XIX
Charlotte didn't know exactly what had happened, but all of a sudden her relations in her flat had altered and undoubtedly for the better. For some reason, Emma had started being a great deal more affectionate towards her and nowadays the two girls were more often sharing Emma's bed at night than enjoying any other arrangement. Charlotte had noticed that Maisie had started sharing her own bed with Susan and, when she was visiting, Josephine. Charlotte guessed (although she never witnessed it) that somehow Maisie's affections had transferred to Susan. Certainly, it was far less often that Emma and Maisie shared the bed together, and it was on those nights that Charlotte would get to sleep in her own bed.
Charlotte to a certain extent understood and appreciated why Susan's uncomplicated and straightforward personality was more comfortable for Maisie than Emma's. However, Emma could not accept that and still made great show that Maisie was the real love in her life despite the passionate nights that she spent with Charlotte. Maisie herself took the curious attitude that it was Emma who was her girlfriend but that Susan was just best friend.
This may have suited Maisie: it certainly suited Charlotte who was pleased to have so much more of Emma's attention than she'd ever had before. And it didn't appear to concern Susan who still loved Charlotte with the same selfless and tireless devotion.
Despite spending most nights in Emma's arms, Charlotte would still be awoken by Susan who now prepared breakfast for both lovers and, of course, Maisie who sometimes accompanied her in the morning. Susan continued to wash and bathe Charlotte each morning and offered to extend the courtesy to Emma, who discourteously refused the invitation. She made a point of polishing Charlotte's shoes, washing and ironing her clothes, and, often with Maisie clinging onto her, declaring her undying and unquestioning love for Charlotte. "It's only you I love. You are the only thing that makes my life worthwhile," she would say, taking every opportunity to kiss Charlotte's body.
"If she loves you so much, why does she sleep with Maisie?" sniffed Emma. Charlotte didn't wish to counter, as she so well knew, that it was always, and without exception, Maisie who decided who she would sleep with or make love with. The evenings were often a very curious battle of wooing between Maisie's girlfriend and best friend, where both Susan and Emma for different reasons would try to entice Maisie to sleep with Emma. But almost always, Maisie would stay with the girl who gave so much passion and demanded so little analysis of her affection.
In the meantime, Charlotte benefited as Emma's lover, if a substitute lover for Maisie; even if, Emma made sexual demands of Charlotte of an intensity and a violence that she almost certainly never made of Maisie.
Indeed they were of a nature that Josephine only rarely agreed to make love with Charlotte if Emma was there. "I can't do my job if I'm covered in bruises and scratches!" Josephine complained. She clearly preferring the company of Susan and Maisie, though she never discussed with Charlotte whether or not she also made love to the Maisie. Charlotte's own body often carried bite-marks, bruises and scratches which Susan would uncomplainingly nurse and sometimes apply make-up to, prior to Charlotte going to work. Sometimes Susan would locate wounds that Charlotte never suspected, as when she found a trickle of blood from Charlotte's anus which Emma must have inflicted the previous night with that rubber truncheon she'd acquired from somewhere.