As they drove, Marcie was obviously thinking of a route for their adventure in Jesmond Dene. “Once we park up, we can walk over past Saint George’s to get into the Dene nearer the Gosforth end, by the waterfall, then we can walk down to the old Armstrong Bridge at least before looping back through the Jesmond streets maybe. We can set straight off, if that’s okay with you. This jacket is warm enough, but I’ll just pop back to the flat to change my shoes and drop my bag off.”

“It sounds like you know the Dene well already,” Ben observed.

“Well, I’ve lived within ten minutes’ walk of it for years now. I’m not always at ease going there on my own as a woman, but it’s a nice place to get some fresh air.”

Once they had parked up and stopped briefly at the flat, they set a brisk pace through the Jesmond streets. Marcie started asking Ben about his work in the Dene, but realised quickly that it was making him a bit sad. They fell into talking instead about what he did on his time off, specifically during the summer months in the trees’ growing season when work could be slower. She was intrigued to hear how Ben could sign up to join crews all around Europe with his certified sailing competency. Given that he had sailed around the Balearics, the Croatian and Ionian Islands as well as the Cyclades, she was a bit surprised that he’d never visited Malta. She dropped heavy hints that she would like to sail with him around her family’s home island, but he tried to put her off with the many anecdotes he had about the squalid deprivations that crews sometimes had put up with.

They were under the trees of the Dene now, and Ben started explaining a bit of the history of the place and the Armstrong family. He was surprised how much Marcie already knew though, so he fell into describing the trees instead. As they walked hand in hand, they passed different native and introduced species, including some particularly impressive specimens that Ben had tended to in the past. Marcie seemed especially interested in the traditional folklore that Ben could remember for some of the trees. He promised her that there was more that he had forgotten, and he agreed to use her help in the library to look the old stories up again.

This discussion had somehow brought them back to the Lord of the Rings film that they’d both seen just before Christmas, and specifically the Ents who featured in it. Ben explained that he’d felt suspicious of them, thinking they were somewhat childish, but Marcie wondered if they didn’t tap into something deeper. She knew that the original author of the books had been heavily influenced by Anglo Saxon and Norse mythology, but again she warned Ben off trying to read them just yet. She remembered that there had also been a long dramatisation of them that had been recorded by the BBC though, and she guessed this was probably more faithful to the books than the films had been so far. She promised to help him find it in the City Library once he had registered, so he could listen to the story rather than read it.

They were climbing a steady incline of shallow steps to reach the level of the old bridge now, and Ben was suddenly aware that he might have made a mistake by taking it at such a pace. His chest was feeling tight and his breath was starting to wheeze, as if his lungs were a leaky pair of bellows, letting air seep away. When he drew breath in, there seemed to be resistance and delay, then when he exhaled, the air seemed to struggle to find its way out.

Marcie had a concerned expression when he explained this to her, but she calmly encouraged him to sit down on a step and take it easy as she squatted down next to him, still holding his hand. It seemed she was struggling to remain calm and mask her anxiety, but she settled on telling Ben her own half-remembered stories of woodland beings as they waited to see if he’d recover his breath naturally. So she began describing the nymphs and dryads of Greek mythology, explaining that they seemed unrelated to Tolkien’s Ents.

She told him one story of a poplar tree’s dryad who had been tricked by Apollo, the god of the Sun and music. She remembered that the god had disguised himself as a tortoise, who sat in the dryad’s lap as she and her friends played innocently with it. Of course, the god’s intention had been less innocent, and he had transformed himself again into a snake to coil himself around her and rape her. Marcie explained that was often the way these stories went, but she also thought it was funny to imagine the tortoise’s cheeky head bobbing up and down in the sexy tree spirit’s lap, “The schemes of a supreme solar deity secretly at work in his tiny wrinkled head.”

Then she remembered that Eurydice had been a dryad too. As Ben had not heard of her, Marcie briefly summarised the story of Orpheus’s descent to the underworld to try and save his lost love from death. She said how he’d faced the three-headed dog Cerberus, as well as Charon who ferried the dead across the Styx, the river of forgetfulness. Marcie pointed out that Charon might have actually been one of the inspirations for Terry Pratchett’s Death, before she went on with Orpheus’s story. She explained that he charmed both Cerberus and Charon, and then the king of the Underworld himself, the god Hades, with the music of his lyre.

Marcie described the conclusion of the story, “He persuaded the king to release Eurydice, but Hades said there was one rule that Orpheus must obey - he must lead his lover back to the land of the living without once looking back. But of course, as they approached the end of their horrid journey through the winding tunnels of the Underworld, Orpheus grew uncertain, unable to hear Eurydice’s footsteps. So did look back, and in that awful moment he saw that she had faithfully followed him all that way, but now she was being dragged back to the land of the dead by the ghostly Shades. And so despite everything he’d faced, he still lost Eurydice for good, or at least until he entered Hades’ realm again, at the point of his own death.”

Ben said that parts of the story had seemed familiar after all, perhaps from old films that he’d watched as a boy, as vague memories of jerkily animated monsters rose from somewhere deep in his mind.

Marcie thought it likely that the ancient tale had spawned films. She then explained that Orpheus’s story was one of the archetypes for the hero’s journey that Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell had written about. In that monomyth, the initially naive hero is called to travel to a strange land, where he faces challenges and then some kind of crisis, which leads to his rebirth or transformation. He then returns to his mundane world, but changed and perhaps bearing a gift from the gods or a lesson for his people. Marcie said the story had been repeated with variations hundreds of times throughout human history, and now some storytellers were deliberately using it; she mentioned Star Wars as the best known recent example of retelling this old myth.

Ben wondered aloud at their own stories when he heard all this. Perhaps both of them had just faced their own personal challenge or crisis, he speculated. If so, perhaps they were already reborn into their new lives, wiser and under the blessing of a supernatural power. Though he struggled to explain this thought to Marcie, she seemed to understand what he meant.

“I guess that’s why the hero’s journey holds our attention. We can see echoes of our own lives in it, and use it to make sense of the difficult things that happen to us. There is another point of view though, that doesn’t need us to fit an epic drama or be subject to supernatural powers. It goes like this, ‘Shit just happens.’”

Ben laughed aloud at this. He realised then that his breathing had gone back to normal while Marcie had been talking. They had been causing a bit of an obstruction on the path, with most people just walking around them. Some had tutted, a few had asked if they could help. But Marcie had ignored or politely declined all of them. Now that he said he was better, she seemed very pleased. They helped pull each other upright, and Marcie stamped her feet, noting without complaint that her legs had gone to sleep.

The weather had become a bit more overcast, so they agreed to head straight back home. Once they had crossed the bridge, the streets of houses they passed seemed drab and mundane after the hint of natural magic in the Dene, especially as the grey sky seemed to make both Marcie and Ben feel colder. They were glad when they got back to her flat safely, kicking their shoes off and getting out of their jackets. Marcie volunteered to make a brew, insisting that Ben should rest on the sofa.

When she brought the mug of sweet tea through from the kitchen for him, with one of her own, she finally noticed the flowers in the jug on the table. “Oh thank you!” she exclaimed in surprise as she put the hot drinks down, “You shouldn’t have though. You know we’re passed all that, don’t you? You said you were grateful for the help I gave you, but now we’re a proper couple, I think. We’re in this together going forwards, as a team. Unless this is your way of saying thank you for last night,” she said provocatively, sitting down so close to him now that their hips touched, “And I thought the going rate for a job like that was more than the cost of a bunch of flowers these days.”

“No!” Ben protested, “None of that crossed my mind. It was just an impulse, a man buys flowers for a woman he likes. Anyway it’s also selfish, because I’m here to enjoy them too. But yes, you know I’m truly grateful for everything you’ve done for me, just like you say. But what we did last night, what you did for me, well, I didn’t think that thing was just a favour. I thought,” he hesitated, but then let himself finish, “I thought we did it as lovers. So that means I’ve said in now. And if I’m your lover, Marcie, and I feel deep down that I am, that means I’ve fallen in love with you, deeply. It does seem crazy to say it, but I’m sure of it. I love you,” he finished simply.

“Oh Ben,” Marcie said with earnestness as she leant close to him and gripped his hands, “I shouldn’t tease so much. I’ve rushed you into talking about something that is still so tender and delicate. But I think you know I agree, I really do strongly feel the same way. It is crazy how quickly we’ve come to this, but each time is different, right? Each time you fall in love, each time you make a new intimate relationship, you have to build everything from scratch. You can’t assume anything will be the same as it was with anyone who went before. So what I’m trying to say is that the freshness, the new beginning, the foundation built from an honest friendship, it all feels so good to me. And that’s on top of me fancying the pants off you too, quite literally if you’ll let me get away with it! So though I know what you mean about it feeling almost dangerous to say it, I’ll say it anyway as well. I love you too, Ben.”

She dropped his hand to put her arm around his shoulder, then pulled him in for a slow kiss, their mouths ajar, tongues lapping gently against each other. Ben raised his hand to caress Marcie, and he found himself placing it naturally upon her breast, just to gently cup it in their intimacy. But Marcie broke away from him just slightly at this. She did not pull back though, and made no move to shoo Ben’s hand off her chest. Instead she just cradled his head in her hands and looked deep into his eyes through her glasses.

“You really worried me on the walk, you know,” she said in a low soulful voice as he dropped his hand voluntarily to her knee, “Until you make your doctor’s appointment and find out what the score is, you’ve really got to take care of yourself, okay? I deeply wish this could go further, right now, that you could wind yourself up by fondling my boob for real, that we could both take our clothes off and rub ourselves together, that you could put your rod against my pussy just like we wanted to last night, that we could just fuck and fuck and fuck! I want us to feel this new love deep in our bodies, to the roots of our being! But I fear for you, for your untrustworthy lungs. So I think we’re both just going to have to wait to see what the experts say. What we did last night seemed to go smoothly, didn’t it? So let’s just keep practising all that wet heavy petting in a calm and relaxed way, making our love real and physical just in that way for now. Deal?”

“Deal,” he agreed, sincerely. He felt that he understood what was at stake, even if the image that popped into his head was actually the comic character of Death that he’d been reading about in Terry Pratchett’s book. But he had been more than satisfied with the way that she had found to bring him to orgasm, and would be very glad to practice that regularly. Yet he had been very excited to hear her describe a raw lustful physical passion that mirrored his own. So he decided to just say, “But we can talk about it, right?”

“Mother of God, yes! That’s good too,” Marcie agreed, dropping her hands and reaching for the cooling mugs of tea, “You’ve been reading my Hot Sex book, right? That must say it’s good to talk to your partner about your intimacy.”

Ben agreed, then she seemed to pause to think as she sipped her tea, before saying, “Hey, I’ve got an idea. We’ll say it’s a bit like those teenager’s games of Truth or Dare or whatever they were called, but here are the rules. We take it in turns to ask questions, you know, about sex things, but we both have to give an honest truthful answer to each question. Agreed? Okay, you go first.”

“Okay,” Ben agreed, mentally reeling a little at how fast Marcie’s mind worked before going on, “Well, this is something I wanted to ask you, from what I read in that book, but I guess it is very personal,” he began hesitantly.

“Just ask it, as long as you’re ready to answer it too. Them’s the rules.”

“Erm, do you masturbate?” he finally managed to ask.

“Erm, yes,” Marcie answered immediately, teasingly imitating his hesitation, “Easy. I assume you do too?”

“Aye, yes, I do,” Ben answered, feeling a little awkward.

“Okay, my turn. How many times a week, on average, would you say you masturbated?”

Ben gave it a little thought before saying, “Honestly? Maybe three or four. I kid myself that I don’t need to do it that often, that once at the weekend is enough, but I’ll have a thought or get a hard on, then I’ll give in to temptation.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I guess I’m about the same, on a good week. Friday night, Sunday morning, then one on Wednesday evening for a mid-week treat are all routine for me when I’m in the mood. Then I might fit at least one more in somewhere. It depends on my cycle though, my menstrual cycle, you know?”

“Aye, I get it. That’s reassuring, Marcie. Thank you for sharing,” Ben said, feeling as if they were really opening up to each other in their honesty now. He was actually quite surprised that she played with herself as often as that, but he felt it certainly wasn’t his place to pass judgment or even an opinion on her private habits.

“I don’t want you to think that my period stops all that though,” she went on, “And it’s true that a nice deep vaginal orgasm can really help to relieve the menstrual cramps, but it’s just that the mess makes it all a bit more of a smelly nuisance, you must understand. You don’t think I’m depraved, do you? That I’m over-sexed or dirty, to just keep masturbating, almost every other day?”

“No, absolutely not!” Ben rushed to reassure her, “Like you said last night, this stuff isn’t dirty. And like the book says, it’s healthy and natural to masturbate, and it helps your sex life with your partner too.”

“Well I hope so, now that you’re my partner, Ben. Anyway, it’s your turn to ask a question,” she reminded him.

“Erm, do you use a toy, like a vibrator?”

“Well yes, I often do. They’re very reliable, and they can help me to go more than once. You know multiple orgasms are easier for girls, right? But I still just use my fingers too sometimes,” she paused, then confessed, “Like last night, after you’d gone to sleep.”

“What?” Ben laughed in surprise, “Really?”

“Hey, that’s another question, and you’ve not answered your own yet. Do you use a toy? They do them for boys, right? Not just those jokes of blow-up dolls, but things to put your rod in that feel comfortable. I’m sure I remember reading about them in Cosmo.”

“Aye, I know they exist, but I don’t have one.” He thought for a moment before going on, “Sometimes I make a little nest in the pillows though, something to lie on top of with a space for my rod. I can come that way, hands-free, moving like it’s sex in the missionary position. I guess that’s a toy, a substitute vagina, in a way.”

“Can you show me how you would do it?” Marcie asked spontaneously, seemingly with genuine curiosity.

“Is that your question?” Ben asked.

“Yes, it can be. You don’t have to get him out, just see if you can give me the general idea of how it works with these cushions.”

So Ben got up to make a little pile of the sofa’s cushions on the rug. He showed Marcie the narrow space he’d made between two of them, explaining that he’d put a towel and some tissues in there. Then he put a third cushion over the little channel, saying that real pillows were firmer, which might be important when he pressed his weight against them. He described how he might use a fourth pillow or perhaps something else like the bundled duvet higher up to support his stomach and chest. However, he did not describe that he might wrap this substitute woman’s body in any worn clothes that his girlfriend of the moment had left lying around, cuddling up to the fragrances that his warm body revived in his simulated passion.

Feeling a little self-conscious, he went on to lie face down on the rug, propped on his elbows, pushing his hips and groin against the pile of cushions. “So my rod is stuck in the space I made now, and I just move like this,” he explained, thrusting his hips rhythmically, imitating stereotypical actions of sexual intercourse. He stopped moving to conclude his account, “Things can move around. It might need a rebuild halfway through, but normally I come quite quickly. It can feel good, using my whole body somehow, rather than just my hand.”

Ben had been intermittently feeling quite turned on since Marcie had come to sit with him on the sofa, especially when he’d touched her breast as they’d kissed, and then when she’d mentioned her orgasms too. Now, even though he was fully clothed, his roleplay of masturbating with the cushions had begun to cross over into the real thing. He’d felt his erection respond to the grinding rhythm, and if Marcie had asked him to carry on with the demonstration for her, he felt sure that he would have managed to ejaculate right there and then on the living room floor, pressing himself more vigorously against her cushions and her rug until he made a damp puddle in his jeans.

“Yes, I can imagine,” Marcie said in response to his statement of how it felt as she held out a hand to help him to his feet.

As he put the cushions back on the sofa the sat down, he asked her hopefully, “Do our rules mean that you have to show me now too? Show me a position you use to masturbate, I mean.”

“Yes, I can do that if you want,” she said with a sly smile, grabbing a cushion as she stood up. “Let me lie down with this as my pillow. Well, I just spread my legs really. Last night, you were lying against me, so I was on my side like this,” she explained as she lay down on the rug facing him, smiling up in a coquettish way with the cushion under her head, “And I guess I make a kind of diamond with my knees.”

She demonstrated this, bending both legs, putting her heels together and raising one knee up the air while the other pointed towards Ben. Her hands went between her legs, over her hidden vulva, “Ooh, I hope I’m not going to rip the stitches in these trousers,” she said, before allaying her own worries, “It should be fine, their quite baggy.”

Ben had noticed how her fingers had traced the stretched seam in the crotch of her trousers and now lingered there. He found it very easy to imagine how Marcie’s position would spread her labia wide and how her fingertips could just as easily have been running along her inner lips. He wondered if she too had crossed the line from merely acting out this position to actual auto-erotic stimulation, right there in front of him as it were.

“If I was on my own in the bed though, I would just lie on my back like this,” Marcie went on, rolling over to stare up the ceiling. Both her knees were raised in the air now whilst her feet were still together, but she seemed to be relaxed, letting her thighs’ own weight splay them widely apart. Ben saw that her legs did indeed make a diamond shape that must have been stretching her genitals open. Again, his imagination was fired up, helping his mind to easily visualise what he could not see under Marcie’s clothes. The dark the slippery mouth of her vagina must have been parted, gaping open in her position, whilst her fingers, which only stroked the fabric of her trousers now, could have easily slipped inside.

But the dreamy moment was suddenly interrupted by a sound of children shouting just outside the living room window. “Oh not again!” Marcie exclaimed, “Their bad timing is exquisite. It’s Shona’s kids,” she explained as she rolled over and picked herself up off the floor. “I’m sorry, we’d better put a pause on this. I’ll pop out and see if Shona needs a hand.” Marcie leant over him, putting her arms on the back of the sofa, still smiling. As she brought her face to his, Ben raised his lips for a peck before she sensuously promised, “I’ll show you more later, if you like.”

“Yes please,” was all Ben could say before she made for the back door to unbolt and open it, slipping on a pair of beach-shoes that she evidently left by the door for just such occasions. Ben rose to get his own shoes, then followed her out into the backyard, which looked a bit brighter now, with patches of blue breaking up the overcast sky. As he stood in the yard, he realised that a narrow iron staircase ran down the side of the bathroom extension from the upstairs kitchen. Two young boys with mops of black hair were standing in the open doorway, squabbling over something.

“Hi Shona,” Marcie called out, “Everything alright?”

Shona appeared behind the boys, a baby in her arms, “Oh hiya Marcie, Ben. Sorry to disturb you twos, but could I kick the boys down to the yard for a bit? They’re climbing the walls.”

“No problem, any time, it’s your space too,” Marcie replied, but the older boy was already pounding down the precipitous stairs, followed closely but unsteadily by his smaller brother.

“Marcie, Marcie, I’ve got a plane! But he’s not allowed it. He’s got to play with baby Lego!”

“I wanna go!” his little brother wailed.

“Ben, this is Cal, and this is Zain. Boys, this is my friend Ben. Say hello,” Marcie said, sparing a glance and a small wave toward Shona, as if to say she had it under control.

“Hello Cal, hello Zain,” Ben said, squatting down to get closer to their eye level. He felt that he’d had to make a crashing change of his mental gears, but he also felt happy falling into the habits that he had learnt with his much younger cousins. “Is that your plane? May I see it? I’ll hold it safe.”

“Daddy started it, but I finished it,” Cal said, holding the blocky Lego construction up in both hands.

Zain made a swipe for it, but Marcie intervened firmly, “No Zain, Cal’s showing it to Ben. Why don’t you get your Lego to show him too?”

“I’m going too,” Cal declared, dumping his model in Ben’s hands. “He’ll get the wrong one.”

As the boys chased back up their stairs, Cal pushing and prodding his little brother from behind, Marcie looked with amusement at Ben holding the toy plane. “Not quite what you had in mind for an afternoon with your new girlfriend?”

“No, but it’s fine. I’ve got cousins, from Mum’s side, a bit older than these two now. And I loved Lego too when I was a boy.”

“Hence the model ships,” Marcie observed.

“Aye, probably,” Ben agreed, raising his eyes to the sound of the boys coming out of their flat again. Zain was clutching something to his chest protectively and Cal was needling him as they clumped down.

“Careful on those stairs, boys,” Marcie warned them, perhaps trying to break up the argument as well as keep them safe, “Watch where you’re putting your feet.”

“I got a nee-naw!” the smaller boy cried, running clumsily towards them once he’d cleared the bottom step, holding out a sturdy toy fire engine.

Ben found himself squatting on his haunches again, balancing the crude plane in one hand and the fire engine in the other, trying to make admiring remarks about both. Marcie persuaded Zain to show them how to drive his vehicle, and as he pushed it around on the rough concrete noisily, Ben focused on Cal’s model.

He could see where the adult’s sturdy plan for the brick fuselage and plate wings had given way to the boy’s chaotic additions. Cal was eagerly pointing out all the plane’s supposed features to him, but struggling with his frustration as pieces kept falling off. Ben suggested they sacrifice part of the tail so that he could fix the poorly secured parts in place better. He then performed the swooshability test for Cal, pretending that the plane was zooming through the air. Cal picked up on the idea fast, stomping around the yard with the model held high, gleefully taking the plane through banked dives and climbs.

Ben had straightened up to lean against the living room’s outside window ledge with Marcie, watching both boys in their active play. If either seemed about to lose interest, one or other of them would only need to say an encouraging word, then they’d quickly get back into their imaginary worlds of aviation and emergency response.

Marcie gripped his hand. “Shona says they call me auntie Marcie, you know. Do you think you’ll be uncle Ben now?”

“That sounds like a brand of rice,” Ben mocked, but he found that at some level he was very pleased by the idea. “I could live with it, though. Do you babysit for them then?”

“I don’t, but I guess I could. Would you be okay with that, if I disappeared upstairs for an evening? Or would it be okay if the boys brought their toys downstairs sometimes to give Shona a bit of peace?”

“I guess so. I had not really thought how it might work.”

“Well, we don’t need to say anything to Shona or Ali now. It can just be another thing that might come up in our exciting uncertain future.”

“Aye,” Ben agreed, watching the boys play around the cracked concrete and neglected washing line. “We should talk to them about fixing up this yard too, sometime. The kids might not need a pocket garden oasis, but they deserve better than this.”

They noticed Shona stepping out of her kitchen door above them. “Have they been alright?” she called down.

“No trouble at all, Shona,” Marcie replied happily.

“Well, thanks for looking out for them. It gave me a chance to feed Fiona and finish getting their scran ready. Boys! Tea time! Come back inside now.” They seemed reluctant to leave, but still obeyed their mother with only token grumbling, Cal pushing his brother ahead of him back up the steps. “Thanks again,” Shona said with a final farewell wave, backing into her kitchen once the boys were inside.

Marcie pulled Ben inside to her kitchen too, but immediately pinned him against the door as he closed and bolted it, her arms reaching up around his neck. Ben let himself be pushed back against the door, putting his hands to her waist, feeling her warm skin through the thin fabric of her blouse. She kissed him, teasingly at first, but with increasing hunger, pushing her tongue into his mouth, sucking on his when he did the same. He had slipped down against the door a little, bracing himself against it as his legs stuck out, Marcie pushing herself against him between his thighs. They had both got their hands at the back of each other’s head, Ben pushing his fingers through the web of hairgrips and ties that Marcie used to keep her hair neat for work.

As they pulled away panting, Ben dropped his hands to her waist again, resting them on her hips where her blouse was tucked in, pulling her against him. He was already reassuringly hard for her now, and he guessed that she could feel it as he pressed against her lower belly. “Oh Ben, wouldn’t it be sexy for you to take me now, in the kitchen? I’m so hungry for you! But I know we mustn’t. We’re going to have to cool down again, aren’t we?”

“Yes, you’re right,” Ben agreed, leaning back to stroke her cheek with the back of his fingers now.

“Why don’t we get on with satisfying our other appetites?” Marcie asked practically, “We can have an early tea like the kids upstairs, then we can settle down with the whole evening ahead of us. We could work through some of those things that you were reading about in Tracy Cox’s book, in a nice calm way, just like I did for you last night. We’ll satisfy our sexual cravings very slowly and gently whilst we keep on sharing what we enjoy, explaining and showing each other, just like we were earlier, but maybe with fewer clothes and more bodily fluids!”

“That sounds very good. I’m definitely ready to eat early, then turn in early.”

“You make it sound as if you’re genuinely tired,” she said with a sympathetic pout, mirroring his gesture by stroking his cheek, “I bet you do still need to catch up on your sleep, you poor thing, don’t you?”

“Maybe. I didn’t lie in after you left for work. I wasn’t going to get back to sleep then. But you know that’s not what I meant by an early night. I think any man can always find a bit more energy, if sex is on the cards.”

Marcie laughed lightly, then leant forwards to give him a peck on the lips before pulling right back. “Good. I hope to find out, even if it’s just for hand sex, not proper sex, if those aren’t just old-fashioned ideas.”

“Well I think it’s still proper sex,” Ben said, trying to convince himself, “You saw the way I went off last night. My rod seemed to think it was the real thing.”

“Hmm, yes, but you’re making me hungry again in all the wrong ways! What’s on the actual menu for tonight? Did you mention chicken curry?”

“Aye, I checked you had onions and rice, then I got a jar of Tikka Masala and some chicken breasts.”

“Of course,” Marcie said, suggestively raising one eyebrow.

“I got some yoghurt too. We can make the sauce go further with that.”

“No vegetables though?” she asked.

“No. I didn’t think. Maybe I’m too used to just protein and carbs. What would go with it?”

“Well, if it’s okay with you, we can just put some frozen peas in.”

“Aye, I’ll do that if you have them. I bought some wine too. I wasn’t sure if you’d want a drink.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem like the milestone event that last night was, but it might be nice to have a glass. We shouldn’t get into the habit of getting through a bottle every night though, I guess. Shall I start getting things ready, chopping the onions and getting a pan on for them?”

“No, leave it to me. I’m serious about taking my turn to cook, even if it’s nothing posh. I’ve got to learn my way around your kitchen too. Could you just pour us the wine instead? Maybe you could choose some music too.”