Free Sinners by Jackie Collins Page B

would intrigue and excite her so much that she would want to meet the man who could write with such explicit passion and know-how.
    And now, at last, he had written such a letter. A masterpiece. The crowning touch being instructions as to what she should do with his plastic-bag offering. Tomorrow he would sit and imagine her reading it and following his instructions. He would fill another plastic bag and write another wonderful letter, explaining how the second bag was filled as he thought of her lovingly dealing with the first.
    ‘Herbie.’ The whiney voice of his wife was accompanied by a knock on the bathroom door and a rattling of the handle. ‘Herbie, I wanna go to the john. Can I go to the john, please? You’ve been in there an hour.’
    The big fat cow would have to spoil these few pleasant moments for him.
    ‘Just a minute, dear,’ he called back mildly. He wrapped a towel around himself and unlocked the door.
    ‘I don’t know why you have to always lock the door,’ she complained. ‘Makes me feel like an intruder.’ She lifted her skirt to sit on the toilet and Herbert rapidly left the room.
    Heavy thighs, Marge had thick heavy thighs. She forgot to shave her legs for weeks on end and they were covered in an unpleasant ginger stubble. They had been married ten years, and glancing at the photo on the dressing table, Herbert could hardly believe that the pretty red-head with the slim figure and big breasts was now the slovenly, fat, Marge, squatting on the john. Did he know he was marrying an eating maniac? A woman to whom six eggs and a loaf of bread for breakfast were not unusual?
    She had been so lovely. Their first meeting near Los Angeles airport, in a bar at lunchtime, had been so romantic. He had gone with a friend for a beer and a sandwich – at that time he was driving trucks – and Marge had come forward to serve them, looking girlish in a short fringed cowboy skirt, white boots, and a stetson hat. It was a topless bar, and her large bosoms had bobbed tantalizingly at him, a sheriff’s star cheekily covering each nipple.
    ‘What’ll you have?’ she had asked, standing by his table, a pad in her hand, and a sheriffs star nearly in his mouth.
    Herbert would never forget that first meeting. They married a few months later, Marge already pregnant. But she had lost the baby, and then another. Shortly afterwards she started to eat, and Herbert started to write his letters.
    ‘Hon,’ Marge came shuffling into the bedroom, ‘what do you think I should wear?’
    ‘Wear?’ He looked at her in surprise. ‘For what?’ This was about the time she always settled in front of the television.
    She was wriggling her fat body out of her shabby house-dress. ‘I told you, hon, I’m gonna go to a movie with our new neighbour. She asked me two days ago. I told you.’
    ‘Oh, yes.’ He remembered now. A married couple had moved into the yellow house next door, and Marge, on her daily trip to the supermarket, had met the wife. The two women had arranged to go to a film. Marge was thrilled. She had no friends and Herbert never took her anywhere, so to go to a movie was a rare treat.
    Marge was trying to struggle into a blue sailor dress that no longer fitted. She grew larger every year.
    ‘We’re gonna see a movie,’ she repeated, ‘it’s supposed to be a real weird movie – y’know, weirdy weird, and dirty too.’ She abandoned the struggle with the sailor dress and chose instead a loose polka-dot shift that she had bought for her sister’s wedding the previous year. She managed to squeeze into that, although it was no longer a loose shift.
    Herbert said, ‘What time are you going?’ He wasn’t sure that he liked the idea of his wife roaming around enjoying herself at dirty movies whilst he was out working.
    ‘Louella’s calling for me at seven. She’s got a car.’ She pouted at herself in the mirror, applied a jammy red lipstick and touched her cheeks with it, wiping the residue on her