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 I first met Herman when I joined the firm.  As my first assignment they put
me on the bid team for a system renewal at a national power company.  I was
the gopher on the team and Herman was one of the Analysts.  That's not his
real name; it was something of a private joke between us.  When he
introduced himself I asked him where he was from and he said Saxony, that
he was a good Anglo-Saxon, just like me.  I said in that case he was
actually German, I'd call him Herman and I hoped he was as reliable as the
cars.  From then onwards I always called him Herman the German.

   As with any bid process the work was very intense and we worked long
hours.  When the bid was successful we celebrated in style, free champagne
on a river-boat cruise.  Herman asked me to dance with him and I did, just
out of courtesy really.  But there was something about him, I could feel it
even then, but it was nothing you could put your finger on and say he was
out-of-line.  He just seemed over-friendly around someone half his age.

   Once the project got started we did a lot of work on site at the company
headquarters, way out of town in the remote coastal region where the
nuclear plants were sited.  I had a flat in Greenwich and Herman lived
about half-an-hour away in a quiet, anonymous suburb with his english wife.
He told me she had some sort of a phobia and was pretty much confined to
the house.  He'd pick me up on his way to work very early on a Monday
morning and drop me off again late on a Friday night.  Weekday evenings
were spent working and we lodged at various B & Bs in the nearby local
town. It was only a short train journey from my home-town so some weekends
I'd go back to my family's house and bore them to death with my stories of
big-city life and how important it all was.

   Herman was clearly very intelligent and he was advancing his career by
working long hours and delivering on all his work.  I was rather more
relaxed and some might say I deserved what happened to me.  I didn't take
him, or my work all that seriously.  I truly believed that I would just
somehow, magically, get on.  As a consequence of feeling so relaxed about
life generally, I told him far more about myself and the life I was living
in the capital than I probably should have done.  Like any young girl fresh
from a provincial town I made the most of my time in London, clubbing and
drinking and drinking and clubbing.  Some of the places we went to and the
things we did were pretty outrageous, especially after I started sharing my
flat with Lynne.  Being away all week meant that when I got back there was
never anything to eat or drink in the place, plus all the cleaning and
stuff to do.  I soon came up with a plan to share my flat with a second
girl and then, as part of the deal, they'd do all the domestic stuff during
the week so that I could have the weekend off.  Lynne paid a token rent in
exchange for looking after the place for me while I was away.

   Lynne had moved away from home to get some privacy.  Her father was dead
and she'd been living at home with her mum and two younger brothers.  The
thing was, she liked to frequent the more outrageous clubs and attend some
pretty extreme parties.  I got drawn into them and began to enjoy dressing
in outrageous outfits too and hanging out at the parties with her.  I'd
thought when she moved in she was a bit of a goth, but I soon found she
modelled her style more on the pin-up girls of the 50's and 60's.  I
followed her lead and we were soon identically dressed as Betty Page
look-alikes.

   On the long commutes to and from work with Herman I told him all sorts
of hair-raising stories, sometimes true, sometimes fantasy, that I really
shouldn't have told anyone, certainly not him.

   I told him about Donny and the weekend we split up.  Donny had been a
sort-of-boyfrined from back home.  He'd come down to stay for the weekend
and we'd go out on the town.  He found it all a bit too outrageous for his
tastes and one weekend it came to a head.  Lynne had been showing off,
acting the clown and she'd been leading me round on a leash.  She'd given
me a ball-gag, THE ball-gag, but I couldn't bring myself to wear it then.
Donny was disgusted with her, with the ball-gag and with me in particular.
There was a bit of a scene where he called us a pair of perverted dykes and
he stormed out.  I never saw him again.

   I told Herman about this the following week, on our way up to work.  He
said something then that made me cringe, although I never let on.  He said
"You'll wear it one day soon, when you discover Mr Special".  There was an
awkward silence after that, until he started asking about Donny and how did
I think he'd got home, stuff like that.  The conversation got under way
again and I put what he'd said out of my mind, although it had creeped me
out a bit.

   There were frequent comings and goings on the project, but Herman and I
carried on doing what we were doing, being good little workers and waiting
for something better to come along.  Then one day our project leader was
promoted and the atmosphere changed.  Clearly Herman was jostling for
position in the queue to take over.  No-one expected it to happen, mainly
because he was so unskilled socially, but lo and behold a week later the
announcement was made, Herman had indeed got the job and would be
relocating to Head Office.  It gave me an immmediate problem; how to get to
& from work each week?  I solved that with my savings and bought a
low-mileage, silver GTI.  Life continued to get better and better, or so I
thought.