“Yes, it is, and we’re a bit on edge about it,” replied Sasha. “But, yes, I will come with you to work on the doco. I’m just about to have some breakfast, and it won’t take me long to get ready after that.”
“Would you like to join us for a coffee?” offered Simone, heading in the direction of the kitchen.
“Thanks, I will,” he replied, following the two women.
Later, as they all sat chatting over coffee, Sasha said teasingly to Brodie, “Mum told me you were chatting up a gorgeous brunette at George and Emily’s party, yesterday. How come you’re not out after her today?”
“She’s on the rebound, still pining over her handsome barrister boyfriend,” responded Brodie, with a smile. “But I am meeting her for coffee next week.”
Just then, Delia came in, looking worried. After greeting Brodie, and pouring herself a glass of orange juice, she spoke to her mother.
“I’m going over to Anita’s this morning, Mum. I’ve just got off the phone to her. She’s really down, and her parents have gone off to church leaving her alone. There’s some stuff on her computer she wants to show me, too.”
“OK,” replied Simone, “but, be careful. Make sure your mobile’s charged up.”
Not long after, when Sasha had gone off with Brodie, and Delia to see Anita, Simone, feeling suddenly lonely, returned Teale’s call. At his urgent invitation, against her better judgment, she agreed to pay him a quick visit at his apartment.
When she arrived at Teale’s door, shortly afterwards, Simone’s body was already beginning to feel the ache of suppressed desire. Then, before she had time to even ring the doorbell, the door was flung open by Teale, who took hold of her hands and pulled her quickly into the apartment, immediately closing the door behind her.
Without a moment’s pause, and without exchanging a word, the two were in each other’s arms, kissing hungrily, as they frantically caressed and then crushed each other in an embrace so intense that their breathing became laboured. Without interrupting that kiss, or completely breaking their embrace, Teale reached behind Simone to grasp her firm, round buttocks in his cupped hands, and began to lift her, bodily, from the floor. She responded by lifting her legs and locking them behind his back as she pressed her now throbbing groin hard up against the firm bulge in the front of his trousers. He then carried her, thus, to his bedroom, where they both collapsed onto his king-sized bed, still locked in their passionate embrace.
The two lovers were engulfed, once more, by an overwhelming surge of unbridled lust, as they struggled to remove each other’s obstructive clothing in order to facilitate the hasty consummation of their flaming desire. That consummation, when it came, brought them, together, to new heights of sexual stimulation, causing both to emit loud cries of exhilaration, before collapsing, spent, in each other’s arms.
They lay together, quietly, for a time, both now enjoying the tranquility, which contrasted so sharply with the intense vibrations that had coursed wildly through their bodies during the sexual act. Before either of them realized it was happening, they had both drifted off to sleep.
When Simone awoke with a start, she was unsure how long she had slept, but she quickly sat up and took stock of her surroundings. She could see that it was still daylight outside, but felt, instinctively, that a significant period of time had passed. Swinging her feet over the edge of the bed, she shook Teale awake, and then sat quietly for a few moments, with her head in her hands. When at last she spoke, it was in a soft voice, devoid of passion, but full of resignation.
“I can’t do this, any more, Teale,” she said. “It was different when we didn’t really know each other. Then it was just pure abandoned pleasure, with no ties or commitments. Now, it’s getting complicated, and more so with our every meeting.”
“I thought that’s what we both wanted – to get to know each other, and put some depth into our lovemaking,” replied Teale, with a puzzled frown.
“I thought so too, but now I realize it’s futile. I’ve come to know that you can spend half a lifetime with someone and never really know them and, besides, how can you truly know someone else when you don’t really know yourself, or what you’re capable of?”
“But, how can we just let each other go, now?” pleaded Teale.
“Please, Teale, let me finish. I only started to really think about us, and what we have been doing, after our tryst at your uncle’s garden cottage yesterday. What were we thinking? We were just so abandoned and careless of possible consequences. I feel fairly certain that someone who was at the party saw us, and maybe even took a photo of us doing it!”
“I don’t know. I think we probably just imagined that,” he interrupted.
“Maybe so,” she responded, “but even if that’s the case, what have we got together? When the passion is spent, what will be left? First, there’s the age difference,” she added, in partial answer to her own question.
“There’s no real age difference,” he retorted. “Age is just a state of mind.”
“But you forget. I also have a family, and our relationship, if disclosed, can bring them nothing but hurt. It’s bound to end tragically, and not just for you and me. As hard as it may seem to us, at this moment, it would be far better to just put an end to it now. It may hurt, sure, but, believe me, we will both survive it, and then move on.”
Stuck for appropriate words in this emotionally charged atmosphere, Teale reached out to touch, and try to take Simone in his arms, to reassure her, and to re-establish the physical link that had always been so strong between them. To his dismay, she ducked away from his arms, slipped off the bed, and began to gather her scattered clothes.
“No, Teale,” she continued, tears beginning to run down her face. “I’ve made up my mind – it has to end, and better now, before we have too many regrets.”
As quickly as she could, Simone dressed and fled from Teale’s presence, trying hard to ignore the deep hurt she could see in his eyes, every time her eyes met his. She ran, blindly to her parked car, and sped off towards her home, without a backward look, which would have painfully revealed to her Teale’s drawn face watching, plaintively, from his balcony.
She hardly remembered any of the drive home, so distraught was she throughout. Then, as she turned her BMW into the driveway, and the automatic garage door began to open, she saw Lee’s car parked within, in its usual place.
“Oh, hell! I didn’t expect him home yet,” she mumbled, aloud, to herself, as she brought her vehicle to a stop beside his.
Quickly, then, she extracted a tissue from the glove box, and wiped the tear stains from her face, before taking a make-up compact from her hand-bag. She then hurriedly retouched her lipstick, applied powder to her nose and cheeks, and ran a comb quickly through her tousled hair, before alighting from her car to face her husband, in the house.
After shepherding Nadine home, Lee had quickly fled the icy atmosphere that hung over them both, as he had assisted her from her car and carried her belongings into her mother’s house. As he drove away, he was relieved that she would need some time off work in the following week to fully recover from her ankle injury. He hoped that, by the time she returned, she would have come to accept the inevitability of the end of their affair, or alternatively decided to seek employment elsewhere.
On his arrival at his home, he had noticed that Simone’s car was nowhere to be seen. With a mental shrug, he entered the house, where he was greeted by the sound of the home theatre system operating at high volume. Delia was seated in his customary arm-chair, apparently watching a music video clip in what seemed to be an almost trance-like state.
Making an effort to be heard over the noise emanating from the system, and to penetrate his daughter’s consciousness, he called out, “Delia! Where’s your mother?”
“I dunno,” she responded, without taking her eyes from the television screen. “Probably out with friends somewhere.”
I don’t know any of her friends, thought Lee, ruefully, as he walked
to his bedroom to unpack his overnight bag. Having completed that chore, he rejoined Delia in the home theatre, after first obtaining a glass of iced water from the kitchen. He sat down in a comfortable chair, off to her right, and waited a few moments before speaking to her again.
“Where’s Sasha?” he asked.
“Out with Brodie,” was her terse reply.
“I’m pleased to hear that,” he responded, relieved that his older daughter was not off on her own somewhere.
Suddenly, then, Delia picked up the remote control handset and turned off the television. The unexpected silence fell over them like a soft, welcome blanket, catching Lee by surprise. Father and daughter then stared silently at each other, for a time, before either spoke again.
“I’m gay, you know,” announced Delia, giving her father a provocative stare.
Briefly startled by his daughter’s abrupt and unexpected declaration of her sexuality, Lee stared back at her, in silence, for what seemed to her like an eternity, before responding.
“I’m not surprised,” he said, at last. “I’ve suspected it for some time now. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. But, why the sudden need to tell me now?”
“Because I’m worried about Anita, and need to talk to someone about it. There’s this girl from our class at uni who has started cyber bullying her over it, on her mobile and her computer. Anita is dead scared her parents are going to find out.”
“Wouldn’t it be better for her to tell them, so they can help her deal with it, rather than have them find out from someone else?” asked Lee.
“No, Dad! They’re weird. They’re dead set against homosexuality. You don’t know what they’re really like.”
The two talked on, then, about Anita’s plight, and about Delia’s homosexuality. In the course of that discussion, Delia told him that Simone already knew about her leaning, having witnessed her passionate kissing with Anita at Sasha’s party.
“When were you two going to tell me about it?” enquired Lee.
“Well, we didn’t know how you would react, so we were waiting for an opportune moment to lay it on you,” replied Delia. “But I got tired of waiting. And anyway, how do you feel about it?”
“Well, I’d prefer it to be otherwise,” he replied, thoughtfully. “You’ll have a hard road ahead, to gain acceptance. There’s still a lot of bigotry about, as Anita is discovering. But, I suppose no one can change the way you’re made, or the way you feel.” Then, after a pause, he added, “You’re still my daughter, and I still love you.”
With Lee’s unexpected display of understanding, Delia felt a lump in her throat, and tears welled in her eyes. Rising quickly, she stepped over to her father, put one arm around his shoulder, and bent to kiss him gently on the forehead.
“Thank you, Dad. I love you too. At long last I can remove my façade,” she said, her relief obvious in both her face and her voice.
It was at that moment that Simone walked from the garage into the room, and stopped in her tracks as she observed her husband and daughter exchanging more affection than she had seen pass between them for a long, long time.
CHAPTER 14
An atmosphere of utter neglect surrounded the old, weatherboard house, situated in a rather down-at-heel outer suburb of the city. The overgrown yard was littered with the broken skeletal remains of an assortment of more or less derelict motor vehicles, one or two of which showed some evidence of recent attempts at mechanical repair. Inside the house, one of the two men who had sat with Pat and Nadine, at Zoot’s, on the night of Sasha’s party, was lolling on a grubby, old couch, smoking, as the other clumped up the stairs and into the house.
“Hey, Mort, get a load of this!” said the new arrival, as he threw a mobile phone onto the couch beside his companion. “Check out the photo I got on Saturd’y arvo, when I was casin’ them joints up on Nob Hill!”
The man called Mort picked up the phone and clicked onto the most recent photograph stored in its memory bank, emitting a low whistle as he stared at the image.
“Fuck, Steve! How did you get this? Isn’t that the snobby bitch we saw at Zoot’s the other night? And who’s the stud fucking her?”
“Yeah, that’s her, alright,” replied Steve, with an evil chuckle. “And it sure ain’t her old man screwing her. According to Pat, he was away with Nadine over the weekend at some sem’nar, or sumthin’”.
“There’s some real good blackmail material for us there,” gloated Mort, rubbing his hands together. “And where the hell have you been since Saturd’y? We’ve got some plannin’ to do, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been hangin’ out with some mates. I’ve got a life, too, ya know!” replied Steve. Then, picking up his mobile phone, and eyeing off the photo of Simone and Teale, he continued, “Jeez! I’d sure like to dip me cock inta her!” and at the same time cupping his genitals in his hand and giving them a vigorous jiggle.
“You keep yer dick in yer pants, Steve,” admonished his companion. “When ya open yer fly, yer brains fall out! You’re just dead lucky that last bitch yer banged didn’t scream to the cops, or y’d be doin’ time now. Keep yer mind on the job. Ya know what the big boss’ll do if ya let yer dick fuck everythin’ up.”
“Ahh! Fuck the big boss! We get peanuts for all our hard work and risk, while he gets the cream off the top, an’ get’s to live in a big, air-conditioned house, with a pool, while we have to live in this dump.”
“Yeah, I know, but he’s got the connections to move the stuff, and we’ll keep this little gem to ourselves,” replied Mort, pointing to the mobile phone. “Besides, one part of this next job won’t be so risky, since we overheard the security code for the dentist’s alarm system.”
“Yeah, and it was dead easy to find his joint after Pat found out from Nadine where their spoilt brat daughter works, so I could follow her home,” said Steve, as he walked from the room into the kitchen, where he opened a dirty looking refrigerator, and extracted a can from it. “Ya want a beer?” he asked.
“Yeah, ta,” replied Mort.
Taking a second can from the refrigerator, Steve threw it to his companion, who caught it expertly in one hand, before both ripped off the ring tops of the cans and threw them, casually, towards, but not into, a box overflowing with rubbish in the middle of the room.
After taking a long pull on his beer, Mort spoke again.
“I hope ya didn’t do nothin’ stupid to draw attention to yerself when ya followed that bitch home or when ya were casin’ the neighbourhood.”
“Nah!” lied Steve, downing the last of his beer in a long draught before crushing the empty can and throwing it to join the other rubbish on the floor.
That same Monday morning, Gai and Brodie were already at the central police station when Lee, Simone and Sasha arrived together. Gai had given her formal statement to the female police officer (Senior Constable Jessup) who had taken the initial report, and was in a separate room helping a police expert to compose an identikit picture of the man who had attacked her on the Saturday afternoon. In the meantime, Sasha was conducted into an interview room where Senior Constable Jessup took a statement from her about the incident on the bus involving her and the obnoxious man. Later, while Gai and Brodie waited with Lee and Simone, Sasha assisted a different police artist to compose an identikit picture of the man involved in that incident.
After the two pictures had been completed and compared, it was remarkable to all how similar the men appeared in both, and the police were left with little doubt that the same man had been involved in both incidents.
“Given that fact, and the striking similarity in appearance of you two young women from behind,” said Senior Constable Jessup, “we think it highly likely that you, Sasha, were the intended recipient of the attack on Gai. Please think hard about whether you may have seen this man somewhere before.”
“I have thought about that, but I’m pretty sure I’d never seen him before that day on the bus,” answered Sasha.
“Well,
if you do think of anything to connect you to him, please ring me and let me know.”
Then, turning to Lee, Simone and Brodie, the constable enquired if any of them was able to recognize the man depicted in the picture, to which she received a negative response from each. She invited each to contact her immediately if they thought of anyone they knew or had seen who might resemble the man in the picture.
“In the meantime,” she continued, “we’ll continue our investigation through other police channels, and if we need to talk to any of you again, we’ll be in contact. Until we get to the bottom of this, I would advise you two young women to be very careful about walking around alone, particularly after dark, and we’ll send a patrol car around your area from time to time just for a bit of extra security.”
The interview process having concluded, the five attendees left the police station together and began to walk along the footpath. Their course was to take them past the front of the nearby Supreme Court building. As they neared that imposing edifice, Simone’s stomach dropped, her heartbeat began to race, and her breath shortened, as she saw Teale walking towards them, accompanied by his uncle, Harold. Almost instantaneously, Lee said, “Oh, here comes Harold. Who’s that with him?”
Before a stunned Simone could gather her wits sufficiently to answer him, Sasha answered her father’s question.
“It’s that Teale, his hunky nephew, and Mum’s client. He’s the one Mum and I bumped into at Zoot’s bar a couple of weeks ago, before my party.”
By this time the two groups had converged, and greetings were being exchanged. Addressing Lee, Harold said, “I don’t think you’ve met my nephew, Teale, Lee. Teale, this is my long time friend, neighbour and former client, Lee Boothby. You met his wife, Simone, here, and our other neighbour, Brodie, here, at the party on Saturday, and this is Brodie’s sister, Gai. I don’t think you’ve met Lee and Simone’s daughter, Sasha, either,” he added, indicating Sasha, who was smiling broadly at Teale.
“Oh, yes,” interjected Sasha, “we did meet briefly at Zoot’s bar a while back, when I was with Mum. She said you’re one of her clients.”
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