My youngest daughter Wendy and her husband Jeff recently came to stay with me for a few days. Jeff and I had never really got on – I'm not sure why, we just seemed to rub each other up the wrong way. Anyway, whatever the reason, this was the first time I'd seen him in several years – since I moved to my current home, in fact. I live in northern England, whereas their home is on the south coast. Wendy comes up to see me occasionally, but on her own.
Jeff's a nice-looking lad – in his mid-thirties, six feet tall with a trim body, a square jaw, twinkling blue eyes and brown curly hair. He goes sailing regularly, and has an attractive tan as a result. Wendy's quite a contrast – in fact she's exactly like a younger version of me; same height, same shape and same general look. We're both five-feet-five, with short blonde hair (though mine's got a fair amount of grey these days), and pale complexions, and we both weight probably thirty pounds more than we should, with big busts and generous bottoms. I would never tell Wendy this, but I always thought she was lucky to snare a man as attractive as Jeff, despite the fact that he had obviously taken a dislike to me.
The first evening they were with me there was a big football match on a satellite TV channel which I don't have, so Jeff went to the local pub to watch the game on their big TV. I could tell Wendy was annoyed at him for sloping off to the boozer, but I was quite pleased. It gave her and me a chance to catch up and have a good gossip, and it meant there wouldn't be any bad atmosphere between Jeff and me, especially as he would probably have been sulking over missing his soccer.
By about eleven o'clock, an hour after the match would have finished, Jeff still hadn't returned, so we assumed he'd met someone in the bar to have a drink with. Wendy was tired after her long journey, and decided she couldn't be bothered to wait up for him. I told her I was putting them in my bedroom, but she wouldn't hear of it. "Oh no Mum, we're not putting you out of your bed. Jeff and I'll have the spare room." I felt a bit guilty about it as the spare room only had twin single beds, whereas my room had a lovely big old double. It's so comfortable that when I moved I couldn't bear to throw it out, even though I'd not had a sniff of male company since my husband died seven years ago. But Wendy was quite insistent. It occurred to me that when Jeff had brought their bags in from the car I had directed him to put them in my room, so he would think that was where they were sleeping. Wendy wrote him a note in big bold letters, telling him which room to go to, and pinned it to the banister at the foot of the stairs, where we agreed he couldn't possibly miss it. Then, leaving the hall light on so that the note was obvious, we went up to our beds.
I slipped into my nightdress and dropped off to sleep quite quickly, helped by a couple of glasses of sherry I'd drunk during the evening with Wendy. I awoke some time afterwards with a start, not sure what had disturbed me. Peering blearily at the alarm clock I saw the illuminated hands indicated it was 12.30 am. I heard a cat yowling outside and thought it must have been that which woke me. I was just burrowing down into my nice deep mattress, and nestling the duvet around me when, with a shock, I felt the other side of the bed sink behind me as a weight landed on it. I smelt beery breath, and realised it must have been Jeff entering the room and taking his clothes off which had disturbed my sleep! The idiot had missed Wendy's sign after all.