First act: Before

Mathematics and science were my favorite academic subjects at school; I studied mathematics at university and fell in love with numbers. My tutors wanted me to take my place with them in the world of academia, but abstract numbers and calculations on their own didn’t interest me. It was a chance encounter which pointed me down the path I followed.

I met a woman in the lounge bar of an hotel. Sounds like the start of a bad joke or a sleazy short story, doesn’t it!

If it was, then the joke was on me. She was sitting in the corner with another woman, a woman I knew very well; she was my aunt and the only reason I’d agreed to be there that evening. Karen was eight years younger than my mother, but she’d always been around when I was growing up. She’d never married, limiting herself to a series of lovers. I had always enjoyed her visits; her presence always lit up my parents’ house. The woman with her, the one my aunt had insisted I meet, was about to change the direction of my life.

I was an only child, living in a run-down country house in the depths of the Sussex countryside. My parents, Simon and Ann, were anthropologists, both professors at Sussex University. They were always travelling, or so it seemed to me. I knew that they loved me; it was just that their academic careers meant I had been left to fend for myself with a series of housekeepers and au pairs. That’s where Aunt Karen had come to my rescue, swooping in and taking me under her wing.

When I’d been almost seventeen, she had taken me with her on holiday. It was Easter, my parents were somewhere in Amazonia, and Karen took me to her lover’s villa on the Italian Riviera. That was the year my true appreciation of the female body was formed. I know it’s hard wired into all teenage boys, but that’s just a mix of lust and hormones.

My aunt is bisexual; most of her lovers are women with the odd man thrown in for variety. Her lover was Francesca di Traglia, an Italian artist, and Francesca loved to paint women. She was an Italian beauty, slim, with long wavy black hair. At the time of our visit, she was two years younger than my aunt, 30 years old, but looked like she was in her mid-20s.

Karen is an amazing woman, beautiful in an ethereal way. Over the years, she’s had many female lovers, sometimes a couple concurrently, but only two of her lovers have stood the test of time. Francesca was one, and I would have to wait another four years to meet the second.

I quickly got used to seeing semi-naked and, be still my beating heart, completely naked women around the villa. I think I fell in and out of love on an almost hourly basis that holiday. These idols of my heart were being posed by Francesca, or just lying around the pool. In addition to indulging my teenage hormones, Francesca opened my eyes to the beauty of symmetry within her paintings. There’s an almost mathematical beauty to her paintings, and she was happy to let me watch her work.

It’s also where I learned that less is more. Francesca discovered that I could draw, and she encouraged me to sketch the models staying at the villa. She studied my efforts; I would outline the scene in front of me in broad charcoal strokes, but when I tried to complete it, I’d lose the soul of the piece. I wanted accuracy; I wanted my paintings to reflect the structure, the symmetry of numbers. Francesca showed me I was wrong, that a few shaded lines on a sheet of paper could be, and were, so evocative of the sensual female form.

She once asked me to pose the model for her. I thought that I’d done a good job when I finally finished. I walked the last time around the pillow-strewn red chaise longue, and the young woman stretched across it looked perfect to my eyes. Karen and Francesca, arms around each other, watched me silently. I gestured in their direction and presented my masterpiece.

Good effort, I was told, and then Francesca proceeded to give me a true master class in how to display the potential beauty within a woman’s body. In ten minutes, the model and the pose were transformed, and I’d been given an insight into the hidden beauty of all women I have never forgotten. No part of the model was hidden from me as Francesca moved around touching, caressing and teasing the model until she looked like a woman whose lover had just left her sated on her bed.

My drawing of that model hangs in Francesca’s bedroom. To this day, it’s one of my best pieces. The lines of the various colored pastel chalks merge and shimmer into the whole vision: an innocence of beauty as seen by a boy yet to be corrupted by life.

She also infused into me a love of cycling. Francesca’s passion was art, her relaxation was the wind in her hair as she hurtled along the dusty lanes on her racing bike. She lent me a bike, and we rode together most mornings. She bought me my first professional bike, and I rode that bike every day when I returned home.

Karen and I returned to the villa in the autumn of the following year. I was eighteen, and it was just before I started university. Francesca’s current lover and model was Prithi, a beautiful twenty-one-year-old bisexual Indian girl. I wasn’t a virgin; a few fumbles after a party over the summer had taken care of that.

Prithi took it upon herself to show me what a woman wants from her lover, lessons that lasted for weeks and are now eternally burnt into my psyche. I will ever be grateful to that lovely woman for the rest of my life. She taught me the one important rule: sex is a manifestation of desire, lust and love. Remove one of the three and the sex is still good but lacks the greatness it deserves.

My last evening at the villa was one I will never forget. It began with a meal for Francesca, Karen, Prithi and me on the terrace. It ended with Francesca taking me to bed. She was Italian, sensual and loved the act of love more than she loves life itself.

I learned that she took very few men to her bed; I was only the fifth. I’d thought that she was a lesbian and my aunt’s lover and she wasn’t interested in the dark side of sex. That night I found out, to my intense satisfaction, I was wrong. Francesca took all that I’d learned from Prithi and then took me to a new level of sexual pleasure.

When we parted, it was with the promise that we would meet again. We did, for just a handful of memorable nights, until I met the woman destined to become my wife.

“Ah, there you are, Michael,” Karen said as she saw me approaching. She stood and gave me a long hug and then turned to the woman who’d been sitting beside her. “Michael, I want you to meet Mary, she’s one of my oldest and dearest friends.”

The way she said it and the looks that they gave each other told me immediately that at some time they had been lovers.

Mary gave me a smile that melted my heart and told me to sit down beside her. Yes, she was beautiful, and no, I didn’t have an affair with her. She was in her mid to late forties, an elegant, statuesque redhead who oozed charm. That was the first time I met the woman who was to become one of my best friends. It is a deep friendship that lasts to this day with her and her husband. It started with one of the most interesting and formative discussions of my life.

“You know my wicked aunt,” I said as I settled down on the sofa beside her, then gave a little gasp as Karen and Mary simultaneously gave me a punch on my arms.

“Sorry, that should have been, ‘so you know my gorgeous and brilliant aunt,” I said, trying a second time.

“Much better,” Karen cooed and gave me a kiss.

“I do,” Mary said, “We met at a university event ten years ago.” The look she gave my aunt confirmed my earlier suspicion and also made me wonder if they were still lovers.

“I wanted you to meet Mary,” my aunt said, “I think you will be very interested in what she can offer you.”

She ordered a round of drinks, and as we enjoyed them, she explained why I was there.

Mary, it turned out, was the wife of an American industrialist. He was currently a guest lecturer at my university, for the economics department. She was a financial VP at her husband David’s group of companies. It was a family owned and run corporation. Their two children and the three children from David’s elder brother’s family were starting to take more responsibility for the running of the business, which had allowed David to accept the month long lectureship, and she had joined him.

“I know that he loves me,” Mary said, “but given the number of young beautiful girls here, I thought that it was prudent to keep an eye on him. Anyway, it gave me the opportunity to see Karen again.”

She leant across, gave her a kiss and Karen responded in kind. For a few moments, they both completely forgot about me. Yes, they were most definitely still lovers. Somehow, I suspected that the opportunity to see Karen had been the prime reason for her to accompany her husband. With a start, they remembered that I was there and sat back in their seats.

Mary said, “Karen has been telling me all about you, and your interest in maths and computers. She also said that you aren’t interested in following an academic career.”

I nodded, “I want to be able to use what I know practically. I’ve been taking a few computer science classes to understand the mechanics, but I’ve had one since I was 10.”

“Why computers?” Mary asked.

“Because they are only as good as the person who programs them. I love to try and understand what the goal was of the person who created the program.”

Mary smiled at that and gave Karen a smile. “I think you were right, love; he does interest me.”

“Have you done any accounting in your courses?” Mary asked me.

“Some theory on the mathematics of it,” I replied.

She gave me a long piercing evaluation. “Goooood,” she drew out. “I think you will be perfect.”

For what, I wanted to know?

“Money is going missing from the corporation, and I don’t know where from or who’s responsible for the losses. The businesses are all profitable on their own but somewhere over ten million dollars a year is disappearing. It’s a small drop compared to our overall profits, but I’m convinced one of the family has found a way to steal it in a way that’s completely untraceable. If they get greedy, then they could use the same method to asset-strip the company.”

“Nothing’s untraceable,” I said with the conviction of youth.

“That’s what I thought, but I’ve got nowhere. I mentioned the problem to your aunt last night, and she suggested that we talk to you.”

Ah, that explained why Karen called me this morning and insisted I meet her tonight. I wondered idly if that discussion had been a pre or post sex talk between the lovers.

“I honestly don’t see what I can do to help,” I said.

“I need someone that no one will suspect, a Trojan horse. Someone with the skills to follow the money and who can fly under the horizon. I think you would be perfect.”

Karen shushed away my concerns and said, “You can work over the summer break in Mary’s office, it’s only a few weeks away. As far as anyone there will know, your summer internship will just be a favor for an old friend’s favorite nephew. You’ll get ten weeks in America as a bonus.”

It was fairly obvious to me that I had about a snowball’s chance in hell of being to be able to refuse the offer. Oh, joy of joys, I was going to get to spend my summer in an office. I had been planning a cycle tour around southern France and Italy. I had an invite from Francesca to stay with her for a few days, so I put up a bit more than a token resistance.

My aunt knows me only too well. “Mary’s agreed to pay for all of your flights, and you can go via Italy. You’ll be able to spend a few days with Francesca before you fly to the States.”

“How did you know...” I trailed off. Of course, she would have known.

I gave in gracefully.

Three months later, I had achieved the impossible and found both the money and the culprits hidden behind layer after layer of shell corporations and financial institutions. I’d loved every second of the chase.

I had sat in a little office, just down the corridor from Mary’s, apparently there to be shown how just how a big corporation should function. I was an intern, the lowest of the low. I was only sitting where I was because my aunt was a close friend of the family. I stayed with them at their mansion and got a lift into the office each morning with Mary. No one, not even David, knew what I was doing with my administrator level computer access.

I was the cute young British guy, the one all the executive secretaries wanted to hug and tell the office gossip to, and I played my cuteness for all it was worth. I followed the gossip, and after delving into the deep dark recesses of the corporation’s computer records, slowly a pattern appeared. A pattern that finally led me to a series of accounts in Hong Kong that were fat with stolen money.

The accounts were in the name of several companies that I finally traced to one of David’s family, a distant cousin who had been almost as good as me in disappearing into the crowd. There were over forty million dollars in the account; about eighty percent of what Mary had calculated was missing.

The culprit and the location of the missing money were revealed at a full board meeting in a manner that paid homage to the best of the classic detective novels.

I sat at the back of the room, just an intern observing the experts. Mary, as agreed, didn’t mention my part in the investigation as she took the lead. There was only a vague mention of any external assistance in the investigation. I did take note when she casually mentioned that the person who’d been responsible for tracing the missing funds would be getting five percent of the recovered money as a reward. She said that last part with a smile in my direction.

The reward totaled two and a half million after the last of the missing funds were recovered. It was the seed financing for my company. It hadn’t taken me long to realize that those three months had been so satisfying that forensic accountancy was what I wanted to do with my life. There was one other reward I received; in many ways far more valuable to me, a lifelong friendship with both Mary and David.

I used some of the reward money to buy a house in a village a few miles north of Brighton in the south of England. It came with a block of disused stables that I converted into an office space. I hired Lesley as my office manager; she lived in the village with her two teenage daughters. I opened the doors to customers a year after I left university.

With Mary and David networking for me, I was soon getting requests from other companies to solve their financial irregularities. My youth was always an initial stumbling block when I first met a new client, but it was my same lack of years that made people underestimate my capabilities. I was good, very good, at what I did. I knew I’d been accepted by the establishment when I was invited to Scotland Yard to consult on a case. I once described my job as 50% computer genius, 50% number cruncher and 50% detective. Yes, I know that the numbers don’t add up but it sure as shit worked for me.

In the late summer of 2008, I was contacted to investigate a multi-million-dollar fraud at a major American airline. I’d spent the first couple of weeks doing research from the comfort of my office. I’d called the company MJ Financial services, not the most original name, but it was mine. I now employed six staff members. Lesley, who was like a second mother to me, was still the office manager. She ran the place even more effectively than I did. In both roles, she kept me from making stupid mistakes. We had a secretary, one of her daughters, and four other investigators.

There’s only so much that I could do in regard to the case from England, so I found myself Atlanta bound. It wasn’t a difficult decision, as I’d also get the chance to see Mary and David since they lived nearby. I hadn’t seen Mary in some time, and I missed my mentor.

To cut a long boring story short, I found the money and the three people responsible for its disappearance. What is important to my story is that it was a result of this trip that I met Rebecca for the first time.

My aunt always seemed to know what I was doing before I did; I suspect that Lesley sends her copies of all my emails. I haven’t been able to prove it but I will one of these days.

I thought that I would surprise Mary and David, no such luck. As I exited the customs hall at Atlanta Hartsfield airport, there was Mary, waiting for me.

The first thing she did was to give me a hug. The first thing she said was. “Karen called to let us know you were coming to visit us. I’ve cancelled your hotel; you’ll be staying with us.”

I tried to put up a token resistance, but I was steamrollered by the primal force of nature also known as my aunt’s lover. I gave in gracefully, then gave her a kiss on the lips.

I said after our lips parted, “I was to tell you that’s from her.” Her smile lit up her face.

I always wondered how much her husband knew about the relationship between my aunt and his wife. They met on a regular basis. Karen would stay with them whenever she was their side of the pond, and Mary visited Karen several times a year. How do I know this? Simple, my aunt lives less than a mile down the road from me, just the other side of the village.

Mary and David lived on an estate about 10 miles to the west of the city. We arrived in style, in the back of Mary’s limousine. I’d tried futilely to get her to stop at the hire car lot so that I could pick up my rental. Atlanta is not a city I could rely on public transportation to get me places. Most American cities are the same; there are a few exceptions: New York and Washington come to mind.

As I tried to get the driver to pull into the Hertz lot, Mary told him to ignore me.

“David said I was to tell you that you can use any of his,” she said.

Okay, that was different, I’d seen his collection, hell, I’d drooled over it, and now David was saying I could pick any one to use. Oh, hell yes. I sank back in the soft seat and grinned at Mary.

“Any one?” I asked carefully.

She gave me a look that was equal parts pleased and anxious. “No, you wouldn’t, not that one!”

The grin on my face grew as I considered the prize of his collection. David had a long term love affair with classic British sports cars. Two years before, he’d spent an absolute fortune restoring a 3.5 litre SS Jaguar. Only 116 of them had ever been built; his was a beautiful British racing green version, and I’d lusted after it ever since he’d shown it to me.

“He did say, any one,” I repeated.

“Christ, just be careful with it; I think he loves that damn car more than me.”

I agreed happily. We pulled through the gates as the red globe of the sun was dipping towards the horizon. Their house, although the term house didn’t do it justice, was a 20-room mansion. I always marveled at it as I approached it along the drive that swept through immaculately kept lawns. David’s family was old money; the house had been damaged during the civil war and rebuilt in its current style a few years later.

The only alterations since then had been a swimming pool, added in the Twenties, and David’s conversion and extension of the old carriage house into a garage to hold his ever expanding collection of cars.

Speaking of the carriage house, it looked different from the last time I saw it, and I mentioned it to Mary.

She gave me a tight smile, “He had it extended again. It was finished a few months ago; he’s been adding a few more cars to the collection.”

David appeared in the doorway as we pulled up outside the entrance to the house. Our relationship was more of the kindly old uncle and shy nephew type than anything else. His children had to prove themselves in the family business. I’d earned it in one fell swoop when I’d unmasked the embezzler amongst his relatives. He greeted me warmly and then turned to his wife.

“So which one did he choose?” he asked.

Mary held out a $10 bill and gave it to him. “You were right; he picked it.”

David laughed, “I told you he wouldn’t be able to resist it. Did you tell him?”

“No, I thought you should be the one.”

Christ, I had no idea what they were going on about.

Mary stood closer to David, and he held out his hand; a set of keys lay on his outstretched palm.

“It’s yours,” he said, and they both had broad grins plastered across their faces.

“Christ, David, I’ll take good care of her. I promise I’ll bring her back without a scratch.”

“No, we mean the Jaguar is yours. I restored it for you; I was just waiting for the right time to give her to you. Karen told us it’s your birthday in a few weeks, so she’s your birthday present from both of us.”

I stood there with my mouth open.

He dropped the keys into my shaking hand. He nodded in the direction of the carriage house. I turned to look, and a set of doors were open, and a pair of men were pushing the SS Jag out onto the graveled forecourt. The racing green paint and the glistening chrome shone with a reddish hint in the last of the sunlight.

David said, “When I asked you a few years ago what your favorite British car of all time was, you pointed at the poster of the Jag on the wall of my study. That’s when I knew I needed to find and restore one for you.”

“But ... but it’s the prize of your collection,” I stammered.

“She was, wasn’t she. But I’ll let you into a little secret; I’ve found another one, an immaculate 1937, 2.5 liter in silver that’s completely original. It’s being delivered next week.”

I laughed, “So basically, I’m getting your hand-me-down!”

“Well if you don’t want it...” David said with a smile.

My fingers tightened around the keys as I shook my head. “Of course I want it.”

He and I walked over to the car, and for a few minutes, I indulged my inner child; sitting on the leather seat, stroking the polished wooden steering wheel and admiring the instruments set into the burl walnut dashboard. Mary needed to call us indoors as though we were naughty children, playing in the garden.

I stayed with them for the next six weeks: the four weeks it took me to solve the case, to trace the airline’s missing money and identify the culprits, then another two weeks to document and satisfy the airline’s legal team. Most of the money was going to be recovered, and my company’s coffers were equally poised to swell healthily.

Each morning I would be up at six, 30 laps of the pool followed by a 5K run. I had no bike with me, so I used the bicycle trainer in their home gym. At home, I would have gone out for a 50k bike ride every other day. Then, I would surrender to my inner child and drive the Jag to the airline’s Atlanta headquarters. The first time I arrived, the security manager took one look at the car and promptly gave me a coveted slot in the executive parking garage.

My 27th birthday fell four weeks into my stay. Mary and David decided that they needed to throw me a birthday party to celebrate the passing of another year of my life. They held it on the fourth Saturday of my trip. I had little input other than to agree to be there, not that I was given any choice in the matter. My instructions were clear; turn up at a specific time and place. No more, no less.

I obeyed. I’m so glad I obeyed.

Mary decided that the party was to be formal. All the men would be in tuxedos. Intuitively, I knew that this was really so the women could dress up in their fine formal gowns. Of course, she had confessed to me that she thought David had one of the cutest asses she’d ever seen in a tux.

At eight in the evening, I made my way downstairs to join Mary, David and the rest of the guests. Two faces stood out from the crowd. Standing together by the main entrance stood Karen and Francesca. They looked like they had only just arrived. I hurried over to greet them as they acquired the first drink from one of the waitresses.

“You’re here,” I said to Karen, stating the obvious, as I hugged her.

She gave me a pitying look, the sort only an aunt who loved her nephew could get away with. Then she said, “See, Francesca, I told you he’s gotten a bit brighter since you last saw him.”

Francesca laughed and said in her sweet Italian-accented English that always managed to make my knees go weak. “Hush, love, can’t you see you’re embarrassing the Bambino?”

Then she turned and hugged me. “Michael, I wouldn’t miss your birthday; how is my favorite English lover?”

I smiled back at the beautiful woman, “I thought I was your only English lover!”

“So, I was right then,” she replied, then followed up her hug with a kiss that made my toes curl.

“Stop raping the poor birthday boy, Francesca.” Mary’s voice came. “I want him on his best behavior tonight.”

Francesca laughed and gave Mary a cute little pout. Then she gave me a second kiss that oozed promise, and let me go. She turned to Mary and gave her a similar kiss before retreating from her ire into the safety of my aunt’s arms.

I always enjoyed watching the interplay between the three influential women in my life. All three were the other’s lover, all three had haunted my dreams, but only Francesca had ever made that dream a reality.

I knew that Mary was the oldest of them. She was six years older than Karen, but you would never have guessed. Francesca was the baby of the three, two years younger than my aunt. They stood in a loose triangle, all three holding hands with the other two.

David joined us and gave Karen a lover’s kiss, which finally answered the question I’d had about his relationship with his wife’s lover. Francesca gave him the traditional Italian two-cheek kiss that told me that they weren’t lovers.

It may seem odd, but this was the first time I’d ever seen all four of them together. I knew that Karen had stayed with Mary and David on numerous occasions. That Mary had visited my aunt on a regular basis, and that Francesca had joined them whenever she could, or that they would visit her in Italy.

This, as I’d said, was the first time I’d ever seen all of them in the same place at the same time. David had his arm around his wife’s waist. She, in turn, was holding Karen’s hand. Francesca was mirroring David; she had her arm around Karen’s waist, and they were for a brief moment, completely oblivious to all the rest of the guests.

Fortunately, when I had first approached my aunt, we had stepped back into a secluded corner of the room, so the sexually charged tableau wasn’t in plain view. I coughed, they all started, and the moment was over.

Francesca wrapped her arm around my waist and briefly rested her head on my shoulder. She whispered, “Buon compleanno, mio dolce amante, “ and stepped back to Karen’s side.

Mary took my hand and drew me through the throng. From the look of it, she’d invited about 100 guests; most I didn’t know. Of the people I did know, most were their relatives, and a few, I knew from my time working for David’s company.

Mary seemed to have a goal in mind, as we wound through the guests, stopping here and there to say hello and so she could introduce me. She quartered the room like the best hunting dog. Finally, she spotted her quarry, a late arrival standing by David Jr. and Sarah, her eldest son and his wife.

We stepped close, the woman turned to face us, and I was lost in the most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen.

“Michael ... Michael,” I surfaced to realize Mary was trying to get my attention.

“Sorry,” I stammered, “What were you saying?”

She gave me an exasperated look. “I was trying to introduce Rebecca to my handsome and intelligent godson, who’s currently doing a wonderful impression of a British village idiot.”

Ah yes, another thing about Mary, she recently decided that she’s adopting me as her godson and that’s how she’s been introducing me all evening. I suppose it’s a lot more diplomatic than introducing me, as her lesbian lover’s British nephew. Christ, what a mouthful that would have been.

Mary sighed, “As I was saying, Rebecca, this is Michael, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, he’s very bright and one of the best in his field.”

Mary turned to me, “Michael, this is Rebecca. She’s Sarah’s sister; she’s been back east at college, studying to become a lawyer. Now she’s back in Atlanta and is working for her grandfather’s firm.”

I stammered a hi, and Mary gave another sigh. She took her son and daughter-in-law by their arms and muttering that she needed them, pulled them away.

Rebecca gave me a long, intense look. “So, you’re the reason I was invited,” she said in the most beautiful southern belle accent that just dripped Tara with every syllable.

I reverted to the village idiot, a role I seemed eminently suitable for, as I studied her. Black hair pulled back from her oval face. Green eyes set either side of a cute little nose, a mouth that was currently twisted in a wry smile, as she watched me studying her.

The top of her head came up to the level of my eyes, a lie because she was wearing three-inch heels, making her taller than her five-foot-four. Her blue silk dress failed miserably to hide the outline of her slender, lithe body.