Fifteen years of marriage was over. I didn't feel sad, it was just what it was. Lots of people divorce. We were no different. Of course I felt the guilt of betrayal but I couldn't live a lie any longer. Jan was understandably mortified. Then angry. But I'd done it. I'd told her I was leaving.
In my mind it had to be done. I had to be happy rather than going through the motions. I needed to be true to myself. And I had to give Jan a chance for a fresh start while she was still young enough.
I finished packing the last of my shirts and glanced at the time, glad Jan had chosen to stay at work while I was in the house. Understandably she wasn't keen on seeing me.
It seemed I still had twenty minutes or so until I was picked up so I sat on the end of what was no longer my bed and let my mind drift to how I'd come to be here.
I was thirty eight now but this journey had begun with me a long time before. Long before I'd even met Jan. back when as a naive somewhat nerdy eighteen year old youth I had a crazy infatuation with the dinner lady at my school. She wasn't one of the cooks. She was out in the hall with the Monitors to help oversee the children and clean up between sittings. Myself and Craig were Sixth-form Prefects and we organised the kids by class and kept the more rowdy ones in order as they waited.
"Class Two A." I called out from my rota.
Craig was there guiding the twelve year olds into an orderly queue as they rushed forward. Lunch was an hour and a half and with near four hundred children taking dinners it was like a slick military operation.
"And be quiet."
I could see Anne moving amongst the tables topping up water jugs. To me she was the perfect woman. A goddess in her blue smock. Thirty years old, an eternity away for me having just turned eighteen but it didn't matter. All I saw was a slim pretty girl with brown hair that hung just short of her shoulders. Not some silly girl my own age. A woman. Experienced. I couldn't count how many times I'd fantasised about her or how many times I'd jerked myself to exhaustion imagining the line of her tits, or her smooth thighs wrapped around me.
Of course the reality was that I'd never seen anything above the knees or below the neck but in my head I had every detail of her perfect body mapped out. My infatuation was such that had there even been any girls in our school I don't think I would have noticed.
The first time I let my interest show was the January of my last year at school when we had a childish conversation about her breast size along with Craig. In fact he started it when Anne accidentally knocked a plastic beaker from the table with her chest while leaning over to wipe up.
"Boobs too big?" Craig braved as he picked up the fallen item.
"I wish."
"They look just fine to me." I chirped in with a moment of honesty.
"So how big are they?" Craig pressed.
Anne glanced at me waiting eagerly to see if she would answer."
"You shouldn't ask a woman questions like that."
Then still looking at me she said.
"Thirty-six if you must know."
"No way. I reckon thirty-two. Thirty-four at a push." Craig retorted.
"Expert at judging a girls boobs are you?"
"So am I right?" Craig wasn't letting go.
"No. Thirty-six. I suppose you want to measure them."
"Oh look. A measuring tape."
How the hell I had a measure in my pocket I don't know. Left over from woodwork I guess but serendipity was working for me that day.
"Oh hell." Craig flustered.
Anne stopped wiping the table and stood up straight.
"Really?"
"I dare you."
Suddenly this had become my conversation. My eyes were on the line of her clothes where what I imagined were the most perfect tits ever gently protruded.
Anne smirked, glancing around while Craig went bright red at my cheek. He was a good talker, not so good when it came back at him.
Anne was smirking.
"Okay. In the broom cupboard.
Just you."
"Aw." Craig protested.
"Sorry. I don't trust you together."
We slipped inside and shut the door leaving my co-conspirator outside. He'd started this but somehow it was me in the cupboard with Anne. Loyalty meant nothing when I had a opportunity to touch the object of so much desire in me. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling giving just enough light in the dingy space for me to see by.
"You should take the smock off." I suggested.
"That all you want me to take off?"
I wasn't brave enough to say what flitted through my mind at that moment. Instead I waited while she peeled the smock away and taking the measure she turned her back to me.
"From behind." She said lifting the tape into place herself much to my disappointment.
I could hear Craig outside the cupboard giggling.
"Hurry up before someone comes."
Now she was showing her nerves. I imagined she was regretting a foolish decision to tease a teenage schoolboy. For my part I wanted to see it through. To measure her tits even if only from a safe position at her rear was still the pinnacle of sex for me at this point.
I took the tape and pulled the ends together behind her back, taking the opportunity to lightly brush my uncomfortable bulge against her pert arse. She didn't flinch and I weighed up trying it again. No. Too obvious. And I wasn't sure I wouldn't cum in my pants if I did. Just as exciting I could feel the clasp of her bra just under my fingers holding the tape in place.
"Thirty-six." I read out.
I caught her perfume and swooned. She smelt wonderful.
Anne stepped away gathering the tape up.
"Satisfied?"
"Well there's still cup size?"
I think I was pushing my luck now and could feel my cheeks burning.
"C cup." She whispered.
"And no you're not checking that."
She opened the door keen to be out before a teacher appeared. I was ecstatic. I knew her bra size. For a lad who'd never touched a girl this was the height of sexual experience. Thirty-six C was implanted in my brain for life.
"Well?" Craig asked.
"She was telling the truth."
"Oh yes." He punched the air
"Did you touch them?"
"No."
"You should have. I would've done"
"That's why I was in the cupboard and not you."
I kept her cup size as my own personal little secret. That day had been a mini triumph for raging teenage hormones.
But more was to come.
The snow came heavy that January. In hindsight it was probably pointless for anyone to have made the journey into school. We spent the morning huddled in cold classrooms with heating that struggled to cope with only the handful of teachers who'd made it in. At lunchtime the Head announced anyone able to go home should and I packed my things away keen to be home in the warm.
Trudging outside was a shock to the senses. I never was great at dressing appropriately. I wore a jacket and trousers to school and a crombie in the colder months. That's what I did. Always smart, with Oxford brogues that just vanished under the ever deepening whiteout. The idea of compromising and donning wellies or putting a coat on with a hood was alien to me.
I paid the price with snow over the tops of my shoes and a biting wind that cut through the material of my trousers and froze my ears.
"Hi Paul."
My heart jumped at the sight of Anne wrapped in her heavy coat and long black boots coming out through the heavy Victorian gates behind me. Sensibly she had a hood up secured under her chin so that it didn't blow off. But her sweet round face with its cute little turned up nose was beaming out at me.
"Didn't think you'd be here today." I said moving to join her.
"I know.
Was a bit pointless trudging down here just to go back, but I didn't want to let anyone down if they had put dinners on.
We can walk back together if you like?"
"Yes. That'd be great."
This was another high. I was with her outside school. Okay, so walking home was hardly a date, but it was an opportunity to talk away from Craig or any other interfering teenagers. I'd impress her with my maturity.
We started walking and chatting about nothing in particular. Her house was on the same estate as mine and it meant I had her to myself for an easy twenty minutes.
The weather was horrid. A bitter cold wind blowing against our faces and driving the fallen snow into drifts that we had to walk around. Ahead it was an undulating scene of coldly pristine white.
Once Anne misjudged where the curb was and I grabbed her arm in time to stop her falling.
