Chapter 7

We had reached a peak that held for the rest of the holiday. It was as if knowing that our time together would be brief, even though we were making speculative plans that bordered on fantasy whenever we weren't making love. We had to make use of every second. With each passing day we knew each other more, and explored our bodies a little deeper.

Our world was magical, chimerical, sometimes chemically enhanced, and reality was something neither of us wanted to face. We tried to do some normal things, go the swimming pool over the river, the pictures, but usually we just packed it I early to get back to bed, because I'd looked at her, or she looked at me, or my hand brushed hers ... We'd meant to spend time with some of Sarah's friends, but that idea was never mentioned after the first days. The phone rang occasionally, and we had to answer it in case it was her parents, or an important message. One day there was a knock at the door. Sarah got up to answer it - we were a bit stoned and playing with each other on the sofa, listening to the new Pink Floyd album. I could only just hear Sarah's over the majestic chords, and a hint of another voice, also female. After a couple of minutes she returned to the sofa, took my hand, and placed it firmly on her crotch.

"Who was it?" I asked.

"Edie ... Edie Parr," Sarah replied, and I could hear unfamiliar nervousness in her tone.

"Your ex ... oh dear ... what did she want?"

"She wondered why I haven't called her since the end of term."

"Did you tell her?" I felt nervous too.

"Um ... sort of ... I said I had a cousin staying and we've been busy. I put her off."

I left it at that, and handed Sarah the joint we'd been smoking. I wasn't worried really, I was too happy.

The next day, the phone rang just after lunch - we'd eaten big doorstep bacon sandwiches to fortify ourselves for our afternoon delights. Sarah was in the loo, so I answered it. There was something about the woman's voice, an edge and depth that made me wary.

"Can I speak to Sarah please, it is important," she said.

"Can you hang on for a minute? I'll go and fetch her," I said. "Can I tell her who's calling?" I remembered to ask.

"Margaret." was the terse reply. I gulped as I laid the receiver down on uncle Eric's desk.

I knocked on the lavatory door.

"Sarah, it's Margaret on the phone."

"Oh god, I don't want to speak to her now!" Sarah exclaimed, opening the door. Her face was red, and an agonised expression twisted her mouth.

"What shall I tell her? She knows you're here!" I protested.

"Oh ... oh bugger. I'll deal with it," said Sarah, pushing past me, crossly.

I followed her back to the study. Sarah glowered as she picked up the receiver.

"Margaret?" She said, her voice a little wobbly.

For the next five minutes I watched Sarah wilt and try to interject into what was obviously an angry monologue.

"Yes, but I can't help that ... you'll have to do without me ... no, not anymore ... look there's someone..." She said.

She had twisted the phone lead into a terrible tangle with her restless right hand. Another shorter monologue followed, and then Sarah motioned me out of the room, mouthing 'sorry'.

A little downcast, I left, closing the door behind me. I went in to the sitting room, feeling distinctly anxious, less than happy for the first time in many days. It looked like my cousin had some unfinished business after all. Perhaps I shouldn't have taken her at her word with regards to Edie and Margaret. I just hoped she could conclude whatever it was quickly and cleanly. I reassured myself. She was decisive, she knew her own mind. We were so, so in love, they could be no competition.

I waited a long time, still hearing Sarah's muffled voice rise and fall. It would pause, escalate, and tail off, until the distinct crash of receiver hitting cradle with some force. Sarah bustled out of the study, face like thunder. I had never seen her so upset. I asked her to tell me what was wrong, tried to coax it out of her with words and caresses, but she just shook her head and glared. Suddenly she grabbed my wrist, pulled me to my feet and dragged me at a half run upstairs to our bedroom. She threw me on the bed, and for the next hour, used and abused me with a sexual ruthlessness that was terrifyingly new and arousing. She tied me up tight, whipped my bottom with a riding crop until I screamed for mercy, made me come again and again with the cruellest caresses I had known, fisted me, and then as a finale, tied me up on all fours and pushed her hand into my bum for the very first time, which hurt a lot, but luckily she relented when I suggested she let me sniff a popper, and soon she had me squealing for more. She took me apart so thoroughly I nearly blacked out from the power of my final orgasm.

After that, she fell on me in such a maelstrom of remorse I ended up comforting her, despite the smarts and bruises of my own poor beleaguered flesh!

"I've hurt you Jill my darling, I shouldn't have done you like that!" She wailed.

"This may sound weird Sarah ... but ... and this is a very weird confession to make ... but ... I enjoyed it. Actually ... you were amazing. I wouldn't want it like that every time, but it was incredibly exciting!" I admitted, and eventually she believed me.

We never mentioned Margaret again, but after her call our loving become markedly more urgent, and at times, more violent.

We shut away all thoughts of parting. It was inconceivable that after this astonishing time out of time we should part and resume normal lives.

Inconceivable, but inevitable. Except that our lives could never be 'normal' again. We had journeyed too far into the pulsing heart of female desire, pushed every horizon back until we were in a space entirely of our own making. There could be no return from a place like that. And, there had to be a spectacular climax to our summer of love, didn't there?

On the second Friday, knowing that tomorrow the family would return, we decided to take acid together, it would be a suitably decadent climax to the holiday, and our last chance to experiment. It would also be Sarah's first trip, but she was so strong, so clear in her head that I had no fears of problems, and anyway, I was experienced, I knew how to bring people out of bad trips. We decided to swallow the blotters in the morning after breakfast so that we'd be safely down and relatively normal by the following day, for the family. In the beautiful Alice in Wonderland surrealism of our only trip together, we drew the blinds and allowed ourselves to have sex all over the house, as we had done so freely for two weeks.

We weren't to know that the phone call we ignored as we were coming up, gazing at each other in giggling wonder at the unworldly sensations, was from Uncle Eric, to tell us they were coming back early, arriving later that day, because the boys had caught something nasty and the holiday had been curtailed. If we'd answered that call, the afternoon might have been less traumatic, even though we would still have been tripping. But we certainly wouldn't have been found by uncle Eric, in the middle of the afternoon, naked in the kitchen, with me sprawled across the table, his darling daughter Sarah crouched behind me with her fist pumping deep in my cunt, a joint still smoking in the ashtray, and the whole house reeking of hash, sex, and poppers.

It was the most awful timing imaginable. One call missed, two lives ruined. Oh yes, it was our own stupid fault all right, or mine actually, I was older, I was an accredited twenty-two year old adult, and Sarah, in the eyes of the law, was still a child, and I will blame myself for my stupidity the rest of my life. It was only Auntie Susan's residual feelings for her half-sister and perhaps a little for me - even though she held her hands over her ears as Sarah raged - and her reluctant recognition that her daughter was as much in love with me as I protested I was with her, that made her stop Uncle Eric from having me prosecuted for drugs and for corrupting the morals of a minor, for lesbian rape, and anything else the law could throw at me.