LITMIR.BIZ

      The thirstlands.

      All through that week and if anyone touches you, brushes by you – near your midriff, belly, chest – you will implode. All nerve endings raw and clenched at the thought of him, and pants damp, soaked with want. Lune gives you a secret smile whenever she catches your eye; you’re a woman now, more woman than her and you both know it. For the first time in your life you have something over her, over all of them, and it makes you walk tall, bold, right down the centre of the convent corridors with their polished parquet floors – you are becoming someone else. No more hugging the walls in this place, you are embarking on a new life.

      Before you catch the bus that will take you to Central Station you change out of your school uniform, preparing for him, making sure you have more time this visit.

      The force of the anticipation, as if a great hand has brushed a sheen of varnish over the tepidness of your life.

      He smiles a triumphant smile as you step from the lift.

      ‘Well well, I wasn’t sure you’d come back.’

      He is not wearing trousers, just a t-shirt. He is ready.

      You hesitate, not sure why; roaming the kitchen, looking at anything but him as he gazes at you like a quarry caught, smiling his smile while he retrieves a lemonade for his guest and a beer for himself, opening it with one finger and still looking. Undressing you, with his eyes, as your fingers scurry to the buckles of your braces in self-consciousness.

      There is a photograph on the battered fridge of three women, one of them is heavily pregnant, they are wearing bikinis on some deserted beach. ‘My flatmate. The middle one,’ he says. CWA is emblazoned in red lipstick across each of their tummies.

      ‘C.W.A.?’

      ‘Cunts With Attitude,’ he laughs. ‘I’ve painted the lot of them.’

      Women who seem a world apart from you with their brazenness, bluntness. As does that word and the way they have colonised it; you’ve never heard it spoken aloud, thought it was only used by men who don’t like women very much.

      ‘Come on. Let’s get going.’

      A new briskness in his voice.

      ‘We don’t have much time.’

      You turn. Take a deep breath. So, this is it. A fresh canvas waits in readiness. The Courbet print is high in its corner with a slice of masking tape. He comes up to you with his knowing smile and unclips you, bold, just like that he draws off your t-shirt and whips off your bra; impatience in his fingers now.

      You step back.

      He grabs your hips, rubs, close. Cups your buttocks under your underpants, draws you into him.

      Right, it must be done, now, this is what you have always wanted, dreamt of – a painter, an artist, you are complicit in this; there will be your triumph over the other schoolgirls, your difference, you cannot go back.

      He spits on his fingers. Gosh, so that is what men must do. A wet finger slips inside you. Another.

      Feel him, exploring. Your eyes blink, smart.

      Lesson 41

      No power on earth can give you back that jewel of glory and strength – your innocence