Chapter 10: Shopping For A Live In Housekeeper

One day as they were about to sit down to one of their now frequent dinners, after which he was due to drive her back to her house, he said, “You know, Wendy, I would love to have some wine with my dinner tonight, but I can’t do that and drive you back afterwards. How about if you stay in the guest room for tonight?”

“Well, I don’t want to spoil your dinner, so I can order a taxi to take me home.”

“That’s silly. If you don’t yet trust me enough to stay here I’ll manage without the wine.”

She thought for a few moments and then said, “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. I don’t have any night things here to start with, then there’s a toothbrush and a hairbrush, and so on.”

David seized the possibility, “As you know the guest room has its own en suite with a brand new disposable toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. You could make do with your photo modelling nightwear perhaps, or the pick of June’s old nightwear for the one night, surely? And then you could perhaps keep an emergency set of your own here for just such occasions as this.”

“Well ... I suppose for once it would be alright.”

“Good. That’s settled then. Since it’s salmon tonight we’ll have a nice bottle of Prosecco to accompany it.”

She was strict at first and said she would only have one glass. He did manage to persuade her to have a second glass, but it wasn’t really so difficult. The third glass went down a treat.

In the course of the next few weeks it became most nights that David would have wine with his dinner and Wendy join him and then she would stay in the guest room. Eventually David suggested, then insisted, that she should move into his guest room on a more permanent basis and pointed out that she could make some money letting the house at Greenacres to carefully chosen tenants.

This was agreed, with the proviso, at her insistence, that he cut her wages to the national minimum as she would not have the housing cost. David was doubtful, but wisely did not push her on this topic as he realised that she was totally serious about it. If I let her have her way occasionally it won’t seem too much like a take over. In any case I can put the difference to one side for her if, or more likely when, we split.

Although he still had her into the studio for photo sessions, and some of those were nude, and although they watched television together most evenings, there was no overtly sexually contact between them. In fact they had not yet even kissed; the modelling sessions could have been with a plastic dummy for all the interest in her personality he showed when moving her flesh into the pose he wanted.