When Estelle answered the door shortly before noon on the First of November to find Bruce, her neighbours' college-aged son, standing on her doormat, she had to swallow a gasp and did her best to keep her face neutral, though she felt a blush coming on.
The night before, she had been stumbling home from a long Halloween party when she suddenly felt an overpowering urge to relive the pranks of her youth. She decided to smash her neighbours' pumpkin lanterns, but she had been caught in the act by Bruce. Not quite recognizing her with her costume on, the boy had mistaken her for one of his younger sister's friends, and he had ended up taking her over his lap and spanking her for her vandalism. Despite being close to 40, Estelle had found herself squirming and sobbing over the knee of a boy half her age.
As she gazed up at the tall, athletic boy, she wondered if he had realized who he had run into the night before. If so, she had a very uncomfortable conversation ahead of her.
"Good morning, Estelle," Bruce said in his usual cheerful manner. Realizing that she didn't seem to know why he was there, he added:" You asked me to come over to help you with some online forms, right? Something you had to fill out before next weekend?"
Estelle breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't here about last night after all. "Oh! I completely forgot! Sorry, I was at a party yesterday, and stayed out a little later than I intended, so it must have slipped my mind."
"That's OK," he said kindly. "Do you want me to look at it now, or should I come back later?"
"Oh, come in," she told him, stepping aside.
He sat down on the sofa, opening her laptop, while she inched down next to him, gently lowering her rear end down on the seat – her bottom was still sore from the treatment it had received the night before. He caught her wince. "Are you OK? Is something wrong?"
"I'm fine!" She tried to look like she meant it. "I slipped and fell down on my way home last night. I don't recommend trying to walk on heels after a few martinis." She did her best not to squirm while he was looking at her, no matter how much it hurt.
Once he was assured that she was OK, he returned his attention to her computer. He tapped away for a few minutes, searching through the website, before frowning. "Oh," he said. "I'm afraid that doesn't say the seventh of November. This should have been done in October. We could try sending them a message and ask if you can have an extension, but they probably won't respond before Monday – if that."
She groaned; she'd never liked dealing with paperwork, but dealing with the people you were supposed to hand in the paperwork to was even worse.
"I'll type an email and send it to them, but while we wait for a reply, we can prepare a draft of the form in case it's not too late. Do you have your membership number?" He glanced at her, realizing from her deer-in-the-headlights look that she probably didn't. He wasn't entirely able to hold back a sigh. "Right. You should have received a membership card when you joined, which has your number on it. Do you still have that?" He looked at her expression. "I see. Or maybe it's on your invoice? Do you receive paper invoices or electronic?"
"I… That's…." She paused. "Paper, I think."
He raised an eyebrow. "You think?" It was clear that he was still doing his very best to remain civil with the woman living next door to his parents. "Is it OK if I look through your email inbox? I can search for it there, while you go through your archive and see if there's a paper invoice there." He glanced at her. "You DO have an archive, don't you?"
"That's… well, I wouldn't call it a…" Her voice trailed off into silence.
"Right," he said, trying to keep up his usual cheerful manner. "Well, I've started a search in your inbox, so we'll hopefully find it there. Do you mind if I quickly use your bathroom while we wait?"
"Go ahead," she said, staring at the screen and praying they'd find the right email.
It was only when Bruce had closed the bathroom door behind him that Estelle remembered something which made her turn pale. The night before, when she returned home after her night out, she'd gone straight to the bathtub for a relaxing soak after the horrible spanking. She'd stripped straight out of her one-piece costume and let it fall to the floor – and she couldn't remember picking it up. As far as she knew, it was still there, and if it was, Bruce would definitely see it.
