Chapter 11: Sixteen Years Later

“Eww! Bryanna Taylor, your family, honestly!”

“What do you mean, my family?”

“Those old people in the lounge, sitting on the settee in front of the goggle box that’s showing white noise, like the channel’s stopped broadcasting ages ago and they haven’t taken notice yet. And they are snogging, again.”

The girl put one of the two opened bottles of pop she had brought from the kitchen on Bryanna’s desk before she threw herself onto Brie’s double bed and took a long swig from her pop bottle.

“Again?” asked Brie, without looking away from her keyboard or the bank of three flat screens she was monitoring.

“Yeah, AGAIN! It’s like they were watching a film on one of those part-time old movie channels last night, then fell asleep in each other’s arms, and now it’s nearly lunchtime-”

“11.16, Cass” Brie interjected.

“Yeah, like its full daylight an’ they’ve woken up horny. Last time I walked down past the lounge to fetch us a mid-morning snack, they was snogging like teenagers. Now they’re on’y at it again ... or maybe they are still at it and progressing onto heavy petting.”

“Well, they are in love, Cassie, so a bit of lovemaking when they are sitting around waiting, especially where it’s quiet and relatively private, is only natural.”

“But they are so ... old and wrinkly. Gross! Eughh!”

“You can be too young for a bit of lovey-doving, Cass, admittedly, and I do mean to speak to you about that subject later, but you’re never too old for romantic love, as clearly demonstrated by loving members of my family every chance they get. Anyway, they are not really that old, and they are only demonstrably proving that they are nowhere near past it, yet.”

“Well, they look about 60, a bit older than my Mum anyway. So, actually, how old are they, then?”

“Not certain. I think they’re both about 70. They celebrate their gold wedding later this year, and Mum’s been planning the event of the century for the pair of them for ages, but don’t say anything, it’s supposed to be Mum and Dad’s secret.”

“I’d never put them down as 70! I mean, your Nan’s lovely, always smiley, and your Granddad looks fit even if he has lost all his hair.”

“Well, Granddad only retired from his building business a year or so ago, but found it hard to stop popping in every day instead of letting my uncles get on with it. He found it hard to let go, but Nan packed up shortly after we moved down here, so she was free to babysit as Mum and Dad tried their best to cram this place full of cots. Anyway, you should be careful about how you judge people, they are my sweet grandparents and I actually lived with them full time until I was about three years old.”

“Whatever. So what are they doing here, anyway?”

“Babysitting,” Brie replied.

“But you could be-”

“-doing babysitting? Sure, and I would normally, but I couldn’t get hold of these images of Dad while I was minding all the kids, could I?”

“So where are your Mum and Dad, and why are you presumably hacking images of them?”

“Ah, it is while Mum and Dad are at the Palace ... hold on, looks like I’m in!”

“In? In what?”

“Ha! Ha! I’m getting images through!” Brie shouted in triumph, her fingers flying over a keyboard, “and just in time, too!” She started typing on one of the tablets she had, too, and carried on a conversation not aimed at Cassie, while automatically touching an ear bud for a moment. “Hi, Uncle Arthur, are you getting these pictures? ... yes? ... good ... right-ho.”

Cassie was intrigued with what Brie was doing. She stepped off the bed and moved closer to Brie and her computer. She seemed to have an old fashioned flat screen computer that she had seen on display in an antique shop once, plus a laptop to one side and a couple of large format tablets on the other side. The flat screen showed a view looking down a hall, dominated by a red carpet, with an Army officer in full dress uniform marching down the carpet. As the man drew nearer the camera, Brie moved her fingers on the touchpad of the laptop and the camera panned around to show the-

“Oh fuck!” Cassie exclaimed, “that’s the King! if that’s being broadcast on the TV, how can you be controlling the camera?”

“Ah, that’s because it is internal CCTV, not a TV broadcast camera.” Brie’s fingers flew, and another camera popped up to the main screen from a tablet where it was stacked with a number of other images, one of them showed a close-up of the King. “There’s only us, the TV in the lounge, the den where the kids are watching, oh and the Fighting Cocks pub, that are seeing this.”

“How the fuck?”

Brie grinned and polished the fingernails of one hand on her blouse, “Being my Army Cadet squad’s Comms Specialist Sergeant, I am expected to be able to communicate electronically at all times, wherever we need to be.”

“So where did you need to be today?”

“Buckingham Palace. I’ve hacked into the Palace security system and as far as their control room is concerned, these two cameras have gone off-line, so they can’t see the images nor can they see me controlling them. They’ll investigate and shut me down of course, but ten minutes is all I need. That’s why I had to monitor the system without them knowing I had access and had to leave it until the very last minute before pulling the plug and taking control, and couldn’t therefore look after the kids.” Then she touched her ear plug again and spoke, “Nan, you getting this on your screen in the lounge? ... good, OK ... yes, bye.”

Cassie was standing behind Brie now, looking at the screens. On the laptop to the left was a split screen showing a screen divided into four images, two of them showing the red carpet scenes she’d seen on the big screen, plus an image out in the sunshine of the Palace garden, and the final image the inside of a pub taken from a tablet propped up behind the bar, with the sports TV on the bar wall showing the Palace scene for the regulars that were packed in the bar like sardines.

With her prep work done, Brie turned to address Cassandra, the girl she had invited along to speak to. She had arranged the time earlier in the week, before Dad announced that he was getting the medal and that the King was presenting it to him. He was only allowed three guests, usually a spouse and both parents, so those three places were a given. Brie decided that she needed full coverage and multi-image recordings of the event for posterity, hence the hacking operation and arranging the logistics of getting her grandparents down to take care of the kids. Now she was free for a moment to address Cass.

“So, Cass, what do you think of my brother Aaron?”

Cassie looked from the screens to stare at Brie. Now, she thought, we were getting to the reason for the invitation she had received out of the blue earlier in the week.

Cassie knew it wasn’t an offer to join “The Elite”, who everyone at college regarded as Brie and her entourage. They were all of the smartest and a large number of the most attractive people in the college. Cassie thought of herself as reasonably bright and pretty, not beautiful but just above average, but just not quite good enough to be one of the select few, who were forging friendships that would affect their careers and relationships for years to come. Aaron? He was Brie’s gorgeous younger brother, an Adonis that every girl Cass knew had the hots for. She hadn’t realised she had attracted the attention of his sister Brie and this probably meant that she was going to be warned off.

These Taylors were beautiful people, she thought, open and generous in their social lives but could close ranks and pull up the drawbridges if any one of them felt under threat. Honesty, that’s what always came across from the Taylors. Look at how her grandparents expressed their love fully and without embarrassment. No point in lying, she thought, no point at all.

“I love him, Brie. I think he is beautiful, smart, kind, everything I would ever want or desire in a life partner. I couldn’t imagine settling for anyone else, only ... I can see that his family, and probably Aaron as well, think I’m a right dork and completely out of his league. I ... I just can’t help how I feel about him.”

Brie smiled. It was a warm, compassionate smile that somehow, impossibly, held out hope for Cassandra. That was a good sign, Cassie thought, at least she hasn’t told me to piss off yet.

“You say you love him, yet you sleep around with boys like a slut. Am I correct? There’s no sanitized way to say this Cass, but you’re a common slut. You’ll sleep with anyone.”

“Yeah, but sex is like totally safe now.”

“Aaron won’t go out with a slut, plain and simple.” Brie said quietly and firmly. “You see, Cassie, my Mum and Dad were sexually active without losing their virginities until they were certain they had found their soulmates, only then did they surrender that precious gift to one another, forsaking all others.”

“Nobody does that any more, Brie, with guaranteed chemically-targeted birth control, plus the complete medical eradication of STDs, sex is 100% safer now than it was in our parents’ time.”

“Well, we in this family still do our best to hold onto our virginities, it has become a tradition now in our family for three generations, and we’ve kept it by being open and honest-”

“Huh! Brie, may I remind you that you have the reputation of being a bigger slut than me!”

“Yes? That right, Cass? And what do you base that reputation on?”

“Well, you see a lot of boys on dates, more boys than me. I mean, we are both 19 nearly 20, so it’s not illegal to fuck around, especially knowing it’s absolutely perfectly safe, is it?”

“True, but sex is not always love and we see a value in preserving ourselves until that right person comes along. We maintain our resolve by concentrating on using foreplay to satisfy our dates, and being perfectly frank together in our weekly family sex education talks.”

“Fuck! Family sex education talks? Every week? What the ... I shudder to think-”

“I simply sit down with Mum, once a week, or sometimes more often if I’ve had a spectacular date or a memorable BJ to recount-”

“What, you talk to your Mum about actual details, like BJs?”