Confessions of a Kinky Divorcee (6 page)

Janey nods. ‘Identity,’ she says.

‘Exactly!’ And I’m glowing inside, Kitten, because Janey understands me. Unlike Gladys, she knows that shoes are important.

‘Look,’ says Janey, shifting her weight and lowering her gaze. ‘I’m sorry about Lil the other night. She told me you caught her smoking on the step. I did tell her not to do that, but we’d had a fight.’

‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘Everyone all right, though, love?’

She sighs. ‘Oh, it’s fine. Love isn’t easy, is it?’ Her lovely blue eyes look so sad that I reach forward and touch her bare arm, and suddenly my whole arm is tingling with the buzz I feel when our skins connect. ‘It
should
be easy for you,’ I say. ‘Love, I mean.’

She smiles. ‘Thanks, Deborah.’

‘Call me Debs,’ I say.

‘Thanks, Debs,’ she says. ‘You’re lovely.’

And that word,
lovely
, stays with me all the way to bed, glowing like an ember in my mind.

12.30 a.m.

Dear God, Kitten! I’m awake. Here’s why.

First, Janey’s sleeping alone tonight. I know because I couldn’t sleep myself, so I decided to go and get Janey’s book on shoes from the table, thinking it would help to rest my mind. Anyway, as I’m passing Janey’s room, I hear this soft little moan, and I feel it like a burning pulse deep inside my pussy. (Honestly, Kitten! Smutty words are part of my everyday vocab, these days!) There’s a line of light surrounding Janey’s bedroom door, and when she moans again, more loudly, I’m drawn to her like a magnet. So I do a terrible thing! I kneel down in front of her door, my bare knees on the carpet, and gaze through the keyhole. Janey is lying on the floor, no less, her legs bent and splayed apart as she fucks herself with some kind of object. It’s pale-blue and she’s thrusting it fast, and oh, my God, I’m completely transfixed. She’s wearing the same tight T-shirt I saw her in earlier, but her lower half is bare, and her pussy, which is covered in downy blonde hair, is so wet that I hear the squelch as she pushes the toy in and out. Her phone is at her ear – she’s listening to someone – but she isn’t saying anything, just thrusting the toy. I find myself rubbing my own pussy as I crouch there, imagining I am in charge of the blue toy, and Janey’s eyes are fixed on mine. The heat I feel as I touch myself builds like crazy, and soon I’m dipping right into my pyjama bottoms and fucking my own pussy. I want to cry out myself because it feels so good, and I imagine peeling Janey’s T-shirt back and sucking on her breasts as I thrust that toy into her. Janey seems close – her eyes have glazed over, and I can see a spot of drool just at the left of her lips as she rolls and thrusts and pushes the toy in more deeply. Suddenly she murmurs, ‘Yes, I’m your slut, your little slut … yes, right up my … God …’ and suddenly the phone crashes to the floor and she’s groaning and thrusting and crying tiny swear-words. And just when she seems to be coming back down, she’s suddenly bucking again, and my own climax takes me over and I’m trying so hard to stay quiet as I feel the hot pleasure shooting through me. When I get back to my bedroom, I’m so turned on that I can barely scramble into my bed. As I touch myself beneath the sheets, I imagine that Janey is fucking me with that toy – the same one she’s had in her own pussy – and the sight of her above me, now utterly unclothed, with those tight little breasts and that pale, flawless skin, makes me purr and roll. But soon I want to imagine her body on top of mine, so I grab my pillow and push it between my thighs, rubbing myself against it as I would against her. And suddenly I’m so aroused that the whole room is morphing: the walls are falling back, and in the moonlight the Georgia O’Keeffe lily on the wall slowly expands. And I’m fucking Janey, and she’s fucking me – we’re rubbing against each other’s thighs, the sweet friction unbearable, as I topple into a climax that makes me splay my pussy hard against the pillow, as I ride the crest of this stretched-out high.

Then after, as I lie collapsed and spread, I remember how Janey embraced my interest in shoes. Feeling suddenly aglow, I get up, flick on the light and wander over to my wardrobe. Opening the door, I stare down at the dozens of shoes that I adore – my bottle-green slingbacks; my strappy silver wedges; my Dorothy Ruby Slippers; my many pairs of kitten heels and stilettos for every occasion – and I feel sure, as I stand there, gazing down at my collection, that these are somehow an expression of me. I think about the drag queen too, in her yellow dress with her dark skin and her black hair piled up high on her head, and the way she told me, ‘I do drag, dear. And when I’m in a pair of heels, there’s no one more woman than me.’ If shoes make us feel sexy and proud, then surely shoes are important. And maybe they’re not much to Glads, but they mean a lot to me.

After all, Kitten, what’s more important than the way we feel inside?

Saturday, 10 March

Dear Kitten,

I’m too wiped to say more than this: I had to fire Cheryl today. Bang goes my Saturday girl. She was in tears, begged me not to do it, but I’m a businesswoman, Kitten, and she left me no choice. She actually laughed – yes, laughed! – at a woman who was trying on shoes because apparently the pair of leopard-print mules made her look ‘like a platypus’. This is what the poor woman told me. And when I talked with Cheryl, she didn’t deny it. I had to call in to head office who, it turns out, couldn’t have been less interested. So there’s a new ad in the paper and more work for yours truly. I was meant to go out for dinner with Guy, but I’m going to cancel and go home to bed.

Sunday, 11 March

10.15 a.m.

Good morning, Kitten,

I woke this morning to the sound of church bells – a reminder that I don’t go to church like I’m meant to. My mother, God love her, would scream her head off if she knew I didn’t go to Mass every week. Anyway, maybe this lapsed Catholic guilt is what makes me restless while the church bells are ringing – so much so that I have to get up. So the first thing I saw today when I pulled back the curtains was the sunlit back patio with the garden chairs and table pulled back, and Janey Prince doing yoga on a purple mat, in the skimpiest pair of exercise shorts I’ve ever seen. And every time she folds her torso downwards, touching the ground, or walks her hands forward, keeping her bum in the air, I get a glimpse of those wonderfully tight buttocks, smooth as eggshells in the morning sun. After a few minutes, she looks up and sees me watching, so I throw open the window and offer her some juice, making it look like that was my plan. ‘No, I’m good,’ she calls. ‘You should come out here. It’s gorgeous.’ And her body language is all warm and open, so I take her up on the offer. Well, why not? Landlord–tenant bonding, and that.

It doesn’t take long before I’m making her a smoothie, and blending bananas, yoghurt and apple juice, which I end up delivering to the garden. ‘That’s so nice of you,’ she says, serious as ever, as she rises up from her sun salutation, but when I sit at the side of the garden and place my glass on the table, Janey comes and joins me. We get to talking about shoes, of course. I tell her about the tiger-print stilettos I’m saving up for, and she watches me closely, asking question after question: What makes them so special? When would I wear them? Would I ever use them in the bedroom?

‘In the bedroom?’ I ask, flushing. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I would.’

Janey sighs, leaning back, taking a sip of her smoothie. ‘Good for you,’ she says. ‘I love shoes in the bedroom.’ Then she adds, ‘I’d love to work in a shoe shop. It’d be like seeing my dissertation in action.’ She gives a sigh. ‘Either way, I should get a job. Stop draining Mum and Dad’s money. It’s savings, you know.’

A switch inside me flicks on. ‘Well, are you interested in a job?’ I ask.

She sits up straight, eyes open, like a meerkat. ‘A job at Pussyfoot?’

‘That’s right,’ I say, ‘I need a Saturday girl, and pronto.’ She watches me, blue eyes growing large, as I fill her in on the job and pay, and as soon as I’ve got to the end of my spiel she says, ‘It sounds perfect. I can’t start this Saturday because I’ve got an appointment, but I can the week after. How should I apply?’

I tell her she doesn’t have to apply. ‘Give it a trial period,’ I tell her. ‘A couple of weeks with full pay, and if it doesn’t work out, no spilt milk.’

Janey watches me for a moment, eyes slant in the sunlight, before we shake on it. ‘It’s like a miracle,’ she tells me. ‘Like this was meant to happen.’

And I feel a strange tingling inside.

Monday, 12 March

Well, my goodness, Kitten, what a day! First, old Gladys pops in holding a small purple bag – the type you get from a gift store – that matches her stunning silk blouse. She’s sorry, she tells me, about what she said the other day. ‘Belittled your passion, I did.’ She shakes her head. ‘What a haggard old bitch I am.’

‘Look, I know shoes aren’t deep like psychology,’ I grumble, and I have to bite my lip to stop myself saying,
Actually shoes are all about psychology.

Glads shakes her head. ‘I was a pig about it, lovey. And given the choice between Freud and some Karen Millen slingbacks, it wouldn’t be the doc who’d get my cash.’ Glads explains that when she was a kid, she was always pushed to be top of the class. She was the only girl, so she had to keep up with her brothers, who were told they had to be surgeons or psychiatrists and such. ‘I liked art best,’ she tells me, ‘but my parents didn’t care when I got good marks for my painting. “Who cares about paint?” they’d ask. It was horrible, really. And now, here I am, doing the same darn thing to you.’

‘Forgiven,’ I tell her, giving her a hug. And when we’re done with the hugging, she hands me the purple bag. ‘A make-up pressie,’ she says, but when I try to take the bag, she grabs my hand for a second and with big, excitable eyes whispers, ‘Open it alone.’

So I stashed it behind the counter, Kitten, but we had a run of customers, and Tanya, whose shift starts at twelve, only just arrived. So now, all intrigued, I get a minute to pop to the loo, and that’s where I dip down into the bag and pull out a purple gift box. On the lid of the box, in silver swirly print, are the words
Pandora’s Box: Erotic Boutique for Women.

I catch my breath, Kitten! I know exactly what this is!

Sure enough, inside the box, lodged in a silky layer, is a small, black, bullet-shaped vibrator. When I take it out and press the tiny button at the end it purrs and hums in my palm, and when I hold it against my skirt so that it vibrates through the fabric, it feels so good that I let out an instant moan. In a matter of moments, I’ve dialled Guy’s number and we’re dirty talking. ‘I’m on my knees, jerking off,’ he growls, ‘and you’re in those perfect shoes …’

‘Describe them,’ I say, slipping the buzzing thing up my skirt and between my thighs, where it feels deliciously good.

And do you know, Kitten, he
does
describe them, feature by feature. The platform sole, the stiletto heels, the cherry-coloured suede and the stockings I was wearing. Henry would never have been able to describe my shoes from memory! But soon Guy’s back to the fantasy, reminding me how I raised my skirt and touched my pussy in front of him. So I press the buzzing plastic hard against my briefs, letting my pussy drink up all the wonderful vibrations, and I find myself grinding against the purring toy, letting out a moan as I fall back against the tiling. ‘I’m gonna come all over your shoes,’ cries Guy, ‘all over your fucking shoes.’ And in my head I can see him doing just that, and I push the buzzing bullet right inside my briefs, against my slippery sex. Again I moan, but more loudly now, and I’m pushing the bullet inside myself, unable to stop as I grind against its pulsing. ‘Oh, God,’ I cry out as I begin to feel the heat of my climax, and suddenly Guy’s moaning, ‘All over your shoes, yes, all over them!’ and I fill with a perfect pleasure that makes me buck in spite of myself as I slide down those tiles, coming again and again and again, until I’m utterly spent, with my bum on the floor.

I feel dirty. And cheap. Like I’ve ruined sacred ground. That’s twice I’ve come in Pussyfoot Shoes. What kind of manager does that make me?

‘You’re one hell of a woman,’ breathes Guy. ‘I’m gonna shower you in gifts.’

‘That orgasm was gift enough,’ I tell him. ‘Have to rush. Bye for now.’

Then I pull myself to my feet, clean myself up, and exit the bathroom hoping no one heard my moans.

As if the store is punishing me, Pearl and I have a spate of bad luck. One woman brings back some Gucci heels that cost several hundred pounds, saying the strap snapped the first time she wore them. She seems sincere enough, so I sigh and give her a refund. Then, to top it all off, I spend an hour – a whole hour, dammit – trying to convince a buxom woman that her feet are extra-wide and can she please stop trying on the expensive shoes because she is stretching them. Eventually, she leaves in a fit, dabbing her eyes. ‘There’s nothing wrong with having big feet,’ I call as she goes. Pearl gives me one hell of a look, in response. ‘What?’ I say. ‘It’s the truth!’

‘Some people,’ say Pearl, blowing hot air onto her glasses, ‘can’t cope with the truth. But we do like customers who don’t slam us online,’ she mumbles.

And what can I say to that? Pearl is right, as flipping usual. It’s hard living with someone ten years your junior who looks like a blonde Jessica Rabbit in preppy glasses, has a brain like a razor and isn’t afraid of speaking her mind.

But Pearl’s OK really. It’s me that’s a mess.

Anyway, things improve when I return from coffee break. Pearl produces a shoebox from behind the counter. ‘A rather dashing man popped in while you were gone,’ she says, with a wink. ‘He bought you these and told me to keep them for you.’

I lift the lid from the box, and my heart does a backflip. Guy’s only gone and bought me the tiger-print stilettos! I run my hand along the velvety uppers, the strappy backs and peep toes. I’ve handled these shoes so often, Kitten, longing for the day when I could take them away! And there they are, in my hands.

‘Gucci, no less,’ gushes Pearl. ‘Go on then! Try ’em on!’