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After dinner, she put on a family drama because she knew her mother would like it, aware of the vague thump of Nate’s music upstairs, suddenly wishing she was in the pub with him instead. Nate would be easy to talk to – she wouldn’t have to choose her words, hopping across the subjects as if watching out for mines.
Her mother nodded as the credits went up.
‘That’s the trouble today. Everybody expects too much.’
Sherie kept her voice level and kind. ‘You didn’t, did you?’
Her mother gave that little sniff that always sent Sherie’s nerves jangling. ‘No, well, you didn’t then. You accepted your lot in those days.’
Sherie had found before that if she made her mother a large enough gin, the truth would seep out.
‘Do you ever wish it had been different?’ she asked. ‘That you’d pursued your career – been a legal secretary like you wanted to, instead of having us and staying at home? Or gone back to it later, when we were at school?’
He mother didn’t look at her. ‘No point wishing. We didn’t want latchkey children. We wanted to give you and Alison the best possible start.’ Her voice had taken on that slight drone as if reciting. ‘But I did have a brain,’ she said suddenly, in a different tone.
Sherie leant forward, almost dislodging Marquis who gave a small chirp of indignation. ‘Of course you did – you do. You’re a very intelligent woman. And it’s not too late, Mum. You’re only seventy-five – it’s nothing these days – you could do an open university degree–’
‘Poorh!’ Her mother’s lips vibrated with disdain.
‘Or take up painting, or join a writing class – you like keeping your diary. You could expand it – write a memoir.’
Even as she suggested it, Sherie wondered what would go in into such a tome. An endless account of serving cups of tea and listening silently to a catalogue of bigotry and Brexit bile?
For a tiny moment, her mother looked sad. Then she sniffed again. ‘I’m fine as I am, thank you very much.’
She looked across at her daughter. ‘I know you’re unhappy because Alison has the children and you haven’t, but it was your own choice. You wanted the big job.’ There was a note of triumph in her voice as she took back the upper hand and delivered the customary coup de grace. ‘And so you missed your chance.’
Chapter 6 (#ulink_096c66c1-3341-58c3-acab-dd7046a5835e)
‘It was too good to miss.’
Roz, sick to her stomach as she let herself into the huge seafront villa on the cliffs at North Foreland – the most expensive stretch of coastline in the area – remembered the first time her colleague had explained where she got her apparently endless money from.
Melody, tall, dark and smiling had looked Roz directly in the eyes when she’d finally plucked up the courage to ask. They did a similar job at Turner Contemporary, the iconic gallery in Margate, and Roz was pretty sure, knowing her own salary, that she couldn’t be funding her lifestyle from there.
Sure, Melody had a five-year-old who spent half the week with her dad and not a cash-draining teenager who was there full-time, and she’d been at the gallery longer so worked four days, whereas Roz rarely did more than three. But even so, working it out pro rata, Roz still couldn’t see how Melody did it.
She’d noticed the clothes and the shoes and the handbags straightway and assumed her workmate had an inheritance stashed away or a generous boyfriend, but as the months went on, it appeared neither was likely.
Melody’s parents lived in a council flat, she told Roz cheerily, and her last boyfriend was a waster she’d dumped when she caught him going through her purse.
‘You’ll be all right one day then,’ she’d said, when Roz – loosened up by the leftover wine she’d had, clearing up after a preview – had confided that she had a difficult relationship with her well-off parents and had always tried desperately hard to avoid asking them for anything – even when Amy was a baby.
‘There’s nobody to leave me anything,’ said Melody. ‘What relatives I’ve got left have got bugger all!’
So when she came in, proudly dangling the keys to her new car, and was heard announcing the booking she’d just made for ten days in Lanzarote, Roz couldn’t contain her curiosity – or desperation – any longer. Melody had to be in debt – she must have a fistful of credit cards maxed out. But as Roz knew to her cost, this could only last so long. She told herself it was concern that drove her to check out the younger woman’s finances.
‘Melody,’ she began cautiously, ‘I know it’s none of my business …’
Melody had listened in silence, given Roz a long appraising look, during which Roz had felt herself squirm, and had then broken into a wide grin. ‘I’ll tell you after work,’ she’d said. ‘Can’t discuss it here.’
They’d gone their separate ways for the rest of the day – Melody to help set up the Foyle Room for a corporate event and Roz to sit on a chair in the South Gallery upstairs, to make sure nobody was taking snaps of My Dead Dog – a gigantic plaster cast of a flattened Alsatian – or pinching the artistically scattered ‘ashes’ of said deceased hound that were mingled with the array of withered flowers, which one particular visitor – probably off his meds again – had been attempting to do on a daily basis.
By the time the two women were sitting in the Lighthouse Bar at the end of Margate’s Harbour Arm, with large glasses of rosé, Roz was in a lather of curiosity and fear. She’d decided it had to be some sort of fraud – shoplifting wouldn’t fund a new car – not unless she was stealing by the sackful and had a very good client base on eBay – and the only prostitute Roz had met in Margate was a sad, downtrodden woman who was barely paying the rent.
‘It’s totally the easiest, best way I’ve ever found of making money,’ said Melody, clearly enjoying keeping Roz in suspense a little longer. ‘I get to dress up, drink champagne, do a bit of play-acting – you know I like my am dram like you do – and I work from home, hours to suit me. I’m providing a service and I’m coining it in.’
‘You’re doing escort work?’ Roz could hear the disapproving note in her voice, despite her best efforts to sound neutral.
‘Nope!’ Melody grinned. ‘It involves men for sure – but I’m not sleeping with them.’
Roz waited.
‘I thrash ’em!’ Melody giggled joyously. ‘Oh, Roz your face. I’m a domme!’
Roz gawped.
‘You know, high black leather boots, fishnets, whip … Or sometimes tweed suit and sensible brogues if they’re having a strict teacher fantasy. I’ve got a plimsoll I use for a couple of clients and a proper old-fashioned cane if they want six of the best. Love, I only started nine months ago and they are queuing up, I tell you. One-hundred and fifty pounds an hour, two-hundred and fifty pounds for two. I’ve got more work on than I can handle–’
‘And you don’t have to–’
‘Absolutely not!’ Melody took a mouthful of wine. ‘No touching of any kind. I am very strict when I get going – they wouldn’t dare. And I make it clear in the email I send first. Everything is on my terms and quite honestly I’m having the time of my fucking life – without the fucking.’ Melody laughed. ‘I can help you get started if you fancy it … it’s dead easy.’
Roz’s heart was pounding in shock and excitement. As one half of her brain was reeling at the image of Melody strutting about with a whip in her hand, the other was calculating the income.
Eight hours would bring her in a thousand pounds. Even if she just did that once a month it would make all the difference in the world … But imagine if she did sixteen hours. There would be money for school trips galore, and she could start to pay off her credit cards …
‘I don’t think I could …’ she said, already wondering how she might be able to. ‘I mean where–’
Melody had it all sorted. ‘Well first, we’d get you an ad up on bendover.com and a Twitter account and then–’
‘I mean where would I do it? Could I go to them?’
Melody shook her head. ‘Not usually. I do it when Emily’s at her dad’s. One of my mates borrows her friend’s house when the friend is working nights. She’s a nurse,’ she added helpfully. ‘You don’t need much – just a room and a chair really. Do it on your day off when Amy’s at school.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Roz’s stomach was fluttering nervously. ‘I think I’d be too terrified.’
‘Only at first,’ said Melody. ‘The first time I did it, I was shaking all over. I hit the vodka and by the time he arrived, I’d got so drunk I could barely walk. But he was such a sweetie. Eighty if he was a day and just over heart surgery. Said a damn good thrashing was the only thing that cheered him up.’ She looked wistful. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to do it hard – thank god it was only a slippering – but he was very complimentary. Brought his own cane next time and told me what to say while he stood in the corner. That's the good thing about domestic and school discipline,’ Melody rattled on. ‘All you need is a cane, slipper, hair brush and belt – costs nothing. My friend Julie spent fifteen grand kitting out her dungeon with all the leather harnesses, cages and queening stools! Mind you, she’s earned it back threefold …’
Roz sat in stunned silence, with no idea what the latter list of equipment was or what you’d do with it.
‘But how did you know about all this?’ she eventually asked faintly.
‘I’m a bottom in my private life,’ said Melody, matter-of-factly, ‘so it makes me a good top – I understand what they want. But I don’t take it for granted,’ she went on, ‘I take it seriously. I ask all the right questions beforehand so I can give them the time of their lives.’
Roz tried to visualise herself in thigh-high black boots, hitting someone’s nether regions, and failed.
Melody sounded almost evangelical. ‘The gratitude really makes it worthwhile. And you get given lots of stuff too – flowers, booze, jewellery, lingerie. Know that Anya Hindmarch bag you liked? That was from a punter who just wanted me to tie him up and then poke him with a stick while he licked my feet.’
‘Really?’
‘And then asked me to pee on him.’
‘Oh my God!’ Roz’s hand had flown to her mouth. ‘I just couldn’t–’
‘But that’s the thing,’ Melody said calmly. ‘You don’t have to do anything you’re not happy with – that’s why you have the conversation in advance. If you don’t like the sound of it, you just politely decline. You can always hand ’em on to me, just in case it’s something I don’t mind.’ Melody chuckled. ‘I’ve got a bit more broadminded since I started … and the cash started rolling in.’
Roz’s brain was still whirring like a fruit machine. Melody was now talking about her ‘profile’ and discussing ‘specialities’. ‘Doesn’t take long,’ she was saying. ‘Come round to me one evening and we’ll set you all up. Think up a name and I’ll take a photo.’
Roz frowned. ‘But suppose someone who knew me saw my picture? There’s Amy to think about …’
‘You don’t have to show your face. I’ve just got a photo of my legs in high boots and stockings, with a whip trailing down beside me. My friend Nina has her hair down over her face – you can just see her lips. Some of the girls are shot from behind – wearing a basque or something. Here – look.’
Melody dug in her handbag for her iPhone and began tapping at the screen. ‘Some of them don’t care at all. See this Sharon? That’s her real name – she works in the Co-op.’
‘Gosh.’ Roz peered at the redhead in the low cut top staring into the camera with a stern expression. ‘Suppose her kids’ teachers saw it?’
‘Well they’re hardly likely to bring it up in assembly, are they?’ Melody grinned. ‘You’ll get loads of interest as soon as you register – the chaps are always all over someone new. Email with them first – make sure they’re not nutters or after anything too disgusting – and they’ll tell you what they want. You need to use the right words. One of my regulars likes me to say ‘smack bottom’ not ‘spanking’ and I’ve got another one who wants me to hit him with one of the shoes he’s wearing. You’ll soon get the hang of it.’
Melody drained the rest of her wine in her glass and gestured towards Roz’s glass. ‘Take the money before you get started and remember they’ve probably got more to lose than you have if anyone else found out, so don’t worry about that …’ She stood up and began to move towards the bar.
‘We can do a two-hander one night if you want,’ she said casually over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got one regular who’d love two of us going at him. Give you a taster of what it’s all about …’
As Roz walked tentatively 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 hurt.’ Roz looked at the cane Melody had given her and the leather slipper. Oh Christ, could she really do this?
She’d been pacing the hall for ten minutes, braced for it, but she still jumped wildly when the doorbell rang. Her palms were sweating so badly she was likely to drop the bloody stick before she could use it.
For a moment she thought about hiding in the coat cupboard till he went away, or telling him it had all been a mistake. Or even denying all knowledge and pretending he’d been the victim of a terrible hoax.
Then she thought of Amy’s face when she told her she could go on the trip to Paris after all.
Roz took a deep breath and opened the door …
Chapter 7 (#ulink_a3843a7e-b8de-564d-a177-87da16f476a5)
I left it so long because I didn’t believe it. Nothing fitted with anything I’d ever read or heard. Breast lumps – I thought – were small and hard and you discovered them in the shower. Like a pea – that’s what everyone always says. This wasn’t even in my breast really – it was above it where there’s a muscle anyway. It wasn’t even a proper lump, just a sort of … thickening … It felt like something that could have happened because I’d pulled something. Or lifted too much.
Or knocked it.
