by Carla Blake
“It’s been half an hour, Kate.”
“Yeah. like I said. Ages. Please. The cloakroom?”
The cloakroom was at the far end of the corridor and to reach it all Rachel had to do was turn right out of her office and keep going until she could go no further.
Originally a storeroom, the building’s war time history had still manage to convince the current occupiers that it was actually the place where spare weaponry had been kept, and although Rachel had no reason to believe it wasn’t true, she didn’t have much evidence to support it either, although it did seem likely. Windowless, the room’s four walls were painted a grubby white and dozens of holes drilled into the plaster were testament to where rows of shelving had once been fixed. The door also showed signs of having been fortified, both by the sheer weight of it and the strange metallic ring it gave whenever it shut, and Rachel got the impression it was made from something other than the wood it was painted out to be. An indentation on the outside also looked suspiciously like the home of a once hefty looking lock, although these days there was nothing there save a handle.
It was, Rachel thought, a really sneaky place for management to have turned into a cloakroom, because aside from several rows of coat racks lined up along the centre and a rather worn looking mirror screwed to the wall, there was nothing else to keep you there. No drinks machine, no chairs, no reason to stay any longer than it took you to hang up your coat, check your face in the mirror and then get the hell back to your desk.
The door opened and Kate walked in.
“I love Autumn.” She said, kissing Rachel on the mouth and whisking her behind the nearest coat rack where she wrapped her arms around her waist. “All these lovely long coats to hide behind.”
“Right. Er, I take it no one saw you come in then?”
“Nope, not a soul. Why? Did someone see you?”
Rachel shook her head. “No, not as far as I know, but I can’t be long. I’ve still got a pile of stuff to do…”
“Oh, do shut up.” Kate said and kissed her, her tongue winding around Rachel’s as her hands deftly fed up inside Rachel’s blouse, traced the embroidery on her bra and then swept round to her back, undoing the clasp, before pulling up the front so she could brush her thumbs across Rachel’s already hardening nipples. Rachel gasped and then shuddered as Kate left her mouth to trail feather-light kisses along her neck and then her throat. Kate feeling Rachel’s pulse throb against her lips as she bent down to kiss her soft, warm stomach and then back up to her breasts, the weight of them deliciously heavy in her hands, the nipples already hardening as she took them in her mouth and made then swell even more.
Rachel gasped, and with soft words begged her not to stop.
Then the door creaked and everything stopped anyway.
Frozen to the spot, Kate slowly lowered Rachel’s blouse into place and withdrew her hands, then she shook her head in a ‘ don’t say a word’ gesture.
The door creaked again. Furtively, as though someone were trying to get in without being heard as Rachel silently did up her bra, thankful for the concealing line of coats, and then buttoned up her blouse whilst Kate, peering around the edge of a grey overcoat, waited for someone to come into view.
A minute passed in which nothing more was heard. Rachel and Kate looked at each other and carefully parting another coat, Rachel stove for a better look.
“What can you see?” Kate hissed, tying to see through the gap as well.
“Sshh.” Rachel, waving a finger at her mouth. “The door’s open. Someone’s holding it.”
They waited. Rachel staring at the door. Kate staring at Rachel. Kate itching to see for herself, but not daring to move in case she gave away their presence to whoever was standing on the other side.
Long seconds passed.
The door, as far as Rachel could see, remained open but she couldn’t see what was keeping it that way. Then a shoe scrapped across the floor.
Softly Kate swore and Rachel again hushed her, watching as the door swung inches open and then closed. The lock softly clunking as whoever was out in the corridor apparently decided that the room was indeed empty after all.
Kate wiped her brow. “Jesus Christ!” She said, stretching out her bones. “ That was a close one!”
“You’re telling me!” Rachel hissed. “God, Kate why do I let you talk me into these things! From now we are only fucking in bed, do you hear me? I am not going to risk getting caught like that again.”
“What do you mean ‘again’? We didn’t get caught that time.” Kate said, rubbing her hands up and down Rachel’s sides in an effort to calm her. “And please don’t tell me this is going to put you off our little snog breaks because I don’t believe it. You get off on this just as much as I do. Just because your sense of adventure has just had a little shock….”
“My sense of adventure!” Rachel retorted, still angry at Kate for taking things so lightly. “Who said anything about having a sense of adventure? And what little ‘snog breaks’? Don’t think for one minute you’re turning this into a regular thing, my girl, cos you’re not. My nerves are shot to pieces as it is!”
“Oh, really? Like they were ‘shot to pieces’ in the filing room or the club room? God, Rach, get a grip! I never knew you were such a wimp.”
“I’m not! But this isn’t a game, Kate. We could have lost our jobs if we’d been caught and I don’t know about you, but I really need the money, and who’s to say that whoever was out there has gone? Did you hear anyone leave?”
“No.”
“Neither did I, which means they might still be out there waiting for us.”
“Why? All they saw, if they saw anything, was an empty room, so why would they wait?”
“What if they heard us?”
“Heard what? We weren’t exactly making a heap of noise you know.”
“I gasped.”
“You gasped. Wow! Hardly the foghorn from hell. Come on Rach, you’re panicking about nothing. There’s no one out there.”
“Maybe not now, but there was a few minutes ago and you can’t pretend there wasn’t, so what if they are waiting? What do you suggest we do? Breeze out there and pretend we were doing something totally innocent or ..or..”
“Let’s do the first one.”
The corridor was empty.
Relieved, Kate laughed and gently chiding Rachel for being so jumpy, told her she’d be going grey before her time if she didn’t learn to chill out a bit. Rachel merely pulled a face, and convinced any premature grey hairs she did get would be entirely down to Kate, stared hard at the door to her office, trying to work out whether it was still in the process of shutting behind a hastily retreating back or whether it had been closed all along?
Kate didn’t seem to care either way. They had got away with it, she grinned. No one had seen them and no one was any the wiser. She would see Rachel later. At three thirty in the second floor ladies.
She’d have a bloody long wait was Rachel’s muttered reply.
The club was busy for a lunchtime but Simon didn’t mind. It was better than that cesspit he’d met Phil in earlier and it didn’t smell of pine or piss either. It also served a decent red as well which was far superior to that muck Phil favoured.
Straightening his jacket, Simon wandered over the to bar. Phil, he noticed, was already there, gloomily nursing a single pint of bitter.
That’ll teach him, Simon thought, noticing how Phil was obviously taking his time drinking it. The prices here were too steep for the little prick to go buying two pints at a time, which meant he would now have to make his solitary pint last the whole evening while he enjoyed an expensive glass of Italian and the opportunity to demonstrate to Phil what an uncultivated, common little shit he really was.
Helping himself to a handful of complimentary pretzels, Simon nodded in Phil’s direction and tossed the first of th
em into his mouth. “ So.” He said, chewing. “What have you discovered? Found out who the little bitch is sleeping with yet?”
“Nope.” Phil said, sipping at his pint. “All I can say is if it is someone from work then they’re keeping it bloody quiet. No one’s seen or heard anything, not even on the office grape vine and the only person I’ve seen Rachel with recently is Kate.”
“And who’s she?”
“Some bint who works in the same office as Rachel.”
“Right. So getting nowhere fast then?”
Phil shrugged. “Looks like it. Unless she’s keeping him well under wraps. But are you sure she’s seeing someone else, mate? What if she just dumped you ‘cos she didn’t want to go out with you anymore?”
“Do you really think that likely?” Simon asked through gritted teeth. “I gave that bitch everything! Everything! She must be seeing someone else. All I need to do is to find out who. Can’t you sit outside her house for a while and watch her.”
Phil laughed. “Are you serious?” He asked. “I’m not sitting outside her house! What if she sees me? What if she calls the bloody cops.”
“What if I thump your head against the bar?”
“Then I’ll have you fucking arrested instead mate. Look. Tell you what. How about I have a word with this Kate. See if she knows anything. If she does, then problem solved, but if not, then it’s up to you. You can sit outside Rachel’s house if you want but I’m not following her home.”
Kate sat in the ladies loo for ten minutes waiting for Rachel.
She didn’t come.
Bored, she washed her hands - twice. Once when someone came in to actually use the toilet and she thought she ought to be doing something other than just standing there, and once when she rubbed her weary eyes and discovered she’d smudged mascara all over her fingers.
Yet still Rachel didn’t show and eventually, resigned to having been stood up, she decided to leave, hating the way she felt stupid and frustrated at the absurdness of the situation. She shouldn’t have to wait in a ladies loo to meet her girlfriend for fuck’s sake, it wasn’t normal and it made her feel.. grubby. But what else could they do? It was alright if other couples, straight couples, who worked here exchanged a few intimate words during the day or a brief kiss before setting off for their respective desks, but if she and Rachel ever dared to be so bold, there’d be outrage. Gay couples were not well received here at the power company and she knew that for a fact. The derisive comments she’d overheard regarding Ray and Michael, a homosexual pair who’d dared to come out at the Christmas party, had been both bigoted and spiteful. Cruel to the point where Michael had been forced to leave simply to get a little peace and Ray had followed soon after. And she didn’t want that to happen to her and Rachel. She wanted them to be left alone. She wanted them and to be accepted, but that was never going to happen. They would always have to sneak around. Waiting in the ladies loo for someone who wasn’t going to come.
Rachel watched the clock. It was now three twenty five and for the last twenty minutes she had done little else but wipe her sweaty palms down her skirt, type in a load of nonsense, delete it again, pour coffee, ignore coffee, tidy her desk drawer and never for one solitary minute forget that at three thirty Kate would be waiting for her in the ladies loo. Not that she was planning to go. She couldn’t. Her nerves were still raw after the scare in the cloakroom and she didn’t care what Kate said, it bothered her that someone might stumble upon them. She didn’t even feel safe at her desk, a little sanctuary Kate didn’t dare to invade, and she constantly felt as though she was been watched. More than once turning round for no other reason than the little hairs on the back of her neck were standing to attention.
Phil got up from his desk. The paperwork he’d been working on was only half finished but he figured it could wait. Here, at last, was another opportunity and he wasn’t going to miss it again. His first time had ended in failure and she had returned to her desk just as he’d reached her section of the office, forcing him to swiftly made a u-turn and run his hand jaggedly through thinning his hair as if he’d forgotten something and was irritated that he had to go back and fetch it. Now she was gone again and if he could just move fast enough he should be able to find out everything he needed to know before she got back. And if she did happen to come back and catch him red handed, then he’d not only claim that one of his accounts had overlapped with one of hers and he had to check it out, but he also have the relevant paperwork to back it up, cutting off her suspicions before they even had time to get started.
In the meantime, there were her instant messages to go through.
Rachel was gone for ten minutes later. Her appointment with Kate had been and gone, but instead of tearing up to the second floor, out of breath and ready for a quick fumble in the nearest cubicle, she’d returned to the cloakroom to sit amongst the coats and the scarves until the period of temptation was over.
Meanwhile, Phil’s fingers flew across the keys. Anyone else might have gone straight for the e-mail inbox, but Phil wasn’t about to waste his time. If Rachel was receiving messages from her new boyfriend via e-mail then trying to crack the complex system of passwords she was bound to have would probably take forever, but if, as Simon suspected, she was seeing someone here in the company, then the likelihood was that they were corresponding via ‘ instant message’ and that would be easy. Everyone assumed ‘instant messages’ just vanished into the ether the moment the user selected ‘delete.’ Butt he knew better. He’d found a way to retrieve them and read them.
Typing quickly, his fingers flew across the keyboard, hesitated, then typed again.
His eyes scanned the rows of text.
Then, blowing out his cheeks, he grinned.
Ten minutes later and feeling guilty, Rachel dropped down onto her chair and resumed where she’d left off. Kate, she noticed, was still not at her desk.
Sighing, she typed in a line of numbers and stared miserably at the screen, totally oblivious to the fact that her seat had been warm when she’d sat down.
Ten
“Why didn’t you come?” Kate asked, twirling a straw around her glass. “I waited for you for ages!”
“I told you I wasn’t going to.”
“I know. But I didn’t think you meant it.”
“Now you do.”
“Even so. Why didn’t you come?”
Rachel sighed. “Because, as I told you, I didn’t want to risk getting caught again.”
“But we didn’t get caught the first time.”
“No thanks to you.”
“Why? What did I do?”
“You put us there in the first place.”
They were in the wine bar. Prudently, Kate had called earlier and reserved a table, figuring, after Rachel had stood her up, that they might have a little sorting out to do. She wasn’t wrong. Rachel, reluctant to join her, even though it was perfectly fine for them to be seen together here, had taken some persuading and still more to get her talking, but now that she was, it was clear she was still very angry and upset by the incident in the cloakroom.
“So it was my suggestion.” Kate said, plucking a bread stick from the glass on the table and biting off the end. “So what? No one forced you to go and I am sorry it turned out the way it did, but I still don’t understand why you’re so angry. We didn’t get caught, no one saw us, so what’s wrong? I thought you liked our little secret meetings?”
“I thought so too.”
“So what’s changed?” Kate gently prompted her.
“Nothing except I’m starting to think that’s what you prefer. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against our sex life. Sex with you is great, but it’s starting to feel as though making love at home isn’t enough anymore. It’s like you need the danger, the risk of getting caught, and I don’t know, somehow you seem more excited, more turned on, when we’re fucking at wor
k.”
“Well, you’re right about the turned on bit.” Kate smiled. “But it’s got nothing to do with the thrill of being caught. It’s you that gets me going, Rach. God, hasn’t it sunk into that thick head yet that I can barely keep my hands off you! I think about you every second of every day and I can hardly wait to get you home before I can touch you again. And that’s the problem. I don’t want to wait and that’s why I keep trying to lure you away for secret trysts. Not because I get my rocks off thinking someone might see us, but because I fancy you so damn much!”
Phil patted the pocket of his jacket and puffed out his chest. He’d left work late this evening, waiting until everyone else had gone home and he could fire up the print machine on his computer and request several pages of incriminating evidence. Now it was all folded safely in his pocket. A little gold mine of proof that had taken less than five minutes to accumulate, but which he was determined Simon was going to pay handsomely for.
The wine bar was heaving by the time Kate and Rachel left and the peaceful oasis they had entered earlier was now a noisy, bustling melee of jostling bodies, all vying for the few remaining tables, whilst trying not to spill glasses of beer or wine or fall foul to the giant leaves of the Cheese plants the owners had chosen to decorate the place with.
Getting out was not easy. Couples blocked their path and a bloke in a ‘Green Day’ T-shirt rudely shoved them out of the way, determined to reach their recently vacated table before anyone else could snap it up. A glass smashed in his wake and male voices loudly cheered, closely followed by a woman’s voice loudly complaining that men could be such children at times.
Rachel and Kate headed for the door, fooled into thinking it was warmer outside than it actually was by a group of drinkers whose close proximity had artificially created a draught excluder that melted away the second they managed to squeeze through.
Surprised at just how cold it was, they shivered and stuffing their hands into their pockets, shot incriminating glances at the sky. Kate’s breath, streaming from her mouth in a diaphanous whirl, seemed to match the smoke from a cluster of nicotine addicts standing stoically beneath a plastic shelter, whilst Rachel stamping her feet, suggested they should get moving.