"What is it, young man? Got lost, have you?"
The sharp rasp of irritation in my voice would have been apparent to anyone. The small, walled patio outside my ground-floor flat was my own private space. Unfortunately, though, because of the layout of the building, people often found their way into it, as they tried to locate the main entrance to the block, just around the corner. It was almost always a genuine mistake, but that didn't make it any less annoying. Now it had happened again. This time, the intruder was a smartly dressed young man, who seemed genuinely concerned that he'd bothered me. Something about him was catching my attention, in a most unexpected way.
As my story starts, I'm single, 30-something, with a well-paid part-time job, living a rather quiet life, independently, in my own flat, in a nondescript town in the East Midlands of England. My name is Nicky. I consider myself quite attractive, and I can afford to dress well. I'm a natural blonde, and I have a nicely-proportioned body which I look after carefully. I'm well educated, I enjoy travelling, and I know how to appreciate good food. Now, I might have given the impression, from what I've said so far, that I'd got things pretty well sorted out, but it had been bothering me, for some time now, that my life had become just a little too safe and predictable. I once read that when a woman becomes bored, she can fall in love all too easily. That wasn't a route I wanted to take. It sounded to much like the "path of least resistance", and for that reason alone, I was determined to avoid it. I didn't want to close off any of my options, and in any case I wasn't actively looking for any kind of emotional involvement. I valued my independence too highly. Nevertheless, I couldn't escape from the irksome feeling that I was missing out on some promising opportunities, and it seemed to me that, somehow, before long, something would have to change. Quite what the change would be, or how it would come about, was something I had yet to work out.
The man who'd just walked onto my patio looked thoroughly respectable. At a guess, I took him for a few years younger than me. He was a little taller than me, slimmer too, with dark hair and deep brown eyes, and there was just a hint of the Mediterranean about him. He was well-spoken and polite. He could have been an estate agent, a solicitor, a financial adviser, or indeed, pretty much anyone who'd arrived here on perfectly legitimate business. That in itself was unusual. For some time now, I'd had to contend with an altogether different sort of problem. The source of my difficulties was my next-door neighbour, Sasha. She was living here on her own, and she was about the same age as me, but that's as far the similarities go. It was public knowledge around here that she made a living by offering sex to any man who would pay. She did this pretty much full-time, day and night. She mostly worked from home, and she'd been doing this for quite a while now.
That in itself needn't have been an issue. If she'd taken a more discrete approach to her work, and kept sensible hours, she could have carried on offering her services without making herself at all conspicuous. Presumably none of her visiting clients would have had any inclination to draw attention to themselves. It had been apparent for some time, however, that she had a serious alcohol problem. She frequently arrived home late at night, very much the worse for wear, along with one or more male companions in a similar state. From what I'd seen and heard, these were almost invariably some of most disreputable characters to be found anywhere. Certainly, at no time did any of them show the merest hint of consideration for anyone living nearby.
Sasha has the flat next to mine, in a four-storey block of eight flats, not far from the centre of town. The block is part of a small estate, just off a main road. It's not posh, here, by any means, but it's not rough, either, unlike some other estates in the area. It's a fairly new estate, and it's clean and tidy, and well maintained, with plenty of green space between the blocks. Women like Sasha are not wanted here, because of the kind of people they bring to the neighbourhood, and the damage they do to the reputation of the place. Sasha had been banned from all the pubs around here. There were all sorts of stories doing the rounds about gang-bangs in pub toilets and drunken orgies in her flat. She could get very aggressive, when confronted about her behaviour, and people usually did their best to avoid her, rather than get into an argument or a fight.
I'd always thought it was a great shame about Sasha, because apart from all that, she seemed to be a really nice person. She was quite nice-looking, and generally took reasonable care of her appearance. My first impression was of someone friendly and down-to-earth. She somehow came across as very straight, open, and honest. In other circumstances, we might well have become close friends by now, but as things were, we didn't have much to say to each other.
Now, although the gentleman I was speaking to didn't look the part at all, I felt sure that he was another of Sasha's visitors. There was something furtive in his stance, as if he'd been caught doing something he wouldn't want others to know about. My first thought was to give him a thorough dressing down, to leave him in no doubt about what I thought of his behaviour, and maybe even scare him off for good. Then, analysing the circumstances quickly, I thought better of that. I tried to scan the situation from his point of view, and it occurred to me that maybe he thought I was another of Sasha's ilk, offering similar services from my own flat.
I was wearing a very short floral-print silk robe, buttoned at the front, which accentuated my curves and my cleavage, and I was showing a lot of leg. On my feet were high-heeled red slip-on shoes, and my hair had an untidy, tousled look. Part-time local independent whore, taking a mid-afternoon break, to wash her underwear? Quite possibly. Still, as I said, this was supposed to be a private space, and so I'd dressed accordingly.
Taking a less aggressive line than I'd originally had in mind, I asked him if he was here to see Sasha. It was a simple, polite, soft-spoken question, but it was direct enough to stop him in his tracks. For a moment, he seemed completely at a loss. He finally managed to stammer out a kind of apology, and said he'd travelled quite a long way, to see her, and had ended up getting here early.
He seemed so embarrassed to have been caught skulking around my patio that I began to feel sorry for him. Once he'd started to get his composure back, he made a surprisingly positive impression. He was articulate, polite and charmingly reserved. Definitely not the sort of guy I'd have expected to run into, on his way to Sasha's boudoir.
Having wrong-footed him, though, just a little, and knowing that he wasn't in a hurry just now, I kept the pressure on.
"Have you seen her before?"
"Yes ... a few times."
"She's worth a journey, then?"
"Oh yes ... she certainly is."
"Do you mind if I ask how you found out about her?"
Disarmed by my gentle, polite curiosity, he explained that she had a "profile" on a website called Adultlife. She said quite a lot about herself on the site, with quite a few pictures, and a frequently updated blog. I could see that he now felt he'd said more than enough, and he was dying to ask me some questions. Not just yet, my good man. I was the one in control of this particular conversation, and I had a reason for wanting the information.
Before he could ask, I told him that Sasha and I were neighbours. That was all he needed to know about me, for the moment. I didn't say anything at all about Sasha. Meanwhile, as I was starting to build up an initial impression of the man in front of me, I was liking what I saw. He seemed quiet and unassuming, shy even. The sort of guy who'd probably rely on someone crazy like Sasha to bring him out of his shell.
Keeping him guessing about the situation he was in, I started to prepare the ground for a plan that was taking shape in my mind.
"OK" I said, "I understand you've travelled a long way to get here, but what would you say if you found that there was a new dish on the menu today?"
He looked puzzled, but I was getting the impression that we understood each other.
"Let me make a little bet with you. Pop in and see me for an hour instead, and I bet that the next time you're in our area, it'll be me that you're here to see, and not her. What do you say?"