House Rules Read Free Page B

smiled abruptly, her solemnity disappearing. ‘I am so glad you feel that way. I feel the same. I think we will go on to discover some wonderful things together.’
    They were silent after their mutual revelations, embarrassed perhaps by their own frankness. But there was an underlying current of excitement as they ate their meal.
    At the end of it, Helena asked him if he had anywhere important to go that day. Richard said no, he was having an indefinite holiday from England. She seemed pleased by his answer. He was happy, because her question implied that she wanted to spend more time with him. Helena stood up.
    ‘Do you mind doing the washing-up, Richard? I need to get ready to go out for a bit.’
    Richard nodded and watched as she took off her apron and hung it up. Nudity became her, he decided. As he washed up the breakfast things, he could hear her moving about in the apartment. The small domestic noises were reassuring. As he was finishing up, Helena came back. She was dressed and carrying a large canvas hold-all in addition to her handbag. She said she would be back in a few hours and he should make himself at home while she was out. Did he have any special requests for dinner?
    ‘Anything, so long as you’re around to cook it. I’m not much good at haute cuisine .’
    She nodded, and withdrew. Richard heard her high heels tapping across the floor, then the sound of the door opening and closing as she left the apartment. He dried his hands on the apron Helena had worn and poured himself a second cup of coffee. He liked being alone in her apartment. Her leaving him there implied a certain degree of trust in him.
    He took the coffee through into the bedroom, where he noticed she hadn’t made up the bed. He smoothed the sheets and drew the quilt up over the pillows. Then he picked up the clothes she had worn the last evening, hanging up her dress and taking the underwear through into the bathroom as he went to take a shower. There was a wicker basket more than half full of her underwear and tights. Richard added the things he carried to the collection and stepped into the shower. He had left his toilet things at the guest house and so had to use Helena’s things. That added another degree of intimacy to the novel situation.
    He dried himself on her towel and put it into the basket of things to be washed before going in search of his clothes. He remembered Helena undressing him in the bedroom but couldn’t find his clothes there. Puzzled, he looked into her wardrobe, in case she had hung them up. That seemed unlikely, since she had left her own things lying around. There was no sign of his clothes anywhere in the bedroom, so he wandered out into the living room. They weren’t there either. Could they possibly be in the other bedroom, the one she had turned into a work room? They weren’t, although Richard spent a good deal of time there both looking for his clothes and studying the drawings Helena had made of her fetish fashions. As on the previous evening, he felt a stirring of excitement as he looked at the drawings of the male and female chastity belts she had designed. He thought again how exciting it might be to be locked into one of them.
    After he had looked all around, he reached the only possible conclusion: Helena had taken his clothes with her, stranding him there. He recalled the canvas hold-all she had carried, which had seemed so incongruous with the way she was dressed. He had no idea why she had done this, and he felt a flare of resentment. They had seemed on the brink of a relationship, of exchanging confidences, maybe even of becoming partners. And now this. But in spite of Helena’s playing this trick on him, he could see the funny side. He could think of a lot of men who wouldn’t mind being stranded without clothes in the apartment of a beautiful young woman who had showed a sexual interest in them. And now it had happened to him. Richard wasn’t afraid of being stranded permanently. This