Truth or Dare: a Sapphic mini-story (Mature)

I The elevator was out of action, so by the time Freja had climbed the stairs to the top floor, she was slightly breathless. And tense. She could feel the tension in her legs, which wasn't just the effect of the climb. Leaning against the wall, she paused outside the flat, listening to the muted clatter of pans beyond the door and the hum of traffic below. It was absurd to feel nervous. Three months earlier an unexpected message from Ida had appeared on her phone. I've just realised we've somehow managed not to speak for five years. That's ridiculous. Come for dinner? The invitation had become a conversation. The conversation had become messages every few days: memories of university, complaints about work, photographs of badly cooked dinners and, perhaps most surprising of all, the discovery that Ida was living with a woman called Katrine, more than a decade older than she was. Somehow it had become this evening. Before she could lose her nerve completely, the door opened. "Freja! Oh, it's so good to see you!" Ida crossed the hallway in two quick strides and wrapped her in a hug before Freja had managed to say a word. For a moment Freja simply laughed into Ida's shoulder. "Come in," Ida said, stepping back at last. "Katrine's been looking forward to meeting you." Almost at once the warmth of the flat closed around her. So did the years. Freja had expected Ida to seem not only older, but different. Instead she looked unmistakably herself: the same quick smile, the same restless energy, the same effortless assumption that everyone else would somehow keep pace with her. Freja realised she was smiling before she'd quite decided whether she meant to. The sitting room glowed with pools of lamplight. Music drifted from somewhere beyond the kitchen, low enough to ignore. A pair of women's boots stood neatly beside Ida's trainers by the radiator. Herbs crowded the kitchen windowsill. A saucepan simmered gently on the hob. Two books lay open on the coffee table, one face down, the other bristling with slips of paper. None of it resembled the life Ida had led at university, when dinner often consisted of olives eaten straight from the jar over the sink and she seemed destined to lose every second earring she owned. "So this is Freja." The woman who emerged from the kitchen looked to be in her early forties, dark-haired and wearing a navy wrap dress. She dried her hands on a tea towel before holding one out. There was something quietly self-possessed about her, not aloofness but the easy confidence of someone entirely at home in her own life. "Katrine," she said. "I've been hearing all about you." Freja took her hand. "That sounds ominous. Ida always did exaggerate." Katrine glanced towards the kitchen, where Ida was opening a cupboard in search of the wine glasses. "Indeed she does. Constantly. But as you'll already know, Ida's much easier to live with if one allows for a little fiction." II Dinner disappeared almost before Freja noticed it. Ida had talked while she cooked, moving around the kitchen with the same impatient energy she had always possessed, apologising unnecessarily for the salad and insisting the pasta needed another minute when it was plainly ready. Slipping back into Ida's rhythm felt oddly familiar. There were moments when the five years between them seemed to disappear altogether. By the time the dishes had been stacked beside the sink and they carried their glasses into the sitting room, a second bottle had been opened. The lights were low. Beyond the windows, Copenhagen had dissolved into reflections and scattered points of white and amber. Freja settled into the armchair by the window. Ida dropped onto one end of the sofa with a sigh, folding one leg beneath herself. Katrine settled at the other end, stretching her feet out before drawing them back underneath her. "Do you remember Professor Nielsen?" Ida said. Freja laughed. "You spent an entire seminar arguing with him." "He was wrong." "You became more convinced of that every time he disagreed with you." Ida grinned. "It was very inconsiderate of him." They drifted easily into other stories after that: the student bar where the floor had always been sticky, the disastrous departmental Christmas party, and their flatmate Mette, who had somehow borrowed everyone's clothes without ever returning them. "She stole my scarf," Ida said. "I loved that scarf." "You gave it to her. Probably as a bribe." Ida gave an impish grin. "Okay, guilty as charged." Freja smiled into her wine. For a while she stopped noticing the years between then and now. Katrine finished the last of her wine and set the glass carefully on the coffee table. She looked from Ida to Freja with an expression that suggested she had been quietly enjoying the ease with which they had found one another again. "I think," she said, "we've earned a change of subject." Ida regarded her with immediate suspicion. "What sort of change?" "A game." "Oh God." "How about Sandhed eller konsekvens ?" Ida groaned. "Truth or Consequences? Really? We are not sixteen." "No, we aren't," said Katrine. "And I suspect sixteen-year-old Ida was a nightmare. We'll play the grown-up version instead." "You mean the version designed to humiliate adults." "Exactly so. I'll get the cards." Ida reached automatically for the bottle and topped up all three glasses. "I married the right woman," she said to Freja. "It's important you know that." "I'd already gathered." Katrine looked across at Freja. "If we're going to do this properly, you can't stay over there looking like an adjudicator." "I wasn't aware I was." "You were." "It's the armchair," Ida said solemnly. "It makes people judgemental." Freja laughed. "Come over here." She hesitated only for a moment before carrying her glass across. There was less room than she had expected. As she settled between them, Ida's shoulder brushed hers. Katrine tucked one bare foot beneath herself and shifted to make space. Freja suddenly became rather more aware of where she was sitting than she had been in the armchair. The first round was harmless enough. Ida chose Truth and admitted she had stolen a pair of earrings from a jeweller's at twenty-one, then been so horrified by herself that she had returned the following morning and left them anonymously on the counter. "I apologised in my heart," she said. "How noble," said Katrine. Freja chose Consequences and found herself sending her older sister a message apologising for signing her up, years earlier, to a weekend seminar entitled Feminine Abundance: Release Your Inner Goddess . When it was Katrine's turn, she admitted, with remarkable composure, to a brief affair with a married violinist in Malmö. Ida looked delighted. "That's unusual. A violinist with no strings attached." She laughed before either of the others had time to groan. By the second round, Freja had stopped paying much attention to whose turn it was. Ida's knee brushed hers whenever she shifted. Katrine had become quieter. Once or twice Freja caught her looking from one of them to the other with an expression that seemed amused, thoughtful and faintly expectant all at once. Freja picked up the next card. Truth. "Oh," she said. "Well, what does it say?" Ida asked, trying to peer at the words. Katrine put her glass on the table and plucked the card from Freja's hand. "It says: Have you ever had a crush on someone you absolutely shouldn't have?" Freja was aware of the sudden surge of heat that made her cheeks feel like they were burning — which, in itself, felt like an admission. "Yes," she murmured. Something shifted in Ida's expression, almost too slight to notice. It was the look she had worn at university whenever she already knew the answer but wanted someone else to say it aloud. "Anyone I know?" Freja gave a short laugh. "That's two questions." "Answer both." Freja looked from one woman to the other. Katrine didn't seem embarrassed. If anything, she looked quietly fascinated. Freja lowered her glass onto the coffee table. "You know who it was." For the first time that evening, Ida didn't laugh. She held Freja's gaze for a heartbeat longer than necessary. "Do I?" she said quietly. A faint smile touched her mouth, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. "All right: yes, I knew you had feelings for me." She looked down into her glass. "And I wasn't always very kind about it." Silence settled over the room. Katrine reached past Freja for the bottle and filled her glass before either of the others. Then she settled back against the sofa. "That," she said after a moment, "certainly changes the game." III "I admit," Ida said at last, "that I behaved rather badly." Freja felt herself colouring. At university she'd watched Ida disappear into her room with women who looked as though they belonged to another species entirely: black lipstick, silver rings and studs through places Freja hadn't known could be pierced. The closest she'd come to being edgy was dying her hair red. "You never mentioned leaving admirers in your wake," Katrine said. "It wasn't like that," Freja said, far too quickly, because that's exactly what it had been like. "No?" Katrine held out a hand for Freja's empty glass. Freja passed it across almost automatically. "Then what was it?" Freja looked down. "An embarrassing waste of a year." Ida laughed before she could stop herself. The sound landed badly. "Freja..." Freja shrugged, attempting a smile she knew wasn't convincing. Nobody spoke. Katrine looked from one to the other. It was obvious neither of them knew how to move the conversation any further. When Freja looked up again, Katrine was a little closer than before. Close enough that she could smell her perfume beneath the wine. "May I?" The question was so quietly asked that, for a moment, Freja didn't grasp its meaning. Katrine kissed her gently. One hand rested lightly on Freja's arm, the other against the side of her neck, waiting rather than directing. Freja realised she was kissing her back almost immediately. When they separated, she opened her eyes to find Ida watching them. There was no amusement in Ida's expression now, only an almost startled tenderness. Suddenly Freja became acutely aware of herself. She half rose from the sofa. "I'm sorry—" Ida reached out and touched her arm. "Hey." Freja looked at her. "It's okay." Something inside her unclenched. Ida leaned in. Her kiss was entirely different. Where Katrine had waited, Ida didn't. She kissed with an ease that made the years between them seem to dissolve. Freja felt herself smiling against her mouth before surprise gave way to something warmer. For a moment she lost track of whose fingers were whose. Then she became aware of Katrine beside her again, lips brushing lightly against her temple and then her cheek and jaw. Freja closed her eyes. She had fantasised about something like this at twenty-two. The reality was both stranger and far more tender. Ida drew back just far enough to look at her. Without a word, she reached for Freja's hand. Very gently, she turned it and laid it against the slight curve of Katrine's breast. The warmth startled Freja more than the touch itself. She could have drawn her hand away. She didn't. Almost without thinking, her fingers closed tightly. Katrine didn't move, she simply held Freja's gaze. For a long moment neither of them spoke. Then Katrine smiled, almost imperceptibly. "Yes," she said. IV Ida set her wineglass quietly on the floor, then held out a hand. Freja took it. Ida pulled her gently to her feet, kissing her before she was properly upright. By the time they reached the bedroom, Freja could feel her own pulse everywhere: in her throat, in her wrists, in the narrow strip of skin above her jeans where Ida's hand kept finding her as though by instinct. The room was lit only by the lamp on Ida's bedside table. Freja had just enough time to register the unmade bed and the dark shape of a chair with clothes slung over it before Katrine was in front of her, fingers already at the buttons of her blouse. The first two came undone easily. The third did not. Katrine gave a quiet sigh. "Stand still." "I am standing still." "The wretched thing's stuck." Despite herself, Freja laughed. Then the button finally gave. As Katrine eased the blouse from her shoulders, cool air touched her skin so suddenly that she drew breath through her teeth. Behind her, Ida kissed the place just below her ear, then the nape of her neck, before her mouth drifted slowly to the curve where neck became shoulder. Freja closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Katrine was slipping her dress over her head. The tattoo wrapped darkly around Katrine's upper arm, black against pale skin: not decorative, exactly, but severe and elegant, a band of leaves or branches so dark they looked almost lacquered in the low light. Freja felt a jolt of surprise: she hadn't expected Katrine to have a tattoo. Then Ida reached for the fastening of her jeans, dealing briskly with the button and zip, and her thoughts suddenly lost their clarity as the denim slid over her knees, pooling around her feet. She stepped out of her jeans and underwear, shivering as her skin prickled into gooseflesh. Freja turned towards Ida and kissed her before she could think what to do with the flood-like sensation that was building inside her. All three of them were now naked. Freja stood between them, aware of the lamplight on Katrine's shoulder, of Ida's hair falling loose behind one ear, of the warmth of both their bodies so close to hers. She had the almost unbearable sense of being visible from every angle at once. She became conscious of every breath she drew, every place where cool air met warm skin. Her hands hovered uncertainly before falling uselessly to her sides. The silence stretched. She wanted to cover herself. Instead she stayed where she was. She wanted one of them to touch her before she had to ask. Katrine seemed to understand. She stepped closer, meeting Freja's eyes for a moment before taking her hand. When Freja didn't draw away, Katrine led her gently down onto the bed between them. By then all three of them were breathing a little harder, laughing a little less, and nobody had much use for speech anymore. V Freja woke to the thin grey light of a Copenhagen morning and, for a few seconds, had no idea where she was. Then the room returned in pieces: the unfamiliar chair with Katrine's dress draped over the back of it, the glass of water on the bedside table, Ida asleep on her stomach with one arm flung across the sheet, and Katrine beside her on the other side, lying on her back with the kind of stillness that suggested either profound sleep or excellent self-control. Freja stayed where she was and looked at the ceiling. Her body felt both overused and absurdly alert. One of Ida's feet rested against her calf beneath the duvet. Katrine's hand, lying palm-down on the mattress between them, was close enough that if Freja moved her own fingers an inch to the left they would touch. The intimacy of it made her feel shy in a way that last night hadn't permitted. She lay there for another minute or so, trying to decide whether slipping out quietly would be tactful or cowardly. Cowardly, probably. Tactful, almost certainly. In the end she settled on a compromise: gathering her clothes as silently as possible and escaping only as far as the kitchen. She had just found the coffee jar when Katrine came in. She was barefoot, wearing a pale blue dressing gown tied loosely at the waist. A few dark curls had escaped around her face as though she'd simply run her fingers through her hair and left them there. "Good morning," Katrine said. "Morning." Katrine crossed to the counter and reached for the kettle. The sleeve of her dressing gown slipped back from her forearm, revealing a section of the tattoo that had disappeared beneath the bedclothes the night before. In daylight the black leaves looked more delicate. Softer. For a moment neither of them spoke. "I was going to leave a note," Freja said at last. "Were you?" "Possibly." "How grim." Freja smiled despite herself. Katrine took down two mugs, then, after a moment's thought, a third. "I don't mean because I wanted to escape." "That's a relief," Katrine said. "I'd hate to think we'd driven you out before breakfast." Freja leaned one hip against the counter. She was still not entirely sure how to stand in the room. The night before had left her with the unsettling sense that every ordinary movement now carried a second meaning. "I wasn't sure what the rules were," she admitted. "For leaving notes?" "For this morning." Katrine considered that without the faintest trace of mockery. "There aren't any," she said. "Which is either wonderfully freeing or deeply irresponsible." The kettle boiled and clicked. Without asking, Katrine handed Freja a coffee made exactly how she'd asked for it after the previous night's meal. That small detail felt, for reasons Freja couldn't quite explain, unexpectedly intimate. "Do you often do this?" Freja asked, then immediately wished she had found a less prim way of putting it. Katrine, to her credit, did not pretend not to know what she meant. "Not often enough to have developed a handbook," she said. "Why?" Freja looked down into her coffee. "Because I don't know what I'm meant to say." Katrine stirred her own mug once before setting the spoon aside. "Just be honest, with me, and Ida and with yourself. And if you're regretting what happened, it's okay." Freja looked up. "I don't regret it. Not at all." She heard how quickly the words came and knew they were true. Something now loosened in Katrine's expression. "You see, that wasn't so hard," she said. Freja smiled. Through the half-open bedroom door came the faint sound of someone moving about. Katrine glanced towards it, and nodded. "She's awake," she said. "She's probably deciding how she'd like to make an entrance." And as though on cue, footsteps crossed the hallway. VI Ida appeared a few moments later. She was barefoot, wearing a T-shirt. Her hair had escaped its loose knot overnight, and there was a faint crease on one cheek from the pillow. She looked from Freja to Katrine, took in the coffee, and grinned. "I knew I'd find the two of you conspiring." "We've barely started," said Katrine. Ida wandered over and leaned against the counter beside Freja. "You were going to leave a note, weren't you?" Freja looked at her. "How do you know that?" "You have note-leaving energy." "That is not a real thing." "It absolutely is." Freja looked to Katrine for support. Katrine lifted an eyebrow over the rim of her mug. "She's right." Freja gave a small, disbelieving shake of her head. "You're both impossible." Ida nudged her lightly with one shoulder. "You stayed." It was barely more than an observation. "I did," Freja said. "Good." Ida reached for the coffee pot and poured herself a mug. "Well," she said, "I vote for breakfast in bed." Katrine looked at her over the rim of her mug. "You would." "It's an excellent policy." She glanced at Freja. "No pressure." Freja looked from one woman to the other, already knowing her answer. "All right," she said. Then she searched for Ida's hand and held it.