After I'd finished in the upstairs bathroom I'd poked about upstairs. It wasn't a very admirable thing to do but I was drunk and I was curious and I could hear mother and daughter talking together in the lounge. The other four doors off the landing were all closed but I opened them as quietly as I could and poked my head into each room.
The first was hardly big enough to warrant the description "bedroom" and was clearly being used as a study, with bookcases and a desk under the window. The second door was just a cupboard, containing the hot water tank and shelves of towels and bedding. The third was a double bedroom, but it had a deserted feel and the bed wasn't made up. Which left the fourth door.
This opened onto another double bedroom at the front of the house and was presumably Abigail's room. There was a queen-sized bed and wardrobes and a dressing table and the decoration and bed linen were conspicuously feminine. The head of the bed was flanked by matching bedside cabinets and there was a book on each one. I could see the title of the nearest - Portnoy's Complaint, by Philip Roth.
I was puzzled. Did Abigail and her daughter sleep together? Why would they do that when there was another double room? But they must be sharing that bed because I knew she hadn't read, and wasn't currently reading, Portnoy's Complaint.
In the early afternoon I walked back to Abigail's house to retrieve my car. Freya's sportscar was absent, which I was quite glad about, but Abigail's hatchback was there and she answered the door and gave me a huge smile and asked me in.
In the hall we came together and kissed properly, arms around each other, my hands stroking her back and cupping her bum cheeks, hers massaging my shoulders and pressing her nails lightly into my deltoids, our mouths fastened together, eyes closed, tongues entwined. She was wearing tight-fitting jeans and I slid my hands into her back pockets and squeezed her buttocks.
After a long time we broke for air and she led me into the kitchen and put the kettle on.
'How are you feeling today? We did have rather a lot to drink. Did you get home alright?'
'I'm ok,' I replied, sitting down at the little kitchen table while Abigail made tea and, putting a mug down in front of me, sat down opposite.
'Your daughter's quite an interesting person,' I began. 'Quite... assertive. I was a bit surprised.'
'Yes,' said Abigail, slowly, 'her father and I gave her a rather free reign as she was growing up. Probably to compensate for the problems in our marriage. As a result she's rather... well, spoilt, I suppose. I hope she wasn't rude to you.'
'No, no, not at all. But I was a bit surprised at the way she spoke to you.'
Abigail said nothing and we sipped our tea in an awkward silence while I made up my mind.
'Why do you and your daughter sleep in the same bed?' I said, at length. I don't mean to pry but I used the upstairs toilet last night and I got the wrong door and... well, it's obvious there are two people sleeping in the front bedroom.'
Abigail went white and I felt my stomach lurch. What was going on?
She wiped a hand across her forehead and steadied herself by breathing deeply and slowly.
'What's the matter?' I asked, deeply concerned.
Abigail was silent for about half a minute, still breathing slowly and deeply. Then she looked up at me and there was a world of pain in her hazel eyes.
'I need to talk to you, Tom,' she began.
'Of course,' I said, now very concerned.
'Not here,' she said, quietly. 'Can we go for a walk?'
In silence we got into my car and I drove us to a local country park and parked under a spreading beech tree. We didn't say anything on the fifteen-minute journey. We got out and I locked the car and we set out on a grassy track that led to a bracken-covered hill in the distance. I said nothing, waiting for Abigail to get whatever it was off her chest. I was expecting a conversation about the difficulty of bringing up a spirited girl as a single parent; nothing prepared me for her opening statement.
'Just after my husband left, about five years ago, my daughter seduced me. We had sex together.' Abigail said this quietly, matter of factly, staring at the ground as she walked. My intuition told me to say nothing, although there were many things I wanted to ask. She continued: 'I'm not going to make excuses for my behaviour, but I was in a very dark place at that time. I'd been rejected by a man whom I still loved very much and who had walked out on us with barely a word. My parents were both dead and I was struggling financially. I suppose in today's terminology I was very vulnerable.
'And my daughter took advantage of my vulnerability. Over a period of weeks she broke me down, weakened my resistance. It started with a lot of hugs and holding hands. Then one evening she kissed me and... Oh God, Tom, I didn't push her away. I needed some love, some reassurance. After that we kissed a lot and then she started stroking me and touching me and I was appalled and I loved it at the same time.' Abigail started weeping and I put my arm around her and drew her close and she cried into my shoulder and I held her tight against me.
'Then one Saturday afternoon we went all the way. Freya took me to bed and made love to me and it felt so wrong and so good.'
'And you're still sleeping together?' I asked, quietly. It was the first thing I'd said since leaving Abigail's house.
'Yes,' she whispered.
'And still enjoying it?' I asked, a little cruelly.
'Oh yes! It's wonderful!'
'Better than us?' I asked, a shard of jealousy piercing my viscera.
'No!' said Abigail, emphatically. 'Nothing could be as good as that!'
'I love you, Abigail,' I said suddenly and she wept again and held me and her tears ran down my cheeks.
'Where do we go now?' I asked when she'd stopped crying and blown her nose.
'Do you really love me, Tom?' she asked, her eyes red and puffy.
'Yes.'
'You're not just feeling sorry for me because I'm so fucked up?' Her use of the expletive was shocking; Abigail never swore.
'No. I think it's the real thing, as far as I can tell.'
'I feel the same way,' she said, wiping her eyes with a hand and smearing mascara across her cheek.
'So where do we go now,' I repeated, my heart bursting with gladness, her confession of incestuous sex seeming temporarily irrelevant. 'What would Freya say if you moved in with me?' I hadn't thought this through but the afternoon was crazy so why not?
'There's more,' said Abigail.
'More?'
'We talked last night. This morning. After you'd gone.'
I was all ears. 'What did Freya say?'
Abigail seemed to pause, collecting her thoughts. 'You remember I said that I'd dated quite a bit after my husband walked out but they were all my age or older and I didn't sleep with many of them. Well, only one, actually.'
'I remember,' I said.
Abigail gulped. 'I don't know how to say this.'
'Go on,' I said, gently.
'Freya never bothered about my boyfriends, such as they were. She didn't see them as a threat, I suppose. But it's different with you. She fancies you. She wants the three of us to go to bed together.'
Ten conflicting and stomach-churning thoughts crashed through my brain simultaneously and I was lost for words, a rare state of affairs for a lawyer. 'But...' I said, and then couldn't think of anything to follow it. 'You're not serious?' I asked, eventually, though I knew she was.
By this time, although both of us were oblivious to the landscape, we'd reached the foot of the hill, where a wooden bench had been placed in someone's memory. We sat down and held hands and looked out over the fields and hedgerows.
'This is fucking insane,' I said, at last, although I didn't usually swear in front of Abigail.
'I'm sorry Tom. I'm so sorry. But I had to tell you. And if you walk away now I'll understand.'
'I'm not going anywhere,' I said, firmly. And I wasn't. My love for this very special woman transcended minor peccadilloes like sleeping with her daughter. So what! 'Move in with me,' I said again. 'Freya's an estate agent, she can afford to run your house. And she's a big girl, now,' I added.'
We walked for hours, talking and kissing. We didn't discuss Abigail's incestuous relationship with Freya any further, that bombshell had detonated and the reverberations were still bouncing of the distant hills, but for now we discussed us, and our love and what we would do together.
Later we returned to her house and Abigail packed an overnight bag and left a note for her daughter saying she'd be away a couple of days and then she followed me to my house. Once inside I pressed her up against the front door and kissed her long and hard and she kissed me back and thrust her hips into mine. We were both very, very aroused and we stumbled up the stairs to my bedroom, ripped our clothes off and threw ourselves onto the bed.