FIVE
'Anyway,' Soria had said, 'I know you prefer the company of women.'
How could this woman she had never met know about her life, about things that were so personal, when she had striven so hard to keep her private life just that - private?
'Aidra!' Eleanor murmured, just loud enough for Soria to hear.
The very girl she had just been thinking about.
She
must have boasted about her conquest of a member of the senior management team to her colleagues and the gossip reached Robert, who had passed it on to his wife. The truth turned out to be rather different, as Eleanor was about to learn. But she was half right: the pixieish blonde was at the fulcrum of events.
'Did she tell you about us?' the Persian woman asked her, with a note of disapproval in her voice. 'Did she tell you our story?'
'No,' said Eleanor flatly. 'It's just that - well, that if you were going to hear such things about anyone in the company, it would most probably be from her.'
'I will tell you what she did to me,' said Soria, as if she herself had no part in the matter, which Eleanor could scarcely believe, 'and then I will give you my gift.'
Eleanor shuddered at Soria's words - a reaction that did not go unnoticed by the enigmatic woman with the aquiline nose and the slender build.
'It was two years ago - maybe a little more now. I was changing the sheets in our bedroom when I discovered an earring. It wasn't mine, of course. It was a clip-on one, quite stylish, not cheap. My first thought was that my husband had brought a whore to the house while I was away visiting some friends who live in Norfolk. I confronted him and he confessed immediately. It seemed to be a big weight off his mind. He told me he'd never been unfaithful before but he had succumbed to temptation with a girl from the office. I asked him who it was, since I had visited the office just half a year before, and he told me I wouldn't know her, since she had only joined recently. I asked him to show me a photo and he said he didn't have one. I said I didn't believe him and told him not to lie to me if he wanted me to stay with him. Otherwise, I would contact my lawyer first thing in the morning.
He showed me this photo of a beautiful blonde girl on his phone (the phone he used for his personal calls) and I knew there and then that I must have her. It would be the sweetest revenge I could work on him. I told him to give me his phone, and I told him exactly what I was going to do - how I was going to seduce her. He didn't say anything but I could tell that he was very excited about the idea. He knew I had been with women before we were married. What he didn't know is that I had been with three or four since we were married. I don't honestly think he would have cared even had I told him. But I wanted there to be some secrets between us. It kept me young and it kept me hungry - two qualities that Robert liked in me very much. It was, as you can see, very much a win-win situation.
'I told my husband to arrange another meeting with her at our house, telling her I would be away again. This time, though, it was he who went off to stay with a friend up north somewhere on the pretext he had some work up there. I messaged her on the afternoon of the day we had arranged to meet after work, telling her to go in through the back door, which had been left unlocked. I told her to have a shower in the bathroom off the master bedroom, and that I would be home not long after to pick up where we had left off last time. I even told her that I would arrange a surprise for her. All illicit love affairs thrive on surprises, as you have probably learnt, Eleanor.
Of course, I was already in the house when she arrived and I sneaked into the bathroom while her back was turned in the shower and removed all the towels from the room. I had already taken the clothes which she had left scattered on the bedroom floor (what a slob she was, I thought!) and placed them in a drawer, together with her earring. Yes, I know I was very magnanimous in letting her have it back, but odd earrings are such a bore, aren't they?
When she finished in the shower, where she took an age (as I was later to find out, shaving her legs and other places in order to make herself as desirable as she could for Bob) she fussed about in the bathroom, looking in the various drawers for a towel and finally calling out to Robert to 'stop mucking about.' That's funny, I thought. Those were almost the exact words I would use with her to tell her to steer clear of my husband if she valued her well-being.
When she stepped into the bedroom from the entrance to the bathroom, she saw me standing there, only a matter of feet way, wearing a long Persian robe, which buttoned down the front. I had experimented with different postures, but the one I decided to use was the classic arms across the chest look of disapproval.
'Who are you?' she said, as if she genuinely didn't know. 'Could you let me have a towel, please?'
I could see what Bob saw in her. She looked like a bimbo, but she didn't lack nerve.
'I'm Robert's wife,' I said, pausing to see what effect this would have on her, but she seemed to take it in her stride.
'Perhaps you could tell your husband I am here,' she said, as if she really thought he had told me about their affair and wanted me to be in on it.
'He's four hundred miles away,' I said. 'I sent him away so that I could decide what I wanted to do with you.'
'Where are my clothes?' she said, looking around her. ''I'll get dressed then I'll be off. There seems to have been a misunderstanding.'
'You'll be going nowhere until I say you can. Your clothes have been folded neatly and put with the earring you left here when you fucked my husband behind my back. You will get them when I've finished with you.'
She stood there, with little streams of water running down her body onto the carpet, which, I thought, would need fixing. But that could wait. She wasn't covering herself up. She just kept her hands by her sides as if she were an artist's model. I was quite impressed with her sangfroid, and more than impressed with her body. I knew I was going to have so much fun with her and only regretted that she wasn't going to be a virgin. However, that was where I was wrong. As I was going to find out soon, she had never been with a woman. Finally, she spoke the words I had been waiting for.
'What do you want me to do?'