Lily Harlem - Confessions of a Naughty Night Nurse

‘I bought Phedra a ring, then much to her surprise informed her I was still going to Manchester to study. I told her this would mean a better life for us in the future. She cried to start with but eventually she saw my reasoning. Perhaps I wouldn’t have gone if Phedra had let me go all the way, but she’d barely let me touch her since I’d slipped a ring on her finger.

‘The thing was though, her look-but-don’t-touch plan backfired. I’d barely been in Manchester a week and I was in bed with Stella, a red-haired student on my marketing course. She was as in to it as much as me, and wonderfully experienced. She used to do this rotating thing with her hips and then squeeze her internal muscles. Damn, it drove me to the edge every time. God knows how we managed to get any studying done that first term, we were insatiable.

‘Did I miss Phedra? No, not a jot. I wouldn’t have admitted that even to myself back then, though, I liked to pretend I wasn’t that much of a scumbag. I even tried to justify it in my head that I was refining my technique ready for our wedding night. But really, I don’t know who I was trying to kid. I loved being with Stella. She was hot, naughty, and just like a bloke the way she wanted to get naked anywhere, anytime, anyhow.’

‘Sounds fun.’

‘It was, and after Stella it was Nancy, then Emily, and then a bunch of girls whose names all kind of merge into one in my memory. I was on a frenzy for the whole three years I studied. It helped being compared to Brad Pitt who was just making a name for himself as an on-screen god back then. Personally, I thought the resemblance was tenuous, but I wasn’t going to deny girls their fantasy and did my best to make them squeal in delight until the early hours of the morning.

‘I never saw Phedra again. And I’m ashamed to admit that. Not to break off the engagement nor to explain myself. I just didn’t go home in the holidays. My parents were shocked by my long absence from Greece and even came to see me after eighteen months with reports of Phedra’s distress and her family’s growing concerns for my commitment to her. I told them nothing had changed and I just wanted to be standing on my own two feet financially before taking on the responsibility of a wife.

‘They left after three days, not entirely convinced and seemingly suspicious of all the pretty girls who called “hello” to me around the campus. I never saw them again, my parents. And that last meeting, that was full of deception, pains me even all these years later. They were killed the next spring, in a plane crash. They were on one of these light aircrafts and it crashed into the sea in a storm. My parents and three of my father’s work colleagues and their wives were all reported missing. They’d been to Cephalonia on some work-jolly, wine-tasting weekend. It seemed the pilot had also indulged, so the inquest said.

‘The bodies were never found, so no funeral as such. They had a service, of course, but I didn’t go. My sister never forgave me for that, and I’ve never forgiven myself for it either. But the thought of seeing Phedra and her parents was just too terrifying. Why, I don’t know. I should have manned up and told her the situation, but while the authorities were searching for the plane for two months I fell into a place where only alcohol and shagging seemed to make the pain bearable.

‘My university course came to an end. I had a degree, plenty of inherited cash and had taken to fluttering on the horses, which just added to my list of vices – women, booze and gambling. I had a big win, on a horse at Cheltenham, and decided to use the cash to do some travelling. I hopped on a plane to Vegas, the city of lights and dreams. It turned out to be a one-way ticket for several years.

‘On my very first night there I met Cleo. She was tall, blonde, bubbly and from Texas. Her Southern drawl made my groin ache right from the first time she said “Howdy, cowboy, how ya doin’?” I bought her a drink and she sat with me at a roulette table in Caesars Palace. When she kissed my cheek and wished me luck right before a thousand-buck win came in, I was smitten.

‘Cleo became my world. I gambled a small fortune but won a larger one. My luck just kept on growing and for six months I didn’t need to work at all. Then a friend I’d made said he was opening his own casino, just off the strip. Not quite as salubrious as Vegas’ other signature hotels, but classy enough for me to want to invest. With inheritance and big wins I threw up fifty per cent of the cash he needed and signed the deal on the same night I proposed for the second time in my life.

‘Cleo, in her true spirit, yeha’d and leapt on me. I adored her enthusiasm for life, her ditzy nature and the fact that in her eyes I could do no wrong, despite my failings. None of which I’d ever tried to hide; she knew it all. I’d cocked up with my family, drank and gambled, but she still loved me. It made me love her all the more.

‘We married, but we didn’t settle in Texas, we bought a pad in Vegas. Cleo didn’t need to work. She had her nails done, went to the gym, wished me luck when I threw dice. She was there for me, I was there for her, and the casino I’d invested in was making me a good living with minimal effort required. We were on a permanent holiday and for several blissful years I was happier than I thought it possible to be.

‘Then Cleo began to withdraw and eventually confessed she hadn’t been taking her pill and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t pregnant. Technically she should have been – we were at it every opportunity we got. We were like a couple of rabbits on speed. And why not, she had a body made for fantasies and was up for anything, if you know what I mean.’

‘Mmm,’ I said, thinking what a lucky girl this Cleo was to be rolling not just a dice but also between the sheets with Ted.

‘I paid for us to go and see the best doctor in town. A ton of tests later, we got our answer. I was shooting blanks, no swimmers at all. Not one little bugger to even have a go at wriggling into an ovum. All that time I’d been so proud of my huge quantities of jizz, presuming it to be laden with tadpoles, and it was just empty juice – vodka and lemonade without the damn vodka.’

‘That’s bad luck,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Yeah, we were too, devastated in fact, and I began to drink heavily again, something I’d stopped doing. My luck took a downward turn at the tables, not that it mattered. I only gambled with my spare change really. The casino was my steady wage and paid the bills. I guess I was depressed again but didn’t recognise it at the time.

‘It was a few months before I noticed there was something different about Cleo. She was putting on weight, eating weird stuff and sleeping all the time. She couldn’t hide her pregnancy from me for another day.

‘Her confirmation of my suspicion really turned my world upside down. That feeling, dreams coming true, existed for an entire three seconds, then she blurted out that the baby was Stan’s. Stan was my best friend, the guy I’d set up the casino with. It seemed during my depression Stan had been cheering Cleo up, not with a box of chocolates and a bunch of flowers, but with his big, fat, cheating dick.

‘If I thought I’d been depressed before, then now I was rock bottom. Cleo announced that she was in love with Stan and wanted to divorce me and marry him so he could raise his child. Talk about getting kicked in the guts when you’re already down. I’m pretty sure I would have made a go of it, with her and the baby, if she’d just given me some time to get used to the idea. I loved her with all my heart and could have loved her child. But Cleo always was an instant gratification kind of girl. If she wanted something she wanted it now, and right then, she wanted Stan.