I was sore downstairs for a few days after sleeping with Damon, my stepdad.

Mum suspected nothing when she got home, she was tired from the long drive home from the conference, so Zoey and I made her dinner, then she went to bed, with Damon. Maybe I will buy some noise cancelling headphones, like Zoey suggested.

Anyway, it’s the weekend, mum has gone away with Damon for a few days of annoying someone else with their noisy sex, Zoey is helping her sister move into a new flat in Liverpool, and I’m home alone.

It’s a lovely day, so I dug a sun lounger out of the shed, dusted it off and now I’m lounging in the sun, wearing a bikini with a book and a glass of chilled Pinot Gris.

When I got up to top up my wine, I noticed Mrs Conway was doing much the same next door. I looked at her fantastic figure, and remembered Damon’s admission that he’d been sleeping with her, and I was curious about how she handled him, because her husband is very much the opposite to Damon. I’ve seen him in swimming trunks and I fill them better than he does.

I decided to break the ice by offering Mrs Conway a drink, so I returned with the whole bottle.

“Excuse me, would you like a top-up, this bottle is wonderfully chilled,” I called out, holding the bottle up so she could see the label, Cloudy Bay, because mum only buys the best.

Mrs Conway lifted her big sunglasses and looked my way, she smiled when she saw the bottle.

“That would be lovely, thank you ... why don’t you bring your glass round, I have more loungers.”

I walked out of our garden and through Mrs Conway’s gate, she’d already pulled up another sun lounger and placed a small table between the two.

“This is a lovely garden, Mrs Conway,” I observed, and it was, with a perfectly trimmed lawn that meandered between flowerbeds planted with lots of colourful flowers. In the bottom right-hand corner was a small pool with a rockery and waterfall.

“Call me Fiona dear.”

“Do you do the gardening, Fiona?”

“Oh no, that’s Gerald’s job.”

Gerald is Mr Conway, Fiona’s husband. He’s older than Fiona, maybe 50 years old, and is the manager of the biggest bank in the nearby city, earning a salary sufficient to keep Fiona in the way she’s become accustomed. Gerald is a bit of a wimp, and I’ve been wondering if Fiona isn’t a bit of a dom in the bedroom, but that is none of my business.

We made small talk as we drank the first bottle; about the garden, about holidays, about university.

After three glasses, I was ready to ask the question I needed to ask, but Fiona was a little behind me, so I fetched a fresh bottle, in case she needed Dutch courage to answer.

“So,” I started as I refilled her glass, “is it true you’ve been sleeping with my stepdad?”

Fiona didn’t even hesitate, “yes, I have. How did you find out?”

“I asked him ... and this is going to make me sound weird ... I think I’ll have another glass.”

I emptied, then refilled my glass.

“I had a little obsession last week, and I ended up needing to sleep with Damon...”

“I can understand that,” Fiona replied.

“You don’t think it’s weird?” I replied, turning to look at Fiona, to watch her body language, but also to look at her, because like I mentioned before, she’s stunning, and up close, she’s a work of art. I can’t work out whether her boobs are real or not. They’re big, much bigger than Zoey’s. They’re quite firm, but they move about, they don’t behave like falsies.

“Oh no, he’s not related to you, and he is very good looking.”

“He really is ... so I tried to seduce him. I dressed in my skimpiest outfits, the ones that never fail in bars, and he just ignored me.”

“Well, dear, despite him not being your birth father, you are his daughter, he did get parental responsibility when he married Gaynor.”

“I guess ... it’s just a bit weird how you’re so calm about it ... does Mr Conway know about you and my dad?”

“Gerald? Of course he does, he knows about every man and woman I’ve slept with ... we don’t have what you would describe as a normal marriage...” Fiona replied before draining her glass, I poured her another as she martialled her thoughts.

“Gerald is older than me, as I’m sure you guessed.”

“Yes, you’re early 30’s I think...”

“Good guess, I’m 32. Gerald is 60. He was more than twice my age when we met. He saved my life, I love him dearly, and he loves me, but we don’t ... we’ve never shared a bed as a man and wife would.”

“You don’t have sex!” I exclaimed, then regretted it, “ ... I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s OK ... and you are correct ... we don’t have sex in the way you did with your stepfather, or any of your other partners.”

I was intrigued, but I hoped I didn’t show it.

“Where shall I start ... Gerald has ... shall I say ... particular tastes. No, I need to go back further ... I ran away from home when I was 14. We lived in a village near Carlisle. My parents were ... I think arseholes is the best word. They drank, they smoked, they took any drugs they could get their hands on ... and when my mum was high, she was no use to dad, because he liked his bed partners to resist, to scream in terror, and to come away damaged. On these occasions he turned to me. I endured this for ... far too long ... years ... because I was afraid if I fought back, everything would be so much worse.

“One day, dad and a couple of his friends robbed a bookie at the race course. They came back to the house already drunk, they got stoned, raped me one by one, then passed out...”

I was stunned, this was not the conversation I expected ... Fiona looked so respectable, so middle class, how can she have come from such a horrible background?

I refilled our glasses and waited for her to continue.

“After they’d all passed out, I dragged myself upstairs and ran a bath. As I lay soaking away the aches I thought about soaking everything away, about killing myself. I’d just reached for one of mum’s leg razors and was about to smash it to get one of the blades when I had a better idea.

“I dried myself, dressed, packed a few clothes and toiletries in my school backpack and went down to the living room. Dad and his pals were all still unconscious ... I found their stash from the robbery, I had to be careful because one of the guys was lying on it. I slowly dragged it out and opened the bag, it was packed full of screwed up money; £10s, £20s, £50s ... thousands. I tipped it all into my backpack, shoving it down to the bottom and covering it with my clothes, then I packed their bag with newspaper, tipped half a bottle of vodka I’d found on the floor over the paper, set it alight and tossed it on the sofa before legging it.”

“Did they die?” I asked, breathless from Fiona’s tale.

“Yep, all of them, including mum, and I’m not sorry. I phoned the police from the pub at the end of the road, telling them where they can find the guys who robbed the bookie. Afterwards, I phoned the fire brigade, then I got a bus into Carlisle, followed by the first National Express out of Carlisle. I ended up in Blackpool.

“I walked from the bus station down to the sea front and walked around for a while, still not quite sure what I was going to do. As it started getting dark, I asked the first respectable looking person I found for the name of a decent guest house. The man didn’t just give me a name, he walked me there. It was on a side street, about a 5-minute walk from the sea. The woman who ran it, Maggie Wallace, took one look at me, gave me a room key and sent me upstairs for a bath and a lie down, telling me we’d talk about money afterwards. Maggie was an amazing woman, she gave me the room for £10 a night, including meals, until I found work. This was good news, because even at that age, I knew the £20,000 in my bag wouldn’t last forever.”

“Is that how much they stole?”

“Well, according to the bookie, they stole £50k, but he was lying. It was about £23k, but a lot of the £50 notes were forgeries. I had a little over £21,500 in my bag.”

“So, what did you do for work ... you were only 14, I think you said.”

“Maggie found me a job. She let me decompress for a couple of weeks. I just hung around the arcades, went shopping, ate in greasy cafes, picked up boys for a quick blow job under the pier for a few pounds or some cigarettes. Then, once Maggie saw I was fully relaxed, she took me to a friend’s bar, he gave me a job ... as a stripper.”

“But! You were only 14! Surely that’s illegal...”

“Yeah, but who asks a stripper for ID? Besides, I always had big tits.”

“I wanted to ask if they were real ... but I didn’t know how to ask...”

“You can ask me anything, honey ... and yes, my tits are real. Everything about me is real, apart from my hair colour, it’s really a mousy brown colour, but I prefer my hair to be as black as my heart.”

“But ... your heart isn’t black, you’re a good person.”

“I’ve killed five people, my heart is black.”

“Five? It was your dad, two friends and your mum.”

“I also killed a client ... we’ll come to that. Anyway, like I said, I always had big tits, they started growing when I was still in primary school, which is when he started taking an interest.”

“Oh my god...” I replied, “I’m struggling to take all this in.”

“Ahh, sweetheart, it doesn’t get any better. Even though I thought I was enjoying my life in Blackpool, looking back, it wasn’t a good life, a girl that age shouldn’t have to do the things I did,” Fiona said as she sipped her wine.

I noticed as she drank that her bright red lipstick wasn’t marking the glass, was it painted on?

“So, dancing and stripping ... I was a good dancer ... if I’d stayed in school, I was going to do GCSE Dance ... but I had no experience of stripping. The club owner came down to see me while I was trying to audition for the manager. I nearly fainted when I saw him, it was the man who took me to Maggie’s guest house. Was this all a plot to trap the pretty runaway? It didn’t matter anyway, I was in way too deep now and had nowhere else to go. Also, bizarrely considering the circumstances, I had a good feeling about the club. Yeah it was seedy, and though the indoor smoking ban had recently come in, the atmosphere suggested nobody had told the club’s customers, but I wasn’t afraid, the manager, Keith, and the owner, Harry Pierce, didn’t seem dangerous.

“Harry stepped up close to me ... considering the last four years of my life, I was quite prepared for him to take me back to his office for a ‘test drive’, but no, Harry simply looked me over, like I was a pedigree at a dog show. He asked me to take my clothes off, to show my tits and arse ... again, he didn’t touch me, just asked me to turn around slowly, then jiggle my tits and bum cheeks. Satisfied he nodded at Keith, thanked Maggie and left.