All right then, before we hear what the nosey copper has to say, perhaps I’d better come clean. I might have suggested, earlier, that my affair with Toadface was all his fault, but well, that’s not quite the whole story.
Before we go any further, please be warned:
The following material is classified MA15+.
It contains content that may offend some viewers.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Still with me? Great because here’s the thing: yes, Todd Karlouis was a total sleazebag who ogled anything in a skirt, but I may have taken to wearing skirts in the off-chance I’d be ogled.
Happy now? Have I humiliated myself enough?
I know it’s pathetic, but I was lonely, really lonely. That’s why I wore short skirts daily, even though I preferred jeans and had no real interest in my boss and they were really quite tricky to work in. You try scrubbing an en suite bathroom in a tight skirt and see how much dignity you come away with.
I just liked the idea of being admired, even by a bloke I dubbed Toadface. It had been a long time since anyone had looked twice at me, and I needed it so badly I took it where I could get it.
So I wore my slutty skirts à la Bridget Jones, and I let him check me out, basking in the attention but not expecting anything to come of it. Really, my self-esteem was so low I honestly didn’t think even a cliché sleaze would try his hand.
And then he did!
It was a major revelation. Somebody wasn’t repulsed by the thought of kissing me, which happened in a hot sweaty flourish one day, between the pile of plastic buckets and the vat of Mega Mould Remover. I was caught off guard at first. Call me naïve, but when he said he wanted to show me his “giant Hoover”, I honestly thought he was going to exhibit a new vacuum cleaner. And I was kind of excited about that. The old one has never been up to scratch; we really could have done with another.
So I almost slapped him away when his hand went for my butt and his tongue suddenly reached down my throat until a tiny voice inside said, Steady girl. This may be the only good Hoovering you get.
And so we tongue danced for a bit before the zips were unzipped and his vacuum cleaner did its biz. Giant it was not, but it still managed to clean me out.
Then, dirty deed over, he grabbed an old mop, told me to wait five minutes, and snuck out. I waited two, reached for a bottle of bleach, and did the same. I’m not sure anyone saw us, we weren’t exactly discreet, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t have a reputation to uphold. Toadface clearly did because the next time he approached me he suggested lunch.
“What for?” I asked.
“Be good to take it out of the office don’t you think?”
“What for?” I repeated. I wasn’t after a meal. I certainly wasn’t after a relationship. I just wanted to liven work up a bit. That was the turn-on for me—brief flings between cleaning jobs. And so, five minutes later, I found myself back in the supplies shed being Hoovered all over again.
So, this nonsense lasted, oh, eight, nine months. Not daily, of course. We went entire weeks restraining ourselves, but it was regular enough for the rest of the crew to notice and then, of course, his wife. It was around the end of the ninth month that she accosted me in the car park.
“Are you Lou Gold?” she said, her voice catching in her throat.
“Lulu, actually. Who are you?”
She swallowed awkwardly, waited a heartbeat, then said, “I’m the wife of the married man you’ve been banging.”
After nine months of tongue dancing, I suddenly couldn’t find mine and, empowered, she took a step towards me.
“I suppose you think he loves you?”
I shook my head. Definitely not what I had been thinking.
“I suppose you think he’ll leave me for…”—she paused to slap her eyes down my body and back—“…for you?”
Nope, wrong again lady. Didn’t even want him to.
“Look,” I croaked, tongue now located. “I didn’t mean—”
“To wreck a perfectly good marriage?” she interrupted.
“Er, no.” That wasn’t what I was going to say. “I didn’t mean for it to go for that long.”
She seemed horrified by this answer, and I wonder now whether she was expecting me to fight for him, to say we loved each other and he was mine, all mine! Fact is, as you know, I never even liked the guy. I was just lonely. He was there. That’s all there was to it.
“Well, if you ever go near him again—”
I raised a hand like a child in a classroom. “Kinda have to, we work together.”
She growled. “Go near him again, and I’ll kill you! Comprende?”
I felt a little rattled now and pretty pissed off to boot. It takes two to tango, right? So I said, rather stupidly, “Not if I kill you first!”
That’s when her jaw dropped, her skin paled, and I guess she went off and applied for that restraining order. I wonder now what took them so long.
The next day, Toadface called me into his office, looking more sheep than toad, and said the words I knew he would say.
“I’m gonna have to let you go. I’m really sorry, Lulu.”
“You know you can’t do that,” I snapped back, aware of my rights. He was my employer. I could have slapped him with a sexual harassment suit, but the way he, too, paled, the pathetic look on his toady face and the cheque he was now madly scribbling, all quashed my anger.
So I took the money, waved good-bye to my now-contemptuous colleagues and exited stage right.
Two weeks later and just minutes after my murder, the AVO arrived. Too little, too late, lady. I guess Toadface’s wife will sleep better in her bed tonight.
Not that Curious Copper says any of this to Chief now. It looks like I spilled my guts for nothing. Turns out the officer knows very little about the sordid affair, only that it ended two weeks ago and Mrs Karlouis applied for the restraining order soon after.
There’s one more thing he’s found out. It seems that, whatever their anger, whatever their bitterness, neither of the Karlouises could have killed me.
They are 4,500 kilometres away, in Bali, trying to rescue their marriage.