"What time's this presentation tomorrow?" I asked.

"Uh, um, I'm not sure..." Graham seemed a bit flustered, I thought. Probably caught him playing Freecell again.

"Got it out yet?" I teased. Graham looked distinctly red in the face, and had an expression like a kid caught smoking in his bedroom.

"What?" he exclaimed.

"I get it out about seventy percent of times, now. The secret is not to fill up your free cells. That way you can move longer columns."

"Ah, yeah," he muttered. He seemed so disconcerted that I began to get suspicious. Porn, I thought: he must be looking at porn. I moved a bit closer to his desk for a better look: no, it looked like a normal Word document on the screen. So what was he up to? I puzzled about it for a moment: applying for another job?; writing to his lover?; defamatory remarks about the boss? What was he up to? There was no doubt about it, though; his face gave him away, now a shade darker than mauve, with "guilty" writ large on every feature. The little devil, I thought, amused that straight-laced Graham could be up to no good. He was renowned as a bit of a fuddy-duddy, Mister Nine-to-Five and straight home to his wife and children, the most boring conversationalist this side of Tony Blair and only slightly less pious than him. And it was then, only then, after I had been stood in his office for about two minutes, that I realised what was wrong with him.

He had his dick out.

Jesus wept, straight-laced Graham was wanking at his desk. No wonder he reacted like a scalded parrot when I asked if he'd got it out.

"Ah," I said, edging towards the door, "I'll come back when you're... when you're more focussed." And I slid out of his office, my own face about as red as his, gently easing the door shut behind me, and breathed a huge sigh.

I'm embarrassed to say it took me even longer to realise what I could do with my discovery. At first I pondered various options: report him to the boss; report him to the police; tell his wife; tell the office; do all of those; do none of them. But nothing seemed appropriate. After all, everybody has a wank from time to time; usually not while they're sitting at their desks, right enough, but everyone does it, all the same. So why make his life a misery?

Why indeed? It was only later, much later, that the answer to that question came to me. I should make his life a misery if it makes mine more pleasurable. Simple really. It really was a revelation, the proverbial lightbulb illuminating in my brain. Use it to your advantage, Harriet, use it to your advantage.

Now I may be slow on the uptake, but once I decide on a course of action, I follow it through pretty resolutely. Consequently, ten minutes or so after my brainwave I was sitting in Graham's office, smiling as brightly as only a woman who has had a lightbulb illuminate in her brain can.

"Now, Graham," I began, relishing the moment. He looked pale and drawn, a worried man. Hmm, I wondered. My interruption earlier had probably brought about the speediest detumescence known to history: not something a girl would normally be too proud of, but there you go.

"Harriet," he said, "I just wanted to say..."

"Graham, do you think you ought? Aren't you in enough trouble as it is, without opening your mouth and boring the pants off me?" Oh, this was good, very good. "Oops, bit of an unfortunate expression, that, given the circumstances." I giggled archly; Graham smiled wanly. "I've been thinking about this a lot," I continued, "and it seems to me that you're the biggest tit outside of a Russ Meyer film."

Graham opened his mouth to say something, but saw my look and thought better of it. He stared morosely at his desk, like the condemned man waiting for the judge to don his black cloth and pronounce judgement.

"I mean, if you were horny why didn't you just go to the toilets like the rest of us? A quick fumble in the cubicle, wipe it down and get back to work. Simple. It's not even as if you were using your computer to look at porn while you did it. What on earth possessed you man?" I saw he was about to reply. "Don't answer me, Graham, I don't actually care. My point is, what an arsehole you are." Boy, I was really getting into this. All the times I'd had to suffer the tedious little man without demur, all those meetings he had hijacked with that droning, boring, flat, leaden voice, that feeble delivery, that passionless, soulless indifference; how often I'd sat through them and wished I could skewer him, make him squirm, make him pay for the tedium he induced in all around him. And now, here I was.

"What an arsehole," I repeated, much taken with the sound of the sentence as well as its meaning. "Arsehole" Graham looked miserable and terrified at once, a man teetering on the edge of tears while scrabbling at the edge of the abyss. Not a sensible combination: the one distracts attention from the other. I knew I had him under my control.

"So what are you going to do?" he whispered, like a little schoolboy afraid of being reported to the headmaster.

"What am I going to do?" I rejoindered disdainfully. "What am I going to do? Absolutely nothing, sweetie pie. Absolutely nothing. Seems to me your wandering little hands have done enough for everybody."

"You mean, you won't tell the Boss, or..."

"What?" I scorned. "What d'you think this is? One of your little porn stories? Where I start blackmailing you? Tell you that I'll tell everybody in the whole world unless you do exactly as I say?" I could tell from his face that this, indeed, was what he expected. "And so what if I did?" I continued, crossing my legs peremptorily and working very hard to get the right amount of sneer in my voice. "Who would care? Everyone thinks you're a wanker anyway, this would just be proof positive. Who'd care?"

Graham looked crestfallen, but I wasn't sure whether it was because of my character assassination, or because he had been fantasising about me blackmailing him and was dismayed to discover it wasn't going to happen.

"The thing is, Graham," I continued, "I don't need to blackmail you, do I?"

He looked at me blankly.

"These stories," I said, "Tell me, incidentally, do you read stories like that? Humiliation stories, blackmail stories?" He nodded. "Excellent, I like them too. But these stories, they nearly always have a false premise. They nearly always rely on some lame blackmail motif to progress the story. That isn't necessary, is it Graham?"

Again, his look was blank.

"What I mean is, I don't need to blackmail you, do I sweetie pie. I caught you. I caught the little man with his little man out. And Graham, I don't need to threaten you with exposure, do I? Not now that I've already seen your exposure. Because you'll do anything I want anyway." I made this last remark a statement, not a question. Graham, however, chose to answer.

"Yes," he said.

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