Living for Myself

Prologue

It was my old friend Leigh Nicholls that told me to start living for myself. We have always been there to pick each other up since we were at junior school. She has always been part of my life and I love her like a sister.

As we sat in her favourite restaurant on that fateful July evening, it seemed like she was the only thing I had left in my rapidly diminishing world.

The things she set in motion that night helped to transform me. She was my saviour.

We've shared a lot in the last forty-five years.

I can't wait to get home and tell her what an absolute slut I have been for the last few months.

I took her advice and aged fifty, I have finally started living for myself.

And God, has it been fun!

One

As I waited for the final divorce papers to come through, everything seemed fine with the world. It had gone on too long and I wanted closure. Eighteen months of solicitors, arguments, counter-arguments and finally a compromise agreement that left both of us relatively satisfied and anxious to move on. I got the house, so the feeling of rejection was tempered by at least having a roof over my head. The rest of the settlement meant I would want for nothing for the rest of my days as long as I wasn't too frivolous.

Then the envelope landed on my doormat and I was about to crack open the champagne. When I read the contents, the only thing that cracked was me. I was in floods for days and felt utterly empty, bereft and alone.

I was coming up to the dreaded fifty and I was all by myself in this great big, unforgiving world. The kids had flown the coop -- one settled in New Zealand with her partner and twins, the youngest doing his Post-graduate degree in Edinburgh. My ex-husband was off with his new, younger model -- a clone of me as I had been some fifteen years earlier according to the bush telegraph.

Robyn Hall-Evans aged forty-nine and three-quarters. Welcome to your new life on the scrapheap. Life hadn't begun for me at forty -- it had started the downward spiral that led me to where I was now. What chance had I as I approached fifty?

The first thing I did was to ditch the Hall-Evans part of the equation and after twenty-six years, went back to being Robyn Christie again. It felt cathartic for a while, then merely reminded me of how far I had travelled in that time to arrive back in exactly the same place I started.

Most of the so-called friends we had made over the years made all the right noises about 'poor old Robyn' then quietly forgot about me. A single woman didn't suit the demographic of their insular little worlds of genteel dinner parties and bridge nights. It bothered me at first, then I realised I was better off without them.

I didn't even have work to distract me. My ex-husband was a very well-paid, senior executive and once the kids were old enough to go to school, I just seemed to fall into the role of mother and housewife and my old, unlamented job was never mentioned again. In the early days, it suited me and after a few years I began to get involved in village life -- the usual round of committees, organising fetes and fund-raisers.

Now I could barely raise the enthusiasm for that, as I began to see in the older single women, the very thing I was destined to become myself. It quite frankly terrified me and I found myself making excuses not to be part of that world anymore.

I felt like I was in a giant bathtub that was emptying rather too rapidly -- the current whirling about me, dragging me ever closer to the plughole, down which I was about to disappear without trace.

Just about the only thing I managed to keep up with was my gym work. I started after having William as I found it hard to keep weight off and had stayed with it ever since. It became just about the only solace in my life -- the ten minute drive to the gym in a nearby town, flogging myself into the ground for an hour, doing the machines or pilates or yoga, then a leisurely shower, a skinny latte and a few words with some of the ladies I knew by sight.

Then it was back to my idyllic little cottage on the edge of the village green with the gin bottle screaming at me from the drinks cabinet. My next challenge was to see how long I could let it scream without me screaming back. Some days it didn't take long and those were the days I hated myself more than ever.

As for sex, I had barely even thought about it for a long time. It had not been a pleasant menopause and that contributed in part to an already rapidly declining relationship. I was not easy to live with, but a complete lack of understanding of my condition made a bad situation even worse.

I was in regular contact with Leigh during that period and even though she lived sixty miles away we saw each other regularly. I put on a brave face at our meetings, but Leigh being Leigh, and having known me since I could form basic sentences, knew I was in a bad place.

About a month into my new-found 'freedom', we sat in a pub garden halfway between our respective homes one Friday afternoon. At least the drive meant we weren't tempted by wine or gin. We sat, nursing spritzers as we always did, making them last so we could chat once our lunch was done.

Leigh looked at me over her half-moon glasses. Four kids and two marriages had left their toll on her, and over the last few years she had gone from being a head-turner to looking her age.

"So, you're looking good on the surface, babes. That gym work is obviously paying dividends." She patted her ample tummy. "Wish I had the willpower. So which rich village bachelor has our Robyn got her beady little eyes on then? Must be fighting them off with a shitty stick, I reckon!"

I knew she was probing me and the beady little eyes she referred to rolled in my head in exasperation. "Give over, Leigh. The only thing I'm fighting off has 'Gordon's' writ-large on the label. I'm down to marking the fucking bottle each night. How sad is that?"

"So no-one riding across the village green on a white charger to fall at your feet in supplication?"

I barked a mirthless laugh. "Hardly. Most nights it would be me falling attheir feet, but bloody dead drunk." I closed my eyes for a moment. "What a fucking mess I am, Leigh. Going through the motions of keeping fit, then drinking myself into oblivion." I took a drink of warm wine and soda. "And I don't even think about sex because if I did..." I trailed off for a moment, tears welling in my eyes. "Christ, Leigh -- this fucking façade I'm wearing. My drinking, my exercise kick. It's all for one reason and I am so fucking scared, I can barely think straight."

She held out a hand to me. "Come on, tell Aunty Leigh everything. You know it always works -- I'm here for you and you're here for me."

I took a deep breath and looked around the garden to make sure no-one would overhear me. I moved closer to her and kept my voice low. Somehow I got it all out without crying.

"Leigh, I haven't been touched intimately for almost two years. I am forty-nine years old and the damned thing is so under-used it has virtually healed up. I am scared to touch myself. I am scared to even think about sex. Every time I see something on television that is remotely sexual, I switch over. I've stopped reading in case the characters get it on. I can barely use the internet because I long to open up one of the websites I know Charles used to visit. They are still there in the History."

She laughed ruefully. "Then just do it. Don't think about it -- let it come naturally. Get it out of your system, girl!"

I shook my head. "I can't, Leigh. It's like the gin or the exercise - I know that if I start, I won't be able to stop."

"I recall a nineteen-year-old bombshell coming home from University or her gap year, telling me she couldn't stop either. She was fearless, beautiful and sexy as all get out. Thirty years on, she's still the latter two, but she got scared somewhere along the way. We need to change that and change it very quickly."

With a deft motion, she dug in her handbag and palmed something into mine. I may have led a sheltered few years, but even I knew it was a small pocket vibrator. The next few words echoed with me all the way home.

"So, when you get home later this afternoon, you are going to pour yourself an industrial-strength glass of gin, then you are going to open one of those websites and you are going to watch porn, drink gin and fuck yourself silly with that little contraption until you are unable to walk. Then do it again tomorrow and the next day. Get it out of your system."

She fixed me with a gimlet eye. "Coz at the moment, you are damaged goods and you are no good to anyone. If anyone does come knocking on your door, you'll run a mile. You need to get back in the game, girlfriend - and it starts today. Got that?"

I didn't know what to say. We had always been open with each other, but this? "Leigh, I can't. I just can't..." I tailed off again, looking down at the table.

She took my hand in hers, her voice low. "Worked for me after Terrence left all those years ago. A weekend of no self-control. Do whatever the fuck you want. Watch something completely out of your comfort zone. Group sex, lessies, trannies - anything you like. Get drunk and above all, remember what it is to orgasm, because that is one addiction that you should feed regularly."

Resistance was futile with Leigh. "Ok, but only coz it's you telling me."

She nodded slowly as if in thought. "Good lass - right -- Phil's away next weekend with his golfing buddies and Josie and Katie are off on a school hockey tour, so I'm all on my ownsome. At least I was until my bestie Robyn decided to pay me a visit for a long-overdue girly weekend that will include some long pub lunches and plenty of wine and gin. Oh, and of course - a sordid little recap of what she did when she finally remembered that her pouting little tuppence was designed for other things than making wee-wee."

As we reached our cars, I was in a complete daze. We hugged and I got behind the wheel and started the car before I had even registered we had left our seats. Leigh wound down her window and gave me a big wink.

"See you next Friday - go hard!"

She backed out with a screech of gravel and roared off up the narrow country lane. I sat gazing at the pub sign for a long time before I burst out laughing. It seemed quite appropriate given the advice I had just been given.

The Nag's Head.

Two

It was a lovely evening and we sat in Leigh's back garden, a bottle of Chablis in a cooler, the last few crusts of a delivery pizza curling in the late sunshine.

After the previous cathartic, cleansing weekend I had proved I could do things in moderation once more. Leigh was right -- it had been a revelation. Once my sexual tension had been released and the floodgates opened, I was able to control my drinking and it was now at a pretty manageable level.

We had skirted the issue since I arrived in the late afternoon and now the food was out of the way and the wine flowed, I could tell she was itching to find out all my naughty little secrets.

Not that drinking gin and getting off by my own hand was exactly material for a porn movie, although I had seen a few women doing just that over the last few nights as I began to widen my - until now - very narrow viewing horizons.

It had been a very long time since Leigh and I discussed matters of a sexual nature. Twenty-five to thirty years ago, it had almost been our sole topic of conversation. We began by comparing our first kisses and admitted to our schoolgirl crushes. Later we would describe in detail our first, less than stellar encounters. Once we got started, every meeting was laced with a 'who, what, why, where and when' and no detail was left out. It was only when marriage tamed us both that - as Leigh had once so succinctly put it - our 'discourse featured less intercourse'.

She didn't have to say anything -- I just opened up to her and let it all out. "You were right, Leigh. I needed that so badly. The first time was like my virginity -- it bloody hurt and I had to force myself to go through with it. I put three measures of gin in a pint glass, topped it up with tonic and hit a few random lines on the History tab."

She grinned. "An eye-opener, huh?"

I laughed back. "Some of it made me close mine very tightly -- especially when it involved having cum in them!"

"Yes, I always prefer it below the eye-line. Lost a contact lens once years ago, but that's another story!"

"Yuck, too much info, Missy! Anyway -- it was a bit uncomfortable the first night after so long, so I went into the pharmacy in town on Saturday and made sure I used the self-serve till as I had three bottles of lubricant in my basket. Let's just say Saturday night was a lot more fun." I sighed. "That's when I watched an older woman take two young guys, one at each end. I searched for ages to find someone that looked a bit like me."

"And?"

I closed my eyes for a long moment and took a deep breath as I recalled the slim, fifty-something honey-blonde being tossed like a rag-doll. "Leigh, I have just turned fifty and I shocked myself that night. By the end, I was almost crying; willing myself to become that woman. I wanted to feel those two guys doing what they were doing to her." I drained my wineglass. "I still want it so badly, Leigh. It's gone right to the top of my bucket list. The Great Barrier Reef, the Taj Mahal and the hang-glider over the Grand Canyon have all just dropped one place each. Now, number one on my bucket list is being fucked at both ends by two young studs until I cannot remember my name."

Her reply threw me as she refilled our glasses. "So what are you going to do about it?"

I expected at least a burst of derisive laughter. "Nothing. Dream. Wish. Not going to happen, is it?"

"Why not?"

"Oh come on, Leigh -- I'll just wander into the village pub, jump up on the pool table and invite all-comers to have their fill, shall I? Get real, babe -- how is a middle-aged woman in a tiny Cotswold village going to fulfil her new, all-consuming fantasy of being spit-roasted?" I hung my head. "And all the other fantasies I have suddenly accumulated in the course of five days of surfing the morass of sin readily available to the chosen few."

She nodded. "Hmm, when you put it like that. So what other things took your fancy then?"

By the time I had told her, she said I needed a new separate bucket list for things sexual. "Jeez, you are a little dark horse, Robs. No wonder you've been repressed and buttoned-up for so long, holding all that inside."

"I never knew it was inside, that's the problem! The other problem is there's no way I can see of getting it outside either."

She picked up on something I had mentioned on my rapidly expanding bucket list. "Do you really want to do it with another woman?"

"Yes, but don't worry, I'm not going to come on to you. Be like kissing my sister. But yes I do and it scares me and turns me on at the same time. All of it does." I sighed. "Anyway -- it's fantasy and that's how it will stay. At least I've remembered what my 'pouting tuppence' is for again, and while I liked your pocket rocket, look what arrived on Wednesday in a very discrete package!"

I thumbed to a webpage on my phone and held it up to her. Her eyes went wide.

"Robyn, you dirty old mare! Fucking hell, it looks like a bloody model spaceship!"

"G-spot and clit stims. As one of the reviews so eloquently said, 'vibrates like a muthafucka!' Two-hundred quid, but worth every penny already!"

"How much? Fucking hell, you could get an escort for that money! Got it with you?"

"Yeah, its upstairs. Want to borrow it tonight?"

"Is it clean?"

"Ish.."

"Oooh go on then! More wine, my dear?"

It was just like old times after that. I felt as relaxed as I had done in many years and Leigh said the change in me was very noticeable.

There was a very noticeable change in her the next morning too and when I offered her pocket rocket back in exchange for my new toy, she shook her head. "Ooh no -- that was a gift for me putting you back on track... wasn't it?"

"Not exactly..."

"Oh, ok then. Must have got my wires crossed." She took the smaller vibe from me and handed mine back with a sulky look on her face. "Hmph, some friend." Her face cracked into a huge grin. "Fuck me, that was good, Robs. Surprised you didn't hear me!"

The look I gave her stopped her in her tracks.

"Oh shit, you did, didn't you! Oh well, best have it back then as I can at least hide my little playmate quite easily. That contraption would be a bit difficult to explain away to a husband and seventeen-year-old twins. Just stay more often and bring it with you each time, that's all!"

The rest of Saturday was just like the previous night -- like old times and we had great fun on a horse trek as we used to do way back. After we showered and put on our finery, we walked the short distance into the centre of town for a belated fiftieth birthday meal.

She was clearly well known at the restaurant and introduced the waitress to me. Lorraine was a pretty, bubbly woman of about thirty with an alluring West-country accent. As she left, Leigh grinned at me. "What about her for your first girl?"

"No, Leigh. Stop it. She's far too pretty and cute. I would need someone with experience."

The girl returned with our aperitif gins and as she left I looked at my friend. "Bloody hell, Leigh -- that's now an image I can't shake off. Is she?"

Leigh did a facepalm. "You are so easy to wind up. No, she's happily married with two adorable little twin girls. Twins - must be something in the water around here, eh?" She held her gin up to me. "Here's to sorting out my bessie mate."

I touched my glass to hers. "Cheers Leigh. And thanks for sorting me -- it's been a revelation!"

"Glad to hear it -- but don't thank me yet -- I've hardly started, my dear. You were happily married for a fair few years and gave everything to bringing up two great kids while that dissolute arse you married swanned about the globe like a Master of the Universe. You always had my back when we were young. Now we're not so young, I've got yours. You've lived for other people for too long, milady."

She held out her glass once more. "Right -- let's drink to the new Robyn Christie who's new life officially starts today. It's time to start living for yourself now, Robyn -- and I'm going to help you do just that!"

She reached into her bag and handed me a large envelope. "Your belated birthday pressie. Welcome to the Half-Century club, babes."

Leigh co-owned a small travel agency, but even so, I was stunned when I opened the envelope to find she had gifted me a ten-day cruise in the Mediterranean, embarking from Southampton and ending in Marseilles after visiting various interesting ports.

"Be good for you. Plenty of rich divorcees looking for fun. Get some sun, see some sights." She leaned in, her voice low. "And spend some time on your fucking back. Or on top. Wherever you like -- just fucking get laid, Christie - or you'll pay me back every penny."

I was too shocked to argue and Leigh was a nightmare to argue against. By the end of the evening, I had vowed to her I would do my best to be a naughty girl and after she insisted, I told her that, yes, I would book myself a stay in Paris afterwards to try and relive a small part of my gap year.

As we paid the bill, we were more than a little merry. Leigh fixed Lorraine with a stare. "How old d'you think my friend is, Loz? Not bad for a mother of two and a granny, is she?"

The girl had been funny and flirty all night and made us laugh with her introductions to each course. She even pretended to set a place for herself when we ordered our desserts as she 'loiked them both'. She looked at me appraisingly, hands on her hips, then turned to Leigh.