Jennifer

I became very calm, almost sane, almost 'normal'. A father, lover if you like, to this quite remarkable young woman. She scraped the flat back into some resemblance of a home... the snow drifted delicately down, kettle simmered on the old gas stove, the ancient, chipped, deep butler sink cleaned. Bits and pieces, pots and pans stowed tidily away. Stopped drifting about in the cab, stopped seeing all the old, all too familiar places, the faces… pleased to work my few hours in the dark evenings, to creep back in the flat, she asleep, television softly on, glasses lying beside her. No question of us ever going out, anywhere at all. Where was there too go....? She, most happy to have come in from the reality of her existence, to turn her back on what had been.

No relatives, a mother somewhere, who had abandoned her as a child, had been brought up to believe that this woman was her aunt. Certainly, she had been well looked after, good education in a Catholic school, but her sexuality was aroused very early, preferring fast motor bikes.... to be surrounded by boys, the more the better.

Her life of casual sex, hot metal, burning rubber had come to a abrupt halt when she was thrown head first through a brick wall from the back of a Triumph speed twin. They swept her scalp, nose, teeth, eyebrows and ears up off of Roehampton Lane.... in a coma for four months. Being so very young, the State decided she should have the finest plastic surgeon in the Country, the result being totally unbelievable. A strange, calm, gentle face, completely smooth, not the slightest blemish, not the slightest mark. Only when she became very tired could the criss-cross scars be faintly seen.

The accident, the two years lying in the hospital, had given her the depth and maturity of a woman twice her age, very little being left for her imagination, had not the slightest illusion about anything and anyone.

Often thought that the experience had given her a second sight. She understood me completely. Her attitude, one of profound gratitude.... would call me "Sir", unable to see what I had done to warrant this, initially having been nothing but a predator, nothing different from any other man, but I started to go soft on the situation, to show her consideration that never imagined was in my possession. Perhaps her complete trust, her openness.
We went, collected all her belongings. Regardless of life in the fast lane, she had still assembled her "Bottom Drawer", sheets, cutlery, crockery, a huge trunk full of books, clothes, which I staggered up the stairs with, accompanied by her hilarious laughter...... all the things that women put by for that one day in their life, were offered to me.
Felt naked, at a complete loss...... Jennifer, at 17 years old, had brought the old man to his knees.