Glass Shard

Paula Kemp was sitting on her own at lunch in the company cafeteria when Zoe Graham sat down beside her. Zoe hadn't acquired any lunch yet, and was clearly there to talk.

"I hear that you gave Simon the brush-off," she announced.

"How did you hear that?" Paula asked, startled.

"You know that Simon's a friend of Dave," Zoe answered. Paula shrugged. Dave was Zoe's boyfriend. "What'd he done to annoy you?" Zoe continued.

"Nothing," Paula said.

"Then why'd you have to slap him down?" Zoe demanded.

"I didn't

slap him down,

" Paula replied.

"Dave reckoned he felt a bit slapped."

"I'm sure that he'll live. I was perfectly polite to him."

"Then why not politely say yes? He was just asking you out for a drink, from what I heard." Zoe sounded honestly puzzled now. "You said only last week that you like him."

"I said that I like

working

with him. If I mix that with going out drinking with him... well, I don't like mixing business with pleasure, okay?"

"Bollocks. You're fine hanging out with me when we're working together. Anyway, think of it as keeping on good terms with a colleague. It doesn't have to be anything else."

"It'd still be

difficult.

Perhaps I do like him..."

"So why's that a problem..."

"Look, I just don't want to, okay? And it's really none of your business."

"Oh, Christ," Zoe muttered. "So this is all part of your not, you know..."

"That's

really

none of your business," Paula snapped. "I shouldn't ever have mentioned it."

"Okay, okay." Zoe raised a placatory hand. "But all he suggested was a drink, in a bar, after work. There's really nothing dangerous about that, you know."

"It's a date," Paula sighed. "I just don't

do

dates, okay?"

"Okay." Zoe pulled a face. "But you said the other day that the current project is making you tense. And I know that you hardly get out in the evening for anything. You can't go on like this. I can see that just looking at you."

"That's my worry, not yours."

Zoe shrugged, then frowned. "Still... Hey, you're a member at the Leisure Centre, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I use the pool a bit. When I've got time."

"A

bit

?" Zoe cocked an amused eyebrow.

Paula shrugged. "I go swimming three or four times a week."

"Sheesh. No wonder you've got that amazing figure. It's a bloody waste." Zoe took a breath. "Anyway. Ever had a proper massage?"

"Uh,

what

?"

"Nonono, I'm serious -- nothing freaky. There's a woman down there -- one of the physios -- who's trained and qualified and all that. Gets the tension out of your muscles like nothing else."

Paula was unconvinced, but Zoe was enthusiastic enough about the idea that the conversation ended a few minutes later with Paula holding a note of a name and number. Then, as the afternoon passed, she began thinking. She

was

too tense, and it did just seem like a problem with her muscles. It couldn't hurt to try... She slipped away from her desk for a few minutes with her mobile phone, and returned with an appointment for the next day, a Friday. She could get away early enough then.

So she arrived at the Leisure Centre in good time, undressed from her work suit, and met the masseuse, a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman named Anne. A few minutes later, as Anne worked on the muscles of her back, she decided that Zoe had been right. This was doing her good.

Then Anne worked up to her shoulders, which felt just as good to begin with. After a few seconds, though, Paula gave a sudden yelp as a sharp pain stabbed into her.

"Are you okay?" Anne asked, pausing her work but so surprised that she didn't release her careful grip at first.

"Your nails!" Paula gasped.

"No, I wasn't..." Anne said, removing her hands from Paula's shoulders, then "Oh, damn!"

"What's up?" Paula asked, looking back at Anne, who was staring aghast at her hands. Paula saw that one of them now had a smear of blood on it.

"I don't understand," Anne said. "I didn't do anything, and you had no cuts or abrasions there... hey, what's that?"

Paula twisted her head to try and see where Anne was looking, and saw that the site of the pain was now bloody. Anne reached forward with finger and thumb and plucked at something. For a fraction of a second, the pain was worse, and then it lessened.

"What the heck is that?" Anne asked, and Paula saw that she was holding something small with evident care. "Damn, I probably shouldn't have fiddled with it."

"It looks like...

glass,

" Paula said. Anne picked up a spare cotton wool swab and put the thing on it.

"I'll get the first aid kit," Anne said, and scurried away. She returned in less than a minute with the kit, and discovered Paula holding the cotton wool pad and studying the glass fragment.

"Was that really

in

me?" Paula asked, and Anne nodded as she produced antiseptic wipes and a bandage. "You know, I think I remember -- when I was a kid, I had an accident. I fell on a broken bottle or something." She frowned. "I don't remember much, but that must be it."

"How long ago was this?" Anne asked as she set to work cleaning up the wound. The antiseptic was cold and stung at first, but the astringency soon seemed almost pleasant to Paula.

"Must be ten or twelve years now," she said uncertainly.

Anne blinked. "So that was in your shoulder all that time, but it's just worked its way out."

"Obviously," Paula agreed. "Weird. The doctor must have missed it. I think I read somewhere that glass doesn't show up terribly well on X-rays."

"And you never felt it until now."

"I think I got the odd twinge from that shoulder, but I thought it must just be muscle cramps."

"Good thing it's out now, I suppose," Anne said. "Sorry about how it happened."

"Not your fault," Paula reassured her. From the relief on Anne's face, she realised that the masseuse must have been worrying about legal consequences.

"That's done," Anne said, throwing the bandage packet in a nearby bin. "Should we get you to Casualty?"

"No -- don't bother," Paula said. "I feel fine, actually. Thanks."

After a few more discussions, and a promise to go straight to a hospital if any more problems developed, Anne escaped to head home. She took the glass shard with her, wrapped in cotton wool, on the excuse that she might need to show it to a doctor. Once she was home, though, and after she'd fixed herself dinner and poured a large glass of wine, she unwrapped it and spent long minutes staring at it, frowning in thought.

Then, after she'd eaten her dinner, on a whim, she went to her workroom and pulled a box out from a drawer. She had several hobbies which she pursued with typically obsessive care, and simple jewellery-making was one of them. With a frown of concentration on her face, she carefully enclosed the shard in silver wire, letting the glass surface show enough to catch the light, but making the sharp edges and points unlikely to cut. Then she attached the whole thing to a silver chain, making a simple pendant.

She put the chain around her neck, and looked at herself in a mirror. The shard glittered.

Close,

she thought,

but not as close as it was. A souvenir.

Then she pulled the pendant off, dropped it into her handbag, and went to bed.

The next morning, she woke early but realised that she's slept better than she had for weeks. Either the abortive massage had done a lot of good, or -- well, she realised that her shoulders felt pleasantly

different.

Could the removal of the shard have helped there?

That wasn't the only question that was nagging at her, she reflected as she ate toast and drank coffee and orange juice. Reaching an abrupt decision that felt completely right although she couldn't have explained it properly in words, she finished dressing in blouse and jeans, and went out to her car.

Her journey would take a couple of hours. After perhaps one hour, she realised that she should really have phoned ahead. But there was nowhere convenient to pull over to make a call, and she felt an odd determination to solve a mystery. She pressed on.

*****

Monica Kemp was sprawled on a sofa in her living room, naked but for stockings, suspenders, and high-heeled shoes. Her mid-length hair, still in loose dark curls although she was in her fifties, splayed over the cushions, Her husband Neil was standing in front of her, completely naked and gently caressing his cock so that his erection grew ever firmer and larger. Monica smiled at the sight, and spread her thighs a little wider.

"C'mon," she murmured.

Neil needed no more invitation. Positioning himself on the sofa, he plunged into her waiting pussy with smooth precision. Monica gasped happily, and clamped her thighs around him, pressing her high heels into the back of his legs just hard enough. He gasped, and began thrusting rhythmically. She made a noise that was half squeal and half sigh, and then gave a series of gasps, in time with his thrusts at first, then faster. Suddenly, though, he gave a groan and pushed into her hard. She embraced him with arms and legs, and responded to him with a prolonged moan of pleasure.

A moment later, he rolled off her with a cheerful smirk, and she grabbed a tissue and mopped herself.

"Not bad," she said.

"Not done yet," he replied. Then he knelt beside the sofa and took one of her nipples carefully between his teeth. As he set to work on it with his tongue, though, a noise interrupted them -- the sound of a lock being worked, then of the front door opening and closing.

"Damn," Neil whispered.

"Paula," Monica whispered back. "She's still got a key."

Paula was indeed standing in the hall at that moment, pausing and wondering whether to call out. Her parents' car was outside, so she assumed that they must be home...

Then her mother emerged from the living room, wearing a dressing gown -- no, it was the sort of thing that had to be called a

negligée.

She was looking as annoyingly good as ever, Paula decided. It wasn't always easy being the reserved daughter of an outgoing mother.

"Darling," her mother said, "this is unexpected! What brings you home?"

"It's, uh, a long story," Paula began. "I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"Oh ... oh no. I just hadn't got around to getting dressed yet. 'Fraid I'm getting quite slobby now there's no one around to notice. But anyway -- want a cup of tea?"

Paula allowed herself to be steered into the kitchen, and once she was sitting down and the kettle was boiling, she barely noticed the sounds of doors opening and closing, and of footsteps on the staircase; hence, she had no idea that her father was slipping upstairs, entirely naked.

"Anyway," her mother repeated, "why are you here? You're welcome, of course."

Paula reached into her handbag with a thoughtful expression, produced the simple home-made pendant, and raised the shard to catch the light. By the time the tea was made and on the table, she had told the story of the previous day.

Her mother stared at the shard in fascination, then reached out and carefully picked it up. She gave a shiver. "Nasty little thing," she said. "It makes me sick just thinking about it." She dropped the pendant back on the tabletop, letting the chain trickle through her fingers, and suddenly smiled again. "You're right, of course," she said. "It must be from that accident when you were eleven."

"But what actually happened?" Paula asked.

"You don't remember?"

"Not really. Not much. I know that I got home from school early..." Paula shook her head.

"No," said her mother. "You didn't seem to remember much at the time. We were a bit worried about concussion, actually, though the doctors couldn't find any sign that you'd bashed your head."

"So what did happen?" Paula asked again.

"Oh, you were running round the house -- not like you, that -- and you -- well, you ran into the living room, tripped over, and fell onto the coffee table. There was a tumbler on there, and it broke."

"Christ."

"Yeah." Monica Kemp shivered. "God, I was terrified. There was broken glass and blood everywhere. But you hadn't actually cut anything major, thank God. We got you to hospital, and they stitched you up okay. You were shaken up, but you recovered after a couple of weeks."

"Yeah. I remember having a few days off school."

"Do you really not remember the accident itself?"

"No, not much." Paula frowned. "Well, bits and pieces. I think talking about it is bringing it back."

"That's good, I guess," her mother said uncertainly. "I mean, you not remembering anything seemed strange at the time. But you were okay physically, so we didn't like to make too much fuss. We guessed you just didn't want to think about it."

The two women sat in silence for a moment, drinking tea. Then Paula looked up with a frown.

"Were you and Daddy... having sex?" she asked nervously. She didn't seem to notice the momentary confused glance that this received from her mother.

"What -- back then, before your accident?" Monica Kemp asked.

"Yes."

"Yes, I'm afraid that we were." Paula's mother sighed. "Do you remember that?"

Paula frowned. "Maybe a bit," she said.

Her mother half-smiled ruefully. "Yes, I think that was what made you run off in such a panic. You'd got home much earlier than we were expecting, you see, and we didn't hear you come in, and you slipped upstairs..."

"God," Paula said with a brittle laugh.

Somewhere in her memory -- strange moans and cries, and the bedroom door ajar...

"Sorry about that."

"Hardly your fault, darling. And I mean ... well, you were eleven. You knew a bit about sex, but it must be a terrible shock for a child that age, seeing anything like that." Monica Kemp laughed, a very little. "The guilt nearly put us off for life."

"Yes, I think it was a shock," Paula muttered, then fell silent again.

"Anyway," her mother said, "Are you keeping this?" She was staring at the shard, looking at it as though it was something evil. She began reaching out to touch it, then stopped.

"I suppose so, yes," said Paula. "I don't see why not. Call it a souvenir."

"I wouldn't if I were you," her mother said.

Paula began to ask why not. But then, her father appeared, dressed in shirt and jeans and smiling happily to see his daughter, and she had to repeat her story. She explained her return home as a matter of sudden strong but casual curiosity, and he shrugged understandingly and told her that she was always welcome, and the conversation turned to lunch arrangements.

Later, though, Paula managed to catch her mother alone briefly. "Mum," she said, "it's not a problem, but I've been kind of wondering ... you never gave me much of a talk about ... about sex, did you?"

Her mother blinked. "No, I didn't," she admitted. "Sorry about that, I suppose. I meant to, actually, when you were young, but you never seemed comfortable, and you insisted that the school had told you enough. And I suppose that you seeing us like that..." (

A sudden flash of memory hit Paula; her mother in black underwear, kneeling in front of her father, and his animalistic groans...

) "...Well, I could understand that thinking about your parents doing things might be especially difficult for you." Her mother flashed another nervous smile. "Especially if it was all tied up with memories of the accident. And later, you never had any boyfriends to make me worried about you knowing enough. And I assumed that by the time you left home, well, it was a bit late then wasn't it?"

"I suppose that it was."

Paula's mother gazed at her. "You have been okay, haven't you?" she asked.

Paula managed a natural-sounding laugh. "I've been fine, Mum," she said.

A little after that, she made her goodbyes. As she started her car, she glanced back to wave goodbye one more time, and was startled. Her parents were in the porch, behind a door glazed with reeded glass, but Paula was fairly certain from what she could see that her father was not only embracing her mother from behind, but that he had his hands inside her clothes, grasping her breasts.

Then, though, Paula turned away, and found herself smiling. She had never thought much about her parents' sex life, but now she decided that it was a good thing if they were still close.

She was in a pensive mood as she drove away, and fifteen minutes down the road, when she saw a lay-by signposted, she pulled over and sat for a moment, her hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. Then she drew the pendant from her bag again, and tentatively touched the glass shard. As she did so, her thoughtful expression turned to a hard frown.

Startled at the range of emotions she was experiencing, she took her hand away and put the shard back in her handbag. As she did so, she saw her mobile phone in the same compartment, and almost snatched it out of the bag. Then she took a deep breath and made a call.

"Simon?" she asked when it was answered. "It's Paula. Look, is that offer of a drink still open? That's great ... really, tonight? No, but actually, I think that we need to talk about something first. Yeah, quietly. Can I come round to your place?"

*****

Two and a half hours later, Simon Waterstone heard a knock on his front door, and hurried to let Paula in. She was smiling nervously, he saw, and she made a lot of stilted conversation about his house and how she'd found it quite easily, while he made coffee. But once they were sitting side by side on the sofa, mugs in hand, she took a deep breath and began talking seriously.

"I'm sorry if I turned you down a bit brusquely the other day," she began.

"It's okay," Simon said. "I do take your point about problems working together."

"No," Paula said, "that's a weak excuse, really. We could deal with anything like that. You deserved a straight answer, at the very least."

Simon shrugged. "Don't worry," he said. "I gather from Zoe and Dave that you just don't do dating much."

"They told you that?"

"Mmm. I'm afraid that -- well, maybe being turned down got me down a bit, and Zoe told me that it wouldn't have been personal with you."

Paula sighed. "I can't deny that used to be true, I suppose, but actually, I've been thinking that I ought to ... review my policies a bit, I suppose."

"Really? I feel flattered."

"Don't get too pleased with yourself. This is about me, not you."

"Okay..."

"Still -- well, anyway, I changed my mind."

"And that's what you came to say? So shall we go for that drink now?"

"No -- not yet." Paula waved at Simon to sit back down, as he'd already started to stand. "I have to ask -- if we go out for this drink -- well, what comes next?"

"Next?" Simon looked puzzled. "Well, a second drink, I suppose. Maybe. If you want one."

"So you're planning to get me drunk?" Paula asked, but with a smile.

"Okay, it doesn't have to be more drinks. Look, we could just talk a bit more. Over one drink. Though I'll buy you dinner if you like."

"Which sounds okay, I suppose." Paula frowned. "But look, I may not do dating, but I'm not an idiot. I know what can come after drinks, or dinner."

"Oh. Is

that

what you think I was after?"

"Well, had it crossed your mind? Honestly?"

"Honestly?" Simon pulled a wry face. "Okay, all sorts of things crossed my mind. I wouldn't have asked you out if I didn't, well, like the look of you. But anyway..."

"But what?"

"Zoe made it fairly clear that you don't do dating

at all

."

"She told you

that

?"

"Hey, don't get mad at her. She was just trying to hint that I didn't have any chance of a date, and, well -- I got nosy, I suppose. But she didn't blab any details."

"Hmmph." Paula crossed her arms, looking angry, but then glared at Simon as her loose mid-blonde bob fell across her face. "Look," she said, sweeping it back, "I don't really care much what Zoe said, because she doesn't know everything about me. Okay, I've been... careful... about men, but maybe I've got bored with that, and maybe I'm even ready to take a few risks."