A BANKING SCANDAL

Allen Edgar Pooe 

As soon as he came into her shop she made an executive decision. She put 'Closed for Stocktaking' on the door and led him upstairs. Let's call them Annette and Roger. The shop sold beds and bedding so they simply made use of the stock. Someday, somewhere, somebody will be settling down to sleep in their expensive new bed, blissfully unaware that a glamourous woman in her early forties had been there first, screwing a good-looking bank manager in his thirties. Two souls stealing a little time together and nothing wrong with that.

A shame that her Head Office didn't see it that way. Annette's mistake was to brag about it the next day to one of her sales girls who tactically mentioned it to the area supervisor who informed Head Office. The result was a visit from HR with Annette's P45 ready in an envelope.

This was far from the first time that Annette and Roger had met for sex. They met at least once a week, an arrangement that suited them both. It all began over a year earlier when Roger summoned her to his bank to discuss her financial affairs which were frankly catastrophic, the end was nigh and she knew it. He took her upstairs for privacy.

As they entered the swanky boardroom he put a finger to his lips to indicate silence and ran through a pantomime of jumping up on the table to look in fire alarms and light units. Then he hopped down and announced there were no microphones or cameras, they were safe to talk freely. Without hesitation he presented his offer clearly and confidently. He had the power to save her, managerial discretion on repayment rates etc. He could do things for her, pull strings, if she did things for him, sexual things, at least once a week.

Annette was a tall pretty woman, slim yet busty (silicone), who had once worked on cruise ships and in casinos all over the world. She was no fool and she was no virgin. She accepted his offer and he made his first deposit right there and then, screwing her on the boardroom table to seal the deal.

Roger was a nice chap, everyone said so, polite, courteous and handsome. A consummate professional whose career was going splendidly, already manager of the HSCUM in Fellchester-on-Sea. Annette was happy 'seeing' him, maybe she even loved him after a while. Their affair was necessarily secret so if she talked about him at all, it was obliquely and discreetly. She was being discreet and oblique at a barbecue one evening until a younger woman, let's call her Sandra, took Annette aside for a little chat. They stood in the corner of the garden for an hour talking earnestly. They had never met before, total strangers, but they something in common; they were both sleeping with that particular bank manager.

What astonished both Annette and Sandra was that Roger had played the exact same routine for them both: the debt, the boardroom, the silence, the jumping up on the table, the offer, the fuck. Word for word! They went over every detail. It was uncanny, like he had been following a script. They wondered how many other debt-ridden women he had 'helped', how many others were out there? Annette and Sandra felt somewhat miffed and indignant.

A sympathetic bystander at the barbecue rang a journalist contact who said a story like that is worth money, proper money, could be ten grand or more if one, ideally both, of the victims stepped forward. Disappointingly Annette said she still had feelings for Roger and no desire to expose him, it would end his career. Likewise Sandra would not cooperate due to unspecified personal reasons. Luckily for Roger and the reputation of the HSCUM bank, this story has not yet reached the tabloids, but if it does, remember you saw it here first (with names changed to protect the guilty) in the esteemed pages of The Crazy Oik.