He smiled. She was glad he didn’t ask her whether she was sure or not. She was glad he could tell how sure she was just by looking at her.
And so they showered together, and having Mark soap her neck, her breasts, her thighs and the cleft between her buttocks was the most erotic thing Estelle had ever experienced in her life. Mark obviously thought so too, because soon he was kissing her deeply and then they were running – still dripping wet – into the bedroom where, after a short period of fierce thrusting, Estelle Morgan had the very first orgasm of her life.
‘Is that what they call a quickie?’ she asked as they lay side by side afterwards, out of breath.
‘Well,’ said Mark ruefully, ‘since it lasted all of a minute, I think it might be.’
She kissed him. ‘Well, it was fucking great!’ she said, and laughing triumphantly, she rolled over on top of him and began to kiss him all over again.
Thirty-two
Realising there was no way she was going to get to sleep that night, Janet knew she had a choice. Either she could mope about crying – because she was far from feeling as OK as she had made out to Estelle – or she could do something constructive.
In the end she managed to combine both activities by making a new start at clearing out her mother’s belongings and sobbing her heart out all the while she was doing it. By morning there were twenty black sacks of rubbish lined up in the hallway ready to be put out for the dustmen, and she was reasonably sure she had no more tears left to cry as far as her marriage was concerned. The tears had mostly been about the waste of her life anyhow, and she certainly didn’t intend to waste anymore of it.
She didn’t love Ray, and it was likely that she hadn’t loved him for a very long time. He was a bad habit she intended to break, along with over-apologising, settling for second best and failing to go for her dreams. Besides, today was the day for Plan Number Two.
Despite being completely exhausted, Janet arrived at work five minutes early to discover that Ray had already phoned the shop.
‘I would be grateful if you could sort out your domestic discussions before you come into work, Janet,’ Carol De Ville told her, but Janet just shrugged and walked past her to stow her handbag out the back without bothering to reply. She didn’t bother to return Ray’s call either. Why should she? She wasn’t interested in anything he had to say to her.
At ten o’clock he phoned again. Once again Carol answered it.
‘Janet,’ she called across the shop, ‘it’s your husband. Again.’
Janet carried on with what she was doing. ‘Tell him I don’t want to speak to him,’ she said.
‘Kindly tell him yourself!’ Carol told her furiously.
So Janet walked past her boss to the phone, took the receiver from her and replaced it without speaking. Then she walked back past an astonished Carol to return to her work.
‘Well!’ said Carol indignantly, but the next time it rang she let it ring. But only after she had shot Janet a glare that would have caused a lesser person to keel over at forty paces.
Janet didn’t care. The days when Carol De Ville could intimidate her were over, and she was counting the minutes until eleven o’clock when Plan Number Two was set to commence.
At eleven o’clock precisely, a smartly dressed man in a pinstripe suit came into the shop. Carol De Ville was instantly all smiles.
‘Christopher! How lovely to see you!’ she said. ‘Do you have somebody to show round?’
Chris Manning, who was a local estate agent, smiled back with easy charm. ‘I do indeed, Ms De Ville,’ he said, and he walked past Carol to shake Janet’s hand. ‘Although obviously, since Mrs Thornton works here, she’s already more familiar than most with the business.’ He smiled at Janet.
‘That’s true,’ Janet said, equally charming. ‘However, I know that with you showing me around I’ll be able to see everything in a completely different light.’ She could feel Carol’s glare in the back of her neck like a deadly laser beam.
‘Shall we start with the upstairs accommodation?’ Chris Manning said, and Janet nodded.
‘That sounds perfect,’ she said.
The upstairs accommodation was presently used only for storage and was dusty and neglected.
‘You’ll need to use some imagination up here, Mrs Thornton,’ Chris Manning told her as they walked through the back of the shop towards the stairs.
Janet smiled at him. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’d be a pretty poor candidate for an interior design business if I didn’t have any of that, Mr Manning,’ she said.
‘Indeed,’ he agreed. ‘But please, call me Chris.’
‘Lead on, Chris.’
Janet hadn’t been up to the flat very often in her six months in the shop – two or three times at the most, and even then only to dump something up there, out of the way. She certainly hadn’t been viewing the rooms as a potential home the way she was now. But actually, despite the dust and the junk, they were nice rooms with high ceilings and original fireplaces that Chris Manning was keen to point out. The flat was certainly small – just a bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom, but if she lived here it would all be hers, and nobody else’s. Janet had never had her own living space before. Doing up the flat would be almost as exciting as starting up a business.
‘Are you ready to venture back downstairs now?’ Chris was a nice man, quite good looking, in his early thirties, she’d say. Without a word having been spoken, something told Janet he knew exactly why she had particularly wanted him to show her round the premises. After all, why wouldn’t Carol be as difficult at the estate agents as she was everywhere else?
Janet glanced at her watch. It was eleven ten – phase two of Plan Two was about to commence. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think it’s the perfect time to look at the shop itself.’
It was. As they went back into the shop, John George was just coming in from the street. Carol De Ville was busy with some customers.
‘The sale will include all shop fittings including the cash register,’ Chris said as John elbowed his way as politely as possible past several customers who were waiting to be served.
‘Excuse me, madam. Thank you so much, sir.’
At the counter he dumped a sales ledger in front of Carol De Ville with a resounding thump.
‘Excuse me,’ said a woman, ‘we were here first.’
‘I don’t think so, madam,’ John told her courteously. ‘I was first here in 2006. And very welcome I was too in those days, let me tell you.’
‘Er…shall we move on to look at the display space?’ Chris said, but Janet shook her head.
‘No, not just yet,’ she said. ‘I’d like to examine the counter area in greater detail.’ And she settled down to watch.
‘Very unctuous back then, our lady here was,’ John said. ‘Oozing charm and co-operation.’
Carol De Ville attempted to use some of this same unctuousness now, but her fake smile was distinctly shaky. ‘John, perhaps we could discuss this at an alternative time? The shop is rather busy just now, as you can see.’
‘Something in it for her then, wasn’t there?’ John swept on as if Carol hadn’t spoken. ‘Wanted to set up an account with me. An account she has never paid on time, not once in all the years we’ve been doing business together.’
Janet saw John take something from a bemused customer’s hand and brandish it in the air. ‘Take this door handle you’ve chosen, madam – it belongs to me. And since it belongs to me, then I can sell it to you. In fact, I can let you have it for twenty-five percent less than Ms De Ville can. What do you say?’
‘Mr George, please,’ Carol De Ville hissed rather desperately. Some of the customers – including the woman with the door handle – began to drift away. Others, like Janet, were rooted to the spot, enthralled by the unexpected entertainment.
The shop door opened again. Taking a look, Janet saw Michael Clark, a manufacturer of bespoke blinds from Norwich. How had John managed to track him down? She was impressed.
‘Ah,’ said John. ‘Here’s another gentleman whose account with this establishment is in arrears.’
‘Five thousand pounds, to be precise,’ Michael Clark said, advancing with a sheaf of invoices. ‘And if the account isn’t settled this morning, I shall be putting the matter into the hands of my solicitors.’
Carol De Ville looked as if she were about to explode. The small group of remaining customers looked as if they wanted her to.
‘This business is currently up for sale,’ she said. ‘Your accounts will be settled just as soon as a buyer has been found. Now, if you’d kindly allow my customers to make their purchases– ’
‘I’ll buy it,’ Janet said.
Everybody looked her way.
Chris Manning beamed at her. ‘You’re interested in making an offer, Mrs Thornton?’ he asked.
Janet nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am. In fact, I already made Ms De Ville an offer a few days ago. That offer is still on the table.’
‘Excellent,’ he said, looking over at Carol De Ville. ‘That is good news, isn’t it, Mrs De Ville?’
The customers were all nodding. John was grinning from ear to ear.
Everybody looked at Carol. She licked her lips. ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding as if she’d swallowed a large quantity of razor blades.
The shop door opened again. Everybody looked round – the three customers, John George, Michael Clark, Chris Manning, Carol and, of course, Janet her-self.
It was Ray.
Disconcerted to receive so much unexpected attention, Ray came to an abrupt halt just inside the door. He licked his lips.
‘Janet?’ he said at last.
She looked at him. ‘Everybody,’ she announced to the assembled crowd, ‘this is my soon-to-be ex-husband, Ray.’
There was silence. Ray looked at her. She had never seen him wear such a cowed, pleading expression. It totally failed to move her. ‘Janet, please,’ he grovelled. ‘Just let me explain. Last night meant nothing.’
‘I’m a bit too busy to talk now, actually, Ray,’ she said. ‘I’m just negotiating the purchase of this shop.’
‘What?’
John George chipped in helpfully. ‘Janet’s just made an offer,’ he told Ray. ‘We’re all waiting to see whether Ms De Ville is going to accept it.’
Everybody’s heads swivelled from Ray to Carol who was, by now, extremely red in the face. The tension was palpable. At last she spoke.
‘Very well,’ she said, arrogant even in defeat. ‘I accept.’
It should have been a perfect moment of triumph for Janet, and for a while it was. Especially when John George gave a huge whoop of joy and lifted her off her feet to give her a huge celebratory kiss right in front of Ray.
After the fuss had died down and Janet was back at her mother’s house, she phoned Estelle to tell her the good news.
‘That’s brilliant,’ her friend said. ‘Absolutely brilliant! D’you know what you’ll call the shop?’
‘Janet’s Dreams,’ Janet said without hesitation, remembering her dream.
‘Perfect,’ approved Estelle.
Janet smiled. ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘And how about you? How did things go with Mark last night?’
Estelle laughed, and just that one laugh was enough to tell Janet everything.
‘My God,’ she said, ‘you’ve done it, haven’t you? You’ve had an orgasm!’
‘Yes!’ confirmed Estelle delightedly. ‘The very first time we made love!’
‘That’s fantastic, Estelle. I’m so pleased for you.’ She was, she genuinely was. But even so, as Janet put the phone down a few minutes later, she couldn’t help feeling envious too. Out of the four of them, she was the only one who hadn’t yet scaled the heights of pleasure, and as she sat and brooded about it in her mother’s house, her excitement about the shop began to crumble away.
Not only had she not had an orgasm, but now she no longer had a man to make love to, so she was even further away from it than she had been at the start of the workshops. Kate, Reenie and Estelle would all be living their lives in the glow of love and the afterglow of great sex, while she was about to become more solitary than she had ever been in her life.
Could she do it? Could she really do it? Live happily as a divorced woman? Run a business single-handedly? Cope with all the little problems of everyday life on her own? She’d never had to do it before, and her mother, Ray, Carol De Ville and even Gwen had always treated her as if she was some kind of defective. And maybe she was. Janet’s Dreams would probably go bankrupt in the first few weeks and she’d end up broke, lonely and non-orgasmic.
Janet reached for the phone, needing to speak to somebody. But who? Her new friends were all busy having amazing sex – they wouldn’t want her interrupting them with her pathetic insecurities. Debbie was wrapped up in her problems with Nigel, and besides, Janet had always resisted confiding in her daughter about her personal problems. John George? Janet smiled to herself at the thought. It was funny, but even though she barely knew the man, she could imagine confiding in him. He’d been brilliant today at the shop, and she liked him a lot. He was so easy-going compared to Ray. But maybe it was a little too soon in their fledging friendship to confess that she was worried she would never have an orgasm.
Janet frowned, racking her brains, then suddenly remembered Jade. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought about her before? Jade had smiled at her with such warmth when she’d told her she had to start standing up to people and stop doing things she didn’t want to do. But she had also promised Janet mind-blowing pleasure as a result of her classes, something she had yet to deliver. Yes, Jade was exactly the right person to speak to, and thanks to Gwen’s nosiness, Janet knew exactly where to find her.
By the time Janet got up to the caravan site, the sun was just beginning to set, showing the caravans in dark relief against the sky. But it was still easy to pick out Jade’s caravan, because most of the other vans looked unoccupied. There was also a dirty great big black motorbike parked outside it, which it was all too easy to imagine Jade riding. Skin-tight leathers, long hair streaming behind her, the powerful throb of the engine…Yes, this definitely had to be Jade’s caravan.
Leaving her car on the grass, Janet walked past the bike towards the van’s door. But before she could knock, the door was torn open and there was Jade, dressed more casually than she usually was, in jeans and a jumper and smiling all over her face. ‘Janet!’ she said. ‘How lovely to see you!’
Even though Jade was smiling and seemed genuinely glad to see her, Janet couldn’t help feeling uncertain. ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming. My neighbour mentioned you were living here…’ Janet’s voice trailed off.
‘Gwen of the dried-up primulas?’ Jade remembered, and suddenly Janet was laughing and everything was all right.
‘Of course I don’t mind, Janet. Come in! I was just getting some food ready for Orgasm Night. You can help me if you like.’
Jade led the way inside the caravan and Janet soon found that when she said she was getting some food ready for Orgasm Night, she hadn’t meant sausage rolls or cheese and pineapple on sticks. The table between the upholstered seating in the living space was covered in plates of very erotically suggestive food.
‘What do you think?’ Jade asked with a wicked smile, and Janet stood and stared.
‘What are these?’ she asked, looking at a plateful of halved fruit, which didn’t look at all dissimilar to the view she had received when she had done her homework with her hand mirror.
‘Figs,’ said Jade. ‘Aren’t they perfect?’
Janet nodded. ‘Yes, very effective,’ she said, her gaze moving on to a Galia melon, halved and skinned with a cherry in the centre of each half to make it look like breasts, and then to several sets of penises and testicles constructed out of sausages and meatballs.
Janet looked at the sausages. They were bigger than the average supermarket banger. ‘Impressive,’ she said.
Jade laughed, bu
t when Janet didn’t join in, Jade looked at her. ‘But you didn’t come here to find out how my preparations for Orgasm Night were progressing, did you?’ she guessed.
Janet shook her head, suddenly feeling emotional. ‘No.’
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ Jade invited her. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea.’
While she waited, Janet looked around the inside of the caravan, which clearly dated from the 1970s. Jade had done her best with throws and lamps, but the carpet was chocolate brown nylon beneath the rug, the curtains were 1970s, and there was a slight smell of mildew. It couldn’t be a pleasant place to live in, especially now that the nights were drawing in. So why was Jade here?
‘Here you are,’ Jade said, bringing the tea.
‘Thanks.’
Jade smiled. ‘OK. So tell me why you’re here.’
Janet put her tea down next to the plate of figs. ‘I wanted to ask you why you think I haven’t had an orgasm yet. Only all the others have, and I’ve been taking your advice about standing up for myself and everything.’ She thought about it. ‘In fact, that’s all I seem to have been doing lately.’
Jade looked at her thoughtfully. ‘It takes a lot of energy, doesn’t it?’ she said.
Janet thought about all the plotting and the scheming. Tricking Ray with Estelle and Fiona. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘It does.’
‘Sensuality isn’t a race, Janet,’ Jade told her. ‘It will happen for you when the time’s right. That may be tonight at Orgasm Night, and it may not. But it will happen. And in the meantime… Well, I just think you need to start giving yourself permission to become orgasmic.’
Janet frowned. Permission? ‘How do I do that?’
‘Think it. Feel it. See it. Make time for it. Consciously include everything we’ve covered in the workshops into your life. Make sensuality the focus of your life, instead of a subject you’re studying. Place yourself in the centre instead of on the outside looking in.’
As usual, Jade sounded so inspired about her subject. Even here in this run- down caravan in her old jeans and jumper. But somehow it still wasn’t what Janet needed.
The Goddess Workshop Page 29