Sandy drove me home from the hospital and I spent my first night in my new bed in my new bedroom. Harry was in the marital bed fast asleep and I managed not to wake him.

I was woken on Saturday morning by coffee and toast in bed, I had a pounding headache which Harry put down to drinking too much, I almost bit his head off, in all the years he knew me he had only seen me drink alcohol twice, once when we got engaged and the next time on our wedding day.

When I finally made it into the living room Harry was glued to the local news on TV, a spotty faced youth was being interviewed, he had been standing only fifty feet from the car, he thought it was a black Mercedes or an American car that looked similar, “I saw this black guy point a gun through the car’s window and then the police shot him” the youth said. He was asked what type of gun the suspect was holding and the youth just shook his head, he had no idea. ‘Typical of the younger generation, they don’t watch enough TV these days’, I thought to myself. I mumbled, “It was an Uzi nine millimetre” under my breath to no one in particular. Harry looked over at me, “Don’t be so dramatic, it was probably a replica cow-boy gun. There’ll be all kinds of trouble later on today when the boy’s mother goes on TV to tell everyone that her son, a prominent, church going, choir boy or alter boy was just passing a child it’s toy through that window!” He said, “Simon was no choir boy” I responded.

“News just in, the young man involved in the shooting outside Bagpus’s bar in Nottingham’s Saint Ann’s district at eleven o’clock last night has been named as Simon Winston. A twenty-five year-old Jamaican gang member wanted by police on various charges of drug dealing, aggravated assault and prostitution. Winston recently moved to Nottingham after ‘Operation Javelin’, a metropolitan police initiative drove several major drugs gangs out of the capital. Two other suspects were taken into custody at the scene of the shooting ”.

Harry looked over at me, “how did you know the dead man’s name was Simon?” He asked, “Lucky guess!” I was on my fifth cup of coffee and third pain killer proscribed by the hospital when Sandy arrived, she had offered to drive me into the city to give my statement. “Good morning, you look like shit!” Was Sandy’s greeting to me, “Thanks, love you too!” Was my response. Sandy insisted on helping me to get ready, I didn’t feel like dressing up or putting make up on, “I’ll bet you haven’t even showered yet!” Sandy scolded at me. I was forced through the shower, quite reminded me of my school days, thirty girls all trying to avoid going through the shower after net-ball and almost being herded through by the gym mistress. Sandy picked out my clothes and helped me to apply my makeup. Harry gave out a wolf-whistle as I walked past him, “Where are you off to all dressed up?” He asked, “Town”, was all I said.

I started to recite my recollections from the previous evening as a young police officer wrote the whole thing out freehand, the senior officer in charge was Inspector Baker, he was asking me questions and getting me to clarify points as the young man wrote furiously with a cheap Bic ballpoint pen.

I mentioned that at some point the driver asked if he should take the River Road turning but that Isaac had told him that they had to finish the business before they could have their pleasure. Inspector Baker stopped the hand of the young officer who was writing my dissertation. “We don’t have a road in Nottingham called River Road, can you remember where you were when the driver said that?” He said, I nodded my head, “I think so”.

The statement taking was suspended at that point and Sandy and I were placed in the back of the large Lexus that I had seen many times during the previous evening. “Here! It was here, I think when the driver asked if he should turn into River Road” we pulled over and the driver of the car and the inspector both checked a street guide, “Look, second on the right, the road heads toward the river but stops about a quarter of a mile short, but the old factory units carry on right down to the river” the driver said.

We took the turning, at the disused factories there was a rough mud track carrying on toward the river, we drove along the track slowly, the Lexus, though powerful and comfortable, wasn’t designed for off road use. The driver was about to carry out an ‘S’ shaped manoeuvre to avoid two potholes when the inspector called out “Stop!” The two police officers studied the extreme right hand edge of the drive, I heard inspector Baker say, “Could that be a BMW tyre track?” The driver nodded his head, “Right young man, seal this section of track off, contact SOCO and get a cast of that tyre track made. I’m going on to the river on foot”. Sandy and I jumped out of the back of the car and followed the inspector down the track, he tried to make us stop by the car, could be dangerous and all that. I pointed out that I had come close to death the previous day and that this was almost a walk by the river in comparison. We were still quite a way from the river when the inspector stopped, he pushed Sandy and I against a gatepost, “Don’t move from there!” He walked on carefully into the gateway, I could now see what he had spotted from the drive, there was a pile of clothing dumped under the hedgerow at the side of the deserted factory fence. A pen was used to carefully lift the edge of what looked like a skirt, I realised that I could see the belt buckle and zipper, both still closed, the skirt had been cut down the front with a sharp knife.

“Hello, Inspector Baker here sir, I’m calling for a major incident response at the Industrial estate off Colwick Road, I think we need all the SOCO teams we can get, as many feet on the ground too and the helicopter should be in the air, just in case!”

Sandy and I had to remain where we were for a while, we couldn’t walk back to the car in case we disturbed crucial evidence. Inspector Baker couldn’t leave because he had just declared the whole area a crime scene.

Several officers were rushed to our side, fast tracked in our exact footsteps, following the tracks that our three pairs of shoes had left in the dusty track. The helicopter had made three passes overhead and we could hear the directions being relayed out of many radio loud speakers. Police officers dressed from head to toe in white paper overalls were fanning out carefully to the suspicious spots indicated by the helicopter spotter.

Sandy and I both jumped when the first whistle sounded, we looked out over the field, it looked like a strange crop of semi-human looking flowers dotted around the knee-length grass and weeds An officer was standing with his arm raised in the air blowing a whistle, everyone’s attention was on him now, he spoke into his microphone, we clearly heard “Female body sir, badly decomposed”, Sandy grabbed me and pulled me closer to her, there were already tears filling her eyes, we just hugged as a second whistle sounded, a little further into the field.

The main search team finally arrived at our position, there were five police officers standing sentinel still, one arm raised to indicate the location of a female body. They dare not move further in fear of disturbing vital evidence around each body. As Sandy and I were lead away small tents were being erected over the location of each body.

At the Lexus, we sat and waited, the track behind us was now blocked by around fifty police vehicles. A huge pantechnican lorry, converted into a mobile police station was just behind our position. We watched as dog handlers walked past, the track leading to the old factory was like an obstacle course; each remotely significant thing found on the search toward the field of death had been fenced off for later, more thorough examination. Everything and everyone that was needed at the end of the track had to weave its way along that grotesque slalom.

The statement was forgotten about for the time being, there wasn’t a police officer in Nottinghamshire that wasn’t now involved on the search of the industrial estate, the police had cancelled leave to bring in the off duty officers to maintain law and order on the rest of Nottingham’s streets. Sandy and I managed to get dropped off at a pub in the city centre, I had a brandy, I needed something to settle my nerves. There was a TV on in the bar, the local news was making a big thing out of the unfolding events. All scheduled programs had been suspended as news began to trickle through the various agencies.

“This is the BBC news team, unconfirmed reports are coming in that two female bodies have been recovered in the Colwick Park area of Nottingham!” Then a third, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth. There was even a shot on TV, taken at the side of the incident room showing Sandy and I being led from the Lexus to a waiting Police car and the shot of the car racing away from the scene with ‘blues and two’s” in operation, fortunately the camera wasn’t there to record us walking from the car to the Queen’s head, a dusty little back street pub. One of the old codgers looked from the image of Sandy and I on TV to the actual Sandy and I standing in the bar next to him but he didn’t say anything, people don’t in Nottingham, just live and let live.

Sandy’s cell-phone rang, there was a problem of some sort at the doctor’s surgery where she worked and they were looking for someone with a key to open the building, she explained that she wasn’t at home and hung up the phone. Seeing Sandy on her phone reminded me that I had switched my own cell-phone off when I was giving my statement to the police and had forgotten to turn it back on again. I switched the phone on and typed in my pin number, as soon as the phone had finished working through it’s set up ritual it rang, “Hello” I said, it was Woodrow, “How are you?” there was a lot of tension in his voice, “I’m OK thanks, what’s wrong?” Woodrow was flabbergasted by my casual demeanour, “You and some other woman are being splashed over the news every fifteen minutes up here as the probable thirteenth victim of the Colwick Ripper!” Just then I heard the news item in my telephone earpiece as I saw the newsreader delivering the same news item on the TV in the bar. “Nottingham drug dealer was found hanged in his cell at Nottingham’s central Police headquarters this afternoon. Isaac Newton, a thirty-year-old Jamaican man suspected of dealing in crack cocaine and heroin. Newton is believed to have been arrested late on Friday night and was expected to have been released earlier today when a development in another case resulted in a delay in his release”. There was no photograph of Isaac on the screen, just a picture of the outside of the police station where I had been earlier in the day. The next news item was delivered from the side of the mobile police station in the Colwack area of Nottingham, I heard Woodrow’s voice in my ear again, “The bit with you in it is about to be shown again!” “I know, I’m watching it now”, I said.

Police inspector Baker was standing in front of the incident room’s steps, I heard him say that they believed they were looking for twelve bodies, eleven had so far been found hidden in the grounds and outbuildings of a derelict factory unit. The picture of Sandy and I walking past the incident room hugging each other was then shown with a voice over “It is believed that one of these two women was the Colwick Ripper’s, intended thirteenth victim. And that it was her evidence that had led inspector Baker to this spot and it’s grizzly discovery”.

Woodrow was all for driving down and picking me up, he wanted to protect me, he told me that he had gone cold at the thought that he had come so close to loosing me. I just said, “I’ll see you on Monday at your flat if you’re going to be there”. It wasn’t good enough for Woodrow but he knew better than to push me further.

The news coverage had been on every station, it was all over the front page of the Evening Standard, little wonder then that my cell-phone battery was drained of power in less than twenty minutes from all the people ringing me up to see if I was really the woman on the TV and in the newspaper. A message was singularly missing from Harry though. I got home and found it empty, Harry arrived an hour or so later, he smelled of sex, he really should have had a shower before leaving Sarah, well I hoped it was Sarah, I would hate to think he was two timing her. It turned out that Harry had followed Sandy and I out earlier and hadn’t seen any news items during the day. I had to smile inwardly, the most important news in Nottingham’s history since the death of Robin Hood and Harry missed it all.

Before bed I laid out the new ground rules for our marriage, “No I don’t want a divorce, unless you want one. I intend to stop in Northampton during the week and come home on Friday evenings until, either Sunday night or Monday morning. If you want to have sex with me it is OK to ask, and if I feel like it I will accede, in your bed but returning to my own bed after. I’m totally happy if you want to move another woman into your bed at any time and I expect the same consideration. I will no longer be your domestic engineer, you mess it you clean it, you use it you replace it. I’m willing to split the Mortgage fifty-fifty but all other bills will be, at best two ninths from me and seven ninths from you.”

Harry just sat listening, in the end he actually began to cry, he couldn’t work out what had suddenly gone wrong between us, he was trying to intimate that the Sarah thing was just a one off thing and wouldn’t ever happen again. I knew at that point that I was right, Harry was a lying bastard, even after being caught out he still couldn’t tell the truth.

I was sitting in my bedroom reading when I heard a stone hit the window, I looked out and Dell was standing in my back garden. Harry was in bed, I assumed he was sleeping, there was no light on in his room so I tiptoed past, not so that he didn’t know that I was going somewhere just as a courtesy, not wishing to wake him up.

I pulled my mackintosh over my nighty and met Dell in the back garden. Sandy had told him that I had moved into the back bedroom so he decided to risk throwing a small stone at the window when he saw my light was still on.

We walked across the footpaths around Bestwood Park, talking about everything and nothing, the summer night was warm, very dark still over the park, no lights in sight from the urbanised sprawl all around us. “What do you want to do?” I asked Dell, “I want to sleep with you again!” Was his simple answer. He was a different person to the rough and callow lad who had expected my body as his right a few weeks earlier. I told him that I might not feel the same to him anymore, that I had a new boyfriend, I almost choked on that word, how come even if the significant other were a man in his eighties he would still be a boyfriend. Dell didn’t care, wrong word, Dell had done a lot of growing up in a short time, “Your body, your right to do what you want with it”, he said. All Dell wanted was to share as much of me as I was willing to let him, on my own terms. I pulled him to me and we kissed.

I ended up at Dell’s house, just before midnight, Carol was already in bed, Dell made me a coffee and asked me to wait in the kitchen for him. I didn’t, I stood at the bottom of the stairs and heard Dell waking his mother up, she willingly vacated her double bed for her son’s room and his single one. I felt guilty but not guilty enough not to take the double bed if it was on offer.

Dell was very tender, there wasn’t much of my clothing to remove, just an old Mackintosh and a boring old nighty, no bra or panties. Dell spent an hour exploring my body, when his fingers finally slipped into my pussy he realised what I had meant about feeling different. Dell brought me to several climaxes with his mouth and his fingers and then before he climbed on top he asked me if he should use a condom, I thought about it, no, do it without, I’m going to get birth control on Monday, if anything happens I’ll have to deal with it.

Dell was wonderful, he did everything he could to give me an orgasm while he fucked me but he couldn’t manage it, there was just too much hole and too little Dell but after he filled me with his cream he used his fingers once again to give me a final orgasm before we fell asleep in each-others arms.

I had a realisation after sex with Dell, Woodrow, while a fantastic lover would ruin my body for anyone else, so I had to make a decision, did I want to be Woodrow’s lover on a permanent basis or did I want other lovers, hell I was being a little precocious now, did Woodrow see me as anything more that a quick fuck or did he have intentions of a more permanent nature. Something to talk about with the big fella on Monday evening.

I was in my own bed by the time Harry Woke up on Sunday morning, I had only been in it an hour though. Harry came in and tried to cuddle up to me, “No way!” I said forcefully. “You’re not fucking me ever again until you tell me the truth and I want to know everything!”

I met Harry in the living room to listen to his version of the truth; it was unfortunate for him that I had so much information at my disposal about him that I would probably know more about his truth than he knew himself. Half way through his confession Harry was distracted by the TV news; the initial coverage of the previous day had been scaled down to a bulletin inserted into each scheduled news slot instead of half hourly updates, as they were the previous day. Harry Recognised Sandy first and then me, mainly because I was dressed so differently to my norm, even though he had commented on the way I was dressed when I left the house. Harry wanted the low-down on what had happened on Friday night, “Well if I believe your version of the truth I may tell you, if not, well we won’t be talking enough for me to tell you anything!”

I went around to Sandy’s house on the off chance that she would be in, I just wanted to get out of the house, Harry was still missing a large portion of his truth and I decided not to challenge him on the lack of truth.

Sandy was in, I asked her if it would be possible to get a quick visit with one of her doctors, if I went early in the morning she would add my name in to the front of the appointments diary so that it looked like it had been there all week. We had a coffee and I told her all about Woodrow and what he had done to me, Sandy wanted to see, well feel. She had an intimate knowledge of my anatomy from a few weeks earlier, “Wow, you have been stretched, I need to meet this Woodrow”. I told her about the introduction to the JH club, “You mean it really does exist?” I nodded my head and said, “I was in a room with twenty or more men all with above average appendages. “Mmmmm, can you get me an invite, I want to try that!” Sandy was still touching me between my legs; “You know that you made Dell a happy bunny again last night?” Sandy said, “My god has that news item spread around already?” I joked, “Clare couldn’t wait to tell me, so she left a text on my mobile”. Sandy was idly toying with my clitoris, it was the first time a woman had touched me in such an intimate way, she wasn’t trying to make love to me or anything, she had just forgotten herself, as I caught my breath she suddenly realised what she was doing and blushed as she apologised.