I leave the clubhouse, cleaning myself with the wet wipes, and dropping them on the floor behind me as I go. By the time I get to Jack’s car I have used them all, and I leave the empty packet on top of a white Mazda, which, out of all the cars parked out the front, seems the most likely to belong to Bronwyn.
In the driver’s seat, I grip the wheel and look at the asphalt of the road, the gutter and the trees dotted evenly along the street. I never feel like I’m truly away from home until I’m looking at suburban streets that I don’t know the name of, or sliding on other people’s cleaning residue in the bottom of unfamiliar showers. And I never really feel homesick until I see how difficult it is to create a different life somewhere else entirely.
Vlad walks down the driveway towards the car, and I press the button to lower the window.
‘Hey, look, we’ve had a quick talk, and we think it might be good if you experience being a sub, so you know the expectations of each role better.’
She rests her chin on the window. ‘What do you think of coming back later tonight and having a go at that?’
‘With Carl?’
‘No, no,’ she says. ‘Carl’s tired now. Tonight you’d be with Jay. He’s very experienced. You can feel what it’s like to be a sub, and then re-create that energy with your own subs.’
‘I have tried it, and it was painful.’
She laughs. ‘It’s the worst! But you have a little more to learn until we can let you loose on the other members. We don’t have so many that we can afford to have you frighten them all off.’
I consider her offer. ‘I’ll do it,’ I say, ‘but only to prove a point.’
‘No, really, no one needs you to prove anything—it’s just about developing your skills,’ she says.
‘Okay, I’m in. Tell Tanya I have the gumption to come back.’
‘How about you go and get cleaned up, and then come back whenever you’re ready. I’m here until late—maybe we could hang out a bit before you start.’
‘That sounds nice,’ I say. ‘My mum actually died this week.’ I stare straight ahead, unsure why I feel the need to share this information with everyone.
‘Yeah, I guessed something must’ve happened.’
‘Oh?’
‘You have that look.’
She raises her eyebrows at me. ‘You know, I used to come here four or five times a week, caterwauling like a she-devil at the back door, wanting to rope people up, bind them and gag them, the whole thing. I don’t know if Tanya told you, but the stain really high up on the wall in the slave chamber, that’s from me. I worked through a lot of issues in there.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, this place saved my life.’
‘I want it to save mine.’
‘Well, you can’t ever do what you did to poor Carl again.’
‘I actually think he was into some parts of it,’ I say.
She shakes her head. ‘He wasn’t.’
The sky is violet as I drive away, my new clothes pinching in all the wrong places. I wonder if I should call the Widow Maker and tell them my tampon is in the corner of the room, or whether they will find it themselves. I can’t decide which scenario would feel less awful. I feel hot and sick with shame the more I unpack what I did to Carl. My cheeks flush as I remember his face coated in blood.
I arrive home and let myself in the front door. ‘It’s just me,’ I call out.
‘Jesus Christ, Amelia,’ Jack says, sticking his head out of the study door. ‘What the fuck are you wearing?’
‘Oh.’ I look down at my Marquis outfit.
He opens the door wider and scoots out, still seated on his office chair.
‘This’—he gestures to my outfit—‘is a deep cry for help.’
‘Maybe,’ I say, wiping away a few tears.
‘Oh, honey muffin, don’t do that,’ he says, which makes me howl.
‘Okay, okay,’ he says. ‘Let’s sort this out.’
He scoots the chair back towards the study, then gets up and walks off.
I hover in the hallway, not sure what to do next.
Jack leans out of the laundry door and throws me a towel. ‘Go and have a shower and then join me in the kitchen.’
‘Good idea,’ I say, thankful for a direction.
A house can feel very big or very, very small. At first, it felt small. I couldn’t move in case I bumped into him. Both of us were bloated by grief. Now, I don’t want to be far from him. I call his name when I re-emerge from the shower.
‘What did you say?’ I hear him yell back from the kitchen, and I have no idea what I said; I just wanted to hear his voice and know he was near.
There are two mugs of peppermint tea on the table, and four photo albums, and he has already pulled up a chair for me next to his.
‘I don’t really know how to help you right now, but I had a think, and I want to remind you of who you are, and who you came from.’ He taps the stack of albums. ‘Because I think you might be trying to get away from those things, because of your sadness, which is so uncomfortable that it’s almost unbearable—but I promise you, running away from that sadness is like trying to run from your own shadow.’
He slides the first album over and opens it, pointing to a photo of Simon as a chunky baby having a bath in a bucket.
‘He hated the exhaust fan in the bathroom. He would cry every time it went on, so we would either hose him down on the deck or pop him in a bucket. He loved the bucket, but you can see what a big baby he was. The buckets would often split, and there was a point when we had to stop using them.’ He squints at
