Arch is in The Gardens, sat on a bench painting his fingernails, pots of varnish in a wooden box next to him. It’s a scrotum thing to do; people give up most of their food ration for ballots to enter the garden and he is painting his fucking fingernails.

No different for us, Lucy says, but she’s wrong. We’re here for love. At least I am.

This ridge of stone between us and Arch, low slung bushes. We can see out but no one can see the five seconds of bliss Lucy gives me. Slow, slow, slow, careful, at first, and then as caution begins to flee from my mind Lucy presses her hands between us, digs her nails in and stops the moment. Lucy tender as she eases the condom free, every touch a tease but that’s not her aim. She inspects the rolls of plastic up close from every angle. Satisified, she slaps the wet mass against my chest.

‘Happy now?’ she says.

‘Not really.’

It’s not pregnant before marriage is the problem, it’s pregnant without care, pregnant against the careful ordered genetic will of The Council. Two years till we marry, till I’m sterilised. But let god have his way before then, have Lucy carry my biological child? It means death for all three of us.

Right on time the rains come, a seething torrent that turns the sky grey and blacks out the cameras. Lucy strides away and in one second her linen white shift turns sheer and shows me her body beneath. Arch shows a shocked face as she appears. I know what she is saying to him. Telling him how she needs a man who can step up.

Arch is married, Arch has been sterilised. Out here they can fuck like bunnies and no one will ever know. To give the little fucker some credit, Arch takes her hand and goes willing enough.

There’s no way to argue it, Lucy’s a bitch. I said yes because I love Lucy. I said yes because maybe that’s how we get through our one day marriage. I might not be the only one but at least I’ll be the first.

But none of those reasons stop me following them into the narrow cliff paths above. I take it slow, scared they might hear now the rain has stopped. No danger of that, the noise they’re making, Lucy on her back and him working hard. Rage only comes when Lucy sees me, when she grins at me.

The rock is little more than a pebble but it does the job against his temple. My turn to smirk, the looks on their faces. Arch finds his knees, and stares back at me, fully clothed but his proud dick taunting me. It’s the first one I’ve touched that’s not mine, and I’ve never squeezed harder. Arch is squealing, beating at my shoulders, as double handed I drag him to the cliff edge.

Now it’s me grinning at Lucy staring her rage back at me. My climax denied, but so’s hers. A faint thump from the rocks below tells us Arch has found his.