‘Good evening, sir,’ she said. ‘And thank you for correcting me.’
It was the script. She had to say it.
‘I hope you will.’
He opened the screens and left.
Poppy re-arranged the booth into perfect order then made the trip upstairs to Allyson’s office, nodding at the security guards so that they would know she was clocking off for the night.
‘My goodness.’ Allyson greeted her with evident surprise, looking up from her computer screen. ‘New girls are always popular, but you’ve broken the record, I think. We’ve hardly been open ten minutes.’
Poppy blushed and held out the wad of banknotes.
Allyson counted them carefully. ‘There’s fifty over,’ she said. ‘He must have liked you.’
‘Oh, he was French. Perhaps he just didn’t understand the exchange rate or something.’
‘All the same, take your tip and your half of the fee. Well done, love. That’s a good first night’s work. Back tomorrow, I assume, since he only used his hand?’
‘Oh, yes, that’s fine. Same time tomorrow, then?’
Allyson smiled.
As Poppy turned to go, she stopped her. ‘Poppy, did you enjoy yourself?’
Her face was tilted on one side, as if the answer mattered to her.
‘Yes, it was cool,’ mumbled Poppy, wanting nothing more, now, than to get out of this silly costume and meet Bruno in the pub.
‘Would you mind showing me your bottom?’
‘Oh! Er, all right.’
It seemed an outlandish request but then, considering this was a spanking club, perhaps Poppy was being oversensitive. Allyson probably needed to make sure she hadn’t been marked.
She turned around and lifted the brief satin skirt of her robe, exposing the newly-spanked cheeks.
‘Lovely and pink,’ commented Allyson. ‘But you won’t have bruises tomorrow. Perfect.’ There was a long and pregnant pause. ‘All right, you can go.’
Poppy’s throat was dry and she needed a long drink of water before she slipped back into her dress. The dressing room, so shabby and prosaic, seemed to lower her mood and warn her against meeting Bruno.
He thought she was a prostitute. He expected sex. No matter how attractive and sweet he seemed, no matter how sexy his accent, this was what he was after. Wham, bam, merci madame.
However you looked at it, it wasn’t romantic.
Poppy, back on the street, joined the teeming nightlife and hoped she could slip past the pub unnoticed. She wove a path through the gangs of men peering into peepshows, and past the windows filled with mannequins in rubber basques. It was so old-fashioned now, this sexscape, it almost seemed like a fabricated street in a heritage museum. Serious sex-seekers went online – all you found here was tourist curiosity.
Around the corner lay freedom and fashionable restaurants. She ducked as she passed the pub, hoping that a combination of busy streets and frosted glass windows would be her friend.
But she couldn’t resist a quick look inside the open door on the way past.
Bad move.
He was there, at the bar, right in her line of vision, and he caught sight of her as she crept by.
‘Allo!’ he exclaimed, taking two steps forward.
She froze.