NIGHTS IN
WHITE COTTON

This book is a work of fiction.

In real life, make sure you practise safe, sane and consensual sex.

First published in 2005 by

Nexus

Thames Wharf Studios

Rainville Road

London W6 9HA

Copyright © Penny Birch 2005

The right of Penny Birch to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

www.nexus-books.co.uk

ISBN 0 352 34008 8

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Author’s Note on Erotica

To many people erotica must be restrained in order to have any claim to value. The nude must be less than fully displayed, the sentence cloaked in euphemism. Otherwise, we are told, the work descends into pornography.

I disagree. This is an argument of the bland, the mediocre, of those too frightened to face their sexuality in reflection. To give free rein to one’s expression is not a descent at all, but an ascent. Let no word be considered unacceptable, no act of pleasure beyond description, and if the result must be called pornography then I wear the word with pride. A quote from Nights in White Cotton:

‘– so good, so completely and comprehensively filthy, the behaviour of a dirty, depraved, lewd little slut, a girl whose behaviour is an outrage to everything decent and proper and prissy and dull. To be used so badly, as a butch dyke’s sex toy, and to delight in every single instant of my ordeal. It was me, through and through, and I would never want to be any other way.’

Consider Gustave Coubert’s The Origin of the World. I have heard it dismissed as ‘just a dirty picture’, as if taking a woman’s vulva as the subject immediately destroys all possibility of greater worth. Surely this is a shallow view? In the same way, openly sexual expression in a novel does not preclude a subtext. For those who consider The Origin of the World just a dirty picture, Nights in White Cotton will no doubt seem a morass of unrelieved filth. Perhaps it is, but for some it may be deep enough to drown in.

Penny Birch

One

I was first turned across my aunt Elaine’s knee at the age of sixteen.

Every excruciating detail remains vivid in my memory, from the first awful moment when I realised I was to be spanked to the last guilty tremor of my virgin orgasm. Since that day, more men and women than I can number have had my panties down and smacked my bottom. I need to be spanked.

Most people not only do not understand, but cannot understand, any more than somebody who has been blind from birth can understand the beauty of a sunrise. They may be hostile – this is violence, the coercion of woman by man, and a relic of our darker past fit only for pity and disapproval. They may be offended – what a traitor I am, to want to be treated like that, and how utterly inappropriate in our modern world. They may be condescending – how sad that in our brave new world my mind should be so bent out of shape that I should be unable to enjoy a normal, healthy sex life. They may be amused – how quite absurd, after all, for a grown woman to want her knickers taken down and her bare bottom smacked! They may be liberal – perhaps they may even come to appreciate the warm glow of a pair of well-smacked bottom cheeks, the rush of blood and endorphins.

To me, spanking is all these things. I want to be held down and punished by somebody stronger than me. I want to feel the stinging shame of complying with an inappropriate act. I want to be kinky, and naughty, and rude. I want to be made ridiculous, an object of laughter and derision with my panties at half mast and my bottom on show to the world. I want the hot pain and the urgency in my sex, to be made to lick pussy or suck cock as I say thank you for my punishment, and to come under busy fingers as I do it.

Yes, I want to be spanked, I need to be spanked, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The more the circumstances go against what the conventional world views as right, the better it is for me. Order me to dress in nothing but a light summer dress and crisp white panties, take me out on the concourse of Paddington Station, strip my bottom bare and spank me until I howl. Yes, Paddington Station would be ideal, public and open, so that I have no choice whatsoever in who sees my punishment. Do that, and I will be your devoted sex toy, for just as long as it takes to leave us cuddled together in the afterglow of ecstasy.

Only I won’t, because long before we get to that point we’ll have been arrested. That is the problem. Being confident in who I am and what I am is one thing, but expecting the rest of the world to adapt to my personal requirements is simply not realistic. I need to earn a wage, to eat, to keep a roof over my head, and preferably not the roof of a police station or a mental institute. In short, I may need to be spanked, but I also need to compromise with the real world, which is why I found myself walking briskly along a Berkshire lane one bright spring morning.

I’d come by train and walked up from the station as a deliberate choice, partly so I could enjoy a glass of wine with the Sunday lunch I knew Aunt Elaine would be cooking, but mainly so that I could soak up the atmosphere and so fully appreciate what was to be done to me. Our agreement, ostensibly, was to fulfil a need in me. In practice, although never admitted, it was to fulfil a need in both of us. Between the time the joint went into the oven and when the vegetables had to be prepared, I would be given a very English, very discreet, very ladylike spanking.

It was always across her knee, and always on my bare skin, a routine that varied only according to what I happened to be wearing and the time of year. In the winter, I was generally done in front of the fire with my jeans and knickers at half-mast, or perhaps a thick woollen skirt raised and the underwear beneath rolled down to my thighs. During the summer, I was more likely to be done outside, in the walled kitchen garden, dress up, panties down, and my bottom warm and bare in the sunlight. Afterwards, I would go upstairs, to cry out my feelings and bring myself to an orgasm that invariably left my soul as satisfied as the subsequent lunch would leave my body.

The routine was also important to me, a reassuringly fixed point in a changing world: the guarantee of a bare-bottom spanking each Sunday during term-time, and otherwise on Tuesday evenings. It had now been happening for over four years, since shortly after accepting my post as Senior Lecturer at the university, and had become as familiar and comforting as the house itself and the countryside I’d known since childhood.

I still felt apprehensive. As I walked, my bottom cheeks would tighten occasionally in anticipation of the coming exposure and pain, while my tummy was fluttering badly. After all, I would shortly be having my panties pulled down and my bottom smacked, and just because I needed it and just because I was given the same shameful treatment on a regular basis didn’t mean my feelings weren’t strong.

By the time I came in sight of the house they were boiling, so intense I had to stop for a little. It wasn’t just the prospect of my spanking either, but a powerful nostalgia. The view ahead of me was exactly as it had been on the day of my cousin Kate’s wedding, the day I got it for the very first time, over my aunt’s knee in my pretty pink bridesmaid’s dress. Maybe some of the trees were a little more grown, and there was a For Sale sign outside what had been Colonel Aimsworth’s house, along with a large white receiver dish on the roof, but otherwise I might have stepped back in time. My aunt’s eccentric red-brick house, the moss-grown tiles, the air of sleepy wellbeing, all was exactly as it lived in my memory.

As I walked forwards, I had recaptured that same sense of helplessness I’d felt then, of having no choice in what was done to me. The feeling grew stronger still as Elaine opened the door to me and I caught the delicate scent of her perfume, blended with the smell of roasting beef. A single, demure peck in greeting and I was inside, my aunt speaking as she moved towards the kitchen in the brisk, no-nonsense manner I knew so well. ‘You’re rather late, Penny. Other people will be here soon.’

‘Other people?’

‘Other people, Penny, yes. Geraldine, Kate, everybody. Didn’t you get my mail?’

Her voice was a trifle stern, carrying the sense of mild exasperation with my behaviour that reminded me so strongly of my mother – the last person on Earth I wanted to catch me across her younger sister’s lap.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t –’ I began, only to be cut off.

‘No, no, better to get things over and done with, don’t you think?’

As always there was a hint of a sigh in her voice. She understood my need to be spanked, and felt that if it had to be done then she was the best person to do it, a family member I could trust. Yet there was always that touch of disapproval for my inability to control my needs.

I nodded and swallowed hard as she walked across to the kitchen table. A chair had already been pulled out, probably in readiness. She sat down on it and patted her lap, her mouth set in a little firm smile, full of sympathy and understanding yet anything but weak. I hitched my skirt up a little, just the exposure of a few inches of thighs setting my stomach into a tight knot that grew tighter still as I laid myself gently across her lap and into spanking position. She took hold of my skirt as I braced my feet on the floor to lift my bottom and let her get me bare. My whole body was trembling, and I closed my eyes to savour my own shame as I was made ready.

‘Just as well to be in a skirt,’ Elaine remarked as the garment was eased gently but firmly up my legs. ‘Those jeans you always seem to wear are very awkward.’

My mouth opened to answer, but there was a bubble of mucus in my throat and no words would come, only a strong shiver as my skirt was pulled up over my hips with a single sharp tug. With my panties showing behind, big and taut and white around my bottom, I felt the first of my tears start to grow, moist in the corner of my eye. I thought of how right she was, and how I’d deliberately dressed to make it easier to spank me.

I’d begun to sob, and Elaine gave a little tut as she adjusted me into a more comfortable position across her lap, half-sympathy, half-disapproval. Her voice was the same as she spoke. ‘Now then, let’s have your knickers down and we’ll soon have you dealt with.’

Her thumbs pushed into the waistband of my white cotton panties, and they begun to come down, not slow, nor fast, just a good practical speed to get my bottom bare for punishment. I felt every instant, blissful humiliation so strongly it made my throat hurt and set me choking back tears. She took them right down, too, all the way to my knees, making sure the chubby globe of my bottom was laid completely bare, completely vulnerable, and showing everything, the way a spanked girl should.

I’d begun to cry as she took me firmly around the waist, exposed and helpless, lying bare bottom across my aunt’s knee in the kitchen, and about to be punished. Her hand settled on my bottom, lifted, came down again, and it had begun. It wasn’t all that hard, but it didn’t need to be hard, just a firm, purposeful spanking applied to my bare bottom. That was what mattered: that I was bare, that I was punished, my panties taken down and my bottom smacked.

It soon got harder, enough to make me kick, just a little, my legs turning up and my thighs jerking in my panties. I knew it made me show behind. I knew it made me look even more ridiculous, with my feet waving and the wet tart of my pussy peeping out between my thighs. That was right. I was supposed to look foolish. I was supposed to have my modesty stripped away. I was supposed to have my bare sex put on display and, as Elaine began to spank harder still and the stinging pain grew worse, that rudest, most intimate detail of all, my bumhole.

Elaine gave another little disapproving tut as my cheeks began to come wide and I’d given in completely, bawling my eyes out across her lap, as she spanked me with fast, stinging slaps, peppering the full spread of my behind. My legs were kicking wildly, my hips bucking to splay out my wobbling bottom cheeks and show the rude brown hole between, a full-blown spanking tantrum. I’d begun to howl, too, and gasp and squeak, all to the tune of her hand on my bottom flesh, smack, smack, smack, so loud in the quiet, drowsy air of the kitchen, with only the faint sizzle of the roasting pan to compete.

She kept on, now spanking as hard as she could, bringing all my emotions to the surface, making me blubber pathetically across her lap, without the slightest shred of modesty or restraint. I was as I should be, a spanked brat, over my auntie’s knee with my panties pulled well down and my hot bottom on show to the world, well punished, and now reduced to that abandoned condition that comes no other way.

A last bubble of frustration and shame burst in my head and the pain had begun to turn to warmth. My sobs and gasps gave way to sighs; my bottom began to push up and I was truly beyond caring, brought on heat in the way only a really good spanking can, all my bad feelings smacked right out of me. Elaine knew immediately, but gave me another round dozen to finish me off, then stopped. ‘I trust that’s what you needed?’ she asked, as I climbed unsteadily from her lap.

‘Thank you, yes,’ I answered, and kissed her.

I was still snivelling a bit, my vision hazy with tears and my mouth salty with the mucus running from my nose, dizzy too. For a moment I had to lean on the table, but Elaine gave me a couple of purposeful pats on one still naked cheek. I nodded and snatched for my panties, clutching them in one hand as I ran for the stairs and up, with my bare red bottom wobbling behind me. She’d tucked my skirt up into its own waistband, and I stayed bare all the way to the room I used.

The instant I’d shut the door behind me I was on my bed, face down as it all came together in my head. I stuck up my bottom and turned to face the wardrobe mirror, admiring the view; my snotty, tear-stained face, my turned-up skirt, my lowered panties and my bare, rosy cheeks between. My hand went down under my tummy to find my sex, wet and ready, my clitoris an aching point between swollen lips. I began to masturbate, letting my feelings go as I ran over what had been done to me in my head.

My aunt had spanked me, my own aunt, over her knee with my panties dropped, the way a naughty girl should be spanked. Just to think about it sent a shiver through me, so delicious, so addictive I had to masturbate again, with a touch of my clitoris each time – spanked bare bottom across my aunt’s knee . . . spanked bare bottom across my aunt’s knee . . . spanked bare bottom across my aunt’s knee . . .

I started to come, but held myself back, right on the edge, deliberately tormenting myself. My spare hand went back to my bottom to stroke my smacked cheeks, feeling the warm flesh, sensitive and ever so slightly roughened. It felt so good to have it bare, to see it pink in the mirror, exposed between panties and skirt, showing off, because I didn’t care. I’d been spanked and I was glad I’d been spanked.

My hand burrowed between my cheeks to touch my bumhole, as I thought of how I’d let my cheeks come open, how I must have looked, a grown woman, a university lecturer, with her panties down and her bottom spread to show the rude, pinkish-brown dimple between as I was punished. It was so gloriously, exquisitely humiliating, to have my own aunt pull down my panties and spank my bare bottom with my bumhole on show . . . pull down my panties and spank my bare bottom . . . spank my bare bottom . . .

This time there was no holding back. I pushed my finger in up my bottom just as my ring began to tighten and I was there, coming in a long, tight orgasm with my fingers working on my clitoris and in my bumhole, my eyes tight shut and my mouth wide, the image of myself laid bare across Aunt Elaine’s knee fixed firmly in my mind’s eye. It was as good as ever, not only ecstasy, but also cathartic, leaving me with all the tension of mind and body washed clean away.

I was still on the bed, absent-mindedly teasing my pussy and bumhole, wondering if I should come a second time when I heard the bell. Until that moment I’d completely forgotten the rest of the family were due to turn up, and I was panicking more than a little as I ran for the bathroom with my knickers still half-down. As I washed and made a few hasty adjustments to my appearance, I heard voices downstairs, first my mother’s commanding tones, and then Elaine, softer, suddenly switched from domestic disciplinarian to little sister.

The thought of my mother downstairs in the very room in which I’d just been punished set me blushing, and I took a moment more to splash water on my face and tidy my hair into its neat black bob. A single deep breath and I felt ready, no longer a naughty little girl but a grown, respectable woman. Downstairs, my mother and Elaine were already in the kitchen, sipping dry sherry. I accepted a glass before sitting down in the very same chair over which I’d been spanked.

We’d barely exchanged a word when the bell went again, this time for my cousin Kate, her husband Jeremy and their daughters, Pippa and Jemima. Immediately the house was full of laughter and conversation, and it stayed that way as I helped Elaine with the vegetables, scraping carrots and chopping cabbage while she did the Yorkshire pudding.

I hadn’t seen Kate in a while, but she was the same as ever, full of life and talking about everything under the sun. It was even longer since I’d seen the two girls, so long in fact that I had to change gear a little, accepting them as young adults rather than older children, Pippa especially. She was taller than me for a start, with a slender, womanly elegance more in keeping with her grandmother than her mother, although her hair was just as curly, if darker and worn short. Jemima was slimmer still, with a skinny awkwardness and a rebellious scowl that reminded me of Susan, her aunt and Kate’s little sister. When Susan herself turned up, just as we were putting the dishes out on the dining-room table, I was even more struck by the resemblance.

For the next half-hour we were all deeply involved in the ritual of British Sunday lunch, with Jeremy carving the rib of beef and the seven women coping with everything else. I still felt a little warm behind, but otherwise had forgotten about my spanking, first trying to follow a conversation about the latest bands between Susan and Pippa, then listening to my mother explain to Elaine why it was too early to plant delphiniums out. Only when we’d finished the beef and the scent of baking apple pudding had begun to replace that of roast meat did Elaine ask us all to pay attention. ‘You may have seen the sign opposite,’ she stated when we’d all finally shut up, ‘so you’ll know that what used to be Colonel Aimsworth’s house is back on the market.’

‘What happened?’ Kate asked. ‘It was only sold, what, two years ago?’

‘Nearly three,’ her mother corrected her, ‘but, in any event, the new people have moved on, and not before time.’

I nodded agreement, remembering the raucous parties and the sight of broken bottles in the road.

‘Quite. Ghastly, noisy people,’ my mother agreed. ‘Every time I came they seemed to have the builders in.’

‘I believe he played football for a living,’ Elaine went on, her tone suggesting that she’d have preferred a pimp or a blackmailer as a neighbour, ‘and so he has presumably gone to another part of the country –’

‘Uh, uh, Mum,’ Susan broke in, ‘he was Billy Watts, striker for the Royal Blues. He got sacked for spit roasting a girl, in Cardiff.’

‘Spit roasting?’ my mother queried in open horror.

‘Not real spit roasting,’ Susan said, laughing, ‘it’s just an expression for when two guys have a girl from both ends at once, like she’s on a spit.’

‘I do not wish to know, thank you, Susan,’ my mother answered, as Jemima burst into giggles.

I hid a smile behind a sip of wine, remembering the last occasion for me, ruder still, shared between two girlfriends with oversized strap-on dildoes, Jade’s in my mouth as Sophie fed hers in and out of my pussy. It was not a memory I intended to share, not even with Elaine, who had carried on talking after a tut of admonition for her daughter. ‘In any event, they are gone, and the house is on the market. This time, I suggest we buy the house ourselves, which will prevent any such nonsense in future.’

‘What were you thinking of?’ Jeremy asked. ‘Because I’m afraid Kate and I simply can’t risk any further exposure on our mortgage.’

‘Nor can I!’ Susan added. ‘I can barely make my payments as it is.’

‘It’s not an option for me, either, I’m afraid,’ I put in, ‘not on my salary.’

‘If you were to sell, Geraldine –’ Elaine began, only to be cut off by my mother.

‘Absolutely not! I’m very comfortable where I am, thank you, Elaine. Nor do I have any desire to live in such a vulgar house. They’ve ruined it completely.’

‘We looked in at the windows,’ Kate supplied. ‘All the appliances are pink, even the cooker, so are the carpets.’

‘The false Greek portico’s bad enough,’ Jeremy put in.

‘There’s a swimming pool,’ Pippa added, only in a very different tone of voice, ‘shaped like a football.’

‘Well, I certainly can’t afford it on my own,’ Elaine went on, now somewhat terse, ‘but at least I am prepared to contribute. If you’re not prepared to sell, Geraldine, although Purley is hardly what is was when we were children so I can’t imagine why not, then Penny can –’

‘Me?’ I interrupted. ‘I can’t possibly, my salary –’

‘– is quite sufficient to allow you to increase your mortgage to cover the balance,’ Elaine insisted.

‘I doubt it,’ I pointed out, ‘and I’m really quite comfortable in my flat.’

‘I think you’ll find you could manage, Penny,’ Jeremy remarked. ‘I’m happy to advise and can get you a great deal.’

‘Yes, but I really don’t want to –’

‘You always loved it up here,’ Kate pointed out.

‘Yes, but I really don’t –’

‘And your flat is rather poky,’ Susan added.

‘Yes, but I really –’

‘And you’re not in a very nice area,’ my mother agreed.

‘Yes, but I –’

‘We could use the swimming pool!’ Pippa and Jemima said in chorus.

‘Yes, but –’

‘We’ll be right opposite each other,’ Elaine put in.

‘Yes –’

I bought the house, leaving myself with just a 25-year mortgage and about enough disposable income to live on bread and dripping. It wasn’t even particularly difficult, because most of the people who came to view it had been put off by the Watts’ taste, which went beyond anything mere redecoration could sort out, or by their apparent inability to be satisfied with what they’d got, which meant that half of it was a building site.

The rest of it had been stripped bare by the time I came into possession, apparently to help cover the Watts’ enormous legal bills. At least the pink cooker was gone, but my own possessions were barely sufficient to make the kitchen, the living room and one bedroom habitable. They’d also left both bathrooms complete with baby-pink tiles and gold fittings.

For an entire week I camped out at Elaine’s, and drove into work every morning letting the removers and assorted workmen get on with it. I didn’t even get a chance to have my bottom smacked, what with endless comings and goings and questions to answer and decisions to be made, not to mention my mother’s habit of dropping in to offer critical advice at all hours.

On the Saturday morning a week after technically becoming the new owner, I at last moved in, and for once could look forward to a bit of peace. Elaine and my mother had gone into London, so I was entirely alone, and able to explore at leisure. It was an odd sensation because, even after the changes the Watts had made, being in the house provoked a feeling that I was doing wrong.

I could remember Colonel Aimsworth well, a liverish man with a red face, bulging eyes and a penchant for topiary. He’d also had several fruit trees, which were still there, and although Kate and Susan had perfectly good ones in their own garden it had always been far more fun to pinch the Colonel’s. The three of us had fought a running battle with him for years, and I’d twice been hauled from his garden by the ear. Being in his house felt very odd indeed and despite the fact that I now owned it I found myself treading carefully and expecting his angry bark to ring out at any moment.

Telling myself not to be silly, I began to wonder what I could do to make the place my own. With so little money to spare, ambitious projects were out, but the pink and gold wallpaper had to go; so did a lot of other things, in due course, but at least I could strip wallpaper and paint without paying any workmen. Jade and Sophie had promised to come up and help so that could wait. For the moment I could remove the gigantic receiver dish from the roof, because it was a serious eyesore, I had no intention of using it and I wouldn’t need to buy any more equipment.

It was fixed right beside one of the attic windows. Going up seemed more sensible than climbing a ladder, so I made my way upstairs to where a trapdoor opened into the roof space above the landing. There was no obvious way up, and a prod with a broom revealed that it was painted in. A second, harder prod showered me with flakes of paint and it was loose. A third and I had it lifted with a squeak of unoiled hinges.

I fetched the step ladder and climbed up, taking some tools with me. Pushing the hatch back revealed a long, dusty space so heavily criss-crossed with beams that it was no real use for anything but storage. Bright sunlight flooded in from the windows at either end, showing that it had been lagged relatively recently, while the workmen had piled up a number of trunks and chests near the window I needed to get at.

Pulling myself up, I made my way cautiously along the planks, only to discover that, like the trapdoor, the window was painted into its frame. Unlike the trapdoor, I couldn’t budge it, even by sitting on a trunk to brace myself and pushing as hard as I could. All I got for my trouble was a dusty bottom, but as I turned round to pat myself down I saw the name on the trunk – Capt. L. Aimsworth.

I was immediately intrigued. He had been retired when I’d known him, so presumably he was a Captain during the Second World War, or shortly afterwards. A gentle shake of the trunk revealed that it was quite full, and so were the other boxes and chests in the pile. All were evidently his, left behind when the house had first changed hands.

Not to investigate them would have been impossible, and I quickly sat down on the boards and pulled up the hasps. The central one was locked, but the wrench I’d brought up to remove the dish soon took care of that, and with a deliciously guilty thrill I was pulling up the lid. Inside were several old-fashioned box files, the marbled paper discoloured with age and peeling back from the cardboard beneath.

I opened the first, expecting old documents, perhaps interesting ones. One thing I did not expect was a large black and white photograph of a girl standing beside a pond in the act of removing her only garment, a pair of large pink panties. She was maybe five foot tall or a little more, to judge by the fence behind her, with shiny black hair cut into a short bob, slightly built and compact, her breasts small and turned up, a slender waist and a distinctly chubby bottom – me.

For a long moment I could only stare, my mouth falling slowly open as the implications of what I was seeing sank in. I remembered the occasion well, very well, the summer after my first year at university when I’d come to keep Kate company after the break-up of her first marriage. The pond was a flooded gravel pit, a place we’d known all our lives, a place so secluded we’d thought nothing of stripping off to swim. I remember being disturbed as well, once we’d been swimming for a while. We’d glimpsed somebody on the lip of the quarry, looking down, but it had never occurred to me for a moment it might have been Colonel Aimsworth. He was just too respectable to do such things.

Immediately I was burrowing through the rest of the photos, which filled the whole file, and with every one my sense of shock grew stronger. There were an extraordinary number from that day at the quarry alone, ones of Kate and me undressing and swimming together, even scrambling out of the pool after we’d been seen, with me halfway out of the water, one leg cocked up, my pussy flaunted for all the world to see and my bumhole showing pink in the hair between my open cheeks.

There was more, every single one of the files packed with photos and neatly labelled with the year they’d been taken, from when Kate and I were in our late teens to the year before the Colonel’s death, assuming he had died. I got off relatively lightly, the picture of me climbing out of the water just about the rudest of all, but with only about one picture in ten showing me at all.

Kate and Susan got a great deal more exposure, mainly taken on the lawn opposite. Most were innocent enough, showing them in cut-down jeans or bikinis, sunbathing or just minding their own business. Elaine had never approved of the girls going naked, even in the secluded kitchen garden, despite her habit of taking my pants down for al fresco spankings, but in a few pictures Kate had her top off and her full breasts naked to the sun, and to the lens of Aimsworth’s camera.

I could tell from the angle where they’d been taken from, too, the very window I was sitting in, presumably with a tripod set up and a chair, probably a table too, for a plate of biscuits or a glass of beer, to judge by the length of time he’d obviously spent spying on us. Nor had he restricted his activities to the house. Just as the old quarry had been a favourite spot of ours, so it had been of his. In addition to the ones with me in them, there were plenty of Kate and Susan undressing, skinny dipping and lying naked on the grass as they dried off afterwards.

Once or twice he’d really got lucky, and some were anything but innocent. Kate’s first husband, Toby, had always been a dirty bastard, and a show-off. I knew he’d occasionally made her suck him off outdoors, but I was still shocked to see a picture of her doing it, down on her knees with her cheeks bulging and her fingers tickling underneath his balls as she sucked. She’d had her top and bra pulled up too, her heavy breasts lolling naked beneath her chest.

That wasn’t the worst. The worst was of Susan, in the living room, across Elaine’s knee in what had always been her father’s favourite chair. Her school skirt had been turned up and her long, coltish legs were kicked apart at a ridiculous angle, trapped at the level of her knees by the pair of plain white panties she’d had pulled down. Her bottom was bare, and open, showing off her pouted sex and her anus. She was being spanked.

By then my hands were shaking so badly I had trouble holding the photos. I couldn’t get over what he’d done, over so long, and so skilfully. I could even see why he’d put so much effort into his topiary pigeons, because it gave him an excuse to look over the hedge into Elaine’s living room and across at least part of the lawn. If anything looked likely to happen, all he had to do was nip upstairs and he could photograph us at his leisure. He’d have been able to see the garden gate too, and when we left with towels under our arms he would have been able to install himself above the quarry before we got there, simply by nipping across his own land and along a single hedgerow.

When I finally managed to pull myself together, my first thought was to burn the lot, along with everything else of his that remained in the house. Most of the other chests and boxes held what I’d imagined in the first place, old documents, but they’d entirely lost their fascination. There was also a collection of ancient pornographic magazines, and a few more rude photographs, some very old indeed and taken in all sorts of places, but not of anybody I knew.

I was feeling distinctly numb as I moved everything to the trapdoor hatch, only to realise that I had a problem, the sheer bulk. Getting it down from the attic was going to be hard enough, as I could not possibly climb down the ladder while supporting a large trunk and so would have to lower each item individually on a pulley. Even once I’d done it and stacked everything in some suitable part of the garden, it was going to take ages to burn, make an enormous quantity of smoke and need to be tended to until I was sure every last piece was gone.

The sensible thing to do was to burn the photos and leave the rest until I had somebody to help me, but by the time I’d stacked all eight of the old box files on the kitchen table I’d realised that I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it. The pictures might have been taken by a Peeping Tom, but they still involved me, and some held precious memories of which I had no other record. To have burnt them would have been like destroying part of my own life.

I sat down and had a coffee instead, trying to rid myself of the parade of pictures moving in front of my eyes, of Kate, Susan and myself in various states of undress and Colonel Aimsworth’s leering face in the background. It was impossible, especially his bulging eyes peering at my naked body, enjoying my nudity and the thrill of peeping. So often I’d thought I was secure, swimming naked with my cousins or sunbathing on their lawn in just a bikini, and all the time those bulging red eyes had been peering down on me, caressing my body with his gaze, exploring every contour, lingering on my breasts and bottom, even my pussy as I’d pulled myself from the water that time.

By the time I’d finished my coffee, I had the pictures spread out on the table and was feeling distinctly guilty about what I was going to do, masturbate. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t important, that he hadn’t done any real harm, but there was no denying the effect it was having on me. It was both erotic and intensely humiliating, for me, a fatal combination. I knew he’d have masturbated over them too, it was naïve to think otherwise, holding my picture as his eyes feasted on my body and he tugged at himself. The one of me taking my panties down at the water’s edge was distinctly dog-eared at one corner, where he’d obviously held it while he pulled at his dirty old cock. It had evidently been a favourite, perhaps second only to the one of Susan taking a spanking across Elaine’s knee.

It really was hopeless, something I could no more resist than hunger or thirst. I knew where I wanted to do it as well, down by the old quarry. Just thinking about it had me so full of shameful, sexual thoughts that my fingers were shaking as I put my coat on. It was shameful too, so shameful. I mean, what kind of dirty little tart masturbates over the thought of being peeped at?

All but two of the photos went back in their boxes, which I stacked in a cupboard behind my ironing board. The two that stayed out were my favourites, and had been his, Susan being spanked and me taking my panties down. I was going to take both, but changed my mind, feeling bad for Susan. Hers went into the drawer of the telephone table, safe for the time being. Mine I slipped into a magazine.

I left the house, locking up behind me just to make doubly sure nobody could come across the road and find the pictures. Outside, bright afternoon sunshine had made the day tolerably warm, not warm enough to go nude maybe, not like the July day on which the photo had been taken, but warm enough to pop my panties down and take a long, lingering orgasm over what had been done to me.

Instead of going by the lane, I followed the route Aimsworth must have taken to peep at us, through the back of the property. The strip of trees behind the house had become badly overgrown with nettles and brambles, but I picked my way through to where a gate opened in the rusting iron fence. It has seized up long ago and I had to climb over, into a band of scrubby elder and hawthorn less overgrown but liberally dotted with cow pats.

I knew I was trespassing, which added a pleasant touch of naughtiness and vulnerability as I made my way along the hedgerow. The field belonged to one of Elaine’s neighbours, a Mr Cudrow, who’d known me from childhood and probably wasn’t going to mind now that I was a neighbour too, but, knowing what I was up to, it would have been intensely embarrassing to meet him. Fortunately, I didn’t, nor anybody else, as I followed the muddy path to the far side of the field and through a barbed wire fence on to the scrubland above the quarry.

Everything was as I remembered it, the long, rough grass and gnarled bushes of gorse and butcher’s broom, the high trees beyond, and the still, open pool beneath the low cliff where the quarrymen had opened up the hillside. I wanted to take my time, and first went to the place Aimsworth would have stood to photograph Kate and myself as we stripped and swam.

It was a Peeping Tom’s delight, so much so that I was surprised we’d noticed anyone at all. The gorse bushes grew right up to the lip of the quarry, leaving him looking down from about twenty feet above the water. The little patch of grass where we’d liked to undress and sunbathe or have our picnic afterwards was clearly, blatantly visible. I took out the photo, imagining him watching as I peeled off, as I took down my panties, to send a strong shiver through me.

At the time it had upset me, even though I’d had no idea who he was or how much he’d seen. Now it was different, still a little frightening, but in a safe way, a way that allowed me to fantasise, and to play. First, my panties had to come down, just as they had on that day, and properly, so that my bottom was bare in the sun and I could imagine him watching me.