A Day Trip to Gimberley

Flora was annoyed. She and her boyfriend Henry had arranged this weekend away in order to try and save their ailing relationship, and she had been expecting to spend two days in bed, attempting to kindle some passion in their ailing sex life, or, at the very least, give him a clearer idea of where her clitoris was. However, he'd roused her early on Saturday morning, not with a nice, firm erection, which she had seen all too little of lately, but with two tickets to a nearby living history museum. She gaped at him, suddenly realising that he hadn't realised by how quite thin a string their relationship was dangling.

"Are you kidding?" she asked. "We're meant to be having a romantic weekend away."

"I know, and it will be romantic. It's set in acres of beautiful countryside, and it's such a beautiful day," Henry replied earnestly.

"But we said we'd explore the city, go to some bars, have a nice dinner. Not look at some rusty old steam tractors, or whatever this is."

"We can do that this evening. You'll love this, I promise. You always said you wanted to time travel, and this is the nearest you'll ever get to stepping back into the past."

He put a leaflet in her hand and then got out of the bed and went to the bathroom. She looked at the cover, which read 'Gimberley Living Museum' across the top in an old-fashioned font. Beneath it was a picture of a young couple in what looked like Victorian dress, standing in front of a steam train. Her gaze lingered on them for a moment. The woman had vivid blue eyes, dark brown hair and a pleasantly swelling chest beneath her white blouse. The man had kind brown eyes, a virile-looking moustache and a smart suit. Flora sighed. She bet they would have a great sex life, if they weren't imaginary people played by museum staff.

She opened the leaflet and started reading: 'Gimberley is an open-air living history museum that vividly brings the past to life. It recreates life in England during various periods, from the 1800s to the 1950s. Gimberley immerses visitors in working towns, villages, farms, and transportation systems, all staffed by costumed interpreters who demonstrate daily life, trades, and customs from each era.'

She pursed her lips. That did sound up her street, she had to admit. Flora loved history and was a guilty fan of trashy historical romance novels, becoming flustered and turned on as she read about all those feisty heroines with heaving bosoms and darkly handsome heroes with tragic pasts, stiff upper lips and even stiffer - in her fevered mind at least - cocks. She was well aware the books were clichéd and silly, and yet she couldn't help but long to be in one of them. Her mind returned to the last one she had read, where a prim duchess had had her coach held up by a masked highwayman. After insisting she remove her jewellery and expensive gown he had been so aroused by her voluptuous body that he had roughly taken her by the side of the road, ostensibly against her will but she had quickly responded with enthusiasm. Flora was lost in a daydream of being bent over a carriage wheel while hot, excited hands pulled her knickers down when Henry reappeared from the bathroom.

The fantasy vanished as Flora considered her boyfriend of three years. They had met at university while both doing PhDs, Henry's on computer science and Flora's on early modern literature. When they first met she had been charmed by his slightly geeky demeanour, and had liked the fact he wasn't a total nerd like a lot of her fellow students: he rowed for the university team and was well-built and muscular. She had given him her number after a social event for PGRs and had liked the fact that he had been too shy to phone her for a while. At least, that's what he claimed at the time: it later transpired that he just hadn't bothered as his mind too full of the importance of his thesis, a state of affairs which set the tone for their subsequent relationship.

Where he had at first seemed quiet and bashful it turned out he was self-involved and diffident, and while she had initially enjoyed his enthusiasm for his studies, it slowly dawned on her that his main passion in life was endlessly talking about himself. Henry turned out to be egotistical and boring, and stopped rowing once he left the university, so she couldn't even just enjoy his body anymore. Flora wasn't shallow, and knew that there was more to sex than muscles and a large penis, which Henry wasn't blessed with, but he was as self-absorbed in bed as he was out of it, and he'd never even attempted to make her come. She chided herself for faking it the first time because she wanted to please him. He felt like he didn't need to try and she had been foolish enough to let him off the hook because she was in the first flush of their relationship and thought the sex would improve. It hadn't.

So why didn't she finish with him? She constantly asked herself the same question. Partly it was the sunk cost fallacy: she had invested three years of her late-twenties in him and didn't want to have wasted her time. Her friends were starting to get engaged, a couple had got married, one was pregnant. Though Flora was unsure whether she ever wanted any of those things for herself, she was at the same time aware of the societal pressure to meet those milestones, whatever she had been led to believe about women not having to conform to these things in the 21st century. Flora considered herself bisexual, having wildly enjoyed several one-night stands with women, and a year-long relationship while doing her degree with an intense Spanish girl called Isabel. But she liked men too, and had always had the nagging feeling that she should please her parents by getting married and settling happily down, like they had.

The other reason was that she lacked self esteem. She knew she was intelligent, funny and accomplished, and when she looked in the mirror she saw an attractively curvy 30-year-old with glossy red hair, friendly green eyes and clear, shining skin. And yet, on the inside, she still felt like the frumpy little Flo she'd been at secondary school, with braces and teenage chub and spots, who had been ignored by boys and girls alike because she liked books and painting, rather than drinking White Lightning and snogging. At university she'd blossomed and discovered her enthusiasm for getting drunk and kissing people both sexes in dark clubs, but it was hard to forget the humiliation of her teenage years and feel like the adult she actually was. Henry was little help here. What she needed was someone who told her she was beautiful and sexy; what she got was a man who found out from her brother that her childhood nickname had been 'Speckyface', and called her it incessantly.

So, she knew she should end it, but hadn't managed to do so. The thought of continuing the relationship filled her with dread, but so did the thought of being single. However, one thing that was tipping her ever closer to finally pulling the plug was the suspicion that he was getting ready to propose. The humiliation, for both of them, if she turned him down was mortifying to imagine, and in the darker recesses of her mind should could see herself agreeing, just so it wasn't incredibly awkward for both of them. To allay the panic of having to make the decision, she had arranged this weekend for them in the hope that she would fall back in love with Henry and everything would magically be fine. Flora wasn't an idiot and knew she was just delaying the inevitable, and now he had suggested this odd little day trip, on top of everything else.

Henry picked up a towel and returned to the bathroom, closing the door and turning on the shower. Flora glanced at the leaflet again. She started idly considering whether the couple were about to get on the train. She imagined them settling into a compartment, sitting next to each other and surrounded by other people. Perhaps they were on their honeymoon, she thought, in the first flush of lust, barely able to keep their hands off of each other. The man would tuck a blanket round them both as night fell and the compartment become gloomy. The woman would slide her hand onto his knee, then, when she was sure nobody was paying attention, up towards his groin.

She would slowly unbutton his fly, aware that his cock was already hard, had been hard since they'd sat down so close together. Slowly, stealthily, she would slide her hand into his trousers, closing her fingers around the warm flesh of his penis, feeling it get even harder as she began to gently stroke it. Flora slid her own fingers down under the waste band of her knickers, her cunt already wet. She and Henry hadn't had sex for weeks, and she was growing increasingly desperate to be fucked. She moved her middle finger rhythmically around her clit as she imagined the women in the train getting wetter and she touched her husband. After a couple of minutes or so she was getting close to coming, imagining the man silently ejaculating into the woman's hand, when the bathroom door banged open.

She stopped suddenly and guiltily, but Henry hadn't noticed what she was doing. He started putting on his clothes and muttered, 'You better get dressed, we need to leave in ten minutes.' Frustrated and horny, Flora wouldn't even have time to finish herself off in the shower. She sighed and got up, sure the day was going to be annoying from start to finish.