The evening started off awkward and went downhill from there.

The meal Jess served up was – edible. That was the best I could come up with, it was also bland, cold and greasy.

Mike and I tried to get a conversation going, our hosts were clearly incapable of it but we just kept hitting a wall of monosyllabic replies. Jess hardly spoke a word, just kept staring down at her plate, her curly hair hiding her face, I wondered if she was crying. John seemed to be struggling to contain a simmering anger, I very much got the impression they had had a huge row before we arrived.

I moved the food around, drank too much of the local white wine, I was getting a real taste for German wine, it was not at all like the Black Tower or Liebfraumilch we got at home, and it was potent stuff, I could never get used to the way the locals often drank it though: Heated and drenched in sugar. I was waiting to make the signal, we had discussed it prior to leaving home, “we need to check on Katyana.” That would be the signal to call the au pair, learn there was some problem with the kids, and make our excuses.

I held off though, Mike would be disappointed and probably sulk at me, it would be a lot better if he decided this night was just not going to happen. It would hardly be the first time an apparently eager couple got cold feet on the night. I would not have agreed to even try if Jess had not personally begged me, I thought her chronically shy, she always wore this bizarre white pancake makeup, like a Japanese Geisha, and tagged along like John’s pet, silent and avoiding eye contact. The plain fact was I felt sorry for her, living in a foreign country with no skill in the language was bad enough, being effectively cut off from the support of the other exiles would make it unbearable. She never came to our weekend parties that were becoming a tradition, John did, but there was always some careless excuse why she did not.

I could not see the attraction Mike had formed for her, apart from the strange makeup she dressed in loose clothes, baggy, uninteresting, not at all like the tall, leggy amazons he tended to lust after. John was – well army! All the ex army guys were pretty much the same, loud, self-confident, and fit. Oh yes, he was fit, in both meanings of the word, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist and a nice tight bum I had to keep reminding myself not to stare at when he was diving into the pool.

John had approached Mike first, the men constantly thought they arranged these things, silly boys. I had slapped down the idea at once, Jess could never have agreed to it, I would not believe it. Now if John had come to me and suggested a one on one, or better yet a threesome, things would have been very different. That was wishful thinking though, although the Navy guys were comfortable with two men and a woman in bed (a result of their living conditions at sea perhaps) the army and the air force wanted to prove what studs they were with two women to themselves.

But then Jess called me, at first I had no idea who was on the phone, I had never heard more that a low whisper from her before. “I am just calling to let you know John and I discussed it, but I will understand if you are not interested.”

I had prevaricated, it was too easy to assume that by now all the ex-pats on the project were in on the secret, even if they did not want any of it. “Discussed what, Jess?” I replied.

Her voice did drop to a whisper then. “The other parties.”

I was silent, since she did not come to the normal parties even how would she know about the private ones? “You see,” she broke my silence. “That night, when a few of us stayed at Dave and June’s, Dave walked in on me and John, he was…” She drew a deep breath.