Seven Scarlet Tales

He looked so pleased to see her, and Poppy could never resist anyone’s good opinion of her.

She changed course and went into the pub.

‘I wasn’t sure,’ she said with an apologetic look.

‘You would like a drink?’

‘Oh, maybe a vodka and cranberry. Thanks.’

Squashed into a corner, their thighs touching, they clinked glasses and smiled, him radiantly, her nervously.

‘Bruno,’ she opened. ‘I’m not a prostitute. If that’s what you think. I just like you.’

‘That’s good. I am not going to pay you for sex,’ he said.

‘You aren’t?’

‘No. Maybe you can tell me your name now?’

There didn’t seem any harm in it.

‘Poppy.’

‘Pop-py,’ he said, seemingly finding it enchantingly novel. ‘What is poppy?’

‘A flower. Red. Like, um, the Somme, Flanders Fields, the First World War, remembrance …’ The reference he was most likely to understand was the grimmest.

‘Oh, coquelicqot,’ he said, grinning. ‘C’est joli.’

‘Yes, I remember looking it up in the French dictionary at school. I don’t suppose anyone has that name in France? What a mouthful.’

‘And it is Poppy’s first day in the spanking club,’ he said.

She looked around, dreading that they might be overheard. Everybody was engrossed in their own affairs, though, and she turned back to Bruno.

‘Yes, as I said.’

‘I just wondered. You know, you seem so … I did not expect a girl like you. I thought perhaps you were playing a part, the innocent. But this is really you?’

‘I’m not so innocent. I knew what I was getting into. Please don’t cast me in the role of victim. I’m not.’

‘OK, no, I see that. You have a strength.’ It took him about five minutes to mangle the word ‘strength’ and Poppy’s brief fit of pique evaporated.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘I am going to confess to you. I didn’t think you would come. Or if you did, you would try to get me into a room upstairs, for a fuck.’

Poppy had nothing to say to this, but her wide eyes and open mouth must have said it for her.

‘But it seems like you are not in that situation. You are a genuine employee, who goes to her home a free woman after she is spanked.’

‘I told you. I’m not a prisoner.’

‘You told me the truth, so now I will tell you. I am not really interested in spanking.’

‘You … I thought—’

‘OK, I like it now. But I never thought about it before, not much.’