Taking Sex Toys to Amsterdam Read online

  She hurried through the lounge and into the bedroom desperate to hide the toys before he arrived. Their suitcase lay open on the bed. Simon had been so busy to pack his clothes, so she'd packed them for him along with her own stuff. She'd put in comfortable sandals because they'd be doing a lot of walking around the sights. She'd read that Amsterdam weather was changeable, so she'd put in his fleece in case he got chilly on the boat ride along the canal.

  One-by-one, she took the sex toys out of the plastic bag. She ripped off their packaging and peeled off any prices. Then she laid them in the case on top of the neatly folded clothes.

  She heard the sound of the key turning in the lock. Her pulse quickened.

  "Pumpkin, I'm home," Simon's voice called.

  Freya grabbed the packaging and shoved it under the bed. Then she snapped down the lid of the case.

  Simon came into the room. He looked hot and exhausted from the Tube ride home. Puddles of sweat showed through the armpits of his shirt. The buttons gaped around his belly.

  He came up to her and kissed her on the cheek. She felt the prickle of his stubble. He smelt of smog and traffic fumes.

  "I'm starving," he said. "What's for dinner? Pizza?"

  She nodded. On Friday nights, she always made them home-cooked pizza, which they ate in front of the TV. Then Simon would retire to his study to work while she stayed on the couch and watched Netflix and drank cheap wine.

  She pointed at the case. "Everything's ready."

  Simon studied his feet.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  He didn't speak.

  Freya stared at his face, trying to read it for clues. A chill traveled through her.

  "You're not coming, are you?" she said.

  "No. No."

  Freya felt a flood of relief.

  "I am still coming," Simon went on. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. It's just—"

  "Just what?"

  "Well." He rocked forward onto the balls of his toes, something that he did when he was nervous. "Well," he went on, "you know that they're taking down the system at the weekend, so that we can do the upgrades? Well, the time line has changed somewhat. They need me to do my piece of work on Friday night now not on Thursday. Be calm, Pumpkin. Don't freak. Hear me out."

  "I am still coming," he continued. "I'm going to the work through Friday night then hop on a flight on Saturday morning. I'll be with you in Amsterdam practically first thing. Look," he went on. "I know it's not great."

  Freya ground her teeth together. Not great. It was a bloody disaster. They were only going for two nights.

  Simon sighed. "I'm sorry but they need me, Pumpkin."

  He sighed again more dramatically than before.

  He was acting like he was a super hero who'd been summoned at the last minute to save the day. Suddenly, Freya felt needy and irrational. She hated the way that he made her feel.

  He came up to her and hugged her. For a second, she recoiled. Then she rested her head onto the shoulder of his iron-free shirt.

  "I knew you'd understand," he said. "You're too good for me, Pumpkin.”

  Maybe I am, Freya thought. Then she immediately felt guilty.

  Chapter Seven

  Freya stood among the mass of travellers who were crowded around the luggage carousel waiting to get their bags. She was about four rows back and she struggled to see the cases that revolved around the conveyor belt.

  The flight had been great. She actually preferred flying alone, she'd discovered. She'd only flown once with Simon when they'd gone to Malaga. On the flight, he'd hogged both of the arm rests and had done this nervous jiggling thing with his leg that had set her teeth on edge.

  On this flight, Freya had sat in blissful calm flicking through her favorite guide book. The pages were dark from her fingerprints. She hoped that Miss McAllister wouldn't notice when she took the book back. But even if she did, it was worth it. Freya felt proud at how prepared she was.

  The trip was going to run like clockwork. First, she'd take a taxi to the guest house. Once she'd dumped her case and freshened up, she would walk to Restaurant Greetje for Stamppot, a traditional Dutch dish made from mashed potatoes. Then she would head to bed early, so that she'd be rested for Simon's arrival in the morning.

  The crowd around the carousel bunched more tightly together. Probably someone was trying to push in from the back. Freya brushed against the woman next to her. The woman wore silk combat trousers and a crop top that showed off her smooth brown belly. Her hair was expensively tousled.

  Freya looked around. She spotted clones of the girl everywhere, dotted around the perimeter of the carousel. Who were these glamorous hipsters? And where were they heading to in Amsterdam? Somewhere cool, Freya bet.

  She glanced down at her jeans with their elasticated waistband and at her slip-on shoes. They were comfy clothes that were great for travelling. But now that she'd seen these hipster girls, she wished that she could run into the washroom and change into something else. Not that she had any trendy clothes.

  With a sigh, she turned her attention back to the carousel. There was her little bag with the yellow ribbon around the handle. It had appeared from the chute and was about to go around the first curve of the conveyor belt. Freya shoved her way toward it through the crowd, muttering apologies as she elbowed people aside.

  She reached the conveyor belt. The bag was level with her. It started to move past her. She lunged forward and, grunting, pulled it free from the carousel. The crowd cleared around her, as she dropped the case onto the floor.

  She extended the handle. Then she wheeled the bag through seemingly endless corridors to the immigration section. She handed her passport to the customs man at the booth. He stamped her passport and waved her through. Now it was nearly over. Just a short walk through the nothing to declare section then her holiday in sexy Amsterdam would begin.

  She headed through the nothing to declare section. Her suitcase seemed to speed up of its own accord. Its wheels made a happy trundling sound across the polished floor. The taxi rank was just outside. That's what all five guidebooks had said. Of course, she could take the Metro but that way too scary. She wasn't that—

  "Excuse me," a voice called.

  It took several seconds for Freya to realize that the person was talking to her. She stopped and turned her head toward the voice. A customs officer stood behind an inspection table. He had a clipped moustache. His short-sleeved shirt was adorned with badges and crests.

  "Excuse me, ma'am." He spoke perfect English with just a trace of a Dutch accent. "Can you come over here?"

  Freya stared at him confused. Then she wheeled her bag up to him.

  He gestured to the case. "Did you pack it yourself?"

  She nodded.

  The man pointed at the table. "Can you put your bag up there?"

  It was more of a command than a request.

  Freya fought back a sigh. She wanted to get to the guesthouse. How long was this charade going to take? Did she look like a drugs smuggler? Or a desperate, gullible drugs mule? Then she was sledgehammered by a hideous thought.

  The thought was so awful that she started to shake. The shaking took hold of the whole of her body. Oh God, oh God. The sex toys.

  She must have turned pale because now the man was really staring at her.

  "Bag on the table." A fresh insistency had crept into his voice.

  Freya started to sweat. She stared at the exit. Passengers streamed through it seemingly without a care in the universe. With leaden hands, she lifted the case up onto the desk.

  "And what brings you to Amsterdam?" the man asked.

  "I'm here for—pleasure." She flushed. Shit. Why did she say pleasure?

  The man stared at her even harder.

  He reached forward and, with agonizing slowness, he tugged back the zipper on the case. The sound echoed around the room. All of the blood drained to Freya's head. Oh God. Oh God. She'd packed the sex toys last. They would be on clear display on
the top.

  The man flipped open the lid of the case. Freya peered inside. Yay. The toys had gone. They'd magically disappeared. Then she realized that they must have been shaken about by the baggage handlers and had sunk to the bottom like treasure.

  The custom's man started to rummage through the clothes, past Simon's Y fronts and the sundress with the strappy back that she'd bought for the cruise along the river. From the depths of the case, he pulled out the handcuffs. He held them up by one cuff, so that the other cuff dangled down. The pink fun fur seemed even more ludicrous against the sterile background of the airport.

  "Oh," he said. "I see you really are here for pleasure."

  Freya's earlobes burned.

  "And what is your profession?" he asked.

  "I'm a librarian."

  "Oh, a librarian."

  She knew what he was thinking. So it's true about what they say about quiet ones.

  He put the handcuffs back into the case and continued to shift through her stuff. It was as if he were panning for gold. He held aloft the love balls. Freya squirmed. She half expected him to start juggling with them.

  To her horror, another customs man wandered over. He was scrawny. His Adam's apple was so pointed that it looked like it was about to cut through his throat.

  "Need any help, Aart?" he asked the first customs guy.

  The first man shook his head. "But stay. This is worth watching."

  Freya wanted to die.

  The first customs man reached into the bag again. He groped through the clothes with a look of extreme concentration on his face.

  Not the vibrator, Freya thought. Please, not the vibrator.

  Suddenly, she couldn't bear to watch. She glanced away. People continued to flow through the nothing to declare section toward the exit. As they walked past the table, they slowed down, rubbernecking, and shot her curious, sideways looks. A handsome man in a suit paused by the table. He was clearly watching what was happening.

  Freya heard a buzzing sound. She whipped her head back to bag.

  The customs man had found her vibrator and had switched it on.

  "Just checking that it wasn't damaged on the flight, miss," he said.

  The second customs guy's lips twitched.

  The first customs man switched off the vibrator and dropped it back into the case. He started to zip the case back up. But he wasn't doing it fast enough. Why wasn't he working faster? Freya prayed that this would soon be over. She fantasized around turning around and hopping onto the next flight back to Heathrow.

  The first customs man picked up her bag and set it back down onto the floor.

  "Have fun," he said to her.

  She blushed for what had to be the thousandth time in the last five minutes. Or maybe she'd never stopped blushing. Perhaps her face had been one continuous blush.

  As she set off toward the exit, she heard one of the customs men say something to the other one in Dutch. They snickered.

  Head down, she marched through the exit and onto the concourse and into the hubbub of people. Travellers were hurrying this way and that. The air rang with the slap of footsteps and the sound of trundling wheels. Her legs were still shaking. The colours around her seemed brighter than normal as the adrenaline pumped through her. Still, in a few more minutes' time, she'd be speeding away in a taxi and would be free from this God awful airport.

  "Excuse me," a voice called.

  Freya's heart thumped in her ears. Oh God. It was the customs man again. He was going to summon her back to the table and make her unpack her bag in front of more of his mates. Clearly, word had gotten around about her bag of tricks.

  She pivoted, her heart thumping. Relief flowed through her. It wasn't the customs man but a man in a suit. He was in his thirties with high cheekbones and a strong jawline. He was clearly a lawyer. He wore the same expensive-looking suit as the lawyer on that TV show Banged Up, which she was glued to on Thursday nights.

  "Hey,” the man spoke again. He had a slight London accent.

  Freya stared at him, bemused. She had no idea why this hot lawyer had stopped her or why he was talking to her. Things were becoming increasingly surreal by the second.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "Do I know you?"

  The man shook his head. "I saw what happened with those customs guys. Talk about making a show of it.”

  Ah, that was right. Now Freya recognized him. He'd watched her at the examination table while the custom's man had pawed through her things.

  She smiled at him. He was such a handsome lawyer. This was the first good thing that had happened all day. He'd seen the way that the customs men had humiliated her. Now he was going to help her to sue them. Or to file a Human Rights complaint.

  The man's blue eyes searched her face. "I just wanted to check—"

  "On my financial situation? Don't worry, I've got a job. I can pay you. I won't need legal aid."

  The man's pale eyebrows knitted together. He was beginning to look less certain. “I just came to check—”

  “About the toys.”

  “No. No. I mean what you do is your own business. What happens in Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam.”

  “I thought that was Vegas.”

  Now Freya got it. He wanted to use the toys with her.

  “Go away,” she snarled. "I'm a librarian not a prostitute."

  She cast a glance at the man's shocked face. Then she turned and began to pull her suitcase as fast as she could through the concourse, dragging it like a reluctant dog.

  "Hey," the man called.

  Freya stopped listening. She pressed her lips together and continued to march toward the automatic doors. The holiday was a disaster. She wished she'd never come to Amsterdam at all.

  Chapter Eight

  Freya sat brooding in the back of the taxi as it drove to the guesthouse. Images flashed through her head—of the customs man smirking as he held up the handcuffs, of the man in the suit holding out his business card to her, of the lust in the handsome face.

  The one time that she'd done something daring in her life, it had backfired on her. In fact, it had more than backfired. It had gone catastrophically wrong. People were punishing her like she was a whore.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled through the window. Even Amsterdam was punishing her. Where was the Amsterdam that had been advertised in the guidebooks? This was not the Amsterdam that she'd signed up for. Where were the canals? And the cute stalls selling tulips and clogs? The taxi was passing a stretch of shops that were so nondescript that they could easily have been in England. True, the men did look more European. They were taller and wore flat caps. Mopeds whined along the road.

  A woman on a bike pulled out, wobbling, in front of the cab. Freya waited for her driver to honk at her. But he didn't. Dutch taxi drivers were clearly a lot more chilled than London drivers were. She smiled. This was a new travelling experience. She was discovering new things. Maybe it was going to be okay after all.

  And she couldn't wait to see the guesthouse, Das Vogel. It had been her fifth choice. The other four places that she'd picked from her favourite guidebook had all been booked up. According to the guidebook, Das Vogel had been built at the turn of the century. Freya loved old buildings. They were more romantic than new ones. She also loved the sound of Das Vogel's decor, which the guidebook had described as “sumptuous”.

  She imagined Simon lying her down onto the sumptuous ruffles of the bed and making sumptuous love to her. He would ravage her in ways that she'd never dreamed possible. Just being in Amsterdam would make him good at sex.

  The taxi stopped. Freya peered through the glass. They had stopped by an ugly sand-coloured building. Was this Das Vogel? It looked nothing like the photo in the guidebook. The guidebook had photo shopped the hell out of it.

  The place was razor thin, much taller than it was wide. It was built on stilts and it leaned toward her at such an alarming angle that it seemed about to fall on her at any second. Still, she thought, it was
probably much better inside.

  She paid the driver and hopped out. He took her case out of the trunk. She nodded her thanks then pulled her bag across the pavement toward the ornate iron gate. It creaked when she opened it. She bumped her bag up the steps and through the imposing door. Then she stepped into a foyer, her eyes straining in the gloom. She wrinkled her nose at the musty smell.

  A woman sat behind a desk. Her gray hair was piled on top of her hair in a messy bun. She wore a blouse with puffy sleeves. The collar was secured around her neck with a diamante broach. Next to her, a love bird squawked in a cage.

  Freya knew that it was rude but she couldn't stop staring at the woman, who seemed to belong to a bygone era. Rather than holding a quill, the woman had a phone tucked under her chin.

  "Sorry," she spoke into the receiver. "No, sorry, not even a single."

  She laid the phone back into its cradle and shot Freya a brittle smile.

  The phone rang again.

  The woman rolled her eyes then picked up the receiver. "Hello. No. We have run out. You have tried the Picadillo, no? Oh, you have. Call the tourist information board, perhaps they help."

  She put down the phone. Instantly, it started up again.

  She ignored it and turned her attention to Freya. "Sorry. We're full."

  "It's okay," Freya said. "I have a reservation. Freya Grey for the marital suite."

  The woman's lined face lit up. "Oh, I remember. I talk to you. I am Madame Meijer."

  She opened a spiral bound book, which lay on the desk and ran a gnarled finger down the entries. "Ah, there you are. Is a good job you booked, no? It seems that the whole world has turned up for the party."

  "What party?" Freya felt excited.

  Madame Meijer shrugged. "Oh, is a famous DJ. He come to play. Everyone lose their head over him. But the couple in Number 4." Madame Meijer pointed down the corridor. "She have food poisoning. She eat at Elandsstraat. I told her not to. But would she listen? And now she is sick. She want me to sell her ticket to the party. We just work in the hotel. We are not peddlers, are we, Rembrandt?" Freya realized that Madame Meijer was speaking to the love bird.