The long street was as difficult to park in as it had ever been. I'd not been this way in years but the lines of parked cars on either side roughly blocked up any sight of a spare spot outside the ancient terrace houses in a very familiar way. This had been the home of my great grandparents, who'd both died while I'd been young, maybe seven or eight, my cousin, Sara had been born a year or so later and the house had been inherited by our uncle. He'd died and being childless left it to her and I had gotten roped into helping her clean it up and move things around. My girlfriend, Ellen had wanted to come along and help and meet my cousin and her girlfriend, "Make a double date of it," she had joked, but work had reared like the waves on a harbour and ruined that plan.
I quickly parked up once I found a free spot and took a look around the old neighbourhood. As a child, I'd spent a lot of school holidays and weekends here and had considered it a second home. Now it was Sara's, who was barely twenty-two. Apart from some satellite dishes and modern cars, the place looked much the same. I knocked on the door and was greeted by Sara's friend, Moria, who was about the same age but could have passed for eighteen.
"You made it!" Moria exclaimed as she pulled the door back. "How was the parking?"
Moria had jet-black hair tied up in a ponytail and eyes that seemed to change colour as the light hit them. She was dressed in a plain white vest top that left her very pale, slender arms on display. It looked damp with sweat and clung to her chest. I quickly averted my eyes from her notable nipples and made eye contact. She wasn't as pretty as Ellen, but in fairness, Ellen had always been much in demand as a model, even if only as an amateur, comparisons were hardly fair but in her defence, I could see Moria turning heads and maybe causing a car crash or two.
"Painful. I might have annoyed one of the neighbours," I admitted as she waived me in. Looking around the hallway it looked like the girls had taken down all the old paintings and prints and given the walls a thorough wash, otherwise, the place looked much the same as I recalled it.
"Sara! Your cousins here!" Moria shouted up the stairs opposite the front door, then gave me something of a naughty look. "You want a coffee?"
"Nah, I'm good." Most of the very familiar furniture had been moved around, bar the larger wall units which I thought might take all three of us to lift. "Where do you want me?"
"Now there's an offer," Moria sniggered lightly as she headed upstairs allowing me to see she also wore rather tight cycling shorts, which seemed to have a slight hint of a bump toward the crotch. "We've been struggling to open the windows," she pointed at the sub landing's window before the stairs turned back on themselves to get to the top floor. "Get some air in here. It reeks of old man."
"I don't think I've ever seen them open," I admitted as we stopped on the landing and looked out the window, taking in the view of the houses opposite, and the park and the glistening coastline beyond. "Our great-grandparents never seemed to get fresh air in here unless they opened the backdoor."
"Great grandparents?" Moria asked quizzically, then seemed to do some mental calculations. "So that makes you and Sara, what? Second cousins?"
"Yeah, I think so." I noticed that naughty look on Moria's face again, and got the feeling she was letting her imagination go wild.
"Hey, you!" Sara's voice came from the top of the stairs. "You're early."
"Am I?" I replied as I looked up towards her. "I thought you said come around nine?"
"I said ten," Sara asked as she made her way down to the sub landing where she and Moria gave each other a gentle peck on the lips, with Moria stroking some loose strands of Sara's blond locks over her ears. "Was parking a pain?"
Sara was dressed much like Moria, tight, form-fitting cycling shorts, a grey vest top that might have been a size too small for her, and much like Moria, clearly had forgone a bra. I briefly wondered if maybe they were both going commando as well.
"It always has been. How you two settling in? This is a big place for two people."
"We got one of the bedrooms set up for us," Moria stated proudly. "Got most of the stuff from up here rounded up and stored in the smaller bedroom, leaving the master bedroom alone for now. How's the window look?"
"Well," I gave the window an experimental tug, it didn't even budge. "You can see out of it."
Examining it I realised its old wooden frame had been painted over so many times it must have been coated in layers and layers of paint, jamming it in place. Even the glass was just a single pane, probably the original glass and frame from whenever the house had been built.
"I'll bet that's the same for each of them," I said pointing at the sealed-up joins.
"I was afraid of that," Sara sighed. "Any ideas"?
"Well, I might be able to score along the gaps with a Stanley knife, but that might be risky. Might not even work."
"So leave it to a professional?"
"Yeah, probably for the best. Might want to get a little fan to help airflow."
I didn't want to mention that it stank of old man, I was sure Moria must have made that remark a few times by now. The place had smelt rather unique back when I was a little kid, but that was due to the coal fire burning most of the day, this was a musky smell that was much harder to pin down further.
"Oh, way ahead of you there," Moria declared as she bounded up the stairs, gently bouncing her bum against my hip as she did. I noticed the odd little bulge at the back of her shorts-clad booty bouncing ever so slightly.
"What's with the... whatever that is?" I whispered to Sara.
"She lost a bet."
"With who?"
"With me." Sara's own mischievous look made me decide not to ask further.
In any case, Moria returned to the top of the stairs with a large fan on a pole she quickly turned on, putting an end to any conversations.
"This ought to cool down a snowman in a heatwave!" Moria yelled over the roar of the fan blades.
I had to turn my face from the assault of cold air, but in so doing my eyes caught a glimpse of Sara's chest. Like Moria her nipples were protruding through the thin fabric, helped by the extreme cold of the fan. I started turning my head away but Sara seemed to love the attention of the fan, pushing her own chest further out drawing my attention like a magnet while her hair blew freely behind her.
"He must have gotten this off a movie set or something," Moria yelled again as we made our way upstairs.
The rest of the morning went much along the lines of me lifting the heavier furniture while the girls brought out the dusters and mops and cleaned the walls while I worked the vacuum cleaner. Today was the turn of the top of the house, all three bedrooms, the upstairs bathroom and both the main landing and sub landing were getting our full attention. I noticed the two of them always sharing some sort of giggle when my back was turned or they thought I was out of earshot, and Moria seemed to find any number of excuses to make some sort of physical contact with me whenever we did any lifting. That was at last somewhat understandable as an 'accident' but then there was the occasional brushing with the feather duster to contend with, always with that same damn smirk and the teasing look in her eyes.
The main landing was large enough to be a livable room in itself, you could have set up a TV and a couple of sofas and had space for a coffee table. Whoever had designed this style of house had made sure they were built to be very long, granting lots of space and the landing window allowed plenty of natural light to get in. The master bedroom and bathroom sat at the house's rear with the other two bedrooms at the front, one slightly smaller than the other, which we moved things into that weren't needed. The other front bedroom, which the girls had selected to sleep in, was quite sparsely occupied. It had a large bed, a couple of elaborately carved wardrobes that might lead to another world and nothing else bar curtains. It looked like the bedroom of an old woman and had been the room I'd stayed in back when my great-grandparents lived here. It was like our uncle had left it as a monument to them.
"I'll get some drinks," Sara declared as Moria headed off to the bathroom. "Lemonade all round good?"
"Sure," I replied as I headed off to wait for Moira to vacate the bathroom.
The bathroom looked utterly different to the one of my memories. Clearly, our uncle had spent some money getting it redone and modernised. The old bathroom, much like the girls' bedroom, had looked like something out of a BBC period drama set in the 1800s after some disaster had hit the country. I'd only just left the bathroom when Moria accosted me.
"So, you and Sara," she whispered, placing her hands gently on my chest.
"What about us?" I took a step back only to feel the door against my heels.
