The relationship had been about sex; that was what they had both understood – 'until we both... you know' he'd said, meaning 'find someone new', not 'until we end up falling in love with each other.'
She thought of how awful it would sound, the younger widow, Husband only dead a year, falls for the smooth talker that chat's and woo's his way into her bed less than three months after moving in together...
Suddenly her mind was back in the club, and all of the women. Looking askance at the first poor unfortunate widow that dared to 'shed the black and the weeds' and get back on with their lives. The general age of the clientele meant that this was more often than in an average situation. She thought of her 'friend' at the club, Linda; husband a former Navy man and sentenced to death by Asbestosis he'd contracted on board old ships before he'd even reached his 25th birthday. He'd died in same hospice that Jenny had – a shadow of the man he had been.
Almost two years later, and she had started to 'see' a man from work. Those appalling harridans of a temporary virtue given weight and life by their need to bitch about someone, would pronounce 'see' with such a hateful venom that you could almost smell the leather and hear the crack of the whip and the disgusting grunts and groans of two disrespectful people that should know better at their age.
She shuddered slightly thinking back to her own thoughts at the time. Those other women, content that they wouldn't be sat on their own every night missing the content of companionship, tearing the absent Linda to strips in a frenzy of reality TV nastiness.
But that was a crock of shit, she had no contact with any of those miserable bitches any longer and she couldn't use that excuse anymore.
She had admitted to him and herself that she had moved in because of the sex. OK it happened that she wanted to move out of the area she was in and desperately so. Doing the legal work that she did, meant that she knew house prices in the immediate vicinity and a two bed on that estate, even paid for, wasn't going to fund much in the way of a replacement for a late thirties, part-time working single mum. So when the opportunity to share bills and babysitting with someone she trusted was ideal, it just so happened that they also clicked in bed and were incredible together, both having an instinctive response to the other's needs.
And it wasn't just in bed, domestically they were a great team too, all of the children were happy and settled; the loss of either a mother or a father was understood and accepted. He didn't try to replace Brian and she didn't try to become Jenny to her niece and nephew.
One day, Robert had walked over to her and was chatting through some of his homework with her, moving closer as they talked. Out of the blue, he pushed his nose into her neck and breathed in.
"You smell like Mummy," he said, breathing in the perfume Jen must also have used. She was stunned by his statement and thought quickly.
"That's OK isn't it?" she asked.
"Yes," he said with grin, "it's a lovely smell."
"Well, everything about your mummy was lovely wasn't it." She said reigning in her emotions.
"Yes." He said with a grin, "Nanny says Mummy is with great nanny and baby George that died just after he was born. Do you think she went to look after baby George?"
With tears straining at the backs of her eyes, she quickly put pay to doubts that were set, however innocently, in his young brain.
"No darling," she said, "Mummy would have given everything to stay here with us; but in the end she was just too ill." She gave him a hug and pulled him onto her lap. "But knowing your mummy I bet she is looking after baby George along with great nanny Rose," she bent closer to him and whispered conspiratorially "Actually, I bet mummy and great nanny Rose are arguing over who gets to have the most cuddles, while the other one makes the tea."
Robert giggled and she gave him a squeeze, and they sat together chatting until Chris got home, neither of them in a rush to move.
Chris came into the kitchen to find all of them together while Colleen and Karen where playing camping in the large garden. She could feel the satisfaction pouring from him to see her so close with Robert.
Her emotions pulled again. He'd been in love with her sister not her! Her feelings for him were very close, she knew that. After all it must have been almost impossible to be that close to him in so many ways and not love him. But 'in love' with him?
Was she?
They'd all moved in together and they had all clicked into place. There had been a few problems at first, while boundaries were established and people got to know each other. The younger kids were all at the same school, and he dropped them off in the morning on his way to work. The atmosphere in the house was fantastic, better and warmer than it had been even when she had first married Brian and there were no kids to tire them out.
Chris could work an eight hour day, go to the gym, be home at half five or six and still have a smile on his face as he helped with the housework.
He insisted they have a dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer, in fact any machine that could possible make life easier for them all; insistence was necessary as for some reason she found herself repeating Brian's twin mantras of 'a little hard work, and soap and water never hurt anyone' and 'it only takes a few minutes'. Chris's reply had been, 'well you can do as much washing up as you like, I'm having a dishwasher'.
And that had been that; Karen and Robert automatically put there crockery and cutlery into it and Dan and Colleen followed suit. Soon even she got used to the sudden automation of another part of their domestic world.
Brian would have hated it, and would have grumbled about the waste and laziness of such a thing. Chris didn't even consider any other option, and it did free up more time, and as she got to know him and their children, not forgetting herself all over again, she began to realise what a fantastic thing free time was.
Chris would help when asked to help with homework without Brian's customary snarl, didn't balk when asked for a lift somewhere and was kindness and generosity itself. On occasions he even read stories to the little ones when he put them to bed at night – Brian had never done that, he might have missed Coronation Street or Eastenders.
Once the kids were all in bed she had snuggled up to Chris and they cuddled, even to the point of falling asleep on his shoulder in his arms, or with her head on his lap; even after 16 years with Brian she could count on the fingers of one hand how many times he'd let her do that. Once the kids came along, he'd retreated into an arm chair by the fire and the cuddles disappeared – not in front of the children.
In this new house they only had sofas, and they had christened two out of the three of them.
One evening, she woke to his coughing, and realised that he too had nodded off. Her face was on his thigh, his hand resting gently and lovingly on her shoulder. She felt his erection through his jeans and decided she should help him with it. Tugging gently at the zip she slowly, so very slowly, eased the sensitive tip of him out and wrapped her lips around it, gently sliding her mouth up and down the small exposed area.
It was enough to wake him, and he sat up with a slight start, enough to force the rest of his erection out into the open, and her grasp. She rolled onto her front and carried on sucking until she gratefully received his come in her mouth. He of course said it was only fair he reciprocate and did so, and being Chris, managed to strip her completely and wonderfully naked into the bargain, warm skin against the cool leather, using his long and skilful fingers, lips and tongue to prolong one orgasm into a stream of multiples that left her gasping yet wonderfully and achingly satisfied.
No matter how much they pleased each other sexually and emotionally her mind would always go back to Brian and how different these two men in her life had been.
Chalk and cheese. Brian was a only a few years younger than her Dad. But while her Dad stayed young and contemporary, Brian seemed to age both mentally and physically from the fun man she had fallen for, and at great speed once he had his required 'wife'.
As Brian got 'older' he became a committee member at the Legion Club in town, one of his regular haunts since his youth and leaving the Parachute Regiment. He had kind of wandered into the painting and decorating/jobbing handyman trade and had regular work from many of the local builders and some well off regulars that could afford someone else to look after their homes. Brian had even come home one day with an offer for her to be housekeeper at one of them; pin money he'd said, no need for her to go to that nasty office with all those solicitors. Her advocacy training had taught her to ignore stupid questions like that.
They'd met when he was employed to repaint the office she was working in as part of her degree course during the summer break. She had just broken up with a bloke who she thought was the one, and it had hurt her.
Brian was older, wiser, smoother than the boys at university and just 'had a way about him'. His was tall, rugged and had that 'squaddie' sense of humour she had grown up with. As she sat in her room sixteen years on she thought about it as a solicitor and not lover. He was a father figure, Freud would have been proud.
But at the time, she convinced herself that he was the one for her. He promised to take care of her, support her and see to her every whim. He owned his own house, mortgage free, but it was in the part of town she recognised as being where most of the legal aid clients came from. It was a two bedroom, but when the children they spoke of came along they would have to move up surely. They got engaged.
She finished that years tough exams and decided to take him up on his advice and take a year out of study to get married. Even her normally passive father had advised her not to and to finish college – even for just a year. Jennifer her younger sister still studying A' levels with a view to a medicine said not to, this bloke was ages older than her, almost as old as Dad, it was a rebound thing, live together for a while but not marriage.
