What My Daughter Did
We were a fairly typical family. What you would call normal. At least I thought so. We were England's suburbia, it's Middle England, manifested. Tony Blair's Mondeo man, or whatever the modern term would be for us. As ordinary as you can get.
"What's for tea?" Jade asked as she opened the fridge to steal a carrot.
"Nothing if you eat it all before it makes the oven."
"It's just a carrot.
I'm going out later, mum."
"Then I'd better get on with it. What time?"
She leaned on the worktop and crunched the carrot. All legs in nothing but a long tee shirt. I'd been like that once.
"About eight. Be back late. Or not at all."
"Helpful."
She pushed off as if launching herself into space and headed for the stairs.
"You know how it is at my age. Party, party, party."
Is that what she was doing? Jade was a regular young lady. She didn't do anything special. Not that I knew of. She was mostly a stop at home. A few friends she saw but no boyfriend or anyone special.
Saturday night, however, once a month she disappeared out. She didn't say where and she didn't dress up, so not clubbing. She did do her makeup, so I always had the impression it was something special, something she wasn't sharing. I didn't ask. She was a young woman and was entitled to her secrets. But it intrigued me where she went until the early hours. I just hoped it wasn't a married man.
We had dinner and Jade darted out the door in nothing more than jeans and a baggy pullover. Did she have a bra on? Yes, I was getting suspicious. Perhaps I should just ask her.
Ben helped me load the dishwasher and I settled down to read a book while he watched TV. Yep. Normal family life. We'd sit around hardly talking until bedtime. Years and years of marriage had left us with little to say and an ability to read each other's minds sufficiently that even less needed to be said.
Regular as clockwork, we readied for bed and went up about ten thirty.
Ben wanted sex. At forty-six I rarely got it any more but I wasn't so old that I didn't crave it. I wanted his cock. I wanted that feeling of scratching an itch that nagged away at me from deep in my groin. It waxed and waned through the passing days, always waiting for an opportunity.
I knew as soon as the light was out that he was horny. It was the way he lay. The little fidget. Then it was fingers tickling my arm. I snuggled closer as a signal of my acceptance, inviting him how a female bird might dip its head or fluff its feathers to indicate willingness.
Ben mumbled halfhearted I love you's as he kissed my shoulder and neck. That hand moved to my stomach and drifted around in circles. There wasn't any real hunger or even a sense of having to work for it. Just an expectation that sex would follow the prerequisite actions.
"Mmm. That's nice."
It was. It just wasn't amazing or exciting. It was merely a well-practised routine we'd fallen into.
Without my even being fully aware of the almost immaterial attempt at foreplay, Ben was easing between my thighs. I lifted my knees and opened my legs for him for what seemed the ten thousandth time in our marriage.
"Put it in."
I did feel good as his hard meat eased into my tunnel, stretching muscles and teasing nectar from eager glands. It wasn't exciting though. It was just fucking. An action born of instinct and familiarity to satisfy a frustration on both our parts. I did love him. And I didn't doubt he loved me. But years of the same thing had dulled the licentious lust of youth.
We went through the motions in what had become a routine of muscle memory. Ben fucked me and I groaned my pleasure.
"Uh. Uh. Uh."
I missed the urgency of youth. The smouldering heat of almost illicit sex that had fired our passions in the early days. There wasn't any unexpected touch or the desire to have the other in some new exciting position. We lacked the overwhelming desire to be so connected in body and soul that our fucking became exhausting. It was nothing more than what was necessary.
I envied Jade. She was young. An attractive girl who turned heads. While I didn't want to think of my daughter being defiled, and I didn't know who it had been, I did know she wasn't a virgin.
I lay there in the dark after, thinking about how mundane sex had become. Where had the fire and excitement of our youth gone? I did still remember that desire which fanned the flames of passion at Jade's age. I just didn't see or feel any of it. What had happened to talking and saying dirty things as we did it?
I remembered when once had not been enough for us. Of how we'd fuck in one position and stop before either of us came to swap to another position and start again.
At one time he would take me front, back and with me on top. Now it was mostly missionary, or sometimes with me laid on my stomach without even the enthusiasm to get on all fours.
Where we fucked for hours, now it was minutes. A few pumps to bring about a mediocre orgasm as quickly as possible followed by sleep. Was that all there was to sex now?
We fitted the image of the perfect family outwardly. Behind closed doors, things were less idyllic. Nothing outrageous, just boring. Ben worked as a senior manager in an engineering firm and brought home a decent enough wage. I was a stay-at-home mum. At least that was how it'd started. Our daughter, Jade, was twenty-one. I'd just carried on staying at home when she'd outgrown a need for her mother.
Jade was normal as well. She had a job in the bank. Only as a cashier, but with a promise for better things. She stayed out of trouble and helped me around the home. She was just as boring. The only mystery about her was her indifference to boys.
I saw her looking when they were on TV. I'd even seen her internet history. She had a healthy interest in sex and wasn't into girls behind a little natural curiosity. But for some reason that didn't translate into boyfriends. Ben saw it as good news. No trouble, he said. I generally went along with that, except sometimes I wondered why such a pretty girl who turned heads just didn't seem as interested as we had been at twenty-one.
What I didn't know that night was that I was about to find out the truth about my daughter's sex life. And it was far more outrageous than anything I'd ever done.
I met Janet for an early evening drink in town after she finished work. She was an old school friend. The only one I'd stayed in touch with.
"I got news."
She was excited as she brought our drinks and shuffled onto the seat next to me.
"I had my first date since the divorce."
"Janet. You kept that secret. Who is it?"
"Some bloke called Leo I found on Tinder."
"What?"
I'd expected someone from her work or even an old flame she'd conjured up on Facebook.
"Tinders for kids isn't it?"
I lifted my drink to my lips
"You'd be surprised. Lots of older people on there. He wasn't one of them though."
I stopped before I took a sip.
"What do you mean he wasn't one of them?"
Janet smirked.
"Thirty. Ish."
