Always Turns Up

Author's note.

This story is a follow up to my series "Bad Penny" which was written in 2010 to 2013. That story was semi autobiographical, with names and events changed to protect the innocent. I also wrote a couple of other series at the time, "Life sentence" and "If I knew then..." All of which feature 'Penny', but are entirely fantasy. All those stories are full of explicit sex scenes. This one isn't.

This is the start of a new series. Background, scene setting, and about to kick off into the same sort of mad fantasy and mixed biographical reality that the other stories contained. So, to anyone looking for mad eroticism - try reading those other stories first. If you like them, come back and read this - it will make more sense, and might just intrigue you enough to want to read the next instalment... Which I promise will be considerably more explicit. - MVP

... Always turns up... Chapter 1.

Afternoon Tea at the Ritz in London is not inexpensive. It is, however, worth it.

The mirrored and gilded walls, the statues, the elegant furniture, the silently moving, formal but friendly staff, and the well dressed and lightly chattering clientele add to the decadence of the petite fours and the trimmed cucumber sandwiches. For someone of my provincial background, and fondness for P G Wodehouse, it was a memorable glimpse into a lifestyle I knew I would never really be able to join.

More memorable still because of the company I was expecting.

I had taken up position carefully, making sure I had a clear view of the entrance, and other doors into the atrium. I had of course also placed myself a suitably discrete distance away from everyone else in the room, although I could still see the very pretty group of four young women who were obviously gossiping scandalously as they indulged in eclairs and calorie filled delights that their figures told me were not their usual fare. I tried to read the paper, look nonchalant and still my heart, but in truth I probably looked like a meerkat.

Then suddenly she was there. Thirty feet away, walking toward me, smiling.

Penny Harty. Twenty nine years on.

I rose to my feet a good deal less casually than I had intended, and stood like a schoolboy meeting a girl for the first time on a date arranged by their pals.

She beamed, and held out both hands, and I took them as she said "Hello, Sean. It is good to see you."

She stepped forward and kissed me on the cheek, and stepped back, still holding my hands to look me up and down. I smiled, and did the same.

All I could say was "Penny."

"Well," she said, with a slightly wicked glint and a tilt of her head that I remembered fondly, "I won't say you haven't changed a bit, but the changes haven't been bad."

I grinned back and said "You are looking well yourself. I had expected you to be more like your mother, but I see you have avoided that."

She laughed. "Yes. I've battled the genetic inheritance pretty well."

We sat down, and she said "Let's order. I'm dying for a cup of tea."

She gestured and an attentive waiter was at our table instantly. "Afternoon tea for two please," she said. "Unless you would like coffee or chocolate, or something stronger?" she asked, looking at me.

"Tea is fine. Daarjeeling for preference."

"So," she said when the waiter had gone, "how are you?"

"Not bad. Nervous. It has been a long time. I was surprised to hear from you."

She smiled a little sadly. "Well, I have thought of you often, but I didn't feel that I could get in touch. The way things ended before, you know. I felt bad about it. But you obviously had a life without me, and I didn't want to intrude. Old girlfriends are rarely welcomed by new wives."

"True. I felt bad about things too. I thought about contacting you, but I never knew how. You disappeared."

"Really? That is good to know. I have missed you Sean. You were always a good influence on me. You looked after me, and tried to get me to look after myself. I've needed that sometimes. I'm sorry I treated you so badly."

Tea arrived, and I had to pause while it was served. Once the staff had gone I said "You didn't treat me too badly. Hardly badly at all. It was understandable. And I was no saint. I was at fault, even more than you, I think. And you were in a strange place. Which I helped to place you in. I didn't look after you as well as I should have. I am sorry, Penny. Truly. I wish I had known better. We were young and foolish and naive."

She smiled, less sad now. "Oh, Sean. That we were. And now we are older. And I guess wiser. Not naive anyway."

"So why did you get in touch then? I mean, I'm glad you did, but why now?" I asked.

"Well, I just seemed like the right time. And anyway, as they say, 'a Bad Penny always turns up.'"

My breath caught, and she looked up at me as she picked up a dainty side plate. She smiled and said "I wanted to see you because I read your stories." She lifted a tiny sandwich onto her plate, and sat back. "They made interesting bedtime reading," she said.

"My stories?" I said, incredulously.

"'Bad Penny'. And 'If I knew then.' And of course the other one, which has a character called Penny, although it is obviously pure fantasy, the slave girl one. And the rest. I enjoyed them. You always wrote well."

She smiled at me as she selected another salmon stuffed triangle. "Oh, Sean darling, don't look so shocked. I only read them. You are the one who wrote them and put them on the net."

"Well, I. Well, yes. I did. But how did you find them, and how did you know it was me?"

"Search Literotica for 'Belfast'. They turn up. And who else could it have been? There is too much detail about things we did alone for it to be one of the others writing it."

"Ah. Well," I said, "it's a fair cop, I suppose."

"And you are so gallant as well, in how you describe people. You are kind to almost everyone. And not half harsh enough to some." She was hesitant when she said that last phrase.

"Ah. Yes." I said, all eloquence gone. "Well, I suppose I intended to write it as I remember it, with a few changes to protect the innocent and tweaks to spice up the action and the timeline."

"Yes," she said. "I enjoyed the tweaks. There were a couple of things I found myself wishing I had done, with you." There was a hint in those last words that suggested she had done them with someone else, and I found myself both intrigued and slightly aroused at the idea.

"You didn't mind then. My fantasies." I was slightly blushing.

"Well, not really. I have to say I didn't come off looking too good in any of them, but then I didn't do that well in real life, so I can't complain can I? Although I think Jill would be utterly horrified if she knew about your wicked ideas. Or does she know?"

I blushed. The character, Jill, in my stories was obviously based on someone real, who we had both known well. I reflected that for any of my friends reading those stories it would be all too obvious who I meant, and it really would be a massive defamation of her character. Faithfully happily married, a pillar of the Church and all round lovely woman, who I still occasionally met, and was very fond of, and not in the least the sex mad vixen of my fantasy. "Ah, well, I sincerely hope not. At least she has never said, and I think she would..."

Penny laughed. "Yes I am sure she would. And a few of the others might be a little scandalised. You should have done more to hide their identities, my dear."

"Maybe I should take the stories down.. " I mused.

"Oh no. Don't do that. The fantasy ones are obviously fantastic, the other... well the truth isn't that bad, and the made up bits are all your own kinks, not anyone else's. If anyone reads them and recognises themselves.. well why were they reading them? What kinks do they have?"

To be honest, I had not really changed things much in the 'Bad Penny' stories - compressed the timeline a little so more happened faster, and left out the boring stuff about normal life, and yes, put in a few things that I had not actually done or witnessed, but seemed to fit with the flow. In the wild time we had together almost anything would have been possible, so it did not seem wrong to add a couple of extra encounters. The other tales were of course more revealing about my hopeless dreams and perverse imaginings. One tale was of life reimagined, in which Penny was my trois for a ménage, in the other she was sex slave, saved by an alter ego, me as the hero, her as the hapless victim. What embarrassed me was knowing that she had read about my inner thoughts, plots and schemes and twisted morality. And my desire for other women, and my ideas about her mental states and personality. My kinks. I shrugged ruefully.

"Well, I do have to say that I was a little disturbed about what happened to that poor Penny in 'Life Sentence' but then you, 'Mike' in that one is you, isn't he? Yes of course he is. Well, you come along and rescue her. But the second half of the story doesn't have the passion of the first. When she is describing the horrible things that you imagined were done to her there is a real drive and emotional commitment to it. The first time I read it I thought, briefly, that you enjoyed it. Which was disturbing. But then I realised that there is a genuine note of horror. You hated writing it, didn't you? So why did you write it?"

I was thrown by that question for a moment. I was suddenly being interviewed about my most private and secret thoughts by a woman who was the subject of many of the darker ones. It was unnerving. I had to think a moment, and collect my ideas, before I said "You used the word 'drive.' You were right. I was driven. Driven by horror. It was a story I had to write, had to explore. It came from a dream I had. About you. One of those heart wrenching dreams that you wake up from with cold horror that lingers and preys on your mind for days. Writing was a way of getting rid of that horror."

"You had a nightmare about me? I'm not sure that I'm flattered."

"Well, at least you can take comfort in the idea that I was still dreaming of you twenty years on from when we last saw each other. And that in the dream you were not the bad guy. And that although the dream was of something horrible happening to you, I was at least utterly appalled by it. I didn't want those things to happen to you. I feared that they might."

"Yes," she said, "I suppose that is something. So you dreamed all those awful things had happened to me?"

"No. It was a short dream, no more than a few seconds. Full of detail, but more full of suggestion. You know how in dreams you sometimes think you know the whole backstory about a person? You see them and you know everything about them? Except you don't really. When you think about the details you realise you don't have them, that you have to fill them in and imagine them afresh. But some things you do know. So it actually would take longer to tell than it did to dream it. The short version is that you were a sex slave to a foul old man who I met. He was sitting on the porch of an old run down house beside a dirt lane, which I knew was in Jamaica, although I have never been there. There was a girl working at a vegetable patch, on her hands and knees, dressed in a dirty, old, short summer dress. I looked at her, but couldn't see her face, and he called to me as I walked past and he asked if I was looking for him. I said no. Then he said I must be looking for the girl then. I said no I was just out for a walk, and he cackled and said no-one just goes for a walk along that lane. The only people who walk that way are men looking for a good time with his girl. And he called you over, and I realised it was you, though you looked terrible, filthy and bedraggled and battered, and clothed in rags. He told you to drop your dress, and you did. You had nothing on beneath it but dirt. And scars and bruises. Then he told you bend over and show me, well, what there was to see. And you did it. And it was shocking, and I woke up almost screaming. Part of the horror came from the idea of you having to serve the old man, and the physical injuries you displayed, and the things that must have been done to you to make your body look like that. But most horrifying of all was the vapid, blank passivity. You didn't recognise me, and you were just listless and compliant. Like you had been brain damaged or just abused beyond hope. It was gut wrenching. The image and the despair kept hitting me for weeks. I couldn't help but wonder how someone like you could be made into someone like that. So I wrote the story to explore how a beautiful, bright, lovely young girl could end up as a catatonic zombie."

Penny looked serious, thoughtful, and sympathetic. There was a moment of silence before she said. "That explains it. The note of horror. But why did you go on with it? I got the feeling that you weren't committed to it at the end."

"I had to. Having written it I decided to put it on Lit, because I arrogantly thought that it would be a good idea to show people the horror I felt, that there is a great deal of brutal and misogynist stuff on there, and I wanted to put up something that had realism in it. Even though it is a fantasy. I was sickened by all those 'non consent' stories where the girl likes being raped, or the guy doesn't care if he hurts the girl. So having published it, and put them in that position I felt I couldn't leave them there. I had to rescue them. So I kept writing. And then, it all seemed safe enough, and it was turning into a domestic drama. I thought I could leave them be."

"You know that there are some guys who will read it and not be horrified? They'll get a kick out of it?" she said. "They'd be disappointed that 'Mike' whimps out and doesn't keep beating and murdering girls, but the first couple of chapters would be just what they would get off on." Penny had an intense air about her. She shared my disgust.

I shrugged. "Yes. But they are already beyond help, I suspect. I hoped that the casual thrill seekers that were getting kicks out of the unrealistic fantasy stuff might get the horror of the reality. Like a kid who thinks shooting people is fun because they watch the A-Team - show them Reservoir Dogs, or Saving Private Ryan. That would shock them. But the sickos, you can't help. They laugh." I shook my head sadly.

Penny gave a rueful smile and said "Yes, they do. And there are more of them than you would like to think." Then she gave a bright smile, trying to lift the mood, and said "So then you wrote 'Bad Penny.' Why? Another dream?"

I smiled back, and said "What is this? Quiz the Author day?" I said it lightly, but I was looking at her face, studying the tension and sadness there, wondering about what she meant by her previous remark. There was a story there. She had obviously encountered some brute, or brutes, in the last two decades.

She smiled in a warmer fashion. "No, but I am interested. There were some things I wanted to ask you, and we can talk about other stuff later. So why did you drag up all those old memories and write about 'Bad Penny'?"

"Well, it was therapy." I shrugged. "I found that I felt I had to write it. I felt bad about what happened between us, how it went, how it ended. Writing 'Life Sentence' purged the horror of the dream, but I didn't know what had happened to you. I didn't even know if you were still alive. I realised that I felt guilty about things, and I wanted to purge that. And, of course, I had begun to realise how much fun writing about sex can be. And we did have some great times together. And I enjoyed writing about them. But going through that, reconstruction it, that was also hard. Cathartic, but, sad. So that lead to the fantasy versions in 'If I Knew Then..' I wanted a happy ending. It became an exploration of my psychology. Therapy."

She laughed, that little light chuckle that used to melt my heart. It still made me smile.

"Yes. 'If I Knew Then...'. I have enjoyed that. I'm not sure that I have always approved of your portrait of 'Penny' in that one. Although I suspect it is not unlike me. Speaking of your psychology, I have noticed a fascination with deflowering teenage girls. I think you have described it about ten times, doing it yourself about six or seven of those. Three of them have been me." Penny's smile was warm and amused.

"Yeah," I said, blushing and shrugging. "I suppose I have. I. I..." I paused, collected my thoughts. "I suppose I have never got over the way I felt with you. I was so honoured that you wanted me to be your first. I was so ashamed that you weren't mine. I wished I hadn't slept with Tara."

Penny was surprised. Touched, I think. She said lightly "I'm sure Tara would be upset to hear that."

I knew she was covering up her shock, but I couldn't let that pass without comment. "No, she wouldn't. Tara would understand. Did understand. We talked about it after, after you had gone. I felt guilty about a lot of things. She was really quite sane about it. She understood. She wished Mike had been her first."

Penny nodded, and said quietly "Yes. Yes I can see that. I was upset when I found out that you slept with her first. But that's not why I left, you know."

"No, I knew that. But I often felt that if I hadn't given in to the temptation of Tara that first time then we would never have ended up with her and Mike, and all the rest that followed. We wouldn't have swung, you wouldn't have met Tilly, life would have been different." I shrugged. Shrugs can say a great deal.

She gave me a sad smile, and said "Yes," but then she went on in a more positive tone "but if I hadn't left you would not have met Ruth and fallen in love, and married her. You wouldn't be who you are now. You wouldn't have done the things you have done. And I wouldn't be me. It's kind of crazy to regret those things, feel guilty about stuff from so long ago."

"Yeah, I suppose so. Middle aged men are notorious for writing letters to old girlfriends you know. Apologising for youthful misdeeds. We carry guilt for years." I looked up at her and caught her gaze and said softly, "I would have written to you if I had known where to send a letter."

She glanced down and up again, and said "You don't need to apologise. Or feel guilty. I made my own choices. And it all turned out okay."

"Did it?" I asked. "You haven't told me anything about yourself."

"In a minute. You can ask me anything, and I promise I shall answer. But first, I have to ask you: what does Ruth think about your stories?"

There was a silence, for just a little too long. I was about to say something when she said "Okay. So she doesn't know."

"No.."

Penny sighed. "Oh Sean. You know I am willing to bet you have never been with another women since you met her. Never been unfaithful? Am I right?"

"Yes."

She gave the tiniest smile, and a rueful laugh. "Learned your lesson. Eh? Well we all learned lessons I suppose. Let me guess, you never showed her your writing because those stories are ... the sort of thing Jimmy Carter would call 'adultery in the heart'?" said Penny. "Yes I can see that. She would be hurt. Jealous. Think you were regretting leaving your old life, that you wanted sex with young women again. Or with Jill, and Tara. And me. And about a dozen others. Which of course you do."

"Oh no, hold on there!" I said

She smiled at me a most gently understanding smile. "Don't be silly, Sean. Of course you want to have sex with beautiful young women. You are male. You are Sean Carver. You haven't changed that much. But because you are Sean Carver you would cut your arm off before betraying her. Still, it is one thing to know that your husband fancies the teenage girl next door, it is quite another to find out he has thought out in detail what he would like to do, and actually written and published stories about her. I liked that one, but really it was rather naughty. Is there a teenage girl next door? Is it a case of smoke and fire, eh? Ruth might not be happy about that, I guess, and there is no point in making her unhappy is there?"