Folly (4 page)

‘It's fancy-dress, Emma,' she'd told me on the phone. ‘The theme is priests and prostitutes.'

‘Oh, what fun! We simply have to go as a pair of whores,' I'd said.

We'd spent hours ransacking our cupboards for outrageously short skirts, strapless tops, fishnet stockings in which we ripped some extra holes to create a seedy effect, and the highest heels we could find. Then we'd applied garish make-up, teased our hair, and set off for the party only to find, to our horror, that Gaby's acquaintance had scrapped the fancy-dress theme without notifying her. Everybody else there was traditionally clad in blue jeans and jerseys.

There was only one thing to do, costumed as we were. Trying our best to avoid the disapproving looks from the women and the fascinated stares from the men, we sidled up to the bar for some Dutch courage.

An hour later I found myself perched on a bar stool conversing with a tall, well-built, clean-cut man who introduced himself as Mark Caine. Over several drinks, I learned that Mark was single, played league tennis and cricket, had a well-paying job with a shipping company and aspired to owning a business one day and making piles of money, just like his brothers.

‘It's lucky you're dressed the way you are,' he'd told me, laughing. ‘At least it's been a conversation starter. You're so pretty I don't think I'd have dared to chat to you otherwise.'

‘That's just as well, then,' I'd said. ‘And I don't always dress like this.'

He'd smiled; his fingers moving tentatively over my stockinged thigh and exploring the bare skin exposed by one of the rips I'd made.

‘
That's
just as well,' he'd said.

After dating for a while, Mark and I had married, and year by year, I slowly became the person I realised I always should have been. With Mark tending towards the conservative, I found myself becoming entrenched in respectability. Emma Caine, writer, wife, horse-owner, good cook … quite the domestic goddess.

I had successfully turned my back on the idiotic choices I'd made in my past, and I'd gradually lost touch with the friends I'd made during that time. Even I had started to believe that what I'd done in my early twenties was a shameful illusion.

Now, staring at Bob as he jumped into the vegetable patch and pounced on something small and helpless hiding behind a spinach plant, I realised that there was still one opportunity open to me.

There was one way in which I had a hope of salvaging my life. Doing it, though, would mean revisiting the foolish things I had done in my youth. I could no longer deny their reality and pretend that period of my life had never existed.

Instead, I would have to turn back to the person I had been in my twenties … and I would have to become her again.

Chapter 5

T
he week before Hayley moved out of the folly, I spent the very last of her rental money on paying my cellphone bill and placing a test insertion in the classifieds section of the local paper. I'd thought long and hard about what I should call myself and in the end, I realised that there simply wasn't a better name for me to use in my potential new career than my own married one, Caine.

It wasn't as if I expected any of my friends or acquaintances to put two and two together while browsing through the Adult Entertainment section of the classifieds.

The advertisement read:

‘Hungry for Punishment?

Mistress Caine's House of Pain

Spanking, Humiliation, Slave Training.'

This was followed by the area and the phone number.

I transferred the money via the Internet and was told the advert would run the next day. I spent most of that afternoon doubled over on the toilet and praying, simultaneously, that my newly reconnected phone would not ring, and that it would not stop ringing. Just what the man upstairs was supposed to make of these mixed messages I couldn't say.

I was awake at half-five the next morning. I unplugged my phone from its charger and it and I went downstairs together. I placed it carefully on the table while I made coffee. I drank the coffee, checking in between sips that the phone still had a signal and that it had not accidentally turned itself off.

Then I fed the cats, shaking the kibbles as quietly as I could into their bowls, lest the noise should drown out the sound of the phone, even though its ringtone volume was so loud it could probably be heard from the edge of space. Unaware of the seriousness of their mother's predicament, the cats rubbed happily against my legs in a moving mosaic of pale and tawny fur.

Then, when they were lined up in a neat row and crunching away, I sat and stared at the damn phone with a sick feeling in my stomach until I simply couldn't take the stress any more. Every tick of the clock signalled a peak of hope, swiftly followed by a trough of despair. An endless rollercoaster ride of emotion.

In a firm effort to distract myself, I went upstairs with the phone, got dressed, checked my emails, browsed the Internet for a couple of hours and had a careful look at all the job sites. No new opportunities, employmentwise, in my field. At any rate, nothing that would be in time to save me, since this idea was already looking like it wasn't going to work out.

Putting the phone in my pocket, I went back downstairs and headed outside.

I buzzed open the gate and set off at a brisk pace up the driveway and along the edge of the narrow strip of tarmac. Only the occasional passing car disturbed my solitude. I walked all the way around the block – which, considering this was the countryside and the stands were large, took well over an hour and was good going for someone who had forgotten, in recent months, what the word ‘exercise' even meant.

By the time I got home I was sweating slightly and my legs were tired, but my stomach still felt cold and tight with an anxiety that was starting to veer ever closer to despair. I sat down again at the kitchen table and drank a glass of water, which did nothing to help the dryness in my mouth go away.

I realised that I hadn't had a thing to eat yet, and that I couldn't imagine being hungry.

After Mark's accident, when my situation seemed to be getting more and more hopeless, I had developed a toast and jam habit that was largely responsible for the extra kilos that now padded my thighs.

It was something to do. It was cheap and comforting. It became my morning routine. The process of making the toast – from ordinary, white supermarket bread – was somehow soothing. Put two slices into the pop-up toaster and wait for two minutes, until they were pale brown and sweetsmelling. Cover with a not-so thin layer of butter, watching as it melted, glossing the textured surface of the toasted bread. Dig the knife into the jam jar and slather a layer on top, spreading it right to the corners to produce a delicious, appealing meal of sugar, fat and carbs.

Cut in half and eat.

And repeat.

And repeat.

Sometimes I hadn't stopped eating until I'd run out of bread or, in one case, jam. I think my record for one sitting was a shameful twelve slices.

This unhealthy habit had come to an abrupt end in December when the toaster had stopped working and I hadn't replaced it. Bread and jam hadn't had the same addictive appeal. In any case, by then I had been eating less of it than I'd done at my peak, and starting to get less comfort from it too.

I'd gone cold turkey on the toast, so to speak, and my breakfast now usually consisted of brown bread with peanut butter.

Right now, even the thought of that made me want to throw up.

It was already quarter past nine, and the newspaper must have been read by millions of people. If there was a demand for domination, it would surely have been evident by now.

And just as I thought that, the deafening air raid siren ringtone blasted out from the phone in my pocket.

It made me jump so violently that I nearly fell off my chair. I fumbled for it, my heart racing, pulled it out and stared in panicky disbelief at the screen. There was actually an incoming number showing, and one that didn't belong to anyone I knew.

What should I say when I picked up this call? Should I give my name? At that point, I feared it would take all my effort to remain coherent.

Suddenly terrified that whoever was calling might simply ring off, I jabbed the answer button and mashed the phone against my ear.

‘Good morning,' I said.

‘Good morning. Would that be … Mistress Caine?' the caller asked.

‘This is the mistress speaking.' My tone was somewhat formal, with just a touch of ice.

‘I saw your very interesting advert in the paper just now, and thought I'd call to find out more.' I realised this man sounded both well-spoken and self-assured. There was an edge to his voice that made me suspect he wouldn't suffer fools gladly, if at all.

‘Ah, yes.' Time to deliver the carefully worded excuse I'd thought up when placing the test insertion. ‘Unfortunately, they ran it a week early. My dungeon is still undergoing renovation. I'm only open for business from next Thursday.'

‘I see. They didn't only run the advert a week early. They also placed it in a rather inappropriate section. Unless you deliberately asked for it to go under catering services, because that's where I've just seen it.'

‘Catering services?'

‘Yes.' He paused for a moment and added, ‘Just underneath an advert for Hassan's Samoosas.'

‘Hassan's Samoosas?' I repeated, thinking that this conversation was somewhat surreal, and that I was beginning to sound like his echo.

‘That's right. I probably wouldn't have seen it at all if I hadn't been parked on a closed highway for the best part of an hour already while they work out how to un-jackknife a stuck petrol tanker. My advice is avoid driving south on the
M1
this morning, or if you're going that way, take along something to read.'

I found myself laughing. ‘Thanks for the traffic update. And for letting me know my advert went into the wrong section.'

‘Could you tell me what you offer?'

I took a deep breath. My voice sounded rock steady but my hands were shaking like leaves. I was really going to have to get control of my nerves before I started doing this in person. None of my potential clients would want to be disciplined by a trembling, wet-palmed mistress.

‘All forms of domination. I have large premises in a private, countryside setting in the northern suburbs. I'm offering bondage, spanking, corporal punishment, slave training, humiliation, cross-dressing. I also cater for foot-fetishists and adult babies.' I took a deep breath. ‘Anal punishment, too, of course.' God, how I was ever going to manage to push a vibrator up somebody's backside if my hands didn't steady up, I really had no idea. ‘Plus any other specifics that you would like to explore. We can discuss your requirements before the start.'

‘And you conduct the session personally?'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘May I ask what your charges are?'

I took another, metaphorical, deep breath. I'd agonised over this for hours. I'd Googled dominatrix websites all over the world. And while it would be all too easy to undercut myself in the hope of getting in paying customers, this was not what domination was all about. Those who wanted it were usually more than capable of paying a premium rate. So, I was going to charge what I thought was an exorbitant amount, rather than sell myself short.

I told him my rates, expecting him to ring off immediately. He didn't. Instead, he said, ‘I'd like to make an appointment now.'

Now? Already? I gulped my heart back down from my throat.

‘Of course. You can book any time from next Thursday onwards.'

‘Friday lunchtime, perhaps? Twelve-thirty p.m.?'

‘I'll book you in for that. Your name?'

‘Simon.'

‘This is the address.' I gave it to him. ‘Please arrive promptly. Is there anything special you will require over and above what I've mentioned?'

‘No. What you have sounds good. Thanks very much – er – Mistress Caine. I look forward to seeing you next Friday.'

He disconnected and for a while I sat and stared at the wall, my head absolutely spinning with the implications of what I had just done.

The advertisement had been placed in the wrong category. But in spite of this, my very first caller had made a booking – and he hadn't even questioned the price. This crazy idea of mine had a chance of working. It really did.

Next week, I would entertain this caller in my dungeon. He would no longer be a voice on the phone but a real, live client.

I felt at once breathlessly excited and nauseous with terror at the thought of this. What would he be like? I had no points of comparison because I'd never met, nor wanted to meet, any of the slaves who'd meekly submitted themselves to my orders and dictates over the phone.

Why was that? The answer was that I had never thought of them as real men. Real men were macho specimens like Mark, who played sport and drank beer, who socialised with their buddies in bars, and who satisfied their sexual urges in straightforward and manly ways.

These submissive creatures … they were different. They needed to be told what to do. They longed to have the burden of decision-making removed from their shoulders, subjugating responsibility for their actions and handing control over to the authoritarian mistress.

They were undoubtedly lesser beings. Although I'd revelled in my dominant powers when I spoke to them, deep down, I believed there was something pathetic about their willingness to submit to a woman's rule. And their sexual desires were twisted in the extreme. Needing to be spanked and whipped was bad enough, but when it came to the other forms of bodily torture and the anal play … I shuddered at the thought.

Simon had sounded normal, and not particularly submissive either. That was the most worrying fact of all. Speaking to him on the phone had made me feel as if I'd been making a business appointment with him, rather than setting up a time to satisfy his alternative sexual needs. He'd talked about the traffic. He'd even made me laugh. The tone of his voice told me that this was somebody who was accustomed to calling the shots. I imagined him as a powerful, high-net-worth individual who was both comfortable with himself and unashamed of his aberrant desires.