Chapter One - A Lad's Night Out

A splash of my best cologne, and I was ready to head out into town with the lads. Tonight was going to be a good night, I could feel it in my loins. Feeling certain I'd be getting laid tonight, I’d commented as much to the lads earlier in our WhatsApp group. After all “everyone loves a squaddie” I’d said.
I took one last glance in the mirror to check that my T-shirt wasn't creased and my jeans hadn’t somehow got dirty, even though I'd very carefully washed and ironed it all, especially for tonight.

It’s been a little over a year now, since I joined the British Army, and I’m enjoying being stationed at the new base. Like most of my generation, I work hard and party harder. I know for a fact that’s one of the first things my buddies would say about me if they were asked.

So far I’ve found the locals to be very friendly and although there have been a few encounters with the odd girl here and there, I’m really looking out for someone a bit different. Someone more adventurous. Someone who’s going to tease me and above all, someone I can live out all my fantasies with. Put very simply, I know I’m lusting for an older woman.

Something To Think About

Jamie has that inexplicable feeling again, in the pit of his stomach, like he’s missing something or someone.

He’s awake early, it’s just gone 0350hrs, and he can’t remember the last time he slept more than four hours in any one period, and even achieving that has been a struggle. When his relationship with Jess ended, he slept even less, the odd hour if he was lucky and it was a good eighteen months before he started sleeping for as long as four.

He’d lie awake thinking about Jess, their sex life, their relationship and most of all how he had managed to destroy everything they had for a one night stand on a drunken night out, fueled by rage after an argument with Jess over her parents.

He never understood why she couldn’t tell them, she would always say to him “my mum’s difficult, she’s complicated” she didn’t like people like Jamie, he figured that much, he wasn’t someone she wanted her daughter with, she wanted her to be with someone who was posh like them.

JAMIE’S WOKEN EARLIER THAN usual, his first day backwith his regiment, it’s been a long twelve months and anadventurous one.He left his regiment engaged to Tara and arrived back one yearlater married to Jess and with two children, his son Michael who isfive, soon to be six, and Charlotte who is three-months old.Lying there cuddled into Jess, his sleeping beauty, he kisses theback of her head and pulls her in tighter, he never imagined hislife would be like this, a feeling of wholeness and contentment,finally living in married quarters after spending years in the ‘singleblocks’.He looks over to Charlotte in her crib sleeping peacefully, sheno longer wakes for her 0500 feed she sleeps through untilaround 0630 which, thinking about it, gives Jess an extra hour anda half sleep...