33 comments/ 46477 views/ 4 favorites In The Mirror I Saw Her By: The Wanderer I thank my LadyCibelle and Techsan for their patience, proof reading, and editing skills and of course encouragement. * I was probably on my forth or maybe fifth pint of the evening - I wasn't exactly counting -- and I had been staring down at the almost empty glass thinking that it was about time it was filled up again, but when I looked up to catch the barman's eye, I saw her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. How long she'd been standing there, I have no idea. But our eyes met the moment I raised my head. She looked somehow bedraggled, not her usual immaculate self that I'd been used to seeing in the previous two years. She was still as beautiful as ever, but her eyes looked sunken. And I'd say, that since I'd last laid eyes on her two months previous, she'd lost a couple of pounds in weight that she couldn't really afford to. For a few seconds neither of us moved, we just stared at each other in the reflection of the mirror. Then she seemed to straighten her back; she got a little taller, taking herself to her full five foot three inches. I watched her as she took a deep intake of breath, then strode confidently, but somehow at the same time tentatively, towards the empty stool beside me. "Can we talk?" she asked, as she climbed onto the stool. "Can't see that there's much to talk about, Susan," I replied. "Please, Pete? I need to explain, if only for my own peace of mind." "Then explain; I'm not deaf!" "No, Pete, not here, everyone can hear. Can't we go somewhere more private?" "I like it here - all my friends are here. And George over there does a really good job of keeping my glass full. Don't you, George?" The barman nodded in our direction, letting Sue know that he could hear every word that was exchanged between us. "Your friends aren't here, Peter; they are back at the institute and the university, where you should be." "No, they're all my friends, all neatly lined up in rows on those shelves. And George only has to pull on that pump handle over there and some more of my friends come out to play. It's a good pint he serves up here. Hey, George, this one's nearly dead; you'd better earn your keep." George picked up a fresh glass and pulled me another pint. "Anything for you, Miss?" he asked, as he placed the glass in front of me, whisking away the empty one. "I'll have a brandy please? I think I'm going to need it!" Susan replied. "Your tab, Pete?" George asked. "Does it look like I've got a choice?" I commented. George picked up his pen and made a quick note on the little pad by the till. "Pete, can we at least sit at a table or in one of the booths back there? I really need to explain," Susan insisted. "If we must, but I can't see the point," I said reluctantly, sliding off of my perch and onto my feet, and just a little unsteadily as well. "Make sure no one nicks my spot, George; this shouldn't take very long." To be honest I didn't really want George hearing this exchange either. Susan led the way to one of the booths at the back of the bar, the only one that wasn't already taken. She slid daintily in on one side of the table and I collapsed onto the bench opposite her. Then I leant against the seat back, and waited for her to say her piece. Susan took some time composing herself. I assumed she was getting her probably often-rehearsed little speech right in her mind. "I'm sorry, Pete! It was a mistake; I shouldn't have let it happen," she finally said. I do believe she expected me to say something in reply. But to be honest I was too pissed -- in both senses of the word, drunk and angry - to come up with the comic repartee in reply, that I'd like to have done. After waiting a few moments Susan went on. "You know who he was obviously?" That question I could reply to. I wasn't quite that drunk yet. "Yeah, of course I do. I'd seen the pictures of you and the fucker around your mother's house enough times." "You hurt him badly, you know?" she informed me. Not something I didn't know; I'd injured both my hands in the process. "Yeah, well, he and you hurt me pretty bad yourselves. What was I supposed to do? Shake his hand as say 'Hi, Gordon, I'm Pete and that's my girl you're shagging there?' If the bugger had stayed down when I put him down the first time, he wouldn't have got hurt half as much as he did. But the arsehole thought he was a tough guy, didn't he? He forgot all about the old saying the bigger they come the harder they fall." I could see tears forming in Susan's eyes as the scene was brought back into her mind's eye. "No, your lover boy thought he was going to wipe the floor with the little archaeology student; only to find out he'd picked on a geek who knew how to look after himself. The bastard was lucky I never killed him. And then he goes running to the police!" "Not exactly running, Peter; they took him to hospital in an ambulance, and me as well!" That surprised me, "You as well? But I never touched you!" I said defensively. "Of course you didn't, I know that. Dumb-arse fell on me when he was trying to get up, dislocated my shoulder in the process." I do believe my face must have cracked a little, and I almost smiled at the thought. Sue must have been watching me closely and she noticed the change in my expression. "It wasn't funny, Peter; it hurt a lot! Still gives me trouble now, sometimes; and the doctor said it could dislocate again anytime in the future, if I'm not careful." "Well, if you hadn't been in bed with the bastard in the first place, it wouldn't have happened, would it? So don't go trying to lay the blame on me." "Oh, god, Peter, I wasn't doing that! I was trying to explain how the police got involved. The ambulance men called them, when they saw the state Gordon was in. You realise you broke his cheekbone, don't you?" "So, I busted a couple of bones in my hands in the process, so I would call that even, wouldn't you?" I instinctively felt my right hand, the one that was still giving me grief, with my left. "Not exactly. Gordon lost four teeth as well, you know," Susan said, reaching out toward my right hand, I can only assume to inspect the damage. Instantly I dropped my hand below the table, out of her sight and reach. "Is that all? I was hoping for all of the bloody things; teach the git not to grin at me like that again." "When did he grin at you?" "When he saw me standing at the door. He thought it was quite funny, him fucking you whilst I was standing there watching." "Sorry, I don't understand. I didn't know you were watching us. How long were you standing there, watching us?" "Dunno, a couple of minutes maybe." "And you did nothing, said nothing?" "No, I was waiting for the opportune moment." "I still don't understand. What opportune moment?" "Just before he thought he was about to cum in you. That's when I thumped him the first time. The wanker thought I was a fucking voyeur or something, and had a bloody great grin on his face. Kind-a lost that though when I hit him, didn't he?" "Oh, god, you not only caught us, but you stood there and watched as well." "So?" "But I was your girlfriend. We were going to get engaged and married," Susan exclaimed. "And you stood there and watched another man having sex with me." "No, you weren't. You hadn't been my girlfriend for several minutes by the time I got to your bedroom door. I heard you the moment I entered your flat that day; I know the sounds of Susan getting shagged extremely well. Actually you were a lot more vocal than you normally are that day, really enjoying yourself. You should have discovered that watch you gave me ground into the kitchen floor. You ceased being anything to do with me the moment you got into that bed. Shit, the instant that you met him that day if I'd known about it." "Peter, surely you don't mean that. You came to the bedroom. You hit him!" "Of course, he knew you were my girl when he entered that room, didn't he? I mean, you never told him it was all over between us, did you?" "Of course I didn't, Peter. I love you. We were going to get married." "Yeah, going to. And he knew that, but you still climbed into that bed and he climbed in there with you. He knew full well the kind of risk he was taking. Jesus, he was lucky I didn't kill him; you know there are some blokes who would have. He deserved everything he got. Now are we finished? Can I get back to some serious drinking?" "No, we haven't finished, Peter. I haven't explained to you how I finished up in that bed with him yet. I'm hoping that you might understand," Susan said. "Susan, you don't have to explain, I can work it out for myself. I was supposed to be away on that dig for two weeks, and you got lonely. Gordon, your old boyfriend turns up in town, you decide to forget about me, have a good time with him whilst I'm away and shag the bugger; that's all there is to it!" "No, it wasn't like that at all, Peter. It wasn't really a spur of the moment thing, it was something that.... Oh I don't know, it was something that I felt I had to do, I can't really explain." "So what's the point in you being here; unless it's to rub my nose in it?" "No, no, I didn't mean to say that, I must explain. You must forgive me." "All right if you must explain what you can't explain then get on with it. I haven't got all night to sit here listening to your tripe." A kind of resigned look came over Susan's face. Mind I couldn't see it properly; I was trying to look at her as little as possible. Of course, even seeing the woman was upsetting to me. This had been the woman I'd planned to marry and spend the rest of my life with, until that night. "Pete, you know that Gordon and I were together for a long time." "Yeah, well, I couldn't really not know that, could I? Your mother has pictures of you and him together, scattered liberally all over the house. And she's forever comparing what I do to what he used to do. I should imagine she's a happy woman now that you're back with him." "I'm not back with him, Peter, and I never will be. I can't be sure he set that scene up that you walked into, but I suspect that he did somehow. I will never speak to him again, that I can promise you." "You've broken too many promises for me to take that statement seriously, Susan." "I know, but it is one promise that I will keep. Now please let me try to explain this to you without interruptions, Peter. This is hard enough as it is." I almost said 'but you invited a reply,' but decided against it. "Gordon and I were together right from when we met back in school. He was my only boyfriend, before you, and I thought that I loved him. I still do think that I loved him in a way, but nothing like how I love you. I do believe that I loved him like a brother, but not having a brother, I never did realise it. And I hate what he made me do that night." I think that touched a raw nerve, in me. Susan just insinuated that Gordon had somehow forced her to have sex with him the day I had caught them together. That would have been rape and from what I'd seen there was no way Susan was being raped that day. Although there was something about the scene I walked in on that day. Something had niggled away in the back of my mind. Something that I had never been able to put my finger on. And I still couldn't. Susan must have noted the slight change in my demeanour; she faltered in her diatribe and started crying. I handed her a clean hanky from my pocket. It was an instinctive gesture, not meant to show any concern. She cried for a little while and then wiping her eyes took a deep breath. Then staring at the table in front of her, she continued. "Just after my father died - you know Ralph is my stepfather?" She looked up for my affirmation. "Yes," I replied. Susan's eyes dropped back to the table. "Well, just after my dad passed away, a girl who lived a few doors down the road from us got pregnant. She was only fourteen, a year older than me at the time. Anyway mother started to get paranoid about Gordon and me and what we were getting up to. We'd been hanging around together since we were twelve, and my mother got it into her head, that if Sally Roberts was having sex with her boyfriend, then it stood to reason that Gordon and I would before much longer, if we hadn't already. "So my mother collared me one day and gave me a long lecture about sex and babies. You can guess the sort of thing I mean." She looked up at me again, but this time I just nodded. "Well, what it all boils down to is that I promised my mother that I would never have sexual intercourse with anyone, let alone Gordon, until I was twenty-one, and I had finished my education. Unless I had gotten married in the mean time, that is." That struck a cord with me. It had been the night of Sue's twenty-first birthday party that she'd dragged me back to her flat and almost raped me. She had however, not completed her education at that time and was still a student at the university. I said nothing, and let her continue with her story. "Mother made me promise that to her, on my father's grave. Literally she had me stand there in the cemetery with my hands on father's memorial stone and promise the both of them." Susan looked up at me again, and stared into my eyes. "I kept that promise, Peter! Gordon and I ... well, I thought I was in love with him; we did just about everything short of the actual deed itself. Well, you must have worked that one out for yourself. I wasn't exactly unskilled in the art of making love when we met, was I?" "Nope!" I interjected. "Gordon and I came very close to doing it a few times, quite a lot of times over the following years actually. But I always managed to stop, somehow. I'd remind him of my promise and unfortunately I kept on promising him that he would be my first when the terms of that promise were fulfilled. I thought it was a safe promise to make. At the time I really thought that I loved him. But..." She stopped speaking and the tears started running down her cheeks again. Looking down at the table again, she wiped the tears away. "But then I met you at the university. I hadn't been interested in boys there; I was being true to Gordon. I avoided even speaking to most of the guys there, except for the professors. I thought I was being true to the love of my life. "But then I was having problems with that German course, and professor Kolinsky suggested that I joined the group that you were tutoring. She told me that you had grown up in Germany, spoke the language fluently and the year before had been asked by a few friends to help them with their grammar and conversation. She'd approached you about doing the same thing that year as well and you'd agreed. So I came along to that first meeting." "I knew it the moment I first saw you. I was even more sure, the first time you opened your mouth to speak. Some folks say that there's no such thing as love at first sight, but I know when our eyes met that day, you felt exactly the same way as I did. I knew that you were the one man for me and that I was the only girl you'd ever love as much as you do!" Again Susan stopped speaking and looked into my eyes again. "It's still there, Peter. I can see into your heart, when I look into your eyes." "What my heart feels and what my mind tells me I must do are two entirely different things, Susan. You know that!" "Regretfully I do, Peter. You're a proud and stubborn man. I think I'm going to go to my grave regretting that and the stupid thing that I did." Her eyes dropped to looking down at the table again. "I knew that I was in love with you and that I didn't really love Gordon at that first meeting. That night I wrote to him and told him it was all over between us. I couldn't pursue your love and still be emotionally attached to Gordon. "He wouldn't accept it to start with. I can't blame him; we'd been together for almost ten years. But I realised it was just a school thing that we'd never got around to breaking off. I'd been going with Gordon because I'd always been with him. It had been comfortable and I hadn't had to look elsewhere. Then you came along and I realised what a big mistake I'd been making." Once again her head lifted and just for an instant our eyes met again. That instant was enough for me to know that what she had said so far had been the truth. Then her eyes dropped to the table's surface again. "Gordon wouldn't accept that it was over between us. He came up to the university and tried to persuade me to change my mind. He even got my mother to give me a hard time over dumping him. That was before we got together though, so I never told you about how I sat in my room and he cried his eyes out like a little baby. Honestly he almost convinced me that I should take him back, but I knew my heart was somewhere else, even though we hadn't said more than two words to each other at the time." Susan took a sip of her brandy. "In the end Gordon appeared to accept that it was over between us. Then you invited me to see that German film and all thought of Gordon went out of my mind. Remember you took a group of us to that funny little cinema?" "Yes, they show a lot of continental films there. Most of the students find it helps them to get used to the speed the language is spoken at." "Then we stopped in that pub to discuss the film and I sat next to you." "Almost on my lap, if I remember rightly." "Well, I had to make sure you knew I was as interested in you as you were in me." "How did you work that one out? I treated everyone in the group the same." "Wishful thinking, Pete. Didn't you notice that Helen got up and moved so I could sit next to you in the pub that night. They all knew that you were going to ask me out; we just didn't know when." "That obvious, was it?" "Yes, to everyone but you. Well, you invited me to dinner and ... well, there's not much point in discussing that. Other than to say that they were the happiest two years of my life. You know that on my twenty-first birthday I broke my promise, don't you. I just couldn't wait any longer, Peter; I wanted you to know how much I loved you." Susan looked into my eyes as she said those words, then dropped her eyes to the table once again. "But when I went home that Christmas my mother must have been snooping in my bag and she found my birth control pills. I lied to her and told her that I was taking them to control my cycle; I made up some rubbish about not being regular and that it was giving me problems studying. She didn't believe me, of course. I didn't think she would; but it kind of saved us arguing over me breaking that promise. "Anyway I believe that she told Gordon that you and I were having sex. And to cut a long story short he started calling me and giving me grief about the promise I made to him and how I'd broken that as well. He kept going on about how he still loved me and that I'd promised him that he'd be my first. Honestly, Peter, he was hanging a real guilt trip on me, about breaking my promises to every one: my mum, dad and to him." "Then that day he was waiting for me outside the lecture hall. I have no idea how he knew I'd be in there. He made up some story about being in town doing a story for his newspaper. You knew he was a reporter for the local rag in our home town, didn't you?" "No, I had no interest in the guy, Susan. But maybe I can recall your mother mentioning he was a writer one time. It didn't really register." "Well, that's what he does. He's one of the reporters on the local rag. Gordon told me he'd been doing some research on a story in the university library and he wanted to buy me lunch. The thought never entered my head that he must have known you were out of town or I'd be eating with you. In The Mirror I Saw Her - Epilogue I thank my LadyCibelle and Techsan for their patience, proof reading, and editing skills and of course encouragement. * Determinedly I turned to the left and began walking towards my digs. "What Susan had done with Gordon couldn't be forgiven, could it?" I found I was saying to myself, out loud. It could be I was talking to myself a lot as I walked along. Looking back I can remember several people giving me curious looks. As I walked I past a courting couple snogging in a shop doorway, the thought, 'Another mug to the slaughter,' crossed my mind. 'Women: you can't trust any of them!' I said to myself. But suddenly I was roused out of my thoughts by the raised voice of a young woman further along the road. "So what's it got to do with you who I go out with?" she shouted. "You don't own me; we aren't engaged or anything. If I want to go out with him I can. And there's sod all stopping my going to bed with him, if I feel like it either." "But you're my girl!" a young man's voice replied. "No, I'm not, mister! Not until that ring's on my finger, I'm not," the young woman replied angrily. "Oh, yeah, you're pretty good at talking about getting engaged and making all kinds of promises to me when you're trying to get me into bed. But where's that ring that you keep talking about? Look, I do love you, Jim; but I'm not letting you string me along like this any longer. When you put that ring on my finger and name the day, we'll be exclusive. But until you do that, I'm a free agent, and don't you forget it." "But, Donna...." "Don't you go Donna-ing me, Jimmy Harper. Two bloody years you've being saying that you'll buy the ring, but it's always next week. Three times I've been into different jewellers to get my finger measured so's you could surprise me with it. But do I ever get that surprise? No, the only surprise I get is finding you chatting up that tart, Sally Greenwood!" "I wasn't chatting her up, honest. We were just... you got a problem, mate?" The young man had spotted me standing there and realised I could overhear their conversation. For a moment I didn't know what to say to him, but their conversation had gotten me thinking about what the old boy in the pub had said. These two were on their way to splitting up because the boy had been undecided. The girl was right; they weren't engaged but they had talked about it. Susan and I hadn't been engaged but we had talked about it as well. But as the girl pointed out they hadn't made any kind of legal promise to be faithful to each other. I suppose there was a kind of moral promise, but surely that is a kind of technicality. I couldn't recall ever asking Susan to be - Christ, how do you put it? - in a monogamous relationship with me. Hey, she'd even dumped her guy, before she'd even contemplated going out with me. But I'd taken a couple of women out, after the first time I'd taken her to dinner. "Yeah, I have got a problem!" I replied to the guy. "Is that your car?" I asked, motioning to the car I had the feeling they'd both gotten out of before I'd heard them arguing. "Yeah, why?" he replied. "Look, Jimmy, I need to get to the station before eleven." I looked at my watch; it said a quarter to. "Fifteen minutes! Shit! Can you get me there?" I asked, waving a fiver in his direction. The young man's eyes lit up. "I can try, but it's pushing it some!" he replied. In a matter of seconds all three of us were in the car and Jimmy was doing his F1 stunts around the inner ring road. "What's the rush?" Donna asked from the rear seat. "Donna, there's a girl about to get on the eleven o'clock train. I need to buy her an engagement ring in the morning. You two having your row reminded me of the fact." I smiled back at her. "Oh, nearly let her get away, did you?" Donna asked. "Yeah, I think I might have, if Jimmy doesn't get us there in time." We saw that the train was pulling into the station, as we got close. "Jimmy, I need another favour. If I don't get off of that train before it pulls out, could you pick me up at the next station down the line?" I said proffering a twenty this time. "He'll be there, don't worry, or he won't get his hands on this!" Donna said, snatching the note from my hand. I jumped out of the car before it had fully stopped and then ran out onto the platform just as the train began to pull away. Running alongside, I managed to open the nearest door and dived inside, landing somewhat unceremoniously on the floor. The train was picking up speed as I made my way through the carriages until I found Susan sitting there staring out of the window. I just stood there looking down at her. For a mile or so the railway ran alongside the main road and I watched Jimmy and Donna's car race ahead of us. But shortly the railway dropped into a hillside cut and the embankment blocked off the light from the streetlamps. In doing so the window turned into a virtual mirror. I watched as Susan caught sight of my reflection. Her eyes raised until they were looking directly back into mine reflected in that makeshift mirror. Then suddenly she realised who was standing there staring at her and turned quickly to look at me. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "Well, there's a couple of friends of mine who I do believe are going to the jewellers in the morning to buy an engagement ring. I was wondering whether you felt like coming along as well so I could buy you one," I replied. "Do you mean that? You're not trying to get back at me or anything, are you?" "Susan, I don't chase bloody trains halfway around the town for the fun of it. Now where's your bag? We have to get off at the next stop and I can feel the train slowing down." ------------------------------------------------------ Donna and Jimmy were honoured guests at our wedding, and Susan and I were honoured guests at theirs. We are also godparents to Donna's little girl, who came along a bit quicker than anyone expected. The plan is that they will be godparents to Susan and my first born as well. By chance I was able to be instrumental in getting Jimmy a better job with a company that the university does some research for. Not that I ever do anything for them, but some of my friends do. They had to move up country near to Susan and me, but both of them appear to be pleased with the move. Well, that's about it. Except that Susan does talk to her mother again now. It was the point that the old boy made about life being too short that made me push her on that. If Susan had cut her out of her life completely, she'd most likely have regretted it in the years to come. Life goes on, but we never know for how long! In The Mirror I Saw Her "I couldn't see any harm in having a bite to eat with him, so I said yes; that was my first mistake. We went to the pub near the lecture hall - you know, the Irish one. What's it called - O'hannahan's or something? Anyway we ordered and sat talking. He didn't lay the guilt trip on me at first, just talked about when we were kids together and about my dad. I was so bloody stupid I couldn't see what he was leading up to. After we ate he ordered more drinks and we still kept on chatting." "I'm going to be honest here; I don't remember how many drinks I actually had. Some of the crowd came in and sat with us for a while. They bought drinks as well so I kind of lost track a bit. You know what it's like in those Uni pubs - everyone drinking all the time." "Look, I'm not accusing Gordon of doctoring my drinks or anything. But I can usually handle my beer better than that. By about six o'clock when I went to go home I was really unsteady on my feet. Gordon, more in a brotherly way than anything, told me he'd better walk me to my flat, I was that unsteady on my feet. I couldn't very well refuse; I could hardly stand up, but that was my second mistake. "He drove me to the flat, helped me inside, sat me in the lounge and then went off to make me some coffee. I can remember him bringing me the coffee and I did notice that he didn't have one himself. That's important, if you are going to believe what I think happened later. That single coffee cup has bearing on all this." Once again Susan took a quick look into my eyes. I wondered why she couldn't look at me all the time. Then I remembered the embarrassment I'd felt when I'd broken a window as a child. I hadn't been able to look my father in the face as he chastised me about it. It had been an accident, but it happened because I'd been stupid. I'd been playing football right by that window; what you might call a recipe for disaster or an accident that was guaranteed to happen. Susan must have realised that she'd walked into what happened that day with her eyes wide open and she was embarrassed to explain it all to me. "Gordon sat on the sofa with me and then he started going on about broken promises again. I know I should have asked him to leave then. I should never have gone to lunch with him and I should never have allowed him to drive me back to the flat. My only excuse for the last one is that my judgement was impaired with the alcohol. "He really laid the guilt trip on me then. Keeping on about how we'd come so close, so many times, but he'd always stopped, because I'd promised him he'd be my first when we got married. But looking back now with a clear head, it wasn't Gordon who brought things to a halt. It was me reminding him of that promise, I'd made." "I don't know.... I honestly don't remember whether I agreed to go to bed with him or I passed out and he carried me there. It was all like I was dreaming of when he and I were together. Even the way he spoke and the things he said were like he used to be when we were young. Except that he didn't stop when I reminded him of that promise. Then I was suddenly aware of what was happening. Gordon, to put it bluntly, was fucking me on our bed. That's how I thought of that bed, Peter; that was our bed." Susan started crying again. But this time she took a considerable amount of time to get herself under control. "He was kissing me and telling me how much he loved me and then he said, 'He's not going to have you. You're mine,' and started driving into me so hard that he was hurting me. That's what you heard, Peter. Not a scream of lust, but screams of pain. I had bruises all over my legs and pelvic area to prove it. That's why you weren't charged with assaulting Gordon. The policewoman I spoke to said that I could have had Gordon charged with rape. No one was going to believe those bruises were caused during consensual sex. "Gordon agreed to tell the police that his injuries were caused when he fell down the stairs. Providing I didn't press rape charges. Anyway he was fucking me one minute and then he wasn't, You were there hitting him every time he tried to stand up. I think he broke his cheekbone when his head smashed into my dressing table so hard that he broke it. You were shouting, he was shouting and I think I was shouting as well. But god only knows what any of us actually said. Then as quickly as you appeared, you were gone again." Susan looked up yet again but she didn't break contact with my eyes after that. "The ambulance came. God knows who called them; I know I was in no condition to. And then the police turned up and Gordon and I were carted off to hospital. That's about it. There was a lot of talk between myself, a nurse and the doctor, about my bruises. So they called a policewoman in, I told her all about you finding Gordon and me in bed together, and how I was terrified you were going to get into trouble. "It was the policewoman's idea to scare the backside off of Gordon with the rape accusation. She was very nice to me, that girl. You know, she went looking for you at the police station later, but you'd already been released. It was her who found out that you were here and told me; I think she could get in trouble for doing that." "Is that it? Can I get back to my drinking in peace now?" "No please, Peter; bear with me for a few more minutes, please. I was kept in the hospital overnight, and then because I was feeling so upset about it all, I went to Marge's flat with her when they released me. Somehow Professor Kolinsky heard about what had happened and she turned up at Marge's flat. Actually Ron Fillmore was looking for you because you hadn't turned up at the institute. Jean Kolinsky put two and two together and came looking for me to see if I knew where you were. I gave her the whole sorry story. "It was Jean who went to my flat and took the coffee cup to the labs. The point is, Peter; they said there were traces of some chemical in there beside my bloody sweeteners. Those damned sweeteners though stopped them finding out what it was. Jean wondered whether Gordon put something in that coffee, that made me lose that half hour or so. But there is no way in hell to prove it either way." "There's something else you should know as well. Ron Fillmore says that a local newspaper reporter turned up on that dig the morning before all this happened. Ronny told us that he distinctly remembered telling the guy that he had to close the dig down, because he'd dug as far as his permit would allow. He says he's sure he told the guy that the whole team and that includes you, would be pulling off site and going home the following morning." I'll give you one guess who that damned reporter was. He set it all up. Peter, Gordon must have guessed that you'd come straight round to my flat. He did whatever he could that day to ensure you'd find us, him and me, in a compromising situation." "I was stupid and I let it happen. So I've really got no one to blame for losing you, but myself. But I can't live with the thought that you're going to destroy your career over this, Peter. If you don't show up at the institute before long, Ronny Fillmore will have to dismiss you. You must go back, Peter. You'll never get another place like you've got there." "You don't have to worry about me. Jean Kolinsky has arranged for me to finish my studies at Newcastle. I won't be around to embarrass you. I'm not going home to mother anymore either. I told her that you were on that dig and she must have informed Gordon; how else would he know where to find you. "Now I'd better go, I've got a train to catch; I've said what I came here to tell you. The most important thing is for you to get back to work at the institute before it's too late. I wish you the best in the future, Peter. I'll always love you, you know." Susan reached out and took the hand that was holding my almost empty glass. She pulled it towards her and gently kissed the back of it. Then she stood and walked out of the bar. I sat there for a while staring into my empty glass, trying to get straight in my mind what Susan had just told me. But suddenly I was disturbed by George placing a full glass on the table and taking my empty away. "Better bring me a scotch, George; a big one. I think I need it." George just nodded in reply and went back towards his little domain. I picked up the pint and downed most of it in one go. But as I lowered the glass from my face I saw an old man drop into the seat opposite me. The old bugger must have been well into his eighties. "Well, son, what are you going to do?" He asked. "Sorry?" I replied, not understanding what that old codger was talking about. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a hearing aid. "Sorry, son, but this thing picks up every bloody word said within twenty yards. I couldn't help but overhear what your young lady said to you." "Now I know it's none of my business, but I'd hate to see you make the same mistakes as I made. You see I was out in the far east during the war, got married the day before the buggers shipped me out. Five ef-ing years I was out there and when I came back, well, I was told that my wife had stepped out on me with a bleeding Yank. Only once, she swore on her mother's grave, in all the five bleeding years I was gone. But I was a proud bugger, too ef-ing proud; I dumped her and walked away. "She found someone else eventually, and had a couple of kids by him as well. Me, I couldn't find anyone I loved like I'd loved her. I've spent the last sixty years regretting the bloody day I walked away from her. It was my bloody pride and I knew it but, you see, I couldn't get passed it." The old boy stopped speaking when George came over with my whisky. "An' then, about ten years ago now, someone told me she was in a hospice. Dying of cancer she was! I don't know why I went to see her, but it was something I felt I had to do. She was just as pretty as the day we walked down that aisle together and, Jesus, if she didn't tell me she'd always loved me. She told me she'd married that other bloke because she wanted to have children, not because she loved him. She even named both the kids after me and my mother." The old boy stopped speaking for a moment and fixed me with his eyes. "Don't make the same mistake that I did, son. That glass your holding won't keep you warm on a cold night. All it will do is destroy you. Think about what that girl just told you. She didn't lie to you; she was straight out that she didn't know whether she did or didn't get into bed with him of her own volition." "And think about what she didn't do. She didn't beg you to take her back, she knows how proud you are, so she didn't even ask. But she did ask you to go back to your job and she's moved herself away so that her presence won't embarrass you. All she's thinking about is you, son, not herself. If that ain't love, I'm buggered if I know what is." The old guy's eyes settled on the whisky, and I pushed it towards him. It was gone in one gulp. "One last thing before I leave you with your thoughts, lad. There's only one train left to go out of town tonight, and that don't leave until eleven. You've got an hour to make up your mind lad, whether you're going to be a sad old git like me, or live a full and happy life with a woman who loves you." With that the old boy got up and walked away. I sat there for another twenty minutes or so trying to think what I should do. Then I stood up. I'd had enough drink for one evening and I needed out of that bar. But when I got out of the door onto the street, I discovered that I had an important decision to make at that moment. Do I turn left to my digs to pick up my stuff and return to my college? Or, do I turn right for the railway station? You tell me, what would you do if you were me? Life must go on.