Chapter 1

I know I was lucky to have the teenage years that I had, and there any many men and women who would have happily traded their experiences of growing up with mine. I have met several of them over the years, but my life in Aylesbury was as complicated, exasperating and confusing as much as it was exhilarating and enthralling.

My parents split up when I was seven. My father was a property developer and I hardly remembered him when we left. I am fortunate that I did not witness endless rows and fights between them, but then I am not sure my father was at home often enough for them to occur. He was too preoccupied with his business to be home much and eventually it got too much for Mum who gave him an ultimatum that he did not take seriously.

My mother, two sisters and myself left Staffordshire for a small town thirty miles outside London shortly after the divorce. My mother had purchased a nightclub with a flat on top and it was a shock moving from a leafy six-bedroom house with five acres of land to one that possessed a fire escape and only a window box. I sulked for days after we moved, in the way only a seven-year-old can, but my younger sister, Rhea, soon beat it out of me.

That is not to say that Julie, my elder sibling, appreciated my gloominess but I have always got on better with Rhea than Julie. Rhea is only eighteen months younger than me and was as much of a tomboy as any girl I ever knew. She could climb trees and play football better than most of the boys in her year and along with her staunchly independent personality, confident demeanour and ultra-determined nature earned her a certain, unenviable reputation amongst her teachers and peers of being "trouble." This did not seem to bother her at all, and instead started to play along with the characterisation given to her and her inability to stay "out of trouble" was to be a hallmark of her entire life.

As I grew up Rhea and I realised that the club was actually a lap dancing club. The female half of the species was becoming interesting rather than irritating and I acquired an interest into the innards of my mothers' business. She was resolute that a twelve year old should not understand the workings of such establishments and with the flat being almost completely self-contained I barely got the chance to sneak a peek inside the venue. However, many of the visitors to the flat were sexy, confident women and both Rhea and I got used to being around them.

I didn't know any different but conversing with the opposite sex, especially young, beautiful women, was never a problem; even though in later years this sometimes occurred with an unwanted erection hiding in my shorts.

Moving away from my friends was hard and I did not make many new ones at my new primary school. Friendship groups at the school were well formed by the time I rolled along in 1989 and I found it hard to make any close friends to replace Euan and Oliver that I had left behind.

It was when I was ten that I met Ray, a calm and quiet boy who was the exact opposite of me. We attended the same Scout group and moved up from Cubs at the same time. His father was a photographer and understandably, he had adopted the art of the camera as one of his personal interests. I was given my fathers' camera when we moved – a Nikon F-501 – that my mother probably would not have trusted a primary school child with if she knew its true value, but then given it was her ex-husbands, maybe she did and just did not care. I was instructed to take good care of it, which I did, and in the Summer Ray and I would regularly go on bike rides around the Chiltern Hills with our cameras.

Being at different schools, the only time Ray and I would regularly meet would be Monday evenings at Scouts. By the time we were twelve, Ray and I would often stay at each others' houses on Fridays – the host alternating between us most weeks. My younger sister, teased Ray mercilessly about everything but he was fairly short, shy and a bit podgy with freckles covering his nose and Rhea sensed a weakness in his reticent and self-conscious personality that her extroverted, confident nature loved to exploit.

Ray lived in a five bedroom house in a small, leafy village not far from Aylesbury and his father had set up a dark room in the spare bedroom. Ray and I were allowed to use it to develop our films and I tried it with his help a couple of times, but the prints I produced were poor and Ray was far better at it than I was.

It was the Summer of 1994 and I was twelve. Ray had been dropped off by his Dad at around six and my elder sister, Julie, had bought three pizzas from the local pizza restaurant. We had hired Home Alone 2 and Wayne's World from the Blockbuster in the town, and were going to enjoy a good night in. Julie had also, unbeknownst to our mother, invited her boyfriend round to enjoy the pizza (and he probably had plans to enjoy other things as well).

Kevin McCallister had barely touched down in New York City when the proverbial hit the fan. The boiler for the showers in the dressing rooms at club had exploded and our mother appeared from nowhere with a troupe of women via the (normally locked) interconnecting door to the club who needed to get changed in our flat.

To say she was unimpressed with Julie sneakily inviting her boyfriend to the flat would be an understatement and it is one of the few times I have ever seen her lose her temper. When the shouting started, Ray and I slipped unseen upstairs and out of sight, neither of us wishing to get caught in the crossfire between Julie and Mum. It took twenty minutes for the row to end, by which time both Rhea and Julie were in their bedrooms, my mother was downstairs and Ray and I were playing Sensible Soccer on my Atari ST in my bedroom.

I heard her, before I saw her, coming up the stairs. I turned around to see the flash of red in the crack of the door before disappearing out of view. I leaned back in my chair and was treated a glimpse of a scantily clad dancer going into the bathroom.

Ray clearly hadn't noticed as he proudly shouted, "What a goal, right round the 'keeper." I jerked my attention back to the computer game for a moment.

"Did you see that?" I asked him, ignoring the action replay. "The girl."

"What girl?" he replied, a look of confusion on his face. "Did you see that goal?"

I paused the game and pulled open my door from ajar to open and peered round it. It took a few seconds but then she emerged from the bathroom.

What must have been two seconds felt like a lifetime, my introduction to the infinite wonders of the female form that have stayed with me forever.

She elegantly stepped into the corridor oblivious to the two twelve year old boys anxiously watching from the doorway down the hall. She was straightening her skirt as I looked her up and down.

She gained four inches from her heels alone, the delicate glossy black shoes tightening her calves. Her black fishnet stockings criss-crossed over her toned, tanned legs stopping at her jet black garter a few inches from her crotch and the end of a bright scarlet Hawaiian hula skirt that cannot have been more than five inches long. Her black lingerie was clearly visible underneath, but hidden enough to suggest and not reveal its' delights.

Her bare midriff was punctuated with a glistening pierced belly button and then her lacy black bra that hid little and accentuated her cleavage wonderfully. Long, wavy red hair cascaded behind her shoulder that contrasted with her pale skin and black lingerie.

"Wow!" I heard Ray cry out softly behind me as the dancer walked back down the corridor. Her curvy hips swayed from side to side, her hair and skirt swinging back and forth with the motion. Her long, powerful, elegant strides towards us etched forever in my memory.

She smiled as she passed my door, the fear of being caught watching long since evaporated.

"Hiya boys," she said smiling as she passed, her Scottish voice alluring and welcoming.

I scrambled to the door, as best I could with my rapidly acquired hard-on, to watch the dancer disappear down the stairs.

"I gotta go to the bathroom for a moment," Ray uttered but I dragged him in the opposite direction.

"Let's go downstairs," I demanded and bounced down the hall, half dragging my friend with me to the top of the landing.

There was close to fifteen dancers in our front room, getting changed or unchanged. We sat on the top step of the stairs motionless for a few seconds surveying the sight beyond us.

A couple of the dancers were nude nearest the end of the room and we could clearly see their pubic hair, or lack of it. A few were dressed in lingerie or outfits. Black girls, mixed-race, white and one oriental girl. Some tall, some short. Mostly thin except one of the naked girls who was buxom with a full figure.

"Just like I always imagined," I told Ray in a whisper.

"It's better," he replied in a low voice and turned the light off at the top of the stairs so we would not be seen by anyone looking up.

We ogled and watched the dancers change for fifteen minutes, spellbound in awe. The red-haired dancer sat down on the couch and I could barely see her, but I began to understand the variance and wonder in the female form more in that quarter-of-an-hour than any biology lesson ever could.

We were lucky in that the downstairs lavatory, at the time, also contained a small shower and it was these facilities that were being used more than the one upstairs. A couple of times we were ready to run back to my bedroom when a naked, or nearly-naked dancer walked towards our viewing platform.

We saw my mother, fully dressed emerge from the club via the interconnecting door and look our way, so we scrambled back up to my bedroom and out of sight; she had been to check on us just before we saw the dancer and didn't want her to make another appearance.

We kept sneaking out for a peek of the changing dancers that night until we were seen and my mother came to have words. I know she didn't believe our excuse of wanting to get a drink but she couldn't disbelieve us and, so consequently, we escaped any punishment or tongue-lashing for our ogling of her employees, although she didn't seem too cross or surprised. I didn't quite understand her leniency at the time but I wasn't going to complain.

The dancer fulfilled all of my fantasies for months afterwards. By no means was she the most attractive girl we saw that night, but she was the most sexy. For me, she defined female perfection in a way I could not explain. Maybe it was the fantastic body, or sexy clothes, or her smile that caused to have so much of an effect on me. I did not know for certain, but for the first time in my life I began to masturbate regularly, and as a result of that beautiful red-haired girl, my organ took plenty of abuse on an almost daily basis.

I found myself almost always horny when I woke up and often when I went to bed, and naturally navigated my thoughts and memories to that blissful Friday night. When my classmates had managed to find or procure a dirty magazine I found the pictures phony and false instead of alluring and erotic.

Unlike me, Mum and my sisters had never been shy about their bodies and it was not uncommon for any of them to walk naked in the house when getting changed or coming out of the shower. Surprisingly (at least when I told Ray), I did not find this arousing in the slightest; the thought of seeing Julie or my Mum in a sexual sense had always been a scary proposition for me although Rhea and I were not averse to hearing Mum having sex with her boyfriends at night or in the morning.

I found this embarrassing, I never quite knew how to look at Mum afterwards, especially if she was scantily dressed or naked shortly afterwards and Rhea took great delight in teasing my awkwardness outside the earshot of Mum and Julie.

Ray and I talked very little directly about what we witnessed but our memories were there whenever we talked about girls and I desperately wanted a repeat performance. Alas, the shower rooms in the club never did break down again and our lounge was never again converted into an emergency dressing room. At least, not while I was present.

Unfortunately, after that night my mother was no longer keen for my elder sister to look after myself and Rhea, and she started using babysitters again. I resented this greatly but could not really object when a dancer, unfortunately appropriately attired for childcare, would watch us. I longed and hoped for the red-haired dancer would one day come around but she never did. Although, they all wore sensible clothing that left plenty to the imagination, there can surely be few teenagers who grew up being looked after by strippers!

Of course knowing that they were exotic dancers added to their appeal and I fantasised repeatedly. I got used to talking to them before I went to bed, and even got some of them to help with my homework. I was always impressed by how much they actually knew and told Ray that when I was older I would marry a dancer. They were sexy, smart and very pleasant; what more could anyone want?

I was thirteen when my mother started dating Julian, a lawyer in his late twenties from London. It started occasionally at first, but then became more regular when he would turn up after dinner. In hindsight, I probably should have given him more of a chance to fit in to the family and I now realise how hard it can be for adults to relate to teenagers but I disliked him almost immediately and resented him having any control over me.

Ray's elder sister, Jenny, thought it was a protectiveness of my mother coming through but, even now, don't think it was. I liked Mark, her boyfriend before Julian. He never treated me as a child, even though I was only eleven at the time and never tried to be my friend, or my parent. He was just Mark. He came round, cooked curry, beat me at cards, let me drink some of his beer and even ride in his Ford Cosworth Convertible. But it was probably the reason why I liked him, was the reason why my mother ultimately didn't. He was just too easy-going. Julian was the opposite; he was a patronising control freak. He tried to stop me doing anything I wanted to do and the natural rebel in me rose up against it.

My uneasy truce with Julian, if it ever really existed, was broken one evening when I was fourteen. It was a Friday at the end of July and there was a special event on in the club. Consequently, Julian was in the flat, although my mother had long since given up the premise that he was there to babysit and in truth he was simply there to watch the television and screw my mother after she finished work for the night.

I can't remember the exact reason for the disagreement but it started when I got myself a bottle of beer from the fridge. Julie was staying the night at her friends (or more accurately, her boyfriend's) and Rhea was on Guide Camp, as was Paula, my girlfriend from next door, and so I was the only person in the flat. I had spent the entire day with Ray and his neighbour in Missenden with our cameras, just to be out of the flat and away from him.

"I am the adult," he shouted at me, "and you will do as you are told!" He reached forward to grab my wrist to underline his point but I knocked it away and stormed towards the door, grabbing my camera bag as I went. I replied to his demands that I "will come here" with a suitable expletive and a slam of the front door and set out for the train station to get to Stoke Mandeville – Ray's home village, just to calm down if nothing else.

I felt the uncontrollable rage, the tightness across my shoulders and anger welling up inside of me and I knew if I didn't get away from him I would say or do something I would regret. From past experience, I knew that while I did not often lose my temper, when I did it my hotheaded actions often made things ten times worse with caustic and malicious comments and occasionally destructive and violent behaviour.

I had a few character flaws – an ability to lose my temper spectacularly was one but then I shared this with my younger sister, and to a certain extent, my mother. I also had a shyness around the opposite sex when it came to romance. I could happily chat, laugh, play and even initiate conversation with girls, but I always had a block when it came to asking them out. I missed out on a few dates because of it as I could not pluck up the courage, or was too scared of the rejection.

I had fantasised about murdering him with a kitchen knife, an act that had been fuelled by my reading material at the time, a large number of autobiographies and stories about real-life murderers and while I doubted that I would seriously go through with it and do it, it did no harm to remove myself from Julian and the knives while I was in such a dark, angry mood.

Ray and I had a good chat in his garden. His house had glorious views of the sunset over the hills and I never tired of watching it, but that day's setting sun was aglow with incredible, vivid colours. I finished the film and slid it into a pouch in my camera bag. Ray's dad offered to give me a lift home, but I declined it mostly because I didn't want to get home too quickly and meet Julian again but also did not want to be an inconvenience to Ray's parents.

My train arrived at Aylesbury a little after eleven and I idly wandered the streets of the town. The streets were fairly busy with pubs closing and the clubs starting to get going so I was hardly alone as I picked an indirect route from the station to the Club. Not particularly wanting to start another row with Julian, I elected to come in via the back way and climb the steel fire escape. This lead past the kitchen and to the top of the stairs outside my bedroom, where I could come in via the spare key and I could then go into my bedroom without having to walk past him sat on the couch.

There was little light in Exchange Close – the yard at the back of the club - and the moon was not visible over the buildings but I had been in and out of it several times over the years and knew where the pavement was. The rickety old fire escape creaked as I climbed it, but was soon level with the kitchen window and crept up to the locked door at the top. It took me a few attempts to slide the correct key into the Yale lock but it soon swung open and I quietly entered the landing. The door swung back effortlessly and I cushioned it against the palm of my hand to stop it from making a noise as it closed.

Then as I held my breath, I heard it. Squeals and mewing from downstairs over the distinctive tones of Oasis. I tentatively stepped a few steps down and peered underneath the ceiling. I was not prepared for what I saw.

Julian, naked from the waist down was leaning over a naked girl with long blonde hair, that was obviously not my mother. I watched as he buried his face between her legs, and I instinctively reached for my camera, remembering to load a new film first. I was concerned that the lighting might not be great for such photography but I could hardly load a flash, and did the best I could, somehow managing to hold the camera steady and zoom in despite my hand shaking uncontrollably.

By the time I had finished the film, Julian had impaled the girl on his erect member and then squirted his load over her stomach of the girl, who I recognised as a dancer from the club, and I hurriedly left the stairs for the sanctuary of my bedroom.

Ray was kind enough to develop the film the following day. I could hardly send them off to BonusPrint or take them to my local shop and I was not expecting them to come out too clearly anyhow. Ray was good at what he did, and gave me two copies at school on Monday. I asked him to keep one as "insurance" although what I was insuring against I did not know or even want to consider.

Indeed, it took a few days for me to be able to get Julian on his own long enough to show him the photographs. I had rehearsed it my head repeatedly and the exchange between us always ended with Julian reduced to begging and pleading with me, and me issuing an ultimatum. I wondered if I should demand he leave the family but then realised that if I showed my mother the photos he would do that anyway, and in the end decided to demand that he simply leaves me alone.

While I know what I wanted to achieve, I am not sure what I really expected to achieve from the photos but knew I could not do nothing when I had them in my possession. As bravely as I could muster, I threw the two dozen black and white pictures on the table in front of him that following Thursday. He had papers strewn around him and appeared to be preparing for a court case in London the following day.

"What's this?" he asked, dismissively barely tearing his eyes from the page as the photos slid across his legal paperwork. I bit my lip for a moment, trying to pick the right words. In my mind, I had not planned for him to show indifference at the production of the incriminating evidence. Anger and fear yes. Violence even, but not a total lack of interest. He was completely nonplussed by them.

He didn't wait for me to respond and put his paperwork to one side for a moment. His face dropped briefly when he saw the first image and then a smirk flashed across his face.

"You little shit!" he exclaimed his face grinning as he leafed through the first few pictures. I shifted uncomfortably at the table and bit my lip again. I was not prepared for amusement either and half-wanted him to explode into a ball of rage. I knew – or at least I think I knew – what to do.

"I think they came out rather well, especially considering the lighting," I heard myself saying nervously. My heart was pumping furiously and butterflies were fluttering in my stomach. I leant against the back of the chair, for support and my eyes narrowed

"Yeah, very good. I'm sure your mother would be very proud," he sneered in his patronising voice. I felt my insides lurch for a moment, the subject of Mum was something I had tried not to think about. "Sneaking up and filming me, covertly. It's a sick way to get your thrills."

I stared at him, dumbfounded for a moment. "I'm sick?" I asked him incredulously. "You are the one cheating. What would happen if Mum saw these?"

He gathered up the photos in his hand and slid them back across the table at me and then shrugged his shoulders. "Why don't you find out? You go show her those; and why you are there, perhaps you could also explain why you decided to creep up on me and photo me and the lovely Chloe. Listen kid, I'm telling you, you haven't got anything there that can hurt me"

He looked at my shocked, and puzzled expression and picked up his page from the table.

I thought for a moment and glanced down at the photos that were still on his paperwork. I could see him watching me from behind his document and, for the first time that evening, felt slightly unnerved. Surely I had all the trump cards but why did I feel like I had just been outmanoeuvred? I just didn't understand: if proof of his cheating wouldn't break up his relationship then what power did I have over him?

I felt his smugness from the other end of the room and lent over the chair to pick up the pictures that were sprawled across a couple of his letters

"Of course, I expect your employers would love to see these," I thought out loud. "Respected solicitor, big name clients, would love to be represented by someone who screws teenagers." I saw him put his page down and look at me in my peripheral vision. I was staring at the upturned picture and noticed the grass green logo of his employer in the corner. "I mean, do Feltmann and Co like the idea of employing someone who does that? She's a dancer isn't she? I think I have seen her before. Prostitute too, on the side sometimes." Julian glared at me but said nothing. "It's all very, very murky" I told him in a serious voice and rubbed my sweaty hands together. I realised that I had found his weakness, the fearful look in his eyes said everything I had hoped for, and I hummed. "Of course, if I have nothing here that can hurt you, what have you to fear?"

Julian jumped up from the table, his chair flying backwards onto the tiled floor. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. His eyes narrowed as he thought and then started in a low menacing voice, "If you think, if you think you can blackmail me..."

I didn't let him finish and simply shook my head. I felt supremely confident across down at him, and perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt invincible.

"No. I know I can blackmail you, if I want to," I corrected him. "Now you can keep those, I have plenty of copies if I need them. And if you leave me alone, I'll keep them safely locked up."

I strode out of the room, his eyes boring at the back of my skull as I left.

I knew Julian searched my room when I was at school the following day. I had placed a couple of hairs gently over the cupboard doors with tiny pieces of Blu-Tac and these were broken when I returned after school. It was a trick that Rhea had taught me previously (she also showed me how to get around them with ease but that's another story.) The room had been examined carefully and methodically with everything put back, and I did not think Julian would be able to be so devious, but the proof existed that he had.

I tried to rationalise the conversation over the coming days but couldn't make any sense of it. Julian had steered clear of my presence but I wasn't sure if that was shame, embarrassment, fear or a mixture of all three. I liked the idea that he was scared of me but was rather glad of him not being around me to care too much.

I needed to talk it over with Ray. He had an unerring knack of seeing things in a different light and so, the following weekend, travelled to Stoke Mandeville on the train. Being the hot day it was, both of his sisters were sunbathing and Ray was busy watching the football on television with his Dad. Fortunately it only had a few minutes to go to Full Time and was rather relieved when we escaped to the sanctuary of the garden from the oven that was his front room.

We both sat with a cold drink at the end of the garden and I recounted the conversation with Julian. He looked thoughtful and then told me to wait for a moment while he went inside. He emerged with the set of photographs and we leafed through them.

"It's definitely him. No excuse of it being mistaken identity," Ray said as he passed me the last one.

"Well, it's definitely our flat, and he looks nothing like his brother. No it's totally him but he didn't seem fazed at all. It didn't bother him until I mentioned the legal angle."

"It doesn't make sense," Ray concluded and we had been so engrossed in the photos we had not seen Ray's elder sister come up the garden path.

"Something interesting?" she asked causing us both to jump. Our guilty faces said more than words could have done and she looked down at the images in my hand. "Naughty photos!" she exclaimed, loud enough so that we would panic but not so that anyone else could hear. She giggled at our facial expressions and looked down at the now upturned pictures in my hand.

Ray recovered first and told her that they contained Julian and this caused Jenny to smirk even more. "You been finding naughty photos of your mother," she asked suggestively and then stopped. "That is a little bit freaky, you know?"

"No. I took them ... and they aren't my mother but they are of her boyfriend."

"Oh ... Ohhhh," she uttered, the implications of what I had said dawning on her.

"Sit down, and I will tell you." I gestured at the grass and the bikini-clad seventeen year old sat down cross-legged. I desperately needed some perspective on the previous couple of weeks and had known Jenny for as long as I had known Ray. She was very much like Ray but considerably more experienced in the world and would certainly be able to put things into perspective.

I then told her how I had the photos, and what had happened when I confronted Julian. She nodded appreciatively as I recalled my tale and then leafed through the pictures.

"I don't get why your Mum wouldn't be upset with the pictures. It's cheating, right?" I asked and Jenny looked back at one of them, humming in thought.

"Well yes. But maybe no. Maybe your mother and step-dad..." I winced at this but let her continue without correcting her " ... have an open relationship, or are swingers. Maybe your mum is happy with it."

I looked at her as if she was mad but let her words sink in for a moment before speaking. "I don't think so. I have never seen Mum bring anyone back, or Julian for that matter."

Jenny smiled but replied to my denial. "Well I don't think they would publicise it. They would have to be discrete. You weren't supposed to see them that night, right? Does Julian have a house of his own?"

"Flat in Little Chalfont" I said without hesitation.

"And does your Mum ever stay there?" Jenny asked

"Sometimes" I admitted. "But not often. I just can't see it. I don't..."

" ... want to admit your mother has a sex life?" Jenny continued for me. "She is quite sexy, even at her age."

"But..." I started, unsure of where to finish the sentence but Jenny cut across my unfinished sentence.