"Oh yes, that's a beautiful colour," said the girl behind the market stall. Our eyes met. I had picked up a length of blood-red silk ribbon.

"It would look lovely against your pale skin," she said.

And she was right. Later, as I knelt among the long grass, the girl bound my wrists in that blood-red silk.

She was so gentle. It hurt, of course... how could it not, but her torments were acts of kindness.

She smiled into my half-closed eyes as I lay sprawled on that expanse of flattened grass.

"Which colour will you choose tomorrow, Suzy?