Chapter 5: Pain and love

Stephen

Nervously I parked in front of the Blythe's large house. Jenny had been several times before and knew what to expect but I'd kept myself away from social occasions for obvious reasons. Two other cars were in the drive; one I recognised as Clarissa's and the other Jenny said, belonged to Howard's sister, Mary Chatwin and her husband Costain. "Her two twin twenty-year old daughters, Marika and Katrina, may well be with her. They're doing arts courses in Edinburgh so they're students too," she informed me, and indeed they were there. "Come on," Jenny urged, "No good hanging about in the cold. You're going to make us girls do things we don't want to for the next few terms do so now it's my turn to get my own back." She laughed and took my hand and almost dragged me to the door and rang the bell. A maid let us in and showed us to the lounge where everyone except Clarissa tried to make us welcome. She scowled when we entered still holding hands.

Earlier I had some enjoyable practice with Jenny at greeting ladies socially; the light shake of the hand and a peck on both cheeks. "This will be a test of their forbearance," I thought but neither Sarah Blythe nor Mary Chatwin even flinched when I kissed them and the twins only slightly turned their heads away. Clarissa of course, wouldn't even shake my hand and received a severe look from her father but he didn't comment. The fact that I couldn't have alcohol was accepted and while the others nursed glasses of sherry the maid produced orange juice for me.

"What was your Christmas like Jenny?" Mary enquired towards the end of the meal.

By then Jenny had drunk a couple of glasses of wine with the meal as well as the pre-dinner sherry and was becoming less inhibited in what she said. "Very pleasant really. Much better than I expected it would be. We made breakfast and opened presents. They were spur of the moment things as neither of us knew we'd be together for Christmas day. Big bully here made me finish putting my computer together and test it but that only took an hour or so. It worked but even with the upgrades it's still slow compared with his."

"I told Stephen he could contact our IT department and get a decent one." Howard interrupted.

"Yes, but he wanted me to have hands on experience of what goes on inside the case so he made me strip an old Pentium II down and rebuild it. Sometimes he can be really mean." She was laughing as she said it and then went on, "Helen came round and brought us both a gift and a plate of hot mince pies, Pete Gatliff and his wife came and were surprised by my being there. We cooked a wild pheasant, which was a first for both of us, but it turned out okay and it made a pleasant change from the usual turkey or goose. In the afternoon we walked across the heath and in the evening we played Monopoly before we went to bed." The tone of her voice indicated that we had gone to bed together rather than to our separate rooms. Clarrie of course picked up on it.

"You whore! You went to bed with that cretin! How disgusting can you get? I'm not staying in the same room as you! As soon as I'm not there you are after his prick. Yukk! And I thought you were my friend." Clarissa stormed up to her bedroom.

Tears ran down Jenny's face and I put my arm around her. Sarah apologised for her daughter's outburst and the twins offered to go and talk with Clarissa but Sarah cautioned against it. "No, leave her for a bit girls. If I had the tawse here I would have given her a talking to that she might have understood but we'll leave her until after we've had coffee. She'll either have calmed down by then or worked herself into a real fury."

Howard was furious and he too apologised for his daughter but added that he would definitely deal with her later. The rest of the afternoon was more subdued but towards the end and Clarissa still hadn't appeared, the atmosphere lightened again. It was the twins who kept up a lively, bubbly conversation and amused us with some of the things they got up to at their university. I think it was Marika who finally asked the question that had been on their minds since Clarissa's flare-up, "Jenny you don't have to answer my question but if you don't we'll know the answer anyway. In any case, Clarrie will find out for herself when she returns and lives with you again, that is, if she returns."

"She will," Howard interrupted grimly.

"Whatever. I guess you know what I'm going to undiplomatically ask and being an outrageous art student I'm going straight in and asking directly what we're all dying to know. Are you sleeping with Steve? Sorry, its blunt and to the point but it will save a lot of speculation."

I think Sarah was going to step in and reprimand the girl but before she could Jenny quickly said, "Yes," and gave me a kiss. At that second I saw Clarissa flee from the doorway and knew that there would be more trouble when or if she came back to live with me.

Clarissa

I knew immediately she came through the door holding his hand and with a grin a mile wide that the slimy, cunning, conniving bitch had allowed him to fuck her. Her plan was obvious now. With a place to stay at his house, she no longer needed me and I would have no hold over her even if daddy still paid for our rooms. She was using him like she used me and I'd thought she was a friend but no, I was just someone she could sponge off of. I'd get my own back somehow.

Then she introduces him to my family; MY family and all the ladies allow him to kiss them, even the twins. I wasn't going to even shake hands with that repulsive creature. Fortunately I didn't have to sit near him at the dinner table, but it almost made me sick the way everyone talked to him as though he was a normal person and how well they expected me to do when he tutored us. As though I will be taking much notice of that pratt! Most of the time I kept quiet and when I did get a snide comment in, daddy took his part and I knew from the way he raised his brows that I would have to be a bit careful in what I said. However, when the bitch virtually admitted to everyone that she went to bed with him, although it was a little ambiguous, I think we all got the right idea, I was so sickened that I called her a whore and him a cretin. I knew better than to stay and face daddy's wrath so I fled to my bedroom and when no one came I hoped I had got away with it.

Eventually I crept downstairs and stood listening just outside the lounge door and heard Marika ask if she fucked him and heard her say, yes. I swore and ran back to my room. It signalled the end of the get-together and shortly after I heard our guests drive away. Voices on the stairs warned me that mummy and daddy were paying me a visit; a visit I guessed could be painful. Daddy already had his belt wrapped around his wrist when mummy used her emergency key to open my bedroom door.