It was Thursday again, so Lindsey had announced she was going to Pilates as usual. Charity, the blind woman, had invited Jennifer, the wheelchair user, and me to her house on the other side of Tiverton. So Himari, Mandy, and Nicole had decided to meet at Mandy's house, just up the lane from me.

I collected Jennifer and she showed me how to dismantle her wheelchair for putting in the car after she'd transferred herself into the front seat of my car, and we drove to Charity's house. Apparently, Thursdays were when neither her mother, aunt, nor Home Helps were there, except for first thing in the morning.

I reassembled Jennifer's wheelchair in the street outside Charity's house and helped Jennifer negotiate the pavement and the shallow steps up to Charity's front door. Once we had knocked on the door, Charity turned on the inner hall light and let us in, after we'd said who we were.

She greeted us both with a double kiss, left cheek first, right cheek next, before announcing to us, with an obvious smile plastered across her face, what she was going to ask us to do first.

“So you can get a flavour of what being blind is like,” she said, “I'm asking you if it's OK to spend the evening in the dark, so you can't see anything.”

There was a slight pause. On our way here I had wondered if Charity would do this, seeing as how Jennifer had done it when we went to hers. Plainly, Jennifer had wondered this, as well. We both laughed and agreed to do it without any further ado. Charity reached out a hand, groped for the hall light switch, and flicked it off. We were plunged into complete darkness. Outside, the November early evening darkness flooded in. After a few seconds, a faint smear of dull light from a distant street light showed us where the front door was. Apart from that, nothing. I had no idea where anything was - furniture, doorways, rooms, or corridors. Charity guided us into her downstairs room which she said was big enough for her study/office as well as her bedroom. There was, apparently, a kitchen further down the passage, and Charity asked us if we'd like our coffee sitting at the kitchen table.

“Yes, please!”

Charity guided us towards it. I put my hands out in front of me, in the classic 'the-lights-have-gone-out-where-is-my-torch?' pose, but Charity put her hand on my arm and led me two steps towards Jennifer's wheelchair.

“Stella will steer you, Jennifer. Is that OK?” Charity's voice came out of the blackness next to my ear.

“Thank goodness for that!” Jennifer giggled.

The convoy formed up and set off for the kitchen; Charity seeming to know exactly where the wheelchair was going without any vision at all.

“Don't shuffle your feet, Stella. Walk normally. You'll be alright!”

I stopped shuffling my feet along the carpet like a bandaged Imhotep in Boris Karloff's epic 1932 Mummy film, picked them up, and allowed Charity to steer me as I steered Jennifer down the short passage into the kitchen. I was aware of entering a biggish room even though I could see nothing. She steered me to a chair next to the table, then steered Jennifer to the chair-less place next to me. We both made ourselves comfortable. I was reminded of the Christmas parties when I was a girl; someone always wanted to play Murder In The Dark. And now I was reaping the reward - hoping no one was going to put their hands around my neck and squeeze.

“Jennifer, do you have your green tea with you?” asked Charity.

The usual noises of a kettle being filled and switched on, mugs being lined up on the worktop, and coffee being placed into each one comforted us in its normality. The water had nearly boiled before Jennifer had located the small plastic box containing the tea bags which was buried at the bottom of her handbag (after some muttering and one or two rude words) and negotiated with Charity as to where she was holding it out to. Charity groped around and found it just as the kettle clicked off.

There were more noises of the milk coming out of the fridge, being slopped into Charity's and my coffee but not Jennifer's tea, then the milk going back into the fridge.

“Sugar, Stella?”

“Yes please, just one.”

More noises.

The mugs were placed in front of us, and we both carefully felt around in front of us until we had them safely in our grasp.

“What do you think of being blind so far?”

Charity's voice came from the other side of the kitchen table, now at sitting-down level as opposed to standing up.

“I can tell you're now sitting down, Charity, whereas you were standing up when you were making our drinks,” said Jennifer.

“And I could tell we were entering a biggish room when I came through the doorway, even though we didn't turn left or right to enter the kitchen,” I added.

Any residual light from the street light near the front of the house had entirely disappeared the moment we set off from the hall, but I would have expected some dim light to come in through the kitchen windows, even on a November evening. I said this.

“No, the downstairs windows all have Venetian blinds which I drop down and tilt when it gets dark. I don't like the idea of someone being able to watch me from outside when I can't see them.”

She explained various other differences between the houses of sighted people and blind people, including the rigorously adhered-to rule that everything was always in its place, without exception.

“Once something is three inches out of place, it's almost gone for good until I stumble across it three months later, by accident when I'm hunting for something else! When we go into the bedroom, I think you find it more sexy to rely on your hands as opposed to just looking at someone,” Charity suggested. “Use your hands and fingers as eyes. Also, sniff the scent and use your taste buds as well.”

She gave us some other tips on having sex as a blind person. And a few normal things, too.

“Remember where you put everything,” she reeled off. “And don't forget to open the room door fully or shut it completely, otherwise you'll walk into the thin edge of it.”

She then gathered us up in the darkness, and the convoy reformed and headed for the bedroom. When it was time to turn left into the bedroom, Jennifer was very careful not to bump the paintwork. She spent a few seconds feeling where the doorway was, and also was careful not to catch her knuckles between her wheelchair push-rings and the door-posts. Finally, we were in.

“There's a double bed in the middle of the room. Jennifer, if you can go another couple of feet further forward, you'll find where it is.”

“Ah, got it!” came the voice from in front.

We all found the bed, sat on it, and started groping around with our hands to find where everything was, so to speak. I felt hands on my body in various places, and when the hands had figured out which bit of whose body, they began to stroke and squeeze. My hands were doing the same. I found Jennifer's legs and slid my hand up under her skirt while someone was investigating my breasts, still of course under my top and bra. Jennifer's legs were bare, and I went on upwards until I found her knickers.

We gradually keeled over backwards, all three of us, until we had found a place to lie on the double bed while not stopping with our hands. Occasionally, someone's hand accidentally touched a face or some other unintended part of their anatomy.

“Sorry!”

“OK, no problem.”

I concentrated my mind on Jennifer's legs, a part of her that I had sometimes shied away from because, well, I thought she might be sensitive about them, even though she'd never said she was. I reversed my direction after a while, followed her legs down to her toes, then removed her sandals and put them under the bed. I lifted her legs up and swung them around onto the bed. Amazingly, I knew exactly where the others were, and the various parts of their bodies, and played with her toes, slipping them apart and wiggling them up and down.

Someone began to undo my bra by putting their hand up my back under my top. It went loose and floppy, then the hand made its way around to my front. By now, I was getting used to not seeing anything, and I found myself staring blankly in any direction but the one I was working in. The hands started to remove my top, so I let them. My bra followed it somewhere on the floor, I assumed. I started again at the top of Jennifer's legs and delved gently inside her knickers. Suddenly, everyone decided to get totally undressed, and positions changed in the darkness. I found myself lying back on the bed naked with two pairs of hands doing nice things to my breasts and my pussy.

I extended my hands in two random directions and came across Charity's little boobs dangling downwards like two water drops under a glass. Her nipples sprang to attention, and she shifted herself nearer me by a few inches so I could reach more easily. She lowered herself next to me, I assumed on top of Jennifer who was lying next to me. My hands couldn't reach Charity's boobs anymore, so I sat up cautiously and searched around in the dark with my hands. Charity appeared to be causing Jennifer a lot of pleasure, so I found someone's bottom and began to play with it. I think it was Charity's, because of the angle.

And because the owner of it was kneeling on all fours, with her legs apart, one knee each side of Jennifer.

I stroked her lips and buttocks, enjoying the feel of her, her warmth, and the rising scent which I could sense rather than see. I sniffed my fingers and liked what I smelled, so I let my fingers wander around Charity's lips and a tiny bit inside her vagina a bit more. OK, a lot more. Her legs worked their way further apart for me so I pushed in a little further. Charity moaned with pleasure and sank onto her stomach right on top of Jennifer. I couldn't reach Charity anymore so I turned my attention to finding Jennifer's lips. After a while I found them, Charity meanwhile having retired to one side to finish herself off.

“Open my legs, Stella,” Jennifer whispered.

I obliged, and my fingers sank inside her a little further while she played with her own breasts, which I sensed rather than saw. I felt her vagina beginning to clench and unclench. I lowered my head and got my tongue out and flicked it around her lips, missing the target the first couple of times, while my nose was washed with her musky scent, both olfactorily and because it was pushing up to her very wet pussy. Her flavour was very exciting, hitting my taste buds like a nine-volt hammer. I licked her up and down till my tongue was nearly locked up with cramp, and her juice was dribbling down my chin and doubtless making Charity's bed sheet wet and delightfully aromatic (to say nothing of my face).

I rotated myself so my bottom was over Jennifer's face, so she did a number on me just like I'd done on her. It didn't matter that I couldn't see anything. Even after all this time, my eyes hadn't found any light, and it was beginning to affect me, in addition to the fun we were having. I felt her fingers exploring my pussy, finding my lips and clitoris (of course). But this time, she didn't stay with my clit; she eased her way into my vagina. I hadn't consciously noticed Jennifer's fingers nor how long they were, but it felt like they were a hundred miles long inside me. Charity had recovered herself and had found my breasts, dangling somewhere above Jennifer's pussy. I felt two gentle hands smoothing the skin all over my chest, cupping my breasts and squeezing my nipples just right.

It was no good, I couldn't hold it back any longer. I squeezed my eyes shut and keeled over onto where Charity was kneeling. She felt me coming down so she gave me a gentle landing on the bed, right next to her and Jennifer. I lay there for ages, just enjoying the non-visual senses - the taste and scent of the others, the feeling I still had within me, the sound of the three of us murmuring to ourselves with the pleasure and the memory.

At about three o'clock in the morning (or so it seemed) Charity's voice came out of the blackness.

“Would you like the lights on so you can find your clothes?” she asked.

Jennifer and I considered this idea. I felt like I'd quite like to continue being blind, and to try to find my clothes on the floor and climb into them without getting my knickers inside out or somebody else's bra on backwards. As Jennifer hadn't immediately said yes, I thought she might be thinking the same as me. Even then, she beat me to it.

“Well, no, I think I'd like to try without the lights, Charity.”

“Same here,” I added.

“Oh!” Charity said, in a 'I'm-glad-you-said-that' tone of voice.

I heard Charity sit up and then stand up on the other side of the bed. The bed echoed this movement, and I heard Charity's feet on the carpet as she walked around to where all our clothes were scattered in a heap, all mixed up on the floor. I don't know how she did it, but she sorted all our clothes into three piles and gave the right pile to the right person. I found my knickers and put them on, feeling for the label on the inside left position. I struggled into my bra and the other clothes. Jennifer took a time to coax her bendy legs and floppy toes into her knickers and skirt, but she muttered that it always took this long anyway, even when she could see. Charity had by now sorted out our shoes and sandals, so we put them on.

Charity seemed to magically dress herself without any ado, and then found the wheelchair and brought it to Jennifer, who transferred into it once she'd figured out where it all was. The convoy formed once more, and we headed towards the kitchen, still in the dark. Steaming teas and coffees rapidly appeared in front of us, and we drank them, too replete with sex and experiences to talk much.

For some time, I'd been feeling guilty about a day or two ago when we'd all been talking about not having been lesbians before, and Charity had said something about playing around with her cousin but she didn't look, a comment which had then caused us all to laugh. I explained this into the darkness and about how embarrassed and awkward I felt about it afterwards, and still did, because of having laughed at a blind person saying they couldn't see something. I started to apologise, but Charity's voice from across the blackness of the kitchen table interrupted me.

“I remember that conversation,” she said. “Because it's not often I admit to having played around with her. But I'm the one that made the joke. I'm the one that said 'I didn't look'. It was intended to be funny and I'm glad, really glad that everyone felt able to laugh with me. I'm glad my little joke didn't end with an eerie silence - that would have been awkward and embarrassing. When I make a joke about my blindness, please laugh!”

“Also, Jennifer, I've been a bit uncertain as to whether us playing with your legs is OK for you. You have problems with your legs, and I worry that you don't want anybody touching them.”

“Oh, no, dear,” Jennifer said.

I could hear the smile in her voice even though I couldn't see her face.

“I love it when you all play with my legs, and feet. And my toes. Do it as much as you like! It's good for them to be moved around and stimulated.”

There was another moment of silence in the deep inky nothingness of the kitchen.

“How do you do it, Charity?” Jennifer's voice came from the ether. “How do you do things when you just can't see?”

“By having to, Jennifer. It just takes a lot longer! And I do have help most times. I could ask you the same question - how do you manage without being able to use your legs?”

“I have my wheelchair, but you have nothing to help you.”

“No, that's true,” she replied.

Charity led us to the front door but didn't turn on the hall light, and we each gave her a big hug and a thank-you. She opened the door, and the dim light from the street lamp just up the road flooded our senses but didn't burn a hole in our (by now) highly sensitive retinas. By the time Jennifer and I had reached the car, I was back to normal, and when I opened the car door for Jennifer, the interior light was just the same as I would have expected, and it was only ten o'clock by the car clock. As I drove away with Jennifer in the passenger seat and her wheelchair in the boot, the silence between us was of repleteness, of our itches having been scratched, and for me a new respect for blind and wheelchair-bound people.

“I wonder what's it like being blind and unable to walk?” I mused as we turned into Jennifer's road.

“Huh,” came the reply. “I'll stick with my damn useless legs so long as I can still see!”

Rover, the cat, was out when I got home. What's good enough for the goose is good enough for the gander, I thought I heard her say.