Always Turns Up

This is the fourth part of the sequel to my series "Bad Penny" which I published here a few years ago. That was a semi autobiographical story (enhanced of course for fun, names changed to protect the guilty).

A related series "If I knew then" is also referenced in this story. It is a fantasy based on what could have been in a perfect world. A third series, "Life Sentence" also gets a mention - it is an horrific nightmare inspired fantasy, in which Penny is featured.

I hope this story is readable and enjoyable as a stand alone, but obviously, if you read the first chapters in this new series (and all the others) first, it will make more sense. This series, as a sequel to Bad Penny, is of course also semi autobiographical. And all names are fictitious. But some of it is true...

Dining at the Ritz hotel in London is an experience. The high ceilinged room with the multiple mirrored wall, the waiters in grey waistcoats, the sparkling silver and crystal, the crisp white linen, all combine to give an air of genteel opulence. And the food is wonderful. Presented on plates covered by silver domes, which are lifted from all the guests at the table at once to reveal the delicately plated complex and delicious dishes, they are masterpieces of flavour, texture, smell, and appearance.

Of course it helps when you have a beautiful woman for company. The woman who was your first love, and first lover, who has spent the last few hours telling you about her various adventures in the nearly thirty years you spent apart. Some of them very sexually explicit stories. Some of them quite shocking stories about abuse, and the sudden breakup of her first marriage, snatching her children away forever. But here she was, now smiling, chatting, sharing comparatively small talk, as we had agreed to do in this very public place.

So we talked about our travels, about other great meals we had, about old friends who she had not seen for years, about politics, and about books. She didn't take dessert, but encouraged me to indulge, and stole a spoonful of the walnut ice-cream which accompanied my poached pears. And then she proposed we have coffee in the foyer, at a table she had asked to be reserved.

As I followed her out I noticed that the beautiful young woman I had seen earlier that afternoon with her three companions, the ash blonde on who had winked at me, was sitting at a table with a middle aged man in a suit and apparently was deeply intent on listening to the story he was telling. Which surprised me, as two of the other girls had been at a table in my view behind Penny, with two Japanese businessmen, and the fourth young woman had walked past our table on the way out, accompanied by another older man, a few minutes before we had finished our meal. They must have met up before meeting their partners, for afternoon tea. And why not? I suspected they were all trophy wives, with little else to do. But if that was the case why did the blonde wink at me again?

I put it out of my mind, as we settled into the comfortable chairs and I sipped my coffee. Penny's long legs were crossed at the ankles, and they were fine ankles, I thought. I had taken a glass of wine with dinner, but had not yet taken my medication, so I was in gently relaxed mood. It was then that Penny said "Well, it is not late, for me, but perhaps it is late for you? I have so much more to tell you, but do you want to leave it for another day? Or shall I carry on?"

I told her I was wide awake, and would stay that way until I took the meds, and had no reason to get up early, so I was at her disposal, if she wished to talk.

"Then where were we? Oh yes, I was here, in my suite, weeping, as Angelo had just walked out, telling me his solicitor would be in touch shortly. Which was true. He rang in about ten minutes and told me he would be coming to see me at the hotel in a couple of hours time. He suggested that Angelo had agreed to pay for the bill until the next morning, but I should seek somewhere else to stay the next day, if I did not wish to continue paying for the suite myself. So I spent the next few hours packing. I knew that Angelo was never going to come back.

The deal was simple. If I agreed to a divorce in Italy, under Italian law, I could keep the Dama Frisi title, which of course required an agreement about royalties for the domain name, and the flat in Paris, and an annual income of 12,000 euros. And I had to agree never to see the children again. I signed. I ordered the most expensive dinner and breakfast I could, and charged the taxi to the room. It was petty but, I felt petty.

The taxi took me to a much cheaper hotel, and I basically folded up for a few days. Then I rang one of my London acquaintances, and met for drinks, and she knew someone who had a pied-à-terre they were not using, so I borrowed it for a few weeks, and all the time I was just heart sick and despairing. And then Franzi turned up. My saviour again. He had heard from Angelo, who was not happy with him. Zi had after all introduced us, and knew a little of my past, so he should have warned him that I was a worthless whore. Close quotes. So Zi asked me to come back to work for him, but I said no. I had a different future that I knew I had to endure.

I got myself together, made some preparations, and then I went to Tilly, and knelt before her, and begged her forgiveness."

I nearly spilled my coffee. "What? You didn't! Why!"

Penny smiled. "To destroy her. They still had not got Leo, and I had realised that it was Tilly, and Leo, who had destroyed my life. Oh I had helped them and I went along with it as they had manipulated me and tried to destroy me before, so I took responsibility for having lead that life. But there had been no need for her to do that me now. Nothing more than wickedness. So I told Franzi that the only work I wanted to do was to help him destroy them.

Which meant getting back into their circle of friends, and this time getting something I could use as evidence. Which was not very easy. As their former slave they were not going to have me back except as a slave. So I debased myself. She was of course furious that I had had her tattoo taken off, and intended to have it redone, but as I suspected, she wanted to turn me over to her uncle first, to discipline me. He enjoyed that. I didn't. I will not bore you with the details, but it was easier for me to keep my sanity because this time I had a purpose, and I had outside support, and could get resources smuggled in. Before I went there I had discussed plans with Zi, and he had some good ideas. I was taught how to pick the lock on the cupboard I was kept in when alone in the house, so I was able to open the door when Leo and Edwards were out. So I could then let in a team of spy-cam and sound-bug planting private investigators that Franzi had hired. All very illegal, but so was much of what Leo was up to.

I was, thankfully, only three weeks in that place when Franzi came for me. They had enough. Leo was arrested for fraud and tax evasion charges, and when they had him in for questioning they laid out the sex trafficking, and various assault charges, and started to question him about three murders of young women. He was found hanged in his cell the next morning. So far as I was concerned he got off lightly, but you take what you can get. Tilly had fled the country as soon as she heard he had been arrested. Although he was only being accused of financial crimes publicly, she must have guessed that other things would come out. So I didn't get her then. And of course because the sex crimes, and my case of illegal imprisonment, kidnapping and forced prostitution didn't go to trial, I didn't become publicly named either.

The three weeks had already started to destroy me though. Despite my preparation and my determination, old patterns of behaviour were recalled, old thoughts refreshed. If I had not been filled with hate for the bastard, I might have cracked. I knew I had to rest and recover for weeks afterwards, trying to be normal, and not to fall into the sort of depression that I had endured before. But I still wanted to get Tilly, so I refused Franzi's offer to whisk me away to look after me, and instead contacted one of Leo's friends. He was a frequent guest at Leo's house, who had always been fairly decent to me, and who I knew to be single, and I thought he actually liked me. So the day they raided Leo's I went to his house, which we had visited, and at which Leo had me perform for the entertainment of his host. I arrived on the doorstep in a long coat with nothing underneath but knee length boots, a leather collar and cuffs, and a chain belt around my waist. I told him that Edwards had bundled me out the back door when the police arrived, and told me to go to his house, which was quite close by. For a moment I thought he was going to close the door on me, but I let the coat slip open a little, and he panicked, and told me to come in quickly.

He was very decent actually. Which is why I won't mention his name. We aren't friends or anything now, but I see him on the television every so often. Anyway, he clothed me, fed me, and talked to me like a human being, and had me remove the collar and cuffs. I was obviously helpless, and clearly vulnerable, and he, bless him, did not take advantage of that too much. He even tried to fend me off when I made a pass at him a few days later, saying I didn't have to sleep with him. But even though he was kindly and not vicious, he was part of the wider scene. He had friends who were swingers and some involved in the BDSM set, and some of those were not nice people. I wanted to get some handle on Tilly, and I am afraid I used him to get me back into the circle. But I was afraid that some Dom might decide to pick me up as an abandoned slave, and treat me the way Leo did, or worse, but with... I almost said his name there... Let us call him Paul, he looked a little like Paul Newman, believe it or not... With Paul's help I got to know some of Tilly's London friends on a more even footing. Some had of course played with me when I first went to London under Tilly's sway, but they accepted that I had been playing the role, that Tilly and I were still on good terms, and so they welcomed me in. A spare single woman is always welcome in those circles. And that was how I ended up in business.

After a few weeks, while I as still living at Paul's, one of the women I had once met at a party at Tilly's, by the name of Allison, invited me to a little dinner party, and that ended up as a gentle and rather lovely foursome. We all had breakfast together in a huge bed she had in a huge bedroom, and then the men left. She showed them out, insisting that I stay in bed until she got back, and then she spent a little while ravishing me, which I didn't mind. And then she said "I have a confession to make."

I laughed and said "You are bisexual? I could never have guessed."

"No. Well yes. And I am also an escort girl. I get paid a thousand pounds a night to have dinner and sex, mostly with travelling businessmen. Mostly Americans."

The two men that had just left were American businessmen. She had said they were friends of a friend, that she had met at a party. She had invited me saying that she had a date with a nice guy she fancied, but he had a friend and would I help her by making up the four. Which had all sounded reasonably innocent, but I had the nous to ask her did she intend to take her man to bed, and she had said yes. "And what am I supposed to do with the other guy?" I had asked, and she said "Whatever you like."

So I could hardly be too harsh to her. I had accepted the date, knowing that she was going to drag her man off to the bedroom, and I didn't have to join her, but also knowing that was the most likely scenario. And that had obviously been the idea all along. She had encouraged me once the dinner was ongoing, and the wine was flowing, and well, you know me. It promised to be fun. It was fun.

So I just looked at her and didn't say anything. And she looked very shamefaced and said "They pay extra for a threesome. Or a foursome. And sometimes they tip quite generously too. If you want it, your half would be two grand."

I blinked. "Two thousand pounds?"

"Yes. Fifteen hundred each for the group thing, and they chipped in an extra five hundred each for a tip. Bradley really liked you. He said he would be back in four weeks and if you were free he..."

I didn't let her finish the sentence. I remember being quite angry, full of somewhat hypocritical righteousness. I said something like "Stop right there! You just made me into a prostitute without telling me, and you are already planning to pimp me out again next month! What the hell do you think I am!"

Of course it was obvious what she thought of me. Unflattering perhaps but, hardly entirely undeserved. And once I calmed down, which took a while, I was tempted to take the cash. I had taken the man to bed. Not for money of course, but he didn't know that. But did that matter? I had done the work. Why not take the pay?

But I didn't. "

Penny was kind enough not to comment on the sudden relaxation of my pose.

I hadn't realised how tense I had been, thinking that perhaps she had become an escort. A prostitute. It was weird, given all that I knew about her many sexual partners, and the pretty extreme things she had willingly done, never mind the things done to her. In an instant I realised that over the last few hours I had never once thought she was a bad person for doing any of the things she did. In all of it she was still an innocent. There wasn't a grasping or manipulative bone in her body, not a selfish thought in her head. It had all been fun, and kindly, on her part, except for the well justified entrapment of Leo, and I suspected those weeks with him had been close to hell. That had been brave, and noble of her, even though it was passionate revenge. But not an evil revenge. A justified one. So why had I tensed so much when she talked about being tempted to take the cash? It came to me in a flash. For her to have become a professional would have changed all that. I had to admit to myself it would have made me think less of her, in a way that the other things did not.

But she went on smoothly, as if reading my mind "I knew if I did it would be the end of me. It would be the end of what little self esteem I still had. Oh I slept around, yes, but somehow it was different doing it for fun, or even doing it as a submissive. If I took the money it wouldn't be fun any more. Even if it was fun, it would be for the money. It wouldn't be for me, or for them, or for any of the right reasons. And that realisation gave me a huge jolt. I had often felt guilty about my past, but it was then I realised I shouldn't. I didn't care what others thought. I knew I had never knowingly done wrong. Never used anybody. Not with sex anyway.

However I did use the moral leverage it gave me to force Allison to get me into the modelling agency she worked for. Not as model. Well not really, I did a few shoots for hands and legs in catalogue work, but nothing else at that time, but as a receptionist. Allison had mentioned that they were looking for someone, and had joked with me about taking the job, since she knew I was hard up. Twelve grand a year does not go far in London, and I had not got any royalties by then. So I twisted her arm.

The model agency was all straight up fashion and catalogue work, with a tiny bit of glamour work. A few well known big name photographers that did some very artistic nudes used us, and a few of the girls were happy to do that for the much better pay. But we did get fairly frequent enquiries from other people about glamour and nude work. Officially we always turned it down, but a couple of the girls sometimes asked me if I had any contacts. They only wanted private clients, no commercial nudes, no page three or nudie magazine work. So I started to connect them up. In about six months I realised I had learned all I needed about how to run an agency, and I had a viable business worth of clients willing to pay, and all I needed was some girls that would do the work. So I started an agency, and looked for models. In London it wasn't hard to get them. Getting pretty ones was hard.

Allison did a few shoots, for private collectors. But I needed girls that would do commercial glamour, and what used to be called soft porn. In those days anything more was of course illegal in the UK. So she put me in touch with some of the other girls from her escort organisation, and some of them were okay about doing the work. They wanted the fame as well as the money. Page Three of the Sun had a certain prestige among a certain group of girls. So I found girls that would do it."

I interrupted her flow again because I could not help myself. "You ran a model agency for porn shoots? Really?"

She simply nodded, and smiled. "Being a woman helped. The girls trusted me. And I didn't take any shit from the photographers. I would not let the girls be exploited or pressured to do anything they did not agree to before the shoot. Anyone who tired that on got fired from my books, and I would help police with enquiries. So they kept it legal, and the girls felt safe. The hard line worked of course. In two years I had a reputation for having the prettiest and most daring nude and glamour models in England. And then I began to get enquiries from America. Girls who would go a bit further, and make the big money. At first I was reluctant, but some of the girls had made it clear they wanted that sort of work, so I set up a Los Angeles office, on paper at least, and we started to do some business. All the money had to remain in America of course because in the UK it would be "immoral earnings." And that, after a couple of years, was how I met Charlie. He made porn movies."

"Charlie your second husband, who gave 300 million to charity when he died?"

"Yes. His hypocritical kids were ashamed of how he had made the cash, but they wanted it when he was dead, so I enjoyed winning the court case and spending it to spite them. He would have laughed so much. It was what attracted me in the first place. He laughed a lot, even in the last weeks, before the illness took him. "

Penny looked sad again, and again I felt a little pang of jealousy. It unnerved me. It seemed inappropriate, but it was undeniable. I was jealous. To cover the growing uncomfortableness of the moment I asked "So did you move to the States? What happened to the London modelling business?"

"Yes, I moved to L.A. And I had a manager take over while I was away. I spent quite a few years there, with Charlie being ill, and the wrangling over the will, and then setting up the trust. So while I was there I got in contact with the woman who had been so insistent at the party I had been at with Giles, years before. You remember the party with the film stars in the English actress's house? It turned out she knew Leo, and Tilly. That was why she had been so keen to talk to me in private, and so concerned for me. She had been an early victim, a friend of Tilly's mother. She told me how relived she was when she heard of Leo's death, and I confided that I had been involved in his downfall. And then she shocked me by asking if I would like to help bring down Tilly as well.

I had not heard of her for years. She had dropped off the grid, and no one knew where she was. It turns out she was in Porn Valley. Making hardcore BDSM movies. Directing and producing mostly, but often appearing in a mask. Rumour had it that she was also providing even more extreme videos for a select private group. Real torture, mutilation, and so on. I had always thought the snuff movie story was fake, but knowing Tilly...

So I set out to try to entrap her. I used Charlie's contacts to try to set up a deal, to get her to make some films for a private collector, and to try to get proof of her evil ways, although how to do that without actually letting her torture someone was a puzzle. I was tempted of course to let her do it. To sacrifice someone else to help prevent her from ever doing it to others. One for the many. But I am glad to say that I didn't have to give into that temptation. The week before she was due to come to my setup studio in a borrowed mansion in Beverly hills, she overdosed on cocaine and heroin. There was film of it, her snorting lines off the breasts of a tied up teenage girl who she had been sexually abusing, and no doubt planned to abuse some more. The investigators thought she didn't know it was heroin mixed, and so pure, so it was obviously accidental. Apparently the commissioner of the film who had supplied the girl, the coke and the chalet in the hills for the set, had simply scarpered when Tilly went into spasms and then coma, leaving her for dead, and the poor girl still tied up and screaming was not found for two days. She was on the verge of death herself, but fortunately recovered. The commissioner was never identified.