One Little Room An Everywhere

They started as soon as the door gently clicked itself shut.

He moved towards her slowly, but they embraced instantly, so tight, like a vacuum had opened and slammed their bodies into each other. The kissing was wide-mouthed and messy. A kind of slow spinning shuffle moved them to the bed, their mouths still attached, lips clumsily catching on teeth, their bodies losing items of clothing. She fell backwards on the bed, unexpectedly, as if it had been shoved into the back of her legs as a practical joke. He doggedly removed his trousers, then his underpants, and moved on top of her. She reached under and fed him into her, before gripping him with her legs, and instantly he began fucking her deeply, his lips still applied to hers. They attempted to devour each other's faces, like teenagers new to the world of snogging. She moved her head away as orgasm built, because this required clear airways, so he rested his head alongside hers to concentrate on the work of thrusting. Her body arched, time frozen across her scrunched-up face, his body movements arrested until she sank down again, at which point he resumed with vigour and, seconds later, shouted a long, guttural swear word, every muscle tensing and turning his body into a solid, straight piece. She looked up at him with a disbelieving, startled, confused gaze, her breath short. He looked down at her, surprised to the point of being offended, with a sweaty gloss. He was still inside her, the sperm leaking against his balls. This was the first time they had fucked in 30 years. Although they had chatted online, only two sentences had passed between them in real life during those 30 years, too. They had been uttered 10 minutes earlier. Meeting him outside, she had said, 'The room is upstairs.' He had said, 'Okay.'

He lay back and she rested her head on his chest, stroking his stomach, before her hand came to a rest on his chest, palm down, as if to hold him in place. He ran his fingers through her curls, massaging her skull with his fingertips.

After a few seconds her breathing became longer and slower.

She was asleep! Carefully, he reached for one of the sheets and pulled it over their bodies. She twitched but her breathing didn't change.

He stared at the ceiling for 30 minutes and listened to the ticking of a clock, before she woke, with a quiet snort. She declared, 'Oh I must've fallen asleep,' to which he replied, 'Yes.'

'I'm not even tired,' she said, through a yawn.

She looked up at him, then kissed him quickly on the lips, before rising from the bed.

He sat up.

'Do you want a drink?' she said, walking over to a kitchenette area.

'You mean tea or coffee? Or alcohol?'

'I don't know yet.'

She rooted through what was there, then crouched as she opened the small fridge.

'No milk. Black tea or coffee, I guess. I was hoping for--'

She moved over to a desk that was piled high with stuff, set against the far wall, and started rummaging there, too. This wall was where the clock was. It was one of those stupidly large clock faces, and it was mounted high. It was 11.05am.

'This will do!' she said, showing him a dark bottle that, by the curvy shape, was probably some kind of rum or brandy. She swigged from it, as if desperately thirsty, before taking it over to him. He considered the bottle before taking his own swig and wincing.

She put the bottle on the bedside table, and said, 'Again.' She straddled him. Her face again applied itself to his. He was hard, instantly, and reached under to align himself as she lowered onto him.

She held onto his head as she ground against him, before he leaned forward so she could embrace him fully and tightly.

'Yes, yes, yes!' she said quietly, like she was counting down, before again there was the moment of frozen time and she stiffened, and then relaxed against him equally quickly. And again, he was a pace behind, holding her shoulders and pulling her down onto him as he winced (in the same way as with the booze), and released a mixture of growl and grunt. His body twitched several times before it became clear it was over.

She held his head at each side and affixed her mouth to his. He pulled away to catch his breath.

'Fuck me!' he said.

They laughed like drains, before gazing at each other without smiling. Her face was a mess. Her lipstick had turned into a red glow around her full lips, and the mascara had given her panda eyes.

Much of the lipstick had been transferred to his lips and the surrounding area, too. She rubbed away at it with her thumbs.

'You're still hard?' she said, her eyebrows high. He was still inside her, and continued to hold her tightly to him, so she couldn't escape. Her breasts pressed against him, as did various folds of their middle-aged skin.

'Still hard, but we don't need to do anything with it. It's one of the side effects. Viagra.'

She nodded.

'At my age--' he continued. 'It's basically insurance.'

'Oh, I know. Yes.'

They stayed embraced, attached, each holding the other, feeding off their warmth.

He started crying, almost imperceptibly, trying to hide it.

She pulled him into her.

A moment passed before she said, 'My darling, I need to get cleaned up.'

He nodded, and she decoupled, again rising from the bed with surprising energy. She took a swig from the bottle, before walking over to a door, opening it, discovering it was a closet stuffed full of bric-a-brac, walking over to another door, and discovering the bathroom she had wanted.

He leaned back and glanced at the bottle but didn't take it, and instead looked around at the apartment. It was just one room, essentially little more than a bedroom, across the top floor of an Edwardian shop front. Once upon a time it would've been used to store stock, and its whitewashed brick walls reflected this.

They had entered via a door at the back, near a loading bay, and ascended five flights of grimy stairs to get to this secret room. Nobody could ever realise it existed.

'This place belongs to your friend?' he said.

'Yeah. He calls it his pied-à-terre. I've not been here before. I think he actually lives somewhere in the south west. He stays here to watch shows in the West End.'

She hadn't closed the bathroom door. A floor-standing mirror was positioned such that he could see her, and he watched as she used toilet roll to wipe her thighs and vagina, before sitting on the toilet. He massaged his cock absently, still wet and messy from earlier.

'It's so like you to have cool friends who just let you use their place,' he continued. 'I mean, like you used to be. Back in the old days.'

'Yeah, well,' she said. 'It's never that simple, is it?'

She rose from the toilet, again dabbing herself, and began checking her face in the mirror above the sink. She didn't return his gaze through the mirror.

She hadn't realised he could see her.

'There's a shower here,' she said. 'We could get in together. Would you like that?'

'Love it. But are there towels?'

She looked around, picked one up from a rail, sniffed it, and rapidly returned it.

'Shit. Just one and it is very used.'

She returned to looking in the sink's mirror.

'I'm such a mess.'

'I don't care.'

'I do! Jesus.'

Her tone was sharp. Once again, he absently massaged his cock.

She ran the taps and washed her face before blindly reaching around and realising for a second time there were no towels. For one long second, she looked like she was contemplating grabbing the rejected towel, before instead drying with rapid finger flicks.

She came back to the bed, her face looking fresh, and smiled at him in a deliberate, exaggerated way.

'So, what's the guy's name?' he asked. 'The guy who owns this place?'

She sat alongside him in the bed, and used the sheet to towel her hands and face.

'Edward. He's in Mexico right now, for whatever reason. I said I needed a place to stay after watching a show. It's what he uses it for, too, I think.'

'He's a friend?'

'Yeah, I guess.'

'A friend friend?'

She looked at him quizzically and then exploded into laughter: 'Oh! No. No, he's gay. Been with his partner for decades.'

'It's so cool you know people like that.'

'Not really.'

'I don't have friends like that. I mean, the closest is this fella I worked with and who's kind of a friend. A friend in social media terms, anyway. He's a landlord. Got a few apartments. When you talked about this-- About meeting up like this-- I wondered if I could ask him if he had something that was between tenants. But he'd probably say no, even if he did have somewhere. And even if he was cool with it, he'd probably charge me. Then make me pay for cleaning after.'

'Well, it's quid pro quo. Even for me.'

'You mean you're paying Edward?'

She sighed.

'Can you pass me the brandy?'

He did so, and she swigged, before hugging the bottle to her, pushing her breasts apart.

'Quid pro quo. Edward will expect something. And more than a bottle of wine and a Thank You card. Apparently, his partner's an artist. It'll be something like that. Coverage. Writing about this man in one of my columns. Getting somebody I know to write about him. Mentioning this man's name to people I know.'

'I get it.'

'It'll be something like this: me and Edward chatting, casually, maybe amongst friends. And Edward will say something like, 'Oh, did you know that my partner--and I don't even know this man's name--has completed his best work yet?' And he'll look at me.'

'A nod's as good as a wink, right?'

She laughed and grasped his thigh.

'Nudge nudge wink wink.'

They had been members of The Monty Python Society at university. That was how they had met 30 years earlier. Without Cleese, Palin, Chapman, Idle, Jones and Gilliam, this story could not exist.

'And Edward's partner will be a crap artist. I haven't seen his work. I haven't heard a word about it. But his partner will be some autodidact, who gets paints in bulk from some craft store and decided to start taking himself seriously, and now declares he's part of an outsider art movement comprising just himself, actually, at this moment. And he'll have a spare bedroom in his house where the air is toxic because of oil paints and he'll have canvases racked against the wall. And all of them are literally nothing more than colours against other colours. He says it's expressionistic, because he's expressing himself.'

'I remember you painting canvasses full of colours.'

She harrumphed.

'I have one. At home.'

She turned to him quickly.

'Wow. I remember. You stole it.'

'You gave it to me.'

'I wanted it back.'

'But you'd given it to me.'

'It's not very good.'

'It's perfect.'

'Do you hang it on a wall?'

'No. It's in the attic. I mean, I couldn't, could I? I couldn't explain to my wife that I really wanted a canvas on the wall that reminded me of a former girlfriend.'

'I suppose not.'

'It has emotional attachments. Do you remember how we fucked on top of it?'

'Did we?'

'Smudged it. Your face. The paint was so thick it wasn't completely dry.'

'I remember! Oh my God, I remember!'

'Richard came to the front door, and you answered it with this smear of paint on your cheek. And then he came in--'

She laughed hysterically.

'-- and I was there, in my dressing gown, clearly seconds after post-coitus, with an identical smear of paint on my hands --'

She fell into his lap, laughing.

'--and he had that frown and clearly thought something kinky had just gone down.'

'Richard was so vanilla!'

Eventually they stopped laughing and she arranged herself so she lay in a foetus position, her head in his lap, the weight pressing against his cock, balls and thighs. He massaged her head with both hands like he was gently kneading dough.

'Still the same hair,' he said.

'Same crazy curls that I can't do anything with.'

'I happen to like them.'

'Not as blonde as they used to be. Horrible dirty, faded blonde. It's not deliberate, so not good.'

'I was always surprised how small your head is.'

'Thanks.'

'I mean compared to mine. My own huge head.'

'Your lovely huge head on top of your lovely huge body.'

She stroked his legs.

'The problem with a huge body is that it makes everything look small. My penis is larger than average. 16% larger, actually. A bit over seven inches, rather than six. By the way, all men measure their cocks. If they say they don't they're lying. Never use a ruler borrowed from a man without wiping it clean. Mine had a little calculator built in, which is why I figured out the 16% figure. Anyway. If you're well over six foot tall, like I am, and get hard, even seven inches just looks-- Modest. In proportion to the rest of me. This is why most porn stars are well under six feet. It makes their cocks look huge. Same with women. A smaller frame makes their tits look bigger.'

'Like me.'

'Like you, although as I used to say, your limited height means perfection is increased because it's concentrated into a smaller space. What happened to Richard?'

'I've no idea.'

'You were with him after me, right?'

'More or less.'

He looked down at her with a frown. She glanced up at him momentarily, then continued: 'We carried on until graduation. Then he moved somewhere to start a job. Inverness, maybe? I did not move to Inverness. It didn't break my heart. Broke his, though. I earned myself what we would now call a stalker. He turned up at-- What was it? I think it was my dad's barbecue. A year after we graduated. He invited himself. My dad had no idea and vaguely remembered him, so thought it was all just fine. I had to take Richard aside and tell him to fuck off and never cross my path again. And to be fair, he followed orders.'

'He was really into you.'

'People were, back then.'

He laughed. She didn't.

'So fucking true!' he said. 'You were beating them off with a shitty stick. It was the tits, I reckon.'

'It's always the tits.'

'It wasn't, though, was it? Well, they might've helped. But it was because you were talented. You were alpha. Head girl. But a head girl at university, instead of Malory Towers.'

'Were.'

'Pardon?'

'You said I was talented. You said, "you were talented".'

'But you are still talented, right? It can't have gone away.'

She leaped out of bed.

'Jesus fucking Christ.'

An extensive row of windows lined the left side of the room. White paper blinds were pulled down on all of them, but she pulled one up and gazed out. They were very high up. The view was of the high street below, and she looked down at the tiny people. Nobody would even think to look up to gaze back at her.

'I have something to tell you,' he said.

'What?'

There was a pause.

She repeated herself, terse: 'What? What do you have to tell me?'

'I'm married.'

'Oh right.'

She resumed looking out of the window and said, 'I know.'

'Ah.'

'Of course you're fucking married. I read it between the lines in the first few sentences you sent me on instant messenger. Bursting into tears earlier? That might've tipped me off, if I was completely fucking stupid. But the biggest clue was that you just mentioned your fucking wife.'

'The painting.'

She glared at him.

'Oh my fucking God. This is turning you on?'

He had 50% of an erection.

'You always turned me on when you got angry.'

'You're fucked up.'

He laughed. 'I know. It's getting better as I get older, though.'

She sighed.

'Do you want me to do something with it?'

'The erection?'

'Yes.'

'I'm worried about using it up. We've only been here for, what, maybe an hour? There's still time. It could benefit from a bit of a rest.'

'OK, well, please stop wanking it.'

'Sorry. The mind is willing. Really willing. But the flesh is weak. Well, not weak, obviously. Not at all. But just eager.'

'How much Viagra did you take?'

'Enough. The sky looks especially blue today.'

She folded the blind down then stood at the side of the bed and held out her hand for him to take.

'I'm married, too.'

'Right. I did not know that.'

'You really thought I was single?'

'I didn't think about it.'

'How could it not have crossed your mind?'

'Back in college you had more relationships than anybody else. It was like people were arranged in a chocolate box, and you were trying each one to see if you liked them. And you had these gaps in-between.'

She pulled her hand away.

He said: 'I assumed this is one of those in-between times.'

'That was--'

She took a deep breath before continuing: 'That was 30 years ago. Things change.'

He looked like a Joycean epiphany had not only struck him but made him punch drunk.

'I guess so. Of course. You're right.'

'I've been married for 22 years. Happily married. Most of the time.'

'Me too. Not 22 years. 19 years for me. For us. It's funny how we've both been married for so long. Maybe we're very faithful people.'

She sat on the bed.

'One thing about having an affair is that you shouldn't talk about your significant other.'

'Have you had many affairs?'

She looked him in the eyes, stone cold.

'No.'

'Me neither.'

'I know.'

She smiled at him, a smile as weak as orange squash from a spendthrift mother. He smiled back. His erection was gone.

'I'm taking a time out,' he said. 'But it doesn't mean you have to.'

'What do you mean?'

'I've been thinking. A lot. Thinking about that thing you used to do back then.'

She looked at him askance.

'You know the thing,' he continued. 'I go down on you and then you--'

She pursed her lips and frowned quizzically.

'-- you spray.'

'Oh, yes!'

'Do you still do that?'

'I haven't done it for-- A decade. Maybe two decades. It's only useful at the beginning of a relationship when you have to impress. I mean, I leak a bit when I'm wanking. But not like that. Should I give it a try?'

'We have nothing to lose. You get a good time no matter what, right?'

'Do you want to go down on me?'

'I'm on a time out. I'd just get worked up and, you know, want to stick it back in.'

'Okay. Yeah.'

She danced over to where her handbag had dropped when they came into the apartment, and rummaged.

'I'll need this, I think.'

She held a small gold finger vibrator between her fingertips.

'You carry that around?' he said.

'Yes. Cosmopolitan said all the best bad girls have at least one sex toy in their handbag. August issue, 2007.'

He moved his legs up, and she sat facing him, then leaned back slightly, supporting herself with one hand. She opened her legs wide, placing them outside his, and applied the vibrator, her eyes closed.

'You have a beautiful pussy,' he said.

'Thank you. Tell me a dirty story.'

'Umm-- About what?'

Her breathing got shorter: 'Fucking.'

'You said not to mention partners?'

'Not your wife!'

'Okay. This one has got me through many a long night. That time at university. We'd all just come back from the summer vacation. It was a party at your house.'

'Yes!'

'Me, you and-- Shit. I've forgotten his name.'

'It doesn't matter!'

'Me, you and that guy with the George Michael stubble. In your room. All three of us, sitting on your bed. Him, then you, and then me.'

'Yes!'

'As soon as we entered your room I was hard. We knew what was going to happen. But you still insisted on saying it was just so you could play us that CD.'

'I was so innocent!'

'You were not.'

'No, I was not!'

'And Andrea came barging in and there it was. Me and that guy. Lying back. You, sitting between us. Classic ski pole pose. One cock in either hand, giving us hand jobs.'

'Yes! Fuck yes!'

'And Andrea said nothing, turned around, and went straight out.'

'Stupid cow!'

'And then myself and that other guy took turns fucking you, while the other one watched. So weird feeling your pussy stretched open by somebody else.'

She stopped saying words. Instead, she had reverted to a more primitive form of communication involving just throat sounds.

He gazed at the glistening slit of her pussy.

'He came first. Filled your pussy. Then I filled your pussy all over again. It was so odd because it was slippery inside you. Like you'd been greased. I remember watching and laughing as the spunk leaked out. So much of it.'

More noises. Her pussy was beginning to twitch.

'I was so turned on that I stayed rock solid. No Viagra needed back then. Do you remember what happened next?'

She nodded her head violently, her eyes clenched closed.

'I wanked off over your tits. And then the other guy did too. What a fucking mess we made.'

She let out a long cry. He watched as her pussy pulsed and then spat a stream of liquid that arched through the air before its warmth splashed against his stomach.

He laughed, uncontrollably.

She wasn't done. Another orgasm followed, and another, and another, the quiet drone of the vibrator relentless as his laughing ceased, its tone dipping as she pressed it hard against herself.

No more vaginal spitting, though.

Her eyes sprang open, and she had that same look of surprise and shock on her face as before. This time, though, her face was ruddy and glowed.

'Did I--? I think I did but--'

'Oh yes.'

He gestured to his glistening midriff, as well as his saturated cock and balls. His cock was hard.

'That's amazing!' she said, flopping back. 'You can use me however you wish. My mouth is here for you. Do you want to wank off across my tits? I'd like to see that. Is there still gallons of it?'

'Maybe later.'

'Okay.'

She held up her hand. He passed her the bottle of brandy. She raised herself weakly to take a swig before flopping back again.

He got out of bed.

'And now I've got to piss through a huge erection.'

'Ooh, can I watch?'

'If you want.'

She got up with a goofy smile, then followed him to the bathroom.

He stood above the toilet bowl and pushed his erection down the best he could.

'Peeing hurts when it's like this, right?' she said, standing slightly behind him.

'It's more that it's uncomfortable.'

The flow was slow and hesitant. Some splashed against the porcelain rim.

'Aiming is difficult when it's jutting out straight.'

'Can I touch it?'

'Always.'

She put her fingers on top and he let her take over pushing it down.

'This is so hot,' she said.

'You mean it feels warm?'

'Erotic hot.'

'Mmm, it's nice for me, too.'

She moved so she could hold the stiff thickness between her fingers and thumb. The flow was still stop/start.

He bent his knees and turned his head to her. They kissed in the porny, silly way they had earlier when they first came into the room. Tongues and saliva, like teenagers.

'I could do this for a living,' she said. 'An attendant in men's bathrooms. I would be naked, so they'd get hard. Then I'd hold their lovely thick, smooth cocks, so they could pee comfortably.'

'There must be a chapter about it in one of those ancient Chinese or Indian sex manuals.'

She didn't reply but instead returned to kissing him.

'Aim!' he said, as her grip loosened. His piss splashed the seat. He took over and both his and her fingers pushed the cock down.

She said: 'We're making such a mess of Edward's pied-à-terre. What would that be in French? Pisser partout sur son pied. There's wee all over his loo and carpet.'

'Why does he have carpet in a bathroom? We'll have to clean before we leave.'

'And I've just made a mess all over his sheets.'

'And over me.'

The pee ceased and he dabbed the tip with some loo roll, then washed his hands. She watched him do so, a delighted look on her face. He moved to pick up the towel but she slapped his hand away.

'Oh yeah. Right.'

He ostentatiously combed his hands through her hair.

'Nice and dry.'

'Bastard!'

Back in the room, they embraced and kissed, this time slowly, languorously and delicately. It was the first time in 30 years they had done so. Their height difference was apparent. She barely over 5ft. He significantly above 6ft.

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked up at him.

'Do you remember that other thing we used to do?'

'Standing-up fucking? I couldn't do that now. Probably not. I haven't been to the gym in years.'

'But can you lift me?'

'We can try!'

With a practiced vault that 30 years evidently hadn't diminished, she wrapped her legs around his midriff, and he caught her, supporting her by her buttocks.

'We can still do it!' she said.

'We can! Not bad for two oldies in their late 40s!'

She frowned but he kissed her before she could do anything with it.

'But not for too long, if that's OK,' he added, his breath short.

She gripped him tightly as he let go, so she could safely get back on her own two feet. It was less elegant than the initial vault, but nobody was around to raise scorecards.

She took another swig from the brandy.

'Are you hungry?' she said.

'I could eat.'

'We could go out and get something.'

'That would mean leaving this room.'

'We could order-in some food.'

He looked at his watch.

'It's 11.37am on a Tuesday. Do places deliver at this time? Would anybody even be able to find this secret place?'

She moved to the door, and lifted the door entry phone off its cradle.

'It works. I can hear the delivery yard downstairs. We just tell the food delivery people it's a door behind M&S. The problem is one of us would have to get dressed to take delivery.'

'I'll answer the door.'

'Dressed?'

He shook his head.

'It'll make no difference if it's a guy. And it always is a guy. He won't even notice. They see way weirder stuff than that.'

'Will your stiffy have gone by then?'

He looked down. It was still at around 30%.

'I should have let you take care of it. Maybe you should get into bed and pull the sheet up over the tits. Let's avoid any obvious triggers.'

She did so and, after retrieving his phone from his discarded trousers, he got into bed alongside her. They bickered about what kind of food they wanted but settled on something, and placed the order online.

She again rested her head on his chest, and he again moved his fingers through her curls.

'Tell me about us,' she said.

'Do you mean what's going to happen now, after today?'

'No. Tell me about when we were together at college.'

His hand stopped moving.

'You were there. Do you not remember?'

'Yes. But tell me what happened. Your side of the story.'

He drew several deep breaths, and her head on his chest rose and fell as he did so.

'We were together. Until we weren't. It lasted 12 months, until the end of Summer term in the second year. Then in the third year we didn't really see each other because you were with other people. Apart from when you would randomly come to my house, in the evening, or at night, for sex.'

'I remember.'

'Each time you did that, it tore strips from me.'

'I know.'

'We would fuck so hard, and cum so intensely, and I would think, "How can she possibly walk away again?" These weren't just some random hook-ups to burn off a bit of sexual energy. We needed each other. Well, I needed you. I suppose I can't speak for you. You left. Each and every time.'

'I was with somebody.'

'That wasn't the issue, and you know it.'

'I do know, yes.'

'Some people didn't invite me to parties because you'd be there. It was horribly awkward for me in my final year at college.'

'What did we have? When we were together?'

Again, he breathed deeply.

'Why are you asking these questions?'

She moved her hand down to his crotch, but there was no response.

'I don't know why I'm asking.'

'I loved you. Is that what you want to hear?'

He shrugged her off him, and turned away from her, but changed his mind, and momentarily turned back to face her.

'And you didn't love me. Okay?'

'I cared about you. More than anybody else.'

It was his turn to shrug her off and leap out of bed, his fingers pressed against his forehead. He paced for a while before sitting on the edge of the bed, speaking quietly and calmly.

'I loved you. I loved you then as I love you still. I've loved you for the 25 years in-between. You have no fucking idea. I have wasted so much of my life-- I have wasted an entire adult life.'

'But you got married!'

He didn't reply, his face still dark.

'I knew,' she continued. 'I knew you loved me. That you did, and still do. I knew you wouldn't fall out of love with me, no matter what happened to you. I've carried that with me for all this time, too. I tried to talk myself out of believing it. And I succeeded sometimes. Maybe for a year or more. Ah, he'll have forgotten about me. I'm off the hook.'

'Right.'

'But you didn't, did you? I knew you wouldn't because I knew you so well. Sometimes I-- and this is horrible-- Sometimes I hoped you had died. So that it was gone. Your love for me. I even started checking the newspaper's obituary columns for your name. And then Googling your name and adding "car crash", or "died peacefully in his sleep".'

'Really?'

'What was I supposed to do? I carried the thought of you hurting for so long. It was so awful.'

'You think you found it difficult? For fuck's sake! Do you know what it's like to wake up on the morning of your wedding, and to think immediately about another woman? To get married and realise you're making a good choice but not the right choice?'

'When I got in touch with you last week, I didn't want any of this.'

He spoke quietly: 'Fucking hell.'

'I just wanted to make peace. To turn it all off.'

'Okay. You start texting me, out of the blue, with an apology. I'm shocked and surprised but, okay. Fine. Then you message me again the next night, at 11.30pm, telling me you were rubbing your clit thinking of how we used to fuck, and encouraging me to wank while talking about the same things-- Was that supposed to make peace with me? And then inviting me for this, for a day of sex in some guy's room you borrowed?'

'It wasn't part of my original plan, no. But you responded. You could've just ignored me.'

He stood again.

'You see, that was always the problem, wasn't it? You go through people, one after the other, throwing them out when you've finished with them. You need that constant reassurance. It's such a cliché but with you it's true. You use people to massage your ego. And I fell for it. Poor 20 something-year-old me. And now here I am again! 25 years and I've learned absolutely fucking nothing! You were probably feeling a bit low and thought, well, why not? That guy from university! He had a decent cock!'

'You weren't one of the ones that-- Came and went. There are two people in my life-- Two people who are different. Two people not like the others. You. And my husband.'

'Do you love him? Can you love him? Or is it just somebody else for you to "care" about?'

'I love him. But it took time. I married him without loving him. I only started being sure I loved him 10 years ago.'

'You were married for 12 years before you loved your husband?'

'We were together for five years before we got married. So, it was 17 years.'

'And do you love me? It's been 25 years.'

She bit her lip and half smiled.

'I love that I don't know. I love the feeling it gives me. It's new. I haven't felt this way since-- I love the thought that I might love two men. I love that I might have grown up -- that I might have matured enough to love not just one person, but two. Two! Two amazing men! I want them both!'

He remained standing at the edge of the bed, glaring at her, slowly shaking his head.

'Let me suck you,' she said, reaching across to him. 'Let me suck your cock. You can use me however you want. Fuck my mouth. I'll swallow your cock down my throat. Do what you want with me. I want you inside me. I want your sperm inside me, to walk away from this room with you inside me. I want to go home to my husband, and suck him, and swallow his cum, too, so that the sperm of the two men I care about are inside me, mingling together. The two men I need, who I can't push out of my mind, no matter how much I try!'

He again sat on the edge of the bed.

'I'm not in the mood.'

'Okay.'

A moment passed. The sound of the traffic below was just about audible, as was the slow but terrifyingly regular tick tick tick of that massive wall clock.

'You damaged me,' he continued. 'During this week I've been thinking about today, and what I would say to you. You damaged me. I was new and young and ready for life. And you fucked me over before I could even start. I hate you for it.'

'But don't you see? Damaging you -- It wasn't my fault. It wasn't. And anyway, damaging you damaged me just as much. And I hate you, too. I've hated you so fucking much over the years. And I -- I love you! I love you, now. It was the only way out for me. Yes! I understand it now! It's the only way to sort this out once and for all. To love you. It was why I got in touch. To put you back in my life, for better or worse.'

Another moment passed.

'Now that I know that, what do I do?' he said.

She swigged from the bottle.

'Sometimes I want to go away,' she said. 'To be on my own. To go to a remote Scottish island, so I can't feel anybody's influence on me any longer. Where there's just sheep and stone cottages. And where nobody wants me. Where I don't want anybody else.'

'Me too. We can't go to the same island, though. Maybe I can go to one of those islands off the coast of Cornwall. You can go to one in the Shetlands.'

They laughed, quietly.

He turned to look at her lying on the bed: '25 years. Nearly three decades of-- Of thinking about you. Every day. Never even a holiday.'

'I know, my darling. I'm sorry.'

Neither spoke for a moment.

'You are so fucked up,' he said, again laughing quietly. 'Swallowing our sperm so they can mingle? Seriously? I mean, that might be a sentence entirely new to the language. Never uttered before today.'

'I'm not as fucked-up as I once was, now that I'm getting older.'

There was yet another moment of silence but this time shattered by the incredibly loud buzz of the door entry phone. They were both physically startled.

He picked it up, had a quick conversation, and then reported that the delivery driver would not come inside because he was afraid.

'Afraid of what?' she asked.

'Being mugged. I'll have to go and get the food from the door downstairs.'

'Looking like that?'

'I'll put my trainers on.'

As he did so, she said, 'You know, I'm finding this very horny. I don't know why. It's a vestigial hunter gatherer thing, I think.'

He shrugged, standing there naked except for slightly worn Nikes. Then he was gone.

She lay back in the bed and idly moved her hand down to her crotch. The blinds on the window were now capturing the full afternoon sun, and were almost too bright to look at. The room had warmed up significantly, too. She kicked the sheets down to the bottom of the bed. She closed her eyes and the minutes passed flew past until--

He was back into the room, carrying bags.

'That's a lovely sight,' he said, stamping out of his trainers.

'What is?'

'You in bed.'

'I do it every night. It's nothing special.'

'It's special for me.'

They unpacked the bag onto the bed, and then he sat at the top, cross legged, and she sat at the bottom. They helped themselves. The delivery driver had been one of those who will do shopping for you, anywhere, so long as you're prepared to pay. So, they'd got him to pop into the M&S below and pick up some booze.

A can of ready-mixed G&T was the first thing she grabbed. After cracking it open, she downed the contents almost in one gulp. He looked on with a frown.

'What?' she said, puzzled. 'Is it drinking one of these? I mean, they don't taste nice. Not really. But that's not the point, is it. It's the convenience.'

He cracked open his own can and took a sip.

'Bring me up to speed with you,' she said, biting into a McDonalds burger. 'Tell me what you've been up to for 30 years. No kids, right?'

He shook his head.

'You haven't any, either.'

'No.'

'Isn't it funny we knew that about each other?'

'You might just have read the biography on my website.'

'And you might be surprised but I don't run your fan club. I know barely anything about you or your life or your work. You were only ever in my head. The old you, from back then.'

'But you looked at my website when I messaged you. You said you did.'

'Yeah. But only at that point.'

'Why don't you have kids?'

'Same things as I told you all those years ago.'

'The doom and gloom stuff? It never went away?'

He frowned.

'If anything I've developed the thoughts further and can now justify them. Actually.'

He gestured around himself: 'This. All this. It's clearly Hell, right?'

She stopped chewing.

'You mean you and me?'

'No!'

'This room? This room is hell?'

'No! Existence. The world we live in. There's so much suffering, and it's so easy to generate suffering, that we must be living in Hell. Or at least Purgatory, if you want to put it into religious terms. And why not. They provide as good a reference point as anything.'

'What about all the nice things? Like McDonalds burgers? And orgasms? And Titian, or Shakespeare, or Mozart?'

'They're only there to provide necessary contrast. How can we identify suffering unless we have the inverse also available to us? How can we understand that darkness exists, if there's no light?'

'You still sound a bit teenage. And it's still such a blokey way of looking at the world.'

'Okay. But the key thing is, I just couldn't bring a new life into this world knowing that they would be born into suffering. And that their existence would always involve suffering. And their life would end with suffering, because nearly all our lives end with some horrible illness taking us out.'

'But it is theoretically possible to avoid suffering. If somebody had a truly blessed life?'

'Theoretically, yes.'

'So, if this really was Hell, wouldn't they have made suffering truly mandatory?'

'It effectively is.'

'But not guaranteed.'

'Effectively it's guaranteed.'

'But there's that space, that hope, that we could find a way to avoid it. Medical advancements. Being compassionate with each other.'

'Okay, you've just proved this is Purgatory, and not Hell. Suffering isn't mandatory. But suffering is overwhelmingly probable. So, my point stands. And the only reason this existence would be created would be to punish every living thing, including humans. And if it wasn't created, and it's just a cast off from some blind watchmaker, then it's still all about suffering. That's why I have no sprogs. What about you?'

'It was a combination of things. Seeing what happened to my friends having kids, mainly. It was always a nuclear bomb planted under their existing happy lives. Two young people, mixing with friends, having sex, going out every night. And kaboom. It's gone, in an explosion of sick, and green shit. Each and every time. And I never really saw good examples, either. I've never seen a mother actually enjoying it. Never seen a dad enjoying it, or at least one who didn't flirt with me and seem to beg for escape via his eyes, while he still had the fucking baby strapped to his chest. Never seen a kid enjoying it, for that matter. It's like reading about some foreign war where you can't take sides because all parties seem equally repugnant. Nobody seems to come out of child rearing well. Then there's my own awful mother, of course. I fear transmogrifying into her every morning when I look in the mirror. But with a kid or two at my hip, that would be even more likely because I'd just be lazy, and rely on her old ways. And that's the other thing. Mothers and daughters. They always hate each other. Always. Perpetual hatred, passed down every generation. I don't want to carry that on. Maybe I'd be lucky and have boys? But what a monumental flip of the coin.'

He nodded, using a napkin to mop McDonalds mayonnaise off his penis, where it had fallen as he ate a burger.

'I think you've just made the same basic argument as I did.'

'Not really. Anyway, kids are probably impossible for me now. And that's odd because now I feel I could make a reasonable job of it. I'm just about ready for motherhood. At 46 years old. I haven't gone through the change yet. But I imagine conception is nearly impossible.'

'Same here. Older men like me have crap sperm. They try to swim to the egg but they just get tired out.'

'Poor little things. We didn't use condoms today but--'

He shook his head.

'It'd take a miracle. We're fine. I haven't worn a condom this century.'

'There was another reason why I never had kids. My own personal reason, coming from me. I was my own kid that I had to take care of 24/7. I had my own tantrums. I had my own heart-breaking disappointments that I had to mollycoddle myself back to happiness from. I had nothing at all to spare for another life. This limitation was obvious to me. And I see other women like me, who never seemed to realise. And they ignore their kid, and put themselves first, and think only about themselves. And they should've realised, before squirting the kid out of their vagina, how little they could emotionally afford one.'

'Okay, that's kids out of the way. What about work life? Jobs? I kinda know your career from reading your bio on the website, but I'd like to hear the story.'

'No. You go first.'

'Okay. Well, I graduated as an architect. You know that. And there were two career paths. One was to become an architect. The second was not to become an architect and do something else, like running an ice cream van. But you see, I'm clever! I figured out a third path. I did become an architect but I wasn't very good. I wasn't incompetent. But there were better draftsmen than me in any office where I worked. They had-- That certain spark. I did not.'

'Oh darling!'

'It's okay. I got comfortable with this decades ago. I was good. Just not brilliant. Managers loved me. I was always called a safe pair of hands. That's not as nice as it sounds. I was designing staircases, fire escapes, roofs. The in-between bits of buildings. I did so many roofs. A certain industrial estate in Ipswich is all my roof lines. Except one, because it blew off in a storm last year. Not my fault. I'm an architect. Not a structural engineer. But my job increasingly didn't make sense to me. I had loved studying architecture. But here I was, in the real world, and I was throwing sickies to avoid going into the office. So, there was only one thing to do. Go back to college and study yet more architecture.'

'Oh wow! The same college we went to?'

'No. A different one. Cheaper. I got a master's degree. I saw a job ad pinned to a faculty noticeboard. I applied for it and got it. I started teaching undergraduates while I completed my doctorate. I got the doctorate and carried on teaching because it was an income and also because a doctorate in architecture is utterly useless other than at a university where they teach architecture.'

'What was your doctorate about?'

'A carbon-negative building material that has since sunk without trace and quite rightly because it was shit and people should just use a decent hardwood if they want that kind of thing. Still, we built some council office blocks up in Tyneside. They're still there but I do expect a good storm to change that. The bricks were incredibly lightweight.'

They had finished eating now. She had polished off three cans of the G&T while he had barely finished one. He put all the rubbish back into the bags and put it on the floor.

She moved over to the window and again raised one of the blinds. He came behind her, embraced her, and kissed the top of her head. He held her hips and they swayed left and right gently, as if slow dancing.

'What about you? What happened with the fine art degree? The paintings? The huge colourful incredible canvases.'

She stiffened.

'It's impossible to make a living. So, I had to get a proper job. Simple.'

'If I remember, you had agents queueing up when you graduated. You were going places. Not one single person disagreed. If anybody was going to succeed, it was you.'

'Well, clearly, I didn't. Not in fine art.'

She snapped free of his embrace and then lay on the bed, facing away from him.

He got into bed behind her, and their bodies folded into each other.

'We did this a lot,' he said.

'It was nice.'

'My favourite thing.'

'We still fit together so well. Me tall. You tiny. Probably an even snugger fit now I'm not so skinny.'

'Yes.'

The noise of the traffic below again became quietly evident, as did the ticking of the clock.

She spoke: 'I had an agent even before I graduated. One of the lecturers put me onto him. I literally moved out of the house where I'd been a student and the next day attended an opening for my first show in a gallery in Islington. I went from scruffy jeans and t-shirt, to having to get an evening gown from somewhere. My works sold, too. Not for huge amounts. But I was making a living. I was lucky because people would gaze at my paintings and then, always with a hand at their jaw, tell me what I was trying to express. As if I didn't know. It was annoying, but also a good sign. Nobody's going to buy art they can't understand. And painting was fashionable at that moment, too. Again, that was useful to me. People told me I was part of a reaction against the kind of artists filling houses with concrete. I had nothing against those lot. I knew a handful of them. A great bunch of lads and ladesses.

'Anyway, about four months after we graduated, a photographer came to my studio. I was renting this house in the middle of nowhere in Kent, and my studio, such as it was, was a shed with windows. I think it was a large potting shed? Great light. Anyway, the photos were for an article in a newspaper. A big deal, my agent said. Be on your best behaviour. Ensure you make him a sandwich for lunch. That kind of thing. And the photographer arrived, and he took photos, obviously. Photos of me in the studio. He took photos of me outside the studio, in the garden. Photos of me cleaning my brushes. Photos of me eating fruit in my dining room. Photos of me reading magazines and books in my lounge. He wanted to take photos of me in my bedroom, but I said no. He took photos from above, standing on a step he had brought for just this purpose. He took photos crouched down below, so he was looking up at me. He knew his stuff. And then I realised something: He hadn't taken any photos of my canvases. I suggested he take a few. He nodded, and said yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah (I hate that), and said definitely he'd take some before he left. And I realised that if I stand in front of the canvasses then he has no choice but to include them in the background. They may be a little blurred. But at least people would see them. So, I did that. I realised, too, that I had started to pose, like a model, to make sure these would be the good shots they would use. And he said perfect, this is gold. He told me to put my hands on my hips. He said to push my shoulders back, because I assume it pushed my tits out. But at least the canvasses were in the frame, literally and figuratively.

'It still irritated me that it was like he'd turned up just to photograph me, as if I was the story. I hadn't spoken to the journalist at that point. Obviously, I wasn't stupid. But that story was surely about me, the artist. Not me, the person. I said I would go and make some more coffee, and it was the perfect moment for him to take the photos of the artwork, as he had suggested. He hadn't suggested it, but, you know, I phrased it that way. He shrugged his shoulders. I didn't actually leave, but stood at the door watching him. He used just one roll of film. This was before digital cameras were popular. He didn't set up any lighting to ensure the colours were accurate. He just pointed and clicked at the canvasses that were at the top of the pile against the wall. I half wondered if he thought I was asking him to take the photos as a favour, as if I wanted the pictures myself, for my own use.

'I didn't make any coffee. I said I'd run out of the posh stuff, and asked him if he'd finished because I had to be somewhere. He puffed out his cheeks and said, yeah, he should have enough now for the feature.

'He started to pack everything away into his flight cases. Then he stopped and turned to me and said, "I suppose a blow job is out of the question?" And I just looked at him. I was truly lost for words. That's happened to me maybe twice in my entire life. And I said, it wouldn't be right. It's all I could think of saying. And he went back to packing up and he said, well, if you don't ask then you don't get. I sat down at the little table I had in the studio, where I ate my lunch sometimes. My legs were wobbly. Again, that's rare for me. He carried on packing up and talking as he did so. Asking for a blow job was a bet he and a friend had with each other, he said. It came from a book a comedian had written. The rule was you must ask every woman you spend any time with, for any reason. It's more successful than you might think, he said. And I said, you ask even your mother, or your sister? And he said, no, of course not. Just the attractive ones. And then he stopped his packing up again and looked at me, and said, you're extremely attractive. Off the scale. You know that, right?

'And again it was so hard to say anything. I think I managed just to tell him to get out. I can't remember for sure. In playing this back in my head over and over again I've perfected the riposte I never said. Get out or I'm going to call the police. Get out or I'm going to kick your balls into your mouth. In several versions I attack him with a kitchen knife, straight into one of his eyes, and just leave it there, sticking out, for him to deal with. But he carried on packing up his stuff and, when he was done, said it had been lovely to meet me and that his colleague, the journalist, would be in touch. And then he carried it all to his car and left. I waited until I couldn't hear his car engine any longer.

'And then I cried. Solidly, for hours. It isn't like I timed it with a stopwatch. But it had gone dark by the time it ended. I went back into the house, hoping it would stop the crying, but then I just cried in there, too. I cried in every room we'd been taking photos in.

'Then the crying stopped, and I realised there was one thing left to do. Even though it was dark, I dragged my canvasses into the garden. All of them. Even the ones from university. I stacked them on top of each other, like they do with wooden pallets at Bonfire Night parties. There were eventually two piles, about as high as me. I dowsed them with lawnmower petrol from a can, mixed with a bottle of turps, and threw a match on them.

'They didn't even burn properly. It didn't go up with a whoof. I didn't even get a moment of drama. A film of flames just spread over it all quickly, and then various parts of it started smouldering and burning and crackling. It was interesting watching the oils catch fire and burn with the same colour as they had been on the canvas. Little flames of blue and green and lilac. I watched it for as long as I could, mainly to ensure it didn't set anything else on fire. I'd had half a thought to burn down the entire studio, canvases inside, and it was just some wooden-framed outbuilding after all, so it would've been easy. That would've given me the drama, I suppose. But I thought, well, I don't own the building. I'm just renting. And it might be useful to some other artist when I move out. A proper artist. When I was sure the actual canvas and paint had mostly burned away, I went back inside. The next morning, when I looked at it, it was just a load of wooden frames, mostly burned and charred, extinguished by the overnight rain.

'But I got it wrong. It's obvious in hindsight, isn't it. I should not have burned the canvasses. I should have burned me. I should have dowsed me with lawnmower petrol and turps, and put the match to me. I punished the art but it wasn't the art's fault.'

He pulled her tight into him.

'I'm so sorry,' he said, tears coming to his eyes.

'The journalist phoned me the next day. And I had to figure out what to tell him. So, I said I'd destroyed all my canvasses. Set them on fire. Just like that. Like it was something I did every once in a while. And I heard him pause, and he said, well, there might still be a story. I know you artists are crazy. Did Colin--that was the name of the photographer, by the way-- Did Colin take any pictures of the artwork before you burned it? Did he photograph the bonfire? He asked if I could take a photo of the remains and send it to him. And I had to hang up. The crying was back. The phone rang again immediately and I didn't answer. I didn't answer that phone ever again. I moved out a few weeks later. I'm guessing some calls were probably the journalist, or some were probably my agent, or some were probably the milkman asking why I hadn't paid. But I physically couldn't answer that phone.'

He nuzzled his face into the back of her head, and his tears dampened her hair.

'I got a letter from my agent. Through the post. Again, no email back then. Some people had mobiles, but they were still exotic if you lived outside London, so no text messages. I can't remember the exact phrasing, but the letter said, basically, what the fuck has happened, and please get in touch with me as soon as you can or we're going to miss this career-defining opportunity with the newspaper. I do remember that phrase. Career-defining opportunity.'

She didn't speak for a moment before continuing: 'I went to stay with my mum, for as long as I could stand it. That was about two weeks, I think. I travelled to Goa. Did the usual kind of thing there for a few months. Took lots of E. Found myself spiritually. The money ran out, so I stopped taking E. Lost myself spiritually. Flew back, stayed with my mum again, and started to go mad. No money. No job. My mum's delighted I'm not painting any longer, of course, and keeps telling me there's lots of work for me in her interior design business. No. No no no. I read a review in the paper of an exhibition opening and I thought, I can do that. I can write a description of something happening. So, I did. I went along to one on Jermyn Street. Some crappy gallery owned by this old bloke I vaguely knew but who liked to flirt with me. I turned what I saw into 1,000 words and mailed it, on-spec, to a newspaper arts editor I again vaguely knew. He invited me in for a chat. I wore a tight blouse. He offered me a job. Five reviews a month, a few hundred quid each time, my picture at the top of each published piece. Instantly I was earning more than my mum, for around a day or two of work each week. The rest is history. I was still in the art scene. Just not as an artist. Fine. Nobody knows this story, by the way. I've never told it to anybody. You're the first.'

'And now you're one of the UK's foremost art critics.'

'I wouldn't go that far.'

'That's exactly what you say on your website.'

'I didn't write that. I had a publicist when I did the first book.'

'And you've been on TV. You can't imagine what it was like for me to suddenly see you on TV. Myself and my wife, just watching TV one evening, was it two years ago? And there you are. A new documentary series about contemporary art on BBC Four. It's not that I lost my breath. I nearly suffocated. And of course, I couldn't mention any of this to my wife.'

'Oh, darling!'

'You were so lovely though. You scrub up well.'

'Thank you. They assigned me a make-up artist. And I got a clothes budget. It was fun. Pass the brandy.'

'It's gone. I finished it off before lunch. Although there wasn't much left.'

'Shit. We should've got the bloke to get us something stronger from downstairs.'

'I can go and get something.'

'Naked?'

'If you want.'

She flipped over to face him, her face an explosion of joy.

'Seriously? You would go shopping naked? I have no idea why that turns me on, but it does. I've always had fantasies about naked shoppers in a supermarket. Casual sex breaking out here and there. People fucking against the freezers. A woman hooking her leg on the baked beans shelf while a man crouches and eats her out. And other people just wandering around plucking items off the shelves, as they do. Just with no clothes on.'

He was silent for a moment.

'Do you think they'd arrest me?'

'For sure.'

'So not a good idea, then.'

'What's the minimum you could get away with wearing?'

'A shirt. And trainers.'

'No underpants?'

'No. I would be free and loose and swinging away under the shirt.'

'Oh please. Please do it!'

He stood and scooped his shirt off the floor.

'What booze do you want?'

'Something strong that tastes nice. That usually does it.'

He stood in front of her. His tree trunk legs were planted in the slightly worn Nike trainers. And his shirt came down to just cover his cock and balls. He clutched his wallet.

'You look amazing,' she said. 'I want to suck your cock.'

He nodded. And then he was gone.

She knelt on the bed and clapped her hands with clear delight.

His phone. It was there on the side table. It had buzzed and the screen had come alive.

She picked it up.

A text message: "Don't forget bday card for my mum x"

She set the phone down again, carefully.

By the time he returned she was nearly fully dressed.

'Courvoisier!' he said, stepping through the door with a bottle. 'They didn't arrest me but they did stare and-- What's happened?'

'Did you remember to get a birthday card for your wife's mother?'

He stood still, stunned.

'I don't understand at all.'

'Today is over. We are over. I don't know what we thought we were doing. This is so completely wrong.'

She began applying make-up.

'Check your phone,' she continued, through lips pursed as she applied lipstick.

He did and said, 'Right. I was planning to get it on the way home.'

'It was wrong for me to bring you here. Christ, I managed 25 years. I could've managed 25 more. This isn't fair. There are innocent people involved.'

'I came here under my own volition.'

'This isn't fair for her. It isn't fair for my husband. Who knows, by the way. He knows I fuck other men. And no, it's not some kink he has. It hurts him. He ignores it so he can keep me. As if it wasn't already horrible enough.'

She snapped her compact mirror closed and faced him, fully dressed, made up, and her handbag over her arm.

'Do I look okay? I have to ask this of anybody before I leave anywhere-- The house. This room.'

'It's inexpressible but the closest word I have is beautiful.'

'Just "yes" would've have done. I have to go.'

She moved past him. He grabbed her arm. She looked up at him with fury and tried to jerk herself away.

'We've gone way too far for you to leave now,' he said.

She shielded her face with her hands.

'We haven't!' she said, her voice muffled. 'We can end it again. We can end it now.'

'I can't. I cannot stand not seeing you again, not even in the next five minutes, never mind the next 25 years.'

His eyes had filled with tears, and she was full-on crying, saying: 'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.'

He released her and she stood, motionless, as he stepped out of his trainers then lay on the bed, facing away from her.

She cried some more before dropping her handbag on the floor.

'I hate you,' she said.

He didn't reply.

'I fucking hate you. I'm going. I'm leaving now.'

And she did. He heard the door close and then silence except for the ticking of the clock.

He lay on his back, then rose and sat on the edge of the bed, his trousers some distance away. He stared at them for a while.

Edward was in Mexico. Far, far away. Even if Edward set off to return to his pied-à-terre right now, it would be at least 12 hours until anybody stepped through that door.

He lay back on the bed, and pulled the sheet up. Sleep fell upon him instantly and heavily, like a tonne of feathers.

When his eyes opened the light had changed. It was a few notches darker. The room was colder. The giant clock said 3.45pm. There was a body nestled against his back, holding onto him. He sensed without looking it was her. She was asleep, still fully dressed.

His waking up caused her to wake, too.

'I bought some towels,' she said, sleepily.

'You didn't go.'

'No. I got as far as my car. Then I turned around. I called into M&S. Got us some sandwiches for later, too.'

'Take your clothes off.'

She rose and, still sleepy, stripped. She stood there, and he looked her up and down. Then he held out his hand, and pulled her back into bed.

She lay back and he moved on top of her. He started by lightly kissing her on the lips. She responded eagerly, but his mouth was no longer there. He was kissing her cheek. Then her forehead.

He moved down to her neck, kissing the left, and then the right.

Her collarbones deserved individual kisses, too, as did her sternum. Then he took one of breasts in his hand and brought a nipple to his mouth. He kissed it, then took it inside his mouth, and sucked on its firmness.

She gasped.

Her stomach was kissed at each station of the cross--left, right, top and bottom.

The smoothness of her inner thighs were kissed. Left and right.

He brushed his mouth lightly through the hair of her pussy, each sweep of his face moving closer until his lips were touching the wetness of her labia.

He pushed his tongue inside and sought out her clitoris. It didn't take long.

He softly tongued it, up and then down, and back up, and then down again. And then it was time to begin in earnest. He began gently lapping at it, over and over and over again, his rhythm steady and soft and sure and persistent.

Her breathing changed and she murmured, quietly: 'Yes. Please. More.'

He sensed tenseness building in her body, and gently slid two fingers inside her. Then he switched to being less gentle, as he began finger fucking her while his tongue remained lapping higher up.

He increased the pace, again. Harder and faster with his tongue, and faster and pushing deeper inside her with his fingers.

Orgasm arrived like a freight train. A hand slammed against his head as she screamed out and her body arched. He kept his tongue pressed against her clitoris throughout.

A few seconds after she relaxed, he resumed what he had been doing. Slow and gentle, then picking up speed. And seconds later she orgasmed again.

When she had relaxed, he looked up at her, catching her gaze through the valley of her breasts.

'Again?'

She shook her head, and he moved up to lie alongside her. He turned on his side and she resumed spooning him.

'What are we going to do?' he said. 'Leaving this room and returning to our homes this evening is-- I can feel it physically. Even now, even though it's only 4pm. They call it a physical wrench, right? I understand why. For the first time.'

'We can do this again. Today can be the beginning. Not the end.'

'How could it work? We meet here once a week? Or a hotel room? It's impossible. I took a day off work so I could be here. I've got no days left.'

'What about the weekend?'

'I spend them with--'

And he stopped himself, and took some deep breaths, before saying: 'I can't do weekends. Can you?'

'No. Not really. But I'm freelance. I can do what I want during the week.'

'What's happened to me? This is ridiculous. I'm 47 years old. Not 18.'

'Try not to think about it. Don't think about anything. We've got

two hours left. Maybe three. Let's just be together.'

They lay for maybe 15 minutes, not talking, before she broke free and said: 'Let's sit on the floor.'

'Really? Like I mentioned, I'm not 18 any longer.'

'There are some cushions. We can sit on them.'

She took his hand and led him to the middle of the room, where she sat cross-legged, and he did, too, facing her. They looked like they were about to start chanting Hare Krishna.

'There's something we haven't talked about,' she said

'There's a thousand things we haven't talked about.'

He glanced at the huge clock.

'This one's huge,' she said. 'Sex.'

'Haven't we just covered that by acting it out several times? A discussion entirely in the physical realm, if you will.'

'We should talk about how our sexualities have evolved.'

He pondered for a while.

'True. I definitely don't have the same basic needs as 20-year-old me.'

'Back then it was just oral and straight-up fucking, if I recall.'

'I did not hear you complain. Not once. But I gave oral as well as receiving, and as you know, that's rarer amongst young men.'

'You weren't so hot at giving. Too rushed. You gave up too easily. And I had to tell you the clitoris is at the top, not the bottom.'

'Ha.'

'But that's why it came into my head to talk about sex. You've got seriously fucking good at going down on a woman.'

'Practice.'

He looked at the floor and she did too.

'And the fucking?' he asked. 'Am I still good at that?'

'That's as good as it ever was. It's the fit. It fits and it fills me so perfectly. Does it-- Does it feel the same to you?'

He shrugged: 'Yeah. As far as I remember.'

'Good. I worry a little about-- Stretching down there. Becoming a bit slack.'

'You're as tight and lovely as when you were 20.'

'You're so sweet! I worried before today-- I mean, it wouldn't be me if I didn't worry ahead of time-- I worried that maybe you wouldn't be able to get it up.'

'It does happen. God's curse for middle-aged men. I was worried too. But with you it's just not a problem--'

'You're so sweet!'

'You make me stiffer than a week-old baguette.'

'Less sweet. I do see you're on the way up right now.'

He looked down. He was.

'I'm enjoying this discussion. That's something that's new with age, I suppose. Talking about sex is almost as much fun as having sex.'

'Agree.'

'That's how we should do it. This discussion, I mean. One of us says a sexual activity. The other one says agree or disagree.'

'Okay. Should I go first?'

'Hit me.'

'Agree! Oh right. You meant I should make the first suggestion.'

'Ha. I'll get to that later.'

'Ooh, I would like that.'

'Hit me.'

'Okay. Let's start with A. Anal.'

He made a so-so gesture.

'You're supposed to say agree or disagree. But really? I thought all men love that.'

'I think I like the idea of it more than doing it. And I love looking at the arsehole and getting my tongue on it if I'm doing other stuff in that area. But it's a bit too tight once you're inside. I lose sensation after a while. How about you?'

'Absolutely fucking love it. I was going to put in a butt plug before I set off today but I thought it might be presumptuous.'

'Okay.'

'Your turn.'

'Umm-- Cum?'

'From a man? Love it. No, sorry. Agree.'

'What about getting it on your skin?'

'Agree. Wherever the man wants it to go.'

'Tits? Face?'

'Your choice. You know about this from years ago. My cunt is preferred. I love men filling me up. I cannot express how much I like that. But also, if you want to cover my face, it's hot. Just avoid the eyes if you can.'

'Okay. Your turn.'

'Feet.'

'Disagree.'

'Why?'

'They just don't do anything for me. They're utilitarian things. It'd be like fucking-- I don't know-- Like fucking the arm of a sofa. Is it your kink or something?'

'No. But I've been with men for whom it is. I mean, it's kind of fun. It tickles my feet in a nice way when the man is pumping his cock between them. Plus, those men just love feet in every way, so they always want to massage them. They really know what they're doing when they do. Oh, it's so lovely. I've only had dalliances with men like that, though. One offs. I don't know how it would be if it was full-time, in a relationship. Right, you're next.'

'Other women.'

'Agree.'

'Phwoar.'

'Seriously? I come out as Bi and your response is Sid James?'

'Sorry not sorry.'

'What about you? Bi? I always thought you could be.'

'I haven't tried it. There's been times when I was so horny, so fucking incredibly desperate to use my cock, that I would happily have had a man suck my cock as much as a woman. And, as you know, I'm fine being in a room with another hard cock and a woman. But-- Let's just say the jury is out on that one.'

'Okay. To let you know, if you wanted to suck another man's cock while I watched, I would be totally up for it. Is it your turn, or mine?'

'I don't know. But I'll go next. Tit fucking. Or tit wanking, depending on chosen nomenclature.'

She gestured so-so.

'If you're a woman with decent tits, men are obsessed with them. And they want to do everything with them. Lick them, suck them, cum on them and yes, slap their cock between them. A friend of mine with titanic boobs had a reduction partly because of the backache but also because she wanted men to stop wanting to wank over and fuck them. It didn't work by, the way. They still did. The best I can say is that it's a nice way to give a man pleasure. But there are other ways I would choose, personally. You are quite erect.'

'Yes. Don't pretend you aren't at least a little bit moist.'

'That's a secret.'

'Right. You're next.'

'BDSM. Should we do them one at a time? B, then D, then S, then M?'

'Fire through them.'

'B.'

'Agree.'

'D.'

'Agree.'

'S.'

'Agree, to a limit. Not hardcore. No actual torture.'

'M.'

'Giving, not receiving.'

'Okay. Wow. Is it getting hot in here?'

'Should I run through them for you to answer?'

'Hit me.'

He looked at her askance. She waggled her eyebrows.

He said: 'B.'

'Love it.'

'D.'

'Fucking love it.'

'S.'

'You can probably guess by now.'

'M.'

'Tell me you want me to do, sir, and I'll do it. Nothing that will leave marks, though. I'm on the telly now. I need to keep myself immaculate.'

She looked down at his cock.

'Surely I've got to take care of that? It's so hard and shiny. I haven't had you in my mouth yet. It's overdue. I can probably see my face in it. My face in thine cock.'

'Maybe. But going back to the whole B, D, S and M thing. Can you elucidate?'

'You first.'

He gazed at her blankly for a long moment, then jumped to his feet and began pacing.

'No. We should stop. Stop this discussion, I mean.'

'You're clearly enjoying it!'

'It isn't that. Look, let's just say that these revelations are not making me like you any less.'

'Do you want that?'

'The way I feel about you now is-- It's fucking crazy. This is new to me. I can't deal with it. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to do about it.'

'But we agreed. The Rubicon has been crossed. It's why I didn't leave just now.'

'Do we have to make it worse for ourselves? Can't we just finish off the cognac and fill the time by discussing our favourite summer breaks?'

She rose and embraced him.

'I don't know what we can do about it. I didn't expect this. I love you. Insanely. And yes, it's getting worse with every passing minute. Getting better, I should say. It feels like the most wonderful thing. This can't be bad. It just can't. Come on, let's sit down again. We have such little time left.'

They remained embraced, listening to the tick of the giant clock, before she took his hand and led him back to the centre of the room, where they sat again.

'Let's talk about the D,' he said. He raised his hand to stop her obvious joke. Then he continued: 'What you didn't say was whether you're into, uh, being the manager or the employee.'

'I can go both ways. I've dominated men. High heel boots up to my crotch. PVC corsets. Riding crop tapping against the bollocks.'

He winced.

She continued regardless: 'Quite expensive if you want the good stuff and the perfect look. And I've also been dominated. I think I'm happier when the other person's doing the work. I especially enjoy being dominated and talking back. I think they call it bratty. I wanted to let you know. Just in case.'

'You're submissive?'

'Truly, madly, deeply.'

'I'm dominant.'

She feigned surprise, grabbing her shocked mouth.

'Hey, I tried being a submissive! It wasn't my bag but there are many men out there who are submissive. That's a whole branch of sex work involving women called Dominatrices. So, it is not obvious that a man is always dominant.'

'It was obvious you are.'

'You make me want to do things that punish you.'

'I would like that very much.'

'What's your safe word?'

'You won't need that.'

'Tell me just in case.'

'Really?'

'Is this part of the whole thing about being sassy and talking back?'

'Maybe.'

'I'm going to assign you a safe word: Orange juice.'

'That's not a word. It's a phrase.'

'It's a noun.'

'And--? Your point is--?'

'Just say it if you need to.'

'Okay. But I won't need to.'

'You have no idea what I'm going to do to you right now.'

She paused for a second, with a delighted expression, like she was looking over a cake arrangement and deciding on the best.

'I won't need the safe noun.'

He stood and rummaged through the desk at the top of the room.

'I'll need a few things-- Aha! That'll do. Oh, yes. This is also perfect.'

He hid the items behind his back, walked over to where she was sitting on the floor, and looked down at her.

'Stand up.'

She did so with a ridiculous, innocent smile.

He showed her what he had been hiding behind his back.

'Some ribbon to tie you up with. And Edward's ruler. Vintage. Wooden. I haven't bothered to clean it. You can assume it's covered in his cock germs from when he used it to measure himself. But quite frankly, that's the least of your concerns right now. Bend over the end of the bed.'

She danced over to the spot, giggling, and did so.

'You will not say a word from this point on until I'm finished with you. Do you understand?'

'Really? Not a-- OW!'

He had phwapped her arse cheeks hard.

'You will not call out when I spank you.'

She was silent.

He phwapped her arse cheeks hard again.

'Fuck!' she said. 'What was that for? I didn't say anything!'

'That was for saying OW! And this one now is for speaking when I have told you not to.

Phwap!

Silence.

'Good girl.'

He trailed the edge of the ruler across the plump flesh of her arse cheeks. She giggled.

Phwap!

She sucked air through her teeth.

'That's the testing finished. I wanted to ensure the ruler wouldn't break. It seems very sturdy. Now I can start.'

He raised his arm high in the air and swung the ruler into her arse cheeks, hard. Then he did it again, in the exact same spot. And again. She remained silent.

Five times in total. The flesh had gained a deep red outline.

'Stand.'

She did. Her eyes had been watering. Makeup had run.

He put his hand on the back of her head, then angled it down, and said, '

'Look at it. You've made me very hard. You'll have to make it go away.'

She reached out to touch it, but he dragged her away by holding her hair. She winced but was silent.

'No! Come with me.'

He walked over to the windows. She followed.

'Kneel with your back against the wall.'

She did so.

'Put your hands above your head.'

She obeyed him.

He took the long piece of black ribbon from the floor and tied her wrists with it. Then he hooked the remainder over one of the window handles and pulled it, so she was lifted slightly, before tying it off.

He was still for a moment, his hard cock an inch from her face.

'Are you a whore?'

'Yes.'

He slapped his hand across her face. She cried out. She slapped her again. She was silent.

'Are you a whore?'

Silence.

'Open your mouth.'

She obeyed him.

He pushed his cock inside, his eyes closed.

'I have thought about this so much.'

He put his hands on the sides of her head and began fucking her mouth, pushing deeper with each buck of his hips.

She gagged. He pulled out, waited for her to gasp back her breath, and then pushed himself inside again.

'I have thought about you in every scenario. Fantasised about you. Me using you. Other men using you. Gangbangs.'

He withdrew again to let her catch her breath.

'I fantasised about you, too!' she said.

He slapped her across the face. She cried out.

He pushed inside again and grunted as he focussed on fucking her mouth and throat.

'The Polaroids we took. Remember? Back when that was the only way to take dirty photos. You naked. You sucking my cock. I've spunked to those photos so much over the years. I didn't need them after a while because they're scorched into my memory.'

He withdrew again. She coughed and spluttered.

'You can take new photos!' she said, gasping, then winced in preparation for his hand, which arrived a split second later.

'Look at me. Don't stop looking at me.'

She did. Her face was a mess. Her eyes streamed with tears, sending black mascara lines down her cheeks. Her mouth and chin were covered in a froth of saliva.

He slapped his cock against her forehead, then rubbed it against her face--against her cheeks, against her chin.

He pulled back and began stroking, and grabbed her curls in his fist. She cried out.

'Taste my cum.'

Then it was his turn to cry out, as if in pain. He began spurting and quickly pushed his cock inside her mouth, before it slipped out, and his cock floated free, spurting over her face and over his hand clenching her hair.

When he stopped ejaculating, he pushed his cock back into her mouth and resumed fucking. She gagged.

Eventually he pulled out, released her hair and stood back.

It was quiet for a moment except for their breathing, which was quick and loud.

'I honestly thought I was going to pass out,' he said. 'That was-- That was intense. I haven't cum like that in years. Darling, are you okay?'

She looked up at him, smiling brightly, one eye shut because of sperm. He untied her and she gasped at the relief, rubbing her wrists and rotating her shoulders.

'Could you do me a favour? Can you get one of the towels? And also the Courvoisier?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Thanks.'

He delivered them to her. She wiped herself clean, then wiped his cock for him, before taking a long swig from the bottle.

'How was it?' he said. 'Were there any orange juice moments? I'm so sorry if I went too far.'

'No. It was amazing. The best I've had by far. You have a talent.'

She stood and they kissed in a slow lingering way.

She walked to the bed and said, matter of factly: 'I am very turned on. Would you mind if I masturbated again?'

'Not at all.'

'Thanks, darling.'

'What would you like me to do?'

'Stand there so I can look at you. Try not to talk.'

'Okay.'

She sat and then stood-up immediately with a hiss.

'My bottom is going to take a while to stop burning.'

He nodded.

'And I suspect I'll be tasting you in the back of my throat until the middle of next week.'

She gingerly lowered herself onto the mattress, and then lay flat. This time she didn't use the vibrator, but instead reached down to finger herself. She did so vigorously, her body creased and contorted, each finger movement squelching. Her eyes were mostly closed but occasionally she looked at him, hazily, as if grabbing just enough visual imagery to take back to the safety of her own little world.

He became hard again and knelt on the bed alongside her. He began stroking his cock at the point it was clear she was getting close to orgasm. She looked sideways at what he was doing and hissed, 'Yesssss!'

She came, her back arching so that she very nearly adopted the full Wheel yoga pose. This was his cue and, once she had flopped back down, he groaned and sent spurts of cum across her breasts and neck.

She looked down absently at the messy outcome but evidently it was enough to fire another orgasm inside her. She arched her back and bared her teeth, with a deep frown, not unlike if she'd just stubbed her toe.

'Enough!' she said. 'No more.'

'My balls actually ache. Same here.'

He passed her the towel, and she mopped herself dry, before he lay alongside her.

'I have a question,' she said.

'Hit me.'

'Why does your cock taste of McDonalds' burgers?'

'Ah. I dropped some on it when I was eating.'

'Oh yes.'

He stretched out his arm and she once nestled her head into his armpit and onto his chest.

'I still hate you,' she said.

'And I, you. I wish you'd never come into my life.'

He kissed the top of her head, accidentally wetting his nose with some cum from earlier.

'Really?' she said. 'You'd even throw away what we had when we were younger?'

'Yes. At the drop of a hat. If I could change history, then obviously I would make it so we didn't split up. And if that happened, I wouldn't throw that part of my life away, no. We could have got married. And then divorced a few years later, probably. But at least we would have run the course. That's the problem I've had for-- Well, for 30 years. What we had never ran its course.'

'Is that the problem? Is that all we must do? Could we just keep meeting up like this until whatever we have runs out? Until we've fucked each other so much, and in each and every way, that we don't care any longer? Until we're bored of each other?'

'The trouble is we're older. We're far more robust. Less volatile. We're far more accepting. More knowledgeable. We're not going to be thrown off course by some little thing that would otherwise break us apart. Can I ask something difficult?'

'Hit me.'

He frowned but continued anyway: 'Why did you dump me back then?'

'Because I didn't love you.'

'I know. I knew. But that shouldn't have mattered. You weren't capable of love. You said it yourself.'

'I thought I was. Or that I might be.'

'Right. And there's the perfect example of what I'm saying. If you could've been you, as you are now, you would know that you are indeed capable of love, but that it takes time. An amount of time that would've seemed inconceivable to us as the children we were, barely beyond our teenage years. That's the difference now. I love you for what you are, even more than I loved you back then. I think you're even more perfect than you were then. I don't think what we have now can run its course until one of us dies.'

'Everything you just said is so true. We've really fucked up, haven't we? We've done all the wrong things in exactly the right way.'

'Yes.'

'I love you and I cannot bear to be without you ever again.'

He kissed the top of her head again: 'And I, you.'

'And I hate you because of it.'

'And I, you.'

They listened to the ticking of the huge clock.

'I must shower,' he said. 'I can't go back home smelling like-- Well, it'd be good to be clean. But I want to do something first. Still in the shower, though.'

'What?'

He took a deep breath.

'I want to piss on you.'

'More sex? But I thought you said you had nothing left?'

'It's not sexual. Well, it is, and it isn't. I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense at all. But I hate you. I want to piss on you. On your face, on your breasts, on your body. 25 years. 25 years of longing and suffering and destroying my life. I want to spit on you, too. It would mean I could get the strength to leave this room, somehow.'

'My darling, I understand. Yes! It makes sense while making no sense. I want to piss on you, too. I want to squat over you, and take a long hard piss on your face. I hate you. Hate you, hate you, hate you! You have fucked-up my life. Twenty five years of pain, of carrying you with me, and today we've made it infinitely worse. What we have now is going to destroy my beautiful marriage and also the man I love back at home. I hate you. I fucking hate you.'

'Okay.'

'We are so fucked up.'

'Yes. It's very difficult to deny at this point. Do you want to grab the clean towel?'

She did so, and they went to the bathroom. He took his turn first, while she crouched on the shower pan on front of him. Sure enough, he did get the beginnings of an erection as he peed on her. Her face was stoical as the hot stream splashed against her. She didn't flinch. At the end, as the stream died back, he gently lifted her soaked head by the chin, leaned down, and spat in her face.

Then it was her turn. It took some manoeuvring, but eventually he lay on his back, his torso inside the shower cubicle, his long legs outside, while she stood above him. Her legs bowed, she pissed on him, staggering forward and back to ensure he was covered, before squatting so that the short curve of piss pelted his scrunched-up face. Once she was finished, she spat on him from above.

He got to his feet and turned on the shower, after some experimentation with the controls. After wetting themselves, they embraced tightly, then sobbed loudly like children for a moment, before washing each other with the vestiges of some shower gel they found. They towelled each other dry, and returned to the main room, where they dressed in silence.

'I'll be the one to ask,' he said, as she snapped shut her compact. 'What's going to happen now?'

They stood facing each other, like two colleagues chatting over the water cooler.

'I don't want to see you again,' she said. 'Ever.'

'And I don't want to see you again.'

'But I have to see you again. I already feel a horrible, horrible pain.'

'And I have to see you. I think I might be sick when I walk through that door. Actual sick, as in vomit. I'm not sure I can face the cold air outside.'

'Do we have to reach a decision? Can't we just continue to continue?'

He shrugged.

'It's as good a plan as any.'

'Let's just leave. We can sort it out another time.'

He nodded.

She said: 'You go first. I'll leave in a moment.'

He turned on his heels, and was gone.

'How do I look?' she said, to nobody.

She stood still, glancing around the room one last time. The silence was loud. The ticking of the clock began to feel like body blows. She had to leave immediately.

She pulled open the door and walked through.

The door closed with a quiet click.