Chapter 2

I suppose I should be able to say at this point that Emily and I didn't contact or speak to each other after she returned home and accepted Graham's proposal of marriage. I'm afraid I can't say that we did that until after their wedding. We spoke on the telephone for an hour or so every week right up until the fateful day arrived eight months later.

Emily needed assurance that she was doing the right thing. As she had said she loved Graham but she wasn't in love with him. If you can't understand that context then there's no way I can explain it to you. I'm going to admit that I wasn't too sure in my own mind that Emily was doing the right thing myself, but I had a vested interest that I had to fight in my own mind to ignore. Emily wanted children and to my way of thinking Graham was the best chance she had of achieving that goal.

I didn't attend Emily and Graham's wedding. I'll admit I had been trying to come up with some excuse for not going, but my non-attendance was organised by a higher power, i.e. my employers, who suddenly announced that it was necessary for me to attend several seminars in the States. I later discovered that my trip was all in aid of me being thoroughly checked out by the powers that be before I was offered yet another promotion.

On my return I was offered the position of service and maintenance director, with a hefty rise in salary. What it boiled down to was that, when the shit hit the fan, I got my arse kicked, but luckily that didn't happen often. I was given a place on the board of the English subsidiary and I was the youngest guy on it, although the director of sales was only a couple of years older than I was. Generally I could count on him to back me providing I backed him up when required. Nearly all the other guys - except the Yanks - were moneymen and a bleeding pain in the arse to everyone.

So there I was twenty-eight years old and I was sitting pretty behind a director's desk at head office, although still some two hundred miles away from home. But life was good as far as I was concerned; I had a nice flat all bought and paid for. There was plenty of totty about, when I could be bothered. Hey, I was a very "eligible" bachelor with an impressive income and an assured future and I was having the time of my bloody life.

And then came the day. There I was sitting in the office cafeteria, and who should go sashaying past but Cecilia. I didn't see her face, I just saw that arse go strolling past my table and I wasn't alone; every other lecherous bugger in the place saw her as well, of that I can assure you.

Well, all the guys anyway, but I suppose that Cecilia wasn't the only woman with her particular sexual preferences in the organisation. I did have the knowledge of those sexual preferences though, which at that time was more than could be said for most.

Cecilia hadn't noticed me, much to my relief. A little detective work amongst my contacts in the personnel department informed me that Cecilia had been taken on as a PA in the advertising department. It was a big place and I didn't personally know Cecilia's boss; I'd only met the guy a couple of times, in all the time I'd been working there. So I figured with any luck I wouldn't run into Cecilia too often either.

Let's get my mind-set explained here. It had been my cousin Emily who'd been my friend over the years. Cecilia had been a friend of Emily's and I'd always been helping Emily stay in the closet, as they say, not Cecilia.

That had called for me to go out on double dates with the girls, but because of the normal taboos in our society concerning romantic relationships between cousins. I'd always been required to be Cecilia's escort. That had been forced upon me by convention, not by my personal choice.

Cecilia was a very attractive woman, even more attractive now that she'd matured some. But she was a muff-diver and I had no interest in becoming involved in her problems now. I was strictly into heterosexual relationships and was having a very busy time of it.

It was to be the company Christmas party, before Cecilia even discovered that I worked for the same organisation as she did. By then word had gone around about the little cracker of a PA who'd joined the company, and the wide-boys were apparently queuing up for taking a shot at her.

A few weeks later the story that Cecilia was a lesbian also went around. Somewhat surprisingly this news led to the company wolves going into competition with each other over which of the studs was going to successfully get Cecilia into bed and convert her to a heterosexual with his skills.

Over a period of time the rumours about the size of the kitty involved indicated that it had gotten quite large. Reputedly over 100 quid, but I never heard any mention of anyone coming near to claiming it.

Some months later I'd gone to the Christmas party with Rigmor, an extremely tasty twenty-two year old Norwegian veterinary student, whom I'd met when she'd been sitting in with the local vet who was a friend and neighbour of mine. And, yes, I did have dishonourable intentions towards her. Mind you, from the signals she'd been giving out in the preceding weeks, it was obvious Rigmor was intending to rattle my bones later that night, whatever my intentions.

You know the kind of function I'm taking about, the company hires a hotel function room and lays on a buffet and a band of some kind. Everybody gets one free drink when you enter, after that, there are plenty of free soft drinks available to those who want them, but you buy your own alcoholic beverages.

Sometime after Rigmor and I had gotten there, I'd noticed Cecilia arrive with Rachael, another girl from advertising. I watched them carefully make the rounds of must say hello-to's, but it was obvious that Cecilia didn't notice me sitting in our quiet corner. Then they settled themselves at a table with a couple of other women that I didn't know.

As I expected, they did circulate; Cecilia always had liked to dance with the guys, just to wind them up. I noticed that both Cecilia and Rachael danced with some of the male staff, noticeably not any of the company wolves though. More often their dance partners were the older married guys. Whether this was the girl's choice or the wolves had given up on the chase, I don't know.

Anyway it was an hour or so into the celebrations before Cecilia spotted me on the dance floor with Rigmor. I don't believe that she could believe her eyes at first and how she never broke her neck twisting and turning her head to look in my direction I don't know. I could see that she was getting the low down on who I was within the company, from the guy she was dancing with, Pete Morris, head of distribution. No sooner had Rigmor and I returned to our seats than Cecilia - with her girlfriend Rachael in tow - arrived at our table.

"My god, Stewart Toomey, I had no idea you worked for the company. I hear that you're something important in the service department here," Cecilia said with a big smile on her face.

The necessary introductions were made and the two girls sat down to join us for a little while. I noted that Rachael was looking at Rigmor with what I can only call lecherous eyes. I'd seen Rachael around the offices on occasion, but I had no idea that she was AC/DC as well. As I said earlier it was a big place and you can't know everyone. Rachael apparently knew who I was though.

After some small talk about who and what we all were within the company, and how long we'd worked there, Cecilia got around to the question that I thought she'd really come over to ask.

"How's Emily getting on nowadays, Stewart. Have you seen her lately?"

The question obviously got Rachael's attention pretty quickly. I had to wonder if lesbians discuss their former lovers with their current partners.

"Emily's fine as far as I know. I haven't seen her since last Christmas. We'll probably run into each other over the holidays. We normally do when I go home. I think she's very happy with Graham."

I had no idea how Cecilia was going to react to that one. I wondered whether she even knew that Emily had gotten married. But Cecilia didn't blink an eyelid.

"Such a shame you two never got together. You were made for each other," Cecilia replied.

"Convention, Cecilia, you know what the family is like."

"I'm sorry that was unthinking of me. I shouldn't have said it," Cecilia said, taking a quick glance in Rigmor's direction. "Look, can we meet one lunchtime and have a chat about old times?"

When she'd said that, I could feel both Rigmor and Rachael looking at us intently.

"Sure, why not. Give me a call on the internal and we'll meet for lunch in the cafeteria one day."

Cecilia and Rachael got up to leave the table then, Cecilia giving me a kiss on the cheek before they went out onto the dance floor. I turned my attention back to Rigmor, who very covertly and not in an unpleasant way, enquired about how I knew an obvious dyke and exactly who Emily was. So I explained to her about Emily being my cousin; Rigmor appeared to understand the taboos about relationships with close cousins.

I didn't manage to talk Rigmor into bed that night. I feared that the talk about Emily had put her off some. To my mind she had been raring to go until Cecilia had come over at the party. Still I figured she'd get over that once we got away for Christmas; for some reason that I can't remember Rigmor wasn't going home to Norway for the holidays, so I'd invited her to spend Christmas with my family.