Nikki Gemmell - The Bride Stripped Bare Set - The Bride Stripped Bare / With My Body

The Bride Stripped Bare

With My Body

The Bride Stripped Bare

With My Body

About the Author

Also by Nikki Gemmell

Copyright

About the Publisher

Nikki Gemmell

For my husband. For every husband.

Title Page

Dedication

Dear sir

I

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Lesson 138, the last

Postscript

Dear Reader

Dear sir,

I am taking the liberty of sending you this manuscript, which I am hoping may interest you.

It was written by my daughter. Twelve months ago she vanished. Her car was found at the top of a cliff in the south of England, yet her body was never recovered. Despite extensive questioning of several people close to her the police concluded it was a case of suicide and closed their file. Others speculate that she may have staged her disappearance. I’m not sure about either scenario and the uncertainty of it all, I must admit, has consumed my life.

She was completing a book at the time of her disappearance. It was in her laptop which the police returned to me. I’m the only person, as far as I know, whom she told about what she’d been working on. It’s about a married woman’s secret life, and my daughter wished to remain anonymous because she wanted to write with complete candour; she feared she’d only end up censoring herself if her name was attached. She also wanted to protect the people around her, and herself.

I read through her manuscript in the hope of finding a reason for her vanishing, and I felt her life open up before me like a flower. How much I didn’t know. How much I didn’t want to know. She was a stranger to me in many ways and yet the person closest to me.

My first instinct, I must admit, was to just delete her book and forget about it, but it’s been a long time since her going, and even though I’ve never stopped hoping it will be her on the end of the line when the phone rings, I feel, now, that I owe it to her to help if I can and find a publisher for her work. I believe it’s what she wanted, very much. Her happiness is, ultimately, all I ever wanted for her.

So, here is The Bride Stripped Bare. Thank you for your time.

I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s somebody nobody knows about.

Alfred Hitchcock and Thornton Wilder,

Shadow of a Doubt

honesty is of the utmost importance

Your husband doesn’t know you’re writing this. It’s quite easy to write it under his nose. Just as easy, perhaps, as sleeping with other people. But no one will ever know who you are, or what you’ve done, for you’ve always been seen as the good wife.

cold water stimulates, strengthens and braces the nerves

A honeymoon. A foreign land.

There you are, succumbing to the sexual ritual and remembering the day as a seven-year-old when you discovered water. You’d never been in a swimming pool before; there were none where you were growing up. You’re remembering a summer holiday and a swimming pool with the water inching up your belly as you stepped forward gingerly and the slow creep of the cold and the breath collected in the knot of your stomach and your mother always there ahead of you, smiling and coaxing and holding out her hands and stepping back and back. Then suddenly, pop, you’re floating and the water’s holding your belly and legs like sinews of rope, it’s muscular and balming and silky and the memory’s as potent as a first kiss.

As for the first time you fucked, well, you remember the sound, as his fingers readied you between your legs, not much else. Not even a name now.

making a comfortable bed is a very important part of household work

In the night air of Marrakech, on your belated honeymoon, the first scrum of morning birds sounds like fat spitting and crackling in a kitchen. It’s still dark but the birds have taken over from the frogs as crisply as if a conductor’s lowered his baton. The call to prayers has pulled you awake and you can’t fall back into sleep, you want to fling the french doors wide, as wide as they’ll go, and inhale the strange desert dawn. But your husband, Cole, will wake and complain if you do.

So. You lay your hand on the jut of his hip and breathe in his sleeping, the sour, sweet smell of it, and smile softly in the dark. The tip of your nose nuzzles his scent on the back of his neck.

You’ve never loved anyone more in your life.

You slip on to the balcony. It’s hot, twenty-eight degrees at least. A wondrous child-smile greets a great spill of stars, for the vast orange glow from London’s lights means you never see stars at home, scarcely know when there’s a full moon. The night flowers exhale their bloom, bougainvillaea and hibiscus and magnolia are still and shadowy in the night. You feel fat with content. Cole calls out, plaintive, and you slip back inside and his arm wings your body and clamps you tight.

Your feet manoeuvre free of the sheet’s smother and dangle off the edge of the bed, as they always do, finding the coolness and the air.