Prim and proper Penelope samples the BDSM lifestyle.
Nerves of steel? No. Of jelly, more like. Here was she, in a run-down London back street. Looking up at a first floor window. At shabby curtains untidily drawn together. Broad daylight. Hmmm....
She had left a note on the kitchen table at home - 'Gone shopping - back later'.
But what was the extraordinary urge that had brought her here, in mid-afternoon, to this unfashionable quarter of the city bustling with ordinary folk going single-mindedly about their ordinary day-to-day business? While apprehensive that the visit might be fruitless, she was fairly confident that at least she would not be seen by anyone she knew - her village socialites being hardly likely to frequent such a dismal area.
But she was justifiably nervous all the same. Was this legal? Could she be exposed? Would she be mugged? Would shame then prevent her from seeking any redress from the authorities should some embarrassing setback befall her? Butterflies flitted annoyingly in the pit of her stomach.
Or was she worrying about nothing? Would the whole thing be a total anticlimax? A disastrous waste of time and money perhaps? "Oh for God's sake Penny," she told herself, "act normal, get it done, don't get in a stew. If you pull out now, you'll just go home miserable, and fret for ages you never even gave it a try. It's your life, you only get one go. Get on with it."
Her resolve failed to allay the fluttering of the blessed lepidoptera.
But the positive excitement did not wane. In fact, it increased momentarily as she pressed the button labelled simply "1b" with no accompanying name.
There seemed a lifetime's delay while she contemplated her predicament. She was a middle-class, middle-aged woman whose husband, albeit a good and well-respected man, was considerably older than she, and dedicated to an important job which had made him staid and sapped his sex drive - one which was never that passionate even in the earliest days of marriage.
To put not too fine a point on it, the problem for Penelope was that she was chronically sexually repressed. Not an old maid exactly - she had a husband after all, and his sense of marital duty did afford her tame vanilla bed-sex on occasion.
But she was tired of faking it. Neither was she old - at least not old enough that hormones had stopped nagging her into fantasies about love, romance, seduction, eroticism, perversion, fetish and various other phenomena bordering on the taboo, and not usually associated with a prim and proper well-spoken English rose from the Home Counties hoping soon to become a grandmother if and when her wimpy son-in-law gets his act together and impregnates her daughter......
"Hello?" Penelope's convoluted musings suddenly hit a road block as a female voice rattled the tinny loudspeaker. She took a deep breath.
"It's Penny. I telephoned earlier."
"Push the door and come up, sweetie." The front door-lock release buzzed. At least she was expected, Penny congratulated herself.
One flight of stairs. Creaky. Not well-lit. Probably just as well - the need for redecoration thus appeared less palpable. In any case, the seediness of the apartment building added to the erotic allure of being somewhere for pleasure you shouldn't be.
The woman who had answered Penny's earlier phone call had sounded pleasant enough, and reassuringly businesslike. "Yes, my love, ladies are catered for. No problem. What kind of thing were you looking for?"
Penny had clumsily described the 'kind of thing she was looking for', not at all confident that she would be considered worthwhile street-wise clientele, given her patent unfamiliarity with the practices of bondage and sadomasochism. But one hour later, here she was, on the landing, looking distastefully down at a stained carpet which was fraying alarmingly at the edges.
Thirty-something Sharon stood by an open door. "Come in, my love, don't trip on the mat - it's a bit of a health hazard."
Penny soon found herself sat at one end of a sofa, now paying less attention to tastes in furniture and more to her hostess, the professional, communicative and rather glamorous Sharon - her with the mischievous sparkling eyes, perfect stockinged legs and strappy court shoes. Penelope's middle-class upbringing had bypassed concepts like lesbianism and bisexuality, so the pangs of physical attraction she now felt towards this confident and beautiful young woman were dramatically exercising her in-bred respect for sexual taboos.
