landowners. The old customs and folklore were maintained and even the new wealth could not diminish it. The newcomers simply had to absorb the traditions or suffer isolation.
Before Mimi had even moved into her room, some nine months ago, her gossip-happy landlady had shuffled her fat posterior from house to church to village hall telling anyone who wanted to know that a young journalist from the Echo was to be her new tenant. Fortunately, the Spinster also told everyone that she was a local girl, so Mimi found herself more immediately accepted than some of the London incomers would be, although she still noticed some reticence when being spoken to. She guessed she would have to live there a good many years before this wore off.
She also noticed that she became a hub for gossip. If certain blabbermouths wanted a scandal spread around they often ‘accidentally’ divulged their secret within her earshot, as if she had the power to splash it across the front pages. This didn’t bother her. Hopefully one day the local scandal might well prove to be the roots of the very story she was desperate to break, the one that did indeed make headlines and get her noticed.
She would be the first to admit that in nearly five years at the Echo she hadn’t made the impact she had intended. She was well-liked and appreciated but she suspected this was more for her prick-pleasing attributes than for her journalistic prowess. She had the kind of looks that many men seemingly found hard to ignore, although they tended to induce private thoughts of filthiness rather than outward declarations of love. She was blonde and by many accounts very pretty. She received plenty of compliments about her large blue eyes and her sunshine smile, but it was her body that brought out the lust in her admirers.
You could just see indications of extra weight under her chin but if she stayed hiding behind her desk you might never realise that she was quite a big girl. Her breasts were a nice handful and still perky and there was a paunch but by no means a roll. It was her bum and thighs that carried most of the excess. Her bottom stuck out from the pronounced dip at the small of her back, defining a round curve down to the heavy tuck. In loose skirts she thought she looked like she was wearing a small Victorian bustle, so she always stuck to tighter ones, even though it might look as if she was trying to show off her biggest asset.
Her thighs and calves were thick but firm and soft white under the stockings she habitually wore for work. As soon as she got home it was straight into clothes more suitable for country living, but when at the office or out seeking stories she always took to her high heels and hosiery and squeezed her fat bum into hip-hugging skirts, although her intention was always to look businesslike rather than plain sexy. She wasn’t entirely happy with her body. If the glossy mags were to be believed, her figure should have been a turn-off for most. However, for so many it seemed one to lust after, to build your dirtiest fantasies around. One former beau had told her plainly: ‘The thought of your bare arse bending over in front of him could send any sane man senseless. You are the kind of girl you want to touch, to kiss and squeeze, to bury yourself deep inside.’
She even found that drunken girls at office parties hugged her for longer than was considered appropriate, or snatched New Year kisses from her under the pretence of doing it to wind up the guys.
She was certainly no tease though. She wasn’t quite ready to settle down but within her was the feeling that she should be looking for something more meaningful than a few dates and some quick, urgent sex before an inevitable petering out. All this made her question the wisdom of her more-off-than-on relationship with Dominic, who at barely nineteen was seven years her junior.
She had met him when following up a story about lads from the area disappearing ‘without trace’. In the last few years five males from the locale in either their late teens or early twenties had abruptly departed, leaving friends and family behind without any warning. This would have been odd, were it not that such deathly quiet villages were a graveyard for youthful ambition and could not compete with the brighter lights of any town or city. As for ‘without trace’, this wasn’t quite an accurate description of their disappearance, since all of them wrote home telling loved ones that they were fine and settled. These letters had continued to arrive at fairly regular intervals. True, in these days of mobile phones and texts, it was strange that they solely communicated by letter, but if you had escaped and didn’t want to be found and dragged back home, it was the safest form of contact. All the boys shared one thing in common: they were bright, fit lads who were expected to do well in life. Maybe it was merely the weight of expectation that drove them away, and once one went others followed the example. One thing was for sure, there was certainly no front-page story in it.
Mimi now met Dominic less and less often, and not just because her work made her keep odd hours or he was busy with his college studies. Despite his obvious intelligence, the immaturity – or, to be fairer, the lack of life experience – was beginning to tell. It was nice to have an athlete in bed but Mimi was aware of his shallowness. He was also somehow detached when they had sex. He would slam into her from the back as avidly as any former lover, but she never felt his simmering lust before they got to bed or any closeness during the act.
It was hard enough finding time and privacy for them to do anything, which sometimes led to snatched shags down dark lanes, trying to get the job done before the chill air numbed the desire. Considering their lack of opportunity, he never seemed as desperate for her as an on-heat teenager should have been. He wasn’t always grasping and fondling her or pulling her in for kisses. He waited until a chance presented itself and then without much preamble gave her a breathless seeing-to.
They just didn’t quite connect. Maybe they would have done if they had ever opened up about what they each wanted. He had once crawled naked over her lap, jokily asking to be punished. She had given him a few light smacks but too light-heartedly for it to go anywhere. Inwardly she had squirmed with the embarrassment of it all. If it had been the other way round, if he had dragged her over his lap and dealt a series of stinging slaps to her big bum, she was sure, despite never having received such treatment before, that she would have simply loved it.
Once, when the Spinster had gone to her sister’s for the night, they had actually had time to watch a bit of internet porn together before climbing into bed. They had looked at a few sites, jumping around a selection of video clips, their choices acting as unspoken demonstrations of what they each found appealing. She was surprised when he chose a short clip of a naked man bound with thick ropes and bent over, yelping as a corseted Mistress forced a strap-on into his rear end. Mimi had said something about how much of a fuss the man was making and if it had been the other way around the girl would have been expected to take it all without complaint.
‘Well, having a big one up the bum can hurt, as I’m sure you know!’ he had replied.
Actually, she didn’t know. She probably wanted to find out but for some reason she never had, although everyone seemed to be doing it these days. Plenty of girls told a different story, that it was a scintillating experience not to be missed. By the way he was talking, it sounded like he hadn’t missed it either. Another time, they had been indulging in some simultaneous oral with him on top, lapping at her bud whilst pressing a slender smooth vibrator into her puss. Only later, when she recalled how he had slightly wiggled his hips above her and pushed his behind back a little more, did she realise that he might actually have wanted the toy forced inside him. Basically, if both of them were displaying signs of submissiveness then it wasn’t going to work, and if he was bi-curious or trying to figure out if indeed he was gay she did not want to be fumbled around with while he made up his mind.
Relocating the secret picnic spot proved harder than she thought and Dominic didn’t help by getting exasperated. Eventually, when they did find it, he was typically underwhelmed. He seemed more distracted than usual, not really listening to anything she said. He hardly looked at her, more often glancing at his phone as if imploring it to receive some important message that would get him out of there. As ever he stuffed his food down as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks, barely noticing the trouble she had gone to
