Chapter 1

Marietje wishes to point out that she still sells MarieMelk SupaGro ™, 250ml for €49.95, a singularly effective breast enlargement formula.

"This is the worst part, I always think. At least when we took off there was no time to worry about it, but coming down is horrible. I always think he's going to plummet straight into the ground." Miss Twizzell stared fretfully out of the window and whinnied as the plane wobbled in the turbulent atmosphere over the fast-growing landscape. It had seemed so toylike on the approach but now everything was much bigger, disturbingly solid-looking, and whizzing past at two hundred miles per hour.

"It's a she," said Virginia, not altogether reassuringly. "The captain told us her name before we took off. They always let the First Officer do the flying."

"A woman pilot? It can't be!" Miss Twizzell yanked her seatbelt even tighter and closed her eyes in silent prayer. Her assistant seemed unnaturally calm about the whole thing. Young girls these days, they flew all over the place the whole time, she supposed. "Have you done up your safety belt?" she asked her.

"Of course. By feel, naturally..."

Miss Twizzell was glad she had taken the window seat, or she'd never have been able to see the outside world past Virginia's bust. Even though Virginia was securely trussed up in what she called her special travelling gear, with the ingeniously designed low-slung bra, there was no getting away from the young woman's staggering development. It had been a master stroke, bringing Virginia to the conference, rather than one of Discoveries' top boutique managers. Miss Twizzell was looking forward to being the only delegate accompanied by such a hugely-stacked assistant.

The ground was whizzing past in a blur now, and the engines sighed and gave up trying to keep the machine in the air. There was a monstrous thud as the woman pilot slammed the wheels on to the tarmac as if she was determined never to let them come up again, then an urgent roar of reverse thrust. Within seconds, they lurched to the left, still travelling obscenely fast, and thumped across the uneven taxiway in search of somewhere nice and easy to park. There was a distinct relaxation of tension and the usual faint smell of fear from the seasoned travellers. Another One more flight closer to inevitable destruction. The aircraft had begun playing soft soothing sounds to them, like the music in an elevator.

Miss Twizzell was fiddling with her seatbelt with her nervous bra-maker's fingers. "You can't get out yet," Virginia reminded her new boss with a smirk. "We've got to let the plane stop first. It will be ages yet. How far is it to the hotel from the airport? I've never been here before. I know it's still Europe but it feels so different. I wonder how warm it will be. It looks hot out there."

"It's not hot in Holland. It's further up than London. I want a nice cup of tea. And I need a pee. Not necessarily in that order. There'll be a taxi waiting for us, they said..."

"We'll be first off. Business Class always gets off first. That's the other good thing about it." Virginia stretched as well as she could.

Miss Twizzell couldn't think of anything good about travelling Business Class, but there was little doubt that Virginia would have had extreme difficulty squeezing her bosom into one of the Cattle Class seats at the back, even for a brief up-and-downer across the North Sea.

"I wonder if any of these are going to the same convention." She looked round at the other passengers, some of whom were studying her disguised figure with decidedly ill-disguised non-professional interest. "They're all staring at me," she whispered suddenly to her employer.

"I can't believe you said that! Of course they are. Look at you! Even in that potato sack, you can't hide those things. Are you going to be able to walk?"

"Of course I can walk! I'm used to them. Although it does feel funny having them strapped down here in my lap like this. I know it's meant to make me just look fat, but I haven't got fat legs, nor a fat face."

"You're a walking advertisement for Discoveries."

"A waddling advertisement, maybe. Here we go, I'll have to let you get the bags down from the locker, I'm not sure I can reach up there without breaking something."

If Miss Twizzell was a poor air passenger, she was even worse in a taxi, especially in a strange foreign city where they drove on the wrong side of the road. "How can I read this brochure at this speed?" she protested to Virginia.

"It's no good complaining to me," Virginia giggled. She had slumped in the corner and brought one foot up on to the seat. It squeezed her breasts together in the middle and stopped them wobbling around. "Haven't you memorised everything in that brochure anyway?"

"I've forgotten it all again. What have we got tonight? They describe it as a get-together."

"Ah, that'll be where we all get together. Do you want me to wear one of my dangly bras again?"

Miss Twizzell looked at Virginia with surprise. "If you like. You've got plenty of choice. You'll be able to wear them all this weekend. We've got four nights, after all, although I don't really know how they expect to be able to talk about custom-made bras for four whole days!"

"Well, they've got bra-makers coming from all over the world: America, Russia, Italy, Israel. And all those Asian countries. You wouldn't think there'd be much demand out there..." Virginia stopped. She remembered Mr Yashimoto's staggeringly developed daughters, both of whom easily dwarfed her own vast bust. It would have been nice to have seen them again - at least, it would have been nice to see Miki again, Kimiko was okay, but only in small doses. There was no such thing as a small dose of Miki Yashimoto. Everything about her was considerably larger than life, including her twelve foot bustline.

"It's a pity we couldn't bring the water tank with us," Miss Twizzell mused. "I doubt if anyone else is using the flotation method to measure the more pendulous breast."

Virginia blushed and looked out of the window. 'The more pendulous breast' clearly included herself. Since finishing her first year of college, her bust had been hanging lower and lower. The cost of new bras was so daunting, it had been a pleasant surprise when Miss Twizzell had suggested that Virginia should come and work for her during the summer vacation. "I can't pay you much, but you can have your bras free. Swimsuits, too, if you need any. And it will be good experience for you, whatever you do for a career when you graduate. What are you thinking of doing, anyway?"

Virginia hadn't thought about it lately. At one time she had entertained thoughts of taking a year out and travelling round the world, but the way her breasts had grown had virtually ruled that out as impracticable. She simply couldn't go back-packing with tits the size of pillows hanging down her front. "Something with computers, maybe," she had answered vaguely.

"Oh, good. I can't get on with ours at all. Gerard usually looks after it, but he's over at one of our other branches all the time. And of course, you can learn the custom bra trade, too. When can you start?"

"Start? Ummm. Tomorrow?"

That had been three weeks ago, during which time Virginia had partially reorganised the Discoveries stock control system. The stores, scattered around the country, were holding enormous stocks of bras in absurd sizes, in a range of colours and styles. Even the most huge sizes were available from stock. Gerard was largely to blame. He loved counting his boxes, rearranging the stock in pretty patterns on the shelves. Sales weren't bad, but there was a tremendous amount of cash tied up in enormously unsaleable bras gathering dust in the stock rooms.

Virginia had mounted the step ladder in her first week. "Do we really need all these, Veronica?"

"All what, dear?"

"We've got five ... six ... no, seven black 30W cups. Is there really any demand for all those in Brocklehurst? We ought to have a centralised storage facility, and this database needs updating." She wobbled down the ladder and tapped a few keys at the computer. "The machine's showing no customers at this branch for size 30W. The nearest are a 30T and a 28X."

"I made them for a special customer we had. She was a 30Q, and she'd been growing steadily, so I worked out that she'd stop growing when she reached a W cup. And black was her favourite colour," Miss Twizzell had ended weakly.

"Well?"

"She got pregnant and shot up to a 34K2. How was I to know she was going to get in the club? She didn't even have a boyfriend. I mean, she obviously had one, but he didn't really like big breasts."

Virginia had grimaced and immediately e-mailed all branch managers requesting them to update their database entries forthwith. To her pleased surprise, she was able to get rid of all seven bras within two days.

Miss Twizzell was so delighted, she told Virginia of her decision to take her along to the Convention.

"It's in Amsterdam in two weeks' time."

"A whole week in Amsterdam? But what can bra-makers talk about for a whole week?"

"Oh, I don't know," Miss Twizzell said airily. "And it's not a week, it's only four nights and five days."

So here they were, pulled up in front of the hotel and wondering why the taxi driver was having apoplexy with a 100 Euro note in his hand. "Should I tell him to keep the change?" Miss Twizzell whispered.

"I shouldn't if I were you. Not on our first morning, or we'll be hitch-hiking home tomorrow." Virginia dug in her purse and found something smaller. So small, in fact, that the tip came to around twenty cents. If Virginia hadn't been so pretty and so intriguingly large-breasted, the taxi driver might have been quite annoyed.

"Over here to the window, Willy. Here's a couple of them coming in now."

"How do you know? You don't know them, do you?" Panic crept into Willy Voorskens' voice.

"No, just look at them. She's got to be the bra-maker, the older one. The kid's her model."

"The fat one? A model? Matti, you've been at the genever already?"

"Take another look. Ankles, arms, face? She's got them all. I may be wrong, but I bet that under that shapeless sack, there's a fucking great pair of tits! Disgusting."

The two of them stared down into the street in front of the Wilczkowsky Hotel on Dam Square, where the two women were surrounded by luggage, apparently arguing with the taxi driver.

"I bet they're English!" Matti sniffed and pursed her lips. Willy was scared when his producer looked like this. "It will be a pleasure making the English look stupid. Not that making the English look stupid is too much of a challenge. Pass me the list of delegates. And the script."

Willy glanced at the list as he handed it over.

INAUGURAL CONVENTION

of the

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION

of

INDEPENDENT CUSTOM FOUNDATION GARMENT MANUFACTURERS

Wilczkowsky Hotel

Amsterdam

"Why do they call them foundation garments?" he said. "What's wrong with calling them bras?" He noticed a pained expression cross Matti's face at the word. She had absolutely no need of foundation garments herself, so she preferred not to hear about them. It was evidently a wry joke on the part of one of the TV company's top executives to send her with a crew to produce a one-hour documentary about a convention of custom bra makers.

"The shareholders of the Wilczkowsky Hotel are going to wish they'd never heard of brassieres by the time this show goes on the air," she snarled bitterly. "In fact, they'll be wishing that by Tuesday night." She moved away from the window and studied the list of delegates' names. "Let's see. Miss Twizzell. That will be her. What kind of a name's Twizzell, anyway? Stupid English name, that's what. We'll see. She's got her show on Monday. Plenty of time before then. Are all the preparations in hand?"

Willy squinted through his glasses at his Production Manager's clipboard. "We're shooting the delegates touring the city tomorrow, Matti, and..."

"Not those preparations, fathead! The fucking crew can do that on their own, standing on their heads. Hansi can direct. It will be pissing with rain anyway. What about the preparations?"

"I'm not sure it's a good idea, Mats. It seemed a good idea back in Capetown, but now we're here, I'm not so happy about it. Can't we just shoot it straight and put a spin on it in the editing?"

"Balls, man! I've made my decision. The boys have been here a week, with the chemicals. Once they're ready, we can begin. Look at this program. Fashion shows on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and the big Grand Gala Night on the Wednesday. Imagine how that's going to go down when Fanie and Kepler get down to work. Have they completed their tests yet?"

Willy's shoulders slumped in resignation. "Just about. Fanie fed one of the bar girls last Monday, and she's just got a job as a model."

"A model? Here, for the convention?"

"Ja. When they started she had next to nothing to speak of under her shirt. Monday she had the mixture, Tuesday and Wednesday they took her out and stuffed her with pancakes and poffertjes. Today, she's out to here." Willy held his hands quite a long way in front of his chest.

Matti grimaced. "What about the side effects? You know... ?"

Willy looked uncomfortable. "Well, yes. They're still a problem. Kepler's still recovering but he's back at work this morning in the kitchens. And Fanie's back on room service. But it shouldn't be a problem as long as there are plenty of men around to keep the girls satisfied."

"Fifty girls? There are fifty big-breasted models..." Matti almost spat, "fifty of them, plus any of the special models the delegates might have brought with them. Like that fat bitch with Twizzell. Are Kepler and Fanie sure there are going to be enough men around to keep a hundred girls satisfied for five days and four nights? You were supposed to make sure all these side effects were eliminated."

"It's not five days and four nights. By the time the guys have administered the mixture to the girls, it will be another day before the effects start. Then a day of feeding..."

"One day? You're sure? Didn't you say the test subject took two whole days'-worth of pancakes?"

"Kepler's been able to increase the strength of the stuff now he knows it works okay. If we can get a dose of the mixture down the girls' throats by tomorrow morning, they'll have three square meals here at the hotel - you've seen the menu - and they'll be growing by bedtime tomorrow night, and busting their shirts by Sunday morning."

"It sounds encouraging," Matti admitted. "If only the guys had done something about the other effects. That could embarrass us."

"I don't know," Willy grinned for the first time. "I can always help out with the girls..."

"You?"

The porter struggled out of the elevator with their baggage and Miss Twizzell and Virginia followed him along the carpeted passageway that smelled of warm hotels. "Miss Twizzell?" he intoned, stopping in front of Room 516. The door opened and he lugged most of the bags inside. Just one small suitcase remained on his trolley when he returned and led Virginia along to the next room. "517, Miss Mackerel?"

Miss Twizzell appeared at her room door looking anxious. "I didn't have any change, dear, perhaps you could..."

"Me? Okay." Virginia dug into her purse and found a handful of alien coins which she tipped into the porter's palm. The fingers closed resignedly when he realised that was all he was getting.

"Thank you, madam." He withdrew backwards, pocketing his tip while trying not to look too elated. Virginia gave up on working out how much she had given him. All she now had left in her purse was a wad of brightly-coloured Monopoly money. It was time to pass Go. She rapped on Miss Twizzell's door.

"We're going to have to try this on you," the bra-maker was holding up a fearsome contraption in black and purple satin with several areas of shiny leather.

"It's upside down," Virginia pointed out helpfully. "Not today, surely? Our show isn't until Tuesday night."

"You haven't even tried it on yet. It might need altering to fit."

"I'm not going near that thing until I have to. It's like something out of a mediaeval dungeon."

"This is the shape of the custom bra of the future," Miss Twizzell retorted indignantly. "BraPants are where it's going to be in a year's time."

"By 'it' I assume you mean my private parts. And in that thing is precisely where they're not going to be. When I need to get at them, I need to get at them in a hurry, for whatever purpose. I don't want to take my whole bra off to go for a pee."

"There's a flap down here," Miss Twizzell said, blushing furiously.

"How very thoughtful! I've got to pee through there?"

Miss Twizzell peeled back the velcro and waggled two fingers through the hole before realising that it probably looked obscene. "I could make it bigger..."

"The size isn't the problem. It's the whole idea of the thing. Especially in warm weather."

"It's not too warm here. And it's only for an hour or so. The rest of the time you can wear one of your travelling bras. They're comfortable enough, aren't they?"

"Yes, luckily. I can't try that thing on for a while, anyway. I've got to go out."

"Out? Where are we going?"

"We? Well, I need to go to the bank. After I paid the porter at the airport, I paid the taxi driver and I tipped the hotel porter. I hate to think how much I've just given away, but all I've got left is Bank of Toytown notes in huge denominations. I've got to get some small change." She held out her hand.

"Oh. I suppose you want to change some of my money, too."

"Unless you were thinking of papering the shop with it when we get home." Virginia snapped her fingers until her employer produced her purse. "Thanks. Now why don't you carry on with your unpacking and we can try the BraPants on when I get back. Then maybe we can go for a walk after lunch, do some sightseeing, ride on a boat?" Virginia looped the string of her purse round her neck and dropped it out of sight into the bottomless depths of her cleavage.

Miss Twizzell watched it disappear. "Okay. Don't be long, though."

"I won't. Meanwhile, you could call room service and have a nice cup of tea? If you want it with milk you'll have to ask for it specially."

Miss Twizzell raised an eyebrow. "Really? How extraordinary! It's almost like being in a foreign country."

Willy looked both ways then slipped into the kitchens through the service entrance. He spied Kepler, up to his elbows in greasy water. "Hi. I sneaked in the back way. Just a last check, is everything okay?"

"Near enough."

"Near enough? What kind of an answer's that, for Chraassakes? Is the stuff ready?"

"It's okay. Just final tests and we'll be okay. When I upped the strength I overdid it. The girl got way out of control, although that might have been just her. We should have tried it out on a whole bunch of girls back home, but you didn't allow enough time. But it will be all right; we had it too weak, then I made it too strong, so all I need is to make it somewhere in between. We've got to try out the method of feeding it to them. I've slipped a batch to Fanie and he's going to test it in coffee. The other thing I want to work on is these side effects. I've got an idea that might just work, but I need to try it out. Next time I see you..."

"There won't be a next time, not before the event. I can't be seen down here talking to you. Any messages, get them to me through Fanie, okay?" Willy glanced round nervously. "I've got to go. You've got plenty of the stuff?"

Kepler dried his hands on a towel. "Shit, man, I've got enough mixed to enlarge the entire population of Amsterdam! And there's still a whole box of the concentrated stuff left. There's enough there to do the whole of Holland."

"Right, I'm out of here. Good luck, Kepler!"

Willy slipped out of the back door silently and unobserved, looking in both directions and simultaneously colliding with half a dozen garbage bins.

At the same moment, Fanie sailed into the kitchen, rubbing his hands together. "What d'you know, Kep?"

"Great, man. Shit-head's just been in, checking up on us."

"Why does the dragon send her messenger boy? Why doesn't she come down here herself?"

"You can't be serious, man!"

"Mebbe not. But I bet she's a right goer once she's loosened up."

"I'm not about to try and find out. How's the testing going?"

"I've got a special batch ready to go into a pot of coffee. As soon as we find a suitable candidate, I'll slip it in and we'll see how it goes. The delegates have started arriving already, and the models are due in later tonight. Willy's laid on a special dinner for them all in the Stello Banqueting Room, so we'll be able to feed the brew to them all in one hit. They've even been told they can have breakfast in their rooms tomorrow morning, so we can make sure the treatment has started working. Did the extra pancakes arrive?"

"Just been delivered, and more coming in at six tomorrow morning. You'd better have another batch of powder in case we can't get together again." Kepler reached into a store cupboard and brought out a carton marked 'DRIED EGG POWDER.'

"Great disguise, man! Nobody would ever dream of opening a box of that stuff."

"That's the idea. Right, you know the amount to use?"

"No prob, man!"

"What else might we have forgotten... ? Ah, you've got plenty of these?"

Fanie laughed and accepted the package. "144 packets of three? That's a year's supply!"

"Better safe than sorry, man! Take it. I've got a dozen more boxes in case we run out. They're all standard, none of these rib-tickler gimmicks."

"As long as they're big enough, Kep!"

"Yeah, sure!"

Walking wasn't easy for a big girl, even in the travel bra. But the disguise was total; nobody stared at her, at least, not for more than a few seconds. Virginia visited the bank and tucked a fat roll of smaller notes into her purse. She'd only walked a few hundred yards, but there seemed to be so much to see in this teeming, so alive city. Time to get back to the hotel, and then she'd come out with Twizz after lunch. Twizz! She wondered what the bra-maker would think of the nickname. She was a funny old thing, well, not old, just funny. And despite that fiendish BraPants thing, the woman had a way with stretchy fabrics. This travel bra was like wearing a few wisps of cloud. Of course, it wasn't at all uplifting; Virginia was now so extremely pendulous that she accepted the fact that she'd never be able to support her breasts at anywhere even approaching waist level. The best she could hope for was to stop them dangling too far below her crotch. At least, they'd stopped growing now she'd found a suitable diet. Even at that time of the month, she didn't experience much additional discomfort from her size. Mercifully, her periods were regular as clockwork and her celibate lifestyle meant that she didn't feel any need for the birth control pill, which would surely send her hormones into a flat spin.

"What kind of a name's Wilczkowsky, anyway?" she mused, entering the lobby and thumbing the lift button. "Just time for a cup of coffee before lunch..."

Virginia's room looked out over a busy street with trams clanging up and down. Down that way to the right was the quay where the canal boats started their sightseeing tours, and further along the street was the station, with the broad river beyond it.

"Room service, madam!" Did they take the trouble to find out that it was an English-speaking guest in the room, or did they simply use English by default?

"Come in." Not a bad-looking guy. A bit short, but chunky, and nice hair. "I only ordered coffee, not these..."

"Poffertjes, madam. With the hotel's compliments."

"But it's lunchtime in half an hour..."

"They're so light, madam, you'll hardly know you've eaten them." The man checked the items on the tray, pointing silently with his finger, as if making sure of everything. Not too difficult, surely: coffee pot, cup and saucer, cream jug, sugar bowl, spoon, great plate of those pofferty-things. Maybe he was new. He spoke excellent English. What was that accent, South African? Why not, there must be a lot of South African people with Dutch ancestors.

"Thank you. Oh, here..." She fished the purse out on its string and selected a suitable coin. No reason to overdo the tips, or room service would be queuing outside her door.

"Done!" Fanie whispered behind his hand to Kepler. "English girl in Room 517, name of Mackerel, for crying out loud! A bit fat, but she's got some tit on her! She keeps her purse on a string round her neck and it dangles right down between them. This tip she gave me's still warm!"

"Shit, man, concentrate on the job. Did you give her the stuff? And some food to give her the necessary bulk?"

"Right, she's got a normal dose in her coffee pot, and a great heap of poffertjes with the hotel's compliments."

"I'm still not happy about this girl, Fanie. If she's a fattie, how you going to see how much she's grown?"

"She's not huge, man, just kinda plump. Besides, I'll be able to see how much bigger her tits get. Tits are up here, not down there! I could quite fancy her, you know. Her face isn't fat, and she's got slim ankles and everything. She fancied me, I could tell. You always know when they're gagging for it." Fanie cackled. "Don't you wish you'd grabbed the room service job?"

"Huh! I'll be all right later on. I've got the penguin suit all ready on its hanger for tonight. I'm serving in the Stello room, so I'll be getting a good look down the cleavages of fifty huge-titted bra models! Of course, it helps if you're tall enough to look over their shoulders when they're sitting down!"

"Piss off, man! Right, I'd better get back to my hutch in case little Miss Mackerel - Big Miss Mackerel - needs anything. See ya!"

He'd gone before Kepler did a double take. "Fanie? Did you say she had a whole pot of coffee?"

Little Miss Mackerel didn't want anything; least of all, a pair of BraPants. But she stuffed the last poffertje in her mouth and dusted the icing sugar off the swelling slopes of her bodice. A last gulp of coffee and she was ready to face her boss.

"Come in, dear. Did you have a nice walk?"

Virginia pulled out her purse and passed a wad of notes to Miss Twizzell. "There you go. You can pay for the boat this afternoon out of that."

"How much will it be? Should we be splashing out on our first day, do you think?"

"We won't be splashing out, we'll be cosy and dry inside the boat. It goes all the way round the town. Let's face it, if we don't go today, we won't get another chance once the fashion shows start. You'll be wanting to see the models when they arrive, to make sure you've got enough bras in the right sizes for them."

"I've been worrying about that," Miss Twizzell confessed. "They said the models have been specially selected for their size, but other people's idea of big bosoms isn't necessarily the same as ours."

"The brochure says there will be a range of models from H cup upwards. That's big, isn't it?"

"I suppose so, dear. We'll have to see tomorrow. You're right about the boat ride, I'm sure it will be lovely. We could even have two trips if it's not too expensive..."

"I say, steady on, old thing! But I'll be a good girl and try on this fucking abortion!" Virginia held up the bizarre BraPants with distaste.

"Such language, dear," said Miss Twizzell, tutting absently. "It shouldn't need much alteration, it's pretty well adjustable in all directions." She watched her assistant unbuttoning her dress and working it up and over her head. "My God, I always forget how bloody huge those things of yours are!"

"Language!" Virginia's voice was muffled. "Help me out of this thing, will you?"