Lloyd smiled a tender apology at the woman he had been chatting up, removed his odious eyes from her cleavage and directed them at me. You could have sewn a patchwork quilt of emotions from the look he shot across my bows. One square of challenge, one square of annoyance, one square of knowing smugness, one square of menace, and one gigantic huge fuck-off square of lust dead centre.
'Madam?' he drawled, sliding down the bar as if on castors.
'Don't madam me,' I snipped. 'If I'm going to go through with this I need another Whisky Sour. A large one.'
'A Whisky Sour? Sure I can't tempt you with . . .'
'If you say Sloe Comfortable Screw, I will deck you,' I warned him.
'No, I was going to say a gangbang,' hissed Lloyd, grinning. I swear there were fangs in there somewhere. 'Except we've got that to come, haven't we? So to speak. And I'm very much looking forward to it. Aren't you?'
'I'll be straight with you, Lloyd. You weren't my first choice of orgy partner. You weren't even my thousand-and-first choice. But I suppose we should just try to . . . pretend we aren't each other. Pretend we're complete strangers.'
'Well, that is what you go for, after all, isn't it, Sophie?'
'Shut the fuck up. I mean, you won't be having me. You won't be having Sophie the person. It'll be pure, neat sex. No mixers, no fizz, no olive on a stick. You are cock and I am cunt. That's all.'
'You put it so nicely.' He bared his teeth, but you couldn't have called it a smile. 'Don't worry, sweetheart, I know I'll never be good enough for you. Unlike every other man in town. It's strictly a pole in a hole for me too. Whisky Sour, you said? The sourer the better.'
I drained my glass recklessly, wanting to get into the mood, but my encounter with Lloyd had sent my libido wildly out of kilter. I would have been happy just to leave with Jake and have a little friendly festivity of our own, just me and him and a gallon of Baileys. Or Chase . . . where was Chase? With family, he said. Surrey, he said. I wasn't so sure.
But the clock struck twelve and Jake gave the signal, watching as first Jade and Maria, then Lincoln, then Lloyd made discreet exits.
'Are you ready for this?' Jake asked me, taking my hand and drawing me out of the messy revel.
'I don't know how to be ready for it,' I confessed. 'But . . . it'll be all right, won't it?'
'Still worried about Lloyd?'
'Let's say there's no love lost. But we're going to try and put that to one side.'
Jake kissed my brow.
'It'll be amazing, you'll see,' he told me.
Our four co-conspirators milled by the pool entrance, waiting for Jake to unlock the promised land.
'Just a sec,' he said, organising lights and the switching on of filters and jacuzzis and the like. The rest of us looked sideways at each other, smirking, sheepish, fidgety.
'How are we going to do this?' Lincoln opened. 'I mean, you know. There's logistics to consider. Three straight guys, one straight girl, one bi girl, one dyke. Should we do a rota or something?'
The girls snorted and I rolled my eyes. 'A rota?'
'OK. Not a rota. What then?'
'Lincoln, I believe you're meant to just . . . go with the flow.' I put a hand on his chest in its expensive black mesh vest. Some luxury sports brand or other. A flicker-flutter, like what you might feel in the breast of a captured bird, against my palm. I melted. Lincoln, of all people, was nervous.
'The flow?' he said.
'Yeah. Shall we get into the water? Just you and me?'
'The water, yeah. The water's good.' Lincoln brightened and began stripping off. It occurred to me that it was the presence of other men that was bothering him – being watched and assessed and judged. The pool was a hiding place.
'Last one in gets a spanking!' I challenged, kicking off my high heels and knowing perfectly well that Lincoln would beat me to it, unless he had stockings and suspenders on underneath those baggy trousers.
'Bad idea, babe,' he chuckled, already down to his jockstrap while I was still fumbling with my skirt zipper. He ridded himself of the surplus covering and stood, a magnificent block of man, with his arms folded, obstructing my path to the pool steps. 'I'm ready to slap some ass.'
Rolling down my stockings, I noticed that the others had drifted off to the jacuzzi. Maria and Jade were sitting in it, kissing, while Jake stood behind them, his hands cupping Maria's breasts, nibbling at her neck. Lloyd, still clothed, simply watched them, his eyes slipping between the snogging sapphists and my striptease. I kept my eyes on Lloyd, grinning and giggling with pleasurable fear, until the knickers were off. Lincoln made a lunge for me and I skipped sideways and threw myself into the pool, as always relishing the moment that its perfect static calm ruptures into froth and wavelets.