“It’s not like I’m sexually submissive or anything,” said West Kensington to Vauxhall Park over the brim of her teacup. “It’s not even like I’m really, like, bi-curious. I mean, I can see why women are attractive, but…” Somehow running out of words, her sentence remained derailed, and she turned to look out of the cafe window, avoiding her companion’s gaze.

“But what?” Vauxhall Park looked faintly amused.

There are parts of Central London that could seem, at a glance, almost rural. Bits of greenish gold like tarnished copper, patches of trees between small, leaf-strewn suburbs. You can feel it though. You know it’s still London. The city has a vibration, almost inaudible, but there all the same. Even as you sit, there in that cafe, over the sound of polite chatter, china and cutlery, the sound of two women drunking tea, talking about sex, you can nearly hear it if you just listen: the amorphous sludge of low-register noise, its pitch too deep to get an aural grip on. It’s a rumble that you feel in your stomach, the soundless sound of a hundred trains disgorging commuters into burrows deep under your feet, a swarm of traffic helicopters flying too low overhead, a million thoughts beamed across invisible strings of radio, phone and wi-fi, tangling around your skull and tightening.

A chairleg screeched as someone shuffled and turned the page of the free newspaper he’d spread across his table.

“There was this evening a while ago,” began West Kensington. “Shit, I don’t know why I’m even telling you this. Let’s just forget it.”

Vauxhall Park was patient. “There was this evening a while ago…?”

“Yeah.” West Kensington took another sip of tea. “Well, bear in mind that I’d had a drink. And he’d been out. I knew he was on his way back. And so I got in the shower. And as the water was running down over my face I decided I was going to be you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. It was like I’d shapeshifted or something. In my head, I mean. It’s the strangest feeling. And it turned me on. Being you. The idea of him coming home and finding me, being you, there in the shower.”

Vauxhall Park said nothing, but smiled.

“And so when he came in,” continued West Kensington, emboldened, looking down into her tea. “I was out of the shower by then. He was late, so I’d done my make-up like you do yours. That thing with the eyes? And I’d looked through the drawer and picked out what I thought you’d wear.”

“What did I choose?” laughed Vauxhall Park quietly.

West Kensington took a large sip of tea, still looking down. “Just this black slinky thing. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, my hair was wet, and he came in and said something, I don’t remember what, but I just kind of attacked him. Well, not attacked. Pounced maybe. Like how I imagine you’d do it.”

“I’m more of a pouncer then, am I?” She adopted an infuriating smirk.

“Fuck, this is so embarrassing.” West Kensington shook her head and blinked twice, putting the cup down slightly too hard in its saucer.

“I’m sorry, go on.”

West Kensington paused. “Well, he looked kind of shocked at first. I’d got him pushed up against the wall and I was saying all these things in his ear, in this really deep, whispery voice, the sorts of things I thought you’d say. Talking dirty. You know?”

A complacent nod from Vauxhall Park.

“He was surprised, but we’ve always played a bit rough. Nothing extreme before. Just a playfight every now and then. Fluffy handcuffs. Normal stuff. But when I was being you, it was crazy. We were throwing each other about all over the place. Kicking, scratching, all sorts.”

Vauxhall Park was laughing now, leaning back against her chair until West Kensington beckoned her back in with mock urgency, giggling, shushing.

“And he overpowered me. Obviously. I mean, he’s stronger and I’ve always kind of let him win with stuff like that. You know? But I kept on struggling. He had to pin me down, and even then I put up a good fight, just like I figured you would. I got so fucking wet.” West Kensington’s voice was a conspiratorial whisper now. “And he fucked me hard. I made him. He smacked me while he was doing it, and fucked me so hard it hurt. I closed my eyes and I was you. It was you he was fucking right then. And I loved it. I loved being you, being fucked like that.”

“Good.” Vauxhall park seemed surprisingly nonplussed by the revelation.

“I don’t think you’d have given in like that though. You’d have fought. You’d have been the one fucking him, not the one getting fucked.”

“I’d imagine so.”

“So what does it mean? Why does it turn me on, the idea of a strong woman being overpowered? The idea of you being hurt. Well, me, being you, being hurt? Do I secretly want to harm you or something? Does it make me a bad person? What the hell is that?”

Vauxhall Park was smiling, brows relaxed. “Post-feminism?”

“Seriously though, it freaked me out. We’ve done it a couple of times since then. The same. I haven’t told him what’s in my head when we fuck like that. He’s never asked. It’s just so good.”

The city purred quietly below the linoleum, as if perched upon the belly of a sleeping beast. Just out of earshot, something was roaring. The heating vent perhaps, the wings of a million pigeons, or the brakes of a bus at traffic lights. Not so much a noise, but rather a sensation in the metal fillings that hold your back teeth together. A deep reverberation like inside of a churchbell several minutes after it’s tolled.

“If it’s good, then what’s the problem?”

“There are times with you,” said West Kensington, the other woman’s hand closing around her own, “when I’m scared I’ll forget which one of us I am.”