This morning, my husband Dan phoned from Istanbul, to say he’d be back Monday night.

“Any adventures while I’ve been away?”

“You mean sex?”

“What else?” I suppress a smile. I imagine his reaction if I’d said, Well, I have been lifting a few thousand pound handbags. But I keep stumm.

Does it surprise you that my husband and I have an open marriage? It surprises most people, that’s why I don’t usually mention it. When we got married, Dan said that marriage shouldn’t be about control, about limitations, it should be about having a base, a solid base from which the two partners can come and go, birds that fly away and go on adventures in foreign lands with strangers, and then come back. He doesn’t even ask me to tell him about the other person. Sometimes I do, sharing each caress, each bite or scrape of nails. Sometimes I don’t.

“What’s he like?”

“Oh, I don’t know …” my voice sounds weak, like the mewl of a kitten. I don’t want to explain that Boris is different from all the others, the stream of bodies, mostly men, but with the occasional woman tossed in, that offered carnal release, the thrill of experimentation, new tastes, sensations, secretions. I’ve tasted and sucked and fucked enough for now. It’s my mind that wants to be sucked and fucked. Does that make any sense?

“Jane? Are you still there? How did you meet this man?”

“We met in the handbag department of Harrods.”

“And? What profession is he in?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care, and that’s how I want it to stay.”

Something about Boris has affected me. He treats me like an object to be used. He has all the control.

I find I like it.

“So what have you been doing with yourself? You haven’t even had Alan and Penelope round?”

Alan and Penelope are one of the couples we occasionally invite over for dinner, brandies and sex. Mostly it’s about me and Penelope getting it on and the men watching, which can be hugely arousing, when I’m in the right mood.

“Hey, it wouldn’t be the same without you, darling,” I say. Although Penelope is absolutely gorgeous, I haven’t thought of her in months.

“Can you call them and invite them round for Monday night?”

“Sure. Oh and Dan—” It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him about the stealing. How I’ve developed a little problem.

“What?”

“Nothing. It can wait until you get home.”

Surely I can stop myself, as long as I avoid going into shops. Not very likely, admittedly, but I’m going to try.

As I phone Alan and Penelope, I find my voice lacks enthusiasm. They’re over the moon to be invited for one of our intimate exchanges, while I can’t be bothered. All I can think about is Boris. Boris. Anonymous Boris.

Yesterday, once we’d eaten our meal, he said, “You get a thrill out of stealing things, yes?”

“I guess so.” I could feel myself blushing. “I just can’t seem to help myself.”

“Stealing is a sign of boredom.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am bored. After all, I don’t have any kids. We have a cleaner. My job is only part time.”

“You’re looking for a distraction?”

“Maybe I’ve found it,” I said, putting my bare foot over his erect cock and rubbing it slowly back and forth.

An itchiness filled my morning. I cleaned the house thoroughly, I masturbated with a new vibrator, but even an orgasm failed to lift my mood.

I knew what I needed.

At Harrods, I walked round and round the handbag department. I tried to look casual. No one looked at me. I was invisible in my beauty, my thinness. Wearing just a short black skirt and a white t-shirt, my blonde hair loose on my shoulders. No one would think I was just a dirty little thief.

I had bought with me my cavernous Louis Vuitton bag in which to place my new bag. My virgin bag. The bag that would nestle inside the other, like a baby in the womb.

Maybe I just simply want to caress the leather, I thought, as my irritated fingers touched the brand new bags, flicking open their locks.

This is no good, I told myself. If you keep going on like this, rushing from display to display, face flushed, you will attract attention.

Glancing up, I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Dark suit, pale violet shirt, and brown-black eyes that held the promise of an insatiable appetite for sex and violence. My stomach flipped with excitement.

He was ascetic looking, with a face that could have belonged to the statue of a saint in some Gothic cathedral, and he had the slight hunch of the shoulders the very tall have. He had long sensitive fingers and something about the cut of his suit, his long wavy hair, tied into a ponytail, told me he was foreign.

His eyes were deadly. They seemed to peel the skin from my skull like acid. He moved under my skin like a worm, a parasite, looking into my hot pulsing, squirming brain.

My nipples stiffened under my t-shirt.

No. No!

This was no time for games, for flirtations.

Turning my back on him, I quickly placed a pink leather handbag into the Louis Vuitton. When I turned around, he was still staring at me. His sensuous mouth twisted into bitter smile.

Fuck!

I hurried away, flushing hot cold hot cold.

Once I’d left the bag department, I realized that my cunt had begun to ache. I had blue balls, or the equivalent. In the end I had to lock myself in the Ladies and rub myself to a climax.

I was just leaving Harrods, smiling to myself as I thought how this had already become almost normal. Just something I did every now and again, like picking up a pint of milk, when a hand grabbed my shoulder.

“Excuse me, madam,” said a voice.

I was shitting bricks as I turned round.

But it was just the man from the handbag department, and he was laughing at me. His front teeth were a little crooked, but sexy, and he had a couple of gold rings on his fingers.

“Something funny?”

“Yes, the expression on your face,” he said. He spoke with an East European accent. “You are terrified, yes?”

“I’m glad you find it funny that you scared the life out of me.”

“Sorry,” he said, putting on an apologetic face. “Am I forgiven?”

“Okay.”

“Would you like to come for lunch?”

Actually, I put that question mark in, but really it was more of a command. It didn’t matter, I would have gone anywhere with him. I would have let him lock me up in a cell and feed me dry crusts.

Yeah, he really was all that. Not on the looks front, he just had it, that something else that has you hooked from the first moment.

We went to a very expensive restaurant decorated in pale cream, with a single red arum lily in a vase at the center of the table. I kept sipping water, I was so nervous.

I thought he was going to talk about the shoplifting incident, but he didn’t, just rolled a fork between his fingers, waiting for me to speak. Eventually I said, “What do you do for a living?”

“Do you really care?” he said.

I shook my head. “I’m just trying to make conversation.”

He edged a little nearer, the rough tweed of his suit brushing my knee.

“I don’t think you really want to know what I do,” he said.

“Try me.”

“Let’s just say I don’t want you to know because …”

“It would shock me?”

“Perhaps, but also, I don’t want to burden you with that information.”

“How very considerate. You mean you’re a criminal?”

“Some people might see it like that.”

“And how do you see it?”

He brushed his hand across the table cloth as if brushing the question away.

“In any case, I’ve just had any idea. Wouldn’t it be nice if we just knew nothing about each other.”

“Nothing? You mean, you wouldn’t want to know if I was married or—“

“It doesn’t matter, unless it matters to you?”

I shook my head.

“What’s your name?”

“Boris.”

“I’m Jane.”

He has a hairy chest, I can see it curling up over his shirt collar. It’s slightly repulsive, but also animalistic, sexy. My mouth is dry.

I should get out of here.

He places his warm hand on my knee. I open my legs a little wider. His hand is going up my thigh.

“Pleased to meet you, Jane.”

He’s fingering me, right here in the restaurant.

I try not to show what’s happening beneath the long tablecloth, but in the end I betray myself, making a noise like tinkling glass when I come.

He hasn’t. Got the message, I mean.

He keeps calling. I keep ignoring him. Maybe he’ll just go away.

Wandering around Marks and Spencer’s food hall, I slipped a lemon meringue pie into my handbag.

I don’t even like lemon meringue pie.

I wonder if I am losing it?

I just slipped the pie into the bin when I got home.

Tonight I feel lonely.

I wish Dan would come home.

I’ve had Alison sobbing on the phone all morning. Richard’s finished with her. Where did she go wrong? He was her soul mate. Blah blah blah. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the following:

I don’t know how Richard got my number, but he’s been ringing me, leaving crazy messages on the answer phone, ever since we met the other night. I spoke to him at some point, telling him to just leave me alone. He said if I was worried about seeing him behind Alison’s back, I needn’t worry, because that was all over.

I didn’t want to say, “I know that, you stupid bastard. You’ve broken Alison’s heart and now I’m going to have to scrape her off the wall.”

Okay, I admit it. Part of me is attracted to him, but I switched that part of me off, like a light. You don’t do that to friends.

Then, would you believe it, half an hour ago, he turned up at the door of my flat.

I put on the chain and opened the door a crack.

“How the hell did you know where I lived?” I said, as he frothed at the mouth, like a rabid dog.

“I found your address in Alison’s address book. Just let me in,” he said, running his fingers through his hair, his eyes darting about like a maniac. Turned me on, I suppose, the thought that he was so crazy about me that he’d trawl through his mistress’s private things. Just what kind of a sick weirdo does that make me?

“Look, I know you like me. So stop messing about and open the door.”

“Go away,” I said, closing the door in his face, but he kept banging away. For someone who thrives on sexually humiliating women, the boot was clearly on the other foot.

I enjoyed feeling my power over him. Sure, men are usually attracted to me, unless they’re gay, and even from that sector, men have been known to switch sides for a one off fumble. Is it my fault that I was first in the queue when looks were being given out? I’m five four, with peaches and cream skin, a smattering of freckles, grey eyes, long ash blonde hair and a big pouty mouth (a bit like that French film sexpot Emmanuelle Beart’s, or so I’ve been told, anyway) and decent sized tits. I couldn’t blame the poor sod for being turned on by me, now could I?

While he crashed about in the outside hall, I couldn’t deny the fact that I wanted him. He was so out of control, so wild. Alison told me he likes to semi-asphixiate her in bed. As I stood in my hall, while he butted his fist into my door, I wondered how it would feel to have his hands round my neck.

In the end I let him in, he was making such a scene. I didn’t want a neighbour coming out, asking what was going on, now did I?

“Don’t you think it’s time we stopped playing games?” he said, standing so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. It smelt of beer and cigarettes and his eyes were very intense and blue and tortured looking.

“I’m not playing games. The fact is, I’m married,” I said, although that wasn’t the real reason I didn’t want to have sex with him. It was that, even though they were through, I’d still never do that to Alison. Never.

“So am I,” he said, taking a step towards me and stroking my hair. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

And then. This is so embarrassing to recount. He ground his lips onto mine, shoved me against the wall. I felt myself responding, despite myself.

We were both panting and his hard cock was boring its way into my thigh. It was nice and big too. I had to stop myself from reaching down and unzipping his fly and freeing it so that he could fuck me. I wanted him to.

But in the end I pushed him off.

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

We stood there, panting at each other, his shirt hanging out of his trousers and half unbuttoned. He looked kind of ridiculous. I started to laugh.

He didn’t think it was funny. In fact, he smashed his fist into the wall.

“You psycho!” I hissed, going up and looking at the wall. It was only dented a little.

Finally he left, crushed. Humiliated.

All the violence had left me turned on, my clit throbbing, my nipples sticking out like little revolvers. I finished myself off with my vibrator and waited for he waves of red molten pleasure to pulse out of me, trying not to miss what I’d never had with Richard, a hard, brutal fucking, some strangulation. Aaaah, it would have been quite an experience, but, stop thinking about it.

No regrets. That’s my motto, always has been.

I told myself I’d done the right thing, telling him to piss off.

Yes, I think he got the message.

Alison insisted on meeting up for drinks tonight with this author bloke she’s seeing, Richard. She wanted me to give her my opinion on him. Yes, he’s gorgeous, dark, wirey, intense, but from what she’d told me about his sadistic sexual predilections, not my cup of tea. That’s not strictly true. I mean, he could be my cup of tea, sure, if he wasn’t with Alison.

If you’re wondering what I like I the sack, well, to be honest, I don’t have any particular kink. Sometimes I like to be tied up and used and spanked until my skin is raw and I’m practically out of it, but sometimes I like to just cuddle or whatever. This Richard guy was simmering with passion and a kind of repressed anger which attracted and repulsed me at the same time.

He was going on and on about the political situation in Iraq and how the US had made such a mess over there, and why did no one care about how many Iraqis had died? Was it because they were Muslims? Is that why no one cared? And he kept banging the table for emphasis.

Alison was looking at him, all gaga, like a simpering fool. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that the political situation in Iraq was all very well, but that every time he banged the table, he was making our glasses jump and the liquid slosh over the sides, but I bit my lip. At one point, I asked him if we could talk about something else, like whether Angelina Jolie was pregnant with kid number two or not, but he just glared at me and started a fresh diatribe, this time against Blair.

Once Alison and I had escaped to the toilets, I told her I thought he was a bit intense, but she dismissed my comments, and told me that his bark was worse than his bite and that once you got to know him, he was a great big teddy bear.

Then, unbelievably, he slipped his phone number into my jean pocket while he was giving me a hug goodbye, the jammy bastard. Like I’m going to call him!

Dan called today from Istanbul.

"I'm going to have to stay on for a few more days. Is that okay?"

“Yeah. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Anything exciting been happening?” he asks.

“No.”

What I didn’t say was that I’d done it again. Couldn’t help myself. I lifted a pair of soft leather gloves from Selfridges. I stroked them for a while. It felt soothing, meditative. I felt like I was enclosed in a vacuum of silence. All the buzz from the shop floor dimmed as I slipped the gloves into my bag. The high lasted for hours, like when you come really hard and your ears are ringing, the inside of your head feels soft, spongey and you’re floating about, disconnected from everybody. Like that, only it also felt like I was glowing from the inside. The badness felt good. I was an apple with a rotten core, only no one could see it! Delicious.

Before I got married, I worked, rather desultorily I admit, as a production assistant at the BBC, where I met Dan, a producer who makes documentaries all over the world. That’s what appealed to me about him, I suppose, the fact that we wouldn’t be together all that much. I like my space.

I don’t really know why I got married, only that I had a vague desire to quit full time work and that sex with Dan was spectacular. He has this amazing ability to make me come with just a bit of rudimentary foreplay and a few thrusts. Maybe my G-spot and the contours of his cock are mysteriously aligned. Maybe we just have that thing they call chemistry. Who cares? He can make me come and gives me space (he's away filming in Istanbul at the moment), so who am I to complain?

My best friend Alison raced round this evening. She has long black hair tumbling about an olive hued face, long legs, gorgeous cleavage, and the worst luck with men I’ve ever known. She’d brought a bottle of Chablis and a huge bar of dark chocolate with her. I was headed for another of Alison’s dramas, I reckoned. Without a doubt it would concern some new bastard. I guessed correctly. This time, as always, she can’t seem to help herself. She says he treats her rough, sexually degrades her, but she loves it. He’s a novelist called Richard. She’s a freelance journalist who went round to his house to interview him. They ended up doing it in the marital bed. Oh, did I not mention he’s married?

“Piss off, I don’t want to hear any more,” I said, but she continued.

“What am I going to do, Jane?”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Two months. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought it was just a fling.”

“And it’s not?” Oh Christ. I reached for the Chablis. “You’re not in love with him are you?”

“Well no, not exactly, no. Infatuated is maybe a better word.”

I poured myself a glass.

“So you are?”

Today I went into Harvey Nichols and stole a pair of Ralph Lauren jeans. I don’t know why I did it, maybe because by some oversight they hadn’t been electronically tagged, maybe to see if I could? I did it in a wave of cold sweat, the jeans weren’t even my size, and when I got home, I stuffed them in the bin in a wave of guilt and nausea. Yet beneath it all was a thrill, a tiny metallic thrill, like having a cold key dropped down your back. I had done it. I had done it!

I tried to forget about it as I taught my body sculpting class at the YMCA (I love being a fitness instructor, a strictly part time gig, it allows me engage my body while leaving my mind free to fantasize). But all the time I felt this sense of satisfaction, growing and growing. Why? It was wrong, wasn’t it? Well, of course it was. And yet, the act set me apart, apart from my flabby harassed mummy students and their petty thoughts about would they be in time to pick up their kids, wondering what to cook for dinner, could they get away with warming up the lasagna one last time? While I, at home, had a pair of Ralph Laurens burning like a coal inside my bin.

When I got home, I started this blog. I suppose I need to confess.

It won’t happen again.