Sebastian - Secrets (4 page)

“Hey Beth.  Are you busy?”  I start at the intrusion, minimising the opened window on my desktop and turn to face Julie, the temp who is covering maternity leave.

“No.  Not at all,” I bluster.  “What can I do for you?”

“Ruth asked me to make sure you’ve signed off the accounts before the weekend.  Can I tell her you have?”

“Yes.  Nearly done, thank you Julie.” 

Alone once more, I click on my profile and see I have unread mail.  Intrigued by the name of the sender, SlaveMaster, I open the message and almost fall off my chair …

Girl,

Master is interested in talking with this girl, despite the lack of information on her profile.
 Master is not interested in this girl for curiosity only however, I have decided I am going to turn you into               the perfect slave.  You will listen to everything I tell you and provide Master with all of the information I               seek.  This must be clearly understood by the girl.

I expect a reply to this message with
in 45 minutes               of you reading it.  You will include your description (which will be full and detailed). Your description will not be generic and will describe you as you               look at this precise moment in time.

The girl
will also tell Master of her current living arrangements, work and relationship status and a list of duties the girl will perform.  You will reply in exactly 200 words.

SlaveMaster

When I can stop laughing enough to type, I daringly tap a humorous reply …

Dear SlaveMaster

Thank you so very kindly for your interesting and challenging email.  I have my stopwatch ticking down the 45 minutes - so anxious am I not to fail you in this first task, which you have so generously set me.

I am tall with longis
h blonde hair and blue eyes.  I am wearing nothing at all because I stripped all of my clothing off the minute I read your message to me, such was my excitement and eagerness to please you.

My living arrangements currently are that I reside under a bridge, which is exceptionally cold currently, not least right now, void of my clothes as I am.
 No sacrifice or hardship is too great though to please you Master.  I am fortunate in so far as I have full Internet connection under this particular bridge, thanks to the hot-wiring I did on the nearby streetlight.  My years spent in the Women's Remand Prison served me well and I am glad that I studied hard on the electronics course when I wasn't being ravaged by the plethora of lesbian inmates.

My relationship status, Sir, is that I am single.... technically, I am still married but he is likely to remain in prison for another twenty years unless he
              makes parole but after the last time he got caught               (that wasn't my fault, I genuinely thought I was helping in turning him in), they said they were throwing the book at him.  In hindsight I guess I shouldn't have hidden him under the stairs for those two long years, he may have got off more lightly.

So, Sir, I digress.
 To summarise, I am keen to drink from a dog bowl and lick your shoes until they shine brighter than the sun itself.  Just say the word and I and my 13 children will be right there...

Yours respectfully,

Rosiesub

With
in five minutes, I receive a reply from the jerk…

Girl,

Thank you girl, unfortunately it wasn’t 200 words,               so I couldn’t read it.

What a weirdo
!  I sign out of my profile and get back to finalising the accounts, in need of some welcome normality. 
I may be sick, but I’m not that twisted
.  I wonder when I will hear from Simon and, in fact, whether I want to hear from him.  I have a husband, healthy children and a good business – what more could I need?

When we arrive home, after school, Joe hands me a letter from his form teacher, advising me that Joe has been unacceptably late on three occasions this week and two last week.  He asks if there is a valid reason for this tardiness and offers to meet with me to discuss Joe’s progress – or lack of it.  I fold the letter and tuck it in my briefcase.  I will deal with this on Monday.

By the time Alan returns home from work at six-thirty, my overnight bag is packed ready for the morning and dinner is ready to serve.  We sit, as a family, at the kitchen table, Alan and the children devouring the lasagne, while I pick at my food with my fork but eat very little, my stomach in knots.

“Not hungry?” Alan observes.

“No.  I think I’m getting nervous about tomorrow.  I don’t like meeting lots of new people, or doing a long journey alone.”  I rest my fork on my plate, replete.

“So who else is going then?” He quizzes.

“A bunch of egotistical Alpha females I suspect.   My idea of hell, but Ruth and I agreed that I’d go.  You don’t mind do you?”

He cocks an eyebrow, apparently surprised at the request for approval.  “Do what you like.”  He replies dismissively.

“Nice to know I’ll be missed,” I quip.

“No doubt there’ll be some blokes there too,” he adds, ignoring my comment.

“Alan,” I sigh, “it’s a Women In Business event … the clue’s in the name … women.”

“Yeh right, it just seems odd to me.”  He scrapes the remaining lasagne from his plate into the food recycling bin, and crashes his plate and cutlery into the sink then leaves the kitchen.

“Oh piss off,” I hiss under my breath.

3

It’s Saturday morning and I have made an early start on the long drive to Cornwall.  The ‘Women In Business’ team-building weekend event - why on earth did I put my name down for that?  I reflect. As if I don’t have enough to do, I now have to surround myself with alpha females, up to my arse in mud in Cornwall, of all places, where I feel sure everyone drinks cider and is inter-bred.  Not only that, Alan is clearly convinced I’m making up the whole event and am in fact planning a liaison with another man. I worried last night that he’d found out somehow about Simon, but then assured myself that he’d have gone crazy if that had been the case.  Satisfied that he has no idea what I did two days previously, I made a show of kissing him goodbye this morning and telling him I would miss him.

As I drive west on the A35
, the rain sets in.  My journey to Cornwall should take three hours and twenty minutes according to Google maps and I’m glad that I set off early. 

I pick up the M5 and the motorway is quiet.  I relish the peace and solitude of my journey.  A night away from Alan will be refreshing. 

I call my mother on hands free and have a chat to her, I haven’t seen her as much as I should lately and it’s good to talk to her.  My mother lives only two miles from our house and is a considerable help with the children, for which I’m eternally grateful.  She’s seventy-four and has lived alone since Dad succumbed to prostate cancer twelve years ago.  I make a mental note to treat my mother to a spa day some time soon. 

Mum seemed quiet on the phone, when I cut the call and reflect on our conversation I think about Dad an
d by the time I pass Exeter, I’m feeling melancholy.  I turn on the radio, flick through the channels and settle upon an upbeat tune in the hope of raising my spirits.  I stop for a strong cup of coffee and a bathroom visit near Launceston. 

The pub I find is a traditional thatched inn
, which is several hundred years old and very quaint.  As I enter it feels as though one hundred eyes are upon me, all viewing me as a trespasser.  I pay for the coffee and a cheese and pickle sandwich and find a table near the door, feeling nervous.  I wish now that I’d cancelled my booking for the event, not relishing spending twenty-four hours with a bunch of strange women. 

I’
m aware that outwardly I appear to be a competent entrepreneur, but I seriously lack confidence.  I frequently doubt myself – I wear so many hats: mother, boss, wife but the saying ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ is a mantle I feel fits me well.  I have forgotten who the real Elizabeth Dove is.  I used to love to paint, before the children came along.  I used to write poetry.  What happened to that carefree girl?  Where and who is the real Elizabeth Dove now?

I finish my lunch and return to my car feeling refue
lled and ready to face the day ahead.

Shortly before two o’clock, after traversing dangerously narrow country lanes, the satellite navigation system on my dashboard tells me I’ve arrived at my destination.  I indicate a right turn and drive past a pair of stone pillars on which stand two stone stags – weathered and chipped yet graceful with majestic horns, they look down on me with austere regard.

The half-mile
drive, lined with dense rhododendron, is staggeringly beautiful.  Through the trees I glimpse acres of woodland, which gives way to paddocks with horses and fallow deer grazing.  Beyond lies a jagged cliff, falling away to the sea beyond.  I’m now driving slowly along the dirt and gravel track toward the most magnificent manor house I have seen.  It takes my breath away.

I park ne
xt to a sleek white Range Rover, and cut my engine.  Stepping out of the car onto the pale yellow gravel, I turn and gaze up at the façade of the enormous house, recalling from the literature sent to me that the main house is seventeenth century. 

Taking my overnight bag from the trunk of the car, I walk toward the impressive entrance, feeling more positive about the weekend ahead.  It will be therapeutic to have time away from Alan
and this is a pretty cool place to hang out in.  Above me I notice a 1634 date stone and a family crest featuring a dragon and shield.  The house has a gothic style with stone mullioned leaded windows and I approach a vast arched doorway where I rap heavily on the wrought iron lion head knocker.

The door opens and, e
xpecting a dusty old butler, I’m surprised to see a pretty dark haired girl ushering me in.  The hall has an ornate plaster ceiling and fireplace with carved wooden over-mantel, on which I can see the date 1650.  The mottled grey flagstone flooring is softened with ornate rugs in ochre and crimson hues.   The walls are adorned with swords, axes and shields criss-crossed and glinting like metal rainbows in the sunlight, which streams through arched coloured leaded light windows, either side of the front door, that look as though they belong in a church.  Each pane is adorned with a glazed image of knights, stags, rabbits and lions.  It’s so beautiful that it captures my attention for several moments.

“Stunning, isn’t it?” the girl says.

“Breath-taking,” I sigh.

“Come on, I’ll show you through to the library.  Most of the ladies are here already.” 
The girl takes my overnight bag from my hand, then leads me through to the library, with dark oak panelling, carved pillars and yards of dusty books, it has a comfortable feel but not the silence one would expect of a library.  The room is buzzing with the conversation of twenty or thirty women chatting in small groups. 

C
ollecting a porcelain cup filled with milky coffee, I begin to introduce myself to a group of four women all dressed, like me, in jeans and pale pink sweatshirts with “Women Mean Business” slogan emblazoned across the front.  The four women are all from the same organization, a PR company in London. 

We make polite small talk and, as one overly bleached blonde tells us about her latest client, I glance across the room.  That is when I first see him and the room stands still. My breath catches and I feel myself flush.

I suggest that all women have an ideal man locked away inside our psyche – mine is tall, dark and handsome with a commanding and assertive demeanour.  The man whose gaze I meet exceeds my dreams.  He’s tall, maybe six feet three or four inches and is dressed in blue denim jeans and an open necked blue checked shirt tucked in, the sleeves rolled half way up his strong, muscular forearms.  His hair is jet black, yet speckled with silver flecks to the temples, giving him an air of maturity.  He has coal dark eyes, framed by black eyebrows sculpted into a serious frown, and the broadest shoulders.  Those shoulders are the kind onto which a woman could cry, cuddle, knead, and which would be consummately powerful.  I estimate his age to be mid forties, but it is hard to be sure.  As I stand transfixed by his maturity and rakish charm, his head turns and his gaze meets mine across the room. 

B
lushing as a shiver passes through me, I avert my eyes.  How ridiculous I must look, a grown woman beet red and trembling like a newborn lamb.  I turn away.
Play hard to get Beth!  What are you thinking?  Why would he be vaguely interested in me?  I’m a married woman for heaven’s sake! 

I turn back to Bleached Blonde and laugh raucously at a droll
story she is telling, then a hand touches my elbow and a spark courses through me.  I turn and my cornflower blue iris lock on to his smoky dark hazel eyes with which he studies my plastic name badge pinned above my left breast.

“Elizabeth Dove.  Managing Director, Evershaw Dove Recruitment Agency.  Very impressive title Elizabeth.” His deep, sensual gravelly voice renders me speechless.  He uses my full name, which no one has done for many years, and they way his lips form the letters, parting to reveal perfect white teeth and
the hint of a tongue, makes me tingle.  I am lost to him in that very moment.