Chapter 1

I have no idea why I woke up when I did. The bedside clock was blinking 1.00am, so we must have had a blackout about an hour ago. This was not so much a rarity but something to take note of and change as soon as I could find my watch and the light switch. Moonlight was streaming through the open curtains and open widow behind the bed; it must be a full moon and I hadn't noticed before.

The cold yellow moonlight reflected off the naked body lying, facing away, on top of the sheets beside me. Her long mousy coloured hair was strewn over the spare pillow between us like so much seaweed washed up on coastal rocks. It was too warm and humid a November night to have bedclothes over you and the almost perfect curved line from below her shoulder over her slightly immature hips down to her spread thighs caught my attention as a sign of perfection in design. It fascinated me for a time until I came back to reality realising I had meant to find my watch and adjust the time so we didn't sleep in.

I fumbled in the shadow over the bedside table and placed my hand on my glasses and, directly under them my old wristwatch. The moonlight made it possible to read the hands but the need I still had, that pang of irritability because I needed, was forced, by my aging body to use the reading glasses always sent an irrational pang of annoyance through me. Get over it Perkins! 3.45am. I picked up the clock and drew the cord over towards me until I could differentiate between the top time buttons and the alarm set buttons in the moonlight. I didn't want to disturb the Angel with switching on the bedside light but this did make everything so much more awkward.

My fiddling around caused the waterbed to wave a little, but she only turned onto her back giving me another perfect line, over a handful sized breast down the ski slope, down over her flat perfect bellybutton and into the soft curly down of her maturing pubic hair. The almost colourless pudenda peeked through from below the vee marking the beginning where her legs were now splayed widely trying to relieve the humid discomfort. The sight engrossed me for an almost interminable length of time - far more important than the sleep that I was missing. My love for my Angel was almost a discomforting pain in my chest.

The lightning storms that had been plaguing the area all evening seemed to have left without relieving the unpleasant mugginess. In the distant towards the coast occasional flashes still occurred - it must a bit rough out at sea at this moment. I had been hoping the small southerly change which struck early yesterday evening, would have blown away the two week long unseasonable hot spell. No such luck. The fact that my Angel had run to daddy for protection from the hated lightning and thunder from her own bed, and I hadn't noticed, just showed how tired I must have been last night, and leaving me wondering how long it would be until she would feel she was too old to run for comfort to her daddy any more. The fact alone that she was in here did not surprise me in the slightest as she had been doing just this since she was two years old, jumping into the safety between her mother an myself and consistently did it even after her mother left us. The only thing that changed was that she no longer deemed it necessary to wear the little bunny rabbit pyjamas, which her mother had always insisted on. Now fourteen she had gone from pyjamas to training bras and panties, to sans bra and into nothing whatsoever in the space of time barely longer than the blink of an eye.

I suppose I should think myself lucky that Angel's friend Mel the Bitch, now legally my ward, hadn't taken fright and joined me as well. Her room though, was further inside the house, muffled from the outside elements by having no windows and only a skylight for lighting and ventilation. That would have thrown the tacit spectre of sex into the mixture; I didn't want to face that ghost. She'd taken to leaving her door open all the time, no matter her state of dress or that what she had been doing should be private, insisting that "Daddy's Little Angel" could do it and seeing she was now my daughter too, she could as well; So there! I know they both used tampons, after all I bought the damned things in the weekly shop, but my Angel applied them in the toilet, bathroom or wherever, which seemed the private thing to do. Mel saw both my and Angel's comfort with each others skin as permission to masturbate while watching me, always watching me, from her bed through her open bedroom door. Trouble is that she's not my daughter. When I fronted her, in the presence of my daughter they both just laughed at me; silly old daddy.

The phantom thought about Mel the Bitch left an uncomfortable fear of the unknown behind the total contentment I'd previously had with the relationship I shared with my Angel, my daughter. That Mel would cause disquiet in our almost perfect relationship worried me more than a little. Nothing innocent or even coy about the Bitch - with which Angel had dubbed her long before I'd ever met her. They'd had one of those classic love/hate relationships for the couple of years they'd shared a common high school class, then the distant relative she had been boarding with kicked her out. Though they'd still wanted the money she received from the government for letting Mel stay there, they couldn't stand the girl any more than her own mother, or seemingly distantly separated father could. Call me an old softie but I couldn't understand how family, and supposedly adults, could treat a child this way.

That my girl would come running to me still gave me hope. I didn't have that same hope for Mel who stared at me through old/young eyes and watched us for signs of my interfering with her friend - after all that is what had consistently happened to her in her past - why would I be any different to every other male she had known? Except that I didn't, hadn't, wouldn't or couldn't. I couldn't even see my Angel as a sexual being. I'd changed her nappies, wiped her bum, showed her how to insert a tampon, mopped up the blood when she'd broken her hymen in a fall whilst riding her first "big kids" bike. Yes, I also gave her "the talk" when I discovered her masturbating with her duds off on the lounge; but that's not sex, just pressure relief. I just made her understand that others wouldn't view what she was doing as no different than an intentional sneeze (that's how I saw it) and that she had to be a little more circumspect around outsiders (like using snuff I said - then I had to explain about snuff and... God, simple things sometimes can get very complicated). However she no longer viewed Mel as a visitor and Mel watched everything with jealous eyes not wanting to be treated differently. Mel's taken to leaving the bathroom door open, "to let the steam out". I've taken to cooking tea when she has her shower.