I had no idea what I had just agreed to. Was I just going to her flat for a drink? Was she going to tie me up and torture me? Was she perhaps an axe murderer herself? I resisted the urge to examine the palms of her hands. She might not be a murderer, but I had my suspicions that she might be a nut-job. I had the knack of attracting them at the moment. I also wasn’t sure what I was doing in a taxi heading towards a strange girl’s flat. I was probably being old-fashioned. Maybe this was how things worked now if you didn’t offend your date in the first five minutes of meeting. She was right about one thing: I did find her attractive. She was physically attractive but I also liked her self-confidence. I have always liked strong women.
I noticed the taxi driver glancing at me in his rear-view mirror. He smiled knowingly. What he knew I don’t know, but he seemed to know more than I knew – that was for sure. We arrived at her building and after paying the driver, she opened the communal door to her block.
Her flat was on the first floor and her front door opened directly into her living room. It had wooden floors and a small leather couch facing a flat-screen television. The place was filled with light from the floor-to-ceiling French doors that faced onto her private balcony. She opened them and I stepped out while Carrie disappeared back inside. The view was lovely. Her flat overlooked the canal basin, and I noticed there were a number of little coloured barges and house-boats bobbing on the water. It was not as spectacular a view as the one from my penthouse, but there was more to see here, with people coming and going from the boats and flats.
The canal was overlooked on three sides by similar apartment blocks, and on the furthest away block on the eastern corner was a small bar with tables outside. The bar was busy and music drifted across the basin towards us. There was a slight smell of decay in the air which I assumed came from the stagnant water below. That alone would put me off living on a house-boat as the odour must have been much stronger close to the water.
Carrie returned with two large glasses of red wine and we sat and watched the world go by for a while. Carrie was very quiet, compared to earlier and I wondered what was going through her mind. I glanced at her and she smiled.
‘What time do you need to be home?’
I checked my watch. It had just gone nine. Amy would be in bed by now and Pauline would be quite happy watching the TV. ‘As long as I’m back for midnight I’m probably OK. I don’t like to take advantage.’
‘Aw, that’s a shame. I was hoping you would take advantage of me.’
As Carrie smiled at me, I felt a tingle of excitement slip down my spine into my loins. I hadn’t had sex with anyone since Lindsay died, and even then we last made love in early November so it had been nearly a year.
I didn’t know what to say so I simply smiled. I was still feeling uncomfortable with the whole scenario but there was no going back now.
‘OK then.’ Carrie stood up. ‘Just stay there for a few minutes and I’ll call you through, OK?’
Still mute I nodded.
Carrie leaned over, put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me slowly and sensuously on the lips. I could taste cherry lip gloss and red wine.
A few minutes passed, which seemed like hours, before Carrie called out to me. I put my empty glass down onto the metal table and stepped through the doors into her living room. There were four doors leading out of the room. One was the front door we came in, another was open and revealed a small galley kitchen, and the other two were closed. The first one I opened led into a small bathroom. Amazed with my powers of deduction, I decided that Carrie must be behind the other door which I assumed led to her bedroom. I tried to suppress my growing excitement which was becoming obvious by the bulge in the front of my jeans.
The sight that greeted me when I stepped into her bedroom did nothing to reduce my excitement. The room was dark. Carrie obviously had a blackout blind behind the closed silver curtains. The room was lit by a number of scented candles, the flames of which flickered when I walked in. She asked me to close the door.
Carrie was lying naked on her double bed holding a small silver vibrator. I could also see a number of other instruments of pleasure lined up neatly on her bedside cabinet. Some of them were instantly recognizable from various magazines and porn movies I’d seen such as the ‘double intruder’ and a pink ‘rabbit’. However some of them looked like torture instruments, and one in particular reminded me of a miniature version of a deep mine tunnelling machine that I think I saw once in a documentary on the Discovery channel.
She placed the small silver bullet vibrator on her pillow and then reached over for the ‘tunneller’. (I’ve no idea if that was what it was called, but it was the name I gave it.) She switched it on and gasped as the spinning knobbly multiple-headed device throbbed over her nether regions. Adding to the effect was the multi-coloured lights that were spaced along the edge of the device. The colours changed from red to blue then to green and back to red again. It lit up the room like some kind of weird sexual discotheque. The scent of Carrie’s arousal filled the small space and I wondered what my role was to be. Carrie had made no attempt to involve me yet in her reverie and I wondered if I was just supposed to join in. I was aching with the sight of her and watched as her magnificent breasts heaved up and down with the steady rhythm of the ‘tunneller’. I began to undo my belt.
Carrie looked up from her ecstasy and frowned. She waved her finger at me, switched the ‘tunneller’ off and sat up, covering her body with a sheet.
I was taken aback by her sudden display of modesty. Noticing my confusion, Carrie explained. ‘You can watch me, Andy, I like being watched, but I don’t want you to touch me, and I don’t want to touch you. Not yet anyway. I don’t know you well enough.’
The whole situation was completely absurd. My life was starting to feel completely absurd. She didn’t know me well enough, and yet she was happy enough to invite me back to her flat and let me watch her masturbating.
‘Can you sit on the chair in the corner, please,’ Carrie instructed. ‘That way I can keep an eye on you.’ She indicated a small wooden chair opposite her bed.
I followed her instructions while she fired up the ‘tunneller’ again and the room was once more bathed in multi-coloured lights. Sitting in the corner while Carrie lost herself again I felt like some kind of naughty schoolboy, though quite what sort of school would apply this kind of punishment to one of their pupils I wasn’t sure – not one I would want to send my children to anyway. I watched for a moment longer then told her I needed to go to the bathroom – which was true, although I needed an excuse to get out of her room for a few minutes. It took me a while to pee for obvious reasons, but that also gave me time to think. As sexy as it was watching Carrie playing with herself, I didn’t feel comfortable with the arrangement. It had been a long time since I’d been in such an erotic situation. Who was I kidding? I’d never been in that kind of situation and I was ill equipped to deal with it. Carrie was not what I was looking for. If I was going to meet somebody I wanted them to be normal, whatever normal was. Maybe there was no such thing as normal any more. Given my recent experiences, I certainly had my doubts.
I flushed the toilet and stepped back into her living room. I could hear the buzzing of her sex toys and gasps of pleasure from her bedroom. Reluctantly I decided to leave, and slipped quietly out of her flat, though I’m not sure why I was being quiet as I doubted very much she was aware of anything other than her own body, and the liquid sounds it was producing.
I headed home, strangely relieved to be out of her flat, and a little sad that yet another date had ended in disappointment, although the image of Carrie on her bed would stay with me for some time, I was sure.
I hailed a cab and phoned Pauline to say I was on my way home. When I arrived she was waiting for me at the front door of the apartment block and jumped into my taxi. I had paid the driver more than enough to cover my fair and Pauline’s ride home. Pauline didn’t get a
chance to ask me how the evening had gone or why I was home early, which was a relief.
Back in my apartment I checked on Amy who was sleeping soundly. I poured a glass of wine and flipped open my iPad. I logged on to Love Bitz. I wasn’t expecting any emails from Carrie whom I was sure hadn’t even noticed I was gone yet. There was one email waiting for me though from someone called Sandra.
Hi Andy,
I saw your profile and felt really attracted to you. The only thing is I’m actually married.
I sighed. Another odd-ball.
I know my profile says I’m single but you have to say that to get a listing on the site. Anyway my husband and I have . . . mmm what would you call it? An understanding maybe? You see we don’t make love any more. We’ve been married for ten years now and stopped the sex thing about three years ago. We basically just stopped fancying each other so it seemed pointless having sex when neither of us enjoyed it. What we do now is we have an open marriage – at least I think that’s what it’s called. Basically we can sleep with other people as long as it doesn’t get serious. We talked about getting divorced but actually we get on really well, except physically, so neither of us wants to do that. I suppose it is possible we might meet someone else and it might happen, but it hasn’t yet.
I guess that’s it, so if you want to meet up for a no-strings arrangement then I’d love to see you, but quite understand if you are looking for something different.
Sandra xxx
PS I’ve added you to my friends so you can see my profile.
Out of curiosity I clicked onto her profile. Sandra (34) had only one visible picture. It showed a petite raven-haired beauty with intense green eyes. I found it hard to believe her husband had stopped fancying her. However, as tempting as her offer was, I didn’t need this kind of complication in my life and I reluctantly sent her a quick email telling her that, and sadly shut down my iPad for the night.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
My rota for the week ahead meant I had to work Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. When I woke up on the Friday morning and got myself dressed I had no inkling at that point what was about to happen. The fact that most of the firm’s senior managers had been called down to London for meetings should have alerted me that something was going on. However, as I had been preoccupied with other matters, it was no surprise really that everything had passed me by.
During the week I had received no more contact from Lindsay, which I found surprising. Maybe her ‘system’ had failed and I would never hear from her again. The thought saddened me but perhaps it was for the best.
I’d had no contact from Carrie either which was a relief. I felt ashamed of myself for running out on her, and likened it to the time at school when Jamie had arranged for a girl who fancied me, Diane Stevenson, to meet me outside the football changing rooms after school. I was aged fourteen and something of a late developer. That particular afternoon I took stage fright and hid in the boys’ toilets until she got fed up and left. Jamie had never let me live it down until this day. Now he’d have something else to taunt me with.
I had bitten the bullet with Amanda. I sensed she had become frustrated with me and I had agreed to meet up with her that evening for a drink. I really didn’t want to do that, partly because I didn’t want to discover she was a nutcase like all the rest, and partly because I would probably do something to mess it all up. She was my back up – my last chance maybe?
As all the senior managers were away, it meant that it would be an unusually busy day for me as I was likely to be the only person left in the building able to make any decisions. The benefit of that would be that it would keep my mind off my impending meeting with Amanda. We’d arranged to meet in a bar called Nine Brothers in the Cowgate at seven o’clock.
All that was for later. In the meantime I‘d finished showering and donned a new suit. I had about a dozen new suits in my wardrobe which sounded extravagant, but most were cheap off-the-peg numbers from a retail outlet store near Edinburgh. I had got into the habit of buying a new suit every time I was in the store and, as I tended to wear them into the ground, they did last a long time.
Amy was awake and doing the usual with her breakfast cereal while watching CBeebies. I knew having the TV on so early was probably not good for her brain development, but it kept her occupied whilst I got ready for work. Pauline arrived soon after I’d finished my breakfast and immediately switched off the TV. She explained, ‘I can’t hear myself think with that racket going on, and Amy’s not even watching it.’
That was true. Amy had given up on the TV and was playing with one of her many dolls and a buggy, but I was watching Gigglebiz. It was one of the few kids’ programmes I actually quite liked and was certainly a lot more cheerful than tuning in to the news.
I thought about protesting but decided her opinion of me would not be improved by knowing I liked a TV programme aimed at children aged seven and under. Maybe that was actually my intellectual level – in which case Amy and I would have some great conversations in about four years’ time.
‘Andy, remember to take your antibiotics,’ Pauline reminded me. I popped one of the tablets on my tongue and washed it down with some of the milk left over from the bottom of my cereal bowl. I’d had a dental abscess in one of my front incisors for most of the week and the dentist had prescribed the pills for me on Tuesday morning. They had certainly helped and I no longer needed any painkillers, but I could still feel the pain as a dull pulse in my gum.
I picked up my mobile and noticed I had seven missed calls, all from Jamie. I wondered what had made him so anxious to speak to me. He couldn’t have found out about Carrie already unless she’d put something about my ‘fear of sex’ all over some social network site. I hardly checked Facebook these days. I’d been too busy with Lindsay’s emails and Love Bitz.
I hardly spoke to Jamie these days so the missed phone calls made me wonder what was going on as it was not like him to chase me. Annoyingly, as usual he hadn’t left a voicemail, so I decided to put off calling him back until later. I was going to be late for work anyway.
As I dropped my plate into the sink I noticed the calendar beside the cooker said it was Friday 13 September. I was not normally a superstitious person: I tended to avoid walking under ladders, but that was usually because there would be some clown at the top of it likely to drop something onto my head. I saw that more as common sense than superstition.
However, when I arrived at work and plonked myself behind my desk, I found a sinister looking A4 white envelope marked ‘Private and Confidential’ sitting on my desk. The words ‘private’ and ‘confidential’ usually spelt trouble in an organization like Perennial Mutual.
Inside was a pack with a typed letter attached to the front inviting me to attend a meeting in the main boardroom at eleven o’clock. The information was for senior management eyes only, and it made it clear that the contents must not be revealed to any other staff.
Today was the first time I realized I was classified as ‘senior management’ but reckoned, by the tone of the writing, it might not be a great time to find myself in such lofty company.
As the RRA I had some insight into the state of the company’s finances and knew they had endured a very rocky time recently. For over 250 years Perennial Mutual had ploughed its own furrow through wars, famines, depressions, market crashes and hostile government legislation and, despite everything that had been thrown at them, had prospered. They had spent the last three years trying to do the same thing, all that experience counting against them, and it now appeared they were facing a takeover as the company share price had slumped to an all-time low. (They were mutual in name only!)
I made my way up to the grand boardroom at the allotted time and took my allotted seat around the huge old table. The walls of the oak-panelled room were adorned with the portraits of previous chief executives, dating back nearly 200 years. Sir Daniel Levy had the unenv
iable task of addressing the meeting knowing full well that his would in all likelihood be the last portrait to hang in this room. Unsurprisingly his voice was solemn and his expression gloomy when he began to speak.
‘First of all I would like to thank you all for attending the meeting today.’
Not that we had a lot of choice, I thought to myself. I knew that Sir Daniel would now lapse into corporate jargon and I would need to translate for myself what he was actually saying.
He continued. ‘As most of you will know, over the last twelve months the directors have encountered some fiscal difficulties . . .’ (They’d lost all the company’s money.)
‘. . . had invested into some bundled commercial property portfolios. . . .’ (We bought into some unknown debt from American banks and now own the mortgages on a large number of shacks in Kentucky where people can’t afford the payments and keep chickens in their living room.)
‘. . . efforts were undertaken to secure the commercial property bundles. . . .’ (We lent more money to the Kentucky shack owners who used the funds to buy more chickens.)
The sense of gloom around the room increased as everyone realized the state of the firm’s finances. The meeting concluded with the bombshell that all our jobs were at risk – more corporate jargon for ‘you are effectively out on your arse’. Suddenly the money I had in the bank seemed inadequate. Sure it was enough to tide me over for a few years – a lot of years if push came to shove (whatever that meant) – but most of that money was earmarked to buy myself and Amy a new home one day, not for buying food, clothes and other stuff. That was what I had a job for.
It was amazing how suddenly you appreciate something only when you are in danger of losing it. I had taken my role at PM for granted. They were a good employer with a benign environment that suited me. They were great when Lindsay was ill, and after her death they went out of their way to help me work part-time. I had a good deal of goodwill towards them and was angry that a very few greedy people at the top had jeopardized my job, and probably the jobs of hundreds of others who didn’t even know there was a problem yet – and who had less money in the bank than I did.
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