Of course, Mr Bichard,” I reply, trying to sound professional. My mouth feels like someone’s filled it with cotton wool.
I spent the rest of the day dutifully working. Keeping my hands busy, keeping my mind busy. Piers never comes out to speak to me again, which is unusual. On other days, he would regularly come and stand at my shoulder, dictate an email for me to write or tell me what to charge on an invoice. His absence and radio silence make me progressively more and more anxious.
At five to five I stand, tuck my hand into my coat pocket and rub my Algiz rune stone for good luck. Then I go to his office like a prisoner walking to the gallows.
When I knock on his door, he calls out ‘Come in’ in an inscrutable tone. I open the door, and he tells me to come and sit at his desk. When I start to walk towards him, he scolds me. ‘Close the door!’ he says, and I apologise dumbly and do as he says.
Sitting at his desk, I see that the wedding photo of him and his wife in its gilt frame is angled slightly towards me. Him, vulpine and handsome, smiling into the camera. His wife, raven-haired and stunning, looking incandescent in white ivory satin.
“Ms. Hart,” he says, tearing me from my reverie. “I’m afraid I’ve heard some upsetting accusations about you.”
I say nothing.
“One of my clients says he saw you on Saturday night,” he continues. “You were working in a club. As a stripper. Do you deny these claims?”
“No,” I reply, after a moment’s hesitation. I’d considered lying, but I couldn’t lie to him. Couldn’t bring myself to do it.
He leans back in his winged brown leather chair and studies me.
“This is a problem,” he says, lacing his fingers across his chest. I flush with shame, but I feel a frisson of injustice, too. I have no one. No family support, no partner. I support myself. I’m independent and self-sufficient, and stripping allows me to be so.
“Emilia, some of our clients are conservative people,” he continues. “You are the face of my business; you represent us. I can’t afford for you to represent us in a negative manner.”
He leans forward, his fingers making a temple on the desk.
“You have to choose. Keep your job here, or continue working in that… club.”
Both my thoughts and my heart are racing. I can’t really afford to lose either job, but here I am. This one, at least, comes with some societal acceptability, paid holiday leave, a pension plan. My heart breaks a little, but I know what I have to say.
“I’ll quit the club,” I reply.
“Good girl,” he says to me, and his face breaks into that vulpine smile once more.
I tried to stay away from the club, I really did. I made it work for a while on my PA salary alone. I got my rent, bills and car paid for just fine; it was the little luxuries I missed out on. No makeup splurges, no takeaway coffees. I didn’t need those things, but it wasn’t much fun to live without them, either.
Growing up, I had nothing. My mum was young, artistic, alcoholic, and wholly unequipped to take care of a child. I knew she loved me in her own way, but love didn’t buy me proper school uniform or make my packed lunch. She didn’t know who my biological dad was, and she herself was estranged from her overbearing boomer parents, so there wasn’t much in the way of familial support. I was taken into Care at fifteen, then independent living at eighteen. That first apartment, in a building for disadvantaged teens, it meant everything to me. It was shit; the water ran hot and cold erratically and the fire alarms were going off constantly (kids ignored the rules and smoked inside all the time). But it was mine. When I closed the front door behind me on my first night, I experienced the pleasure of being alone and independent for the first time in my life. I could keep that flat as neat and orderly as I wanted, with no one else coming along and messing it up behind me.
I found stripping at nineteen. I was at college, trying to catch up on the GCSEs I’d missed out on due to my turbulent home life. For a girl of my background and social status, it was just about the most meritocratic yet high-paying job I could have done. Outside of a quick audition (which was more of an informal chat with the manager, which culminated with her asking ‘Ok, when can you start?’) I walked straight in without having to fulfil any sort of illogical interview criteria.
I never got into it for the lifestyle; I always approached it as a business. I started stacking money pretty quickly. As a Care-leaver, my accommodation and bills were subsidised by the government, so I saved all of my money, squirrelling it away for the future. Eventually, I saved enough to move out, into my own, first proper adult flat, and buy my beloved Mini. Stripping changed my life.
But Piers didn’t want me to do it alongside my PA gig, so I didn’t do it. That was until said beloved Mini needed urgent work doing, which would cost hundreds of pounds, and I didn’t have the cash to put towards it. I started to feel the club calling to me again, whispering to me to ‘Try it again, he doesn’t have to find out’.
So trying it was what I was doing. I was back at the club, and I was killing it. Thus far I’d done back-to-back dances. I left the VIP Room in my little turquoise bra and g-string and my perspex stripper heels, hugged my customer goodbye and let my face fall out of my saccharine ‘customer service’ smile as I turned away from him. I turned my head to scan the bar, to target my next victim, and that’s when I saw him. Piers. My blood ran cold.
He was stood at the bar, gently swirling a dark whiskey in his hand, looking at me with a fixed stare. My heart was pounding, fearful of what was to come next. He beckoned me over, so I went.
“Hi-,” I began, but he cut me off.
“How much to book you out ’til the end of the night?” he asked. I stared at him dumbly for a moment; this was the last thing I had expected to come out of his mouth.
I did a quick calculation in my head. “An hours’ VIP is two hundred and twenty pounds, so…” I started.
“I’ll pay it,” he interrupted, retrieving his brown leather wallet from his pocket and starting to count fifties into my hand. ‘Let’s go,” he told me, once he’d given me the right amount.
I walked him to the VIP Room, suddenly hyper-conscious of how much ass cheek my little thong exposed. I could feel his eyes on my body as he walked behind me. This was absolutely the most skin I had ever exposed in front of him.
When we got into the VIP Room, I pulled the curtain closed behind us.
“I don’t want you to talk to me,” he said. “Just dance.”
I began my usual routine, the one I had performed hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. Cheekily pull down my bra strap, whip my knickers into the corner of the room, rub my hands over my tits right in front of his face. Unlike every single over time I’d done it, though, this time felt completely different. It felt insanely intimate. Here I was, getting naked for a man who I had spent every weekday with for the past year. A man who had heretofore only ever seen me in a pencil skirt and blouse. A man who knew I ate an avocado salad every day for lunch, and that I took my tea with one sugar.
He watched me, his eyes dark, his expression unmoving. He drank me in, every inch of my skin, and something curious started to happen. Despite what I’m sure my customers would like to think, I never got turned on in private dances. Typically, my mind would be focused on not forgetting when my next stage show was, or whether or not to go through the drive-thru on my way home.
This time, though, I started to feel myself getting wet. At first, I feared I might be unexpectedly starting my period. I surreptitiously swiped my hand down there, and then I realised. It was not my time of the month. This situation was turning me on, and my pussy was soaking wet.
Piers’ eyes bore into me, and I just kept on dancing.
Monday 25th June 2012
8.55am
Bichard Building Supplies
On Monday morning I arrive to the office expecting to find a notice of dismissal on my desk, but Piers is acting so bizarrely. It’s almost like he’s pretending nothing happened; he doesn’t allude to our time in the VIP Room at all. I feel strangely shy, finding it faintly unbelievable that my boss has seen me naked, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering him at all. He only emerges from his office a few times during the day to fire instructions off at me, but other than that I barely see him. At five to five, however, the phone rings. When I pick it up, it’s him.
“Emilia, I’d like you to come to my office before you leave for the day,” he says.
“Yes, Mr Bichard,” I reply, and obediently I walk down the corridor. When I arrive in his doorway, he looks up from the papers on his desk.
“Come in and close the door behind you,” he says, firmly. I do as he instructs, my heart racing.
“Sit down,” he says, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. I sit.
“As my employee, you have a duty to inform me of your diagnosis,” he says to me. This takes me aback; it’s not what I expected him to say.
“My di… I’m sorry?” I say, stumbling over my words.
“Your diagnosis of amnesia,” he replies shortly.
Realisation kicks in. “I don’t have amnesia,” I say, softly.
“Oh, so you do remember our conversation in which you agreed not to work in a strip club any more?” he says sardonically.
“Yes,” I reply, in a tiny voice.
“And yet you chose to continue working there, disregarding the wishes of your employer?”
“Yes,” I say again.
He leans back in his chair, examines me with an unreadable expression on his face.
“What is it that made you so disobedient?” he asks me. When I don’t answer, he speaks again. “I think I know…”
He quietly gets up from his seat, walks around to my side of the table, stands behind me. I’m tense, unsure of what will happen next.
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