The Agency

Some time passed in silence as they lay together. Joel sensed she did not want to leave. Neither did he. But eventually they rose from the bed, dressed and prepared to leave.

On the street, Emily sent another text and a few minutes later a black car pulled up to collect him.

"Well, I can honestly say that was one of the best nights of my life. Thank you very much!"

He had to fight back the urge to ask if he could see her again. She responded with a smile and a nod. But said nothing. They hugged in an almost professional manner and Joel climbed into the car and it took him away through town.

He had the driver drop him off near Piccadilly Circus and spent the day in a fantastic mood doing some shopping, having lunch and generally hanging out. When he finally made it home he was in bed and asleep by 7:30.

In the week that followed, he received an email from Pam giving him the opportunity to feedback on his experience. He kept his response brief, stating that the evening had surpassed all expectations and that his service provider had gone above and beyond to see him satisfied. Pam had not pushed him to rebook, obviously aware of his financial limitations. Her final email, however, had included a link to a download. The file was a huge 5GB and had taken most of the evening to complete. But it had been worth every second. On opening the file he saw the familiar sight of the huge bed, a chesterfield armchair adjacent. He guessed that the camera had been behind the mirror on the sideboard; a suspicion confirmed by scrolling through the hours of footage to the end where a closeup of Emily bent over in front of the camera was the main feature.

It had taken a while to watch the whole video in its entirety as he often only made it through a few minutes of footage at a time; occasionally obsessing over a few minutes which he repeated over and over. But one sleepless night some months later he found himself awake in the middle of the night and watching the last few seconds of the video in bed on his tablet. It depicted Emily and himself dressing and collecting their belongings, preparing to leave the room. At one point he was offscreen, most likely in the bathroom. In his absence he saw Emily walk over to his suitcase and appear to interfere with it in some way.

Intrigued, he went to the wardrobe and fished out the small suitcase. The main compartment was empty, as he expected. Searching further he found that the lid of the suitcase had a zipped compartment which only flat items could be stored. Before he even opened the zip he could see the material was slightly raised. He pulled the zip down, stuck his hand in and fished out the contents. In his hand he held the small, red lace panties that Nikki had handed him in the nightclub along with Emily's darker panties which he'd last interacted by yanking them down as he held her bent over.

He stood there for a few seconds, memories rushing back to him and then headed back to bed where he fell asleep with the panties on his pillow. The perfect memento.