Izzy checks her face in the dresser mirror before leaving, the idling diesel of the taxi in the street below the bedroom urging her to hurry. I imagine the twitching curtains of neighbours, the scandal of our late hours.My mind is racing, desperate, a succession of useless thoughts that could never forestall the inevitable. But then an idea arrives. Only half-formed, it might yet be fit for purpose, my get out of jail free card lifted from the chance pack stacked on the board of desperation. “Sebastion was talking about you earlier, Iz,” I call to her as I rise from the bed and hurriedly dress, my words groping for an exit from personal darkness.She stops attending to her reflection, turns to me and says, “You and Sebastion… Talking?””Is that so strange?””You detest him.””Not to me. That Dutch girl with the impossible name. They were discussing you at the bar earlier. I overheard when I was buying drinks.” “Sabastion and Joosje were talking about me?””Yeah, him and Joo…” My tongue trips on her name and I have to reorganise my tongue. “Him and Joosje. Something about you needing to meet someone. Something about it being the right part for you. ‘Izzy would be just right for it,’ I heard her say.”She returns her attention to the mirror, uses fingers to widen a single eye and adjusts a contact lens. “I don’t believe you.””You can ask them yourself.” She stands up straight, turns to me again: “If you’re lying…”In the cab, I give the driver the name of Sebastion’s club. We travel in silence, and I gaze from my window and Izzy hers, both of us mesmerised by the city centre’s neon-gaud, both of us lost in private thoughts. I remember our lovemaking, the deliciousness of her cunt, her small breasts and soft buttocks. I consider asking if she’ll suck my cock one last time but don’t. Instead, I slip my hand into my pocket and squeeze my erection, try to conjure how it felt inside her. She senses my gaze, turns and says, “If you were lying to me, Nathan… You’d best fess up now.”Her face slips into shadows as we pass under the railway arches, but her eyes have captured some sourceless light and retain it, bright as a ginnel cat fixed by headlights at midnight. I tell her, “Listen, Iz. I probably got the wrong end of the stick.” When the street light returns to the interior, I see her lips have taken on a childish pout, her eyes flickering and tearful with rekindled hope. She has never looked so vulnerable, so trusting, so appealing. And then I know that fucking her has not cured me of an obsession. All of her previous hostility has abandoned her voice when she says, “I read something in The Stage. They’re casting at Shepperton next month. A new version of Poe’s House of Usher. That must be why Joosje is over.” “Poe! Yeah, that’s the guy,” I offer, hardly believing she has taken the bait.I text Hester:You still at the club? She replies in an instant.We’re on our way to Sebastion’s. What’s keeping you? Izzy wanted to talk.So you fucked her then?Would that be so wrong?I’m coming home.We’ve already left the house.Bastard! You fucked my sister!I’m not that stupid.It’s so obvious you are.What about you and Barrington?Different.Playing catch up?I am now.Where are you?In a cab. Should I come?Only if you want to watch.Izzy too?Sebastion was asking about her?Asking?I told him about you wanting to fuck her.What did he say?That he’d like to fuck both of us too.I give the driver the new address. Then I ask Izzy, “I thought Sebastion lived in London?” “He has friends up here. Schol Harvey?””The slasher-flick-chick female director Schol Harvey?””No, Nathan, not the slasher-chick-flick female director Schol Harvey; the dark meditations on the absurd nature of women’s lives in the twenty-first century Schol Harvey.” She’s pleased with herself for remembering the line, serving something up she has obviously read as her own.”Is that the kind of crap they İstanbul Escort teach at RADA these days?””Oh-fuck-off, Nathan.”A loft apartment. Victorian brickwork and four vast metal-framed cotton mill windows. There is too much space, dimensions outgunning the sparse and eclectically mismatch of furniture. And books. A twenty-foot stretch of wall, floor to ceiling of crammed shelves. Noir, postmodern posters between each window, the pretentious avant-garde artwork for Schol Harvey’s films. It’s early summer but the place retains the chill of its empty winter months. The benefit of underfloor heating has yet to transcend the stripped, pale oak flooring. Hester and Joosje stand at a skip-salvaged sixties-retro mini-bar while Barrington mixes drinks and pompously narrates some theatrical anecdote. “What are you having, dear boy?” he calls to me, breaking from his monologue and holding an empty glass high when I enter the room. “And the ever-fabulous Izzy too. How delightful. We thought the sheets had claimed you both. The usual, darling?” he asks her as she slips out of her jacket. “Pink gin? On the rocks?””Aww, darling, you remembered. How sweet.””And a Guinness for me,” I call, feeling forgotten. “If you have one?””Sorry, old man, no can do. Women auteurs, eh! It’ll have to be mixers or wine.””Not for me,” I tell him, shying from strong spirits. I am determined to keep my wits about me.”Don’t be so miserable,” Hester says as Barrington passes her a tumbler of Scotch and nods that she should give it to me.When she brings it over, I tell her, “I said I’m okay, didn’t I!” Even so, I take the glass from her hand.”Have you fucked her?” she asks. Quietly, rationally.”I said, didn’t I?””You didn’t, actually.””What are you two hatching?” Izzy says as she comes towards us nursing her drink. She stands too close and rattles the ice in her glass, its clatter a warning of the danger ahead. I fear that my life is about to spiral out of the sky.”You two took ages. You must have had loads to talk about,” Hester says.Izzy is too quick to answer, and I hold my breath. “I was upset, that’s all. But now I’m okay again. Nice of you to ask, sis. Your Nathan has been an angel.”There is an affected sympathy in Hester’s tone when she says, “Sebastion was worried about you, Iz. I was too. And Joosje. They kept asking about you. See, Iz, how much we all love you, how all of us were concerned. I began to think the most awful thoughts.””I needed to get stuff off my chest.” Hester fixes her with a look that could wither spiders, her tone telling me she is prepared to execute all prisoners. “What kind of stuff?”But Izzy holds her gaze, is completely unfazed. “Oh, you know… Thoughts about deceitful men — that kind of thing. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you, Hester? Nathan would never do the dirty on you, would he? Because you two have an understanding.” She turns to me with a look both complicit and murderous and says, “He’s such a good listener, aren’t you, Nathan, sweetheart?” And then she turns and looks at Joosje, who is still at the bar, and says, “And now I really must tear myself away. I need to speak to a colleague.”When Izzy has gone, Hester says, “You bastard! You really have fucked her, haven’t you! I could see it in her eyes: that Little Miss Clever look of hers. Sebastion said you would.””Would it be so bad if I had?””Not being honest with me is bad.” “It was in the cab… she sucked my cock.””And you just sat there and let her.””Well, yeah.” I shrug my shoulder. “What man wouldn’t?””God, Nathan! You’re so fucking selfish. At least now we’re getting somewhere. We’ll talk about it back home. Now finish your drink — Dutch courage. You’re going to need it,” she says, her eyes prompting me to turn and look at Joosje.Am I forgiven, or is this merely a stay of execution? I try not to think about it, tell myself İstanbul Escort Bayan to take it one step at a time, enjoy the reprieve.Joosje and Izzy are talking, thick as thespian thieves. I hope she tells Izzy something halfway close to what she so desperately needs to hear.Barrington puts on music. Ambient and sensual. “Everyone must dance,” he says, his words something between a decree and a plea. He holds out both arms in an invitation for someone to join him on the floor.Hester fixes me with her eyes, and I try to imagine that it reconfirms our unshakable bond. But I know that deep down she must be full of resentment, fearful I have betrayed her emotionally as well as sexually. And so I tell her I love her, and I see how she wants to believe me but can’t quite allow herself to — at least not just yet, not until she has extracted her pound of emotional flesh. But she should believe me — because I still do love her. For now, thoughts of Izzy and me have been folded away and stored in the cupboard of her mind. I have no doubt she will unpack them when it suits her. The inevitable postponed, I am so relieved. I have time to rationalise, prepare a defence.She leans in and kisses me, slips her tongue into my mouth, the sugared pill to make what follows palatable before telling me, “Now it’s time for what we agreed, yeah?”She stands back to give me a searching look. My last chance to appeal, to forestall what I know will follow. And when I just stare blankly, neither smile nor nod, she reaches out and places her palm against my cheek and smiles before turning from me and walking over to Barrington, who is watching, waiting expectantly.Seeing her walk towards him, I become newly enamoured by her tall beauty, her female animalness, her sturdiness, and curves viewed from behind that make her a stranger to me, some gorgeous possibility in a club. And I see now how the shout of her bright morning autumn hair, the roar of it over her bare shoulders, is the truth of her soul.Barrington throws his arms wide to welcome my wife, and I watch as his all-encompassing certainty subsumes her. I wonder what Izzy will make of Hester and Barrington now dancing so intimately. When I throw her a glance, I see a new comprehension making itself at home among her pretty features. She touches Joosje lightly on the arm so that she turns from watching my wife and Barrington and focus on me.They both watch me, and I stare right back. Then Joosje says something to Izzy, something I cannot hear. I intuit female collusion, arrangements, the cooking up of new torments, eyeing me up for the rack of their beauty? And I wonder if there is still time to confess to Hester, to make everything as it was between us, go back to yesterday. Then Izzy up on tiptoes kissing Joosje on the cheek before slipping off her shoes and skipping barefoot to join her sister and Barrington. She has her hands locked behind her back like a coy and pretty girl child seeking a favour but never quite having the courage to ask it. She wears a single, slim gold bangle looped about her ankle to draw the eye. The skitter of her silver-glossed toes on the pale oak floor is a choreographed performance. I watch the arch of her soles, the rise and twist of heels, the convexity of her calves as she stalks the dancers, circling the kiss-locked couple. Izzy’s dress clings, emphasising those essential places and evoking memories of her lithe frame beneath. The limber of her muscles, their costume of ethereal flesh, her all too real bones. I focus on the shift of her hips as she moves, remember her buttocks beneath the slickest of garments, how both halves enfolded my cock when it momentarily rested between them just before I fucked her. I wonder if Barrington will sense the slop of my presence when fucks her too.Hester’s eyes are closed, lost to the music, subsumed Escort İstanbul by the bluff and camp machismo of Barrington’s faux magnificence. And I wonder if she even knows her sister is so close and determined to join their dance. Quick as you like, Barrington’s left arm has snagged Izzy by her wrist, incorporated and pleached her into the moment. Barrington bookended between the two sisters, their bellies and breasts limpet-like against his bulk, their curves and convexity thick with solvency. The legs of both girls widen as their hips undulate to the music, their crotches milling against his outer thighs, their hips a tidal swell advancing and withdrawing to the subtle cadence of the music’s beat.In turn, he kisses them. Hester first, then changing to Izzy, spending no more than twenty seconds with each. For a moment, between kisses, he looks over to Joosje and asks, “Why don’t you join us, darling?” And when she does not reply, he encourages her with affected sad little boy gazes. And as he does so, his hands declare independence and descend in symmetrical accord down Izzy and Hester’s backs, surmounting such disparate buttocks, coming to rest in the cleft between rump and thigh. Palm and fingers staunch the coming and going of the sisterly cheeks, grip tight to prevent their surge and retreat. God! How their movements must arouse him! The thought of touching both sisters at once makes my heart heave with envy, my cock want to burst. I look to Joosje, and she meets my gaze with eyes wild with expectation as she asks me, “You like to see your wife and sister like this?””She’s not my sister,” I reply, though my voice is barely audible, no longer my own.”But such a thrill to think it, yes?” she says, hoping I might confess the inadmissible. “I like to see sisters enjoy good things together. Family is so important — don’t you agree?” She stands and comes to where I stand, the spot where Hester abandoned me. She takes my hand and leads me to the sofa, where we sit side by side. She turns to me and half-whispers, “Which sister will Sebastion choose? Such responsibility for a man! He will not want to offend — so why must he choose?” “He seems to like my missus well enough,” I mutter to myself.Her hand goes to my crotch, brail fingers reading my size, deciphering capability. “You like thinking this, don’t you,” she says, “Sebastion fucking your wife? You want him to choose her, don’t you?” Her grip on my cock is malicious, squeezing harder as she continues, “Perhaps you have known this… what is the word — this dilemma, the difficulty Sebastion now faces? Does the cute sister come to you and your wife? Both are such beautiful, amenable women!” And when I don’t reply, she squeezes my cock even harder and says, “See how hard it makes you to be thinking this.”She begins to undo the buckle of my belt, unzips my trousers and extracts my cock and holds it at ninety-five degrees to my body. As she studies me, her hand grips and relaxes, tentatively rising and falling before she looks up to watch the three dancing figures. Finally, without bothering to look at me again, she relinquishes her hold, stands up and says, “You must see to yourself now. It is my time to join with sisters. You wait here. Be good boy, eh?”Joosje is a tall, mid-twenty-something blonde, slim and indecently beautiful, a beauty that becomes sheer elegance when she rises to her feet and strides with catwalk confidence to Barrington and his devotees. Like Izzy before her, she circles the tight knot of bodies, pausing as if suddenly unsure about gatecrashing the moment. As Barrington continues to kiss each girl in turn, Joosje circles as a presence only intuited, a visitation about to manifest as an angelic intervention. Joosje positions herself behind Izzy, towering over her sylphid slightness where she clings to Barrington as if she might falter and fall without his support. The Dutch girl places one hand on each side of Izzy’s hips, stepping forward to dismiss the gap between them by thrusting her thighs against Izzy’s subtly undulating buttocks. As Hester does so, she lowers her head to taste the nape of Izzy’s neck, sends her tongue licking in long, slow passes.