"The mystery woman!" Siobhan exclaimed. "You do still exist then."

"Alive and kicking," I replied. "Didn't realise I was posted awol."

"Not a word from you in how long, darling? Not even an email; not a saucy postcard, no birthday card even," she said reprovingly. I laughed, apologised and ushered them through.

It was true. I had lost touch with them over the last few months; and not only them, but all of my old friends. Since the cataclysmic change in my private life, on my assumption of the position of full time slave girl to my Master, I had foresworn all my old contacts, cut myself off from any vestiges of my previous life. I had resigned from work to devote myself full time to my Master, and had made no contact with anyone from the past. The reason was simple: however humiliating it was to have my role and lifestyle revealed to new acquaintances and peripheral people like our neighbours, it would have been unbearable to be exposed as a slave girl to all my erstwhile friends, people who knew me before, who had no idea of what I was and what I had become, people who remembered me as a very different person from that which I now am. People develop and change in the course of their lives, but friendships which are broken for any length of time are frozen as though in aspic, and the resumption of relations can be fraught until the scale and extent of changes in the individuals is recognised and understood; often these changes never are, and friendships in those circumstances can be sorely tested. Such was the level of change in my life that I knew it would be almost impossible to explain, and also unconscionably humiliating. And so, I had eschewed all contact with the past.

"We tried your work, but they told us you left six months ago. No notice, you just upped and left," said Kathy, unable to hide the curiosity in her voice.

"Yeah, well, I just got bored with it. Same crap every day. Filing, writing reports, meeting clients, the sheer, bum-numbingly repetitiveness of it all. So I quit."

"And what are you up to, then?"

"Oh, nothing much. This and that. Bit of freelancing now and then 3;"

"And are you still with him, whotsisname?"

"Oh yes, I still am. He's in the garden, I think." And I hope he stays there too, I thought to myself. I didn't want any awkward scenes in front of Siobhan and Kathy. We went a long way back, the three of us. We had been at university together, and formed an unholy trinity who made it our mission to outdrink, outshag, outshock and out-everything else all the guys around us. The Three Nearly-Degrees we called ourselves, as an ironic statement on the likely impact on our studies of our louche lifestyles, and established for ourselves a formidable reputation as women not to be messed with. It would be exceptionally difficult to explain my new circumstances to my curious friends.

My heart sank, then, when I heard, just as I was saying those words, the back door close and my Master shuffle into the kitchen, kicking off his wellingtons. "Harriet," he called, and entered the living room. "Oh, hello," he said, "I didn't know you had company."

"Hi," I said, warmly, hoping my trepidation didn't show. "These are two old friends of mine, from university days. Siobhan and Kathy." Siobhan and Kathy said hello and coolly appraised him. "Oh yeah," my Master replied. "I've heard you talk about them. The Three Musketeers or something like that."

"Yeah, something like that," said Siobhan, laughing. I could see her eyeing him up, her look flitting up and down his body; she always had an eye for the good lookers.

"Just making a coffee and then going up to the study to finish a column and get it filed," he said, returning to the kitchen. Relieved, I relaxed again, once more throwing myself into the merry reminiscences which inevitably begin when old acquaintances meet up. A couple of minutes later, my Master passed through, with his coffee.

"I know you haven't met up for a while, but not too much noise please. I'm trying to work," he said, and departed upstairs. As he closed the door Siobhan and Kathy both erupted with a snort of derisory laughter. I cringed, knowing my Master would have heard.

"Where does he get off?" exclaimed Siobhan.

"It's complicated," I said, "but it's best to do as he says. Keep the noise down."

"Wow, you've changed, girl. Wouldn't have let some bloke trample over you like that in the old days."

"It's nothing to do with him being a bloke," I replied.

"What is it to do with, then?" asked Kathy, with confusion etched on her face. What is it to do with, I pondered. It's about control; about being able to grant control to someone else, whatever the consequences; about trust and faith, and love; about the deep-rooted, twisted, invigorating, exciting surges of sexual tension which explode through you when you voluntarily place yourself in a position of abject powerlessness, when you surrender yourself to the whim of someone else, when you devote yourself to satisfying, pleasing, performing for another person. It's about the mind, as all good sex is. And nobody who sees sex as merely a physical act can ever understand that; nobody whose horizons are so narrow can ever hope to comprehend. Their loss.

"Oh, never mind. It's not important. I want to hear the gossip? What's been happening?"

We spent the next twenty minutes or so in merry conversation, swapping salacious stories and laughing over shared recollections. I dredged up faces and memories which I had all but forgotten, and delighted in the tales of Siobhan and Kathy. We fed off each other, each story reminding one of us of another, and another, and another. Remininscence is a powerful drug, a potent force for good, inducing feelings of contentment and relaxation, and I found I was enjoying myself enormously, carefree and lightheaded. I suppose we must have become a bit raucous. Siobhan, in particular, always had a rather high-pitched and penetrating laugh: it could scrape rust off metal, we always used to say.

So, in retrospect, it wasn't much of a surprise when the living room door burst open and my Master stood framed in the doorway, glaring at us, his hands on his hips and his body language screaming his discontent.

"Harriet!" he shouted. Immediately there was silence.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, rising to collect the empty coffee cups from the table.

"I did ask, didn't I? A reasonable request for a bit of peace and quiet while I do some work. Not too much to ask, is it?"

"No, I'm sorry," I repeated, heading for the kitchen.

"Where are you going? Don't you dare walk away from me like that." I stopped in my tracks. This was getting serious.

"Hang on," said Siobhan. Oh no; that was all I needed. I didn't need her wading in and making things worse. Please shut up, I thought. My discomfort and misery was clearly evident on my face.

"I beg your pardon," my Master said, acidly. "I wasn't aware that what passes between my slave and me was any concern of yours."

Shit.