Chapter 1
I hadn't set out to do it. I had never thought about it or planned such a thing. It just wasn't me, it was not my thing, well it had never been until then. Something must have changed, but was it with me, was it circumstances or what?
Chapter 2
I was Acting Head Copywriter in a big ad agency. Acting, because I was not a full time employee, but a freelancer, as they call self-employed contractors in the ad business. Things were booming and the agency was stretched. With the typical lack of loyalty and 'sell yourself to the highest bidder' attitude of that crazy business, job jumping was rife and good employees were on a merry-go-round of moving from agency to agency. Hence the agency's need for an 'Acting Head Copy Chief.'
I usually worked from home. The flat I shared with my twelve year old daughter in London Docklands was both my home and work place. It was certainly big enough and the great views over the rejuvenated docks and beyond to the Thames were highly conducive to the creative mind. The sort of word orientated mind needed to produce elegant plagiarism, which was the 'grift to the mill', for most copywriters.
I had been there three years at the time. That made , well nearer forty really, single woman, trying new things, working out where I was going and where I would like to go, I was redefining mysel; life-style re-engineering as some of those 'up their own arse, magazines term it.
I didn't want to take the job. I don't like the pressure of managing others and I don't like going to work. Working I don't mind. Hard work I relish, but I hate the corporate bullshit of companies, especially ad agencies. That, and it made easier for me to look after Sara, was why I was freelance. Oh yes, I also didn't like the macho, totally non PC way of agency life anymore. Whilst by no means a feminist, I do feel females are entitled not to be continually sexually or verbally harassed in the work place, but that is a concept that has not reached the ad business: especially where thirty something divorcees, 'who must be gagging for it', are concerned.
Mike, the MD and I went back a very long way. We went back to before I had even met Kevin. In fact he was instrumental in me meeting the man who became my husband, for he was an Account Director at the agency on Kevin's account and I was the copywriter. We had kept in touch throughout my marriage, but carefully resisted getting too close in fear that we would rekindle to the powerfully sexual relationship we'd had pre Kevin.
"Look Mands, we're in deep shit," Mike said.
"So tell me something new," I replied into my mobile as I sat in my apartment naked apart from a pair of pale blue, lacy shorts.
He went on to tell me about the agency's staffing problems, the projects he had in process, the backlog of copy to be written and the new business pitches he had lined up.
"So why call me? You know I'll take all the work you want to give," I asked idly stroking my right breast with my fingertips.
As part of redefining myself after all those years with Kevin, I had found chat rooms and from that, exchanging mails with people I met on there. Obviously, the content of both was rather, shall we say 'intimate and personal?' No, let's call a spade a spade, it was fucking horny, well most was, some was just pathetically pornographic and I quickly got away from that.
"You should write stories," one of the guys said in a chat room one day.
I had previously exchanged a few mails with him describing some of my sexual experiences. I found that interesting, quite sexually stimulating, remember I was now single after fourteen or so years of three or four times a week sex, and strangely cathartic; it was helping me find myself again after the devastation of my marriage break up.
"I couldn't do that," I had said to him, "I've got an eleven year old daughter."
"So?" He had persisted.
"If they were published she might see them."
"Not if you published them on Literotica," he suggested.
I looked it up, liked it, read some fantastic erotica and was on my way.
"I need help in the agency," Mike was saying.
I was only half listening for I was proof reading a piece I had just written for Lit, called The Mirror. That describes my body and how, by writing about myity, I aroused myself and ended up naked on the floor of the apartment masturbating in front of a floor to ceiling mirror. As I chatted to Mike, I glanced over at that mirror wondering ........................?
"Really?" I murmured probably sounding absent-minded as I read my lengthy description of my full, heavy, at the time, 35 D breasts which I was fondling as I read about them.
"Mandy are you listening to me? I'm in deep shit and I need your help," Mike said, dragging me away from my sexual meanderings. I closed 'The Mirror' and let go of my breasts, although they were still tingling and I had that lovely warmth of arousal all through my body.
In the end I agreed. I would do three months, pretty much full time. I would spend the mornings in the agency, the early afternoons with clients, but would generally leave to be home by four when I would then continue working from home. We agreed a great package, including a Porsche 911, my dream car.
****
I was two months into the contract. It was working well. I had sorted out many of the problems, had called on a number of old contacts to overcome the copy backlog and do the pitches and had recruited a few key creative and production staff including four copywriters, one of whom was a senior writer, earmarked as my replacement.
I was running a weekend workshop for the copy team. Sara was away for a few days with her father, so I had set it up at a lovely country hotel, not far from Windsor, just outside London. The arrangement was to meet for dinner on the Friday evening and discuss the loose agenda I had prepared. The overall objective of the workshop was to improve both the quality, but as importantly the speed with which we turned copy projects round, at present it was too slow and cumbersome.
On theFriday morning we would discuss the overall problem as a group, have a brainstorm and develop loads of potential ways to improve, irrespective at that stage or their practicality. We would then break into four smaller groups of three and investigate the suggestions and come up the best three workable suggestions from each group. Later, maybe the next day, these would be presented to the main group and fully discussed with a view to developing one from each group into a workable system the next morning.
The back end of the Saturday afternoon was to be one-to-one counselling and coaching sessions pairing the more senior with the more junior team members; this was recommended by the training facilitator I had invited. He paired us by the most experienced with the least experienced and so. I was thus paired with the second least experienced, Sammi.
She was twenty two or so and had just left Bristol University with a solid 2:1 in English and Psychology, a perfect combination for a copywriter in the ad industry. She was on the company's graduate trainee scheme and would spend a time in different departments eventually finding a permanent home with a job in a department that was most suitable for her. She had spent a few months in accounts, which was where all the grads started, and had been in copy for just a few weeks.
I knew that she was very popular throughout the agency, particularly with the creatives, but also she seemed to making quite an impression on the suits in account management. But then, when you looked at her golden blonde hair, her blue eyes, her pretty face, her youthfully rounded figure and slender, tanned legs, it wasn't hard to see why, and I realised a little ashamed of myself, I did look at them quite a lot. When you added in her bubbly personality, her smiling, chatty, friendly demeanour, her willingness to help and her apparently strong work ethic, the reason for her popularity and why most of the department heads, me included, were already making overtures to capture her for their group was pretty obvious.
The afternoon had gone well and we were onto the last session, the one-to-ones. Sammi and I found a quiet spot in an empty room off the bar. We talked about her career aspirations and why she had chosen to come into advertising and then she had shown me her copy portfolio. Her writing, though inevitably a little naïve, was sharp and punchy and showed a lot of promise, which I told her.
"Oh really Mandy," she said leaning forward and grabbing my wrist, "You really mean that?"
"Yes absolutely Sammi, you have a good style," I replied turning and looking at her. As she was leaning forward the long sleeved, low cut top had gaped a bit and my eyes confirmed what I had thought earlier that she wasn't wearing a bra.
