6. We both drifted off into a sound, relaxing, dreamlike sleep

Soon it would be Christmas 2014. Sometime earlier in the year, I had started to attend the All Saint’s Anglican Church in Derby Road, here in Eastleigh. A new young pastor who had trained at Cambridge University gave the sermon. His oration was eloquent. I left impressed. I returned the next Sunday.

Christmas celebration services were planned. I invited my Asian friends to attend these with me. Ian, the pastor, paid our group a lot of attention. We all enjoyed the carol singing.

I spent Christmas Day with my Asian friends. We all partook of a favourite of mine, whole, slow-cooked roast duck with Jamie Oliver roast potatoes. We had a memorable day and evening in my home, out of the icy cold, wet and windy weather beating outside.

There arose a problem when it came to taking them all home. Carol couldn’t find her new iPhone!

Easy, I thought, I’ll just call her number, her phone will ring and we’ll find it! But No! Earlier Carol had turned it to Silent. Don’t worry, we’ll search the flat. We all spent ages looking for it, we looked everywhere. No joy! We simply couldn’t find it anywhere! Carol suggested, if she spent the night here, I could set my alarm for a few minutes before hers was due to go off then we would find it.

We consulted the others. All happy?

“Yes, but please could you take the rest of us home. It would become far too cold for us all to stay in the flat with you and Carol.”

Carol asked to remain while I took the rest back to their lodgings.

“I’ll be back within an hour.” She stayed, watching a video, or was it the popular Chinese TV music programme, China’s Got Talent?

I suggested we share my comfortable King size bed. “But no monkey business,” I confirmed.

“Thank you, Bruce. I will.”

I gave her a light summer gown to use to sleep in or cover herself, while I changed into my one and only pair of shorty pyjamas, reserved for occasions when I have guests.

Unlike the time with Marlene some twenty-two years previously, when I had stayed over in her flat in the ice cold London winter of 1992-3, I had been a married man, and I had become sexually intimate at the first opportunity. However, this time, despite being truly in love with Carol, and it appeared, she with me, we did not consummate our love. For me, I simply did not know what the future held. Nor did I know the intimate details of how courting couples are expected to behave in her Chinese culture. I did not want to offend Carol or her friends again.

Would she be able to remain in the UK to work here after graduating? I didn’t want to rush into a hasty marriage for the sake of giving her British citizenship and, with it, the right to remain in the UK. Another question, would she be comfortable enough to marry me, a man nearly three times her age? There were precedents amongst the musicians I had studied. But what about us? As much as I wanted to consummate our love, I had respect for her as a free woman, I could not force myself upon her. There was so much going on in my mind that night. Could I sleep?

At the beginning, neither of us could. We talked.

She was menstruating. How fortunate! I sensed that Carol felt safe with me because she was in the middle of her menstrual cycle, she was sure I would not deflower her at a time like this or take advantage of her vulnerability.

Instead, we talked late into the night. The last time I had shared a bed with a woman had been with Monica, my late wife, 4 years previously. Oh, how I would have loved to have cuddled up to Carol. No, I couldn’t! I gently sought her hand under the cover of the warm duvet. She did not resist. She lay comfortably. I did not. Physical comfort meant little to me that night. I was holding the hand of the woman, or girl, as she preferred to be called, whom I had fallen so deeply in love with. I told her how much it meant to me just to hold her hand. Monica had never wanted to reciprocate my desire to hold hands. This time with Carol, holding hands was comfort enough. I felt a deep satisfaction waft over me. Still, with Carol’s left hand in my right, we both drifted off into a sound, relaxing, dreamlike sleep.