Living for Myself

Like making myself look good and making sure I was on time. As I returned to the apartment, I checked on my booking on the way up to make sure and was assured the table was mine from four-thirty.

As I did my makeup, I took a long look at myself in the mirror and tried to appraise myself with neutral eyes. Lorraine was right -- my skin was that of a woman twenty years younger. My rigorous regime saw to that and I almost needed another suitcase for my big-name brand potions and unguents. When my daughter was in her early teens, she used to call me Professor Snape -- the potions master from her beloved Harry Potter books, thanks to my penchant for expensive little pots of magic.

Ok, it cost me, but I had to admit the results were damned good. I would have preferred to have my hair done but asking for something in a foreign language I had largely forgotten was a recipe for disaster, so I saw to it myself. I had been away for almost three weeks, but thanks to the beauty salon on the cruise ship, my roots remained hidden and my honey-blonde hair was nicely streaked with lighter, ash-blonde highlights. It fell in gentle waves onto my shoulders. Nicole already said she liked it, so I was happy.

I applied a tiny amount of eye-liner and nodded at my reflection. I wasn't sure if I looked nearer forty than fifty, though given some of the women of my age I had seen being ravaged on the internet, I felt heartened when I realised I could easily pass muster amongst them.

I was good to go.

So I went.

She was fashionably late -- fifteen minutes, and of course there was no apology. She just breezed into the café and with an airy wave, gestured to the waiter. "Espresso, s'il vous plait, Albert!"

She slumped down opposite me in a very unladylike manner. She looked utterly stunning in a tight black leather jacket and matching knee-length boots over wet-look leggings. Her hair was tied up in an elaborate, colourful bandanna and she filled a replica French rugby shirt very nicely indeed. If my resolve had shown any sign of faltering, the sight in front of me now would have reaffirmed it in an instant.

Once settled, she appraised me through narrowed eyes. "Tres elegante! You look sensational."

I thanked her, and as though nothing of any great import was about to pass between us, we chatted a little about her job and all manner of things including my divorce. I was surprised to say the least that she was an English teacher in an elementary school. We talked like old friends for fifteen, twenty minutes, not two people who barely knew each other. She was warm, friendly and good company but something didn't seem to add up and I felt she was holding back - skirting something that maybe she felt was best left unsaid.

As we finished our second coffee, she signalled to the waiter and glanced at me. "Wine?"

It sounded like a fine idea. "Pourquoi pas!"

As with many other men in the café, it was clear the waiter had the hots for her. As he left, she held out her little finger and wound the strap of her shoulder bag around and around it. She giggled and put her hand to her mouth.

"Nicole, it is highly likely you have most men wrapped around that little finger. Some women too, no doubt."

She deadpanned. "Oui -- Colette over there for one. Francine behind you. Old Madame Duberry who is in here most days. Any more you can think of?"

I thought for a moment. "I hear there is an Englishwoman of a certain age that recently began to frequent the place. Though I hear on the grapevine that she is interested in wrapping something wet and more intimate around your fingers than a bag strap."

Nicole took a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. "Is she now? And did she tell you why she changed her stance from yesterday?"

I put my chin on my hand and stared at her. "What did the great Madame Piaf say? 'Non, je ne regrette rien'. Well I regret something, Nicole. Something I didn't do before you were born. If I don't do it now, I never will. For me, it is unfinished business."

I paused as the waiter brought the wine. He ostentatiously poured two glasses and held them out to us. "Mesdames!"

We thanked him and I held my glass to Nicole's. "I don't intend to finish that business this evening - I intend to start it. It's time to be me again. So I would be very grateful if once we have finished this wine, you take me upstairs to Apartment Eight and show me what I have been missing for so long."

She touched her glass to mine, her eyes misting over. "Oh, petit oiseau, I will wash away the hurt and the regret. It will be my pleasure and my honour to induct such an elegant, lovely lady into our world. Salut!"

"Cheers!" We drank and a little shiver ran down my spine. I wanted to text Leigh but didn't want to spoil the moment. "So, how was last night?"

Nicole looked around us. "Here -- in the street? I'd be arrested! Maybe over a glass on the balcony later to get us in the mood for more?"

"Deal. It's funny, I had you pegged as a model from the start. Just that poise, elegance, natural beauty. It seems strange to think you are a teacher. I'm sure the catwalks of Europe are poorer for your absence."

She was silent for a long moment then looked at me pensively from over the rim of her wineglass. "Robyn, you seem like a very open-minded, level-headed lady. I don't normally pour my heart out and tell my sad little tale to people I barely know, but somehow, this is very different. May I?"

I considered my response for a moment. "Nicole, you said you would be honoured to induct me into your world. In return, I would be honoured to listen to your story. I like to think I never judge people, so please -- in your own time. I'm not going anywhere." Smiling, I looked up at her balcony, far above us. "At least not for a while."

She sat in silence for a moment. "Merci, Robyn. Ok - I started out working as a teacher a few years ago but something has always played at the back of my mind. I was always told I could be a model and despite being happy, there is a deep desire in me to be something else. Someone else. It took me a long time, but eventually, like you, I realised I have made a decision I regret."

I looked at her wide-eyed, unsure as to where things were going. When I found out I was almost speechless.

"Just after I started teaching, I received an offer that almost tore me in two. I had applied to a major production company a few months earlier -- sent them some solo work in the vain hope of being accepted. There was no reply and I almost forgot about it. Four days into my teaching career, they contacted me and I blew out their offer of an audition. I wanted both jobs so badly. I had wanted to teach for as long as I could remember. The other job had become something of an obsession. One of them had to give and I couldn't let it be my lifelong ambition. If I had gone down the other road while still teaching and was found out -- as would undoubtedly have happened - it would have caused such a scandal."

I was surprised that this young girl would take me into her confidence so readily. "I assume this wasn't just straight modelling?"

She took a drink and looked at me levelly. "No, Robyn. As you have no doubt realised, it was an adult movie production company." She raised an eyebrow. "Twenty-one year-old Nicole Bouvier had just been accepted as a probationary English teacher to elementary school children. And she had also been offered an audition for a major European producer of pornographic images."

She closed her eyes for a moment as though it was hard for her to bring back the memory. "As time has passed, the desires grow. I see girls like myself in movies and keep wondering. It began to nibble at me like 'une petite souris' - a little mouse. Very soon, that little mouse became a pack of feral rats gnawing at me constantly. My childhood ambition was overtaken very quickly by my adult ambition, but now it is too late. I blew my chance years ago."

There was a long silence. "Regrets, eh? Madame Piaf was lucky to have none -- we all have them." She shook her head. "No, she wasn't lucky. She died aged forty-seven."

As she lapsed into another silence, the waiter passed our table and saw the bottle was almost empty. "Une autre?"

Despite wanting to sink into her soft embrace, I felt there was a little more she had to tell me. Her revelations had not exactly shocked me, but I was very intrigued. "Well I for one am enjoying getting to know my new friend a little better. The night is still young."

I took hold of her hand and she squeezed my fingers gently as she turned to the waiter. "Oui, merci Albert -- une autre!"

As he left, she turned back and gave me the same stare she had given me from her doorway the day before. It tore into my soul. "Robyn -- when I tell you who I really am -- what I really am, I would not be surprised if you run upstairs to your apartment and hide under the bed."

I gripped her hand even tighter. "When I go upstairs, I go with you, Nicole. Please go on."

"Merci, Robyn." Our glasses refilled, she lowered her voice even though the tables around us were now vacant. "You are obviously an intelligent and observant lady. When you see my apartment, I am sure you will wonder how I can afford it on a teaching salary. I have been in the apartment you are staying in -- I viewed it before I saw the one I now own. It is a little faded, old fashioned and tired, is it not?"

I had to agree with her. It had seen better days, but I forgave everything thanks to the view.

She went on. "Mine is the opposite -- clean, modern. Tres chic... but way above my pay grade." A hand covered her face for a moment as she gathered her thoughts. "The gentleman I was with the night I met you on the balcony. Did it not seem to you a little odd that my lover would leave so quickly after our... denouement?"

Suddenly, it all became clear. "He left because his time was up, didn't he?"

A shy smile played on her lips. "He was a little over, actually. I am quite generous."

"And last evening. Your dinner date."

I thought she was going to down her glass of wine in one hit. She coughed a little as it caught in her throat. "Robyn, when you are - not to put too fine a point on it - a raving nymphomaniac like I am, and a handsome, well-endowed older gentleman is willing to pay me one-thousand Euros to dine with him at a Michelin-starred restaurant then stay the night with him, it is quite hard to refuse."

When I stayed silent, unable to believe what she had just said, she took hold of my hand, her big grey eyes wide in fear. "Say something... please!"

I swallowed hard. "Well, we've already had Edith Piaf, so how about I quote Kylie Minogue this time? 'I should be so lucky!'"

Her smile lit up the café and heads turned at her lovely, natural laugh. "I take it that you won't run and hide then. Thank you for not judging me. Oh, and just to be clear, it is my night off so I will waive my usual fee!"

I held her hand to my mouth and kissed her fingers. "No judging, Nicole. I take it the decision was yours to embark on such a... career? No coercion from anyone, I hope."

That lovely long, auburn mane shimmered as she shook her head vigorously. "Very much my decision. A friend did some escorting when we studied in London and got me into it. It may not be my dream job, but it is a lot easier to keep it discrete, so I can still do the other thing I love. I would be doing the things I do anyway, so c'est parfait."

The girl intrigued me more and more with every word. "I envy you your youth and freedom."

Her face changed abruptly, as though a cloud had covered the sun. "I never really had a youth. I grew up in a strange little commune in a tumble-down old chateau in the Loire Valley. My mother had drippy-hippy ideals. Free love and endless supplies of dope were all that mattered to her. I was an inconvenience -- an impediment to her hedonistic lifestyle. Looking after a precocious brat didn't sit well with stoned group-sex sessions every night."

She drained her glass and refilled it and topped up mine. "So you can see where I get it from. I somehow wonder how there is a respectable part of me left!"

I stared at her in wonder. "Oh my God, Nicole -- what a life you've had already! I can't imagine what it would be like to live in an environment like that."

She stared off into the distance. "When it's all you know, it just becomes your little world. You think that is all there is. As far as we were concerned, there was nothing outside of our grounds and the local village that interested us. It took me a long time to adjust to the real world when my mother threw me out." She gave a mirthless laugh. "I was glad to get rid of the dope, but the group-sex is harder to kick!"

I was utterly horrified. "Threw you out? What happened?"

Nicole scratched her chin, gazing out into the traffic on the busy Boulevard. I thought that maybe she wasn't going to answer as she gathered up her bag and drained her glass. Mine was nearly empty and I followed her lead. The way the conversation had gone, the wine had not lasted long.

She beckoned the waiter over to pay and turned back to me, her face impassive. "I was beginning to be more popular with her gentlemen friends than she was. She didn't like that. I won't tell you how old I was, but it is why I prefer older lovers."

The speed with which she stood and left after paying, it was clear she wanted to move on. "Right, if you're still with me?"

I caught up with her as she opened the heavy outer door to the apartment. I put my hand on her arm. "Nicole, thank you for confiding in me. I can see it took a lot to say what you did."

She stroked my cheek. "I like honesty. I survived and it made me what I am today, so I should be grateful." Long fingers closed around my left wrist and I was dragged into the hallway. I stumbled over the worn doormat and surprisingly strong arms held me up.

She pressed the elevator button. "Time for someone else to be grateful..."

Five

It should have felt alien and wrong to embrace her slim body -- to feel her breasts press against mine in the rickety old elevator as our lips met for the first time. If I hadn't known it before, I knew at that first contact it was going to be an utterly unforgettable experience. I had kissed a fair few men in my time, most of them a long time ago, but nothing prepared me for Nicole's featherlight touch, her soft lips, her gently probing tongue. I felt as though I were sixteen again and kissing Harry Ingram at the school disco as the elevator rattled to a halt.

It was 1985 again and Robyn Christie was about to lose her virginity. As Nicole took me by the hand and led me to her apartment, I half expected to hear Wham! or Whitney Houston playing as they had that fateful night. It felt as though I was walking on air, just like when Harry led me out of the school hall and we found a secluded spot behind the science block.

When she opened her front door and led me inside, reality crashed back in on me. This was not 1985 -- it was 2020 and I was now fifty years old, not sixteen. Before my cruise ship dalliances, the last time I had meaningful sex with someone that wasn't my husband was in 1992. That was before Nicole was born. She was younger than my daughter, the same age as my son, who would no doubt lust after her.

I shivered as doubt welled up in me. Then I thought of my bold assertion to Leigh about wanting to sleep with a woman. Usually when I kissed a woman, it was a fleeting brush on her cheek or an air-kiss accompanied by the inevitable, 'Mwah' sound. I had just felt Nicole's tongue probe between my parted lips and I loved the feel of it. The tingle in my groin had not been there during either of my brief horizontal moments on the ship. There, I had been reserved and mechanical. The contact I had with those two men was the thing that felt alien and wrong. My fleeting contact with Nicole just felt so right that I could barely contain my emotions.

As Nicole stood gazing at me in her hallway, her voice came to me in a breathy whisper. "Are you sure, petit oiseau? You really want to do this?"

I held my hand out and took hers. "Nicole, I didn't even feel this way thirty-something years ago when a young man took my maidenhead. Yes, I am sure. I want this more than anything."

She nodded slowly and raised my fingers to her lips. "That's good, because so do I! It has been my pleasure to introduce some curious ladies to Sapphic sex in my evening job, but I think this will be much more fulfilling. Let me know if I go too fast or if there is something you do not like."

It was now my turn to drag her towards me. "Oh, you beautiful girl, just fucking fuck me. It must be ten years since I came properly at someone else's hand. Do whatever it takes, and I'll do everything I can to reciprocate. I want to come harder than I have ever come in my life and I want to make you come so hard, you'll never forget this night either."

Her smile lit up her face. "Well, if you put it like that!"

As we came together again, there was no more doubt, no more panic, no second thoughts. I just yielded to her and let her flow over me like silk on a breeze. She was gentle, her lips and fingers feather-light on my skin as we slowly undressed. We kissed for a long time before she began to touch me more intimately. At first I was almost disappointed that she didn't make any moves in that direction, then realised she really was breaking me in gently -- getting me used to the feel of another woman. After all, she was the expert. I was the novice despite our relative ages. I let myself fall under her spell and went with the flow, wherever it took us.

When her lips closed over my left nipple, some fifteen minutes after our first touch, it was as if someone had passed an electric current through my body. Her hand cupped my pudenda as she teased me with nibbling teeth and soft lips and made me squeal in delight as she stretched it between her teeth further than it had ever gone before.

Then she left a long, slow, wet trail down my body, her lovely eyes never leaving mine as her tongue worked its magic down my breasts, over my ribs and tummy. It wiggled in my belly-button as I stroked her long, thick hair, then began the last leg of the journey. I suddenly wished I didn't have such an unruly tangle of hair down below, but she didn't seem to mind. I wondered if she were clean-shaven, trimmed, or full bush.

If touching my nipples with her mouth gave me electric shocks, words cannot describe the feeling as her tongue ran over my labia. I was propped up on pillows so I could get the best possible view and I ran my hands through her hair and over her silky smooth shoulders, hoping she would feel the same when it was my turn. Again, it was slow but insistent and I felt like I wanted it to go on forever.

After a few minutes of sheer bliss, she raised her head, her lips wet and sticky and spoke for the first time since we started. "You taste good, little bird. Heady and musky. May I go inside?"

I took her hand. "You may, young lady -- but only if I can taste you first."

She breathed in as her hand went down between her legs and if I had any doubts that she may be enjoying our liaison, they were dispelled as she held sticky, wet fingers up to me. I inhaled her aroma then parted my lips as she slipped them inside my mouth. She could have fed me all night. I had always liked my own taste and I knew hers was like a fine champagne as opposed to my 'vin ordinaire.'

As I sucked her dry for the fifth time, she slipped a finger inside and I shuddered as the tip pressed on my G-spot. Her voice was low and breathy. "Let me make you come, Robyn."

I shook my head. "When we come, we come together, Nicole. Just keep doing that -- I'm in no hurry."

She kept doing it and kept adding fingers as her mouth worked on my clit. Once I had got over the fabulous sensation, I whispered to her. "Surprised you could find it in that jungle!"