Finally, my dad nodded to the undertaker who started the conveyor.

“Annie?” he had asked. I just couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't. Bloody typical, Sarah would’ve thought.

“Brian?”

Sarah’s father, again cervical cancer’s bitch, had also shaken his head; a stoic’s single tear staining his new cream shirt.

My fingers locked with theirs. My face dissolved, a mascara mess. The white pine coffin, painted with rainbows and unicorns, inscribed with Goddess and Christian messages of love and redemption, ferried my girlfriend, alone, through life’s final curtain. 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 

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Sometimes fashionable is a fashion mistake; even the chic yellow summer dress and cream sandals that cost me a small fortune in a Byron Bay boutique. I stood out, sore thumb obvious, in a town that’s both an hour’s drive and sixty years from today’s Byron. 

Nimbin’s small main street boasted more weed, more tie-dye, and more hippie paraphernalia than everywhere else in Australia combined. Paradise, 1960’s style, according to the guidebook.

I’d taken the tour, browsed the shops, and inhaled the sweet smoky ambience. Managed to resist the sales patter of bare-footed, dreadlocked locals: you realize hemp’s a super-food, your future’s in the tarot cards, and, even more heroically, tie-dyed never goes out of fashion. Wasn't even safe from retail outside the shops, where freelancers whispered about cash-only deals on quality weed and molly. Illegal, but, this, they intimated, was the nirvana beyond the reach of the fuzz.   

Resisting the resistible tires a girl. Even so, I should have had my wits about me in the café. A savoury scone with my coffee? Of course, Nimbin being Nimbin, the menu’s small print had pointed out a seasoning not added elsewhere in Australia. 

The unfamiliar weed soon began nibbling on my nerve endings. Reaching the end of the high street, a familiar sound drew inquisitive me into a glade in the middle of the small public gardens. There, beside a slow-flowing stream, a kaftan-wearing, balding flautist was leading his three-piece band through the repertoire of, so Google told me, an oldies band called Jethro Tull. 

All a bit mellow yellow, I kicked off my sandals and plonked myself on the grass. I’d played the flute at school and hated how it vanished in an ensemble. Here the sound system allowed me to focus on the flute’s crisp melody piercing both the backing instruments and the humidity of the summer’s day. 

Until my eyes were drawn to a sun-bleached blond. Close to me, on the stream bank, bare feet caked in mud. Braless, that much was obvious, but her dress was something else. Mid-calf, and not even up to the standard of a Nimbin cheapie. More like a tie-dyed reject from the bin in a Salvo op-shop labelled: fashion catastrophes. 

Yet she danced, oh my God could she dance, oblivious to the tut-tutting glances of the tourists and the admiring stares of the locals. Eyes closed, hands a web of intricate silken movement, feet gracefully alternating spins with jumps, her interpretation of Aqualung and Locomotive Breath was a masterclass in lithe sensual physicality.

When the music stopped, the small crowd politely applauded. She opened her eyes, clapping enthusiastically, and bouncing from foot to foot like an overexcited schoolgirl who’d heard her favourite band for the first time. 

People had already left by the time she ran out of enthusiasm and stopped applauding. Having mopped her brow with a rag impersonating a handkerchief, she’d obviously realized she’d become a sweaty mess. Unselfconsciously, her dress slipped from her taut muscular body and she stepped, naked, into the stream and dunked herself under the crystal-clear water. 

She stood, rivulets flowing from her long hair into the small of her back and out over the curve of her peachy butt. Turning towards the stream’s bank, her full breasts glistening in the afternoon sun, her unfashionable matted pubes and pits dripping, she smiled, radiantly, at me. “Couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t?”

“What?” I felt a blush staining my neck as the eyes of those who remained lounging in the sun focused on me.

“Ms Couldn’t, Ms Wouldn’t, Ms Shouldn’t turn their noses up at skinny dipping. Surely not you?” 

“Seriously; losing my kit in front of strangers?”

“Why ever not. You're hot…” 

I couldn’t help but smirk. She noticed. “Come in, cool off. Bring our dresses and phones, we’ll keep them safe on the other side.” 

God knows you never anticipate the moment you’re forged on life’s anvil. Her unselfconsciousness mixed with Nimbin’s ambience had dissolved the boundaries Ms Couldn’t, Wouldn’t and Shouldn’t usually police rigorously. Carrying my clothes, blushing, I picked up her dress and phone and waded into the thigh-deep water. 

Her eyes lingered on my body as she held out her arms. “Let’s go upstream, around the bend is more private. I’ll carry our things; you swim… breaststroke.”

“That’s so corny.”

“In my defence, you smirked again.”

We swam, we splashed, we giggled. Then lay in the grass drying off. All the time we talked, oh boy did we talk. Like me, she’d started with wind instruments. “Loved the flute and clarinet. Don’t give blowjobs anymore.”

Of course, she’d then picked up the ever-sensual cello. Brilliant too, accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. “Too structured. My first love is dance.”

Dear God, stunning at that too, joined the Australian Ballet. “Didn’t finish my second year. They expect twenty-four-seven.” 

“Outrageous.” 

She laughed. “Won’t be tied down, Annie.”

“So, D/s is off the table?”

She stared at me for the longest time. Then plucked a long blade of grass and traced it up my abdomen with the wickedest grin. “My favourite song is by the Beach Boys?” 

“I’ll play your game: Good Vibrations?”

“Close, but no cigar.” The blade of grass tickled the curve of my breast; her giggle was totally adorable. 

“This has gotta be corny. So not: Help me, Rhonda.”

“Nope. Then…” She teasingly swirled the grass around my areola.

 “You’re such a clown. I…” 

“Smartie. Kissed…” The blade of grass flicked against my stiffening nipple.

“Her.” 

Lips, having landed on mine with butterfly softness, paused. I whimpered. Her tongue slowly swirled against mine, the sweetest of kisses. 

After many more luscious and increasingly passionate kisses, she knelt between my feet and inhaled the scent of my arousal, her smile that of a sommelier who anticipated grand cru flavours given that intoxicating bouquet. Ms Shouldn't didn’t have time to panic about being lost in lust outside. I was putty in Sarah’s hands the moment her tongue tip flicked through the folds of my slick slit.

Her long rasping lick from perineum to clit was followed by another and another. Each time her tongue wiggled deeper into my slippery folds, scooping more juices and smearing them over my swelling clit.

Having led me to the precipice of pleasure, she stunned me. Sarah lay on her back, her matted pubes glistening with arousal. “Ride my face, gorgeous girl?”

I knelt astride her face, hovering my pussy over her mouth. My fingers intertwined with hers. She whimpered. “Pretty please.”

Having smothered her mouth with my sex, instinct took control. Rocking my hips, I fucked her pretty face, sliding my pussy over her tongue again and again. Until my thighs clamped hard against her head and I gushed, soaking her face with a screaming supernova of an orgasm.

Lying beside her, having recovered my breath, we softly kissed. “Isn’t a submissive free spirit a contradiction?”

She smirked, took my hand and pressed my palm against her sopping pussy. “Nope; my choice. Yours from the moment I caught you staring at me.”

Mashing my thumb against her clit, I curled two fingers into her pussy. Massaging her clit, my knuckles stretched her velvet walls as they slid in and out of her squelching cunt.

She locked eyes with mine. “Own a crop?” 

“Don’t ride.”

“There’s an agricultural supply store off the high street.” Sarah bucked her hips, impaling her sex deeper onto my fingers. As my knuckles twisted in her cunt, seemingly her whole body spasmed in ecstasy.

I bought a crop and missed the bus back to Byron. “No worries. I’ll drop you, it’s on my way.” 

No prizes for guessing she owned an ancient Volkswagen Kombi seemingly held together by rust and painted sunflowers, though her art was up there with her music and dance. But dropping me off turned out to be the biggest exaggeration of her life, the next night we spent apart was after her dad and I settled her into palliative care.

Unbelievably the van was shabbier inside than out. She hated throwing things out, but I had a sharper eye for past the use-by-date. “You’re such a tough Mistress, Annie.” 

I bit my tongue and cancelled my flight back to Sydney. 

We broke our journey at Red Rocks. On coming back to the van, I found a random hippie chick not only orgasming in Sarah’s mouth but also breaking in my crop by tapping it on Sarah’s spasming clit. “Fleur, meet Annie, my girlfriend.”

Girlfriend was news; non-monogamy was bigger news. But once we’d set up home, and I got rid of the fucking Kombi for not much more than a couple of slabs of beer, our bed did welcome thirds. Hard to resist those puppy dog eyes and her sultry whisper, “Pretty please, Miss. She's so hot.” 

Me saying yes to Sarah’s whims inside and outside the bedroom had her bubbling with happiness. Life really was good until her genetics caught up with her.   

Early on, though, her dad had been firm with me. “To love her, you have to know when to yell, ‘No.’”

In Pakistan, I yelled for the first time. She was like, “Only a bus trip to the Afghanistan border. Don't be boring, you know I’ve always wanted to go.”

“The Australian travel advisory has changed.”

“Bureaucracy.”

“Whatever. It’s a hard no.”

She pouted, she sulked, her over-acting almost as en-pointe as her ballet. Until the news reached us that the tourist bus had flamed out in a terrorist attack. Then she cried. 

The embassy got us out, though her dad had to pay for business class. Her head on my shoulder, each sip of champagne was followed by, “Sorry.” 

“Enough, Sarah. It’s mostly yes, but occasionally Ms Couldn’t, Wouldn’t, Shouldn’t, have to rule the roost. They’ll actually help us fully enjoy the time the Goddess allows.” That wasn't the last time our dads picked up pissed and happy daughters at Sydney airport. 

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Mum, like me, can organize. Relieved that Dad had accompanied me to the crematorium, her quid pro quo was the management of the wake following Sarah’s commitment ceremony. All were invited back to the family home, where suits mingled with hippies, and vegans ate with carnivores. 

When I arrived back with our dads, Mum handed them beers. My father, clearly following wifely instructions, was Brian’s shadow as he faced the gauntlet of commiserations for the passing of his only child.  

But there again, Mum passed me a glass of wine with a knowing wink, and was with me, as I faced that same emotional gauntlet, unleavened by alcohol, for the love of my life. 

We got through it, though the tears were copious. At the end of the day only family remained; Sarah’s dad, my parents, my brother, sister-in-law and nieces. My turn to be lost for words. Mum scooped my hand into hers.

“I’m pregnant. Twins. Sarah’s eggs.”

In the stunned silence, her dad’s beer hit the tiled floor, echoing loudly. Typical, so mum, plastic meant no shattered glass endangering her granddaughters’ bare feet. 

“For once, Sarah was: ‘Couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t.’ But, no dice. Despite Pakistan, I’d totally bought into her: ‘We’ll always dance, the wallflower life isn't for us.’” 

The sounds of my nieces happily playing in Dad’s enormous sandpit drifted through the open windows. No worries; babies always sense their Mama’s spirit in the cycle of life.