“So you and the Famous Fatal Fenella have crossed paths again,” said my aunt Gemma, “but what a different girl she is now.” Her lovely green eyes twinkled in the kindly bantering way with which, over the years, she has greeted me on the many occasions when I have sought counsel and comfort from her.

It was on the first such occasion, during a blissful summer holiday when I stayed with her while my parents were away overseas, that I had confided to her the confusion I was feeling about my growing feelings of attraction to my own sex. The initiation that followed – the sweetest a girl could ever have wished for – is another story, but ever since then her door has always been open to me, and except for times when she has been in live-in relationships (usually with younger women) there has also always been a warm, loving place for me in her bed.

It was to her that I turned after Fenella’s devastating rejection of me.

Over the years she has been a source of quiet, stabilizing strength, as well as being the greatest lover I have ever had. Fortunately she is also a woman of great discretion, and throughout many family get-togethers I’m sure that none of our relatives can ever have had the least inkling of our relationship as lovers.

One of my most fervent hopes is that, when I’m as close to sixty as my mother’s younger sister, I’ll still be as vibrantly sexy and as physically fit and vigorous – and attractive - as she is.

She is in many ways the opposite of me. Although I like going out into the countryside, I’m an urban creature through and through. Gemma is a dyed-in-the-wool country woman. She lives on the outskirts of Lincoln, a small town a few kilometres from Christchurch that is the home of a university that, like my own, Massey in New Zealand’s North Island, began as an agricultural college. It was there that she had her academic career, from which she took early retirement to start up her own successful consultancy business.

I’m slender, a bit too tall to be described as short, fair-haired and brown-eyed, with breasts that I have often wished were rather bigger. Gemma is tall and luxuriantly built, with hair in which grey mingles with her slightly faded auburn. She has generous hips, a fantastic arse, and breasts that have become a little more pendulous over the years but are still to die for. I have always envied her ability to lick and even suck her own nipples; by the same token, I’ve lost count of the orgasms she has given me by grinding one of those great nipples against my clit – something she knows I love.

Two hours on Facebook the previous night had left me exhausted, feeling overwhelmed by what I had learned and at my emotional wits’ end. The desire I had felt for Fenella all those years ago had reawakened as strongly as before: yet what now was it sensible for me to want or to hope for, now that we had moved on into separate and very different lives? I couldn’t even focus on wanking myself to sleep. The next morning I had known what I needed; I had phoned Gemma and asked if I could spend the weekend with her.

And now, after she had smoothed away all my turbulence of spirit in a long, leisurely, tenderly thorough and profoundly multiorgasmic fucking, we were sipping beer at her kitchen table, showered and fully dressed - “just in case someone calls by” - with my tablet in front of us.

On the screen was a photograph of an attractive brunette, below which was an entry Fen had posted on her Facebook page some weeks before: “Today I remember with gratitude Claire Prebble, née Williams, my partner in life and love, who died on this day two years ago.”

Elsewhere was another post with a photograph taken some fifteen years earlier. It showed Fen together with a taller, strikingly-featured woman (more handsome than pretty), who looked about the age Gemma was now. They stood side-on but with faces turned towards the camera, in a classic tango embrace, with the other woman in the male lead attitude, holding her close.

Of this statuesque beauty Fen had written, in Spanish that I could make sense of: “I dedicate this day to Pilar Díaz Fernandez, tanguera of Buenos Aires, who taught my heart to dance as well as my body. Love and gratitude for ever, my darling. Fenellita xoxoxo”

“Well, well,” Gemma said wonderingly. “When she said she’d changed, she wasn’t exaggerating, eh?”

I nodded.

“And you’re beginning to think it means that this time you’re going to be able to get into her knickers, right?”

Gemma was nothing if not down-to-earth. I had to laugh in spite of myself.

“Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,” I said. “But if you insist…”

She chuckled infectiously, took a swig of her beer, put the glass firmly down on the table, took a breath, and paused, her face turning thoughtful.

“Well, look, sweetheart,” she said, “I think you need to calm down. Look what happened the last time you thought you could get into them. Scared the bloody horses good and proper, didn’t you?”

I couldn’t help giggling, and Gemma laughed back at me. Then her face turned serious again.

“Look, I’m reading between the lines, but my take on this woman is that she’s been on a long, hard journey.

“She reminds me a bit of an old girlfriend of mine who spent years doing her damnedest to go straight – you know, getting married, having kids, the whole bloody nine yards – before finally accepting that she wasn’t straight at all, that she wasn’t even bi.

Bit of a shock for hubby, bit of an upheaval all round, but once she faced and embraced what she was, there was no holding her. Her only regret was that she hadn’t been honest with herself about her own sexuality back in her teens and that she’d spent all those years fighting against her own real desires.”

“Didn’t have an auntie like you, eh?”

She leaned forward, patted my shoulder and kissed my neck. “Now in the case of Prof Fenella it looks as if this Pilar lady was responsible for her having had what I’d call a sexual epiphany. ‘Taught my heart to dance as well as my body’ – what else can you make of that? And what I in turn make of that, my dear, is that she spent some years battling on trying to be a straight girl. Until señora Pilar happened along. What was it she said when she turned you away? ‘I can’t – I wish I could.’ Well, I’d guess that with Pilar she found she could at last. Bully for Pilar.” She raised her glass in salute.

“And then there was Claire,” Gemma went on. “A really serious, committed live-in relationship with a woman, followed by a dreadful loss. And what happened in the years between Pilar and Claire? Not to mention whatever’s happened since Claire…

“What I’m getting at, darling, is that not only has there been some pretty heavy stuff in her life, but there’s probably a lot that her Facebook page doesn’t tell you. There could be a lot of baggage there that you need to find out about before you even think of making a move. You may not even want to by the time you’ve got your head round it.

“And besides, remember why she contacted you in the first place. She happened to see you on TV and was concerned about you because of the earthquake situation. Doesn’t mean she wanted to fuck you. You shouldn’t assume that there was anything more than concern about your safety.”

“You’re right, Gem,” I said. “I needed to hear you say all this.”

“So,” she continued, “what I say is, take things as they come, one at a time. You and she will be getting to know each other all over again. There’ll be plenty for you to enjoy in that process alone. So don’t make assumptions; just relax and enjoy and look forward to whatever happens. If you do that, whatever happens will be good. Trust Auntie Gem, sweetheart.”

I turned to her, leaned over and held her close. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, darling. Thank you.”

She patted my thigh. “Now, what about some lunch? And how about we go over to the stables this afternoon?”

One of the other things aunt Gemma had taught me during that far-off summer of seduction was to ride a horse. She had also had a local saddler make for me a saddle like the one she had, which was shaped so that, if she sat and leaned in a certain way, she could easily get herself off without disturbing the horse as it trotted along. (“When I have a flutter on a horse,” she had once said, “it’s not the betting sort…”)

My version of her saddle was kept along with hers at the local stables down the road.

“Yes, Gem,” I said. “That sounds like a plan.” And then our eyes met desirously again. “But first things first…”

She chuckled. “God, girl, you’re the still the same sexy little minx you always were!”

Sometimes all Gemma has to do is to look at me, in a particular way that I can’t describe, and I melt inside, and it’s as if I’m back to being that seventeen-year-old girl she first counselled, comforted and caressed. She embraced and kissed me as she had done that very first time, slowly and softly enfolding me, her mouth resting lightly on mine, then pressing more strongly as I pressed in return, her tongue tip making tentative, interrogating contact with my lips, then gliding forward to meet and dance with my own tongue as our mouths opened fully to each other. That was enough to send a warm current of desire flowing downwards through my body and to set my hands into urgent motion exploring and caressing hers. She shivered with a quiet moan and arched her back as I reached under her sweater and gently raked the length of her spine with my fingertips.

We left a trail of garments on the way from the kitchen to our bedroom. And now the tables turned: whereas this morning it had been she who took the lead in our lovemaking, this time it was I who took control. Soon she was bucking beneath me and moaning loudly as I ate her out, my tongue lashing her cunt, the tip of my nose teasing her clit, my hands reaching up to play with those magnificent breasts and nipples.

Then I was on top of her and we were into our favourite 69 position, tongues and fingers deep into each other’s cunts and arses, racing towards a mutual orgasm that left us shuddering and gasping.

At last, breath recovered, we showered and changed into our riding gear. Gemma rustled up corn cheese and bacon toasted sandwiches, and we polished them off in no time accompanied by a nice local craft beer she fished out from the fridge. One way and another we had worked up quite an appetite.