The next morning was also spent cooking and painting, with both Sally and Janie trying not to look as if they were straining for the doorbell. To cheer themselves up in the absence of any visitors, they decided to dress as they had yesterday. That is, in precious little.
Just as they were finishing their lunch there was a rapping on the front door. Both girls dropped their forks in surprise. Janie was on her feet first, smoothing the silk negligee down her sides and flicking her long hair back over her shoulder. She felt a flush of anticipation spread across her cheeks and swirl down to her stomach. It was as if she was always going to be permanently ready now, for whatever male-shaped promise arrived at their door.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ Sally squeaked. ‘Let me, I’m the polecat around here.’
She was the quicker of the two, and dashed in front of Janie through the sitting room, the pinafore still flapping around her legs.
‘Sally Seaman? Good morning. You called us, yesterday … about the feature? We’re from Cute Cottages. I’m Shona Shaw, but we seem to have come at a very bad time. Perhaps it would be better if we came back another day?’
A tense-looking peroxide-blonde woman in a tight pink suit stood on the doorstep, accompanied by a spindly young man wearing a striped jumper and clutching a camera. They were both staring at the half-naked Sally and the see-through Janie, who were shivering as the wind swept past their visitors to get inside the house.
‘Sally?’ Janie looked at her friend. Sally looked completely blank, and then clapped her hands to both her cheeks in a coy, Bo-Beep kind of way.
‘Oh, hush my mouth, I forgot to tell you. I had the idea yesterday morning, just as the lady says, and I called Cute Cottages. Before all the excitement, you know, with our gentlemen callers –’
Janie kept the look of righteous indignation on her face, but inside her the giggles were threatening to bubble over.
‘Go on,’ she said sternly.
‘I should have told you,’ Sally stammered. ‘I spoke to this, well, to this lady here.’
This lady here wasn’t going to help. She was too busy eyeing the bizarre costumes Janie and Sally were sporting. The photographer was trying to hide behind her shoulder pads. Everyone was shivering.
‘Still not clear, Sally,’ Janie insisted, twisting her mouth to speak into Sally’s ear and folding her arms in what she hoped was schoolmistress fashion.
‘And I thought they could do a feature on the interior design work you’re going to do on the cottage. You know, a “before and after” scenario.’ Sally dug her elbow into Janie’s side. ‘It’s just crying out for it, don’t you think? And it would be superb copy for your professional profile, too.’
A smile slowly stretched across Janie’s face.
‘Can’t leave that business head of yours alone, can you?’ she crooned, chucking Sally under the chin. The tense peroxide and the spindly photographer cleared their throats. Another blast of wind shot straight off the sea and licked between Janie’s bare legs. She allowed another beat of suspense, then beamed graciously at their visitors.
‘Forgive me for being so suspicious,’ she apologised, stepping aside while Sally reached forwards to take their arms. ‘It’s just that we have so many callers here, all hours of day and night, and I have to make absolutely sure – I never can tell who my friend Sally has propositioned – I mean, invited – to descend on us!’
Sally closed the old front door deliberately slowly so that it creaked in a horror-movie manner, and ushered the uneasy pair into the sitting room.
‘There’s so much to show you. Such a lot of work to be done, and we haven’t had a moment to get started. So many interruptions.’ Janie flung her hair back and smoothed the negligee down over her hips, then started gesticulating round the room like a ballet teacher. ‘Honestly, whoever said the countryside was for pansies? Now, this is the main sitting room, which of course we will be stripping to its bare essentials.’
Like a conjuror’s assistant, Sally sprang about the room, following the line of Janie’s pointing finger to indicate the imperfections. At the word ‘stripping’ she tore off a long, jagged swathe of wallpaper from beside the fire, and rubbed her fingers on the marbled patch beneath.
‘Damp,’ she muttered, wrinkling her nose.
Janie kerbed her anxiety at the sight of all the reddish powder cascading round Sally’s head. If that really was as serious a damp problem as it looked, then it would take more than just her, more perhaps than just Maddock and his merry men, to sort it out – but that was just tough. They’d started, so they’d finish. She pushed her guests down onto the sofa, and noticed how it seemed to be sagging even more from the recent action it had endured. Shona Shaw’s prim buttocks were perched exactly where Jonathan had sat yesterday; where Janie had been pole-dancing, using his cock as a prop.
‘Coffee?’ she trilled. She needed five minutes to gather her skittering thoughts or else she would fall prey to the laughter that threatened to engulf her. She snapped her fingers at Sally, who shuffled up to her meekly, tripping over the long cotton pinafore, and bobbed a curtsey. That did it.
‘We’ll just sort that out for you,’ Janie choked, fiddling with the bow of Sally’s pinafore. ‘The coffee, that is. How rude of me not to think of it sooner. Perhaps you’d see to that, Sally, and then I think that we ought to get dressed. You know, properly. You must excuse our appearance. We were expecting –’
‘More gentleman callers,’ Sally piped up, twirling away from Janie’s bossy hands, and displaying a totally bare bottom as she bustled into the kitchen. The pair on the sofa were still open-mouthed with disbelief.
‘Don’t go away, will you?’ Janie beamed. ‘I’ll be with you in two minutes.’
She rushed up the stairs and pulled on her faithful dungarees along with a long-sleeved T-shirt. Suddenly she felt faintly ridiculous. There was no point pretending it was warm enough to be prancing about in a negligee. In any case, if Jack came round later, she could always boot Sally and any other hangers-on out of the room, peel off the dungarees slowly, deliberately, in front of the fire, make them somehow just as alluring as the negligee. She had learned a lot in the last couple of days, in particular that it was her body, not her clothes, that the men wanted.
When she came back down the stairs Sally had produced the coffee and was sitting cross-legged by the fire. The pinafore was stretched like a tent across the tops of her legs so that the slightest dip of a curious neck would afford a perfect view of her pussy. Shona Shaw was glancing anywhere in the room but at Sally, while the photographer was slurping at his coffee as if it was the last drink on earth, squinting furiously into its grainy depths.
‘Thank you, Sally. I think you should cover up, now. The housemaid’s outfit will do, or perhaps, as it’s a day of leisure, some sensible gardening gear.’ Janie turned to Shona Shaw. ‘We’re a good pair, actually. I’m the creative designer, she’s the dogsbody.’
Sally coughed loudly and flapped the pinafore. Janie went and stood over her, draping her arm across the mantelpiece. Shona slowly crossed one leg over the other with a swish of stocking and flipped her notebook to a blank page. The photographer hadn’t yet taken off his lens cap, but was huddled next to her on the sofa, clutching his bony knees.
‘Light the fire, would you Sally, before you get dressed?’ Janie asked, smiling over Sally’s head at the visitors. ‘Lovely real fire, even in summer. It makes you want to just lie down on this rug here, wriggle about in front of the flames, you know? Especially when the weather is so shitty. But we never close the curtains. Not like you would in London. No need for that kind of privacy out here in the country. We’re open house, you see.’
‘For all gentleman callers,’ added Sally, bending over the hearth.
Shona cleared her throat. ‘Let’s get down to business, shall we? Tell me, if you love the cottage so much, why do you want to change it?’
‘Well, we’ve worn it out, you see.’ Janie ran her finger thoughtfully along the mantelpiece.
‘People come to visit, and we rarely let them get away within twenty-four hours. It’s like a love shack, really, and we want it to stay that way. But the décor is, well, more Goldilocks than Goldfinger, don’t you think?’ Sally piped up, bending right over to light the fire so that the crack between her butt-cheeks widened and the photographer gulped his hot coffee down too fast.
‘Yes, and when our visitors are not fixing things with their hoary hands, everyone out here seems to be hung like donkeys,’ Janie added thoughtfully, tapping her chin and cocking her head as if the idea had just occurred to her. She looked hard at the young photographer, as if seeing him for the first time. He had beautiful green eyes, spaced far apart, she noticed, and jutting cheekbones like Rudolf Nureyev. ‘Not like our boys from the smoke.’
‘Who are all hung like chipmunks,’ chimed in Sally.
‘They’ll never seem so manly. Not after the men we’ve come across, as it were,’ Janie was still examining the boy. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Derek,’ he croaked, and licked his lips.
‘Time to get out your Hasselblad, don’t you think, Derek?’
Sally sat back on her haunches and reached lazily under the pinny, flipping it aside to scratch at herself and giving a little titter of pleasure as she did so. Janie kept her face straight and perched on the arm of the sofa next to Shona. The lady editor nibbled her biro and uncrossed her legs again, keeping her eyes nervously on Janie.
‘Perhaps a guided tour?’ she suggested, tottering to her feet. She turned her back to Sally, holding the notebook in front of her like a shield.
‘Absolutely, Miss Shaw. And I think we should start with the bedrooms, don’t you? Always the cosiest part of a cottage like this, and actually the least run-down. Not that we’ve spent much time asleep, have we, Sal?’
‘No, Janie,’ agreed Sally, rearranging her pinafore demurely.
‘Clothes, Sally, please. We don’t want our guests thinking we’re on heat. Coming, Derek?’ enquired Janie.
Derek was still drooling across at the fireplace, and didn’t hear her. Sally rose smoothly from her cross-legged position and gave the pinafore one last sideways tweak. Young Derek sat up straight as if he’d been shot.
‘One or two of the bedrooms have already been decorated by my cousin, the owner,’ explained Janie, as she took Shona’s Chanel-pink elbow and steered her briskly out into the hall, ‘but there are other parts of the cottage and garden that need attention.’
She noticed that Derek’s hair was very neatly combed into a side parting, and she ruffled it with her fingernails as she passed him. He swiped one hand absently across his locks, then stood to attention, and allowed Sally to lead the way.
‘Come and see the attic room,’ she said to him as she skipped up the staircase. ‘There are spectacular views, you know. You can take pictures, while I get changed.’
‘Hasselblad, Derek,’ barked Shona. ‘In here. Now.’
After showing them round, Janie and Sally left the journalists alone to tramp over the cottage and take their shots. Sally, dressed in Ben’s old jumper again and the infamous denim miniskirt, stoked up the fire.
‘There’s no excuse not to do the work now, is there?’ she remarked.
‘Just as well you’re here to help, then, isn’t it?’ replied Janie, suddenly sombre. She glanced out at the dripping leaves around the window. ‘Anyway, it was always my intention to make good use of our time here.’
‘And so you have, doll, though not perhaps as you planned.’ Sally paused, then went on casually, ‘You could always get that Maddock along to do the job. He might be along later on, anyway, you know. Checking things out, sniffing about.’
‘You hope. Why did you make that call, Sally?’ Janie demanded, nailing down what was bugging her. ‘I mean, it’s turned out to be a great idea, but why behind my back like that?’
‘Honest answer?’
Janie nodded.
‘I thought it would liven things up a little. Keep my toes in the water, keep my pecker up, so to speak, while I’m stuck – while I’m staying here. And get you some publicity into the bargain.’
‘I see,’ Janie mumbled doubtfully. ‘So you’re bored already?’
Sally wasn’t an ex-performer for nothing. She snuggled up to her friend on the sofa, and tickled her under the armpit till Janie laughed hysterically.
‘Janie,’ Sally said. ‘Do I look bored?’
‘Excuse us.’
Shona and her assistant were in the doorway.
‘It’s a wrap then, is it, Derek?’ giggled Sally, leaping away from Janie, who resumed her stern expression.
‘We’ll have to run this past the editor.’ Shona’s face was very flushed. She glanced at Derek, and her face softened a little. ‘It’ll make a marvellous feature, after all. I wasn’t too sure, at first, but it’s perfect for our magazine. Come along, Derek.’
Derek trooped obediently after her, throwing a sorrowful look over his woolly shoulder.
‘Best little whorehouse in Devon,’ he muttered behind his hand.
‘And you be sure to visit again soon, now, honey,’ crooned Sally, in a perfect Dolly Parton response.
‘More to that boy than meets the eye,’ remarked Janie, as the front door rattled shut.
‘He’s a “before and after” feature waiting to happen,’ chuckled Sally, as she watched the car jerk unevenly through the potholes a few minutes later. ‘Pure as the driven snow when he left London this morning, and now look at him! Corrupted the moment he sets foot inside the witches’ cottage!’
From Sally’s vantage point, she could see the journalists clearly through the rear windscreen. Shona’s head was up very close to Derek’s in the front of the car, and he, aware that the girls were watching, was attempting to accelerate manfully away from the cottage.
‘Look! She was as turned on by us as he was. I bet she’ll have him in a lay-by before they reach the M5.’