Southern Comfort

Amy traveled to Goa on the first of June. She was to be gone for precisely nine months. Dan was to meet her at three in the afternoon on St David’s Day, outside the Bay Tree coffee bar on Platform Two of Westing Station. Then she would settle down. She promised.

As Dan watched the Reading train disappear down the line, he was missing Amy already. It was stupid, really. Since they’d met seven years earlier, she’d spent more time away from him than she had with him. Why he should suddenly feel this sense of loss he didn’t know.

He wasn’t sure what to do. He felt like chasing after the train, calling out ‘Don’t go! Come back!’, like a scene from some romantic black and white film. But he just stood there - another lost passenger, gazing at litter blown over the empty tracks by a through train on the opposite platform. Then he made his way to the escalator, walked sadly to the car park and drove slowly home.

Dan had first met Amy at a poetry recital. Despite a love of books, Dan was not the kind of person who usually went to literary events. And it was by good fortune rather than design that he was there.

While working as an apprentice print operator for A.J. Watkins, Dan had supervised the production of a slim volume of verse that was being self-published by a local English teacher. He was a bearded, slightly balding man with a passion for patterned waistcoats, who always recited his poems in a scouse accent (even though he originated from Isleworth and had spent most of his adult life in the West Country).

The teacher, delighted at seeing his work in print, had invited Dan to a private reading of the poems at the Westing Arts Workshop. Although the book was not of the type Dan normally enjoyed, he’d thought it would be impolite not to accept the invitation. So, one Tuesday evening after work he found himself in a room full of misshapen pottery and monochrome photographs, surrounded by people with whom he had little in common.

As he'd stood awkwardly clutching a plate piled recklessly high with finger food (with a complimentary copy of the book tucked under one arm), he spied a youngish looking girl with honey coloured hair and the eyes of a startled calf.

Partly due to the fact that she had a pleasantly plump figure accentuated by a tightly-fitting and rather short floral dress (and partly due to the fact that she was the only person in the room that was not at least twice his age), he had sidled over to her with a shy smile, spilling cheese straws and half an avocado canape.

Despite Dan's dire attempts at conversation (which were even clumsier than his handling of his paper plate), the girl, Amy, had seemed flattered by his attention. She seemed particularly impressed when she discovered that Dan was over five years older than her and had a job and a car and no longer lived with his parents.

And when he explained that he had helped to produce the poet's book, Amy in her naivety had treated him as if he were some kind of editorial executive rather than a mere 2-colour press operator (in fact, ever since then, Amy always told people that Dan was in ‘publishing’ - rather than ‘printing’ or the ‘compiling of food reports’, his more recent occupation).

Amy was totally obsessed with the theatre, and Dan listened patiently as she told him all about her courses in 'A' level drama and English, and (with an almost masochistic relish) informed him how totally impossible it was to become a professional actress

Not knowing quite what to say when faced with such an onslaught of enthusiasm and despondency, Dan told her (with all the worldly wisdom of a twenty-three-year-old printer) that in his opinion 'she had just the right kind of face to be an actress.' It was probably the only occasion in Dan's life that he had ever said the right thing to a woman. And later that week, Amy had almost got herself run over, in her eagerness to cross the street and invite him to join her for a lunchtime coffee.

One lunch break, the following week Dan had popped round to Amy's house (carefully following a miniature map drawn immaculately on the back of a receipt for two toasted tea cakes). The purpose of his visit was supposedly to finish their discussion on films and plays. But when she answered the door in her school uniform - all perfume and make-up and buttons undone - he guessed they were destined to spend most of the afternoon otherwise engaged.

Amy lived with her mum, stepfather and older half-sister in a three-bedroom semi-detached thirties house close to Westing Girls School. The house had a well-established garden, but was surprisingly modern inside. On Dan's arrival at the house, she led him through to a large but sparsely furnished sitting room, where they sat down together on a low biege sofa.

Dan was made immediately uncomfortable by the absense of any pictures or books in the room - a single display cabinet containing china shire horses, miniature cannons and cut crystal glassware being the only un-functional feature of the room

Unable to find any focus by which to appease his nerves Dan had wandered down the hall to the kitchen where Amy was stood by a plastic jug kettle and two dish-washed mugs. Her black school skirt had been taken up way above the regulation length, and her blouse (though which he could see the frilly edge of an ample bra) was at least two sized too small for her. An alluring expanse of naked thigh invited his gaze toward her crotch. And her ample breasts surged hypnotically against tight white cotton.

Having been momentarily transfixed by Amy's nipples, Dan (blushing at his all-too-obvious indiscretion) had hastily raised his gaze to her face. Amy's ash blonde hair was tied back and pinned extravagantly on top of her head. Her mouth glistened with some bright red cosmetic, which he could only presume was a mixture of blood and glue. Her earrings were silver roses, her nails were candy pink love claws, and Dan had never seen any one in his short life he'd rather have made love to.

He blushed, shuffled awkwardly toward the sink and said, "The house is very tidy."

"Yes, my mum doesn't work since she met Clive. So she spends all morning cleaning."

"What does she do in the afternoons."

"She goes out."

"Where?"

"The Stroke Club, playing cards with old ladies. She won't be back for hours."

At that point they'd hugged in the kitchen then kissed hungrily. The next thing he remembered was lying on her bed beneath two very disconcerting posters; one of a PG Tips chimp sitting on a loo and the other of some Californian movie actor (both of which he later insisted she should take down).

Without speaking, he'd wrapped his arms around her, lost in her kisses, drunk on the warmth of her touch. Instinctively, they began to carress each other. Dan felt Amy's hand stroke his shoulders, then the firmness of her fingers invade his shirt and trace gentle patterns across his naked back. He responded by clutching her tight to him, feeling her breasts and nipples push against his ribs

He massaged her hips and then her bum, treasuring the way her school blouse slipped softly across her skin. It seemed obscene to force eighteen-year-old curves into such pubescent garb. But he wasn’t complaining. Their kisses became more savage, and she bit into his lip. The salt taste of fresh blood flooded his mouth, and he slipped his hand inside her short black skirt, greedily stroking the damp satin of her knickers.

He manouvered himself so that he was kneeling above her, and she spread her thighs wider, licking the edge of his jaw holding the back of his head and drawing his mouth back down onto hers

Dan reached inside her blouse and beneath the frilly edge of her bra, feeling her nipple stiffen beneath the palm of his hand as he cupped her breast. He slipped a finger beneath the crotch of her tight, white knickers and pushed it gently inside her, spreading her open.

Moaning softly, Amy reached down to rub the bulge of his cock with the back of her hand, then unzipped him. As she gripped him though the cotton of his pants, she felt his stiffness pulsate against her fingers. She pulled down his trousers and underwear and made him straddle her, licking at his nipples. As his hips started to gyrate over her she couldn't help but gaze down between his thighs.

He was larger than she'd expected. His balls were wrinkled and hairy and hung swollen and low. The skin of his cock was dark, taught and covered in throbbing veins like the wrists of a straining body builder. For a moment, Amy felt as if she were beneath an old man rather than someone barely out of their teens. And she had to look up for reassurance at his startlingly graceful neck and shoulders, before returning her gaze to where it had just been, captivated by the velvety softness of his helmet, like the lid of a roll-on deodorant, a pair of miniature kidneys, the rolled tip of a calf’s tongue

She reached down to slowly stroke him - he felt so soft and tender, it were as if he had been peeled and she was touching his flesh, some raw part that should be hidden inside his skin

As she thrilled to this sensation, she felt his finger move faster inside her. She reached down to try and guide his hand to the right place. But Dan (despite having some previous experience of such situations) didn't seem to understand the urgency with which she needed him to touch her there.

Frustrated, she grabbed his hand again, gripped his middle finger and pushed it against her semi-erect clitoris. Suddenly, realising what she wanted, Dan sucked two fingers, and started to rub them between her lips. With the added wetness, she quickly grew more swollen and her juices flowed freely. She gripped his stiff shaft as the intensity of his fingering increased until, spreading her legs as wide as they'd go, and holding his head to her breast, she felt a gurlging inside her, as if some invisible hand had twisted her guts and then suddenly let go, unleashing a rush of undescribable pleasure, wave after wave after wave of the sweetest, wildest satisfaction.

She had experienced this sensation before; by herself, first from curiosity and then some recurrent urge akin to addiction, which arose mercilessly every two or three days. However, never before had she felt that satisfaction burn so deeply.

Her head swam, her heart raced out of control and her breath was taken by an intense stab of pleasure. Dripping with sweat, Amy lay back on the bed and pulled Dan's hand from between her thighs.

"Don't you want me to," he asked?

"No," she said with a shy grin.

"Have you...?" He raised his eyebrows

"Yes," she said circumspectly (amazed that that he could possibly not have realised...)

He lay back on the bed. She leaned over him, her thighs tightly straddling his leg, her plump young breasts hanging from her unbuttoned blouse. Slowly she started to rub his chest. He took her hand.

"Like this," he said. Gently, but insistently, he wrapped her fingers round his cock, gripped her hand in his fist and started to move it back and forth. After a few moments he reached for her other hand and moved it to his nipple.

Guessing what he wanted, she squeezed and pinched at him, making him writhe with pleasure as he stroked and kneaded her breasts. Her wet crotch slipped against his thigh as she gripped his cock harder and wanked it as fast as she could. Suddenly, his whole body stiffened. He seemed to hold his breath for an age, until with a groan and panting wildly he flung his arms behind his head

Startled, she released her hold. His eyes suddenly flared and his voice became almost angry. "Go on. Go on. Keep on going."

She resumed her rubbing and almost instantly felt his body jolt beneath her. His muscles flexed and thrusted with manic violence as if he'd suddenly been wired to the mains. And she felt the sticky warmth of him splash somewhere just below her right breast. As she let go of him he continued to thrust beneath her, his face contorted with apparent pain

"Are you all right," she asked, her face filled with concern?

"All right?" He laughed and panted. "Fucking hell…Fucking hell!!"

He reached up to gently push a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His eyes filled with amazement.

"You are so fucking beautiful, you know. That was..." He laughed again, lost for a suitable superlative, and held her tight to him.

Following that first close encounter (and the removal of her virginity the following weekend) Dan thought he had it sorted.

He knew, just knew, he'd found the girl, the woman, he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He was pretty certain she felt the same way. And he imagined (irrespective of how their tangled emotions might or might not unravel in the future) he was assured at least a few months of unbridaled pleasure.

However, shortly after Dan had charmed his way into Amy's 'boudoir', she (having failed to get into Drama school) had charmed her way into a small theatre company that toured schools and art centres. Since then, Amy had spent most of her time travelling in dilapidated buses and vans to the far flung reaches of the British Isles to perform little-known plays. And therefore (much to Dan's frustration) they rarely had the opportunity to rekindle their passions (or, to put it more bluntly, shag each other senseless)

And so they had gone on for the next seven years, the dates of her return scribbled on scraps of paper by his pillow in a succession of rented rooms, until he’d finally blagged his way into a job at the food consultants, borrowed some money off his folks during a slump in the housing market and bought his own two bed starter home.

Amy had moved a lot of her gear from the spare room in her parent’s house to the spare room in his new house. Aside from that, little changed. She went off to do her plays, while he continued to work nine to five, and spent his evenings down at the Daffodil Lion or playing six aside. When she returned it was always awkward for a few days, but eventually their separate lives dissolved together again. They went shopping and for walks along the river. They went to watch the latest movies at the Multiplex cinema, or the Westing Film Theatre up at the University campus. They drank lager, argued about the films and made love. Then she was gone.

It was a schizophrenic lifestyle. Half the time he felt like a randy newlywed, the other half like some sad, single billy-no-mates – drowning his sorrows in Southern Comfort, and wanking himself off to hardcore porn mags (which he’d chuck in the litter bin down the street the night before Amy’s return).

Although the set-up offered many advantages, Dan would happily have settled for a more traditional relationship. Nothing complicated - just two toothbrushes in the bathroom, two bowls on the breakfast table, and nightly arguments over who was going to watch what on TV.

It was pathetic really. He had the freedom to do what he wanted, when he wanted (all the while knowing that in two weeks he was guaranteed fantastic sex with his long-term girlfriend). It was the kind of set-up a million married men must long for. And, to be honest, at first it had suited him just fine. But month after month, year after year, it had changed him.

He felt like some South Pacific islander, living in limbo from storm to storm - Amy entering his life like a cyclone and then leaving again. And he began to feel like wading out into the warm water, and swimming and swimming until he reached a more sheltered shoreline, some other Amy (who might be duller and not so pretty but would always be there).

But of course he could not say this to Amy. He had tried a couple of times. And she’d made him feel as if he were attacking her acting career, dismissing her talent, telling her that she would never make it. But they both knew, if she really were going to be ‘spotted’, her occasional walk-on parts in TV hospital dramas, would by now have led to speaking parts, a minor role in a sit-com or soap opera. But they hadn’t.

And as the hope faded from her acting career, so their relationship faded – like the pair of lacy red knickers he’d brought for her three Valentines ago, turned frayed and pinky-grey by too many washes. But just when it felt like those knickers might be destined for the trash – things suddenly changed.

Amy had just returned from her latest tour of schools in Bristol and North Somerset – performing a play about the Blitz. They were walking between pubs by the canal. It was a warm evening, and cooking smells and the muffled babble of TVs rose from the open windows of flats that backed onto the tow path. They’d stopped to watch a couple of swans glide past, when Amy dropped her own doodlebug.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Dan’s heart sunk, thinking that she about to abruptly accelerate the gentle deflation of their love. They strolled on at a funereal pace.

“I was thinking of leaving the theatre group.”

“Ah,” said Dan.

They stopped. Their eyes met briefly, then peeled apart.

This is it he thought, the moment she dumps me. He sighed and braced himself for that final blow. But instead of launching into some carefully rehearsed speech on the futility of their relationship, she simply said:

“I was wondering what you’d think about me coming to stay with you…permanently.”

She looked up at him again. This time their eyes locked together. Dan was speechless.

“You don’t seem very sure…”

“Oh no, I mean, yes. That would be fantastic…I just didn’t expect…. I mean, what about your acting and everything? You’re not thinking of giving that up are you?”

“No, no. It’s just the theatre group’s going nowhere…”

“Well…” He couldn’t argue with that.

“I was thinking of finding an agent. Getting some better parts. I’ll find a part-time job and everything to help with the rent.”

“Whatever you like,” said Dan. And as the shock of her announcement subsided, he gave her a huge hug and kissed her full on the lips - the first time he’d done that in public for at least three years. They stayed holding each other for a while, as the world trickled past. Eventually they eased apart and walked hand-in-hand down the tow path.

“I’ll make you a brochure if you like,” said Dan. “You know a proper colour one. Kev’ll give me a good price. I’ll pay anyway…” he grinned, and hugged her shoulder. “Just so long as I get my ten per cent, when you get your first big Hollywood movie…”

They’d walked to the pub and he’d ordered a couple of large flutes of Cava. He didn’t care about the money. He just didn’t see why he should have to subsidise the French wine industry (when a tub of crushed grapes would happily ferment in Spain, or Australia or even Bulgaria).

Anyway, he knew Amy couldn’t taste the difference, and they went happily home and made love in a way they had not done for many months.

A short while after Amy had suggested she might move in, Dan had mistakenly opened a letter addressed to her. He didn’t do it on purpose. He just saw it had the county council logo on it and presumed it must be his rates bill.

In fact it was a letter to Amy (in her role as Secretary of the Pipe Dreams Theatre Company) confirming that funding was not going to be continued. The envelope also contained a handwritten note from someone called Trish. The note acknowledged (very apologetically) that this would be a blow after they had also failed in their application for lottery funding, and wished them ‘every success in their continued efforts to raise further private sponsorship’.

Dan put the note and the official letter in a new envelope and rewrote the address, mimicking the handwriting on the note with the same colour pen. He felt slightly cheated somehow, but he didn’t directly mention the letter to Amy (who was still away completing her final performances - a two-week run of a play by some obscure new writer - in a room above a pub in Hackney).

During his phone conversations that week, Dan couldn’t resist asking one or two searching questions about how the theatre company would manage in the future without her. But she hadn’t risen to his bait and never said a word about the company’s impending demise.

Although Dan desperately wanted Amy to be his partner, he was suddenly not so sure he really wanted her to be forced upon him by mere circumstance - disrupting his carefully ordered life and house – moving his stuff around, making him feel bad if he went out for a drink by himself to the Daffodil Lion, or stayed out too long after six-a-side. It was just so confusing. Still, he guessed they would adjust. They were both very adaptable.

And, sure enough, a couple of weeks after the theatre company had finished it’s final run, they had settled down to a new routine. Amy found herself a part-time job administrating student loans at the University and helped out two nights a week at the Westing Arts Centre. She didn’t seem to mind his twice weekly excursions to footie, and he didn’t mind her stuff being around the place. Well, not too much. Most of her belongings were already in the spare room, and they bought a second pine wardrobe for the main bedroom (although she hardly used it).

When Amy did leave anything around the house (knickers on radiators, magazines on sofas, a burnt baking tray on top of the fridge), after a few days he would simply place them in her wardrobe. She didn’t seem to mind this. Although the burnt tray did cause a bit of an argument – as it put black grease on her best shoes. Still, he managed to smooth things over by buying her a new (and ridiculously expensive) pair of ankle boots, and himself a new baking tray. The point had been made and the matter was soon forgotten.

But just when he had started to get used to Amy being around, she dropped a new bombshell – casually lobbed into the conversation one Tuesday evening, as the end credits of Eastenders began to roll.

“I was thinking of doing a bit a traveling,” she said.

“Oh yea,” said Dan, flicking through the music channels with the Sky remote.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Thailand.”

“Bit expensive,” said Dan.

“I was thinking of getting one of those Round the World tickets.”

“Aren’t they for if you’re traveling all year?”

“I was thinking more like nine months.”

“Nine months?”

He looked up sharply.

“I’ve checked it all out on the web,” she said. “It’s not that expensive…My mum said she’d lend me the money for the ticket, and I’ve got some savings. I can probably get work in Australia.”

“Australia?”

“Nat’s moved out there now. He said he might be able to find me something.”

Dan looked doubtful.

“It’s a cool idea,” he said. “But I’m not sure I can take nine months off work, right now”

He could see instantly from the look on her face, that he was not part of her travel plans.

“Oh, right…”

He felt anger well up inside him, making the already-stressed muscles in his neck and shoulders start to twist and twitch.

“When was all this planned?”

“Well, nothing’s really planned…I’ve just been sending a few e-mails, checking out prices…”

“And you didn’t think to ask me about it?”

“I don’t need your permission every time I send an e-mail.”

“That’s not what I mean…I thought you were going to stay here, find a new agent?”

“When I get back,” she said.

Dan shook his head in disbelief.

“You didn’t think of telling me?”

“About what…?”

“About going traveling?”

“I never really thought about it. You’ve got your job and your football and…anyway, who would look after the house…we don’t have to do everything together?”

Dan felt the anger suddenly surge up his spine and explode into his head. He sat up on the edge of the sofa and stared straight at her, trembling with indignation.

“You had this fucking planned didn’t you?” He put on a theatrical voice, “Oh shit, my theatre funding’s gone, I’ve got no where to go, whatever am I going to do? I know I’ll go and bunk up with Dan for a couple of weeks, before I go traveling. Better not tell him though, otherwise he might not let me…you fucking two-faced bitch.”

She looked shocked for a moment (partly by the intensity of his outrage, and partly because he clearlly knew about Pipe Dream’s financial problems). But she quickly composed herself.

“I knew you’d be like this,” she said, her face settling into a mask.

“Like what?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Why do you think I can’t tell you anything. You always go off the rails.”

“Well, what do you expect. One moment you tell me you want to settle down. The next moment you’re fucking off round the world for a year. You just can’t piss people about like this! You don’t think about other people. It’s like leaving your shit everywhere like you owned the place. It’s my fucking house.”

“What’s that got to do with me going traveling?”

“Well…you just never though to ask me. Am I really that fucking unbearable to be with…?”

She looked away.

“Oh great. That is fucking great. What a fucking mug I am. I might as well just get the word cunt tattooed on my forehead and have done with it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

“Well everyone fucking treats me like one.”

“I don’t what you’re talking about.” She rolled her eyes.

“I mean everyone fucking shafts me. You, work, whoever…No one gives a shit about me…”

“Oh don’t start feeling sorry for yourself…I’ve never met anyone so self-obsessed as you!”

He flopped back on the sofa and sighed.

“Whatever…“

They sat without talking for a few moments. Amy sipped her tea, and Dan stared blankly at the TV, until the canned laughter of some crap situation comedy, mockingly broke the silence.

“So, is anyone else going with you on this wonderful world trip? I mean, if you’ve got any other revelations I’d rather you got them out now…”

“How do you mean…?”

“Well you obviously don’t want to be with me.”

“Oh don’t be so stupid…”

“Great, I’m stupid and boring, now…anything else?.”

A red flush flared across Amy’s face. She was about to let fly, when she suddenly stopped, and struggled to regain her composure.

“No, no…I’m not going to let you do this to me…”

“Do what?”

“Make me feel like I’ve done something wrong…I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Well, you still haven’t answered my question…?”

“What question?”

“About who you’re going traveling with.”

“Well, I don’t see why I should tell you. But, it will probably be a girl called Christen.”

“Christen?”

“You don’t know her…”

“Where did you meet her…?”

She hesitated slightly.

“There’s this website called Travel Buddies…”

“A website? You’re going with some nutter you met on the web? Are you fucking mad?”

“She’s not a nutter. She’s an Austrian student who wants to travel to Thailand at the same time as me. She’s studying biochemistry at Bath University at the moment and…”

Dan laughed and covered his face in his hands.

“You’re really take the fucking biscuit. In fact, a double pack of ginger nuts. In fact, a whole fucking box – no, a McVities truckload of fucking biscuits…”

“Oh, fuck off,” snapped Amy.

“Well how do you think it makes me feel. You tell me I’m too stupid and boring to go travelling with, but it’s OK to go half way round the world with an Austrian biochemist you’ve never even met…!”

“I’m meeting her in Bath next week…”

Dan stood up and raised his hands, lost for words, fingers flexing into white-knuckled claws.

“Fuck this, I’ve had enough…”

He grabbed his keys from the pot on top of the small bookshelf by the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Amy.

“What the fuck’s it got to do with you,” said Dan. He went into the porch and hauled his jacket on, his shaking fingers fumbling to fasten the zip. He gave up, slammed the front door behind him, and strode off into the street.

He walked and walked, past driveways and parked cars, TVs flickering in windows, empty wheelie bins and rubbish in gutters. A cat scuttled beneath a builder’s van, and two guys on the way to the Prince Albert gave him a quick glance, but hurried on when his scowl deepened. Passing the back of the Chinese, the air turned sweet and sour. He managed a wry smile, which a skinny cook on a fag break mistakenly returned. They exchanged nods. Amplified strumming spilled out of the pub. Dan fancied a pint or seven, but he wasn’t in the mood for a singer songwriter. He headed home along the cycle path, pausing on the bridge across the stream, to watch a single grey swan glide through the darkness.

They talked and he apologized for over reacting. And she admitted that she should have told him of her plans. But it wasn’t the way he thought. She did want to be with him (if he promised never to lose his temper like that again).

She just needed time to adjust, after living out of a suitcase for seven years. That’s why she needed the trip to Thailand. It was like an air-lock between the travelling theatre and domesticity – a curtain call. Dan said that he understood, but she shouldn’t give up acting. She said she would see how she felt in nine months time. Dan told her that whatever happened, he would always love her. And she said she felt the same.

Things had stayed a little tense for a few days. There were no more arguments between them – just a remote politeness. But they both gradually yielded. And by the time she boarded the train to Reading (to catch the Rail Air bus to Heathrow) they could say goodbye as girlfriend and boyfriend again.

The first day without Amy seemed OK. Dan went to work as usual, and was quite content to down a couple of beers and watch Friday night TV alone. When he went to bed he could smell her Nina Ricci perfume on the pillow and the room was still musty with their last moments of passion.

He wanked and slept, and went to the supermarket on Saturday morning. He bought himself a large pecan slice, which he ate as he flicked through the Independent magazine. Then he settled down to watch a bit of sport. But once Football Focus was over, there was nothing else he really fancied (just super bikes and gymnastics).

Feeling restless, Dan caught the bus into town and browsed through the computer games and CDs in HMV. He brought himself a cut-price Buzzcocks album, he knew he’d never listen to more than once. Then he meandered slowly from side-street to alleyway, past the small shops that sold skate wear and health foods and cheap flights to the States and Asia.

He checked out prices of flights to Thailand, and then returned to the pedestrianised part of the High Street, where he sat on a bench swigging diet coke and watching the girls giggle past.

There is a day in early summer when women suddenly decide they want to be seen. Up until that day, wrapped in jumpers and full of cold, any man who dare glance at them is instantly withered by the laser eyes of an alien Boadicea. But then the sun appears. The temperature hits seventy. And suddenly, coats and cares cast asunder, the female emerges from her woolly chrysalis all nipples and thighs and belly buttons.

Miraculously taught and tanned, girls from sixteen to sixty bounce braless down the High Street, with skirts the width of shirt cuffs, bums squeezed into tiny shorts, and lips pouting around smiling zippers. As the days get longer and warmer, their garments diminish in size, until eventually skirts contain less cotton than a schoolgirl's knickers and tops become no more than a blindfold across the nipples.

That Saturday, the season for showing all was well under way, and it appeared that buttocks were in (or, rather, out). Trousers and skirts were worn low on the hips, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of thong, and shorts were worn so tight and, well short, the bottom of the buttocks was clearly visible. OK for the beach thought Dan, but for nipping down to Boots and Woolworths on a Saturday afternoon?

He decided he was getting old and caught the bus back home, alighting outside the Asian newsagents two stops before his street. He bought himself a copy of Rustler and a bottle of Southern Comfort, then took a short cut home through the small park by the canal and along the cycle path.

He checked the answer phone, but there was no call from Amy. They had agreed there wouldn’t be (nor postcards nor emails). But he’d kind of hoped she would have changed her mind.

Dan sighed, put on the TV and poured himself a glass of whisky. He had a quick flick though Rustler, decided that it wasn’t as good as it used to be – too many penises and not enough pussies – then went to the freezer to find something easy to put in the oven.

And so it went on from day to day. Some days Dan worked. Some days it was the weekend. Some days he went to the pub. Some days he played six-a-side. He felt like a fly caught in a tub of humus. Each day he drank a little more Southern Comfort. And each day he got a little more bored of looking at crap porn.

He decided to find some videos on the web. But his dial-up connection was too slow and his system was swamped by pop-up windows, auto-dialers and scumware. All he manged to download was a five second clip of a man with a tiny erection masturbating into the mouth of two flabby Latino hookers. It wasn’t really what he’d had in mind.

Summer was now in full swing. There was a heat wave. Everywhere he went there were more breasts and legs and bellies and loneliness. He drove down to Brockleigh Salterton with Graham and Lennie. They played football and volleyball on the beach. He saw girls pause to look at Graham’s Tarzan-like torseau. But no one of them seemed interested in him. He was too skinny - built like a fifteen-year-old. This meant he was the only one still running after an hour of kicking a ball between the dunes. It also meant he blended into the beach as if he were made of pale sand - a sexual flounder.

They stayed in Brockleigh Salterton until early evening, then ate chips by the harbour and went to the pub for an hour. They normally stayed longer, but Lennie had to be home by nine. Dan dropped him and Graham off, then stopped off at the BP Garage on the Exeter Road - partly because he was getting low on unleaded and Southern Comfort, but also because the garage had started stocking adult DVDs.

As Dan pulled into the garage forecourt, he was relieved to see only one other car, a black Range Rover, at the pumps. He put in twenty quid’s worth, and went to the shop to pay. The other customer, a posh looking man in a blue polo shirt, came out as he went in. Dan held the door open for him and nonchalantly walked over to the fridge of soft drinks. He grabbed himself a Tango and sidled over to the magazine rack. He idly picked up a copy of the local paper, put it back down, and let his eyes wander up to the adult videos and DVDs, which were wedged in front of the porn and car magazines.

He didn’t know why he bothered with this rigmarole. The Asian lad behind the desk was busy sorting out boxes of Flakes and Mars Bars, and there was no one else in there (he had double checked that with a second furtive glance over his shoulder). There was just something about buying porn vids. Somehow the guilt exceeded the crime. But, having come this far, he was determined to go through with it.

He glanced along the titles. He definitely didn’t want anything with men in it. Photos of another man’s arse cheeks and bollocks were enough of a turn off, the last thing he wanted was eighteen frames a second of thrusting cock ‘ramming’ home his monk-like misery.

Then he saw it ‘Solo Girls Three – Back to School’. There was a rough looking brunette on the cover in stripy tie and tight white blouse, legs akimbo, her cunt denoted by a black star. Perfect. She looked dirty as fuck and it was on special offer at £7.99. He took it up to the counter.

“Pump number three and the Tango please mate, and that one…” He handed the man his bank card and pushed the DVD across the counter with the edge of his finger, as if it were dusted with anthrax. The Asian guy didn’t bat an eyelid. He swiped the card, popped the DVD in a brown paper bag and the job was done.

Dan sipped at the Tango as he drove home, the DVD lying on the passenger seat. His heart thumped like he was going on a date. He took a short cut down the lane that lead to Upper Longthorn, flipped the DVD over and glanced at the details on the back cover.

A violent blast on a horn saved him, by a millisecond, from a head on collision with a builder’s van. With a wave of apology, he pulled over into a passing place and ripped the cellophane from the DVD case. He took out the insert card and started to read. The lady on the cover was definitely the best of the four featured ‘models’. The others were all quite mature and no more than one rung up from Reader’s Wives. But they all looked as if they knew what they were up to. Dan smirked to himself and shut the case. He frowned and opened it again. No DVD.

What a fucking idiot he was. No wonder it was cheap. Bastard garage. Dan almost added a racist comment about the guy who’d served him, but stopped himself just in time. It wasn’t the guy’s fault. He was probably on minimum wage (or less). Just trying to get by, poor bastard, by working the night shift. No, there was no point having a pop at him. But that didn’t stop Dan feeling well fucked off with the garage.

They probably relied on most punters being too embarrassed to make a complaint or take the empty case back. And people were unlikely to take the garage to trading standards.

‘The packaging most definitely suggested a glimpse of giblets, your Honour, or (at the very least) hands down panties masturbation. All I got was an empty case (and an unemptied ball sack). I demand compensation for my lasting disappointment.’

He could imagine the local paper headlines. ‘Local perve goes unleaded.’ You’d be a fucking laughing stock.

Still, he wasn’t going to let the garage get away with it. He’d return the empty case, get his money back, and never fill up there again…

“Hello, hello…” Dan rattled the locked door to the garage shop. The pumps were still lit up and whirring, and he could see a light inside. “Hoi. Is there anyone in there?” He started to kick the bottom of the door.

“Hey, what are you doing? The shop’s closed!”

The voice came from Dan’s left.

He looked up to see the Asian lad peering out from a side door, beyond the flowers, home barbecues and the air pipe.

Dan waved the empty case angrily.

“There’s no bloody DVD in it.”

The lad looked mystified, then seemed to suddenly recognize Dan.

“Oh shit, man. I forgot your DVD,” his face broke into a broad grin. “Wait there. I’ll let you in.”

He came bounding through the shop – almost breaking into a jog in his effort to please. He unlocked the door and left the huge set of keys dangling in the lock.

“Yea, sorry man. I don’t believe I forgot. You know, I was so busy with the chocolates and everything. I have to count them every night. Can you believe it? Make sure none’s been nicked see.”

He took the case from Dan, and pulled a pile of discs in plastic

sleeves from a cupboard beneath the counter.

“Volume three, number three,” he muttered to himself. “Forty-eight, fifty-seven, fourteen. There is no system here. No system.”

Dan heard a car rumble into the forecourt, and looked self-consciously over his shoulder.

“Aha, it’s this one I think. Yes?”

The Asian lad passed him a disc entitled ‘Ten Inches – Volume 2’. It was over printed with a massive erection, being consumed by a pair of red lips (of the facial variety) obscured by the obligatory black star.

“I don’t think it is.” Dan picked up the case he’d previously selected and showed the lad the title. ‘Solo Girls Three’.

“Sometimes the titles, they change slightly on the cover.”

“No it’s definitely not that one.”

“It’s right I think. See it says number 12 on the case and number 12 on there.”

He thrust the CD in front of Dan’s face. Dan recoiled from the printed penis.

“No, someone must have put it back in the wrong sleeve”.

“Well there is no school girls there. You look!” He pushed the pile of DVDs towards Dan.

Dan started to shuffle through them, ignoring the person behind him.

“Please, the shop is closed now.”

“Why’s the door open then mate?” The voice belonged to a boy racer in a customised Citroen Saxo.

“I am just helping this gentleman.”

Dan could feel the boy racer looking over his shoulder at the counter strewn with DVDs and cases. He tried to act nochalant, like he was some back-street pornographer doing a bit of business. Tell you what I’ll do you five of Sheila’s Fantasies for fifteen. She’s a fucking diamond Sheila – oral, anal, boy-girl, girl-girl; she’s a real pro. I tell you they’ll fly off the fucking shelf….As if this was somehow less sad than being just another punter with a lost DVD.

“Do us a pack of Kingsize mate,” said the boy racer, pushing a fiver towards him.

The Asian lad sighed.

“OK, OK,” he passed the boy racer a pack of Rizzla and his change. “And push the door shut on your way out please.”

The boy racer just laughed and left the door swinging in the darkness.

“Fucking ignorant,” muttered the Asian lad, and added some curse in a language Dan didn’t understand.

“Did you find your disc yet?”

“No, not yet,” said Dan, still sifting through the pile.

“I tell you it is that one.” The Asian lad pushed ‘Ten Inches – Volume 2’ towards him again.

“Sorry about this mate, but it definitely ain’t that one.”

“Well you just take whatever you want. No system you see. No system.”

Dan heard someone entering through the door. He hastily grabbed a copy of ‘Rubber Lesbians 4’ and shoved it under his jacket.

“What one you got there? I’ll find the case for you.”

“It’s OK cheers mate. Thanks for your help. This is fine.”

He turned away from the counter, wanting to escape as quickly as possible, and collided with two girls behind him.

“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled and, head down, was hurrying for the door, when one of them grabbed his arm.

“Hey.”

Oh shit, he thought, I haven’t dropped the disc have I…

He looked sheepishly up at the girl, and felt embarrassment blaze across his face, as he realized it was one of Amy’s old school friends, Melissa.

“Hi Mel. Sorry, didn’t see you there. I was just…you know, filling up with four star, I mean unleaded, you know, petrol.”

Mel looked slightly puzzled, but smiled politely.

“Me and Nicole are just filling up with alcohol.”

Dan grinned at the other girl who was clutching half-a-dozen Bacardi breezers.

“I can see that,” he said and was just about to ask (jokingly) if he was invited to the party, when the Asian lad called across to him, his voice filled with delight.

“Hey man I found your disc!”

“It’s all right mate.” said Dan. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But it’s Volume Three, the schoolgirl one.”

“It’s OK mate.”

He held his hand up and looked meaningfully at Mel and her friend (who mercifully had their back to the counter).

The Asian guy shook his head in bemusement, and started restacking his DVDs in the cupboard, and muttering again.

Dan grimaced.

“Are you all right?” asked Mel. “You look all flushed.”

“Oh yea.It’s just a bit of sunburn,” said Dan in a low voice. “I’ve been on the beach at Brockleigh all day. I was just buying a CD to listen to in the car. One of those compilations of eighties hits. You know, school disco favourites, and all that. I wanted Volume 3 but they only had the case for Volume 2. But when I thought about it, Volume 2 actually had better songs on it. But then he found the other CD case and…anyway, it doesn’t matter. I better let you get on, and get to your party or whatever…” Dan felt the DVD pressing into his armpit, and shifted awkwardly, trying not to let it slip. “Bloody sunburn,” he said. “First bit of decent weather we get and I turn into a lobster.”

The girls continued to smile in a polite, but slightly puzzled way, as he shuffled towards the door. The Asian lad came over to them.

“The shop is closed now ladies please. I need to lock this door.”

“What about these drinks?”

“I take them and pass them out to you.” He pointed to the night pay window. “I must lock the door now, please.”

He turned to Dan.

“I said I have found your disk now. You can give me the other one back.”

“It’s OK, I prefer volume 2.” Dan smiled. “It’s the same price.”

The man looked confused.

“You understand me? It’s the right DVD. The schoolgirl one.”

“It’s OK.”

“But you have the wrong one .”

“It’s OK really.”

“You want different one now?”

Dan nodded apologetically.

The Asian lad sighed dramatically, shook his head, took the Bacardi breezers from Mel’s friend Nicole and ushered them outside.

It was chilly, and the forecourt smelled of petrol and decaying flowers.

“He was a bit weird,” said Mel.

“I think he was just worried about getting the shop shut.”

“And he called it a schoolgirl DVD,” said Nicole derisorily.

Dan blushed.

“Well it was all a bit confusing.” He raised his hand stiffly, like a man in plaster, and shuffled towards his car. “Better get going. But good to see you Mel and Nicole…enjoy your drinks and all that…”

Mel seemed determined to prolong his agony.

“How are you coping with Amy away?”

“Oh, I’m used to being by myself. You know.”

“Well maybe I’ll drop by sometime.” Mel grinned. “Listen to your CD. I like eighties stuff.”

“Cool, whatever,” said Dan. He didn’t know if she’d realised what he’d been up to and was taking the piss, or whether she was just being friendly. Either way, he could feel the DVD about to slip from inside his jacket. He stumbled towards the car, thrust his hand under his armpit to grab the DVD, pulled the disc from his jacket and held it against his thigh. He yanked the car door open and half-fell into the passenger side.

Mel and Nicole looked bemused.

“I’ll ring you,” Mel called after him.

“Yea, good,” said Dan. He waved with one hand and with the other dropped the DVD into the foot-well, then pretended to rummage in the glove compartment – providing a visual excuse for his odd entrance into the car.

He waited until they had returned to their car, an old white Fiesta, and Mel had driven off from the forecourt with a kiss-cum-wave. Then he put the DVD on the passenger seat, returned to the driver’s side (watched all the while by the Asian lad, who undoubtedly suspected him of stashing half-a-dozen discs under his coat), and drove home.

After all that, the DVD was crap. The lesbians really were lesbians, of a particularly butch and rather saggy variety. One had breasts like soggy dough and four stomachs (fittingly). The other was so painfully thin and sexless she could have been a man (in fact, Dan rather suspected she had been in a former life). They were not at all the faux lipstick lezzies he’d been expecting (i.e. crack addicts and single mums in ill-fitting wigs, pretending to munch each other’s slits for the price of their next ‘rock’/installment on a Toys-R-Us store card). No, these two spent more time licking each other’s rubber boots than their pussies. When they weren’t doing that, they were just tying each other up with black tape (and then untying each other, without a whole lot else happening in between).

Dan decided he would have to take drastic action in his quest for proper porn, and pay a visit to the ‘Pleasure Zone’. The PZ (as it was known at work) was next to a particular unsavoury massage parlour with bars on the windows (and presumably locks on the doors). Every now and again, the police blitzed the place and dragged out a few under-age Moldovans and some Albania gangsters. But the place always seemed to reopen with apparent impunity.

His knowledge of the massage parlour was limited to what he’d read in the Westing Chronicle and heard down the pub. However, he had actually been inside the PZ. It was when Sandra in Accounts (who escaped the crushing boredom of purchase orders and credit notes, with short skirts and double entendres) handed in her notice. Sandra never stopped talking about sex, and the staff were split between those who thought she was all talk and no action, and those who thought she was all action and no knickers (particularly, Colin, the European Food Markets consultant, who claimed he’d ‘inadvertently’ caught a glimpse of her ‘open ledger’, while waiting to have his expenses from the Stuttgart Trade Fair countersigned).

To test her reaction (and raise a laugh), a group of them had ventured into the PZ one lunchtime to buy her the most risqué dildo they could find. And boy were they spoiled for choice. Despite the fact that the PZ had all the retail finesse of a car boot sale (boxes stacked in rough heaps, like German biscuits in Lidl), it’s range of vibrators and butt plugs was second to none.

They settled, after much debate, on a violet ten incher with interchangeable heads and an extra prong for anal stimulation. They had to break into her voucher money to afford it, but as Colin said, ‘you can’t buy that in Marks and Spencers’!

During their deliberations, Dan had become bored and gone to look at the videos. Hence he knew that the PZ stocked a wide range of the latest hardcore from Private, Hustler and the like. He’d never previously considered sampling it. However, nine months was a long time. And Amy hadn’t sent him so much as a postcard. So he decided to treat himself (as a kind of compensation for the disappointment of Rubber Lesbians 4).

On the way home from work, he drove to the cash point at Safeways, and took out fifty in tens. He parked in a side street off the far end of the Bath Road, and walked past the slow, growling traffic towards the PZ. As he got nearer, he felt slightly sick. This was different from looking at the top shelf in the garage, or entering a sex shop for a laugh with a group of work mates. This time he was a bona fide punter – a fully paid up member of the association of shameless perves and weirdos (indifferent to the stares of passing commuters).

At the entrance to the massage parlour that adjoined the PZ, Dan paused. There was something about the place, something in the air - not so much a smell, as an aura – that made you check your step, as if you were a rabbit sensing a lurking lurcher. The heavy door, slightly ajar, the darkened windows, all carried a sense of foreboding - a line that, if crossed, marked a descent into some darker, alternative reality from which there was no return. The place radiated a loveless sadness mirroring that of its punters. It was a sick sideshow, in which poverty and loneliness and addiction and desperation, catalysed transitory pleasures, as plastic and harsh as the dildos next door. However, Dan’s momentum carried him across that line, and into the Pleasure Zone.

Inside, a scruffy man in a green bomber jacket was reading the evening paper. He barely looked up as Dan entered, and Dan quickly made his way over to the DVDs, his fist nervously scrunching the five tenners in his pocket. There were hundreds of titles to choose from, wall to ceiling images of men and women engaged in uncensored group sex. What distinguished one DVD from another he didn’t know.

He’d seen a programme once on Channel Four, about the Erotic equivalent of the Oscars. There were several different categories as he recalled. However, the programme concentrated on the ceremony and the characters rather than the technical niceties of what made for an outstanding performance (and judging from the selection in front of him, it certainly wasn’t make-up or plot development).

He decided to limit himself to finding a DVD that didn’t feature an erect cock on the cover (which, even having come that far) he didn’t think he could stomach. Eventually his eyes rested on a movie delightfully entitled Strap-on Buttfest – Back for more. He wasn’t entirely sure what this involved – but the ladies on the cover certainly seemed a league or two up from those in the garage, and it cost fifty pounds. So he imagined it must be at least five times as good as Rubber Lesbians 4.

Dan took the case up to the counter (a bare desk, which had obviously been purchased from one of many second-hand places that lined the Bath Road).

“This is proper hardcore, right?”

The man in the green bomber jacket laughed.

“Oh yea – you’ve got no worries there mate!”

In one fluid movement, he whipped the notes from Dan’s hand, delved under the desk for the disc, popped it in the case, and slid it into a brown paper bag. The whole procedure took only a couple of seconds.

“We do a twenty pound exchange OK. Just bring it back when you’ve finished with it.”

Dan nodded.

“Cheers,” he said and hurried out onto the street, just as one of the working girls arrived next door - all purple eye shadow, big hair and bare legs. Dan smiled politely, but she bustled past him with a dismissive swish of the belt on her half-length leather coat. He hurried back to the side street where he’d parked the Renault, and eased into the queuing traffic.

For one horrible moment he thought the DVD didn’t work - but it was just that he hadn’t pushed it into the player properly. He selected a scene at random on the menu and leaned back on the sofa, sipping half-a-tumbler of Southern Comfort.

Two girls were sat on a sofa, in a room full of shabby continental antiques. One looked like a French Courtesan, with lots of blonde hair piled high on her head and big round tits squeezed into a bodice. The other had long dark hair and even bigger tits. She was wearing a blouse, a pin striped skirt and fishnet stockings. There was no rational explanation for the setting or the clothes. But there didn’t really need to be.

For no apparent reason, the blonde started to unbutton the brunette’s blouse revealing a lacy black bra. Light jazz started to play accompanied by disembodied gasps. The blonde slipped the brunette’s blouse down her shoulders. She released one breast and bent over as she started to suck and slurp at the brunette’s nipples. The brunette reached round to fondle the blonde’s bum. The scene cut to a close-up of the brunette’s hand fingering the blonde’s crutch through the gusset of her lacy French knickers.

More gasping and breast sucking followed. The brunette spread her thighs and the camera panned into a close-up of her cunt through the fish net tights. The blonde started licking at the brunette’s slit through her gusset then chewed at her clit, sucking savagely at the puckered flesh of her flaps. She reached down and started to pull at the crutch of the fishnets, long pink nails tearing them apart. The brunette turned round so that she was kneeling up on the sofa, her skirt rolled up to her waist, the tattered remains of her tights hanging around her open pussy and arsehole. The blonde knelt behind her and started to lick at the brunette’s anus, as the camera homed in on her wet gash. Then the scene cut to a close-up of the blonde pulling her knickers to one side and slipping two fingers into her own cunt.

Dan undid the button on his jeans, took a last swig of Southern Comfort and lowered his zip.

The blonde started to lick the brunette’s pussy and teased her ring with the tip of her little finger, then she drooled saliva onto her middle finger and pushed it in up to the second knuckle. The camera homed in on the brunette’s face faking wild excitement.

The blonde picked up a long blue vibrator, which she just happened to have under the sofa, and started to rub it between the brunette’s clit and her arsehole (which had, magically, become plastered with lubricant). Dan pulled his cock out of his pants, noticing (gratefully) that it was stiffer than it had been for weeks. The blonde inserted the head of the vibrator into the brunette’s arse, reaching round to pinch hard at the brunette’s nipple, then started to push the vibrator deeper in - the brunette’s reddened ring stretching around the blue rubberised shaft, as Dan started to rub himself faster.

The panting got louder (on and off screen) and the buzzing of the vibrator drowned out the jazz. Dan spat on his palm and gripped himself tighter, imagining it really was him fucking that brunette up the arse…and the door bell rang.

He stopped, catching his breath. The door bell rang again. He stayed very still pretending not to be in. There was a knocking at the door and he realized his car was on the drive, and the lights were on. The knocking continued.

Shit!

He put the DVD on hold, kicked the case under the video stand, flicked off the TV, and tucked his cock back into his pants. Then wiping his palms on the front of his jeans, he went to answer the door, ready to give whichever salesperson it was, a real mouthful. But when he opened the door he was shocked to see it was Amy’s friend Mel.

“Oh, hi,” he said. “Sorry, I was in the kitchen with the TV on…didn’t hear the bell.”

“That’s OK,” she said with a breezy smile. “I was just driving past the end of your road. So I thought I’d drop by quickly and see if you were doing OK.”

“Right,” said Dan, nodding vaguely.

She looked expectantly up at him.

“Sorry, come in, come in…” he said, and she followed him through the jumble of trainers and free papers on the porch floor. “Sorry, the place is such a mess,” he said, hastily scouring the lounge for signs of porn. He straightened the cushions on the sofa and gestured for her to sit down. “Coffee?” he asked, casually clicking off the DVD’s power button with the toe of his Reeboks.

“Tea, please,” she said. “If that’s OK.”

“No problem. I’ve run out of that Chinese stuff Amy drinks, but I’ve got ‘chimp tea’ – you know PG Tips or whatever?”

“As long as it’s wet and warm.”

Her words prompted a sudden flashback to the DVD he’d just been watching. A mental image of Amy and Mel spread across the sofa flashed before him. But he pushed it to the back of his mind, and went to look for biscuits in the kitchen cupboard.

“Do you like Penguins – the biscuit that is, rather then the bird.”

“Don’t go to any trouble,” said Mel.

“No trouble,” said Dan, and he washed his hands thoroughly in Fairy liquid, before touching the tea bags.

She smiled as he bought in a tray with two mugs, a bag of sugar and a plate of penguins.

“Sorry, I’m not a very sophisticated host,” he apologized as he set the tray down.

“Missing that woman’s touch,” she said.

“Yea, I guess so.”

Dan sat down on the armchair next to Mel and took a gulp of coffee.

“It’s very dark in here.”

He realized the curtains were closed, even though it was bright outside.

“It’s the reflection on the TV,” he mumbled. “When the sun’s getting low.“ He got up, about to open them.

“It’s OK,” said Mel. “You’ll only have to close them again.”

Dan looked startled.

“For the TV,” she said.

“Yea, right…” said Dan. He sat back down. “So, have you heard from Amy?”

Mel looked down at carpet.

“…a postcard, that’s all.”

“More than I‘ve had,” said Dan morosely. “Did she say how she was? She hasn’t been eaten by crocodiles or killer koalas or anything.”

Mel laughed.

“No.”

“That’s a relief.” He paused “Did she mention if she’d met anyone out there?”

“Oh, no, no. Just said she was having a great time but was missing everyone.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry,” said Mel. She laid a comforting hand on Dan’s arm. “Every thing will be fine. She just needed to have that last trip. You know she’s always found it hard to settle.”

“Did she talk to you about it? You know the trip and our arrangement. Meeting up on the station and all that?”

“A bit. She was worried about you…she wanted you to feel all right about everything.”

“Right.” He sighed and sipped his coffee, then looked up at her. She seemed concerned. “Look sorry, I‘m not very good company. It’s nice that you popped round, really. Just bad timing…”

“Feeling a bit low?”

“Something like that…” He could hardly tell her she’d caught him in mid-wank while watching hardcore lesbian porn. He leaned back on the sofa, and rubbed his face with his left hand, and added wearily, “I’ll be all right.”

“Yes, “ said Mel soothingly. “You’ll both be fine.”

He felt like hugging her. She probably would have too, if he’d reached out in the right way. But he just put his cup down and offered her a penguin.

“No thanks,” she said.

“On a diet?…not that you need to. I mean, you look all right to me. More than all right, I don’t mean…you know, I don’t want you to think I was…”

“It’s OK,” she laughed. “I know what you meant. And no I’m not on a diet…”

He smiled and nodded.

“Just not in the mood…for a penguin…”

She laughed.

“Now if you had a custard cream….”

She winked.

Dan coughed and started to tidy the tray.

Mel laughed.

“You take everything very seriously don’t you?”

“I suppose so,” said Dan a little warily.

“It’s OK,” said Mel. “I’m not checking up on you.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Well I’m not!” she retorted.

But from the way she self-consciously sipped her tea, he could tell this wasn’t strictly true.

He guessed she must be in touch with Amy (girlfriends always kept in touch with each other, even when there were half way round the world and weren’t even contacting their boyfriends). Mel must have mentioned she’d bumped into him in the garage. Amy probably asked how he was, and Mel probably told her he’d seemed kind of awkward. So Amy had probably asked her to pop round and check up on him and…

“Hey,” Mel gave him a prod. “Are you still with us…?”

“Oh, sorry I was just thinking about Amy.”

“You miss her don’t you.”

He nodded.

She picked up a small red handbag, which he’d just noticed she’d brought in with her. She took out a smart blue and gold pen and scribbled on the TV supplement that was lying on the arm of the sofa.

“Look, there’s my number OK? Next time you feel like a chat, just give me a call and we can go for a drink…just as friends, though…no funny business…just because your chick’s away…”

“Of course,” he said, “I wouldn’t…I mean a drink would be cool…but I’m not going to try and…you know…”

“I was joking,” said Mel, raising her eyebrows…”

“Yes, of course, you would be…”

“It’s quite sweet though…” she smirked.

“Uhu…”

“The way you take everything so seriously…”

“Oh…right….”

She laughed.

“You definitely could do with that drink.”

He smiled politely, but thought to himself – I know what I could definitely do with right now – and as soon as you stop patronizing me and piss off out of that door I’ll be able to get on with it…! But he was actually pleased Mel had called round. And as he waved at the retreating tailgate of her Fiesta, he decided he would definitely call her early the following week.

And so started an unlikely friendship.

Mel wasn’t stunningly good looking. But she definitely had all the right bits in the right places. She had long ginger hair that she highlighted, and longish, slim legs. She mostly wore jeans and baggy t-shirts, that made her look like a slightly conservative rock chick – the daring one in the church choir – rather than a drugged-out rebel jezebel, halfway to damnation.

But, occasionally, she wore a summery vest that clung to her, so that he could see her breasts were firm and shapely, without being of barmaid proportions. And sometimes she wore quite short shorts, so that he could see her legs, although not very tanned, were definitely very toned from cycling.

And on those days, had the chance arisen, he would certainly not have ‘kicked her out of bed’. But the chance never did arise. Firstly, because it wasn’t like that. It just wasn’t. Plus, they were both so close to Amy, it would have been like shagging a sibling. It was just something you wouldn’t do.

Although there was no exchange of fluids between them, they became in almost every other way like boyfriend and girlfriend. They went out about once a week, at first, just for a drink and a chat. Dan quickly picked up from things Mel said that she had been in touch with Amy. And the way she grilled him, he could tell his suspicions had been right, and she was Amy’s spy (albeit by default rather than design).

At some point, however, Mel went from conveniently dropping round to ‘see how he was’, to calling round because she enjoyed spending time with him. It was the almost perfect relationship, free from pressure or expectation or commitment or messy moments.

She went cycling round the lakes with him (usurping Graham, his usual pedal partner, who was busy, anyway, mowing lawns). They went down the pub together to cheer and curse at the Euro Championships on TV, and obliterated their sorrows with lager when England lost on penalties in yet another quarter final.

When it was all over, they went to the cinema, shared popcorn in the air-conditioned coolness, and criticized the shit out of every film they sat through. When nothing else was happening, they went to the pub for a drink.

The guys in the pub thought Mel was his new girlfriend and presumed he had split up with Amy. Dan didn’t do anything to deter this notion. He hadn’t told anyone about his little arrangement with Amy (although they knew she’d gone traveling without him). It was a pride thing – easier than having to admit that Amy had not contacted him, and that he was supposed to wait (like some lapdog in sexual quarantine) for her to meet him at Westing station on St David’s Day.

But, there was still nothing going on between him and Mel. She was just like a male friend, except he could actually talk to her about stuff, and she had nicer breasts. And although he admired the breasts, he never dared instigate a quick grope of them. She had started to hug him goodnight. And it felt nice to be held tight against her. But it was always one of those ‘bridge’ hugs, with pelvises a foot apart. And they always separated after a couple of moments. Then he would go inside for a twenty-minute session with the strap-on girls. And she would drive off in her white Fiesta.

Mel didn’t have a boyfriend. At least Dan imagined she didn’t, given the amount of time she spent with him. It was the one thing they never really talked about it. He guessed she was between relationships, enjoying his company and a summer of singleness, while she waited for some new man to come along. But he didn’t pry.

As the summer slowly faded, still Mel came to see him and still they cycled round the lakes. And still it seemed as if she were waiting, waiting with him and the trees and the creatures for the dormancy of winter and a new future in the new year, when the daffodils would once again spring up on the hill above the pub, and love would be rekindled.

But that was months away. For it was barely Autumn, the season of berries and wild fruit. During the summer the leaves and branches of the hedges and embankments around the lakes had become so thick and tangled, it was hard to see where one plant ended and another began. It were as if the various species of tree and bush had merged into one characterless mass, in which all individuality was surrendered to the collective greenness.

As the leaves began to fall, revealing clusters of distinctive berries, the individuality of the trees returned. And by late September, despite Dan's very rudimentary knowledge of tree taxonomy, he could clearly distinguish elders, hazels and sloes not to mention mountain ash and wild plums.

It felt good then to be cycling in the cool air on an early evening, with dark water stretched out on either side, the reflector of Mel’s mountain bike twinkling in the dusk ahead. Cocooned in his air-conditioned office and centrally heated semi, Dan felt as if he was no longer a real animal, but some cheaply manufactured substitute for whom any notion of seasonal variation was confined to considering how far to twist the control knob on the thermostat in the lounge. Even pedalling through falling leaves and dying flies, he felt like a spectator to the seasons, no longer an active participant within them.

He was a member of that most exclusive evolutionary club – the Homo suburbia – supermarket fed, fuel-injected and plugged in 24x7 to a global network of phones and computers and TVs. And yet his most basic senses - that innate ability to feel things in his bones - had become duller than those of the simplest beast.

During the summer, hedgehogs emerged in the yellow-greyness of dusk, scurrying out from hedges and beneath sheds to rustle purposefully through gardens. By September, fat with worms and snail meat, they ambled lethargically towards hibernation, miraculously slowing down their metabolism to lie curled up in suspended animation, surviving for weeks with neither food nor drink. The Homo suburbians delighted in telling clever jokes about these slow, prickly beasts who each autumn were flattened against the tarmac in their thousands. Yet they retained a sensitivity that we have long since lost - for us, the infinitely shifting shades of nature reduced to two-dimensional replicas on ever flatter screens.

It was an awareness of that loss that drew Dan and Mel again and again to the lakes of Penton Pastures, which offered not so much an escape from civilisation, but of reunion with nature, an awakening of vestigial senses beyond the accepted five, a truer sensation of season (although not necessarily a purer one).

During the summer, Penton Pastures had been bright with the painted wings of butterflies and plumage of escaped parrots. It was also bright with discarded crisp packets and sweet wrappers. Along the dry paths that led from the car park were the signs of illicit lovers, who stole into the darkness to hurriedly share uncomfortable bliss, leaving a litter of soiled tissues around flattened undergrowth.

Beside the pale pinks and blues of the tissues were the deeper hues of empty cigarette and condom packets, chucked there by reckless young men and women who - after the pubs shut on the warmer of Saturday evenings and the night clubs became too unbearably hot - met in pot-holed car parks to dance around fires until dawn, fuelled by pagan urges, amphetamines and take-away food, leaving polystyrene burger boxes and half-drunk cans of lager in stagnant gullies, stubbornly buoyed-up by a skin of grimy algae.

But away from the car parks, the picnic areas and adventure playgrounds, were places that people rarely walked, filled with nettles ten feet tall and huge purple and yellow flowers. And the light passed right through the fresh leaves of willows and birch so that they shone like slices of emerald.

In summer, on the biggest lake, protected from algae and ravenous lilies by bales of straw and a slight tide, the water moved like molten silver, rippling behind red-bellied ducks and black swans whose plumage made the fluorescent life jackets, sails and wet suits of distant windsurfers seem all the more garish.

By winter, the colour would all be gone, replaced by black bark and the putrid brown of decay set against grey sky and grey water. The drink cans in the gullies would rust and sink. While in the undergrowth the bright wrappers would be dirtied by mud and buried by leaves. Even the bravest of the windsurfers would be tucked up in bed reading about new designs of boards whilst last year's wet suits hung wrinkled in the wardrobe. The kids would stay at home watching TV and playing computer games. And the few people who walked their dogs and fished by the side of the lakes would do so in clothes the colour of old tents, further diminished by the faded light.

But before the lingering dimness of winter took hold, the lakes were briefly lit with a softer light, and all was bathed in mustard and honey – the colours of Autumn. And, cycling along with Mel, Dan felt a warmth rise up from the earth to embrace them - as if reassuring them that there was something worth waiting for.

But Winter was harsher than he had imagined. Mel had met someone and it was too cold to cycle. Too cold for anything, not even six-a-side. Dan had grown bored of the strap-on girls. He dumped the DVD in the bin by the bus stop, but couldn’t be bothered to buy a replacement. He gave up any thought that Amy would ever return, let alone get back together with him. He tried to talk to other girls in the Daffodil Lion. But there was something missing. It wasn’t like with Mel. And, in truth, no-one seemed that interested in him. Maybe he was trying too hard. Maybe his loneliness was too obvious. Maybe there was something missing for them too – no smouldering eyes, no expensive car, no chat-up lines – just an average size dick and a boring job.

He considered going to the massage parlour next to the Pleasure Zone, just to see what it was like, just to feel something. But he decided that he would probably emerge suicidal (or with syphillus or worse). And so he settled for lukewarm Southern Comfort and TV comedies and chats with Graham and Lennie.

He’d counted on the days getting shorter in December (allowing him to forget his sorrows in semi-hibernation). But the days dragged on and on, and even with the amount he was drinking, he still couldn’t sleep, and he lay on the sofa until four in the morning watching crap horror films and obscure boxing matches.

His life had been reduced to day-to-day survival, just getting through January and February to March the First, when he would dutifully stand on the Platform two of Westing Station to see if Amy appeared, to see if was all one big game to her, to see if he still felt anything for her, anything at all.

January was shit. But in February, Mel rang him to apologise for not having stayed in touch. She’d been on the phone for over forty minutes (chatting about nothing in particular) before she’d started to sob, and told him that she’d broken up with her new man, and didn’t know who else to talk to.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said. “I didn’t even like the two-timing bastard.”

“Well, it’s not nice to be treated like that, even if he was, you know, nothing serious. It’s still not nice.”

“No it isn’t,” she said.

And then she drove round in her white Fiesta and told him all about it.

Even though she’d spent five hours sitting beside him on the sofa, and helped him polish off his latest bottle of whisky, when he reached for her hand and asked her to stay, she pulled it from his grip and said sternly.

“Don’t make your life any more complicated.”

He didn’t quite get what she meant. But he took the hint and was grateful that he could put it down to the drink and the moment, and that Mel never mentioned it again, and there was no lasting awkwardness between them.

By February, he’d almost forgotten about Amy - all memory of her locked away in some mental deep freeze; the smell, the taste, the touch of her stored like old forensic samples. But as the days grew warmer, and their reunion drew closer, he felt himself start to thaw, and fuelled by the nervous excitement, his brain flashed up images of her in dreams, at work, while driving home.

The night of February 28th, he didn’t sleep at all. He’d met Mel and Graham and Len at the pub for a moral-boosting drink, and had been dropped off quite drunk. He hoped the alcohol would calm him down. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Amy.

He wondered if she’d be tanned, if she’d still love him, if she’d met someone else (for surely she must have done), and whether he could forgive and forget any transient beach romances with hunky Australians? Would their reunion be one of those moments where none of that mattered? Would they feel closer than they had ever done before? Or would it be the moment they finally severed all ties? He no longer cared. He would deal with it. He just wanted the whole charade to be over.

He had taken the day of work, and spent the morning, drinking black coffee and manically tidying the house - doing more polishing and cleaning in one hour than he’d done in the previous nine months.

As he polished the draining board, he looked out of the window at his willow. The willow had grown from a log dumped on the bank at the bottom of his garden by a firm of tree surgeons, when they had cleared the area around the stream. Fed by the slowly flowing water, the willow log had rooted and sprouted two branches. The branches were spread like the legs of a person lying on their back; an athlete stretching before a race or a lover preparing for penetration. Dan favoured the latter image, the fervent freshness of Spring's awakening captured in webs spun between the willow's slender loins, dripping with dew upon the swollen stems of tulips, thistles and narcissi, brewing up eruptions of silver, blood and gold.

At lunchtime, Dan drove to the Daffodil Lion. On the shaded parts of the lane that led to the pub, there were still icy patches where he had to slow. But, the daffodils had started to stab up from the frozen hillside above the pub. He decided it was a good omen - the wet, musky soil, the damp gussett of the earth, softly spread by the gentle thrust of germination. And he longed for the vibrant yellow flower heads to push out of their tight buds, with the reassuring passion of a distant lover's letter. He wanted to lie among the flowers (as he and Amy had done one year) drenched in the lushness of the daffodils' blooming - a shock of yellow all around them, reaffirming the persistence of nature, its power to bundle chaotic energy into bright patterns that cushioned them from the harsh confusion of their synthetic lives.

The pub was quiet as Dan sipped his pint of Stella shandy, served by a barman who he’d never seen doing the evening shift.

“Lunchtime drink?” asked the barman rhetorically.

“Day off,” said Dan.

“Doing anything special?”

Dan shrugged.

“Waiting for the gasman, is it?”

“Something like that,” he murmured, “something like that.”

He felt uncomfortable by himself at the bar and drove to the station.

It was an hour before Amy’s train was due to arrive. He sat in the Bay Tree coffee bar, his fingers shaking as he leafed through a discarded copy of the previous day’s Daily Mirror, filled with nerves and too much caffeine. He felt restless in the bar and went to wait on the platform.

There was no-one much about – an elderly couple; a young guy in a grubby tracksuit sipping from a can of SB and going nowhere; a couple of business people in suits, fiddling with briefcases and checking for messages on their mobile phones; and some sad looking bastard with a brown anorak, crap hair and a small rucksack.

There were no trains, no guards, no noise – as if the whole world were on pause, restlessly waiting with him.

Three o’clock drew closer and suddenly the silence was broken by the disembodied voice of the station announcer.

“Fastrack West welcomes you to Westing Station. It’s two fifty-seven on 29th February. We have a special announcement for a passenger waiting at platform two. Please listen for a special announcement on platform two. Or should I say a special proposal…

Dan felt his knees go week. He started to blush. Of course it was a leap year. Amy was going to ask him to marry her. He gazed anxiously down the platform and saw a train in the distance. He felt a rush of elation, fear and then confusion.

He suddenly realized it wasn’t March the 1st. How was he supposed to know that he was supposed to be there a day early? Melanie hadn’t dropped any hints. Maybe that was part of the test. But what if he hadn’t got the day wrong? What if he had missed her…? The train grew closer, slowly easing it’s way into the station. The speaker above the platform crackled back into life.

“OK. We have a special announcement for a Mr Graham Fitzpatrick from Sandra Dixon. And the message is ‘Will you marry me?’”

With a squeal of brakes the train pulled alongside Platform 2. The sad looking man in the brown anorak stood up, clutching his rucksack, and gazed around sheepishly. Everyone was looking at him, giving him the thumbs up and smiling. The train stopped and a short, but pretty, dark-haired woman in her thirties rushed from a carriage. She was wearing the green Fastrack West uniform and flung herself into the man’s arms. He picked her up and whirled her around. Suddenly loads of guards and other people appeared. They were all clapping and cheering.

Dan looked around expecting to see TV cameras, an advert for chocolates or deodorant. But it was real. He clapped politely and looked anxiously among the alighting passengers for signs of Amy. But she was not there. He had simply got the day wrong.

He walked to the car park in a daze and started to drive home, but just couldn’t face it. Without signaling, he stopped by the side of the road. Ignoring the tooting horns, he called Mel at work on her mobile.

“Hi,” she said. “How’s it going? Getting nervous?”

“I need to talk to you?” he said quietly.

“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

“Not really,” he said.

He could hardly speak.

“What’s happened?”

“Can you meet me?”

“Of course,” she said. “I’ll be in the pub at around eight?”

She sounded very busy.

“I meant now.”

There was a pause.

“Now?”

“I need you…I mean, I need to see you…”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

“Dan…I’m at work right now, but…”

“I know, but please…”

“Dan?”

He couldn’t speak anymore.

“Dan?”

A supermarket lorry nearly destroyed the back of his Renault, but he didn’t give a shit.

“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have called…I’ll be all right…”

“But you’re not all right, are you?”

“To be honest…no.”

“OK. You know where the Westing Insurance building is in the town centre?”

“Yea.”

“I’ll meet you outside in fifteen minutes. OK.”

Dan looked down at his watch.

“That’s twenty to four then?”

“Yea, around then, OK? I can’t be long…”

“Thanks, I really appreciate it…I’ll see you in a bit.”

“OK Dan. Got to go…”

He switched off the mobile and looked over his shoulder. The cars behind him were blocked by oncoming traffic. The driver of the Vectra at the front of the queue glared at Dan and mouthed something angrily. Dan raised a middle finger to him and sped off. The driver flashed his lights and tailgated him for a couple of hundred yards. Dan slammed on his brakes, causing the Vectra to almost write itself off. It squealed to a halt an inch from the boot of his Renault. Dan opened the door, as if to get out. The driver didn’t respond. He looked away shaken. Dan shut the door and drove quietly on to Mel’s office. The Vectra kept it’s distance and turned off to the left.

Dan battled cursing through the traffic and parked on double yellows outside the Westing Insurance building - a five-story monolith from the early seventies with a concrete spiral staircase at one side. He was late, but Mel wasn’t there. He got half out of the car and looked anxiously up the street. He saw her striding towards him. She was wearing a skirt and a blouse and more make-up than usual. He got out of the car and waved. She spotted him and approached, looking anxiously at her watch.

“You’ll get clamped if you leave it there,” she said.

“We’ll I wasn’t going to stay here anywhere. I thought we could…”

“Sorry Dan, I’ve only got five minutes…” she said.

“Forget it then,” he snapped, and abruptly turned his back on her to open the car door.

“Dan,” she said, and reached for his arm.

He brushed her aside.

“Oh, just fuck off back to work,” he said.

“Dan!”

She grabbed hold of his arm again, and pulled him around to face her. She was angry and upset. He stood there dejected and deflated, not knowing what to say. People had started to leave the insurance building, and stared at him as they passed by.

“Get in the car,” said Mel. She shepherded him into the passenger side, then got into the driver’s side, and pulled out her mobile phone.

“Hi Sandra, it’s Mel. I’m really sorry, but there’s been a family crisis. Is it OK if I work on the figures at home tonight, and get them to you first thing in the morning? Oh thanks, Sandra…No, no it’ll be all right. I’ll explain tomorrow…Would you mind switching off my computer….lovely… Thanks. …No, no. That’s not a problem…Ok I’ll get the spreadsheet finished at least…OK…that’s very kind…Speak to you in the morning then…I will…and you.”

She put the phone away, and held out her hand.

“Keys.”

“I’m not sure you’re insured…”

“Fuck the insurance,” she said, mimicking his earlier angry outburst.

He fumbled in his pocket for the keys and passed them to her.

She adjusted the seat and mirror, fired up the ignition, and fiddled with the gear stic