Stranger in the Wharf

by H. A. Nicola

  “Are you really doing this?” she questioned herself. “Go on… Take a chance.” She heard herself respond in a voice straight out of a Disney Christmas movie.

  She replied for the first time knowing that now he would know her real name too.

  Cayenne.Richards72@gmail.com

  “Either the 14th or the 21st is fine.”

  Simple and to the point.

  His response was instant.

  "Wednesday next week or the following Tuesday?

  Let’s act out role play."

  His direct crudeness jolted her from the realms of fantasy that she was temporarily coasting. Suddenly she was uncertain again.

  She placed her phone down and busied herself with preparing for the school run. She simply wouldn’t think about it any further until she had given it much more thought. After all… no harm done. If she never saw him again, what would it matter?

  She glanced at the time, and it was five minutes from the end of school, so she slipped on her trainers so that she could run. Running was always a good way of clearing her head, particularly when there was a steady headwind. Cayenne was immensely proud that in her early 40s, she could potentially outmanoeuvre most of the other mums with ease, even whilst walking. She had always paid attention to taking care of herself, but found that the older she got the more emphasis she placed on becoming her best self. A better mother and a better role model for her children. As she approached the school gates, she was beginning to tire; but as eyes were on her, she braved the last few strides energetically and tried desperately to disguise her heavy breathing as she waited alongside the hedgerow where year 5 were dispatched at 3:30.

  Her thoughts ran as usual, to what they were going to eat for dinner. Her afternoon escapades had prevented her from preparing something earlier. It would probably have to be fast food or some other convenient alternative.

  She noticed her daughter’s thinly disguised smirk as she appeared at the blue exit door. The same one she always displayed when she came out of school and spotted her mother in the crowd. She knew she stood out. Not particularly because of her attire which was more often than not gym gear, it was the whole aura of confidence. Of knowing who she was. That and the fact that she always took time to look presentable. Every day. Regardless of where she was going, or what she was doing. It was simply who she was now. The reluctant smirk on Sugar’s face acknowledged all of this, and the evident pride twitched the corners of her lips every time.

  “What do you want to eat? I didn’t have time to cook anything.”

  Her little urchin face screwed up with delight as she displayed the goofy grin she used whenever she wanted something but was uncertain of the answer.

  “Pizzzzaaaaa!” she sang hopefully.

  Cayenne smiled down at her, secretly thankful that there were never usually complaints on the rare occasion when she hadn’t had time to cook. God had blessed her with children who were easily pleased and very accommodating.

  Thankfully Papa Johns was literally a stone throw from their apartment, which meant she could place her order, take Sugar home, with just enough time to go and get Ocean from the designated bus stop and pick up the order at the same time.

  What seemed like moments later, she was standing at the corner of the main road waiting for his school bus to arrive. As it approached, she always tried to gauge whether Ocean had behaved well or not by the conduct of the staff and assistants that handed him over; and she took every opportunity to flex her discerning ability to read body language, though usually they were far too professional to give much away.

  As he stepped off the bus and towered over her, she marvelled at the thought of how tall he would be when he was his brother’s current age, in four-and-a-half years’ time. She often teased that Ocean would outgrow all of them.

  “Hello… How was school?”

  He rarely answered. With another few prompts, his usual response was, “Good”, before he would fall silent again. He was on the sector of the autistic spectrum that meant his verbal skills were somewhat delayed, and he at best attempted small sentences usually to do with his wants and needs at any given moment. She knew he had the potential to do more. To become more. So she spoke to him as though he could answer whatever question would be thrown at him. The system may limit him, she often thought indignantly, but as for me and my house…

  Ocean was trying to drag her in the direction of the large superstore across the road. Probably with the intention of grabbing some blue soap or the colouring pens and crayons which he was obsessed with.

  His strength was exaggerated for a boy of his age. She often wondered, had she not been so strong a disciplinarian and perhaps opted out of showing him an air of authority; whether he would be able to literally pick her up and take her to the store, hitched on his shoulder, against her will by now. As it was, he mostly listened to the tone of her voice and responded. Unfortunately for school, this was not always the case.

  “No Oshee… I have to pick up the pizza at Papa Johns. I’ve ordered you some chicken bites as well…” She added knowing that pizza was really Sugar’s preferred choice, whereas chicken in any form was just fine by Ocean.

  Later that evening, the younger two were in their shared room whilst Cayenne was enjoying debriefing with her eldest. A tradition that they had both come to appreciate and was one of the reasons why they were so close. They had always discussed everything. She had held nothing back from him. In contrast to growing up in the indomitable Caribbean culture, where very little of importance was discussed, she had determined early on that there would be no carpet to hide anything under when it came to her own style of parenting. Everything would be out in the open. She often felt that Diego was perhaps the only person on the planet that fully understood her and her idiosyncrasies and could appreciate why she often operated in a way that others considered uncommon. He didn’t judge her on her estranged relationship with her own mother as most did. Her own mother had abandoned her at the most vulnerable time in her life. But she had survived—scarred and a little wounded but as fierce as a lioness. It had made her who she was. She could now look back and be thankful for those experiences, as she had emerged as someone who wasn’t desperate for approval or validation, having lived through her adolescence starved of those very virtues.

  “Oh guess what happened today?” she cooed excitedly, suddenly remembering the events of her uncustomary afternoon.

  Diego rolled his eyes with mock exasperation.

  She threw her head back and laughed, appreciating the fact that she had her very own sounding board of advisors and well-wishers right here at home.

  “Well…” she gulped, dramatically, as though she was about to expound on a Shakespearean sonnet.

  “After going to Ocean’s assembly…”

  “Oh, was that today? How did it go?” Diego often accompanied her to see Ocean at school whenever he had free time from college, though more for moral support than out of enthusiasm to see his younger brother reluctantly perform.

  Cayenne paused for a moment, thrown from her train of thought and tilted her head as she tried to recollect the events prior to her lunchtime encounter.

  “Erm… Yeah, it was okay. You know Ocean. You could tell that he wasn’t particularly enjoying it. I could just imagine that he had left a half-finished activity on his desk in the classroom that they would have literally had to drag him away from, and that he was desperate to get back to. It was as though he was looking for the first opportunity to run off the stage…”

  Diego nodded knowingly. He was most familiar with his younger brother’s antics, and the mischievous nature he enlisted to test the versatility of outside boundaries.

  “Anyway,” Cayenne flicked her hand in a dismissive gesture to emphasise the point that he had interrupted what she had been saying. “Soooo, I was heading back home, but made a stop in Canary Wharf ’cause I remembered Sugar wanted that new book she’s been going on about…”

  “Oh, the David Williams one
?”

  “Walliams,” she corrected. “Yeah, there’s a new one out…”

  Diego was smirking, “And she just happened to mention it, right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “She asked me to buy it for her this morning…”

  Cayenne shot him an accusing glance. Had she known this, she would have insisted that he buy it for her. Insisted being the operative word, as it was household legend that Diego was extremely frugal with the money that he earned from his part-time job, at Five Guys Burger Restaurant, on the days that he wasn’t studying performing arts at college. He certainly hadn’t adopted her spendthrift tendencies and delighted in not having to spend his own money.

  “So I get to Waterstones.”

  “Oh yeah? What d’you buy me?”

  “And I’m in there for about ten minutes trying to find this book, so the lady helps me find it, and I leave the store, and I was walking out of Cabot Square; d’you know where you come down the steps towards the D8 bus stop?”

  As usual, Diego was staring intently at his phone; a fact which annoyed his mother, as she considered it rude and disrespectful. He glanced up when he realised that there was a prolonged pause as she waited for his full attention.

  “I’m listening,” he insisted before quickly typing something into his iPhone and throwing it down on the sofa beside him in submission. He rested his head back into interlinked hands, stretched out his long legs and crossed them comfortably onto the rectangular-patterned rug in front of the sofa. His expression resigned to the fact that this was not going to be a quick recap of the events of his mother’s day, but that he was required to be in for the long haul. He knew that she needed to offload. He had come to realise that as a result of feeling unheard when she was growing up, she was often reluctant to share her thoughts with others and consequently held back as if not wanting to burden them; and she likely would have continued on that way well into her golden years, had she not had an obliging son who was more than happy to fill in that role. After all, she was his hero as far as he was concerned, and he made a point of telling her almost daily that he adored her.

  The stern expression she had adopted whilst waiting to regain his attention disappeared the moment his iPhone hit the sofa. “Then I was waiting for the bus, and this guy approached me.”

  “Oh yeah? Look at you,” his tone of voice rose dramatically.

  “He was a white guy,” Diego’s eyebrows raised towards his hairline, more out of interest than judgement.

  “Reasonably good-looking, I suppose. Business type…”

  “Okay, okay.” Diego was sitting up now, leaning forwards slightly and pondering her words.

  Unlike a lot of children who often become possessive of their primary carers, having gotten used to having their full attention, she felt fortunate that her children unselfishly would rather their mother be fulfilled. Having said that, she was also mindful that her teenage son would not necessarily want to hear the gory details of any dalliances that she may encounter and made a point to keep any intricate details to a minimum.

  “He asked me where such and such a place was,” she waved her hands flippantly, trying to remember the location that Kenneth had referred to. “I was just about to say ‘No!’; you know I don’t usually answer those questions anyway, but before I could answer, he said that he had actually seen me in Waterstones and followed me out to the bus stop…” She laughed incredulously at the recollection.

  “Really?” Diego, like his little sister, was proud of the way she took care of herself and nodded with interest. “So what did he say?”

  “Well… he asked if I would join him for a glass of wine…” She knew that Diego would often scold her for not responding well to advances and grimaced painfully when she recounted her frosty dismissals.

  “Oh no. So what did you say?” he braced himself for one of his mother’s customary putdowns, which he found to be cutting but funny at the same time.

  “Well, I thought about it for a minute. First I said no, but he kinda said, ‘Oh go on, I’ve had a bad day at work. Just one glass of wine’… So …”

  “Sooooo?” Diego was circling his hand impatiently, willing her to get to the conclusion of the story so that he could resume his phone activities.

  “So I agreed. And do you know something? It was rather pleasant. He’s an accountant, and he didn’t get the promotion that he was going for. We had a good chat, and he says he’d like to see me again. Nothing serious. But… it would be good to get out once in a while…”

  “Yeah. Okay, okay…” He had his phone in hand again now and was clearly over this conversation; his mentoring duties concluded, but was nodding approvingly.

  It was only then that she remembered that she hadn’t checked her phone for several hours. Unlike Diego, her phone was only really useful to her for necessities. Her children were often stupefied at the fact that she could quite happily go for months without using her phone. In fact, as long as her children were around her, she could go for months without speaking to another soul. Possibly as a result of spending a lot of solitary time as a child, she relished her own company. To engage with other people often felt like a challenge to her. She really had to apply herself when facing social situations. Then again, her father had been a loner and individualist, so perhaps it was hereditary.

  There were four emails backed up on her phone when she finally got around to looking at it.

  It was clear that the stranger was determined to remain in character.

  “Jon is enjoying a strong hard on right now… want to see? :)”

  Embracing the sudden daring mood she found herself in after enjoying a solitary glass of wine, she decided to be a little cheeky not knowing whether the offer still stood several hours later.

  “Oh, go on then…”

  “Bad girl :) Does Jon get something back – although he’s aware Bethany has no requirement to respond…”

  “I’m quite sure Bethany will oblige at some point. Unfortunately, she has an evening yoga class to attend.”

  The next morning, it seemed Kenneth was sensing her hesitation. “Hey, shall we just catch up for a glass of wine and see how Bethany feels?”

  She inwardly sighed with relief, as she had almost talked herself out of this crazy idea of a hotel meet-up with a virtual stranger.

  “Yes, let’s.”

  “Actually Tuesday afternoon may now work instead. How are you fixed?”

  She was beginning to find the constant changes rather irksome, and again he appeared to be able to read her mind.

  “Apologies… work diary keeps changing.”

  “Tuesday is fine; 10:00–3:00.”

  “Great! Let’s meet for lunch at North Greenwich Tube Station—12:00 p.m.”

  “Okay. It will have to be brief though. Almost forgot I have a 2:15 p.m. appointment.”

  “Do you have a 2:15 p.m. appointment on Wednesday too?”

  “No. Free Wednesday till 3:00…”

  “Okay, let’s do Wednesday… I do hope Bethany still wants a toy to tease. I want to be your toy…”

  “Bethany is most certainly intrigued at the thought of playing with Jon…” Perhaps the appeal for her at this point was that it was just empty words. She could quite easily delete his details at any point. It seemed to be a fun, harmless game.

  “Good girl. Jon promises she will get what she needs out of him…”

  “Oooh. I love the confidence, Jon…”

  “Jon wants Bethany to be naughty…”

  “How naughty?”

  "As completely far as she wants to go. Whatever she has ever wanted to try… he wants to be her toy for all of it.

  As I write this, Jon’s white cock is getting hard…"

  How far did he intend to go with this, she pondered.

  “There are levels of naughtiness. Even meeting in secret at all is a little naughty.” She glanced at the full-length mirror opposite her bed and stifled a laugh at her own expense at how prudish she sounded.


  “What did you envisage when you spotted Bethany in Waterstones? Had you thought much beyond the glass of wine. Honestly?”

  “Ideas were forming… Jon is looking forward to meeting Bethany in secret…”

  “Bethany must admit… she is a little excited…”

  “So midday Wednesday, North Greenwich… further details to follow.”…

  Wow. How thoroughly intoxicating. He clearly had specific plans in mind and had given this all some thought. The fact that he seemed to have all the plans in hand, and that all she had to do was wait for further instruction made her feel as though she had become embroiled in some kind of real-life mission impossible escapade.

  “Jon wonders… is it bad that his cock stiffens the more he considers what Bethany might want from him?”

  “The difficulty is, Bethany is also considering.”

  “Do tell Bethany. Anyway seriously, Wednesday will just be a good chance to catch up…”

  “It will be an extraordinary catch-up considering neither Bethany nor Jon are willing to reveal too much…”

  “Hopefully, there’s nothing more to be revealed… Hopefully, Bethany wants to play, and Jon can be her toy…”

  She decided to leave the conversation there. She would meet him on the designated Wednesday and see how she felt then.

  On Wednesday morning, she was considering what to wear when her phone signalled several notifications one after another. She had considered that she might not hear anything from the stranger after all. She almost expected that he would cancel at some point. Perhaps the wounds from her own past ran deeper than she cared to admit.

  "Morning, Bethany.

  Meet me at Gaucho at the 02 at 12:00 p.m. Looking forward to seeing you…"

  The bolt of exhilaration that pursed through her body was undeniable. She decided to discard the black-flared trousers and crew-neck jumper that she had planned to wear in exchange for a figure-hugging black jersey dress. It clung to her every curve and accentuated her pert, rounded bottom. It also tended to ride up as she walked to reveal a generous glimpse of gym-honed thigh. She would wear her knee-high boots with it which were comfortable but sexy. What on earth was happening? Why did she want to be sexy?