Babs Education

Barbara 'phoned home straight away. Her youngest boy had been taken ill, rushed into hospital at nine o'clock, crying for his mummy. Acute appendicitis requiring an emergency operation. He was now asleep and resting. Her husband was tired and depressed.

'Where were you, for God’s sake?' he asked.

‘Oh, er... I went out for a meal and got delayed,' she said. 'I didn't know you'd called until I was told just now. Sorry!'

Barbara returned to her room, sat down on her bed and wept with bitter shame and self pity. Her sexual emancipation of the previous night dashed to insignificance.

On her journey home she resolved to make it up to Bernard. She suddenly saw how unreasonable she had been. It wasn't Jonathan's fault. He too had been treated badly. She had perused and pestered him. He had risked exposure with her on a number of occasions.

She would try to arouse Bernard so that she could go down on him. It was something she had never done before but that he had always wanted her to do. Her revulsion had been overcome by the liberties she took with Jonathan's body.

She thought she could now satisfy Bernard's yearning for oral sex. Then she'd respond to his intercourse, rather than just lie back and leave it to him. She'd take part in the act. She owed it to him. He might wonder what had transformed her attitude to sex. She would have to make up some story about having confessed to a sex counsellor, who was on the course, about her aversion to sex and how she'd changed her thinking.

And it worked. But she would never forget her Jonathan.