Chapter 1

Andrew’s arms were still tired later that evening but he took Helena out to dinner. They did not get glammed up but did dress nicely and went for a lovely dinner. They talked about the future.

“Are you going to live with your parents when you graduate?”

“Yes, to start with. But next week after I get my results I am going to London to start scouting out a place to live as well as start the job hunt. So as soon as I find somewhere to live then I will move out of Mum and Dad’s place. I would rather live in London with flatmates in a crammed flat than stay out in suburbia. I don’t want to be like Dad, commuting into London every day.”

“Do you have any leads on jobs?”

“The careers service has been helpful and so I have plenty of places to try. My CV is all set, crisp and tight, I just need to add in the final degree classification and then I can send it out.”

Helena was worried. She was straddling the line between a First and a 2:1 and so the following Wednesday was going to be stressful for her.

“Make sure you remember to slip a note under my door, letting me know how you did.”

“I will. I can’t believe you are not even going to be here when your results are posted.”

“It is the annual camp that always screws everything up. If I don’t go back to Edinburgh on Tuesday then I will not be back until the middle of September.”

“You never take time off. It makes me ill thinking about it sometimes. I will write to you once I have found a place. You will keep in touch, won’t you?”

“One of my many hidden qualities is I am a very good letter writer. Most Sundays I will spend a chunk of the afternoon sending letters to various family and friends. Some weeks I write more than 10. I will keep in touch, although you can already guess what my letters will say. ‘Studied really hard this week’.”

She laughed.

“True, we know that is a given. It feels strange for me, getting ready to leave. It is as if I didn’t make the cut or something, I failed an audition and I am off. It is only Nigel and me that are not coming back next year.”

More than a third of the year was not coming back as they were graduating but Andrew knew what she meant.

“Matt, Navya and I were always here for four years with our courses. Pedro and Justin have been accepted into Masters programs.”

“You didn’t even mention Abi Andrew.”

He said nothing.

“Is it that bad?”

“It is not anything Helena. She has moved on, not just from me. Over the course of the year she has moved away from most of us, other than you. I have hardly spoken to Emma since before Easter in 1^st year, I don’t even nod or say hi half the time. Same with David Castle. Abi is the now same. People change and grow and want something different with their life. Abi is doing that, has done that. I think her father is more upset than anyone else.”

“Her father?”

“Dan is a great guy, and is an engineer. We got on really well and even after things frayed between Abi and me we still chatted away. At the start of the year I had to be careful not to be bitter with her or about her, but I look at some of the people that I have seen or talked to in the past that I no longer keep in touch with. Nigel was in the room next to me in 1^st year, was a core part of our little group, but over the last two years he has been solely focused on his comedy writing with the Footlights. I don’t know that I will keep in touch with him. In fact, I couldn’t tell you the last time I sat and had dinner with just him. When it comes down to it there will be you, Matt, Navya, Justin and Pedro from College, Olivia and Keith from my course, and Rollie and Jack from the OTC. I will keep in touch with you nine, and maybe one or two more.”

“I remember talking to you that first weekend and you said to me that you had no interest in trying to know 170 people or however many there were of us that started. Better to know a few people well rather than lots of people superficially. I have more in my circles than you but it is not even double your number, 15 probably. That was one thing that stuck with me. Although being VP this year meant I am known to most of the College.”

That night they went back to Andrew’s room and they had sex for the last time just the two of them. Sunday night would be different but they both knew this was likely the end. His five friends at College and Olivia were the ones Andrew was closest to and Helena was the only one he had bedded. But it was not sad it was good dirty fun. From Helena’s classic blowjob face to being shoved from between her legs so hard he fell off the bed. They laughed, they giggled and they fucked each other into exhaustion. In the morning Andrew woke Helena up lying between her thighs before he and Helena Innes made love at Cambridge for the last time. He leaned against the wall, she straddled him and they kissed and fucked, fucked and kissed, and it was the perfect end. The two of them had their moment alone.

And on Thursday night Andrew did it all over again with Merry. The same scenario although he picked a different restaurant. They tripped over each other trying to thank the other person. They realised that what they had created that year was perfect for them, at that time. Andrew had no idea where his life was going and neither did Meredith. She had turned 21 three weeks before him and they were still young. She shared some of her plans.

“I am going to travel for at least a year. After graduation I am going to fly to Santiago in Chile. I will do some travelling but I will also see if there is a chance to work. I can bartend or waitress if I have to but I will see what there is when I get there. After that I will see, which countries are safe, where there is trouble, all the usual things. I would love to spend time in Argentina but I need to see whether being British is an issue before I try. The other place I may go to is the Philippines but that will depend if I work in Chile or not. Anyway I am young and it is a chance to see the world.”

“Have you talked to Pedro about working in Spain?”

“Lots of times. In terms of a medium term place to live and work, then Spain may be ideal. But I am not interested in the coming year, I want to travel to other parts of the world not a couple of hours away in Europe. I will think about Spain when I get back. If I find somewhere to stay for a few months in Santiago or wherever I end up in Chile then I will send you my address. I would like to hear how things are going. I know that we both have almost used each other as opposed to a more traditional dating model but you are part of the reason that the last year has gone so well for me. I would like to keep in touch. Do you have an address where I can write to you when I get back to London if it has been difficult while I am away?”

So there it was. The very first person Andrew gave his London address to was Meredith. He escaped lots of comments by not putting the district down so it was just the street, London and the postcode.

“Don’t bother sending anything until I am back here. It will give you a chance to get settled anyway. My summer job has me travelling again and I don’t know where I will be. Even if you send a letter here in early September they will keep it. I am not changing my room and so the address is identical. Better that I get the letter a couple of weeks late rather than not get it at all.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“I am better than I was on Tuesday afternoon and yesterday morning but I would be lying if I told you I was happy. Spending a summer in London would have been great. I am over the worst of my pouting but it still sucks.”

“Would you like me to pout while I sucked instead?”

Meredith nearly got sprayed with red wine.

“Merry! Don’t say that when I have a mouthful of wine.”

Unrepentant smirking was her response.

“In answer to your question. Yes.”

They headed back to his room, the porters knew Merry very well from her regular signing in at the Lodge.

“They are going to miss you flirting with them.”

More smirking. Meredith was horny and their first fuck was a spirited romp with mutual popping the only goal. They often needed to get that out of the way to take the edge off. She was lying along him, everyone did, and looked adorable.

“What should we do about Sunday night? Is there a plan?”

“Have dinner, come back here, open the wine and then play all night long?

She looked down at him.

“Will you do to me what you did to Helena?”

“Of course I will.”

Merry squirmed on him.

“Fuck I wish she was here right now. The thought of her tongue on my clit as you fuck my arse.”

She shivered with excitement. Andrew opened the drawer on his bedside table and got the lube out. Merry was flat on her stomach beside him on the bed and raised her hips to help him spread her cheeks. Cute and pink and just waiting for him to ravish it. Yum. Rather than rush straight to the fucking Andrew licked and teased and caressed her little starfish. There was a tiny bit of give if he braced his tongue really hard but mostly it resisted all attempts at oral invasion. Andrew lubed his left hand fingers rather than his right hand and teased and prodded her while his more dextrous fingers caressed her g-spot. As he sawed back and forth across Merry’s g-spot he inserted the tip of his middle finger in her arse, just for a moment, before withdrawing again. The constant in and out together with the stimulation of her g-spot had Merry screaming into the pillow, and Andrew as hard as a rock.

“Let’s save it for Sunday, okay?”

Merry’s voice was muffled but he adjusted his aim and saved her pretty pink arsehole for another day. Andrew’s routine the following morning was the same for her as it had been for Helena. She was slower to wake up, which just made her startled awakening all the more arousing. But they too made love for the last time together the exact same way. The importance of Meredith Young to Andrew’s sanity in 3^rd year could not be overstated.

After a long relaxing swim Andrew packed his rucksack and headed down to meet Tony and Maggie. He was early but so were they. Tony relaxed in the back and let Maggie drive with Andrew beside her.

“We were up far too early and figured we might as well just head down. How did you do?”

Andrew told them about his exams, explained that he had done well but didn’t reference the chance to be top in the year. He would know soon enough.

“How have the two weeks been?”

“Oh we have plenty to tell you. But what else has been happening with you? What about your summer job?”

Andrew’s face fell and he tiptoed through the minefield of what he could or could not say.

“I found out on Tuesday that I am going to be away all summer, overseas. It is a complete shitshow to be honest. I am pretty unhappy about the whole thing.”

“Leslie told us just to ignore the job, you can’t really talk about it. Is that right?”

“It is for the Ministry of Defence and the list of rules and regulations is a mile long. It is just easier for everyone if I don’t talk about it. I am not trying to be super mysterious or anything but I worry about saying something I shouldn’t.”

He shrugged. And so did his friends.

“We will not put you in a tough position then. Do you get to fly back?”

“I don’t know yet, hopefully but it will depend how things are when I get there.”

“What’s the point of being a rich playboy if you can’t fly back and forth?”

Rich playboy? Maggie’s face was full of mirth as Andrew looked askance at her. But then he realised, barely in the car five minutes, and she had already cheered him up. As her smile widened he had to start laughing.

“Tony and I were going to get you one of these velvet smoking jackets for your birthday but we couldn’t find anywhere that stocked them. Andrew ‘Hugh Hefner’ McLeod.”

They were half way to Norwich before they stopped teasing him.

“Tell me about the two weeks, how did it go?”

“Five models were great, not necessarily easy to work with, but professional. Of them three were pretty demanding but we did get a huge number of sets out of them. The other two were complete sweeties. Treated it like a holiday, they were still good models but it was more relaxed and fun. Two more were okay, just never seemed to get into it, worried about being seen, things like that. Now they all knew what the shoots were going to be like but were. What’s the word Mags? Timid?”

“Uptight. They never relaxed. They were fine in the boat, in the cabins, but were not very good on the decks.”

“And the last one was a complete bitch that both of us, and the other model, wanted to drown. She had just found out she is on the cover of one of the men’s magazines. She had tried to cancel at the last minute, and looking back we should have let her. We returned to Wroxham one day early, so the Wednesday night of the first week and drove her back to Norwich. Another day with her and they would have been looking for her body in one of the side channels.”

Tony shuddered. Maggie took over again.

“The other woman with her was one of the sweeties, just a nice sensible lass from Wales. She ended up staying for an extra day. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, we got a lot of sets with her, although she wasn’t as much of a show-off on deck as I am, but she came close. It was a great two days and she was nice and relaxing. We have her details and if any of her sets sell then we will definitely use her again. We nearly asked if she wanted to stay on the boat for the weekend with us. Just someone that we clicked with really easily.”

“Other than the bitch, everyone worked really hard. I will be in the darkroom for days, weeks, when we get back.”

“So was it worth it?”

“Definitely. That is the thing Andrew, you called it right two years ago. There just aren’t the nude models in Edinburgh. Sure there are one or two but they are rare. So more than 95% of my photography is standard bikini, lingerie, sexy dresses, lots of pretty ladies but everything stays covered. So it was good to work with nude models the whole time. I think I have shot 50 different sets over the last two weeks, well north of the 300 rolls of film. So we have splurged on nudity and Elspeth will work to sell them over the rest of the summer. But come next week I will be back to our day to day shoots, which are selling well and where we are making money.”

Maggie changed the focus to the business side.

“Talking of Elspeth she is loving her new digs. Everyone is very friendly and nice without being in each other’s offices all day. She told me that everyone has a job to do and so there are lots of days where there is nothing more than a quick chat over a cup of coffee.”

“Has anyone asked what she is doing?”

“Oh yes, everybody. She tells them that she works for us, the photography partnership selling pictures to advertisers, magazines, publishers, newspapers, anyone that needs some photographs. We had 10 or 12 sets that we keep to show people what we mean. There is no nudity and there are only two glamour shots, the rest we have used from some of the pictures that we have bought. Architecture, landscapes, there are a couple of fashion shots. It looks like a nice balanced portfolio and everyone goes away happy.”

“So we are still buying old photographs and negatives?”

They both nodded.

“Fortunately there is not too much of it because it does take a while to sort out. And there are still lots of small spaces for rent. When businesses go under there are leftover bits of leases. We found a two room place, really cheap, for 14 months. It is on the 1^st floor of a building down near the shore, there are a couple of windows so they get natural light and the second office has a cupboard. We installed a new lock on it and they put everything away at the end of the day. I think they sit there and chat away all day, drinking tea and reminiscing about what they see in the photographs. But they are getting through the boxes of stuff.”

“And the new darkroom is almost finished. Just waiting for the plumbers to connect the sink and then we are good to go. The second bench is used more than half the time in the main darkroom.”

Maggie took over again.

“We try and keep track of both the costs and the money we make from everything. Again it is something I hear all the time at work. There are constant complaints back and forth about why something cost more than the original estimate as well as arguments about how much money it made. Creighton showed me how to track it and we are pretty diligent. But we hired someone to help, we needed it.”

“How do you mean?”

“All these different businesses that we run, they have lots of small sales, making sure we get invoices out to people, charged them for using the studio or the darkroom. The shop was easy and Stacey is good at keeping track of what she is selling, even if it is on credit to some of the people. But there was just too much going on. Stacey is busy, Elspeth is busy, Tony is busy and I work during the day. So we got a youngish mum, her youngest has just started school. But she needs to get them to school and be there at the end of the day. She works 10.00 until 2.00 for us, which is perfect. She is happy to work, get out the house, we can cope if she misses a couple of days because the kids are sick and we are all caught up. And the thing is she has the same professional qualification that Creighton does but nobody would hire her part time. She is overqualified for what she is doing but is happy to be working. We did explain about the nature of some of the photographs and she was a bit shocked at first. Nah, that is too strong, startled maybe. But then she shrugged and asked when she could start. She doesn’t care.”