I'm staring at the ring Ron has bought me. It is gold with a nice plump diamond in the middle. Some might consider it vulgar, but what do I care. The average house price is around Β£3,500,
Β£382 sits on my finger, shinning in the sunlight, as I walk up the road on his arm. I can see his proud expression as we pass strangers who gawp at the odd couple coming towards them. Every look makes me shudder. I remember the sales girls in the jewellers who had amusement on their faces, as I was introduced to them as Ron's wife to be. I'm sure I will be the talk of the jewellery store for sometime to come. Becoming his wife will be humiliating I'm sure, and I know there will times when I regret it, but right now I'm thinking of the money, and hoping as the letter I found addressed to him said, he will dead within a year or two.
Back home Ron collects the cactus plant and takes my coat from me, and then we head next door.
"Pleased to meet you, we thought we would welcome you to the area? I'm Ronald Smith, and this is my fiancΓ©e Sylvia."
She looks us over, and almost manages to hide what she is thinking.
"Darling....Terry," she calls, "this is Mr Smith, and his, wife to be."
Terry appears, and his face changes in an instant, from that of a guy who feels like we are intruding, to one of shock.
I sit on the couch with my knees pressed together. The atmosphere feels unreal. It is like the unspoken question about me marrying a much older man, is on our new neighbour's minds, but they are wary about asking it out loud.
"We live in the big house next door," Ronald boasts, and hands over the cactus plant.
Vera our new neighbour's wife, scuttles off with the plant to put the kettle on. I sit in silence as Ronald Smith talks. He's calm and has me show off my engagement ring. After half an hour Ron takes the tray of cups back in the kitchen with Vera, telling her how to care for the cactus plant.
Terry looks at my legs as I stand up, I turn waiting for my husband to be, to return from the kitchen. I take a small step back to the arm of the chair, where Terry is sat, until my leg is against his hand. I stand there with my back to him, feeling his knuckles twitch slightly. Finally his rough knuckles move slowly up the back of my thigh, and then I take a quick step away.
Ron and Vera come back from the kitchen, and I smile as she invites me in for a coffee whenever I'm free.
We sit eating our tea, and Ron talks about our new neighbours. I tell him what I did and how I pushed my leg against Terry's hand, as it lay across the arm of the chair. I'm watching my husband to be for a reaction, he just smiles and tells me I've been good letting Terry have a feel, as he instructed me to do, if I got the chance.
"Why did you want me to tease him?"
"Because my dear Sylvia, I want him to be constantly thinking about you. I want him lusting after you, and imagining his big rough hands groping you. It would make a good photo shoot, the cheating wife and rough brute of a builder, having a sordid sexual encounter."
"I have something you should read."
I go up to my bedroom and pull an exercise book from under the mattress. I make a few notes to Ron at the end, and then I take it downstairs and hand it to him.
"No, don't read it now, read it tonight when you're in bed."
He smiles.
"Sylvia, why don't you read it to me...in bed?"
"Because I told you, there is no sex until I'm your wife, and the prenuptial agreement is signed, and you have written your will."
"In that case I had better start making arrangements," he says with a sickly grin, "and don't forget, you're modelling for us tomorrow."
I settle down and open the exercise book. I start reading what Sylvia has written in her own sweet handwriting. I read her thoughts about me, and the looks I gave her the first time we met, and about her green panties going missing taken by "the dirty old man," next door. I read about the thrill she got on the day she moved in, by bending over the bed in front of Jake. The way Gerry stroked her leg, while she sat on her husband's lap in the van with him, in her words, "Sean was totally unaware that Gerry was having a feel of his wife's leg."
She goes on about the thrill of teasing the headmaster, until he couldn't control himself, and spoilt it all. Then back to me, the dirty old man, whose kindness is hiding something sinister. The secret joy she felt as the cameras clicked, and the dirty old man that helped himself to a feel, as he shove his hands in her underwear. She questions what would have happened if she hadn't run off.
I would have been at their mercy she writes, unable to defend myself, as fingers and cocks played with and fucked me. Oh how vulnerable I would be, and oh how they would enjoy taking photos of my used body, to send to me long into the future, to humiliate me all over again.
I read more; sucked into this weird confession that Sylvia has given me. Her love of the photos she has seen in the magazine, but wishing there was more build up to it. The woman with legs spread wide with that huge saw spinning ever closer between her legs, but why was she there? There has to be a reason, there should be photos explaining why it came to that Sylvia writes.