Bound to You by Nichi Hodgson

must never mutilate my body again. One of the great things about learning to eat once more was getting my boobs back, and whenever I was feeling anxious about my weight, which sometimes did still happen now that I was no longer the size of a ten-year-old child, I made a point of flaunting my cleavage to reassure myself.
    We walked for ten minutes past Holland Park. The area didn’t seem that sleazy to me. Slightly past-its-best decadent, perhaps? Suddenly, I knew where we were. Wasn’t this where sixties seductress Christine Keeler first lived with her West Indian lover, before she moved in on John Profumo? I’d been reading a book about it only the previous week. I told Gina about it.
    Gina laughed. ‘You and your wayward anti-heroines, Nichi!’
    ‘Well, you should read about her! She’s sort of like a proto-feminist! And she didn’t care if anyone thought she was a whore, which was pretty impressive for the time.’
    ‘If you say so!’ Gina replied. ‘But she didn’t sell sex, did she?’
    ‘Well, no, I don’t think so. But she was an erotic dancer.’
    ‘That’s not the same as being a prostitute,’ Gina reprimanded me.
    ‘It’s still making money out of your sexuality,’ I replied. ‘And she clearly knew how to get what she wanted out of feckless men.’
    I surprised myself. Did I really think that Christine Keeler was admirable? Well, yes, I supposed I did.
    Gina and I turned into a neat cul-de-sac.
    ‘Number twenty-three,’ Gina pointed. The front door was flaking purple, with William Morris-style panelled glass above the frame. It must once have looked pretty opulent.
    Inside, the flat was disappointingly mundane but it had been very well bedevilled for Halloween. Black billowing sheets drowned the walls and the only illumination in the main room came from a few church candles and strings of iridescent paper skulls, which one of the attendant art students had cleverly interwoven with fairy lights.
    ‘Hey, Gina, glad you could make it!’ A buxom blonde girl dressed like a bloodied Little Red Riding Hood approached us. Behind her was a rangily handsome wolf, who I took to be her boyfriend.
    ‘Tina, Jamie!’
    Red Riding Hood and her wolf came forward. I saw now that he had a realistically gory wound painted on his furry neck and his head was encased in what was effectively a metal bear trap.
    ‘Brilliant!’ I said, gesturing at the wolf’s neck.
    ‘Isn’t it?’ Tina cackled back. ‘And here’s the most brilliant part.’ She held up her hand to demonstrate that she was carrying a lead affixed to the trap, which essentially functioned as a collar. Wolfboy, then, was her prey ensnared, rather than the other way round. ‘I do like a bit of feminist revisionism,’ she said, with a wink. ‘Help yourself to drinks, ladies. There’s some kind of punch, or else wine and spirits on the table over there.’
    As we went over to fetch drinks, Gina and I continued the conversation we’d been having outside.
    ‘I’ve got a friend who put herself through a Masters by pole dancing. She says she’s not a sex worker, but a sexy worker.’
    I burst out laughing and shook my head. ‘Well, if that makes her feel better! Isn’t the cock just on the wrong side of the trousers?’
    ‘Oh, I’d say so,’ offered a knowing voice.
    The interjection came from a startlingly made-up woman with glorious bright red hair wearing an elegant black halterneck dress and patent-leather kitten heels. The dress exposed an intricate Japanese tattoo that crept down her back like clematis.
    I glanced at Gina. Was this one of her friends? Gina seemed to be shrugging her eyes at me.
    The woman immediately sensed our unease, tittered to herself and swept forward, hand outstretched in friendly greeting. ‘I’m Sapphire. Lovely to meet you both. Great party! Haven’t they fixed it up freakily?’
    She had a low, contralto voice and spoke with an odd cadence. I couldn’t place the accent. English with a hint of something