The first thing she told me was that this day marked her thirtieth birthday. She was dressed rather unimaginatively in cheap jeans and a sweat shirt . Her hair was neither light nor dark. It was greasy. And she wore gum boots.
As with all first time clients, I went to reception to meet her and show her the way to my consulting room. She followed me silently - almost sullenly - and when we reached the office she threw off the shabby wool coat that she'd been clutching around her shapeless clothes. I watched the garment fall to the floor and said: "Please, take a seat."
Looking me straight in the eye and ignoring the chair, she spoke to me for the first time. "Today is my thirtieth birthday." she said. "And I've made such a balls up of my life that I have come to see you - a psychoanalytic pyschotherapist - to help me sort it all out."
I was afarid of her.
At the time I failed to admit the truth - that it was the feelings she aroused in me I feared. I decided I was afraid of her because she wore shabby clothes and spoke with sophisticated vocabulary in a cultured accent. She had betrayed her roots and I imagined this is why I feared her.
A month after our first meeting she arrived with a new hairstyle. By then she'd abandoned the gum boots, and I contemplated commenting on her improved apearance. I couldn't do it. She was twenty years younger than me - only a couple of years older than my daughter for God's sake. And I thought she might take any compliment from me the wrong way. I suppose what I meant was - she might take it the right way. In truth, I lusted after this client who bemoaned her choice of husband and got prettier and sexier with each passing visit.
She had exchanged her jeans for short. slinky skirts. I found myself fantasising over her as I lay in bed at night. But when I shared with her my consulting room I maintained an aloof air that I thought of as professional.
I listened to her and I took her money - I was her therapist. With me she shared her most intimate secrets, yet it was easy to imagine she meant nothing of a personal nature to me. I was, after all, her psychoanalytic pyschotherapist.
One day she arrived with her hair dyed a mysterious shade of auburn and magenta. It was skillfully cut and she used it as a veil through to observe my reaction to her bizarre behaviour. She wore a black skirt split to the mid thigh and a carefully ironed pink blouse open one button beyond decency.
She said nothing as she looked at me through the red fringe of her expensive hair cut. She began to unbutton the pink shirt. I could not help noticing that her breasts were well supported without the help of a brassiere. She thrust them before her as she walked over to my consulting chair, and she fiddled with the waist of her skirt as she did so.
I touched them with my hands and felt her hard nipples under my palms as I rose to suck her breasts in the opening minutes of her session. Her skirt floated to the ground and I lifted her slightly to do it- to fornicate. In my consulting room.
'Thank you.' she said when it was over. 'Now I have the power.' And she paid me. I felt like a cheap whore as I accepted her notes.
And of course she was right. She does now have the power.
Some of my colleagues have said it was green of me to allow this to happen.