Chapter 14

On the way back from our meeting with the lawyer I had discussed with Isa the problem I was having with Katy regarding sexual relations. She recognised that this was a genuine concern for me and said she would think about it.

The problem was that there was no easy solution. If I gave in and let her have her way then we constantly ran the risk of being found out by her dad. It is not easy to hide that kind of thing if you are all living together in the same household. You do not need to be caught in the act. You can give it away by the way you look at each other, by the way you touch each other, by so many ways in which your body language can betray you. I think Joe would have to be blind to miss the giveaway signals since he saw us both on a daily basis in the most intimate of surroundings, that of our daily family life.

Over dinner that evening Isa explained to Joe and Katy what had transpired at the lawyer's office. They were both staggered when they learned that I was worth six million pounds. Isa went on to explain that I did not have unfettered control of this money. She and the lawyer had been appointed trustees until I reached the age of eighteen for four of the six million pounds that I had inherited. The other two million was the settlement of damages from the insurers of the vehicle which wiped out my family and injured him, she explained. The lawyer thinks that as he will be sixteen by the time the legal niceties are finally settled then unless the court decides otherwise that money will be under his control. Peter told Mr MacMillan that if this was the case then he would nominate us as his guardians to look after that money for him. The lawyer thought this was a decision which showed maturity and trust. Because of this I asked him to audit our handling of this sum on a minimum of a yearly basis, but I would be happier with a six monthly accounting.

I interrupted at this point,

"Aunt Isa" I told her, "you and Joe are pretty wealthy on your own account and you seem to be handling your own investments with intelligence and the proper caution required. I don't expect it to be any different with the way you handle mine. That said, I think an annual accounting will be quite sufficient. Much as I am grateful to our lawyer, we don't need to put any more money in his pocket than is necessary."

Joe laughed at this.

"It s obvious that Peter trusts us and that he is a young man with a shrewd head on his shoulders. I agree with his assessment," he told my aunt. "An annual check will be sufficient to show that we are looking after his interests properly."

"That is my reasoning to sir," I responded. "I am also taking economics for my standard grades and A Levels; if my aunt is still worried we can sit down and go over my portfolio as often as you feel necessary between the audits."

I looked meaningfully at my aunt as I said this, and she recognised that it was the soldier speaking at this point.

"If that is what you want Peter, I will go along with it," She said. "We can discuss between ourselves how often a review is necessary."

I happened to glance at Katy as this discussion was drawing to a close and I could see that she was very worried by this turn of events so I decided to close the discussion on inheritance in a positive faction.

"This is not a total surprise to me or my aunt." I told them with a smile. "We knew what my family's assets were and although I had not added the totals together I knew I would be a millionaire and that considerable damages would be coming my way. So there is nothing new in this. The only difference between today and yesterday is that you now know about it as well. So I am the same young man as I was yesterday and I intend to keep my life going along the same path.

"That is easy to say, Peter," Katy said, "But it may not be as easy to do. Money often changes people's attitudes"

I saw Joe suddenly look at her with a flash of concern. He seemed to twig right away what was bothering her about this news. She was worried my attitude to her would change. This just bore out what I was thinking earlier, that it was difficult to hide things when you were living closely together as a family. Before he could say anything, I spoke again for I saw an opportunity to give Joe a heads up on the situation developing between his daughter and me.

"That might be the case when it is new money coming to a person who has never had any before Katy. I knew my family was well off and although I was too young to think what this meant in terms of inheritance. That did not matter for even if I had thought about it, it would have seemed a far off thing and I would still have to make my own way in the world. But it is almost a year since my family was killed and I have had plenty of time to consider my situation and how I am going to handle it." I explained.

The money is a comfort blanket which means I won't have to worry about things like mortgages and electricity bills and where my next slice of bread is coming from. It won't stop me following a career or affect any of my other decisions about my life and that includes how I feel about you or my aunt or your dad."

"Is that what you are concerned about Katy?" Joe asked.

Katy nodded her head and said very quietly, "Yes."

I smiled at her,

"

"Do you remember what worried you when you heard that your dad w as going to marry? I asked her.

"Yes," she said with a watery smile. "I was getting confused because I was thinking of Isa as your mother instead of your aunt and I worried because you would then be my step brother."

"And at the risk of embarrassing you, can you tell your dad and Isa why that worried you," I asked.

She said quietly "I thought that would make you think of me as a sister, and I wanted a different kind of relationship with you."

"That is right," I said, "And I was glad to put you straight on the matter."

I could see Joe and Isa watching this exchange with great interest.

"I told you then that I would not be your step brother, and at most would be your step cousin. I also told you that I was thrilled to have a beautiful sexy girl living with me as a step cousin and hoped this would give me a chance to turn her into a kissing cousin."

Both the adults laughed at this exchange.

"Then she really surprised me," I told them, "and I am going to ask her what her reply was to that statement?"

Then she said with a giggle. "I told you that I would not mind being your kissing cousin."

I joined in with the laughter of Joe and Isa at this point before going on to say,

"We have now made that a reality, and with our parent and guardians consent we have been allowed to become courting cousins. I know we are very young, but I will be sixteen in a few weeks time and I know this much Katy, I love you very much. If things had been a bit different we might have come to love each other as brother and sister living as we do in such close proximity. People would have accepted that as natural and expected it to last. But we also have a strong physical attraction to each other that is far from brotherly or sisterly and that can make people look at our love a bit differently and say they are young they will grow out of it. But that is not always true."

I saw that both Joe and Isa were very surprised that I was declaring our feelings so openly before the people who were in the situation of being our parent and guardian.

Joe was the first to speak as he took in this statement.

"It is true in a lot of cases Peter, and though you say you love my daughter things can and do change at your age. You have only known each other a relatively short time."

"That depends on how you are measuring time sir.

"What do you mean Peter? Joe asked, "Surely there is only one way to measure time, days, weeks, months and years.

"That is true sir for ordinary events but not necessarily for courtship," I told him, "though in the normal run of events it can be true there too,

"I would be fascinated to know how time has changed in your situation," Joe said with a smile.

"I would like to know that as well?" Isa said.

I went on to explain that if they had not come together I might have met Katy at school. I might have shared my lunch hour with her and been allowed to date her once or twice a week. You could say that in a normal week we might be allowed to spend the five hours at lunch time and another six or seven hours on dates. This makes a total of twelve hours a week or between forty to sixty hours a month. That being the case normal time applies in most instances for in a whole year we may have spent seven hundred hours with each other. Put like that it seems a lot of time. But there are huge gaps between these hours so it can take us much longer to get to know each other and also more easily hide our real selves with its bad bits.

"I think I can see what you are getting at with this Peter," Joe said. "Courting in real time takes much longer because it takes much longer to find out the kind of person you are going with. This can make it much more difficult to find out what the other person is really like."

"Yes sir" I said, "But people like Katy and I and very often University students who are living in the same digs or sharing flats spend much more time together than normal and like Katy and I they get up together, study together every day, do their homework together and reveal themselves to each other much more quickly and more intimately. Katy and I are with each other in a close relationship excluding class time; nine or ten hours a day. For easy counting say seventy hours a week about eight hundred hours every two months which is more than a year in ordinary time and even before we moved in and started living together we were seeing a lot more of each other than normal,

"

"I can see the maths, but what is your point?" My aunt asked.

"My point is, Aunt Isa, that in the three months of living here Katy and I have spent over a year of normal time together. I have seen her blossom from a shy isolated and introverted beautiful young girl into a much more confident and outgoing young athlete with close friends. I am also seeing at close range how she is developing physically into a maturity that will make her even more stunning than she is now. I have also learned as she has with me, what actually makes her tick. What I am saying is that I know almost as much of the real Katy as it is possible to do. It is this Katy that I love and I think the same applies with her in relation to me."

"You are a very mature and perceptive young man Peter," Joe said. "I concede a lot of what you are saying and it pleases and frightens me at the same time.

"Why should it frighten you?" Isa asked. "It should please us that they know what the other is really like and still love each other."

"Oh it does!" Joe said. "And if they were the age of university students I would be even more delighted."

"Why?" my aunt asked again.

"Because I feel at that age they would be able to deal with what flows from living in such close proximity for so many hours a day. Because the time they have together also creates great difficulty in dealing with the strong physical attraction that they feel. If my nineteen year old daughter tells me she is in love with the student she is sharing a flat with and that she is also sharing his bed, I am not saying as father it would be easy for me to accept, but reason would prevail. Using Peter's calculation I would be able to say they know each other well enough to have good grounds for thinking this is going to be permanent. But my fourteen year old daughter is a much bigger nettle to grasp and deal with."