We'd both been working at an event down on the quayside. North Shields quayside that is. Not as fashionable as Newcastle's quayside, and with pubs much less likely to attract the smart young things. We'd been marketing some flats in a block that was once a seaman's hotel known as the Jungle. Why anybody would want to live there I'll never know, but since we sold all the flats I maybe shouldn't enquire too much. Just bank the commission and try not to be around when the local residents learn what a foghorn is, or how much noise the early morning ferry makes when it arrives.
Anyway, Kate and myself had done the business and got all the signatures we needed. Deposits too. So we decided to have a late night picnic to celebrate. Stop off at a fish shop on the way, and sit in the carpark overlooking Blyth Beach and eat our supper. Yes, I know, it's hardly champagne and caviar, but the days of big commissions and high bonuses vanished once the big corporations came into the estate agency game. Now we're all just trying to grind out a profit.
I like working with Kate. She lives in Blyth, and doesn't moan about doing overtime or being asked to do out of hours viewings. Her husband is happy doing the childcare bits while she's out at work; he does permanent day shifts making trusses. Roof trusses that is; the timber is imported via the port and then turned into trusses in a high tech factory.
Kate and I get on well. We discussed starting a regular affair 18 months ago, after a farewell kiss at the Christmas party turned into a passionate fumble, a blow job and my frigging her to orgasm as an alternative to unprotected sex.
We discussed it, but didn't do it. Kate simply didn't need that much hassle when sex didn't play such a large part in her life. And oddly, we became closer as a result of those discussions. I appreciated much more the way she approached decisions, meticulous and careful, weighing everything in the balance. I think she enjoyed her role as my office wife, doing everything she could to make my life easier, caring and supportive. If people in the office joked about how close we were they kept it light hearted; each time I found a new girlfriend they teased Kate about my cheating on her.
It doesn't sound the most romantic or sexy of events, sitting by the beach in the car eating fish and chips, but I'll gladly confess to feeling closer to her that night than at any time since our christmas party fumble. I'm a man; we start with a genetic disadvantage when it comes to feeling close to women without sex being involved. So yes. I felt a little horny as well. I think we were both aware the evening had the potential to take us to places where we shouldn't go, but that had happened in the office as well and we'd managed.
Not that maintaining that facade got any easier when a car pulled into the car park just after ten o clock, closely followed by two more cars. Both of us commented on it being surprising that so many cars should turn up together, but didn't draw any conclusions.
Not until the interior light went on anyway. Then it became pretty apparent that the woman in the cavalier had, at the least, bare shoulders and didn't mind being see by the men in the other two cars. Or us for that matter. Except that the two men in the cars that had followed them in didn't stay in their cars for long. We couldn't see that much of what was going on but you didn't need binoculars to see that both men were wanking. You didn't need much imagination to work out what was happening when one of them moved to stand at the passenger window either.
I was surprised when Kate muttered under her breath.