“Greg, what are you doing?” The familiar voice on the other end of the telephone belonged to my next door neighbours’ daughter, Kate.
“Hi Princess! Not very much at the moment.” Which, despite my pleasure at hearing from her, was kind of depressing. I was a contract database programmer working from home and I liked to be busy. I had just finished one job and was waiting for the specification for the next one to arrive. It was due in two weeks time. “Why? What’s up?”
“Oh, I’m bored. Mom’s taken Kevin to in-line hockey and then she’s going to the hairdresser and the supermarket. She’ll be gone for hours. Do you want to come round and play Monopoly with me?”
My spirits lifted. Kate and I had been great buddies ever since I bought the house next door to her parents ten years before. In the early days I had “baby-sat” her and her brother on many, many occasions. Most often together, but sometimes Kate on her own. As a seven-going-on-eight-year-old she treated me like some kind of big live teddy bear that she could climb all over, and bounce on, and occasionally cuddle.
Then, about eighteen months after I moved in, both her maternal grandparents, who had lived in our town, died within months of each other. From that point on Kate noticeably became more affectionate towards me. Not that I was Grandfather material mind - I was only twenty-seven at the time - but I guess I seemed pretty ancient to an eight-year-old! Then, when puberty arrived our relationship changed again, as she became “grown up” and more conscious of her body.
“Yeah, Ok. I’ll be around in a couple of minutes.” I shouldn’t really have gone. Even though I wasn’t working, I still had things to do around the house, like washing-up and ironing and vacuuming. I had lived alone ever since my divorce and things around the house tended to slide while I had a contract. But Kate was Kate and I was more than a little bit enamoured with her. So, when Kate beckoned, I usually ran.
She was waiting for me and opened the front door immediately when I arrived. I didn’t even have to knock. Kate shut the door behind me and, smiling shyly took my hand and led me into their lounge where the Monopoly board and things were already set out on the floor. “You sit there, Greg, and I’ll be over here.”
I looked across the board as we settled into our positions opposite each other. She looked delightful in a simple tight-fitting white top with a scooped neckline that just showed the very top of her swelling young breasts and a loose, pale blue cotton skirt that clung to her legs and came halfway up her slim thighs. My, you look good enough to eat! I thought to myself as she modestly arranged her skirt.
Kate was becoming a truly lovely young woman. When she was younger she had usually let her long blond hair hang loose. But recently, she had taken to wearing it up, showing off the fragile-looking column of her neck, her shell-like ears and the perfect line of her jaw. She was also smart enough to know that she didn’t need to plaster heaps of makeup on to enhance her appearance like so many of her contemporaries seemed to do. As a consequence her skin was exquisite. Kate had never been plagued by puppy fat either, always having a dainty figure – now with high, small breasts, a slim waist and a tight rounded bum, and long, shapely legs. Imagine Anna Kournikova with finer, more aquiline features and a trimmer bust line and you’re almost there. But, unlike Kournikova, Kate’s eyes are so dark a brown they are almost black.
I must have been looking at her silently for quite a while. “Is something wrong?” Kate’s eyes searched mine with concern, a slight frown creasing her brow.
“Oh no! I was just thinking how beautiful you are.” She blushed pinkly and looked down at the Monopoly board. “Hey, Kate! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“It’s Okay… “ Kate looked back up at me and smiled that shy smile again. “It’s just that no-one’s ever said that to me before.”
“Well I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world to think so. I’m just lucky enough to feel I can say something like that to you without causing offence. Besides, all young women should be told that they’re beautiful – every one has something. Not many of you are ever told how lovely you are when it counts the most.”
Kate smiled once more, and blushed an even deeper pink, “Thank you… Greg, can I ask you something? It’s very personal, but don’t be upset…”
“Ask away.”
“Well, since you are such a nice, charming person… “
“Wow! Thank you Princess! But not good looking as well?”
“Shut up a minute and let me finish!”
“Sorreee!”
“You are such a nice, charming person… and handsome too! How come your marriage broke up like it did?”
This was the one question I certainly hadn’t expected! It really set me back on my heels. My wife and I - my ex-wife and I - had only been married two years when she left me. Up to that point our marriage had seemed to be good. Okay, we’d had the usual problems with money and stuff that most people starting out on a new life together have. And the sex wasn’t all that great. Leah had been a virgin when we wed and she seemed to “suffer” sex rather than participate wholeheartedly. But, apart from that, everything else was fine.
Then, one Friday evening after work, she went out to “cruise” the gay bars for fun with a bunch of girls from the office. I never found out the exact details, but, according to one of her friends, some apparition in leathers persuaded Leah onto the dance floor in one of the bars and, just like that, my wife discovered that she was lesbian. Two weeks later she took off with a bull dyke who weighed forty pounds more than I did and who drove a Harley Davidson chopper. I filed for a divorce shortly afterwards, which was uncontested, and shifted cities to where I lived now.
I gave Kate a brief resume, leaving out the bit about the so-so sex.
“That sucks! You must have been really upset!”
“Yes and no. It was one hell of a shock. But Leah finding out about her sexuality like that must have saved a lot more heartache for both of us later, especially if we’d have had children. There was one good thing that came out of it though.”
“What was that?”
Uncertain of her likely reaction, I didn’t look at her, “Well, I’d never have got to know you… and, of course, your Mom and Dad and Kevin. ”
“Hmmmm.” Kate was silent for a moment. Then she asked, “But weren’t you terribly jealous?”