Tilda’s silent for a moment, surveying me with her shrewd, kind eyes.
‘Go home,’ she says. ‘Sylvie, you don’t need a book of boudoir photos. I’m a crap photographer, anyway.’
‘No you’re not,’ I begin politely, but Tilda makes a snorting sound.
‘I could not have made you look more terrible if I’d tried! And why take pictures anyway? Just go home, wearing that.’ She nods at me. ‘Believe me, if that doesn’t make Dan’s day there’s something wrong with him.’
I glance towards the party wall and imagine Dan on the other side of it, eating his single salmon fillet, watching sports on the kitchen telly, believing sincerely that Tilda and I are discussing Flaubert.
‘You’re right.’ I feel a sudden surge of optimism and adrenaline. ‘You’re right!’
Suddenly this whole endeavour seems artificial and weird and kind of too much.
‘Leave all your stuff here,’ says Tilda. ‘Get it tomorrow.’ She hands me my handbag. ‘If I were you, I’d head home right now in that pashmina, peel it off and ravish Dan. I’ll turn up the TV loud,’ she adds with a wink. ‘We won’t hear anything.’
Dan is sitting at the kitchen table as I enter, exactly as I pictured him. Discarded plate with salmon skin. Football on. Beer open. Feet up on a chair. If Vermeer had been around, he could have made a perfect study of him: Man with Wife at Book Club.
‘Hi.’ He looks up with an absent smile. ‘You’re home early.’
I smile back. ‘We wrapped it up. There’s only so much you can say about Flaubert.’
‘Mmm.’ His attention shifts back towards the screen and he takes a slug of beer.
Isn’t he going to say, ‘Why are you dressed only in a pashmina and high heels?’
Clearly not. Clearly he thinks it’s a dress.
‘Dan.’ I plant myself in his field of vision and start to unwrap the pashmina in my most tantalizing, boudoir-photo style.
‘Come on …’
I don’t believe it. He’s peering around me at the screen, as if I’m some annoying obstacle, because something far more exciting is obviously happening on the football pitch. ‘Come on!’ He clenches a fist. ‘Come on!’
‘Dan!’ I say sharply, and let the pashmina fall to the ground in one go.
OK, now I’ve got his attention.
There’s silence, except for the roar of the football crowd. Dan is goggling up at me. He’s actually speechless. He lifts a hand to caress one of my boobs, as though he’s never seen it before.
‘Well,’ he says at last, his voice a little thick. ‘This is interesting.’
I shrug nonchalantly. ‘Surprise.’
‘So I see.’
Slowly he starts playing with the pearl necklace. He presses the pearls into my cleavage, rubs my nipples with them, runs them up and down my skin, his eyes fixed on mine. And I know the pearl necklace is a boudoir photo cliché or whatever, but actually this is pretty sexy. It’s all pretty sexy. The stripper heels, the corset – and Dan’s expression in particular. He hasn’t looked like this in a long time: as though something huge and powerful is overcoming him and no one can stop it.
‘The children are asleep,’ I say huskily, reaching for the remote and snapping off the TV. ‘We can do anything. Try anything. Go anywhere. Be anyone.’
Dan is already eyeing up a nearby barstool with intent. He’s very keen on doing it on those barstools. Me, not so much. They always end up digging into my thighs.
‘Maybe something different,’ I say quickly. ‘Something we’ve never done. Something adventurous. Surprise me.’
There’s another tense silence, broken only by the clicking of the pearls in Dan’s fingers. His eyes are distant. I can tell he’s hugely preoccupied. My own mind is ranging around various delicious possibilities and fixing on that chocolate body paint I bought once for Valentine’s Day … hmm, I wonder where it is … when Dan’s eyes seem to snap.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Get your coat on. I’m asking Tilda to babysit.’
‘What are we doing?’
‘You’ll find out.’ He flashes me a gaze that makes me shiver in anticipation.
‘Do I need clothes on?’
‘Just put a coat on.’ His eyes drop to my lacy black pants. ‘You won’t need those.’
OK, this totally beats a book of boudoir photos. By the time I’ve removed my pants, selected my sexiest coat and made sure that passers-by won’t get an X-rated view of me as I walk along, Dan is back, with Tilda in tow.
‘Going out to supper, I hear, Sylvie?’ says Tilda in super-innocent tones. ‘Or is it more like dessert al fresco?’ She eyes my stripper heels so comically, I bite my lip.
‘Dan’s in charge.’ I match her innocent tone. ‘So. Who knows?’
‘Good man.’ Her eyes sparkle wickedly at me. ‘Well, have a good time. Don’t rush back.’
Dan hires a taxi and gives an address to the driver that I can’t hear. We travel along in silence, my pulse rising as Dan’s hand roams idly up inside my coat. I’m feeling almost faint with lust. We haven’t done anything like this for ages. Maybe ever. And I’m not even sure what ‘this’ is yet.
After a short drive, we get out on a street corner in Vauxhall. Vauxhall? This is all very unlikely.
‘What?’ I begin, looking around. ‘Where are we—’
‘Ssh.’ Dan cuts me off. ‘This way.’
He leads me briskly through an unfamiliar garden square, just as though he’s been here a million times. He ushers me past the church in the corner. We walk through the little graveyard and approach an old wooden gate, set in a brick wall, with a keypad next to it.
‘OK,’ says Dan to himself as we come to a halt. ‘The only question is, have they changed the code?’
I’m too bemused to answer. Where the hell are we?
Dan punches in a code, and I hear an unlocking sound from the gate. Then he slowly pushes it open. And I don’t believe it: it’s a garden. A totally deserted little garden. I stare ahead, open-mouthed, and Dan surveys me with a twinkle of satisfaction.
‘Surprise,’ he says.
I follow him in, looking around in wonderment. What is this place? There are raised beds. Trellises. Pleached apple trees. Roses. It’s a little haven in the heart of London. And in the centre of it all is an arrangement of five abstract modern sculptures – all twisting, sinuous, hardwood curves.
It’s towards these that Dan is leading me, authoritatively, as though he owns the place. Without speaking, he pushes me up against a sculpture and starts to kiss me with determination, peeling off my coat, cupping my naked breasts, not saying a word. The smooth sweep of the sculpture melds to me perfectly. The air is fresh against my skin. I can smell roses in the air; hear the laughter of passers-by on the other side of the wall. They’ve got no idea what we’re up to. This is surreal.
I want to ask, ‘Where are we?’ and ‘How did you know about this place?’ and ‘Why haven’t we been here before?’ but already Dan is pulling me on to another of the sculptures. He fits my limbs expertly to its curves as though it’s custom-made. For thirty seconds he just stares at me, splayed on the wood, like his own private boudoir shot. A million miles from white suspenders and Prosecco.
Then he’s stripping off his own clothes, no pausing, no hesitating, no wondering, his face urgent. Businesslike. Serious. Was this sculpture designed for sex? I can’t help wondering. And how does Dan know about it? And what – why …?
Moments later, I inhale in shock as Dan bodily lifts me on to a third, even more strangely curved sculpture. With firm hands, still not speaking, he manoeuvres me into the weirdest ever … Wait, what does he want me to do? I’m getting head rush. My limbs are twitching in this unfamiliar position. I’ve never known … How did he even think of … If the boudoir shots were ‘soft’, this is full-on, 18-rated …
I had no idea Dan even …
Oh God. My thoughts putter out. I can hear my breath coming in short gasps. I’m clutching hard at the wood. I’m going to explode. This isn’t ‘surprise’. This is ‘seismic’.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sated in my life. I’m almost shaky. What was that?
When we’re finally, finally done, we nestle in the curve of one of the sculptures (they are so designed for sex) and stare up into the sky. There aren’t any stars to speak of – too cloudy – but there’s the floral, earthy scent of the garden and the trickle of a water feature that I didn’t notice before.
‘Wow,’ I say at last. ‘Best surprise ever. You win.’
‘Well, if you will dress up like a hooker.’ I can sense Dan grinning into the darkness.
‘So, what is this place?’ I gesture around with a bare arm. ‘How did you know about it?’
‘I just knew about it. It’s great, isn’t it?’
I nod, feeling my heart rate subside. ‘Amazing.’ I’m still suffused with a rosy glow, with endorphins coursing round my body. (Do I mean pheromones? Sexy loving hormones, anyway.) In fact, I feel pretty euphoric. Finally it’s all worked out! Project Surprise Me has led to this astounding, sublime and transcendental evening which we’ll remember forever. I feel so connected to Dan right now. When’s the last time we lay naked in the fresh night air? We should do this more. All the time.
How did he know about this place, anyway? I think idly. He didn’t really answer the question.
I nudge Dan. ‘How exactly did you know about it?’
‘Oh,’ says Dan, yawning. ‘Well, in actual fact, I helped to create it.’
‘You what?’ I raise myself on an elbow to stare at him.
‘During university, the summer after my first year. I volunteered for a while.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s a community garden. They let groups in to study horticulture, herbology, that kind of thing.’