Chapter Eight

Three months later, towards the end of the spring term, I was at a party in a student house; the sort of open-door event that friends of friends are welcome to attend.

The pain of losing Annabel had faded considerably, helped in no small part by Nicky, one of the girls in whose house the party was being held. I had met and fucked Nicky twice after previous drunken parties (the purely casual basis being her decision, not mine), but we were still on good terms.

And of course, there was always the possibility of a third round in the offing to attract me.

By inviting me and my friends to the party, she was guaranteed a fair showing of good-looking male students and, given that she lived in an all-girl house of seven, we needed no great encouragement to attend.

It was past pub closing time when I arrived at the house with three friends, half-drunk already and on the lookout for available pussy. As promised, there were plenty of girls at the party, but as usual, the availability of their vaginas was questionable.

Rules in the ‘eighties’ were different from today.

Having tasted Nicky’s amazing body already, I was naturally hopeful of enjoying a third helping that night and had brought condoms in case I got lucky. Nicky was as flirtatious as always, but to my severe disappointment, seemed more interested in one of my friends than in me.

At first, I felt intensely jealous and angry at having been brought there under false pretences, but all that changed when, to my amazement, I saw my oldest female friend in a corner of the lounge.

Caroline!

She still had that girl-next-door look she had always projected, but with a sharper, more experienced and yes, much sexier attitude that at first, made me do a quick double-take.

Her hair was the same colour but had a sheen I hadn’t noticed before. Her face was the same; open and pretty but now her features were enhanced through more adventurous use of make-up. Her figure was still full and curvy, but now her legs, breasts and buttocks looked much more shapely, and were presented more prominently by the short skirt and high-heeled boots she was wearing.

She hadn’t seen me; being fully occupied trying to resist the clumsy attempts at seduction being inflicted on her by a short, round, very drunk young man. He had somehow managed to pin her in a corner and was talking to her earnestly, his face only inches from hers as he swayed unsteadily on his wobbly legs.

A little less unsteady than my rival, I homed in on her, in my mind like a knight in shining armour to the rescue.

“Caroline! How ARE you?”

The look of surprise, delight and relief on my friend’s face when she saw me made my heart leap. Pushing past her would-be seducer, she threw herself at me, flung her arms around my neck and kissed me passionately on the lips.

“Help! Get me away from him!” she croaked in my ear.

Putting my arms around her, I returned the embrace, fondling her buttocks ostentatiously in front of the short, round lothario for good measure then, smiling and apologising, let her lead me out of the lounge, through the kitchen and into the house’s tiny backyard, gathering two large glasses of cheap red wine on the way.

“Thanks,” she grinned when the noise was finally low enough to have some kind of conversation.

“You’re welcome,” I grinned back. “It’s great to see you. What are you doing here?”

“Nicky’s just transferred onto my course,” she replied. “She invited us all. What are you doing here?”

For some reason, I didn’t want Caroline to know about my two successful forays into her friend’s knickers. Instead, I said enough for her to infer that Nicky and I knew each through mutual friends.

I don’t know whether it was my half inebriated state, Nicky’s reputation, or the uncanny ability to see through me that Caroline had and still has, but the look on her face showed that she was in no doubt that my relationship with Nicky was as much physical as it was emotional.

Still, whatever the cause, she seemed unsurprised and unconcerned.

“I’m sorry about Annabel,” she said quietly.

“It’s okay,” I replied. “I guess these things happen. How did you find out?”

“We met up over Christmas. Her new boyfriend was there too.”

“What did you think of him?”

“He’s rich and thick, but gorgeous. They’re made for each other,” she said bitterly.

“Shouldn’t I be the one with the grudge?” I joked.

“I don’t like you being hurt,” she said with an honesty that made my heart thump.

There was a pause while we both took a long sip from our drinks. The music suddenly became louder; we moved closer together to try and make ourselves audible.

“How are things with Marcus?” I asked, anxious to divert the conversation from a painful subject.

“Don’t you know?” she asked. “I thought you two were blood brothers.”

“I’ve heard nothing for months,” I told her honestly. “I just assumed you two were still…”

“Well, we aren’t,” Caroline replied sharply.

“I’m sorry…” I began.

“It’s okay. If you must know, I only visited him one weekend and that was last term. It was okay, but it’s such a long journey. He never came down to London to see me, then he went to his parents for Christmas and… and didn’t bother keeping in touch.”

I could see tears welling up in her eyes as she added.

“He’s moved on emotionally, even if he hasn’t found someone else yet.”

There was a sadness in her voice that made me sad too. She clearly still had strong feelings about him. We downed the rest of our drinks, then I forced my way to the kitchen to refill them. When I returned, Caroline met me halfway.

“Come on,” she grinned. “I need to cheer up. Let’s dance a bit.”

The house’s living room was cramped and full, but by judicious use of elbows we forced our way into the gyrating throng, and began to move in time to the music, as much as the crush of bodies would allow.

After half a dozen songs had passed, we were both hot and sweaty and had been kneed and elbowed in every painful place in my body. Caroline grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled my head down towards hers.

“Get me out of here!” she yelled into my ear. “Please!” 

Chapter Nine

We fought our way towards the door, then rummaged through the shoulder high pile of coats until we had found my jumper and her jacket. Pulling them on, I made a series of hand gestured to the nearest of my friends to let him know I was leaving to walk Caroline home.

He made a series of crude gestures, suggesting what I might also do with my friend. I frowned at him then, taking her by the hand, stepped out into the North London night.

It wasn’t particularly cold outside, but the contrast with the hot, steamy dance floor was marked. I could see Caroline shivering so slipped my arm around her shoulders to warm her up. She snuggled against me as we walked along street after street towards her own house, chatting about the old days, our old friends and from there, inevitably, to what had happened since.

“I can’t believe Marcus treated you like that,” I sighed angrily. “Though to be honest, he seems to have dropped me too.”

“I guess he’s just someone for whom out of sight really does mean out of mind,” she suggested.

Using the word ‘whom’ was very old-school Caroline. A warm glow began within me and I squeezed her affectionately.

“Does it still hurt?” I asked hesitantly, though I had already seen the pain in her eyes.

“A little,” she replied. “But what about you? Annabel hasn’t treated you any better.”

“I’ll get over it.”

“Have you found someone else?” she asked quietly.

There was no way I was going to tell her about my one-night stands, any more than I was going to tell her about Nicky. And I most certainly wasn’t going to mention the disgraceful way I had treated Rachel.

“No-one special,” I replied. It was almost the truth. “How about you?”

“The same,” she shrugged.

We crossed the street and turned onto the road in which her house stood.

“Perhaps we should go out with each other,” I said with a hollow laugh as we reached her front gate. “Seeing as nobody else seems to want us anymore.”

It was intended as a joke, but Caroline seemed to take my words at face value. After a short pause, she looked up into my eyes quizzically.

“Are you asking me out?”

She cocked her head to one side and fixed me with those wonderful brown eyes.

This threw me for a moment. I hadn’t intended to ask Caroline out, but now the idea had been raised; it didn’t seem a bad idea at all. In fact, the more I thought about it, the better an idea it seemed.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” I replied.

“I didn’t think you liked me in that way,” she said softly. “I didn’t think I was your type; not after you and Annabel got together. I thought we were just good friends.”

“We are good friends. But I do like you in that way, too.” I replied, realising for the first time the truth of my words. “I think I always have. And you’re definitely my type. Definitely.”

She looked surprised, but at least a little pleased, too. Pressing my luck, I continued.

“Actually, I’d really like us to get together – if you and Marcus really are as finished as me and Annabel.”

Now it was her turn to think. I could see from her worried expression that she was agonising over the decision. My heart twisted in my chest and my breathing stopped as I waited for what I suddenly realised was going to be one of the most important announcements in my life.

“I think…” she began uncertainly, and my heart sank. “I think… I would like to go out with you,” she said after what for me was an eternity. “Actually, I think I’d like it a lot.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

The kiss that followed was one of the strangest of my life. At first, kissing the girl I had known so well and for so long, felt a little like kissing a sister, but after a few minutes of tentative pecking, our lips grew more used to each other, and our mouths began to mould together.

Before long, we were snogging as if our lives depended on it, and I realised I had in my hands a real, wonderfully sexual creature.

When she invited me in for a coffee, my heart leapt.

It leapt higher an hour later when, my lips numb from kissing, she suggested I should stay the night.

Shortly after that, when I had stripped her soft, curvy body naked alongside her large double bed, and was gazing in awe at her full breasts, rounded hips and soft, sparse pubic hair, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

But the real heaven was waiting for me a short while later when, on her back, with her soft legs spread wide and her brown eyes fixed firmly on mine, my painfully erect cock entered the sweet, moist, open body of the girl I had loved ever since I had first set eyes on her, so many years before.

The girl whose hand I had held while she lost her virginity to my best friend.

The girl who had been mine for less than an hour.

As our souls merged into one for the first time, Caroline’s sweet body was as soft and welcoming as I had imagined. She was as sweet and fragrant as I had imagined too, but warmer and tighter than I had thought possible, her vagina moulding itself around my cock like a handmade glove.

There was a pause as our bodies adjusted to each other’s presence, our eyes still locked together, though both were now hazy with lust. I could feel the tightness of her entrance around the base of my shaft and the pressure of her cervix against my swollen head.

I could feel her hips wriggling beneath mine as my cock settled into place deep within her, the walls of her darkest cavern gripping every ridge and furrow of my shaft.

With my head spinning, I began to thrust in and out of my closest female friend, first slowly, then with as long and slow a rhythm as my lust would allow. Caroline gasped, her hands balled into fists, her legs closing instinctively but ineffectively on my sides.

Inspired by the strength of her reaction, I began to thrust harder, with increasing pace and power. Minutes later, the heart-wrenching sounds I had heard so many times before emerged from her sweet lips - for the first time, not as a result of Marcus’ cock in her vagina, but of my own.

‘Uh-uh-uh’

As I thrust into her over and over again, the sweet sounds grew stronger and louder and my own arousal rose to match.

‘Uh-uh-uh’

Caroline’s dark brown eyes remained locked onto mine, her familiar face on the white pillow, a picture of innocent loveliness. My heart was thumping, my mind spinning in disbelief as I slowly and with increasing confidence, fucked the girl I had sat next to in class for so many years.

‘Uh-uh-uh-UHHH!’

A mischievous grin suddenly crossed her face, and I felt her vagina tighten hard around my cock, grip it for a moment, then suddenly release. It felt amazing; I looked down into her face in surprise.

“Oh, my God! That was good!” I gasped in surprised delight.

“You like that?”

“Christ, yes!”

With a twinkle in her eye, she did it again, then a third time, then gripped me tightly for a long time.

“Where did you learn that?” I panted, still thrusting, my arousal mounting faster and faster.

Caroline didn’t reply, but a look of mischievous pleasure crossed her face as she bit her lower lip, tipped her hips forward and tightened her pelvic floor once again, this time much harder and for much longer.

“Oh my God, I’m going to cum!”

My cock gripped and twisted as if by a fist. I thrust into her harder still, increasing the force and pace of my strokes, my rhythm breaking as a painful and copious ejaculation began to bear down on me.

The wet slapping sounds that emanated from our conjoined loins filled the room more and more. Caroline’s soft gasps grew louder and higher in pitch until finally, they were choked off completely by the arrival of her orgasm; the first she had ever experienced at my hands.

Her mouth fell open in silent scream, her hands grabbed at my waist and buttocks and her legs wrapped themselves tightly around my thighs as she came hard beneath my wildly thrusting body, a body that a few moment later was shaking uncontrollably as my own climax hit and hit hard.

With a pulsating, trembling body and hard, throbbing cock, I emptied the entire contents of my tight, swollen balls into Caroline’s vagina for the first of many, many times, in a heart-rending orgasm I can still remember today.

And throughout the whole wonderful coupling, Annabel and Simon had not even entered my mind.

Chapter Ten

I spent the night with Caroline in her single student bed, fucking until we were both sore and exhausted. It was awkward and cramped, neither of us slept much but as we joked the following morning, with my body on top of hers so often, on average, there was plenty of room.

Her housemates seemed surprised that in a single evening, quiet, reserved Caroline had gone from not even mentioning me to spending a noisy night with me in her bed, but they were polite and friendly when we eventually emerged for a very late breakfast of tea and toast.

They were even more friendly when Caroline explained just how long she and I had known each other.

To cut a long story short, she and I became an item that night and have remained one ever since. Throughout the rest of our University days we were a couple, spending night after night together either at her place or mine, making love as if our lives depended on it.

I soon found out that Marcus had been right; Caroline was indeed a tiger in bed.

Lulled into a false sense of security by the relative romance of our first night together, I was completely unprepared for the energy and proficiency of her performance in bed the following night, and throughout the years that followed.

Though still sweet and shy in public, in private, Caroline threw herself into sex with an energy and abandon that completely belied her quiet, conventional appearance. Though seldom taking the lead, she was open to almost any and every idea or suggestion that I made, and took on each new experience with passion, lust and a spirit of adventure that took my breath away.

Her oral skills took me by complete surprise, as did the demands she put on my own mouth and tongue in return. Many was the morning I woke with a badly stiff neck, swollen lips and a gooey face.

The demands she made on the rest of my body and stamina were astonishing too as, over the first few months of our relationship, I fucked her progressively in every available orifice and position in the metaphorical book.

And the things she could do with her pelvic floor…

Where this expertise had come from remains a mystery. As far as I knew, her entire sexual history had been with Marcus and with me – and she certainly hadn’t learned it from me. If I ever came close to commenting on her sexual proficiency, she would become very embarrassed and self-conscious, and for days afterwards would be stiff and awkward in bed.

Naturally, I quickly learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and seldom mentioned it again.

Having an exciting and regular sex partner allowed me to stop trying to play the field and concentrate more on my academic studies. My results improved considerably over the coming terms, as did Caroline’s, so we graduated the same summer with good degrees.

Afterwards, determined to stay together, we both found good jobs in London. With a little help from our parents, we rented a flat and passed the psychological watershed of moving in together.

There were a few rocky patches on the road to domestic bliss, but we eventually navigated them and began our lives as a real couple, both in and out of bed.

For the first few months of our co-habitation, sex continued at the same high-frequency, high-energy levels that had characterised our courtship. It was true even then, that the pace was being set by Caroline, and that I had to run to keep up, but we were young and deeply in love and it all seemed simply wonderful.

For a man to have a lovely, sexy woman demanding sex with him almost every day and in almost every way, does his self-esteem no harm at all.

However, the pressures of work and much desired early promotions did eventually wear us down, and by the time the first year together was closing, we had fallen into the habit of making love only a couple of times a week.

These couplings were still exciting and energetic; the quality had been maintained if not the quality and I was still leading a pussy-whipped existence.

Further promotions for me followed over the next three years, but the company Caroline worked for suffered the fate of many businesses in that period and ended up going bust, leaving her unemployed.

Never one to get depressed, she decided to take the opportunity to re-train as a teacher and we took the monumental decision to get married and start a family.

Long before the ceremony took place, Caroline had come off the pill and we were trying for a baby.

I know I speak for Caroline too when I say that deliberately trying to get my wife pregnant resulted in the best, closest and most meaningful sex of our lives – at least up to that point. If our bodies had merged as we made love before, the conscious insemination of Caroline’s soft, open and we fully intended, highly fertile womb with my seed took that unique bond to an entirely new level.

As with many couples, the process led to both her libido and mine simply soaring. Tiredness meant nothing; every day and at least twice every weekend, she would lie under me, climaxing freely while I delivered load after load of thick, creamy semen into the depths of her belly.

Afterwards, she would lie on her back with her knees raised for a good half hour to let my sperm do their important job.

It worked better than we had hoped; conception happened within two months - and a good few weeks before our wedding, though not long enough to affect the cut of her off-white dress.

What was more of a surprise was the way her pregnancy, far from making her feel heavy and unattractive, raised her libido to hitherto unimagined levels. With increased responsibility at work, extended office hours and frequent weekend working, I could barely manage to keep her satisfied, no matter how hard I tried.

Vaginal, oral – even our first attempts at anal sex were on the menu on a daily basis, all chasing the rapidly receding goal of orgasm for my increasingly insatiable wife.

It sounds a terrible thing to say, but after a couple of months, the novelty of constantly fucking Caroline had worn a bit thin. What should have been a very pleasurable merging of bodies and souls had become an exhausting obligation that left me permanently aching and decidedly sore.

What it was doing between Caroline’s thighs could be seen every time I penetrated her angry pink passage, but something deep within was driving her on to greater and greater sexual athletics.

Eventually, our first baby was born and to my relief, Caroline’s libido returned to more manageable levels. I was promoted at work too, and we moved into a larger flat.

Caroline had put on quite a few pounds during her pregnancy. She lost some of this extra weight after the birth, but less than a year later, we agreed that it would be best to have our children close together and the whole process began again.

The presence of our first baby made our usual noisy, energetic sex much harder to manage, but at Caroline’s insistence, we persevered and, eighteen months after our first daughter was born, our second arrived.

Our family now complete, my much-needed vasectomy followed swiftly after.

With two small children in a small flat, the pressures on us were multiplied. What with another promotion at work, and the demands babies make on both parents, we found less and less time to be a couple, both in bed and out with our friends.

Unsurprisingly, our sex life suffered badly, along with sleep, exercise, healthy eating and every other adult pursuit apart from alcohol and gaining weight.

Before long, we had both lost touch with the last few school friends with whom we had maintained contact.

I hadn’t heard from or about either Marcus or Annabel in over five years.

Chapter Eleven

Fast-forward sixteen years and you find us in our forties, still married, living in a large, four-bedroom house in the Thames Valley west of London. I was, and still am a Senior Executive in a software company. Caroline works part time, teaching in a local school.

Our two kids, both girls, had been in the sixth form in another local school, not far from the one in which their mother taught. 

The older girl – who looks more like me than her mother - was about the same age her mother and I were when this story began. I was pretty sure that her virginity had been discarded a long time ago; I even worried that she might have acquired a reputation for being an easy lay, but of course there are many things a father has to pretend not to notice.

Disconcertingly, our younger daughter was the spitting image of her mother when I had sat next to her in class. Like Caroline, she was sweet, curvy and had the same dark, fiery eyes that her mother still possessed and which both women could use on me to devastating effect.

As a family, we were outwardly very happy but as so often happens in long-term relationships, there was a certain amount of trouble under the surface.

In particular, Caroline and my sex life had ground almost to a halt.

It will come as no surprise to any reader that a couple who have been married for over twenty years no longer copulated with the energy and frequency that they had enjoyed two decades before. Most of our married friends seemed to be in a similar position, the downturn driven by a combination of extreme familiarity with each other, a lack of imagination in terms of technique, and in the case of Caroline, the approach of the menopause.

We still loved each other very deeply, and sex did still feature in our lives, but over time the gaps between copulations had grown from hours to days, from days to weeks, then finally from weeks to months.

You can see couples like us on every street in every town in every country. And we could have remained at this level of bland contentment for many years had it not been for the one key incident that literally changed the course of our lives.

The Facebook message came out of a clear blue sky one Saturday morning.

‘You have a friend request from Marcus.’

I stared at the screen in amazement. Marcus? My best friend from school? Was it really Marcus getting back in touch after twenty-odd years?

I clicked on the icon to look at his profile. It was sparse but from the picture it was definitely him, and he had made a positive move to get in touch with me. I accepted his invitation eagerly and a day later, had access to his posts and pages.

I read them with fascination, along with the private message I found in my inbox.

The gist of the message was that Marcus was planning to return to the UK after a life spent working in the Middle East. From what I could gather from his profile and pictures, he had recently made a killing on one particular deal; enough to allow him to return home and retire early.

He wanted to smooth his return by making contact with a few blasts from his past. To my delight, this included me, and he was keen to arrange a meeting as soon after his return as possible to make up for lost time.

I replied very positively and after exchanging half a dozen short messages, all was set for us to have a pint together in a few weeks’ time.

In the interim, I studied his posting and profile in more detail, along with any other social media activity I could find. I quickly learned that Marcus had been married at least twice, had no children from either association and was now single again.

To my chagrin, I had to admit he looked remarkably like he had looked all those years ago when we were leaving school. Tall, good-looking and athletically built but with fashionably short greying hair instead of the longer, dark brown locks that had been so popular in the seventies and which elicited only amusement whenever photos of that era were viewed. Add to that, a deep tan and a neatly trimmed beard and you had the archetypal rugged, well-travelled Englishman.

I looked in the mirror. My own unruly hair had been receding and turning grey for some years and, like Caroline, there was a padding around my waist that most certainly had not been present during my schooldays.

I resolved to deal with these issues as soon as possible – certainly before Marcus arrived back in the country and we met up again.

For some reason, I decided not to tell Caroline about any of this.

***

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Marcus lied, smiling broadly.

We were sitting across a small round table in a typical London pub a few weeks later. Two tall, dark pints of bitter were on its shiny, damp surface, one of which my friend picked up and sipped lovingly.

“You won’t believe how much I’ve been looking forward to this,” he said, smacking his lips.

“Seeing me or the pub?” I teased.

“Both,” he replied after another long pull at his glass. “But fifteen years in back end of beyond places with little or no beer sure as hell focuses the mind.”

“When did you actually get back?” I asked.

“The day before yesterday. I’m staying in an Airbnb place in Fulham.”

“Why Fulham?”

“It’s where my first ex-wife lived, so I know it better than most places.”

“How many exes do you have?”

“Just the two, if you mean marriages,” he smiled sheepishly. “A good few more if you count girlfriends.”

One of the earliest of those exes was, of course, my wife Caroline, but that had been a very long time ago before she and I got together so neither he nor I mentioned the fact.

I looked across at the man who used to be my closest friend. Despite his long time in the heat of the Middle East, life had treated him kindly. He looked every bit the Marcus I remembered, but a little older and a lot more worldly wise.

His Facebook page didn’t do him justice. However difficult his working life had been psychologically; it had done him no harm physically. Marcus exuded health; from his short but full head of grey-streaked hair to his trendy trainers, he looked like a man who had taken good care of himself. Wiry and athletic rather than muscular, and without a spare ounce of fat, he looked like what I subsequently discovered him to be: a serious long-distance runner.

“Unlucky in love?” I asked cheekily.

“Unfaithful, more like,” Marcus pulled a face.

“Sorry. Did I hit a nerve?”

He grinned.

“Not really. It’s mostly me who cheated,” he confessed. “I always try to be the faithful husband or boyfriend, but then something or someone new comes along, and I can’t help myself.”

He sighed, then grimaced.

“It’s not always that way round, though. I do know how it feels like to find out some other man’s been fucking my girlfriend.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised.

Marcus leaned closer.

“There’s not a lot to do in these isolated places. Between you and me, a lot of swapping and swinging goes on.”

I sat back on my stool in surprise.

“I’d have thought it was mostly men out there,” I said.

“It is mostly,” Marcus agreed. “So when someone brings their wife or girlfriend out, they get, shall we say, a lot of attention.” He raised an eyebrow. “Some of the girls enjoy it and get into it more than others.”

I sat back, surprised.

“You and your wife were into swinging?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Yes. Both of my wives, in fact.”

“Wow!”

“Karen, my first wife couldn’t stick it long term and left me.”

“The climate or the swinging?”

“Both! Or neither!” he grinned. “At first she got into the whole swapping thing big-time. We had a lot of fun with a lot of people and had more sex in three years than I thought I would ever have in my whole life.”

This was like a letter from one of the porn magazines we used to steal from our parents and read when we were at school. I could hardly believe my ears, but my old friend appeared to be sincere.

“It’s true,” he insisted. “Karen was drop dead gorgeous, so all the guys wanted to fuck her.” He leaned closer and whispered. “And she let a lot of them do just that while I fucked their other halves close by.”

Although this was fascinating, I found it embarrassing to hear my friend’s confession, especially in a pub. Marcus must have spotted this, because he laughed aloud.

“You are so fucking British!” he exclaimed. “Perhaps I’ve been abroad too long. I’d forgotten how any talk of sex makes the Brits blush.”

This embarrassed me even more, but I tried hard not to let it show as he continued.

“I have a fair-sized cock, so the women were usually happy. But like they say, size isn’t everything. I also have a problem with delayed ejaculation.”

“You mean you need Viagra or something?” I asked naively.

“No, dum-dum. It’s the other way round. I can stay hard for as long as I like, but when it comes to making babies, it’s a problem. I find it hard to cum, okay? I can keep fucking literally non-stop for an hour but can only do the sperm business once in a blue moon. That’s the main reason I have no kids.”

“Is that why you and Karen broke up?”

He shook his head sadly.

“After a year or so, she had a road to Damascus experience. She suddenly decided all that sex had become too shallow, and she needed what she called a normal marriage to a normal guy with the prospect of children at some time. The divorce was civilised – well, mostly civilised.”

“That’s tough,” I responded, not knowing what else to say.

He shrugged. “She’s married to an accountant in Croydon now. She’s got four kids and has put on three dress sizes. Waste of an amazing body!” he sighed, then grinned cheekily. “To be fair, she is happy as Larry, though. And I bet her husband is too. When it comes to sex, I trained her well!”

I grinned too.

“My second wife, Claire, was on the staff over there. She was – probably still is – a lovely girl, and I fell for her head over heels. We were married quite quickly, and I tried hard to remain faithful while at the same time trying to get her interested in a bit of sharing on the side.

“Claire wasn’t naïve. She knew what went on from the other girls in the office but for a long time didn’t want to take part no matter how hard I tried. In the end, she did weaken and agreed to an evening with a couple we knew well.”

“How did it go?” I asked, fascinated.

“It was okay, but no better than that. To be fair to Claire, she went the whole hog – dressed sexily and spent most of the night with him while his wife and I were having a great time in the room next door. It was only when we were driving home in the early hours that the guilt and remorse hit her, and she started crying.”

“The poor girl.”

“We talked a lot. She admitted that she had really enjoyed it physically, but that just seemed to make the remorse worse. Needless to say, she refused to join in again. I got frustrated and eventually, the inevitable happened. I cheated, she found out and the relationship was over. I’ve only had short flings and affairs since then. It seems I’m not the marrying kind.”

There was genuine sadness in his voice before he pulled himself together and continued.

“Anyway, that’s more than enough about my chaotic life. Tell me about you and the gorgeous Caroline!”

So, I did. I told him how we had met and got together, how the kids were, how our careers had gone. There was nothing very impressive in our life stories, but it seemed to hit a chord within Marcus because he listened intently and became dreamy-eyed a few times, especially when I told him how happy Caroline and I had been for so long.

For the first time in my life, it felt as if I was one step ahead of my oldest friend.

We talked and reminisced for a good hour, sinking another couple of pints each as we did so. The years simply fell away; we got on as we used to and before I knew it, it was time for me to catch my train from Paddington Station back home.

“So where are you moving to next?” I asked. “After the Airbnb?”

“I’ve put a deposit on an apartment in Richmond,” he replied. “I move in at the end of the month.”

“This month?”

“In about four weeks. The Airbnb runs out in a couple of days, so I’ll need to find another place.”

“Come and have dinner with us tomorrow,” I grinned, the beer making me bolder and less thoughtful than I should have been.

Marcus looked pleased, but unsure about it.

“Shouldn’t you check with Caroline first,” he cautioned. “With two teenagers in the house, she won’t want anyone else getting under her feet.”

“She’ll be fine,” I reassured him as we finally parted. “She’d love to see you again.”

Chapter Twelve

“How could you do it without even talking to me?” my wife demanded, clenched fists on her hips. “You didn’t even tell me you were meeting him!”

I was in the wrong and knew it but wasn’t going to admit that… yet.

“I thought you might like to talk about old times too,” I protested. “You haven’t seen him for so long and…”

“Have you forgotten what happened the last time I saw him?” Caroline asked coldly.

“What?”

“He dumped me? Remember now?”

Oh shit! In the excitement of seeing my oldest friend again, I really had forgotten that he and my wife had a history together, and one that had not ended well.

How this could have slipped my mind I cannot explain; it was how she and I had got together after all.

“You get it now?” she demanded.

“I get it,” I agreed sheepishly. “But it’s too late to back out now and…”

Caroline sighed.

“Okay, I’ll get dinner for us. But I can’t see us all being close friends again, not after what happened, can you?”

I shook my head.

***

In the end, we were both wrong, but it took a few hours to realise that.

Clearly anxious about seeing her first lover again, let alone the boy who had unceremoniously dumped her, Caroline had resorted to what for her counted as armour; the dress she believed she looked best in without looking too sexy. When she emerged from the bedroom in her knee-length, figure hugging black dress, medium height heels and with pearls around her neck, she looked attractive but definitely unapproachable.

There was no way Marcus could interpret her choice of clothing as an attempt to impress him or show him what he had rejected. Though my wife seldom dressed sexily those days, even I could see this was a deliberate choice.

Marcus arrived at seven-thirty as planned, bearing champagne, chocolates, flowers and dressed in tight jeans and a polo shirt that showed off his trained body so well that even I felt a slight sexual attraction to him.

I could see that Caroline was taken aback by his appearance and grudgingly impressed. I smiled inwardly. This was a good start, but how would she handle his conversation? If he carried on as openly and unrepentantly sexually as he had with me in the pub, my lovely wife’s prudish side would be put on red alert straight away.

To my relief, Marcus did nothing of the sort. After greeting Caroline with a kiss that was warm, friendly but made no reference to their former intimacy, he remained a respectful distance from both of us all evening. The conversation was bright and amusing, full of anecdotes about his life abroad, avoiding the worst sexual references and asking many genuine questions about her and our life over the decades since we had last been together.

Caroline has always been an excellent cook; the food she served that night was simple but exceptional in flavour. I could see that Marcus was impressed.

I was pleased and amused to observe that he treated Caroline (correctly) as the more intellectually competent of the two of us and listened to all she said with genuine attention. This, of course, thawed her attitude considerably; I could see her visibly relaxing as the evening flowed on and the second bottle of wine was finished.

By the time a third bottle had been opened and coffee served, we were all slightly tipsy. Questioned by Caroline, Marcus’ stories had ventured towards his previous marriages and the reasons for their failure. I could see she was shocked by his revelations about the swinging lifestyle, but after another glass of wine, she was listening more intently, asking more and more detailed questions while Marcus and I unwisely sipped brandies.

It was well past midnight when Marcus’ taxi whisked him away to his flat. He and I hugged our goodbyes in the doorway, promising to get together again soon. I noticed Caroline’s goodnight kiss was a great deal more enthusiastic about his leaving than it had been when he arrived, moving enthusiastically into his embrace and accepting a kiss on the cheek, placed just a short distance from her lips.

The door closed, both of us let out sighs of relief, but for different reasons. Both a little unsteady on our feet, we chatted while we cleared the table and cleaned up in the kitchen.

“Was it as bad as you had feared?” I asked, knowing the answer. “It didn’t look as if you were suffering too badly.”

“No,” my wife smiled, embarrassed. “You were right; it was good to see an old face again.”

“And lay a few ghosts too? Is he forgiven for dumping you?”

She blushed.

“Of course. Actually, I think I had a lucky escape.”

“You didn’t fancy a few years swinging in the desert?” I asked cheekily. “It might have been fun. You haven’t had that many cocks in your life. A few more might loosen you up a bit!”

“Paul!”

Caroline looked genuinely shocked at my words. But when we went to bed shortly afterwards, I was both surprised and delighted to find that more than a little of the old Caroline’s enthusiasm in bed had definitely returned.

Chapter Thirteen

Marcus moved into his new home soon after and became a regular visitor to our house. Their unfortunate history, now apparently consigned to the past, Caroline had become much more at ease with her former lover. With all three now kids at school, she had more time on her hands, and willingly took on the responsibility of showing our friend the highlights and lowlights of our local area.

Their weekly or more frequent daytime trips out became part of her routine.

To help ease him into local society, we introduced him to a carefully selected group of our friends and were pleased to see both how easily they took to him. Caroline and I joked about the considerable impact he clearly had on all the women in our group, but particularly on those who were newly single, who seemed to dote on his every word.

It was also amusing for me to see how their open adoration brought out expressions of unexpected jealousy in my wife. Of course, she denied it when I teased her about it but having known her for so long, her denials fell on deaf ears.

Her jealousy became even more obvious when rumours began circulating that Marcus had bedded both our recently divorced female friends in quick succession. It became worse still when she learned from those friends that not only were the rumours true, but that his performance in bed had been nothing short of exceptional.

It took a couple of months before I noticed more changes in Caroline’s behaviour. At first, they were subtle; taking a little more time over her make-up, choosing skimpier, sexier lingerie and newer, closer fitting dresses instead of the jeans and shapeless shirts she routinely used to wear, but these little changes compounded until over time there was no question that my wife was dressing a great deal more sexily.

She started going to the gym more too, running again and taking classes. Soon, although she still carried extra weight, she carried it much better, holding herself straighter, her buttocks and breasts much more accentuated and on display.

Even I, her harassed, over-worked husband couldn’t fail to notice this, especially as to my delight, with this came more interest in bedroom activities too. There was no mistaking the fact that sex was becoming more frequent and perhaps even a little more adventurous. We weren’t back to Caroline’s early, demanding days by any means, but our sex life could once again be counted in terms of copulations per week instead of our previous, unenviable record of times per month or, at its worst, per year.

I was even allowed oral access to her vulva again after several years of absence. To my satisfaction, this resulted in the first real, uncontrollable orgasms I had given her for a very long time.

Caroline, of course, denied any changes had taken place at all and became angry and embarrassed if I even alluded to them. I decided simply to keep my mouth closed, to watch with interest and enjoy the improvement in our sex lives that was unquestionably taking place.

For this reason, it was even more obvious to me when, apparently overnight, it all suddenly stopped.

Not the exercise, not the wearing of shorter, closer fitting clothes; they didn’t stop. In fact, if anything, they became even more obvious, but the free and frequent access to my wife’s slimmer, sexier body that I had been enjoying so much, came to an abrupt end.

Had the changed happened slowly, gradually over time, I might simply have thought it was a natural consequence of our changing lives, but it didn’t. One evening we were fucking like rabbits while the kids slept, the next her soft, formerly rounded body was off limits.

It took a full week for me to realise something had changed, but there was no doubt about it. Soon almost all other forms of intimacy had been cut back too; no sex, oral or otherwise, no more kissing on the lips, no more long, lingering cuddles when she returned home from her greatly extended sessions at the gym.

By the time a second sexless week had passed, my disappointment had changed to annoyance. As far as I knew, I had done nothing to deserve what increasingly felt like a punishment. I hadn’t said or done anything to upset Caroline; I hadn’t flirted with any of our friends or left my wife feeling undervalued or neglected in any way.

By the time the third barren week was ending, my emotions had changed from annoyance to outright injustice. If she did not want sex, why had she led me on so comprehensively at first? Why had she tormented me by reminding me how hot and adventurous our sex life used to be, simply to refuse any sexual contact straight afterwards?

The cruelty was intolerable and, I had to say, quite out of character with the warm, caring nature of the woman I loved so much and with whom I had created three wonderful children.

Something must have happened for this sudden change to have taken place and I became determined to discover what that something was.

I did not have long to wait.