A Second Chance Ch. 01

"Glad to be of service," I bowed slightly, and handed her the drink.

"So, are you one of those dreadful Marine Engineers?" she looked at me with some concern, "only I've never seen you around college in a uniform."

She'd seen me around college, had she?

"No," I said, "I'm doing applied avionics and electronics, just happened to be surrounded by Sailors and Airmen, Royal Navy of course."

She smiled,

"Oh thank God," she said taking a sip of her tall glass, "that would have been quite disappointing if you had been!" Her smile went almost ear to ear.

"Hell, no!" I said, "I get seasick in the bath," I moved slightly closer, "avionics, I'd much rather do stuff that flies, besides, the last uniform I wore was as a cub, more than enough danger for me..."

She giggled and looked across to the marine engineers on a table away from ours, in their matching white dinner jackets, most of them stained with booze and various elements from the five courses we'd done for that evening.

"I had a bit of an issue with one of them," she said, "earlier on."

"I noticed; did you knee him in the balls by any chance?"

"Yeah, cracking shot, one of the girl M E's decided she was going to come over and have a go, I flexed my finger nails and told her to get on with it; she didn't of course and has just escorted him out of the room. Fucking marine engineers, think they're all that..."

The marine engineers were generally lads and a few girls going forward to be engineering officers, communications specialists, navigators and other salty sea dog tasks in the merchant navy, many of them sponsored by some of the larger international shipping and passenger transport lines and from all over the world.

They had a bit of a name around the place and were separated some distance from our table because of the amount of needle between the two courses, the armed forces and mercantile marine. Because of a particularly vicious attack on one of ours by several of theirs some years before, and the general security threat of course, the military undergrads had stopped wearing uniforms, unless for special occasions.

Their boldness and was based on two things, money and reputation.

Because of their regular placements aboard ship, they always had more money than the rest of us poor students and would flash it around.

They all drove cars that they left badly parked around the campus, generally in other blocks' reserved bays, and the college authorities would group them together in one hall of residence; they played their sound systems loudly, often to the consternation of any neighbours, threw their rubbish out of their windows 'because they knew they could get away with it', so the college kept all their juvenile eggs in one basket.

They loved their 'Reputation', because both the current students and their working alumni on board ship, all talked with great pride to the freshers about the two pubs they historically used in the town, and with fond reminiscences of the two occasions in the university year (Halloween and prior to the Easter break) when they would go into town, get hammered off their faces then attack the student union bar, and upset tables, drinks, customers and staff.

They were generally disliked across the campus and wore it like a badge of honour. The college council had warned them and threatened them, but those courses brought in very big sponsorships, fees and often equipment, very regularly, so other than on an individual basis they were virtually untouchable unless caught.

Bastards.

Knowing that this gorgeous girl had kneed one of them in the bollocks just made her even more attractive, as far as I was concerned.

"All of my table are heading for the Navy, RAF or the army," I sipped my Myers's dark rum (yes, Myers's IS spelt like that) which was a habit I'd gotten into because of the jolly jack tar's I socialised with, "It's like being the bloody NAAFI eating and drinking with that lot."

And it had been; that very night we'd done for six bottles of Taylor's vintage port in various toasts on our table, the Queen (Gawd' bless'er!), The Senior Service, Her Britannic Majesty's Royal Air Force, The Corps or the Regiment, 'Absent friends' (not that any of us were old enough to have any) and finally the cry was 'Wives and sweethearts (And may they never meet...)'.

"I'm the only civilian amongst them though..." I paused.

The gorgeous finance graduate giggled and held out a hand,

"Anna," she said.

"Craig," I said.

"Yeah, I know," I was more intrigued.

"How?"

"I'm in the swimming club with Alison on your table," Ali was a rather boyish but quite lovely RAF potential engineering officer, "and I asked her about how you fitted in with all of the boys in uniform. She spoke very highly of you." She stepped right up close to me, looked across the table and the stunning redhead, and whispered, "is she gay? I mean, she never came on to me or anything but just... kind of has the look... you know?"

"Not to my knowledge," I said, "in fact reading between the lines I kind of think she has a bit of an understanding with Mac, the lad with ginger curly hair there." Ali was indeed leaning against him and whispering in his ear.

"Oh, that's OK then!" Anna stayed right up close to me, and we chatted, just usual introduction stuff, courses, families, hobbies, music, and eventually our mutual single status. As if in cue, the music changed from the obvious dance numbers and slowed down to quiet slow-dance numbers. She took my arm and pulled me towards the dance floor, putting her glass down on her table then taking mine and doing the same.

I took her hand and slipped the other to the small of her back, bare, soft and warm. She did likewise, and we assumed the position, as Etta James sang, 'At last'. We danced all the way through that one, not stopping when it moved into Michael Buble and 'Just the way you look tonight'.

We made big eyes at each, and soon she'd let go of my left hand slipping both around my neck, so I put both mine around her slim waist, just in time for Ronan Keating to sing 'say nothing at all'. By the time Ed Sheeran was singing 'Perfect' we'd given in to our mutual attraction and had been kissing each other for a good two minutes; no, an AMAZING two minutes.

The slow songs continued and so did we, slow dancing and snogging the crap out of each other, only stopping when the DJ announced that the night was at and end and would everybody get on the dance floor for 'Auld Lang Syne' which of course was followed by 'New York, New York' which cleared the floor of all but the drunks.

We did precisely the opposite and headed out of the patio/fire doors to cool off, and to carry on kissing each other in the starlit night.

"Damn," she grumbled, looking at the tiny, posh expensive watch on her wrist, "Give me your number," she said, "My Dad's picking me up in a while."

I did so, ringing me from her phone and saving it as 'Anna BA' in honour of the degree she'd celebrated that night.

I escorted her to the front door and the car park, and the cars starting to arrive,

"There," she said, pointing along the long drive, "in the dark Cherokee, it's Dad AND Mum!" She giggled, "a girl could think her parents don't trust her..."

I smiled, bowed, and took her hand and kissed it, and holding it as she descended the stone stairs down to the service road as the big posh Jeep pulled level with us.

"Thank You Craig," she giggled, "that was so charming!" She whispered, "And look at my Mum's face!"

I peeked a quick look, the slightly older front seat passenger did look very impressed with my display.

"Goodnight Anna, I hope to see you again really soon."

"Call me," she said, "I'd like to see you really soon as well!"

She stepped across to her parents' car, opened the back door and waved to me. I stood straight like one of my military mates and waved back, giving a polite nod to both parents, pretending not to notice when the slash on her dress opened to reveal lots of thigh and the crest of a buttock I'd had a hand on not half an hour before.

Anna told me later that both parents had said, 'well he looks nice!' almost as if they'd rehearsed it.

I'm not sure they would have thought me that nice two nights later when Anna and I rushed our dinner and dashed back to my gradually emptying halls of residence and had the most amazing sex. I had been a virgin, but not Anna; she really didn't seem to mind.

We made love twice that night, and again the next morning. We did everything, in every position bar swinging from the lampshade, and that was probably because there wasn't one.

She confessed she loved 'hands and knees sex' and pretty soon I did too, it was our joint favourite and referred to in many innocent conversations as 'The fall-back position'. She blew my mind a few weeks into our relationship, by blowing 'me'. I paid her back in full, learning on the job as it were, and from some 'Pornhub' on-line lectures.

I started work full time with the aerospace company that had sponsored me and did very well. No longer being sponsored through college I moved home to my Mum's rather cramped house, and my small bedroom. By this time Diana had moved out but Mum still refused to clear her bigger room and bigger bed, even though she had already bought her first house with a view to the second one.

Eventually I introduced Di to Anna, and that was it; she went to Mum's one evening and removed everything she owned from it, insisting that if her life was to go 'Tits up' she'd move back into the small room I was in.

That was it, and I purchased a double bed that I shared with Anna quite often, until her getting a job close to mine meant we bought a place of our own a few years later.

We made love quite a lot in fact. Anna LOVED sex, she came often and quite easily it seemed to me and could be turned on by something sexy on the TV, a song on the radio or CD player, worse still something ROMANTIC on the TV, and would grab me.

She had confessed that she was really impressed with my 'sexy eyes', dark brown, slightly curly hair, but more so my 'fit body' that she'd been eyeing up since she saw me in the pool once and running and working out with my military mates.

She would climb on me on the sofa and start snogging. She would drag me to the sofa and sit on me, drag me to bed and strip off, climb in the shower with me. Eventually we'd end up in bed, screwing the life out of each other, and it was almost every night, even when she had her period-slightly worse in fact. It wasn't an addiction as such, she was just a very sensual and sexual girl and really enjoyed it, I was happy to oblige of course even if she could be hard to keep up with.

But that was someone else's problem now.

I wasn't convinced about the 'text sex' though, and I decided to worry about it if and when it happened.

I spent the next few days going through the house. Diana had an extremely tidy and organised house, much like her tidy and organised brain, and having cleared her clothes, shoes, make-up, bathroom products etc. there wasn't much else. I'd already boxed up lots of her business filing and it was out into file boxes and collected by a courier. Her own personal business stuff was in an antique looking filing cabinet in her antique looking office, I saved that for later.

I finally opened the second bedside table, having used the virtually empty one on the side of the bed I'd slept on since her passing; in the other one was all her bits and pieces, personal bedside table stuff and I really wasn't looking forward to inspecting it.

I found her spare glasses for when she wasn't wearing her contacts, a packet of tissues, an open box of tampons, some night moisturiser, paperback copies of 'Fifty Shades Freed', 'Pride and Prejudice' with Colin Firth on the cover, and a Terry Pratchett paperback I'd loaned her the year before, that looked untouched.

Under those was a white plastic strip of paracetamol, almost all missing. I guessed she had taken them to make her 'feel better' when the symptoms of her fatal cancer had manifested themselves. I binned all of it, bar the books.

The next drawer down had her small weekender rucksack that went almost everywhere with her when she wasn't working, and I lifted it out. Beneath was a totally different story.

There was a thick plastic Sainsburys carrier bag and I lifted it out. Inside was a whole side to my sister I'd never considered, not even once.

There was a long, slim, phallic vibrator and a tube of lubricant, hmmm. She was a healthy girl after all. Next was a Hitachi vibrator, just like the one Anna had in her bedside table from the time I'd first met her, and I figured many healthy women would have. Anna had a selection of vibrators mind you.

But slipped down at the bottom of the bag were some condoms, condoms that MY BIG SISTER HAD BOUGHT, it was a box of twelve, but with FOUR MISSING!

Men, or a man in particular, had never been a source of discussion between Di and Mum, Anna or me, and I was intrigued to know who might have been the person that had worn the missing ones.

Or had she got lucky on a few evenings and brought someone home with her, or was there a particular bloke out there? A friend that she benefitted from, an acquaintance that could have been waiting for the regular phone call from her inviting him over. Her smartphone had been disconnected although I did retain the sim-card just in case I ever needed to check something on her old profile.

I thought back to the funeral, and while there were four single men her age, they all seemed to be friends or colleagues and with someone else there, and none of them had the look I'd imagined a bloke might get at the funeral of a lover. No special flowers, no cards with special messages, nothing.

The condoms still had quite a long expiry date on them, and I figured she couldn't have bought them that long ago. Curious.

The phallic vibe went into the bin along with the lube, but I wiped over the Hitachi with some disinfectant wipes as I had a trick shoulder that Anna would sometimes soothe with hers and I knew just how and where.

The very next Monday I returned to work, and things were back to normal but for the strange quiet, and the eggshells my colleagues were walking on around me.

I thanked them all for their consideration but said that I was getting over it. I also told my couple of close friends that Anna and I had broken up, but that we were still good friends. The close friend Pete said quite simply,

"You might as well tell everyone mate."

"What?

"How will it look if someone invites the pair of you to dinner in a month and you have to say, 'we spilt up two months ago?"

I thought about that. He was right of course, and he even offered to tell the world.

Our amazing office ladies, the two Margaret's, started to cluck about me and check that I had everything I needed, they were both in the office when my Mum had died and knew that I was alone now.

Margaret A, (the other wasn't Margaret B; A was for Adams, as opposed to Margaret P -- Price) had a still-single daughter that she had endeavoured to set up with several of the single men in the team and I figured it might be my turn next.

To ease me back into the work I was flown out to Athens Airport for a quick fix, which was precisely that, by the time I arrived it seemed that the plane had settled itself down quite nicely and the previous fault was no longer present. I plugged my laptop into it and checked all was OK, then on to my hotel then the beach and a night enjoying some excellent food and wine and a morning back on the beach before my three o'clock back to Gatwick.

Not having Anna to pick me up from the reasonably close railway station I jumped another taxi, having to remember that I wasn't going back to the old place and the warm reception I would have got from her.

Instead, it was back to the big, detached house on the outskirts of my Sussex Town, and the empty rooms and empty bed. Again, I had the thought that I could simply send a text and drive over there and screw Anna, just as she had suggested.

No way, I couldn't go there and do that; she still held a big lump of my heart and my affections, but she had also been shagging that obnoxious twat that she worked with, behind my back for quite a few months. Might have been doing that more often now.

Nah.

I received 'that text' from her after almost two months after the chat, and I might actually have been tempted had I not been in Graz, Austria, messing around at the airport there for three days.

I duly sent back the required 'N' but with the rider that I was in Austria and the trip back could be a bit complicated. She sent back a sad ☹ face, adding a 😉just for badness. I was expecting at least one 'I miss you' from her but she evidently didn't.

I figured that she might now be living with Sean and I could have been the one-night-fuck.

That did appeal to me.

Nah, still too complicated.

After three months I was pretty much over it and had booked a day's leave to spend looking for a summer holiday destination, somewhere either quite close, or some distance, as I'd been to almost every European airport over the last four years.

I had always fancied the Antipodes, but it would have meant lots of money and a large amount of leave, but I figured I had a large amount of money now at least.

I dug out my laptop and the memory stick the solicitor had given me almost three months before, it was time I had a proper look at what money I had; the tablet PC she'd shown me had lots of figures and showed lots of money, but I really wasn't sure over and above those numbers.

I pushed in the USB stick, typed the password, and waited.

First on the stick was a word document, entitled 'readmefirst.docx'. I of course did.

"Dear Craig,

Well, here's a how-dee-do. If you're reading this, I'm dead and cremated, not buried, no way. If I was, dig me up and cremate me this instant!

I haven't gotten married obviously and seriously doubt I would have had any children. If I had, you'll be looking after them as well.

Anyway, the solicitor should have told you about my three rental houses, my stocks and shares and investments. They're all yours, I was working my way up and was after a fourth rental house plus the big house which should have seen me able to retire from real hard work and settle and raise a family.

You're reading this, so I evidently haven't managed that.

Now it's your turn. With your and Anna's house out for rent and you both settled down and living at the big house, you should be pretty much self-sufficient with the investment returns and income for the houses, meaning at least Anna can retire, you can finally marry her and sit back and have however big a family you could want.

Do it for me, have those grandchildren that Mum always wanted one of us to have but never saw. I know I never seemed to have time for all that kind of thing, but it was part of my long-term plan honestly Baby Brother, but if this hasn't happened then please, do it for me and Mum."

She wanted me to marry Anna and settle down, shit; we'd had a great time together and Anna had huffed a few times whenever I mentioned 'settling down', so the ring had never been bought, and our commitment to each other was just a 'given'. Perhaps if we'd done all that stuff, she might not have sought solace from Sean; then again, I wasn't that convinced.

I flicked out of that document and the hopes that it had been written with.

There were all the bank account and investment details, fuck but there was a lot of money. I could certainly afford a holiday in Australia, shit, I could take a year out and do it even.

Then there was a file on each of her three rental houses, with the land registry details, insurance company information, the plans, maintenance information, alarm codes and other background stuff, including a 'family history' of her first place, the turn of the century semi in Cairngorm Avenue and its various inhabitants going back to when it was built in 1876.