Chapter 14: Unplanned Families

"I dropped Sally off at school. She's got classes this afternoon."

Delia twisted the control knob of the washing machine. Water began to gurgle. "Good of you to look after her. And thanks for bringing all her washing round. Her jeans and stuff."

Russ looked at her. Delia's face was blank.

"I'd have expected a phone call from her. She is my younger daughter, after all."

"She couldn't call you from 1928."

"They had phones in 1928."

"Yes, but..."

She turned round, grinning broadly. "I was only kidding, you daft bugger!" She swayed across the kitchen and laced her fingers behind his neck. She wasn't wearing anything under her shirt. "Thanks for looking after her."

"She looked after me."

"I bet she did, too!" She wriggled her hips, producing a belated response. "Well, she didn't wear you out completely. Come on, you can tell me all about it in bed." She yanked him off balance and hurried him out of the kitchen. He was halfway up the stairs before he could protest, and by then it was too late. "How did her jeans get soaked like that?" Delia asked over her shoulder.

"It was snowing."

"I know! In February, too. It must be all this global warming and stuff." She hauled him into the bedroom and started tearing at his clothing. He replied in a series of abrupt sentences, punctuated with gasps.

"They didn't have global warming in 1928. I mean it hadn't been invented then. It was at least a foot deep. We could hardly walk through it. Sally fell into a snowdrift. We had to thaw her out. In front of a gas fire." Economical with the truth, perhaps, but true enough.

"So!" Delia sat down on the bed. "Undress me. And tell me what happened. Everything."

"Nothing. I wrapped her up in blankets and put her in front of the gas..."

"Not Sally, stupid! This other business. Your preggers girlfriend. What's her name?"

"Ethel."

"Same name as Granny. I suppose it was quite a popular name back then. It was the name of Just William's big sister, after all. Anyway, is she still pregnant?"

"I don't know exactly. But everything was different this time. I think it's all right. So does Sally."

"That's okay, then. What did you bring back? Anything exciting?"

"No, the weather was so bad I had to spend most of my cash on a pair of boots."

Delia pulled a face and sighed. "Oh, well. Next time, perhaps. We'll have to find some more old money for you. Come on, then. I told you to undress me. I need your body."

No peace for the wicked. He knelt before her and removed her shoes. Delia would want things done in an orderly fashion.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Oh, Russie, Russie, Russie, Russie, Russeeeeee!"

Delia lay back, sweating like a racehorse, as Russ collapsed shuddering on top of her, his face in her wet, wobbling cleavage. "Uh!"

"Is that all you can say? After the most miraculous sex of all time, what does the great lover say? 'Uh!'"

"Dee!"

"That's slightly better." She giggled and squirmed comfortably beneath him. "I suppose I'm a lucky woman, really, being able to share my stud with my two vast-bosomed daughters. A lucky mother. I don't suppose we'll have time for another go before Sally comes in, will we? When's Claire coming home? What's the matter? Russie?"

He raised his face from its damp resting place. Had he heard correctly? Probably not, with tits wrapped round his ears. Not nearly as big as Sally's monsters, of course, but still a wonder of nature.

"You didn't answer my question," she said.

"Which one?"

"When's Claire coming home?"

"It's hard to say. She was going to call again on Tuesday. Tomorrow."

"Oh, good! You don't need to go home tonight. We can have dinner here. As it happens, I've got something special, just for you. Sally enjoys it, too, as it happens."

Russ often had this feeling that Delia never said anything that had only one meaning.

"What were you saying about being able to share me with your daughters?"

Delia laughed and scooted her big bottom across to the edge of the bed. "You can come down and help me in the kitchen. We'd better get dressed first, or we'll keep getting diverted. I don't mind sharing you, as long as the girls don't. And they don't. Well, Sally doesn't. Claire might object to her baby sister getting in on the act. You'd have to ask her." Her voice went muffled as her head disappeared into a monster T-shirt. She emerged, peering round as if expecting the world not to be still there.

"That wasn't what I meant. Not quite. You said something about your two daughters?" Russ was trying not to put words into Delia's mouth. "About the way they both look the same, I mean?"

"Look the same? Claire and Sally?" A giggle. She squirmed into a pair of indecent jeans. "I wouldn't have thought there'd ever be any problem telling those two apart!"

Russ heaved a sigh of relief and groped around on the floor under the bed, looking for his shorts. Delia flounced over to the mirror and inspected her overall appearance.

"Of course, there are certain similarities," she went on. "But Sally's tall, like her father. And Claire's such a squidgy little thing. Except where it counts, of course."

A chill descended on his neck and he hesitated, half in and half out of his pants. "Where it counts?"

Delia gave a great heave to her jeans, setting every ounce of herself wobbling monstrously. "Up top. Of course, with Claire being so much more petite, her bust looks even bigger than Sal's. I shouldn't say it, I know, but with your height, you'd be much better suited to Sally than to Claire. But that's Mother Nature for you. The laws of natural selection. Claire's baby will probably be so much taller than her, so everything will average out nicely. Are you getting dressed, or what?"

"What?"

"That's what I thought. Come on. You've got to peel the spuds."

Sally's face lit up. "You're here!"

"Your mother insisted. Something special for dinner, she said. She's had me peeling potatoes for hours."

"Potatoes?" Sally wiggled her bottom. "She's trying to make me even bigger. I'm starving. I haven't eaten for about seventy years. Where is she, anyway?"

"Upstairs in the bathroom."

"Come here, then!" She held her arms out. An offer he couldn't refuse. "I've been thinking. About clearing up in the past... ?"

"That reminds me. Something your mother said earlier made me think. How big is Claire's bust?"

Sally spluttered. "Claire doesn't have a bust. Hers is a chest! This is what you call a bust." She leaned back in his arms, her lips about two feet out of range. She saw his expression. "What did she say?"

"She was talking about her two vast-bosomed daughters. When I kind of asked her what she meant, she described Claire's figure. She said something about her being petite, so her bust looks even bigger than yours."

"Bigger than mine?"

"And another thing. She was talking about Claire's baby, as if she's pregnant, you know, the way she said it, as if Claire's been pregnant long enough for us all to be used to the idea?"

Sally was impressed. "Wow! We really screwed up!"

"We did? How?"

"I dunno. I could probably work it out. But it must mean that when you went back this time and didn't make Ethel pregnant, you did the wrong thing. And now you've done it - or not done it, as the case may be - everything's changed."

"It can't have changed. We already know what Claire looks like..."

"We do, because we've been involved in one particular version of her history. To everybody else, it seems, Claire's a big girl, and always has been. Petite, so even if her bust is smaller than mine, it looks bigger. We're the only ones who ever knew her as a skinny beanpole."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Is it? Look at Mum, and me. And all the women in our family since way back. Isn't it perfectly logical for Claire to be just like the rest of us? You lucky bugger. That's three of us you've got now, and we've all got huge tits! That's what you like, isn't it?"

Russ shifted uncomfortably. "I suppose so. And Claire could be pregnant, too?"

"Why not?" Sally suddenly laughed her rudest snorting laugh. "Maybe we all are! I wouldn't mind at all! Lisa says I'd look..."

"What are you two lovebirds plotting?" Delia had crept downstairs without them noticing. "Come on, it's all ready to dish up." She stared closely at Sally's tummy. "Not you as well, Sal?"

"Me?"

"I should hope not, either. No babies for you, young lady, not until you finish school." Sally rolled her eyes at Russ as her mother glided ahead of them into the kitchen. Even when she wasn't deliberately swinging those big hips, they still swayed. Sally pointed at her mother's backside and rolled her eyes.

Delia stopped and turned round with a grin. She raised an eyebrow. "Two pregnant women in the family is quite enough, thank you!"

Russ followed the familiar road to Staunchbury. This time, it felt different. He wasn't on his way back to the late 1920s, with a dog-eared business card in his overcoat pocket. The magical card was gone, torn to shreds and tossed into the garden bonfire. He wouldn't have felt safe any more, venturing back seventy years, not knowing what he might find. Especially without Sally's reassuring presence. Sally had gone to school, although not without protest. 'I want to meet Claire, ' she had complained. Her mother had told her not to be such a great big daft baby.

Delia had stayed at home in bed. The return of her eldest daughter meant little enough, although they no doubt had loads of things to tell each other. It did put a stop to her sex-life for a while, at least until she could arrange one of her marvellously-crafted excuses for an hour's nookie.

There were half a dozen taxis waiting in the station yard, with the London train almost due. Russ parked in one of the spaces allocated to those waiting to pick up passengers. The sleet lashed against the car windows. Claire would be complaining bitterly about the weather. She didn't like the cold.

Or would she? He was sitting there behind the wheel, waiting for a stranger. If Claire could have changed from the young woman he knew so intimately to a petitely buxom woman who was carrying his child, what other changes could he expect? He might not even like her. Was he going to have to learn all the ways of this new lover? She, presumably, already knew all of his.

The train came in silently without fuss. None of the puffing, door-slamming self-importance of a 1920s London express. Glimpsed beyond the station buildings as it weaved its tedious way through the approach to Staunchbury: Central - Staunchbury Parkway was two miles back - it sighed to a halt and opened its doors to spill its customers on to the bone-chilling Platform One.

At the station entrance, the first travellers had already emerged, cramming themselves greedily into the available taxis. Unnoticed, half a dozen more black cabs had appeared to take their places in the waiting line, but there would never be enough for everyone. Several people bent their heads and set off up the slope into the town centre, heading for the car parks and the bus station. Claire wasn't one of them. She appeared last of all, peering out into the station yard, a diminutive figure wrapped in a puffa jacket, a bulky holdall in one hand, disapproving of the sleet, looking round. She saw the familiar car and set off with a purpose, skirting the puddles, straight to the passenger side door, opening it...

"Hello, you!" She wriggled in, dumped her bag on her lap and slammed the door shut after her. "Oops, sorry! I forgot." She opened the door again so she could close it once more, quietly this time. "Wow, it's a bit warmer in here, though. Sodding train. The heating was working, but only just. I complained, but they said it was a technical fault. Can you get your money back for that? I'd have thought you could fill in a form and claim." Same old Claire, he thought, without realising. She leaned across. "Thanks for coming to the station. Did you have long to wait?" Her little hand squeezed his arm as she planted a moist kiss on his cheek.

"Only five minutes." He started the engine and released the handbrake as she turned and placed her bag on the back seat, then turned her attention to her seat belt. His eyes widened.

"You can wind your eyeballs back in, too, Russell," she chided him gently with a giggle. "I know what you're thinking." She arranged the belt across her suddenly bulky chest. "You're right, too. I've only been away a couple of weeks and I've gone through half a dozen bras. Literally gone through them. You wait 'til we get home and see this little lot straining to get out. At least, I found this perfectly wonderful little bra shop. The one I told you about? Did you tell Sally about it? I told Mum..."

They swished up the steep slope and turned on to the inner ring road, Claire prattling away nineteen to the dozen about Parsifal, Renfrew, Garbutt, Mountfitchett and Pryce, and Si and Rumbold and Cindy, the twins and Bogdanov. At least, he now knew that Bogdanov was a dog. Maybe all the others were dogs as well...

" ... and the most amazing news! I nearly died when Cindy told me. Bogdanov's getting married in April! I said to him, you've got to be joking, but he just gave me that enigmatic..."

So much for that idea! Young Sally up to her pranks again. She was asking for a good spanking, that one. She'd probably enjoy it, too.

"How's Sally?"

"What? Oh, fine."

"Good. Mum said you'd been away with her for a dirty weekend. Is she as good as me? I suppose she's quite fit, despite those footballs of hers. Although if we got the tape measure out, it might be a different story now." Claire patted her chest. It wobbled disturbingly on each side of the seat belt. "I can't wait to get you home. Can't you stop somewhere and we can climb into the back seat? M-mmm!" She leaned her head on his shoulder, placing a hot little hand on his thigh. Straight away, it began walking as if it had a will of its own. "No, on second thoughts. We'll go to bed as soon as we get back. Put your foot down, driver!"