Red

Twelve or thirteen years ago now and I was on a commuter train home from London to High Wycombe, it was packed with strangers as usual, nobody knew the people with whom they’d been thrust to within such close proximity, so nobody talked. Those standing rubbed up against each other and looked down one another’s noses. I’d been late for the last train so managed to get a seat. Facing towards me, on the other side of the aisle, sat on the outside seat of a table of four was a very attractive redheaded lady, she was quite a bit older than me, possibly in her early forties, but drastically attractive, a truly superb looking woman . Her hair was long, layered and flowing, just a tint towards the red side of auburn, she wore a pristine beige rain mack with the belt drawn tight to subtly reveal a most acceptable physique, ever so slightly curvaceously sleek, a professional looking woman who no doubt kept herself looking good in her city suits, her shoes revealed the suit I could not see, her bag the rest, this was a sexy sophisticated beautiful woman in her prime and she literally could not keep her eyes off me, to the extent that it wasn’t just me who became mesmerised by her display. If she worked her hand through her hair and then gave me a sultry look from with under it once, she did it a hundred times, and from all different angles, she was horny as Hell and she didn’t care who saw it, she wanted me and she couldn’t have laid it on a plate any thicker. She was married too, quite a rock. Now, in those days, I was just a boy really, a boy from a small northern city starting out in the biggest southern city and petrified. The man that became of me after a drink then, or soba only as much as twelve months later, would have disembarked that damn train with her, even if it wasn’t my stop. Even if she’d merely been having a little fun and knocked me back immediately, even if I’d had to wait for God’s knows how long for the next train, just on the off chance. I could have met her every desire whenever or wherever she damn well liked, there and then in a secluded corner of the station, the toilets, car park, her car, a hotel, her home, she could have used me anywhere she liked, but I didn’t get up, and she never knew, and all this time it’s a loose end. I learnt from it though, such things play a part in the people we become don’t they? It also played a part in Alexander McQueen’s film, ‘Shame,’ it seems he must have been on the train.