Chapter 1

 

Cordelia Thurston had woken up early and was feeling angry. She didn't know why. Her career as a journalist was successful, so far as working for the Slackhurst Messenger could be classed as success. Her home was a comfortable place, even if there was a family of exceptionally ghastly working-class people living next door. She despised her husband David, but they weren't about to get divorced. She'd committed a murder and gotten away with it completely unsuspected. Yet there she was, lying awake in a fit of frustration, negative thoughts and angry temper. Angry, angry, angry, she thought and felt her teeth grinding.

The time was just past six a.m. Cordelia knew she wasn't going to fall back to sleep. Physically, she didn't feel at all unwell. She'd just had a good night's rest, so evidently that wasn't the cure for whatever bothered her.

She got out of bed without disturbing David. He was a tall, good-looking man aged thirty-three, four years younger than her. In his sexual tastes he was submissive, indeed masochistic and had a fetish for boots; perhaps he was dreaming about boots and humiliation at that moment. Cordelia left him to it. She put on a dressing-gown and went to look out of the window. Although David was tall, he had no advantage in height over her. She stood six feet two inches in her bare feet and was built to match, with a heavy figure, powerful shoulders and large breasts. Her hair was black and she wore it short and her eyes were a deep brown. Her legs were long and her feet were size nine.

She held the curtains open and looked out. It was light, but nobody was about yet. The road - the crescent: Saraband Crescent - was a long, broad curve of new detached houses, all of them very clean, separated from one another by stretches of grass and tall clumps of bush just suitable for an assailant to hide in while waiting to jump somebody. Her discontented gaze fell upon the house next door. Seen from the front it was as clean as any other in the crescent, but its decor had an unusual touch: the paintwork of the window frames, everywhere else white, had been done in a black gloss that shone in the early morning sun. What awful taste. And at the back of the house - well! Who wouldn't be grumpy sometimes, living next door to Brickie Binman?

Come to that, who wouldn't be depressed sometimes at living in Slackhurst? If it had been an entirely pleasant town it would have been simply boring and in her years at the Messenger Cordelia had spent plenty of time reporting petty burglaries, violent assaults, drug raids, factory closures, gravediggers' strikes, ratepayers' protests and similar squalid events. She'd risen above being a reporter now, it was true: she wrote a weekly column with her picture at its head. Doing the column was a plum job and had made her a local celebrity. Yes, people recognised her in the street and more often than not made silly gape-mouthed comments about her height. The stunted, grotty people of Slackhurst treated her like a freak.

She let the curtains fall, left the window and strode up and down the bedroom. Her right hand clenched into a fist, as if to correspond to a ball of nastiness inside her, growing and hardening and bursting to get out.

Bang!

She pounded her fist against the wall. And again, bang, bang, bang, bang! She swore to herself, then aloud. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Piss! Shit! Fuck!"

"Is something the matter?" David had woken.

"No," said Cordelia, irritated. "Go back to sleep."

He lay back and turned over. Cordelia dumped herself into a chair at her dressing table. There were sounds of somebody getting up and coming out of an adjoining room. "Bernadette," she called, "come in here."

The door opened and there stood a girl of eighteen, dressed in a short kimono-style nightgown. She was something under five feet tall and slight in figure; the kimono left her legs bare to mid-thigh, they were shapely but very slender. Her hair was auburn and descended past her narrow shoulders, and her face was pretty but showed no great depths of intelligence. Its expression at that moment was apprehensive.

"Estelle's woke up," she said. Three words of her accent were enough to tell you that she came from Liverpool.

"Has she? Is that my fault, do you think?"

For a long moment Bernadette stood with her mouth open and her tongue moving indecisively. "Might be. Bangin' might wake someone up."

"It might. If it was my fault, I'd deserve to be soundly flogged for it, wouldn't I?"

Again she hesitated. "Mightn't've done it on purpose. I wouldn't flog no one for an accident ..."

Cordelia looked at her thoughtfully. "No. Open up the boot wardrobe."

Relieved, Bernadette came into the room and slid open the door of a long cupboard. Inside stood a row of pairs of ladies' size nine boots, ranked in ascending order of leg height, from a mid-calf length lace-up pair to huge, powerful leather waders. Most of the boots were black. All were expensive and their abnormal foot size made even the lowest pair imposing.

"Those," said Cordelia, pointing to a pair in the middle of the row. They were classic in style: knee-length black patent leather, straight in the leg, with high stiletto heels. Without another word, Cordelia lifted first her right foot, then her left for Bernadette to slide the boots on. She did the job neatly and comfortably and when it was done stayed kneeling at Cordelia's feet.

Cordelia flexed her ankles inside the boots. Bernadette looked up at her expectantly and nervously. At last she reached down and Bernadette's shoulders grew tense; but Cordelia gave her a pat on the head. "Go back to bed. It's only just past six."

"What about Estelle?"

"Go and look at her, if you wish to."

Bernadette got up and went, closing the bedroom door after her. A minute later she could be heard again: "Hiya, dolly. 'Ow're you today?" Cordelia was still looking down at her feet in the boots. She crossed one leg over the other, and admired the shine and the shape. Boots are so thrilling. Unlike shoes, they appear to have been made expressly for the purposes of stamping and kicking and the high-heeled feminine boot stylises and draws attention to its aggressive tendencies; the heel and the toe, the parts of a boot that crush and smash, become refined points, precision tools rather than blunt instruments. In boots, Cordelia found an excitement that improved her mood but at the same time caused her to hunger for a victim. She looked up to find that David had raised his head again. "I told you to go back to sleep."

"Bernadette woke me up."

"Did she, indeed?" She got up, opened the door again, and called out. "Bernadette, I want to take a bath. Get everything ready."

"Estelle's cryin'," came back from across the landing.

"If I have to drag you out of that nursery by the hair, my girl, you'll regret it. Get my bath ready." Without waiting for an answer, Cordelia strode across to David's dresser and pulled three of his neckties from a drawer. With one hand she whisked the sheets from the bed. David was revealed naked, lying face down now, wrists crossed behind his back and feet together. She climbed on to the bed and bound him tightly and carefully; then she picked up a pillow and let it slide out of its pillow-case, which she folded up and stuffed into his open mouth, tying the remaining necktie around his head to keep the gag in place.

She folded her arms and surveyed her husband, bound and gagged and writhing with arousal. "Your own fault, David. People who won't do as they're told must expect to be punished and that applies to you just as much as it does to Bernadette. Just - as - much!" She gave him a ringing slap on the buttocks. "I'm going for my bath."