Chapter 1

Jack Johnson loves his wife, always had, always will. Theirs is one of those eternal love matches that happen in many romantic novels and rarely in life; but this was the love of a Prince Charming and his Cinderella (or similar). They had been a couple since they were nineteen and seventeen; and, while it would not be true to say there had never been a cross word between them, it was true that they had found they were peas in a pod, two pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle.

They had two children, grown up and left home and visit occasionally – Roberta visited when another love affair had come crashing down in flames of acrimony and disgust; Garfield visited when his latest venture was starting to fail (sometimes Jack put in some cash, mostly he advised Garfield to not waste good money after bad). Jack and Jacqueline were content in Acacia Close. They grew tomatoes and cucumbers, went away in their campervan (‘Motorhome’, Jaqueline would insist; campervans were little VWs with no toilet; and not ‘van’ either. She was proud of their campervan, and if Jack didn’t entirely agree with the chintzy curtains and cushions, he was willing to tolerate that if she tolerated the visits to lovely pubs in out of the way places that they went to), and watched Vera rather than Midsomer Murders.

When they had first married, sex had been an unplanned, sudden experience; the result of the desire of two people to be as close as possible. Jacqueline never really enjoyed it, she enjoyed that Jack enjoyed it, that he enjoyed being deep inside her, that he became incoherently excited when he came. But she never really found it mind-blowingly exciting.

As time went on, things became more ordered, less unplanned. What with children and all, they found that they had to plan if they were going to have time, intimate time, together. After Roberta – their first – one of their happiest memories was quietly making love with a baby in a cot beside the bed. Quiet so she doesn’t wake up, quiet, don’t make too much noise, no squeaking bed meant gentle thrusts. It took a long time. And the climax (for Jack) was great. When Garfield arrived, they even employed baby sitters occasionally so they could go out, ostensibly to a film, but they would frequently skip the film and find a quiet spot where they could rut like rabbits in the back of the car. Slowly, things became more ordered again. Friday night was the chosen evening. Saturday was too crammed with family activities, Sunday was the day before the new working week. And then the working week found him frequently away from home or Jacqueline too tired for anything at the end of the day.

And so it continued for many years; the children grew up, the sex became easier to arrange but less exciting. Jacqueline would lie back and let Jack have his fun, always missionary. Jack would always ask “How about you?” and she would always reply “Oh, I’m all right, tonight.” as if it was just this time that she would pass. Occasionally she would play with herself in the shower, on her own, when Jack was away. Then he had that operation.

It was a minor, a very minor, operation; an overnight job. But they found something else, and then there were complications in the tests, and he was in for a couple of weeks before being released. So they missed a couple of sessions, and then Garfield came to stay whilst he recovered, and somehow the timing became monthly rather than weekly. She didn’t miss it, he did.

Jack was practical; edging towards retirement from his technically demanding job, he liked to spend his time at home on physical activity. He would tinker with his Morris Minor – the first car he ever owned had been a Morris Minor and, one day, he saw this one in a garage for sale and made an impulse purchase. One day it would be perfect, but until then it gave him a couple of hours of frustration or delight each week. He also fixed taps, replaced printer cartridges and dug rows for potatoes. He didn’t maintain their main cars, they were too boring. Likewise the occasional decorating job, this was work for professionals. Each week he eyed up the 50 foot tree that he wanted to trim, and was told not to be so stupid as to think of climbing it himself at his age – he knew he was only 20 at heart, just that his body needed more time these days.

The Close was made up mostly of similar people. There were the Fletchers over the road; both liked food more than exercise, which was why they were large and rotund. In a particularly catty – though funny – aside once, Jacqueline had suggested that Dick Fletcher was a misnomer, since it must be impossible to find it these days. Jack and Jacqueline had separately wondered how they managed intimacy given their comparable hugenesses; did they but know it, the Fletchers had a surprisingly active and imaginative sex life. Oral played a major part, but certain insertion positions were still possible; and the use of sex toys helped. Jacqueline had never had a moment’s hesitation at lending Fiona Fletcher her husband to fix a leaking washing machine connection; she knew that her husband was not at risk there.

Likewise Mrs Gambol up the road. Mrs Gambol was a lovely old dear whose husband had died many years ago. She was eighty three, or so (it changed from eighty one to eighty six, depending upon her mood), and Jack was happy to help out with a fixed fuse or a stuck window when called upon. Her husband had had an enviable store of porn magazines, video tapes, and DVDs, which Mrs Gambol had been at a loss of how to dispose of when he died. When she died, they would be discovered and many people would re-assess the quiet old widow who lived on her own, thinking they were hers.

Claire Smart and Angela Duncan were officially cousins, but Jacqueline knew different. She knew, for example, that only one bedroom light went on at night. She read the signs. She didn’t mind. And, even though they were younger than her, she knew she had nothing to worry about there. She had no second thoughts about lending her husband’s practical skills to a pair of lesbians. When the tree in their front blew down, Jack had a whale of a time cutting it up, sweating like a lumberjack and feeling all manly. It put their own tree out of mind for a week or two as well. They never officially came out, much less married; they were stalwarts of the Baptist Church down the road; everybody knew, and everybody pretended not to – a very British compromise.

So when Mimi moved in Jacqueline was content to welcome her and offer her husband for any small jobs that needed doing. In truth, she knew that her husband would not stray. Or at least, she knew that from the past.

Jacqueline had gone round with a cinnamon cake, noted that Mrs Fairchild had already left her own cake tin (“The interfering, nosey old cow”), but that she had beaten Fiona Fletcher with her standard offering (cheese scones). Any work that Jack could help with, she found herself saying, he’d be more than willing; that was her way to welcome them into the Close.

Because Mimi Manley was a widow; a widow with children; she probably needed help. The Johnsons were willing, actually that marked out the whole Close, they were mostly willing to muck in and help.

It was summer, and Susan Manley was soon to be seen sunning herself in the back garden. Any girl in a bikini will automatically elicit a once-over by the average man, no matter how liberal minded and un-sexist they pretend to be. That Susan was twelve made little difference, Jack looked out of the upstairs window, saw the young girl and watched briefly. She was too young, of course; her bikini top covered gentle protuberances and her hips barely showed themselves. He thought back to his own daughter at that age, a sweet child beginning to turn, with puberty, into a pain in the arse that needed guarding and guiding. He smiled; he’d enjoyed taking her to her first teenage party’s, smiled indulgently as he parked around the corner to pick her up, nodding at the other fathers doing the same thing. She was young and innocent, like the girl in the garden next door. Young, innocent, and barely sexual at all. The same could not be said for her fourteen year old sister who appeared a day later with a more girlish figure. There was no question that the bikini bra was needed and the girl had a waist that expanded again to hip bones on either side, just covered by the respectable bikini. Jack looked, sighed for a time, decades before, when such a girl would have given him palpitations of desire and continued with putting up the new curtain rail upstairs. This was Jane, “Plain Jane”, her sisters would tease her with, but actually she was anything but already; the eldest suspected that she would be eclipsed - at least in looks - as her middle sister grew up.

The next day was Monday, and he was at work in the local office, so he was unaware of the third daughter until he returned to see the nineteen year old possessor of a fine female body lying face down on a sun-lounger, her legs slightly open in that pose that seemingly was designed to raise every male blood pressure that saw it. Just the hint of a space between the two legs; just a slight wrinkle of fabric, just a shadow of where the bottom cleft began at the top. She had even undone her bra strap to get a proper tan, until a faceless voice from the neighbour’s kitchen shouted “Annabel, please do your strap up, what will the neighbours think?” The answer to that rhetorical question was that this particular neighbour was wishing he was twenty years younger (more like thirty, said his inner self). He imagined, briefly, appearing at the base of the sun-lounger and forcing those tempting legs wider, then he shook himself and changed out of his suit into jeans and teeshirt, and went downstairs for dinner. Such dreams were for late at night, impossible dreams of an evil self that he did not possess.

Mimi Manley was a widow. Her husband had not necessarily been the most reliable or trustworthy or faithful of husbands; but he was someone who supported his family. They had a mortgage, so he had ensured they had good life insurance; he was self-employed, so income replacement insurance was in place; he travelled widely, so travel insurance incorporating life protection was set up; and finally he got a pension scheme which guaranteed his widow a good income if he died before he retired. Then he died. It was not directly related to the girl he had been bonking in a hotel in Bracknell. She was actually the daughter of the owner of what was really a guest house (he had an arrangement in which his receipts were not completely filled in, so he could claim a little more than he was charged; as a self-employed man, he was able to artificially increase his costs to reduce the tax owed). The girl was at college, and worked evenings for minimum wage from her mother; she discovered that Mr Manley was happy to pay for some overtime. All of which is probably irrelevant since it didn’t appear to be the direct cause of the heart attack that did for him.

He had volunteered to help with the stop cock in the kitchen, which was locked solid. He had put a lot of pressure on the tap and wrenched and pulled on the wrench; and freed it. Later that evening he had woken with chest pains that were like being stabbed in the upper left arm. He didn’t make it out of bed. The coroner was kind enough not to allude to the traces of semen and female DNA on his penis, indicating that he had recently had sex, since that wasn’t apparently the immediate cause. Neither, in fairness, did he list the work on the stopcock explicitly; he simply said that some excessive physical work appeared to have triggered a coronary incident which happened in private and was therefore not able to be prevented. The upshot was that he died whilst working on a contract, all the insurances kicked in and Mimi found herself comfortably well off.

It took a year for her to realise that she could not live in the house that had been their married home. It took less than that for Joan Ferrers to decide her sister in law needed help bringing up her three children. As a result, when Mimi moved into the house next door, she moved in with three young women and ‘Aunty Joan’, who had very clear, fixed, and disapproving views on women sunning themselves in bikinis. As a result, when Mimi went out to sit in the sun, Joan’s view, and the competition of her eldest daughter’s nubile body meant that she wore shorts and a teeshirt. She still looked good for her age; Joan was about the same age, but she wasn’t as good for her age. Truth to tell, she may not have been that good for any age.

None of this caused Jacqueline any qualms. The three young girls were way too young for him (it never occurred to her that a man had an inbuilt instinct to spread his genes with any and every fertile female he could, she assumed civilisation had washed all that stuff away. She was an optimist, or naive). She wasn’t worried about Joan either, when she met her. The sour look that said “I disapprove, now tell me what it is.” was the result of years of unsatisfactory life. Which had come first, the lack of lovers or the look that sent suitors running? It didn’t matter, she was unmarried, unloved, and spent her life spoiling others’ enjoyment. “Thank you for the cake, I’m not so partial to cinnamon, myself, but I’m sure the others will enjoy it.”

She wasn’t even worried about Mimi, she had got used to trusting Jack, as she should. When they watched a film with a bit of nudity, she knew he enjoyed seeing the young starlet bouncing her boobs around, that was fine. She knew he also enjoyed seeing Charlotte Rampling in the all-together in The Swimming Pool – that was a scene that even she could see was erotic to an attractive degree. She made sure he never saw her like this now. But Mimi? No, it never occurred to her that a woman who was maybe fifteen years younger than her husband, still firm of buttock and breast, with longer auburn hair and a clear-skinned face, would be temptation for her Jack. Perhaps she had become too complacent.

At night, she had undressed facing away from him for some time now. It was always done as naturalistically as possible, but he had no doubt it was deliberate. The nightdress would be drawn up to the waist, she would turn away and remove her top and bra and then hook up the shoulder straps. Then she would take off her jeans. If he was watching, he might catch a glimpse of pants, but that was all. The irony was the nightdress was attractive and loose. If she leant forward, she gave a view of her cleavage which nearly showed all her breasts. He had occasionally cuddled up behind her, spooning round her and allowing his hand to caress her breast over, or under, the fabric, in the dark. It never elicited any response at all if it wasn’t the last Friday in the month. She made it clear from her body language that she wasn’t interested. He never pushed it; perhaps he should, he told himself. Perhaps he should insist in his conjugal rights, but he never did. He wasn’t that kind of man to take what was not offered.

If pressed, she would have said that she would have allowed him access if he’d asked, but, of course, no man wants to feel he should have to ask for sex, like a child asking for a biscuit. He wants to feel that the woman is willing (unless he is fantasising about ravishing someone – or actually raping someone. Even then a man will often claim ‘she wanted it really’). He wants to feel that he is attractive to her, not that she is tolerating him. Jack knew their monthly sessions weren’t much more than pity-sex now, but he was willing to accept that denigration to get the occasional feeling of being inside a woman’s fleshy body.

Even had she been worried, when the call from next door came, it would have been impossible to refuse. “The shower is leaking and won’t turn off, and the floor is soaked and there is a damp patch in the ceiling below and I don’t know what to do and -”

“Hang on. JACK! JACK! Can you pop next door and help? Mimi has a plumbing crisis. - yes, he’s on his way. You’re lucky he’s here, he’s been away all week. Oh? Jack – Mimi says go round the back, the back door is open”

He went round with his plumbing tool roll – he was very organised; he had tools arranged into functions – carpentry, car, plumbing, electrical. He walked in, to be met by the eldest daughter in the kitchen in a satin robe, open to the waist. She was wearing a bra, but it was designed to maximise her chest and display plenty of flesh. The tie at the waist was loosely tied and, as she jumped down from the stool, he was able to see all the way up her legs, beyond what would normally be acceptable for a girl not in a bikini. Her bra matching briefs were white with pale mauve patterns. He had just remarked to himself that her bra showed the nipples as darker shades through the white when the girl shouted up the stairs “Jack’s here! I’ll send him up!”

He moved up the stairs, slightly reluctant to leave the vision he had seen. She followed him. “Put some clothes on! Or at least tie that robe better! What will Jack think?” once again, Jack’s thoughts were less affronted and more sexual. He really didn’t mind seeing her that way. “Jack! She had a shower, and then I went in, and now it won’t turn off and the shower tray is leaking! Oh! And I’d better dress, I hadn’t realised you’d be so quick.”

She was standing with a towel around her. It was plain that she had less on under it than her daughter. Her hair was wet, she had been in the shower, actually soaped up, when the middle girl had informed her that water was appearing on the ceiling below. She was still soapy in places that one could not wash off anywhere except a private bathroom. “No need to dress on my account, Mimi. I might get it fixed. Lets see.” He turned off the water at the mains, patiently clarifying what sort of shower it was (at the third set of questions he understood that the electric shower was to heat the water and it was fed from the mains, it wasn’t a power shower. By that time the flow was dropping anyway).

The other two girls were watching him now, the eldest was back in her room, lying on her bed with the robe wide open. Jack traced the wire from the bathroom to the room next door – her room. Not realising she was there, he walked in; gulped some air and pretended that seeing half-naked, nubile females (with, yes, two little ridges between their legs raising the cotton at her groin) was all in a days work to him. He switched off the isolation switch, nodded to her, and left. She giggled and sent her best friend a text. Actually, she was impressed by his nonchalance; the boys she knew would have stammered and stuttered and stumbled out.

Then he took the cover off, and started looking at the problem. The shower was all electric and the flow control knob adjusted electronically by a little motor – a wire had pulled off and when reconnected it all seemed to work again. “I’d suggest you get a proper plumber to look at this, to make sure it is okay, but it is safe, the water tight cover is still fine. You’ll have to let the ceiling dry out. I’d suggest baths for a while; then the sealant round the shower tray can be fixed.”

“Isn’t the tray broken?”

“Well it looks okay. But, hang on...” he took the cover off the side and bent down to look. “Can you pour some water into the tray?” He stayed staring under the tray, suddenly aware that when Mimi stood beside him to pour the water, it was dangerously easy to look up the towel. He tried to avoid it, but certainly saw well beyond her knees towards the dark opening surrounded by her towel, where her thighs disappeared. He became aware of an embarrassing protuberance in his trousers, and concentrated more on the work. “Ah, yes, I can see there is a leak on the pipe connection. You may be lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Yes, I might be able to fix that. I don’t have any pipe tape, I’m afraid. I’ll need to go to the shops.”

“Oh, I’m putting you to a lot of work, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay I like these little views ... tasks, I mean tasks.”

She bent down and peered through the gap, could not see properly and lay on the floor and edged around; her towel slipped up. Jack looked behind him, the girls had got bored and walked away, he was okay to admire the soft swelling of her bottom as it began to be revealed.

“Where is Joan, by the way?” he asked

“Oh, she’s out shopping. She’d have kittens if she saw me dressed like this with you in the room. Oh! I hadn’t realised the towel had moved. I’m sorry.”

“No apology necessary.” it was clear now, that they were flirting, but it was all perfectly innocent. She sat up, caught the towel at the bottom and, as she stood, it pulled down this time, revealing much of her breast. She caught the towel just in time to hide the nipples. “Ahhh.” he said, involuntarily, then pretended he was joking. He wasn’t.

“Shall I come with you? You can tell me what to buy.” He’d intended to go alone, but he didn’t mind the company. He’d still pay for the tape, since he would use it himself too.

“Oh, but you said you were all soapy... ?”

“I can hardly wait around naked in a towel until it’s fixed.” Yes, she didn’t have to mention that she was naked. “If you wait, I’ll wash myself down ... I mean wait outside the bathroom.” she laughed. Oh, yes, the flirting was moving beyond innocent.

So they went and bought the tape, and he got a new Stanley Knife to cut it, and asked her to ask at reception where the left handed screwdrivers were, and she hit him playfully on the arm for playing a joke on her.

He fixed the shower, it didn’t leak, and nothing happened. Simple as that, just a couple of neighbours getting on together. Two weeks later, he suggested a barbecue and Jacqueline suggested they invite their neighbours. He had wanted to suggest that, but, being all women next door, he felt he couldn’t. She did, so that was okay. She went and asked if they wanted to come, and all were willing, with only Joan casting a baleful eye at her; but even she agreed.

The girls happily munched vegetarian burgers, the adults less happily. Fish was acceptable to all, Jacqueline made salad and they had a few bottles of wine. Even the younger girls were allowed some. “Always felt that if they get used to it, they will drink sensibly.”

“Hasn’t worked with me.” laughed the elder daughter; they all laughed with her. She was actually drinking sensibly and helping with the cooking. In fact Jacqueline and Mimi both watched this young nymphet as she hooked the only man and reeled him in, just for fun. She told him about University and never mentioned her boyfriend. Joan came over and asked about Pete; for once Mimi was grateful to have such a bitch as a sister in law.

“They were nice.” said Jack, after they’d gone; he was thinking of Mimi in her towel.

“They were nice.” said Mimi, after they had returned to their own house, she was thinking of his erection that she noticed when she had just been wearing a towel.

If there was any kind of sexual frisson between them, nobody else would have noticed. They were just two friendly neighbours, that was all. Acacia Close was like that, people were friendly, they would stop mowing their front lawns and wander across the road for a chat. Gossip was rarely mean, even when Sarah Glossop and her husband, Peter, started the difficult process towards separation and divorce; people were sympathetic to both sides, said how nice they both were. No-one suggested that he might have been beating her (he wasn’t), playing away from home (only a little) or keeping her short of housekeeping (okay, yes, he could be a bit mean with money; the car they drove was a rust-bucket disgrace).

The events that follow happened in the middle of October. The two youngest girls were on half-term holiday and had gone to visit Grana and Gramps in Hereford. They liked going there because there was an old pony in a nearby field they could feed – and the two old people spoilt them rotten. The eldest was at Uni now, discovering the joys and (mostly) disappointments of one-night stands with drunken students. She would soon settle down to work and wait for the right person to come along. Joan was taking her annual break with her cousin Michaella (who was wondering, yet again, how she had got herself into this mess of having to go away with a grumpy, difficult, sulky woman like Joan every year. One year they had gone away and Joan had immediately assumed it was a ‘tradition’. She would tell people how Michaella looked forward to this break as it was the only time she got away; Joan ignored, or was not interested, in the Easter break Michaella took with her reading group, where they visited an area associated with one particular writer. Last year it had been Ernest Hemingway and Spain - ‘too hot’ was Joan’s one response – this year it had been Yeats in Ireland - ‘too wet’. Actually the charity was all the other way, Michaella tolerated her cousin to get her out to somewhere new, in the hope that one day a new experience might open her mind; and it got her away from Mimi for a whole week).

On the Friday, Jacqueline got a call that her mother was in hospital. Seeing her age, any hospital visit was risky. She had had a fall, nothing regarded as serious; but Jacqueline’s father was unsteady on his feet, she would need to cook for him for a while. “No need for you to worry. Is that alright?”

“Yes, of course. I’m not away next week, I’ll keep an eye on the garden.” She packed and left and they promised to speak regularly; not every night, they had never felt the need to talk every night when he was away, it would be the same if she was.

“Hi Mimi.” he had gone round to next door almost immediately “That tree at the bottom of the garden, on our boundary. I was thinking of taking some of it away. Would that be all right?” At last, he could take the tree in hand – it was probably seventy feet tall, he wanted to bring it down to fifty. It was a magnificent silver birch, but it also shaded the garden a lot. Twenty feet off would help. S long as his neighbour was okay with that. It wasn’t really clear whose tree it was; it had probably been planted on their side, but the trunk had expanded and the fence now ended at it and then restarted beyond. Now was a good time to do it as the birds weren’t nesting – and there were several regular nesters in that tree. He would leave the branch with a hole in it – even though it was probably a little rotten, because a woodpecker used that. That woodpecker was his pride and joy, but he liked the pigeons and blackbird too. Far more than his wife, if the woodpecker had nested higher up, that would have stopped him cutting.

“Yes, but it is awfully high; are you sure? You are very brave. Do you need to come round to my side with the ladder? It’s fine if you do.”

He wasn’t sure yet, but he knew he would need to climb up the ladder and then get into the tree; he would lower the branches by rope so they didn’t crash down and destroy the bushes. He’d had lots of time to think about it all.

Next day, as soon as it was light, he was up the ladder, tying the ladder to a branch to secure it. Working his way up into the branches. He looked around, a good view could be had from here. His neighbour’s bathroom window was open, steam escaping. There was view of pink in the gap between window and wall. The pink moved. Mimi, in the bathroom, having a leisurely shower, had stepped out, reached for a towel, and then realised that the mirror on the wall facing the window was showing a man, Jack, in the tree at the bottom of the garden. She stepped sideways and the far off view of her naked rump was obscured. Jack surmised what he might have seen, expanded on his fantasy and then concentrated on not falling out of the tree. The work began.

He was careful, ordered and patient. So focused that a voice from below made him jump. “I’m making some coffee, if you want some.” He looked down at Mimi looking up. From below, at eye level, her shirt would have been perfectly encompassing. From his vantage point, he could see straight down her shirt to the well formed breasts that seemed to have no bra holding them up. Could he see reddy-brown at the apex? Or was he imagining it?

“Thanks, I’ll just finish this branch and then I’ll come down.” Crack! The branch began to tilt and then break away, and he lowered it; this one was going to land in her garden and she caught it on its rope and guided it to the lawn, away from the bedding plants. “I’m trying to avoid the plants.”

“I know, it’s fine. Perhaps I should come out and help. I’ve nothing on this morning.” He nearly made a ribald remark, thought better of it, looked at her and realised she had thought the same thing and smiled.

They spent the rest of the day working on this, cutting the branches that reached up, lowering them down on either side of the fence and carefully laying them on the lawns. Then, when there was enough, they would carry them to their respective drives, ready for a trip to the Claude S McGinty Recycling Centre. Both laughed at the idea of a respectable councillor having a dump named after them, but then, as they agreed, there wouldn’t even be that as a lasting monument to themselves.

“Heavens, I’d better ring Jacqueline.” said Jack at 5 pm.

“Well, why don’t you do that, and I’ll fix us something to eat? Nothing fancy, something from the freezer; but it seems a shame for us both to eat alone.”