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.