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Because that was the rule. And Freya Parker had never broken a rule in her life.

Downstairs, her mother was reading a tablet at the kitchen island, a half-eaten grapefruit sweating on a saucer. She glanced up as Freya poured herself orange juice. freeuse freya parker

She did. He studied her face for a long, uncomfortable moment, then lifted her grey dress to her ribs. His fingers were cold on her stomach. He pressed his palm flat against her diaphragm, as if feeling for a heartbeat, then let the fabric drop. Because that was the rule

She bent. The wood was warm from the sun, the grain rough against her palms. She watched a mallard dive and surface, shake water from its emerald head. Behind her, the man unzipped his trousers. She counted the seconds. Fifteen. Thirty. Forty-five. A grunt. A rustle of fabric. She glanced up as Freya poured herself orange juice

She nodded.

At the university library, she found a carrel on the third floor, hidden between stacks of nineteenth-century botany texts. For two hours, she annotated a paper on the economics of care work. The irony was not lost on her. She underlined a sentence: “The body that is always available is the body that never fully belongs to itself.”