It all started so innocently, well on my part anyway. I’d never been entirely sure Carol, or indeed any woman, could ever be accused of innocence. By the time I’d been teaching college kids for a couple of years I was sure of it. Girls were all completely Machiavellian by the time they’d hit sixteen. After rearing two daughters and watching my nieces I revised that because by then I suspected that girls were all completely Machiavellian from birth. Further observation confirmed it wasn’t just the girls in my family. It really was all of them.

Carol and I had, as usual, gone out for a meal and a drink on the Sunday night. This particular Sunday she’d chosen to dine at the George and Dragon. We take it in turns to decide where to eat. The George is a mock Tudor pub that’s a bit pretentious and more than a bit pricey, but it’s clean, pleasant and serves a decent if unimaginative menu, most of which is ready prepared elsewhere and arrives at the pub frozen, all served by pretty bits of fluff seemingly selected for their smiles and the size of their bosoms. They’re all provided with a uniform frock with ridiculously short skirts and a low cut bodice two sizes too small that is more revealing than some fetish wear maids’ uniforms. I know because there’s a costume shop I walk past on the way to work with them in the window. And before you ask, of course I’ve looked, I’m a bloke. Most of the staff waiting on tables are college kids who know me, and they’re all girls.

I don’t know how the management get away with that under the sex discrimination act. I do know that if they insisted all staff had to wear that uniform there’s more than a few local lads would go with that for the laugh. I teach at least a dozen like that. I have no idea if the management are aware that three of their waitresses are trans girls. I know because I teach them, and they’ve all told me they’re glad of the money. There may be more than the three for all I know, but I regard anyone who’d out them as the lowest of the low. They’re just kids trying to get by, and unlike a lot they aren’t expecting a hand out, they’re working for it, and I’ve got a lot of time for kids who’ll work.

However, I don’t like going there because with teaching at the local college, where I’m well known and popular with the kids, it’s impossible to get any privacy when eating. Too, the car park is full of gleaming clean cars less than three years old with pretentious private number plates with a large number of badly parked Chelsea tractors, read large powerful 4x4s that have never been off road, making parking difficult. The vehicles aren’t too bad, but their owners are obnoxious.

I hate having to associate with folk who are obviously so important they can’t possibly turn their mobile phones off in places where others are paying for privacy like we lesser mortals do. Even worse they can’t possibly just say I’ll ring you back, or go somewhere else where I don’t have to listen to their inconsequential babble. I don’t care if there are millions at stake there’s nothing in their conversation for me. I’m eating and have probably just paid good money for my steak. There’s a sign up saying please turn your phone off in the restaurante and make calls from the foyer. Which is pointless if it’s not enforced. In short the management is useless and a lot of the clientèle are arrogant, selfish, ostentatious, idiots who probably own nothing. It will all be on the credit cards. Round here we describe them as being peas over the sticks, which is pronounced 'Pays oh ert sticks'. A pea plant that’s grown over tall, past the top of the supporting sticks can but only fall back to the ground.

In short I don’t like the George and would rather have gone to next pub down the road, The Raven, but it wasn’t my turn to choose where we ate. The Raven is a genuine Tudor building with low ceilings, far superior beer and a limited selection of superbly cooked traditional dishes, all prepared that day on the premises. The vegetables are mostly what’s in season and grown on the allotments behind the pub or local farms, and the meat is all farmed locally and comes from Dooley the butcher who slaughters in a licensed abattoir behind his shop in the village. There're no menu’s to read, just a blackboard with what’s available chalked on it along with another telling you who grew each vegetable and who raised each cut of meat. If something isn’t local it says so and provides as much information as is known. The service is provided by the same staff that serve behind the bar, their welcome is genuine, and the prices are very reasonable.

Since The Raven is a free house it can sell any beer Ralph the landlord wants to, but though there’re always a couple of guest beers he sticks with Parkstones, a local small brew house that’s been in business for over two hundred years and has a considerable reputation for the quality of its ale. The Raven has been in Ralph’s family for generations, and a lot of the staff are family. The car park is full of tightly parked dirty Land Rovers driven by local farmers, of which I am one. I teach, but I also farm with my brother Arthur, who lives in the farm house and Lucas my brother in law. We provide Dooley with a lot of his beef and turkeys which we raise near enough all year round. Arthur is two years younger than I, and there’s Gwen between us. Gwen was in the same class at school as Carol and Mary. Like a lot of families round here we’re interrelated several ways round. Arthur married Mary and Gwen married Lucas, Carol’s younger brother and only sibling, which makes Lucas my wife’s brother and my sister’s husband, my brother in law two ways round.

I knew things were going to be difficult later as soon as I saw Tracy coming to our table to take our order. Carol is hyper sensitive to what she perceives as competition for not so much my attention, but my affections. I’ve never given her any reason to be like that, but she has her reasons and my sympathy, but I can only be pushed so far before I administer a much needed reality check, which though often not pleasant at the time, does result in a curtailment of poor relations between us for what could be an over long period of time. Arthur likes Carol and, notwithstanding her difficulties, has always treated her just like any other family member, yet he can’t for the life of him see why in the main I put up with her tantrums. But then he has a much more placid existence with Mary, who whilst a lovely woman would never have suited me at all.

“Hi, Sir! I didn’t know you came in here, Mr. Laurence.”

“Hello, Tracy. We don’t come here often, but thought we’d have a change.” As Tracy learnt forward to put her little note pad on the table to write our order down, she’s not the sharpest tool in the box and certainly couldn’t remember it all, her enormous breasts strained against their confinement in her bra which was clearly visible over the top of her uniform and looking like the swelling crest of a tidal wave surged up and forward as if they were about to make a break for freedom. I knew this was not going to be good. As you probably just realised I’m definitely a breast man which Carol appreciates, but only when the breasts I’m waxing lyrical over are hers, so any observation I indulge in I do when I'm out on my own, or at least when Carol isn't there.

Tracy chatted as she took our order, and from there on in I was getting ‘the eye’. The one that said ‘you just wait till I get you home’. I knew if I didn’t play this just right I was going to served a selection of cured meats for dinner for the next week if not month. Mostly hot tongue and cold shoulder. I’ll give the lass her due, Tracy was friendly and efficient, God love the kid, but completely unaware of the freezing looks Carol was giving her. As usual at the George I had lamb chops, because there's not much they can do to screw them up, and Carol had the plaice. She bit her nose off to spite her face and declined any pudding, so I didn't bother with the cheese platter I'd been going to order. As we were leaving Tracy expressed her hopes that we’d enjoyed our meal and that she would be working on our next visit. Not going to happen any time soon, but I knew every kid in the college would know where I’d eaten and be reminded of what Mrs. Laurence looked like by first break tomorrow. I got the look again as I left a fiver tip.

We were leaving early. We’d planned on staying for a few drinks till eleven and it was just gone nine, but Carol said she was tired and had a headache. I knew that one, sex was off the menu, and I was about to have a headache too. It started in the car. “I suppose I should congratulate you on your latest conquest.” The tone was bitter, biting and seriously in need of reassurance, but she hadn’t finished. “Leaving a fiver was far too much.”

I’d had enough of Carol bitching at me for things out of my control just recently. I’d never played her false and had no intention of doing so, but I wasn’t taking this. She had a choice, calm down, or I was going out for a drink, at the Raven. It was time to sort things out. “You know damned well I’ve left a fiver if I’ve been happy with the service for a couple of years now. Tracy was polite and efficient, and don’t you dare make any snide remarks revolving on the word service. She’s just a little girl trying to do her job. Don’t be bloody stupid woman, I can’t afford to be married. I certainly can’t afford to be divorced. I’ve always said ‘I appreciate wildlife, but I’m no poacher.’ As is obvious Tracy is a kid I teach, and she’s not over bright, but I do like her because she tries hard and she’s always pleasant.”

“She was anything but a little girl, and I don’t doubt she’d have been very pleasant when you’d finally fallen into her cleavage which she was trying hard enough to push into your face.”

Logic wasn’t going to work here and telling Carol that Tracy was going out with an apprentice plumber who did day release at the college would have been a waste of time. A full frontal assault was required, a not entirely inappropriate expression under the circumstances. “If I hadn’t had a firm seat in my chair the way she was learning over I’d have fallen in and disappeared altogether. That uniform of hers had a bodice at bloody nearly waist level. A man would have had to be made of stone not to notice, and you ought to be grateful that at my age I’m still interested.”

“Maybe, but she was half your age and putting it out.”

“Bollocks! She’s a third of my age and, in spite of having breasts that should have been on the figurehead of a ship of the line in Nelson’s day, she’s still a little girl. She was no more interested in me than she would be in her granddad. I like kids, if you remember that’s why I went into teaching, and half of them are girls. And anyway I have to have a day off sometime.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m a teacher, and if I were going to have an affair I’d want to have one with someone who could teach me something for a change. I’d have been better off with her mother, or better still her grandmother. Now stop being silly, dry your eyes, repair your make up, and if you like I’ll see if I’m still man enough to handle you when we get home, and not that admittedly delightful little girl who was pleasant to look at, but with whom conversation would have been limited to, ‘Turn over, Love.’ Just stop it, Carol, or I’ll go back out for a drink, at the Raven. You know there’s nothing going on, and I’m not going to spend the next week defending myself against accusations that you know are nonsense. And anyway you may well be nearly three times her age, but your bosom is rather more impressive than hers, even if not as prominently displayed.” From the look on her face I’d done it. I’d hit the mother lode. The problem was essentially over.

As we entered the house, I could tell Carol was calming down, but I was surprised when she sheepishly said, “Sorry, Frank. Next time it’s my turn to choose we’ll go to The Raven.”

I’m not a man to rub it in, not when there’s no need, and that was a hell of a climb down, so I asked, “Now that’s out of the way, there’s no need to waste a perfectly good Sunday night, so are we going back out for a drink? Or are you going to exhibit those splendid breasts of yours at a private shewing?”

“We could have the drink here, and—” Carol had already removed her blouse and was reaching behind her back. Carol’s breasts were entirely home grown and owed nothing to surgery, silicone or saline and like the rest of her body were in amazing shape for a woman of her age. In many ways she was still the girl I fell for all those years ago.

“That’s my girl,” I said, “I’ll pour you a brandy when I’ve admired the view for a few seconds.”

I’ve been married to Carol, who when I went to school with her was Carl, for thirty-five years now. She’s good with people, she’s the receptionist at our local group medical practice and is highly thought of by the other staff there and the folk the practice serves who are all neighbours, but once I’m involved she can become difficult as a result of her insecurities which to me is entirely understandable. Till she left home her life had been hell. Beaten and abused by a drunken stepfather from the age of twelve and humiliated by her mother from an early age she’d tried to kill herself after her final beating from her stepdad which put her in hospital for three weeks. Her parents had left her and gone out, and Lucas who'd have been fourteen had found her bleeding to death and rang for an ambulance. It was the paramedics who’d saved her life. Mum had to stop Dad from going round and beating the crap out of her stepfather, which wouldn’t have been a good idea because Dad was a Special Constable.

We all knew Carol was trans way before that because along with Mary she’d been Gwen’s best friend since kindergarten. Most folk knew and treated them as three girls which when her mum remarried had probably been a major reason for her treatment at the hands of her stepfather. Rather than risk her succeeding in killing herself next time if she’d gone back home, or her running away and being at risk on the streets of an unfamiliar city my parents had taken her in when she came out of hospital. She was just turned sixteen at the time and in her last year at school.

Gwen’s husband, Lucas, was always big, and he told me he was never hurt by their stepdad, but he joined the army as soon as he was old enough to get away from home because it was so bad. I suspect Carol has never told even me the worst of her experiences.

Arthur has known Carol as long as I have and wasn’t even vaguely surprised when we became an item. Gwen and Mary said they’d expected it for years. I couldn’t believe my good fortune when she said yes when I proposed. Carol was affectionate and clearly loved me as much as I loved her, but said she wouldn’t allow me more than kissing till after her surgery, which seemed an interminable delay to me, but she was adamant, and the first time I laid eyes on her breasts was on our wedding night when I was twenty-two.

Since then we’ve reared two daughters and a son and are still together. Yes, she can be a right royal pain in the arse, though she doesn’t often pull a stunt like tonight’s. Though all very different Carol, Gwen and Mary are still each other’s best friends though of the three time has been kindest to Carol. She’s still breathtakingly beautiful and just as easy to love as ever, but the reason she’s still my wife is she loves me. She always has, which is why she is the way she is. A man is lucky to find that in a woman, and it’s worth over looking the consequences of a little insecurity for.