‘I’m ruining it?’
‘You’re overreacting!’ I bawled.
He laughed at that, then
pointed to the sofa in our open-plan lounge-diner.
‘All right, Philippa, overreact to this,’ he said, not raising his voice a decibel. ‘Go and bend over the arm.’
‘I …’
‘Now.’
Here I was, at a crossroads that felt enormously significant.
I could say no. He had no recourse, after all. I knew he wouldn’t force me. It would take just a few calm, reasonable words. Or, if I carried on shouting and screaming, he would probably just walk away, go to the pub, like he always used to.
But I didn’t want that. I hated those hours he spent at the pub while I paced the flat, full of rage, then full of remorse, then full of facepalm.
I hated having to apologise and have him wonder aloud what got into me.
Of course, I loved the make-up sex.
But perhaps we could have that too, without all the icky in-between stuff?
I looked at his face. It was resolute and stern. It was everything I had fantasised.
I went to the sofa.
I looked over my shoulder at him. He was watching me.
It was a giddy feeling. If I voluntarily put myself over the arm, I was making a profound statement. I put myself in your hands. I accept your authority.
It was too hard. And I felt ridiculous, like a character in one of the hokey spanking stories I was always browsing online. And I felt guilty, as if I was dancing on the Pankhurst graves in hobnailed boots.
But, look, I had asked for this.
‘Philippa.’
His voice acted like a hand between my shoulder blades.
I bent, feeling the swishy hem of my dress rise up my bared thigh.
I listened to him walk up to me.
‘It’s not that you’ve done something terrible, Philippa,’ he said.
I flinched when he put a hand on my thigh, just where it met the dress, and stroked through the material.
‘Of course it’s not that. That’s trivial. It’s the way you behaved when I asked you. Defensive, straight away. Trying to blame me. Getting yourself wound up. This is what you want to change, isn’t it?’
I nodded, too embarrassed by my position to speak.
‘It’s like the divisional Christmas lunch. Remember that? You were too hungover to go. But that was my fault, apparently, because I should have somehow stopped you from drinking too much with your girlfriends the night before. I should have picked you up earlier. I should have called you to make sure you weren’t too legless. I should have done this, I should have done that. No, Philippa. I’m not having any more of it. You are going to take responsibility for your own behaviour, and if I have to make you, then so be it. It’s what you want, isn’t it?’
I nodded again, stung by his horribly accurate and relevant memory.
Not as stung as I was a moment later, when he lifted my dress to my waist and began to smack my bottom over my prettiest, laciest knickers.