I’d thought it would be a mistake but I was wrong. With her eyes locked on mine she slid her hands behind my neck and slowly drew me to her. It was just as things went out of focus that I felt our lips touch and the warm moistness of her mouth on mine. I had been sort of frozen but as her tongue pushed into my mouth I knew it was going to be okay and I let her in, encouraged her in, wanted her in,

We were sitting on my sofa and I slid my hand into her wrapover dress and found one of those beautiful tits to cup. It was in one of those soft bras that hardly seem to be there at all and I could feel the hard nipple. Her hand moved from my neck and cupped one of my breasts, her thumb rolling over my nipple.

She pulled away from me then. “Is this okay, Faye?” I nodded.

Her hand was on my knee and she moved it to lift the camisole and started sucking my nipples, moving from one to the other. I stroked her hair and relaxed back into the comfortable sofa and reveled in the sensations. Her hand pushed my long skirt up my legs until she could slip under it and stroke my bare thighs. My thighs have a mind of their own sometimes and so it was then that they spread wide and I think she got the message because first she cupped my cunt and then slid a finger into me. That was like she had pulled a trigger and I wanted her, all of her and there and then. I pulled her face up from my nipple and kissed her, hard. I untied the fabric belt that held her dress together and pushed it away from her. Her tits were truly gorgeous, heavy in the soft bra that was almost transparent and her dark nipples were all too obvious. I moved so that I could kiss her cleavage and reached to unclip her bra. I felt them fall just a little as I undid it and then I was down on them and biting them gently. It all got a bit frantic then. I don’t really recall how I got naked but I did and so did she. I was stretched out on the sofa and she was between my legs, then over my face and then I was transported so I was on my knees and she was spread open before me and my face was buried in her.

It all came to an end with her leaning back in the chair and me astride her leg, humping it as she humped mine. She held me away and watched my eyes.

“I want to see your eyes when you cum.”

“Can you cum with me?”

She must have known how close I was. She didn’t have time to answer, but she held my head because I wanted to throw it back and watched me as it flooded out of me figuratively as a scream and, on her thigh, literally. I had to keep moving because her orgasm didn’t coincide exactly with mine but it wasn’t long after and with her it was a sort of muted groaning that seemed to go on and on and I felt her cunt leaking onto my thigh.. I leant forward and held her, my arms around her neck and licked her face and mouth.

We stayed like that for a while and then I rolled off her and sat beside her, my arm across her shoulders.

*

Felicity Caterham, friend to my best friend, Lilly, and also my agent called me. She had, she said, a bit of potentially good news and would I drop into her office when I had time. Flick worked from an unpretentious office in a chic part of the city, assisted by a couple of girls who, like me, had gone to one of those fine British girls’ boarding schools and had the cut glass accent that I had worked so hard to lose. When I wandered into the office later that week, a Thursday, Hattie Forsyth, one of Flick’s handmaidens, was bent over a filing cabinet, a tight black skirt riding up a little over a splendid bottom.

“Christ, Hattie, you’re timing is impeccable”

“God, you made me jump.” She lurched upright clutching a wad of paper files to her lovely chest. “Honestly, you’re worse than some of the men!”

“Flick in?”

“Inner sanctum. Coffee is on the side.”

I wandered into Flick’s office without knocking. Since I last wrote to you I had moved up in the world of acting, having had a relatively minor role in a tv drama series that had been filmed in and around our fair city and which had made me a minor celeb. It had coincided with my then girlfriend, the delicious Indian doctor, Anita, deciding she needed to return to her sub-continent and pursue her dream of improving health care for the poorest of that country’s children and women. I had not wanted her to go but I loved her and I knew she’d never be happy until she had done or attempted her lifelong ambition. I had waved tearfully as she went through to departures at Heathrow and gone home. I then did what all sane people do in the face of adversity. I got drunk and stayed drunk for a week.

“Doesn’t anybody knock?”

“Doing something you didn’t ought to be?”

“Grab a coffee and I’ll tell you a story. Heard from the Indian?”

“Tell me a story.”

“Right.” Flick loved me in a sisterly way as did her sister, Lilly. “The story is that the City Theatre is doing a repertoire series. It’s three months long and each month they are producing two plays which will play on Wednesdays and Saturdays. They want a fixed company and they have asked if you’ll audition for the female lead. It means a lot of bloody work. Six plays to learn, rehearsals during the days you’re not performing. Just like the old days. Fancy it?”

“Is Chesty Morgan directing it all?” Chesty’s real name was Melissa but she’d always been known as Chesty after a porn star and because she had a rack like a porn star.

“Yep. She’s doing the whole bit. It’s a mix: Victorian melodrama, modern comedy, bit of Shakespeare et cet. It’s not TV or Hollywood but it’ll be high profile and who knows where it might lead?”

“Are you telling me to do it?”

“I, darling, am your agent, not your mother. S’up to you but you’d be a complete tit not to.”

“Money?”

“Yes.” She stuck her tongue out.

“I meant, how much?”

“Leave that to Aunty Flick. Say yes and fuck off.”

So I said yes and fucked off. Two weeks later I got the call and went to audition. I did a bit of comedy, Ayckbourn, a bit Shakespeare, Portia (who else) and a bit of Ibsen. All stuff I’d done in the past and I have that sort of mind that can’t forget lines. Chesty applauded at the end and said she’d be speaking to Flick. That could have meant anything of course but, happily, it meant I got the job.

Rehearsals started in the June and we were going to do the plays through August to October. The City Theatre’s rehearsal rooms are either cold as butcher’s cupboard or as hot as hell. That summer was hot and the room was an oven. I look great in a long skirt, sandals, and a t shirt with sweat stains under my arms and between my tits by 11 am. The male lead was a rather well known actor called Tom Kelly. He’d come up the hard way like me; dreadful adverts and such but his had been worse because he’d done children’s TV as well. Fuck that! There were two other women in the company. A middle aged actress called Sandy Leonard who was still beautiful and was always popular in provincial theatre. The other was an ingénue called Pippa Sorensen who had a fabulous voice, like honey, and a body to die for. The other members were Chris Thomas, a type cast gentleman who played retired colonels and Stanley Westcombe who was the juvenile male.

Chesty is old style. Not for her the method acting and political correctness. She drives and drives hard but likes a company to play hard as well. The first time we all got together was for a drink in a local pub. I say ‘a’ drink but with Chesty that meant ‘a lot’ of drink. She slipped an arm across my shoulders. Don’t get me wrong, Chesty does not swim in the ladies’ pool but she’s friendly.

“A little bird tells me you are single again.” I nodded. “Over it?”

“No.”

“Good.” I looked at her questioningly. “Oh, God, you actresses can be so fucking dim.” We were actors or actresses to Chesty.

“Who is keeping you happy these days?” There were rumours about her and Chris Thomas.

“A very nice gentleman called Charlie. He runs a rather nice bar. This one in fact, so I am getting mate’s rates for filling you lot up. Mix.” She patted my shoulder and wandered off to bond with someone else.

*

“It isn’t like that at all.” Rehearsing Act 2 of ‘Complicated Lives’ by a local playwrite called Julie Baker. I was in role as a 1920’s emancipated woman, explaining to an older friend played by Sandy that my friendship with Tom Kelly’s character was not what it seemed. Okay, it’s complicated but keep up.

“It isn’t like what?”

“Everyone seems to think we are lovers. He’s a good friend but it’s never going to be more than that.”

“He thinks it is.”

“Well, he’s wrong.”

Chesty shouted, “Flounce for fuck’s sake. Flounce across to the sideboard for that scotch, Push past her and make it look like you’re sick to death of her.”

So, I flounced. As I strutted back past Sandy she grabbed my arm, almost spilling my scotch. She pulled me to her and kissed my mouth, hard. I pulled away and looked into her eyes and then kissed her back, harder.

“Faye, darling,” Sandy said.

“What?”

“Could we do that bit without spilling your scotch down my back? I’d mind less if it was real but it’ll mean I’ll need a couple of blouses every night and it’s a pain.”

“Sorry.”

“And,” said Chesty, “make the kiss last longer. We’re going to shock some of the good burgers of this fine city with a couple of class tarts at it. Might as well milk it. Don’t forget in the next scene you’re going to be in bed together so that kiss has to have potential.”

I was right. The outraged cries of some of the local citizens increased box office incredibly. The prurient came to see what all the fuss was about, the religious loonies came to feed their fantasies and then decry it in the local paper and a few people came to see a good play. I was interviewed by a local journalist who was, among other things, the paper’s arts correspondent.

“You’re play has kicked up quite a stir.”

“It’s not my play, I only act.”

“But your scenes are the scenes that caused the furore.”

“My scenes with Sandy, and they are only really two scenes, do seem to have shocked people but, in context, they are very important. It’s drama, for heaven’s sake. And it’s not like it’s a porn show. Two women kiss in one scene and in the next they are in bed, partially dressed and neither of us showed so much as a nipple.”

Ellie Simons was her name and she was a searching interviewer. She didn’t ask me outright if I was a lesbian but she hinted and, to be honest, it was beginning to get on my nerves.

“Ellie, I have never made a secret of my sexuality nor do I shout it from the rooftops. It’s just me. Sandra lives with a lovely husband called Gerry. She’s as straight as a roman road. We’re actors. I kiss men on stage.”

“And off?”

“What’s that got to do with the play?”

She smiled. “Nothing whatever.”

We went on to discuss the plays more seriously and she thanked me very politely and left the coffee shop where we’d met. I sat, ordered another Cappuccino and thought about her. She was tall, very pretty and, in the lovely summer day, had worn a pale blue skirt with a white shirt and looked fresh. Her blue eyes had sparkled and her blonde hair had shone. Get a grip.

I was surprised when Ellie called me up a few days later. “I want to do a more detailed article about local talent. Would you mind?”

“No, I wouldn’t mind at all.”

“Can I come to your home? I’d like to take a couple of pictures of you in your own space, get a feel for the real you.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Call me.”

I called her. I agreed and told her where I lived and she said she knew it. When, she wanted to know, would be convenient? We agreed one Monday evening when I could relax a bit now that the programme was into its stride, I knew the plays backwards and the rehearsal schedule had clamed down. She looked great. Her tits were more obvious in a wrapover dress of a sort of bluey-grey with streaks of white. It didn’t cover her knees and she wore white sandals with heels that increased her height and emphasised great legs. I’d gone for actor chic – a long, floaty skirt and a white camisole top. My, by comparison, small tits weren’t too evident but I know my nipples hardened a fraction when I opened the door and saw her. I invited her in, offered her coffee or something and she asked for wine. I left her in the sitting room while I poured a couple of glasses of dry white and then joined her.

“Thanks, this is really kind of you.”

“It’s a pleasure.”

“Tell me about your career.”

So I told her. Disapproving mother and supportive dad, one tutting through my acting schooldays, the other mildly amused. Both dead before I had any sort of success although they had both seen me in my advert days. God, the humiliations an actor goes through. She laughed at my well-used but true story about being a goose and a tea bag. She was interested in my sudden, if not meteoric rise to actually acting, first in the tv costume drama and then in the current repertoire. I asked her a bit about herself and learned she was single, aspiring to greater things but enjoying her current job more than any before. No, she wasn’t married. No, nobody significant in her life currently.

“I think you’ve been brave to be open about being gay.” That came as a shock. “I haven’t been.” That came as a greater shock. “One of the reasons I wanted to interview you was to understand how you dealt with it all.”

“I didn’t really. I lost my parents when I was at college. It was easy for me to be open because there was nobody to disappoint or outrage. My profession is very tolerant. Nobody actually gives a fuck as long as you can remember your lines and don’t trip over the scenery.”

She laughed. “Have you had relationships with other actors?”

“Nope. I’m not saying I wouldn’t but I haven’t. My last was with a doctor. We both worked shit hours and now she’s left the country so it ended.”

“Badly?”

“No ,we’re still friends; distant friends.”

Ellie Simons closed her notebook and sat back in her chair. “Would it be very forward if…..”

“Ellie, I don’t know what you’re thinking of asking but if it’s what I suspect it is, can you imagine the gossip about an actor and a critic? Nobody would believe you were objective if ever you wrote anything about me.”

She looked crestfallen.

“I need all the good coverage I can get. All actors do.”

“I’m not going to be a critic much longer. I’ve accepted a job with the Western Telegraph. I’ll be doing features, deputy editor.”

“Oh, wow, congratulations. That’s fantastic and we clearly should have a drop of the Widow to celebrate.”

She smiled at me. I scampered off to the kitchen and pulled a bottle out of the fridge, popped it and carried it and two fresh glasses back to the sitting room. I handed her a glass and raised mine to her.

“Congratulations and good luck. When do you start?”

“Three weeks time and I’ll be on leave for the last two of those. So I stop in a week.”

We chattered on then and it was then that I felt a sudden desire for her. I think it was a combination of the drink, the knowledge that she was no longer a critic and the fact that Anita, my gorgeous Indian, had been gone for almost six months.

*

We sat with my arm across her shoulder and her head on mine for a while.

“You’re noisy messy too.” She was grinning at me as she said it.

“You may be quiet but you’re just as messy as me.”

The champagne bottle was still half full and I poured two more glasses and we sipped, comfortably naked on my sofa, occasionally touching.

“Are you going to stay the night?”

“Can I?”

“I rather think you have to, don’t you?”

She did.