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“Well… you look…”

“Like a lazy-arse
couch potato surrounded by evidence of her insanely sweet tooth and
other debauched tendencies and appalled at being so cruelly caught
out in this way?” Her arm moved in a circle to gesture at the
scattering of chocolate wrappers strewn around her, along with an
empty wine glass.

“No! Okay, yes, that
too, but it wasn’t my immediate thought. You look… relaxed.
Happy.”

“Yeah, well, I guess
an excess of sugar, fermented and otherwise, surging through your
veins, tickling your funny bone, combined with an evening of
Dinner Date
and
The Millionaire Matchmaker
will tend
to do that to a gal.”

And they laughed.

“I’m serious though,
babe. You look good. Tea?”

“My job. You sit. The
exercise of moving from here to the kettle is the most I’ll have
done all evening and I reckon those clogged arteries and wasting
muscles will thank me for it. Play your cards right, and I’ll throw
in that final KitKat which has spent the past 47 minutes taunting
me from the cupboard.”

He did as he was told
and sat, smiling at the mumbles from the kitchen as she slipped
into her familiar habit of talking her way through every activity,
even when she was alone. She’d told him it was from 12 years of
childrearing, at home and now at work too, but he was sure she’d
been doing it as a teenager when they’d first met.

When she came in a few
minutes later, it was with a large square tray, which she placed on
the table next to the couch. She scooped up the rubbish around her
seat, stuffed it into the bin and sat back down.

“How was your day?”
They both asked the question simultaneously, leading to more
laughter, before they settled into a chat about the perplexing
political hierarchy at his hospital, which made the lives of him
and his colleagues so complicated as they tended to the
bureaucratic overgrowth at the expense of caring for the patients.
A recent high-profile inquiry into a hospital cock-up at the other
side of the country had concluded that “lessons must be learnt”,
which, Rich told her, meant nothing more than endless red tape
slowing down everyone who did anything other than a pen-pushing job
at his place.

“God, you know, it
seems so long ago, my day, that I have no clue how it was,” Megan
said when Rich turned the focus on her. “I’m pretty sure that the
home bit was fine. Kids are all okay, though Sam has a bit of a
sniffle coming on. Shattered, like me, I guess, and ready for the
weekend.”

“Good, good. Maybe we
could do something? You and me, Sunday morning… breakfast, brunch,
talk, fix things maybe, drop them off at Mum’s on the way? She’s
always asking… I know it’s not a romantic dinner, but, hell, I’m
sure the budget could run to a pudding too, if you’d fancy.”

“I’d like that. Yeah,
I really would. We… I mean, there’s a lot I’d like to talk to you
about and maybe home isn’t the ideal place…”

“Uh huh,” he said, his
tone making a joke of the genuine slump that hit him with her last
words. “Should I be worried here?”

“God. No. Sorry.
Nothing ominous, just… did you read that link? The one I sent?”

His expression spoke
the answer.

“Ah. Oh… Jeez, Rich…
do you even still have it?”

“I suspect so, I mean,
you know I never delete. Was it important? I meant to check, but
then things got busy at work… What was it? Something to do with
your job? Your training?”

She sighed. As
comfortable as she was with the notion, this was a tricky one to
start from scratch, and now was probably not the time. But then
she’d never been blessed in the art of choosing the right moment,
and he knew that.

“It was a story. It
was a story I wanted you to read. Written by a guy I know.”

“A story, like
fiction? Okay, erm, so… you think I might like it? Who wrote it?
You know me and fiction, babe. I’m a real facts kind of guy. I
mean, is it sci-fi?”

This was an unusual
turn for him and he had no idea where it was going. Clearly this
was important, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine
why.

“Is this to do with
the kids…?”

“It’s nothing to do
with space or the kids or anything. It’s a story written by a guy
I’ve been chatting to. Online. He’s a journalist and he writes
fiction too.”

“Okay.”

“And I want you to
read it. Because. I want you to read this story because this is how
I met him, by reading his tales, and because I like him and because
I like what he writes.” Although this wasn’t strictly true, the
reality – “He’s a dom I met on a BDSM site and he needs your
permission to fuck me” – didn’t trip quite as fluidly off the
tongue.

“Okay. You can’t just
tell me about it? I mean, it’s great to share each other’s
interests and all, but, erm, isn’t it a bit like me sending you a
New Scientist link and you laughing blatantly in my face…?”

Another sigh.

“I can tell you about
it, but I’d rather you read it. It’s how I feel, and I think it’s
what I want… what I want us to do…”

The lightbulb
flickered above his head.

“You don’t need to
tell me this. I mean, I said, when you asked, I said do whatever
makes you happy, but I don’t need to know what that is.”

“You don’t need to
know what makes me happy?”

They both knew she was
twisting his words, and there was a pause.

“Okay,” Megan
conceded, “but it’s more than just that, more than knowing about
me. I want you to know about him and I think you can see that
through his writing. I want you to know why I need to meet him. But
I want you to trust him and to know I’ll be safe.”

“I trust you,” and his
tone was unmistakably cold here, “which is all that matters to
me.”

During the brief
silence that followed, she was aware that she was biting her lips
to keep words from pouring out before their time.

“I know you trust me.
You trust me and you can always trust me, Rich, but there’s
something I need to do and I can’t do it without your help. I want
your help and I need it.”

And so he sat in all
but open-mouthed silence as she explained what the story was about.
Well used by now to turning men on with her words, she added
explicit details of her own in the expectation that what worked for
prowling guys online would work for him, like one size truly fitted
all.

It didn’t.

But still Rich
remained silent as he sat through the fantasy being concocted
before him, staring at his wife’s familiar face so animatedly
jabbering away and wondering when exactly this had happened and
whether he could have done anything along the way to prevent
it.

The hunch taking shape
in the back of his consciousness was that he could have, that he
could have avoided all of this if he had done… something; he wasn’t
sure what. It was that thought, creeping in, that kept him there
and listening, and it was that same thought that eventually made
him nod, just slightly, but enough to detract attention from the
resounding fuck-you that had begun to echo loudly inside his
head

A tough task lay
ahead of Alasdair as he sat in front of his laptop. Writing –
letters, emails, articles, stories, complaints – had never been
challenging for him. Words were his tools and they tumbled from his
fingertips and on to the keys in front of him without conscious
though.

But this was
different; this required his utmost. Sobriety was a given, although
he was sure that he would deserve a drink afterwards. And
sensitivity: however enthusiastic to please her Megan had made her
husband sound, and she certainly had, it was imperative that he did
not tread on this man’s toes or they would both lose the dignity of
manhood that needed to be maintained before, during and after this
process. This was a delicate business and Alasdair took nothing for
granted here.

Megan’s dream, her
fantasy, had built up as their chats had intensified. She wanted,
she wanted, she wanted – he knew everything she said she wanted,
and had promised to help her achieve it all.

Through her, he had a
mental picture of her husband: a man much younger than him but one
whose open-minded understanding and desperation to please his wife
surmounted all. From what she had told him, Alasdair believed his
request to be a mere formality, like asking a future father-in-law
for his daughter’s hand, a question to which the answer was already
a default “yes”. He felt, too, that this was the moment, that he
could do the right thing by Rich, while signalling to Megan that he
was both in control and to be trusted. It hadn’t taken much to
convince her to pass on her husband’s email address.

Two hours later,
having written, rewritten, thought, edited and started again from
scratch entirely, he finally clicked the send button and fired off
the email. And yes, he had been right; a drink was the first thing
he reached for.

My dear
Rich,

I hope you
will forgive the familiarity of an old man, but if things go as I
feel they might, I will both owe you a great debt of gratitude and
we will know each other on a level that supersedes that of a casual
acquaintance.

I want you to know how
much I value the trust you have put in me by simply reading this
letter. Most men, as we are both aware, would be threatening guns
at dawn at the mere suggestion of what I’m about to ask, but to me,
you are by far the greater man for listening to your wife rather
than to the macho ravings of a society desperate to keep us all
enslaved by the falsehood that the chains of monogamy are the key
to successful family units and are at the very core of love.

Bullshit is the
correct name for that, I believe.

I want you to know
that I have a great deal of respect and admiration for your wife
too. She has come so far along her journey – this can’t have been
easy for either of you – and I would be delighted if you would
permit me to help in her search for a destination as yet
unknown.

The practicalities of
this remain to be worked out, but this is no problem. The important
thing is that we are all happy with things as they stand and with
the path we hope to take.

There is also, I want
to stress, no rush here. As I have told Megan, I will be here to
discuss anything with either or you, but, as the sign in my old
corner shop used to state: a refusal will not offend.

I hope to hear from
you, either directly or through your wife. The rules are flexible
until we agree on them and this can be an evolving process, mostly
between the two of you.

Whatever you decide, I
stand here in total respect and I thank you for the chance to get
to know your wife. She is a remarkable woman and you clearly have a
very deep and honest relationship.

Your
friend,
Alasdair Hammond

********************

Having sent the
message, he had, for the time being, no real interest in the
answer. It was strange how unimportant that suddenly seemed. His
main concern now was a text message he had received on his
antiquated phone earlier that day from Jane, short and sweet, as
was her way: “Frank wants more. Hmmm. Celibacy beckoning?”

He had ignored it at
the time, preoccupied, but now texted her back: “Talk?”

And thus he found
himself later that night in a taxi heading across the city to her
house. While he, with rare restraint, had managed to stop after
that one drink, Jane was clearly way ahead of him in the alcohol
haze. Opening the door barefooted and wearing a silky dressing gown
trimmed with velvet, with nothing obviously visible underneath, she
put a large whisky directly into his right hand, grabbed the left
and pulled him in, an act so girlish it made him smile.

“You’re the only woman
who ever makes me smile like that these days,” he said. “How the
hell do you do it?”

Ignoring this, she sat
down at the end of the settee, still grasping his hand, and pulled
him down beside her.

“Drink.”

And he did. “Have you
ever thought of becoming a dominatrix?” he laughed, holding his
glass out for a refill. “You’re made for it. So what’s the
story?”

“The text said it all.
He proposed, can you believe it? Obviously that’s a no, flat out…
but he wouldn’t stop there. He wants… not to make it official
exactly… but to make it officially more regular. Kind of like
living together but in two places.”

“Living together.
Which is different to the current situation how, exactly?”

“Which is different to
the current situation in the sense that, once said, once announced
as a decision, it moves up a notch from…”

“Casual friendship to
relationship?”

“From casual to
relationship, and that… it scares the shit out of me. At our age.
It really truly does, Alasdair.”

“Yup.”

“Yup.”

She poured them both
another.

“And so we are
drinking to?” he asked.

“Well, now that it’s
staring me in the face, I’m quite adamant that drinking to celibacy
is not an option.”

“You never really had
me convinced that it was, my dear. We could drink to... hmmmm… how
about, ‘Here’s to love and unity, dark corners and
opportunity’?”

“To dark corners and
opportunity! Though, I guess technically, the end of opportunity
for me. That’s it. A rubbish toast that’d make.”

“Leaving dark corners
still free to explore. Sometimes a compromise is good enough and
this barely even qualifies as that.”

“He’s a good man. I
like him, Alasdair; yeah, he’s one of the good guys. Can’t drink
like you, though, total wimp. Total, total, total Yankee wimp.”

And with that, she
laid her head on to his shoulder, lifted her right hand up and
gently stroked his left cheek, before passing gracefully out.