Not One of Those Women

In the car park were several cars, as I approached a couple of men got from the nearest car. "He's all yours, crucify the bastard, you have all the evidence that you need on his computer, there'll be details of where the child porn has gone so that these sickos can be caught. Enjoy yourselves, this is my last day on the job."

The next day I tidied up details at work so that I didn't have to give evidence. Then I arranged for the sale of my unit and my superannuation funds. Then I went home.

Celeste was out the door and into my arms as soon as my car stopped and I got out, she almost knocked me over with her enthusiastic welcome. 'Oh Darling I've missed you so much."

"You'd better believe it, I don't know how many times she asked me when I was expecting you home." Amy gave me a sisterly peck on the cheek. "How did it go?"

"How did what go?" Celeste was curious.

"My Darling, you are now a quite wealthy woman."

"How?"

"Let's just say that I applied a little pressure on you husband and he coughed up what you would have been entitled to. The money's in your account. But there's more, he was arrested yesterday on child pornography charges, it seems that he was one of the kingpins of an international ring. Many more arrests will follow."

"Wow! He kept that a secret. I knew he ran a video store but I thought that it was legitimate. Boy he certainly had me fooled."

"And a lot of other people, but we'd been watching him for some time. Darling I've got a confession to make, in fact several confessions." She looked at me and there was fear, real fear, in her eyes.

Amy sat beside her and held her. "It's all right Celeste, my brother has told me all and you should listen to him with an open mind because he's done the right thing when it comes to you, believe me."

"Darling, I'm a policeman, or at least I was, and the last case I was working on involved one Michael Martin. We knew about his fetish videos but there was little that we could do about that unless one of the parties wasn't consenting to the, in your case, violence. At first I thought that you were one of those, you know porn stars that liked it rough, now I know better. I was to try to get close to you to see if you'd give evidence against him and we were almost prepared to make our move when he kicked you out. I knew that you were upset by this and it wasn't because of any love for him, we were certain that you'd lost that long ago. When I spoke to you in the bar that night I'd already decided that you needed help, what I didn't realise was how deeply depressed you were. I would have never been able to forgive myself if you'd succeeded in ending it. Even at that early stage I was falling in love with you and just had to help you."

"You'd better believe him dear, while you were in hospital he spent hours on the phone to me trying to work out what to do next. In the end I told him to do whatever his heart told him to do. I for one am glad that he did."

"Oh God the thoughts that were going through my brain as you talked! At first I was angry that you even considered using me to get to him, and then I was angry at myself, it wasn't your fault that you didn't know how depressed I was but it was my fault that I didn't believe you when you told me that you'd be back in the morning and then when I woke in hospital you were so kind to me and I was angry again that I'd put you through all of that and then when you took me home and made love to me I was so happy. And now I want to forget all of that and think only of the future and how long we'll have to wait before we can get married." She came into my arms and kissed me, hard, on the lips.

"Ahem, I'm leaving you now I've got work to do, you know like running the farm, so I'll leave you two to do whatever you feel that you have to do, and when I've finished I'll be quiet until dinner's ready and then I'll give you a call, I wouldn't want to walk in on anything, would I?"

"Don't just stand there talking about it, go, do your work, we've got work of our own to do."

"Work, what do you mean work? Is making love to me a chore for you?"

I kissed her to tell her that it wasn't any imposition on me to make love to her and then I carried her to our bedroom to show her exactly how I felt about her and making love to her. Somewhere in amongst all of that I asked Celeste to marry me and she said and emphatic 'yes'. I am glad that she wasn't 'one of those' women.