‘How could I have let him, or anyone for that matter, do that to me? How did it happen, Alan?’ She looked into his face then. ‘How did I allow myself to get caught up in all this?’

Alan put a heavy hand up to her face and cupped her cheek. ‘As you said, Donna. You loved him.’

‘But is that really any excuse - for all this?’ She pulled his hand away from her face. ‘It was weakness, Alan. I was weak inside. I’ve always been weak inside. Deep down I wanted the house and the cars and the big brash husband. I’d never done a day’s work. Forty years old and never, ever done a real day’s work.’ She laughed gently. ‘That’s shocking really, isn’t it? I judged those mothers today, who took their kids to the Bay View Hotel, and I’ve never been without money once in all my life. Without love, without affection, yes, but never without money. Georgio always gave me plenty of that. Who am I to judge them when I can’t even produce a child?’

Alan was quiet beside her, knowing that she had to get it all out of her system before she could get on once more with her life.

‘You’re a nice man, do you know that? Why didn’t I ever realise it before?’

He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘After what you just found out about your old man, the Yorkshire Ripper would be classed a nice man.’

Donna laughed then, a tired sound. Standing up, she looked down into Alan’s face. Then she knelt in front of him, resting her head in his lap. Instinctively, he placed a large hand on her hair, rubbing the nape of her neck gently. Wanting to make her feel better, knowing that she needed someone to make it all all right.

As she pushed her face into his groin, he felt the first stirrings of arousal. Closing his eyes, he begged his body not to embarrass him further. It was only when he felt her hand slipping into the front of his boxer shorts that he realised what she was doing.

As she slipped his erect penis into her mouth, he lay back in the armchair with shock. Easing back on his foreskin, she took his whole member down the back of her throat, pulling gently on his balls as she did so. Then drawing her lips along the length of him, she released it and looked up into his face.

Burying his face in her hair, he whispered her name over and over.

An hour later they lay on the beach together, letting the waves wash over them. Donna snuggled in the crook of his arm, smelling the saltiness of the sea on his skin and the everpresent scent of his Cuban cigars.

‘Fucking hell, Donna, I can’t believe this.’