The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2304 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“Is there a spare cup of that stuff?” asked Stephanie marching into the kitchen.

“Oh, you’ve finished?”

“Yes, I ran out of toenails to rip off.”

“She has the same number of fingernails,” I offered.

“I know that, I’m a doctor, remember?”

“Ah, that’s why we invited you.” I said bumping my forehead with the heel of my hand.

“Tea,” she said as Sammi got a spare mug and poured her some.

“I have to check my emails,” was Sammi’s polite way of leaving us to talk.

“So?”

Stephanie sipped her tea for a few moments. “I needed that.”

I waited for her to start.

“If I’d known I had a pro footballer on my list of patients I’d have put my fees up,” she said smirking.

“Go on.”

“She is fine.”

“So why did she pretend to overdose?”

“Easy, she wanted to punish you and draw attention to herself—she’s a teenager, they do such things. Didn’t you?”

“No, I was twenty two when I tried to kill myself, only it wasn’t an attention grabbing stunt, it was for real.”

“So how come you’re still here?”

Fair question. “I was living in a student bedsit and I took a pile of pills after my father beat me up quite badly. Fortunately or unfortunately, the caretaker came in and found me—he was doing an electrical appliances test.”

“Fortunately, I think.”

“What?”

“You being rescued.”

“Perhaps.”

“No perhaps or maybes about it, at least not from the perspective of the half a dozen or more children you’ve helped.”

“There’s ten at the moment and I didn’t do it on my own.”

“No but without you none of it would have happened, would it?”

“You’d have to ask Simon about that.”

“Ask me what?” he asked coming through the kitchen door.

I motioned for him to close the kitchen door, a sign I didn’t want to be disturbed. “I asserted that we were lucky that her attempt to join her ancestors was unsuccessful, especially from the children’s point of view. She suggested she didn’t do it by herself, but I insisted she was the driving force. She told me I should ask you.”

“You know the answer to that already.” Was his response.

“We are lucky,” reasserted Stephanie.

“I’m the luckiest man on this earth, without Cathy my life would have been so different, so lacking. We have these wonderful children and young people, and Tom and this lovely old house.”

“That sounds pretty definite to me.”

“If I might suggest that I’m the lucky one, I’m married to the most wonderful man on this planet who has learned to cope with me and my strange needs. I’m also blessed with the finest group of children and young adults anyone could have assembled and with the nicest adoptive father I could wish for, plus really super inlaws.”

“I’m happy to extol the virtues of my wife and children all day long, but why are we having this love-in?”

“I was trying to explain what was going on with Danni.”

“She’s okay?”

Stephanie nodded.

“So I can cancel the order for the straightjacket and padded cell?”

Steph rolled her eyes at Simon’s attempt at humour.

“Danni is a nice kid who is dealing with her life experience which can best be described as between traumatic and bizarre, to say the least. At times she finds it difficult and to draw attention to it, she plays you up. If she were a boy, she’d be vandalising somewhere or fighting.”

“At one point last night she said she was a boy.”

“She isn’t and is well aware of that fact, it was said for effect.”

“Does she need to become one again?” I asked aware of how real the statement had seemed.

“What, a boy?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t see or hear any indication of it. She’s still adjusting to being a girl but as natural females can take most of their lives to do that, I think she’s doing really well. The football is a good link to her past, one she was good at and still is by all accounts, so allowing her to keep it is good.”

“It comes at a price—because it’s a link it could be used to trace her.”

“To her past?” asked Steph.

“Yes.”

“Everything has risks, the more worthwhile the bigger the risks usually.”

I thanked Stephanie who went in search of Emily and found her being nursed by Julie who keeps trying to tell me she doesn’t like babies. Mind you, Mima was with her, in a supervisory capacity of course.

The next hour was spent getting the children to bed and it was apparently my turn to read the story. We’d just received the latest Gaby book, so I read them chapter one and then made them go to sleep.

An hour and half after that I was being told to come to bed by Simon. A short time later we were lying there cwtching together when he suddenly said, “I came across the paper I put to the board when we approved the project for the mammal survey. D’you remember that night?”

“How could I forget it? It was the first time we ever slept together.”

“You nearly told me about yourself, didn’t you?”

“Yes, though I don’t know how you’d have taken it?”

“In all honesty, I suspect not as well as when you did tell me.”

“I thought I’d lost you,” I said holding onto him more tightly.

“Hey, no need to grip so tight, I’m not going anywhere—unless you come as well.”

I kissed him, “I love you so much, Simon.”

“Do you remember what you did when I came out of the shower?”

I did but I wasn’t going to admit it. “You tickled me and I wet myself, I had to go home sans panties.”

He sniggered, “I’ll bet that felt a bit bracing.”

“Bracing, it was bloody freezing in the skimpy dress I had on.”If it hadn’t been for the fact that everything was glued up inside me, it could well have frozen off and saved the surgeon a job.”

He chuckled, “I’m glad it didn’t, I’m quite fond of the recycled bits.”

“They have their uses.”

“If I recall, I touched your breasts and then...” he leant over and began rubbing and sucking my breasts—I forgot all about the previous occasion and was very firmly in the moment as they say. Of course we progressed to full blown consummation and lay there basking in post orgasmic bliss. “You brought me off with your hand, d’you remember?”

“Did I?” I asked thinking more about going to the loo than about the past.

“Yes, the first time I’d ever had a hand job, and then you tasted it.”

“Tasted what?” I couldn’t remember.

“My—um—sperm.”

“Did I?” No big deal, I was a girl, they do things like that especially for men they love.

“Yes, you’ve never said anything about it since.”

“Si, I’ve given you fellatio since then, I think I possibly said something about that.”

“Yeah, sorry. Like I said, I came across the original proposal and it triggered memories.”

I felt him blushing.

“Simon Cameron, you old romantic, you.” I kissed him and told him I loved him, he kissed me back and...

I was glad I wasn’t cycling the next day.