Behind the Pink Door

'Are you a lesbian or something?' Gary asked.

'No, Gary. I'm not a lesbian. I simply don't want to... well... have sex with you. OK?'

'But you let me buy you supper.'

'I think you'll find that the company bought supper for both of us,' I said. 'In fact, technically, it could be said that the client bought supper. Travel, accommodation, and sustenance are all built into our fee.'

'Are you sure?' Gary said.

'Absolutely. We're a training consultancy, not some bloody charity.'

'No. I mean about the sex. Are you sure that you don't want to have a bit of... well... fun? I'm not asking you to marry me or anything.'

'Good. And I'm quite sure, thank you.'

Belinda had warned me that Gary was probably going to hit on me. 'He's been asking lots of questions about you,' she said.

'Oh?'

'Yeah. You know... wanting to know what you do in your spare time. Whether Tom is still around. Whether you have a new boyfriend. Stuff like that.'

'And what have you told him?' I asked.

'Me? Nothing. What should I have told him?' Belinda asked.

'Nothing is good,' I told her.

'Well... just letting you know,' Belinda said.

'Thanks.'

To be honest, I was a little bit surprised. Gary had a reputation within the business for being a bit of a predator. But he normally went for the young ones. The summer interns in particular. I would have thought that, at 44, I was far too long in the tooth for Gary to be even vaguely interested in me. At 44, I was nearly as old as Gary himself, for goodness sake.

'Oh, well,' Gary said, 'if we're not going to do it, we might as well have another drink.'

Did I really want another drink? No, not really. But, still... 'I'll get them,' I said.

I got us each another glass of wine - which I paid for with my personal card - and then, about halfway through mine, I told Gary that I was going to have an early night. Maybe go and read for a bit.

'Do you need me to come and tuck you in?' he asked.

'I'll manage,' I assured him.

Gary frowned slightly. 'Well... give me a call if you change your mind,' he said.

I went up to my room, took a quick shower, and slipped into my sleepshirt. Then I fired up my tablet and looked to see what I had bookmarked to read. I wasn't in the mood for great literature. I just wanted something light and entertaining. Maybe something a little bit sexy. But nothing really leapt out. And then I remembered Literotica.

Literotica is an enormous story site with thousands and thousands of stories by thousands of different authors. Many of the stories - perhaps most of them - are not very well written. Or maybe they're just not to my taste. But there are a few excellent writers who sometimes post there.

I scanned the story categories a few times trying to decide where to dip in. Erotic Couplings could sometimes throw up the odd gem. Exhibitionist & Voyeur was sometimes OK. And I'd read a few good stories in the Mature category. I guess having accumulated a few birthdays myself, the idea of an older woman and a younger man was a little titillating. And then there was the Lesbian Sex category. Well, Gary had asked me if I was a lesbian.

I made a start on four or five stories, but abandoned each of them after about half a page. When you spend your working days training business managers how to write clear, concise English, you do come to expect a well-turned sentence or two in your leisure reading as well.

I typed a few words into Mrs Google. Perhaps she would have some ideas. And that's how I happened on Mother Mary-Louise.

At first glance, Mother Mary-Louise looked like something religious. But then I read '43-year-old married woman giving herself permission to explore her own sexuality'. Despite no longer being married, I was intrigued.

Mother Mary-Louise was a blog - a surprisingly literate blog. Some of the entries were just a sentence or two; while others were mini essays. And most were illustrated with an erotic illustration or two. Some of the drawings I recognised as the work of Egon Schiele or Gustav Klimt or Betty Dodson or Georgia O'Keefe; but others were more like schoolboy (or schoolgirl) sketches. Most of the photographs also had a homemade feel about them. I read a couple of entries and then got under the duvet and scrolled back a page or ten.

Interestingly, several of the issues that Mother Mary-Louise canvassed were things that I, too, had sometimes wondered about. People accept that casual sex is OK when you are in your 20s (well, many people do), but what about when you are in your 40s? Or your 50s? Or even your 60s? And is it OK to have sex with your ex? Or does that imply that you are considering getting back together? And what's wrong with being a little bit bi-curious? Or even a little bit bi?

In one of her posts, Mother Mary-Louise confessed that, as she got older, she was becoming a bigger and bigger fan of what Betty Dodson had called 'self-loving'. 'Nobody knows me quite like my fingers know me,' Mary-Louise said.

I added Mother Mary-Louise's blog to my favourites, turned out the light, and pulled up the hem of my sleepshirt.

I began by softly tracing my fingertips across my smooth tummy - just above my 'timberline'. My fingers were barely touching my skin. I circled around three or four times, and then dropped down to the edge of my dirty-blonde forest. Tom - my ex - used to like me shaved. I prefer a proper grown-up patch of thatch. I worried, when I let it grow back, that it might grow back bristly. But no. I once again had my own little soft and springy forest. My fingers explored my mound and then brushed my plump outer lips. Somewhere deep inside I could feel the beginnings of a tingle.

When I'm Jilling off, I often imagine that someone else is doing it to me. A character from a book perhaps. Someone good-looking. Someone powerful yet tender. But now, having dipped into Mary-Louise's blog, I found myself wondering why it couldn't simply be me doing it to myself. I imagined myself watching myself. Watching myself spreading my labia and tracing a fingertip along my warm groove all the way to my growing clit. Yes, that worked. 'Do you like that, Jacqui?' I asked myself. 'Yes. Yes, I do,' I told myself. 'I like it very much. It feels very... umm... nice. Very sensual.'

And then - and I don't know why - I wondered how it would feel if it was Mary-Louise who was doing it to me.

Mary-Louise had already suggested, albeit tentatively, that she felt that she was becoming more and more omni-sexual. 'I'm well past the age of making babies,' she said, in one of her blogs. 'Why does my sexual partner need to be a heterosexual male? Why can't he be a bisexual male? Or she, a bisexual female? In fact, why can't she be an out and out lesbian?'

'Are you a lesbian or something?' I heard Gary saying in my mind.

'No, Gary,' I had told him. But that didn't mean that I couldn't enjoy the erotic company of both men and women.

Fingers - were they mine? Or were they someone else's? - gently circled my clit. And then the same fingers - at least I assume that they were the same fingers - toyed with the entrance to my cunt. I thrust my hips upward, giving the fingers permission to explore further. One finger; two fingers; three fingers. And then a thumb reached for my clit.

'Oh, yes,' I heard myself say.

Five, ten minutes later - time was suddenly of no importance - I experienced a super orgasm. And then I fell asleep. I think that I had several delicious dreams, but the only one that I could really remember was the one I was still having when I woke up.

I was on a white-sand beach overlooking a shallow lagoon. In the middle distance I could see waves crashing over something, a reef I assumed. I was wearing a thin wrap. That's all. Nothing underneath. And I could feel the heat of the sun on my body. And there was a woman's voice, coming from somewhere behind me. 'Remember, it's your mind, Jacqui,' the voice said. 'Your body. You're the only one who can decide.'

'Decide what?' I asked. But, by then, I was already awake.

'How did you sleep?' Gary asked when I met him for breakfast.

'Like a baby. Like a very contented baby.'

'Lucky you,' he said. 'I had a terrible night. Kept waking up. I couldn't even find any decent porn.'

'I don't think that I need to know that, Gary,' I said. Perhaps he just thought that he was being friendly, sharing his nocturnal trials and tribulations with me.

Shortly before nine o'clock, Andrea, the workshop coordinator, arrived at the hotel with print-outs of the participants' overnight assignments. Gary and I spent the next couple of hours reviewing what they had done and preparing our feedback. And then, at eleven, we reconvened for a two-hour wrap-up session.

As usual, several of the participants had really grasped the principles of plain English communication and made a fist of starting to apply the principles to their own writing. A couple more were on the way - but still had some way to go. And another couple were still firmly bogged down in a field of muddy, bureaucratic gobbledygook. At one o'clock, we wished everyone good luck and bade them farewell.

I had my car with me, and so, once we had packed up, I drove Gary to the station (he was headed home to Kent).

'What are you up to this weekend?' he asked.

'Nothing special. A few chores that need doing.'

'You should come down to Kent for a weekend. Not necessarily this one. We could have fun, you and I. We'd be good together.'

'Thank you, Gary. But I think I'm busy that weekend.'

'Just a thought,' he said. 'Keep it in mind.'

I dropped Gary at the station and set off for High Witham. It was starting to spit with rain as I left Oxford and, by the time I arrived home, the rain was pouring down. So much for my plan to spend a weekend in the garden.

There was a time when I would have arrived home from two or three days away to find the doormat covered with post. But, of course, these days, everything - well, almost everything - is delivered by email. The only item waiting for me on that wet Friday afternoon was the latest copy of Have You Heard?, the fortnightly community newsletter. I picked it up and put it to one side to look at later.

I don't know if it was because of the weather or what, but somewhere about five-thirty I suddenly had a craving for a bowl of chowder. I had stopped to buy bread and milk on my way home, and I had potatoes and onions in the pantry, and various fishy bits and pieces - salmon, prawns, clams - in the freezer, so why not?

I started by finely dicing some onion and gently frying it off with a few anchovy fillets. And then, on a whim, I added a finely sliced chilli - seeds and all - some crushed garlic, and some really finely-chopped ginger. Then it was time for some small cubes of potato.

My mind was turning over the events of the previous evening: Gary's clumsy attempt at a pickup; Mother Mary-Louise's blog; my mind-blowing orgasm; and my tropical island dream. As much as I like to think that I can multi-task with the best of them, I think that I must have forgotten that I was making chowder, and the next thing I knew I was adding coconut milk. Oh, well.

Somewhere about six o'clock, the kitchen was smelling a little like a Malaysian street market. I added cubes of the defrosted salmon to the pinkish-white broth. Four or so minutes later, the salmon was joined by the defrosted prawns and the clams, and I turned the heat off. I made a chiffonade of a small handful of fresh basil leaves, and we were ready to go.

OK, so it wasn't exactly a chowder. And it wasn't a Laksa either. But it was delicious.

As you may know, High Witham is a bit of a centre for traditional crafts. It's home to two luthiers, a cutler who specialises in refurbishing high end cooks' knives, one of the country's best picture frame makers, a bespoke bookbinder, and several other such businesses. Perhaps it's out of respect for 'the old ways' that, in an era of online marketing, many of these businesses support our traditional ink-on-paper community newsletter - even if their advertisements are often little more than some sort of slogan and a web address.

As I scanned the latest copy of Have You Heard? I noticed what looked like a new advertiser - well, new to me anyway. The Crevice, it said, Helping today's woman get in touch with her mind and body. And there was a web address. Nothing else.

I tidied up the kitchen, put the dishes into the dishwasher, poured myself a glass of Pinot Grigio, and opened my laptop. I thought that I would see if Mary-Louise had added to her blog. She had. She had posted a photograph of a woman. Fair shoulder-length hair and sunglasses. About my age. Standing in a garden. She was wearing a pale blue chemise and a slight smile. One breast was hanging out, and the hem of her chemise was hitched up to reveal her pale-reddish hair-covered mound and her generous slot.

'I think that I would like to know this woman,' Mary-Louise had written. And, yes, I could see what she meant. There was something very attractive about the woman. 'Yes, I think that I would like to know her too,' I said.

While I had my laptop open, I decided that I would also investigate The Crevice. I typed in the web address from the community newsletter and I was greeted by a picture of a hot-pink Georgian-style front door. An elegantly inscribed legend warned that: Beyond this point, there may be erotic imagery. What sort of erotic imagery? I clicked on the door and it opened.

'Would you like to make an appointment?' a new screen asked. 'An appointment with whom?' I wondered. 'An appointment for what?' And while I watched, an image began to form. And then the image dissolved and formed into a new image. And then... another new image. The images were of naked women. Being massaged by other naked women. There was nothing especially pornographic about the images. But they were quite mesmerising. Quite erotic.

Did I make an appointment? I suppose that I must have. Someone named Celine emailed me confirmation of the day and time. And she sent me an address. 'We are looking forward to welcoming you behind the pink door,' Celine said.

The address that Celine had sent me was in a corner of the village where a number of traditional crafts businesses were clustered. It had stopped raining. But I took an umbrella anyway. Just in case.

I could see why it was called The Crevice. The hot pink door from the website was squeezed in between the premises of Mundy & Sons, Master Chair Makers, and J-M Chapoutier, Bookbinder. The gap between the chair makers and the bookbinder was barely wide enough for the brightly-coloured door, let alone for another building. I pressed the doorbell. A light came on. There was a click. And the door opened.

Behind the door, there was a corridor - not much wider than the door itself. And at the end of the corridor there was another door. Standing in the doorway was a woman dressed in the manner of a receptionist at an upmarket hotel. 'Jacqui?' she said, in a tone that was both a question and a greeting.

'Yes. That's me,' I said.

'I am Julia. Welcome to The Crevice. I see that you have brought us some better weather.'

'Well... it's stopped raining,' I said.

Julia smiled.

Beyond the narrow corridor, the building suddenly opened out into a sort of Victorian-style conservatory, filled with light and with lush plants. 'Gosh, this is nice,' I said.

Julia nodded. 'It is, isn't it. Let me take your coat and your umbrella, and then I will take you through to meet Sarah.' She looked me up and down. 'I think you'll like Sarah.'

I handed Julia my umbrella and then my coat, and then I followed her through the semi-tropical 'jungle' to the back of the conservatory. There were three doors. Julia tapped on the first one. A few moments later, the door was opened by a smiling woman dressed in a pale pink, mid-calf length towelling bathrobe. 'Jacqui. Welcome,' she said.

'I'll leave you in Sarah's capable hands,' Julia said.

'Your first time?' Sarah asked, closing the door behind us.

'Umm... yes. I didn't even know that this was here. Well, not until I saw the notice in the newsletter.'

'We need to find you some music,' Sarah said. 'What do you like?'

'Most things,' I said. 'Although I'm not too keen on metal or rap.'

Sarah smiled. 'Perhaps a bit of gentle jazz,' she suggested, looking me up and down. And almost before she had finished saying it the room started to fill with the soothing sounds of a piano trio. It sounded vaguely familiar. McCoy Tyner perhaps? David Benoit? I couldn't be sure.

'You might want to begin with a relaxing shower,' Sarah said. 'The shower is through here. And she led me through a door on one side of the softly-lit room. The music was playing in the shower room too. 'There's a robe on the coat hanger,' Sarah said. 'I'll leave you to it.'

I undressed and looked around for the shower controls. But there weren't any. No taps. No buttons. Nothing. And then the shower just started all by itself. And when I tested the water temperature, it was perfect. As was the water pressure. Spooky.

I showered, and then dried myself off, and then slipped on the thick towelling robe. 'Are we ready for a... massage?' a voice asked. It was Sarah. She was handing me a mug of something. It smelled delicious. She smiled. 'Our secret herbal infusion,' she said. 'I could tell you what's in it, but then I'd have to... Well, you know.'

I took a sip. It tasted every bit as good as it smelled.

'What tempted you to come behind the pink door?' Sarah asked.

'I'm not sure,' I said. 'I think that I might just have reached a point in my life when it's all right to be me. You know. It's my mind, my body, and what I do is up to me. Does that make sense?'

'It does,' she said.

I'm not sure what I was expecting to happen next. I certainly wasn't expecting Sarah to slip off her towelling robe. But that's what she did.

I tried not to seem surprised. I tried not to stare. But at the same I time I was fascinated. Beneath her fluffy robe, she was the archetypal woman next door. Certainly not a model or anything like that. And yet there was something quite alluring about her. And then she held her hand out - evidently expecting me to remove my robe. And so I did. Sarah didn't bat an eyelid.

'Let's start with you lying on your tummy,' she said.

Well... yes... let's do that, I thought.

Sarah - naked Sarah, woman-next-door Sarah - dipped her fingers into a bowl of something and began massaging my shoulders. Her touch was surprisingly light - more of a caress than a full-on massage.

After she had massaged my shoulders, and my upper arms, her fingers made their way down each side of my spine until they reached my waist. And from my waist, her hands flared out to my hips.

'Are you enjoying this music?' she asked.

'Yes. I am,' I said. 'It's very relaxing... while still being interesting.'

'Yes,' she said. And she dipped her fingers into the bowl again and then turned her attention to my bum. Again, it was more of a caress than a massage. For some reason, my mind turned to Mary-Louise. 'I think you might like this, Mary-Louise,' my mind said. 'I think that you might enjoy what happens behind the pink door.'

'Right. Shall we turn you over?' Sarah said.

I wanted to say: 'You can do whatever you want to, Sarah. Just don't stop.' But I didn't. 'Like this?' I said, as I turned over onto my back.

'Perfect,' she replied.

And so there I was, lying on my back, my arms beside me, my boobs falling off my chest slightly - but still agreeably boob-like - with my recently restored snatch-thatch catching the light from somewhere and looking (I thought, as I glanced down) as sexy as all hell.

Sarah dipped her fingers into her magic bowl once more and began massaging - caressing - my left foot. And then she slowly worked her way up my left leg, leaving my calf and my thigh feeling like firm, warm jelly. And then, just as I was readying myself to feel the touch of her fingers on my golden triangle, she went around to the other side of the table and began to work on my right foot. There was no question about it: this woman was good. This woman knew exactly what she was doing.