This piece is a little slower: it takes a couple pages to get into the thick of the eroticism. If you don't want a slow-burn, turn back or skip ahead. You have my horniest sympathies. For those who stay, your thoughts and ratings are greatly appreciated. Xx.
———
The Runaway Niece
For a while Kerry doesn't even register that someone is knocking. His bed is too comfortable to consider the outside world, and the hour is too early to expect visitors, so he stays buried in his pillow with his cold feet folded up underneath his weight. The knocking might be a broken drainpipe, or the garage door unlatching itself again, or that family of wild rabbits who take him as a fool.
It is only once the sound takes on a rather hysterical rhythm that he sits up. This is no rabbit. Someone is at the front door.
Kerry parts his bedside curtain to peer through the rain. The world had been suspended in a state of calm all week, like a snowglobe, but now the storm has hit in full force. Trees tilt on their axes. Raindrops are like skiers on his window. From this vantage point he can't get a good view of the doorstep.
The visitor seems unlikely to stop knocking. Deciding there's nothing for it, Kerry pulls on his socks, wraps up in his dressing gown, and heads downstairs. When he steps into the hallway, he stops and stares at the front door. Skeletal hands are silhouetted on its frosted glass window. They are knocking with their palms, rattling the door in its hinges.
Kerry approaches the door silently. He stops a foot from the threshold. The hands at the window freeze, fingers splayed on the glass.
"Hello?" It's a girl's voice. "Hello, did I see someone?"
Kerry tightens the cord of his dressing gown. He leans in. "Who is it?"
"Is this Kerry? Does Kerry still live here?" The hands slide an inch or so down the door's window, as though from exhaustion. "I swear to
fucking
God, did he move? If he fucking moved—"
"Who is it?"
A pause. The girl's hands vanish. "Is this Kerry?"
He hears her slump her weight against the door. There's a plea in her tone. The hall is cold.
"Yes," Kerry says finally. "It's Kerry. Now, tell me—"
"Kerry, it's Iona. Let me in or I will freeze to death on your doorstep." The girl's voice breaks. She throws her weight against the door. "Come on. They'll lock you up for negligence or something. Just open. The
door
." Another thud. "
Fuck
."
And Kerry opens the door. The girl almost topples inside. He catches her fall, recoiling at the cold of her flesh. She is sodden-wet. Her clothes and hair drip all over the threshold. The cuffs of his dressing gown dampen. The girl slams the door shut. For a while there is silence but for her shallow breathing. A steady
pink-plink
as she drips onto his floor.
"You took your sweet time," she tells him. "Is your back going? Struggling out of bed?"
"Hold on." Kerry tears his eyes from her face. Her features are soft in the half-light, like those of an old photo. He fumbles for the lightswitch behind the coat rack. "There."
The hallway is illuminated. They stare at one another.
Iona's soaked clothes cling to her like wet fur. Her hair is red, down to her shoulders. It criss-crosses her face in stray strands. A smattering of freckles. Hazel eyes. She is his niece.
He reaches over her shoulder to lock the door. "Iona?"
"Kerry."
"Iona..." A beat passes. A thousand raindrops, and he exhales. "What's going on?"
"I don't know. It's really quite awkward, you know?" Iona raises her arms, which are weighed by soaked clothing. "I thought you'd let me in. Some food maybe. But no, I guess we'll stand here by the door till the storm blows over and fucking Itsy Bitsy Spider comes out. That's cool too."
"Iona, you know what I mean. It's three in the morning." Kerry lays a knuckle against her icy cheek. "Why are you here?"
"I just am." Iona plucks his hand from the air, gives his fingers a smart pinch, and holds on tight. She says, "Please let me stay."
For the first time since he let her in, Kerry hears that note of urgency in her voice again. Iona's pale lips teeter towards a frown. It is the same stern expression she used to wear as a child when Kerry babysat her. That was twelve years ago. Now her fingernails bore into his hand.
"Okay. Just—okay." Kerry nods. He ushers her down the hall. "A hot shower, maybe? Towels are in the bottom drawer."
He guides her to the bathroom, then goes upstairs to find her a change of clothes. The house rattles in the wind, cold seeps up from between floorboards, window panes straining their brackets; and the rain streaks its windows like hail. Kerry tracks an old towel up and down the hallway till the floor is quite dry. He brings a pot of milk to the stove and stirs cocoa through. The trick, he always used to tell Iona, is to heat the milk so slowly it doesn't realise what's happening till it's too late. Then it won't curdle. She used to scold him and say milk wasn't alive.
Kerry adds sugar, vanilla, and a pinch of chilli. Iona emerges from her shower after some fifteen minutes with her soggy clothes in a bundle, one towel tight in a turban around her hair and another around her middle. She leaves silent, damp footprints on the floorboards.
"Is this the
Iona special
, then?" she asks, standing on the other side of the kitchen bench and eyeing the pot of hot chocolate. "I can smell the chilli."
"Just a smidge, don't worry." Kerry gives a little salute with two fingers. He fills two mugs to their rims with drink. "Oh—here. Chuck your clothes in the laundry, I'll get them clean tomorrow." He takes the bundle from her arms.
Iona gives a mock curtsy. "Ta."
"The spare room is set up for you," Kerry says. He deposits her clothes in the laundry. "It's across from mine upstairs, when you want to sleep."
"Yeah. I remember it."
He returns to the kitchen and gives her one of the hot chocolates. "Right, well... cheers."
They clink mugs. The drink is rich and thick as ice cream. Iona adjusts her towels and goes to sit on the couch, looking out over the paddocks through the living room sliding doors. There isn't much to see in the dark, but there is a certain satisfaction in the way the wind rolls all the way over the hills to buffet the house while they sit comfortably inside. Defying the cold bite of nature with hot drinks in their hands. Iona runs a finger around and around the rim of her mug.
Kerry watches her nervously from the kitchen bench. He doesn't want to press her, but she looks like a ghost—a snarky ghost with all the wit of her human self, but a ghost all the same. He's never seen her in such an anxious state. Her white shoulders glisten from the shower. Several bits of red hair have escaped her towel, falling down her neck at random.
"Iona." Kerry crosses from kitchen to living room. He sits beside her on the couch. "I need you to tell me that you're safe..."
She stares ahead. "I'm safe."
"Did you walk here from London? That's a hell of a distance."
"And I have a hell of a blister." Iona gives a dry smile, still not looking. She takes a deep swig of hot chocolate and sighs. Her eyelids flutter. "Do we have to talk about it tonight?"
Kerry swishes his own hot chocolate around his teeth. He can smell her conditioner. For a long while neither of them speak, and the proximity is enough to constitute company. The paddocks outside roll like black waves. Kerry throws glances to his niece, who sits like a bird in the rain: ruffled, smaller than life, wings pegged in the wet. Her collarbone stands out. She is too pale for a tan line.
Iona raises a hand to bite hard at a nail.
"Hey." Kerry takes her hand and guides it back down. "Save your nails, they're nice. We don't have to talk about it tonight."
Iona smiles. She clings to him.
"Look, I found some more clothes. From Aunt Kath's collection." Kerry gets the pile of fluffy gowns from the kitchen. "I was always her second love, see. Her first was the creature comforts."
"Will we visit Aunt Kath?"
"We'll see after the rain."
Iona heads off to bed with the bundle of gowns. Kerry rinses out their mugs and goes to take a shower himself. The bathroom is still hot and steamed out, but he doesn't mind. The heat is comforting; he savours it till his fingertips wrinkle. Odd as the night's events were, it was pleasant to drink hot chocolate with his niece as he always had in the past.
He is not alone in the storm tonight.
———
Though the spare room is quite comfortable, Iona doesn't get much sleep. Instead, she fishes old paperback novels from a trunk at the foot of her bed and reads them with her feet tucked up under her bum. Pages worn by the oil of a hundred fingerprints. Her room has a marvellous view of the countryside out the rear of the house. When the sun rises to kiss the morning clouds, she thinks she hasn't seen anything so serene as those paddocks and hills in all her life.
Kerry is not yet up when she descends to the living space. Iona takes the time to peruse the house. As she does, she gets the impression that Kerry has been alone for a very long time. His place smells richly of coffee. It could have been a workshop: spare screws scattered like ornaments, everything furnished with wood still coarse to the fingertips, all of it touched by the fragrance of sawdust. The homemade woodwork and rustic edges are charming.
When Kerry emerges from upstairs, he smiles at her. "Up like the sparrows, are you?"
"I found photos of us," Iona says. She picks one up in its frame. "Look—we're sunbathing in the autumn leaves here. By one of the swimming holes, I guess. I'm about ten..."
"Mm, that'll be just downstream." Kerry gestures vaguely out the rear sliding doors. "Coffee?"
"Thanks."
He makes it on the stove with an old pot. Iona stands by the kitchen bench and watches, and for a short while she is hypnotised. Kerry's hands are very gentle. He does everything with such little hurry that Iona forgets what he's making, and starts only to appreciate the
click
and
clack
of the equipment and the various stages of preparation. The dance of metal and fingers. When he sets the finished cup in front of her, she meets his eye, and finds his expression incredibly soft. She smiles.
"Eggs for breakfast, too." Kerry claps his hands. "But first—let's visit Aunt Kath."
They each find a pair of gumboots, then they take their coffees and set out into the expanse of green field behind the house. All that remains of last night's weather are small branches scattered by wind, and the excessive
squelch
of wet grass underfoot. The horizon is clear.
