It's hard to pinpoint where it all started. Where it finished, we'll come to later. It may have been when we got the digital SLR and I was persuaded to allow Jonny, my husband, to take some shots of me in my finest lingerie. Don't get me wrong, I was happy enough with the results, I thought I looked hot, sexy and sophisticated. He took them in black and white mode, so they looked quite artistic as well. I wouldn't want them on the walls when people came round though. They were for me and him. I thought I might put them on view when I was old and grey to show how hot I used to be, but as I'm young and blonde (ish) at the moment they stay private.
It may have been when we got the 2 Terabyte home server as part of our home entertainment system, all our pictures, films, music and recorded TV shows were saved centrally for access anywhere in the house or, with the right password, anywhere in the world.
It may even have been when Jonny got involved with rebuilding the changing rooms at the village football club seven years ago, because that's where he met Rich, now one of his closest mates.
Jonny's mid-thirties, a year older than me, he works as a civil engineer for the highways agency, building and maintaining roads and bridges around the southwest of England. His unruly black hair is starting to grey a bit here and there, detracting a bit from his overall boyish look. I think he likes it as it gives him a bit more gravitas at work. I miss the boyish look but tease him about turning into my very own silver fox. He keeps active through work and goes to the gym a few times a week as well as playing Sunday league football, so he's still got the athletic build he had when I first met him as a twenty-two-year-old fresh out of uni, although he's been putting a lot of time into work lately and the Gym's taken a bit of a back seat over the past six months.
I'm Louise, I work in the IT support team at the Southwest Regional NHS Trust, keeping the computers working in the hospitals, health centres, ambulance stations and GPs surgeries across three counties. It's not the best paid job in the world, I could double what I get if I went to one of the banks in London or Bristol, but it gets me out and about and it's a job that really makes a difference and the satisfaction from that is worth the extra money.
I'm not the only girl in the department, there are twenty people in IT and eight of us are female, including the director, Carol Wainwright. There are still a few blokes in their forties with straggly beards and wolf or dragon T shirts hiding in the shadows, enraged at the lack of accuracy in the second film in the Lord of the Rings series but they are in the minority these days and most of them are now capable of speech in the presence of a woman.
I prefer Zumba and Dancercise classes to keep fit, one of the benefits of working in a big health care organisation is having subsidised wellbeing opportunities and I normally took a couple of classes a week at work, along with yoga in the village community centre.
Rich is workshop manager at the local Renault dealership, he trained as a mechanic and is still qualified but these days spends his time in a corporate shirt and tie not overalls. He gets his grease fix maintaining a couple of old motorbikes, don't ask me what they are because (1) I have no interest and so don't really care and (2) he keeps changing them so while it could be a Honda and a Yamaha today, next week it could be a (googles motorbike names) Ducati and an Indian.
Rich invariably had bits of motorbike in the kitchen, he used the dishwasher to clean engine parts and often had a frame in varying states of assembly in the living room. You may be surprised to learn he's single at the moment, girls came and went but none of them had ever come close to moving into chateau Rich. There's only so much grease and engine oil a girl can put up with in her home.
He and Jonny were heading off to Ireland for a weekend, Rich's dad was from Cork, and he'd instilled a lifelong passion for Gaelic football in his son, and there was some international event against Australia at Croke Park which they'd scored a couple of tickets for, so off they were going for a weekend of Guinness, stuffing the Aussies, more Guinness, tea and cake at Bewley's and more Guinness. My role was to deliver them to Bristol airport for a 9 am flight on Friday and to collect them at 2 pm on Sunday, other than that I had the house to myself.
To be honest, I was quite looking forward to it. I'd arranged for a couple of girlfriends to come over on Friday evening for a catch up with a couple of bottles of Frascati and a takeaway, plus Jonny really needed a break, he'd been under a lot of pressure at work for a while now.
As the boys' flight was earlyish on Friday Rich was staying over on Thursday evening, I had a Zumba class at the hospital in Gloucester and was persuaded to pick up a curry on the way home. Jonny and Rich would start the evening with a "Cheeky quick one in the Lamb, honest Lou, it'll just be the one."
I was not shocked when I got home to find the quick one had turned into a quick three and I was faced with two giggly but amiable drunks. I'd anticipated their lack of will power and grabbed half a dozen cans of Guinness and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc along with the curry.
I'm not a massive beer drinker, and something as strong tasting as Guinness was well out of my comfort zone but I was persuaded to try a glass with my biryani, it wasn't as bad as I expected and as I topped up with a second glass Rich seemed very pleased with himself telling me "You see Lou, it's like they say. Once you've been Black, you'll never go back."
He and Jonny thought this was the funniest thing they'd ever heard, I gave them an indulgent smile, suggested that perhaps that wasn't what the saying referred to and swapped to Sauvignon Blanc.
After we'd eaten and all the dishes were in our carburettor free dishwasher we moved through to the living room, which since we had the extension built is on the first floor above the double garage, it gives us an enormous room that I'm not convinced Jonny didn't design simply so he could have the world's biggest TV without it looking out of place. Honestly, I kid you not, it's like being at a Multiplex.
We settled into the sofas and Jonny fired up the screen, "Rich you've got to see this. We went to the county show last weekend and there were all these classic cars and bikes. Look at this lot."
He took hold of the remote and in his drunken state tried to navigate to the photos on the server, semi-successfully as it turned out. He got to the photo files but instead of opening the folder marked 'County Show' he clicked on the one underneath that was 'Lou, Hot'. Before I could grab the handset off him the first image popped up on the screen. Did I mention it's the biggest TV in the world? 85-inch, 4K, Ultra High Definition. And there was me, in a black and white image wearing a black Basque with stockings, suspenders, four-inch heels and a tiny thong. My boobs were barely held in by the sheer 34 c cups, if I hadn't been posed with one arm folded across my front, squeezing them in, my nipples would have shown through as if I was naked.
"Jonny, what the fuck are you doing? Get that off." I was mortified, glowing crimson with embarrassment. Rich was dumbstruck and Jonny was genuinely dismayed, apologising over and over as he tried to change the image, eventually switching the TV off, which at least got the image off the screen. I grabbed the remote off him, annoyed but prepared to believe it was a genuine mistake.
"Right. As the only sober and IT literate person here, I'll take control of this" I announced and switched the TV back on again. Of course, the server was still set to the previous file, and I reappeared in all my sex-goddess artistic black and white glory. In terms of breaking the embarrassment that was probably for the best. I'd made a similar mistake to Jonny, I should have selected input before activating the screen, so couldn't stay angry.
Rich looked over at me and approvingly said "I think you look very nice, if that helps?". I thanked him but confirmed to no one's surprise that it didn't actually help. I navigated out of my embarrassment and into the county show where there were about a dozen pictures of a very shiny red Ducati and a few Harley-Davidson custom bikes. I had a feeling they weren't the image everyone enjoyed the most from the evening and sat there in a confliction of embarrassment at being caught out and pride in how hot I looked. The Guinness ran out shortly afterwards and as we had to be out of the door at around five thirty the next morning, we all turned in shortly after eleven.
The numbers on my bedside alarm glowed green, something had woken me up at two thirteen. It couldn't have been Jonny, he was making enough noise snoring to raise the dead, a skinful of beer does that to him. Something told me it was from outside our bedroom.
I rolled out of bed and quietly padded across to the door, opening it softly I looked down the hallway. I thought I saw a shadow pass into the living room. Thinking to myself that if it was a burglar, I could shout loud enough to wake up Jonny, and Rich for that matter, but if it was my imagination I didn't want to look stupid, I tiptoed down to the half open entrance.