ONE

I hear the music before I even arrive at Mitzi’s. It is dubstep, and I know this because I was at a club last week and asked the girl I was with what the hell we were listening to. She told me it was dubstep and I told her it was awful and she nodded, although we didn’t leave because we were drunk.

You expect that sort of racket in a club in London; out in the sticks in Kent, it is so unexpected it seems surreal. Mitzi lives outside one of those quaint villages the Tories always cream themselves over in a house that’s joined onto another. It’s not a semi exactly, the place is too rustic for that; more a couple of pissed old cottages that have slumped together and stayed there. On the two occasions I’ve visited here it’s been usually deadly quiet; even the owls sound cautious.

I walk up the cobbled driveway. The music is coming from the house next door, which has every lamp in every room turned on. Light spills out along with the music, illuminating the garden and reaching into the surrounding fields.

Mitzi is in a state of high excitement when she opens the door, reaching out and yanking me in as if to get me out of sight before anyone notices. This, too, is highly unusual. The inside of Mitzi’s place is cluttered with scented candles, little sculptures and figurines, as well as paintings and photos – usually of her, although I think I’ve spotted one of me in there somewhere.

Like me, Mitzi is a t-girl. Neither of us is tall, but where I am lithe, she is tiny and delicate. She’s in her late twenties, so a few years younger than me.

Her genius with makeup makes her already huge eyes even more elfin and beguiling. She also gets away with short hair, which only people with absurdly pointy cheekbones can. Tonight, I think the hair is dyed light blue, although she’s got most of the lamps off so it’s hard to tell. Only fairy lights around the fireplace illuminate her small living room, with its ancient walls that look like they’ve started melting, then decided against it.

Tonight, the little knick-knacks and exquisitely-chosen ornaments are shaking in their obsessively-placed positions as dubstep shreds the crisp late-summer night. Mitzi pulls me into the living room, and we stand and stare at each other.

“Kelly,” Mitzi says. “The man next door is trying to drive me insane.”

“Well that’s stupid,” I reply. “You’re already insane.”

“Yes, but I mean in ways I don’t enjoy and are of no use to me socially.”

“Have you tried talking to him?”

“He won’t open the door.”

“This sounds serious, Mitzi. We should go to that pub down the road and torment old biddies by using the men’s and the ladies’ loos.”

“The locals have got used to all that now. A couple even read The Guardian.”

“For God’s sake! You should move.”

“No, I’ve just got everything as I like it.”

“Why is your neighbour doing this?” I say. “He was all right before, wasn’t he?”

“He’s never been all right, Kelly. He is evil. That’s why I called you.”

“I’m not evil.”

“Your tvChix profile says you’re a witch.”

“And a galactic agent.”

“I don’t know what that means. Will you help me?”

“Have you got gin?”

“And tonic with elderflower, and lemons that have already been sliced.”

“By you?”

“Don’t be silly, darling.”

“Okay, I’m in. What’s your plan?”

“He’s scared of ghosts.”

“Right.”

“We convince him his house is haunted, so he moves.”

I regard Mitzi, who exists in a liminal realm between joking and seriousness that is often hard to find one’s way around.

“Haunted,” I repeat.

“Yes. I’ve downloaded some pant-wettingly horrid ghost noises and bought a speaker system that is so small it can hardly be seen. I’ve also worked out the frequencies the bastard is using with that music –“

“It’s called dubstep.”

Mitzi blinks.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“It sounds like the description of a medieval washing facility.”

“Don’t get the hump with me, Mitzi; I didn’t come up with it. Why are you yapping about frequencies?”

“We can use different frequencies to cut through the noise.”

“How unnervingly scientific of you.”

“A man showed me.”

“Of course he did.”

“The bastard next door won’t know where the spookage is coming from, and we can properly freak him out. Over time he will either desist or vacate.”

“How are you going to get the sound into his house?”

“Drill through the walls.”

“These walls have seen off glaciers, Mitzi. I fear your cordless will not be up to the task.”

“I haven’t got any tools, Kelly. I always get men in for…”

She thinks, then waves a hand in the direction of the kitchen.

“Work?” I suggest.

“Yes. That.”

“So…?”

“We use his tools.”

“Um…”

Mitzi leans forward and whispers, which seems over-the-top even for her.

“He keeps his shed unlocked.”

“How do you know?”

“Spying, in a special cocktail dress.”

I nod solemnly.

“There’s one of those long wire things as well,” Mitzi adds.

“An extension cable?”

“I knew you were the girl for the job.”

The music is starting to piss me off now.

“Okay, Mitzi. Let’s get ginned up and do this thing.”

She leads me into the kitchen, whose shadowy contours reveal a farmhouse chic unbothered by the need to prepare food. She lights a small candle and pours a couple of large super-cold gins. She’s had the booze in the freezer, and the mixer and lemons too, and pours both over ice in large tumblers that look huge in her small, delicate hands. We get through a couple, but it’s hard to enjoy them with that racket, and I knock mine back.

Mitzi fetches some long wires that she explains are the speakers and the cables. This is good; wifi is rubbish out here, so we don’t want to rely on that to get the sound signal into the house next door. The guy probably has a hammer drill with a small bit; we can use it on a low setting to get through the wall with his awful music covering the noise. If the first hole goes well then we can get up a ladder and do another hole into the bedroom as well. There might be putty or something I can use to plug the holes to avoid drafts. Failing that I’ll use mud.

Mitzi has used my thinking time to get into another outfit, whose suitability I question before realising she will be there more in a guidance than practical capacity.

Clutching the cables, we leave through the back door and slink down the garden, hidden from the neighbour by a high but neatly-trimmed hedge. It’s when we’re over the back fence and in the dense wooded area that we encounter problems.

“Kelly!”

“Shush!”

“We’re being followed.”

“How do you know?”

“There is disruption in the undergrowth,” Mitzi says.

“That’s you. Why did you have to wear that tutu?”

“It seemed apt,” she says, and freezes. “There it is again! We’ve stopped, so it can’t be me.”

“I can’t hear anything, except that music.”

“We’re being followed, Kelly. By someone… or something.”

“Someone or something? Who are you, Enid Blyton?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

I look around. It’s a cloudy night, and very dark. Mitzi is a vague shape beside me. I can’t make anything out in the gloom, and go to push on, but Mitzi clutches my arm. She is disproportionately strong, like an ant.

“Kelly, I think we’re being stalked by a badger.”

“Badgers don’t stalk.”

“This one may be atypical, like the shark in Jaws.”

“That film was not a documentary, Mitzi; how many more times?”

The frenetic pace of the music sounds like anxiety; it grinds away at my mind.

“Do you want to do this or not?” I say

I sense rather than see her glower at me, which feels like being menaced by a kitten. I move on and climb over the neighbour’s fence.

I’m shielded from the house by another hedge, which hides the compost bins with their dense, heady cut-grass smell. I move past them and ease around so I can see through the shed window. In reflected light from the house, I notice the shed is well-organised; I can even make out the drill and extension cable.

My heart begins to thud. Until now, this has all been theoretical, but we have reached the point of committing burglary, criminal damage and psychological assault. Put like that it seems rather less fun, but when you’ve walked in my heels long enough you realise you’ve got to make your own rules.

Something sparks beside me.

“What are you doing, Mitzi?”

“I brought a candle, so we can see.”

“You will burn the shed down. Put it out.”

She does so, and the scent of sandalwood enriches the air for a moment.

We get the shed door open. It creaks and we freeze, but the noise is drowned out by music from the house. I slip inside and Mitzi follows.

I’m breathless now, and have to concentrate hard on what I’m doing. I take the cable because that’s lighter and hand it to Mitzi, then gently pick up the drill and look around for a toolbox.

“Do you want the candle on?” Mitzi whispers.

“Oh, all right.”

She sparks it up. I spot putty! This is going to be easy. There’s even a ladder against one wall; an A-frame that looks new. I hand the drill and putty to Mitzi, who blows the candle out, stuffs it down her tutu along with the lighter, and takes the tools as I unhook the ladder.

It’s as we creep out of the shed that I realise something has changed; something is very, very wrong.

The music has stopped.

“What the fuck are you doing in my garden?”

TWO

He is a massive shadow in front of the now-silent house. His face is difficult to make out, but light reflects off the shed window to part-illuminate blue eyes whose coldness is not obscured by their dimmed surroundings. I see them narrow as he looks at me; he blinks, as if he recognizes me, then turns to glare at Mitzi.

I find my voice.

“Just borrowing a couple of… tools for…an emergency…”

He looks back at me. I nod at Mitzi’s house.

“With that.”

“You could have asked,” the man says. His voice is low and quiet; soft with dangerous anger.

“We thought you were out,” I say.

He looks back at Mitzi.

“I thought you were out,” he says.

“What?” I say.

“We’ll just put these items back,” Mitzi says.

She ducks into the shed, deposits the tools she is holding, trots back out and plucks the ladder from my grasp as if it weighs nothing.

“What about your ‘emergency’?” the man says, his voice even quieter now.

“We’ll just plug it with a duvet,” I say.

“Fuck this,” the man says. “I’m calling the police.”

He pulls a mobile from his trouser pocket and the screen lights his face. It’s a basic sort of face as if he is an early form of man whose performance has exceeded expectations. His stubble is the same length as his hair, which I think is brown.

Neither Mitzi nor I can afford any more tangles with the law. I hurl myself at the man, but when I land on him he doesn’t even sway; it’s like grappling an island. I wrap my arms and legs around him anyway.

“Run Mitzi! I shall obstruct the mouthpiece!”

I hear scampering feet, some odd scrabbling, then silence.

“Get off,” the man says.

He smells faintly of Coach aftershave and marijuana. I shake my head.

“I will bite through your neck. The gristle of it, everything.”

I feel an absurd pulse between my legs at this frankly horrible threat, but before I can decide what to do I hear a whisper.

“Kelly?”

I lift my head from the man’s shoulder and turn around. Mitzi is on top of the shed.

“Why are you whispering?” I hiss. “If I can hear you, he can hear you.”

“Yes; it’s just that I’m stuck.”

The fight goes out of me and I slide to the ground.

“We thought you were trying to drive her insane with dubstep,” I tell the man.

“That wasn’t dubstep. It was garage.”

“No, it wasn’t. I like garage.”

“I’m not fucking arguing,” he says. “Anyway, I thought Simon was out. I wouldn’t have had the music on if I’d known he was there.”

“Simon?”

“I’m not calling him Mitzi. We’ve been neighbours for years. It was always Sim– Wait, ‘Mitzi’? Is that because you drove a Mitzubishi?”

“Not – no,” Mitzi says in a sullen voice.

“It was a Colt wasn’t it?” the man says.

“Yes,” Mitzi’s voice is even quieter now.

“A Colt?” I say. “That sounds impressive.”

“No,” the man says. “It was more of a keyring than a car.”

“How dare you!” screams Mitzi.

The man sighs and starts dialling.

“Please don’t,” I say. “There must be something we can do for you.”

He looks at me, then back at his phone.

“I don’t like trannies,” he says.

“Why?” I say, although without my usual fire.

“You can punch Kelly in the face!” Mitzi cries.

The man’s eyes widen; he blinks, looks at Mitzi and then looks at me.

“Why can’t he punch you in the face?” I ask Mitzi.

“You look like you’ve been punched in the face before,” Mitzi says.

“You try presenting as female at a South London boys’ comprehensive!” I yell.

“Comprehensive?” the man says.

“Don’t be fooled by the voice,” I say. “I might sound like Alan Rickman, but I’m really quite common.”

The man looks at me. His expression is odd. He has stopped dialling.

I sigh and think it through.

At a club, a few years back, a nice man called Steve who looked like a circus strongman asked if I would give him permission to knock me about a bit. I take a harsh view of domestic violence, and an even harsher one of violence against girls like us, but Steve’s proposition was different. What he had in mind was more of a ritual, with firm guidelines and permissions. The only reason I didn’t go along with it was because I had to be up early the next morning, but I’ve always been curious about what it would have been like.

This man isn’t like kindly Steve though. This man is angry and probably dangerous. He had threatened to bite through my neck. The bit about the gristle was good, albeit terrifying.

I lick my lips.

“You get to slap the side of my face, open-handed, once,” I say. “If you then call the police, I’ll tell them you assaulted me.”

He has not blinked, or taken his eyes off me.

“Have you seen pictures of his ex?” he says unexpectedly, nodding at Mitzi. “Emma.”

“I don’t know about any ex,” I said.

“Simon went like that,” the man said, pointing at Mitzi’s tutu. “Emma couldn’t cope with it, so she came to me. We were together a while, and then she left. That’s what this is about.”

“Oh,” I say, unsure how I feel about any of it, but anxious to get the slapping out of the way.

“Yes,” the man says. “Emma was tall for a girl, athletic, nice chest, long legs, loads of thick dark hair with a fringe; big brown eyes and sex-doll lips. Nose was smaller but otherwise you’re the dead spit.”

I spin around.

“Mitzi!” I shout. “Am I some sort of Emma methadone?”

Mitzi starts crying. Absurdly, the only thing I can think of is how her lovely makeup will be spoiled. I shake my head.

“Let’s get this over with,” I say.

He tenses. I keep my eyes fixed on his, but when his arm moves I flinch and blink, cursing my weakness. There’s no pain, just an odd spinning, then a greater darkness. I anticipate the feel of cool, dewy grass against my jangling face, but…

I open my eyes. I’m still standing; I haven’t been struck at all. The darkness is the absence of light from the house now the man has switched the lights off. I stand there, and relief tinged with weird disappointment floods me like the delayed after-effects of two hefty gins. There is a patter of scampering feet and I look down at Mitzi.

“I thought you were stuck,” I say.

“I was, but I got better.”

I nod, and head for the back fence.

“Kelly?”

I turn, and the moon chooses that moment to expose herself and flood the garden with dazzling white light. Mitzi glows like a celestial being and I remember why I put up with her.

“Thank you,” she says.

I extend my hand, she takes it and we head back over the fence into the woods behind the garden.

“Is that badger still here?” I say, anxious to get back to the gin.

“The fucker has retreated.”

“Let’s go.”

Back in the kitchen, we put half the bottle away in less than five minutes, adrenaline fuelling our drinking to the extent that I need to sit down. I stagger into the living room and slump onto one of Mitzi’s diddy but plush sofas. She follows with the drinks on a tray that has a picture of Audrey Hepburn on it and places the lot on a table she toes from under a nest by the telly. Then she sits beside me and strokes my hair until I calm down. Neither of us feels like talking.

She screams.

The man from next door is in the living room, like a demon we have unwittingly conjured. He wears black jeans, a black top, and no facial expression. He holds wires in hands that look like they’re used for whipping cattle.

He has clearly changed his mind about the violence; or maybe he needed more kit to make a decent job of it. I am oddly relaxed, as if all of this is happening to someone else. Fuck it. He’ll lose an eye at least, and maybe a testicle.

The man raises the wires.

THREE

“Are these the sound cables I lent you?” The man asks Mitzi.

“Ah,” Mitzi says. “Er… No.”

I realise the wires are the cables we were going to use for our haunting; they just look tiny in those hands.

“You borrowed cables from…” I begin to ask Mitzi, then turn to the man. “Sorry, what is your name?”

“Terry.”

“Yes,” Mitzi says. “He’s in IT, so it seemed like a good idea.”

“IT?” I say to Terry. “From your build and general demeanour, I thought you might have been in the military.”

“I was,” Terry says. “Now I’m in IT.”

“And have you bitten through anyone’s neck before?” I ask.

“Yes.”

I expect him to say something like ‘I don’t want to talk about it’, but he doesn’t.

“What was your plan, anyway?” Terry says.

“We were going to convince you your house was haunted,” I say.

“Is that why you were asking about frequencies?” Terry asks Mitzi.

“Might be,” Mitzi says.

I stare at her.

“You really are a sociopath, aren’t you?” I say.

“I’m not a sociopath,” Mitzi says. “I’m just organised.”

Terry seems to fill the room, like dark expanding foam, without moving at all.

“I’m terribly sorry about all this, Terry,” I say.

“He likes being used,” Mitzi says. “And so do you.”

I look at Terry and realise that like all good sociopaths Mitzi has the truth of it. Terry shrugs, coils the cables with the insouciant skill of someone who does that all the time and places the tight circles on Mitzi’s small, lacquered dining table. For a while no one says anything, and then Terry pulls a leather pouch from his back pocket and produces a third-smoked but still unfeasibly large spliff.

“Ah, I have a strict no-smoking policy –”

“Fuck off Mitzi,” Terry says and uses a Zippo to light the spliff.

Mitzi tuts then slips off the sofa and heads into the kitchen. Terry exhales a plume of powerfully fragrant smoke and studiously ignores me. There are muttered curses from the kitchen, followed by the sound of impatient searching. I keep looking at Terry because he is suddenly the most interesting thing in the place. After a while, his eyes move so he is looking at me, but otherwise, he remains still. Mitzi comes back in with two ashtrays, one filled with water and the other with sand, and an actual fuck-off great fire extinguisher.

“Really Mitzi?” I say.

“The ceiling is wattle and daub,” Mitzi says. “Is it not, Terry?”

“I don’t care.”

Mitzi hovers, looking anxious, which seems to please Terry although neither his expression or body language change. I wonder if it’s a military technique and if so what possible use it could have in battle.

I feel a sudden need to refresh my lipstick; God knows what state my makeup is in after all this excitement. My bag is by the door, so I get to my feet after an unseemly struggle against both gravity and excessive cushions to grab the reassuring luggage. It’s a mid-sized tawny leather affair with many pockets and compartments, all of which are as carefully arranged as Mitzi’s knick-knack collection. When a girl is off her face with one thing or another it’s good to know where important items are without any inconvenient rummaging. I consider heading to the loo, but for some reason don’t want to, and dither by the door.

“Come here, Kelly,” Terry says.

I look at him, chin raised and with defiance in my eyes. Then I cross the small space to stand in front of him. He takes my bag off my shoulder and drops it on the sofa. Then he takes my hands.

“Crouch down,” he says.

I do, and he squats opposite me. He puts the burning end of the spliff in his mouth, then leans forward. I take the other end between my lips and he blows smoke down into me as I inhale. I’ve got big lungs, but Terry’s might be bigger, and my eyes widen as I wonder how much more is coming. As he exhales and I inhale, he tugs on my hands so I stand up, and the movement makes the blood carry the hefty drug load around my system a lot faster.

Terry carries on lifting my hands until I am on tiptoe and my fingertips brush the low, uneven ceiling. We stay there for a while, then I open my mouth but don’t exhale, and Terry moves his head back and flips the spliff again so the burning end points towards me. I wonder if he will jab it in my eye, and stay very still. I have no inclination to exhale, and watch him, thinking that I will show him how resilient I can be, as if this is SAS selection, but with unicorns instead of jungle training or whatever.

I decide it’s time to breathe out and slowly do so, aiming my plume past Terry’s head. I am aware of Mitzi nearby, her breathing so short she is almost panting. Terry puts a hand on my head to keep it still, takes another drag, and blows the smoke in my face. Then he puts the spliff out, places his hands on either side of my waist, pulls me to him and kisses my mouth.

He is a surprisingly careful kisser, working his way around my lips as though exploring them. He doesn’t use his tongue, just kisses and kisses, holding me tighter. Soon I struggle to breathe. He eases the pressure on me and then lifts his hands to hold my face, looking in my eyes as if searching for something.

I feel adrift; the close focus a counterpoint to the buzzing in the soles of my feet and the fluttering of my heart. I forget where I am, and why, and what it is we were doing, and what we are doing now. There is only the pressure of rough hands on my face, and the cold blue eyes looking into mine. Seized by a sudden hunger, I lean in to kiss him, but he doesn’t let me no matter how many times I try. I let my expression become petulant. Terry is unconcerned. He lets go of my face and strokes my front, from my breasts to my stomach.

“Christ,” he whispers. “Your abs are almost as big as your tits.”

His hand hovers in front of my skirt, and for the first time, he seems uncertain. I watch him, and then he grips me between the legs, holds what’s there for a moment and then lets go. He snatches up the spliff, lights it, takes a drag and then hands it to me. I turn my back on him and stick my bottom out as I hold the spliff between two fingers and smoke it like I’m in the 70s.

Mitzi watches from the other side of the room. Usually, we make love by holding each other and rubbing our groins through our panties while she strokes my hair and I run my thumbs along her gorgeous cheekbones. We have a rhythm that means we come at the same time and spend the rest of the evening with wet pants until we feel up to doing it again, sometimes as often as three times a night. We find each other’s beauty inexhaustible, but Terry has introduced a new element. This matter of the ex-girlfriend, Emma, is delectably confusing as well. How twisted it all is, and how beguiling.

Terry strokes my bottom, then grips it. I ignore him and nod at the drinks tray. Mitzi pours one, and I notice that the ice has begun to melt from the heat in the room. Mitzi brings the drink over, but Terry grabs it, seizes my jaw and pushes my head back. I open my mouth and Terry pours the whole drink down my throat. I keep my face inexpressive and look at him. He glances between my legs again. The spliff has burned right down, so I drop it in the ashtray that has the water in.

Terry lifts my skirt.

I’m in a black bodycon mini with long sleeves, so it stays up when it’s lifted. Under that, I’ve got black tights on, and beneath those are my hips, which this evening are enhanced with fabric pads to sweeten the curves. Terry seems confused by this innovation, and while he studies it I turn my back on him again.

Mitzi is still beside me. She picks up my bag, takes out my makeup and produces my trademark red lipstick, which she expertly applies to my mouth. She holds a tissue between my lips to dry her handiwork; I press down and see my kiss mark on the delicate paper. Mitzi dabs me with radiance powder, then reworks my eyes with a dark pigment, presumably to make them smokier. Her expression as she does this is rapt, while Terry continues to touch my backside as if he is unsure whether it is dangerous.

Mitzi brushes my hair, which drifts around me in a black cloud until she strokes it into submission. I don’t know how she does this; it’s as though she has the power of a million salons in her fingers. I am always Kardashian-sleek when she’s done, no matter what else we’ve been up to.

There is a rustling behind me; Terry is rolling another spliff. Mitzi pulls me to the other side of the room, pushes me onto the opposite sofa and drapes herself protectively over me, glaring at Terry as she does so. Terry doesn’t seem bothered; he is focussed on mixing grass and tobacco with the intensity of a man diffusing a bomb.

My skirt is still around my waist. Mitzi puts her hand between my legs and strokes me. I keep my legs demurely together and point the toes of my boots away from Terry. He glances up at me, then clocks Mitzi and what she is doing, before going back to his spliff. This one is an even bigger monster than the last. Terry stretches out on the other sofa, lights up and regards us.

“Bring Kelly over here, Mitzi,” he says.

“No.”

“Bring her over now.”

Mitzi clutches me to her.

“She’s mine,” Mitzi says.

Terry drinks gin from the bottle, smokes some more, and says, “I think we both know I can take her from you quite easily.”

“I refuse.”

“Do it and I will let you watch.”

Mitzi hesitates.

Terry moves so fast it’s as though he has somehow displaced himself from one part of the room to the other. I’m hoisted off the sofa and am over his shoulder before I can move, my hair swinging down his back and blocking my view of the rest of the room. Terry strides towards the front door with me; I look back at Mitzi who is stricken on the sofa, her lip trembling with extreme feelings I had not thought her capable of.

FOUR

“All right!” Mitzi screams.

“Too late,” Terry says.

“I will help you!” Mitzi cries. “You don’t know how to treat her!”

Draped as I am down Terry’s back with a good view of his solid arse, I can’t see his face, but when he shudders I sense terrific emotion erupt in him. He tugs my dress down, a movement that seems more reflex than conscious decision.

“I know how to treat her,” Mitzi goes on. “You think I didn’t love her, but I did.”

Terry puts me down and looks at me with tears in his eyes.

“This is not really your problem, Kelly,” he says. “You can go if you want.”

“I don’t want to go,” I say.

Terry nods, then says, “Thank fuck for that.”

We go back into the living room, where Mitzi stands and trembles like a beautiful exposed nerve.

“You keep pouring stuff into her,” Mitzi says. “Why not do what you really want?”

Terry’s spliff and the gin bottle without its lid are on the small table. He looks at them; Mitzi picks the spliff up, puts it in Terry’s mouth and after a few pathetic attempts gets the lighter sparked up and the spliff lit.

“Do what you want, and relax,” Mitzi tells him.

She points at the sofa, and Terry sits on it.

“Would you like to know what Kelly likes?”

Terry nods. Mitzi reaches into my bag and gets out a new 25ml bottle of Amsterdam Gold.

“Kelly likes poppers.”

Mitzi can never get through the plastic wrap on new poppers bottles, and I struggle. Usually, I have to use a knife or key or something, but Terry simply presses down, twists, and has the top off at once. I feel that little twitch between my legs again. Terry puts the bottle to his right nostril, inhales with a delicacy I did not expect, then does the same with the other.

“Nice,” he says.

Mitzi takes the bottle from him and holds it under my right nostril. I take a hit, then another in the same place because the septum in my left nostril is buckled after a scrap. Usually, Mitzi takes the bottle away, but this time she leaves it there. I take a couple more raw hits and feel the flood of rightness blossom all the way through me as my blood vessels relax and take all my hang-ups with them.

Mitzi tightens the cap and bends down to place the bottle on the table within easy reach. Her arse is delectable under that tutu, which I suddenly realise is exactly the right thing for her to be wearing tonight.

“And now Kelly will fall to her knees,” Mitzi says, “because that is where she most likes to be.”

It is as though her words are prophetic because I do indeed sink to my knees in front of Terry, the underside of Mitzi’s tutu and the smell of Mitzi’s sex in close and lovely proximity. It is as though I was designed to be in this position, so right does it feel.

“Isn’t Kelly pretty?” Mitzi says.

“Yes,” Terry says, as though he is hypnotised by me.

Mitzi kisses the top of my head and strokes my hair, arranging it. Terry’s hand finds a life of its own and grips his cock through the front of his jeans.

“Now, now,” Mitzi says.

She guides Terry’s hand away. He has forgotten the spliff, which Mitzi points at.

“Get her higher,” Mitzi says.

Terry has an uncanny grace when he moves; he is on his knees in front of me as though the movement is choreographed. He flips the spliff and breathes its power into me again; once more we rise, but this time we don’t touch, as though to preserve a more delicate and intoxicating closeness.

I put my head back, trusting that Mitzi will keep my hair in place, and she does. The ceiling is like the surface of another world, ripe with glorious mystery. Mitzi has the gin bottle; she pours gin into my mouth; I hold it there; Mitzi pours in tonic and I hold that too.

“Swallow,” Mitzi says, and I do, the alcohol rushing beneath the smoke like an icy river beneath thick and potent clouds.

Once more Mitzi holds the poppers beneath my nose and once more I take four big hits. The room expands in all directions; I sway, unsure if I will remain upright. Mitzi puts a hand on my left side, and Terry puts his hand on the other. Rather than falling, I sink to my knees again and it feels gorgeous.

Terry is still standing. Mitzi’s clever hands dart around the man’s front and then I am staring at his cock. More Mitzi magic and the cock is sheathed in a flavoured condom, and then the cock is in my mouth.

I close around it, work out its size and shape and then ease forward as far as I can go. Terry can’t help himself, and thrusts; I get my gag reflex in order, although it takes slightly longer because of the sheer volume of drugs I’ve got in me. I work back and then forward, sucking hard and using my lips to apply hot wet pressure up and down. Terry’s cock is like the rest of him; large, stocky and unreasonably powerful, and when he puts his hands over the hair covering my ears and grips hard I know I’m in for a good head-fucking.

Sure enough, he works me hard, but Mitzi is attending to me too, her hands beneath my skirt, gripping and stroking, and across my back as well to relax me, so Terry can thrust deeper and harder for longer. For a long while all is quiet, sucking movement and sighs, both from Terry and from Mitzi as she moves her touch over me, finally slipping her hand into my panties. Terry’s moans grow in volume, and I wonder if he will come. I would like him to fuck me, but sometimes the joy of sex is in pleasing the other person.

Mitzi solves it my moving my head away when Terry lets go for a moment. She gathers me to her; although I am bigger, she knows how to hold me as if I am a tiny girl, which I love.

“My poor baby,” Mitzi says

She kisses my mouth as though it has been dreadfully abused, while Terry stands above us and strains towards my face.

“Calm yourself, Terrance,” Mitzi says. “Sweet Kelly has other delights.”

She turns me around away from Terry and pulls me forward so I’m on my hands and knees. I feel her lift my skirt again, and this time she takes my hip pads and panties down, making me naked.

“Look,” Mitzi whispers. “Look at her beautiful arse.”

“Jesus,” Terry says.

He kneels and I feel his hands on my bottom.

“So firm,” he says, “but so soft.”

“My Kelly is a work of art,” Mitzi says.

“Yes…” Terry whispers.

“You may admire her for a while, but not touch.”

I sense Terry about to resist, but then hear him sit back on the sofa, followed by the solid metal clink of the lighter and the gusting heat of smoke being blown over my bum.

“Give her some of that,” Mitzi instructs.

The spliff appears, and I inhale deeply. My back pussy is already relaxed, and I feel it go further, as though Terry could fit his entire arm in there. I want it penetrated; so much that my thighs tremble and I wiggle my bottom at Terry. Mitzi slaps it.

“Naughty,” she says. “You will enrage him, and then…”

“Yes,” I say.

“Hmmm,” Mitzi says.

I smell the cool, medicinal scent of lube and hear wet sounds, which get louder as…

Aaaahh…

Terry slips one large finger into me. I twitch at the unexpected penetration, then get used to it and back myself onto him, right to the knuckle. Mitzi gives me another dose of poppers, and I clench myself around Terry, wiggling as I do so.

“You may fuck Kelly now,” Mitzi says.

And then Terry is in me, so fast and deep I don’t even have time to tense and resist. He seizes my hips and pulls me as far onto him as it’s possible to go, and for both of us even that doesn’t feel far enough. Then he starts thrusting.

I’m bent so far over, my breasts rub the carpet; but then Mitzi kneels in front of me, lifts my head and starts kissing me with a hunger she has not expressed before. Her mouth is delicious, in taste, touch and appearance, and its beauty wants to distract from what’s happening to my sex. It doesn’t; the two are in a delectable conflict more intoxicating than anything else I’ve enjoyed tonight.

She pulls my dress up past my breasts, so the only part that covers me is the sleeves. It’s a relief; I’m hot and getting hotter as Terry works me with remorseless and increasingly brutal passion. My long hair sticks to my back, Terry gently lifts it and pushes it aside so it falls past my face. I feel it swing as he fucks me.

Mitzi takes a breath and Terry pulls me up so my back is against his solid chest. He wraps one arm around my front and puts his other hand on my head, fixing me in place. The angle of penetration changes and I wriggle to accommodate, but Terry holds me firm and I keep still, although I still feel him pulse inside me.

“Kelly would have taken a slap for you,” Terry tells Mitzi.

She stares, her eyes huge and her mouth slightly open. Terry’s hand slides down my hot wet front to grip me between the legs and push me even further onto him. A moan escapes me, and Terry’s other hand tightens on my head.

“Shh,” he says.

I stay quiet and still and he starts making little darting movements into me.

“I don’t think you appreciate Kelly,” Terry says.

“I do, though,” Mitzi says.

“And how have you rewarded this sweet girl for her bravery?”

Mitzi looks between my legs as Terry tightens his grip. I try to remain motionless and silent, but can’t stop my thighs trembling. He tightens it still further.

“Do you like that, Kelly?”

I nod; two little head movements the only motion possible in the man’s fearsome grasp.

“I seem to be the one doing the rewarding, Mitzi,” Terry says.

Mitzi begins to pant as she watches what is being done to me.

“I’ve got your girl,” Terry goes on. “I’m doing what I want to her.”

Mitzi’s lip trembles and she sniffs. Terry kisses and licks my neck for a while, then looks up again.

“I’m all the way in her,” he whispers. “I know how she feels inside. The way she moves. The way she smells. The way she tastes.”

Mitzi’s tutu encircles her waif’s body like a pool of textured light. She looks broken, yet in a state of such arousal, it doesn’t matter.

“You think I’m going to let you carry on kissing Kelly?”

“Please…” Mitzi says.

“No.”

Terry is thrusting harder again now; my legs are beginning to ache with the strain of staying still. I shift, and Terry uses the hand he has on my head to grip my chest.

“She wants to move, but I’m not going to let her. She must stay where she is, and work her arse off for me.”

“I will distract her from the pain,” Mitzi says.

She seizes the gin and holds it to my lips. I sip, but Mitzi leaves the bottle there until I’ve got several big gulps down. Then she holds up the tonic; this is better, I’m thirsty and guzzle the cool, fizzy liquid. As I’m gasping, Mitzie doses me with poppers again and the tension that has built while Terry has been gripping and fucking me dissipates. Then Mizti gets the spliff going again; she does Terry’s trick with reversing it and blowing the smoke straight into me, and my head gets light and I feel dizzy, but calm, with a great sense of expanding space.

I’m out of breath though and realise Terry is not so much gripping me as holding me up. When he stands, still inside me, he hauls me to my feet as well. I spread my legs for balance and ease of penetration, but he slaps my right thigh and I close them again.

“Bend over, Kelly.”

I obey, and Terry loses all sense of rhythm and fucks me with such frenzy my sweat flies off in droplets, My hair swings crazily, although less than before because it is matted. Mitzi gets my dress off completely; she knows how to do it without dislodging my hair, and I feel the movement of air from the way I’m being used cooling my wet limbs. My legs feel better now they’re stretched upright, but Terry is bigger than me, his legs longer, so I have to do a little jump each time he thrusts. I feel like a gorgeous trippy gazelle as I do this, and it drives Terry mad. He lets go of my hips and tears off his top, then grips me again and re-establishes his rhythm.

Below me, Mitzi’s face approaches and recedes as I’m moved back and forth by Terry’s lust. Mitzi looks into my eyes; I want her to touch my face and kiss me again, but she seems paralysed and only moves to look over my shoulder at Terry, who seems to scare her.

Terry pulls me up again; the hair on his chest tickles my back for a moment before I’m clasped to him. He grabs me between the legs once more, his grip remorseless. The gratification and agony are exquisite and I forget where I am again; I can’t even see for a while.

“You can put this in your mouth, Mitzi,” I hear Terry, who sounds both near and far away.

Mitzi and I have never done that before; we love the feel of our panties against our loveliness, but Mitzi scrabbles forward with a revealing lack of decorum and begins to lick me. As a long-term lover and confidante, she is fully aware of my one strict rule – safe sex for everything – so she focuses on my whole lady length except the end, her clever tongue and skilled little fingers darting, tasting and kissing.

I don’t normally harden when I’m being fucked, but tonight we are in the land of misrule, and I want Mitzi’s beautiful mouth around me. As though reading my mind, she slips a condom onto me and even manages to make that feel amazing.

And then she tucks in, and no amount of firm treatment from Terry stops me howling with pleasure.

I lose track of time again; I don’t want to come, although I know if I did I would be happy for Terry to carry on doing what he is doing. Rather, it is that we are in an intense place, and I do not want to leave, even for a moment. Mitzi must sense my closeness in the way I’m moving, or perhaps she can smell it, but a sudden welcome coolness surrounds me down there and I realise the wet heat of her mouth is gone.

“Terry,” Mitzi says.

“Ugh?”

Terry has temporarily moved beyond speech.

“Kneel Kelly down again,” Mitzi says.

For a moment I think Terry is going to ignore Mitzi, but then feel myself pushed to my knees. Mitzi spends a while kissing me again.

“Pretty girl,” she whispers. “I adore you so.”

She slips out of the tutu and slides her white tights down her legs. Then she takes her panties off.

I have never seen Mitzi naked like this before, and am astonished to see she is almost as big as Terry. Genius be buggered, this woman is spoiled. She giggles and touches my hair and face as Terry’s thrusts send me towards her, then pull me away.

“Hmmm…” Mitzi says, almost absent-mindedly.

She grows before me, slides on a condom puts her hand on my head and slips into my mouth. A new rhythm is quickly established. Powered by lust and everything I have taken, I find a new energy and focus, determined to be a willing, wet and lovely conduit.

And so, with great and tender muscularity, we spend the night like that. We use our implements, our potions and our physical strength to create an intimacy so powerful we seem to break down walls between worlds, finding ourselves bathed in light whose source we love but do not yet understand.

This, then, is how with kindness and deeply erotic understanding, we exorcise the ghost of Emma.