Free The Gift of Girls by Chloë Thurlow

by the beauty of the Mesquita to destroy it, and it had occurred to me that beauty was the only treasure worth seeking.
    ‘Are you thinking about what I said?’ he asked suddenly.
    ‘No,’ I said truthfully. ‘I was thinking about the Mesquita in Cordoba.’
    ‘Ah, yes, of course, you have something of the Andaluz gypsy about you, something quite wild and reckless.’
    I had always thought of myself as being more cautious than reckless. Had I changed so much, died and been reborn? Cut flowers don’t know they are already dead. ‘My mother is Spanish,’ I said. ‘If she knew I was sitting here without any clothes on she would die of shame.’
    ‘Are you dying of shame?’ he asked. ‘Or are you secretly enjoying yourself ?’ He waited for me to reply.
    ‘I’m not enjoying myself, no,’ I said.
    ‘But you’re not hating it either, are you, Magdalena?’
    My cheeks burned with embarrassment. ‘No,’ I muttered.
    ‘Did you ever imagine having an orgasm merely from being spanked?’
    I didn’t want to answer, but that was against the rules of the game: unspoken rules, to be sure, but I knew them nonetheless.
    ‘No,’ I said.
    I sensed a faint smile about his lips, and Simon Roche never smiled. As he talked about my being spanked and having an orgasm, a strange charge went through my body. I became tense and was aware that a bead of juice was welling into my labia before leaking over the black leather seat. I could smell once more the faint aroma of arousal and wondered why sitting naked in the traffic surrounded by people dressed and stressed as they hurried home was a turn-on, that perhaps deep down I didn’t know ‘me’ at all.
    ‘Aren’t you just a little intrigued to ponder what might happen in the next thirty-one days?’ he continued.
    ‘No, I’m terrified,’ I told him.
    ‘Really? That’s marvellous. A touch of fear makes things much more exciting for everyone, even you,’ he remarked.
    ‘I’m not sure how fear is going to make anything exciting,’ I said.
    ‘You’re not afraid of what’s going to happen to you.’
    ‘What?’ I demanded. ‘Of course I am.’
    He smiled again. ‘No, dear girl, you are afraid of what you might learn about yourself.’
    He sighed as the traffic ground to a halt. We were next to the pavement outside a furniture showroom. I could see my reflection in the shiny glass, eyes bright, breasts firm, hair every which way. I tried to focus on what he had said, but it seemed totally unreal to be sitting there nude in black high heels, totally unreal that Magdalena Maria Manzano Wallace, the girl I thought I was, could have got herself into this disgraceful position.
    The traffic started moving again.
    ‘Magdalena, if you acquit yourself well,’ he said, ‘we will talk again about your future.’
    I gasped. ‘Really?’
    ‘I always do what I say. Always.’
    I had been so preoccupied thinking about the £3,100 I’d stolen I’d almost forgotten that I had lost all my savings. I didn’t have a future.
    ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know what I’m going to have to do.’
    ‘Are you sure about that?’
    ‘Yes, honestly,’ I said, but, even if I didn’t know exactly, I had a pretty good idea and the word
honestly
didn’t exactly apply.
    ‘Well, you’ll just have to wait and see.’ He sounded like Mother. ‘Discipline is the path to happiness and freedom.’
    It was a lifeline. I clenched my fists and resolved to try to do everything he wanted.
    I glanced out of the window. Ten minutes in slow-moving traffic and already I was used to the blank stares of car drivers and van drivers, pedestrians on the sidewalk, men in kaftans with beards, women in long skirts, their heads and faces covered except for their shiny expressive eyes. In a multicultural society, I was the fallen woman, Jezebel, Mary Magdalene. I had, as Sister Benedict was wont to say, got too full of myself.
    I couldn’t help feeling sorry for myself sitting there with