I got caught!

I saw Boris a few times during the week. Each time was more intense than the last. Then yesterday he said he had to go on a business trip and I pretended I didn’t care, while inside I was dying.

Dan is so pleased that Boris has left. He hasn’t said so, but when I said he’d gone he got this smug, satisfied look on his face.

I suppose I was rubbing it in his face a bit. Seeing me all full of welts brought the situation home to him. That I am now the property of another man. I am no longer the free floating sexual libertine I was with him, where there were no boundaries, no jealousies.

Now there are jealousies all right. It’s true, I do favour Boris, for now. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I do.

This morning, I went shopping in Oxford Street. I bought myself some expensive new clothes, kid leather ankle boots, some silk underwear that lies coolly against my skin while it heals from Boris’s man handling.

And then, I don’t know what happened. I lost sight of what I was doing, I suppose.

I’d sworn off the stealing. I’d hoped the impulse had left me.

Turns out it hasn’t.

In a red haze of sorrow and longing for Boris, I lifted a cashmere sweater and shoved it in one of my carrier bags. I got a sharp, cool thrill. It was almost like Boris was watching me do it. I glanced around quickly, he wasn’t, but I could have sworn his eyes were on me.

Turns out someone else was watching me. I was walking out of the store, Selfridges, laughter tickling the inside of my belly, when a plain clothed security guard tapped my shoulder.

I played dumb for a bit, until he searched my bags. He made me accompany him to the back office. When I started to cry, they said they wouldn’t press charges.

When I got home I told Dan.

He wasn’t very sympathetic. In fact, he was furious.

“I have a problem,” I admitted.

“This isn’t the first time,” I said, once he’d stopped shouting.

He drank a lot of whisky, until his eyes became red rimmed.

“I’ll get you help,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He meant, of course, a psychoanalyst. I said I didn’t want one.

But he insisted. Sometimes Dan can be very insistent.

We had make up sex. Very easy, the love between us flowing. I came in great ragged peaks and we fell asleep in each others arms.