The Big Five O. Jane Wenham-Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ across the spacious panelled hall of the house Charlotte had entrusted her with, and pushed open the door to the vast sitting room with its large inglenook style fireplace and sumptuous sofas, her heart pounded at the memory of that first evening.

      Melody had told her to dress as an ‘authoritarian’ – a school mistress perhaps, she’d added helpfully, or some sort of forbidding character. ‘If you haven’t got tweeds,’ she’d instructed, (tweeds?), ‘then think Ann Robinson on The Weakest Link.’

      Roz had looked hopelessly at her wardrobe of sweatshirts and jeans before putting on one of the simple straight black skirts she wore for work and teaming it with a high-necked blouse and some pearls her mother had given her. She still looked rather timid and mousey.

      But Melody had nodded, substituting Roz’s low heels for a pair of her own perilous ones as soon as Roz arrived, and handing Roz a dark lipstick to apply. ‘You’ll do!’ she said, grinning at Roz while Roz looked wildly around her wondering which door on the landing led to the bathroom in case she actually had to throw up.

      ‘I’ll do the talking,’ said Melody as they went back downstairs. ‘You just follow me.’

      Roz had been unable to make more than a squeak in reply before Melody, dressed in a severe black suit with her hair in a bun, opened the front door and ushered in a weedy-looking bloke called Clive, who looked as terror-struck as Roz felt.

      Clive had sat in the middle of the sofa while Melody, towering above him, had kept up a ten-minute tirade about the Clive’s poor performance at work and then ordered him to drop his trousers.

      Roz instinctively recoiled and looked away but Melody, handing her a leather slipper and giving her a small encouraging shove, stepped smartly forward to where Clive was bent over the arm of the sofa and brought what looked like a riding crop with a wide leather end down on his lower regions with an alarmingly loud crack.

      Roz clapped a hand to her mouth as a small, shocked squeal escaped before she could stop it and Clive yelped in pain. Thwack! Melody brought the crop down hard again and Roz gasped once more. ‘Miss Sterling is very disappointed in you, too!’ said Melody, looking disapprovingly at Roz, who shook her head faintly. She looked queasily at Clive’s quivering buttocks encased in a pair of green underpants decorated, somewhat incongruously, with a pattern of holly and reindeers. ‘I’m not sure …’ she began, but Melody was issuing further instructions.

      ‘Upstairs!’ she roared. ‘Now we’re going to do it properly!’

      Roz felt a small bubble of hysteria rise in her throat as Clive scuttled up the stairs after Melody, holding up his trousers.

      ‘Bare bottom!’ Melody yelled as Clive draped himself over the foot of the bed and Roz shot backwards onto the landing in alarm.

      ‘I really can’t …’ she spluttered, as Melody began to apply a matching leather slipper to one side of Clive’s behind, beckoning to Roz to do the same. Roz took a deep breath, trying not faint with embarrassment, before stepping forward, and giving the unappealing white flesh a timid tap with the footwear in her hand.

      ‘Harder,’ hissed Melody, bringing down her arm with spectacular force. ‘Please stop!’ howled Clive.

      Roz immediately dropped her slipper, nearly falling off Melody’s heels, but Melody, not missing a beat, retrieved it and stuffed it back into Roz’s hand. ‘Not said the safe word,’ she mouthed, giving Clive another magnificent wallop. ‘Any more fuss,’ she said to him sternly, ‘and it will hurt even more …’

      She nodded to Roz. ‘Go!’

      Roz raised her arm and brought it down as firmly as she could. Clive whimpered. ‘Six more!’ said Melody, as Roz raised her arm again and they rained down blows in unison while Clive squirmed. Then it was over and Clive was dressed and downstairs and pushing notes into Melody’s hand while thanking her profusely.

      Roz sat weakly on a chair in Melody’s kitchen as her friend counted out eighty pounds and handed it over. Roz looked at the four twenty-pound notes in her hand. The whole encounter had lasted barely half an hour. But she still felt light-headed.

      She’d decided then that the only way she could do it again was to make an absolute rule about no exposed flesh, and to treat it like a role in a play.

      Hadn’t she received rave reviews for her depiction of a wounded wife in Where Does He Go at Night? at the Sarah Thorne Theatre, when she’d gone for a part with the Hilderstone Players?

      That nice lady afterwards – Sue someone – had suggested she auditioned for Mrs Gargery for the annual Dickens Play as a result. And she was a dominating sort.

      Channel your inner Mrs Joe, she breathed to herself now, trying to still the hammering in her chest as she moved around the elegant rooms.

      She’d had a string of part-time jobs before the position at the gallery had come up, always acutely aware that she had to fill the shoes of two parents for Amy and wanting to be there for her. She had taken the decision – perhaps wrongly, she thought ruefully – to live hand to mouth so that she could pick her daughter up from school. She’d worked in shops and pubs, as a dinner lady and a hotel chambermaid, so that the hours would fit, claimed what meagre benefits she could, just about scraping along and hanging onto the thought of finding something with a proper salary when Amy was older. Not realising how very difficult that would be, when she’d been out of the marketplace for so long.

      When Amy was small she didn’t really notice how poor they were – or show any concern about her lack of a father – but she sure did now.

      ‘Perhaps if you’d bothered to stay in touch …’ she’d said nastily, as Roz tried to explain the limitations of just one income against a rising tide of bills and why high-speed internet could not be a priority.

      Roz sighed. Didn’t Amy think her mother longed to stop the constant juggling, the endless calculations, the daily decisions over how much to allow for food so that the hot water could still go on. Didn’t she think Roz wanted to be able to give her nice things? ‘Ask Granny then!’ Amy would snarl. And so it would go on.

      That was why she was doing this, she reminded herself, as she looked around for a final time, and waited – heart still banging – for the doorbell to ring.

      She’d dusted, changed the flowers, rubbed a little essential oil along the tops of the radiators, so the place would smell lovely when the heating came on for its hour twice a day, and opened the windows wide in the downstairs utility room which had a tendency to damp. She’d ticked off everything on Charlotte’s list before stripping off her jeans and changing into the high heels and short, yet demure dress that she thought would fulfil ‘Colin’s’ desire for someone ‘sexy yet prim’ to beat the living daylights out of him.

      She’d taken Melody’s advice and entered into a detailed correspondence with the three men who’d been in touch since her legs, neatly crossed in a pair of high heels, appeared on the website.

      She’d withdrawn from ‘Mark’ quite quickly when he’d expressed a polite desire for her to smear him in peanut butter (if she didn’t mind) and then spread it on toast and eat it, and was still waiting for ‘Jimmy’ to reply with his exact requirements. So far it just seemed to involve him standing in the corner while she threatened him.

      But Colin had seemed unfussy apart from wanting to have a clear view of her legs, and as long as it ‘really СКАЧАТЬ