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After stepping out of the shower, she rubbed down with a fresh towel and wrapped a long cotton robe about her. The steam had glazed over the bathroom mirror. Now she couldn’t even talk to herself, so she headed into the kitchen for the important caffeine fix.
The apartment was her pride and joy—an investment of her own. It even had two bedrooms. The one she didn’t sleep in was where she had set up a desk and computer. It left the living space, which combined the lounge, dining area and kitchen into one, vast and free of clutter. Tania’s tastes were puritanical. No patterns adorned the walls or furnishings. The floor was bare, apart from two plain rugs, one situated by the sofa to keep her feet warm, the other laid out near the entrance to the apartment—a welcome mat of comfort, which she wriggled her toes on after removing her high heels.
The kitchen had been fitted with black cupboards and white surfaces—nothing wooden or countrified about her choice of color scheme. No pine knobs on the door handles. Instead, the drawers and cupboards were released with a gentle nudge of the hip. The hob had a large wok ring taking up center stage. Tania loved the simplicity of stir-fries, although she rarely made use of the burner. The refrigerator was of the size found in large family kitchens—an oversized temple for the adoration of quick and convenient meals. The shelves were stacked with prepared wrapped salads, thin-crusted pizzas with minimalist toppings and pots of pasta and sauces. If it couldn’t be heated in an oven or a single saucepan, Tania didn’t want to
know about it.
Her culinary style wasn’t owing to a lack of interest in cooking. Tania did not have the time to indulge in lengthy sessions with chopping boards, raw ingredients and spice racks. Occasionally, and increasingly rarely, she baked cakes or biscuits for her colleagues in the office. She liked to treat her team to the odd moment of frivolity, typically triggered by a birthday celebration and on those rare days, she almost felt popular.
Tania suspected she was not admired by her work colleagues. A rapid rise up the ranks did not endear her to everyone, though she focused hard on keeping good relationships with her immediate team members. She accepted the situation with fortitude and ignored the backchat as she continued to climb over the heads of analysts who had been with the firm much longer. If they wanted to emulate her success, they had to work hard—very hard.
She drove her small team in much the same fashion as she did herself—relentlessly, unyieldingly and ambitiously. She had created a cooking pot of highly strung personalities and she liked to stir them up from time to time. Tania didn’t care that much for the lack of sleep, the stress and loss of social time, but an investment firm was a mean, competitive place to work. The choice was there for everyone—work hard or let someone else take your shoes.
If there were lessons in life to learn from, Tania closed her mind and ignored them. Her mother should have been the one to warn Tania. She had no doubt seen it all before and had noticed the danger signs, but Tania’s mother was far too happy in her own little bubble to rock the boat and remind Tania what had happened to her father. The long hours, the anxieties of surviving a recession and possible redundancy notices, plus the unsympathetic bosses—all these things Tania’s father had experienced to his cost. He’d keeled over in his early fifties with a heart attack and had left Tania and her brother fatherless. The life of a stockbroker in the midst of a financial crisis was dangerous.
Tania greatly admired her father. From him she had learned about banking, investments and how the financial markets worked. At the tender age of twelve, she had read out the latest stock prices over the breakfast table while her father had munched on his heavily buttered toast. He’d told her which were good investments and which were not to be touched, as if Tania had a ready source of income to invest. She had her pocket money and she played at banks in her bedroom, until her father finally had let her use some of it to buy her first shares using his account. They had been a good investment and the dividends had bought her some extra clothes.
As she’d approached adulthood, she’d loved the thrill of watching the digits change on the stocks and shares websites, allowing her to keep tabs on trends. It had been an easy choice when it came to university. She had taken an economics degree and had specialized in the financial markets. Her father had been very proud of his girl as she’d headed off to university and she’d looked forward to the day she would graduate and have her photograph taken with him. He hadn’t lived to see her graduation day. The phone call from her brother had interrupted her thoughts one day as she’d been writing an essay. Her father had died at his desk, surrounded by telephones and computer screens, his heart clogged up with butter.
Now, Tania had her own career as an investment analyst. Starting as a junior for an investment firm, she had put all of her father’s knowledge and expertise to good use and impressed her bosses into an early promotion to associate grade, skipping out on having to obtain extra qualifications. If there were pangs of regret that her father wasn’t around to witness her success, Tania buried them deep and remembered not to butter her toast too thickly.
The jogging machine was a futile attempt to keep herself in shape. Rather like her father, she never had the time to look after herself. However, the lack of social life and, in particular, sex, did plague Tania’s daydreams.
Tania’s one and only remaining school friend believed she had the solution to Tania’s problem as they’d talked on the phone the week before her massage appointment.
“Get married,” Melanie had suggested.
Tania had been able to see why that opinion was appealing to Melanie. She was married and had two kids and a dog. Her husband was attentive, well paid and home in the evenings. The kids did as they were told, for the most part, and the dog didn’t chew the furniture. Melanie, who spent the day cooking elaborate dishes, was more than happy with life.
“Mel, I can’t even find the time to meet you, so where am I going to find the man of my dreams?” The idea had not appealed to Tania one bit. Regular sex with a man, no problem. She could see the advantages, but then when Melanie had told her one of the kids still slept in their bed every night, Tania had laughed off the whole marriage thing as preposterous.
“You can be the breadwinner,” Melanie had pointed out. “He could be the home dad.”
“Mel, I don’t want kids. Not yet. In fact, not for a long while. It just isn’t me. I’m doing brilliantly at work. Why screw it up with commitments?”
“You don’t sound fulfilled or happy to me.”
“I just need to get laid. That’s all.”
The line had gone silent. They had drifted into the awkward territory of different lifestyles and upbringings. Melanie was a regular churchgoer, brought up to believe in marriage as a worthy institute and one to be admired. Tania, though not from a broken family, had rarely seen her parents in the same room at the same time. They had performed different functions.
Tania had sighed and moved the conversation back to safer waters of discussion. What had brought the two women together were their tastes in music, films and good books. The latter hobby Tania barely had the inclination to register as an interest anymore. What she did read had become the quick, popular digests rather than the weighty tomes of a classic novels. The divergence of the two friends had been tough on Tania.
On the big day of Tania’s new adventure into sensual pleasure, she was constantly distracted at work by the idea of a stranger laying hands on her. Images flashed through her mind of some ugly fat-handed man who would do nothing but make her feel ashamed and small. Somehow, she survived and made her way, on automatic pilot, to the side street and the unassuming façade of the erotic parlor.
The building housing the clandestine business was old, perhaps Georgian in origins. From the outside, the exterior was plain and unadorned with no advertising or signage. It appeared to be a typical domestic house—a three-story, red brick town house with thick blinds or drapes hiding the onlooker. Blinds allowed the light to permeate into the rooms, but nothing could be seen from outside. Whether the bright sun shone or not, the interior of the building was shuttered and hidden. What the neighbors thought of the comings and goings was a mystery, though most of the surrounding houses were also businesses—an architect, accountants, a design company and other small private companies. The cost of living in the houses was far too great for most locals.
Stepping inside, Tania noted the covings around the ceilings were deep curves of cream, the walls covered in blue and white thinly striped wallpaper. In the waiting area, the fireplace remained in situ but unused. Instead of a hearth with coals, a large bouquet of silk flowers had been arranged in ceramic vase. The advantages of the architecture were there. A spatial room with thick, soundproof walls and an ambience of a bygone era. Within the remnants of Regency etiquette, a different scenario was enacted—a modern approach to sexual pleasure.
She had no idea what to expect.
“You’ve nothing to be nervous about, Miss Havers,” the receptionist said. “We’ve received all the paperwork and you will need to sign here.” The woman pointed her bright red, elongated fingernail at the dotted line.
Tania’s hand trembled fractionally as she made her signature. Her own fingernails were smart but not like painted talons. The signature didn’t look like her regular one, more like a scrawl. She handed the pen back and the receptionist smiled again with white teeth that were immaculately straight and polished. Tania ran her tongue along her own front teeth and reminded herself of the spearmint mouthwash she had used earlier in the day. She had nothing to be ashamed of and she tossed her hair back over her shoulder. The strands let loose the aroma of roses and juniper essence. She was determined to feel good about herself.
“Take a seat,” the receptionist instructed, looking down at her glossy magazine, a glazed expression returning to her face.
Solitary seats furnished the waiting area each with their own little tables. Four in total and all angled in such a fashion that nobody faced anyone else when seated. The spaces were unoccupied, and Tania the only client. The magazines were from the top end of the market and on a sideboard, there was a jug of iced water and glasses. Crossing and uncrossing her stockinged legs, Tania wanted to bolt out of the door.
