Paul Biggerstaff and Liz Bradshaw were staying on a camp site in the Finchbottom Vale that was once a working railway station before it fell afoul of Dr Beeching and his cuts, in a place called Sharpinghead.
The two of them were staying in the converted railway station, as part of a family gathering, as they did for a month every summer.
Among those drawn back to Sharpinghead each year were the four Walker girls, sister’s Jane, Kathy, Margaret and the baby of the family, Liz.
And over the years the numbers grew with the addition of boyfriends, husbands and then for the older two girls, children.
And it was on the whole a very loving family and among their number were Paul Biggerstaff and Liz Bradshaw but they felt love of a very different kind.
The problem was they were not a couple, they were married however, just not to each other, and they were in fact brother and sister in law.
Paul had been married to Liz’s sister Margaret for over four years and they had been in love with each other for all of those and their mutual attraction was obvious to them both from the first moment they were introduced, but they knew instinctively that they could never act on it.
And for over four years they kept their feelings in check, at least until Christmas in 1970 when with the aid of mulled wine and mistletoe they kissed.
When they reflected on it later the nature of the kiss had surprised them both, once they started they didn’t want to stop, but stop they did, it was not just a perfect Christmas kiss, it was perfect on every level, and having broken the ice with a kiss, they wanted to repeat it.
But the next morning in the cold, sober, light of day, they felt guilty, really, really guilty, but not just for weakening, the guilt came because the kiss revealed that they were not just attracted by naked lust, after the kiss they realised it was love, so they avoided each other for the rest of the week.
They had both decided they would not get drunk in case they let their guard down on New Year’s Eve and kissed again.
In the New Year being in close proximity to each other was torture being close enough that they could smell each other was both a blessing and a curse, and being so close to one another that they could touch was agony, but there were occasional opportunities when they succumbed to the temptation.
But they had mixed feelings when the time came around again to go to Sharpinghead for the summer family gathering.
It was always fun at Sharpinghead and there was always plenty to do,
The campsite was attached to Maxlin’s Holiday Camp and although the campgrounds and the old railway buildings were nothing to do with Maxlin’s, all those who stayed there automatically qualified for day passes to use some of the amenities.
Unfortunately doing family stuff together brought them into each other’s orbits time after time every single day and it was driving them to distraction.
After that first surrender to their love at Christmas Liz felt alive and tingling all over and she wanted more of the same.
There had been the occasional repeat of their perfect kissing but they were few and far between and relied mainly on chance.
Paul for one was desperate to try and engineer something a little more prolonged.
So Paul separated himself and Liz from the group and took her over to Mornington where they spent a very pleasant afternoon together and enjoyed it so much so that they felt like a couple and they both wanted more of that and over the next couple of weeks there was more but it was on their last weekend at Sharpinghead when things came to a head.
Paul woke up on Sunday morning in an empty bed and he noticed that Margaret’s clothes were not strewn all over the bedroom floor as was her habit and shoes were not standing sentry by the door as they would have been had she been in.
He got up and walked bleary eyed down the hall to the bathroom to relieve himself and when he returned, equally bleary eyed he opened the bedroom door and climbed back into bed and was delighted to discover there was a warm body beneath the duvet and he guessed that Margaret must have got back into bed while he was in the bathroom.
Paul snuggled up to her and she murmured softly in her sleep but as he kissed the skin of her shoulder, she woke up and rolled onto her back, but it wasn’t Margaret he was looking at but the smiling face of her younger sister Liz and then he kissed her smiling mouth.
“I’d better go” he said
“No don’t” she implored
“Where’s Bob?” he asked
“Fishing” she replied and he rose up on one elbow and looked through a gap in the bedroom curtain where he could see his wife, Margaret, through the window talking to Auntie Vi.
“Which one of us is in the wrong bed?” he asked
“Do you care?” Liz replied
“No not really” he answered and kissed her and after a few minutes he paused to look through the window again and could see Margaret and Aunty Vi disappearing in the distance.
So they did what they had been longing to do for five years and made love.
That sultry Sunday morning marked a turning point in their lives as it brought their relationship to a head and by Christmas they had separated from the respective partners and the following summer they were starting a new life together in Australia and they never saw the family again, but they were truly happy for the first time in their lives.
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