I kicked him in the shin and then he let me come at last.
Romance isn’t dead, you know.
The next day, he was on night shift, so I didn’t see much of him. Instead, I did more surreptitious reading of Book 2, and more fantasising about the final chapter.
I wanted to know about this ginger thing, and yet I also really didn’t want to know. I went as far as going to the kitchen and peeling a ginger finger, but then I got scared and threw it in the sink. I really wanted Dan to come home – I was ragingly horny and forbidden from relieving myself. In fact, I’d been ragingly horny ever since we started with this domestic discipline thing. The link seemed clear.
The more I thought about being bent over and caned with my bum stuffed full of root vegetable matter, the more desperate I was to welcome my husband home.
And yet, I really dreaded his doing any of these things. It was too paradoxical to think about.
I was asleep before he came home, but we both had today off.
We had an excursion planned – a trip to the seaside, involving calling on old friends from university days. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks.
‘Are you going to bring your cane?’ I asked teasingly as he looked around the room for his iPod and charger.
‘Not a bad idea,’ he said.
I’d been joking, but he actually went downstairs, holding it in his hand for all to see, and put it in the back seat of the car.
‘I can’t believe you did that,’ I gasped, staring at him on his return.
‘Your idea,’ he said casually. ‘And I know what you’re like on car journeys. Thought it might come in handy.’
‘OK, I’ll drive,’ I said, although I loathed driving and avoided it at all costs.
‘No need for that,’ he said, swooping on the iPod when he saw it on the kitchen shelf. ‘It’s only an hour down the motorway. I’m happy to take the wheel.’
Take the wheel. Something about the way he said it sounded both sinister and exciting. I could tell he had some kind of agenda in mind, and the cane might well be part of it.
‘Have you programmed the SatNav?’
Most of our vehicle-bound fallings-out involved directions wrongly or hastily given. The SatNav had saved our marriage on more than one occasion.
‘We won’t need it,’ he said briskly. ‘It’s motorway all the way, then downhill to the beach. Easy as pie.’
‘Have you ever made a pie?’ I grumbled. ‘They’re actually quite complicated.’
He laughed, then clapped his hands.
‘Got the towels? Picnic basket? Sunblock? Come on. The sun’ll go in.’
I eyed the cane on the back seat as Dan hit the motorway slip road, singing along to a rock track I didn’t much like. I supposed it was there to warn me. He wouldn’t actually use the thing. All the same, it added ice to my veins, seeing it lying there like a lithe brown snake.
Better a brown snake than Whitesnake, though, I thought crossly, wishing Dan would turn off the CD player.
Once we were in the middle lane of the road, he began really belting the song out and I found myself both irritated and fearful. Because my own driving is so bad, it always makes me anxious to think that Dan might not be giving the road his full attention.
‘Watch out!’ I kept shouting, every time a car in another lane indicated in front of us, no matter how far ahead they were.
‘I have eyes,’ he said. ‘I can see.’
He went back to singing.
I snapped off the CD player.
‘Hey, what’s up? I was listening to that.’