With My Body. Nikki Gemmell

got an hour to kill.’

      The lie slips out, it surprises you, the ease of it. And the impertinence of your voice, your boldness – the collector, the archivist, with a task to complete.

      ‘My parents don’t like me hanging around Central alone.’ A pause. ‘I don’t like it.’

      Your desire for friendship, companionship, someone, anyone, is insatiable; your desire, too, to have something, one thing, over all those girls in your class, over their ease and smoothness and confidence, their sense of entitlement. You can’t wait to tell Lune. She’ll be so proud of you. An artist, the coolness of that. The artist. Yours.

      It is beginning.

      And you are following this man from the railway concourse because of something else that has recently crept into your life. The possibility of aloneness, all through your days. You feel you could be very good at being alone and it frightens you; needs arresting.

      Lesson 38

      Easy, pleasant and beautiful as it is to obey, development of character is not complete when the person is fitted only to obey

      His studio is in a warehouse, a proper one, whose second floor is reached by a scuffed and clanking goods lift. You say nothing as you are lifted high, high, but you are breathing tremulous, fast, clutching the straps of your backpack. Not looking, biting your lip, scarcely believing you are doing this. Trying not to show him anything of the great churning within you. He is wearing jeans and t-shirt, he looks different, a student himself. He shares the space with three other people, it is a hot Friday afternoon, they are out.

      He gives you some lemonade. Lemonade! You are not allowed it at home.

      You sit at the table, he accidently brushes your leg as he sits, you pretend not to notice, breathe shallow. You look around. Tacked on the wall are various postcards from galleries, and photographs, black and white and colour. Your eye rests on a print of a painting, a woman naked, the artist looking straight up her legs.

      The meticulous detail.

      He catches you looking.

      ‘Courbet. The Origin of the World.’

      A prickly silence. You don’t want to look away, in shock, don’t want to give him that; can feel a familiar tingling, in your belly, between your legs.

      ‘Incredibly bold for way back then.’ A pause. ‘And now.’

      You nod. Blush. The good student, taking in your lesson.

      He stands in front of you. The bulge between his legs has grown again, he is right in front of you.

      ‘Do you want to sit for me?’ he breathes.

      You try to still your breath.

      So, this is it. You close your eyes, nod, can’t speak. Finally you will learn how love happens, touching and cherishing and nourishing and wanting, you, just you; you will learn where love comes from, how it’s snared, yes, this is the beginning of everything.

      You stand, your finger finds the back of the chair, you don’t know what to do next.

      He strokes your cheek. It slips down. Over your neck, chest, breast. Something is taking you over, a vast yes. You are angling up your arms and awkwardly unzipping your school uniform, and now he is helping you, he is undressing you, leading you; reaching behind your back, as if this moment will disappear if he doesn’t hurry, stumbling with the clasp and finally slipping off your small, pale bra then kneeling and holding his face to your skin, your quivering skin and with a great sigh burying himself in you, breathing you in. And staying there, staying.

      Then his fingers. Slowly, slowly, like a daddy longlegs. Working their way into your white cotton panties.

      Spidering inside, to your core, your great warmth; slowly prising your legs apart. You watch him watching, his mouth parted, his breathing. You are intrigued – his face, that you can do this to another person.

      Transform them.

      The power in that, and you have never felt such power in your life as he undresses you until there is nothing left.

      So wet you feel you could crumble with it, now, buckle with his touch. You clutch his hair. Your legs collapse under you. He catches you and lays you on a worn Persian rug on the floor. Stands over you, smiles, assesses. Whips off his t-shirt.

      Picks up a paintbrush.

      Lesson 39

      Would that, instead of educating our young girls with the notion that they are to be wives, or nothing – we could instil into them the principle that, above and before all, they are to be women

      You feel suddenly, brutally, exposed.

      ‘Uh uh,’ he admonishes, as your legs instinctively entwine, shutting you away.

      The rug is threadbare, thin, you can feel the sharpness of the floorboards underneath.

      He unzips his trousers, fast, and you are astonished at the length of his penis, the size of it, it looks so big, it could never fit.

      ‘Are you a virgin?’ he asks.

      Yes, you nod, breathe, biting your lip, can scarcely talk.

      ‘How old are you?’

      ‘Fourteen.’

      ‘No one must know we’re doing this.’ No talk in his voice, just breath.

      ‘Yes.’ Your face turns away, to the Courbet, so this is what women do, all women, you will learn, it is time.

      ‘I don’t know if I –’ you suddenly blurt, the voice of a child.

      ‘Sssh,’ he says.

      You glance across at his canvases, stacked against walls and on easels, the paint is viscous, tumultuous, raw; among the portraits are some other ones, secret ones, bodies, just bits, never a face; men and women, their genitals in stark, cold, medical close-up. You look and look at those ones and then something cold touches you, playfully, and you start; the paintbrush, it parts your lips, you yelp in shock, it brushes your clit, plays with the entrance of your secret interior, then slithers across your mouth and your taste the tang of it, of you. And he dips the brush inside, gentle but insistent and you gag and he stops, it goes back to your clit and your stomach flips and despite yourself you’re suddenly opening your legs wider, wider, surrendering, arching your back and gasping, suddenly, and there is a great warmth, a tingling, something is taking over you, you are becoming someone else.

      Who opens herself. Who is turned over. Who lifts her buttocks out, high to the sky, wanting, waiting, for God knows what, as the tip of the brush plays, explores. Teases and you wince and flop – no, this is going too fast, it’s too unknown. All of it. You twist onto your back, legs clamped.

      ‘You’re beautiful,’ he says, matter-of-fact, smiling, placing the paintbrush back in a crammed jar. You look at him, no one has ever said you are beautiful before. A blush roars through your body.

      ‘I really want to paint you.’

      You nod, the good girl, still biting your lip.

      ‘Now,’ he whispers.

      But the spell is broken, you should be getting back, the golden light of late afternoon is slanting too obliquely through the tall, dusty windows and you must hurry to catch the next train, you’ll be just in time for Dad to not be worried if you go now, quick.

      ‘Next Friday,’ you manage to stumble out. ‘Same time.’ Don’t know what you’re saying.

      His fingertip draws a line across the top of your pubis, then slowly, slowly – as your belly rolls under him – his