Chapter 1: The Questions

Kenneth Jones first mistake was to pull into his driveway in his brand new Ford Fairlane Guia.

His second mistake was to step out of the car and look in the direction of his next door neighbors house, and that coincided with his third mistake, which was to greet the middle-aged woman with greying hair who was standing arms folded underneath the hefty bosom of her matronly figure...

"Mrs Cresswell, Evelyn, how are you this fine evening?"

With a stern expression smeared across a 52-year-old face that had seen one or two gins too many Evelyn Cresswell was about to answer that question with the sort of direct response she was accustomed to giving any question asked of her. She was after all not a woman who said one thing and meant another, and she was about to continue that tradition when a pretty blonde haired girl came barrelling out of the Jones house, ran straight at her father and took off three maybe four feet from him and landed in his outstretched arms.

"Daddy, daddy, you're home," she cried unnecessarily as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him all over. She looked across the grass median strip that separated the driveways of the two houses and saw Mrs. Cresswell standing there. "Oh hello again Mrs. Cresswell," she said with a smile as she wriggled happily in her father's strong arms. "Have you spoken to daddy yet?" she asked with the total innocence of a girl who had no understanding of the bomb that was about to drop.

Kenneth knelt down and eased his daughter Beccy's feet onto the bitumen of their driveway as he patted her 8-year-old bottom. "No she hasn't pumpkin."

He stood up to his full 6ft height and looked at the woman as he held onto his daughter's hand with one of his own while he brushed away a stray lock of light brown hair with the other. "Is something wrong Evelyn?" asked Kenneth unnecessarily as he could quite clearly see that something was bothering her.

She kept her arms folded as she continued to look at Alison Jones's poor husband. She failed to understand how that wretched woman could treat such a wonderful man in such an abominable manner. She had at least had the consolation of knowing that the woman had at least kept her scabrous habits, her vile behaviour, out of sight so that she and Donald, her husband, could use the 'out of sight out of mind' philosophy to treat her like some sort of a lady instead of the jezebel, the harlot, she obviously was.

"Evelyn! Mrs. Cresswell," said Kenneth Jones a little louder so as to get her attention. "I asked if there was something wrong?"

The woman looked at the pretty little blonde and then turned her attention back to the father. She was about to suggest that Beccy go back in the house but thought better of it. The poor little mite had after all witnessed the whole sorry episode and who knows what other disgusting doings in the privacy of their home.

"Mr Jones, Kenneth, how long has your wife been in the habit of going out in the evening without underwear? Come to that why have her boyfriends started picking her up from your home?"

"No underwear! Boyfriends? Picking her up from here? I'm sorry Evelyn, I'm afraid I don't understand. What do you mean?" He turned to his daughter with a view to telling her to go into the house so that she wouldn't hear anything more about his Alison's supposedly scandalous behaviour, however she didn't give him a chance.

"Oh daddy didn't you know?" Beccy Jones was seriously confused, her mother had made it sound as though her father would know. "Daddy, mummy went out with a very tall, very handsome man in his big car." She held her hands out so that her father would pick her up and he obliged. "Daddy--" she said with her arms around his neck and her bottom sitting on his strong right arm while his left hand rested in the small of her back "--mummy stood there looking at me while I stood on the porch watching them go. She told me if I asked the questions she told me to that you would answer them." She leaned back and looked at him. "That's when the man lifted mummy's skirt and showed me and Mrs... I mean showed Mrs. Cresswell and I that mummy wasn't wearing no undies. Daddy I don't think mummy was very happy that the man did that, but she didn't say nuff... didn't say anything."

"Kenneth," said Evelyn Creswell feeling very sorry for the man for being married to such a... such a... slut!! It was hard for her to even think the word. "Kenneth, you should know that this man used, and forced your wife to use, a number of vulgar words in front of your daughter. And I'm very much afraid that judging by the tone of the conversation they will be expecting your daughter to use the same smutty, vulgar language."

"Well thank you very much Evelyn... Mrs. Cresswell... I'm sure that Alison and I will discuss what she has been doing tonight."

"Well I should certainly hope so. Donald and I were prepared to overlook quite a number of the, shall we say, unfortunate episodes because your 'wife'--" she said the word wife as though she had just swallowed some very distasteful medicine "--at least kept her unfortunate dalliances out of the public gaze. But now, not only has she allowed herself to be so exposed in broad daylight the woman, and I use that term in it's broadest terms Mr. Jones, chose to do so in front of her young daughter." Then, having said her piece, she promptly sniffed the air and walked away.

He waited until the woman had gone back inside and then he turned his attention back to Beccy. "It seems to me baby, that we have some things to talk about."

"Yes daddy. Mummy said you would tell me what she was like in school, in high school. She said it would help me understand what mummy has been doing with all these men. And what she's doing tonight with that nice Uncle Philip."

He started towards his house via the car where he picked up his briefcase as he transferred his daughter to his left arm. Then he moved inside after pushing the door shut with his backside and locking it with the remote.

"Did mummy leave some dinner for me angel?" asked Kenneth Jones as he dropped his daughter gently to the carpeted hallway floor and as his 7-year-old son Ricky came bursting out of the lounge to greet him.

"Yes daddy," answered Beccy as she watched her brother approach.

"Daddy?" said Ricky as he held out his arms for a hug.

"Yes Ricky," he responded as he picked his son up.

"Is mummy going out to fuck that man?"

Kenneth held his son away from him. Considering his wife's predilection for the male sex and the erect penis that usually saluted her style of dress in those days he was not in the least surprised at his 7-year-olds casual use of the vulgar term.

His wife had promised at their wedding that those days were behind her, but judging by what Evelyn Cresswell had to say, and judging by the way his children were talking it was quite apparent they weren't.

"She said she was daddy," continued Ricky with the total innocence and becoming honesty that could only come from children of that age. "Mummy said to talk to you about it, and to ask you all about high school and the things she did with the football team and to ask about Auntie Dorothy's wedding and about Auntie Genevieve as well."

"Yes daddy," added Beccy as she pulled her father towards the kitchen while he was still carrying her brother, "mummy said you'd explain how mummy came to have a cunt and not a vagina!"

Kenneth wasn't even phased. He was disappointed in the language she was allowing their children to use, but not phased. He'd also thought that Alison was over her years of teenage sluttiness. After all she had promised to love, honour and obey, even throwing in a promise not to have sex with anybody, male or female, but him. And now she wanted him to tell their 8-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son what she was like growing up and when they were going together before they were married.

Once in the kitchen he put Ricky down and moved to the microwave and opened the door to see what it was. He should have known. Spaghetti from a packet thrown into some water, heated, drained and served on a plate with meat sauce from a tin. He wondered if Alison could spare the time, he guessed that, from the time the water boiled, it would have taken her twelve minutes, fifteen tops, to put such a feast together.

Realising there wasn't a lot he could do about it Kenneth shrugged his shoulders, punched in three and a half minutes on the microwave timer and turned to his son and daughter who by now were both seated at the table drinking a glass of orange juice each. "Okay," he said with a touch of resignation as he looked from one to the other, "who wants to hear what?"

"Daddy," said Beccy with a child's natural curiosity as she idly flicked at her shiny blonde hair, "mummy said that it all began with not being good at school and that getting good grades sort of coincided with her discovering she had a cunt and not a vagina. What did she mean?"

His daughter had spoken with such disarming honesty that it was all he could do not to smile. The trouble was how to answer the question. He well remembered how it all began, he had just finished year 12 while Alison, having struggled with year 8, was expected to struggle with year 9 until that miscreant, that wretch of a mother had decided to take her education in hand and introduced the special system of rewards with his wife that she had instituted for her elder sisters. The question was how did he tell them how much influence her parents, her brother and her elder sisters and their then boyfriends, now husbands, had in the rewards?

At the same time as her husband Kenneth was sitting down and eating a fairly ordinary meal of spaghetti and meat sauce. Alison Jones was in the booth of one of the cities more exclusive restaurant and enjoying a nice light chicken salad while the man opposite her tucked into a medium-rare steak that almost filled the plate and left hardly any room for his side of French fries.

"So Alison, do you think your husband knows about your lack of panties by now?" As he said that he reached out with his foot and pushed the toe of his patented leather shoes between her thighs and gently rubbed the lips of her naked pussy.

"Oh I should think so. If little Beccy hasn't said anything that old cow from next door with a trumpet for a mouth is bound to have." She speared some lettuce and tomato and added a small piece of chicken before saying, "It was enough that you insisted on calling for me at home, but did you really have to show the whole neighbourhood and both my children my naked cunt?"