You Need Excitement in Your Life

My mother was home when we arrived and I got my ears well and truly pinned back for stopping out all night, Dawn stepped in to my defence though, "I'm sorry that my daughter was such a problem last night Mrs. Porter, it was a good thing that Victoria was there to get her home safely after the party, my Elle had far too much to drink, when I woke up this morning I found four girls sleeping in Elle's bedroom and Victoria was the only sober one amongst them."

Dawn's intervention took the wind out of my mother's sails and she calmed down quite a lot. "Are you sure you'll be able to make it to Elle's nineteenth birthday party on Friday night Vicky? If you have problems getting over to Kettering feel free to give me a ring and I'll be happy to pop over and pick you up."

Well, I was more than a little confused but I looked at my mother first, she seemed to be nodding her head as if she was giving me permission to go to the imaginary party for an imaginary girl in two day's time. So I smiled at Dawn, "I'm sure I'll be okay getting there but what about getting back?"

"Either my husband or I will drop you home on Saturday morning, we'll have to take all of the other girls that sleepover home so it might be afternoon before we get you home."

I looked at my mother again, "Is that okay mum?"

My mother nodded her head, I saw Dawn to her car and as soon as we were out of my mother's hearing Dawn whispered, "Meet Mark at the King's Head around seven o'clock on Friday evening, come along dressed for a party, we'll have a little fun and you can help Mark with another little job, check your handbag, Mark's given you a watch from Monday's job, it's worth around five thousand pounds but too distinctive to try and fence, never take it in for repair though!"

I waited for my mother to go off to work and then I went to bed for a few hours. I woke up and tossed a coin, heads I'd go out for a run, tails I'd go to the job centre. Tails won so I went into Kettering to visit the job centre. I'd walked past the boards advertising the jobs available in the area, I'd seen most of the adverts before, many wanted older workers, many wanted previous experience but there was a new advert that I hadn't seen before. I did recognise the company name though, I'd sat in one of their delivery trucks just a few hours earlier, they were looking for pickers, I read the advert again and thought, what the hell is a picker?'

I jotted the reference number down and headed for the counter. The guy looking after the counter phoned a number, he chatted to someone and then he covered the telephone mouthpiece, "They can see you now if you have an hour to spare, do you know the way to Commercial Road?" I smiled inwardly before I nodded my head. It was two miles to the warehouse from the job centre and I didn't have any transport so I'd have to make my way there on foot.

I actually ran to the warehouse, I didn't really want the job, just wanted to see inside in the daylight so I didn't care that I wasn't dressed for an interview or that I'd turn up all smelly and sweaty. I was standing in the reception area of the warehouse just twelve minutes after the agent at the job centre put the phone down. There was no way I could have made it to the interview that fast by any other method than running or cycling, the mid-afternoon traffic was really crawling along on the main roads of Kettering.

I was taken into an office where the manager was surprised to see me so soon after his conversation with the job centre and even more surprised when I told him that I'd run all the way there. I think that gave me a massive plus point in the interview. Then I was given a high visibility vest and a hard hat and the manager walked me through to the loading bay.

"It's usually much busier in here than this but unfortunately we had a burglary last night, the police have closed us down until after they've done their forensic investigation."

"Gosh, I'm sorry to hear that, was much stolen?"

"From the looks of things, around eighty thousand pounds worth of big screen TVs. We won't know the full cost until we've had a chance to take a closer look at things, some of the smaller items we can't get to until after the police release the storage area back to us."

In the daylight I could see that the warehouse was bristling with CCTV cameras and was really glad that Mark had been thoughtful enough to give me a ski mask for my journey through the factory, my tour was continued through the building, the police officer that was investigating the robbery was in the security guard's office, he was watching the CCTV footage, he was actually complaining that the cameras were pointless if the warehouse was in total darkness. The manager cleared his throat, he looked uncomfortable, "When the cameras were installed we had a three shift pattern working here, the lights were running all day and all night, since the recession we've had to cut back, we're down to one shift picking and we turn the lights off whenever we can!"

The look on the police officers face was one of disgust, "Well, after your insurance assessors read my report I doubt that they'll look favourably on your claim!"

The manager suddenly went pale, his face turned ashen and he staggered backwards, he was helped to a seat and my interview and guided tour was over with the arrival of an ambulance to cart him off to hospital. His PA came over to me and apologised, "Did Mr. Griggs get around to talking about the potential for promotion and development within the group Miss Porter?"

I shook my head, I was actually feeling slightly guilty that my actions had put the warehouse manager in the hospital, however indirectly. I was given a package of information to take away and read in my own time, I got a hand shake and a reassuring, "I'm sure that once Mr. Griggs gets back in the saddle he'll contact you and ask for you to come in again for a second interview."

I walked out of the warehouse and bumped into the security guard in the car park smoking a cigarette, "You look very upset miss."

"I am a little, I thought he was going to die, it looked like he was having a heart attack."

"You shouldn't give it a second thought miss; it's his own fault, every year I have to put in a risk assessment form detailing all of the security risks, the top risk every year is that we need the lights to be left on all day and night and the second thing on every list has been that damned skylight, the whole thing should have been replaced years ago. This place was just waiting to be burgled!"

I walked off feeling a little bit better, if it hadn't been me and Mark it would have been someone else, the place was just waiting to be burgled. As I was in town and it was late afternoon I decided to visit the King's Head, see if Mark was in, I could tell him what I'd heard at the warehouse, I'd been told that the value of stolen goods was at least eighty thousand pounds and I thought that news might interest Mark.

I bumped into Kelly Thatcher, one of my old classmates on my walk to the pub, she was as bored as I had been the week before, I really, really wanted to tell her about how my life had taken a turn for the better on the excitement front but I knew that it would need to be kept a secret from everyone in the world apart from Mark and Dawn, well those two and perhaps a few of their friends, people like Steven at the King's Head, he was at least in on Mark's love of drugging young girls for sex, perhaps there were others.

I wouldn't exactly call Kelly a friend, she was always an outsider at school, desperate to get in with the alpha group of girls, I, because of my prowess on the sports field was definitely one of the alpha girls, I could run faster and further than any other girl, I was the captain of the netball team as well as the hockey team even though those two sports never really interested me at all. When I told Kelly that I was heading off to the pub she invited herself to join me but not before she had searched in her purse to see if she had a couple of pounds to buy herself a drink.

I regarded her closely as we walked along, her chattering away about all the failed job interviews she'd been on, the troubles she was having at home because she had fallen into the catch twenty-two matrix. In the UK no one was entitled to public assistance until they reached twenty one, it was expected by the government that after leaving school at eighteen we would all be in work or still in full time education. Kelly was too thick to remain in education, her parents were both unemployed, before Kelly turned eighteen her parents were getting family allowance for Kelly as well as extra unemployment benefits for looking after her, on her eighteenth birthday all of that ended, the extra money stopped but Kelly was still at home, a total drain on her families living standards. Kelly didn't look half bad; she was clean and presentable, reasonably well dressed as she had been to an interview that afternoon, no makeup on her face but still pretty for all of that.

She might make a nice present for Mark if he was in the pub tonight. The pub was empty when we got there, Kelly walked in first and Steve was blocking her path, he was turning her around and sending her back into the street when he bumped into me. Kelly had her ID on her, a photograph ID card issued by the council to under twenty-one year old people to prove their age.

Steve wasn't really interested in looking at Kelly's ID until he saw me walking in behind her and then he stopped in his tracks, "Your uncle isn't in yet, I didn't expect to see you in here again after last night!"

I flashed my own ID card proving that I was eighteen years old and so eligible to drink alcohol in his pub if I wanted too. "Is my uncle Mark due in tonight?"

"Yes he is, I think he has a little business to do in here tonight!"

I asked Kelly what she wanted to drink, she, like me hadn't really been bitten by the alcohol bug, her parents both drank but they didn't have money to spare for her to develop the habit as well so she asked for a cola. I pointed out the table that Mark had been sitting at the night before, "Sit there, I'll buy you a cola for old time's sake."

I walked up to the bar and asked Steve for two colas, "You go and sit down and I'll bring your drinks over to you!"

"I'd rather you put the two empty glasses on the bar in front of me and let me watch you pour our drinks. Steve banged two half pint glasses down on the bar and turned to pick up a bottle of Coke from the back shelf of the bar, I cleared my throat, "I'll have two pre-mix colas if you don't mind, you never know how long a bottle has been open, the stuff in there could be warm and flat for all I know."

Steve looked really pissed off now but he put the bottle down and used the post-mix gun to fill both glasses while I watched him closely. I paid for the drinks and carried them over to the table that Kelly was sitting at. "I was in here yesterday; there were only four of us in here until nine-thirty and I think Steve closed the place when we left, how can they afford to stay open?"

Kelly looked around the room, "My dad says that this is the place to come if you want dodgy gear!"

"Like what?"

"Like anything, if they haven't got what you want all you have to do is say and it'll be here the next day. No one on our council estate would ever have anything nice if it wasn't for this place!"

Kelly and I were both half way down our drinks when the next person walked in the bar, Steve was waiting for him at the door, there must have been some kind of early warning device to tell Steven when someone was walking towards the door. There was a whispered conversation at the door, I heard Steve say, "He's not here yet but I'll give him a call and ask him what he can do for you."

The man sat at the bar and had a pint of beer. Mark turned up ten minutes later, he had a shoulder bag across his back, he smiled at me, looked at Kelly and raised his eyebrows. I went to stand up but Mark gestured for me to stay seated. Mark spoke to the guy at the bar, he searched in the bag and I saw him hand the other customer a box. I didn't have an iPhone but enough of my friends had one to know what the box looked like. A roll of notes were passed over to Mark in exchange for a boxed iPhone six still in its cellophane wrapper and the other customer walked away leaving half the beer still in his glass.

I watched as Mark peeled two ten pound notes from the roll that he had been given by the punter buying the iPhone, he handed the money over to Steven and Steven handed Mark a pint in exchange. Mark came over to our table; "Did you buy those drinks Vicky?"

I nodded my head and Mark peeled off a ten pound note from the roll he was holding and handed it to me, I was about to complain that the drinks had only cost me two pounds each but Mark stopped me with a long and passionate kiss. I let my eyes flick over to Kelly; I thought that she would become uncomfortable seeing such an old man kissing me so passionately but she smiled when she saw me looking over at her.

We sat chatting, Mark asked Kelly how long she and I had been friends, "Well, we weren't really friends, we both went to Kettering High school at the same time for the last two years, Victoria was one of the cool girls, everyone wanted to be her friend but I guess that a girl can only manage a small number of real friends."

Mark raised his eyebrows and he looked at me trying to suppress a grin, "So if you girls aren't really friends, how come you're out on the town together?"

Kelly looked at me, she was hoping that I'd answer Mark's question but when I didn't Kelly said, "Well, we just bumped into each other really, Vicky was just coming from her interview at the big warehouse on Commercial Road, they weren't really open because they were robbed in the night. I live on the estate opposite Commercial Road and only really spotted Vicky because I was watching the ambulance making an emergency run to hospital. I was really bored at home so I just tagged along with her for a bit."

Mark looked surprised, he turned to face me, "You didn't say that you had an interview in Kettering today darling!"

"It was a last minute thing, I was at the job centre and they sent me over to meet the manager."

"Really, how exciting, an interview out of the blue after so long trying."

"Well, not really, the manager had a heart attack so I didn't get to finish my interview before they had to rush him off to hospital."

"What did you do to him you naughty girl...to cause the poor man to have a heart attack?"

I wanted to say that it was more what Mark did that caused the attack but I stopped myself, "He was okay until the copper told him that his insurance probably wouldn't make a pay out on the stolen goods, they think at least eighty thousand pounds worth of TVs were stolen."

"Really, well I heard the late news on my way over here, they think it's more like one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, they found the Apple cage busted wide open too and all of their Apple products were stolen as well."

Kelly looked like she was desperate to get her comment into our conversation, I looked at her and then Mark did the same, Kelly took a sip of her cola and then she said, "Vicky is lucky that she lives in a nice area, I haven't had a single interview since I left school, both my mum and dad are unemployed as well, they say it's because of where we live, people don't want to give jobs to people off the council estate. I only got my interview today because the job centre lied about my address and post code."

As Kelly spoke I spotted Steven walking purposefully towards the front door of the pub. I followed him with my eyes, he reached the door just as it opened, a man walked in, he and Steven chatted for a moment or two, Steve pointed the man in the direction of the bar and then Steve turned to Mark, he gestured with his head towards the man sitting at the bar.

Mark asked us to excuse him and he walked to the bar, he spoke to Steve and then he sat at the side of the other man. This time after Mark searched his shoulder bag he brought out a brand new iPad and swapped it for a bundle of money again, the new customer hadn't even bothered with the farce of buying a drink, he just exchanged money for an iPad and left. Mark sorted through the money, this time he pulled out a twenty and a ten, Steve was at our table, he had two glasses of cola in his hands, one with and one without ice, "Mark told me that you didn't like ice in your drink Vicky."

One glass with ice in it placed in front of Kelly and the other with no ice in it placed in front of me. Mark and Steve crossed in the middle of the bar; Mark handed over the thirty pounds that he had separated from the bundle he had just got for the iPad. Mark joined us again at the table; Kelly took a swallow from her glass and pulled a face, "What's in this glass? It isn't just cola!"

Mark grinned, "Just a little alcohol, I had Steve pop a rum in there to help alleviate your boredom, the two of you!"

I tasted my cola; it tasted to me exactly like the cocktail I'd been given the day before that was designed to knock me out. I scowled over at Mark but before I could say anything Kelly asked where the toilets were. As soon as she was far enough away so that she couldn't hear us I said, "Okay, what the hell have you put in our drinks?"

Mark chuckled as he answered me, "The one without ice is just straight rum and cola, Kelly's drink has rum and GHB, I let Steve use his own stash as he is surer of the right dosage to use for that drug. I just thought that if Kelly was bored I could do something to spice her life up a little and perhaps get her some work that would get her out of the council estate."

"Are you sure that my glass is just straight rum?"

"Steve wouldn't do anything to upset me and I know that I don't have to drug you to have sex, you came back today after all!"

I relaxed slightly, Mark was right, I'd let him fuck me three times already without being drugged insensible and I had returned less than twenty-four hours later. Kelly was soon back from the toilet, she didn't touch her drink again until I swallowed a huge mouthful from my own glass, I coughed and choked a little on the rum, "That's stronger than yesterday's drink!"

"Yes, I told Steve to give you a double rum this time because he's planning on closing early again today."

Once Kelly saw me drinking my cocktail she relaxed and she started drinking hers too. It was quite funny to watch her, once she started to drink she appeared to become thirstier, the glass didn't seem to stop moving once she started and the whole half pint was finished in around fifteen minutes.

Mark sold two more iPhones to punters and then he checked his watch, he and Steven were just a few feet away from our table, Mark turned his wrist so that Steve could see the face, "I doubt that anyone else will be calling round now, might as well lock up."

Steve was locking the front door and I realised that Kelly had stopped jabbering, she had been talking ten to the dozen as she drank her drugged cocktail but now she was just sitting there looking at her empty glass, her mouth was still moving, even though she had just drunk a half a pint of liquid she was smacking her lips as if her mouth was dry. Mark tapped Kelly's hand, "Kelly darling, Kelly, look at me, stand up for me please Kelly."

Kelly rocked back and forth as she tried to stand up. In the end Mark had to help her to her feet and had to help support her as he guided her towards the door that led to the toilets and, I assumed, the living quarters above the pub. I hadn't moved, I just sat there watching Mark and Kelly, Steven held the door open so that Mark could concentrate on keeping Kelly upright and on the move. As Mark started to pass through the doorway he looked back over his shoulder and jerked his head, indicating that I should follow them.