“You probably think she’d be great in bed, but she’s not.”

That was my best friend, Al, talking about his girlfriend, who he’d been with for several years. We had hung out as three, comfortable in each other’s company and with me careful not to get in the way of Al and Helly. She and I treated each other like brother and sister. Now, though, Al was going away, leaving the area, and she wasn’t going with him. He had a future to create and she had a present that obliged her to stay where she was.

Although our relationship had been a familial one, there was something between Helly and me. It’s almost inevitable with your best friend’s girlfriend. You spend so much time together, share so much, laugh together, listen to the same music, watch the same films, eat in the same restaurants at the same table. You use the same bathrooms, and information about the couple’s sex life has a way of leaking out.

And you’re always just a few feet away from this girl’s bits, her tits, her arse. You see her bra straps and the top of her knickers at the back when her shirt rides up and the back of her jeans gapes.

And she gets the same with you. Loyal and innocent as she may be, she is often in the presence of a man who would look after her if the need arose. And women do love security and are prepared to pay for it with themselves. A simple trade-off; you make me feel extra safe and happy and I’ll overlook the fact that you’re looking at the little hill between my legs.

The boyfriend is aware of this. He must be, because he’s a man himself and knows the feeling of quietly desiring somebody else’s property.

So we had the farewell party with some more friends and, for their last night together, Al and Helly stayed in a hotel, just the two of them, like a futile, too-late honeymoon. And then off he went down the motorway and Helly and I each acquired an empty place inside where he had been.

It was early afternoon and we had had a few last drinks at our favourite pub.

“What you doing this aft?” I asked.

Helly shook her head. “Dunno,” she mumbled sadly.

“Want to go for a drive?”

“Okay.”

We sped out of town into the hills and I pulled into a remote car park with a famously good view of the valley in which our little town lay.

Helly and I talked, nervously at first, then more casually as we grew accustomed to our circumstances. Suddenly I felt an erection starting and I realized I couldn’t do it. I made an excuse and drove back to town, dropping her at her flat and retreating to mine, where I put my feet up on the settee and listened to some old Motown.

The erection returned, and I thought the best way to deal with it was to have a wank, to get rid of the lust and get back to zero. But it was Helly in my mind as I pulled myself off. I managed to avoid a definite scenario – no blow job, no licking her beautiful shaven hole (I knew she shaved down there) - and when I came it had the desired effect for a few minutes.

Then, as I was walking to the bathroom to wash my hands and dispose of the wet tissue, my phone rang, and as I put my guilty fingers in my pocket to retrieve it, I knew it would be her.

“I’m bored,” she said. “Shall we have something to eat in a bit? Bar meal at the Oak? They start at six.”

It was five o’clock. I said, “Sure, see you about ten to,” because she lived right next door to the Oak. So I had a shower and smoked a joint and thought about it. It would be just like a normal evening, with Al playing cricket or visiting his Dad and he would join us later. And in the normal course of events if he didn’t show up, that would be okay. I’d walk her to her door and go home. No big deal.

It wasn’t a normal atmosphere, though. We had some food and a couple of drinks, but I felt like we were being watched. It was as if everyone was sitting there in judgement on me and Al’s girlfriend.

“No, it’s too weird. I’ve got to get out of here,” Helly said suddenly. “Come on.”

We slipped out of the door like fugitives and darted to her door. Close it, up the stairs, her front room, music on, glass of wine, she gives me the grass and I roll.

It did feel better, though, being out of the public gaze.

Helly sat next to me on the sofa, which wasn’t surprising because the sofa was the only furniture there was, apart from a rickety old dining table and two plastic garden chairs.

We watched a video, an old Bob Dylan concert, and we edged closer together until my knee came into contact with hers.

“Oh God,” she said as she turned to me and we melted into each other’s arms.

It was strange holding Helly. I hadn’t realized how thin she was, how bony she felt. We kissed together okay, though, and  after a minute she led me into the bedroom, which featured just a mattress on the floor. We stood next to it and I fumbled with her jeans. She shrugged me off and undressed herself, then sat on the bed and looked at a magazine as I wrenched off my clothes.

I touched her tiny breasts and thought how much bigger they looked in a bra under a t-shirt. She lay down and let me suck her nipples before taking my cock in her hand and jerking it clumsily.

Maybe Al was right. Maybe she wasn’t good at sex, because although there are no evening classes, no official standards to attain and be awarded certificates for, there is the matter of basic competence, which seems to have no correlation to enthusiasm.

“Turn around,” she said, so I did, kneeling on the mattress. She reached around and continued playing with me, kneeling behind my tense, unknowing body.

“Don’t come,” she said. “I want you inside me.”

With that she let go of my cock and knelt in front of me, reaching behind to guide me into her vagina with the blind, awkward fumbling that women do when they’re making sure you don’t think you’re going to fuck them up the arse.

When my cock finally slid into the right entrance, Helly turned her head.

“I want you to bang me as hard as you can,” she said. “Don’t worry, you won’t hurt me.”

Ours is not to reason why, is it? Ours is to be grateful for being granted some sort of access. I slammed her doggie-style and she grunted and cried out, but when I stopped and asked, she just told me to carry on. I banged her again but I could feel the tip of my cock colliding with whatever it is that makes most girls want you to take it easy.

“Can you lie on your back?” I asked, withdrawing.

“No,” she said firmly. “You are not doing me face to face.”

This seemed like some sort of contract she had drawn up with herself, a way of allowing us to have something  that wouldn’t be considered full sex, proper sex. As if looking into someone’s eyes as you were fucking was more damning than just banging.

“Can I lick your arse?” I said, remembering that Al had told me she wanted him to do that. He had declined, the squeamish fool.

“Yes, of course,” Helly said. “I would like that.”

So, had she been thinking about it all this time we had known each other? Thinking that although her boyfriend wouldn’t rim her, there would eventually be someone who would?

I looked at Helly’s slim back region and saw pure white buns like smooth mounds of bread dough, and between them, not recessed very far, a dark brown, neatly puckered ring with a sort of pinhole that made it look not quite closed. I put my face there and she moaned happily. Now that we were into territory where her boyfriend didn’t stray, doing things he hadn’t claimed as his, she could relax and enjoy it.

She shivered and giggled as my tongue invaded her crevice.

“That is beautiful,” she whispered. “That is beautiful.”

I licked her arse as if I had been wanting to do it for ages, gently, firmly, fearlessly. It was something I had done only occasionally with other girls, because they didn’t ask for it and I had been perfectly happy with all the other things you can do. But I must admit I had sometimes watched Helly kneeling to put a record of a video on and looked at the back of her thighs in her little denim skirt, trying not to make it obvious for Al’s sake, and I had fantasised about doing the most depraved things to her.

And here I was, doing it, with her full permission. In fact she was loving it, pressing back at me and inviting my tongue as deep and as wide as it wanted to go.

Then she started to whimper, louder and louder, and finally collapsed forwards.

“I want to make you come,” she said worriedly. “Stay like that.” I was on my hands and knees.

She went around and knelt behind me, took my cock and began wanking me again. And then, to my surprise and delight, she licked my arse.

It took mere seconds for me to come, splashing my spunk over the sheet, and we lay together giggling, She spooned me, so again we were not facing each other.

“Fuck, I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” she said quietly. “Forgive me, please. I’m sorry.”