Free Eighty Days Yellow by Vina Jackson Page B

not at all. If the violin had been stolen, or worse, left strangled on my doorstep, I might have feared that I had an Internet stalker, but the message didn’t appear malevolent to me.
    A spark had been lit, and try as I might, I couldn’t extinguish it now.
    I stared at the screen for a further ten minutes, none the wiser, until Charlotte burst through the door, her arms full of shopping bags.
    ‘You better not be vegetarian,’ she called out, ‘because I got nothing but meat.’
    I assured her that my predilections were firmly in favour of steak and beckoned her over to read the email.
    Charlotte stared at the screen, raised an eyebrow and smirked.
    ‘What challenge?’ she asked. ‘And what terms?’
    ‘I don’t know. Should I reply?’
    ‘Well, that would be a start. Go on – write back to him.’
    ‘How do you know it’s a him?’
    ‘Of course it’s a him. It’s got alpha male written all over it. Probably someone who’s seen you playing, got the hots for you.’
    I deliberated, then pressed the ‘reply’ button. I rested my fingers gently on the keyboard and replied:
    Good evening,
    Thank you for your kind words.
    What is your challenge? And your terms?
    Regards,
    Summer Zahova
    A reply came back within minutes.
    I would be delighted to respond to your queries in full. Meet me.
    A question mark was conspicuously absent from his request.
    Against my better judgement, and with Charlotte egging me on, I arranged a date with the stranger, for noon precisely the following day.
    I was ten minutes late.
    He had suggested we meet at an Italian coffee shop in St Katharine Docks. I pretended I knew the place, although I didn’t; it saved me having to suggest a location.
    When I arrived, I discovered that it was right in the middle of the water. Walking one way round the boardwalk at the sides of the dock, I realised the path was closed for repairs and had to turn and walk back again the other way. I was the only person on the docks, walking back and forth, lost like an ant who discovers a crumb in its path, and I imagined that the mysterious stranger was watching my movements from the comfort of the cafe all the while. I was wearing the least sexual outfit of Charlotte’s that I could find so as not to give him the wrong impression. I had overslept and hadn’t had time to pop back to my own flat and change.
    Charlotte had found me a navy dress, part wool and part stretch, that she had stored from a very brief interlude working as the receptionist at a law firm before she began her career in online poker. It was lined, sat just past the knee and had a very modest scoop neck and four buttons placed evenly over the chest, military style. It was a little tight on the hips, but loose on the waist, and I wore it with a thin cream belt, my lace-up ankle boots, which I had fortunately been wearing the day of the Tube brawl, and a pair of skin-coloured hold-up stockings. The packet read ‘Lightly oiled – bare-legged look’.
    ‘He’s going to think I want to fuck him if he sees I’m wearing these,’ I said to Charlotte.
    ‘Well, maybe you will want to fuck him,’ she replied.
    Then she told me not to be silly as I would have to be bending all the way over for the split at the back to reveal what I had on underneath. The split was fortunately set low, which meant that it was a little hard to walk, but also meant that hopefully nobody would know that I wasn’t wearing any underwear. As the fabric of the dress immediately highlighted my pantyline, Charlotte had refused to let me leave the house with my knickers on. I surrendered them to her at the door like a soldier surrendering a flag.
    She had lent me her cream wool coat also, with a warning not to leave it behind as it was expensive. The coat smelled strongly of perfume, a musky variety that was not of my style, and of cinnamon-flavoured lubricant from the night she’d worn it over the latex dress.
    By the time I arrived, I was glad of the coat as it was