All was quiet in the Woolpack. The cleaners had gone. Diane the landlady was away, leaving just Moira and Marlon alone to get ready for the busy lunchtime opening.
Whilst Marlon prepared his lunchtime menu, Moira was busy stacking the bar shelves and ensuring the pumps were working for the draught beers.
"Want a coffee?" Moira shouted from the bar.
From the kitchen came the reply "I could kill for one, thanks, milk and two sugars."
Moira made the brew and carried the cups into the kitchen. Sitting down at the small table, she looked at her workmate, who always seemed to have the cares of the world on his shoulders, but today seemed really morose.
"What's the matter babe?" Moira asked in her soft Scottish lilt, "you look really down today."
Marlon looked up with his hangdog expression, a tear in his eye and said "today would have been my wedding anniversary, if I still had a wife."
Moira looked at him and said "Oh Marlon, I am so sorry, I didn't want to pry, do you want to talk?"
For the next few minutes he poured his heart out, telling how Tricia had been killed in an explosion in the very pub they now worked in, and Donna had left him for another man. He and Donna would have been married seven years today.
"So one since Donna then?" asked Moira.
"No, three years and no one, I have not even kissed another woman, never mind sex, I am a 40 years old monk, apart from a monk probably gets more than I do."
Without thinking, but feeling incredibly sorry for him, Moira going against every principle she held on the sanctity of marriage, could not help herself and leaned over and kissed Marlon softly on the lips.
He responded as any man would who had not been near a woman for three years. He kissed her back fiercely, his tongue forcing open her teeth and finding hers responding with equal ferocity. His hand reached for her breast as he broke the kiss to apply his lips to her neck, Moira moaned softly as Marlon's tongue ran up and down her neck. she pulled his head up and again kissed him with a passion.
Moira was caught in a dilemma, for 20 years she had been with no other man but her husband John , but the situation she found herself in with such spontaneous sexual tension, overrode any negative thoughts.
Marlon lifted her sweater and slipped his hand under her bra, caressing her breast and rubbing the taut nipple.