They say that when a rabbit is caught at night in the middle of the road, he is often transfixed by the approaching car headlights, frozen to the spot by the rapidly nearing lightshow. He's scared but cannot move, petrified really, but cannot change his course of action. For Mr Bunny, there's no turning back. Turning red, certainly, but turning back, no.
I know how Mr Bunny must feel.
This is a recollection of the events that started with the thought of approaching headlights, and moves on to a certain amount of red. A red face, to be exact.
My sister, Wendy, has lived in the same house since she was at college some fifteen years ago. Back then at the start, she was renting a room there while she studied business finance (or whatever it was), then used the knowledge to enter into some weird trust arrangement with the elderly owner, before gaining full benefit from her four years of education there by inheriting the five-bedroomed property for a penny or two when the old man died just as Wendy was finishing her course.
The property sits on its own little piece of land on the outside of a long bend in a wide, fast country road which takes traffic past a minor town on the South Coast of England (if drivers know where to look for the blessed short-cut). It rests at the bottom of a gentle slope from the north before the road kinks towards the east, sitting atop a long lawn at the front and open to a ragged woodland at the back. The only possible negative about the rambling old house is that when the occasional car passes after dark travelling from the north, the living room is bathed in its headlights for a few seconds if the curtains are not drawn.
Big deal.
I've never once been jealous of the insight and acumen my sister showed in manoeuvring herself into position to take over the delightful property. I have never referred to her as a lucky, manipulative, uncaring bitch. No, not once. I have never thought of her as calculating or scheming, callous or selfish, fortunate or devious. Absolutely not. No way. Mind you, she has got a couple of extra pounds on her hips and thighs while her two-years younger sister still retains her sylph-like charms despite being thirty-seven and having had a son when she was sixteen.
But really? I adore her. And the house, come to that.
So much so, that when Wendy goes on holiday, if I have a chance to house-sit for her I normally jump at the chance. Last March was no exception. Wendy was off to somewhere hot and humidly desirable, I was working on a contract I could carry out at home (wherever that might be) and even my son was free from his university course to come along and act as unpaid bodyguard (not that this was necessary in such a remote location -- he just liked the change as much as I did).
It was by no means the first time I'd undertaken the less than onerous task, but this time was, I'd decided, going to be different. The idea had started to form over the previous Christmas holidays when I'd spent a boozy few days with Wendy and we'd spent hours each night sitting in the living room playing silly games. One of those (when we were clearly getting short of idea) was betting on how long would pass between vehicles coming down the long, gentle slope from the north. After some typically sororial debates on when exactly a car was said to have 'passed' we had opened the curtains a little a registered the exact moment the headlights lit up an old clock on the shelf behind the sofa where we were getting steadily more whiskied. The passing of vehicles was surprisingly (to me) quite far apart -- some fifteen minutes on average after midnight -- but despite Wendy's obvious advantage (actually living there!), I seem to recall I won the game. She might tell you different of course, but there again, she'd probably tell you that her tits don't sag at all yet despite her being thirty-nine. Trust me, if they don't it's just because she's too small. And she really wasn't at all manipulative back in her college years.
Where was I? Oh yes, the idea. First though I need to explain a little about myself. I'm straight, cute enough, well-preserved for my age, fun-loving -- but curiously quite shy. Other than one night when I was sixteen and slightly drunk on cider at a friend's birthday party (check the numbers above and you might well work out that was when my son, Abe, was conceived) I've never been very adventurous sexually. I have, however, for the longest time been gently aroused by the thought of a little exposure. But there's the rub -- shy and interested in exposure? They don't mix, do they? I agree totally, but the older I get the more I recognise that time is running out for me in some ways -- I won't be cute enough forever. If nothing else I'm an inquisitive type, always trying to find the truth behind things, always seeking for possible solutions when none seem clear.
My natural inquisitiveness -- okay, nosiness -- had me reading all sorts of material trying to find a way whereby I might be able to address my growing need to overcome my shyness. And that's when I discovered the term 'accidental exposure'. The 'accidental' is, of course, an act, a misdirection -- alright, a lie -- which makes the act appear to be out of the control of the perpetrator; a way in which the effect of exposure can be achieved in such a way that it seems entirely unplanned to the point where it may even engender the deepest of sympathies among some witnesses.
The concept fascinated me. The stories made me feel as if there was hope for me, as if I might stand a chance of coming up with a way of attaining my long, long, long desired goal without seeming to have become brazen. It was, surely, a way of remaining guilt-free while still achieving my naughty aims. Okay, and some of them made me wetter than a bank holiday in Wales.
The only problem I could still see was one of proximity. Even if I could bring myself to be 'accidentally' seen in a rather revealing way, I just knew I couldn't do it within a few feet of some stranger. A few miles seemed to be pushing things a little. I hated the thought that maybe someone would lose control and touch me, I guess. And if that sounds like self-praise -- me with the body that just had to be touched if it was ever exposed -- well, tough. That's the way I felt.
All of that research began three years ago and even three months ago I seemed to be no closer to a solution despite recognising that time was getting shorter.
And then I spent those boozy nights with Wendy. And we played the headlights game.
*****
Here was what I dreamed up; what I realised wasn't just a naughty idea, but a possible one.
I was going to be staying in a house that, after midnight, was passed every fifteen minutes, by a car which would for a few seconds flood the living room with bright headlights. The car was likely to be travelling somewhere close to the national speed limit of sixty miles per hour, although given the hour, maybe even more. The driver and front seat passenger, if there was one, would briefly see whoever was in that house's front room if the curtains were open. Somewhere in the region of sixty or seventy percent of people in the front of those cars would be male. They wouldn't stop because firstly they probably physically couldn't very quickly and secondly, even if they could, they didn't know who else would be in the house -- too risky. I was safe if they saw me, wasn't I?
I thought and thought about it. Between the whiskified nights over Christmas with Wendy and the week I would be spending in her house in the March I must have played the possibilities of my plan through my mind a thousand times, quite literally. It seemed, more and more, that it might work well. But I still hadn't plucked up the courage to actually do anything.
On the way there I was still thinking that what I would probably do is get up after midnight and open the curtains a little, pretend that as cars passed by I was actually going through with my daring ideas. I might even allow myself to play a little as I imagined these things. Abe would be asleep at that hour, no driver could possibly make out anything through a tiny gap in those living room curtains, and yet I would be feeling as if I were being so brave. I might even shed the nightie for a while.
And there was just the tiniest chance that I might actually be able to maybe try the real thing maybe just once. Maybe.
The whole idea was consuming me, overwhelming my thoughts and distracting me. Wendy, who wasn't leaving until the morning, even commented in how preoccupied I was as we ate a light supper that evening.
