Madam in Attendance – ebook

Excerpt

If you are reading this, you nosy pervert, then clearly you have invaded my room and removed this diary without my permission! When I find out who you are you will pay for your effrontery, be assured you will suffer in the most severe of ways, that I promise, but for now as you have the book you may as well read it. I hope that it tickles you, entertains and for your sake, I would suggest that you memorize as much of it as you are able, because when I find out who you are you will need to have something pleasant to think on whilst you pay for your invasion of my privacy.

I believe that it would be best if I began the story at the beginning and not at the point of my life that I am at now. After all, if you have taken the trouble to acquire this very private diary then your voyeuristic interest should be sated. That does not mean to say that you are forgiven for invading my personal thoughts, nor that if I find out who you are that you will not get exactly what you deserve. All that I would ask is that you treat this diary with the care that you would wish me to treat you with and of course return my book back where you found it.

My name as you probably already know is either Miss Whippy Cane or Madam Marks, but for your information that has not always been my name. Before I became who and what I now am, I was simply known as Cheryl or Cherry. My story begins when I was eighteen and started work for the first time having left college and progressed onto typing courses, at which I’m proud to say I got quite good. On second thought, perhaps I should explain a bit more of my earlier years; after all they do have quite a bearing. Just so that you understand keeping a diary is bloody hard to do, try it, you will see.

I grew up in a two up two down terraced house on the fringes of a large well-known city, and no I’m not telling you which one. My parents are loving in their own way but work makes them distant. I have a younger half brother named Charles or as I preferred to call him Charlie. We were very close as children but grew more distant as the age gap became more obvious. Charlie turned out to be very bookish and by the time that I left home permanently, he was very much the student loner. I admit to worrying about him and just hoped that he would meet some nice girl and get married, living out his life in happy, ignorant bliss of the world’s troubles and demands. Little did I know at that point of my life or Charlie’s how very different from my expectations and ambitions our respective lives would turn out?

I’m not going to discuss my childhood in detail but generally it was happy, if a little restricted at times. By the time I was seventeen I had scraped in to college and from being there, I realized that I probably didn’t have a future as an academic, but I did have reasonable English and a few other things to recommend me to an employer, though not enough to fund the lifestyle I would like. So on a whim and having seen an advertisement in the local paper, I had signed up for a typist course and from there I planned to become some director’s P.A… well eventually! Boring don’t you think? I do now as I look back.

That was then and regrets are pointless in this life, so there I was, eighteen years old, a bit dowdy in dress style never having been a great follower of fashion, and with my typing certificate clutched in my hand, I started applying for jobs.

Clearly the post of Personal Secretary was not going to leap out and grasp me, I would have to work to get it, but work didn’t scare me and so I finally found employment in a typing pool, working for the Health & Safety Executive. It may sound glamorous: the Health & Safety Executive, it sounded glamorous to me then but in reality it was dull, dull, and dull. I typed virtually identical letters all day long and with no recognition. Even the money which was all right I suppose, for a young girl of just eighteen, didn’t relieve the boredom.

Three and a half months in employment and out with the girls from the office, I met up with Madam Lesley. I called her that because as she had been the tutor who taught my class to type. We had all called her Madam, she insisted on the title. We chatted and had a drink together. I was bored with the company I was with, they all seemed interested to the point of fixation on the men in the pub. I wasn’t, men were not very high on my list of priorities.

Oops, that could be taken the wrong way so just to clear up any misunderstandings nor were women. When we parted for the night Lesley passed me her home telephone number and invited me to call her sometime, adding that perhaps we could get together for a meal or something. Yes, you have guessed it, naïve wasn’t I then, but as you might expect, company and nice company at that was rare and invitations to eat were very few and far between. In fact, this was my first real invitation.

This is how two weeks later I found myself giving her a call and setting up a date of sorts. I was to arrive on the following Tuesday at exactly six pm. She should have finished dealing with one of her students by then, and if not, I could sit in the lounge or if I preferred listen and watch the end of his lesson. Then a nice meal together and a get to know each other better session.

All in all, it made for a nice sounding arrangement. The following Tuesday I left work, stopping off on the way home to pick up a bottle of reasonable quality red wine and then hurrying on home to get changed for the evening. I had been looking forward to this evening for most of the week. I don’t honestly know why, not even now. Perhaps I was just bored and the diversion was welcome or perhaps I had been given a premonition that my life would be changed by this woman, I can’t really say, so you my mysterious reader, must decide for yourself.