Nathan gurgles and sits up again. ‘You know what I mean. Gawd, I’ve never had to do that before. She’d got me cornered and I’m trying to hand her off like some prop forward! One arm out like this, the other hand on me bits and praying like stink I’d have chance to grab my towel.  Anyway, she stops and just stands there looking at me with this real daft grin on her face and I’m beginning to think she’s finally got the message.’

‘But she hadn’t?’

‘Uh uh, nope! Next thing I know, she’s waving this baggie at me and asking if I needed a little help getting it on.’

‘By baggie, you mean a condom?’

Nathan’s shoulders start to shake and he laughs noiselessly until his eyes are wet with tears.

‘Take it the answer’s ‘No’?’ Jessie says, trying to control her own laughter in response to Nathan’s.

‘No..oo’ he gasps for breath. ’Baggie.. little bag…with drugs in.’

‘Ohhh! Heck, when you said, getting it on, I thought you meant…’

‘I know what you thought I meant…But getting it on…getting lucky…having sex. She thought I might need a bit of help in that department’  he huffs indignantly.

‘Ah! Right, now I get you. Although what I said…it still works…sort of’ She shrugs a giggle. ’So here comes the serious bit?’

‘Urrgghh’ he gasps again and tries to stop grinning. ‘Doesn’t seem like it now, does it?’

‘What I said wasn’t that funny’

‘Probably not but I’ve been so wound up, it’s more likely relief talking about it all. I’ve been a bit of a prat, haven’t I?’

‘I refuse to answer that on the grounds that I might get it wrong again. What was in this….bag thing?’

‘Coke at a guess by the state of her. I only got a quick look.’ He grimaces. ‘I was too busy staring at her father!’

‘Oh flipping heck!’

‘Exactly! He was standing there in the doorway. My guts turned to water, I can tell you. I thought to myself, it only wants her to scream or something and I’d be well and truly fu…stuffed. I’d got no way of proving it was me who was trying to get away.’

‘But clearly, she didn’t scream since you’re still here to tell the tale?’

‘No, thank God! He’d been away and nobody was expecting him at all until the following Tuesday but if she was surprised to see him, she was too far-gone to care. She just goes ‘Daddee!’ grinning all over the place, waves the bloody baggie at him and asks him if he wants to join us.’

‘No!’

‘I’m telling you straight. His face was absolutely purple. Course, he starts in on me then. Came at me with fists flying. I’m a damn sight bigger than he is, I could’ve mauled him but I just pushed him off.‘ he says virtuously.

Getting no appreciation from Jessie, he continues. ‘So he’s shouting, wants to know what the hell I think I’m doing and didn’t I know how old she was et cetera et cetera. Wants me off the site and threatens to call the police.’

‘Heck.’ Jessie breathes, her eyes widening even further.

‘Too right! My head was buzzing, I just couldn’t think fast enough but then when he said about the police, I told him to call them and while he was at it I’d be ringing Social Services about his sodding daughter being out of parental control, using drugs and on top of all that she was a bloody nympho! It was the only thing I could think of but it stopped him in his tracks.’

‘He must have known what you were saying was the truth.’ She nods sagely.

‘The way he shut up, I’d be surprised if that was the first trouble he’d had. I explained as best as I could what had gone on and prayed that he’d believe me.’ Nathan reaches for his cigarettes from the coffee table.

‘What was the girl doing while all this was happening?’

‘Just sitting on the floor, watching.’ He mumbles with a cigarette between his lips as he clicks his lighter.

‘Good Lord! Still naked?’

‘She didn’t give a damn. I’d managed to grab a towel by then and things had calmed down a bit…. for a while.’ He tosses his lighter atop a magazine on the table and releases a plume of smoke. ‘Then he told her to cover herself up and get back to the house. Told her she was grounded for the foreseeable and she went mental, totally lost it, screaming and carrying on about some bloke she was supposed to be seeing that night. Jess, I’ve read about people going as white as a sheet but I’ve never actually seen it before. It was like he’d died standing up. Poor sod, I felt for him, I really did. I damn near had to catch him. Then…..’ Nathan rubs his hand over his chin, pulling his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger before sighing deeply. ‘Her mum turns up and it was me that needed catching.’

‘Her mother?’

‘Yup…the woman I was going away with.’ He mumbles, looking down at the floor between his feet.

‘Oh Nathan!’ Jessie breathes, looking at him with ill concealed disapproval. ‘Dirty weekends I can live with but adultery…’

He looks up swiftly. ‘But I didn’t KNOW she was married! Least of all to the bloke that was paying my wages. I met her at a bar in Woodbury but I never saw her at the house at all. Coincidence just wasn’t in it.’ He draws hard on his cigarette.

‘You must have been a bit taken aback.’

‘Jeeze, that’s the understatement of the bloody century! I don’t know who was more shocked. Her, finding me there or me when she turned up…. she wasn’t expecting her old man either. She’d heard all the racket and come to investigate.’

‘Whatever did you say?’

‘I didn’t say anything, nor did she. We just stood and stared at each other. I know what a rabbit feels like now, too bloody terrified to move when there’s a truck coming hurtling at it. Lucky for me, her husband just thought she was angry and started to explain things. Ordered her to take the girl back to the house and I reckon she was glad to get out of there. I was sweating clods. I’d only just persuaded him I was the good guy.’

‘That, Nathan, is what you call a close shave.’ Jessie pauses before venturing ‘Isn’t she a bit old for you?’

‘Maybe, but that’s only because I know who she is now, so she has to be older than she looks but hell, she’s a babe…and it’s wasn’t she, not isn’t she, I knocked that one on the head.’

‘I’m glad to hear it! So, how come you got into all this you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours with the girl’s father? Seems to me he knew what she was like and if he knew, so did other people so what difference did it make if you saw it?’

‘I have no flipping idea! That was the strangest thing. All I wanted to do was go home and forget all about it anyway. She was their problem, not mine. The job was almost at an end; chances were I could avoid her and her mother while we finished off and…well…I’d’ve been a bit embarrassed to tell anyone about my part in it all. Being chased round a shower-room by a naked girl and not making the most of it?’

‘She is only fifteen, Nathan.’ Jessie chides.

‘That wouldn’t matter to some people, they’d still think there was something wrong with me.’ He takes a final draw from his cigarette before pressing it into the overflowing ashtray and lifts the packet to take another. At Jessie’s tap of her finger on the back of his hand, he closes it again and lets it drop.

‘But now she’s telling everyone that you did…..oblige.’

‘I do know that.’ Nathan's mouth sets with annoyance.

‘What did he say to you?’

‘He started off not saying anything much, very quiet, sort of gloomy. I thought he was still trying to deal with what had happened so I let him get on with it. I rabbitted on about nothing in particular and grabbed the chance to get dressed. It was surreal! I hadn’t finished my shower but it hardly mattered, I wasn’t going anywhere was I?’ Nathan sighs and leans back. ‘ Then he says he wants to inspect the site. I thought ‘fair enough’ and followed him out there. For a sec I thought he might be after doing for me again, so I was ready for him but nope’ He shakes his head ‘He says he’s pleased with the way it was going, although, to be honest, he didn’t really look, and starts harping on about this new project he’s got in the pipeline and telling me that the contract’s mine if I keep my mouth shut. I was gob smacked. Gob smacked and seeing pound signs. No skin off my nose, I wasn’t planning on saying anything anyway.’ He shrugs.

‘Did he give you a reason?’ Jessie probes.

‘He did and it did make perfect sense at the time, although I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. He said that they’d got her into this la-di-dah school, a crammer or something; she wasn’t doing too well at the other place she was at and this one was much stricter, heaps more expensive but they’d get her through her exams. He reckoned that if they got to hear about her behaviour they’d chuck her out. There was nowhere else for her to go.’

‘What did he think you were going to do, march up to the place and spill the beans?’ She looks at him incredulously.

‘I didn’t even know the place existed’ Nathan spreads his hands

‘My point exactly.’

‘I did say it made sense at the time. I thought about it afterwards and it seemed a bit weird but whatever was going on in his head, I’d be getting a contract just by doing what I was going to do anyway. So I didn’t question it and kept my mouth shut.’

‘In the meantime, the girl spends the rest of her summer holidays giving people a totally different story.’ Jessie clicks her tongue with disgust.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m surprised you haven’t had the police round.’

‘Why?’ The furrows deepens between Nathan's brows.

‘Don’t be dim! She’s fifteen, you’re supposed to have had sex with her and..' She prods his thigh then holds her finger up to emphasis the point.  'I hate to tell you this, but there can’t be many people that haven’t heard by now. It’s against the law.’

‘I think there’d have to be an official complaint, they can’t just go on gossip.’

‘Even so.’

‘Well, thank God they haven’t, that’s all I can say. I don’t need that sort of hassle. It’s bad enough that….’ His eyes light up as an idea occurs to him. ‘Perhaps that might be the answer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You think he knows what’s going around?’ he asks

‘I wouldn’t have a clue.’

‘Say he doesn’t, he’d want it stopped wouldn’t he? Whatever he’s about and I’m sure it’s got sod all to do with some posh school; perhaps he wouldn’t want to risk me having to tell what I do know.’

‘Which is what exactly?’

‘God knows.’ Nathan says dejectedly as his shoulders slump. ‘It was only an idea. I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary.’

‘I’d hardly call what went on ordinary.’

‘Well, whatever it is, it sure as hell must be important to him if he can wave a damn great contract under my nose not to say anything, even if I can’t work out what it is. Perhaps I should go and see him, see if he can get her to stop or better still, get her to tell people it was all a load of cods.’ he says hopefully.

‘Oh, right, and you really think she’s going to take any notice of him?’ Jessie huffs her doubts.

‘God knows but I’ve got to do something. I can’t just leave things how they are, there’s not a decent woman around that’ll touch me right now.’ He glances at the digital display on the DVD player. ‘Gawd, look at the time! Let me go get some socks on and I’ll drive you home. Not much of a story was it?’ he says as he stands up. ‘But I’m glad I’ve told you.’

Dell Cottage...continued

Chapter One