Author: Akiko

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I followed her up. It would have been rude not to, and also I couldn’t have looked anywhere else if I’d tried. The satin moved over her hips on every step, and the slit kept opening on a long, strong, bare leg.

“Ages,” she said over her shoulder, “are the one thing you may say out loud. Nobody up here is under twenty-five. Tom’s list is very strict. And if anyone, anywhere, says the word cinders, everything stops. No sulking, no questions.”

“Cinders. Got it.”

The upstairs corridor was lit by candles in jam jars. Every door had a ribbon knotted on its handle.

“Blue is the library,” she said, strolling. “Quiet. Somebody reading and hoping to be interrupted. Purple is the old billiard room. Seven or eight people at the moment, and the baize has seen things. Black is mine.” She glanced back at me through those silver whiskers. “And the red one, right at the end, is spoken for. She tied it herself. She’s waiting for somebody.”

“Who?”

“That,” she said, “is the point of the masks.”

A door halfway along opened. Gold ribbon. A man in a silver wolf mask and a woman in a white swan mask stood there in the glow, holding hands. The woman smiled at me, slow and deliberate, and crooked one finger.

The cat woman stopped beside me, close enough that I smelled jasmine and warm skin.

“Well, highwayman? They asked first. But I’m standing right here.”

→ I take the invitation from the couple at the gold door

→ I ask the cat woman what’s behind the black ribbon

← Back

I lost my nerve in a very British way. I went and stood in the kitchen and made tea.

Tom found me there ten minutes later, still in his Dracula cape, a plastic fang hanging out of his mouth. He took one look at the mug and the black ribbon on my wrist and howled.

“You’ve been given the key! You absolute legend! And you’re down here making a brew?”

“There was a woman,” I said. “In red. She said she was waiting.”

“Ah. Her.” Tom grinned and tapped the side of his nose. “I’m not saying a thing. Rule of the house, mate. Nobody says who anybody is.” He got himself a beer, leaned on the fridge and softened a bit. “Listen. You’ve had a rough couple of years. You don’t have to do anything up there. That’s the whole point. Everybody who goes up has said yes to whatever they’re doing, and anybody can stop anything with one word. It’s the safest room in London.”

“That’s actually quite reassuring.”

“Library’s quiet, if you want quiet. Blue ribbon. Some woman’s been in there with a book for two hours, looking like she’s waiting to be talked to.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Or there’s the back door and the garden, and nobody will ever mention it again. Your choice, Ben. Honestly.”

The key sat in my hand. Warm and heavy, and absolutely mine to use or not.

→ I take the key up to the library

→ I step out into the garden and walk away

← Back

I climbed the stairs with my heart going like a lift motor with a bad bearing.

The corridor was long and dim, candle flames shivering in their jam jars. Blue ribbon: a crack of lamplight, the smell of old books. Gold: a rhythmic creak, and a woman’s voice saying yes, oh yes, just like that. Black: shut tight, quiet. The key was warm in my fist.

At the far end, a red ribbon hung on a dark wooden door, tied in a perfect bow. Next to it, one door before, was purple.

Purple was open a few inches. Candlelight and heat poured through the gap, and a babble of low voices and wet, slapping sounds, laughter, a man groaning, a woman’s voice breathlessly saying more. Somebody inside saw me looking. A hand in a long gold glove appeared through the gap and waggled its fingers.

“Come on in, highwayman,” a voice called, amused. “There’s room.”

Down the corridor the red door waited, still and silent. A minute earlier a woman in a scarlet dress had told me exactly where to find her.

I stood between them with the key in one hand and my own pulse in my ears and about two seconds of courage left.

→ I put the key in the red door

→ I push open the purple door

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“Mine is the room nobody gets shown,” she said. “But you asked nicely, and I like your hands.”

She opened the black-ribboned door with a key of her own. Inside was a small, warm room with a black velvet chaise, a mirror taller than me, and a dressing table covered in candle stubs and silver brushes. Her room, for the night, and nobody else’s.

“I run the stairs,” she said, closing the door. “I keep everyone safe, I tie the wrists, I count the keys back in at three. I don’t play.” She turned to look at me, a black cat in a black room. “Usually.”

“What changed?”

“You said sorry to the coat stand.” Her gloved hand came to my chest. “And then you said it to a potted palm. Nobody is that polite unless they mean it.”

I kissed her. I’d barely decided to, my mouth was just there. Her lips were soft behind the velvet edge of the mask, and she made a small noise and pulled me in by the tailcoat and kissed me back hungrily, her tongue sliding against mine.

When she stopped she was breathing hard. Her thigh had pushed between mine, and I’m sure she could feel exactly how pleased I was.

“I’m thirty-four,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you my name. Do you want to be told what to do, or do you want to ask me something?”

→ I tell her to take charge of me

→ I ask her what her name is

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“We’ve been hoping someone nice would come along,” said the woman in the swan mask. She had a warm, husky voice and a mouth that looked made for laughing. “Come in, highwayman. Please. Let me look at you properly.”

The room was lamplit gold, with a huge four-poster and a velvet armchair in the corner. The man in the wolf mask shut the door behind us, gently, and leaned against it. Broad, dark-bearded, shoulders like a rugby player.

“I’m thirty-eight,” he said. “She’s thirty-six. Ages are allowed.”

“Thirty-three,” I said. “Lift engineer. Names are not.”

“Lift engineer,” the woman said, delighted. “Oh, that’s good. I’ve never been taken up by a professional.”

We all laughed, and the nerves went out of the room like air from a tyre.

Then she stepped close and went serious. “Here’s what we want. We’ve talked about it for a year. One night, one man, someone kind. My husband wants to watch me and then join in. I want both of you, at once. But only if you do. And you say no the second you want to, to either of us, and we say thank you and mean it.”

She took my hand and laid it flat on the swan’s white feathers over her breast. Her heart was going like a bird’s.

Behind her the wolf nodded once, eyes bright through the slits, one hand rubbing the front of his trousers.

“Yes or no, highwayman?”

→ I say yes, to both of them

→ I ask if I can watch them first

← Back

I walked out through the kitchen door into the garden, and the cold hit me like a good slap.

It was a lovely night. Clear, frosty, a big orange moon over the bare apple trees. Somebody had lit a fire pit on the lawn, and a handful of guests in hats and cloaks stood round it, passing a bottle and telling ghost stories. A man dressed as a pirate was explaining the plot of a film nobody had seen. Nobody was masked as anyone who was upstairs. Everyone was just cold and cheerful.

I stood on the edge of the grass with my breath steaming and the key in my pocket. Behind me the house glowed like a lantern. Music pulsed out of the ballroom, and above it, along the first floor, I could see window after window with a dim flicker of candlelight behind curtains.

One of the upper windows was lit red. A figure in the glass, just a shape, a woman with her hair pinned up, looking down over the garden. Maybe at me. Maybe at nothing.

It might have been a trick of the light.

I’m a sensible man. I have a lift to inspect at nine on Monday. I have a perfectly nice flat and a perfectly nice bed, and nobody had made me do a single thing tonight.

The side gate was twenty feet away, the taxi rank a five-minute walk beyond it. And at the front door, at the foot of the stairs, the cat woman was surely still waiting.

→ I keep walking and call a taxi

→ I go back and return the key at the front door

← Back

The library was lamplit, warm and lovely, a long room with floor-to-ceiling shelves, a rolling ladder, a fire turned low, and one deep leather armchair. In the armchair sat a woman in a silver butterfly mask, bare feet tucked under her, a green velvet dress pooled around her legs and a battered paperback in her hand.

She looked up over the top of it. “You’re not a murder victim,” she said. “Good. I was expecting one.”

“Sorry. Wrong room?”

“Blue ribbon. Right room.” She patted the footstool by her chair. “Sit. I’m thirty-eight and I’ve read this chapter four times. I’d rather talk to you.”

So I sat. And we talked, and she was funny, sharp, a bit self-mocking, a woman who had spent a long time being the sensible one at parties. She’d come up here to read. She’d said yes to the quiet. She’d stayed because somebody she hadn’t expected to like might walk through the door.

“I don’t want a performance,” she said, tracing the spine of her book. “I want somebody who’ll sit with me, and maybe, if it feels right, do the other thing. No rush. No audience.”

Through the soft green velvet I could see the shape of her thigh. The firelight shone in her eyes. She put the book on the arm of the chair and held out her hand, palm up.

“So,” she said. “What would you like to do, highwayman?”

→ I stay on the footstool and keep talking

→ I ask what she’d like to do that she’s never done in a library

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I pushed the purple door open and went in, because the key was warm, the ribbon was tight, and I had spent three years saying no to everything.

The old billiard room was a fever dream. Candles on every ledge, a table pushed to the middle with its baize covered by a heap of bare bodies, a leather sofa along one wall with three more entwined on it. Masks everywhere. Feathers, glitter, leather, lace. And above the noise a low warm hum of voices, nobody shouting, everyone checking.

“Is this good?” Somebody was saying it, right now, in the dark. “Yes? Tell me if it’s not.” And somebody else, “God, yes, don’t stop.”

A woman in a gold mask, tall, dark-skinned, naked except for the long glove I’d seen through the door, pulled me in by the cravat.

“You’re new. Welcome. There are three rules and one word, and you’ve been told them.” She looked me up and down. “I’m twenty-nine, and I’m going to take your trousers off in front of all these lovely people unless you say otherwise. Do you say otherwise?”

My heart was a drum. Across the room a man in a devil mask looked up from between a woman’s thighs and gave me a thumbs up.

I could say yes, and let the room swallow me whole. Or I could say thank you, let go of her hand, and walk back down the corridor to a red ribbon and a woman who had said ten minutes.

→ I tell her yes

→ I tell her thanks, but I’m expected elsewhere

← Back

The brass key turned like it had been oiled for me.

The red room was dim and warm and smelled of candle wax and expensive perfume. A huge bed, dark red sheets, a fire crackling in the grate. She stood at the tall window with her back to me, the scarlet silk clinging to her waist and hips, the red domino mask still on, one hand resting on the glass.

“You came,” she said, without turning. “Ten minutes. I’d started to think you wouldn’t.”

“I nearly didn’t. I’m Ben. Sorry. I’m not supposed to…”

“Thirty-three,” she said, “single, fixes lifts for a living, terrible at lying. Tom’s list had a few details.” She turned. “I’m thirty-one. That’s all you get, and that’s the point. Nobody here has to be anyone else’s anything.”

She crossed the room and stopped inches away. Her gloved fingers walked up my chest and unknotted my cravat. Her eyes were doing something warm and wicked behind the red.

“The rules are simple. Masks stay on. If either of us says cinders, everything stops. Otherwise, I’d like to lead. I’d like you to do what I ask, and I’d like you to tell me what you like and what you don’t, out loud, in your own filthy words.”

Her dress dropped open at the shoulder. She was wearing nothing underneath it.

“Do you want to find out who I am?” she said, very softly. “Or do you want to find out what I’m like?”

→ I keep the rules and let her lead

→ I tell her I think I know who she is

← Back

“What’s your name?” I said.

I regretted it before the words were finished.

The room changed. The cat stepped back, her hand slid off my chest, and for a second she was just a woman in a mask who had been told something she’d said at the door. She was not cross. She was very still.

“That,” she said, “is the only question I won’t answer.”

“Sorry. God. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’d rather you ask than guess.” Her voice stayed soft and level, the voice of someone who has said this to a lot of men and forgiven most of them. “But it’s rule two, and I wrote the rules. Masks stay on. Names stay secret. If either of those is a problem for you, there’s a staircase, a garden, and a taxi rank, and nobody will think any less of you.”

I looked at her. At the whiskers, the ears, the generous mouth. At the bare strip of thigh the slit had shown me. I wanted to know her name very badly and I wanted her very badly, and for the first time in my life I could see those were two separate things.

“If you want to stay,” she said, “ask me something else. If you don’t, say goodnight, and I’ll open the door.”

She let go of the handle. Her chest rose and fell. She was waiting, perfectly polite, perfectly sure of herself, for what I’d choose.

→ I ask her what she wants instead

→ I tell her I can’t do this without a name