Retuned

I'm in Middlesbrough for a few days while my Mum is in Lancaster having a rest from my Dad. I was to be "looking after" him, which conjured up blanching images of flannels and genitalia, but I have had the jammiest stroke of luck.

Instead of having to endure his company twenty-four hours a day, my duties are now much abbreviated, as he is hospitalised in The Biffa Bacon General Hospital, having thankfully banged his head the other day, compounding his malingering and self-pitying attitude towards a broken leg. All I have to do then, is a couple of hours of hospital visiting a day. My Mum has warned me that he might not know who I am. One day he saw three goats at the end of his bed, and more recently was pleased to find himself on holiday in Margate.

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I had my "voluntary" interview with the police yesterday. No matter how prepared you think you are, and how many times you've rehearsed your answers and their possible subversion, it's exacting being in a tiny, airless room with a copper, your solicitor, a tape recorder, and your guilt. My solicitor told me that they had very little on me and that Plod would be going on a fishing expedition, so in the words of the hectoring old ad, just say no.

An envelope destined for a former lodger of mine was intercepted at Gatwick. The airport's drug detection machines identified the "substance" as methamphetamine, and so the police came looking for a meth lab which might have been hidden between the Eurovision Song Contest CDs and the poetry of W N Herbert.

There was an air of wanting to get it over and done with. "No," I laughed with unwonted nervousness, "meth is one thing I've never tried." As soon as that was out I realised its implication that I'd tried other drugs, having previously answered "no" to the question "Have you ever been a drug user, Mr Looby?"

He clicked the tape recorder to a stop, and said "I'm not sending this file up. It won't go any further as there's insufficient evidence." I asked about getting the money back for the broken down door and having to change the locks. They said that as they'd been round four times to try to enter the house peaceably -- and we'd all been out -- they had been "left with no option" but to break in, so I'd be unlikely to get my money back. I still think that's wrong.

Outside, the light is all turned up. I am a little disappointed at the intensity of my elation, but taken by surprise at how wobbly my legs are. I am reminded of Kirsty's Dad, walking down The Strand after being released from the Old Bailey, quiet for some safe yards, before saying to his daughter, "That's a relief. Because I did it."

I texted Erica, Kim and Trina. Trina came down for a drink, as did fortuitously, Seth, a friend of mine I've been seeing quite a bit of lately. We agree not to talk about his interest in Healing With Coloured Torches and other middle class quackery, but we get on well and I like his attitude to money. He went off to pawn a couple of gold sovereigns, waving away my offer of a tenner loan.

Then Trina started to turn my afternoon into hers. "I've read that letter you sent to Donna," referring to a long letter I wrote -- but never sent -- whilst I was on holiday with Kirsty and the girls in Dieppe, a fragment of which I posted here. From friendly touristic beginnings it firms up into sex -- our sex, mine and hers sex, not anyone else's.

"So while I've been locked into an interview room at the police station, you've been riffling through my private letters?"

"No, no, I was was looking for something else." "Yes, and then you found the letter to Donna and read it all?"

I was determined not to let her spoil my afternoon, but told her that she had prodigiously overstepped the mark. She bulldozed on, more interested in discussing its content than apologising. "I don't know how you put up with me for two years; I must have seemed very tame." And then later, trying to sound jocular, she said "Men are strange. You're all pervs."

Thrown into my second involuntary quizzing of the day, I simply refused to answer and shook my head. Trina sees sex as either comical or dirty. Unable to let the subject go, but receiving no further response from me, she stood up with the drink in her eyes and announced her intention to have a lie down at mine -- something to which me and Seth assented without demur.

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Back to Middlesbrough. I sit down with a discount ale, no obligations until about 7ish this evening. Opposite me, an elderly foursome, spending their pensions and house inflation. To my surprise, the letter's intended recipient, the girl with the filthiest name on my phone, texts me.

Donna is in "an important meeting" and is sending me secret texts. I am trying to keep my squirming from interfering with anyone's Two Meals for 7.19. I apologise by text to Donna for taking the seat next to her and accidentally allowing my fingers to stroke slowly up her skirt and pulling it up asymmetrically across her thighs so that my fingertips can rest on her stocking tops.

Donna, Donna, Donna. My slut, my always-want-you girl, my compliant, dressing-up, high-heeled, open-legged, stairs sex, cunt. I thought this was all over? I don't think anyone has ever turned me on like this.

"Oh dear, so now you've told me my imaginings are correct. I fancy you so fucking much Donna. I'll give you a ring when I'm calmer. But just to say... I LONG to fuck you."