Chapter 7: Cleaning

The next day, the multigym arrived. Already! How they do it, I really don’t know.

The girls had announced the day as a Dressed Day, so they were in skin tight - skin-like in fact - shorts, and bra-style tops. I was in shorts and T shirt, muesli fueled and ready for action. This was going to be the first day of the rest of my life, getting it back. Already I’d had an enquiry from a cleaner, to start getting the house sorted out again, and she was calling round later. I was going to look forward now, not back.

We had to carry all the parts up the stairs to the new gym. I’d bought a machine with a 100kg weight stack, thinking, at the time, I’d eventually one-up these pesky teens with it. But now, after carrying a couple of the weights up, I was having second thoughts.

“Have a rest Colin,” Nancy grinned as I sat down on the bench, puffing. She put her weight down and whirled off for another one, while Thea laid her section of frame down and went after her.

I managed another weight, then a footbar, before all the parts were in place. Then at least I was able to pull my weight, as it were, helping with doing up the bolts. Not that the girls needed help, they seemed to have a pretty clear idea how everything fitted together, but it was good to be doing it with them as a team.

Finally we were standing looking at it: a gym room, albeit with carpet on the floor. The machine was bigger than I’d realised, with tall, wide arms and a long bench. But there it was, expressing purpose.

“Right,” said Thea, “christening. You survived that Colin. You’re getting fitter already, so it’s time to get some action out of your biggun!”

They both laughed.

“What do you mean?” I had to ask. Surely ... but with these two, it wasn’t safe to assume anything.

“Time to try your cock,” sniggered Nancy, pulling her top off, “in our tight underage schoolgirl pussies.”

“Are you sure?” I said stupidly. It was a conflict: I wasn’t that kind of man! At the same time, they were not vulnerable, were they? Or immature. At an animal level they were infinitely desirable.

“Colin,” Thea was nude again, already, and coming up to me, “if you care about us, you’ll look after us, won’t you?”

“Well yes...”

“And you get hard for us don’t you,” Nancy had sandwiched me between her naked body and her girlfriend’s.

I couldn’t deny it, with her hand proving the point. It wasn’t the first time either, but that wasn’t the whole story. When they’d said they wouldn’t fuck me because I wasn’t fit enough, I’d instantly wanted to! But now...

“We’re safe, and it’s what we want,” Thea continued, lifting my T-shirt so I was raising my arms to let it come off, “as it’s real. Real relating, so we can feel: what you think about us and what’s going to happen. Cos we’re not secure, really.”

“Don’t give me that,” I called out the manipulation, while leaning on her so Nancy could pull my shorts and briefs past my feet.

“It only helps if you care,” Thea smirked, putting her arm round my waist so her warm, firm, perfect skin was all down my side. “And that’s why we like you in the first place.”

“You loved your wife so much,” Nancy trampled casually into territory where others might have feared to tread, “with being secretly an emotional person. So just connect with us.”

“I can’t love you like that,” I smiled sorrowfully. I hugged her nude body to mine, to soften the message.

“No no, we’re young aren’t we, but if she was looking down, kind of thing, what would she want?”

My brain was going a little fuzzy. I had to either get away from the fondling fingers, or accept I was going to be an old pervert sugar daddy. As for what Helen would have thought - I was pretty sure she’d never imagined a situation like this!

But at this critical moment, the doorbell went.

Guilt, rational or not, flooded through me. I was in danger of being discovered! Discovered with an erection between two underage and underdressed petty criminals, in one of my bedrooms! And discovered as a man whom they’d laughingly overpowered and forcibly moved in with.

But at least they let go of me, so I could hastily pull my clothes back on and get down to answer the door.

“Hello,” I smiled at the uncertain-looking woman in the porch. She was, as are quite a few people, a little overawed by the house. In her thirties somewhere, average height or a bit over, and slim, in trousers and blouse. “Have you come about the cleaning? Rosemary?” I added, when she didn’t say anything.

“Yes,” she raised a nervous smile back.

“Come in,” I made way and ushered her in. “Thanks for coming, let me show you round.”

She smiled briefly, but didn’t say anything, looking more down than at me.

“So this is the kitchen...” I led the way round the ground floor, “I was thinking perhaps one day a week?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“What’s your rate for that?” I asked.

“I was thinking, about...” she paused, “ten pounds an hour?”

I did the arithmetic. £70 or £80 a day, so she’d be earning £400 a week at best, and she’d come straight round so she probably wasn’t doing even five days a week. But of course I didn’t know about the rest of her circumstances.

“Fine,” I said. “Let me show you upstairs.” Surely even Nancy and Thea would have realised they needed to put some clothes on.

To make sure, I talked loudly as I led Rosemary round the other rooms. She didn’t react to the unmade double bed in the girls’ room, still sporting its head-sized indent in each of the pillows. I could hear the multigym being used next door, clunking rhythmically, so I was reasonably hopeful, as I opened the door to the gym, that the girls’ dubious presence wasn’t going to be a showstopper.

“This is...” I began.

“Oh!” gasped Rosemary.

“Mum!” gasped Nancy, standing next to the machine in her revealing clothes.

“Rosie!” gasped Thea, on the machine and also clothed, to my faint relief.

For once, the girls didn’t laugh. Also for once, my brain did a reasonable job of catching up. Nancy’s mother!!

“You didn’t know they were here?” I asked Rosemary.

“I told her I was at Thea’s,” said Nancy. “And same for her, at mine.”

Rosemary wasn’t saying anything. Nancy wasn’t going to hug her.

“Are you alright?” Thea asked her.

“Thank you,” Rosemary nodded.

On the scale of awkwardness, it was an easy 11. But uppermost in my mind was Rosemary’s humble demeanour, in contrast to her daughter’s.

“Come downstairs,” I told them all. “Rosemary, I apologise, I should have checked they’d told you where they were.”

“It’s alright,” she mumbled.

I sat everyone down in the breakfast room end of the kitchen, and put the kettle on. Nancy had sat next to her mother, but not touched her so far. What was their relationship? Why had Thea asked if she was alright? The girls were subdued, why? Rosemary was waiting for me to decide what happened next. In fact, to my considerable surprise, they all were.

“Do you have other children?” I asked Rosemary with a smile. A normal, pleasant conversation starter.

“It’s just Nance,” Thea answered while Rosemary shook her head.

“I was an accident,” Nancy joked. Or tried to joke, but it wasn’t funny of course.

I poured the water into the pot and put the tea cosy on. Rosemary wasn’t looking that old, for the mother of a teen. Some of Nancy’s features. But none of the fight. Downtrodden, and no doubt seeming older than if she’d been smiling.

“How about you?” I asked Thea, to break the silence. “Any brothers or sisters?”

“Sister,” she rolled her eyes. “She’s a bit young though, even for you.” She grinned and stuck her tongue out at me.

Rosemary wasn’t looking especially concerned at this calumny. Even so...

“I haven’t touched them,” I told her, with a half smile to show the very idea was amusing.

“That’s okay,” she answered. There was a pause. “She’s got some of her dad in her.”

It took me a few seconds, while I poured the teas, to work out this meant Nancy’s mother wasn’t concerned for her daughter’s safety, or her girlfriend’s little sister’s, because Nancy had inherited some aggressiveness from her father? Which she’d channelled into her karate, and then used against him. Nancy, stunning slim teen girl or not, was nobody’s victim.

I looked at Thea. A kindred spirit. With a disloyal father and a mother who’d taken off. But, I supposed, a mother who’d refused to put up with disrespect. A father who was a bit of an adventurer, in a modest way. Who’d kept Thea and her sister, and worried about them? Well, who could tell, even the family themselves I daresay.

“He’s still an asshole,” Thea was looking back at me. Meaning Nancy’s father. “He’ll always be like it.”

“Tell me,” I said to Rosemary. She shook her head, looking down at the table.

I looked at Nancy. “What did you do to him?” Her dark blue eyes were glinting with big, angry pupils.

“Has he been at you again?” she asked her mother.

Her mother didn’t answer. Her mother who, I realised, hadn’t been able to protect her. Nancy reached over and pushed a sleeve up: the forearm had a big, light-purple bruise over it.

Were there other bruises? But none on her face - that’s how deliberate it was.

“We cut his fingers off,” Thea’s low voice had no apology in it. “On his right hand. He used to keep a stick, by the door. Then he was waving a fucking knife at us. A huge fucking knife. As we’d been stopping him with kicks, the karate. So I brought a hammer and we waited till he was too pissed to dodge it and I hit him with it. Twice, the second time with the side in case it went through.

“Then we put his hand on the hearth and used the knife and the hammer to cut his fingers off, so he can’t hold it - a knife or a stick.” A wolfish smile spread across her face at the memory. She was looking me in the eye, expecting me to be on their side. As I found I was.

I looked at Rosemary. She was still staring down at the table, her shoulder length blonde hair hiding her face like a curtain.

“So is it happening again?” I asked her. “Rosemary? With his left hand?”

“Just sometimes,” she mumbled. “He doesn’t need a stick. It’s alright most of the time.”

Nancy was looking at me, with her blue eyes. Thea was looking at me, with her grey ones. There was only one option.

“Rosemary, you’re not going back there, you’re staying here with us,” I told her, with enough authority in my voice to deter any objection.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s not your fault,” I told her, “it’s his fault.”

“Stay, Mum,” Nancy reached a hand across and put it on her mother’s. “We’ve got loads of bedrooms and plenty of money.”

Rosemary was clutching her daughter’s hand gratefully.