Free Beauty by Raphael Selbourne

she hissed.
    Maxine, the blonde from Head Office. Maxine. The one with the fantastic figure. It wasn’t as if anything had really
happened
. Not the way he’d planned it. Kate had found his phone and the messages arranging the rendezvous before he’d had chance to consummate the affair. And then there was the miscarriage Kate had had. She’d seen the relief on his face and had never forgiven him.
    Guilt deflated him, as it always did.
    ‘Look, I’m sorry.’
    The phone began to burn. Peter switched it to the other ear. How much longer would he have to endure this?
    ‘I just wish you could love me for who I am,’ Kate said. ‘But you obviously don’t care what happens to me.’
    ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Of course I do!’
    ‘Don’t you raise your voice at me.
I deserve a bit of fucking happiness too, you know!
’
    The line went dead.
    Peter switched off the phone. He knew that wouldn’t be the end of it, but he wasn’t going to call her back. In defiant mood he got up from the armchair and turned on the laptop. Analsluts.com might help keep up his resolve. He sat at the shaky computer desk watching the egg timer on the screen, then decided to take his time over itand went to the kitchen to make more coffee. There was nothing to do until
EastEnders
. Perhaps he could have a smoke, too.
    By the time he settled down in front of the screen the search engine was waiting for him. He went to a free listings page, an A to Z of sexual preferences, and started at the beginning, following the links to the thumbnail galleries.
    ‘Anal fisting.’ Too grim.
    ‘Beads – Gorgeous Busty Blonde Inserts Beads.’ He couldn’t quite make it out, but it looked like long red fingernails poking a line of rosary beads up a woman’s arse.
    ‘Big boobs.’ Too dull.
    ‘Butt plugs.’ He’d save that for later.
    ‘Camel toe.’ Too much up-skirt schoolgirl stuff. Tempting, but he didn’t want it on the hard drive.
    ‘CBT.’ What the hell could that be? Surely not Kate’s Cognitive Behaviour Therapy? Psychiatrists taking advantage of patients on couches?
    Peter opened the link. Clothes pegs attached to men’s genitals.
    Cock and Ball Torture.

7
    Mark Aston sat on his new sofa in the warmth of the halogen heater. The mess in his front room didn’t look so bad in its glow. That bloke Pete seemed all right, and it was good to have a white neighbour you could borrow a smoke off of. Pete’s house was much better, too. Clean and well-decorated. Mark’s was shit. He’d laid the carpet himself, but after a few months the dogs had pissed on it that many times he’d had to take it up and stuff it in the cupboard under the stairs until the smell had dried out. He’d put it back down three weeks ago and it was all right. The rest of the house was fucked, though, apart from the back room, which he never went in. He was saving it for Honey and her pups. This time, he couldn’t afford to lose any. Last time it had been that Paki landlord’s fault. He’d given Mark a shit house. No central heating or double glazing either, and three of the puppies had died from the cold.
    Still, at least he ay been round to pick up the top-up on me rent what the housing benefit do’ cover.
    Missing that appointment at the Crown House Jobcentre had been a real choker. The bastards had signed him off and cut all his money, without any warning. He’d gone straight up there as soon as he’d discovered he hadn’t been paid. It looked like others had missed appointments,too. People were shouting at every desk, demanding their money immediately. The two feeble security guards couldn’t cope and had called for back-up over their radios.
    He’d had to reapply for his housing and council tax benefit, as well as his Jobseekers’ Allowance, which they wouldn’t pay until his new claim had gone through the system. In the meantime he’d had to make do with a hardship allowance of thirty-seven pounds a week until he’d served a six-week sanction period