Three days into the regime working with Alan on below decks conversion work on the former fishing boat Miranda, and then setting up pottery production in the studio now blotting the landscape somewhat on part of the frontage of Alan Meadows residential plot, Lydia sighed.
It was time to come clean, to cease living a lie.
She delivered her confession that evening when she and her host and now lover were sitting with drinks on the aft deck of the 62-foot Miranda. That large vessel on the hard provided a further blot on the residential site that was bounded on three sides by attractive undergrowth of hillside forest.
Alan said, "Another great day of progress on the refit."
"Indeed and you have been so good to me that I can't bear to continue my deception any longer."
He asked steadily, "What are you about to reveal you were or still are married?"
"Yes, the former."
"Don't look surprised, it was only a guess. I mean I'd wondered why a woman of thirty-six was still living at home with her family."
"Well I hope telling you this doesn't change our relationship but if it does so be it. I feel the need to hold nothing back from you as I'm sure we both want an open relationship and so here goes," Lydia said, settling into her narrative...
* * *
Three years ago a professional photographer and author of three books on potters and pottery, Lydia Kennedy (33), who'd spent most of teenage years in Houston, Texas, and then much of her life after that living in a variety of locations with her family, married Kevin Stephen Bishop (35) at Douglas City 400 miles north of Arundel Sound where she now lived three years later.
She'd immigrated to the country three years earlier after winning a position to teach glazing techniques to ceramic arts diploma students at a large Polytechnic Institute.
A year later her father Ronald applied for a position as a line manager at a petroleum refinery near Douglas City. He negotiated the position as his final placement by the corporation before his retirement on the condition that the corporation he'd been with for most of his working life supported his application to immigrate to that country with his wife and younger daughter.
Lydia caught up with her family most weekends after their arrival because the polytechnic and the refinery were only a little over 100 miles apart.
During one weekend at Douglas City, Lydia and sister Olivia went surfing immediately after an easterly storm. The beach was almost at the point of being closed to swimming and surfing because the surf during the outgoing tide was becoming rather treacherous.
The sisters were trained swimmers and revelled in the conditions and they heard the surf club siren go, warning everyone out of the water.
They were paddling across a rip when Oliva heard a cry for help. They looked back and saw two teenage female swimmers in trouble.
With little effort the two sisters paddled back and pulled one of the swimmers on to their board.
They then both caught a wave and expertly managed the extra weight on their board to be powered back to the beach by the same wave.
The hysterical mothers called for medical help and a patrolling newspaper photographer and reporter arrived with the responding club medics carrying oxygen kits and within minutes both girls were pronounced a little water-logged but okay.
The relieved mothers dubbed the Kennedy sisters heroes.
The newspaper team had found nothing else of interest and soon the sisters were being photographed and interviewed along with the rescued girls and their mothers.
Just as the news team were leaving Lydia called them back and said she didn't wish to be named or identified with any heroic rescue because such a claim was phony. Bringing the distressed teenagers in had been carried out effortlessly.
The reporter called his editor to talk to Lydia, and that was her first contact with Kevin Bishop. Kevin told her the surf club was on the eve of its annual call for public donations to assist financing its operations and a heroic rescue had come with perfect timing.
Lydia relented and next morning the
Douglas Daily
had a big front page photo of the four young women and the two mothers and a screaming headline, 'Heroic Sisters Save Teens from Drowning'.
She flared that editor and his team wouldn't know the difference between a hero and their own asshole.
Her mother yelled to stop being so disgusting and Lydia said sorry the A-hole word just slipped out.
Shortly before noon there was a knock at the front door.
Lydia who was helping her father paint the dining room walls called to Olivia that some A-hole was ringing the doorbell.
There was no reply and her father said Kate and Olivia had taken some baking next door to old Mrs Peters.
Lydia went to the door forgetting she was wearing a tea-towel around her hair to keep paint drips from invading her hair, no bra under one of her mother's t-shirts and her smallest sister's discarded cut-off shorts that gave her a tummy bulge and showed the outline of her pussy.
The guy at the door looked at her breasts when saying good morning Lydia.
"Good morning. Can you make it snappy; we are painting."
"Yeah I can see that. You have a big streak of wet paint down your right cheek. Here allow me."
He grabbed her T-shirt and jerked it up to her cheek, totally exposing her left breast.
The idiot wiped her cheek and looked hard at the breast before pulling the shirt back into place and without apologising for exposing her or saying something like nice tit, he said he was Kevin Bishop and had arrived to invite her for lunch.
Lydia said why and Kevin looked her straight in the eye and said because she appeared to have everything he wanted in a woman and such women were as rare as ice-blocks in a desert.
She laughed and he became bolder and said she had nice tits and instead of hitting the A-hole she said to Kevin to go to the kitchen and pour himself coffee while she finished the wall she was working on and then would change and go to lunch with him.
He pleaded to her not to change and asked why not and Kevin said he'd never before gone out with female apparently wearing only sneakers, tight shorts and a shirt and a stupid hat.
Lydia said god he was rude and that made him a bit of a stand out. She said that looking at his crotch and he looked embarrassed and looked down to check.
They hit it off well and she met his family and eventually she spend some weekends in bed with Kevin at his family home and he spent time at her family home after her mother finally relented about Lydia having a guy sleep over.
Lydia became pregnant, probably because of a split in a condom, and she and Kevin found themselves overjoyed about that and decided they should marry.
Six weeks into the marriage she and Kevin were driving home from the wedding of a friend of his. Lydia was driving because she hadn't been drinking alcohol.
A driver in a stolen car came out of a side road without observing the compulsory stop and crashed into their side of their car, killing Kevin,
The huge impact pushed in Kevin's door to crush his chest and burst his aorta. Lydia received minor cuts from flying glass and bruising from her seat-belt and the driver's air bag as it caught the side of her face as she slid sideways.
Later that night while in hospital under observation, Lydia lost the baby.
As a result of that double tragedy, Lydia sank into depression and for days only left her bed to go to the bathroom. She was adamant she never wished to return to the house she and Kevin had purchased with a big mortgage and it was sold.
Over the weeks she showed no signs of responding to medication and was admitted to a special facility for more intense treatment where she stayed for two months. She returned home showing improved energy and mobility but remained mentally listless.
Gradually Lydia engaged in conversation more naturally and her concentration had improved and that was encouraging for her family. She resigned from her Polytechnic employment, winning the tussle over that with her mother by continually stating she wished to leave that place as it reminded her about her association with Kevin too vividly.
