Nineteen Minutes

Day 88 in chastity - 1:17pm

I was twenty years old, home from university, working three days a week at an internship that barely paid me and lying around in the garden with one hand down my shorts.

Not in a sexual way. Oh my god, obviously not! It was hot, the elastic pressed against the cage, and the cage itched. That was all.

Probably.

My laptop rested on the grass beside me with a graduate scheme application open and ignored. On my phone, the group chat was deciding which pub to start at tonight.

LUKE: spoons 7 then old red?

MAYA: daniel buying first round with his big fat graduate salary?

ME: guys my big fat graduate salary is mostly paid in transferable skills

LUKE: get a real job then you tramp

I smiled. See? Normal. Young. Fun. Twenty years old and home for a few months, that was all. I would find a proper job, save some money, move in with Luke and become the kind of man whose stepfather did not keep the key to his permanent chastity device.

My phone buzzed.

RICHARD: BLUEBELL.

I stopped smiling.

No.

No no no no no.

I checked the time: 1:17pm. Mum was having lunch with friends and was expected home around half two, Richard was supposedly at work, I had plans tonight and an application to finish and a whole sunny afternoon in which I had intended to be Daniel. I was supposed to be free today.

The message sat there.

BLUEBELL.

One word meant Gabriella. One word meant immediately.

I typed, deleted, typed again.

ME: Mum will be back soon

The reply arrived before I had finished pulling my hand from my shorts.

RICHARD: Then don't dawdle.

RICHARD: Blue pinafore. White blouse. Full makeup. Cute pigtails.

RICHARD: I will collect you at 1:45.

My stomach dropped. Mum home in maybe seventy minutes, Richard arriving in twenty-eight, and me still in the garden wearing gym shorts with yesterday's mascara imperceptibly staining my lashes.

Could I refuse? Yes. Technically. But Daddy loved technically.

I could ignore the message, go to the pub, tell Luke everything was fine and spend the evening feeling the permanent steel secret itching between my legs. I could return at midnight and walk straight past Richard, go upstairs and lock my bedroom door - ah, wait, rule number two. No locked doors. 

I suppose I could leave forever. Nothing tied me down except the key beneath Richard's shirt, the phone he monitored, the internship that offered me next door to nothing, and Mum - because there was no version of me leaving that did not begin with trying to tell her why.

My phone buzzed again.

RICHARD: 26 minutes, sweetheart. Tick, tock.

I ran.

Of course I ran. Daddy didn't need to chase me, scare me or even raise his voice anymore; he typed one word and the pathetic little thing he had trained to answer to sissy supplied all the panic herself.

Richard. His name was Richard, and I was running towards him as much as I was running from him.

Laptop under my arm, back door, leaping two stairs at a time felt appropriate, shower on, clothes off, cage checked automatically as the water scorched my tensed shoulders, although of course it was still there. It was always still there. Permanent means permanent.

Four minutes under the shower. I shaved the places Daddy required, patted myself dry and opened the vintage locking chest Richard had fitted into the wardrobe of my childhood bedroom.

The Bluebell outfit waited inside, as always.

Oh god, it was so pretty: a white blouse with a prim collar and ridiculous puffed sleeves beneath a pale blue pinafore with pearl buttons and a short, full skirt, every piece chosen because Daddy said blue made me look sweet. You don't really see real life girls dressed like this. Sometimes, when I'm in less of a panic, I wonder how long he spent thinking up exactly the outfit I would be most ashamed to wear so beautifully.

I stepped into blue satin underwear, carefully arranged the cage and fastened my bra, two soft, small, real little breasts settling into the cups. No padding anymore. Daddy hated padding.

Glossy white tights went up without snagging, then frilled ankle socks because Daddy thought bare ankles looked garishly unfinished even with tights, perfectly straight on the first try, and a tiny shameful glow of pride moved through me because they were good, they were fast, and Daddy would notice.

Oh, fuck off.

The pinafore zipped and I turned sideways, Gabriella already arriving in my room before my face was even finished: soft waist, smooth legs, a frightened little doll in powder blue, weak and pretty and exactly the sort of sissy some real man might look at and immediately understand.

Three months ago I wouldn't even have known that word. Richard had taught it to me, along with panicking into action for every unexpected rapid change and whimpering apology and each involuntary little warmth fluttering in my chest at his occasional meagre praise, until turning my bedroom upside down to become Gabriella because my stepfather had texted me one word started to feel horribly like a normal part of my routine. Daniel would have refused. Any man would have protected his plans, his social life, his afternoon. But I couldn’t be sure who or what I was, now.

My hands were already reaching for the makeup.

Daddy knew what that made me, even when I didn’t.

1:29. Sixteen minutes.

I whispered the getting-ready string while I laid everything across the bed, memorised so completely by now that it passed through my lips like counting to twenty rather than recounting the essential rules Daddy expected me to live by.

"Smooth-satin-stockings-socks, blouse-bluebell-bows, base-blush-black-pink, part-pair-curl-match, shoes-show-smile-send, hands-knees-chin-kiss, pink-lock-leave."

Again, faster.

"Smoothsatinstockingssocksblousebluebellbowsbaseblushblackpinkpartpaircurlmatchshoesshowsmilesendhandskneeschinkisspinklockleave."

It wasn't every rule. Oh god, no, not even close. These were only the dressing rules I forgot often enough for Daddy to turn them into something more memorable for me: no bare ankles, no visible bra strap, no foundation on the collar, no touching my mouth after gloss, no photograph with the wardrobe open, no stupidly asking whether a rule applied if I already knew it counted. That one was especially difficult, because how was I supposed to know whether I knew?

Primer, foundation, concealer around the eyes because sometimes Gabriella cries, very visible blush, liner, lashes, glossy pink mouth. My hands shook but the wings matched - they actually matched - and pride rose to my cheeks before I could stop it.

I swallowed it back down and reached for my hair.

The part went perfectly down the middle. I tied my hair into low twin ponytails and curled each tail into thick controlled sections over my shoulders, then turned my head and noticed the left side was heavier.

No, not heavier. Lower. Or the bow was higher and made it look lower.

Stupid, stupid, stupid little Gabriella, being ready quickly meant nothing if Daddy saw one fat ponytail and one thin one.

Both hairbands came out.

Daddy always wanted mistakes undone from the start, never just fixed, and my hands were already working efficiently through my hair, letting a little from the right come over to the left, dividing again, tying again, blue satin bows hiding the elastics before I turned my head left, right, left again.

Even. Nearly? Please be even.

Daddy liked my face open and my hair long. Natalie had once said the bows made me look twelve.

No. Not now. Not her.

1:36. Ten minutes.

I stepped into pale blue patent Mary Janes, kicked Daniel's shorts beneath the bed and hid the nightdress I knew he would make me wear to bed under my pillowcase while the rest of the cosmetics went back into the chest.

My phone buzzed.

RICHARD: Photograph.

I grasped for my phone, and shut the wardrobe before standing back against it. Nearly forgot.

Wardrobe closed, tidy background, hands, knees, chin, shoes, smile, kiss if requested. Smile but not too much, chin down but never sulky, fingers loose but together, pretty but not pleased with myself.

I took three photographs and chose the prettiest.

No, the most convincing. No. Prettiest.

I sent it.

The typing dots appeared instantly.

RICHARD: 19 minutes. Good girl.

My whole body warmed.

Nineteen minutes! My record was twenty-one. I had taken Daniel apart and built Gabriella in nineteen minutes, with matching eyeliner and not one ladder in my tights.

This was deranged. This was abuse. This was also, most importantly, a really impressive improvement.

ME: Thank you Daddy x

I stared at the message after sending it.

I had added the kiss myself. I didn't need to be told, not anymore.

RICHARD: New rule. Full-length proof piccies from Gabriella from now on. Both shoes visible. Hands together unless instructed otherwise.

RICHARD: Kiss for Daddy.

Of course. Mastering this transformation did not earn me fewer tasks. It only earned me more specific ones. Just another thread for my string.

I was already moving the phone farther away, checking the wardrobe was still shut, finding the angle that showed both shoes. One hand rose to my glossy mouth and I blew Daddy a kiss while the other held the phone steady, my eyes wide and frightened in the screen and the little blue skirt standing perfectly around me.

It was a much better picture.

Daddy would think so, anyway.

The doorbell rang.

Natalie’s Things

Day 88 in chastity - 1:45pm

Richard stood on the step in a dark polo shirt and cream trousers, calm and broad and completely relaxed. I had just deleted myself from existence and created somebody new in nineteen frantic minutes. Daddy looked as though he had spent those same nineteen minutes enjoying a coffee and scrolling on his phone.

"Hello, sweetheart."

"Keep your voice down," I hissed. “Please."

"You look lovely."

"Mum could come back any minute."

"Then stop blocking the doorway."

I hurried outside. Richard held out his hand. I looked at it. Hand. Daddy. Public.

Oh.

I placed my hand gently in his. The neighbour looked over from his car and I smiled automatically, which seemed the right thing to do but obviously made it far worse: now he thought I was some absurdly dressed young woman leaving the house hand-in-hand with a man old enough to be her father. Better than recognising me as Daniel, obviously, but not by as much as it should have been.

Richard opened the passenger door. I slipped inside, smoothing my little skirt before sitting.

"Seatbelt."

"I know how a car works," I grumbled. "I do have a car of my own, you know."

Richard laughed. Not cruelly, not even particularly knowingly, just one short surprised laugh as if I had reminded him of something mildly funny.

"What?" I tightened my jaw.

"Nothing, sweetheart. Seatbelt."

I stared at him.

"Demonstrate."

I fastened it quickly.

"Good girl."

Relief and pride danced in my chest and ran downwards into a horrible little ache against the cage between my thighs. All because I had successfully fastened a seatbelt for the man who had made me into a doll in my childhood bedroom.

Oh, I was pathetic.

"Where are we going?"

"The hotel."

"What hotel?"

"Where Natalie left something last night."

My stomach dropped.

"You were with her?"

"Yes."

"At a hotel?"

"Yes."

"Doing what?"

Daddy glanced at me. "Do you really need me for that question, sweetheart?”

The cage tightened painfully, which always drew my knees in closer together. Richard noticed. Of course he noticed; he could practically smell my frustration these days, and suddenly one worry had become five at once: Natalie with Daddy, Natalie discussing me with Daddy, my locked clitty pressing uselessly against steel, and whatever she had left behind waiting somewhere for me to find it.

Underwear? Makeup? Something I had bought her? Was Daddy taking me there to collect it? Did they do this often? Would the staff recognise him? Would they think I was just the next girl?

"Settle down," Richard said.

My shoulders dropped before I could stop them. I couldn't have stopped them if I wanted to.

"That's better."

He drove one-handed, leaning deeply back into his seat - from my vantage point, everything always looked so easy for him. He didn’t have to worry about silly things like rules, outfits, posture, or exposure. I kept my knees together and watched the group chat decide I was buying their drinks after all.

LUKE: daniel has gone quiet because he knows we're right

MAYA: seven means seven, grad boy

I could still go. Hotel, home, shower, pub. Makeup off, hair down, Daniel back together before seven.

Unless Natalie had left underwear. Unless she had left it in Richard's room. Unless I walked into that room and found something I couldn't push back into the strange private part of my life afterwards.

The bows suddenly felt ridiculous against my hair. Richard had me put them on this afternoon while remembering Natalie last night: her clothes coming off without rules, her hair allowed to become messy, her underwear something a man might simply want rather than something requiring instructions about colour and fit and what I was permitted to do with the cage underneath it. Freedom I could hardly taste even if I worked hard to remember it. Freedom, perhaps, that I had never been able to have.

"What did she leave?" I tried to sound calm and neutral.

"Several things."

"Like what?"

"You are just collecting them, not conducting an investigation, silly girl.”

"Why me? Like, if you're going anyway?"

"Because Natalie kindly suggested that Gabriella could do something useful."

My mouth opened, closed, then opened again because there had to be a response that was angry enough without sounding jealous, hurt enough without sounding pathetic, proud enough to remind him I had important plans this evening and masculine enough to remind him whose girlfriend she had been in the first place.

Nothing arrived. I knew better.

"Pretty face," Richard said. 

I stopped twisting my mouth. He wasn’t even looking.

That counted as obeying. Oh god. Everything does.

The hotel was not romantic, which I suppose made it easier. Glass doors, beige stone, little corporate bowls of green apples nobody would ever dream of eating. People came through pulling suitcases and gave their discreet little instructions to familiar receptionists.

Richard held out his hand before we entered. This time I took it immediately.

Good. No hesitation. Daddy would notice.

Fuck off, Gabriella.

The receptionist recognised him. "Good afternoon, Mr Carter."

Of course she did.

Her eyes moved to me. Hair. Bows. Blush. Ridiculous dress. Richard's hand around mine. I watched her decide what sort of young woman wore a powder-blue pinafore to a hotel with a man his age, then assemble the professional little smile which allowed her to deliver her opinion without having to ask.

"Miss Palmer left some belongings in four-sixteen," Richard said. "Gabriella will collect them."

My name in his mouth. Natalie's on the room.

The receptionist looked at me again. "Certainly. I'll prepare a key."

Richard waited. The receptionist waited. I waited because nobody had said anything to me.

Daddy tapped the desk once. 

Oh! "May... Gabriella have the key, please?"

"Of course she can, lovely,” the receptionist mirrored my smile back to me. 

She placed the card on the desk. I reached for it. Richard cleared his throat.

Both hands. I stopped, corrected myself and accepted one plastic key card carefully between both palms.

"Four-sixteen," Richard said.

"Four-sixteen, Daddy," I confirmed gently.

The receptionist looked down very quickly at her screen, the edges of her mouth twisting tightly.

My face burned all the way to the lift. "You made me call you that in front of her."

"I only gave you my room number."

"You knew I would repeat it - repeat it the way that you always make me.”

"Yes."

The lift doors closed. Brass mirrors returned a real man in heavy trousers and a trembling little powder-blue thing carrying a key card against her chest.

"What if I'd told her?" I whispered.

"Told her what?"

Everything. My name. My clothes. The cage. Natalie. Help me. Please take me somewhere he cannot follow.

"That I’m… Daniel.” The words almost caught on my mouth.

Richard looked at the bows, the glossy lips, the little skirt and the hands clutching the key exactly as instructed. "You always have the opportunity to do so, I suppose. I notice that you wisely never do."

The lift chimed and I followed him out.

Room four-sixteen contained one bed. One unmade bed, anyway, though it looked like two people had made a determined and successful attempt to prove one bed was simply not enough for them.

Two wine glasses. One lipstick mark. Richard's watch charger beside the lamp. Natalie's perfume stood open on the dressing table, the sweet woody one I had bought her on her birthday because she said my first choice smelled like something you'd use to cover up the smell of your worst aunt. Her black dress lay across the chair and her bra hung from the lampshade.

I laughed once because apparently my body had too many possible emergencies available and selected the wrong noise. "She hung it there deliberately."

"Yes."

"For me to see. When you planned this."

"Probably. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Probably. Daddy conspiring in my humiliation while in bed with my ex-girlfriend was just probably, while my bra required careful planning and three rules about strap visibility.

Richard sat in the armchair.

"Collect Natalie's things. Check the bathroom. Fold anything that folds."

I stared at him.

"Now, sweetheart."

Black dress first. I shook it out, smoothed it against the bed and folded it. Her camisole came from beneath the pillow, then a single stocking caught around the bedpost, cosmetics scattered beside the sink, toothbrush, charger, one gold hoop earring beside Richard's side of the bed.

I had given her those earrings for her birthday. No, I had given her a pair. Richard and Natalie had apparently reduced that to one.

"Other side," he said, barely looking up from his phone.

I dropped to my knees, the skirt collapsing with a pleasant sigh into a neat airy ring around me, and looked beneath the bed. Her lace underwear waited beside Richard's shirt.

Black. Obviously black. Not sweet Bluebell blue like mine.

Sexy black. Not like me.

I reached under and grabbed at them.

"Carefully,” he warned.

"It's just underwear."

“No. It is Natalie's underwear. You will show it the respect it demands."

Right. Her dignity required careful handling. Mine required humiliation like this.

I lifted both items. Her perfume clung to his collar. 

"Did you... sleep with her?"

Richard looked at the bed, then at the underwear in my hand, then at me.

"Gabriella, what do you think?"

My eyes filled. I looked away and folded the underwear very neatly, edges together, lace flat, one perfect little pile because Daddy always noticed good work.

Rage climbed my throat. Beneath it, warm and greedy, waited the wish that he would say I had done it well.

"Bathroom," he reminded me.

I checked the bathroom.

Mirrors were always trouble. Sometimes, in the rush to do what was required of me as quickly as I could, I was able to tap in to something almost out-of-body, somewhere between a robot and a doll. Mirrors always meant remembering what I looked like to others. The wet eyes, the trembling pouting lips, that pathetic obedient expression.

Natalie's makeup bag sat beside two nearly dry towels piled over one another. A lipstick had rolled beneath the basin. I picked it up and recognised the shade she used when we went somewhere nice, the one I had kissed off her mouth in restaurant doorways and found smeared faintly on glasses afterwards.

Richard had left it on a wine glass.

Natalie had always been the one who made our nights acquire momentum. Another drink, another bar, come on Daniel, don't be boring. She could bully you into staying out until four and make it all feel like she had single-handedly rescued you from your own bad habits. Half of my best stories began with me telling her no, and really started with me saying fine, and I could basically smell her in the room right now.

God, I missed her.

Bag. Zip. Smile if watched. Do not cry onto a woman's cosmetics.

When I returned, Richard inspected the folded pile. "Good."

Warmth and gratitude opened stupidly in my chest.

No. He had slept with Natalie. He had brought me here dressed like this. He had made me crawl beneath their bed and fold her knickers after he was done with her.

"Thank you, Daddy,” I chirped.

Oh, I was revolting.

He placed everything in the hotel property bag and handed it to me. "Carry that."

I carried it.

At reception, the same woman raised one finger. "Just a moment. Housekeeping found one additional item."

She brought out a transparent laundry sleeve. A pair of black lace panties lay inside it, pressed flat beneath a little hotel label.

"We weren't certain whether these belonged to Miss Palmer or..."

Her eyes flicked towards my powder-blue skirt.

Me.

I knew them. Natalie had worn them beneath a green dress on our anniversary. I knew because I had once been the man allowed to take them off.

We had barely made it through the front door that night, laughing into each other's mouths, both of us too impatient to pretend we were civilised. The memory arrived hot and complete and immediately became useless against the little locked weight between my legs.

"Gabriella?" Richard prompted.

"They're Natalie's?" I said, my voice rising obediently at the end, hope against hope that Daddy would not make me explain how I was sure.

The receptionist held out the sleeve. I accepted it with both hands.

"Thank you for finding them?"

"You're so welcome, sweetheart.” She looked at Richard. "Will Miss Palmer be joining you again this evening, Mr Carter?"

"Probably."

One word. Calm. No apology to me because why would Daddy apologise to the little assistant holding his girlfriend's underwear?

We crossed the lobby. The property bag knocked against my glossy tights while the transparent sleeve remained trapped between both palms because nobody had told me where else to put it.

"Don't paw through Natalie's things in the car," Richard said.

"I wasn't going to!"

"Good. Sissies do not rummage through women's underwear."

"But you made me -"

He stopped walking.

The lobby continued around us. Suitcase wheels, coffee cups, a family waiting for the lift. Richard said nothing.

I looked down at the black lace in my hands. "Sorry, Daddy. Gabriella misunderstood?"

"Better."

He resumed walking.

I followed, carrying everything.

Back in the car my phone showed eleven new messages. Luke wanted to know whether I had died. Maya had sent a photograph of the pub garden, all bright tables and pints and exactly the sort of afternoon I had intended to be having.

I could still answer.

ME: sorry weird family errand, seven still good. still coming

My thumb hovered over send.

Richard fastened his seatbelt. "You behaved very well in public. I was impressed."

The praise went straight through me.

My thumb moved backwards across the message until nothing remained. I dropped the phone into Richard's jacket pocket because he liked it when I handed it over without him needing to tell me, then sat back with my knees together while Luke's unanswered messages disappeared with it.

Three months earlier there had been no Gabriella to praise. No chest in my wardrobe, no uniform, no cage and no pathetic little voice thanking my stepfather for letting me collect my girlfriend's underwear from his hotel room.

Richard had needed to make all of that first.

Seven Means Seven

Day 88 in chastity - 4:27pm

Mum had texted Richard while we were at the hotel to say she'd gone on to her sister's for dinner and wouldn't be home until tomorrow. My first thought was terror, as the potential hours of Gabriella expanded instantly in front of me.

But Richard let me change.

I did not quite believe him at first. We had barely made it through the front door and I was still carrying Natalie's hotel property bag against the front of my blue pinafore, the plastic swinging softly into my tights whenever I moved, when I asked whether I could please get changed now and Richard said yes with the same attention he might have given me if I'd asked whether I could take my shoes off.

"Actually?"

He looked at me.

"Go upstairs. Good girl.”

Relief burnt through me so quickly that my knees softened. I hurried before he could find another condition to attach to my freedom, Mary Janes knocking against the stairs while the skirt bounced around my thighs, and by the time I reached my room my fingers were already pulling at one of the satin bows.

Several hairs came with it and the sting spread sharply across my scalp, but then the left pigtail collapsed over my shoulder and the pressure inside my chest seemed to loosen with it.

"Oh, thank God."

The other bow followed, then both hairbands, until my hair dropped unevenly around my face, one side flatter where it had been curled and tied for moments longer and perhaps a touch tighter, little dents left by the bands. Normally the asymmetry would have pulled my hands towards a brush before I had consciously noticed what was wrong. Right then it looked wonderful.

Messy. Imperfect. Something I could truly say was mine.

My fingers found the zip at my back and tugged too hard, the little metal pull scraping down the skin between my shoulders before the fitted bodice loosened around me. The blouse buttons went next, one catching briefly because I was trying to open three at once, then the ribbon came away from my throat and cool air touched the pink mark it had left behind.

I knew the thing had not actually been choking me. I could breath eperfectly well, if only a little restricted to shorter breaths, in it. But suddenly my shoulders could slump and the blouse could wrinkle and my hair could stick to my damp face and nobody was about to look me over head to toe for a crooked cuff or a sagging bow or an uneven stocking, and my lungs seemed to discover several inches of space that had apparently been missing all afternoon, bringing pure relief directly into my bloodstream.

The pinafore slipped from my hips and landed half inside out, my blouse followed it, the frilled socks rolled into little white rings around my ankles and the Mary Janes disappeared beneath the chair after I kicked them away without lining them up.

The tights tried their best to slow me down from becoming Daniel again.

Their waistband reached the cage and my hands immediately changed pressure, thumbs working carefully around the steel so the fine white fabric would not catch on an edge, and I had almost rescued one entire leg before I looked down and realised I was so delicately and so automatically preserving the clothes I was desperate to escape from.

"Oh my God, who cares?" I mumbled to myself.

I pulled harder.

The tights came away without a ladder anyway. Of course they did. I’d done it so many times now. Apparently even while I was trying to banish Gabriella my fingers could not quite stop protecting her things.

The bra loosened next, hooks releasing behind me while the straps travelled down my shoulders and the cups fell away from the small weight of my breasts. My nipples were sore where the fabric had held them, pale little points standing in the cooler room, and the sight was enough to send my old grey university T-shirt flying over my head almost immediately.

The cotton dropped over my chest and nearly made it disappear.

Then the jeans went on. Actual jeans, rough denim dragging over smooth glossy legs which had spent the afternoon inside slippery tights before closing around my hips and compressing everything into a shape that felt solid, square, and ordinary.

The cage remained beneath them, obviously. There was no taking that part of Gabriella off. There was always something of Richard left on me, wherever I went. The little weight still rested between my thighs and pinched when I pulled the zip too quickly, but now it was private again, hidden beneath denim, something terrible happening underneath me instead of the thing every other piece of clothing had been carefully arranged around.

The tingling across my skin caused my eyes to water. That was how ridiculously good jeans felt.

I looked into the mirror and found Daniel's clothes almost taunting me beneath Gabriella's face, blush still hot across my cheeks, lashes black and long, mouth shining pink as though somebody had pasted the wrong head onto me.

Makeup remover soaked into a pad and pink came away first, a slick bright smear across the white cotton, then foundation and blush and the beginnings of my own skin underneath. Mascara took three pads and left the corners of my eyes, already softened and sensitised with held-back tears, burning. I scrubbed harder than I should have because I could not bear the possibility that Mum might come home and see me like Gabriella, or look closely enough to find one black trace caught between my lashes. I’d gotten away with it all so far, somehow.

By the time my face finally emerged, the skin around my eyes was pink and raw, my cheeks were blotchy and one eyebrow looked bushy and roughened by whatever I had done to it in the rush. I looked properly awful, and a laugh escaped me because there I was. Daniel.

My eyes filled while I was still laughing, which made my face look even worse, and for once there was nothing to protect. No liner to save, no foundation that would streak, no photograph to send Richard afterwards. One tear reached my cheek and I wiped it with my palm.

My hair went into the old low tie I used when I couldn't be bothered doing anything with it. The lengths still fell too smoothly from the blow-dry, so I tugged pieces loose around my ears and deliberately left one side worse than the other.

Then I remembered the pub. Seven. I looked at the clock. It was barely twenty past four. "Oh my God,” I whispered, for the first time today in a hopeful way.

I had hours.

Relief pooled at my palms. I had enough time to wash my face again properly, maybe shower and scrub away the last trace of Natalie's perfume that had transferred to my fingers while I folded her clothes, find a better shirt and get the train early. Luke would still accuse me of being late whenever I showed up, and Maya would still insist I was buying the first round even if they’d already helped themselves to a couple of drinks, and by seven this whole afternoon would be pushed backwards into the strange private part of my life I never talked about.

Just another little thing Richard made happen that I could forget about and get on with my real life.

I shoved the pinafore into the chest with far less respect than its ironing deserved, pushed the shoes underneath the others, tossed the bows into the drawer and checked the floor twice for anything Mum might find, before locking the chest and closing the wardrobe doors.

Then I went downstairs almost bouncing.

Richard was making coffee. My phone lay on the kitchen table beside him.

I picked it up.

He let me.

That made everything feel even safer. There were Gabriella rules, and then there were Daniel rules. Daniel didn’t have to be so careful around him.

Eleven messages waited in the group chat, including a photograph of the pub garden and Luke asking whether I had died since my last text.

MAYA: seven means seven rich boy

I smiled because yes. Exactly.

Seven meant seven. An ordinary rule created by my friends, because of my bad habit of being late, and one which did not require stockings or photographs or asking permission to use my own phone.

My thumbs moved again.

ME: yes that’s right. i died and came back to life, just so i could see u all one last time.

ME: family thing ran late but I'm still coming

Send.

Luke replied almost immediately.

LUKE: THERE HE IS

My face actually hurt from smiling. I looked up. Richard had placed his mug on the counter.

"Bluebell."

The smile remained on my mouth for perhaps half a second after the rest of me understood. Then my heart struck hard against my ribs. "No."

Richard picked the mug up again.

"No, wait, Richard."

He turned towards the hall. He was walking away.

I followed him one step and the cage caught painfully beneath my jeans, the sudden pinch making my thighs close.

"Please, I just -"

Everything I wanted to say crowded into my throat together. I had already done it once. Once had to be enough. He had told me I could change back. I’d made plans. My friends were expecting me. I had spent the afternoon doing exactly what he wanted and I had been good at it, really good, nineteen minutes, a new record, holding his hand, Natalie's horrible fucking underwear, all of it, so surely there had to be some point where doing well meant I had finished. He couldn’t keep doing this to me.

My eyes filled before I could turn any of that into words.

Richard looked at me. Nothing in his face had moved.

The plea stopped inside my mouth. I knew that expression by now. If I kept talking I would only be explaining the thing I was about to do anyway.

My fingers tightened around the phone. “Normal?”

"Evening."

He walked away.

There was no countdown this time, no threat from the hallway, not even a second instruction telling me to go upstairs. His footsteps simply crossed into the study while Luke's message remained bright in my hand.

LUKE: FIRST ROUND STILL YOURS

My thumb opened the keyboard.

ME: sorry I can't -

A tear slipped down my cheek and I wiped it hard enough to make the skin sting. Something pulled at my scalp at the same moment and I realised my other hand had reached behind my head and found the elastic.

The loose, messy, mine ponytail was already coming loose.

My fingers stopped. I stared at them.

I had already started.

"No." My hand dropped.

For several seconds I stood very still, as though refusal might consist simply of keeping every part of Daniel exactly where I had only just put him. The jeans pressed around my waist. My face still felt raw and exposed from the remover. The hair around my ears tickled because I had deliberately left it messy.

Upstairs, every object required to change that waited exactly where I had left it.

My feet found the stairs.

The second Gabriella visit of the day hurt differently because there was almost nothing left to resist. She wasn’t here by surprise, not really. I’d only just seen her.

The chest opened beneath my hands and the pale daytime underwear moved aside before I properly considered why, dark blue satin with lace trim coming out instead because Richard had said evening and apparently some part of my mind had already classified the distinction.

My face went hot.

"Oh, fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.“

Nobody heard, and so nobody answered.

My jeans opened, and only twenty minutes after I had nearly cried with relief when the denim closed around me, my own fingers were pushing it back down my thighs. The T-shirt travelled over my head next and the room's air reached my breasts again, nipples still tender from the first bra of the day.

Sapphire satin climbed around the cage. My fingers eased the fabric flat where the steel distorted it, correcting the line automatically to the perfect centre, then the matching bra went around my chest, strapless and tight-fitting, the hooks finding one another behind me without a single failed attempt before my hands came forward and gathered each breast into its cup.

Tenderness spread beneath my thumbs. Both sides matched. He’d probably accept me dressed like this.

The knowledge arrived before I had asked for it. Daddy would tolerate me appearing in lingerie only, which meant dresses and skirts became a source of a strange kind of dignity for me now.

The nude tights came next and blurred slightly as tears kept gathering in my eyes, but my fingers continued smoothing them as they slid over my calves and knees, pressing out the little spirals that formed whenever I pulled too quickly. One wrinkle near my ankle lasted perhaps two seconds before my palm travelled down and corrected it.

Nobody had told me to. I just knew.

The dark blue dress felt worse than the pinafore because there was so much less to blame on Richard's ridiculous taste. No puffed sleeves, no bows, no childish little pearl buttons. It was simply a dress an ordinary young woman might plausibly wear in the evening, soft thin satin stretching just around the waist my body now possessed, the fabric following the breasts I had tried to hide beneath Daniel's T-shirt twenty minutes earlier.

The zip travelled up my back and its metal pull scratched across the same tender place the pinafore had caught while I was taking it off.

My skin remembered Daniel's escape while Gabriella closed around it again. Sometimes, my skin remembered these things longer than even I did.

At the vanity, makeup went onto a face I had only just scrubbed clean. Primer stung around my eyes, foundation caught at the dry corners and had to be worked in more carefully, and the first line of eyeliner dragged because my eyes were still watering.

Frustration barely had time to rise before a cotton bud appeared between my fingers and cleaned the mistake away. The second wing matched. A little relief loosened somewhere beneath my ribs.

I wanted to smash the mirror.

Instead my hands continued through blush and mascara and gloss until every finished part made whatever remained unfinished beside it feel increasingly impossible to leave alone.

My phone buzzed.

RICHARD: Natalie arriving at six.

I read it twice.

So this was not even something he had invented because I'd tried to go drinking. There had already been an evening. Somewhere inside Richard's day, Gabriella had apparently existed past the hotel before Daniel had ever been allowed back.

I opened the group chat. I knew all I needed to know. It was over.

ME: sorry can't make it, family thing

Maya booed.

Luke told me to divorce my family.

I put the phone down because I could not explain that my family thing was standing in front of a mirror reapplying mascara to skin I'd scrubbed red raw half an hour earlier.

My hair gathered into a smooth low ponytail. The relief arrived instantly and made my face burn again.

Pearl earrings went in. Black low heels.

When I finally stood, the mirror showed some girl who might almost have been dressed for a normal evening.

Richard had not entered the room once. He never needed to.

Natalie arrived at six.

Her perfume reached me before she had fully crossed the threshold, that familiar sweet woody warmth carrying a whole relationship inside it. Restaurant doorways. Her bedroom. Her hair across my face. The little hollow beneath her jaw where the scent stayed longest if I kissed there.

My body recognised her before anything else did.

Then Natalie looked at me. There was no shock. She was used to this by now.

Her eyes passed over the dress and my hair with the brisk familiarity of someone checking whether I'd worn the right thing.

"Oh, that's much nicer,” she smiled.

"Than what?"

"The little blue outfit."

Her handbag came towards me. Both of my hands accepted it.

By the time the strap settled across my palms, Natalie was leaning forward to kiss Richard.

It was not theatrical. If anything, that made it harder to watch. Their mouths met briefly and easily, a kiss with no need to prove itself because apparently there had already been more than enough of them to make this one ordinary.

I stood beside them holding her bag.

Natalie pulled away and looked at my hair. "Turn around."

"What?"

"Your ponytail's gone funny."

My body had already turned halfway before the humiliation reached my face. I didn’t need to look at Richard to imagine his displeasure.

Her fingers smoothed the hair near the elastic, pressing down a small raised section with two careful passes. Once, hands in my hair had meant she wanted me closer. She used to catch a fistful at the back of my head and pull me into kisses hard enough to leave my lips stinging for days.

Now she was all fingertips and precise touches. She was only fixing Gabriella. "There."

I turned back. "What was wrong with it?"

"Just a little bump." She smiled. "You're welcome."

“Yes. Thank you.”

Richard took her coat. Natalie did not take the handbag. I followed them into the sitting room still carrying it until she looked around and noticed. "Oh, sweetheart, you can put that down."

I placed it beside her chair. "No, not there. I'll kick it."

My hand immediately lifted it again. “On the table?” I asked, suddenly feeling frightened under Richard’s gaze.

"Perfect, darling.”

Warmth flickered through my chest.

Natalie's eyes caught the tiny movement in my mouth before I flattened it. "Aww."

“Please don’t.”

"What?"

“Be nice."

That was part of the problem. She was so nice to Gabriella. It was hard to hate her.

Sometimes I couldn't tell whether Natalie genuinely thought Gabriella liked being handled this way, whether the sweetness had acquired its edge only because Daniel had lied to her for weeks, or whether those two explanations had become easier for both of us than looking directly at what Richard was doing to me.

I never asked. I didn’t know which answer I wanted.

She called me Gabby a few minutes later while asking about the missing gold hoop. "Did you find it?"

"Yeah."

"Thank God! Where was it?"

I looked at her. "Beside his bed."

Something tightened briefly around her eyes. "Gabby."

"Don't call me that."

Her expression softened rather than hardening. "I'm not trying to upset you."

"You slept with my stepfather."

Richard continued pouring his wine, apparently unbothered.

Natalie glanced towards him and then back at me. "We've discussed this."

"You discussed it. You were making fun of me. I was collecting your underwear."

“And I said thank you! You like doing that sort of thing.” She sounded so patiently reasonable that I almost laughed.

Maybe she believed Gabriella was a role I had somehow chosen and then become embarrassed about. Maybe some part of her was still furious enough with Daniel that she could only really conceive of him in her mind by being some twisted version of ‘sweet’ to Gabriella.

Either way, Richard said my name.

My spine straightened beneath the dress before I had turned towards him.

Natalie noticed.

"Take Natalie's bag upstairs and make sure everything is properly arranged in the bedroom. You can change the sheets in the morning.”

I looked at her. A small grateful smile appeared. "Thanks, Gabby,” she mouthed, her eyes already warm and bright.

The handbag strap had already found my palm again.

Upstairs, Natalie's belongings spread across the en-suite bathroom counter beneath my hands.

Her perfume stayed upright because it leaked if left on its side. The hairbrush went beside it. The cosmetic bag opened and the lipstick, powder, cleanser and moisturiser began acquiring sensible places almost before I had decided whether arranging them was actually part of Richard's instruction.

My eyes still burned. My whole face felt hot. The neat little row kept growing. 

Then Natalie laughed in the bedroom. They had followed me straight up to the room.

My fingers stopped around the moisturiser. Richard said something too low for me to hear. Natalie laughed again.

The second laugh was different.

I knew every version of Natalie laughing. There was the loud one she used in pubs, head thrown back and hand slapping the nearest table; the incredulous little bark when somebody said something genuinely stupid; the laugh that broke halfway through a sentence when she was trying not to find me funny because she wanted to maintain an illusion of finding me annoying.

And then there was that one.

Breath caught dragging somewhere inside it, suppressed because there had once been neighbours or housemates or parents on the other side of a wall.

I had heard it against my mouth, I had felt it blast in hot spurts against my neck.

My throat tightened. Her moisturiser remained clenched in my palm.

I could leave. Nobody had actually told me to remain in the bathroom once the things were arranged.

Then Natalie said Richard's name, long and slow.

My fingers started moving again, neat and ordered.

The moisturiser went beside the cleanser. Her handbag had left a pale smear of powder near the basin, so a tissue appeared in my hand and wiped it away while another low murmur came through the adjoining room.

A towel hung crookedly. My fingers straightened it.

The second one was damp, likely belonging to Mum, and so it travelled quickly out of sight to the laundry hamper. They didn’t like any reminders.

Natalie made another sound. My thighs closed.

Heat had begun gathering around my cage, sweat spreading where my legs met the cage until the warm dampness pressed unpleasantly against cold metal whenever I moved.

My body knew what those sounds meant, and it responded strongly.

I didn't have to imagine what was happening because I knew Natalie. I knew the little protesting noise she made when she wanted more than anything for somebody to continue doing exactly what they were doing. I knew when a laugh meant she was about to lose the ability to laugh. I knew the breathless half-word she used when she wanted more without quite asking for it.

I had spent eighteen months learning the private language of her body. Some parts of that we’d learned together.  Now I was listening to somebody else speak it so fluently while my hands arranged her makeup over a bathroom counter.

Another sound came through the door, louder than I remembered hearing from her with me, and jealousy flared hot enough that my fingers missed the lid of her lipstick.

The tube rolled towards the basin. My hand caught it before it could make a sound. I couldn’t distract them. Daddy would be furious.

For a second I wanted to throw it. Instead my thumb checked the cap. Loose. I pressed it down hard.

My face crumpled as I checked myself in the mirror. "Oh my God,” this time entirely without hope.

The lipstick went upright with the others.

Behind me, through the crack in the door, the mattress sighed against the wall and Natalie laughed breathlessly, that tiny broken laugh I knew so well that a whole vanished room from a forgotten past seemed to open around me: her flat, my shirt on the floor, her lipstick smeared onto my jaw, her legs around me, both of us trying not to laugh because the cheap bedframe had made some new noise.

The memory lasted just long enough for the cage to pinch between my thighs.

My hands searched for another job. A cotton pad had fallen beside the bin. It disappeared. Two brushes were crossing one another. My fingers separated them. A hair elastic rested near the tap. It joined the others in her bag.

By the time I realised I was arranging the makeup brushes from largest to smallest, tears were already reaching my chin. I took a deep breath, and stopped.

One brush slipped from my hand and hit the tile.

At exactly that moment Natalie cried out from the bedroom, sharp and loud and brilliant and deep.

My stomach contracted so sharply that I had to catch the counter. The brush lay beside my shoe.

I looked at it. Then my knees bent together. My finger tips collected it. It had touched the floor.

The tap opened beneath my hand. I didn’t need to think. Water ran over the bristles, I dried them carefully and put the brush back in its place.

I was still crying.

Nothing in my body appeared to consider that a reason to leave a dirty makeup brush among Natalie's things. My task was my task, whatever else was happening around me.

By the time the bedroom went quiet, there was almost nothing left for me to do.

I folded the hand towel once. One edge sat slightly wrong. My fingers opened it again. I stood there, in my heels, folding and unfolding the towel in an lonely performance of productive service for an audience of only myself.

Natalie appeared in the doorway while I was correcting what might have been the hundredth fold.

She was barefoot and flushed, Richard's shirt hanging loosely around her thighs, hair disordered in a way nobody would ever ask her to fix.

Her eyes travelled around the bathroom. "Oh, Gabby."

My hands stopped on the towel. "What?"

"This is lovely. Thank you."

Warmth opened beneath my ribs before I could stop it. My face twisted, as if it only wanted to keep the tears flowing.

Natalie smiled with the tender, maddening expression she had started using whenever Gabriella accidentally pleased somebody. "There, see? You're so good at this when you stop fighting everything."

"Please don't."

She crossed towards me. Her hand approached my face and I flinched. "Hold still."

Her thumb passed beneath one eye. "You've smudged, sweetie.”

"I don't care." I hissed.

"Well, I do."

The cosmetic bag I had just arranged opened beneath her fingers. She found the concealer without asking and dabbed carefully beneath my eye while I stood there breathing the perfume which had once meant Natalie was close enough for me to kiss.

Her face was inches from mine. Her mouth still looked swollen. I knew why.

"There." She tilted her head, inspecting her work. "Pretty again."

My throat tightened. Natalie kissed my forehead. "Thank you for sorting all this. You’re so good to us.”

She turned towards the bedroom, then stopped with one hand against the doorframe, Richard's shirt hanging loosely around her body.

When she looked back at me something in her expression had changed.

Not enough to turn her back into the girl who used to grab my hand and pull me home because she wanted me all for herself.

Just enough that I recognised her the way she used to be.

"Richard?" she called out.

He answered with a soft grunt from the bedroom.

"Let him change." 

My breath caught.

Natalie looked at me again, opening the door a touch to let Daddy see me. "Seriously. Look at him."

Him.

The word went through me like sunlight.

Richard appeared behind her. "He'll change before his mother gets home."

"No. Now. She’s done enough” There was no grand outrage in Natalie's voice, which somehow made the moment more intimate. She sounded tired with him. Annoyed on my behalf. Like somebody asking a boyfriend to stop taking a joke too far. She wanted me out of the way as much as she wanted to give me a break.

Richard checked his watch. "Seven fifty-eight."

"Then why is he still dressed?" 

“He can change at nine.”

Natalie frowned. "What? Why?"

"He changes at nine. He needs to learn-”

“Another hour?” Her eyes travelled over my hair, makeup, dress and tights. "Don't be ridiculous. He's had enough. Let him go.”

Richard looked at her. “Fine.”

Natalie rolled her eyes. "Fine."

The room seemed to open. Richard had said one thing and Natalie had made him say another. 

My eyes filled so quickly that I had to blink hard. "Thank you."

Natalie looked at me. I swallowed.  "Thank you, Nat."

She was still my Natalie, somehow.

For perhaps one impossible second I could see a way through everything.

Her flat appeared in my mind with my jeans over the chair and no Bluebell chest waiting for me in the wardrobe. The key turned. The cage opened. Natalie swore at Richard on the phone while I sat beside her trying to explain everything properly this time, not with his words filling my mouth, and afterwards we would both be furious and embarrassed and alive enough to fight about it and get me out of this.

Morning sunlight. Her hair across my face. Daniel.

Then Natalie's fingers closed around my wrist, warm and familiar. The whole imagined future narrowed back into the bathroom.

"Hey."

I looked at her.

"You've disappeared somewhere."

A wet laugh escaped me.

"Sorry. Sorry,“ I whispered.

Her thumb moved once against my wrist.

"I just don't like seeing you this upset. This is supposed to be fun for you, ok?”

Something inside me lurched towards her.

Perhaps there was still enough Natalie underneath everything to care when I cried. That was enough hope to hurt.

"Thank you."

Her eyebrows lifted. My mouth kept moving because gratitude had already loosened it. "I'll be quick. I won't make a mess or anything, I'll put everything away properly, I promise."

Silence met the end of the sentence.

My face heated. Why had I promised her that?

Natalie had just argued for Daniel and apparently the first thing Gabriella wanted her to know was that dismantling herself would be neat and convenient, and that she’d be ready for next time.

Natalie’s mouth twitched. She looked half-annoyed. "Okay."

Richard remained in the doorway.

I looked at him. "May I?"

Natalie's fingers tightened slightly around my wrist.

The permission had already been given. She had told me to go. Richard had agreed. Still my body had carried the decision back to him.

Heat rushed into my face. Richard looked once at Natalie, then back at me. “Yes.”

Relief dropped through my knees. "Thank you, Daddy."

The words escaped before I could stop them.

Natalie's hand went still. My entire face burned. “S-sorry."

I pulled away, then stopped before leaving. "Nat?"

"What?" she nearly spat through folded arms.

Everything I actually wanted from her was too large to fit into the room. Give me the key. Take me home with you. Believe me. Remember me.

I smiled instead. "Thanks."

Natalie returned a small, uncertain smile. "There she is."

My throat closed tight. I couldn't say another word. None were safe.

Mum came home the next morning. She didn't seem to suspect a thing.

By then Natalie had gone and so had Gabriella : old sweatshirt, loose trousers, hair tied badly at the back, face scrubbed clean. The Bluebell chest was locked inside the wardrobe upstairs. There was no evidence of the body or the mind trapped helplessly beneath the disguise.

Richard was making coffee.

Mum came through the front door with an overnight bag hanging from one shoulder and smiled when she saw us both in the kitchen.

"There you are."

"Hi."

She kissed Richard, then looked at me. "Did you two have a nice evening without me?"

My eyes moved towards him. "Yeah. Fine."

"What did you get up to?"

The hotel room came back first. Natalie's black underwear. Her lipstick. The bathroom. Her voice through the wall.

Nothing useful reached my mouth.

Richard answered. “Target practice.”

Mum brightened. "Oh! So macho. How was that?"

"Fine."

"Did you enjoy it?" 

My sleeves had slipped halfway over my hands. I pushed them back. "Yeah."

Richard took another sip of coffee while Mum smiled at both of us with such uncomplicated pleasure that the ache behind my ribs sharpened.

"I'm glad you've finally found something you both enjoy."

My throat tightened.

"You should do that more often, Daniel."

Richard looked at me. There was no smirk for me to resent, no secret expression I could point to later and tell myself proved he had enjoyed teasing me like this. "Yes Daniel. It's good for you."

Mum opened the cupboard. "Tea?"

My hands had already found one another in front of me, one wrapped neatly around the opposite wrist.

I remembered myself and separated them before she turned. "Yeah."

She reached for the mugs. The second word arrived quietly after the first.

"Please."

--

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