I’ll tell you no lies

by Norman Wills

  So basically he killed your mum; he might not have been able to do much about it but let’s chalk another one up to mankind. Every time something shitty happens who’s there waiting to claim their cigar. Bastards!

  That maybe so Sally-Anne, but what’s going to happen now, I’m now an orphan, fifteen years old, I’ve got a brother who lives in London, a lover who lives in Manchester, and my school’s in Manchester. We may have to move to London. There’s no chance of John coming back to Manchester, his job is London based not Manchester.

  We’ll be okay, Lucy. Your beauty my brains, remember?

  Yeah well, there’s no amount of brain going to alter the fact that we’re probably going to be going to school in London soon and Jayne isn’t. Relationships at two hundred miles soon fizzle out, I should know, remember?

  No I don’t remember, I came to you later, but I’ve not let you down yet have I? Trust me, Lucy. London or Manchester, with Jayne or without her, we’ll be okay. Things are going to be fine, I love Jayne too, or had you forgotten about that? I don’t want to be in London while Jayne is 200 miles away either.

  No I hadn’t forgotten. But my dad killed himself eighteen months ago and my mum died having sex with her boyfriend earlier this week. I guess you’ll just have to forgive me if I don’t seem too enthusiastic about my future at this point in time.

  That’s a fair point Lucy. All that I’m saying is that you should make your own future what you want it to be. Don’t let other people tell you what it’s going to be. Deal with the shit and move on. We dealt with Terry Sandford and moved on didn’t we? You may not have been too keen on the method but no more problems there, you can’t argue with that.

  At least I know I’ve got one friend who I can trust, you won’t let me down will you?

  Never will, Lucy. You can count on me.

  When the autopsy results were made available it was clear that no crime had been committed and that Marie had died because of an unfortunate and quite bizarre set of circumstances.

  They were first time bondage participants whose lives ended following a serious run of bad luck. The first bit of bad luck was Simon’s unquestionable enthusiasm to fix Marie to the bed so well that she had little or no chance of making an escape by herself. The second being his precise moment to die of natural causes, a genetic predisposition, and the third being the unfortunate lack of family or neighbours within hearing distance.

  So what we’re being told is that Simon died of natural causes while he was getting his jollies with your mum, and then she died roughly four days later through dehydration, tied to the bed and with him on top, pinning her down?

  That’s about it.

  What a way to die. Slow and very painful I guess.

  Nobody heard her screaming so they think she might have been unconscious all the time. She probably knew very little about it.

  But if it hadn’t been for Simon your mum would still be alive today and for a long time to come most probably, she was hardly knocking on death’s door asking to come in was she?

  But that’s not what’s being said, Sally-Anne. It was just an unfortunate set of circumstances. He didn’t mean to kill her; he wouldn’t be too thrilled at having died himself, I imagine. Death by misadventure is how it’ll be seen. Neither Simon nor mum could have seen it coming and as such prevented it.

  You call it death by misadventure if you want to. He didn’t need to take total control of her like that, I’d still say Simon killed her, misadventure or not.

  Yeah well I’m fairly sure there’s nothing I can say that’s going to change your mind on that so I’m not even going to try.

  Sally-Anne wasn’t to know that her submission towards Simon had been totally Marie’s idea. Simon had willingly gone along with the game but he’d just been there as a tool, a method of fulfilling Marie’s desires, and he’d been doing such a wonderful job of it at the time.

  She would have liked the idea of Marie being the one in control though; she would have laughed at the irony of it all. Sally-Anne liked being in control herself, she knew all about submission, but not from the submissive’s viewpoint though. She liked to make people submit to her, she was much more the domineering type.

  You know I’m right, Lucy. I’m always right. When it comes to men they’re all complete bastards, with very few, if any, exceptions.

  Fourteen

  John became Lucy’s legal guardian, at the age of twenty-three. He was thrust into a new role, making decisions he’d thought he wouldn’t have to make for a good few years yet. At twenty-three, he’d done so much in his short life already. Being a surrogate parent to his little sister was just one more thing he needed to learn fast. He’d handled most things life had thrown at him so far, and come out smelling of roses, why not one more thing?

  John, being the sort of brother that he was, made no decision without talking it through fully with Lucy first to find out what she wanted, she was after all on the verge of adulthood anyway. He was happy to go with most of Lucy’s wishes, when she was sixteen she could just wave goodbye, tell him to piss off, and sail away forever into the sunset if she wanted to. He didn’t want that to happen so he worked with her requests when he could and made sure she understood the reasons when he couldn’t. Lucy thought he was a great brother, the best brother a girl could possibly wish for.

  Lucy didn’t want to move from Manchester to another school in London, particularly at such a stressful period in her life. John had come to realise only recently what the move to Manchester had been like for Lucy, he’d not been there at the time and he didn’t want to be the one causing that much pain again.

  The real reason she didn’t want to move to London yet was because she didn’t want to be torn away from Jayne. She pleaded with John to be allowed to stay in Manchester, after all, she would soon be in her final year and she would be sitting her GCSE exams at the end of it. After that time, if she wanted to carry on with her education she would have to move schools anyway. Everyone felt that this was far from ideal but in an ideal world she’d have a mother and father who were still alive so that these decisions didn’t need to be made by anyone else.

  With the agreement of John, the social workers, the school principal, Jayne and Lucy it was decided that Lucy should stay with Jayne for the final year of her high school. It was highly irregular but seen as the best solution. A monthly payment would be made to Jayne from Lucy’s estate for food, rent and such things. Jayne was to become Lucy’s surrogate mother, allowing her to stay as her lover with only both their knowledge. At the end of the year Lucy would move to London, as agreed, to live with John and Steph. Sally-Anne was sure things would work themselves out satisfactorily before the end of the year, one way or another. After her GCSE exams they were free, in reality, to do what they wanted.

  Lucy’s estate was quite significant after her mother’s death. She had the fifty thousand pounds already in trust until she was sixteen, with half the moneys from the eventual house sale, life insurance policies, investments and bank accounts she would be a fifteen year old with a fortune nudging past half a million pounds.

  Nobody would say that Lucy’s life was ever going to be straightforward, but at least at only fifteen years old she had wealth behind her, a brother who loved her, Jayne who was her lover, Sally-Anne her guardian angel and a promising future in the modelling business if she wanted it.

  As far as Lucy and Jayne were concerned it had been a high price to pay for Marie and Simon, but it had allowed her and Jayne to be together as a proper couple, or more like an improper couple. Even though they could only be a couple behind closed doors, the safety that the situation allowed them to feel brought them even closer together, if that was possible. Their lovemaking became less frantic, they had time now to explore each other, and their loving became much more intense. Lucy was learning things from Jayne and Jayne was picking things up at the hands of Lucy and Sally-Anne, even though she didn’t know it.

  Sally-Anne was sure that killing Lucy’s
dad had been the turning point in Lucy’s life, even if she didn’t know it, she just needed a little help along the way. Sally-Anne wouldn’t let her down.

  Marie’s funeral had been a quiet affair, dignified but quiet. She was laid to rest with her husband in the same grave she hadn’t even found the time to visit. This was a sad time for John and Lucy, not only did they have no parents but both were aware that neither of their futures lay in Manchester.

  The grave would probably be given no more respect than it had since their dad had died, in fact once Lucy moved to London it was doubtful if it would ever be visited more than a handful of times again. A sad end for them both, the move to Manchester hadn’t been good in that respect, but hey, if people thought too much about the consequences of their actions they probably wouldn’t do anything in life. Consequences can be a bitter pill to swallow for the people on the receiving end.

  Oh well, chin up dear, life must go on. Isn’t that what they always say when the bitter pill is making it’s way down someone’s poor unfortunate throat, gently patting them on the back at the same time to help make sure it goes down and stays down.

  Fifteen

  So Lucy lifted her chin up and life went on.

  10 December 2007

  Two years had passed since the phone call about a possible job change that had sealed her father’s miserably short future. She was now sixteen years old, but unless you knew her well it was almost impossible to put an age to her. She’d done so much growing up over the past two years, lived the life of a much older Lucy Kirkpatrick than the one wearing her skin.

  The way she held herself, the way she spoke, her confidence, her much admired physical attributes, it all said that she was a girl not quite like any other, not an ordinary girl. It hinted at a girl with a secretive side, a girl far more mature beyond her sixteen short years. She was definitely a girl that most men would love to get to know, physically for sure. Spiritually, they would think okay maybe later, but hey, they’d be thinking, give us a fair crack at the physical side first before we get too ahead of ourselves.

  The problem with men is, on the whole, they just don’t know a good thing when they see it, and what this means, by implication, is that they aren’t the most worldly wise at spotting a bad thing either. Not that Lucy was necessarily a bad thing. Lucy was a good girl really, but if you looked into Lucy’s eyes you saw Lucy staring back at you not Sally-Anne. That’s where your troubles began, especially if you’re the proud owner of a penis and pair of testicles and desperate to use them the way most men think that god intended them to be used. That for a lot of men would be as regular as possible and with as many different women as possible. If a man is going to make hay then you can put your house on the fact that he’ll make hay while the sun shines.

  John and Steph had travelled up to Manchester to surprise Lucy on her sixteenth birthday. They weren’t going to miss out on her birthday, especially so soon after Marie’s tragic death, she needed them and so they were only too willing to oblige. They’d been making the trip north on a regular basis since the summer to check on how things were working out for Lucy.

  Lucy had been happy enough, they saw that the situation with Jayne was working well; they were more like sisters now, John thought, rather than teacher and pupil. Jayne was good for Lucy so she was never left out of anything on their visits to Manchester. That was the way Lucy wanted it to be and John did everything he could to fit in with Lucy’s wishes. He knew that at sixteen he could lose her very easily, he didn’t want that to happen so he was more prone to indulge her than not.

  What Lucy really wanted on her sixteenth birthday was to go clubbing in Manchester, so John, Steph and Jayne obliged. It wouldn’t be a problem; Lucy could pass for whatever age she wanted to. Before they hit the finest nightlife Manchester had to offer though they decided to hit the curry mile in Rusholme. John had a few things that needed to be discussed and over a curry was Steph’s preferred choice of venue to do it.

  The birthday party settled down at the table with their drinks.

  “Well, Lucy. There aren’t many sixteen year olds with a little black Versace number they can slip into for a night on the town.” Jayne said.

  “I know, isn’t it great I feel fantastic, but I do feel just a little too dressed up for a curry though,” said Lucy “The dress must have been your idea Steph, I can’t believe John picked this out all by himself.”

  “Well Donatella helped me actually. She did mention that it’s what all the beautiful, young, and extremely wealthy girls are going to be wearing this season.” Steph said.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Why would we do that, Lucy?” John replied. “If Steph says Donatella Versace helped her pick out a present for you you’d better believe it, we were in Milan two weeks ago. Steph was modelling for Versace. She’s known Donatella for quite some time.”

  “She lost her brother 10 years ago, Lucy, he was murdered on his doorstep in Miami.” said Steph, “She took a long time to come to terms with that and she was very upset when I told her what had happened to your mum. She has an artistic temperament, she may only be a clothes designer to some people, but she has the ability to be very moved by life’s sad realities. She thought black was an appropriate colour.”

  He was murdered at home too, Lucy. Just like your mum.

  “Wow, Donatella Versace.” Lucy was more than a little starstruck at hearing her name.

  “She wanted to help me choose something for myself too when I explained to her that I was giving up modelling,” Said Steph, “I did my last shoot on Thursday.”

  “Giving up modelling, why?” Asked Lucy, “You’re so good at it, you’re only thirty, you’re too young just to give up, you’re just at your peak; you still look fantastic.”

  “Well she’s not just giving up modelling for no reason; the craving for onion bhajis dipped in lime pickle at four o’clock in the morning has played a big part in the decision.” John said excitedly, “Why do you think we’re all sat in an Indian restaurant now?”

  “Because it’s my birthday and I love Indian food?” Lucy replied naively.

  Jayne knew what was coming but she didn’t want to steal anybody’s thunder so she just sat there smiling, watching Lucy’s face.

  “Yes we are, that’s true, and it’s a very special birthday.” said Steph, “But we have some news to share.” Steph turned to John, “Go on, John. You tell her, you’ve been dying to tell her since we arrived.”

  She’s pregnant, you Dumbo.

  Wow!

  “You’re pregnant.” Exclaimed Lucy before John could get the words out, his thunder well and truly stolen after all.

  “Well I’m not,” said John, “Steph’s the one who’s pregnant, but I suppose if you wanted to you could say ‘we’re’ pregnant, if I’m to be included in it.”

  “Wow!”

  “That’s what we think too.” Steph said. “We’ve been dying to say something before now but we thought we’d wait until your birthday, a double celebration.”

  Well what do you think of that then, Lucy? Or should I say, Auntie Lucy.

  It’s fantastic, Sally-Anne. Auntie Lucy sounds good too.

  Yeah great, let’s hope it’s a girl though hey, someone we can relate to.

  With the good news now finally out and everybody happy, well almost everybody, the night went with a bang. Steph could now eat what she wanted without thinking of her career and so she attacked the meal with gusto, especially the onion bhajis and lime pickle. Lucy on the other hand ate like a model in the making, she enjoyed all she ate but in much smaller portions than the others, she now wanted the sort of life that Steph was giving up more than ever. John and Jayne gave the meal what it deserved on such an occasion, they thrashed it to within an inch of its life and a good time was enjoyed by all.

  Getting into a nightclub, any good nightclub, in Manchester isn’t always easy. That night it was a doddle. Let’s face it, how many doormen were going to turn away Stephani
e Wilkins and still have a job to go to the next day? Nightclub doormen are many things, but on the whole they aren’t stupid. Steph could enjoy free entrance to any nightclub being a VIP of head turning quality, and of course everyone in the party gets in free, and a table in the VIP section at whichever club they choose to grace with their presence.

  Any nightclub in Manchester worth visiting would usually have a VIP section. There are lots of famous footballers, actors and musicians who carry a certain amount of kudos in Manchester on any night of the week. To have that kudos in your club allows some of the kudos to rub off. It also brings in a regular flow of stargazers; it’s good for business, so long as you can keep the riffraff at a reasonable distance.

  “Well it certainly has its benefits, the modelling game.” Jayne said to Steph, “I’ve never seen people more eager to have someone in their club. They were practically drooling when you turned up.”

  “Don’t believe it, Jayne.” Steph replied. “The times I just want to be able to walk down the street without having to put on a thick coat and a woolly hat to not be recognised. The celebrity status has certainly started to outweigh all the benefits. I feel as though modelling has had my best years, I want to have kids, and I want to eat real food again. Don’t get me wrong it’s a fantastic way to earn money and travel the world at someone else’s expense. But when I see girls who look like Lucy coming up snapping at my heels it makes me feel old at thirty, it was time to make a decision, getting pregnant just made it very easy to make.”