 
Once Upon A Time... The End?

Tony Spencer

Published by Tony Spencer at Smashwords

Copyright © 2013 Tony Spencer

Smashword Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction, any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is wholly unintentional.

A collection of seven short stories with the common theme of the brevity of relationships or how quickly they can change from one state to another. Just to keep the reader on one's toes there may also be the odd exception that proves the rule, whatever the rules are!

Themes include: an allotment blog, a gangster's moll, relocation, a fisherman's catch, a long separation, a Freudian slip, and actors, typical!

### MONDAY. BLOG FROM A POTTING SHED

When I first retired, well, was forced into a spell of relative inactivity by redundancy from my normal course of employment and the lack of effort, both on my part and the locally-inundated employment office, I found myself kinda at a loose end.

I only had twelve months left on my mortgage which added up to about ten grand outstanding, plus the bank loans of three grand on the car and an odd couple of hundred on a washer-drier, which was all covered by PPI. So I was sitting pretty, I had a nice lump sum to put in the bank from the severance, plus all my outstanding debts paid for me, and a monthly stipend coming in from social security, so I didn't really have to work for a living any more.

I tried to call Wayne at the bank to thank him for selling me that insurance cover that I didn't think I needed but he never returned my calls. I keep getting calls on my mobile about PPI and I tell them every time to keep it up, that they are doing a grand job, best product I ever bought. They never seem happy about my genuine heart-felt comments, they must just be extremely modest about having given me the very best advice I could possibly have had at the time I took out the loans.

Anyway, after a year on the dole I was still out of work with just a couple of years to go before I finally draw my state pension, so the employment people gave up trying to find me a job and put me on this pension credit instead. This was just like unemployment benefit but I didn't have to go through the farce of applying for non-existent jobs. Apparently a lot of agencies don't like potential clients (or rivals) to know they've hardly got anything on their books so they invent hundreds of false jobs just to look as though they have business. All that does is give false hope and waste everybody's time. Fortunately, not mine any more.

It left me at a loose end with nothing much to do but sit around the house. I would have been happy doing that, perfectly happy in fact. Working for a living loses its appeal after 48 years with your nose pressed up to the grindstone. No wonder my looks have gone. One look at my mug and you'll never be scared by gargoyles again.

My time was my time. Well, that's what I thought.

No, Solomon Tree, your time was my wife Amanda's, to do with what she wanted. I had known that all along I suppose, but the daily routine of filling potholes and clearing drains had hidden the true facts of life from me.

My wife of long standing (too bloody long, I think sometimes) took a view and immediately decided I needed a vegetable allotment halfway across town to keep me from getting under her feet all day. She organised it for me, as she pretty well organises my life for me in general. She seems to organise everybody in our little community.

Mandy needed the car during the day for shopping and socialising with her friends. She's never worked a single day at a paid job in her life but was usually kept far busier than me, even when I had a career in road repair. I suppose this all helps keep her young, well she's fifteen years younger than me to start with.

She has coffee mornings with her other layabout, sorry, homemaker friends, then there's shopping and library/museum visits in the afternoons, charity and fundraising organisations, women's institute and townwomen's guild meetings in the evenings. In between she spends several hours a week down the gym. No wonder she keeps her firm hour-glass figure. Damn, she even arranged weekend shopping outings too, taking in a musical show and overnight stays with her friends in London and other places. Other than our evening meals I hardly ever see her.

Mandy knows I hate musicals, so I count myself bloody lucky being able to watch match of the day in peace and quiet with a pizza and a can or six of ale at regular intervals.

When I was home alone, in those first few weeks after redundancy, I kept getting calls from her friends to this or that meeting or invitations for her to certain places and times, or I had to take messages. I was like her unpaid bleedin' appointment secretary. Our fridge was covered in yellow post-its. Some of her friends' husbands also kept calling asking her to ring back. Bloody hell, I thought, if she got me doing her appointments diary like these other guys were clearly doing, my life wouldn't be my own anymore.

So I wasn't too unhappy at first to get out of going to the allotment every day, knowing if I didn't my life wouldn't be worth living at home. So I picked up an old push-bike with a basket on the front and rack over the back wheel. Didn't cost me anything, because I saw it in the local free ads. Had to take the wheels off to get it in the car to get it home though, and had to keep pumping up one of the tyres, which had a slow puncture, every couple of days.

Well, I found a little potting shed on the plot that the gardening secretary allotted me, which was handy. Looking around the plot it looked like the previous holder only grew stinging nettles at one end and docks at the other, no doubt to sort out any stings suffered by passers-by.

Them stinging nettles sure grew high and wide. Must be some great soil under there I thought. So I scrapped off some of them weeds and put them in the compost area at the end of the plot, which I had filled up to overflowing before I got to the end of the first row of weeds.

Damn! I had by my reckoning twenty more rows to do, so when nobody was looking, I put the next row of weeds in my neighbour's bin. Result! That was the solution. I ended up taking wheelbarrow-loads all over them allotments, especially early in the mornings when it was quiet and no-one about. I found that a little sure goes a long way!

I tried to burn some of it off, too, after lugging two gallons of petrol from the other side of town, one in the basket and holding onto the other can while I steered the bike one-handed. The cans were too big, they wouldn't bloody-well fit on the rack.

The damn wind was a bit fierce that day and the flames soon cleared most of the dock patch plus three neighbouring plots, a shed containing at least fifty racing pigeons (championship-winners all, I later found out) and a six-foot high boundary fence for a length of about thirty-six feet or so, fortunately just missing the allotment clubhouse by barely six feet.

If the wind had been blowing the other way I'd've lost my damn potting shed! That would have been a disaster. Phew!

Anyway, I hid the petrol cans at the back of the shed, covered by some sacks, and blamed the fire on vandals. There was a lot of muttering goin' on, I can tell you, but I've got a thick skin, you need one when you've been married as long as I have, married twice as it happens. One thing though, helplessly watching them pigeons being roasted alive in front of me put me off my regular Friday night KFC for almost a fortnight.

Anyway, I scraped off the rest of the nettles which the flames didn't touch, planted a load of seeds that spring and all that came up in the summer were nettles at one end and docks at the other. At least that damn plot was reliable. I made a lot of nettle tea that year and had enough dried leaves to last me well into my seventies. I hoped they were good for me, cos they tasted like shit.

The next autumn and winter, Mandy forced me down the allotment again every single bloody weekday, that took a bit of the gloss off getting out of the house. Anyway, I put a paraffin heater in the potting shed plus an armchair I found in a skip down Shepperton Street. It had casters on three of the corners so I managed to push it down there with only three stops on the way to get my breath back. Anyway, I left the door of the shed open when it wasn't raining so the damp mildew whiff of that chair died down a bit.

Either that or I just got used to it.

That autumn and winter I dug the plot over as thoroughly as old Arnold from plot 392, about 12 rows over in the other direction, showed me. That second year I grew a few things but the only real successes were purple sprouting broccoli and butternut squashes.

Mandy soon got fed up with broccoli and neither of us like squashes much, I soon found out. Somebody had given me some squash and broccoli seedlings, they are generous like that up at the allotments, and they came up like bloody weeds. Most of the other seeds I put in the plot simply lost the will to live.

Anyway, them broccolis don't need much looking after, can't I come home once in a while?, I asked the wife at tea one miserable winter evening.

Mandy said I needed to keep myself occupied, not under her blessed feet all day. What bloody feet?, I thought, although I didn't say it, she was out with her friends nearly all day and when it was her turn to play host I could have had a snooze upstairs with nobody being any the wiser.

So, the next idea she had was to buy me a tablet, she called it, saying I could use it to write a blog, an allotment blog.

What's a bleeding blog when it's at home? I asked.

It could be anything you like she said, what about writing about your allotment or write some stories, keep yourself amused, sweetheart?

Yeah, I could get all I know about gardening on one side of a tablet, I thought.

I remember we had them at school, learning to write our letters and numbers with chalk on a black slate tablet. My Mam used to moan because I got chalk all over my navy blue shorts, that chalk dust used to get every-bloody-where.

It didn't matter if I got chalk on my trousers anymore now, though, they were getting pretty grubby every day from the allotment anyway, so that tablet couldn't be any more trouble than it used to be, could it? She gave it to me with a bright pink plastic cover round it, she said it was so I'd see it if I left it lying around. So thoughtful, my wife.

I cycled to the potting shed with sleet and snow forecast for later in the day. I was thinking of setting to and making a start on digging the plot over ready for the spring. It was bloody cold when I got there so I got the paraffin heater in the potting shed going first. I ain't that daft. I double-dug the first two rows (dropping shovelfuls of the nice compost that I had made with last year's nettles), so I had learned something from my activities.

They also had a lorry load of stable manure steaming in the corner and told to help ourselves. First forkful turned up a horseshoe and thought I better quit digging. You never know, I thought, if I carried on I'd get the bloody saddle. Anyway, Old Arnold said, nail the horseshoe above the door to your potting shed, it'll bring you good fortune. Well, I did that, but I'm not superstitious, I told him, touching the wooden shed for luck.

When it started to sleet halfway through the morning I retired into the potting shed. It was quite dark in there as it was so overcast and gloomy out and only the one window on the north side. I thought I might have to invest in one of them there camping gas lamps or lanterns. Old Arnold had one, it was really bloody noisy but didn't smoke or smell anywhere near as bad as the paraffin heater did. I thought I'd make a shopping list note on my brand new tablet. Mandy would appreciate me using her present so soon.

I had a packet of chalks already. I was in the scouts once so I came prepared. When I say I was in the scouts once, I actually only went the one time, with Billy Merryweather who was keen on wearing the khaki uniform as well as the short trousers. Well, we all wore short trousers in those days, until we were 11, perhaps wearing those shorts after that age kept Billy feeling young again. Them scout leaders put me off that first meeting with all that cheerful bloody dib dib dib stuff, talk of woggles and earning badges and crap, so I never went again. That Billy Merryweather went all the bloody way though, venture scouting, Duke of Edinburgh Award for walking somewhere, the lot; had his very own troop at one point, till he got caught for feeling youngsters. He wears a bright day-glo orange uniform nowadays, apparently, not sure if they come with long or short trousers.

Anyway, I unwrapped the pink cover and sure enough it looked like a modern equivalent of my old tablet, although a lot flashier and made of metal and glass rather than the wood and slate they used in my day. Bloody chalk wouldn't work though, the surface was too shiny. I could write on the pink cover, but then it rubbed off as soon as you bleeding looked at it.

I rummaged around in my diddy box at the back of the potting shed and found the permanent magic marker I used to write plant labels, so I could tell if that row were all weeds or only mostly weeds. That worked a treat, that marker, but a dark black on a dark grey background wasn't very readable, so I noted on the tablet that I definitely needed a camping gas lantern.

Then I wrote a sentence about my nettle compost and that was it, I had filled up the tablet. I hoped it hadn't cost much because it didn't contain a lot. I held it up, to the light, it looked alright. Then I propped it up on a shelf, leaning at just the right angle against an inverted eight-inch terracotta pot, and admired it. I had done my best joined up writing, too. The wife would be impressed, I was sure of that.

I've filled up that tablet, I told her that evening while we were clearing the table after the meal.

She normally lets me back indoors about ten minutes before tea-time so I've a chance to rinse the dirt and sweat off and change into clean clothes before I'm allowed to sit down anywhere that shows marks easily. Every bit of furnishing in that bloody house marks easily, I reckon the shops look out delicate items just for Mandy when they see her enter their store.

Mind you, if I'm late for tea she threatens to give my dinner to the dog, or she would if we still had one. We did have a dog when the kiddies were little, but not any more. She and the kids loved that little dog, while I hated the annoying yapping little bugger. Only I was the one that had to take it out for walks and calls of nature. If mongrels were thoroughbreds that dog would still be a bloody mongrel, it didn't look anything like the pictures I've ever seen on the tins of dog food we bought.

That dog got really fat on beer and crisps, I remember. Towards the end I had to drag the bloody thing out of the house, it really didn't want to go. I don't get much chance go to the pub since, I really miss that little dog.

You can't've used it up already, Solly, my wife Mandy yelled from the kitchen as she started washing the pots while I fiddled with the TV trying to find the sports channels. Our bloody TV reverts to the Hallmark Channel every bloody time I turn it on to use it, they must pay a special bloody fee to Samsung and Sony or something.

I said used up what? I have a very short attention span and had forgotten all about the tablet while I searched for the footy.

She said, the tablet, I got you one with the biggest memory they had.

Memory? What the bloody hell you on about?, I yelled back. My Mam always made us tie a knot in a handkerchief to remind us to remember something. My wife switched me over to paper tissues years ago and my memory's never been the same since.

Let me have a look at it she said, all annoyed like, while you do the washing up. Blimey, that was a rare thing, she likes me just to dry up and put things away, she says that not only do I stretch her marigolds out of shape, I always seem to get them wet on the inside. Well, my hands sweat a lot in those bloody things, don't they?

When she found my best handwriting on my tablet, she swore long and loud. You can't please everybody, I guess, and I never please her, especially lately.

"Solomon Tree," she said, "Sometimes words absolutely fail me."

Well, that's what she said but that didn't stop her one little bit and I know from experience that it never had in the past.

She went on and on. Some of the words she came up with I had to look up later in the dictionary she got me for Christmas. I had worked with some roadmen who used nothing but Anglo-Saxon and she still stumped me with some of what she came up with.

At one point she went out into the back yard and screamed, I've never seen so many bloody crows in the air at the same time before.

When she calmed down, several frosty hours later, she showed me this switch on the side of the tablet. Bloody hell, it was like looking at a little telly when she switched it on. She showed me the calendar where I could put my appointments. Yeah right, same old bloody thing every day, I'll really need that! She had a similar tablet, she said, which kept track of all her functions and meetings on it.

Then she showed me where I could type things up on a notepad and she set up one file as a shopping list and another as gardening tips and yet one more where I could write some kind of blog, if I wanted. Mandy pointed out where the electric plug went so I could charge it up overnight.

I thought I would like to write some stories, I said, perhaps come up with the great English romantic period novel and make our fortune, you know, from the point of view of an idiot. When she calls you that often enough, it sort of sticks.

Well, honey, Mandy said with a fair amount of feeling, I noticed, if you want to write about romantic matters using the benefit of your experience, I think you better make 'em short and brief. She went off to the kitchen laughing at that. Female humour, I just don't get it at all.

Anyway, by the time she had explained how the tablet worked I felt my head spin and I was so dizzy that I had to go have a lie-down.

Next day I cycled down to the potting shed, taking that fully-charged tablet with me. I did a bit of digging of the allotment until it started raining. The whole allotment site was pretty well deserted. Everyone had better things to do than spend their day on a windswept field in the rain. I made myself a kettle of nettle tea on the primus stove I installed last winter and had another look at that bloody tablet.

I found the switch and turned it on and up came the notes page. The keyboard popped up at the bottom as well and I could type away with one finger. Trouble was I couldn't see the screen very well because of the magic marker all over the bloody thing. I kept losing track of what I was thinking and typing the magic marker words that I could see instead.

After typing "camping gas" three times when thinking about Brussels sprouts and cabbages, I had a rummage around the back of the potting shed. I found a sheet of wet-and-dry, an abrasive glass paper which I use to keep my wooden tool handles nice and smooth. It worked a bloody treat, with the added bonus of taking that annoying shiny glare off the screen.

That's when Widder Madeleine Collins came over to see what I was doing, the nosy cow. She took over old McPherson's plot near the new fence this winter and has been digging it over for months now. McPherson never got over the loss of his precious birds and went downhill fast, poor old bugger.

I was taught manners by my Mam so I offered Maddy a nettle tea and let her use my easy chair, thinking that green mildew looks bad at first when it gets on your clothes but it brushes off easy when it dries up after two or three days.

I didn't worry too much about the smell, I had put up with that potting shed for over two years, I could put up with her sweaty armpits for a minute or two. I pulled up an old wooden soap box to perch my butt on.

It gave me a chance to look her over while she looked at my tablet. God, that woman must have the thickest legs I've ever seen on a woman, most tug-rope teamsters would give their eye-teeth for those pins. She was about thirty, I think, rumour down the allotments had it that she had worn her last husband out well before she buried him. She was short, as wide as she was high and with huge tits. She needed thick legs with those breasts, if her legs were any thinner she'd keep falling over.

Maddy wasn't pretty, unless the term "pretty ugly" counts. When she smiled you couldn't help notice that she had lost both her upper canines and first molar on each side, giving her a huge overbite, and the colour of her teeth were nearer green than cream. Matched the colour of the fur on her tongue, though. Trouble was when you spoke to her you couldn't help notice her wobbly tits. Maddy's cleavage seemed to start at her throat and end around her knees.

When Mandy dresses up and exposes the top of her breasts you could barely insert a fag paper in her cleavage, with Widder Collins you could lose a set of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.

I lifted my eyes from her tits to find her regarding me with her gap-toothed grin. Shit! I thought, caught out again! That happens to me all the bloody time. Mandy hates being in mixed company with me, which is why she never lets me go out with her, I guess.

"Play your cards right Solly," Maddy cooed, "And we could have this May-December thing going between us, wink-wink!"

Don't know what the hell she was on about, that dumb Widder, don't she know it's only February?

Anyway, I said, can't afford to chew the fat, regretting the words as soon as I said them. She didn't seem to take offence, though.

This rain looks like it's in for the day, I said, so I'll be on my way home.

Being a gentleman, I left the shed door open for her, the shed on her plot was burned down a couple of years ago, if you remember.

I was soaked to the skin by the time I got home. No-one about, of course, Mandy was probably at some coffee morning, or heading to a lunch date with another set of old biddies. As I ran a hot bath in the en suite and stuffed my wet clothes in the washing basket, I thought what a dope I was, I could have been coming back any time over these past couple of years, as she was almost always out and about with her pals.

Perhaps if I sneaked a look at her tablet to find out her movements I could come back for a snooze any time I liked. I may not be too bright, but when I get a good idea, it's a really bloody good one.

I was about to sort out my pyjamas after setting my alarm clock for three hour's time, which would give me a couple of hours down the pub before cycling back in time for tea, when I heard the front door open and the sound of voices downstairs. Damn! Caught out the very first bloody morning I sneak home. I never get an even break, do I?

I held my breath as they hung up their damp coats, it was pouring down outside. Hopefully, I thought, they will go into the kitchen for a cuppa, or the sitting room for a chin-wag. Damn! They were coming up the bloody stairs!

I didn't have a stitch on. I couldn't hide in the en suite, Mandy would be bound to use it if she'd been drinking coffee all morning. The wardrobes were out, those sliding doors always made a noise opening that she would hear, and if they had been shopping she probably had new clothes to hang up anyway.

The only hiding place, and it was a very tight fit, was under the bed. I scooted under there, hoping she wouldn't spend ages trying on whatever clothing she had bought and go out again fairly sharpish. I thought I had a good chance of getting away with it, my bike was in the shed behind the garage, she never went in there; my clothes stuffed in the wash basket, my wet towel drying off nicely on the heated rail. Fingers crossed, I thought.

I couldn't actually see her or who she was with because the hessian lining under our old bed sagged all around me. I could hear her though, gigging as she came into the room, both of them kicking their shoes off and the rustling of clothing coming off. Then she jumped on the bed and started bouncing about, squealing like she was really happy. Next or Marks'n'Sparks must've had a bloody spring sale on, I thought.

Then I thought I could hear kissing. Damn! I thought, they must've both scored well in the sales and were happy as sand monkeys and doing the old mwaw-mwaw that women do for some unknown reason. I might even get lucky tonight if she was in a good mood, I thought, that's if I can remember how to do it, it's been so long since.

There was fifteen years age difference between us, so with me in my mid-sixties, she would be in her late forties, I was jammed in under that bed so tight, especially with those two ladies on the bed, that I couldn't see my fingers that I needed to work out the ages. Anyway, she used to turn me down so often, probably because she was going through the change and was no longer interested, that I didn't even bother to ask her for any nookie any more.

They were bouncing around so much, with Mandy squealing like a new-born piglet rooting out a sow's nipple. The other woman had a really deep voice I thought. The bed springs were by then making so much bloody racket I could hardly hear myself think.

It reminded me a little of when Mandy and I used to make love, only it went on a hell of a lot longer than that. Damn! Just thinking about that gave me an erection, and I hardly ever got them nowadays. It was poking up into that hessian lining, with the bed bouncing up and down, I actually came all over it.

The bed stopped moving so wildly for a while, just a bit of fidgeting going on. No doubt Mandy and friend had stopped getting excited unwrapping their purchases and had started wriggling and putting them on. One of them ran into the en suite. When she came back the other one ran out there, she must've been a big lass, she sounded like a bleedin' elephant.

Yeah, I thought, too much coffee, mind you that nettle tea has the same effect on me, good job I keep those couple of old milk bottles in the potting shed for emergencies, don't want to frighten the old girls that get down there, do I? He-he!

I heard the toilet flush, then a run and jump on the bed and then the bloody bouncing started all over again. Damn! I got a bloody erection again. Twice in one day, must be a record for the decade, I thought. I wished they'd finish being so excited, they were probably trying on each others clothes now and it sounded like they were breathlessly wrestling each other. Damn! That thought only made my erection harder. That was exhausting. I must've dozed off for a while.

It was my alarm going off that woke me. I was stiff as a board, all of me, I had never been so bloody hard. I turned off the alarm. The room was empty, the new clothes put away and the shopping bags no doubt recycled, even the bed remade. The sheets smelt of fabric softener and it wasn't even washday Friday. The house sounded quiet. I dressed quickly and crept down the stairs. The house was empty and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had gotten away with it. Phew! I had a final look round to make sure everything was straight before leaving and thought there was was something odd in the en suite. Then it hit me, bloody hell, I had left the bloody toilet seat up! That was one of Mandy's pet hates. That was a damn close call I thought as I lowered it again. Everything was right with the world again, thank goodness.

The only thing was I still had this massive stiffie that refused to go down. What was I going to do with that?

I had been hoping that Mandy would be in a good mood when we were both together that evening and be prepared for a little loving, but the way she had tidied away her shopping, even down to hiding the shopping bags, probably meant she had overspent her budget and was more than a little ashamed. That would definitely put the kibosh on any nookie. I couldn't mention anything about it cos then she would know I was at home. I was in a lose-lose situation.

Then I remembered Maddy. It suddenly occurred to me that she had been coming onto me at least a little, and I've heard them rumours about Widders before. Now, an older man married to a young and attractive wife, who in fact was very fit, and I mean fit in every sense, doesn't mess around with other ladies. I never had. But I was in the mood, my equipment was up and ready and I thought Maddy was too, and what goes on in the potting shed stays in the potting shed, or something like that.

I put my coat on and pulled the bike out of the garden shed.

Maddy's car was still in the car park at the allotments, that was good. My potting shed door was shut when I reached it. Not surprising, really, it had stopped raining but it was always cold in late February. I was hot and sweaty, mind, from the cycling.

I yanked the door open and perched on my old armchair was Maddy, bouncing up and down on ... he peered around her, it was a considerable stretch for a short fella, Old Arnold from twelve plots over. Damn! How could she? She was supposed to have been my bitch! And Old Arnold, as well, I mean, he was old, really old, old enough to be my ... older brother at least. Damn! I shut that door again and cycled up the pub.

Over a pint of Directors bitter I sat in the _White Swan_ and thought about the day. I had had three erections, in fact the damn thing was still half hard under the oak table. And I had come once too. For the first time in my life, alright, the first time since I married my second wife, I had actually thought about banging that bloody ugly Widder. Damn!

Mandy had encouraged me to write, I had the tablet, the handy dictionary in my haversack and a pint of giggle juice in front of me. I could do this, I could write something based on this experience.

"-the fair-haired beauty relaxed her creamy-white alabaster smooth thighs, while the highwayman's huge and excitingly roughened hands cushioned her rounded cheeks, inexorably lowering her down onto his rampant extension, feeling his swollen latex-clad tumescence smoothly penetrate her succulent innocence, fulfilling her wildest dreams in one delicious stroke-"

"Solly, what is it you have been reading out loud?" Mandy gasped, her breathing heavy, her cheeks burning scarlet with a flush of excitement. She brushed a non-existent hair from her temple.

"I was just getting to the last but one paragraph of the first two pages of the regency romance tale I was trying to write for you today. What do you think of it so far?"

"Solly, it was great, just for a moment there, you know, I was ... I still am very ... wet ... down there."

"Where?"

"You know ..." she looked at me with an unusual look on her face. A soft look. Damn! She hadn't looked at me like that in a long road. Oh damnation! I looked down at the front of my trousers, wow, a fourth erection today, that hasn't happened for ages either, in fact it never ever bloody happened before.

I looked up, Mandy was looking down where I had been looking.

"Wow, that hasn't happened for ages," she observed.

"Sure ain't," I had to agree.

She looked at me with a kinda smirk on her chops, sorry, her mouth. Haven't had her smile at me in that way either in a very long while.

"So," she said, huskily, holding out a hand and taking the tablet, dropping it on the table, squeezing my other hand in hers, "When were you going to continue writing that story?"

I didn't even have to think about what to do, it's what I do best.

"Think I'll start tomorrow!"

THE END ... until Tuesday, anyway ...

<~~~>

### TUESDAY. NOT PASSING GO!

I drove the limo to her office and I picked up a very beautiful young woman. I was supposed to take her to the airport. She realised almost immediately she got into the vehicle that the limo was the one that a driver she knew named Yousif normally drives. So, she asked tersely, clearly disappointed to find a middle-aged guy like me in the driving seat, where was Yousif?

I fed her a line, not much choice really. I apologetically admitted that this was my first day with the courtesy car firm and that taking her to the airport was only my second unsupervised job so far and I really don't want to muck this one up. I gave her my most charming smile and hoped she'd buy it. Her brow remained furrowed. Damn! This was supposed to have been a whole lot easier than this.

The plan was to drive her to the airport in time for her flight, collect another two hundred for my trouble and, as a bonus, see if I could sneak off with her passport and get away, leaving her there tapping her pretty little foot. That was the plan, I knew now, that nothing was that easy. I should have realised sooner and simply walked away. Maybe I could still do that. Just stop the car, get out and leave her and that limo well alone. Then I looked at her beautiful face in the mirror and knew I couldn't do that either. She would be an innocent victim. As for Yousif, he would have to take his chances.

She was still waiting for a better explanation from me. I couldn't tell her what was really going on, could I? She'd've freaked.

I lied and told her I had been introduced to a dozen different drivers and other staff on my first day today, so it was all a blur of faces but I thought that Yousif was a tall, very slender dark-haired young man with a neat moustache?

Yes, she said that's him, so why was he not driving today?

Damn good question, Danny boy, I thought, she's not only attractive, she's a sharp smart chick for someone still in her mid- to late-twenties, I guessed and with a comfortable lifestyle she'll probably still look gorgeous well into her middle years. Me? I'm 39 and well and truly careworn from a hard life, so I look way older than I am. I replied that as far as I understood it, and I was just the new guy and not entitled to know all the ins and outs of anything, Yousif had already planned the afternoon and evening off and, some time after he had left, this job of collecting her came in. Otherwise, maybe he would have been there for her instead of me, I suggested. Without waiting for her to comment, I moved the car out into the heavy early evening traffic, thinking that the airport was almost certainly not the best place to go, but that I better head that way until I could think of something better.

She went rather quiet and closed the soundproof courtesy window before trying to ring Yousif on his mobile, I could see her key in the numbers and press her mobile to her ear in the mirror. I could also feel his phone vibrating against my thigh as it was set on silent earlier in the day. I knew it was his phone, because I didn't have one of my own. Eventually it stopped moving and presumably went to voicemail as I saw her lips move, leaving a message. She fiddled with the phone again, making other calls, probably trying his known haunts. Best of luck finding him girl, he was actually only three feet away from her in the boot but they would never hear each other in that soundproofed compartment.

She knew his number off by heart, which brought to mind the smirk on his face when he told his caller that he knew the pick-up. I didn't know what religion Yousif was but I'm smart enough to recognise when someone knows another person in the Biblical sense, I was just late in reappraising those signals, I got rusty over the last few years I guess. He had repeated the name too, Susan Kollikov, over the phone, I now recalled. It was a common enough Russian name, even in London, so it didn't ring any alarm bells in my head at the time. They were jangling like bloody fire alarms at an oil refinery right now.

I knew we were both in serious trouble, well, Yousif was too, although he didn't know it, nor did she, yet.

Obviously there was no way I was going to tell the young lady that I had Yousif's mobile or that Yousif himself was trussed up tight and gagged in the boot of our sleek limo, next to whatever was going to kill them both. Me too, if I stuck around long enough.

OK, I am no limo driver. Sure, I've driven a few getaway cars, much smaller, more manoeuvrable and a whole lot faster than this baby elephant we were in but I was driving a limo today purely out of desperation.

Only got out of nick three days ago and the old muckers I was relying on for a decent leg up, having done my time at Her Majesty's Pleasure solely on their behalf, had disappeared off to warmer climes to spend theirs as well as my share of the multi-seven-figure takings. I had managed to locate where in Spain one of them, Mikey, was holed up and now I needed some seed money so I could get to him before he jumped, and through Mikey catch up with the rest of the thieving buggers, Marty and Simon.

I intended taking out my fair share from each of them either in lump sums or simply lumps. I was easy either way. I like accounts to be balanced, debit and credit, settled nice and neat to satisfy my own self-audit.

Anyway, earlier that afternoon, I was sitting relaxed in a café enjoying a warm sweet cuppa, it made a change from the tongue-strangling stewed brew I had become accustomed to. I was minding my own business and keeping out of the winter chill. I wasn't used to being outside much, just an hour's exercise a day for over seventeen hundred consecutive days leaves you a touch agoraphobic.

That's when I overheard this skinny guy dressed in a smart grey drivers' uniform, I now know as Yousif, taking a phone call. I only caught one side of the conversation, obviously, but the gist was he had to pick up a girl from a nearby office and take her to the airport, and was given the flight number. On a scrap of paper he wrote that down plus the city office post code, pick-up and departure times and finally the girl's name, which he repeated saying he knew the person. That's when that knowing smile played on his greasy chops.

What pricked up my ears was that some guy was bringing round her cases to the café with a two hundred down-payment and promised another two hundred at the airport where someone would meet them both with her tickets and passport, provided they met the timetable in time to catch the flight.

I could definitely use the cash and Freddie the Forger, who owed me big time, could convert that passport to something I could use to get out and back into the country without my parole officer being any the wiser-like, between our weekly appointments scheduled for my first six months out and about, mixing with the general public.

I had got up from my table first, went outside and waited, freezing my bloody balls off. Sure enough a big black car turned up outside the café, driven by a mature heavy-set bloke with a buzz cut, who looked more than a bit useful. From where I stood, in an alleyway behind where this long limo was parked, I could see they knew one another as soon as he went inside. They came out and walked over to the big dude's car. The guy opened his boot and handed over a couple of heavy smart leather cases to Yousif. They shook hands and Yousif was handed four crisp fifties, which he folded and put in his pocket. The big guy drove off. Yousif dragged the cases over to his limousine and unlocked the boot lid, opening it up.

That's when I hit him, short and sharp. In my game one punch is plenty. I bundled his limp body seamlessly into the cavernous boot, taking the keys out of his hand. I dropped the cases in on top of him and looked around. Nobody was about to see anything anyway. I drove the car around the corner where it was even quieter. I opened the boot again.

His uniform would never fit me, I was tall and broad, he was just as tall but painfully skinny, so I just took his cap. Good job he had a big head. I had lost a lot of weight in five years, I was leaner and harder than when I went in, I'd had to be to survive. I really needed to drill another hole in my belt but the battery in my cordless drill round at Mum's was so flat it wouldn't take a charge any more, so I had to keep hitching up my trousers to stop them falling down. Apparently hipsters were the biz with the kids, I was just too bloody old to look right in them.

There was a pack of polishing rags in the boot, they like these cars to be kept gleaming. I stuffed one in his gob and tied another over his mouth to keep it in place. Used others to tie his hands and feet and finally lashed them together with his necktie to stop him moving about when he eventually came to. He couldn't move much anyway, jammed up against those heavy cases.

Jeez, I thought, this Susan woman was either one big broad or she likes to wear a lot of boots, those cases sure weren't packed with skimpy knickers and bikinis. Perhaps she was going to the North Pole and had flat-packed the sled and a team of huskies.

In his pocket was the note of the office address plus the flight number. I took his mobile, too, using the web function to find out the check-in time. There wasn't much time to spare, so I went straight to her office.

So there we were, me driving up front and Susan sitting in the back wondering where Yousif was and why she couldn't get hold of him. Not much I could do about that.

Trouble for me was that I already knew of her fat hubby Benny Kollerov, he was the banker for my last bank job. Never met him, the business was conducted by middle men, but it was made certain that I knew who was entitled to a lion's share of the take and what would happen to me if I reneged on the deal. Made his money on Afghanistan drugs, apparently, with his hands also on an almost inexhaustible supply of high-quality plastic explosive, which I needed a few grams of myself at the time.

I had organised the bank job, and took on the risky business of driving decoy, a car recently registered in my own name, while a very similar car with fake plates which did the actually getaway from the job, was driven into a yard we'd rented while I drove off as the second part of a tag team, with the police following me in hot pursuit.

Damn those stingers. Stopped me in my tracks, I had banked on that, though. They arrested me for the bank job, while I countered with "I thought you were chasing me for unpaid parking fines, it's a fair cop for the fines, officer, but know nuffink about any bank job".

I thought that when the real getaway car was eventually found burnt out with almost the same number plate, with an F in the index number and mine with a broken bottom stroke of the E, I would have the perfect alibi.

The other car never turned up.

Somebody put me away, while the others got off scot-free. The police had a tape recording of me telling the lads my plan for the raid in the pub. The recording implicated me and me only, the rest of the boys kept schtum during the recording. Yeah, real funny that.

Got five years and had to do the lot. I was picked on for fights a lot inside, winning most, losing some, but mostly I lost any chance I might have had of early release for good behaviour. Funny that, too.

Buddies on the outside were supposed to look after me missus, while I was inside. They certainly did that alright, she had twins 15 months into my sentence. My Ma told me she'd named them Martina and Michaela, which meant either Simon was innocent or my wife was double-bluffing me and Simon was the father. Agnes wasn't that bright, she was cute but dumb when I met her on alpine training in Norway. Agnes and the girls were still living in our cheap near-hovel flat on a sink estate in Tottenham, so she definitely wasn't the mastermind behind my prolonged incarceration. The three stooges didn't have a brain cell between them either, but sod it, all three of them were getting the good kicking they deserved.

Susan slid open the courtesy window, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"I don't have my passport with me," she announced, "I need to go via my place, first."

I had been led to believe that the passport in question was already waiting for her at the airport and that she would have been informed of that fact, but that was now more than likely bloody unlikely, so was Yousif's promised two hundred for passing Go!

Anyway, A, she didn't need to know that and B, not moving towards the airport was a really good plan as far as I was concerned.

"Certainly, Madam," I replied, "What's the postcode?"

She gave it to me and I keyed it into the satnav, the resulting route led me to a destination just twelve minutes away, which was way better than the ninety estimated to the airport at this time of the evening, which would mean maybe an hour before getting to open country. No way was I staying behind that wheel for anywhere near another sixty minutes. I didn't know what the margin of error was, I wasn't prepared to assume anything at the moment.

"Thanks, driver, sorry I don't know your name?"

"Daniel, Miss, most of my friends call me Dan or Danny."

"It's Mrs rather than Miss, Danny, and you can call me Susan if you like, I prefer informality."

I understood that. She'd clearly been very informal with her previous driver. At least she hadn't asked me for my telephone number yet. Perhaps I was too old for her, only being about twenty years younger than her husband.

We had a short conversation, she found out I had a family (alright I lied again, this time about Agnes and the twins but it don't count as a lie if we're still married though, does it?), and she told me there was just Benny and herself, no kids yet. Like a sixty-year-old billionaire gangster with a grown-up family back in Moscow wants more kids? Anyway, she rabbited on, Benny had a holiday home in the Bahamas and that was where they were headed, apparently. Last minute plans?, I asked, knowing the answer already.

Apparently, yes. It was Benny's secretary that had called her out of the blue mid-afternoon about the spontaneously-arranged trip, yet Susan voiced the thought that she was sure Benny had a Lodge meeting the first Tuesday in the month and he never missed one, so why the panic, why not fly out tomorrow?

Yeah, why the panic? I guess old Benny had found out about Yousif and legal niceties are anathema to Russian gangsters, any gangsters I suppose. The Lodge meeting, with half the London Met top brass present, wouldn't hurt none either.

Susan directed me to the entrance of the underground car park under her building, once we reached the satnav destination. I guessed that car had 40 minutes left on the clock, enough time to get to the apartment, grab her passport, and let Yousif out. He had behaved himself, after all and I had no beef with him.

I just wasn't sure what to do with Susan herself. She was hot and bright, and my type was more cute and dumb, I smiled to myself. Yeah, right, any attractive girl was my type, I just didn't have much of a chance to register as hers, even in my wildest dreams. No, even though I would never be rewarded, I would have to get her away somehow. Her marriage had terminal stamped all over it, that didn't necessarily have to apply to her life as well.

We pulled up into a parking spot next to a smart shiny-new black Bentley, Benny's Bentley, no doubt. We both got out.

"Do you want me to go with you?" I asked, "In case you need a hand bringing anything down? You didn't pack your own bags, I believe?"

Susan thought for just a momentary hesitation.

"Not a problem, please wait here for me, Danny."

"OK, Susan." Not much else I could say, she was holding all the cards, calling all the shots. "Shall I come up in twenty minutes if you are not down?"

"That's a good idea," she smiled, "The Penthouse, the code to the car park door is 1234 and the elevator code is 5678. Damn! That is so lame, I hadn't really thought about it before."

I nodded and rested my butt on the bonnet, folded my arms, resigned to wait. "See you in twenty, then."

She flashed that stunning smile again and turned, walked through the car park and the code-protected door. My eyes followed her all the way, she sure looked tasty in that pin-striped suit cut just above the knee.

I gave her two minutes before pulling the heavy nearly foot-long torch from the glove compartment and following her through that door, ignoring the lift. I climbed the stairs fairly rapidly, I was still in good shape for an older guy. Only problem was my damn trousers kept wanting to go south. If Yousif had worn a belt I might've tried it on for size. It occurred to me then that I could've taken his tie to hold my kecks up, if I hadn't already used it to lash his hands to his feet.

That reminded me about Yousif, I could have dragged him out and dropped him the other side of the Bentley for safety. Plenty of time though, I could leave him for another twenty minutes. Just about.

The stairs didn't go right up to the penthouse, they stopped at a solid door a floor short. It took a different code to the ones Susan had given me, I guess she didn't use the stairs much. I had to open the window and climb out. Alright, I've done some cat burglary in the past, just never got caught doing it so it's not on my record. I knew the mountain climbing training I had in the Forces would come in handy. Plenty of handholds in the brickwork and I made it to a skylight over one of the darkened bedrooms in no time at all, carrying the torch in my mouth. A little judicious knife work with my gloves on to avoid leaving fingerprints and it was open. I dropped down almost silently into the room, pausing for a moment to hear any sounds in the apartment. I could hear voices, a male and female conversing quietly but animatedly, some distance away. I was in an empty bedroom.

I crept over to the door and twisted the knob slowly, it was well oiled and silent. I opened it a crack, using a single eye to look through into a deserted brightly-lit corridor. I opened the door wider and chanced a glance up and down. A door at the far end was open, where the voices came from. There was another closed door opposite this one, which I stepped up to and opened cautiously, it was in darkness, so I went in and closed the door silently behind me.

My eyes had long been attuned to the dark and I soon recovered from the brief exposure to the bright light in the corridor. I flicked on the torch. I was in what looked like the master bedroom with one of the biggest beds I'd ever seen. But what took most of my attention was a body on the floor in front of the bed, oozing scarlet onto a very nice Axminster rug.

He wasn't quite dead yet, but he didn't have long to go. Gut shot, single bullet, nine-millimetre by the size of the entry wound. Recently shot, longer than ten but twenty minutes tops, so it wasn't Susan. Somebody she rang from the limo?

I knew the signature of the gut shot, Dmetri. Another Russian gangster. Been around for a while, started off pimping, drug dealing and owned a couple of small bars-cum-nightclubs, all small stuff. Couldn't remember his surname but I knew it began with P, because everyone called him Poppemoff. He liked to hit his victims with a single shot in the gut and let them die slowly, twenty to thirty minutes.

Benny on the other hand liked to blow people up, timed to go off outside town in the country where it was less messy but not quite as far as the airport where they had sniffer dogs and the victim might just get away. Also, Benny no doubt wanted to kill two birds at the same time, his cheating wife and the cheeky bastard driver who did the nasty on him.

Anyway, there I was thinking about this nearly deceased body, his life leaking casually into that lovely woollen weave when I realised that the only reason for a rug on top of the thickest, plushest fitted bedroom carpet I've ever seen in my life was ... a floor safe.

I rolled the big bugger over, lifted up the Axminster and there it was. Oh, goody, a Marshall-Eckhart Mark 2a. Typical Russian gangster, drives a top of the range Bentley but keeps his valuables in the kinda safe you couldn't give away on eBay. Ideally, I needed a slotted screwdriver, but all I had was my trusty heavy penknife, which would have to do. The voices were still coming from the other room at the end of the corridor, so I had to be quiet. I lined up the knife, pulled the carpet back over to muffle the sound and struck the knife with the heel of my hand. I listened for a moment, nothing coming my way, so I checked the safe. It was open. It's criminal what rubbish some of these security firms pass you off with.

Inside were bundles of notes plus a lot other papers, I took the lot with just a quick glance through them. In cash alone there must've been eighty grand in fifties. I stuffed the notes in my waistband, at least they solved the problem of keeping my trousers up, while the other documents I slipped in my jacket or back pockets. I zipped up my jacket to keep everything secure. I closed the safe, which gently clicked shut, rolled back and smoothed out the carpet and then rolled back Benny. He let out a low groan. I stood up, time to get going, I thought.

Suddenly the door crashed open and before I could react a slug hit me at close range and lifted me off my pins. I fell back against the bedside cabinet, cracking my head on the wall and slipped out of consciousness.

I don't know how long I was out, at least a few minutes, the bedroom was still in darkness but now the corridor light was out as well. The only other immediate thoughts that surfaced was that my head and gut really bloody hurt. I was about to lift my hand to my head when I realised there was a gun in my ungloved right hand. That immediately brought to mind where I was and how I got here. I released the gun and fumbled around and found the torch, flicked it on. Benny was still where he fell, he didn't look well, no, not very well at all.

I checked the gun, it was an automatic and the magazine and chamber empty. It had my dabs on it and I was sure as hell that Benny's dabs would be on it too and, I could guarantee, nobody else's.

I imagined how Dmitri's mind worked, the created scenario being that Benny disturbed me, a known burglar. He shot me, I wrestled the gun from him and shot him back, he pushed me against the wall and then we conveniently both died of our wounds. That was the effect he wanted to create. I was feeling rather less than completely happy about being conveniently out of the way for Dmitri and the recently-widowed Susan.

I got up, unsteadily, unzipped my jacket and checked my stomach. The thick wads of notes had stopped the bullet going right the way through, although I would have some colourful bruises to show for it and probably piss blood for a few days. Written off about five grand, had Dmitri, but maybe Mum could still pass them off for me through the local shops, blame it on mice, we get a lot of them round our way, a lot more bloody mice than crisp fifties anyway.

Couldn't leave the gun there, I'd wipe it and dump it in the river on my way home. I stuffed it in my jacket, zipped it up and put my right glove on again. As I walked down the back stairs, the building suddenly rocked. Damn it Benny, I thought, used too much again as per bloody usual. I guess when you have to pay through the nose for the stuff you use barely enough; when you got loads you use loads. Well, he'll never learn now. I decided to take the fire escape at that point and let myself out the back.

Shame about Susan, if she'd stuck with me we could've had a gas instead of being vaporised with both her lovers. I recalled that instant back in the apartment, the open door, Dmitri and his gun, with Susan peering out from behind him, both hands clinging to his protective left arm.

Anyway, I've got a few bob literally tucked under my belt now so I can track down my ex-buddies, and got Benny's Russian passport in my back pocket for Freddie to work his magic on. Wonder what I'd look like in a buzz cut?

In my jacket I had the deeds for a seafront property in the Bahamas and another set for a luxury yacht, wasn't sure where it was moored but I'd track it down. I may have to invite Freddie over for the next few winters, he don't get out much. I know I carried what was left of Freddie after he stepped on that UID, for 5 kilometres, so he's got to concede we can finally call it quits so that I can pay him the going rate he deserves in future.

Then there was the bank vault key nestling safely in my pocket, along with the yellow post-it with the bank code, account number and password on it. Thank goodness Benny's mind was like a bloody sieve, I looked upon that as a bit of a bonus.

As I reached the end of the fire escape and strolled unconcernedly along the riverside walk, breathing in the cold night air. It started out heavy with the smell of cordite, burning rubber and fuel, but became cleaner, replaced by the fresh pungency of the ebb-tide river, a light mist rising from the water.

I thought the twins might like to learn to swim in a warm and secluded Caribbean cove as I tossed the automatic far out across the water.

What the hell, I thought, I can't help it if I'm comfortable with cute and dumb.

THE END.

<~~~>

### WEDNESDAY. IT'S JUST PUSSY

My new neighbour was stunning, nothing short of absolutely gorgeous. I knew I was smitten at very first sight and, of course, she knew I knew. They do don't they? I never stood a chance.

We danced around for a while, getting to know one another without getting too close. She smelled like she looked, hot! OK, I know you think you can't smell "hot", but when you are in love you can imagine anything. Anyway, this was one sweet-as-honey bitch who was in heat and I had the hots for her from the very first moment I saw her.

What was it about her that attracted me?

Everything!

To say she was easy on the eye would be an understatement. Her crystal clear almond-shaped eyes were beautiful, her legs were to die for, her shape simply good enough to eat. Petite but perfect. Hair was every colour from dark brown to blond, even a spicy touch of ginger, short and neat but soft as silk, shiny as spun gold.

Oh boy, was I in trouble!

It wasn't as if I went over there as soon as she moved in with any ulterior motive. I didn't take a cup of sugar, just _moi_. You know how it is, new neighbours, you gotta welcome them to the neighbourhood, warn them who to avoid, that kind of thing, but most of the time new neighbours are just pains in the butt. But Dolly? Oh my, Dolly was different.

Taking her out on the town and showing her the best night spots, canoodling for a while and ending up getting laid was actually the last thing on my mind. Alright, I own up, getting laid is always the first and last thing on my mind but at my age that is where it usually stays, just in my fertile mind. Damn, I've been around the block so many times they should rename this street Felix Block.

This youngster, Dolly, was a stone cold fox, a sex-kitten if ever I saw one. She was way too good looking, way too sophisticated, way way way too young for me. I knew I had no chance so I just played it casual, devil-may-care cool, even though I was ticking like a time bomb inside.

Dolly made me feel special. Maybe she was attracted to the fact that I played it so calmly when I was around her, tried not to make it too obvious that I could be hers if she played her cards right, or wrong, for that matter. She responded to me straight away, Dolly was way more than just friendly. She seemed interested in me, sending signals that even an insensitive old male like me found hard to ignore. We seemed to hit it off immediately. We clearly rubbed each other up the right way. Maybe that should have rung some alarm bells that she was a little too easy, eager even, a little too quickly. Love is blind they say and I was blinkered from the start.

She showed me round her house, the garden, the shrubs in the front lawn, told me her plans and dreams for the future. I told her I loved what she'd done with the place already, and she laughed. Wow! She sure was pretty when she laughed.

We went out and about and I showed her round, where the shops were, the park, introduced her to everyone. All the guys licked their lips, I knew they all wanted to get their paws on her but she seemed to want to stay close to me. I didn't complain, she boosted my ego. Well, I'm not much to look at, been in a few scrapes over the years, and have the scars to show it, but I have been told that some around here still regard me as a big bruising mother who is definitely not to be messed with.

Hey, that's all wrong, really, I'm nothing but a sweet gentle pussycat, once you get to know me, honest.

So, Dolly and me spent some time together that first day and night, in fact, right from the get-go we were inseparable. She laughed at all my jokes. Enjoyed my little tricks that I felt emboldened to show off. I acted like I was the cat's whiskers and she seemed impressed. Even when I was really embarrassing, she seemed to love it. Maybe, I thought she'd get to love me in time. Hell, I was in love with her already.

And then, completely out of the blue we made love. I just leaned in to say goodnight and she responded by licking my ear. I nibbled hers, one thing lead to another and there was no going back. It wasn't just sex, though, not for me anyway, this was just wonderful, it was love, true love.

When I walked home, I felt as light as a feather, with the feeling I could float home all the way, walk on air, or at least along the top of the wall between our properties, or climb to the top of the highest tree and announce to the moonlight that I, Felix, was hopelessly in love with Dolly.

The next day I slept in late. I'm way too old for late nights, I needed to recharge my batteries for later, if you know what I mean.

The day was bright and sunny, warm and sultry and it was already looking like it was going to be a sticky one today. Best find my love and take her to a shady place I know, where we could get loose and snooze.

So, after a light breakfast, a lot of washing and grooming to make me look as handsome as I could ever get. Well, if I say so myself, I do scrub up nice when I need to.

So I strolled across to my neighbour full of the joys of spring. No sign of her anywhere there though, maybe she was up the shops or the park.

So you could imagine my shock when I passed by her other neighbour's open gate to their back yard and found her with ... Tom. He's a big black mother from two blocks across, the very last pussy hound I would ever introduce Dolly to. Here he was in my girl's neighbourhood, ploughing her from behind right in the middle of the lawn. Her eyes were shut but I could tell she was loving every bit of it. Tom had his eyes open, a big "cat who got the cream" smile on his ugly mug, as if he was waiting just for me to come through the gate so he could mock me with his latest conquest. With my girl! What a bastard!

Just then, the householder came out of his house and chased the lovers off. Tom scooted over the back fence like his arse was on fire, while Dolly dashed for the open gate. She was looking at the neighbour at first, then turned and saw me. The look on her face, of shock, horror, the shame of being found out.

It could have been so good, girl, the expression on my face conveyed to her, but you blew it, we're finished. No going back now. She ran by me back to her house, her tail between her legs.

"Fuccccking cats!" the householder said as he threw the empty water bucket down, "They really piss me off!"

Yeah, you said it, Mister.

THE END.

<~~~>

### THURSDAY. THE CATCH

Drew loved to fish, any kind of angling, he was prepared to try. Coarse fishing occupied a lot of his spare time and he'd enjoyed a few holidays in Scotland over the years, hunting wild salmon and trout with a fly on a gossamer line, but his real love was sea fishing.

His uncle John introduced him to the pastime when he was a kid. Drew lost his dad to emphysema when he was very young and inherited a string of temporary uncles, few of whom bothered to give a snotty-nosed Drew the time of day. Uncle John wasn't around for long but he took him fishing for carp at a flooded quarry a couple of times and, in that old cliché, Drew was hooked.

Losing his dad to an occupational disease put Drew off coal mining, so when he came to choose a career, he sold insurance, mostly life, health and investment plans. Drew didn't break any industry records but he did OK. The business had changed wholesale since he started, most of it done over the phone nowadays but at the beginning he was put out there on his own, doing a lot of door-to-door leg work. He wasn't a bad-looking kid and looked after himself, dressed smartly for the job, so he got a lot of offers from bored housewives but turned them all down. He didn't consider himself a prude, he was as randy as the next man, but these desperate housewives reminded him too much of his Mum.

She had been lonely, desperate for love, still considered herself too young and pretty to be a widow hampered by two young kids, Drew's sister Alice is two years older. Drew's mum had to settle for short relationships, too much alcoholic drink and, he suspected, occasional recreational drugs. As a consequence of his Mum's desperation for affection and seeking attention elsewhere, there wasn't much time or love left over for the children, and both siblings found it difficult to establish lasting relationships themselves. Drew didn't blame Mum for his crappy childhood, they were just the hands that both of them were dealt, three duff hands if he included his sister. Both Drew and his sister Alice were still single, now well into their thirties, and both of them cold fish when it came to lasting romance. Drew only seemed to love cold fish.

That's why he cultivated his friendship with Alan when they were about ten years old. Alan's dad had a little boat moored up in an estuary about twenty miles from their mining village and, by palling up with Alan, Drew wangled a few fishing trips each summer.

Drew broke off the friendship briefly when they were both 15 and Alan started courting Janice, a girl Drew was rather sweet on but much too shy at that time to ask out.

After a couple of months Drew realised how much he missed Alan, even more than he missed the sea fishing, they really turned out to be good friends, after all. So, he approached Alan and Janice straight after school and shook Alan's hand and asked if they could be friends again, and Alan had embraced him without embarrassment in front of everyone and then Janice kissed and told him that Alan had been really miserable without his best friend to bounce off.

Drew didn't tell either of them exactly how he felt about Janice at the time, he would have been far too embarrassed, but that didn't stop him telling everyone at their wedding reception eight years later, through the hilarious medium of the best man's speech, the full story of how he loved them both and always would.

Apparently, everyone knew already, had always known, but it did Drew good to clear the air. Janice kissed him gently when it was his turn to dance with her, assuring him that the couple would both always love him as the very best of friends. He was later godfather to both their kids and now they had a third one on the way.

Janice kept trying to fix Drew up with her own friends with little success. The last few years they had almost exclusively been divorced or single mothers. He smiled at the recollection. No, if he was going to fall in love it was going to have to be someone very special, unfortunately Janice had set the bar way too high.

Alan was on board the boat, of course, it was now partly at least his boat. His dad had lasted longer than most, but you don't get many old miners draining the pension fund for very long. Alan didn't seem to spend much time fishing on this particular trip or the previous one, he was busy tinkering with the blasted engine again, ensuring he got it going again before the tide turned, in time to take them home.

Alan had gone down the mine like his father, from his sixteenth birthday, but the mine had been shut for over ten years now and he was currently employed as a forklift driver at an out-of-town supermarket. He needed to take the boat that he shared with his three brothers out on his turn every four weeks with a guest or three prepared to chip in for the beer, sandwiches, bait, gas and mooring fees to make the boat pay for itself. Today, Alan's brother-in-law Jack and a friend Andy from work were invited but each had cried off at the last minute for one reason or another, too late to find replacements.

Drew knew the score, and insisted Alan took fifty instead of the usual twenty. Alan knew the score too, and accepted the crisp folded notes without objection or argument, the bond between them so strong.

Drew hollered down the engine hatch, "Time for a beer break, Al!"

Alan poked his head, with one cheek streaked with black grease, through the engine room opening, just as Drew closed up the cool box, and smoothly caught the tossed can.

"Cheers!" laughed Drew.

"Likewise," grinned Alan. He clambered out and joined his crew-mate sat on a bench next to the half-dozen rods trailing their lifeless hooks and lines behind and to the side of the boat.

"Wow!" exclaimed Alan, looking around. "What a lovely day." Just a few puffy clouds punctuated the azure sky, a light swell barely disturbing the quiet water all around them.

"You should be up here enjoying the trip, not messing about with that engine. Get that spare one put in that Pat keeps offering you."

"We can't afford it, Drew, you know that, especially with the baby coming."

Drew knew the situation and wished he could help. He was working on it, actually. Old Pat down at the ships chandlers was a shrewd old sea dog, he knew the dilemma that was faced by the owners of the boat and had come up with a solution with Drew. Alan and his brothers couldn't afford to replace the engine but Drew could. The engine would cost half the value of the boat, so if he had a mind to he could probably negotiate a half share in the boat without the brothers having to fork out the capital investment. The difficulty then was with the running costs, which made it such a delicate matter. With the four brothers having equal shares, they could each take the boat out once a month, with two or three paying guests at a time and break even. With a fifth wheel, even if he just took the one turn every five weeks instead of every second week, the balance would shift and the brothers would eventually be unable to maintain their share and have to drop out. That would end Drew's friendly relationship with Alan's brothers and probably damage his best friendship with Alan. A prickly problem, no easy solution.

Pat's plan was that Drew quietly pay for half the engine, Pat would then offer it at half-price to the brothers on easy repayment terms. Drew was still considering it.

"Your father ordered that engine before he died, you know."

"Yeah, I know," Alan admitted. It wasn't common knowledge, but it wasn't that much of a secret either and he'd noticed that Drew had become pretty pally with Old Pat of late so assumed it must have come up in the conversation.

"Da' had banked on still drawing his pension to pay for it and him going so quick and Ma's onset of dementia, meant every penny of Ma's pension and more goes into paying the nursing home's fees."

Alan felt sorry for Pat and the shame arising from the situation he shared with his brothers. Pat had paid out good money for that engine, still greased up in its packing case three years on. A lot of the other boat owners looked at that wooden case with covetous eyes but everyone moored in that estuary were in the same boat, so to speak.

There was no-one in view within the horizon in any direction of the scruffy little vessel today though, and no matter how many problems the boat may have suffered there was only brilliant sunshine and sparkling water under the clear blue skies to concern them. There was just a slight swell running, east to west, the boat easily riding up and down the gentle waves. It really was a beautiful day. They both thought this was simply perfect.

"Just ten more minutes, putting the engine together," Alan promised, "And I'll fire it up again."

"OK, just make sure that's all," grinned Drew. "You know, if you got Pat to put that engine in, you'd be up here enjoying the sunshine, the fishing, and the company."

"Yeah, sure," he grinned, "You know I only bring you with me so I can be sure you're not chatting up Janice while I'm away?"

"Alan, she's seven months pregnant."

"You still think she's the most beautiful woman you've ever seen, though," Alan's smile was sympathetic, he felt for his friend, knowing how devastated he would be if he ever lost Janice.

"Yeah," Drew agreed, lost in his thoughts for a moment. Then another thought came into his head, one he'd harboured for a few weeks now, waiting for the right moment. Now, thinking about complicated relationships, seemed to be the most appropriate time.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Al," he said, seriously, watching his pal take another pull from his can of John Smiths, "talking about the subject of extra-marital, reminded me of your sister."

"Oh yes?" Alan still had a smile on his face at his friend's clear embarrassment.

"Yeah, I've been hearing rumours that Jack is up to his old tricks again."

Alan sighed. He'd been putting this off too, Janice had been chewing his ear to do something about it for a month now and, as urgent action was required, he had mulled it over for long enough and had intended bringing it up with Jack today. Only Jack shied off, no doubt so he could meet some woman he was seeing. Sherry deserved better than that slimy toe rag.

"Yeah," he admitted, "I heard that too. What we gonna do about it?"

Alan wasn't slow or dumb, but he was hardly a man of the world. Married at 23 to the one and only girl in his life, he had a simple naïve existence which he was reluctant to complicate. He drove his forklift all day and hardly spoke to anyone at work, at home he was surrounded by loving wife and two adorable little angels. His hobbies were his family, making wooden toys in his workshop, caring for his racing pigeons and the boat, not necessarily in that order. Simple, uncomplicated, a life relatively without stress.

Drew on the other hand was out in the community all day and many evenings, selling, networking, juggling different complicated insurance plans and gearing them to the requirements of his clients. Alan had taken on what insurances and saving plans he could afford too, and knew that Drew was straight as they come. Any advice he gave on any subject would be insightful, considered and therefore worth considering.

"I was hoping Jack'd be here today," Drew said, "So we could have it out with him and, if he didn't change his ways we'd lash him to the anchor and bump him along the bottom for a couple of hours. What'yer think?"

Yeah, thought Alan, that was considered, pretty much what I would do. He laughed and drained his can.

"Sherry always had a crush on you," he grinned.

"When?" Drew's eyebrows raised.

"Since she was about 9 and you started coming round to see me again after our little trial separation," Alan admitted, "And she still says nice things about you whenever you come up in the conversation."

"When do I come up in the conversation, then?"

"All the bloody time," Alan grinned, as he clambered down the engine hatch, before an empty can came his way, "We hardly talk about anything else!" Then he was gone, leaving Drew alone with only the empty ocean for company.

Just then one of the reels clicked, indicating a nibble. Drew picked up the rod, felt the bite and struck the hook firmly with a flick of his wrist, then the fish was hooked, off and running. Drew began the process of reeling it in, letting it run and reeling in once more. Sooner than usual the fight was over and he could reel his first catch of the day in. He knew by the feel of it that it was a sizeable specimen and he'd need the gaff to get the monster out of the water, but that was well out of reach in the wheelhouse and Alan was also out of sight and earshot with the engine.

The fish was totally played out and was hauled to the surface with barely a flap of its broad tail. What a strange fish, Drew thought, he had never seen anything like it. It was about three feet or so long and looked like a mirror carp but of course he knew that carp were freshwater fish that couldn't possibly survive this far out to sea.

He estimated it weighed about 40 pounds. It lay there placidly in the water, as if it was completely played out. It would be a stretch, he knew, but he could reach down and pull it out, although it would be a strain. Drew kept himself pretty fit but this was risky. All the while the fish rested it was naturally garnering its strength for another run, no doubt hoping for success this time.

Damn it, thought Drew, I don't want to lose this fish.

He stretched down over the gunwale, wrapped his hands around and under the large fish and braced himself to lift the monster onto the boat. He took the strain slowly and careful, drawing the beast forth from the reluctant suction of its natural environment. Remarkably, the fish didn't react adversely to being lifted, almost as if it sensed that Drew meant it no harm.

At the moment he lifted that fish, Drew could honestly say that the only thoughts running through his head were of wanting to see this beautiful specimen close up, not even an inkling of any other event or consequence occurred to him. There was no malice, triumph in winning a battle, sense of achievement or otherwise, only an overwhelming admiration for the indescribable beauty of one of God's exquisite creations.

As the water streamed off the fish and it emerged into the clear as crystal air, the sun shone on the golden scales, each individual mirror reflecting a contorted image of Drew's face, while he himself was filled with wonderment at this glorious sight.

His strong arms hauled the fish over the side of the boat, fluids draining off the body streamed to the deck around his feet and down his trousers. Drew kicked a towel off one of the benches and spread it out carefully with a foot as he balanced the heavy fish in his arms, trying his best not to rub off scales or damage it in any way. He got down to his knees and laid the fish on the now very wet towel and carefully removed his arms from underneath, draping the ends of the towel over the fish to prevent it drying out.

He sat back on the bench and regarded his capture for a moment while he caught his breath. He was sure he had held in his breath during the whole of the extraction process. The fish just lay there on its side, looking at him with its baleful eye, mouth open, almost as if it was breathing like a mammal rather than gasping like an aquatic out of its natural element. It languidly flapped its tail and one end of the towel slipped away. Drew got down on his knees once more and adjusted the towel, overlapping the ends and thus reducing the risk of it falling off, leaving only the head and tail fins exposed to the desiccating air in the welcome shade of the gunwale.

"You are beautiful," he breathed, hardly able to contain his sense of wonderment at the glorious creature of the deep immediately in front of him. He had never seen anything so stunning in all his life. He bent down and kissed the fish on its head without a second thought.

He had kissed fish before, never quite as reverentially as this particular one, of course. He laughed inwardly, remembering that his first kiss was not with a girl, no it was five or six years earlier than that! His first smacker, planted on the very first muddy reservoir carp he caught at the age of nine, was tentative at best. Later specimens were pressed to his lips more enthusiastically, accompanied by an appropriate exclamation of joy or triumph as well as appreciation, typically such as "You absolute beauty!", but none of those triumphant milestones had touched him to his very soul as this latest piscine treasure had.

Drew glanced back at the engine hatch to check that Alan hadn't seen his brief act of devotional reverence. Then he thought he needed to get some seawater to keep the fish wet, and pour the water across its gills to keep it alive longer. He toyed with the idea of putting it back in the water as soon as Alan had seen it. The thought of gutting, filleting, freezing and later cooking and eating it never even crossed his mind.

In the wheelhouse were a stack of buckets, all with ropes attached. He fetched one and tossed it in the water and dragged it back to the boat, filled to overflowing with bright seawater. As he did so he leaned over the engine hatch and yelled to Alan to come up and see what he had caught. The echoey reply was somewhat short-tempered and conveyed the muffled message that did he realise the boat's engineer was right up to his armpits right now in muck and bullets and would be another three or four minutes if it pleased his lordship and master?

Drew grinned at the reply and turned around to view the fish where he left it safely in the well of the boat and dropped his bucket in surprise. The water sloshed up his trouser legs and splashed across the deck and ran out through the scuppers. The fish was no longer there!

In its place, or rather sitting on the bench above the well where it had previously lain almost inert, was a creature which could only be described as a ... mermaid!

Drew stood there, his mouth dropping open as his jaw muscles failed to respond to any positive signals from his brain, which had gone completely into overdrive. There in front of him was that object of legend, part female, part fish!

It couldn't possibly be real, could it? But his eyes added the evidence of substance to any notion of incredulity. This was no heat-haze mirage, no smoke and mirrors trickery, nor projected CGI hologram as an elaborate if belated April Fool, but a real embodied, heavenly bodied he couldn't help but notice, creature of substance, flesh and blood.

The towel was wrapped around her, hanging from her shoulders. The being was clearly feminine, although the recognisable biological gender indicators and the somewhat alien transition between the species was conveniently (for her, not him) veiled by the damp cloth, the effect not unlike that of a wet teeshirt was not totally lost on Drew's cognitive senses. Her tail glistened in the sunshine, the fin laterally undulating languidly. He raised his eyes from the fin to the face again to realise that what should be a manifestation of unmitigated horror was actually a vision of unbelievable beauty, lithe in shape and elegantly attractive in appearance.

She was carrying an enigmatic smile on her heart-shaped face, which was unblemished and stunning, decorated in delicate freckles. Her hair was outstanding, thick and long lustrous tresses like spun gold flowing over her shoulders and tumbling in shimmering waves down to her waist. Her delicate shoulders were flat and square, her arms slender and pale in colour the upper surface covered in pale freckles reminiscent of the scales which were probably their original form.

"No doubt you are amazed that this miraculous transmogrification has happened?" she said in perfect English, without any trace of accent, a fairly husky, yet feminine voice both pleasant and unsettlingly sexy, "Still happening, as you can see."

Drew looked down at her long tail, which was melting away from its original fishy singular form and turning into a pair of extremely shapely legs, her tailfins also evolving rapidly into a pair of long and slim daintily-toed feet. He raised his head to her beautiful bemused smile once again.

"How?" Drew's mind was racing, filling with questions, possibilities, worries for his sanity, fears for his safety, excitement that this was happening to him, yet all he could get out was a single stuttering syllable.

"Magic, Drew," she almost sang her words to him, sending electric pulses of tingles up and down his spine, "I am borne out of the love you held for my oceanic form."

"Because I kissed you?" he asked, still coping with the shock, "All this because of a kiss?"

"Ah, but what a kiss," she smiled with a dreamy look which made her stunning face look impossibly even more desirable, "Such a kiss no man has ever bestowed upon an immortal. The poets could occupy themselves for millennia on this one glorious act alone."

"How can you speak so well, how is it even possible that you know my name?" Drew now finding his voice.

"Your kiss conferred to me all your memories, every experience, each and every hope and aspiration you have ever harboured, all of your deepest most secret desires and knowledge at first hand of exactly what pleases you as well as what you have wanted but never had the opportunity to try."

"So what does that all mean?"

By now her legs and feet had fully formed, her muscles taut and sculptured. She gracefully stretched out a slender arm towards Drew.

"Would you mind helping me to stand, Drew my love? I may be a little wobbly for a while as I get used to having legs for the first time."

"So, do you have the ability to read my thoughts?" asked Drew.

"No, of course not, my dear heart," she smiled showing even white teeth, the action swelling plump freckled flesh high on her cheekbones and crinkling the skin around eyes that Drew noticed were a gloriously deep green colour, "When your lips touched me you completed a process already begun when you hooked me. I felt drawn towards you as if this was always meant to be, as if the gods themselves decreed we be bound together for as long as there are stars in the heavens. That premonition inside me was compounded by feelings emanating from you through the slender line that held me, bonding me to your very soul. This inspired me to desire that we would be joined together for ever when you lifted me so tenderly and lovingly out of the water. The kiss? Well, the kiss was nothing but everything."

She paused for a moment as Drew absorbed this information.

"Now I will be your devoted partner in love," she continued, "We could be married soon my dearest, make love every night, any time in fact at the drop of a hat would give me such pleasure. There's nothing I would deny you. I will never age, never get fat or wrinkly, I'd be utterly devoted to you and I will care for you always. When our time together on Earth is ended we will become a new constellation to illuminate the sky for all eternity."

"Why me of all people? I just sell insurance."

"Our destiny must have been written in the stars, who knows or cares why, it only matters that we are now together, darling," she continued, her voice melodic and captivating, "I was already intrigued by that gentle and tender act, which satisfied any doubts I might have had why I allowed myself to be caught in the first place."

"You allowed me?"

"No human has ever caught one of my kind before. Like you, we have legends of what you call mermaids, some strange and exotic intermediate creature between the two separate kingdoms of mammals and fish, but we always regarded such ideas as flights of fantasy, impossible in reality."

"If this is so fantastic what brought you here?"

"I was freeing a poor fish which nibbled at the dearly departed body of another fish and suddenly your hook, just dangling there, jumped into my mouth and, before I knew what was happening, you started reeling me in."

"What was the fish you shooed away from my hook, then?" asked Drew, intrigued.

"Naturally I know her by another ancient name, completely unpronounceable using this human tongue but an exploration of your memory banks, which I have assimilated, reveals it was a fish you call a Sea Bass."

"Oh, was it a big one?"

"Oh yes, bigger than any bass you remember catching before."

"Oh, was it much bigger?"

"Much bigger, a male bass in the prime of his life, now free to spawn more of his delightful children," she closed her eyes, "Oh, I can see in your memories horrible images of you eating fish! Now, my darling, that will have to stop from now on."

"Stop eating fish? What do you eat?"

"Seaweed, we are vegetarians," she replied, "I see you used to like eating fish and even catching fish. No more of that my love, you'll have to live on salads and engage in other more pleasurable pastimes from now on."

"What? No more fish'n'chip suppers? No more fishing? Ever?"

"That's right my darling, for that small sacrifice you have me to give you sweet sweet loving every night for the rest of eternity..."

***

Alan paused at the engine hatch for just one delicious moment, closing his eyes as the warm sunlight, already low in the sky, hit his hot, flushed face, which he knew would be grubby with dirt and engine grease. He allowed the light but fresh salty breeze to sweetly refresh his turgid lungs and water down the diesel, grease and body odour aromas he knew permeated to the very core of every pore in his body. That damn engine, he thought, it had ruined his last two trips and he knew his brothers were having the self same interruptions to their fishing pleasure. They were going to have to find the money some-

Splash!

Alan's train of thought was shattered by the sound of the splash, his first new thought in panic was that Drew had been dragged or fallen overboard. He turned his head round sharply to face the stern of the small vessel and was relieved see his best friend standing there with his back to him, head bowed looking down at the water, a wet towel hanging loosely from one hand, both arms dangling by his side.

"Drew!" Alan called from the hatch as he climbed out, "Are you alright?"

Drew turned, showing a very wet shirt front and trousers.

"Fine," he replied, his face set grim.

"Thought you fell overboard," said his friend, "I heard a splash like a body going over the side."

"Just jettisoning something that wasn't as palatable as I hoped it might be. Is the engine OK?"

"Yes, the engine's ready to go," Alan smiled, "Should get us home. Gonna bite the bullet and get that new engine off of Pat. Ordering it today."

"Great idea, if Pat starts immediately that will mean the boat will be on stocks in the yard for five or six weeks, right?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"How about we go pike fishing in four weeks' time instead of sea fishing, my treat this time?"

"Yeah, sounds great," Alan said, "So long as you cheer up before then, though, you look like you've found a pound and lost a tenner, mate."

Drew smiled slowly, "I'm fine, really, although I do have a favour to ask of you."

"Anything, my friend!" Alan laughed, happy to see Drew cheer up somewhat.

"Can you persuade Sherry to kick Jack into touch and then put in a good word for me?"

"Sure thing, it's a given. Looks like the beers are on you tonight, huh?"

"Yeah. Why not? We'll have a few jars in the _Jolly Fisherman_ and swap fishing yarns, bags I go first!"

THE END.

<~~~>

### FRIDAY. LONG HAUL

Alice was so beautiful she took my breath away every time I saw her. I asked her out a couple of times and she turned me down on both occasions. The second time was just after she split with Dougie Laughery and I thought I had a real chance that time. Dougie was an asshole, I had been competing with him toe-to-toe since junior high. I couldn't see what Alice saw in him even before he had been caught with his pants down in company with Sissy Hollins, whose reputation went before her almost as far as her chest measurements did.

When I asked Alice out we were both working for the same pharmaceutical company whose massive plant was sprawled on the edge of our home town. Alice agreed to come to lunch with me, on her terms, so we took sandwiches and sodas to the park and sat on a blanket. Alice was straight with me, she liked me, she said, liked me a lot but she was in love with someone else and only wanted to be fair to my feelings. She sensed that I more than just liked her but she made it crystal clear that we could only be friends.

OK, I said, let's stay friends and we did. We met up for lunch regularly, as we spent most of the time at work in different parts of the building. She worked in accounts, I was an engineer troubleshooting problems in production. We became best friends.

She started dating again post-Dougie, several different guys, but no-one seemed to stick. We even went on foursomes, with Alice trying to get me interested in one or other of her pals but none of them stuck either. She used to pull my leg about it, even got angry a couple of times when some of her friends really seemed to like me but I couldn't get involved, I was too full of love, infatuation, obsession, whatever it was, with Alice to begin any meaningful relationship.

What was it about Alice? Well, I guess we would have made an odd couple. She was small and neat, say just an inch over five foot tall, her body sublimely in proportion. She looked plain, ordinary even, at very first glance and could easily be overlooked by the unfamiliar. But when she moved, as gracefully as any cat, and she smiled to light up the room, she was in another class entirely.

Alice was captivating, lively and funny. She knew everybody and everyone knew her. She would talk to anyone, not just at you but converse with you, encourage you to engage with her and always gave the impression that she hung off every word you uttered. Yet she was aware of what else was going on around her and loved to talk about or involve everyone, aware of who they were seeing and who everyone's cousin was. Alice never had a bad word to say about anyone, though, she just seemed genuinely interested in the people around her.

She was the centre of everyone's attention but I don't think she knew that at all, she believed she was on the outside of the web, just networking, without realising she was the object of everyone's desire.

Me? I'm Carl Smith, by the way. Well, I was just over six foot high, with blonde curly hair, and built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Neither handsome, nor noteworthily ugly, just average wallflower material I guess. While she was funny, engaging and outgoing, I was serious, quiet, dull.

My folks split up when I was little, an only child. Dad moved a thousand miles away, started a new family and forgot us entirely, and Mom found it hard to make ends meet. So I always had to get home from school to do my chores and any jobs around the neighborhood for spare change to put in my college fund. I won scholarships, but still had to work my butt off to get by.

I was into all sports, played some football and basketball at college but wasn't one of the jocks. Outside school I played racket sports to keep fit, gym work didn't appeal to me, although I was grateful that I had done some weight training in my early teens so I developed my body to its best advantages. I was quite smart and went all the way to a masters in engineering, that didn't give me much time for anything else, like socialising and dating.

I tried out for the high school and college teams and got a few games in but there was always someone just enough better than me to keep me on the bench most of the time. Usually that was Dougie Loughery. We bounced into and off each other all the way through from eighth or ninth grade to state graduation.

Naturally, Alice was crowned home-coming queen all through high school and college and she was paired with Dougie every time. She seemed shocked every time she won, while Dougie thought it was a given. He boasted to everyone in the team that he had taken her virginity on high school graduation night but I doubted it. He probably did later but when Alice and I became best pals, I got the impression there was no way she had given it up to him so early and easily.

So that's what we were, Alice and I were best friends and bumping along, with me hoping to be there for when she was mature enough to recognise my qualities, whatever they were. I wondered if she thought I was gay, she treated me like a best girlfriend, at least she didn't go so far as to ask me to go lingerie shopping with her! On second thoughts, yeah, I would'a'gone!

Then one day she told me she was going out with Dougie again and my world vaporised around me. She had actually been seeing him for a couple of weeks before she told me one lunch time. She knew I would be hurt and had put it off as long as she could. I donned a smiley face and asked if she was happy. I could recognise the dreamy look in her eyes, her animated movements, when she said she was. She gripped my hand and said I really needed to get myself fixed up, it was what I deserved. I almost lost my lunch.

I stumbled back to work for an hour or two that afternoon doing nothing on the shop floor, before locking myself in my office looking for jobs on the net. I found one in California, got myself an interview and flew out a couple of days later. After three interviews I was on board and gave two weeks' notice and, without saying anything to anyone, took the two weeks' leave I was owed and disappeared.

A clean break, it was the best thing for her, the only option for me. I was thinking of the long haul.

Two years later I was back home for a brief visit to Mom. I'm a poor son, really, I can only take so much of her, but there is only me for her nowadays.

So I sneaked out to a bar second night home and saw them together, Alice and Dougie. They had walked in as a couple and met up with some friends, Alice kissing and hugging everyone and was generally making everyone's day as usual. I was sat at the far end of the bar, the dark end, with a whiskey sour, feeling more and more sour every moment. I drank up and left. I stayed indoors keeping Mom company until my visit ended.

Back home, I checked vacancies within the group and found they had an engineering opening in England with a good opportunity for advancement. Nobody who was any good wanted to go to this dead-end place with run-down plant and the poorest performance in the group. I was already concentrating hard on my career and making a good impression, so nobody understood my interest. This job, after promotion would mean a big hike in pay and I'd be a big fish in a small pond, but it was a dead end, the place was scheduled to be closed down in a couple of years max, pending results.

I really enjoyed my ten years in England. Back home I was considered too quiet, reserved, while to the Brits I was a big noisy, pushy Yank. The plant was small and quaint, the equipment almost medieval and held together by gaffer tape. The biggest department was research and development but were understaffed, underfunded and although absolutely brilliant, had been ignored too long and were virtually moribund. Some of the stuff they were working on though was revolutionary. Some pruducts had been developed already and mothballed because no one at head office had recognised what they even had there.

My boss Jim was two years off retirement and was looking forward to going home to the States. The chemists lacked direction. I got them enthused again. A young man, Nigel, about my age and trapped as a junior in the lab, seemed to have potential, so with Jim's easy acquiescence, I got Nigel motivated running the lab while I concentrated on updating the manufacturing plant and improving quality control.

They had been on the site for 75 years, during periods of boom and bust. They had plenty of room for expansion into the empty buildings and we used every inch of the place in my ten years. The scientists appreciated the recognition they were getting for their work and kept coming up with potential products they had offered up before but been forced to shelf. We had so many concoctions which promised results that we had to ship some of the testing to other sites and I made sure the guys got the chance to go with the samples and nurse them through the trials. We had a happy ship and they brought in the goods.

Long story told short, in ten years, the England operation became the jewel in the business and I was local president with eight years of solid year-on-year improvement behind me. Then head office wanted me to come home and manage a much bigger manufacturing plant. Yes, you got it. The company had expanded, partly due to all the new products produced in the English R&D, and had bought lock, stock and barrel the company that had owned the plant in my home town. It was my dream job.

They accepted my recommendation to have Dr Nigel run the England end, the first Brit they had allowed to run the place since they had set it up in the 1930s. Nigel and the rest of the guys appeared to be sad at my parting and seemed genuinely insistent that I came back and visit. Great actors those Brits, Oscar winners all. I know I had ridden them hard but I had to concede, they had sure risen to the ante.

I hadn't been Stateside in two years. I learned my lesson from my previous home town visit and had flewn Mom down to Florida each summer and stayed with her there. No way was I gonna run into Alice and Dougie again. Last year Mom came to stay with me across the pond, which was surprisingly enjoyable. I was looking forward to getting home again and planned on staying with Mom until I had scouted out a place of my own.

I toyed with the idea of renting out my English house, but I had bought it when the market was low and although still relatively low, it had done better than property had in the States over the same period, so I sold it for a very good price, and pretty quick too, I was able to leave for the States a week earlier than expected.

I was still single. I had courted some since leaving home, but without endangering my bachelor status. I did come close with Caroline six or seven years ago. When I thought about taking our relationship to another level, though, I discovered that although I was very fond of her, she was a lovely person, she just wasn't the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I introduced her to Nigel and I am now godfather to both their lovely children.

I read the dossier on my new plant as I flew over the Atlantic, so I was primed for my meeting in Manhattan with the top dogs. I knew the senior VP at the plant, my second in command, was going to be Mrs Alice Loughery but didn't understand why she hadn't been promoted to local president. The answer, I was informed, was that she simply didn't want it. According to the company president, she had the local finances screwed down tight but the real problem with the plant was production and quality control. The plant was worn out, morale was low and the place needed a production man to put it right and she would do her best to pull the financial strings to make it work if the right person was running the show.

Alice had just been informed that I was the man they had appointed and she told them she thought I was the best man for the job and she looked forward to working with me, again.

Well, at least I knew where I stood. It seemed she was prepared to work with me and I thought I'd had enough time to get over her so I could do the same. We were both in oyr late 30s, I just hoped she was fat and over-run with a houseful of brattish kids. I just had to psych myself up to be professional and impersonal in all my dealings with her. I could be restrained and aloof, impenetrably unemotional, hell, I'd worked with the Brits long enough I was practically one of 'em!

I had never told Mom about how I felt about Alice, so the subject never came up in any conversation, so I was spared years of embarrassment. Mom gave up on having grandkids long ago. I know Alice had at least one kid though, because another local guy I used to get emails from mentioned she was on maternity leave. I soon found excuses for only replying sporadically and that source eventually dried up, I'm ashamed to say. The latest company info sheet just had her married name, length of service and disclosed that she was a proud mother.

It was mid-winter when I went back to the States. I had become accustomed to mild English winters where if they had any snow at all it was just a few inches. On the plane out of a freezing New York, they were talking about three or four feet of snow falling on my destination and we got rerouted to another city and it looked like we were stuck there for the night.

We were disembarked, without our luggage, and milling around waiting to be told where we were spending the night, when I heard the voice behind me.

"Hey Buddy, how'yer doin'?"

I turned, the last person, well bar one, that I wanted to see right now when I wasn't really primed and ready, was Dougie Loughery. Of course I knew the voice, but the man was barely recognisable, he was fat and bald, the last eleven years or so hadn't been kind to him since I last saw him and Alice in that crowded bar. Maybe it was because he stuck to an American diet while I adhered to a more austere English one, where food was so much more expensive and portions in proportion.

We struck up a conversation, which I kept steered well away from personal details. I couldn't help but notice the fat gold ring on his left hand, which he waved in my face, and knew he'd bring up my misery at some stage, it was in his nature to boast. When he said,

"Hey, you know whom I'm married to, don'cha?"

"Yes, I do," I replied tersely, holding my hands up. "Look, I'm exhausted, stuck in limbo, and I don't want to talk about our happy families, or otherwise, OK?"

I didn't want him rubbing my nose in the fact that he had beaten me in our contest over Alice.

"Sure," Dougie grinned, "Look, I've been in this position before, Smithy, I trade in sporting goods, and travel all over and presently on my way home from a convention back East. I called ahead while we were in the air and booked a room for the night."

I must've stared at him blankly. He sighed.

"Look around you, the hotels can't cope with this number of people, so they're gonna have to double or even treble up the guests in the rooms. So we are in a bargaining position, instead of being forced to take in a stranger, we could be roomies."

It sounded like a good idea. Dougie really did know all the tricks of the hotel trade, got us into the restaurant with ease and persuaded the hotel to sponge down my suit and launder my shirt overnight for peanuts. He had planned ahead for this eventuality and had his own spare clothes and toothbrush in his carry-on.

We hit the bar, boy, could he drink. It was like I was the boring married one and he was the footloose and fancy-free single.

Actually, I do Dougie an injustice. Although I hated him for being the first and only choice of the only woman I loved, he was surprisingly good company and I found myself enjoying our brief stop-over. I even let him show me photos he carried in his wallet of his three beautiful girls. The eldest was painfully close to the Alice I knew when she was 15, Annie clearly had her eyes and smile. The other two girls were a lot younger, were darker haired and looked facially more like Dougie than Alice, but still feminine and, I had to admit, kind of cute.

I had a bit of a hangover in the morning, while Dougie was fresh as a daisy. I blamed it on jet-lag, but I suppose it was down to clean living on my part, my body couldn't take that kind of hammering. At least I had a clean shirt and sharp suit, thanks to my new companion. The weather had improved by the morning, the runway cleared of snow at both destinations, although it was still cold.

The flight was uneventful. We sat together on the plane, Dougie having charmed the stewardess into making the adjustments to the seating plan. He had called ahead, he told me, so he would be met in the arrivals hall and he wanted the surprise of introducing me to the four wonderful angels in his life. He gave me that lop-sided smirking grin and I started to dislike the son-of-a-bitch again just for rubbing my nose in it.

I hung back behind Dougie after collecting our bags, I wasn't anxious to meet his family yet but knew I couldn't put it off as long as I had originally hoped, by coming to town a week early. I would have liked to have sneaked off, leaving them to it, but that was the coward's way out. I just had to bite the bullet and hope my eyes didn't water too much at the pain I knew I was going to experience.

I saw the oldest girl first, she burst out of the crowd as a flash of bright yellow top and blue jeans, long flowing blonde hair all the way down her torso.

"Daddy!" she cried as she dived into her father's arms. He cried out "Annie!"

They hugged and I moved over to the side out of the line of sight, looking for Alice. I found her, looking on and smiling Mona Lisa-like at Annie embracing her father. Alice looked good. She had filled out a little maybe, but hardly at all. She certainly wasn't fat like her husband, far from it, although she did hold Annie's thick waterproof coat in front of her, camouflaging her shape somewhat. Her face looked as luminous as I remembered her almost every night in my dreams. My worst nightmare, I had wish, without any hope, that she'd be fat and ugly. She was still gorgeous.

Alice stepped forward when her daughter let her dad go, then she embraced Dougie, too. I couldn't watch, it was too gut-wrenchingly painful. This was the reason why I left thirteen years ago and not been back for eleven years, only the pain felt like it all happened just yesterday. How could I have even imagined I could endure being on the same continent as this?

I looked away from the couple and my eyes settled on a young lady standing right in front of me, looking at me with her head to one side. Annie regarded me with intense interest mixed with a degree of amusement. She appeared even more like her mother than she had in her photo. She wore that same enigmatic smile, assessing me, working out the sum of me, while maintaining her independent confidence in her own self-worth. She was going to break hearts too one day, not intentionally, of course, it must be hard being the focus of every boy's dreams where there can be only one.

"I saw you coming through with my Dad, are you his friend? I've not seen you before."

She was disarmingly forthright.

"Well, I don't know about friend," I said, trying to be honest, I've learned how to be around kids, well my two godchildren, anyway, "But I suppose I've known him since before you were born."

"Oh!" she said, nodding, "You talk funny."

"That's because I've lived in England for ten years, I suppose it was bound to affect the way I speak."

She nodded her agreement to the possibility.

"Do you know my Mom, too?"

"Yes." I could have said more but I felt under interrogation here and was reluctant to spill all my beans at once.

"So, are you a friend of my Mom?"

Oh boy, she was good, perhaps she watched a lot of cop shows.

"I was, once upon a time."

"And now you're not sure?"

"That's right."

She regarded me for a moment, then stuck her hand out, smiling broadly,

"I'm Annie Loughery, pleased to meet you."

"I'm Carl Smith," I said, smiling back at her.

She digested that information for a moment, still holding onto my hand.

"You're early," she said, then grinned, shaking her head slightly, sending waves down her blonde locks, looking even more incredibly like her mother, "You are in _such_ trouble, Carl."

"I am?"

"You are," she confirmed, "You never said goodbye to Mom, Carl, when you left."

"At the time I thought it was for the best."

"It wasn't." She was as frank and honest as her Mom. I liked this little girl already.

I suppose I smiled. I realised I'd been doing that a lot in the last couple of minutes.

"You're quite cute, for an old guy," she offered by way of comment, "And you look like you've kept yourself in shape. Smart suit." She nodded approvingly.

The thought occurred to me that she was measuring me up, like her Mom used to do years back, seeing if I'd be suitable for one of her older friends, the babysitter, perhaps.

Annie let go of my hand and peered around behind me.

"Where's your family, Carl?" she asked.

"My family? Oh, my Mom isn't expecting me for at least a couple of days."

"There's just ... your Mom, then?"

"Yeah, I don't see my Dad any more."

Damn, I was spilling the beans and she hadn't even done the good cop, bad cop bit yet.

"And you're staying here in town with your Mom?"

"Yes, but not tonight, it's late and she's not expecting me, so I'll take a cab, find a hotel."

"Oh, boy," she laughed, "You are in such trouble. You don't even know how much trouble you are in, do you Carl?"

"Really? How much, Annie?"

"Deep trouble, really deep. I guess you are gonna need me to handle your defence."

I suppose she watches courtroom dramas as well as cop shows, I didn't just like this pretty little girl, I loved her already.

"I suppose, if we do this properly, you're going to need a retainer?"

She nodded vigorously.

"Can you split a ten?"

"Nah, the full ten'll cover it, Carl."

I guess I'd lost track of the cost of living over here in ten years. I dug a note out of my wallet for her, which she neatly folded and stuffed in her jeans pocket before we turned as one to face her parents.

Dougie had a little girl in each arm, a big grin on his face, and was looking at us, chuckling. The two little brunette angels were smiling too. Standing in front of them was Alice, looking absolutely amazing, like barely a day had passed since I last saw her. I couldn't even begin to read the expression on her face. Annie might have expressed the opinion in her words that I was in trouble, in my terms it looked like I was royally screwed.

A woman partly hidden behind Alice then moved to one side. She was also looking at me and smiling. She looked familiar, somehow. Overweight, by thirty pounds or more, but she reminded me a little of an older Sissy Hollins. She was pulling Dougie's case with one hand and slowly waving at me up and down with the fingers of the other hand. She was smiling as broadly as Dougie. I turned to my newly-appointed attorney and moved my head close to hers for a private consultation.

"Sissy is ...?" I lifted my eyebrows.

Annie put a hand over her mouth to foil lip readers. Oh, she was good, really good.

"Sissy Laughery is the mother of my half-sisters," she whispered carefully, like one would to a child or rather slow adult, she had summed me up pretty well in the few minutes of our acquaintance, "And has been married to my Dad for about eight years. I can't remember Dad ever living with us, actually, he left when I was just a baby. Apparently he always felt something for Sissy. She's really very nice, very momsy, when you get to know her."

"Yeah, she was really nice when I knew her, too, although she wasn't very momsy at all back then. So, does your Mom still ... er... love your Dad?"

"Are you for real, Carl?"

"Why, you think I'm a dipstick?"

"What's that?"

"Er ... a dipshit?"

"Yeah, kinda. She loves _you_ , dummy. But that doesn't mean you're outta trouble yet, it'll be a long time before I can call you 'Dad', Carl."

"I'm in your hands, Annie, what tariff d'yer reckon you can get me, Hon?

"Don't call me 'Hon', Carl, it's unethical as well as unprofessional, remember you're a client."

"Sorry, H-Annie."

"That's OK, I should be able to get you 15 to 20," Annie whispered, tucking her arm in mine, as we took a step forward towards her mother,

"But stick with me, Dad, we're gonna go for life!"

THE END.

<~~~>

### SATURDAY. FOUR LITTLE WORDS

It was just four words that ended my marriage, a mere five little syllables that spelled out doom, finito, the end of the line, adios amigos, fin, tatty bye muchachos, well, you get the drift.

Actually, on their own, the first time I heard those four words I am referring to, the effect was immediate, like being hit with a bucket of icy water, plus it planted a seed of doubt. It was the repeat of those exact same words a couple of days later which was the clincher.

How did it come to this? In the first place we had been married for a long time but we had also been drifting apart for quite a while, too. We got to the point where no longer slept in the same beds, or even the same bedroom. We spent less and less time in each others company. If she was in the kitchen, I was in the garage; if I was in the sitting room, she would stay in the dining room.

We had different pursuits, I watched cricket and fished, she shopped and, well, then she shopped again. She could spend all day at the shops and come back empty-handed and say she had a great time. Not much difference with me and fishing, I suppose. Those same evenings, after whatever separate pursuits we had engaged in during the day, I would be in one room, she'd occupy another.

It was because we watched different programmes she said, I knew different; often when I went out to the kitchen to top up my coffee or make a snack, she was watching exactly the same as what I was watching. She just didn't want to spend any time with me, that was the truth.

This situation we found ourselves in started (or is that ended?) when the first of the kids left home.

She complained I snored, so I eventually acquiesced after continual complaints, moving to what had recently become vacant, a spare bedroom. Our lovemaking dropped off because she was going through the change and I respected her right to say no. She said "no" so regularly that after a while I stopped asking because I knew the answer.

My temporary move to the spare room turned out to be permanent.

She spread her work or her laptop, or a dress she was making, stacks of ironing, a jigsaw puzzle, whatever, on the dining table, so more often than not that I ate my meals in the other room off a tray on my lap. Eventually that became the norm for me.

All these little steps built up and I discovered that my occupancy had become reduced to being a guest, with a distinct feeling I had rather overstayed my welcome.

I became very unhappy for a while after coming to terms with the condition of my marriage and one day I just decided I had enough of being the lodger in my own house. So I thought the best thing would be to split up, sell our house and get myself a small flat or apartment on my own with my share of the proceeds. I checked out the prices of property in the town I wanted to move to, some thirty miles away, and thought I'd find something suitable in my price range. The town I selected was some distance from where we lived, because the prices were much more reasonable and I had nothing really tying me to the village once my marriage was over.

My wife, however, would probably not be so happy having to move out of the area we lived in to find somewhere in a cheaper neighbourhood. She had put down firm roots there. One of us would get the car or half its value and whoever got the cash would need to buy a car. I didn't mind either way.

So it was that I said to her those other cliché words, "Honey, we need to talk". Five words or six syllables this time.

There were tears on her part, I hadn't expected that. I thought she'd be pleased. She declared that, unlike me, she had been happy with her, our, life and thought I was too.

I said, no, I wasn't at all happy being the lodger. We clearly were no longer in love. I told her that there was no other woman involved, I just wanted to end this farce of a marriage and be in a position to find a fresh new life and, if love came along while I was still young enough to enjoy it, I would be even happier. She replied that she wasn't at all interested in finding anyone else, she still loved me and didn't want a divorce. I still couldn't see any other way out of our situation, I wasn't prepared to sleep in a separate room or eat separately, and more particularly I wasn't interested in any relationship without loving between the partners.

Then she said that whatever was needed to save our marriage, she would do.

Does that mean making love regularly?, I asked.

Yes, she said, we could that, of course, starting straight away if I wanted.

What would you do? On the face of it she was offering me what I wanted out of my marriage. It would be as easy as that. No selling up the house, splitting up everything and moving into a dingy little flat, no big pay out for fancy lawyers and court fees. No having to start all over with the depressing thought of finding dates. It all seemed too good to be true.

I should've asked about whether she would mind leaving the toilet seat up for me for the first six months but felt that attitude might not help matters.

OK, I said, we'll give it a try for six months and see how it goes. Right, she said brightly, and offered to set the table for our next meal, and said that we could spend the evening on the couch together and maybe ...

Hold on, I said. We can't just start cold on that front, I thought our marriage had been virtually non-existent for years and that we needed to start courting again, share more activities, go out on dates. Get the romance back in our lives and take our relationship onto where we could naturally become lovers again before we actually took that final step. I was more interested in romance than simply sex.

I wanted us to get accustomed to kissing each other in the morning, then kiss again whenever we met up during the day and last thing at night before going to bed. Perhaps even canoodle on the sofa in the evenings, like courting couples in a healthy relationship do, once we had become properly reacquainted.

So we agreed to this trial period, I asked her out on a date the following Friday night and she fluttered her eyelids and accepted.

From the time we had our little talk, some things changed but not that much really. We began to eat our meals together and spent the evening in company as a couple. We kissed and cuddled in the mornings and evenings, but I was determined from the outset that we didn't actually sleep together until we had our first date at least. So I was still the lodger for a few more days.

We had that first date, I gave her flowers. Actually, we had a good time out, saw a chick-flick movie she liked, a steak or chicken dinner respectively, a couple of bottles of wine between us and she took me to her bed afterwards.

So from that night on we shared the same bed again. Things seemed pretty good and I felt pleased that I had raised the issue with her first instead of just going off and finding my own place alone.

A couple of nights later I asked her if we could make love together again and she agreed. Things were really looking up. In fact, that first month we made love twice a week, you could say lucky for some! I was in clover. I actually felt loved for a change and believed I was falling in love with my wife all over again. So the next month, when lovemaking dropped to just the once, I wasn't too worried. We both had short illnesses at different times during that period and I had a lot of additional freelance work to keep myself very busy during evenings and weekends that month. I still missed it though.

She noticed I was depressed at the end of that second month and, under her grilling, I explained my disappointment at how the previous four weeks had gone, romance-wise, and without warning she jumped my bones there and then. The next eight weeks was regular sex once a week, which turned put to be the average over the four months.

The wheels fell off our passion wagon then. During the fifth month we made love just once, then not at all for a whole month. I more than sensed that her heart simply wasn't in it, so I didn't press it too much until the six months' trial was over when things came to a head.

When she came to bed late that night, having stayed up to watch her favourite programme, and disturbed me from my light slumbers, I pointed out that we had made love only once in the last eight weeks and had just gone 48 days without any loving at all, and that it looked to me like it was the end of the road for our relationship.

She was in tears at that, just like before. I suppose because the waterworks was successful the first time it would work again. Surely it's not been 48 days, she said. It sure bloody was, I insisted, before turning over and going back to sleep immediately. My conscience was clear, I had given it a go, it wasn't my fault we were done and dusted.

The next night, immediately after feeding me my favourite lasagne, followed by sherry trifle with hundreds and thousands sprinkled on the top, plus a bottle of my favourite plonk, she was all over me like the proverbial rash. The next day, when we morning kissed, she put so much into it that for a moment I actually thought about taking the day off. Same thing when I got in, a smashing snog and a glass of my favourite beer this time. I could live with this, I thought, I could survive on this indefinitely.

We settled into a routine, making love every two weeks for the next couple of months, which was ok. As it was bitterly cold, we both wore pyjamas between bath- and bed time. We had long established a subtle but unwritten code between us. If she was unreceptive she came to bed in her Pjs or nightie, while if she was receptive to a bit of nookie she would remove such garments upon entry. It was a simple system and worked for me, I like to know where I stand, well, don't we all?

I was nude all the time, yeah I know, I'm a bloke.

Then one night, there I was naked as usual. It had been about a fortnight since the last time, so I thought, if she was up for it I was definitely going to be. I always go to bed first and warm it up for her. I was asleep when she climbed in, although I always sleep very lightly and almost always wake up. I noticed she was wearing her long cotton nightie, damn! I thought, better luck another night.

Anyway, she snuggled up and started kissing my neck and throat. I was dozing at first but all of a sudden I was wide awake. I am very sensitive around my neck, especially the front of my throat. When she started kissing there, I really woke up, and my brain wasn't the only thing that was perking up.

Now I am a simple soul, I build and repair roads for a living, so I'm no brain surgeon. I don't do subtle hints, I'm a _Sun_ man not a _Guardian_ reader, I like things plain and simple, black and white. I need to know where I stand, I can't interpret female signals even from someone I've lived with for twenty-four years. There I am in bed naked, so she knows by the unwritten rules that I'm up for it and we are just about loosely scheduled for a bit of serious hanky-panky.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean a green light for nookie, maybe amber if you like, but neither are things definitely stuck on red. I hate mixed signals, I don't know what to do with them. I need starting instructions like: get to your blocks and on your marks before the starter's pistol goes off.

She still had her cotton coverall nightie on, which screams "no way, hose away" but she's also winding me up like a spring by her kissing me in places that she only usually does when I've already been given the RSVP. If she just wanted to get warm after chilling in the cold bathroom, she normally just lies there cuddling up passively, not this proactive crap. I was bloody well confused.

Like I say, I don't do subtle mind-reading exercises, I just react to the obvious. Internally I argued that I could take it slowly and she could say no if she chooses at any time and then I'll stop. So I start a bit of light petting while she continues kissing me where she's pressing all my buttons. Then I engaged her in a nice long snog, which escalated to suckling her breasts and then I went down on her for a good ten minutes or so. She was making appreciative noises and seemed pretty much good to go, with her nightie rucked up to her underarms, so I felt more than confident as I literally climbed on board.

By that time I had not only forgotten about the rucked up nightie, I didn't even know what month of the year it was.

As I reached the point of penetration, I thought she said something that sounded very negative. I thought she said something like "goodness sake". But she said it so quietly, that I was in two minds, did she just sigh wordlessly in pleasure as I transferred from oral to physical or did she actually vocalise the particular words I thought she breathed?

I had heard her say them before where something particularly annoyed her.

"What was that?" I asked, as I stopped what I was doing. As I've said before, I don't drive through red lights, I know the dangers.

"Nothing," she replied.

"I felt sure you said something," I said, "I just wasn't sure what it was."

"I didn't say anything, nothing at all."

Well, I was sure that was a bloody bare-faced lie.

Whether she did or not say anything, what I thought she said had completely put me off the romantic mood I had worked myself into. Even if she didn't mean to say it, only thought it out loud, it was enough, I was done.

From that point I couldn't get it up if I was trapped in a sultan's harem with the doors locked. I did put in a bit more oral to see if I could get both myself and her back in the mood, but I had gone off the boil completely. I backed off saying I was too tired and a little unwell, any excuse I could think of without getting into an untimely argument over my confusion. She didn't make a fuss, which seemed to confirm to me that she hadn't been in the mood in the first place.

It was a few days later that I was sure my marriage was over, done and dusted and could be locked away in a drawer and forgotten about. I was having a rare lie-in having worked late the previous night helping number one son decorate the rundown flat he was buying against my better judgement. He was making a pig's ear of painting his lounge while I was retiling his scruffy closet that masqueraded as a bathroom.

Anyway, the next day, her indoors was trying to vacuum the carpet just outside our bedroom door, while I was trying to relax the kinks out of my back and knees, no longer blissfully asleep. She must've sucked up something then, which blocked the pipe. That's when she repeated exactly what she had said when we were making love, well, I was making love, she wasn't, I know then that she clearly wasn't.

I realised that all she wanted out of me was company, maybe someone who could fix a fuse, change the clocks back after a blackout, reach the back of the top cupboards and put the Christmas decorations back in the loft in January. Like a pet who she could take for walkies and feed and stroke when she felt like it and push me down when I tried to jump up at her, muddy paws or not. She didn't actually want me. She didn't love me and it dawned on me then that I didn't love her either and certainly wasn't prepared to put up with her crap any longer.

So in nine months, or 270 days, we had sex 24 times and that is all it was. I was convinced now that at no time was there any loving involved on her side. She was a cold fish, so I thought, sod it, I might as well be too.

The lawyer was efficient, he had all the paperwork run off in a matter of days, I signed the papers and he got them registered with the divorce court, sending me two copies of the documents as I requested. I took the day off work after he called and advised me that everything was in place. Once I had paid his bill, I went to the bank. I drew out half the current account and half the savings, suitably adjusted for the value of leaving her the car. I settled half the credit card account and had my name removed from it. I opened new accounts in my name only, my replacement card due within a week. I bought a nice second hand car, that I had already reserved, with a banker's draft and signed a six-months' lease on a compact apartment, which would tide me over until the house was sold and I could find a permanent place of my own.

I drove down to my soon-to-be-ex-wife's place of work in my fantastic nearly-new car, remembering she used to hate me going down there in my firm's beat up old truck. I left the envelope containing a copy of the divorce petition, assets valuation, my house keys and wedding ring, under her windscreen wiper blade and waited for twenty minutes or so until she came out. I was two cars away from her, although she didn't recognise me inside my dark-tinted glass windows.

I wound down the window a crack when she opened the envelope, so I could hear the last words I knew I would ever hear her say.

"Oh for Goodness sake!"

THE END.

<~~~>

### SUNDAY. MATINEE

"Look, Henry... darling. All I was saying was, we are playing two characters who are deeply in love and, as you know, they have a very hot sex scene in the second act, so therefore we need to be comfortable together and be convincing lovers for the audience."

"I know, I heard all that, Audrey," Henry said, "I've read the manuscript, twice, and my part through twice more, and that scene especially carefully, ever since we were selected for the roles."

"It's a big part for you, Henry."

"I know, it's the biggest I've ever done for the troupe, I just hope I can deliver."

"You'll be fine, you and I are up on the stage pretty well all the way through, start to finish. If anyone can do it, you can, Henry." She squeezed his hand. "We were made to do this, darling, fate has brought us to-"

"No, that's not exactly right Audry, you are there because Madge Allnut was caught shop-lifting after a Kindle Fire was found in her shopping bag when she went through the scanner at the Asda exit and her court case comes up in a fortnight, while Reg Mellows, who usually plays most of the male lead roles, came out in a rash because of some allergic reaction, so I wasn't the first choice either."

"There you go, fate has definitely taken a hand and brought us together for these very roles."

"But what you are suggesting we do to enhance our performance is nothing short of crazy, we are not method actors, after all is said and done this is only the village hall and we are performing in amateur dramatics!"

"But Henry darling, this is a little embarrassing for me to say," she whispered as low as she could, as a stage hand walked by carrying a prop, "But I have played roles similar to this in the past, before younger actresses like Madge came along, and believe you me, it can make a huge difference to the actual performance on stage."

"You mean," Henry leaned so close that he was almost overcome by her heady scent, "You've slept with the leading man before?"

"Almost," she breathed through her crimson lips, her hot breath fanning his ear, "Every time, darling."

"Oh, blimey, and you think it makes that much difference?"

"Immeasurably."

"I don't know," Henry sounded doubtful, flicking over a page and pointing to some odd line, hoping that onlookers would assume they were quietly discussing the finer points of the script, after all the pair of them carry the whole weight of the play. He continued, "I have never done anything like this before, you know I haven't."

"It's just like falling off a log, darling, at the very least we should get together for an initial quickie, just to break the ice between us so we can relax when we eventually get it all together, then we'll be sizzling like very familiar practising lovers on the stage."

"Look, Audry, you are a beautiful, very desirable woman, but I am married, you are married, we can't possibly do this."

"Tosh! Henry, it's just sex, darling, it won't mean anything to either of us other than a relaxing, pleasurable activity ensuring we achieve sublime artistic integrity!"

"I couldn't do that to Bernie, not that I know him all that well, Audrey."

"You'd be doing Bernie a favour," she leaned in even closer, dropping her voice lower still, resting a palm on his firm, broad chest, massaging him subtly with her fingertips, "He wouldn't want to be aware that I've told you this but Bernie can't, you know, can't quite get it up anymore, so he really doesn't mind."

"Oh." Henry thought about it for a moment, only a moment. "Anyway, I still can't possibly, I couldn't do that to Libby. What would she think? She's been your best friend since, well, forever."

"Pooh and fiddlesticks," Audrey scoffed, "We'd be discrete about it, darling, of course we would. I could get us a hotel room, we could do it over lunchtime or you could even miss one of your precious football games. I would be the very model of discretion and Libby will never be any the wiser. Consider it, if you will, as part of the rehearsal process."

"No, impossible, it's our twentieth wedding anniversary in two weeks' time and I've already got a surprise planned for the evening. Sorry Audry, I couldn't possibly cheat on Libby, no matter what. If this is a problem for you, I'll happily step down and let the understudy take the part."

"I'm very disappointed, Henry. You know I think you are an absolute hunk who I've lusted after for years, you deserve to beat that Reg Mellows to the best parts every time. Have you never thought of having sex with a willing woman other than your wife?"

"I can honestly say I never have, with any woman, no matter what their supposed charms. You are a very attractive woman, Audrey, believe me, I've even said as much to Libby. I'm sure many men would jump into your arms like a shot, and clearly some have, but I do not desire you significantly more than any other woman and certainly not more than my own beautiful and loyal wife. I think you can guarantee that I am and always will be a one-woman man, so please don't take this rejection personally."

Henry held Audrey's shoulders for a moment, while Audrey took the opportunity to put her hands on his hips and pull herself in close with her arms moving around his slim waist, resting her head on one of his broad shoulders. Henry kissed her on the top of her head, then her cheek, before releasing her and exiting stage left.

Audrey watched the mesmerizing motion of his firm round butt cheeks as he strode purposeful off the stage and sighed, thinking he was definitely a very desirable hunk but it was pretty definite now he'd made it clear he would never be _her_ hunk. Then a hand on her shoulder made her jump and turn around.

"Libby!" she exclaimed, suddenly flushed with embarrassment, "What are you doing here?"

"Watching you seduce my husband, Aud!" her friend laughed, her attractive face wreathed in smiles, "I just saw you two handsome honeys kiss and squeeze each other like an old couple, so when are you both meeting up clandestinely to get down and do the dirty deed?"

"Oh, Lib, it was just a kiss on the cheek as old friends, there will be no getting together clandestinely or otherwise. He just doesn't want to make love to me."

"No?" Libby's euphoria evaporated and her face took on a crestfallen look, "I thought you of all people wouldn't let me down, Aud."

"Sorry Lib, I tried every trick in the book to bed him and he doesn't want to know. Normally when I flutter my eyelashes at a man he gets at least a semi on, I rubbed my firm thigh up against your hubby's nut sack, after trying everything else in my armoury and he was as soft down there as farm fresh brie. Nice package he's got though, by the way, Lib."

"O God!" Libby looked ashen, "What am I going to do now? You were my last hope. That awful Madge Allnut said she wouldn't touch my husband with a barge-pole! I think she must be gay."

"Honey, I know you told me not to ask questions when you requested that I seduce your husband and you _know_ I was more than happy to oblige, but I've got to ask, what the hell are you playing at, woman?" said Audrey in exasperation, "Henry has admitted to me that you are the only woman he has ever been with since your marriage and the only one he could ever desire. He is simply not interested in bonking his leading lady or any other lady in fact, however pretty they may be. Sweetheart, he is an absolute keeper, one loyal husband in a million, so why are you throwing other women at him? Unless he is crap in bed, which I doubt, especially after you have been boasting about him for at least the last twenty years. You could lose him, if you are not careful, Lib."

"That's the last thing I want, Aud," Libby began sobbing now, "I couldn't possibly live without Henry. As for crap in bed, he's nigh on the perfect lover, considerate, gentle, loving, but can be as passionate as any Casanova can, especially when he is on a mission."

"Like your anniversary?"

"Oh God, that's only two weeks away."

"So why this, trying to palm him off on your friends, after nearly twenty years of marriage?"

"Just because it is nearly twenty years, that's the big problem."

"Lib, I don't understand, he's got something special already set up for your anniversary, he's already said so, you always look forward to it every year, and for the special ones, I was so envious of you on your tenth. Bernie's useless, he doesn't know what day it is let alome what year."

"I know, I always sneak looks at the 'so-called' secret credit card account Henry uses for surprises and he has booked a show, restaurant, dancing and hotel suite for the weekend in the West End, it's going to be brilliant."

"Lib," Audrey shook her head, "So why?-"

"It's Enrique!" Libby blurted out.

"Who?"

"Enrique, the stripper" Libby elaborated.

"What!? The stripper at Julia's hen night last month?"

"Yes... I slept with him."

"But you didn't have time, sweetie, I was the designated driver that night and drove you home straight after. And you were out of your head, I remember, sucking him off like that, you wicked woman you! But, it was a hen night, you were with friends. It was just oral, so it doesn't really count, does it? and all us girls present will make sure Henry never ever finds out."

"I know, I couldn't believe what I did when I woke up the next day, but when he called me -"

"What? How did he call you?"

"I must've passed him my mobile number, I really can't remember," Libby wailed.

"So he called you?"

"Yes, the next day while I was still under the influence and what I did to him still fresh and obsessive in my mind. And so I agreed that we met up in a hotel room."

"You dirty, lucky bitch!"

"No, it was god-damn awful," sobbed Libby, "He was abusive, he slapped me around making me feel like the slut I was. I thought it was going be exciting as I had done nothing like this before but it was... terrible, the worst experience of my life."

"Oh honey," Audrey embraced her best friend, who was now crying openly, "Henry will never find out, dear, we'll make sure of that, so best just chalk it up to experience and forget all about it."

"You don't understand," Libby cried, "Enrique has pictures and is threatening to show Henry."

"How did he get photos?"

"He booked the hotel room for the day and set up a couple of small cameras that were taking stills ... of us doing it."

"Is he after money?"

"Not yet, he's after more sex, but if I stop giving it to him, he will either tell Henry or will want money."

"What do you mean, 'stop'?"

"He's blackmailing me to continue seeing him."

"How often?"

"Once a week, but he wants to step it up to twice."

"So how many times have you been with him?"

"Three times," she sobbed, "And he's shown me more photos that he has taken since, plus a video with sound and everything, so I can't go to Henry and say I made a single mistake, unless I can catch Henry doing the same sort of thing."

"So that's why you wanted me to seduce Henry?"

"That was the idea, throw you two together so you have a brief affair, I find out and forgive Henry, so then he has to forgive me. That's why I followed Madge a couple of weeks ago and slipped the Kindle I stole into her shopping bag in her trolley while you kept her occupied in conversation. Teach her a lesson for dissing Henry like that. Then I slipped an irritant in Reg's shower gel when I used his bathroom, so that you and Henry would be cast together in this play."

"How the hell did you get into Reg's bathroom, you and Angie hate each other, right Lib?"

"Damn, this gets worse, Aud," Libby admitted, "I had to seduce Reg in order to get at him, and now he's pestering me for more sex as well!"

"I despair of you sometimes, Lib, I really do!"

Henry left the side of the stage a little puzzled, having turned back to check the timing of the next rehearsal with the stage manager. With mobile in hand, as he walked across the village hall car park on the way to his car, he pressed the one-touch key and held the phone to his ear as it rang. The other end was picked up on the second ring.

"Hi H," the phone speaker squawked, "You finally on the way to the pub?"

"No can do, Fred, although I was dying for an ale or two-"

"Yeah" interjected the distant voice, "I bet prancing about on the stage like a right tart all evening makes you posers really thirsty."

"You're right!" laughed Henry, "I could murder a jar or three and still thrash you at a game of arrows with one arm tied behind my back!"

"Ooo! Get you, Shirley Temple," came the retort in an affected camp accent, "I bet you theatricals loved being tied up!"

"As it happens ..." Henry laughed back with a similar affectation, "No, Libby's back from her girls' night early, really early in fact, considering it's the Bank Holiday tomorrow, so I better get back to the old homestead. I'll see you at the match tomorrow and we'll sort out an evening out before next match on Saturday, alright?"

"OK, see you then, H. I take it you've not told her anything yet then?"

"Nah, I told you, Fred, we gotta get this blessed anniversary outta the way, then I'll leave it a couple of weeks for her to come down from her high, and then I'll tell her. I really will. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yeah, of course I do, you sensitive old fart, you," the voice came back affectionately, "Don't forget I really love you, man."

"I know," said Henry softly, "Love you loads too, big boy."

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#  THE END.

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# Tony Spencer

# The author lives in the UK and has been writing pretty well since he got his first slate tablet and chalk while he still wore short trousers, mostly sports reports with provincial newspapers along with some factual works and now devoting his calcium carbonate scribblings to minor (even mini-) works of fiction. Worked as a printer and proofreader for over 40 years and still available to freelance as a 'corrector of the press'. This is his fifteenth publication and his first set of new original short stories published on Smashwords. Methinks Solly Tree may rear his ugly head again with another collection in the near future, either that nettle tea is fertile stuff or his prostrate's playing up again! I'll look some more milk bottles for him.

# Facebook: facebook.com/tony.spencer.942

# Email: ae.spencer@btconnect.com
