Читать книгу So Lucky - Dawn O’Porter - Страница 13

I read on the Cosmo website that love and desire are two separate things in a marriage. That love is the easy bit, but desire is the challenge when you spend a lot of time with someone. The trick is to keep desire going, and to do that you have to reinstate some mystery. A distraction from the thing they have become accustomed to. Something new that makes them see your body in a new and exciting way.

Right now, all my body is to Michael is a car crash after childbirth and a milk machine keeping our baby alive. I am functional, not sexual. Maybe all I have to do is make him look twice?

While Risky is in the toilet, I use my arms to push my boobs together and create a cleavage. I take a selfie with a seductive pout. It does not turn out how I expect it would. My boobs look lop-sided and my eyes deranged. Risky takes selfies at her desk all the time, she makes it look so easy. I try again. Even worse. My lips don’t look sexy. I look like I’m trying to scratch my nose with my mouth. I go for more of a smile, but that’s just weird. How do people make this look so natural?

‘Boss, what are you doing?’ Risky asks, coming out of the toilet. I hadn’t heard her flush. Did I miss it? Weird. Anyway, I put my phone down and give up.

‘Were you taking a selfie?’ Risky almost whispers it, like she’s discovered my dark secret.

‘I may have been.’

‘Wow, I’ve never seen you take a selfie, ever. Were you going to post it?’

‘No, I was going to send it to Michael,’ I say, sounding ridiculous. ‘But I look like a deformed butternut squash in them so let’s just move on.’

‘No way. I am the selfie queen. I’m going to teach you.’

This is ridiculous.

‘Risky, we have a high profile wedding in under three weeks. We do not have the time for a selfie masterclass,’ I say, actually really wanting to know how to make myself look sexy in a photo.

‘Tough. It’s happening.’ Risky sits at her desk and holds her phone in her hands. ‘OK, copy everything I do. Hold your phone up a bit, you’ll look thinner.’

I do as she says, and hold the camera around twelve inches higher than my face.

‘OK, now look at it like it’s just caught you masturbating but you don’t mind because you kind of want it to join in.’

‘What? Risky, come on!’

‘What? There is nothing wrong with masturbating. I just masturbated in the bathroom. So don’t be ashamed of pretending to masturbate, that’s just crazy.’

I put my phone down.

‘I’m sorry, you just what?’

‘I just masturbated in the bathroom. I do it loads at work. It gives me a burst of energy in the afternoon. It’s better than a Mars Bar, isn’t it?’

‘Better than a Mars Bar?’ Sometimes I think Risky is another species.

‘I guess so,’ I say, and I must look a little disgusted because she somehow feels the need to continue talking about masturbation.

‘Seriously, boss, we’re two women who share an office. If we can’t be open about self-pleasure here, where can we be? We need to abolish the stigma surrounding female masturbation. The silence around it has gone on long enough. I take my vibrator everywhere with me, just in case.’

‘Just in case of what?’

‘Just in case I need it. You know when you become so consumed with the need to come that you have to duck into the nearest room and bring yourself off just to get through the rest of your day?’

I do know that feeling. I feel it almost every day. The difference between me and Risky is that I have attached so much of my sexuality to my husband that I forget I have the power to satisfy myself sometimes. Rather than tell my assistant that, though, I try to bring the focus back to our job.

‘OK, anyway, we should do some work.’

‘Not before we nail this photo. Phone up, channel your inner Princess Diana – is that a better reference for you, she was big in the Eighties, right?’ I nod and do as she says. It might make me feel old, but I know exactly what she means in terms of the bashful but slightly suggestive look Diana would probably have given her phone, should they have existed when she was alive. ‘Now drop your head more to the left. Give a little smile, like you’re thinking naughty thoughts, and take the photo.’

I do it. And have to admit, the photo is really nice.

‘Wow, I look hot,’ I say. Risky rushes over to look. When she sees it she makes all sorts of ‘Look at you, you saucy minx’ type comments, before snatching the phone from me.

‘OK, we need a filter. And a slight tone change. Let me just … and … yup … that’s it … Oh my God, look at it in black and white.’ She hands it back to me. I really do look amazing in black and white.

‘Cor, thanks, Risky. I look so hot even I’d masturbate to that pic.’

‘Yes boss!!!’

I send it immediately to Michael. After a minute or so, a speech bubble pops up and I am excited to read his response.

Nice. Hey, can you grab some milk on the way home? We are out.