V Is for Vicky

"Mike, it's getting late. You really ought to go and fetch Martina."

That was my wife Mary talking. We'd sat up until almost one in the morning waiting for Martina to get back from the party. At first I was reluctant, I mean, Martina was nearly eighteen and really we should be standing back and letting her learn life's lessons herself.

"She'll be OK, Mary. Give her another ten minutes."

"I'm not sure, Mike. It's nearly one, she was supposed to be back by half-twelve."

"Just another ten minutes. OK?"

But right then Malcolm, our twenty-year-old son, staggered in the door. He was clearly the worse for wear.

"Malcolm, where's your sister? I thought you were supposed to be seeing she was all right."

Malcolm looked towards us with glazed eyes. Definitely drunk. Very. He just grinned rather inanely.

"She had a fair bit to drink, Dad, And she was groping some very old guy, he must be nearly thirty, when I last saw her. He looked like he was after..."

At which point he suddenly turned and staggered towards the downstairs bathroom. He made it just in time. We could hear the sound of quite large scale vomiting.

I was still hesitating. Mary came straight in with a killer comment.

"Mike. Remember – that night when we met."

I did remember, it was also at a party, when we were in our early twenties. My brother and I had gone there together, and picked up Mary and her sister Melissa. And sex ensued. Quite a lot of it. It started out with Melissa and I, and Mary and Maurice. And ended up with effectively a 'wife-swap'.

OK so it worked out for us, that second-half-of-the-night shag ended up with Mary and I getting married about eleven months later. Melissa and Maurice. Well, actually no. I mean, I know what happened, I wasn't all that drunk and I actually remember it. It turned out neither of them remembered much about it. But that whole evening had acted as a salutary message to both Mary and I for over twenty years.