The Break Up

This story is set in 1981 in England. There was no internet, no mobile phones, and very different attitudes.

Jill's thoughts about what happened to her the previous November would have been more mainstream in 1981 than nowadays.

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It was the last Friday before the end of the 1981 spring term and nine days before Easter. Jill had broken up with her fiancé, Alan Hampton, on Monday night. They had been going out for nearly three and a half years and engaged for two and a half years. Alan was a fellow teacher at St. Thomas's Grammar School in Birmingham.

She and Alan had agreed on a story that preserved their dignity. He would say that she had instigated the break-up and that he understood and respected her reasons. She, in turn, would be polite about him. The version for colleagues and friends was that Jill had decided that while she still cared and respected Alan, she could not face being a politician's wife. Their closest colleagues and friends would be told that her panic at the thought of attending even hustings for him to become a candidate had made her physically ill and had crystallised both their thoughts.

That was better than either of them talking about what happened that last Monday evening. It was a pity in some ways. If he had been so decisive and forceful earlier in the relationship, they would already be married. As it was, they had said and done things that might have been better left unsaid and undone. It had also taught her things about herself and unlocked more of her suppressed memories about her relationship with Gavin and her evening with most of a rugby team. She had to decide between repressing those memories and desires, working out how to indulge them in a socially acceptable manner or embracing the depths of her depravity.

She had decided to apply for a new job and leave St. Toms at the end of the summer term at the latest. She would move to a new town or even country. She would certainly have her summer holidays in a foreign country -- perhaps Rome or Paris.

Most people at school had been very sympathetic to her and Alan. Indeed, the deputy head had told her on Thursday afternoon to take Friday and the last three days of term next week off as well. He said that it was best for her and the school.

He also said that the upper-sixth girls would no longer attend that general studies class for the sixth-form girls. They would be busy revising for the A levels in June. Well, next term, that would be the story everyone would agree to believe in, including her. If only she had worked out earlier that taking on the Three Witches at their own game would cause them to back off, she would have done it months ago. Perhaps she had overdone it with the First Witch, but the bitch had decided to laugh at her by ostentatiously forgiving her rather than take offence.

She needed to talk with Amber this weekend. She was the only friend who knew most of the truth about Gavin and anything at all about the night in Coketown. Well, she knew about the Dapper Man and his nephew and that she had gone to a party afterwards. Jill had admitted to snogging the men there and being topless at the party, but no more than that. She wasn't sure she could face talking about more than that, even though she thought about it constantly.

She also looked forward to the Warwickshire Schools Rugby Final on Saturday afternoon. She promised Stephen Williamson, Clive Pemberton, and the team that she would support them--she was their mascot, after all. She also wanted to show the world she was glad to be single again and that she would survive the break-up. She was tempted to have a relationship with Stephen or Clive, but it would too clearly be on the rebound. Besides, they were unlikely to be as discrete as Alan about her proclivities.

Amber had been able to leave her school at lunchtime because of a half-holiday for Founders Day at Scrivener's and a free period before lunch. She had suggested that she and Jill lunch in town, then do a little shopping before going to Jill's place. They met at New Street at about 1.30 and had lunch at a Berni Inn, where they shared a bottle of wine with a prawn cocktail, well-done steak and chips, and Black Forest Gateau.

Jill had needed the alcohol to open up about what had happened over the last two weeks. Over lunch, she had admitted to chickening out of going to the hustings, even though Amber had got her to New Street fifteen minutes before the train departed. Amber reciprocated by telling her about the engagement party she had attended last weekend for the sister of an old university friend. She had pointed out that Jill should have warned her just in case Alan had checked on the alibi. Jill supposed that Amber was right, but it wasn't as though it had mattered.

Before going back to Amber's cottage, they went on a shopping expedition for new clothes. Amber had suggested Monsieur Alphonse's because, for a small amount of money, a shop assistant was prepared to model clothing and dance to music. At the same time, the customer saw what the clothes they wanted to buy looked like on a real woman. This service cost £5 for thirty minutes and included a bottle of Freixenet.

It had been some time since she had been there, and the shop amused her. She hadn't heard Monsieur Alphonse speak French before, and it was surprisingly plausible. It helped that "Suzanne," one of the "vendeuses," as the pretentious owner referred to them, could speak French fluently. She was arguably better than Jill, who had done it for A level, and Suzanne even had Gallic disdain off to perfection.

Even better, she was around Jill's height and build, only blonde and had a ponytail, so the service that Monsieur Alphonse's provided would be useful. Of course, that meant that if she let her hair down, she would be a blonde version of the First Witch.

Amber paid for the half hour, saying that it was her treat. After they had picked the clothes they wanted her to model, Suzanne led them into a backroom with a chaise longue and a couple of armchairs. There was a small stage with a wooden chair on one side. There was a music centre which played cassettes and records.

Suzanne was a good, even excellent, dancer, and between the two of them, they got her to dance to some current hits in appropriate costumes. They both ordered versions of the outfits that "Suzanne" had used to dance to "Do the Hucklebuck" by Coast to Coast and the Buck's Fizz song, "Making Your Mind Up," which was the UK's song for Europe this year. They'd even tried out the routines with her. Jill was already wondering which of her tight jeans and the new Hucklebuck outfit was the best one to wear when cheering on the First XV on Saturday afternoon.

After they watched Suzanne sing and dance to the old Bacarra song, "Yes Sir, I can boogie," Jill decided she wanted an extra thirty minutes.

"Amber, I would like to buy some lingerie as well. Could you ask Monsieur Alphonse for an extra half hour with Mademoiselle Suzanne and a selection of his most alluring lingerie for her to dance in? Another bottle, as well. Perhaps a glass for Mademoiselle Suzanne as well. She's earning her commission today. Suzanne, do you have a brunette wig you could wear?" She handed Amber a fiver.

After checking her watch, Amber replied, "Of course, Jill. We can still make our train."

Suzanne returned first with the new bottle, wearing a brunette wig and the first set of lingerie. Jill supposed that Amber had gone to the toilet. Jill looked at Suzanne and told her to open the bottle for them and pour a glass for herself as well as Jill and Amber. With the wig, Suzanne looked like the Tart.

The woman expertly and suggestively opened the bottle while singing, "I don't pop the cork for any gal I see."

After all three glasses were full, Jill looked at Suzanne and asked, "Suzanne, are you a professional..... dancer."

She saw the woman wince at the insinuation. "Mais Oui, Mademoiselle. Je suis aussi actrice et mannequin." Definitely on the game, then.

"So, when and where is your next performance?"

"Je me produis ce soir à Coketown pour le conseil municipal."

Jill returned during this answer and put a hand on Jill's shoulder. Jill was grateful for the reminder that Suzanne couldn't know why that answer displeased her so much. Still, she would get her revenge on the woman for reminding her of what the News of The World would have called her Night of Shame. Suzanne would probably be performing in private for the Dapper Man as well tonight. She took a deep breath and handed Suzanne a pound note. "There's another fiver if you answer to the name Rebecca for the next thirty minutes and do whatever I ask."

Jill didn't know what she had expected the reaction to be, but it certainly wasn't, "Est-elle une de vos ennemies? Je ne fais jamais confiance à quelqu'un qui s'appelle de ce nom."

Maybe she was a good actress -- that sounded sincere. Certainly, her French was as good as Jill's. "Just imagine that the poses I ask you to be in for the next thirty minutes are those of your Rebecca."

The woman nodded. For the next thirty minutes, Jill asked her to pose in some of the ways that the Dapper Man had asked her to last November. Well, at least to start with.

She moved on to reliving the early part of the evening in Coketown and then indulging her curiosity as to how it might have felt to be Alan last Monday when he had told her that it was all over and that he knew what type of woman she was.

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Amber had been curious about "Suzanne." This was because last Saturday afternoon, "Suzanne" had given John a blow job in the changing rooms of Monsieur Alphonse's. The young woman was a better dancer than she had been expecting.

Gerald had suggested, and she'd agreed, that the private show was a good way to keep Jill mildly inebriated and to loosen her inhibitions before this evening's entertainment. Gerald was subbing the fiver and the purchase of some new clothes.

She hadn't counted on Jill being such a bitch. Amber watched with mounting unease as Jill humiliated "Rebecca" for the next thirty minutes. Admittedly, it had been impressive to see how far Suzanne could spread her legs, but when Jill asked "Rebecca" how far she could propel a ping-pong ball, Amber stopped finding it funny. She was sensitive to women being insulted by being called whores.

It had been bad enough when the girl had only been a name, but it was worse now that she had heard about the real Rebecca from Bess and the other members of the DP Team. The woman's background had some similarities to hers, and she felt that Jill's contempt for the girl showed what Jill really thought about Amber.

When Jill had told Suzanne to tell them what a whore she was while Jill spanked her, she knew that introducing Jill to Gerald and the DP Team was the best thing for her. The sooner Jill accepted that she enjoyed sex and shouldn't be ashamed about it, the better. She should also be more careful, but that was a different matter.

Finally, Jill bent Suzanne over the back of an armchair and pretended to be a man fucking a whore from behind while telling the woman to imagine she was sucking a cock as well as being fucked by a rugby player in return for a ten-pound note. To this end she had told Amber to stand in front of the woman with the now empty bottle held at groin level and in a position whereby Jill could look at the reflection in the mirror.

Hell, it looked like she was fingering "Rebecca." Jill was obviously reenacting the spit roast from Coketown and being turned on by it. Amber was terrified that something would go wrong, but "Suzanne" had no problem sucking the bottle without damaging her teeth.

Amber knew that John Round, an old admirer of Jill's from St Tom's, would be happy to reenact the spit roast for real and to teach Jill how depraved she was, and she was going to assist him in delivering the lesson.

She'd been going to do it anyway because of her financial position and the need to keep Gerald and John happy. She didn't really owe Jill much personal loyalty. It was obvious that Jill had only got in touch after Coketown because there was no one else Jill could talk to who would not judge her in the way the old Jill would have judged any other woman who had cheated on their fiancée with anywhere between two to ten men. Before then, it had been Alan rather than Jill who had supported her and offered sympathy after the break-up with Donald. The man may be a bit serious, but he was an honest and considerate man.

Jill had even broken the "ho" code -- if you are going to use someone to give you an alibi for parents or a boyfriend you ask their permission before using the alibi. At the very least, you warn them before they are questioned about the alibi, especially if it involves your car breaking down on the way to Birmingham. As far as she could tell, Alan had kept his word about not telling Jill that he had guessed that Jill had been lying about the reason for missing the hustings. Thanking her for getting Jill to New Street on time had put her in an impossible spot.

She had half persuaded herself that it was for the best anyway. Now, any residual guilt about enabling John to teach Jill that lesson vanished. It would be for Jill's good, especially if she used her own name while learning it. Fuck, pretending to be one of your pupils to persuade yourself that you weren't really a slut was about a mile rather than a step too far.

When Jill went to pay for the clothes she wanted to buy, Amber checked with Suzanne that she was OK. She replied "Elle ne m'a pas fait de mal et elle m'a payé dix livres sterling."

In the top of her stockings, there was indeed a ten-pound note.

The woman whispered, "Prévenez-la que combattre une femme appelée Rebecca, c'est comme se match de coups de pied au cul contre un porc-épic."

"Sorry, my French isn't that good. I get the bit about warning her not to pick a fight with a girl called Rebecca."

"Don't get in an arse-kicking match with a porcupine."

Amber laughed. "A vivid image. Good luck with the gig tonight."

"J'ai une audition la semaine prochaine pour un rôle dans un film." The woman was trying to convince herself more than Amber that she was a success.

"Well, bonne chance." She gave the woman a hug and was frightened by the intensity with which the woman returned it. She must know that she would be invited onto the casting couch, and even then, the likelihood was that she would be told don't call us -- we'll call you. Probably wouldn't even get a tenner.

Amber looked at her watch over the woman's shoulders and saw that they would catch the train she had always intended they would catch. She decided to give Suzanne an extra £5 tip. She was almost confident that Gerald would refund her the money. She slid the note into the top of Suzanne's stockings.

Suzanne responded by pushing herself against Amber and kissing her. Anber had never kissed a woman before and was shocked that she enjoyed it so much. It also worried her that without meaning to, she had sent the signal that she wanted something for an act of sympathy.

They made the train at New Street, and because it was pretty full, they just talked about mutual acquaintances until they got to Hagley. They were met at the station by Henry, a contact of Amber's landlord, who would give them a lift back to Amber's cottage. Amber decided to appeal to Jill's wicked side a little more.

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Jill was impressed by the limousine. Amber explained that the straps by the doors allowed overweight elderly businessmen to haul themselves out of their comfortable seats without requiring the driver to help.

Amber then gave a dirty laugh -- sort of a female Sid James - "I was disappointed to hear that. I thought that it would be something totally different."

"What was that?" Jill knew that a dirty joke was coming.

"I know my legs aren't long enough to get my ankles in each strap. I think you might be able to manage it."

Jill was puzzled and then worked out what Amber meant.

"Oh, you are awful..."

"But you like me. Go on, I'll show you."

Jill giggled but did help Amber show that her legs weren't long enough even if she sat on Jill's lap. She did get one ankle in a strap.

Amber then asked Jill if she thought Suzanne could have managed it. Jill thought about it and said, "Well, she has longer legs than you, and she can certainly spread them."

"If you weren't wearing such tight jeans, I think you could manage it."

Henry, the Chauffeur, kept a wonderfully straight face as he doffed his cap when dropping them off.

Laughing, they carried the bags into Amber's cottage. Soon, Amber opened a bottle of wine, and they sat down in the sitting room. Now that they were in private, Jill could be more open when Amber asked, "Did you try out my suggestion that you finally let Alan have sex with you?"

"I did offer him a test drive last Thursday, as you suggested, but that's when I should have known it was over."

"Sorry?"

She remembered the evening well. She had met him for a meal out on Tuesday and said she wanted to make it up to him. She'd been optimistic because although on Sunday night on the phone, he had said it was time to think about the relationship, he hadn't actually dumped her.

On Tuesday, he had said that in the end, her not coming up hadn't resulted in his losing the nomination. However, if she did not want to be the wife of a potential politician, he understood and would respect that.

He added that if, after three years, she was neither ready to agree on a wedding date nor have sex with him, she clearly wasn't certain that he was the man for her. In those circumstances, it was only fair on her to let her have her freedom.

Initially, she felt relieved. She had decided that this was his ultimatum to her to put out or get out. A woman who wanted to think of herself as a good woman was allowed to succumb to such an ultimatum.

Clearly, the Dapper Man had not told him what had happened in Coketown on that Saturday in November, as otherwise he would have just dumped her. While she couldn't explain that it was not his desire to be an MP that had been the problem but the seat he wanted to stand in, she believed that he would forgive her if she begged his forgiveness and finally allowed him to have sex with her. She could then decide in her own time whether or not she wanted to marry him.

She knew that the fact that he said his mother had called to say that his step-grandfather was looking frail meant she needed to make up her mind quickly. She knew his cousins thought that Alan was the front-runner in the inheritance stakes and made snide remarks saying that despite what anyone else said, they didn't think she was a gold digger.

They had agreed to meet again on Thursday night at her flat. She explained to Amber that she had prepared to make up with him and prove to him that she wanted to have sex with and marry him.

She'd dressed in her smartest respectable outfit. The talk was again civil, but he said that he did not believe that she wanted to be the wife of a politician. He also said that he felt she respected and liked him rather than loved him.

She'd said he was wrong and would prove it to him. She had danced with him to warm them both up. For the first time ever, Alan had not been aroused by having her body close to his.

Jill turned to Amber, "I wasn't ready for that. I thought that it would be easy for one thing to lead to another and that instead of panicking and pushing him away, I would let him make love to me."

"So what did you do?"

"I told him that I wanted him to make love to me that night in my bed."

Jill said, "And he turned you down?"

"He reminded me that he'd always promised me that he wouldn't have sex with me and then dump me like Gavin. He didn't quite say he was going to dump me, but he did say that he only wanted to have sex with me if both of us were happy in the relationship, and he didn't believe that I was. He wasn't prepared to take the risk that I'd still feel the same after he'd slept with me."