Chapter 12

"It's not that she didn't find me, it's the fact that she didn't really look! And why? Because she had someone else lined up to take my place. That Derek was installed before the trail was cold! Everything's gone swimmingly for her hasn't it? One man disappears another takes his place in her bed and in her life. You should have seen them, they're definitely a married couple already, I could have sworn that when he came over to our table, he nearly said 'wife' instead of 'fiancée'."

I was fulminating yet again and Trish was taking it all patiently. She had taken me to her bed as soon as I arrived and made gentle love to me for hours before even asking the question. In fact it wasn't a question but a statement.

"You've seen Ann, and you've remembered."

So I had to tell her the whole story. I recounted how my memories had cascaded into my mind overwhelmingly. Now, having exhausted my diatribe, she had time to speak herself. She didn't try to change my mind; she didn't offer any solutions. I knew I would have done in her place and that's what I was waiting for.

"Allan, you've had a terrible shock. You're suffering from overload, and you're bereaved in the worst possible way."

My love for her surged. She understood me, she knew what I was going through. We'd risen her marathon love in, and we'd eaten a lovely meal she'd prepared for me and I hardly tasted it. As soon as we began to eat I'd launched into the whole thing again, and from her there was no reproach, no sign of disappointment.

"Time for bed," was all she said next. "Tomorrow we have all day. You have a lot of healing to do."

It was early to retire, but retire we did and as she folded me in her arms I fell at once into a deep and dreamless sleep, at least I had no recollection of any dreams.

The next morning as I came to consciousness, the bed was empty and the sun was shining. It was late, very late, almost not morning at all. I stumbled to the lavatory to relieve my aching bladder, and when I returned after splashing my face with cold water, Trish was sitting in bed displaying her wonderfully neat breasts, and sipping a mug of tea. Mine was on my side and I did likewise, including displaying my breasts, which did not measure up to hers at all.

When the mugs were empty we hunkered down into the bed, and she idly began to trace patterns over my body, my face and my head. The feeling was almost soporific and there was no world anywhere else but there in her arms. She was my universe at that moment, and everything else simply faded away.

When I was totally relaxed, her hand glided over my quiescent penis, her fingers featherlike on the very tip. It grew, and her head went down and she bestowed kiss after kiss on my now erect member, up and down the sides and gossamer touches of her lips on the tip and the rest of the glans. Nothing mattered in the world at all, but the exquisite feeling of her loving lips.

It was strange that at that moment I realised that I had not thought about Ann or about that first meeting that morning until then, and the thought aroused no angry or depressive feelings at all. It was as if all that was in another world. That world did not matter; only this world mattered, where this loving woman was healing me gently with her mouth.

My eyes were closed, and then it was no longer her mouth, but something much warmer, and it enveloped my penis entirely with a soft embrace. I opened my eyes and she was straddled over me, keeping her weight off but slowly riding me up and down so gently that it did not excite unduly, but gave an intense sensation of her vaginal walls. Her eyes were closed and she seemed lost in her own world.

This went on for a long time until I began to want release and moved my hips up to meet her sinking down. Immediately her eyes opened and she smiled, rolling off me and pulling me over her. She held my cock and directed it to her pussy and I slipped back into her slick and welcoming channel. Then we moved together with more purpose, my strokes were deepening and her upward thrusts more active and soon we were moving fast and hard.

I saw the flush spread over her chest and she began to pant, until suddenly she held her breath. She became still, rigid, and her hands clenched the bed. Then came the release; she bucked and groaned and shook and cried out in a wordless affirmation of the intensity racking her lithe body, then she twitched a whole body twitch again and again, each time accompanied by a guttural sound which seemed to come from her very core. I rode her as her body shook seeming as if it wanted to shake me off. As her movements gentled, I came myself, deeply and thoroughly, feeling the life-force gush all along my cock before it burst in spurts into her.

"Yes," she gasped, just once, and I collapsed onto her.

We lay supine and spent as the sun's light became hazy. Then she pushed me off her and we lay wrapped round each other's bodies. Did we sleep awhile? I think so, because I became aware of her leaving the bed and disappearing into the bathroom, and following that, the uniquely musical tinkle of a woman passing water. She came back to the bed, leant over me, her breasts hanging deliciously, and kissed me long and gently. I kissed back and fondled her paps, running my fingers over her nips and making her exhale with pleasure.

"Come on, my lover," she murmured, "Let's get out of here or the day will be gone."

She took me to the coast again, driving my car which she loved, and we walked along the sand muffled against the cold as we'd done before. A sea fret had rolled in and its cold damp fingers, coupled with the lack of visibility, made the sound of the waves eerie, invisible as they were. The brisk exercise was like an exorcism, purging with the biting cold of the North East coast all my pent up feelings, and complementing the gentle loving exercise of the morning.

I said nothing and indeed I didn't think much either. I wanted to stay in this other misty world, with this wonderful loving woman who as always had taken such comprehensive care of me and seemed to know exactly what my body and spirit needed.

She spoke little either, save to avert to the foghorn from the Whitley Bay Lighthouse, and the other sounds drifting from Tynemouth harbour and the river mouth. We ate an evening meal at a pub and then she drove me home.

The evening was spent listening to music and playing scrabble, a game she loved to distraction, and which she usually won comprehensively. We fell into bed with that clean exhaustion that comes from good exercise in the cold and a warm evening's mental exercise.

As I drifted off, her arm across my hip and mine under her neck, her head on my shoulder, I fleetingly wondered why she'd said nothing about my trauma. It did not worry or concern me and I think I must have gone to sleep smiling.

We both awoke relatively early on Sunday morning, and after a visit each to the loo, made love in a business-like manner, totally the opposite from Saturday's marathon. We both wished to give the other a satisfying orgasm, playing each other's body with considerable success, and flopped back onto our backs shining with perspiration and panting with our exertion. We each turned our heads to the other.

"Good." I said

"Yes." She said.

Then we got up and after a breakfast of cereal and toast were on the road to the Cheviots for a long bracing walk, lunch at a pub near the Roman Wall, and a relaxing drive back.

In the early evening she took me to meet her colleagues at the hospital watering hole, most of whom I had not seen for a while. It was the usual mix of gossip, anecdotes and ribald humour. Everyone was relaxed and that helped me. I felt a warm glow, fuelled no doubt by the pints which were going down with reckless rapidity, but also by the lack of any of that emotional intensity which characterised life back in Sale.

I say everyone was relaxed. There was one who looked anything but. When I went to return some of what I had gained from the bar in the gentleman's washroom, the worried one followed me. He was a muscular young man with a handsome face and a shock of red hair. We stood at the stalls side by side.

"Allan," he said, looking straight ahead.

"Yes?" I answered in like manner.

"I'm Tim."

"Oh. Pleased to meet you."

"That it?"

"Yes. I'd shake you hand, but I've got my hands full at the moment," I gave a short laugh at my own joke.

"But–"

"Look Tim," I said gently, "what you and Trish did together caused her to feel guilty as hell. I told her at the time that she was not under any obligation of faithfulness to me, but she then said she wanted to be faithful while our relationship lasts. That's fine with me as well. I've no real claim on her; she's done more for me than anyone, so I'm grateful for whatever she gives me. It seems she wants to stay monogamous until she goes to New Zealand. So don't worry."

"Oh, that's a relief!" he sighed. "I was worried you'd be miffed by our fling."

"As I said, don't worry about it."

He was a nice enough bloke. I almost advised him to improve his sexual technique but resisted the impulse.