One day, whilst she is working in the Laundry, Clare Davenport makes a discovery.
The day has not been going well for Clare, largely owing to her knickers. She has always hated wearing Reformatory knickers – you never know who has worn them before, what sort of fluids and juices they have been stained with. But the pair she was doled out last changeover day are not only stained and frayed: the elastic is also so worn that she has difficulty keeping them up, and has to stand awkwardly, with her legs slightly apart. Otherwise it scarcely needs Tania Nye to yank them down, as they slide down by themselves.
She has noticed the other girls sniggering at her. She has even noticed Miss Armstrong and Miss Harman eyeing her with smirks on their faces.
She has just finished ironing a pile of sheets when two white uniform dresses are passed her way. She lays the first one on the ironing board, and notices the nametape: B Jolley. She laughs sardonically to herself: could there ever have been a more inappropriately named woman than Matron? She irons carefully, making sure there are no creases for anyone to complain about, then lays out the second uniform dress and looks at the nametape: R Lucie.
So Miss Lucy is really Miss Lucie after all. It makes sense to Clare: why would she alone be called by her first name, when all the Wardens are called by their surnames? It's an interesting discovery – though hardly worth passing on. But it does distract Clare from the problem of her knickers, and sets her thinking about Miss Lucy/Lucie.
She has been shaved three times now by Miss Lucy (it's no good, she cannot think of her as Miss Lucie). Each time, Miss Lucy has seemed friendly. She has asked Clare about herself. She has shaved her gently and considerately. She has touched Clare in a way that has been arousing, but has always stopped short of overt arousal. But Clare cannot make her out: always it seems as though there is something unsaid. Always there seems to be something in the air – unless it is only in Clare's imagination. Miss Lucy is an enigma, Clare thinks, as she holds up the uniform dress that has so recently been in contact with Miss Lucy's body.
Whilst Clare Davenport has been thinking about Miss Lucy, Miss Lucy has been thinking about Clare Davenport.
For Miss Lucy – listed as Rebecca Lucie on the Hazely payroll – the offer of a job assisting her Aunt could hardly have come at a better moment. Things had been getting a little hot at 36 Ravenscroft Terrace after a neighbour had complained to the Police about the frequency of late-night gentlemen visitors. And when Rebecca and her companion Kim Starkey had learned that Rebecca's principle duty would be to shave the genitals of thirty Reformatory girls, the two girls had laughed so much that Kim had literally wet her knickers.
So Rebecca had joined the Staff at Hazely, and morphed into Miss Lucy.
It was like being a child in charge of a sweetshop. Every Saturday afternoon some fifteen girls, aged between 18 and 21, lay on an Examination Couch, spread their young legs, and lay back whilst Miss Lucy – with no-one to supervise her - ferreted around between their legs and shaved them until their vulvas were as smooth as they day they were born.
Every Saturday evening Miss Lucy took herself early to bed and, with her clitoris practically burning a hole in her knickers, rubbed herself silly – often with the aid of a dildo and a vibrator.
And every Monday she caught the train back to Ravenscroft Terrace, where she and Kim Starkey, a flame-haired Irish girl who had been brought up riding thoroughbred horses and now rode her clients in a similarly assured and no-nonsense manner, would fuck and suck and finger each other until neither girl could stand up – their arousal heightened by Miss Lucy's accounts of life inside Hazely. These accounts focussed on the desperation of the inmates, their reactions at being shaved, the longing on their faces, the quivering of their little pussies, and the subtle pleasures and torments Miss Lucy had the power to inflict upon them.
Sometimes Miss Lucy would even mime or pantomime the reactions of one of the Hazely girls: lying on her back on their bed she would thrust her own trim little pussy towards Kim, saying:
Oh Miss Lucy, please Miss Lucy, it's been so long, I'm so desperate, I'll die if I don't have an orgasm.
And Kim would pretend to reprove her, tapping her pubic bone with her forefinger, saying Now, now, you know it isn't allowed, you have to show more self-control, until the two girls would collapse giggling, and Kim would slide her fingers inside Miss Lucy's sopping vagina, and work her into another climax.
Or else Kim would ask Miss Lucy to tie her up, to strap her legs open and show her exactly how she treated the Hazely girls, and Miss Lucy would oblige her, trace her fingers around Kim's swollen labia, tease her and taunt her and bring her to a peak of desperation, withholding the final coup de grace until Kim could stand it no longer, and would yell at her to stop the game, and Miss Lucy would plunge her fingers inside her friend's hot, quivering vagina and reward her with a volcanic squirting orgasm.
And on Tuesday afternoons Miss Lucy, having had enough sex to last a normal girl a month, would catch the train back to Hazely.
But the job as assistant to her Aunt was not just about sexual titillation. As Miss Lucy was quick to discover, there were other possibilities. For where there is need, and where there are shortages, there is also opportunity.
It did not take Miss Lucy long to find her way to the Passwords to her Aunt's computer, and thence to the Hazely records. Before long she was in possession of a great deal of useful information. She knew why each girl was in Hazely. She knew how long each girl was in Hazely for. And more importantly to her, she knew something about each girl's social background, particularly as regards her and her family's financial status.
Of course the records did not show how much a girl had in her bank account. But by putting together other pieces of information - the girl's job if she had one, her address, the nature of her offence – Miss Lucy was able to form a pretty accurate idea of her resources.
Mostly the information was depressing. Most of the girls lived in tower blocks and Council Houses; if they worked at all they worked on market stalls, in Supermarkets or fast-food outlets. Their crimes were petty: shoplifting, prostitution, small-time drug-dealing.
There was one glaring exception: Karen Frayn. Miss Lucy hardly needed to look up the records, as she remembered having read about Karen's case in the newspaper.
Karen was not a typical Hazely girl. Karen came from a very wealthy family. In fact Karen's family had money to burn. Though Miss Lucy still could not quite believe her own boldness in asking for five thousand pounds for a service rendered. But then didn't somebody once say that the more you're asked to pay for something the more you value it?
With one possible exception the other girls have nothing to offer financially. So Miss Lucy treats them as the whim takes her. Some of them are sexy, some pitiable: though she has no intention of losing her power and authority by having sex with any of them.
Not that they aren't offering. The way some of them display themselves, offering up their little fannies, trying to tempt her. Sienna Sharples for instance. She is cute – and she knows it. The way she lies back on the Examination Couch, and stretches out like a cat, all the time with those big eyes trying to make eye contact. Miss Lucy can't deny she feels a quiver between her legs when Sienna Sharples is on the couch before her. But she knows something of Sienna's character too: how Sienna liked to seduce men on dance floors, rub up against them seductively, with one hand caressing them and the other in their back pockets searching for their wallets. She knows that it would be very foolish to give Sienna any kind of lever that could be used against her. So she pretends to be drawn in, gazing at Sienna's pussy as though she has never seen anything so gorgeous before, parting her firm little buttocks and gasping as she uncovers Sienna's puckered little anus, smoothing oil over Sienna's mound until Sienna is pushing desperately at her hand, quivering on the brink of a climax – then stopping abruptly, leaving Sienna high and dry, giving the devious little prick-tease a taste of her own medicine.
Yes, Miss Lucy has the measure of the Hazely girls: of their finances and their characters.
