Chapter 17

Andrew turned the car into the train station car park in Virginia Water just after lunchtime. Other than directions, the ride down had been quiet and tense. The morning had started with Suzanne meeting Olivia, and her parents, and she had offered one of the guest bedrooms in the house as a place for Olivia to stay while she found a flat. Andrew expected that Olivia would not want to stay with them for long but it would save her significant money while she looked for a small flat, or a room in a flat or house. Given that he would be away half the summer it was not a big deal. Ara and Andrew had gone swimming while Suzanne went to meet Olivia but he could tell that the meeting with her parents was playing on Ara’s mind. He held her hand on the drive down, Suzanne in the back seat with her hand resting on her shoulder. They all knew it was going to be a shitshow but Ara was unwilling to defy her grandfather. Ara’s parents’ house was in a private estate not far from the station. There was a way to get to it using streets but Ara took them along a riverside walk and they suddenly popped out near the house. Hands were squeezed extra tight as they approached the door. Rather than use her key Ara rang the bell.

“Arabella, did you forget your key? It is lovely to see you. You look well.”

Ara’s father was in his early 50s, ruddy faced and silver haired.

“I am sorry, I didn’t realise that you brought friends with you. George Lindsay, nice to meet you. Come in, come in.”

They entered the house before Ara completed the introductions.

“Dad, this is Suzanne Jenner and Andrew McLeod. Is Mum home with you?”

“She is in the conservatory, come through.”

Suzanne and Andrew followed Ara and her dad through the kitchen and into the conservatory. Andrew didn’t know how either Ara or Suzanne were feeling but his heart was racing.

“Arabella, why did you not let us know you would be here today?”

One sentence was all it took to get the measure of Ara’s mother.

“Oh, you have brought guests. How unexpected.”

“Mum, this is Suzanne Jenner and Andrew McLeod.”

At the mention of Andrew’s name the temperature of the room turned glacial.

“Why have you seen to impose upon us this afternoon? We so rarely see you these days. Sunday used to be for family only.”

Andrew wasn’t sure that it made sense even to sit down. This was going to be short and not sweet.

“I saw Grandfather ten days ago and he suggested that I come and see you.”

Ara’s dad had been passive in the scene so far. He did ask them to sit, and even that seemed to be an affront to Ara’s mother. But other than that he had been silent.

“Well you are always running off to hide up there. I don’t know. What did you tell him? He wouldn’t have suggested coming here unless it was something serious.”

She stopped and looked sharply at Ara.

“You are not going off another of these ridiculous Turkish adventures, are you?”

The verbal prod elicited the expected reaction.

“It was part of my doctoral research. It was neither ridiculous nor an adventure. The only thing you just said that is true was I was in Istanbul, which is in Turkey.”

“Don’t be smart with me. And answer my question.”

“No, I am not going on another research trip. At least not at present.”

“Then why are you here disrupting our Sunday. If you had given me any semblance of notice then I could have arranged for us to visit some of my friends.”

Ara had been nervous and defensive when they first arrived but her mother’s reaction and words were stiffening her spine by the second.

“I don’t need to be dragged around the neighbourhood being introduced to every ‘suitable’ man within a ten mile radius.”

It was only six miles to Windsor Castle; the last four miles were not needed. Ara’s mother had her mouth open for an angry retort but looked at Andrew and it snapped shut. So far Suzanne had been ignored. He was clearly the bad guy in this little tableau.

“Stop wasting my time Arabella. Why are you here? What is it that you told my father? It must have been something to...”

The sentence petered out. Once again her angry eyes alighted on Andrew.

“Arabella Lindsay.”

That was a first. A name in the form of a question.

“Suzanne, Andrew and I went to see Grandfather to tell him about us. He told me to tell you to your face, even although he knew you would disapprove.”

Ara’s mother’s face was cold and still, think Cruella but without the charm. But the face was for Ara shacking up with a peasant. Andrew. When the words sank in, the impassive look cracked and for the first time she looked at Suzanne.

“What do you mean Suzanne, Andrew and you?”

“The three of us are living together. I love them both and so we are going to live as a three.”

For a moment Andrew was sure they had given Ara’s mother a stroke. She seemed to shake. But then the dam of vitriol burst.

“Of all the most stupid, self-indulgent, pathetic claptrap I have ever heard. You are the daughter of a Baron, you do not live with another man and woman as if this was some kind of hippie commune. Do you understand? How can you listen to this man’s poison? Are you going to commit bigamy? Oh my god, what will everyone think? We will be the laughing stock of the county. Why are you doing this? Throwing everything away. Why are you doing this to me?”

It was an unending stream of questions, any answers neither expected or listened to. She ran out of steam and the icy façade returned. She glared at Andrew, Suzanne still getting off scot free.

“If you are doing this for money, she will get nothing, do you hear? Nothing. George, say something.”

Ara’s father still had not said a word.

“Arabella, is everything okay? Are you on drugs?”

Drugs!

“No Daddy, I am not on drugs. I am living my life, as I want to live it.”

“What about your family? Because if you insist on carrying on with this ridiculous idea then you will no longer be welcome here.”

The mother was back on the attack.

“I mean it.”

Ara stood, tears escaping from her eyes. It had been necessary to go there but this was always going to be the outcome. A shitshow.

“Let’s go. Let me pack a bag of the remaining things in my room and then we can head back to London.”

Suzanne and Andrew followed Ara out of the conservatory and upstairs to her old bedroom. She was fighting tears but trying to hold it together. She and Suzanne had already taken the bulk of the things from her room so it was more of a look round, packing a last few odds and ends. Ten minutes later they headed for the front door. Ara’s father was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

“Arabella, please don’t leave like this. Come through and talk with your mother and me.”

“There is nothing to talk about Daddy. Do you realise that Andrew and Suzanne never said anything? Not a word. They came to support me, I could have done this on my own, because we all knew this was going to be the outcome. I love you both.”

With a kiss on his cheek the three of them were out the front door and down the drive, ignoring the protestations of Ara’s father. Ara managed to hold it together until they were back on the woodland path, out of sight of the house. But then she clung to Suzanne and wept. She pulled Andrew into the soggy hug and he and Suzanne just held her and let the emotion purge from her system. Five minutes later they were walking determinedly back to the car. Ara was even quieter on the journey back than she had been on the way to Surrey. But when she stepped into the house she flung her cloak of gloom aside.

“Leave the bags, come upstairs and let’s chat.”

Ara stood and looked round the living room when they entered.

“At Christmas 1985 I had a tough time over the holiday with my mother. But Andrew had an even worse one. In an attempt to please his grandmother he went and saw his parents and the estrangement deepened to a break. We have gone and seen all our immediate families other than Andrew’s parents because he knows it is not worth the hassle. I think this is my same moment. I have been drifting apart from my parents, especially my Mother, for some time. But in attempting to comply with Grandfather’s wishes all I have done is expose the chasm in our relationship. Thank you both for coming down and supporting me today. It was not easy to watch my Mother be so, well her. But when I came into the room there just now I realised I was coming home. I had left that house many years ago, it had not been my home for some time but it was today that I realised that this is my home. I am here with the two of you, in this house, buying furniture for it.”

She straddled Suzanne and kissed her long and hard before sliding over and grinding down on Andrew while they kissed passionately as well. She pushed in between them, revelling in the closeness.

“That was terrible today, necessary maybe but still terrible. But I am happy. My life has a purpose, with the two people I love. And this house is lovely but it is not what I love. I love the two of you and the chance to live my life on my own terms. I get more support from the two of you than I ever got from my parents. You saw Dad, he is the passive one, it is Mum that rules the roost. Even today, you heard her. Ridiculous adventures.”

She giggled and kissed Suzanne again.

“We are living with the king of ridiculous adventures. I don’t know about you but I am excited about the future. Are you ready for some adventures?”

Baroness Ashland, Tarana Lindsay, a Regency mother living out of time, had not defeated her daughter. The three of them were going to make this work.

For the first time since living in the house they had a quiet two weeks. So the three of them nested, working on the house, particularly the study. But it was lots of little things, an endless stream of small domestic tasks. They got a separate chest freezer so they had more freezer space, shopped in bulk at a butcher, froze left overs so they were not always going to collect takeout. Silly little nothings like that but all preparation for the three of them returning to the house tired at the end of a work day. And it was going to be much less of a shock for Ara and Suzanne than it would be for Andrew. They at least had experience of flat living, most of the time when Andrew had been in Edinburgh living in his flat he had eaten takeout. In amongst the domestic bliss they also trawled the antique markets of London looking for bookcases and desks for the study. That was where Suzanne was in her element. She was the chatty, flirty one, talking to different shop and stall owners, finding out when there were markets, and where they were likely to pick up good pieces. And when they found something they wanted then Ara stepped forward and demonstrated that she had honed her haggling skills in her visits to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. They went to Greenwich one day, the market there was very good, and found one of the desks. On another day they went to Camden to an area called Camden Passage, which as the name suggests was a narrow alley, and found several things that they ended up buying. Given that the rest of the house needed next to nothing they had fun finding pieces for the study. And there was no theme to the room whatsoever. Frankly it was a gaudy clash of styles. Ara’s desk was Italian art deco from the 1950s whereas Andrew’s was a solid Victorian lump but with a large surface and long deep drawers. Add in a sculpture and three paintings of him and the room was a chaotic, stylistic medley. Which is probably a nice way of saying it was an incoherent mess. But they didn’t care, it was functional. There were bookcases, the huge, long map table, three desks and on those warm summer days they could open the French doors out onto the little Juliet balcony and let in some fresh air.

Andrew spent a fair amount of time talking to Julian and he ordered Andrew a new computer through their company. Which was just as well as it was extremely pricey. It was an American machine, not yet available in the UK but it had the latest Intel chip and so Julian just had four of them shipped over. While Andrew talked computing with Julian, often for several hours, Suzanne was working on her business plan and Ara was reading. Ara’s bookcase was filling up rapidly as she added to her already extensive collection. On Wednesday July 1^st the top two floors of the building on Beak Street were empty, the tenant had moved out, their lease having expired the previous day. Iain Barrett’s firm were going to be the property managers, although it was nothing more than providing a veil for Andrew to hide behind. They would deal with any issues as they arose from the tenants on the ground and first floors. They had also hired someone to assess the space and fix any minor issues, check the electrical, make sure that everything was safe. Suzanne had wanted to go round and see her new office but reluctantly agreed to wait until the following week.

The three of them also spent a lot of time in bed, just getting used to each other, day in, day out. And that was very important. Andrew had spent the previous three months trying to be equal every night. But it was never going to be possible every night. Ara and Suzanne played on the Tuesday night when he was out at the TA. That was their time and an important time for them as part of the three of them. When they were all together Andrew consciously stayed away from any props with them. He knew how to dominate Suzanne, knew her triggers, throwing her around on the bed, bending her into an ‘el’, all the things he had done with her for years. He was still trying to sort out the right approach with Ara. By the pink hue to Suzanne’s bum it was clear that Ara was enthusiastic in her dominance of Suzanne. What Andrew was struggling to deal with was Ara’s apparent submissiveness to him when it was the three of them. He hadn’t yet figured out the right way to approach that. Ara and Suzanne were not clones and he wanted to individualise things for her. Now it was the very definition of a first world problem but he worried about whether Ara really was as submissive as she claimed. He also didn’t want to just assume that he knew better. When it came to all this stuff Andrew was still very much a beginner.

But he and Suzanne had reached a point where it was natural, they had experimented, tried things, ditched things, changed things and by the previous Christmas were very much in tune sexually. And it did seem like Ara and Suzanne were developing the same rapport when they were alone together. So he stayed away from props, there was no tying up, it was all just in his approach, in the way he dealt with them both. What he had learned with Suzanne was that she wanted no control. When they were in the bedroom, when they were alone in the flat, they did what he wanted. Which was what she wanted, and he wanted to make her happy so it was one big positive feedback loop. So Andrew decided to carry on the same arrangement and see what worked. As Suzanne used to say, less theory more practice. But he also knew that there were still things to discuss and settle with Ara.

They finally watched the third porn video they had bought in Amsterdam all those weeks earlier. It was a standard suck and fuck flick with little memorable content. Apart from one scene that immediately became part of their weekly repertoire. The woman was lying on her back at the end of the bed, her head off the end of the bed and tilted back. She then gave the man an upside down blowjob. They didn’t know it was called throat-fucking at the time but at one point the camera zoomed in and they saw the bulge from the guy’s dick rippling on the woman’s throat. Suzanne grabbed the remote control and stopped the movie.

“We have to try that. Now. Come on, stop sitting there.”

There was no foreplay, no warm-up nothing. Suzanne stripped hurriedly and then positioned herself like the porn actress had and motioned Andrew to get into position. His dick seemed to slip into Suzanne’s throat easier than when she was the other way up but that wasn’t what made it so amazing. He looked down and saw the skin on Suzanne’s neck bulge. Now not having a pornstar cock meant it was closer to her jaw than in the movie but his distinctive mushroom head was bulging her skin.

“Suze, we need to get a picture of this. It is insane.”

Ara was wrong. What made it insane was that she tried to give Andrew a blowjob while his dick was in Suzanne’s throat, which was clearly anatomically impossible. A better way to explain it was that she tried to cover as much of the head as possible. As if she was trying to give Suzanne a love bite where the head of Andrew’s dick had reached. So he was getting deep-throated, every time he pulled out to let Suzanne grab a breath and then re-entered her throat he saw her neck bulge, and to top it off Ara was licking and sucking Suzanne’s neck right where the head of his cock reached in her throat. Suzanne’s hand started stroking his pubic muscle and gently fondling the boys and he was lost.

“Holy shit, I can feel Andrew coming in your throat.”

He had to sit on the end of the bed to recover his wits for a second and Suzanne pulled herself up and sat beside him. Looking just radiantly happy.

“I need to see if I can do that. Come on Suzanne get him hard.”

Ara had flipped over and edged into position. Andrew thought he would take a few minutes to recover but the recuperative powers of youth plus Ara splayed out on the bed and Suzanne fondling him worked their magic sooner than he thought. With Suzanne there had been no hesitation, she had almost pulled Andrew into her throat, her gag reflex now fully suppressed. Ara on the other hand was struggling to deep throat, but Andrew didn’t know whether it was competiveness with Suzanne or Ara wanted Suzanne to see the same as she had, but that night she managed. It was in small gasping increments with much spluttering and coughing but Ara kept her hands on the back of his thighs holding him in place.