The Big Five O. Jane Wenham-Jones

at Roz, who shook her head faintly. She looked queasily at Clive’s quivering buttocks encased in a pair of green underpants decorated, somewhat incongruously, with a pattern of holly and reindeers. ‘I’m not sure …’ she began, but Melody was issuing further instructions.

      ‘Upstairs!’ she roared. ‘Now we’re going to do it properly!’

      Roz felt a small bubble of hysteria rise in her throat as Clive scuttled up the stairs after Melody, holding up his trousers.

      ‘Bare bottom!’ Melody yelled as Clive draped himself over the foot of the bed and Roz shot backwards onto the landing in alarm.

      ‘I really can’t …’ she spluttered, as Melody began to apply a matching leather slipper to one side of Clive’s behind, beckoning to Roz to do the same. Roz took a deep breath, trying not faint with embarrassment, before stepping forward, and giving the unappealing white flesh a timid tap with the footwear in her hand.

      ‘Harder,’ hissed Melody, bringing down her arm with spectacular force. ‘Please stop!’ howled Clive.

      Roz immediately dropped her slipper, nearly falling off Melody’s heels, but Melody, not missing a beat, retrieved it and stuffed it back into Roz’s hand. ‘Not said the safe word,’ she mouthed, giving Clive another magnificent wallop. ‘Any more fuss,’ she said to him sternly, ‘and it will hurt even more …’

      She nodded to Roz. ‘Go!’

      Roz raised her arm and brought it down as firmly as she could. Clive whimpered. ‘Six more!’ said Melody, as Roz raised her arm again and they rained down blows in unison while Clive squirmed. Then it was over and Clive was dressed and downstairs and pushing notes into Melody’s hand while thanking her profusely.

      Roz sat weakly on a chair in Melody’s kitchen as her friend counted out eighty pounds and handed it over. Roz looked at the four twenty-pound notes in her hand. The whole encounter had lasted barely half an hour. But she still felt light-headed.

      She’d decided then that the only way she could do it again was to make an absolute rule about no exposed flesh, and to treat it like a role in a play.

      Hadn’t she received rave reviews for her depiction of a wounded wife in Where Does He Go at Night? at the Sarah Thorne Theatre, when she’d gone for a part with the Hilderstone Players?

      That nice lady afterwards – Sue someone – had suggested she auditioned for Mrs Gargery for the annual Dickens Play as a result. And she was a dominating sort.

      Channel your inner Mrs Joe, she breathed to herself now, trying to still the hammering in her chest as she moved around the elegant rooms.

      She’d had a string of part-time jobs before the position at the gallery had come up, always acutely aware that she had to fill the shoes of two parents for Amy and wanting to be there for her. She had taken the decision – perhaps wrongly, she thought ruefully – to live hand to mouth so that she could pick her daughter up from school. She’d worked in shops and pubs, as a dinner lady and a hotel chambermaid, so that the hours would fit, claimed what meagre benefits she could, just about scraping along and hanging onto the thought of finding something with a proper salary when Amy was older. Not realising how very difficult that would be, when she’d been out of the marketplace for so long.

      When Amy was small she didn’t really notice how poor they were – or show any concern about her lack of a father – but she sure did now.

      ‘Perhaps if you’d bothered to stay in touch …’ she’d said nastily, as Roz tried to explain the limitations of just one income against a rising tide of bills and why high-speed internet could not be a priority.

      Roz sighed. Didn’t Amy think her mother longed to stop the constant juggling, the endless calculations, the daily decisions over how much to allow for food so that the hot water could still go on. Didn’t she think Roz wanted to be able to give her nice things? ‘Ask Granny then!’ Amy would snarl. And so it would go on.

      That was why she was doing this, she reminded herself, as she looked around for a final time, and waited – heart still banging – for the doorbell to ring.

      She’d dusted, changed the flowers, rubbed a little essential oil along the tops of the radiators, so the place would smell lovely when the heating came on for its hour twice a day, and opened the windows wide in the downstairs utility room which had a tendency to damp. She’d ticked off everything on Charlotte’s list before stripping off her jeans and changing into the high heels and short, yet demure dress that she thought would fulfil ‘Colin’s’ desire for someone ‘sexy yet prim’ to beat the living daylights out of him.

      She’d taken Melody’s advice and entered into a detailed correspondence with the three men who’d been in touch since her legs, neatly crossed in a pair of high heels, appeared on the website.

      She’d withdrawn from ‘Mark’ quite quickly when he’d expressed a polite desire for her to smear him in peanut butter (if she didn’t mind) and then spread it on toast and eat it, and was still waiting for ‘Jimmy’ to reply with his exact requirements. So far it just seemed to involve him standing in the corner while she threatened him.

      But Colin had seemed unfussy apart from wanting to have a clear view of her legs, and as long as it ‘really hurt.’ Roz looked at the cane Melody had given her and the leather slipper. Oh Christ, could she really do this?

      She’d been pacing the hall for ten minutes, braced for it, but she still jumped wildly when the doorbell rang. Her palms were sweating so badly she was likely to drop the bloody stick before she could use it.

      For a moment she thought about hiding in the coat cupboard till he went away, or telling him it had all been a mistake. Or even denying all knowledge and pretending he’d been the victim of a terrible hoax.

      Then she thought of Amy’s face when she told her she could go on the trip to Paris after all.

      Roz took a deep breath and opened the door …

       Chapter 7

       I left it so long because I didn’t believe it. Nothing fitted with anything I’d ever read or heard. Breast lumps – I thought – were small and hard and you discovered them in the shower. Like a pea – that’s what everyone always says. This wasn’t even in my breast really – it was above it where there’s a muscle anyway. It wasn’t even a proper lump, just a sort of … thickening … It felt like something that could have happened because I’d pulled something. Or lifted too much.

       Or knocked it.

       I’ve been waiting for it to go away.

       But it hasn’t.

       It’s got bigger. And I can no longer pretend. I’ve Googled of course. And I thought at first it was probably a cyst. Easily drained and removed. Some go away all on their own. But not mine.

       But I’ve felt stressed and stress can lead to all sorts of things. It could be some sort of inflammation caused by too much cortisol.

       Or a fibroadenoma. ‘A very common benign breast condition’ the website says. Describing a lump that is rubbery and moves when you touch it. I think mine moves. I’m not sure. I’ve prodded it so much it’s sore. Unless it was going to hurt anyway – in which case it can’t be cancer, can it? Cancerous lumps are usually painless – it says that on several pages.

       Apart from the forum where the terminal women were talking. But everyone knows you don’t go to chat rooms with good news …

       If this happened to any of the others, they’d be decisive, and go straight to the doctor and God knows they’d expect me to as well.