Chapter 1

One evening, we were sitting relaxing after Emma had finally decided to go to sleep. Penny had wrapped herself round me on the sofa and I was resisting the temptation to turn the moment into a groping session. I was reflecting that in what I now thought of as our previous existence, we had had two disconnected ways of relating to each other. Our sex life had been intense, and our intellectual discussions had given both of us pleasure and satisfaction, but that was pretty much it. To simply receive and give real love and affection was something I was still getting used to, but enjoying thoroughly. Then Penny sat up and straddled me.

She said: “Would you like me to tell you about the months I was away?”

“I was waiting for you to raise the subject,” I said. “Of course I’m interested, if you want to tell.”

“I told you I was angry, and I wanted to hurt you and so on, but the money I took was because I was totally unsure of where to go. I didn’t want to go back to the US. I think I feel more at home in Europe, now. Besides, even in a country that size, I thought it would be just my luck to bump into someone I knew.”

“That could just as easily have happened here,” I said.

“Agreed. And so I looked for somewhere I could get lost until my baby was born and I could decide what I wanted to happen after that.”

“So, where did you go?”

“I tried London, but I’m not a big city girl any more, I discovered. Then a couple of other places, but eventually I ended up in the middle of nowhere in Lincolnshire. I rented a cottage from a strange English lady, miles from even the smallest village.”

“What was strange about her?”

“Well, her name for a start. She was called Diane Something-or-other O’Houlihan-Smythe. She spoke with a cut-glass accent like the Queen of England. Her cottage walls were papered with rosettes from show-jumping competitions and dog-training competitions and oil paintings of what she called her ancestral home in Ireland, but she dressed like a down-and-out most of the time; battered anoraks teamed with old running shorts or corduroy trousers held up with twine, depending on the weather.”

“How old was she?”

“Certainly older than me. Maybe forties, early fifties, even, but it was hard to tell. Never any makeup, hair like a bird’s nest. You get the picture?”

“I do.”

“Her clothes made her look as if she ought to be filthy, but she always smelled of lavender soap.”

“Nice. You say this was in the middle of nowhere. Weren’t you scared to be so isolated?”

Penny laughed. “It was the first thing that occurred to me when I saw how remote the cottage was. When I said so to Diane, she stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled. A dog came pounding across the grass. He was an absolutely huge Great Dane. I’m not joking, Pete, his shoulders came up to my waist. Diane said “Intruders, Rex!” and the snarl he gave petrified me. Then he began barking and the cottage windows shook!”

“Impressive!”

“Fortunately, Diane had him well-trained, but he only took notice of her. If I told him to do something, he either ignored me or ostentatiously started to lick his balls as a sort of canine middle finger to me. Anyway, I settled down there. It was a pair of cottages, Diane had one and I had the other. They were in the middle of a vast garden surrounded by a high hedge. I soon realised why Diane looked and dressed as she did. She was out working in the garden all day, pretty much every day, in all weather. She was virtually self-sufficient as far as food was concerned. I ate lots of healthy food, did an awful lot of reading and I worked on my dissertation that I’d never got around to finishing at uni. It’s done, now. I haven’t presented it yet, but I will.”

“You didn’t say. Congratulations!”

“My belly was getting fatter and fatter and the days got hotter and hotter. Very un-English weather. I was sleeping badly, and I couldn’t bear more than the lightest of clothes. I was telling Diane this one day and she said: “with these hedges nobody can possibly see you, so if you want to be in your nightie all day, go ahead.” So I did. I was over eight months gone by then and good for nothing. I used to spend all day collapsed in a deckchair out on the lawn. Sometimes I thought about taking the nightie off, too, but I wasn’t sure how Diane would react.”

“You think she was lesbian?”

“I couldn’t be sure either way at that point and I didn’t want to complicate matters by suddenly appearing naked, especially with my huge bump. Then, early one morning, Diane got out her bicycle and said she had to go to Market Deeping, the nearest town. You should have seen her outfit, Pete. She appeared round the corner of my cottage in a flimsy little cotton miniskirt almost hidden by one of those heavy white sweaters like the cricketers wear and the oldest pair of canvas trainers I have ever seen, and she was wheeling a man’s racing bike. She said she’d be several hours. As soon as I was sure she’d gone, I stripped off, slathered on the sun cream and spread a towel on my deckchair. By then, with my bump, there was only one comfortable position for me, so I sprawled on the deckchair with my legs wide apart and dangling on either side of the chair. Not very elegant, I know. It was boiling hot. I half-dozed for quite some time, I think, then heaved myself up, went to get a drink of water and back to my dozing again. Except this time, I really went to sleep.”

“And?”

“All the time I was pregnant, I had the most vivid erotic dreams. You were in most of them, but so were all sorts of other people. If you want me to tell you more about that, I will, but that’s for another time. That day, I was dreaming that you were licking me. You know how I love when you do that.”

“My pleasure,” I said.

“The dream became more and more intense. Somehow it seemed as if my sex was open and very wet. At first you licked me normally, but then it felt as if your tongue was much longer than I thought possible. I told you to be careful because of the baby and that woke me up. That was when I discovered that Rex had his nose between my legs and it was his tongue that I could feel, actually deep inside my conchah!”

“The dog! That must have been a shock,”

“It was, but the awful thing was that until I knew it was a dog, I’d been getting really close to coming.”

“You weren’t to know, so it’s not as if you’d done it deliberately.”

“But for just a split second, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to stop. Is that disgraceful?”

“It was an accident and you were excited, so not really.” I kept my voice calm, but in an uncomfortable way, this part of Penny’s story was making me hard.

“I put my knees together as best I could, but he kept nuzzling at me. I wanted to get up, but the only way I could get up at that stage was to roll off the deckchair sideways and get onto my hands and knees, then stand up from there. I was scared if he saw me with my bum in the air, he’d assume I was a bitch. I was pretty sure he would be too strong for me to stop him. He was totally erect, I could see his long, pink pointed penis. I was lying there, pushing him away and trying to work out how to escape, when Diane suddenly appeared.

“You haven’t been teasing Rex, have you?” she demanded. She looked and sounded almost angry.

“No! Not at all. I was asleep and when I woke up, there he was, licking at me,” I told her.

“Look at the state of him,” Diane said, pointing at Rex. He was sitting up, looking hopeful, if a dog can do that. His bright pink erection was sticking out under his belly. It looked so long! Diane sighed. “Poor boy. Doesn’t he look magnificent though,? We can’t have that, can we, Rex?” What happened next blew my mind. She reached under her skirt and pulled down the most ancient pair of granny knickers I think I’ve ever seen, and then got onto her hands and knees and flipped up her skirt. Rex was obviously used to this and he leapt on her back and mounted her!”

“Mmm,” I said. “So not a lesbian after all.”

“Diane looked over at me and said I could watch or not, she didn’t care. It was disgusting and disturbing and bestial, but I have to admit it excited me to watch Diane’s dog as he began to try to fuck her. I’d never given it any thought. There was a girl at high school who worked vacations at a dog rescue place and the rumour was she did it with dogs there, but I never knew whether it was true or not. What I was watching was far more complicated than you might imagine. When you take me in the doggy position, you can see where you’re aiming. A dog can’t, so Rex kept missing. He was keen, and Diane was willing, but she had to use her hand to guide him into her. Rex was a big, heavy dog and Diane was struggling to hold his weight once he’d climbed onto her back. When her arms gave way, I thought it was over. But she crawled over to the deckchair, still impaled on Rex and braced herself against its frame, so my weight could hold the whole performance steady. Her head was resting on my knees. Rex had wrapped his forepaws round under her breasts and he just humped and humped her. Diane was whimpering, almost sobbing by then, in time with Rex’s thrusts. Her tits were being hammered against my knees. It looked painful, so I went back to my usual position, with my legs apart. Diane shunted forward, so her tits were resting on the deckchair, between my thighs.”