Bad Penny by Penny Birch

intending to come but just for the soothing pleasure of stroking my pussy. I started to think about the girl I’d been going to lick. I hadn’t even known her name, but we’d been intending to lick each other to orgasm in front of her lover. Just knowing that I’d have done it felt so dirty, and I was much too drunk to feel any guilt at all. My thoughts went back to my cousin Kate and my first lesbian experience, wallowing together in a mess of peach pulp and bringing each other to orgasm. Twice at university I’d ended up in bed with other girls, always drunk and always guilty and ashamed in the morning. Not that it stopped me going back for more.
    It was noticing that one of the boats in the harbour had a Guernsey registration that turned my thoughts further back still, to the Channel Island holidays of my childhood and teenage years. I hadn’t made a very good teenager, lacking the qualities needed in such a restrictive, structured social environment. This had been especially true on the Channel Islands, where my experience with the perverse Ryan had been my only really worthwhile sexual experience. At the time I’d felt used and had been rather shocked. Now it would have been different. I’d have given him a long, slow striptease, allowing him to concentrate on my bottom, which was what he liked best. I would have pretended to be coy, getting him more and more wound up but making sure we fucked and ended up with his cock deep up my bumhole.
    Looking at the boat, I began to think of the rough, manly fishermen I’d known. None had ever shown much interest in me, preferring Kate’s more opulent curves and extrovert character. Her boyfriend Carl had been the best of them: big, strong, swarthy and lusty, not unlike the lorry driver who’d fucked me the week before. The boat in front of me was not his father’s, or I think I’d have borrowed a rowing boat and gone out to it. As it was, the proximity of the island started to tempt me and I began to wonder about going there.
    There was no reason why not. I was completely free, with no obligation to be anywhere or to see anyone for over a month. My mother would be cross when she heard I’d been wandering around France on my own instead of coming straight home, but that was something I could handle when the time came. Nothing was stopping me and, by the time I had soothed myself into a light sleep, I was on a full-blown nostalgia trip for my teenage years.
    The next morning I retrieved my bags from the hotel, showered and breakfasted. The big Frenchwoman was a bit sniffy with me, but unfortunately didn’t whip me over her knee for a panties-down spanking, contenting herself with a remark I didn’t understand as I left. I was determined on the course of action I had decided on the previous night and made straight for the airport.
    The journey is so short that the planes barely get to a cruising altitude before coming down again, and before noon I was looking out of my window at the fields and cliffs of the island I was so familiar with. I could even make out the Val de Fret, and the German bunker in which I had had my encounter with Ryan. I felt so nostalgic for it all that there were tears in my eyes, with all the bad times forgotten and all the good enhanced a thousandfold.
    One sniff of the air as I stepped from the plane and everything changed. It was a hot day, with a light breeze blowing the smell of the sea over the tarmac. Everything came rushing back with a force that made me feel weak. All my sorrows and insecurities returned, as strong as ever, and I almost booked a ticket for Eastleigh and left without ever stepping outside the airport terminal.
    I’ve always had a streak of stubbornness, and that was what made me pick up my bags and start for town, not really sure where I was going, but determined to at least try and lay the ghost that had sprung on me with such unexpected force. Just walking into town