CHAPTER 11
Once more my mood was swinging, and I was bouncing between elation and despair. Larinda was somebody I could have met years ago, and now I had Siobhan to consider. The guilt was acid in my stomach, only slightly assuaged by the raw animal delight of the sex.

And that thought raised another Hydra head, as I realised I could never do anything with her that didn’t involve my external masculinity.

That summed up my life so well. I was in a situation most men dreamt of: an attractive woman who liked her underwear and was completely uninhibited and totally enthusiastic about sex had decided that I was to be her personal route to gratification, and she appeared to be asking for nothing in return except company. A teenager’s fantasy, in other words, but it palled on me because by definition I was to be the man in the relationship, and I knew that after a while my automatic responses to having this or that done to me would weaken, as my mind and soul rejected masculinity.

What would she do then? She was bright, she was funny, she stirred my libido as no other had done for decades, but she wanted my body and not me. And then, there was Siobhan. I couldn’t simply leave her to go back to her Valley haunts, assuming she would forget about me. Adults aren’t like that, or they shouldn’t be, and in the age of the car and motorway distance was much less effective in reducing affection. I had to work out which direction I needed to go, and my only compass was the imperative that neither woman be hurt.

I had to do something to give myself time to think. I finished off the two visits I had arranged for the day, interrupted by a burger meal, and rode back to the office. I booked the next pair of files out and then found myself standing in an odd sort of waking doze by the hot-water boiler, cup in hand.

“Penny for them?”

“What? Oh, hi, Rach”

“You look shagged out, Carter. Thought your missus was in Welsh Wales?”

“Er, she is”

She peered at me. “Well, someone kept you up last night. Or…”

She took a moment to look around and make sure the room was empty.

“Was it, you know, your worries? Oh, I see; you blush well, Jill”

That was it, and it all tumbled out in a mess, everything from the visit to Dixon’s little fiefdom to Larinda’s frantic attempts to screw my life out of me in all-too-frequent instalments. Rachel waited patiently, just the occasional nod or aha, a few questions to move the tale along, and it was out.

“So, what about Von, Jill?”

“I really don’t know, Rach, not at all. Just, like, I don’t want to hurt her”

“Ah, she was always too twee for you anyway, girl. All flowers and puppies, yeah? There’s a difference between being a bit girly, enjoying being female, and being all little girly, with chintz teapots and floral knickers, if you take my point”

Her eyes widened a little. “Of for fuck’s sake, please tell me you aren’t the sort of girl who goes for poodle-shaped covers for the spare bogroll!”

“No, not me. I like a bit of femininity, it sort of goes with the turf, like. Not frills and flounces, but a nice cut, decent fabrics, aye?”

“Well, that time you brought your sheepshagger out to the pub quiz, I wanted to gag. Those nail things, dear god”

I looked pointedly at her own scarlet and shaped nails, and she grinned.

“Part of the look, innit? If I’m going to tease half the office out of their concentration, I need to carry it off properly. Like my shoes, yeah? Got to be heels, but notice something about them? Plain, black, pointy. No flowers, no diamante bows, just simple, straightforward fuck-mes. Your Von, she’d want half a florist hanging off them. I bet that tart from last night had shoes more my style than Siobhan, right?”

She was right, and I just nodded. Her voice softened.

“Jill, love, that Von, she’s a nice girl, yeah, but I really don’t think she’s on the same wavelength as you, and I suspect she would never understand the real you, yeah? Am I right?”

I nodded again. “I have to work out how to leave her, Rach, and I don’t know if I have the ba…guts. I really am in shit here. I can’t be ne, I can never be me, cause I look so crap, and if I stay like this I won’t survive, and now I’ve only ended up with another woman to hurt. I’d be better off right out of it”

She stepped forward, putting her arms around my shoulders and pulling me close, her breasts squashing between us, and we held each other for a few minutes.

“Don’t ever talk like that, Jill Carter, because I know what you really mean, and it would be a fuckwitted thing to do. Promise me, yeah? Promise?”

That was when MAC walked in, and I watched his gaze slither up Rachel from her ankles to her arse, before he registered my presence.

“Have you two not got work enough?”

Rachel let me go and turned. “Sorry, Mr Wilkins, but we were making a cuppa, and I felt a bit weak, so Rob had to support me for a second. On the account of how he was such an animal last night, yeah, fair wore me out, he did”

White, then pink, and finally almost green, his face switched colours as Rachel quickly made two teas before taking my hand and leading me out of the kitchen. As the door shut behind us, she started to shudder, then snort with suppressed hilarity.

“Didja see his FACE? Fuck me!”

“No ta, I’ve got nothing left, have I?”

Rachel leant back slightly. “She’s that good?”

“Well, aye, but more like she’s that insistent”

“Sounds like my sort of girl. Trouble is, are you hers?”

“Her what?”

“Her sort of girl. Look, she didn’t freak, did she? You never know…just, Rob, promise me one thing”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t rush anything just because you feel scared, or lonely, or as if time’s pissing off too quickly, yeah? Promise?”

“I promise. Look, MAC’s going to be gunning for us both now, so we better get the crap shifted before he works out what he wants to do, like”

“OK. Coming out for a drink some evening? You could bring your tart along”

“I will think on, aye? She might not want to”

“Trust me, if she has any real interest in you, she will want to, so ask her, yeah?”

“Yeah, I will. See you later, aye?”

“Laters, yeah”

I worked through the last part of the afternoon, clearing both folders, and as I finished I saw MAC’s car leaving the parking area. Safe at last. I had expected at least a barbed ‘joke’ from him, but that had never materialised. I wrapped up, switched all my equipment off, and headed down to where my bike lay tucked in a corner of the locker room.

The tyres were both flat. Fucker.

A few minutes saw them hard enough to get me home, and I rode off without any further problems, smiling inside at the obvious culprit’s expense. Along with just about every other bloke in the office, I am sure that the idea of having Rachel was bobbing away on top of the cesspit he called a mind, and to see her apparently wrapped around me after a night of post-watershed naughtiness must have hit him squarely in the ego. What an arsehole.

I got in, and started the oven heating for the two pizzas I had picked up on the way home, and drew myself a bath. I rang Larinda as it filled.

“Hello!”

“Hi, Larinda, it’s Jill here”

“Jill…? Oh, ROB Jill! How are you? Still knackered?”

“Worn away to a stump, pet. Look, there’s this lass at work, and she has suggested going out for a drink, like”

“You dumping me already?”

“What? No, you and me, and her, together, aye?”

“Just teasing, darling. Is she sound?”

“As a pound. Look, just taking a bath, then tea, and an early night”

“Want me to wash your back?”

“Ha, I’ll leave the door unlocked then!”

“Laters, lover boy”

I hung up, and finished running the bath. As it stood, I dropped the skirt I had changed into on arrival home and after I had used my electric clippers to trim my beard, I soaped my legs and set to work on the stubble. I always loved the smooth feeling I got when my calves rubbed together, and for a while I could forget the rest of me. I rinsed the razor, and then, before my resolve evaporated, pulled it across my cheek.

First space cleared. I soaped my face, and slowly, slowly it emerged from foam and hair. Each time I exhaled through my nose, it tickled my chin; weird.

I wore a favourite nighty, early and sober to bed. Larinda climbed in at ten o’clock.