It all began with Heidi. I was on a business trip abroad and alone in my hotel when I got a chance email from an Internet friend I had spoken to off and on for a few years. I was in Switzerland at the time and I happened to mention that fact.

“Fräulein Rottenmeier and all that,” she said.

I didn’t know what she meant and we ended up exchanging a dozen emails about Swiss governesses and all that that implies.

Indigo and I stayed in touch more closely after that, even exchanging telephone numbers. We would talk for hours, me a simple lone businessman and she a damsel in distress with a very complicated life.

It is hard now to remember what I felt or what I thought would happen. I remember that small excitement whenever she would call and how easy it was to talk to her about all those things one never talks about.

She met a man and told me about it. I wasn’t jealous exactly, but although I wanted to be supportive something about the situation made me feel uncomfortable.

All Indigo was looking for was a mentor to address some of her needs and give her some guidance. She found Horrid, as she now calls him. An abusive man who cared only about his needs and who as it turned was completely clueless.

I assured her that she had done nothing wrong and that this fool was entirely to blame for how she was feeling. In fact I had no idea then, but she had bruises and welts on her legs and bottom that were to last for weeks.

I can’t remember who suggested it, but we decided to meet in my neighbourhood and I met her at the tube station. It is the sort of stunt that she should have been spanked for, after all she didn’t really know me and she had recently experienced how crazy people on the scene can be. But I have to admit she was very brave.

Sometimes courage overrules wisdom and Indigo is a very smart girl indeed so therefore she must be very, very brave.

I had been seeing a few other women at the time but somehow I knew this was something different. It was like when the wind drops and calm descends so that you can feel a great change in the weather coming from a long way off.

Was I nervous? To be honest I don’t think so. I felt I knew Indigo by then and we definitely had a rapport. The photograph she had sent was of an elegant woman with long hair piled up on her head. It was an image that certainly matched her voice.

Indigo’s voice is two clips above well-spoken. She had gone to one of those schools that people have heard of, where pony riding is an option. I, on the other hand grew up on a council estate (the UK equivalent of the projects) and although I have a postgraduate education my RP definitely has cracks in it through which the sounds of North London can clearly be heard.

I wasn’t intimidated exactly, but I did wonder what we might have in common beyond our spanking and subDom interests. Also I was well into my 40s while she was a young 30-something, what would she make of that?

In fact I was to learn that her first impression of me was that I was old and not at all what she was expecting. Not that I had a clue at the time, at more than a head shorter than I, she barely lifted her chin off her chest for the whole walk to my house. It was very endearing, as she was blushing the whole time.

“Are you nervous?” I asked.

She might have mumbled yes, but I am not sure she was as expansive as that.

God knows what she made of my house. I think I saw it for the first time through her eyes. Think bachelor just passing through with and indifferent taste in furniture and a mend and make do attitude to repairs. Remember this is the woman for whom the V&A is her spiritual home.

We sat down in front of the great lounge window that overlooks London. The city was shining that day with a big sky suspended over the shiny cathedrals to Mammon. When the sun sets it turns the crystal towers ablaze and as the light slowly dims the buildings come alive with the myriad colour of their own. Then as the sky turned azure blue and darkened we talked and drank tea.

Drinking tea is a sacred act. Setting a teabag to float in indifferently heated water is the beverage equivalent of describing Budweiser as beer. I served Assam tea in a teapot, although sadly I only had one cup with a saucer.

We talked for what seemed like days, only some of which I remember now. Our words just devoured hours, passing in seconds with timeless conversation. She spoke about the spanking boyfriends she had known and near misses. She told me more about Horrid and her story made my skin crawl as if something precious had been broken. But through it all she was shining.

She told me too of her school and how they caned. This was our segue way into spanking I think. I was intrigued by tales of 18-year-old school girls caned on the bare bottom by House Masters and evil boy prefects with nicknames like the Beast. That is the British public school (that’s old school private to anyone who isn’t a brit) system for you or was until the reforms of 1999. No one ever talks about, especially girls. I was fascinated.

I was to later fictionalise some of her anecdotes in the story Abaconti: Future Imperfect but that is to digress.

As the evening wore on she grew in confidence and I saw the powerful girl-woman she was; all layers of complexity like a flower, alternately shy and confronting as her eyes played peek-a-boo with me.

She grew cheeky then and began to tease me.

I played it stern and assertive as I glared at her jibes. She said I was scary, but still she probed.

There were four items on the table as I remember: two mugs, a teapot and the milk. I told her that every time she crossed the line I would pick one of them up and take it out to the kitchen. Once the table was empty I would spank her.

I wish I remember what was actually said. It would certainly be romantic to say that every moment is engraved on my soul, but the truth is it was how I felt and the connection we made that endures.

Five minutes later she had provoked me again and I merely stood up and removed a mug to the kitchen. She looked cute and blushed; even becoming a little tongue-tied.

What I loved about it was the lack of cliché. She didn’t say you wouldn’t dare or you are not man enough. It was all just gentle teasing. I do remember that she said that she was an expert in sailing close to the wind and yet getting away with it. It had been ever thus at school and she liked to live dangerously.

All of this was leading to a spanking and we both knew it, yet neither of us had explicitly said that.

The second and third items got removed within 10 minutes I would say. She would provoke or tease and I would counter and hint at a scolding, nothing overt. Then finally she looked around coyly and bit her lip. I could see thoughts forming in her face and then she spoke.

I picked the teapot up and showed it to her as if her fate was imprinted on the glaze and then that too went to the kitchen.

I think I crooked my finger at her as I sat on the sofa and she blushed. There was no struggle, no throw-down as she likes to say. It was all in the look I think. With both our pulses racing she went across my lap and I tugged at the hem of her skirt.

Her knickers were the carefully chosen kind; one may have even thought she had been planning this. I tugged at them gently, testing for resistance, but not for long. They slid down her thighs to bare her bottom with pleasing ease; this despite a respectable show of resistance from this girl.

This was my first glimpse of her bare bottom and I felt like a king knowing I was its master.

Then I saw the marking. Her bottom and thighs had red stains like tongues ending in faint bruises. I almost abandoned the spanking. It was Horrid’s work and I became angry, but only for a moment. This was not his and never would be and he had no place here. Indigo didn’t come to be reminded and I owed her that. I owed her too the spanking she had coming.

I don’t remember what I said, I am sure it was suitably toppy, maybe she can tell you? All I know is that my hand did most of the communicating.

Her bottom was crisp and rolling under my hand and she made little squeaks and chewed demurely on her lips as she squirmed.

“It’s so shy-making,” she whispered.

I had never heard that phrase, but I love it still.

I was too concerned about her markings to spank her too long or hard, but I made up for this by setting her in the corner to the right of the window.

Picture the scene, London laid out in all its multi-coloured nightscape glory set next to a pretty all cherry red in the tail and pouting. I saw then how cute and fidgeting she was so posed. I would have had there an hour or more like art, but softly, softly…

She was shy after that and she did not meet my eyes; a perfect moment for me and one that has changed my life. I could say more, so very much more, about how she slept in my bed with me on the sofa and when we next met, but the most important things about this story is that it is true and better still it is not ended. I hope it never ends.