you that. My heart was doing something irregular and my hands were cold and I was holding a wooden spoon which, honestly, wasn’t going to save me from anything. I was definitely scared.
But I was also. I mean.
Something else too.
Something warm and low and a little bit embarrassing had started moving around in my stomach watching them kiss like that. This couple in the dark, dressed in matching black, doing something stupid and clearly terrifying to themselves, stopping to just kiss each other anyway.
I am apparently a very specific kind of person.
I backed away from the window. My spaghetti was sitting in cooling water on the cold stove and my heart was beating too fast, and I needed to think.
What I did instead was go to my small bedroom and close the door almost all the way and stand behind it.
Not my best moment. But honestly, what was the plan, call the police? My phone signal was approximately nothing out here. Stand in the kitchen with my wooden spoon? I’m brave but I’m not stupid. Or I’m a little stupid, but not like that.
I heard the front door.
It was a soft sound. A careful, slow sound. The kind of sound that someone makes when they really don’t want you to hear them opening your front door, which, in retrospect, I should absolutely have locked. I’d locked it. Hadn’t I locked it? I thought I’d locked it.
Apparently not.
I held my breath.
Two pairs of feet. Soft-soled shoes on the old wooden floor, step by careful step. I could hear them breathing, almost. Could hear them whispering to each other in that language I couldn’t place.
I thought: I should do something.
I did not do anything.
The bedroom door swung open.
They were smaller than I’d expected. Standing there in the doorway with the dim light of the living room behind them, hoods still up, and they were genuinely young, maybe my age or a bit younger, and they were looking at me with an expression that I can only describe as extremely nervous. One of them said something sharp and quick in their language, and I pressed back against the wall.
The one on the left was holding a knife.
A knife. Okay. Except. When my eyes adjusted and I really looked at it, it was a small, blunt breakfast knife. The kind you’d use to spread butter or scrape jam out of the bottom of the jar. It had a rounded tip. She was holding it slightly away from her body, pointed at me, and she looked like she might faint.
The one on the right was holding handcuffs.
Pink handcuffs. Covered in that soft plush fluff, the kind you see in the novelty section of sex shops, pink and fluffy and with a tiny little heart charm on the chain. She was holding them in her fist with an expression of complete seriousness, like they were a legitimate weapon or a professional tool, which they were obviously absolutely not.
These two had never done anything like this before in their lives. I could see it in every single thing about them. The way they kept glancing at each other. The shallow, too-fast breathing. The way the one with the knife kept shifting her grip because her hands were sweating.
“Okay,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. My voice came out surprisingly steady. “Okay, hi.”
They looked at each other.
The one with the knife said something to me in their language. Firm, instructional tone, clearly intended to be commanding. I had absolutely no idea what she said.
“I don’t. I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I said. “I only speak English.”
More of a look between them. Then the one with the knife turned back to me, frowning hard with concentration, and said, in very broken and heavily accented English: “Your. Money. We want.”
Oh.
“Right,” I said. “Okay. I. Right.” I exhaled slowly. “I don’t have any. Money. Like, cash money. I don’t carry cash.”
She stared at me.
“Card,” I said, and mimed tapping my hand like a contactless payment, which looking back was probably a bizarre gesture. “I pay with my card. Always. I just have like, coins. Change.”
She didn’t look like she believed me. She looked frustrated. She turned to her girlfriend and said something rapid and the girlfriend replied, gesturing at me and then at the room, and then the girlfriend, the one with the handcuffs, started moving toward my backpack which was propped against the wall by the little wardrobe.
“That’s my stuff,” I said, and then felt immediately ridiculous because yes, obviously, that was why she was going through it.
She unzipped it and started pulling things out with focused, methodical hands. My spare jeans. My rolled t-shirts. My wash bag. My water bottle. She held up my wash bag and undid it and peered inside, found only toiletries and a box of paracetamol, put it down. She found the small zipped interior pocket and went through it and found my emergency twenty euros in coins, which she showed to her girlfriend with an expression of genuine disappointment.
The girlfriend said something. It sounded rhetorical.
They whispered to each other for a moment. It was actually quite a long moment. I stood against the wall and watched them and thought about whether I could run for the front door, and decided probably not, and then thought about the wooden spoon still in my hand and quietly, slowly, set it down on the bedside table.
Then they both looked at me.
The one with the knife nodded at me. Then looked down at my body. Then back at my face.
I didn’t understand for a second.
And then I did.
“Sorry, what?” I said.
The one with the knife gestured again. At me. Down and up. It was unmistakable.
“You want me to. You want me to undress.” I said it flatly, as a statement, not a question, and my voice was doing something that wasn’t quite fear but was adjacent to it and also adjacent to something else that I didn’t want to look at too directly.
They looked at each other and the one with the knife said something to her girlfriend in a low voice, and the girlfriend pressed her lips together like she was trying not to smile, and that, I don’t know, that little almost-smile, it did something to me.
“No,” I said. “No, I’m not going to. That’s not. No.”
I said it very firmly. Good for me, honestly.
The one with the knife turned back to me and pointed with the blunt butter knife and said, slowly, carefully, in her accented English: “Off.”
Just that. Off.
And the thing is. The thing is, there were two of them and one of me, and one of them had a knife even if it was a completely useless knife, and I didn’t have my phone signal and my front door was open and the village was quiet and dark and it was late.
And also.
Also I was already aware of something I’d rather not have been aware of, which was that the warmth in my stomach from watching them kiss in my yard hadn’t entirely gone away. Which was inconvenient. And confusing. And I was going to examine that later, not now.
“Fine,” I said. “Fine. Okay.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, grabbing the hem of my vest, and pulled it up over my head.
The cold air hit my bare skin and I immediately went to cover myself, arms coming up across my chest, which was, I knew, a very natural response when you’ve just taken your top off in front of two strangers who broke into your house. But I was also very aware of how I looked, big breasts and pale skin and my heart going too fast, and the embarrassment was immediate and physical, a flush of heat across my cheeks and throat and chest.
They were looking at me. Both of them. Really looking.
They said something to each other in their language, low and appreciative, and even without understanding a word I understood the tone completely. My cheeks went hotter.
“Okay, I did it,” I said, and my voice had gone slightly smaller. “I took my top off. So.”
The one with the handcuffs said something short. Sharp. She pointed at my arms.
I understood. I dropped my arms.
Just, stood there.
They looked at me and said something else to each other and the one with the knife made a gesture that was clearly expressive of approval, and I felt a wave of humiliation so intense it went slightly liquid, went warm, went through me and settled somewhere it had no business settling.
The other girl, the one with the knife, crouched down and picked up my vest from the floor. She went through it. Turned out the single small pocket. Found nothing.
She dropped it.
They looked at my shorts.
“No,” I said. “Come on. No, please.”
The one with the knife looked at me steadily and said something, probably “off” again, but I wasn’t sure, and I said: “Please, can you just. Please don’t make me. I’ve cooperated, haven’t I? I’ve been very cooperative, I took my top off, can we just.”
They didn’t understand most of it. I could tell. The one with the knife tilted her head and said something to her girlfriend and the girlfriend said something back and then they both looked at me and the girlfriend made a rolling motion with her hand.
Continue. Keep going.
I closed my eyes for a second.
Okay. Fine.
I pushed my shorts down and stepped out of them and stood there in just my underwear, plain cotton, nothing glamorous, and the cold wooden floor under my bare feet was oddly grounding. I crossed my arms again automatically.
The girlfriend made the same short, sharp sound. Pointed at my arms.
I dropped them again.
They looked at me. The way they looked at me. Like I was something. I don’t know. Like they were both looking at me and also somehow still mostly aware of each other, like I was something they were experiencing together, and I didn’t know what to do with that, how to be looked at like that, it made my whole skin prickle.
The one with the knife bent down for my shorts. Went through the pockets. Found my ChapStick and my room key and nothing useful.
She straightened up and said something dismissive and dropped the shorts too.
And then they both looked at my underwear.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. No. I’ve been. Look, I’ve been really good, I’ve done what you asked, you don’t need to. Please.”
They looked at each other. The girlfriend said something and the one with the knife said something back and then they looked at me and the girlfriend, slowly and clearly, said: “Off.”
She’d picked up the word from her girlfriend. I almost laughed. I almost actually laughed.
“Please,” I said again, and I hated the sound of my own voice, small and asking. “Please. Come on.”
They waited.
I reached behind my back and unclasped my bra.
The straps fell forward and I held it against my chest for just a moment, one last pathetic second of coverage, and then I let it drop and caught the involuntary sound I made in the back of my throat.
They both made sounds too. Not involuntary ones. Approving ones.
Something was said between them and then the one with the knife laughed softly, and the sound of her laughing at me while she looked at my bare chest did something absolutely unconscionable to my body, my nipples pulling tight in the cool air, which I could not do anything about, which was mortifying.
“Don’t,” I said stupidly, uselessly.
They’d noticed. They were both noticing, openly, saying something to each other about it, and then they both laughed together and the sound of it washed over me and my face was burning and I was genuinely, genuinely embarrassed, standing there bare-breasted in the dim light of this tiny bedroom with two girls laughing at my body’s obvious, visible response to them looking at me.
I pushed my underwear down and off before they could ask.
I don’t know why I did it that way, preemptively, as if getting there before they told me to gave me some control back. It didn’t. It just made them stop laughing and go quiet instead, which was somehow worse, that sudden attentive silence.
They stepped closer.
Both of them. Moving together like they were one thing, like they always moved at the same time in the same direction, and one of them reached out a hand and touched my breast, just cupped it gently, feeling the weight of it, and I made a sound I wasn’t proud of and she looked up at my face with something like curiosity and then smiled.
Her girlfriend’s hand came up to the other side.
I stood there with two strangers’ hands on my breasts in a cabin by the sea and my entire body was doing something completely unreasonable and my face was so hot I thought I might actually combust from embarrassment.
They said things to each other over my shoulder, comfortable, conversational things, like they were discussing this arrangement, like I was something interesting they’d found together, and then they stepped back and looked at the rest of me.
The rest of me.
More comments. More of that language I couldn’t catch a single word of. The one with the knife made a motion with her free hand, circular, and then pointed to the floor space in front of her.
I stared at her.
She made the circular motion again and I realized, oh God, she wanted me to turn around. Turn around and. What, just stand there? She made it again and added a little wave, a kind of loose, rhythmic wave, and.
Oh. She wanted me to dance.
“I’m sorry, are you actually serious right now?” I said.
She did the motion again. Patient. Expectant.
“This is. Okay, this is,” I started, and then stopped, because there was nothing to finish that sentence with that didn’t sound completely absurd given my current situation.
I turned around.
I moved. I wouldn’t call it dancing, exactly. It was a slow, deeply self-conscious rotation of my hips and I was absolutely scarlet with embarrassment and I was very aware of my bare bottom and my whole exposed back and the fact that they were watching me do this, this ridiculous thing, in this little bedroom, and I was. I was.
I was also incredibly, helplessly, mortifyingly turned on. Something I was going to have to do a lot of thinking about at a later date when I was somewhere private and had my clothes back.
They murmured to each other appreciatively.
I turned back around because I couldn’t bear not seeing their faces.
And then the girlfriend’s head came up and she said something suddenly different, brighter, and they both turned toward the door and then back to me and the one with the knife was actually smiling now, a real smile, and she said something pointing out toward the kitchen.
The spaghetti.
They could smell the spaghetti.
The girlfriend made an excited noise and said something to her girlfriend and the one with the knife made a happy confirming noise back and they looked at each other with such pure uncomplicated delight about the prospect of pasta that I could’ve almost cried. These ridiculous girls. These hopeless, ridiculous girls.
The girlfriend went out toward the kitchen and I heard the gas ring click on, heard the sound of someone picking up my wooden spoon, heard small sounds of genuine domestic pleasure.
The one with the knife looked at me. The warmth had gone slightly out of her expression, more businesslike now, and she gestured at the chair, the little wooden chair by the narrow desk in the corner of the room.
I went to it and sat down.
The cold of the wood on my bare skin hit me all at once, a shock of it, smooth and cool against my bottom and the backs of my thighs, and I made a small involuntary sound and she looked at me and said something that might have been sympathetic or might have been mocking, I honestly couldn’t tell.
She came around behind me.
I felt the plush-covered cuffs go around my wrists, the soft furry material strange against my skin, and heard the little click as they fastened. Then she crouched down and I felt her hands on my ankles, firm and efficient, and she tied something around each one, some cord or rope she’d produced from her pocket, and she tied each ankle to the corresponding front leg of the chair.
Not tight enough to hurt. But firm. Secure.
Which meant my legs were open. Not wide, just, parted. Just enough.
I sat there, hands cuffed behind the back of the chair and ankles tied to its legs, completely bare, slightly cool, and from the kitchen I could hear the soft sound of the other girl humming to herself while she stirred my spaghetti.
The one who’d cuffed me stood back and looked at me.
She tilted her head.
Said something soft.
I didn’t understand a single word.
I sat there anyway.
