How Did That Ever Happen&;#063;

Sitting at the window in her apartment in the building for
pensioners, she looked out on the grey depressing streets of the inner
city. How different it was in her young days, everything seemed better
then and more colourful.

The Saturday nights were filled with flickering lights and music came
to you on the wind inviting you to join the stream of young people
making their way to the overfull clubs.

She never had any problems with getting a date for the evening; by any
standard she was a beautiful woman and showed the traces of all her
forefathers in different and subtle ways. She was an exotic sexy thing
and knew how to wind the admirers round her fingers.
Her friends often looked at her in envy when she managed to capture yet
another desirable young man to add to her long list.

Her parents warned her about playing with the feelings of the poor
young men, but she had no qualms about using anyone for her own selfish
means. She felt quite powerful and liked the feeling it gave to be able
to wind them round her little fingers. Always confident of her beauty
she only smiled at the warnings.

Why Gerard was to be so different who could say, but when she first saw
his smooth muscular body she was lost. She felt something that she had
never experienced by anyone else she had ever met. It was as if the
bottom dropped out of her stomach .She lost herself in his blue eyes
drowning in them as in the ocean. She was introduced to him at one of
the clubs she frequented with her friends, and from the first moment
she couldn't keep her eyes away from him. He was there with one of her
friends; Carolyn and she supposed that they had a relationship. It did
not worry her at all. She was lost.

Everyone of course noticed her preoccupations with Gerard and there
were a few nasty smans and secret bets about when she would make her
move.

It might have ended quite happily if fate had not had a hand in the
matter,

She remembered the next time she saw him, he came to her home with the
rather lame excuse that he had had a bit of business in the
neighbourhood and knowing that she lived there had taken the
opportunity to renew their acquaintance. She was very glad to see him,
and because he seemed a very personable young man her parents had no
objections to the visit, or the fact that it soon became an accepted
thing that they were courting. It never occurred to her to wonder why
they never seemed to be meeting any of her old friends any more. She
was so taken up with her love for Gerard that she never noticed it at
first.
She knew that he sometimes met Carolyn, but he had assured her that
their families were old friends.

On the sunny Sunday in July when her father suggested to her that they
take a drive in the country because Gerard would not be visiting, he
had business in another town, she accepted readily. After a very nice
drive they stopped at a hotel to have lunch, and having noticed that
the gardens were very lovely she decided to take a walk before
beginning the drive home. Her father who had met an old friend declined
to accompany her and so she walked through the beautifully laid out
maze alone.

The voices were not very distinguishable at first, and because of the
intricacies of the maze she had no idea from which direction they came.
When she turned the corner she nearly fainted dead away, there in the
maze absorbed in each other and entangled in the most intimate manner
possible were her Gerard and Carolyn. She almost died on the spot. Her
heart stopped and she thought it would never again resume its beating,
time stood still.

When she recovered sufficiently to move she was very happy that they
hadn't seen her. She hurried back to the hotel where her father luckily
was already preparing to leave.

Gerard had not arranged to meet her that evening, but had said that he
would most likely be back before ten o'clock. She made sure that her
father was comfortable in front of the fire, wished him good night and
retired to her room,

He was very surprised to see her at the door when she rang a little
later even more so when she gave him her present.

They never asked her any questions, her father told them that she had
been very tired that night from their trip to the country and had gone
to bed early with a headache. Out respect for her feelings, she had
been engaged to Gerard after all, they had left her alone to cope with
her grief. Carolyn hadn't ever spoken to her again but then they had
not had many opportunities to meet each other since that time. Her
parents had sent her away to Europe after a few weeks to get over the
grief as they put it. Some times money does have its advantages. It
helped.

She met Dave in Paris and they had lived happily ever after. He had
died two years ago and the children had persuaded her to get rid of the
house, which they considered a money-eating monster. She had lived here
since then.

It was not that she did not enjoy living here and having everything
done for her but it was so depressing looking out of the window and
seeing only grey dirty streets. It reminded her of a time long ago
standing in front of a blank door in a dingy dirty corridor. She never
saw what happened next, but she knew that it hadn't been pleasant, and
now the memory of that day often came back to haunt her.