Ch. 01: The Rescue
Whenever there's a crisis in my family, it feels like I'm always the first one they call. I'm known for being the nice guy, always willing to help. So it was no surprise that when my cousin Sally got thrown out of her house for sleeping with her landlady's husband that I was the one she called. As I made the long journey from my home in London to pick her up from Cardiff, my collection of heavy metal CDs on rotation on the multi-changer in the car to keep me awake, I thought back to when we'd been kids.
Sally and I had always been especially close despite my being slightly older, because our lives couldn't have been more similar. We were both always seen as the black sheep of our families, with my parents always ignoring me in favour of my sisters, hers always preferring her brothers to her. As a result, we learned to stick together. I looked after her in school, becoming part protective older brother, part father figure to her. As we got older, she saw me as the person she could talk to about her problems and ask for advice. In short, we were as much friends as relatives.
We grew up in a small village and became very much 'latchkey kids' by virtue of there being little to do but to hang out around the village and surrounding countryside. We didn't have the luxuries of the big town, no bowling alley or shopping mall. We had a single-screen cinema that rarely changed the picture - I remember they had Titanic showing there for almost a year after it came out - but that was it.
Because our families had very little time for us, we used to spend a lot of time together and never had any inhibitions around each other. During school holidays, it wasn't unusual for us to camp out for weeks on end in our little tent in a field by the lake, only going home to steal food from our houses and collect pocket money to spend on sweets, take-aways and fizzy drinks, as well as batteries for the portable radio that kept us entertained out there. We'd go skinny-dipping in the lake and share a sleeping bag at night. We never did anything sexual, but it did make us unusually comfortable around each other, certainly more comfortable than cousins are 'supposed' to be.
As we got older, nothing really changed. We still spent our summers by the lake unsupervised and if you asked our parents even now they probably wouldn't know we'd ever been there. We both matured physically and emotionally but were just as close as we'd ever been. I protected her throughout high school, whether from the boys in her year (And, in truth, right up to mine) who were trying to sleep with her, from the teachers that hassled her, to the other girls that teased her out of jealousy. And they had every reason to be jealous.
I won't pretend that even in high school I hadn't noticed her developing into a beautiful young woman and took some pleasure in her always looking to me to approve or veto her boyfriends. In truth, she had her pick of all the boys at the school. No doubt some of the teachers would've happily risked their careers to be with her as well. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't even been a little jealous. I was never considered bad looking, certainly the right side of average, but I was always a little more socially awkward and I think that made it difficult for me to attract girls. I dated a few, but didn't really find my way out of my shell until I got to university.
My time there was the longest we'd ever spent apart. We hung out when I came home, and she visited when she could, but things weren't the same. Every time I came home she was with a different guy, and I think that without me there to approve them for her she found herself dating a lot of arseholes, who were all keen, in turn, to take advantage of my not being there. It was one of these boyfriends that was the reason she came to end up leaving home. Her refusal to sleep with him, because she wasn't ready, lead to him raping her and her falling pregnant. Her parents were unsympathetic and kicked her out, and the police refused to help her. Eventually she lost the baby, but the stigma of being the pregnant girl never left her behind. As soon as she finished school, she moved as far away as possible. She moved to Cardiff where she started working in a call centre and moved in with a young couple. We hardly talked during this time, she claimed because she was afraid of what I thought. She said she couldn't face my judging her, even though I never did.
For a while, life just ticked along. We started speaking more and more, I eventually finished university with degree in English, and moved to London to pursue my dream of being a writer. I eventually found myself in a serious relationship with a girl who eventually moved in. I then eventually found her in bed with another guy. But since our lives always run in parallel, Sally was also experiencing her own drama.
She found herself made redundant when the call centre she worked in was packed up and moved overseas. Unable to pay her rent, her landlord suggested she could pay him in other ways. Faced with a choice of being his sex slave or being homeless, she agreed. An arrangement that continued whenever she found herself out of work which, with her lack of qualifications, was often. Unfortunately for her, his wife had found out and she found herself homeless anyway. She called me first, and I was on the road to get her.
I arrived in Cardiff late in the evening. Having packed her bags, she had gone to a local hotel and waited for me to arrive in the bar. By the time I got there she was already extremely drunk and was being hit on by a balding, middle-aged businessman. Having disposed of him I proceeded to load her and her bags into my car for the long journey home. As we approached Bristol, I found myself feeling too tired to drive and decided to stop at a hotel for the night.
I had to help her into the hotel lobby and got a strange look from the receptionist as I approached, having helped her into a chair. I asked him for a twin room and was told they only had doubles. Being too tired to drive I took it. It was only for one night, after all.
"Is she okay?" The receptionist asked.
"She's had a rough day. Once she's slept it off, she'll be fine."
"Okay, sir. Breakfast is served until eleven. Have a good night."
I had to help her to the lift (No way was I trying to tackle stairs) and into our room, where I flicked on the TV to the news channel to wait for a weather report for the morning. We were in the middle of a cold winter and I wanted to make sure we weren't going to hit any snow on the way home. I helped her into bed and, having seen the weather, got in beside her. We were both asleep almost instantly.
I woke in the middle of the night, disturbed by feeling her getting out of bed. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I was expecting to hear her being sick. Instead, I heard the shower running. Getting out of bed, I knocked on the door to the small bathroom.
"Are you alright?" I said
"Yeah. I just woke up feeling horrible, I thought a shower might help clear my head and feel a little better."
"Okay."
"You don't mind if I sleep naked when I come back do you? My clothes stink of alcohol. I am never drinking again."
"I guess not. It's not like I've never seen you naked."
"Not recently you haven't. Besides, you won't see me. It'll be dark."
"Not in the morning."
"You'll get over it."
"Hey, can you hand me a towel?"
"I'm not in the bathroom, so not really."
"Neither are they."
She was right. They'd been left on the chair in the corner of the room. I opened the door slightly and offered them to her through the crack.
"I can't reach them there, you'll have to come in."
"Or you could get out the shower and get them."
She did, smiling at me through the gap as she took it and closed the door.
I slipped my jeans off and got back into bed. Unable to sleep, I switched on the news and saw yet another weather report. Still no sign of snow, which is always good. She appeared out of the bathroom, wearing a robe and got back into bed. She slipped it off, trying to stay under the covers while I tried desperately not to look. We both failed. As I said, Sally is, and always has been, a beautiful young woman. At 19, four years my junior, she was slim and toned with long auburn hair. Her eyes were reminiscent of those of a fifties movie star, especially now not smeared with the streaks of mascara they were when I'd picked her up. Her breasts were perfectly formed, at a guess somewhere between a large B and a small C cup and, although I knew I shouldn't, I couldn't help getting hard. She pulled the covers over herself as I pretended to have been channel surfing.
"Anything good on?" She asked.
"Nothing special; news, game shows or porn."
"Really?" She asked, taking the remote from me to surf herself. She stopped at a cheesy seventies soft porn flick. "I love these old pornos, they're always so funny."
"Yeah, gotta love porno music."
