(c) DAR 2009
I'm not sure about what follows – should I tell you more, or have I told you too much already? There is more to be told, it's true, but do you want to read it, and do I want to admit to it? I'll read what you say – if you comment – and decide what to do.
I kept telling myself I was just flying to Southampton to sort out a new job - a promotion. That was all it was. Fly down Friday afternoon, fly back on Sunday. Or just possibly on Monday morning, that was always a possibility. I just had to spend some time with the girl who would be my new boss if it all worked out. We were going to go through some plans, try to work out the basis of a couple of new courses - we're in training, you see - so we could see if we worked well together on this kind of thing.
Her husband worked in the Middle East, the oil business, and mine was staying at home for the weekend, poor lamb. I was just visiting her to get the new job, because we needed the extra money. Spending the weekend with her at her house so we could work on what we needed without interruption. I was just going to spend the weekend with a colleague, that was all.
Except that I knew it wasn't going to be like that at all. I was quite certain that Sarah had long since decided it wouldn't - that was her name, Sarah - and I can't help wondering if Alex, my husband, didn't perhaps suspect what was really going to happen. To get the job I had to be able to show I could do it, of course, but everyone concerned knew I could. I'd demonstrated that before when I'd had the opportunity. Indeed if I hadn't lived in Northumberland, hundreds of miles from company headquarters, I'd probably have been given the manager's job instead of Sarah.
No, what Sarah wanted to know wasn't whether I could do the job. She wanted to know if I'd sleep with her, and she also wanted to know whether, if I would, she'd enjoy me enough to want to keep on having me. Would I be her mistress, and would my husband be a problem that would make that difficult? Would I be good enough in bed to keep her interested?
She hadn't said any of this, of course. I'd just worked it out from various things I'd heard or seen. Not least from something said to me a couple of months ago by another of the trainers, a younger and prettier woman from East Anglia, married to a former football star and suitably glamorous and high-maintenance. She'd made some comment about Sarah coming on to her, asking her to come to some hotel for a weekend, a study weekend or something. She hadn't gone, said she knew what Sarah wanted, and she didn't fancy the idea. I'd scoffed at it at the time, of course, but later...
And now Alex's career had gone pear-shaped - he said it was only temporary - and we needed the promotion, needed the money. Sarah had asked me down for the weekend, dangled the promotion in front of me, said her children and their au pair were away at Granny's, and said we'd be alone in the house. And in a meeting the week before, when she thought I couldn't see I'd noticed her eyeing me, eyeing my body.
I'm not bad looking for 45 - slim, good skin that doesn't need make-up, trim hips, neat if small boobs which have stayed in good enough shape that I can and do go topless on the beach, and cropped blonde hair - but I don't get eyed up so often that I don't notice it when it happens. The fact that it was a woman doing it gave me the shivers. I've never gone that way, never thought about sleeping with another woman. Not before this, anyway.
And now here I was on the flight to Southampton wondering how she'd get me into her bed, what it would be like, whether I'd enjoy it, determined not to let myself enjoy it. The further south the plane went, the more scared I got. What had I got myself into? What would she do to me if I was right about what she wanted?
Before I could get into too much of a state we were preparing for landing, and in what seemed like moments I was pulling my overnight bag out of the locker and heading for the exit. Sarah would be waiting for me in the arrivals lounge. I was hoping she'd like what she saw - I hadn't been sure what to wear, and had eventually settled on some nicely tailored trousers in a lightweight fabric that I thought made my bottom look really good, and a long-sleeved cotton tee-shirt that was quite clingy and again made of rather thin fabric.
Sure enough, there she was, looking very trim herself in jeans and a white shirt that was unbuttoned at the neck rather more than I would have expected from seeing her in the office. I put my overnight bag down to exchange pecks on the cheek, and when she bent quickly to pick it up couldn't help getting a good look at her generous cleavage. I wondered if this was coincidence, or if she was trying to send me a message.
I certainly got a pretty good look at her boobs, which are bigger than mine, and looked quite enviable, the skin flawless and firm. But then she's only 34 and quite well off, so she should look good. As she led me out of the terminal was it my imagination, or was she swaying her hips more than usual. No doubt that the jeans were from a designer who knew how to cut them to make a woman's hips look good. I saw a couple of guys giving her a second look; indeed I saw one guy give us both a good look, and couldn't help wondering what he'd have thought if he'd known what was going on.
When we got to her house in an attractive and rather pricey suburb of the city, Sarah said something that made me pretty sure I was right about what was actually happening. I had made some remark about it looking a nice house, and she said that the trouble was it only had four bedrooms. The kids had two; the au pair had the third, so there was no spare bedroom for me.
She could, she said, make up a camp bed on the landing. Or I could share her bedroom. It was a double bed, but it was a big one, a king size. I said that would be fine, and we chatted about what we liked in sleeping arrangements - doubles, singles, hard mattresses, that kind of thing. And then she said she slept naked - not that she didn't wear anything, not even that she slept nude, but that she slept naked. I got the message, and said I didn't wear much in bed in the summer either. That way at least I could keep my knickers on. She seemed happy at the news.
I didn't want her thinking I was too easy. I slept with very few men before I met Alex, and nobody else since then. I wasn't easy. I wouldn't have been doing this at all if it hadn't been for a moment a few weeks ago, just before Sarah called me about the job, when I caught him on the verge of tears as he did the accounts. When I checked later I could see he was going to have trouble paying the mortgage any day now, and he was trying so hard to sort something out, poor lamb, and to be tough and not show how worried he was. In fact he was desperate; I'd never seen him that way before.
So here I was, waiting to be seduced by Sarah so I could get a job as her assistant, pay the mortgage and presumably have sex with her whenever she fancied it from then on. I had been hoping I could confirm the job before she had me, but now I wasn't so sure. If we were going to bed together tonight naked, then my chances of making it through the night without giving her what she wanted looked poor to me. I shivered again at the thought of it.
She got to my overnight bag before I did for the second time, giving me another good look down her shirt in the process, and led me into the house and upstairs to "our" bedroom. It was a big room, light and airy with a mirrored wardrobe down one side, which made it look even bigger. The bed, too, was a big one. Sarah showed me the en-suite bathroom, complete with double shower and huge corner bath. It was, I thought, a bit like a set for an up-market porn film, but I kept my thoughts to myself. It was also very luxurious and beautifully fitted out. At least, I thought wryly, I was going to sell myself in gorgeous surroundings.
Sarah left me to have a wash while she made some tea, and as I tidied myself up and unpacked my toilet bag I couldn't help looking in the mirror and wondering what she was thinking, how she was seeing me. There were, I had to admit, no signs that she'd gone off what I was assuming was the idea, and plenty that she hadn't. I went downstairs for a cup of tea.
After a cup of tea and a small biscuit we went through to her office, and she explained the projects she wanted us to look at. They did sound interesting, and we started work straight away. I enjoyed it, actually - it was nice just to concentrate on work again for a while. I made several suggestions Sarah really seemed to like, and the time flew by.
