Being a Girl by Chloë Thurlow Read Free Book Online

roared. My breasts were full and heavy, my breath threading the silence like a needle passing through silk. I glanced down: my pink nipples had turned dark like ripe plums and hummed as if with a charge of electricity. I was wet and tremulous, the Laird’s soft voice like a prayer when he spoke.
    â€˜Slip those trousers off like a good girl, now. Just like your wee friend.’
    I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to, but Binky was standing there in nothing but her knickers and I rationalised that it was only fair. I looked up into the Laird’s eyes and got the odd sensation that I was about to sit on a mat at the top of the helter-skelter, and once I pushed off I would slide into oblivion.
    â€˜No,’ I said, softly, without conviction.
    â€˜I don’t want to fight you, lassie. Be a good girl and do as you’re told.’
    I didn’t want to, but how could I have refused? I was trapped. We were rushing towards something new, unexplored, incomprehensible. It was like watching the view from a moving train, seeing everything without quite being a part of it. The room was still except for the crackle of the fire. Binky was staring at me, willing me on. Our eyes met and, as Islipped the button in my waistband from its place, I felt a rush of wind as I went spiralling down, down, down into nothingness. I pulled at the zip, shuffled my jeans over my bottom, and eased them down over my knees.
    â€˜You should lend your wee friend a hand, girlie,’ the Laird said to Binky, and she looked back at him.
    â€˜She’s my sister,’ she said, and he smiled as he cast his eyes over us once more.
    â€˜Sisters,’ he said. ‘Of course, I knew there was something.’
    â€˜Same eyes,’ said Byron.
    â€˜Aye, green as emeralds,’ the Laird said. ‘Come on, let’s be getting a move on.’
    Binky helped me keep balance as I pulled my jeans over my feet. I was wearing pink panties with tulips embroidered in the elastic, flimsy and feminine. They seemed to hold great interest for the Laird and he studied the swell of my pubis for a long time before turning again to Binky.
    â€˜You did that very well, lassie, very well. Now, help your sister, do this last teeny wee thing for me.’
    The horror of what he was suggesting made the breath catch in my throat. Up until then it had seemed almost innocent. He was punishing us for damaging his property. We were a couple of city girls, and he was a hill farmer making fun of us. I’d thought about old Mrs McTavish making dinner in the kitchen and had felt safe with her there. Binky was trembling, unable to speak.
    â€˜Don’t,’ I said, my voice a whisper.
    He turned from Binky to me, his blue eyes like fire. He was about to speak, but took a great gasp of air and, in one movement, his left hand was around my back, and with his right he grabbed the front of myknickers and pulled them down to my feet. The breath went out of me. I was naked. Completely naked. My armpits were damp, my breasts were swollen and my nipples really hurt.
    â€˜There now,’ he said, as if something had been proved, and folded his arms.
    What self-respect I had left disappeared as Byron slipped my knickers over my feet and stood, staring into the gusset. I knew they were sticky and felt so ashamed as he held the damp strip of cotton under his nose. When Jean-Luc Cartier had sniffed at my knickers in his office I had been mortified and imagined only a Frenchman would have such a sordid fascination with girls’ underwear. I was wrong, obviously. Byron seemed transfixed by my soiled pants and looked as if he might stand there all night inspecting the pale yellow stain.
    â€˜Well, have you finished, mon?’
    â€˜I’m just checking.’
    â€˜So I see,’ said the Laird, and turned to Binky.
    In the same way that she had not been told to remove her bra before she did so, she hooked her thumbs in the elastic of her white