air to land with a painful bounce on the Persian rug she’d inherited from her aunt. Her aunt! So this was what had been twitching in the knitting bag. Now she understood why Winifred was known as the Merry Spinster.
The penis inched forward and rubbed itself against Dorothy’s bare foot. She pulled back immediately, but then a perverse curiosity made her stretch her foot back toward the expectant organ again. It felt silky, the touch of that velvet skin deliciously familiar. She was reminded of those stolen afternoons, lying back in the motel bed, stroking her lover into submission. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to be caressed.
It was not an entirely unpleasant sensation. The penis rubbed itself backward and forward like a cat; Dorothy could practically hear it purring. The clock in the hallway chimed ten. She’d promised to be at work in half an hour. The organ flopped itself seductively over her foot and appeared to look up at her. What was she going to do? She couldn’t leave it alone in the house.
She reached down but the penis slipped out of her hand and darted behind the sofa. Dorothy spent a good fifteen minutes catching it. Shewrapped the wriggling member up in a sock and hid it in her underwear drawer. As she drove off she prayed that it wouldn’t leap out and give the cleaner a heart attack.
Walking along the High Street, Dorothy got wolf-whistled at fourteen times. Astonished, she gazed at herself in the reflection of a shop window. She was wearing jeans and a threadbare sweater with holes in it. She looked like she always did; what had changed that was causing this sudden male attention?
Even her boss, Mr. Carrington, who must have been at least seventy-five, commented on how good she was looking. Another colleague dropped two Georgian swords onto his toes when Dorothy bent down to do up her shoelaces. At lunchtime, when she walked into the bank, every male set of eyes swung around and stared.
Dorothy was bewildered. For a woman who was used to being invisible to the male sex, it was incredibly disorienting to be suddenly not just visible but apparently extremely desirable. Then a frightening thought occurred to her. Maybe, in some perverse way, this male attention was connected to the penis. As if its manifestation had suddenly imbued her with a powerful pheromone.
That afternoon, convinced she was being betrayed by some terrible scent, Dorothy spent forty minutes scrubbing her armpits in the women’s toilets. When she finally emerged, flushed and stinking of tar soap, water still staining her armpits, Mr. Carrington, worried about her mental state, sent her home early.
On the way back she was followed by a police car. The inanely grinning policeman pulled up beside her and complimented her on the originality of her car. Dorothy gazed at him in disbelief; she drove a blue Honda sedan. A moment later a cyclist fell off his bike because he was staring so hard at her. Then, at the petrol station, the attendant lost concentration and dribbled petrol all down the side of his trousers.
For the first time in her life Dorothy began to consider the advantages of being plain. Relieved to reach the sanctuary of the cottage, where a solitary cow grazed in the field next door, she checked the horizon for any visible male, then bolted to the front door. Inside, she exhaled. At last she was alone—well, almost.
The only way Dorothy could describe how she lived with the penis for the next couple of weeks was…well, like dog and mistress. It followed her everywhere like a love-struck puppy, hopping up beside her on the couch to watch television, getting tangled in the wool when she was knitting, perched precariously on the soap dish while she bathed.
At first Dorothy barely tolerated the intrusion, then, slowly, she started to appreciate its steady vigil. She even found herself listening out for the pitter-patter of those heavy balls thudding gently on the carpet.
“You’ve always wanted a