The furniture was stripped pine. The bed had an ornately carved headboard. It reminded him of a gasthof in Austria he had once stayed in on a police skiing holiday. Except at the guest house in Austria there hadn’t been two sets of standard issue handcuffs threaded neatly through the bedposts.
‘Seeing as this is your first time, I’d better explain how I work.’ Melissa held up three fingers. ‘I do three specials. Wanky Panky – I don’t think that needs any further explanation,’ she said coyly. ‘Hanky Panky, which is full you-know-what with the added benefits of massage with sensual aromatherapy oils. And Spanky Panky, or pervert’s playtime, where I beat you with a selection of household objects of your choice.’
Bob flushed. She sounded as if she was selling him double glazing. It was obviously a routine she had been through more than once before.
‘Very popular with the uniforms, that is,’ Melissa continued. ‘You know what you boys in blue are like, always keen to see a bit of law and order. And not just on the streets of Milton Keynes.’ She wagged a finger at him playfully. ‘Although I’m not very keen on it myself. I have a tendency to break fingernails if I’m not careful.’
She took his hand and pulled him towards the bed. She lay back on the Garden of Romance duvet, sweeping her long hair across the pillows. Her breasts mounted an escape campaign. He stood over her not knowing quite what to do next. How could he tell her that all he wanted was a cuddle, to be held in someone’s arms for one blissful afternoon? How could he tell her that? He had his reputation to keep up. Something else was having no trouble keeping up.
When he made no move towards her, Melissa very slowly parted her thighs. Beads of perspiration broke out on Bob’s brow. It was obvious that Mrs Melissa Cox, wife of Frank Cox of the Milton Keynes Constabulary, was wearing no knickers. Not like the Sharon Stone film where she does a quick flash and you can’t really be sure that you saw anything untoward without replaying the video time after time after time. And you knew that everyone else had done the same thing because every copy in the video hire shop went all grainy and funny at the same place. No, this wasn’t a mere flash, it was a good, long, serious look. Either Melissa was wearing no knickers or she was harbouring a small friendly hedgehog between her Lycra-clad thighs. ‘Don’t you want to arrest me, Detective Elecampane?’
He scratched his head. ‘What, like “Anything you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you”?’
Melissa pushed herself up on her elbow. ‘Trousers.’
‘What?’
‘Trousers. You said they’d be taken down and used in evidence. So go on then.’
With a smile, she took out her chewing gum and stuck it on top of the stripped pine bedpost. She reached towards him and he held his breath. With long, unbroken fingernails she snaked into his pocket and pulled out his personal police radio from its previously unplumbed depths. Opening the bedroom drawer, she tossed it carelessly inside. ‘Now, Detective Constable, you’ve been a naughty boy. I think you need my full correction treatment. What do you say to that?’
‘Er, quite.’ There was really nothing else he could say.
She straddled him, naked, her hair flowing loose over her full, round breasts and down on to him, tickling his stomach as she wriggled above him. Oh, how lovely she was, fresh and clean, sexy and dirty, sinner and saint, all at the same time. His toes curled and his eyes rolled as she ministered to his every need – and to some needs he didn’t even know he had. The handcuffs chafed against his wrists and somewhere in his mind self-pity chafed against his pleasure. Why couldn’t he find a beautiful girl like this? Why did no one ever seem to like him? Why had his previous unpaid encounters with women ended in impotent disaster? What was it about the mere sight of a nubile naked female before him that sent him limping home desolate with humiliation? Yet with Melissa, paid for by the hour, he could be a man.
She smiled down at him, her face pink from exertion. ‘Is that nice?’
‘Yeth,’ he groaned, his voice muffled by the bra that protruded from the corners of his mouth and was tied in a neat bow behind his head. Her waist was so tiny that he thought his hands would have spanned it easily. Dear heaven, if only he could have the chance! It curved out to full and voluptuous hips and a bottom as pink and as rounded as any of Reuben’s cherubs. Her skin wobbled deliciously as she moved against him. The pain and the ecstasy were unbearable. If only she would let him free to touch her.
‘You’d better hurry up.’ She gyrated faster, her eyes on the clock on the bedside table. ‘I’ve got to go and do the vicar soon.’
‘The vithar?’ He shuddered to an alarming orgasm.
Melissa took the bra out of his mouth. ‘The vicar?’ he repeated incredulously and a good deal more clearly. ‘A man of the cloth? I’d never have thought—’
‘No, silly! Not this.’ She rolled off him and sat on the edge of the bed, struggling to herd her breasts back into their Playtex pen. ‘I do for him. Clean.’
He lay there exhausted, staring at the ceiling. Melissa slipped on a baggy T-shirt and some leggings and pulled her hair back into a ponytail in one of those scrunchy things that kids use. Tugging a tissue from the box of Kleenex by the bed, she wiped the red smear of lipstick from her mouth. It took years off her. The sexy, the dirty, the sinner vanished at once. She looked as fresh and as innocent as the day she was born. Bob Elecampane gazed at her. Mesmerised. To him she had never looked more lovely.
He watched, enraptured, as she put the fly swatter, the slotted serving spoon and the steak tenderiser back in the bottom drawer of the cupboard. She looked round, suddenly aware that he was watching her. ‘I’d better get you undone. Your arms can go dead after a while if you’re not used to it.’
All of him felt dead, suddenly bereft, now that their bodies were no longer joined in union. His soul ached for her. Other parts also ached, but that was purely physical and would go after a few days and perhaps a spot of embrocation. He rubbed his wrists, trying to encourage some feeling back into them. ‘What now, Melissa?’ he said throatily. He tried to look earnestly at her, but she was busy throwing the red top and the scrap of black Lycra into the wicker washing basket next to the wardrobe and wasn’t giving him her full attention. ‘What happens now?’
She turned and produced a machine from under the bed. ‘I take all major credit cards – Amex, Visa. Or a cheque with banker’s card. I don’t mind either way.’
He fumbled in the pocket of his jeans for his wallet. ‘RSPCA Mastercard?’
‘That’ll do nicely,’ she said. He passed the card to her. She examined it closely. ‘Oh, that’s sweet. It’s got cute little kittens and puppies on it.’
‘And for every pound spent they make a donation to the RSPCA.’
She looked at him, head cocked to one side. ‘That’s very thoughtful.’
‘It’s not everyone I let see my softer side.’ His voice sounded gruff with emotion.
‘That’ll be £69.99 please,’ she said as she whizzed his card through the machine.
It was money well spent, but how he wished he hadn’t had to spend it. How he wished it could have been spent instead on wining and dining her in some secluded candlelit restaurant, before making love to her in a four-poster bed – without being tied to it. Melissa’s voice broke into his thoughts and he realised to his embarrassment that he was drooling.
‘Sign there, please, where it says signature.’
Obediently he signed the slip of paper with the pen she handed to him. He folded the receipt she gave him and tucked it deep into his wallet – a reminder of their first time together. He had kept cherished souvenirs of his other women – well, all two of them. Now he had a Mastercard receipt to add to his collection. Which didn’t add up to much, really. Two times a lover, two times a loser. With a little twinge of excitement that crept up from his toes, Bob realised that this could well be third time lucky. Who knows?
He slipped on his shirt and reluctantly did up the buttons. Why couldn’t he prolong
this moment for ever? He watched Melissa as she tidied her bedroom, shaking out the Garden of Romance duvet so that it was no longer crumpled by their love – unlike his shirt which was severely crumpled. She took the handcuffs from the bedposts and tossed them into the drawer that contained the culinary sex aids. Soon there would be no trace of their encounter. Gone would be the harlot’s boudoir, transformed before his very eyes to The Little House on the Prairie. He pulled on his jeans. This was terrible. If he wasn’t very careful, he was going to get seriously maudlin. He would have to find a few unfortunate criminals to give a good kicking to on the way home just to raise his spirits.
‘How soon can I come again?’ he asked, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt.
Melissa’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘My, you’re not easily satisfied, are you?’
He looked up from tying his shoelaces. ‘No, no. I mean, when can I come to see you again.’
‘I’ll have to get my diary.’ She pulled it from the bedside drawer. ‘I don’t do this every day. This isn’t my proper job.’ There was a certain defensive note in her voice. She flicked through the pages. ‘What about next Friday afternoon?’
‘The same time?’
Melissa nodded and scribbled a note in her diary.
‘Doesn’t Frank ever look at that?’ he asked, wishing that he didn’t need to.
Her face darkened slightly. ‘No, he does not. And if he did all he’d see was ironing.’ She pointed to the page. ‘Friday, two o’clock, the ironing. That’s what you are. The ironing.’
The ironing. Bob followed her silently down the stairs. She handed him his police radio, which he had completely forgotten about. Melissa stood on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss on his cheek. ‘I’ll see you next week, Bob.’ She ushered him out of the door and closed it behind him.
The ironing. Everybody knew that was the most hated domestic chore. It was right there alongside cleaning the loo and scrubbing between the mouldy tiles behind the shower with a toothbrush. His heart sank back to his size tens. Why was he always branded as the man to be disliked? At work he was used to it, but even Melissa had jumped on the bandwagon now. Why couldn’t he be the man that people wanted to spend jocular tea breaks with, rather than them all moving shiftily away when he came into the staff room? Why didn’t they all stand round and slap him on the back and tell him rude jokes and laugh at his stories like they did with Frank Cox? Why couldn’t he have been ‘putting the kettle on’ or ‘baking a cake’ or any sundry domestic duty that people generally didn’t object to? Why did he have to be the bloody ironing? Endless, monotonous, achingly unpopular ironing. Bob Elecampane looked at the wilted pansies on Melissa’s doorstep and he knew exactly how they felt. What was it that Frank Cox had that he didn’t? Apart from a very beautiful and enterprising young wife, that is.
Chapter Ten
Rose was pleased that she had gone home for her boots, even the car park at Woburn Woods was thick with black, glutinous mud. She had been less pleased to have the suspicious stare of Anise Weston follow her up the lane and into the house and out again. Rose had tried to smile at her, but she had ducked back inside her head scarf and had continued to attack the leylandii hedge with what appeared to be a pair of pinking shears. Rose had, however, felt her beady eyes follow her back along the lane as she strode very self-consciously and very obviously into Dan’s waiting Land Rover Discovery.
Fluffy was a cross between something shaggy and a golden retriever. He was the size of a small, but scalable, mountain and only his hindquarters and low hanging tummy were fluffy. They were also, after not quite five minutes in the car park, extremely muddy.
‘Come on, Fluff,’ Dan shouted and they headed up the steady incline from the car park into the edges of the pine forest.
The ground was soft and dark under a carpet of golden-brown pine needles. The day was turning damp and grey and if Rose’s mind had been turning to thoughts of romance, this couldn’t be classed as the most idyllic location. Half a dozen teenagers on mountain bikes whooped and hollered their way through the towering pines. A pony-trekking school cantered by, churning the track to mud where the horses’ hooves bit hard into the ground, shouting belated ‘thank yous’ behind them after they had forced all the aimless Saturday walkers to dive into the nearest trees or be trampled underfoot.
The rutted track was narrow, strewn with fallen pine cones, sodden and curled tightly shut, steadfastly refusing to predict anything good about the weather. The ground beneath the trees was thick with golden furled bracken, a stark contrast to the dark green needles of the towering Scotch pines.
There were a couple of families strolling ahead of them – mother, father and two point two children, an ideal representation of traditional family values. Okay, so it was probably mother and her new boyfriend. Or father and his much younger woman, given custody for the weekend and desperately trying to think what to do next with two bored, resentful, disenfranchised kids who would rather be out with their friends or at home playing computer games. Rose studied them closely. You could tell from a mile off that the dark-haired couple with the two fair-haired kids weren’t married. For one thing, he was walking along with his arm slung protectively round her shoulders and kept lifting up bits of her hair and trailing it through his fingers as he talked to her. For another, it didn’t irritate her when he did it. And for yet another, she was fondling his bottom through his smart Timberland anorak. Show me a married couple that did that sort of thing, in the daytime, in public, Rose thought, and I’ll show you a pair who haven’t been married long enough to have two kids that age. The woman stopped and bent to the ground, picking up a big gnarled stick. She smacked her ‘husband’ playfully on the bottom with it and he kissed her on the cheek. Rose fought to tear her eyes away from them. Didn’t they know that half the population of Buckinghamshire was watching them? And, if they did, why didn’t they care?
And the children might look happy now, but what would they be like in years to come? They’d probably become maladjusted burglars or serial killers, blaming everything on the fact they came from a broken home. Or if they were lucky enough to be sufficiently unscathed to take up a sensible profession, they’d spend the rest of their lives paying for expensive therapy to sort out why they were emotional cripples who couldn’t make love to their wives.
Mind you, she was not the best defender of the family unit, having carried out a torrid love affair with a married man for the better part of two years. She was hardly a champion for the impenetrability of the marriage bed. That could just as easily have been her, trailing through damp, soggy woods on a Saturday afternoon after someone else’s kids. Hugh’s, in her particular case. Except that when push came very much to shove, Hugh hadn’t had the slightest inclination to leave his family for her.
At the top of the incline the path opened out to a clearing where a great swath of pines had been razed to the ground. She was puffing enthusiastically and vowed that she would join the Tums, Bums and Thighs class at the village hall, although the thought of exposing her bum to the ridicule of Gardenia and Cassia – they were bound to go – with the mere protection of a Lycra leotard was not a humiliation she was keen to embrace.
‘Shall we sit down for a minute?’ Dan said. He pointed to a monstrous tree trunk that had been felled and left skewed on its side at the edge of the track.
‘Yes.’ She had been lost in her thoughts and for a brief moment – a very brief moment – had forgotten he was there. She sat down next to him. A chill gust of wind tucked itself inside her coat and she shivered, huddling into herself.
‘Are you okay?’ Dan asked. He felt huge and safe next to her. His face was wrinkled with concern and the greyness of the day made the greenness of his eyes more vibrant.
‘I’m fine.’ She shivered again. ‘I’m just a bit cold.’
‘Didn’t you put any gloves on?’
She looked at her bare, blue hands. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Have these.’ He peeled off big, th
ick, sheepskin-lined things with fingers the length of bananas and passed them to her.
‘Really, I’ll be fine,’ she protested.
‘Take them. I’ll put my hands in my pockets.’ And to demonstrate his sincerity he did just that.
She slipped her hands into his gloves, wonderfully grateful for the comforting soft warmth. It was possible that she could have put both hands in one glove they were so oversized.
‘You seem quiet,’ Dan observed.
‘I was just thinking.’ There should have been some noise to break the silence. The call of a plaintive bird. The call of a plaintive child. Anything. She looked to Fluffy for help, but he was too busy cocking his leg on various tree stumps and failing singularly to produce anything to water them with.
‘About Hugh?’
She smiled at him. ‘How long have you been a mind reader?’
‘When women go quiet it’s usually a man’s fault.’ Dan dragged a stick along the ground and made a letter D in the dirt. ‘Or hormones.’
‘Well, I think it’s safe to say that my hormones are pretty much in control at the moment.’ She gave him a wry glance. ‘Most of them.’
‘So it must be Hugh.’
She stared down the track they had just walked, eyes glassy, fixed on the family that now struggled up in their wake. The father reached forward and tousled the head of his son and they both laughed. ‘It must be Hugh,’ she agreed sourly.
‘Were you together long?’
‘Too long.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Two years.’
‘And all the time he was married?’
She, too, picked up a stick and inspected it closely to avoid looking at Dan. ‘He was married. He is married. He will always be married.’ She pushed the point of her stick in the soft earth for emphasis.
‘But you knew that when it started.’
‘No,’ she said truthfully. ‘No. I didn’t.’ She wriggled her fingers in the huge expanse of glove. ‘It was easy to believe that he was single. He’s an American. He works over here regularly. And, I have to say, there was a distinct lack of idle chatter about the folks back home.’ Her voice sounded hurt even to her accustomed ears.