The Mating Season

The text came on a Wednesday morning, halfway through a run I wasn't concentrating on.

*Lunch today? I've got something for you.*

I stopped at the lake. The swans were there, as they usually were now, and I stood looking at them and read the message three times. Then I put my phone in my pocket and ran the rest of the circuit faster than I had any reason to.

---

The thing nobody tells you about affairs is how much of it is just talking.

In the two weeks since that first afternoon at her house we'd spent more time talking than anything else. Mornings on the path, lunchtimes in the café, and now texts, which had started as practical things, *are you running tomorrow*, and had become longer, late at night sometimes, both of us saying things we apparently needed to say to someone.

She texted the way she spoke. Direct. No emojis, no qualifications. She'd send me a photo of something she'd drawn and say *thoughts?* and I'd look at it properly and tell her what I thought and she'd argue back and we'd go back and forth for an hour about line and composition, while I sat with Amanda watching television in the other room, and I'd feel the distance between us as something physical.

She told me about Bolton. About her mum's house, a terraced place off Chorley New Road where she'd grown up, her mum still there, sisters nearby. She'd been close to all of it and then Josh had come into her life during his undergraduate years, brilliant and restless and pointing south, and she'd followed because she loved him and because she thought she could take her life with her. He was in London every day, out of the house before seven, back after nine on a good night. She was finding out that wasn't quite how it worked.

I told her about the early years with Amanda, which had been good, genuinely, the way early years often are. I told her about the specific feeling of watching your life become comfortable and not knowing whether that was contentment or just the absence of effort. She listened without offering solutions, which was exactly right.

"Do you still love her?" she asked once, over coffee, the café quiet around us.

I thought about it properly rather than reaching for the easy answer.

"Yes," I said. "But love does different things at different times. Right now it mostly just lives in the house with us."

She nodded slowly. "Josh loves London," she said. "I think he loves it more than he realises and more than he'd admit. I think he thinks he loves me more than London and he's wrong." She looked at her cup. "I'm not saying that to make myself sound sad. I'm just saying it because it's true and I've never said it to anyone."

"You can say true things to me," I said.

She looked up. "I know," she said. "That's the whole problem."

That was the thing about it. That was what kept me crossing that road at lunchtime and standing at that lake every morning at half past six. Not only the obvious thing, though the obvious thing was considerable. It was that she said true things and expected true things back and somewhere in the middle of my comfortable, settled life I had forgotten what that felt like.

I was fifty-two years old and I was falling for a twenty-nine year old woman who lived in a new build on a former RAF station four minutes' drive from my office, and the most alarming part was how reasonable it felt.

---

I crossed the road at twelve twenty-five.

She opened the door before I knocked.

I don't think I said anything immediately. I'm not sure I was capable of it.

She was in a nurse's uniform. Not a costume, not something novelty. Her actual uniform, proper NHS navy blue tunic, fitted, a little above the knee. Sheer black tights and low heels, her dark hair pinned up. A small amount of make-up she didn't normally bother with. She stood in the doorway and looked at me with that direct look she had and waited.

"Beth," I said.

"You'd better come in," she said. "You look terrible."

I laughed. She stepped back and let me in.

"I thought about this this morning," she said, closing the door. "When I was getting dressed. I thought, either he'll like this or he'll think I'm completely ridiculous."

"I don't think you're ridiculous."

"No," she said. "I can see that."

The blind was half down, the light softer. A bottle of wine on the table, two glasses, which was either very confident or very hopeful, and I found I didn't mind which.

"I'm not on until tomorrow," she said, pouring. She'd registered with an agency the previous week, a couple of shifts at Addenbrooke's. "But I thought." She handed me a glass and looked at me over the rim. "I've been thinking about you a lot, Andrew."

"Have you."

"Since the first morning," she said. "Which is embarrassing given I didn't know your name yet. I went home and told myself it was nothing, just a man by a lake, and then I went back the next day to see if you'd be there." She paused. "That's the first time I've said that out loud."

"I was there because I hoped you would be," I said.

She looked at me for a moment. Then she put her glass down and stepped forward and kissed me, and it was different from the first time, less tentative, more certain, already knowing what it was.

I put my hands on her waist and felt the fabric of the tunic, the warmth of her through it.

"I keep thinking," she said, against my mouth, "that I should feel worse about this than I do."

"Does it help if I say I feel terrible about it?"

"A bit," she said. "Mostly no."

We stayed like that for a while, just standing, kissing, her hands against my chest. There was no rushing. She seemed to want the same. Outside the estate was going about its business, a delivery van somewhere, the low percussion of the building works further over. None of it quite reached us.

She sat back on the sofa and pulled me with her and I moved down and she didn't stop me, her fingers in my hair. I took my time. She was already past waiting. I pressed my hand slowly between her legs, feeling the warmth of her through the thin nylon, the give of it, her hips angling up almost before I'd moved. I kept my hand still a moment, letting her feel the pressure, and she pressed back into my hair before she'd meant to.

I kept it steady and unhurried. She tried to stay quiet and couldn't manage it, her breathing going uneven, one hand gripping the back of the sofa.

She caught her breath, sudden and bitten off, and then what came against my hand, the warmth and rush of it through the thin nylon, was nothing she'd planned or could have stopped. Her whole body gathered and then gave out at once, a single hard shudder, then went completely loose.

She lay still. Looked at the cushion. Then at me. Colour had come up in her face.

"I've never done that," she said. Stopped. "I mean I don't usually."

I said nothing.

"Fuck." She was a woman who expected to be in charge of herself.

"Don't," she said quietly. "Don't say anything kind about it."

"I wasn't going to," I said.

The embarrassment was still there, but steadier now, like she'd found the floor of it, and stood, smoothed her tunic, and took my hand.

---

I walked her to the mirror at the bottom of the stairs.

She looked at herself in it, and then at me behind her, and the look on her face was one I didn't have a word for. Not quite surprise. More like someone catching their own reflection and deciding they didn't mind it at all.

I reached for the hem of her tunic and she watched me do it in the mirror. I ran both hands up the outside of her thighs, over the thin tights, feeling the shape of her, and she pressed back against me without being asked.

"Tell me what you're thinking," she said.

I held her eyes in the glass and kept my hands moving, one hand round and between her legs and she went still, the breath going out of her slow and deliberate, her head dropping back against my shoulder. She watched in the mirror. I watched her face watching.

"Upstairs," her voice had changed. "Now."

---

The bedroom curtains were half open, pale afternoon light across the duvet. She reached for my shirt without ceremony and I thought, not for the first time, that there was a confidence to her that surprised me and didn't. She knew what she wanted. She'd always known. She'd just been somewhere it didn't seem to matter.

I reached up and took her hair down from where it was pinned, slowly, and she sat still and let me and watched my face while I did it. Her hair fell around her shoulders.

"Better," I said.

"Better," she agreed.

I kissed her again, one hand at the back of her neck, and laid her back. She still had the uniform on. I undid the top buttons of the tunic and she watched me do it, not moving to help, letting me find my way. Underneath she had nothing, just bare skin, and I looked at her for a moment before I brought my mouth to her breast and felt her breath go in sharply above me.

Twenty-nine years old, and her body was exact and certain. She lay under my hands with a stillness that told me she wasn't in a hurry. I moved one hand down over her stomach, over the curve of her hip, the firm warm round of her bottom, and she shifted to give me more without being asked.

I took her nipple into my mouth and felt her fingers press against the back of my head. Not directing. Just keeping me there. I stayed, unhurried, and heard her breathing slow and go less careful.

"Your hands," she said. Not quite a request. More an observation.

I kept going and moved my hands more deliberately over her, learning the shape of her, and she went quiet the way people go quiet when they stop being self-conscious. I was old enough to take my time and she seemed to have understood that from the start.

The tights came off and I put my mouth on her and she was not quiet about it, nothing composed left in her. She said *please* once, then louder, and then she stopped saying anything coherent at all, just held on.

When she came she grabbed a fistful of the duvet and her voice went somewhere loose and unguarded.

"Come here," she managed. "Now. Andrew. *Come here.*"

I moved up over her and she pulled me in and I felt how tight she was and what came out of me was low and raw, and I hadn't heard it from myself in years, and she responded at once, her hips lifting, her hands on my back pulling me closer.

Her phone lit up on the bedside table.

We both saw it. Josh's name on the screen, a cold white glow against the warm afternoon light of the room.

She'd made a choice in that second and she knew it and so did I, and neither of us said so.

"Leave it," she said, and pulled me deeper, and I stopped thinking about anything else.

We moved together and she was direct when she needed to be, a word, a shift, *there, slower*, and I followed without question. At some point I turned her and she reached out and angled the small mirror on the bedside table, caught my eye in it and held it. I gripped her hips and pulled her back against me and told her, plainly and without any of the usual care, that she was perfect, that this was perfect, that I hadn't wanted anything this much in longer than I was prepared to say, and she said *yes*, just that, and then *again*.

Her composure came apart in stages. She said *don't stop* and I didn't, and then *please don't fucking stop* and I didn't, and then she was past sentences, just *keep going keep going keep going* pressed through her teeth, holding the sheet, her whole body held at that point where everything is still possible and none of it is certain.

"Please," she said, and her voice had gone urgent and bare, almost conversational, like she'd given up caring how she sounded. Just *please*, over and over, stripped of everything else, and the nakedness of it was more than the word.

I gripped her harder and drove into her and she stopped saying anything at all, just held the sheet in both hands, and I finished with her name in my mouth.

---

We lay without speaking. Her breathing settling, mine slower. The room was still and warm. Outside something mechanical on the estate started and stopped and started again, distant enough not to matter.

She was on her back. I was on my side. Neither of us reached for anything to say for a while, and it was the most natural silence I'd sat in for years.

---

"Is he back this week?"

"End of the week. Last train, probably. He always misses the earlier ones." A pause. "I've stopped waiting up."

I didn't say anything to that.

She turned onto her side to face me. The light through the curtain was softer now, the afternoon moving on. She had a small crease from the pillow across her cheek.

"Can I tell you something without it sounding strange."

"Go on."

"Men your age." She paused, choosing it carefully. "There's a way you have of being in a room. Of not needing to prove anything. Josh is brilliant. He's the most intelligent person I know. But he's always performing it." She looked at me. "You don't."

"I'm just old," I said, and meant it more than she understood. She was twenty-nine and I was fifty-two and she was lying in my arms and I had not earned that through wisdom or patience or any of the things she'd said. I had just been there. By a lake. At the right time.

"No," she said. "It's not that." She settled against the pillow. "I knew what I was doing. By the lake. First morning. I knew exactly."

I reached out and ran my hand up her thigh. She shifted slightly, making room without making anything of it, and I kept my hand there, moving gently. She reached down and wrapped her hand around me and we lay like that, easy, neither of us in a rush.

"Can I ask you something strange."

"Go on."

"Do you think fantasies say something true about a person? Or are they just." A pause. "Noise."

I thought about it. "Both, probably. Depending on the fantasy."

She was quiet a moment. Her hand kept moving. "I've got one I've never told anyone. Josh doesn't know. Nobody does."

"You don't have to tell me."

"I know. That's why I want to."

I kissed her, unhurried, and she kissed back and then pulled away just enough to keep talking.

"I think about being in the house alone," she said. "And someone getting in. Not invited." She held my eyes. "And I can't stop them."

I moved my hand gently and she paused, steadied herself.

"More than one, sometimes," she said. "That's the part I've never said out loud."

I kept my hand moving.

"That they'd just. Take turns." She said it flatly, as though reading something aloud she'd written privately. "That I couldn't do anything about any of it." A pause. "I've had that one since I was about nineteen and I've never understood it and I've stopped trying to."

"You don't need to understand it."

"Most people would be horrified."

"Most people have a version of the same one," I said. "Wanting to be wanted that badly. Wanting someone to just take over and stop being careful."

"Yes," she said. "That's exactly it." Then, quieter: "All of them. Not stopping."

She looked at me. "Your turn."

"Your turn what."

"Something you've never told anyone." Her hand stilled, pointedly. "Or I stop."

I laughed. She didn't.

"Alright," I said. "Feet."

She blinked. "Feet."

"A woman's feet. In good stockings." I said it without looking away. "Or, er. Used a certain way."

She stared at me. "Used how."

"You're very literal."

"I want to know."

I looked at her steadily. "Your feet," I said, "around me. Or." A pause. "On me. Properly."

"Properly."

"Yes."

She was quiet for a moment. Then: "You mean like. Your spunk on my feet."

"That would be one version of it."

She laughed, properly, warm and slightly helpless. "You should have told me that on day one."

"Yes, well."

"By the lake."

"In retrospect."

She shook her head, still smiling. Then she looked at me, the amusement still there and a wariness underneath.

"I'm due a pedicure. Fresh gel. Everything." She raised an eyebrow. "We'll try that."

I looked at her. "And yours?"

The amusement didn't leave her face. She went still. It had been a question she'd been carrying.

"There's a belt," she said. "On the chair. The one you came in with."

I looked at the chair.

"Not now if you don't want," she said. "But I'd like to feel like it wasn't my terms. That's the point of it."

"I know," I said. "That's what I mean."

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she sat up.

"The tights," she said. "They're on the floor somewhere."

I found them. She took them from me, looked at them briefly, and handed them back.

"Go on, then," she said. "Since we're here."

She lay back and I pulled her to the edge of the bed. Her feet were bare, toenails painted a deep red, fresh and neat, and I held both ankles and looked at them for a moment, which made her glance away briefly and then back, deciding something about herself.

I wrapped the tights loosely around me and drew her feet together. The nylon pulled warm and close, the soft press of her arches, and her feet pressed together without her meaning them to.

She kept her eyes on my face. Not on what I was doing. On my face, reading every shift in it, her feet pressing slightly when she saw a change she liked in my expression. She found the rhythm quickly, the angle of her arch, where the pressure needed to be, and she worked it out the way she did everything, with close attention and no performance.

I looked down once. The red nails, the sheer nylon, the slow deliberate press of her feet. Then back up at her face, watching me with steady, open curiosity, entirely without self-consciousness now.

"There," she said quietly. "That's it, isn't it."

"Yes."

"Tell me when."

"Not yet."

The light in the room had dropped another notch. Outside the estate was quietening toward late afternoon.

"I want to see," she said. "When you do."

I held on long enough that she asked twice more. When I went she kept still and looked and didn't say anything for a moment, then reached for the sheet on the floor beside her and cleaned her feet and lay back against the pillow and regarded me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"Right," she said. "Now I know."

"Is that a good thing."

"Yes," she said simply. "I like knowing things." She pulled the sheet across and settled. "Belt now. Or."

"Or nothing," I said. "Belt."

She nodded once and lay still.

---

I folded the belt once and ran it between her teeth and she bit down on the leather without being told twice. I took an end in each hand and drew it taut, and felt her whole body respond to the tension before I'd done anything else.

I moved, and the first stroke pressed the leather hard against the corners of her mouth and drove a muffled sound out of her, low and urgent, nothing like her usual voice. She tried to push back, to set her own pace, and I drew the belt tighter and held her there until she stopped. She understood. Her shoulders dropped. She went still and let me find the angle and I felt what that did to her, the way she gripped me, harder and less controlled than before.

I set the pace and kept it. Each stroke pushed her forward and the belt pulled her back and the sounds she made into the leather were nothing like the composed, careful Beth who'd stood in that doorway in her uniform. That woman was entirely gone.

I slowed once, deliberately, and held still. She waited, breath going shallow, hips wanting to move and not moving. Then I drove into her again and she took it, all of it, a grunt of breath forced out through the leather, her hands fisting the sheet.

I set a rhythm with the belt and felt her stop thinking.

Her legs went unsteady. I could feel how she was gripping me, harder than before, involuntary, the way a body does when the mind has stopped running it. I watched her face in profile, her eyes losing focus, the effort of staying present becoming too much, and kept going, kept the same pull, the same pace, until her eyes went somewhere else entirely and she started to say something into the leather, urgent and muffled and beyond sense.