by Limey Lady
(Ready to race to you!)
All too soon it was night fourteen. That made it Sunday and my place. Taking the by then habitual early morning timeout, we were on our backs, idly caressing each other’s groins and talking about nothing in particular. Then my mouth did its automatic thing again.
‘Two can live as cheaply as one,’ it said.
Now I can’t pretend I hadn’t been thinking along those lines. My lease was almost up and I imminently had to decide whether to move or renew. But I certainly hadn’t intended to blurt out anything as corny or needy as that.
I’m sure I heard a creaking sound as Kat turned her head to look at me.
‘This time next year I’ll be off on my travels,’ she said.
‘I know you will,’ my mouth replied. ‘And I’m not proposing marriage, just fifty weeks of living together and saving some money.’ At that stage Logical Dave chipped in. ‘We’re practically living together as it is,’ I/she said, ‘paying for two beds and only using one. And here, look at this.’
I pulled an invitation card out of my wallet and gave it to my bedmate.
‘Robin’s silver wedding,’ she said. Then, reading aloud: ‘”To Dave and Kat” . . . shouldn’t that be Kat and Dave?’
‘I think he’s gone for alphabetical order,’ I said, not really caring who got top billing. ‘But it just goes to prove we’re seen as an item.’
Kat laughed. We tried to keep up professional fronts at work but Skipton isn’t New York. Of course we had been seen out and about by colleagues. And even if our working paths rarely crossed, whenever one of us went for a coffee we always brought back two cups; one each.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let me guess your argument. We split the rent, split the rates and utility bills and we save . . .’
‘Five or six hundred a month,’ I finished for her. ‘Over fifty weeks that’s going to be six grand each; six grand in my house saving account, six on top of your travel budget.’
She chuckled and stroked my cheek. ‘Do you really want to fuck me every night for another fifty weeks?’
‘Yes.’
‘And will you really be able to let go when it’s time for me to be off?’
‘Yes. I’m used to beautiful women drifting in and out of my life. And I don’t do bust-ups; I always part as friends.’
(If that sounds incredibly mature of me you should remember I was only twenty. Fifty weeks seemed to be light years away. Alpha Centauri seemed much closer. And I was used to women drifting in and out of my life; I honestly did believe I was Teflon-coated.)
‘In that case you’d better get into that harness of yours.’ Kat grinned. ‘I don’t intend to seal the deal with only a kiss.’
*****
I’ve noticed that I have quite regularly said “Kat chuckled” or “Kat laughed”. Both statements sum up that first year together. Even when we bickered we were usually chuckling or laughing. Sometimes we went so far as giggling like schoolgirls. They were happy days indeed.
And I didn’t let myself fall in love. I was ever-conscious of my vow to let her go and determined never to waver. I succeeded in that too.
Or so I regularly told myself.
Sad to report, time didn’t crawl by, it seemed to race. Before I knew it Kat’s lease was almost up and I had to decide whether to take it over or move. Because I couldn’t imagine living in her flat without her, I chose not to renew. Kat helped me find a better place, even closer to work, and helped me move in over the weekend before my twenty-first.
(Was that brilliant timing or what? Happy coming of age, Dave, I’ll be off now. Nice knowing you.)
Moving didn’t take long. Kat gave me her few bits of furniture, including the sturdy kitchen table we had so often made out on, and one trip in a rented van did the trick.
‘I will be back,’ she assured me as she stowed her work clothes and a few other odds and ends in the spare wardrobe.
I just nodded. We had agreed not to keep in touch while she was away, claiming it would be clingy and expensive. We had also agreed we were grown women and should be jealousy-free.
Omigod, it all felt so frigging final. But I wouldn’t break my vow, no matter how much I wanted to beg her to stay.
(Here’s a brief admission: Kat was pig-headed in wanting to travel but I was just as bad. She’d been planning her grand depart for months in advance, buying plane tickets, getting visas and so on, and at every stage she had asked me to go with her. All told she must have asked me a dozen times. But I was pig-headed about buying my first house.
Take a year off work and spend some of my savings!
As if I would!!
So I declined her offers and refused to plead with her.)
Even then, with me unpacking and her already packed, ready to leave on Tuesday, I couldn’t find it in me to budge. So I listened to her and just nodded.
‘I’ll be safe,’ she assured me. ‘And I really will be back.
Chapter Forty-Six
Technically Kat’s contract ended the day before my birthday. Steve, the Head of IT, agreed she could do one more day to attend my “presentation”. And how embarrassing was that! The previous year had been bad enough, and that had only really been marked by fellow techies; my twenty-first had people attending from lots of different departments.
And yes, I did have to wear a badge with “21” on it . . . a bloody great big one that was readable from four hundred yards!
Then our working day was over. I rushed off to night class, meeting Kat afterwards in our local before dragging her to my new home and having her on that table . . . and on the kitchen floor . . . not making it halfway into the bedroom before having her again . . .
And then it was morning and a cab arrived to whisk her away to the airport.
That sense of finality had become enormous. It hung over me like the blackest of storm clouds. Eating breakfast on my own was heart-breaking; I nearly burst out in sobs when the café owner stopped and asked me where my friend was. Walking to work alone was just as bad.
This is it, I thought. This is how life is going to be from now.
For all her promises I genuinely believed Kat was gone for good. Never mind the everyday risks she was running of being abroad: beautiful, goddess-like Kat wasn’t going to come back to cartoon-faced Dave. She was as gone as Stan and Bethany. And she was destined for better than me. Heck, she’d probably only left those few items of clothing because they wouldn’t fit in her rucksack.
Me and my inadequate self-image!
My colleagues in IT all knew, of course. Most of them acted as if I’d been bereaved, greeting me with nods or thin smiles and generally keeping out of my way. That was preferable to being sympathized with, I suppose, but I must admit it was a relief when I got a call to Lending.
The problem was only a minor one: a new starter’s PC wouldn’t work. I didn’t hurry much in fixing it and then stopped off at the drinks machine on my way back to IT. And didn’t I curse when I realized I’d got the usual two cups instead of just one!
Taking a seat on a nearby window ledge I opted to drink the evidence. Would Kat have re-joined the Mile High Club yet? I wondered. She’d had no other partners in the last year; I was as good as certain of that. And she openly confessed to liking the occasional hard dick. Maybe some co-pilot was getting lucky right at that moment.
Then I recalled my own year without other partners and tried to work out whether all of my old school chums would have gone back to uni, after their long summer break. I had got a little out of touch, you see. That is to say I had let everyone know I was in a serious-ish relationship and they’d all obligingly kept their distance.
Sara was on the train when I rang. ‘That’s too bad,’ she said, ‘I won’t be home again until December. I’ll gladly attend to your Christmas box then . . . as long as you wear your Christmas stockings for me.’
Meryl sounded as if she was in a disco (really, and it wasn’t ten in the morning!).
‘Birmingham,’ she
said when asked where he was. ‘I’ll be back in November, for my mum’s birthday.’
Before I could try Ellie an email arrived. I blinked when I saw who it was from. Margot had not made any sort of contact in over fifteen months. She didn’t even know about Kat because I hadn’t bothered telling her.
Yet here she was, only a few hours after I became single again . . .
I honestly do not know if Margot had been keeping tabs on me. It is quite possible she knew someone who worked at the building society and had been tipped off. She was crafty enough to play that sort of game but, when I eventually asked her, she swore it was coincidence.
Anyway, I opened her message and read:
“Guess who’s been a naughty girl? I deserve and desperately need spanking. 9:30 in the BH?”
I hesitated a moment. Margot was scheming, conniving and probably wouldn’t have had her nails cut short since she’d last clawed me; in fact she’d more likely have had them sharpened. Did I really need her silliness and sexual demands at a time like this?
Too right I did! I kept my response concise and to the point.
“I’ll be there. Bring a toothbrush.”
*****
As it turned out, Margot’s old, rich and single man wasn’t all it said on the can. Ray was, according to her, old enough to retire if he hadn’t worked for himself.
‘Not that he’s past it,’ she added, lying side by side with me during a break in our renewed activities. ‘He has no problem getting it up and keeping it up. But I don’t suppose you want to know about that, do you?’
Hoping my freshly raked back wasn’t bleeding too heavily onto the duvet, I confirmed I had no interest in the abilities of Ray’s private parts.
Margot duly moved on to her second-favourite subject: money. Apparently Ray’s house was virtually a mansion but still had years of mortgage on it. And his first wife still didn’t only just own fifty per cent of his company; she was obviously the one who wore the trousers when it came to decision-making.
Even worse, his second wife hadn’t got round to divorcing him yet. Instead she’d been down in Puerto Banus for the last three years, spending his dosh like there was no tomorrow.
‘You said you’d been naughty,’ I prompted, realizing we had skipped the spanking in favour of frenetic tongue-lashings.
Suitably encouraged, Margot told me about Ray’s cocktail party, held on Midsummer’s Eve. As it was mostly for business acquaintances, his first wife had been there with her “toy boy”. Playing her part as “toy girl”, Margot had helped meet and greet and couldn’t help but notice the very last arrival.
‘It was only his mistress,’ she said, incredulously. ‘She’s a dead-ringer for Marilyn Monroe . . . and a twenty-five-year-old Marilyn Monroe at that.’
Naturally Marilyn hadn’t been invited, but Ray didn’t want to make a scene in front of guests (and his ex), so he let her saunter in and help herself to Moet and canapés.
‘I bumped into her when I went out on the terrace for a ciggie,’ said Margot. ‘I thought she was after a fight but, once I gave her a light she was as nice as could be. We ended up exchanging numbers and she told me to call in next time I was in Gargrave.’
I could guess what was coming but asked anyway.
‘Yes,’ Margot grinned, ‘I’m fucking my boyfriend’s mistress once a week . . . in the lovely little cottage that he bought for her. So now do I get my spanking?’
Chapter Forty-Seven
After my classes on Wednesday I went home alone and had an early night. That left me full of beans for Thursday and just as well . . . that’s when I got my first overnight stay.
As background, the building society’s outlets each had a “branch computer” and networked PCs. In theory the physical kit was systematically replaced every few years, long before the manufacturers’ warranties ran out. That meant that product failures were addressed under warranty and us techies were rarely physically called out.
In practice the global meltdown was still very much happening and replacements of all kinds had been put on hold. That meant that aging bits of kit were no longer guaranteed and callouts were becoming more and more frequent, as more and more things wore out.
Between us the Head Office techies had a rota to support the branches during opening hours. As we were paid a premium for that, we didn’t mind. Like everywhere else, overtime had got hard to come by . . . yet we had it written into our job description! And it was always good to get out and about, even if those calls weren’t quite as frequent as I just made them sound.
Anyhow, by that particular Thursday my entire callout career totalled three visits, all of them relatively local, with the most remote being in Nottingham. The question of staying over hadn’t arisen. Then, on a day when I was top of the rota, we got a call from Aberdeen.
‘They have a big promotion tomorrow,’ my line-manager told me, ‘and their systems have crashed. A woman on the ground is desperately needed, and you are she.’
I didn’t bother asking if anyone had tried a remote fix. The guys on the IT Help Desk were very good and past masters of remote fixes. If they couldn’t sort the problem centrally, nobody could.
‘Aberdeen,’ I echoed, trying to picture it on a map.
‘They need you yesterday and it’s too late in the day to drive,’ my manager went on. ‘Mick’s ordered you a cab and he is booking your flight even as we speak.’ He passed me the magic Callout Credit Card. ‘You’ll need this for expenses and a hotel room. Go to a Travelodge if you can find one; we get a discount and the accountants like that. Here’s some cash for taxis and the likes. Sign on the dotted line, please.’
I took five slightly tatty tenners and signed a chitty. ‘Aberdeen,’ I said again.
‘The card works contactless up to twenty pounds.’ He gave me the PIN for larger transactions. ‘And a word to the wise; anything you buy up to fifty quid will sail past the bean counters. So feel free to take the branch manager out for a bite to eat once you’ve done.’
I raised an eyebrow at that.
‘You won’t be able to start until the branch closes,’ my manager explained. ‘And the place is essentially a bank; the guy’s been there forever and won’t just leave you there, unaccompanied. He’ll stay with you until you have done everything you can. Feeding him afterward is only polite.’
*****
I would be fibbing if I said I didn’t enjoy the jet set lifestyle. Ten minutes after being briefed a taxi was whisking me away to Leeds-Bradford, dropping me off close to the entrance (as close as permitted by the very visibly armed police, anyway). Then I was inside and the girl on the flight desk was expecting me, saying I had just quarter of an hour to board but not to worry, “Jason” would escort me every step of the way.
Before I knew it we’d landed in Scotland. Free from the worries of Customs or Passport Control, I was able to saunter straight out of ABZ and into the first cab on the rank. I told the driver where I wanted to go but he stopped me before I could give him the address.
‘I know where it is, lassie,’ he said in a pleasant burr of an accent. ‘Don’t ye worry; I’ll get you there in one piece, safe and sound.’
He did, too. Settling up, I looked at the familiar branch façade: it was exactly the same as the one in Bingley Main Street. Taking a deep-ish breath, very aware the locals were depending on me, I went in through the plate glass door.
*****
The customer-facing area was open-plan and totally dominated by women. While I was vainly looking around, trying to spot a grizzle-faced Scotsman, a very attractive female rose from her chair.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘tell me you’re Dave from Head Office.’
I smiled at her because it was impossible not to. ‘I’m Davina from Head Office,’ I said, hoping to avoid the “I thought you were a bloke” conversation. ’But you’re welcome to call me Dave.’ Then, less smoothly, I added, ‘Is the manager about?’
The woman held out her right hand. ‘I am the manag
er,’ she said, ‘and have I got a problem for you.’
‘Hi,’ I said, taken aback.
‘Sue Johnston,’ she replied, taking my hand and shaking it.
Sue ushered me into her swivel chair then, leaning across me, tapped her keyboard until a dropdown menu appeared.