Hello, I'm Anne and until recently I'd never slept with a 'young' man. When I married my husband Harold he was already forty two, while I was only seventeen; the reasons behind that are a whole other story and not one I wish to repeat here, or indeed dwell upon.
Despite everything, I like to think of our marriage as a success; we raised four children, all sadly now scattered due to work and/or partners to the four corners of the earth, two in Australia, a third in Japan and our youngest daughter is in Canada.
When Harold retired in 2008 we moved full-time to what had until then, been our weekend cottage in the Yorkshire Dales, but once his health began to deteriorate ten years later, we returned to our home town near Leeds, leasing an apartment in a, Seniors Community; I was still only forty-nine!
The age difference with my neighbours wasn't an issue; that was something I was long used to accommodating, so I've quite enjoyed the place. With a warden always on call and easy access to public transport -- Harold never permitted me to drive -- I was able to get out and about secure in the knowledge that Harold would be OK.
What I did especially miss from living in the Dales though, were Carol and David: It was Harold & David who'd met first -- both members of the Rotary Club -- but when Carol and I met, we got on like a house on fire from the very start. Carol and I were of an age, with David being rather older, though nothing like the age-gap between Harold and I, but that was never relevant, we all seemed to just 'click', regularly socialising and on a couple of occasions going on holiday together too; I consider Carol to be the best and closest friend that I've ever had.
Like ourselves, David and Carol have a now grown family -- four boys, how did she cope? - though they've perhaps been more fortunate than we, in that all of their boys, along with their partners and now grandchildren live locally. That's not entirely true; their third son Robbie and his wife Gillian were abroad, though even they visited for two or three weeks each year to catch up with family and friends.
Rob & Gill have no kids, so after both had acquired the professional skills and reputations which allowed them -- for outrageous remuneration! - to work wherever they could find a decent internet connection, they simply 'travelled'; working freelance and on-line for a few days or weeks whenever their coffers need to be refilled.
Just during the years that I've known Carol they'd travelled widely through SE Asia on a motorcycle, then seemingly everywhere between Alaska and Panama in a motor-home -- the inevitable motorcycle on a trailer towed behind -- and finally aboard a yacht on which they sailed to the Pacific Islands and on to Australia; even that had small scooter aboard! Two carefree vagabonds whom everyone seemed to love, despite the envy that they must have undoubtedly garnered; I'd met them only twice, but I could easily understand why.
Robbie's tall, slim and even to my jaundiced eyes, a very good looking young man; washboard stomach -- OK, I've only discovered that more recently-- burnished tan and flowing locks of sun-bleached hair; perhaps unsurprising given their lifestyle? And of course, those eyes; expressive and a deep brown; I once overheard a young woman suggest quite accurately, that 'you could drown in those eyes'.
But it's more than skin-deep with Robbie, he's very intelligent, well spoken and old-school polite, as indeed are all of David & Carol's boys; only latterly have I become 'Anne' rather than Mrs Price. He possesses a wicked and charmingly flirtatious sense of humour, irrepressible optimism and seems always to see the best in everybody and everything.
Robbie's now in his mid-thirties - younger than all of my own kids! - but one flash from those eyes as he delivers some flirtatious complement can still give rise to a shameless shiver in an old crone like me, so I can imagine how it effects the younger girls. Gillian knows it too and guards him jealously; I can't say that I blame her, she's got herself a catch and gives short-shrift to any young woman who to tries to trespass or even looks too closely in Rob's direction; thankfully, we older ladies are given a little more leeway.
Then 2020 arrived, upending everyone's lives, including Robbie & Gill's. They were back in the UK for a visit when the world locked-down and couldn't return to their boat -- and yet another motorcycle! - in Australia. My own tribulation -- though already long expected -- was the death of Harold; he didn't go to Covid, but the pressures that virus put on the health service perhaps accelerated his demise?
More shocking and even to me more upsetting, was David; in his late-sixties, admittedly, but as fit and healthy as many men half his age. He contracted Covid early on and died within a week; in some respects it was perhaps fortunate that Robbie and Gill were back home and staying with Carol, so able to afford her some support in those days of lock-downs,
Barely a day passed during the following weeks when Carol and I didn't speak on the phone, to offer mutual support and sympathy. Then on the first day that restrictions eased, Carol came to visit; we chatted for a couple of socially distanced hours in the garden beneath our umbrellas. Carol doesn't drive either, so it was Robbie who'd brought her the fifty miles by car, though I didn't see him beyond a distant wave and smile through the rain-smeared car windscreen as he waited patiently for his mother and I.
It was during that conversation when I discovered that Robbie and Gill were back for the duration: They were already arranging the sale of their yacht and the motorcycle, negotiating to buy a small house for themselves near to Carol's and both back working to pay for it.
Both Robbie & Gill were as ever working remotely and at hours to seemingly suit themselves; so it was generally one or the other, on a couple of times both, who drove Carol across for her weekly visits. Even when restrictions eased and overnight stays were permitted, it was still far easier to have either Rob or Gill drive one of us back and forth to stay for a few days, rather than trust to public transport.
Neither seemed to begrudge providing this taxi service for us, indeed Robbie seemed to delight in making the trip across the hills and it was during those journeys that I fully discovered his boyish and flirtatious nature; Oh God but he was dishy!
I soon finished mourning for Harold -- did I ever really start? - and found myself more often than was perhaps decent, contemplating Robbie as I lay in my lonely bed at night. Hell's Bells! Robbie was married, barely half my age and the son of my best friend in the world; so contemplating him even once would've been indecent!
