Flora rubs her hands on her arms to try and warm herself. She begins the descent. Thinks of how in 1885 they changed that to Clause 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act or the Labouchère Amendment – to protect girls from prostitution with a side clause against sodomy between men specifically. Two years in jail, with or without hard labour. Flora nearly goes over on her ankle and picks her way down more carefully. What kind of a world locks people up for loving? Hard labour for sodomy or oral! Oscar Wilde got three good years for it. Flora does not want to be touched like Greig does, though she’d defend his right to be touched in any way that makes him feel good – as long as his partners are of legal age and willing. What act is really perverse then? None is; sexuality is weird and ugly and strange and terrifying and real and beyond the realms of actual reason. But right now she doesn’t care about any of it. All Flora wants is to get into bed and be held. To read quietly next to him and to make a cup of tea in the morning and sit together in silence.

It has taken no time to get back.

Through the front door and straight to the bar. The perfume smells stronger than it did before and cigarette plumes have coloured the air blue-grey. Lights are turned down lower. A circle has formed around the walls. Another circle inside it begins to rotate the other way. Flora meets her ex-lover’s eyes across the room.

Still that gladness to see his face.

– Baby, come here.

Over to stand beside him, an arm draped around her shoulder. A drunk poet to the right points at a man in a black suit.

– Is he from the Spec Society? I thought they only met at the university. There’s another two over there…

– He is, Flora says.

– How do you know? the poet asks.

– I fucked him in the William Playfair room. Afterwards he cried like a baby. There are no female members in the Spec Society, unless they are visiting for some other reason you’ll never see a woman in there.

– No, the poet says approvingly and skulks away.

The room is beautiful. Deep teal wallpaper. A woman is down on her knees now. Another is strapped to a chair. Legs parted. The whole room is a mass of flesh. A man is having his cock sucked while another woman kisses his neck and a woman dressed all in black fucks her with a strap-on. Another woman steps over the man’s face and sits down casually, as if she were in a fine dining room.

Greig’s fingers slide up her legs and he is licking her. She arches her body toward him despite herself. He looks up from between her thighs. Flora drags him up by the hair.

– You’re such a hideous prick, she says.