Page 148 of Daddy's Pride

“And then of course there’s Isla.”

“What do you, mean, and then there’s Isla?”

This time Cat raised her sunglasses and sat up, looking at Rachel directly. It was slightly discomforting. “Isla. Your best friend. Love of your life. You couldn’t leave her behind.”

Rachel stared, open-mouthed. “Love of my… what on earth are you talking about?”

There was a pause in which Cat’s eyebrows raised so high that they almost disappeared into her hairline. “Are you serious?”

“Are you serious?” Rachel’s heart was pounding and she almost spilled her drink, she was clutching the plastic glass so tightly.

“Fuck,” said Cat. “You really don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“That you’ve been in love with Isla since the moment you met her.”

And Rachel’s whole worldview shifted.

Chapter Five

She’d started by arguing with Cat. Denying it, scoffing at the ridiculousness of it all, but that soon gave way to resignation and then, finally, acceptance.

It still felt slightly ridiculous, the idea that she might be in love with Isla, but Cat had been so definitive about it. “I just thought that you didn’t want to talk about it,” she said. “Because it was some tragic unrequited thing, though even that…”

Rachel held up her hand. “No no, one wild revelation at a time, thank you very much. I’d know if Isla was in love with me.”

“Would you?” asked Cat. “You didn’t even realize that you were in love with her.”

There was some truth to that statement, but Rachel was still processing her own moment of self-discovery.

Isla was her best friend; that much was obvious to pretty much everyone, but more?

“Look,” said Cat, their voice softening. “It’s not like this doesn’t happen with queers all the time. You know enough friends who’ve thought that they’re just hanging out when they’ve actually been going on dates. Not—” she added, “—that you’ve been on dates with Isla. I’m definitely not saying that. But I do think that without her in your life, you’d have left London a long time ago.”

Their final viewing was in an old building, previously abandoned, that was being done up.

“We’re not sure what the space is going to end up being,” said the manager, Tel, with a frankness that Rachel immediately warmed to. “But we’ll have a café—probably vegan—and the idea is that the hall can be hired out by different marginalized groups for various events. I can’t say that they’ll all be kinky, but they’ll definitely all be focused on community.”

The hall itself was really big, with sweeping ceilings and a stage that would be perfect for demos or talks. Cat and Rachel swapped glances, trying very hard not to get too excited. Anything could happen.

“So you’d be okay with us doing demos?” asked Cat.

“Absolutely,” they replied. “And we’ll have our own private security, but we would have to insist that it’s a carded 18+ event.”

“We were intending on that anyway,” said Rachel. “The marketing will be subtle, and refer to it as an ‘alternative market’ and an ‘adult event’, but having onsite security already would be so helpful. Otherwise, we were going to hire our own. With an event like this, you really can’t take any risks.”

“And,” added Cat, “It’s a queer and poly event, which means trans and nonbinary inclusive. So we want to make sure that the security team that we work with are going to be accepting of pronouns, and willing to step in if we have any protesters turning up.”

Tel grinned. “I’m agender myself, so it’s one of the things that we screen for when interviewing people to work with us. When it comes down to it, we’re all just sacks of meat, but some people really don’t see it like that. We host a couple of other queer events, so the team is fully trained.”

“Great.” Rachel was trying not to let her excitement show on her face too much. The whole afternoon had been more disheartening than they’d expected, and this venue—and Tel as its manager—was ticking all of the boxes. “Is there anything else that you’d particularly like to know?”

“I mean, the main things is that we’d need you guys to sort out public liability insurance yourselves, but that’ll be the case anywhere, I should think.”

Rachel nodded, a smile spreading across her face. It all seemed a little too good to be true.

“Well, I think this would be perfect,” said Cat. “We’d love to work with you and your team.”