Their conversation was innocuously enough, with the older woman informing her Chinese colleague that she (the Perm) would be taking an early break to meet a friend (hard to believe she had any) for lunch at Adagio's. Adagio's was a new, highly-affected eating establishment at the other end of the High Street. The Perm's manner suggested that it would have to be alright with the Chinese girl because she, the Perm, was the senior member of staff present, and basically it was her right to do whatever the hell she liked. And besides, she was already gathering up her coat and handbag from beneath the counter.

      "Now remember Wan-Li," the Perm droned on, her tone patronising as if this poor foreigner might be slightly retarded, "we're short-staffed today and you'll be the only one here, so you mustn't leave the shop unattended on any account. Not even for a minute. Is that understood?"

      "Okay," the girl called Wan-Li agreed. In a quieter voice, she added, "Before you go, I use toilet."

      "What do you mean?" the Perm retorted, clearly offended. "I never take more than an hour for lunch."

      "No. I just--?" Wan-Li tried to intervene, but the Perm steam-rollered over her protest.

      "Unlike someone I could mention who came back nearly half an hour late last week."

      "I told you," Wan-Li tried again. "I have dental appointment."

      "Besides," the Perm droned on as she began walking towards the front of the shop, "you're always running off the loo. What on earth do you do in there all day?"

      " I not wait until you come back. I have to go."

      "You most certainly will wait until I get back. Don't you dare leave this shop unattended even for a minute, no matter what the circumstances."

      "But I have to--"

      "I can't stand here chatting," the Perm cut her the girl off again. "I'm already running late. Remember, don't leave the place unattended, under any circumstances."

      As Perm departed the premises, I saw Wan-Li pull a face at her retreating back. I grinned, thinking good for you. Wan-Li caught me grinning and smiled, so I rolled my eyes. Her smile broadened.

      Ostensibly, I resumed looking at the shirts, although the truth was that from my present vantage point, I could see through the only opening in the waist-high counter enclosing the tills. I noted there were no chairs inside: Like so many companies, Wendovers expected its employees to stand all day. That must have been hard on the feet, especially when those feet were perched on sling-back heels, like Wan-Li's.

      I went on casting frequent glances at Wan-Li as Wan-Li kept an eye on the customers mooching around the shop, watching for shoplifters I supposed. I could see her in profile, and reflected on what a gorgeous figure she had. Like so many Asian females she wasn't carrying an ounce of fat on her body. I imagined her slightly uncomfortable bladder and had a brief vision of standing behind her, arms around her body, one hand rubbing against her abdomen to make her squirm, disturbing the status quo in her bladder.

      Suddenly, she crossed her legs and folded her arms across her stomach. An innocuous enough movement, but it confirmed that he bladder was already rather more than slightly uncomfortable. The poor girl needed to pee badly enough to take these discrete measures to control the situation. That was when I truly started to appreciate just how interesting this particular lunch break was going to be.

      I continued checking out the shirts for another few minutes, but I couldn't linger there for the whole lunch hour watching this girl as her desperation to pee grew, as much as I longed to do so. I glanced over at the door as more customers entered, and noticed Macdonald's directly opposite. It occurred to me that if I could get myself a window seat, I would be able to watch Wan-Li's predicament unfold while having a perfectly legitimate reason to be sitting over there. After lunch, I could come back to finish my shopping, by which time things would surely be hotting up on the full bladder front.

      I was just in time to grab the last seat by the window, beating some middle-aged bald man to it. He scowled at me and I wondered briefly if I had deprived him of his lunchtime entertainment. At his age and with his portly figure, I guessed that female voyeurism was all that was left. Was to be my fate one day? Pushing this troubling idea aside, I began my vigil of Wendovers as I unwrapped a soggy and disgusting beefburger.

      From my vantage point, I could see Wan-Li most of the time. When she was at the tills, the lower half of her body cut off from view. She was too far away for me to see her face clearly so I could not tell if she was actually wearing a pained expression, but i could certainly imagine it. After several minutes of this, my attention began to wander. At least, I decided, I would be able to see if the girl broke the rules and made a dash for the loo.

      I was halfway through a cup of vile tea when I saw Wan-Li leave the checkout and begin patrolling the shop. She walked with her arms folded, glancing this way and that as she took in what the half dozen or so customers were doing. As I watched her, it occurred to me that she was keeping her legs on the move.

      One of the female customers must have called out then, because Wan-Li's head snapped round and she promptly walked to where a blonde woman stood looking through a rack of blouses close to the front of the shop. The woman began asking Wan-Li questions, forcing her to stand there and answer them. No longer able to keep her legs on the move, Wan-Li crossed them again, the right foot passing in front of the left. I imagined her tensing her thigh muscles as she fought the urge to pee. I could feel my own muscles stirring, and was forced to sit awkwardly in order to hide the growing bulge in my jeans.

      At ten minutes before one, I paid my bill and crossed the street, returning to Wendovers to witness the last minutes of Wan-Li's hour-long discomfort. There were a dozen or more customers now, and the girl was walking up and down the aisles with her hands clasped behind her back, doing her best to look relaxed. Because I was looking for it, I noticed that she did not stop walking even for a second. I also noticed that her steps were short and rapid. Chinese women tend to walk a little like this anyway, so her dilemma was probably not obvious to anyone else.

      I went back to the display of shirts and began riffling through the ones in my collar size. I watched Wan-Li from the corner of my eye, and when I saw her coming my way I picked up a striped, tasteless affair and went over to the adjacent tie rack. As Wan-Li came within a few paces of me (I could tell where she was from the click of her heels), I turned and said, "Excuse me, miss. I wonder if you could help me?"

      I caught the flicker of anxiety in her eyes at the prospect of having to stop walking. She forced a smile and said, "Of course, sir."

      "I'm no good at matching ties to shirts," I explained. "In fact, I always get it hopelessly wrong and my colleagues at work make fun of me. I wondered, since you actually sell these things, I'd value your opinion. It would save me a lot of grief. Especially from my foreman."

      I'd prattled on deliberately, waiting for her to start fidgeting. I was rewarded by the sight of her bringing her folding her arms across her stomach and bending her right knee. As I continued talking, her foot coming off the floor an inch or too, then she set it down again, only to lift her other leg and do exactly the same thing. She really couldn't hold still now, and must really dying to go to the loo.

      I held up a garish tie against the tasteless shirt and smiled contritely. "What do you think?"

      Wan-Li pulled a face. I was not sure if it was a comment on my bad taste or a grimace of pain as she struggled to maintain control of her bladder. A little of both, I imagined. "No, that no good," she said in clipped English. "You want plain shirt with bright tie, or plain tie with bright shirt." "Oh," I said, sounding hapless.

      Wan-Li crossed her right foot over her left. I knew she was squeezing her thighs together again. I caught her flicking a wistful glance towards the front of the shop, no doubt looking for the Perm to return from lunch. There was evidently no sign of the older woman because Wan-Li released a barely audible sigh. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was still a few minutes before one. Seeing me do this, she asked hopefully, "You have to go back to work?"

      "No, I can go back a bit late. They owe me some time."

      "Oh," she said, disappointed. She uncrossed her legs and quickly re-crossing them in the opposite direction.

      "So," I prompted, "if you have a few minutes, maybe you could pick out some shirt and tie combinations that would work."

      My suggestion served to intensify her fidgeting still further. "Um, I go for lunch in minute," she said, clearly trying to get rid of me. She couldn't just come out with it and tell me to bugger off, however; that, I guessed, would be a sackable offence.

      "Okay, but until then, would you mind?" I persisted, indicating the shirt rack.

      Visibly steeling herself for the task, Wan-Li uncrossing her legs and walked briskly to the display, her heels clicking rapidly. "What size collar?" she demanded somewhat shortly.

      "Um, fifteen."

      She moved to the appropriate section, flipping over the shirts in search of what she considered appropriate for me. I wondered if she was even trying to find anything suitable because she was standing there tapping the toe of her right shoe on the floor and bending forward a little. As she flipped through shirts with her right hand, I noticed that she was pressing the left one against her stomach. I guessed she was longing to reach down and thrust it under her skirt and push hard against her crotch. I savoured the fact that she couldn't do so, or indeed do anything to ease her mounting desperation.

      She selected three shirts and carried them to a table where she laid them out. She then marched quickly to the tie rack and spun the display violently. She selected ties in rapid succession and returned to the table with them. "You come," she instructed. I thought to myself, if you have to wait for the loo much longer, I probably will!

      Wan-Li hastily laid one tie on each of the three shirts. "They good," she informed me, gesturing to her selections.

      "Okay," I said, desperately trying to think of a way to prevent her leaving. Inspiration struck, and I said, "I'll buy them."

      "You buy all?" she asked, surprised.

      "Yes, all," I agreed.

      She looked alarmed, realizing that she would have to stand behind the till for several minutes while she scanned the items and processed the credit card I was already extracting from my wallet. I caught her glance towards the front of the shop again, no doubt hoping for salvation, but there was still none to be had.

      Snatching up the shirts and ties, she marched over to the tills and used her key to unlock one of them. I could only see the top half of her body now, but it was clear from the way she was jogging up and down that she was squirming her legs around. She did her best to concentrate of removing the security tags from the garments, but every few seconds I saw her attention stray back to the front of the shop. I glanced at my watch once more and saw that it was five after one. Wan-Li had already been forced to hold her pee for five minutes longer than she expected, and there was no telling how late back her colleague was going to be. I could almost see the same thoughts going through her mind.

      It took her about a minute to remove all six tags, then she began hurriedly scanning the bar codes. She was swiping the shirts so hastily that the machine kept beeping to report a scan error. Wan-Li forced herself to slow down and she met with more success, until she got to the bar code on one of the ties which simply refused to scan. If I'd known who the printer was who messed it up, I would have bought him a pint. After five attempts to scan the tie, Wan-Li was forced to key in the long string of numbers by hand.

      She was still hopping around as she worked her fingers over the keyboard. She completed inputting the code and hit enter, but the machine beeped again. The panic in her eyes was acute. "Oh," Wan-Li gasped, and biting her lower lip she keyed in the numbers again. I glanced up at her brow and saw that she was sweating. Beads of perspiration were standing out on her skin. She couldn't last much longer.

      Another customer arrived, and glancing at the woman's basket full of clothing, Wan-Li swallowed heavily. It took me a few seconds to work out why, and then it struck me: Even if the Perm showed up now, Wan-Li would not be able to abandon a customer part way through a transaction, and processing everything in the woman's basket was going to take even longer than doing just my six items.

      Wan-Li scanned the remaining ties so hastily that she was forced to swipe the last one three times before the machine read it successfully. Then she rang up the total, informed me what that was in a strained voice and took my proffered card. She swiped it and I heard a modem kick-in as the machine dialed into the bank's system for authorization. Wendovers, it seemed, didn't even have cable.

      Wan-Li bent forward a little as she tore of the credit card receipt and pushed it towards me to sign. I made a futile search for a pen I knew I didn't have, and after a few seconds of this she thrust a biro at me too. I signed with a flourish and waited for my own copy of the receipt to print. "Thanks," I said as she handed it to me.

      With clear reluctance, Wan-Li began taking items from the shopping basket now perched on the counter before her. Unwilling to leave at this critical moment, I circled around the tills and began rotating a display of belts situated about ten feet away. Standing on the far side of the display, I had a view of Wan-Li between two of the tills right down to her knees. Peering through a gap between the hanging belts, I watched her skirt stretch as she wiggled her thighs around, tapping her unseen heels on the floor. I stood mesmerized as she raised her left foot, bent her knee so that the heel of her shoe practically touched her backside, then lowered it in order to do the same thing with her other leg.

      She kept this up as she worked her way through the basket's contents, her exchanges with the customer increasingly taciturn as her desperation became critical. Her movements had become extremely jerky as she battled the burning desire to empty her bladder.

      After another minute, the shopping basket was empty and the woman, having paid in cash, departed. Wan-Li tried to escape from the next waiting customer, a pregnant woman, by darting out from behind the tills, arms folded tightly across her bulging stomach and walking towards the front of the shop, perhaps to look for her erstwhile and extremely late colleague. "Excuse me," the pregnant woman called after her in a no-nonsense tone, arresting Wan-Li's progress. "I need some help getting something down from one of the shelves."

      Wan-Li looked pained as she marched back. "What you want?" she demanded as she reached the woman.

      "There's a box on the top shelf over there," the pregnant woman pointed, "which has a pair of shoes in my size. Would you get them down for me?"

      Without answering, Wan-Li hurried over to the shoe section and snatched up a pair of steps. She opened them at the point the woman indicated and stepped up onto the platform. Her legs were now on full display to the customers around her. Painfully conscious of this fact, Wan-Li did her best to stand still as she reached up for the indicated shoe box.

      Abandoning caution I walked over to the shoe section. As I approached, I saw Wan-Li double up sharply and press her knees together. To my astonishment and delight, pee was running down her legs, splattering onto the platform at her feet. Wan-Li dropped the shoe box as she clutched at the front of her skirt, bunching the material between clawed fingers. She was longing to pull it up to avoid making it wet, but she still had sufficient presence of mind to remember where she was and refrained.

      Descending the three steps as quickly as she could, Wan-Li continued losing control and more pee streamed down her legs, dripping onto each the steps. I watched, fascinated as still more urine meandered down her legs, a wet patch now appearing on the front of her skirt.

      Just at that moment, a voice behind me boomed, "Wan-Li! What on earth are you doing?" I glanced round to see that the Perm was back. She was staring aghast at her embarrassed colleague. I looked back at Wan-Li and found that the poor girl's face had turned scarlet while her eyes brimmed with tears.

      Without a word of reply, Wan-Li turned and half-ran, half-hobbled towards the back of the store, presumably heading for the toilets and leaving a trail of pee in her wake.

      As I left the shop, my shopping bag positioned in front of me to hide the enormous bulge in my jeans, I decided that this had been the most exciting lunch hour I'd ever taken. I knew the memory of that attractive Chinese girl standing on those steps and wetting herself would be with me always.