Sooner or later you know that you'll be caught – or at least caught out – because, after all, there wouldn't be any point to risk-taking if there wasn't a genuine possibility of losing out. And if a risk is chanced often enough then that moment when the trap closes gets ever closer.
But all of that is not to say that the trap closing still doesn't come as a surprise – a shock, even – at the moment when it actually occurs.
And nor do we always foresee the repercussions or reactions of others with any clarity.
Don't get me wrong though. I hadn't become blasé about the calculated risk I was taking, and repeating. I wasn't exactly carrying out the deed on a daily basis, but it was frequent enough that I had grown used to the thrill it brought me – although I never found that it was any less exciting despite the number of times I partook of the chance.
I can't say that the chances were taken as a way of warding off the gradual but inevitable encroachment of time, even though I am now in my mid-thirties. With a son kicking around the house who has been a teenager either forever, or for seven years now – Ben's nineteen – my life was never short of a drama or two. Or a melodrama at a push.
But my life was classically ordinary. An ordinary mother with ordinary looks (although rather well-preserved, even if I say so myself), ordinary hobbies, an entirely ordinary divorce, an entirely ordinary love of shopping, and an ordinary house in an ordinary suburb of an ordinary city.
The risk-taking was the only thing about me that pushed the boundaries of ordinariness. But like I say, it didn't start as a desperate step to arrest the impending arrival of middle-age. I'd been taking the same risk – or rather, variations on the theme – for a couple of decades. It had evolved alongside my maturing (although there are some who will doubt the latter after reading this, I'll bet), and as my son, Ben, approached both his twentieth birthday and the time when he finally left home, it had grown into something that was almost entirely 'other' when compared to where it had started.
In a nutshell, I'm a chatter. Some might say that this equates to 'mouthy bitch' and I won't gainsay them – although I might enter into a long discussion about it. The internet has provided me with a way of allowing my natural chat tendencies to find freedom, and a the same time it has provided me with that delicious risk element that I find so intoxicating.
So, I chat – and I chat about all sorts of things I would never, ever consider doing in real life. That's one of the joys of internet chatting – the mind can roam free and into areas that you would never genuinely allow your body to roam. At the same time, though, I always need one foot – or toe, at least – anchored in the real world. And this is where the risk comes.
If I chat about being daring and taking chances, I'll sit here in this very chair completely naked. Even if I know someone else is in the house or due to arrive here shortly.
I started that way two decades ago when I lived with my parents and older brother, my heart racing as I typed the words, and just lately the risk has grown immeasurably as Ben has matured, with the result that, if anything, time has made the risk appeal even more, the heart beat even faster. There's nothing jaded about my chance-taking in the slightest.
As Ben progressed through school I would sit here starting chat sessions in the hours before he was due home, sometimes leaving things until I heard the front gate close before I would scramble for the safety of a dress or robe. My figure, as lithe now as it was as a teenager, has always been a tad full on top, and scrambling into clothing safety requires consummate timing and steady hands – always a difficult ask when the excitement is high. And, as the start of this tale relates, it was to be my eventual downfall. Although far from the way I had ever imagined.
Ben was working part-time sessions at a local convenience store while awaiting his start at university, and his hours were as regular as a metronome. He would leave here before lunchtime and arrive home at precisely half-past five each weekday and every other Saturday. So, when the mood took me – with alarming frequency of late – I would settle down at maybe four o'clock or half an hour earlier, and log onto a chat site.
The views of a genuine woman, let alone mother, are rather obviously sought after, and I would soon find myself teasing and chatting with young men – or middle aged men with decent acting abilities – and occasionally the topic of conversation would get my blood racing. Or rather, racing even more than the fact I always, but always, chatted naked.
From what I've already said, you must be aware that I'm well-practiced in the art of taking risks such as these and I was not joking when I said that I had never become blasé about them. But that afternoon events conspired against me.
It started with me hooking up with one of the few genuine 'other mothers' who visit one of the sites I frequent. We're both fantasists and honest to a fault with each other – which by no means stops us from 'enjoying' one another on occasion. Well this was just such an occasion, but one that was something of a departure for my friend – and therefore for me as well. The normal fantasy-mode for her was replaced by an almost school-girlish squealing quality which was most unlike her. And it soon become apparent that she had fallen foul of (or rather, thoroughly enjoyed) a real-life incident with a very young (twenty-two year old) delivery guy when the towel she answered the door in became snagged on a splinter in the door frame.
It might not sound like the most exciting story in the world to you, but for my fantasist friend, and in the way she told it, it was one of the hottest things I've heard for many a year. My lovely friend goes into exquisite detail at times, and I gave in to her – let her carry my mind to that day and location, and to that exposure, nervousness, pleasure and more. In short she turned me on more than I can recall being tuned on before in such circumstances. Occasionally – very occasionally – I will allow myself the pleasure of pleasuring myself when I chat, and the exquisitely prolonged descriptions of a real event that I was receiving were getting my fingers dancing to a heart popping tune as my blood surged.
Although I might play occasionally, I almost never, ever arrive at climax during a chat – fingers are needed in too many places – but that day I could feel the excitement build way beyond my usual safety zone. I was rapt. Hooked on every word that my friend typed.
And then she typed 'fuck!'.
I was shocked. My friend almost never swears, and she most certainly never normally interrupts the flow of a conversation to do so.
When the next words, mistyped, appeared – 'adam hoem' – I was momentarily confused.
Then, as her text box disappeared, it struck me. She must mean that her son, Adam had arrived home and that she had to cover up fast – she had adopted some of my methods – and I felt a huge pang of disappointment as my climax begged for release. And then...
And then I realised that if Adam was home then he was either half an hour early or...
