Roz’s heart was pounding in shock and excitement. As one half of her brain was reeling at the image of Melody strutting about with a whip in her hand, the other was calculating the income.
Eight hours would bring her in a thousand pounds. Even if she just did that once a month it would make all the difference in the world … But imagine if she did sixteen hours. There would be money for school trips galore, and she could start to pay off her credit cards …
‘I don’t think I could …’ she said, already wondering how she might be able to. ‘I mean where–’
Melody had it all sorted. ‘Well first, we’d get you an ad up on bendover.com and a Twitter account and then–’
‘I mean where would I do it? Could I go to them?’
Melody shook her head. ‘Not usually. I do it when Emily’s at her dad’s. One of my mates borrows her friend’s house when the friend is working nights. She’s a nurse,’ she added helpfully. ‘You don’t need much – just a room and a chair really. Do it on your day off when Amy’s at school.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Roz’s stomach was fluttering nervously. ‘I think I’d be too terrified.’
‘Only at first,’ said Melody. ‘The first time I did it, I was shaking all over. I hit the vodka and by the time he arrived, I’d got so drunk I could barely walk. But he was such a sweetie. Eighty if he was a day and just over heart surgery. Said a damn good thrashing was the only thing that cheered him up.’ She looked wistful. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to do it hard – thank god it was only a slippering – but he was very complimentary. Brought his own cane next time and told me what to say while he stood in the corner. That's the good thing about domestic and school discipline,’ Melody rattled on. ‘All you need is a cane, slipper, hair brush and belt – costs nothing. My friend Julie spent fifteen grand kitting out her dungeon with all the leather harnesses, cages and queening stools! Mind you, she’s earned it back threefold …’
Roz sat in stunned silence, with no idea what the latter list of equipment was or what you’d do with it.
‘But how did you know about all this?’ she eventually asked faintly.
‘I’m a bottom in my private life,’ said Melody, matter-of-factly, ‘so it makes me a good top – I understand what they want. But I don’t take it for granted,’ she went on, ‘I take it seriously. I ask all the right questions beforehand so I can give them the time of their lives.’
Roz tried to visualise herself in thigh-high black boots, hitting someone’s nether regions, and failed.
Melody sounded almost evangelical. ‘The gratitude really makes it worthwhile. And you get given lots of stuff too – flowers, booze, jewellery, lingerie. Know that Anya Hindmarch bag you liked? That was from a punter who just wanted me to tie him up and then poke him with a stick while he licked my feet.’
‘Really?’
‘And then asked me to pee on him.’
‘Oh my God!’ Roz’s hand had flown to her mouth. ‘I just couldn’t–’
‘But that’s the thing,’ Melody said calmly. ‘You don’t have to do anything you’re not happy with – that’s why you have the conversation in advance. If you don’t like the sound of it, you just politely decline. You can always hand ’em on to me, just in case it’s something I don’t mind.’ Melody chuckled. ‘I’ve got a bit more broadminded since I started … and the cash started rolling in.’
Roz’s brain was still whirring like a fruit machine. Melody was now talking about her ‘profile’ and discussing ‘specialities’. ‘Doesn’t take long,’ she was saying. ‘Come round to me one evening and we’ll set you all up. Think up a name and I’ll take a photo.’
Roz frowned. ‘But suppose someone who knew me saw my picture? There’s Amy to think about …’
‘You don’t have to show your face. I’ve just got a photo of my legs in high boots and stockings, with a whip trailing down beside me. My friend Nina has her hair down over her face – you can just see her lips. Some of the girls are shot from behind – wearing a basque or something. Here – look.’
Melody dug in her handbag for her iPhone and began tapping at the screen. ‘Some of them don’t care at all. See this Sharon? That’s her real name – she works in the Co-op.’
‘Gosh.’ Roz peered at the redhead in the low cut top staring into the camera with a stern expression. ‘Suppose her kids’ teachers saw it?’
‘Well they’re hardly likely to bring it up in assembly, are they?’ Melody grinned. ‘You’ll get loads of interest as soon as you register – the chaps are always all over someone new. Email with them first – make sure they’re not nutters or after anything too disgusting – and they’ll tell you what they want. You need to use the right words. One of my regulars likes me to say ‘smack bottom’ not ‘spanking’ and I’ve got another one who wants me to hit him with one of the shoes he’s wearing. You’ll soon get the hang of it.’
Melody drained the rest of her wine in her glass and gestured towards Roz’s glass. ‘Take the money before you get started and remember they’ve probably got more to lose than you have if anyone else found out, so don’t worry about that …’ She stood up and began to move towards the bar.
‘We can do a two-hander one night if you want,’ she said casually over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got one regular who’d love two of us going at him. Give you a taster of what it’s all about …’
As Roz walked tentatively across the spacious panelled hall of the house Charlotte had entrusted her with, and pushed open the door to the vast sitting room with its large inglenook style fireplace and sumptuous sofas, her heart pounded at the memory of that first evening.
Melody had told her to dress as an ‘authoritarian’ – a school mistress perhaps, she’d added helpfully, or some sort of forbidding character. ‘If you haven’t got tweeds,’ she’d instructed, (tweeds?), ‘then think Ann Robinson on The Weakest Link.’
Roz had looked hopelessly at her wardrobe of sweatshirts and jeans before putting on one of the simple straight black skirts she wore for work and teaming it with a high-necked blouse and some pearls her mother had given her. She still looked rather timid and mousey.
But Melody had nodded, substituting Roz’s low heels for a pair of her own perilous ones as soon as Roz arrived, and handing Roz a dark lipstick to apply. ‘You’ll do!’ she said, grinning at Roz while Roz looked wildly around her wondering which door on the landing led to the bathroom in case she actually had to throw up.
‘I’ll do the talking,’ said Melody as they went back downstairs. ‘You just follow me.’
Roz had been unable to make more than a squeak in reply before Melody, dressed in a severe black suit with her hair in a bun, opened the front door and ushered in a weedy-looking bloke called Clive, who looked as terror-struck as Roz felt.
Clive had sat in the middle of the sofa while Melody, towering above him, had kept up a ten-minute tirade about the Clive’s poor performance at work and then ordered him to drop his trousers.
Roz instinctively recoiled and looked away but Melody, handing her a leather slipper and giving her a small encouraging shove, stepped smartly forward to where Clive was bent over the arm of the sofa and brought what looked like a riding crop with a wide leather end down on his lower regions with an alarmingly loud crack.
Roz clapped a hand to her mouth as a small,