Janice was a good-looking woman in her late thirties. She was tall and well-proportioned - a bit more flesh on her than many men would like, but I thought she was just about perfect. She looked as if she must once have been very physically fit but had eased off on the training recently. Her legs were strong and shapely, her buttocks a good size, belly a little on the meaty side, breasts big but not cartoonish. And she was pretty, whether she liked that or not - and she probably didn't. She was a tough character who was 100% woman but didn't want anyone thinking of her as a "little lady" or anything at all condescending like that.
She had spent most of her adult life in the Royal Air Force and still liked to look like she had just changed out of her uniform. Her hair was blonde and rather coarse and she kept it short, but there was something about it that avoided looking masculine; it was rounded at the edges and looked as if it could burst into curls if left unattended.
She had full lips that could have looked sexy if she had accentuated them with lipstick, but she didn't. That would have made her look as if she were pandering to other people, which was something she would never do. Jackie was a take-it-or-leave-it person. The word that sums her up best is forbidding. Men didn't dare chat her up because she could send them packing with a couple of well-chosen words, and you got the impression if that didn't work she'd have you up against a wall with your arm twisted up your back.
I wasn't scared of her, though. Working on the basis that everyone, male and female (leaving aside the modern complications of gender labelling) wants deep down to be seduced and made love to, I resolved to bide my time and make a move when conditions were right.
On leaving the RAF she had opted for a working life that involved a uniform and an atmosphere of discipline, hierarchy and respect. The police force had been the obvious choice, but she had found it even more misogynistic than the armed forces and as a 21st century woman she couldn’t put up with that. So she applied for and got the position of head of security for a large local company, which allowed her to strut around an office block looking smart and official, valued and admired by management, and treated with a sort of fearful respect by the hoi polloi. That included me. I would smile and say good morning and allow myself a mere second's glance at her breasts, long enough for her to notice but brief enough to suggest I wasn't going to push my luck.
Did she know in my mind I had my head up her skirt and my tongue in her bits? Probably not. In my estimation, she probably imagined, if anything at all, bending over the kitchen sink while some willing male plaything plugged her from behind, not in the arse, and banged her until he could control himself no longer and emptied his pathetic load into her. At which point normal service would be resumed and she would go about her business with the memory of a good shag, albeit with another no-hoper who had given her what she wanted while thinking he had been the winner.
She was known as the WPC, regardless of the fact that a police officer is just a police officer now, whether they have a truncheon or a mango between their legs.
One night it was somebody's leaving do in the canteen on the first floor, with canapes, a DJ and free drinks. I was having a nice enough time with some friends and acquaintances, such as you acquire in a large organisation. You see people around, maybe have a laugh, but you don't really get to know them. The staff "do" presented an opportunity to create deeper bonds.
There were a lot of youngish women, 18-30 secretarial types, so I did the usual bit of flirting, but eventually, I found Janice looking at me across the room, or at least I thought it was me she was looking at. I raised my hand in acknowledgement and she half smiled and looked away.
As the evening wore on, I waited for an opportunity to talk to her. She always seemed to be occupied by one of the bigwigs or the girls who fluttered around her, fascinated by something they probably didn't even understand.
At about eight o'clock I saw my chance as she made a solo trip to the ladies' and then the food station. I sidled up to her and we began an earnest conversation about spring rolls and whether they were the same as pancake rolls that you used to see in every Chinese restaurant in the UK. It was she who introduced the word phallic.
"They are, though," she insisted when I demurred. "Hotter and greasier, but, you know, it's like bananas..."
"And Toblerones," I observed.
"John Cooper Clarke," she said triumphantly, recognising the source of my remark, a song called Post War Glamour Girls by the punk poet. The lyrics whizzed through my mind and I recalled how he rhymed kiss with piss and also found a place for pubes. If Janice was a Johnny Clarke fan, she would be considering such things too. This was the breakthrough I needed: a common interest in punk rock, and we spent a good ten minutes talking about the Pistols and the Clash and whether Johnny Thunders' Chinese Rocks was better than the Damned's New Rose.
"Why don't we go somewhere else?" I ventured. "Pub? My place?"
"Shit," she said. "Steady on."
Before she could add to this, a gaggle of directors swallowed her up and I was cast adrift. I returned to the acquaintances and somehow, at some point, Janice disappeared. I bailed out at about ten and walked the 200 yards to my flat. I didn't even have Janice's phone number, so I just accepted that was it for now, perhaps forever, because knowing her, she would be back in official mode when I saw her next and what happened at the staff do stayed in the staff do.
I poured myself a glass of a Cotes du Rhone called Vacqueyras. Five minutes later there was a knock at the door. Nobody ever dropped in on me, and certainly not at that time of night. I opened it and there was Janice, coat buttoned right up against the cold, and poker-faced while she assessed the situation. We both mumbled uncomfortable nonsense and then she was sitting on my sofa with a glass of wine.
"How did you know where I live?" I asked.
"I'm a security professional," she said calmly. "I have access to certain information in the name of security."
"You know people call you the WPC?" I said, and then hoped she wouldn't object.
"Yeah yeah," she replied. "I know a lot of people think I'm a bit scary. And so they should," she added. "But you don't, do you? Why is that?"
"Because I see you as a woman, separate from your professional capacity. You're a person with a personal life. And I also happen to think you're very attractive."
"Are you going to kiss me, then?" she asked teasingly. I flung my arms around her and kissed her deeply and passionately. My hand went instinctively for her left breast and hers went to my right thigh before sliding up to feel my balls.
"You want me to cuff you?" she asked, daring me to wade further into our sexual pool. I ignored the question, but stood up and took her hand.