Read Online The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) by Stella Knightley - Free Book Online

‘Thank Heaven For Little Girls’ and he would dress as one too, in a pink romper suit with a frilled white apron to match. Oh yes, he had the outfit already. He even had a curly blonde wig that he would wear beneath a frilled cap, along with his false eyelashes and glittering lipstick.
    ‘I can’t wait to see this,’ I said.
    ‘Don’t think he won’t do it,’ Clare warned me. She pulled out her phone and brought up some photographs of Harry at his own birthday party. There he was dressed as Marilyn Monroe, in the iconic dress over the air-vent scene from The Seven Year Itch . He looked remarkably good in women’s clothing. In fact, both Clare and I agreed, he looked far better than we would have done in the same get-up. It was the legs. He had much longer legs, with much more defined muscle tone than Clare and I could ever have achieved even with years in the gym. It was all down to that perfect balance of testosterone. Just as small boys always have the best eyelashes, the big boys get to have the best pins.
    Harry preened as we looked at the evidence of his previous triumphs.
    ‘In Berlin, I can be absolutely myself. This place. Individuality is in the air.’
    I had to agree.
    As we parted he said, ‘Sleep tight, Ms White Bread.’
     
    It was another warm night. Berlin really was experiencing an Indian summer. I went to bed with the windows closed but woke up again in the middle of the night, sweating and tangled in the bedclothes. I got out of bed with the intention of opening the window to let in some air. As I was struggling with the old casement, warped by the years, I saw a couple pause underneath the street-lamp across the road. She threw her arms round his neck. He kissed her passionately, bending her backwards as though in a dip at the end of an exotic tango. He held her in that position for quite some time as he explored her with his mouth.
    They were clearly very hot for each other. She straightened up and continued to clutch at the fabric of his shirt as she kissed him with abandon. She devoured him and he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. I felt a small stab of envy as I wondered if I would ever be kissed like that again.
     
    Ms White Bread? I’d laughed at the time, but Harry’s throwaway line had touched me in a far more personal way than he could have imagined.
    I had been so confused about my desires since breaking up with Steven. I was conflicted, feeling both excited and ashamed by the way I’d responded to the whorish lingerie Steven had me in for our trip to the swingers’ club and the shoes he bought me to wear in Paris. Yet I had played with myself according to instructions on a laptop screen, for the pleasure of a man watching through a secret peephole. I must have known on some level that he would be watching. It was crazy to think otherwise. In fact, I had liked the idea that Marco had been watching me.
    The drawings had given me quite a shock when I first discovered them. On the one hand, I might have felt violated. On the other hand, they were something quite different from photographs. A photograph required no effort. It required no real knowledge of the subject. A drawing required time. It required concentration. As I considered that, I had allowed my shock to fade so that instead I felt flattered by the thought that someone saw me as worthy of the effort the drawings took to produce. The thought of Marco’s gaze was every bit as erotic to me as the thought of his actual touch.
    I wondered what had happened to those pictures. Had Marco kept them or had he thrown them away as I had discarded his letters and the dried flower? I would probably never know. I liked to think that he had kept them and that he looked at them still. I hoped in some way they tormented him.
     
    The following morning I had my first English-language student. Her name was Anna Fischer. When she arrived in my office, exactly on time, unlike any of the students I’d taken for tutorials in London or