Seen from the skylight window, the back-to-back suburban rear gardens were a tessellation of wooden boxes. Slightly different shapes and sizes. Slightly different heights of fence separating them. Each a neat, closed cell. Some with children's paddling pools and trampolines. Some with decking or paving. Some with what Adrian considered to be stupidly expensive-looking high-tech gas barbecues. If you're going to cook on gas you may as well do it in the kitchen, thought Adrian, bitterly. Adrian was much given to bitter thoughts since Stephanie had left him within days of them completing their grand project: the conversion of their loft space into an elegant yet cosy second living room that - with the futon sofa bed - could double as a spacious guest bedroom. Chris. The bastard's name was bastard Chris. Bastard Chris with his own bastard IT consultancy and his bastard villa in bastard Tuscany. Bastard.
So Adrian stood in the elegant, cosy and very empty loft room and looked out of the partly-open skylight window onto the sunlit honeycomb of back gardens. Amazing, the difference in view, just one floor higher. Open countryside not far away - fields, clumps of trees, pretty in a low key sort of way. The aerial view of the gardens, seeing over the tops of the high fences. His seemed to be the only house on the estate with skylight windows. He felt a childlike excitement at the thought that nobody would look up and see him seeing them. Not that there was much to see at the moment. Still, there were always the birds, although nothing very exotic visited this corner of English suburbia. Adrian picked up his binoculars and focused on the chaffinch that was fussing around the bird table in his and Stephanie's - no, his - garden. The bird hopped, pecked at some seeds, stopped still as if startled, then abruptly flew up and away towards the open fields, over the gardens. Adrian tried to track it but it was too quick. As he swept the binoculars across the landscape another movement caught his eye, in the garden diagonally opposite his. He lowered the binoculars. Just a patio door opening.
From the door emerged a woman, carrying a folding sun lounger. She set the lounger up in a sun-trap corner of her patio, close to a high fence. She went indoors and came out again, this time carrying a towel and a book. She was wearing a red sun dress which she pulled off over her head to reveal a white bikini. She settled herself on her sun lounger and began to read.
Adrian's excitement at his unique vantage point mixed with a more uncomfortable thrill. Was it somehow wrong to look at her? The more so as she was oblivious to his gaze? He looked away, then back. She was black, with short hair. Her sunglasses hid her eyes. Hard to tell how old. Late twenties, maybe? Good figure. Really good figure, actually, as far as he could tell while she was lying on her back, which is not necessarily a flattering pose for the female form. The binoculars. Should he use the binoculars? How wrong would that be? She would never know. And it no longer mattered what Stephanie might think.
He picked up the binoculars. His hands trembled slightly as he focused them on the reclining woman. Her full lips were slightly parted as she concentrated on her book. Her hands were slim, with nails painted something dark. No rings. She was holding the book in such a way that it and her arms largely concealed her chest. Her bikini-clad breasts. Adrian gulped. Panned the binoculars down her body. Her belly was toned and taut, but not skinny. A piercing adorned her navel. Her hips were wide, but did not look fat or heavy. Her legs seemed long in relation to her height, with athletic-looking thighs.
She placed the book down. Those breasts. On the large side, definitely. Falling slightly to either side of her chest under their own weight. Real, then. The bikini was just two triangles of cloth with a halter neck. Stephanie had always insisted on underwired and moulded cups in her bikini tops. Once you were D cup or above, she would say, those flimsy bikinis were just exhibitionist. And what's wrong with that, Adrian used to think. But not say.
For a moment, Adrian lowered the binoculars and looked down. Come on, he told himself. Look at yourself. Ogling the neighbours. Get a grip, man. Go and do the washing up or something useful.
One more look, though. Just one.
She had turned over and was lying on her front. The bikini briefs stretched over her magnificent round, prominent buttocks. Adrian carried on looking for a long time. Then she suddenly looked up towards the half-open patio door, got up, and walked inside. Adrian suspected she had heard the phone or doorbell. Ah well. The washing up beckoned.
That night, Adrian had to work hard to focus on memories of good times with Stephanie as he masturbated in bed. Images of his neighbour's glorious arse kept intruding.
****
Week 1. Sunday afternoon.
There were other things Adrian could have spent his time on, but somehow he ended up in the loft again with his binoculars. About the same time as yesterday, the woman appeared again. Same routine. Lounger out. Sundress off. Recline with book. A red bikini this time, but the same style as the white one. She read for a bit. Adrian watched. No pretence of birdwatching. He gazed steadily, hungrily at his beautiful neighbour in her bikini.
After about ten minutes, she sat up and looked around. It looked as if she was working out whether she could be seen where she lay, from the adjoining houses. Interesting point. The fences around her probably blocked the view from ground and first floor windows. She paused for a moment, as if thinking. Looked around again. But not up at Adrian's skylight.
Then she took her top off.
Adrian's heart pounded and he had to work hard to keep the binoculars steady. The woman, satisfied that she could not be seen, lay back on the lounger with her hands behind her head and her large breasts fully exposed. Free of any constraint, they settled under their own weight but their fullness was still apparent. Her nipples showed as wide black discs on brown skin. Adrian felt a rush of blood to his groin, and he began breathing through his mouth. The woman flexed the knee of one leg a little, keeping the other straight. She stayed like that for a while. Adrian's gaze did not waver. He was trying to make out if her nipples were hardening. His cock was swelling inside his jeans. He was desperate to touch himself but something held him back - as long as he did not masturbate, he could tell himself he was just looking out of the window. Not spying on his half naked neighbour. Not a voyeur, not a peeping Tom. Her feet were pointing in Adrian's direction and he was looking down the length of her body. She crossed her arms across her lower chest so that they supported her breasts, emphasising their size and fullness. Adrian could see her nipples were hard now. They looked big and prominent. After a few more minutes she reached for her book. As she lifted it in front of her face, she parted her legs and raised and flexed her knees so that her pose was overtly pornographic. Adrian was looking straight at her bikini-covered crotch, then past that through her spread thighs to her cleavage. He was just reaching down to undo his jeans when his mobile phone buzzed in his pocket. His mother. Better take that, what with Dad not being well.
By the time he had finished speaking to his mother, the woman was gone.
That night, Stephanie was firmly in the background.
