It took less than twenty seconds to snare Amanda Haldane.
It was a warm, humid summer afternoon. It was Wednesday, and everyone was off to work or college. Amanda's daughter Jenny was off to study her art course, and her husband Michael was at work.
Amanda was 38, with wavy auburn hair, a slim body which she kept in trim with visits to Fitness First every Monday and Thursday. Her eyes were brown, her face a triangle with a little pointed chin, and pouty lips. She was wearing a plain white blouse, dark grey slacks and the slip - on house shoes with flat soles she always wore while cleaning about the house.
Amanda herself had been cleaning her home when she saw the folded up note on the glass surface of the coffee table in the living room. The house had been scrubbed clean, top to bottom, by the time her work had brought her to this final room of the house, and to the mysterious piece of paper on the table, folded neatly in half.
Amanda had been in the process of reaching for the note on the table when the telephone rang. Her hand hovered over the note as it rang a second, and then a third time. Amanda looked up, wondering if she could pick up the note, or if the person on the end of the line would hang up first.
The phone rang again. Amanda sighed, straightened up. She'd go and answer the telephone first, then come back and read the note at leisure. If the phone call was from those damned telemarketers again, though, she'd spend a few moments roundly cursing the voice on the other end of the line first. THEN she'd read that note.
By the time she got to the phone, it was on its sixth ring. Amanda picked up the receiver hurriedly; if it went on to a seventh or eight ring, the BT Call Minder service would take over, and the call would be redirected to an answerphone. And that, after Amanda had made a special effort to come and pick up the phone, would simply not do.
Amanda placed the receiver to her ear. "Hello?" she asked.
For a moment, all she could hear was music on the end of the line.
Strange
, she thought.
There was a drawing in of breath on the end of the line. A male voice answered: a voice she'd never heard before.
"Hello," the voice said ...
... in delicious, rich, smoky tones that made Amanda shiver all the way down her spine.
"Er, who are you?" Amanda asked, after a moment during which she realised she'd involuntarily let out a gasp.
"Am I talking to Mrs Amanda Juliet Haldane?" asked the man.
Ah
, thought Amanda.
He
is
a telemarketer, after all.
"Look, here, now, I don't want to buy a timeshare or double glazing off of you -" she snapped curtly down the line.
"You
are
Amanda Juliet Haldane, then?" asked the man. "I must know."
"Yes, I am," Amanda blurted, not knowing why she was suddenly seized by a compulsion to divulge her personal details. "But you'd already know that, wouldn't you? So why would you need to ask -"
The voice paused a moment, then resumed: "Also known as Tamsin?"
Amanda stopped speaking in mid - sentence, stood silently in the hallway, the handset held firmly to her ear as she trembled.
And in that silence, the background music played on.
"How did you know that?" Amanda asked.
"You do go by the name of Tamsin, then?" replied the voice.
"Yes."
"On the 'Married But Looking For ...
Fun
' chatroom?" The voice carried an odd emphasis over the word "fun."
A pause. "Yes."
"And are you still looking for ...
fun?
" Again, the odd emphasis.
Amanda gulped, began to blush. "Y - yes," she stammered, her heart beating more vigourously now. "But a- all I - I did was jus - just leave my - my name," she said. "I didn't leave any - anything else beh - behind to identify m - me, ohhh ..."
Amanda felt a wave of sexual arousal course through her body. "Who - who are you ...?" she gasped.
"Never mind that, Tamsin," replied the voice. "Tell me, truthfully, and hold nothing back. Do you still want ...
fun?
" Yet again, the emphasis.
A knot of fear tightened in Amanda's solar plexus. What was this man asking her to do? She prayed he wasn't going to come in the door and ... at the thought of what he might do, the knot tightened further. Amanda's heart hammered wildly as the fear mixed with the strange sense of arousal.
But something in the word "fun," or maybe it was that background music, just washed a wave of warmth throughout her body, bringing a flush and pinpricks of sweat to her face and neck, and melting the fear like a wash of warm water dissolving a hard lump of sugar.
"Yes," Amanda breathed huskily, "
fun.
"
"Good, Tamsin," said the voice. "But first, you must tell me about yourself. What I will need to know. I will need some information before we can proceed. Will you tell me what I need to know, fully and truthfully?"
"Yes," Amanda replied.
"Even if it's so deeply personal that you'd never even dream of discussing it with a stranger?" added the voice.
"Yes, anything," Amanda replied. "Anything."
"Even secrets about yourself, Tamsin? Secrets so deep that you'd rather die rather than divulge them?"
"At this point," Amanda breathed, "I'd tell you my bank account Pin number and my dirtiest sexual fantasy."
"All in good time, Tamsin," the voice replied, calm and unruffled as he had been at the start of the conversation. "All in good time."
There was a pause, during which time all Amanda could hear was that music in the background. There was a rustling sound, like somebody turning over papers. Then the indrawn breath again.
"Let's begin. Tamsin, how old are you?"
"I'm - I'm 38."
"Oh, dear, Tamsin, I meant your age."
"I'm ... I'm eighteen."
"And your hair colour, Tamsin?"
"Brunette." Amanda was auburn.
"Tamsin, what is your favourite rock band?"
"I love U2," Amanda said, wondering why. She couldn't fucking stand U2.
Her breath caught. But
Tamsin
did ...
"And now, I've got to ask you. Tamsin, do you smoke?"
Amanda shook her head. She didn't smoke. Filthy habit. She opened her mouth to speak ...
"Yes," she replied.
"Have you been a smoker for long, Tamsin?"
"Not really," replied Amanda. "Since my eighteenth, two weeks ago."
"Do you love your husband?" the voice asked.
"I think so," Amanda responded, amazed that she wasn't responding as 'Tamsin' this time.
"You only
think
so?" the voice asked.
"Well, I did when I married him - I thought I was in love with him, only -"
"You disappoint me," said the voice. "The truth, now. Do you love your husband Michael, yes or no?"
Amanda found herself trembling, trying to withhold the answer, but there was that strange compulsion to speak the truth; as though releasing the truth, however bitter, would bring relief from a still deeper inner pain. Her jaw unclenched of its own accord, and the answer rose up in her throat, emerging from her lips with a force beyond her volitional control:
"No," she said. "No, I no longer love Michael."
Gasping, Amanda leaned forwards, struggling for breath, propping herself up against the wall with her free arm for support.
A pause. Then: "That's good, that's fine. Now let it all out. All of it. All of your hidden feelings. I want you to express them all."
A wash of unwanted emotions emerged, in the wake of the public revelation. Anger, bitterness, fear, misery, ennui; all of these tore their way up through her vocal chords.
Twenty years, they'd been married. Twenty years, of quietly raising Jenny, of being the perfect mother, of being Michael's perfect wife. Twenty years.
When Amanda had been Tamsin's age, she vowed to see the river Ganges at Benares by the time she was thirty. Then she'd met Michael, and started dating him. They'd got married, and Jenny had followed a year later.
Amanda'd spent her entire thirtieth year at home. She'd wanted to wander halfway around the world by the age of thirty; for twelve years, she'd not gone further than Benidorm, and the rest of the time, she'd not gone much further than the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom.
Amanda struggled to hold the emotions back; but the emotions were too strong, too insistent. Clenching the handset in her fist like a bone weapon, she threw back her head and howled out her frustration as a single, long drawn - out primal scream of rage.
Then she leaned forward again, sobs emerging from her; sobs of relief. The secret was finally, finally out.
Slowly, the sobs died down, replaced by heavy, ragged breaths. Amanda heard a voice, faint and distant, calling her name calmly. After a while, she realised to her surprise that she was still clutching the handset; that the voice hadn't gone away; and that she
still