Fire After Dark by Sadie Matthews Read Free Book Online Page B

There are people everywhere, in all kinds of dress, from sloppy and casual, to sharp and very expensive. They are dining on food of all kinds in every sort of restaurant, or drinking wine, beer or cocktails at tables on the pavement. The air has curious aroma of a summer evening mixed with the bitterness of petrol fumes and cigarette smoke, and the cooking smells of hundred of restaurants. This place is humming with activity of a kind that won’t begin to lose momentum until the early hours, long after theatres have closed and the pubs have shut.
    But I can see that this isn’t just a place devoted to work and consumption. There’s something else going on here too. The first indication is when I walk past a sex shop, one of those high-street ones that seem mostly to sell feather boas, naughtily shaped chocolates and saucy underwear to hen parties. Although they’ve got their fair share of brightly coloured vibrating plastic, they don’t seem all that interested in sex itself but more as a phwoar-style joke. But soon I see another shop selling gear of another order altogether. The mannequins in the illuminated window are wearing shiny plastic boots, zipped or laced, with vertiginous heels, fishnet stockings, crotchless lace panties, studded garter belts and leather bras, some studded, some spiked, all with holes for the nipples. The models wear leather caps or masks, and hold whips in their hand. Inside the shop, I see rails of outfits and more underwear and for a moment I’m tempted to move inside and touch some of them.
    Hardly have I taken this in than I’m passing another kind of shop, this time a bookshop. In the window are displays of artistic-looking black-and-white volumes, but they are unashamedly devoted to the naked human body, the human body in all sorts of exotic sex gear and the human body locked in embrace with another human body . . .
    Mr R and the woman are still walking ahead of me, and the pavements are busy with people. I’m trying to keep them in sight while also taking in the fact that I’m now passing a sex shop, beautifully presented and with gold angel wings over the door, but a sex shop all the same, cautioning anyone who’s entering that they must be over 18 and not offended by adult material.
    I know where I am. This must be Soho.
    I’m not such an innocent that I haven’t heard of the famous red-light district of London, but its seedy days are clearly long behind it. There’s nothing furtive or grubby about all this. The streets are awash with money and glamour, filled with all sorts of people and entertaining every sort of lifestyle, and none of them seem the least perturbed by the flagrant display of sexual paraphernalia. It simply exists alongside all the other aspects of human indulgence.
    But still, I feel like a country bumpkin among all of this. The truth is, I’ve never seen anything like it, and I feel strange even looking at such things in public. Adam and I felt self-conscious about holding hands, and even alone we hardly ever discussed exactly what we were doing with one another. I can’t imagine walking into a place like these shops and casually picking up bits and pieces that would announce to everyone that I was in the habit of having sex, of putting on gear like that or of using the toys and gadgets they had on offer. I mean, chocolate body paint is one thing, a huge throbbing vibrator something else entirely. I picture myself standing at the till, handing over a sex toy and then paying for it without dying of embarrassment. There’s only one way I’m going to use it, after all, and the idea of having someone know that is almost more than I could bear.
    Just then, Mr R turns a sharp left and we cross a dark square, then another road and take another turn along a small street that’s lit only by one lamp burning orange in the night. It’s like stepping back in time: it’s lined by tall Regency houses set back from the path behind iron railings, each with a metal