The Headmaster's Flame - Welsh Rarebit

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Natalia came down tying the girdles of a mansize white robe to find Neill at the cooker shovelling a pan, the sound of tuneless baritone singing from the shower upstairs.

She pulled up a bar stool that loudly grated the floor.

‘Goodness!’ Neill jumped. ‘Thought you were a farm animal behind me! He ought to get pads on those feet.’

‘How did I sleep in after you two drunkards?’

‘Natalia. We’re not drunkards, we’re men.’

‘Thought it was clichés like Russians who live off the stuff,’ she remarked, as she took up his mug.

‘Russians are drunkards. We’re just men, British men. Our blood has evolved fermenting in hops, we don’t do it like those gloopies. Speaking of which, you woke in the night, murmuring about yours…’ Neill shot a glance up the staircase to where Ed could be heard calling to switch on his Fracino. ‘You were repeating, ‘will he be able to get out of his bonds, Neill, Neill, will he be able to get out!’’

‘Wait! I remember now, your thumb in my mouth. It tasted as rank as this.’ She put down his mug with a grimace.

‘That would have been the valium on the end.’

‘Oh! So I was drugged by a drunkard, a Great British drunkard.’

‘I did try explaining to you that I loosened the bastard’s arms just before we went out.’

‘Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Hmph! I guess I have a radar for your bullshit even when I’m in the middle of a nightmare. I hope you only gave me a quarter? And not your cocaine by accident?’

‘An eighth’s all I had left. Kept you thumb-gagged till it kicked in.’

She sighed. ‘So how do we know that sucker’s not still laying there too, with the police busting the door to find him starved, choked on soap and sodomised with a toilet brush?’

Neill cracked an egg and shrugged. ‘Guess it’d be on the news by now.’

She pulled her phone from her robe pocket. ‘Nothing on Yorkshire Live. Think a better way would be to check if he’s been on Facebook. I deactivated mine but I can log in for the next 30 days.’

She tapped away till an ignored plate of bacon and eggs he’d slid to her had lost its steam.

‘Oh, his picture’s changed.’

‘He must be active. Just like him! Guten morgan Edward!’

Ed was doing up his shirt buttons. ‘Morning, Princess of Wales,’ he politely side-hugged her. ‘Rich, manners! Haven’t you made your girlfriend tea? She doesn’t want your mud water.’

‘That’s your Kenco instant. I couldn’t work out how to even turn on that barista-level thing of yours.’

‘Most guests can’t,’ Ed winked. ‘Two switches round here, swivel the expobar left, and then fill her up with the fresh ground just over here. Ahhh, caffeine, be my friend!’

‘Princess’ll have one, if you make it frothy enough. Tiny amount of coffee like a babyccino.’

Ten minutes of Ed and Neill shoving each other from sink to fridge; Ed wanting his eggs poached, bacon softer and Natalia chiming in to ‘have my bacon floppy too!’ - three plates of breakfast were finally served on the island, birdsong chirrups carried on the gentle spring breeze at the open door, Natalia swirling caster sugar into her foam as Ed vigorously squirted the last of the ketchup bottle.

‘Uff, that hurt my head. No drink for me today.’

‘Oh, hurray,’ Natalia said cynically. ‘So we can have a compos mentis night then?’

‘Till the game.’

‘What! Another football show!’

‘Yes, another football show.’

‘You’ll be asleep by then, Babybum.’

‘Hmph. I’ve had more sleep than the sum total inhabitants of Highgate Cemetery.’

‘Are you saying you’re going to watch it with us?’ Neill smiled.

‘No. We’re going to play Scrabble.’

‘Yea-ah,’ they blinked.

‘Pfft! Since arriving here you wouldn’t think he was an intellectual headmaster, would you Ed? You should hear the way he spoke to our doctor when I was ill. Oh, I’m rather miffed! She’ll miss her Duke of Edinburgh, my good man! Then his forehead went all blotchy when I made a couple of crap sex jokes and he had to hurry him out the door!’ She stuck out her tongue.

‘Watch it, young lady. You know I like sex gags in both senses of the word.’

‘So my good man,’ Ed chuckled, ‘how is it you’re quitting your council estate school? Is it so you can take teenage girls permanently on residential better than the Duke himself would?’

‘That another Princess joke?’

‘Prince Philip’s a paedo. According to Justin.’

‘Haven’t clicked his links in months. Anyway, I got what I went looking up north for.’ Neill bit down hard on his toast.

‘That’s what Claire said,’ Natalia smirked. ‘Back in the ladies’ bogs at London brunch, she said you went looking for me.’

‘In the bogs?’ Neill said with a mouthful.

‘Up north. You know I couldn’t quite believe it then—’

‘Ohh, but you believe it now, now that I have you, a little Northern scallywag, superglued to the end of my knob from the capital to the vall-eyys?’ He tossed his toast crust. ‘In answer to your question Ed, too much work needs to be done to that place and I for one am done shovelling horseshit.’

‘So you were serious? Your Deputy Head dropped dead because you gave him too much work?’

‘He was already ill. Unstable angina going for months. Those awful kids would call him dink-donk, wonky-wank, deny his illness; allsorts. Years of working in that school killed him, and I don’t want it doing the same even to my spirits.’

‘Ohh, I remember the headteacher was like that in my high school,’ Natalia added. ‘Completely up himself, thought he was above the pikey oiks till one day a girl completely outdid him in English. He confessed in Assembly that the school contains fine literary minds and the kind of intercourse he hasn’t had in years…’

‘Sounds like Ed. Only a matter of time now buddy and you’ll have to take what you can get.’

‘What do you mean?’ Natalia frowned.

‘It’s been a few months.’ Ed drew a breath.

‘Sex? Well doesn’t he… you know?’

‘Wank? Oh it’s all he does. That doesn’t really count for a man if it’s his own hand having to do the work.’

Ed sighed. ‘Fancy going out on the tiles, guys? A bit of moonlight, a lot of moonshine, a piece of fluff mooning over the bins and then a lift home’s all I need…’

‘What, you’re going to just pick up any woman to have sex with, because you’re desperate to penetrate something? Or get wanked by something?’

‘She’s learning,’ Neill chuckled.

‘You should just adopt a severed hand. Like the Thing from the Addams’ Family!’

‘That’d do,’ Ed nodded. ‘No face to endure, and it can do the washing up afterwards.’

‘And squeeze the last dreg of that Heinz,’ Neill chortled, as Natalia rolled her eyes at them.

‘I’ve been with Andrea so long I’ve forgotten what a break is like, but to be fair our last six months was one big break.’

‘Oh, I don’t do breaks,’ Neill exhaled. ‘If anything, I do overlaps.’

‘But you were single for seven seconds!’ Natalia laughed— till Ed added: ‘Sure you’re happy hearing him say that, Natalia?’

‘Which I never intend to be again,’ said Neill in answer to Natalia, leaving his frowning audience to muse on the ambiguity of that comment too, as he arose and stacked his plate in the dishwasher. ‘I think I was pretty good with you, considering that normally after a break even of seven seconds, I tear into sex again like an animal. Lucky I took it out tenfold on the poor previous one, and set the stage for a shy little virgin till I had you taking it like a Dutch wife.’

Ed raised an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t even hear you last night. I thought I’d need ear defenders and a screwdriver for the bed in the morning.’

‘You might yet to need the latter,’ Neill walked round and stroked Natalia’s cheek. ‘As for the former, I have my methods.’ He finished with a tickle of her chin.

‘Oh,’ Ed chortled. ‘What’s that.’

In the moment Ed took to neck the last of his coffee, his eyes fell on Neill’s thumb toying at Natalia’s lips.

‘Neill…’ Her cynical glance crossed to Ed.

‘Just like that—’ Neill’s thumb tip pushed through her lips, which drove her to pull back at the same speed, gripping the table - and accidentally her plate rim - as rinds of bacon bounced and Ed chuckled, reaching to take it away.

‘I see it works well. Shall we talk about the plan for today? Beautiful weather—’

‘No, no,’ Neill softly frowned, his hand back at Natalia’s pink cheek. ‘Show Eddie how well it works.’

An anxious earnestness in Neill’s face, had her rooted to her stool for the three seconds it took to edge his thumb back to her mouth, and her eyes falter now between him and Ed, who has turned from the dishwasher with a glint of morbid curiosity at her lips relenting open by a crack - and then, her blood rising - she closes them tight around it, knowing it would elicit a grunt of approval from Neill, and noticing that Ed drops from a cynical look to a somewhat admiring look, the admiration was too much to take, as she slipped off the stool with a muffled laugh just as Neill withdrew his thumb and slicked her hair behind her ear with it.

‘There we go,’ he patted her cheek. ‘That’s how we did it last night.’

The remonstrance she would be a hair away from verbalising, is lost now like mental prayer as Neill roams to the window, eyes on distant Snowdon whilst he slides open the door and out his fag packet. Ed busies at the sink like Gladys, whilst she loiters demurely at the bookshelf, plucking out What Maisie Knew, and in the moments it takes her to reread the blurb and gaze at the petite painted covergirl from head to foot again, Ed is chirping genially about going down to the village and grabbing more milk at least, for their two-pinter is almost out.

‘Are we all heading down?’ Natalia chirped back. ‘I’ll go get a shower.’ Taking the book to the staircase, Neill, in surprise, is taking her arm.

‘Not so fast. Here, in here—’

Ed glanced over just as she was scooped into the downstairs toilet, the door locked, the seat pulled down as Neill sits down and knocks her book to the floor.

‘Face the door and bend over.’

As she does, he hikes up her robe to display her knickered bum.

‘Pull those down. More. Head down to the floor, yoga girl. Now stretch them open.’

She waits for a response that is taking five seconds, another five seconds, till Ed calls outside:

‘Fancy going to the lambing later? Lambs being born! You get to see everything, up close!’

Her grasp slips - till he raps her thigh and she pulls them apart again.

‘Keep still. I need to see this before you shower it away.’

She feels the brush of his hand, now pinching the buttock further outward in one spot, muttering very quietly to himself, ‘yee-ah, that worked,’ now circulating the rump flesh to agitate whatever was gleaming at the enchanting kernel, as she too wonders as though it was brewing in his own petri-dish.

‘Did you wank this last night?’

‘Er… only one, Neill… I fell asleep, I was so tired. But now… oh, I want to—’

She pushed back on his finger just as it drew away.

‘No, no. No touching this at all. Pussy’s in quarantine. Alright, knickers up.’

She stared round in dismay. ‘But I’m wet. Natalia-wet.’

He shook his head.

There was a bang at the door. ‘Time to vamoose, lovebirds!’

‘I… need the loo first.’

‘Go then,’ he lifted the lid, then as she went, he picked up the book, smoothed the cover from where it had fallen, and studied the girl there for a few seconds before putting out his hand.

‘Don’t even rub it with toilet tissue. Blot it,’ he nodded. ‘You’re my little experiment. I’m going to have my fun with you.’

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They roamed all four of the aisles in moments, leading to Neill exasperating almost into the face of a little old lady trying to prise open the dessert freezer door.

‘Well, this is a spartan Spar! We have ketchup. We have Welsh bread, Welsh ales and Welsh cakes - cakes that look like the kind promised to peasants in either of the World Wars. We have a Bara Brith, whatever the fuck that is—’ He paused to wrench the door for the lady.

‘Traditional Welsh cake made with currants and tea,’ Ed prompted.

‘Which on top of coffee likely contains enough caffeine to keep us awake all week. Marlboro Gold costs a tenner—’

‘At least they have more than one flavour of Pavlova!’ Natalia nodded to the freezer. ‘Strawberry’s the best,’ she winked at the lady.

‘We need to do a shop, a big shop, for actual provisions, unless we want to pub it every night—’

‘Yes! An M&S!’

The men shot Natalia a look.

‘Too far,’ Ed screwed his nose.

‘Probably not on my budget right now. Take us to a Tesco, Ed.’

Natalia exclaimed. ‘That’s not a real shop, you said!’

‘When I didn’t have five grand maxed on my Barclaycard. Why are you intent on Sparksies anyway, happy shopper?’

‘Because I’ve been jealous ever since you went with the Arse and you were even going to go with Shingle. Remember that time you sent me there alone? It was like being on a date with you. And now you have me smuggled from the Land of Thornwood, your little Easter eggs-zile in the Walian air!’

‘What the heck’s she talking about?’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ Neill sighed. ‘Ok, locate an M&S.’

‘First shop’s on me, how’s that? Shall we put all this back?’

‘Oh, yes! Thank you thank you Ed!’ Natalia darted round returning the items, as the old lady stared clutching a box of Magnums.

Ed put back on his little Windsor shades. ‘Nearest M&S is in Oswestry, 31 miles. I hope you like the Beatles.’

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Neill was sitting up front, cross-armed in aviator frames. His head turned in one robotic swivel as Natalia remarked she’d never seen him in shades before.

‘And where’s yours, since emerging from under that rock of Gipton?’

‘Shush, Ed thinks I live in Harrogate… anyway, I don’t own any sunglasses.’

‘Naww, Peasant of Wales. We’ll buy you some.’

‘So did you hear about my suggestion of lambing earlier?’ Ed cranked on the diesel engine. ‘Or have you two had enough of gynaecology?’

‘We didn’t quite get that far, thanks to your intrusion sending it, ah - lost, like a little lamb. …Seriously, you still use CDs?’

Ed was murmuring something about ‘cloakroom, not the cock room,’ as he ejected and rubbed a disc on his sleeve, slid it back and on clashed Ob La Di. Neill watched bemused, then turned his expression to Natalia spread over the back seat in her blue and cream linen dress, that both men had given a silent, extended gawk when she came down from her shower earlier, and from which the pride still bobbed in her bare feet as she mouthed along to the song.

‘She said she hated this one yesterday!’ marvelled Ed.

‘Oh, but turn this one up, turn this one up!’ The guitar strum began Yellow Submarine, and all three of them sang along as the hills rolled past. At the song’s interlude of cranky machinery, Natalia slid out the Henry James novel, smoothing out the diagonal crease that now sullied the cover and narrowly missed the girl.

‘‘As we liiive, a life of ease!’… not so much for Maisie.’

Neill turned his screwed nose. ‘You brought Lamb Henry?’

‘‘Shuttled between divorced parents who value Maisie only to provoke one another,’’ she read. ‘Thought I’d pick away at it in the same way, but unlike the dish, he’s so dense - like Austen…’

‘Certainly ostrich can be, if overcooked.’

‘Charlotte Brontë is so much easier,’ she sighed.

‘Start with the introduction!’ called Ed. ‘Always helps me know what’s going on especially if I’m too sloshed to focus.’

‘Introduction by Paul Theroux:

‘Maisie is a factor in her parents’ divorce settlement. Each of her child-hating parents, in an arrangement agrees to keep her for six months at a time and then toss her back to the other. Maisie is very young - five when it begins. The parents take lovers; each parent remarries…’

‘…Hmm, interesting! My dad left when I was five too, Ed—’

‘Plas Uchaf, Big House on the Hill! Whereas just back there in Trefanen, was the Hedgehog House!’

‘Sort of the difference between the Shiffty cottages and my place,’ Ed remarked back to Neill. ‘Boxy cottages are so stuffy Victorian, just like their literature it sounds like…’

‘Stuffy and just long!’ griped Natalia. ‘I mean, you were an English teacher Neill. What kind of an opening sentence to a book is this?—’ She sucked air like a diver and blew out in one breath:

‘The child was provided for, but the new arrangement was inevitably confounding to a young intelligence intensely aware that something had happened which must matter a good deal and looking anxiously out for the effects of so great a cause.’

‘…Phew! I mean, if you wrote a sentence like this, Mrs Cole— er… an English Language degree would fail you!’

‘I most agree darling, stick to Brontë. Look, Pen-y-bont - we’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy and Tin Man! It’s Shropshire!’

‘Have we done so badly to be exiled from Wales after our first night? Did Rich snore too loud?’

Natalia stuffed away the book, grumbling that Rich really is off headmaster duty, but as they came through the Tudor-fronted buildings of Oswestry’s historic market town, and the black sans-serif font of M&S loomed over them, she was jumping up and down pumping air from the seat leather.

Ed looked bemused as she jogged Neill’s hand in a dash for the trolleys.

‘You don’t need a pound, you don’t need a pound!’

‘I think she does. What is her excitement about Sparksies?’

‘Natalia! Be sensible! You’re nineteen not nine!’

‘We’re going to have a civilised walk around the aisles. You can hold hands, but no shagging, none of that squealing and no touching his cock, Natalia.’

‘Sensible, sure! We can do this!’

In the next five minutes, Neill was vrum-vrumming her inside the trolley through the aisles at lightning speed, hurtling around corners almost knocking into three people; spinning it round whilst Natalia grabbed items and laughed her head off - a security guard looking on dubiously as Ed lagged behind rolling his eyes.

‘Stop, stohhp—! Sunglasses pitstop!’

‘Cat’s Eye ones suit you darling.’

‘Rose ones!’ She pouted in the mirror strip.

‘Not pink! Unless you want your chaperons to be renamed Humbert and Humbert.’

‘Amber then!’

‘I’d say they’re more like tiger stripe.’ Donning his own aviators as she put on hers with the shop label flapping around, he proceeded: ‘Let’s hit the slopes again baby are you ready?’ - ‘Weeee! Woah, woah!— White Farmhouse Loaf! Oh look, Bonbouffe! Truffle Gouda, the one you like! Oh look, Duck Liver Pâté! …Cheerios! Can I buy Cheerios? Will Ed think I’m fourteen?’

‘More like four. Get Coco Pops too! Grab some of that, and that, darling, oh do we need so many apples? Bananas too, darling, bananas. Ooh, butterfingers darling! Get a fresh bunch, we don’t want bruised ones!’

‘Jesus. If you two get this giddy about shopping you can go do it every day.’

‘Angel Delight! Can we?’ Natalia grabbed three sachets. ‘One won’t be enough with the length of Neill’s tongue!’

Ed gravitated to a checkout with a smiling girl, plump-faced and clear-skinned, with big green eyes and blonde hair scraped back in a ponytail.

Neill nudged Natalia. ‘Here we go. Can you tell Ed’s single?’

‘Morning! Would you like any help packing?’

‘I think you’ll find I don’t,’ swaggered Ed.

Neill stepped ahead to her apologetically. ‘Look, ignore him. Scan his shopping and don’t even look at him. He’s just been released, on bail—’

Natalia added hastily: ‘Bad joke. Bad joke’ - as the girl grinned and began scanning.

‘I do find the pounds fly in Sparksies,’ Ed went on, ‘not half when hosting my Northern friends here, who have never seen a supermarket that doesn’t chain the trolleys together.’

‘Oh, are they staying over? Are you local?’

‘I’m from Shepherd’s Bush. I have a holiday home in Snowdonia.’

‘I used to live in Kew. How good to see a Londoner! I came back to my family in Wrexham and just got used to the peace again!’

Neill and Natalia watched their small talk go on as long as the belt rolled - which bore several large reduced Easter eggs, a new shirt for Ed, and a pair of boots for Neill - then the £30 shades that Neill briefly pushed Natalia’s head forward to be scanned.

‘God,’ Neill whispered as they stepped back, ‘we just need a giant teddy bear and it’d be The Generation Game with Bruce Forsyth himself.’

‘Nauseating his blonde and glamorous assistant,’ giggled Natalia.

‘Oh, she’s doing that shoulder shrugging thing you said all women do when they like someone. You know, ever since you said that, every single woman I’ve talked to has done it.’

‘Because they all fancy you, no mystery there. How old’s Ed anyway?’

‘One year older than me, but you’d think it was a decade for how behind he is with the times. Look, look— that godawful shirt’s next, colour of a fucking pensioner - watch her screw her nose right up.’

The girl scanned the shirt, then picked up the Angel Delight. ‘Oh, blast from the past! Used to love making this with mum.’

‘Why, I could whisk you away…’

‘She’s given him five free bags for life,’ Neill muttered. ‘She really must like him.’

‘Or maybe wants to get rid of him?’

Ed ambled up to the car as they waited by the boot with the trolley load. ‘Someone’s in action!’

‘Don’t tell me. She gave you her number?’

‘No. I gave her mine.’

‘You’re so fucking rusty—’

‘Did you give her that great line about needing something to shag?!’

‘Well, she accepted it! My number, that is. Says she has a day off tomorrow, she’s up to meet for a coffee and what better reason for me to buy a new shirt?’

‘She’s a bit young for you, isn’t she?’ sighed Neill.

‘Don’t even start,’ Ed screwed his nose. ‘Cock. Mettle. Twat!’

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Neill was pacing up and down the grassy bank on what appeared to be at least three phone calls, perhaps made purposefully at this moment to leave her and Ed clearing the decks of all the shopping - and an entire Tony’s Chocolonely Easter egg between them. Natalia chewed the last piece of lettering, watching Neill chew his fag stub on the last call - his miming lips going slower than the first two, she noticed - with a warmth in his eyes that met with hers as he strolled back in.

‘Eddie. Why is my girlfriend not wearing a bra since I left you with her?’

Ed scoffed. ‘I wasn’t even looking!’

‘I didn’t want to feel all rigid on holiday,’ Natalia shrugged.

‘Well under that dress you’ll be making someone else rigid. Sorry for the wait, had to speak to four clucking teachers. Shall we make our way to what you called Betty’s Cupboard, if she doesn’t close it before we get there?’

‘Want to drive the Q7, Rich? I can stick you on the insurance for a week.’

‘How far is it?’

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It was a 41-mile drive to Betwys-y-Coed, which Natalia spent most of frowning at the pages of Maisie, Ed’s dozing head bobbing in the front passenger seat, both wordless from their sugar crash whilst Neill hurtled ‘this thing, it’s like a bus! But you do rather get used to it!’ - jiggling the other two, singing loud and hoarsely to Twist & Shout as Ed opened one eye.

‘John Lennon had a cold when he recorded this, did you know?’

Then he dozed back off, the CD began skipping and was shut off, and soon Neill woke him again booming ‘Snowdonia National Park!’ as they glided into a car park teeming with life.

‘This is more like it!’

‘We’ll take the scenic walk up to the old train station,’ yawned Ed. ‘I’ve done it before, I know the route.’

Having stuck her ‘critical supplies’ including book, cardigan and water bottle - into Ed’s Reebok backpack - then chasing him to add a pair of tights ‘in case the mountain gets chilly’ - then chasing him again to zip it up, they proceeded along a woodland path running by a stream. Families squawked by with toddlers jumping over tree roots, one having a tantrum mid-path as Neill circumvented him with a polite grunt; a spaniel and a Weimaraner trotting past with a ‘good boy!’ and head-pat from Ed and Neill.

‘Clwb Golff!’ Ed pointed. ‘You said Natalia’s been practising?’

‘Quite. What happened to your golfing bum chums in Oulton? Any plans to hit their holes?’

‘I told them I’m only two hours away, but they’re away on a jolly.’

Next they came upon the stones of a graveyard set like wobbly teeth on the steep rise of a grassy gum, centred by a short fat tree springing out in cream blossom.

‘Rowan Tree, flowering early,’ nodded Ed. ‘They would have them in all churchyards to ward off evil spirits.’

‘Hopefully Dinkey’s included,’ Natalia linked her arm in Neill’s, as Ed trudged on ahead debating their whereabouts.

‘Thought you knew the route!’ heckled Neill, before lowering his tone: ‘By the way, spoke to Karen earlier. They’re doing a post-mortem and he won’t be buried for at least another week, so I won’t have to rush back for his funeral.’

‘You know I was wondering if the police investigate Dinkey’s death, might his wife tell them you were the last to speak to him?’

‘I rather get the impression they want to investigate the sudden decline in his condition rather than suspicions of manslaughter. Karen mentioned the British Heart Foundation are funding some sort of stipend for a special test.’

‘Perhaps using what your Valentine’s Fair raised.’

‘All’s ill that ends ill.’

‘Wish we’d found my tie and photo though. Who else did you speak with?’

‘Becky. Have you been texting her?’

‘A bit. Last thing she wrote was happy holidays and careful that horny bastard doesn’t make me pregnant. I said the same back to her.’

‘Ha! She’s a hoot. Casually told me she was laid up Easter Sunday with repetitive strain injury on her inner thighs! She did, ah - also mention that when we get back I should ransack Dinkey’s office for anything he might have been compiling. She saw him with Williams furtively rifling through some papers that last school day he was alive. Probably nothing, but Fat Cunt’s made at least two sarcastic Grotto comments over the past month and I suspect the snail-brains are cottoning on.’

Natalia squeezed his hand. The claustrophobic corridors of Thornwood seemed so far away from the dappled fairylight here twinkling on tree trunks as they drew up to Ed, who was asking a bearded rambler for directions.

‘Just round this corner? Perfect!’

They turned round a wall to a huge platform, headed by a brown-blue rustic sign painted ‘BETWYS-Y-COED.’ An old steam train hooted and chugged through.

‘It really is like an old Swiss mountain village! Let’s explore.’

They crossed the footbridge to the concourse where a flurry of hiking outlets, gift shops and eateries began, busied by a steady bustle of fashionable looking sightseers. Bubble Teas, a bright green pizzeria, Utterly Mutterly Ice-Cream For Dogs, a wagon selling Pimms and olives, a shop of village crafts, and another of The Best of Welsh Drinks, into which Ed fast disappeared whilst Neill and Natalia stood gazing at a wishing well for ‘Help An Ape.’

‘Well, Help the Aged have changed their tact. Whatever next, Chimpanzees In Need? Keep Baboons Tidy?’

‘That’s an Ed joke,’ Natalia wandered to a bright coloured dispenser machine.

‘And those are far hornier than one,’ Neill followed. ‘My! Are those ballgags?’

‘Oh, they’re nothing—’

‘Giant Gobstoppers,’ Neill read. ‘My goodness. Sweets like golfballs for your practise indeed. Why, we do need a pound!’ He put in a coin and out one thudded, squirrelling it in his pocket just as Ed came out flourishing a bag of Aber Falls Gin, Penderyn Whisky and Barti Spiced Rum.

‘Three for two!’ He crammed the carrier into his backpack.

‘Very nice Ed, are you going to be carrying that potato sack all the way back?’

‘We’re actually just round the corner. We walked a full circuit.’

‘Oh! I suspected as much. Let’s eat then move on?’

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‘So what is Welsh Rarebit?’

‘Basically cheese on toast, grilled bubbling brown - but imagine the chef was Ed, drunkenly spilling his beer, then knocking the mustard and Worcestershire sauce in too. Quite rich. Are you going to have one with us darling?’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘Rich enough for darling Rich’s turn to go order,’ smiled Ed.

As Neill went off, Natalia sat back on neon embroidered pillows, looking up and round at the quirky Alpine Coffee Shop. A lampshade made of jewels, feathers and iridescent pieces of ribbon. A metal peacock with a tail of cotton reels. A bust of an Italian gentleman ribboned at the neck and a hot-pink-painted cherub strewn from the ceiling.

‘The queue’s massive. Poor bastard.’

‘Poor us. I’m starving!’

‘Here, while we wait - have a tipple…’

‘What! Ed no—’

‘You’ll love this spiced rum. Use these candle holders, they’re perfectly clean.’

‘You’re fucking mad,’ as she sipped and mmmed - then gurned. ‘Where did Neill fucking meet you, anyway? He’s never said.’

‘I’ll give you two fucking guesses.’

‘Café?’

‘Nope.’

‘Oh, pub.’

‘Actually, nope.’

‘Well I’m out of fucking guesses.’

‘A club. 2009 it must have been. God, he could bust some moves just before he gets completely smashed.’

‘I’ve seen. He had to stay dry when we went clubbing in Manchester. Chinawhites.’

‘Ooh, bet he pulled some strings. Justin knows one of the directors.’

‘Did he know Monica and Justin before you then?’

‘Nope, I introduced Rich to Monica and Justin, and they introduced us to Max and Alice. He was taking Claire out the night I met him - not romantically, I mean - he actually met his wife that night. With me. Thanks to me, unfortunately…’

‘Oh, Hannah?’

‘Ah, you know her name. Has he, er… told you much about her?’

‘Just… how they went to the Caribbean, and… that she cheated? But then he said he staged it, not sure if that was true…’

‘Oh. Wouldn’t have been hard for him to do.’

She glanced back to check Neill was still queueing, then took a tiny sip of rum. ‘So… what was she like?’

‘Oh, she was very pretty, although far too much makeup. Long platinum blonde hair, always wearing heels, slim figure like yours…’

‘Was she in his lap a lot?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What he says about petite women. Rude, he says… not to invite a kitty into your lap…’

‘Ha. Well she was catty in a different way. Absolutely nothing like you in that sense. Showy strumpet, a jade as they call them, very superficial. Disloyal. Always making dramas, lashing out at Monica. She married Rich in a flash out in Vegas then we watched them disintegrate in front of our eyes.’

‘Oh. What about his first wife?’

‘I don’t know anything about her, always thought he had enough drama on his plate,’ Ed sipped his candle cup. ‘He only mentioned he had some disagreement… Ah!—this marmalade gin packs a punch. I might actually need some tonic with it…’

‘He just said Rose wanted to be a mummy drudge.’

‘Ah. Rose? You see, you know more than me. Maybe he married the other from rebellion then. Never been married myself, never seen the attraction. You should ask Rich yourself.’

‘It’s funnier to hear it from you…’ She turned quickly, thinking he was behind her.

‘He’s still five away from getting there.’

‘Wives?’

‘The queue,’ Ed chuckled. ‘Yeah, the last I heard of Hannah is she eloped to Australia with some CEO. Rich must have been larking around like a bitter bachelor for, what - five years before he suddenly announced he’s going back up North.’

‘Back?’ she frowned.

‘Yeah, he lived there with his first. I only know because when I met him, he said something like, he’s wiping the past and changing the channel, yada yada. Then he proceeded to get so pissed he could barely talk and when he said he’s a teacher everyone laughed and no-one believed him. He wanted to go home but I took him to another bar and that’s where I asked out Hannah for him. I was only trying to cheer him up…’

‘He never told me he lived up North before. Was it York?’

‘No, it wasn’t Yorkshire. As I say, ask him. Sounds he’s opened up to you. I’ll be honest, when you first rocked up in the Côte, all Blushing Betty when he necked you, I thought he was cradle-snacking, but—’

‘Cradle what!’

‘I see now you’re, well - maturer than he is, you’re like his little…’

‘Priestess?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Raphaelite imprint of goodness? All his words.’

‘Ah, ha! His Welsh Rarebit. Better stop now…’

Neill appeared, promptly pulled and necked Natalia in his lap then smacked his lips. ‘Rum! I knew it. From fucking candle cups?’

‘Drunk enough for everyone to laugh in disbelief when I say I’m a uni girl!’

‘Oh, no-one will believe that,’ chuckled Ed.

‘Why?’

‘Well, everyone drinks at uni,’ he blinked. ‘No one does any work.’

‘Oh great. I mean… great, that’s the cliché you believe. I do lots of work, thank you.’

‘We already know he went for the rarebit! And now we’ll all have rarebit - cutlery’s here! Shall we go on the famous Snowdonia Mountain Rail after this?’

‘Is it round here?’

‘Must be. Let’s wolf this down and buy tickets!’

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Forty minutes later they were standing in front of the miniature-sized Conwy Valley Railway as a tiny, open-sided train rattled in, and three kids, and Natalia, ran toward it.

‘You’re kidding.’

‘What did you expect for £3?’

‘At least Babybum will fit.’

‘Have fun, Babybum!’ Ed called.

‘No way! Don’t leave me alone!’

‘No chance are we leaving you with fatty Jimmy Savile driving the thing. Come on, Ed, do as you’re told. In!’

Neill squeezed into the carriage with Natalia whilst Ed took the one behind. The train rattled, chugged and wheezed out of the concourse, past the roofs of a caravan park, then residential cottages, old decaying carriages, and a defunct model village trundled by with the saddest looking windmill missing two spindles.

‘Best before 1860. Ed—!’ Neill hollered as they pulled up and let everyone else out first. ‘Where’s the real railway after this abysmal charity shop toy?’

‘I just assumed the Mountain Rail was here!’

‘It’s a thirty minute drive in Llanberis.’ A buttoned paunch loomed over them. ‘Have ya booked?’

‘No?’ Neill frowned back at the paunch.

‘‘Fraid y’have to prebook,’ the conductor’s white hair came into view, ‘sometimes a week in advance or more, especially in the holidays.’

‘Oh, thanks for letting us know,’ smiled Natalia.

‘Bollocks!’ groaned Ed.

‘But there’s a castle nearby, Dolbadarn. And nearby is the most splendid cafe and tea-room, goes by the name of Ty Hyll. T-y, H-y-l-l. It will go beautifully with you, gents, although not so much yourself, m’lady. Have fun!’

Natalia was wondering what he meant, whilst Ed was tugging out his backpack stuck under the wooden seat and Neill was grumbling that he had a splinter in his bottom, till they were shunted along by five families descending on the platform. ‘Holidays,’ grunted Neill. ‘Noisy whippersnappers everywhere. Dolbadarn Castle will be quieter, and maybe we’ll drop by that place old fat Jimbo was drivelling about.’

They strolled into a mountain-side street busy with hikers and tourists filtering around the enormous stone-built Royal Oak Hotel. Neill chatted on his phone ahead, whilst Natalia walked with Ed, telling him about the style of Charlotte Brontë.

‘I’m not au fait with the old classics. It’s you and Headteach who’ll have to spoonfeed me a syllabus. Careful, coach coming. … Rather fast, mate! Slow down for tourists!’

‘Grab her hand, Ed!’ Neill called as they caught up. ‘The car should be just round here? Ed - her wrist, always grab her wrist.’

‘You said hand,’ Ed muttered.

‘Hand is too romantic. Hand also allows her to slip away. You grab her by the wrist for three good reasons.’

‘You only said two.’

‘Coat off, Natalia,’ Neill pulled open the back door, as Natalia climbed in with a markedly jutting bottom and turned satisfied to see both of them had indeed stood in view. ‘Can’t I sit in the front?’ she added - Neill about to shake his head, till an eye flicker cued her bottom tumbling over the centre console, Ed was jostled into the back seat, and with a slam of the door, Neill declared he’s driving - and the Beatles’ I Feel Fine began playing - till it stuck.

‘I’m so glad, that she’s my— she’s my— she’s my—’

‘Open your window, Natalia—’

Neill ejected the Beatles CD and boomeranged it straight through. Ed exploded in swear words as it glittered like a UFO over a fence and into a field.

‘Time to get with it, curmudgeon. Get your phone and let’s make you a Gluetooth playlist.’

‘Isn’t it Bluetooth?’

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Dolbadarn Castle was a 13th-century, round medieval stone tower set high in a lofty lonely spot. They entered through a curved iron gate, and as soon as a group of Asian tourists had dissipated from the bottom of the stone steps leading up and round the tower, the three of them scrambled at each others’ heels in a kid-like frisson to the top.

A glorious view of the waters of Llyn Padarn awaited them, weaving like a strip of blue silk between mountains and trees; the ruins of the castle dotted around in the grass below like slate tetrus pieces, the soft breeze cooling Natalia’s sweat from the climb as she flopped in her navy dress over the stone crenel.

‘I’m… so… hot.’

‘Well, quite.’

‘No wonder all the painters came here. Look at that view. Fancy another swim?’

‘Ed. We don’t have bathing suits.’

‘Rich. There’s fuck all people about.’

‘Are you saying—’

‘Come on!’

All three raced back down the stone stairs, and then for at least ten minutes carefully climbed down the rock face, Natalia tentatively gathering her linen skirts, Neill clutching her hand to support both her - and himself.

‘Stop poncing about, Grace Kelly and James Stuart! …Over this way a bit, we’ll be obscured by these brambles!’ Ed began swiftly stripping off as Neill followed.

‘Guys. We can’t do this…’

‘We’re wearing pants, Natalia.’

‘But I… have no bra on.’

‘Really?’

She narrowed her eyes at their innocent stares back. Ed pulled off his socks and tucked his watch and glasses into his shoes.

‘See you in there. I don’t want to be more than ten minutes,’ leaving Neill and Natalia standing looking at each other.

Ed splashed his chest and dived into the depth. By the time he’d swum out two metres, the conjoined bare shoulders of his smitten pals were following with wry smiles. Her arms wrapped around Neill’s neck; his linked fists shielding her bum crack, till she slipped down into the water for only the fish to see, hair trailing behind her.

The men duly splashed their small water riot, then turned in a two-minute silence at the sight of two glistening areolas backstroking by, before the smiling mermaid dropped with a grin into a tread.

‘Well, she likes it more than M&S now, I reckon’ - she heard, before her ears plunge-splashed into a breaststroke. Was it only yesterday she was dunked like a witch into Llyn Tegid, and now she was as accustomed to the wild waters like a gwyniad itself? Well, sort of, she spluttered and laughed, for this was far warmer than Fearnville Leisure Centre, and unlike there, her naked vulva filled with lake water and her pubes swam a secret dance like seaweed tendrils. Now two hands cup her chest, with a faggy purr that she’s ‘like a water nymph, god that I could fuck right against that molehill.’

‘Which molehill!’

‘The bald one with sight like one.’ Feeling her shiver, Neill carried her out and wrapped his shirt around her. ‘Use your dress to towel up your hair. It’s more absorbable.’

‘But I want to dry in the sun… besides, molehill missed out!’ She dropped the shirt to the ground, threw back her hair Baywatch-style, lay back on the sandy grass bank and let her eyes close smugly - bettering the wheeze of surprise that came from Neill, and now, evidently Mr Mole had put back on his glasses.

‘Woah, woah—’

Head tilted back, one knee over the other like the Egon Schiele nude she’d wanted to emulate ever since Neill had made her spread like a sex doll, and incognito, too - from behind her cat’s eye shades she smugly surveyed and compared their dripping ballsac bulges, as well as the two silhouetted heads that must be transfixed, the words sailing on the breeze:

‘What can I say Ed,’ Neill said at last. ‘She’s magnificent. A masterpiece.’

A murmur of accordance from Ed, who was now turned away as if to whisper to the lake. ‘I can hear voices. She’d better dress sharpish or the whole of Llanberis will be down here standing to attention.’

Neill tossed Natalia’s dress over her with a sigh. ‘Natalia, put your fucking beautiful body away before we look like perverts.’

‘Thought you already were-verts?’

‘Before the town sees this—and wheezes, bejesus!—we’ll squeeze this!’

‘Only if you look up the tea room.’

‘Not half. I’m parched,’ said Ed. ‘And we’ve yet to trudge up that hill. Right here we go: Ty Hyll. Wait, this can’t be right… how did he spell that place?’

Natalia, leaning into Ed’s phone whilst Neill zipped her dress, exclaimed: ‘The Ugly House! It’s a tiny little shack! It all makes sense!’

‘What the fuck? What did that old git mean?’

‘He said it will go with you two! You were rude about his train! He’s probably been working there a hundred years. You fell right into it!’

They lay about belly-aching with laughter for five minutes before they summoned themselves back up to the car, Natalia piggybacked on Neill.

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The Ugly House wasn’t so ugly. ‘Deliberately designed by John Wilkes to be asymmetrical,’ the boards read - Natalia thought the same of the frown lines between Ed’s faint wispy brows, like a Year 8 boy had dug in a ruler to etch two crude linear speech marks in the bench table of his bald head, as he grumbled that the thick stone walls prevented him from adding songs to his playlist. ‘Don’t care for an Ugly Sausage then, Ed, or saving it for later?’ Neill smiled and sat back like Daddy Bear in his creaky spindle-back chair, sipping Ceylon tea through his fine peggy teeth, his combed wet hair glimmering back into blondness first at his ear tufts as he exhorted, ‘this is the Honey Pot Tearoom, honey, oh how sweet, and not ugly at all.’

‘It’s not supposed to be called ugly. It says over there that the name was Llugwy, as in the river, but was too difficult for English visitors to pronounce. …Someone carry me to the car!’ - after Neill declared he’s far too hot, and she stood defiantly on a rock, ‘but my belly’s too full of Earl Grey—!’ leaping straight onto Ed as he gave an exaggerated groan, briefly palming his head for leverage and finding it surprisingly soft and warm, she mused, like the end of Neill’s dick.

‘Natalia, you rubbed yourself over Ed’s bed and now all over Ed’s head. You really are a little cunt.’

‘Thought I was honey! Sorry, Ed—’

‘Same thing…’

‘That’s er, ok,’ sighed Ed. ‘Makes two of you, really. You’re both wankers.’

‘Oh, she doesn’t wank, I don’t let her.’

‘Serious?’ Ed chortled.

‘Yes, yes, hear how deprived I am, Ed!’

‘She’s been spoilt all day, and now about to get a spoilt evening serviced by two chefs, how about that? Thank goodness we did that shop earlier. Game’s on 7.45, Ed. Sheffield v Cardiff. Right Ed, I’ve put Beatles on shuffle.’

‘Another football show?’ Natalia groaned. ‘Talk about a spoilt evening!’

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Humming Daytripper as she spruced up in the marble bathroom, taking a quick sniff of Ed’s citrusy Boss cologne to see how it compared to Neill’s musky Armani, she thought upon the second day’s stepping stone from reality. Another reminder that Thornwood High could belong to the realm of history, and that life beyond it might be like this? To be adored every day without a backdrop of doubters? To read books for her own pleasure and criticism, not for Mrs Coleman? To smell the scent of liquor drunk as casually as tea, even though it made her legs like jelly, but to know it was ok, British, manly, didn’t make you the scourge of the earth to consume it like her mum’s Carlsbergs perched in the fridge promising her continuing emotional distance? To be chauffeured along panoramic roads to cherry-picked places without the Gipton fear of spending money, or being mugged of it? Could life be like this, all the time?

She sat on the bed, smoothing a second crease in the cover of Maisie, where Ed’s three bottles of booze had squashed it in his backpack. Well, life was almost perfect.

Her phone buzzed. Lana in a selfie, straw in a coconut, two cross-eyed waiters either side of her.

‘Got my roaming working! Check out this glorious beach and my hot helpers! :D Xx’

It looked chintzy and not nearly as good as Lake Padarn. Natalia sent back a photo she’d taken at Dolbadarn - before kicking herself that she’s supposed to be in south Wales, adding:

‘A view over Pembrokeshire! Not quite as exotic as YOURS but I’m being spoilt by two of my own hot helpers cooking tonight! X’

- ‘Oh ace! Guess what…’

‘What, what?’

- ‘Guess whose number I have ;-)’

‘Er… Mr Clarke’s!’

- ‘Ew! You loon. Neill’s. X’

She frowned.

‘How did you get that?’

After a fidgety two minutes watching Lana’s writing dots bouncing around, backscored by the men’s roaring laughter downstairs:

‘Mum was talking to Dinkey’s wife Karen - god I’m still reeling from the news. Mum used to ride horse shows with her and thought of horse-drawn carts for the school memorial so Karen passed on Neill’s number to discuss. She didn’t know how to send it so she read it out, typical Generation X’ers!’

- ‘And… what are you gonna do with his number?’

‘Well obvs! When I pluck up the courage tho! Gemma claims he is hot for me… I do NOT know whether to believe her! But since he slapped my bum who knows!?’

Natalia’s heart skipped a beat.

‘What, in Haworth?’

- ‘No, in the Grotto, with the grades scroll! Well my memory is a blur, I was so surprised, but yeah!’

‘Wasn’t Santa an actor!’

- ‘No it was Neill! It’s sooo obvious, everyone knows! He said I was lush, the greatest cracker he could pull today… LOL, and never looked at me the same since! He split with the foxy headmistress and Mum said he’s LEAVING at the end of term sooo… who plays wins! xx

The snail brains really are picking up, four months later. But… greatest cracker, slapping her bum?

‘What about Alex??’

- ‘Complicated, hun. I wouldn’t be surprised if that immature ass is playing the field while I’m away. I can’t bear the worry anymore, TBH. Anyway, gotta sleep - it’s midnight here. Night night xx

She stared. Then laughed. Disingenuous bitch, he called her. He dumped his last blonde strumpet six years ago. Then she remembered that third phone conversation from this morning when he had that cheeky look in his face. No, that must have been Becky. Lana said she hasn’t even had the courage to text him yet. She won’t do it. The idea of a schoolgirl texting the Headmaster, believing she likes him, how ridiculous! So ridiculous though, with this one? Oh! Could this be a test whether she was really the schoolgirl apple of his eye. Check he’s really lost temptation for disloyal, jealous jades?

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Serviced by two chefs, she was. Chicken and lamb curried from scratch with fenugreek and saffron, decorated with cheat-ready M&S bhajis, poppadums and samosas, ‘wow, Eddie boy, this is almost as good as a curry house! My naan is as soft as teenage flesh!’ - ‘You’d know.’ - Cue a guessing game of the checkout girl’s age, and vote of whether she’d call back - Natalia raising her hand sheerly from sympathy before Neill tossed Ed’s phone and told him to get on Tinder. Now the smoked full-bellies were pinging lids off Peronis and hitching Pringles socks up by Pringle crisps as Ed clapped Neill’s shoulder with: ‘Right! Blades V Bluebirds! My money’s on the Welsh boys!’

‘Guess I’m backing the Northern Shitfielders.’

Natalia mooned over the couch back, still in her long linen dress. ‘So aren’t we going to the pub tonight? Even for drinks?’

‘Not tonight. We’ve got our own pub,’ Ed nodded at a bottle bank gathered on the kitchen island.

‘Can’t I even tempt you with a board game?’

‘Maybe at half time,’ said Neill.

‘Like I have brain cells for Scrabble after I’ve downed these.’

‘How long’s this one on for?’ she lounged, head on elbows, at over-sharpened footballers’ profiles onscreen.

‘Ninety minutes minimum, if there’s no penalties. Go whisk up that Angel Delight.’

She returned with three bowls of pink mousse that they lapped up with barely a blink from the screen.

‘Tastes the same as it did in 1995. Not finishing yours, darling? Come sit with me… all ok?’

‘Yeah. Lana texted.’

‘What does she want.’

‘Starting to sound like a disingenuous bitch to be honest…’

Neill chuckled, cuddling her into him as she whispered: ‘Says Grotbag slapped her bum.’

‘Who?’ he muttered. ‘Two fouls already by Cardiff. Dirty, dirty Welshmen!’

‘Bad Santa,’ she said, as his chest beneath her cheek inflated and his nostril flared like a calligraphed apostrophe, as they did whenever he spoke of obnoxious and desirable females alike.

‘That girl really does have wishful thinking, doesn’t she? Shrugs her shoulder at me so far it’s like she has cerebral palsy. Yes, her bum was slapped. With a blown up condom that I batted right at it with the grades scroll. Snorted like a horse when I told her she’s the most crackers lush I’d had in all day.’

‘Oh, yeah - I remember her saying in class about the condom…’

‘What lush are you two gassin’ on about?’ heckled Ed.

‘The kind of bird you know what it’s like to endure, Ed.’

Natalia finished the last of her mousse, cuddled back into Neill’s arm and then, pulling out the remote control pressing into her thigh, began to slip it up her dress sleeve. As soon as Neill jumped up to the door for a smoke Ed wouldn’t let him have at the table, and Ed had nipped to the loo, Natalia muted the TV, slid the remote underneath the sofa and ran up the stairs.

In a few moments she heard Ed exclaim.

‘Why’s there no sound?’

‘Where’s the remote?’

‘Fuck, Sheffield scored! That monster prick Leon Clarke!’

‘All my glory and no sound! …Natalia! Where has she gone? I’ll bet she’s got the remote! Natalia!’

Mutterings about her getting a good drubbing. Or a grounding, or having Angel Delight banned or teabags confiscated. Jokes about teabagging, then footsteps up the stairs that made her bowels go, and her giggles make the footsteps hasten and the bowels go even more, till there was a grip on her arm and ‘come with mad Santa, you little grotbag,’ a frogmarch down the stairs and a shove to the sofa where she bent down to duly retrieve the remote.

‘Jesus, I thought you had her disciplined!’

‘Natalia, up to our room for the rest of the night,’ Neill padded her bottom with the remote.

‘No way.’

‘Go wash those dessert bowls then.’

She stuck out her tongue, sat down and pulled out Maisie, eyeing them over the page.

‘Look at the state of that now. Give it here—’ He bent a third crease in the cover and tossed it back. Natalia exclaimed. It now looked like an asterisk hovering beside the girl.

‘So Cardiff beat Burton Albion on Friday - ninth consecutive win? …Uh-uh, Natalia! Not this time—’ He shifted the remote to his other side from where she had begun to toe it.

Then he pulled out his phone, tapping and smiling.

‘Who is it?’ she asked curiously. ‘Mrs Reynolds?’

‘Hm?’

‘Apparently she has your number to talk horses for donkey’s funeral.’

‘No. They had Blackman from Chelsea,’ he continued to Ed, ‘but he was sent off pitch on Friday.’

‘Hmph.’ She tossed down the book, just as Neill motioned his phone to her.

‘Here. A surprise for you.’

‘What, what?’

He flashed her a photo of Ras, curled in a ball with his furry pink lip upturned - as she sighed and awwwed that she missed him - before he stuffed it away and continued hollering to Ed who was rummaging in the fridge. ‘Another offside, your monster prick Leon!’

Natalia stood up and stretched. ‘I’ll go out then. For a walk.’

‘Alone? No chance. Ooh!— Stearman nearly had it!’

‘I’ll go upstairs then, and play by myself.’ She stepped toward the stairs, watching Neill, watching the TV, who didn’t seem to hear whilst Ed clinked away with the bottle opener.

‘Neill, I’m going upstairs to play… with myself. Bye!’

Her saunter past his knees was promptly truncated by his grip on her arm.

‘Hey!… I’m going up—’

‘What did you say? You know the rules don’t you?’ Now a firm hold of her neck, she was pulled down into his lap and her wrists secured one by one, behind her back.

Now this was attention.

‘Neill, let go—’ His response was to group her wrists tighter and take her kicking ankles into his other hand, as Ed’s footsteps returned.

‘How are you gonna drink your beer like that, mate?’

‘She normally has a hairband on her wrist. Nadgers, not today.’

‘It’s there in her hair…’ Her ponytail was scored loose, catching a tangle as she squealed, not knowing which of them had pulled it, before it was bandied around one wrist, then the other, making her wriggle in excitement, too wildly - till it broke, and an anti-climax hovered between the three of them.

‘I see that works well, too,’ Ed chuckled.

‘Well, you can practice what I told you earlier Ed, and take her by the wrists.’

‘No way…’ Natalia sat up and folded her arms.

‘You know, you were asking about my stuff, Rich. I once had a pair of cuffs. Police grade, Andrea made me buy them. I had her on the staircase when we first got here…’

‘Cuffs? Handcuffs?’ Neill spluttered. ‘Where?’

Natalia’s eyes shot back to Ed.

‘I’ll go check the cellar. I hope they still have keys with it.’

‘Keys are optional! Go get them!’

‘Neill! Ed!…’ Natalia jumped to her feet as her heart flip-flopped. ‘You’re not thinking of… there’s no way I’m—?’

‘Off you go! Be free!’ Neill checked his watch, ‘for all of ten minutes or so! Enjoy.’

‘What.’ Ed was disappearing down some stairs by the cloakroom, as she stared back to Neill, who was transfixed by a TV goal about to be made, like an ejaculation about to erupt. ‘He’s got it, Lundstram’s got it… uh!… too high!’ tapering like a failed sneeze, as she promptly disappeared up the spiral staircase and slammed the bedroom door.

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Something else was slamming away inside her. This was almost too much attention. There’s no way Ed was hooking out some handcuffs to have her, what, under house arrest? Oh, fuck, she can hear their laughs now, something about ‘officer,’ and ‘quality, legit,’ and ‘she’ll LOVE’ - then only a few moments before Neill’s call came:

‘Nat-al-ia!’

Footsteps, door knock… no lock on the door, so open it swung, with a clinking of metal.

‘Oh there you are! Come here, little kitty. Time to get locked up!’

‘No way.’ Her eyes were as wide as Ras’s when Neill sneezes. Except now she felt like sneezing.

‘Oh yes way. You asked for it.’

In a trice she was bent forward, arms like flower stalks crinkled and clinked, tightened with a scrape and she was the girl under arrest, the criminal in Sheffield shopping with her mum and oh, the metal creaked right into her wrist bones, she’s pulsating like one giant vein, and the long moan she makes is one of resignation to what was utterly fantasy and utterly mortifying at once, as he frogmarched her again to the stairs.

Flipping her entirely under one arm like a parcel - a parcel with a face too fazed to talk, with legs she didn’t know would look more ridiculous to wiggle in her skirts like a 1940s housewife or hang resignedly like a corpse - he traipsed down the spiral treads happily as a whistling postman, delivering to the house owner, his ordered prisoner, face down on the coffee table after he chucked a cushion for her knees.

‘Win-win!’ Neill dusted his hands and sat down. ‘Or rather, I won-won a game of scrabble up there. Now she’s not causing any trouble and we can watch the game with her bottom wriggling better than she was doing for us at Doll-Be-Damned Castle.’

‘Nice one.’

Nice one? Double indignation. Oh, indignation pumping like two cars squeezing down a Welsh single passageway. Neill and his crony who makes Neill more O’Neill, whilst her knickers soften like butter in summer and her blonde highlights splay like a continuation of gold from the trim on the cushions. She is writhing, slowly and softly, trying to make it look like not a big deal to be handcuffed there over the table, slowly circling her wrists to dilute the sharp throbs at her metacarpals, till an uproarious ‘he’s got it, he’s got it… he’s… OOOH!’ makes her stop frozen and wish the table would swallow her up. But they’re not looking at her, they must not be, they’re all about the football…

‘Well, ahh! She’s er… very good and quiet,’ Ed remarked.

‘Only because she knows if she’s not, I’ll make her wear a gag.’

A soft chortle from Ed.

‘Stick your bottom out if you don’t want to get gagged!’ —Peggy-toothed postman called out, just as her thoughts had already flashed to the gobstopper he’d bought for her earlier - and she knew he knew it, why her lips were pressed into the table with barely a whimper, and she’ll even squirm her bottom, in an appeal for it to stay that way, for now - this was enough, this was more than enough.

‘Very good. Isn’t that very good, Ed?’

‘Er, ha…’ Sidekick sounded as speechless as her. She tossed her head and hair, trying to look toward the side of Ed’s body, whether his face was looking at her, or the football behind her, was he as red as she…?

‘Who’s got the remote now, Natalia?’ The irrepressible one continued.

‘Ha… mm.’

‘Well?’

‘Yuhhh… you…’

‘That tongue you stuck out twice at me today. Shall we use it to lick those bowls clean?’

The three-bowl stack was just by her head. She wished she’d at least moved it to the sink.

‘Ha…nn-no…’

‘Stick that bottom out more then, I reckon. Can’t see it in that dark linen. Enough to hold this—’ She felt the remote placed upon her rump; her cuffed hands nudged up her spine. ‘Don’t touch it, you’ll learn not to touch it. For if it drops, you’ll be showing Ed what I bought you earlier. Understand?’

‘Haa… mm.’

‘You know, I’m a headmaster for twelve more weeks, Natalia. Do you think being polite in the way you address me, might help appease—’

‘Yes, sir.’ Her bottom now like a ledge, hands retreated like shrivelled coral.

‘Goodness, this remote works well since you supercharged it under the sofa!… Oh, is that a score… he’s in, he’s— oh FUCK! It’s one all!’

Whatever Ed thought of all that, she was not privy to, as shouts resound now like that of four men. They must be stoned to be this excited about Shitfield vs Cardiff. Then as silence fell, commentary by Alan Shearer began, they clinked more beers and Natalia numbed out into some strange state of groin-pooled detachment, Ed’s voice came unusually sobering.

‘Are you ok, Nat? Rich, I feel a bit cruel now, mate… what with suggesting the cuffs, you put them on quite tight, they might be painful…’

‘What’s her face like?’

‘Flushed, sort of—’

‘Eyes fluttering?’

‘Y-yeah….’

‘She loves it.’ Neill’s socked toe padded her bottom. ‘Oh yes. I know that moan. By the time Shearer shuts his cake hole, hers will be wetter than Stevie Wonder’s toilet rim.’

‘Rich!’ Their laughs now. Suppressed and sort of polite. She wasn’t here. She wasn’t here… but oh goodness, Neill may as well have a wooden spoon, stirring the bloodstream in her buttocks.

‘United should have got shout out for a penalty, Manga definitely clipped Evans. Or I may be rusty on these footie judgements.’

‘Too much headmastering and not enough ball action, mate.’

‘Who said I didn’t get ball action?’

Another socked kick from Neill as she groaned softly to the low grunts of what were now Two Dickhead Birds, softly belching, at least twice farting, with ‘excuse me’ afterwards, as though the Portrait of a Bent Lady in front of them elicited that reverence, even as Neill murmurs something about ‘balls,’ ‘tongue…’ ‘seriously never,’ and ‘hard as nails,’ she could only take Ed’s mutter of ‘Lord’ to cue sticking her bottom out a bit further, and stiffening it back again to avoid a curry fart of her own being pumped into their faces. Methane emissions were a retaliation she didn’t fancy featuring in good, very-good-Ed, bent lady portrait.

‘Pass the remote, Rich.’

‘Take it from the table.’

‘Well there we go,’ as it was swiped, the booming commentary sunk down and finally her bottom. ‘I’m glad you’re getting some ball action with me, mate.’ Ed slipped into the kitchen, as she craned round to spy Neill tapping on his phone.

‘Neill, Neill… I need to go to bed, I’m so tired…’ Big yawn. ‘Can you…?’ Ten fingers wiggle.

‘Well, Ed has the keys. Go over and ask him.’ He pulled her to standing as she toppled sideways in leg cramp. ‘Ed, Ed! Natalia wants to ask you something.’

‘Yeah!’

Blood flooding back into her shins, she was jostled over to the kitchen in indignity to where Ed was pulling out two whisky glasses by the light of the extractor fan.

‘Try some of the Penderyn, Rich! …Oh, hello?’

‘Hi. Er, Neill says you have the key to get these off?’

‘Get what off?’

‘Fuck’s sake!’ She flashed round to Neill, now perched bemused on a bar stool.

‘Get what off, darling?’

She turned and wiggled her hands. ‘These!’

‘Oh! I’ll have a look,’ Ed jimmied his pyjama pocket. ‘These might work…’

Neill made a comely gesture for Natalia to lean into his arms, as Ed brushed up behind her with a certain civility to gain the friction needed to hold her arms, and for the moment she is sandwiched between Ed’s knee and Neill’s forearm, Natalia’s eyes falter at Neill’s - intoxicatingly, returned by inflamed curiosity from Neill’s - just as she feels a swift, secret rummage of his hand down her pudenda. The swallow in his throat signals he has felt it, felt Lake Padarn padding for an hour; what he has done to her - or what they have done to her - and it is like the foaming waters from which the cuffs were retrieved and dangled in the air like a silvery fish.

Neill pads her bum. ‘Bed then, if you’re tired, but remember the rules. Hands outside the duvet, Natalia.’

‘You should have left them on really, then, shouldn’t you?’ chuckled Ed.

‘Her wrists are marked enough, poor little sausage,’ Neill rubbed them softly. ‘We should give her boxing gloves. Speaking of which, is the boxing on, Ed?’

‘Cricket. Test Match Special starting 11, New Zealand vs England.’

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Mornings in Ed’s Coach House were turning out to be markedly different from Neill’s cottage, and she found to her surprise she liked waking again to an empty bed, roused gently by soft, jasmine-scented white duvet at her upturned nostrils instead of them squash-fucked down into the springs. To the clink of teaspoons and pneumatic drill of Ed’s Fracino, she played her fingers idly through her star-fished pubic hair pondering that ‘in less than three weeks she’s done more than most women have done in a lifetime.’ Was Neill right? Was this break now, in their fuck-packed schedule since Humpday Dumpday, a taster of normal life for those as wanky-chaste as Ed?

Blood rose in her shoulders as she thought about last night. For a second she thought it was a dream, till her wrist bone gave a dull throb gripping the handrail down to breakfast.

‘The Ladies of Llangollen! Now that sounds tastier than these pancakes! Is it open? Let’s go!’

‘A pretty house called Plas Newydd, less than an hour east. Llangollen’s very picturesque and I’ve never been arsed to take all the B-roads to it before. Before we go guys, want to put anything into the wash?’

‘There’s some dresses on the bedroom floor. Anything else, Natalia? Hand over all your soiled knickers, you remember how that goes, don’t you?’

‘I already rinsed them in the shower,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want Ed seeing them.’

‘What a bad girl. Never do that again.’

‘Will we be walking, hiking, swimming today?’ she mused in the bedroom. ‘I’m just wondering what to wear…’

‘Just tottering about the Ladies’ House and the town.’

‘So shall I wear this?’ She held up her grey dress.

‘Most certainly.’

‘Or this one?’ She raised a chequered one.

‘Tough. Ed, come in here!’

‘What?’ He appeared.

He nodded to the dresses on the bed. ‘I recall you’ve seen her in both of these. Which do you rate?’

‘Save the chequered for the chessboard in Portmeiron,’ Ed smiled.

‘And what about shoes? Flats, or pretty ones with a little…’

‘Pretty ones with a little,’ they said together.

Filing out, Natalia spied Neill slipping the handcuffs from the top of the cooker hood. ‘Better behave today, Miss Grey,’ he said slyly, as they jumped into the car. ‘Right, chauffeur! Take us to Llangollen!’

‘Llangollen is pronounced Llan-GOHCK-len. The two LLs in Welsh are a khuhhh sound.’

‘The Welsh gob? Rather like Arabic.’

‘Ah, now Ed’s mansplaining you about Welsh pronunciation. Keep at it, Ed!’ grinned Natalia.

‘Oh I’ll be at it alright - guess who just texted!’ said Ed.

‘No way!’ guffawed Neill. ‘The M&S girl actually wants a date with not just a wanker, but a slaphead wanker?’

‘She’s got a free day. Told her we’re going to the Ladies of Llangollen, says she’s always wanted to visit so I offered to buy her a ticket…’

‘Well three’s a crowd but four is swingin’, why not?’

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They swept into a driveway, where at the end of a long lawn loomed a big stone house in an eye-catching, black Tudor facade.

‘The most celebrated virgins in Europe, Trip Advisor said! Do you think there’ll be oodles of nudes like Botticelli, all crammed into that quaint chocolate-box cottage?’

‘Rich has a thing for virgins, clearly. Already bored of the one you deflowered?’

‘She’s just like that book - creased several times but spine hasn’t broken in yet.’ Neill yanked Maisie from Natalia’s hands and rapped her on the head with it. ‘Natalia!— I know that yawn, she needs tea! Forty minutes of your ABBA shuffle was a sentence excruciatingly longer than any of Henry James’s.’

‘It’s not quite one thirty, let’s sit in the tea room. God, this is the time I need a stiff one.’

‘Plenty time for that later. Siocled Poeth! Is that a native Welsh drink? I’ll have one!’

‘I’ll text Anna and see if she’s on her way.’

‘Leave it Ed, she’ll be driving. Looking clingy at this stage is not a good thing.’

‘Her name begins with an A again, not sure that’s a good thing…’

‘Just thank your stars there’s no H,’ said Neill. ‘But will you do Anna to death like ABBA?’

‘God, everyone’s name begins with an A!’ Natalia laughed. ‘Andrea, Alana, Aisha… Alex, Adam… even Shiffty Alan we met. I don’t need another person beginning with A!’

Neill threw her a surprised glance as their drinks were set down. ‘I guess that’s your new totty downvoted, Ed!’

‘I just feel like I’m sneezing on every name. Ah, ahh…choo-many-fucking-As! …Sorry, Ed! I’m just being silly.’

‘Speaking of names,’ Neill sipped his huge mug, ‘we should go incognito, that’s if this bird even turns up.’

‘She already knows me as Ed. Ed, see? Forget bullshitting.’

‘Well, Natalia and I are not leaching our identity to every bit of pussy you pick up on this holiday. So don’t call me Rich, I’m—’

‘Poor-l.’

‘Paul, and she is…’

‘Like the Two Little Dicky Birds!’ Natalia giggled.

Neill frowned. ‘Bit long. What about—’

‘She’s here!’ Ed jumped up, as they turned to see the checkout girl from M&S rocking up from a mint-coloured Fiat 500, wearing a denim jacket, her short bleached blonde hair brushed out, and a bright-red lipsticked pearly smile that cued a rising from Neill for a two-kiss embrace. ‘Ooh, takes me back to the Southern way!’ followed by a slew of ‘funny seeing you heres’ - ‘This is not just a house, this is the ladies’ house!’ and then a scanter squeeze from Natalia, from maybe wanting to avoid her cheek being marked like a London Red Route, but with a more sincere eye gaze - or attempt of one - than what she deemed as the vacuousness of the Southern way.

‘Oh, latte for me, skimmed if they don’t have soy, single shot… Paul? Cheers Paul!’ Anna was shorter than Natalia, with high cheekbones swept with bronzer that set off her eyes like shamrocks. Her denim breast pockets sported various badges Natalia gazed at till she slipped it off onto the chair.

‘Super sorry I’ve five minutes late - traffic in the town was manic. Gosh, it’s hot today!’ Her voice was louder than at the checkout, jovial and Southern, strong with an impassioned quiver.

‘We haven’t bought tickets yet. We were—’

‘Waiting to see if you turn up,’ said Neill promptly.

Anna tinkled a high note of laughter, as Ed winced a smile: ‘No problem, no problem dear. Ri… Paul, behave!’

‘Did you just call me RuPaul?’

‘Oh, Drag Race, season ten just started, flatmate’s got me hooked!’

‘Yee-ah. I must apologise in advance for my friend - he has mild Tourettes, but it’s completely tamed by the Welsh cure of Siocled Poeth, of which thank goodness he has the portliest cup I’ve seen.’

‘He’s cured by hot chocolate?’ Anna smiled.

‘Yup, turns out the English menu’s just on the other side,’ Neill flipped it over.

‘A kick in the bollocks then.’

‘Well, that’s normally what Ed’s drink translates to,’ Neill added.

‘Hah! Oh goodness, I had a few too many over Easter. Drinks - and kicks, thanks to my incorrigible mates pulling me along to Disco Bliss at Atik when I’m on deadline! Almost didn’t make it to work on Monday, but it was double time and I so need the cash for my MA.’

‘Ah, you’re a uni girl!’

‘Yeah, yeah, at Wrexham. Almost done my BA in Sociology.’

‘Ah, Nat— er—’ Ed clapped Natalia’s shoulder, ‘Not, another one. This one’s also… a smart one.’

‘Oh, what do you do? Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?’

Natalia was mid-swig of Neill’s hot chocolate. ‘Nuh-oh, er—’ she began, just as the chocolate went down the wrong way and she spluttered and began a coughing fit.

Neill patted her back and began, ‘Oh she’s just little… Lynn…’

‘Littling?’

‘Littling…ton.’

‘Littlington?’

‘She’s a colleague of his,’ Ed added.

‘Sweet, your name’s a village in East Sussex! I was just looking at a cottage there - my MA’s in Brighton.’

Natalia had just about recovered and was now gazing down at Anna’s pale and portly ankles in trainer socks, stuffed inside Nikes that must be big as Darren’s. Not pretty shoes with a little… lington.

‘And what’s the MA in?’ Neill gave Natalia’s knee a squeeze to make her look up again.

‘Oh! Sexual Dissidence. Can’t wait to get out there, where it’s all happening,’ Anna sighed. ‘Wales is lovely, but it gets… sleepy! It’s also so traditional, you know? You’d never get an MA like that at Wrexham.’

‘Well, quite. Sexual Dissidence, blimey,’ said Ed. ‘Lilith, Medea, and Lady Khil will have nothing on you by the time you’re qualified to… er, what is it you want to do?’

‘I’m not quite sure yet!’ beamed Anna. ‘So where are your friends from?’

‘Ah, well they’re all the way from—’

‘I’m just going out back!’ The waitress called out shrilly. ‘To take a delivery! Did you lot want to buy tickets for the ‘ouse, I can do ya them now!’

‘Oh, yes! Drink up, two ladies, so we can check out the two ladies, diddly dit dee-dee! Who I’m sure are far more compelling than bald men!’

Neill rolled his eyes, Natalia smiling politely at Anna who was turning away to grab a takeaway cup, giving Natalia the moment she’d been waiting for to rub away the trace of rouge on Neill’s temple. He glanced down at her in surprise.

‘You had some Soc-let Poyf,’ she smiled and pecked his lips.

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Eight legs and four pairs of sunglasses strolled the sunny path like a fashionable spider up to the house, as the morning breeze gently blew away the tearoom’s motley stop-start conversation and an array of hedges came into view, preened to perfection and bordered with bright tulips and daffodils. Ed and Anna walked within inches of each other, she flashing out her phone to ‘show you who RuPaul is, you cheugy! Because I actually adore bald men!’ - ‘Afraid mine’s not a canvas for huge wigs like that!’ - whilst Neill and Natalia followed nudging each other, their collective attention fast transferring to a magnificently Gothic, covered porchway.

‘Quick puck?’ Anna had pulled off her shoulder bag, lit up and dragged zealously on a long white cigarette that she handed to Ed.

‘Good smooth baccy,’ Ed handed it to Neill, ‘not like your Marlboro filth.’

‘Organic, Virginia Green,’ Anna concurred. ‘My flatmate brings it over from the States. Yep, you get all the benefits better this way.’

‘Benefits?’ Natalia chuckled. ‘Is this weed then?’

‘Oh, no no, not out here!’ she laughed. ‘Nicotine - kills parasites. Cleans the blood,’ she said, as Neill exhaled, nodding.

‘Smart girl. I was always touting the salubrity of a fag break, Ed.’

‘Roger that. By the way,’ Ed turned to Anna, ‘I must offer you an apology. I’ve been calling you Anna.’

‘Yes? That’s my name sweetie.’

‘Your badge says Ally?’

‘No, no, ally. As in, a friend, you know…’

‘Oh! I didn’t know there were badges for… friends. Let’s hope we can get that sent off for an upgrade!’

‘You’re so funny!’

Natalia had wandered to the door before they had chance to hand her the lumpy All-American baccy, her nose right up to the relief of kings, queens, cherubs and foliage popping out from the surface of the dark wood better than a Tony’s Chocolonely Easter egg.

‘Do we knock?’ Neill said behind her, when the door swung open and they shrunk back, as two women in top hats stepped out. One short and round with dainty features, the other tall and thin with a turnip nose, costumed in black waistcoats with gold buttons and vintage blouses, they clasped their hands together and chirruped:

‘Welcome, welcome to our home!’

‘Jeez, it’s like Pinky and the Brain isn’t it?’ Neill muttered. ‘Morning, gentlemen! We’re here to see the Ladies of Llangollen!’

‘Nei— Paul…’ Natalia began.

‘Nipple?’ Ed frowned.

‘Ah!’ the smaller one grinned vivaciously. ‘You are indeed looking at them! Circa 1780, if you care to suspend disbelief! For I, am Sarah Ponsonby!’

‘…And I, Eleanor Butler! We are the high class Irish women who own Plas Newydd here. Would you care to tour our beautiful home today?’

‘Yes, if you two lovely ladies are available, so to speak!’ Ed bowed theatrically as Anna giggled.

‘Ah no, we are happily married,’ chuckled the shorter one who announced herself as Eleanor, whilst Neill muttered over Ed’s shoulder.

‘Ed. You’ve brought us to see two dykes. Two fucking dykes. I’m gonna fucking thrash you.’

‘Thank you, ladies!’ chimed Anna, whilst Natalia fought hard to nod sensibly: ‘Yes, we’d love to see your beautiful house!’

‘Quite, quite! May I see your tickets!’

‘Did they say that in 1780?’ chuckled Neill, as Anna presented the receipts, and went ahead after the women, Natalia following - and then turning to see Ed being half-shoved by Neill into the bush bordering the front porch, as a momentary ruckus broke out between them.

‘Guys! Stop it! Behave—’

‘Go on, Littlington. Follow Luxton and Bailey,’ Neill’s knee propelled Natalia into the hallway, which as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they saw was as intricately carved as the entrance.

‘Come through, come through! I see you are wearing the Pride pin, miss,’ the taller lady claiming to be Sarah, nodded at Anna’s jacket. ‘We’re actually here today on behalf of Queer Tales from Wales as part of a National LGBTQIA inclusion strategy.’

‘Ed. You’re dead.’

‘Pride pin?’ Ed frowned at Anna’s jacket.

‘Yes! The one you liked,’ she pinched a pink-blue-grey circle.

Ed groaned. ‘Ally. Not Ali.’

‘Must be all these names beginning with A,’ sighed Neill. ‘Makes you want to sneeze doesn’t it? Ah-ah-TROON!’

Anna turned and frowned, as Neill coughed. ‘Pardon me. It’s my allergies.’

‘May I ask ladies, please,’ Anna stepped to them, ‘how we address you properly - I mean, your pronouns?’

‘Oh my fucking word,’ Neill facepalmed the wall, almost chin-butting a red fire break box.

‘Oh, we are just she/her,’ as the three women trailed ahead into the first ground floor room, Anna chattering about her Sexual Dissidence MA in a ‘so much more progressive town for gender rights and anti-discrimination, almost free from transphobia,’ leaving Neill staring at Ed, with whom the penny had finally dropped.

‘You really want to shag Ally Baba the woke activist?’

‘Fly away, Paul…’

‘Sexual Dissidence isn’t fucking kinky, Ed. It’s about as kinky as this—’ Neill grabbed and pulled Ed’s ear as he yowled, lunged to ‘get you right in the bollocks’ - just as Neill swerved and Natalia caught hold of his sleeve.

‘Just remember whatever you think of all this,’ she urged, ‘you’re a headmaster. Only three hours from Leeds…’

‘I’m not a Leeds headmaster right now.’ He shook her off. ‘I’m sick of being a fucking Leeds headmaster.’

‘He’s a fucking drunk just like he always was. Can’t keep himself dry. Nor can you, according to what he’s been saying.’

‘Look, who knows! Anna might be a fucking governor’s daughter or something—’

‘Fucking a governor’s daughter, I’ll tag along,’ said Ed.

Natalia sighed. ‘Nee—Paul, just watch your step, yes?’

‘And you - you braless sexual dissident, can watch your fucking step before we rename you Nipple. Hang your coat up there, walk in front of us at all times and lean that fucking pert bottom over the information plaque in every single room unless you want the remote impaling it next time. Remember those cuffs are in my pocket— well, Ed’s pocket, and I have the keys…’

‘They’re back in the car,’ said Ed.

‘What? Fuck’s sake Ed! Why?’

‘Because I’ll look like some sort of policeman or pervert if Anna sees those!’

‘Eddie, she calls herself an ally! That’s policeman of a pervert!’

‘She seems alright. I like her.’

‘You mean any hole’s a goal. You go back to the car right now, Ed, and get those cuffs, else I certainly won’t behave round this rug-munchers’ house and your cock will be choosing between Penn and fucking Teller there.’

Natalia stared as Ed sighed and went out. They continued on to find the three women gathered in what used to be the Ladies’ Kitchen, with an alabaster ceiling, walls lined with carvings and murals, and a glass case holding diaries in quill-written font.

‘The story goes that in May 1780, two girls, Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler - and their servant Mary Caryll, ran away from Ireland and started a life that would enchant and scandalise society for the next fifty years. They rejected conventional marriage and lived a life of delight and delicious retirement—’

‘They ran away with their cleaner?’ squinted Neill into a cabinet full of the ladies’ image painted on trinkets and plates. ‘That makes my hackles raise from the off. How lowly were these girls to bring a lackie along with them?’

‘Ah, well they weren’t poverty-stricken as such, but indeed they worked hard, dedicating their lives to self-improvement, and transforming what was then Pen-y-Maes cottage, into a Gothic revival house you see here now: all the clocks, glass, books, bijouterie, and whirligigs of every shape and hue!’

‘Wowsers!’ cooed Anna. ‘To have the guts to shun ostracisation in Ireland, and curate their own sanctuary. All of this was collected?’

‘All the pew ends, chair backs, pieces of chests, and carved intricacies were donated piece by piece like a giant oak jigsaw, to make a houseful of curiosities visited by the likes of Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington and William Wordsworth! He extolled:

‘Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb,

‘Even on this earth, above the rest of time!’

Neill scoffed. ‘Doesn’t everybody spend their lives furnishing a house, except they have to go out every day to mortgage the walls they’re filling with junk?’

Anna, stroking a harp, frowned at Neill just as Ed rushed back in.

‘Oh, the ladies had financial struggles,’ the host Sarah continued. ‘They had to find ways to make money in precarious times, for example, having to purchase a fourth cow to make a bit of butter.’

‘Oh no, a fourth cow!’

Ed, still breathless, pointed: ‘So the ladies were Gordon Ramsey and Les Dawson painted on this bowl here?’ - prompting a chortle from Neill.

‘Indeed, they were not feminine in the typical way!’ Eleanor laughed too. ‘I shouldn’t think that would be of much matter for how tremendous a creative legacy these women left their era!’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ enthused Anna, leading a creak-chorus up the steep staircase, as the hosts talked excitedly about how the BBC are using the costumes as inspiration for a drama series out next year: ‘Gentleman Jack. Watch out for Gentleman Jack’ - ‘Oh coolio, I loved Gunpowder…’ Natalia slipped her hand into Neill’s, feeling thankful for being able to leave Real Uni Girl to voice the role that she suspected, without her, she’d be filling in.

They met with a four-poster bed contrasting like an Oreo with a white carved ceiling; ruby velvet curtains and stained glass windows tinting the wood with a red liturgical glow. Natalia thought against leaning her bottom over the very flimsy information stand, and instead ventured: ‘What’s that big spoon hanging by the fireplace?’ - hoping to keep the conversation amiable, not least from the way Ed’s comment earlier of ‘she seems alright, I like her’ came with an anxious shine in his eye she’d pitied for a moment.

‘They’d warm coals on it and stick it in your bed. An 18th-century hot water bottle,’ chuckled Neill.

‘The ladies would retire here, to read or play backgammon—’

‘Is that what they called it,’ Neill grunted.

‘…They’d improve themselves with drawing, manuscripts, and learning Italian…’

‘Let’s look for the dildos,’ Ed muttered back to Neill.

‘Stop it, you sound thirteen,’ Natalia rapped both men.

‘And their cats, for they loved cats!— would roam freely around their quarters. Watch out for a stuffed pussy cat in one of these rooms!’

‘…Found it, Ed!’ Neill spied a stone column through the window. ‘So massive they had to keep it in the garden. Even has two spheres at the base!’

‘What, the cat?’ Anna stepped over.

‘Their sibrydion,’ Neill answered. ‘Welsh for worshipful object, where they’d gather on their knees and speak in tongues to play the skin flute.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know.’

‘There is scarcely a remarkable person of the last half century who has not sent them a portrait or some curiosity or antique as a token of remembrance for the time they spent in their glorious abode!’

‘That starts to sound suspicious,’ frowned Neill. ‘You know, sort of Epstein Island suspicious.’

Anna flashed round. ‘Oh, don’t tell me you’re a rabbit hole conspiracist.’

‘Conspiracist? In time that billionaire paedo will be outed on every major news channel. Watch out for that Gentleman Jerkon your iPlayer.’

Ed groaned to the fireplace.

‘Come, come to their famous powder closet—’ the gowned hosts clapped, and swept them over to where a flimsy door with a cutout circle promised their attention. ‘Here is where the ladies powdered their hair - a fashionable trend. Hair was rarely washed at the time, so it was a bit like dry shampoo!’

‘Go on Ed, stick your head through.’

‘Fuck off, Paul—’

‘…Your servant would bring you into the closet,’ Sarah promptly led Ed to the hole, ‘put your head through here… and plaster it in grease,’ she smiled, as Ed duly hung his head through; Anna laughed and removed his glasses, whilst Neill soft-slapped him round the chops, Natalia joining in to rub away the tiny smear of lipstick still there on Ed’s jaw. ‘Or if you were wealthy, pomatum!—a kind of hog’s lard, which often left the hair so infested with rodents you had to use a vinegar recipe to rid the hair of vermin.’

‘Jesus, I doubt that was the part that inspired Wordsworth. He didn’t write:

‘Sisters in powder… a pest allowed to thrive…’

Natalia rejoined with Neill:

‘For even in their hairdos, the rodents run alive!’

‘On par, Littlington,’ he nudged, as all six of them laughed gaily.

‘Obliged, Paul.’

‘Remarkable! What is it you do, Mr Paul?’ Sarah asked as they finally freed Ed and gave him back his glasses.

‘I’m a headmaster. Private school up in Scotland. She’s an English teaching assistant,’ he nodded.

‘My, you look very young!’ Eleanor beamed at Natalia. ‘And you - work together?’ as she eyed the lithe fingertips of Miss Littlington that had been chafing Mr Paul’s wrist hair all through his tirades, whose glance followed down as casually as though a cobweb were merely brushing there.

‘Oh, it’s allowed in Scotland. Encouraged, actually. In fact, our job is touring the literacy sites of Britain, from the Brontë Parsonage Museum, to the Tate Modern, now to Plas Newydd - just like the Ladies themselves! Double trouble, Siamese twins… two heads are better than one… er, etcetera!’

‘Well, we concur! And as it goes, I believe Sarah and Eleanor would prefer your poem! They didn’t fancy how Wordsworth said they occupied a low-roof cottage, and thought they could write a grander verse!’

‘Oh, now that tells me everything,’ Neill groaned. ‘What a surprise after the country shows their generosity to two stuck-up 18th-century lefties!’

The ladies looked to one another, and Anna’s eyes narrowed at Ed:

‘Only a mild case of Tourettes, then. Are you two long-term friends?’

‘Oh, no, no, I just met him last week. In the pub… right in the corner, penniless, parched - I took pity. Never knew he was transphobic till now. I tell you, he can walk home to Scotland!’

‘Let me tell you—’ Neill snorted,‘that we don’t have this gender-blurring hocus pocus in my school, nor biology-deniers for the sake of pandering to a few that are mentally ill. I mean, before we had an alphabet soup-train chug along this side of generational sanity, you were either a transvestite, a transexual, or just gay like Butler and Ponsonby—’

‘Oh, we do not know if the Ladies of Llangollen were intimate,’ said Eleanor. ‘They were known as a chaste romantic friendship. They wrote to each other with pet names, and they did share a bed…’

‘Tell that to the Daily Mail,’ grinned Ed.

‘…But when contemporaries suggested they were in a sexual relationship, the ladies were shocked and appalled!’

Neill exploded in laughter. ‘So much for using them as 18th-century LGBT poster girls! Shocked and appalled, quote that! The only closet they were inside was the one to lube each others’ heads with hog’s lard! It makes a laughing stock of your urge to oust them as Ireland’s first openly gay couple!’ He turned and pointed squarely at Anna.

‘Ladies of Llangollen, spells LOL all along,’ came a murmur beside him.

‘Quite right, Littlington.’

‘But we must bear in mind—’ Sarah levied her hand, ‘that if they’d admitted it, they’d have been brought to court. Shock may have been a necessary act to save their own livelihood. So we will never really know if they were lovers in the physical sense. And we might ask, does it really matter?’

‘Absolutely!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘With the ignorance of society they had to protect themselves! Besides, the contents of their underwear is sort of no-one’s business, is it?’

‘I think you’re right,’ said Ed at last.

‘Says the girl wearing a badge that promises to stand by your side if you chop your knob off.’

‘Christ,’ Ed muttered. ‘I’m almost there myself.’

‘But you—’ Natalia cleared her throat and nodded politely at the ladies, ‘you’re from the, Queer Societ… what’s it called again?’

‘Queer Tales from Wales.’

‘Queer Tales from Wales, as part of a LGBT-QRST strategy,’ prompted Neill.

‘Maybe there’s just some… confusion, as to why you’re hosting the house if the ladies themselves weren’t lesbians?’ suggested Natalia, sliding her hand inside Neill’s pocket to station herself closer.

‘Queer is an umbrella term,’ Anna bristled, ‘that encompasses a whole range of non-heterosexual and non-cisgender identities—’

‘Nonce’s gender?’ Ed scratched his head as Neill chortled.

‘Cisgender,’ Anna blinked.

Ed looked blank.

Eleanor raised her hand. ‘Ah, let’s—’

Anna raised hers back. ‘I’ll explain. Cisgender is the sex you were assigned at birth, Ed. It’s people whose chosen gender identity aligns with what they were born with. Many of us including transgender people, Ed, don’t identify with the labels that were, essentially, made by the patriarchy—’

‘She said it!’ Neill hollered. ‘She said the fucking P word! I’m off back to the P-U-B word.’

‘Language, please, headteacher! We have other visitors. …Come, join us!’ Sarah beckoned an old man behind them. ‘We’re just having a friendly little hoo-haa, rather like Question Time!’ - as he disappeared again.

Anna’s glare shifted to Natalia. ‘So what do you think of your… colleaguey, Pub-Paul, bigoted boyfriendy headteacher’s take?’

‘Well, er…’ Natalia blinked, ‘the fact they were forbidden partners, determined to live and die together… whatever they did between the sheets is perhaps none of our business, like you said… and of course they couldn’t get married like you two—’ Natalia turned to the ladies.

‘Oh, we’re not together,’ they chimed.

‘You said you were happily married?’ Neill frowned.

‘To our husbands! We both have two daughters each, and seven grandchildren between us!’

‘So… everyone in this room is straight?’

‘Including the Ladies of Llangollen themselves, apparently!’ added Natalia.

‘Llan-GOHCK-len,’ prompted Ed.

‘What I find the biggest LOL,’ Neill smirked back to Anna, ‘is that you call yourself an ally, advocating for gender-bending TV and degrees, and there you are on a date with the baldest, bawdiest bastard from whom the only trans-action you’ll get is his shopping you scanned at the supermarket!’

‘Date. Oh, it’s no date.’ Anna paced to the door.

‘Never mind Queer Tales, the LOL-dolls would be on Grand Designs!…’ Ed followed forlornly, ‘we should have Kevin McCloud showing us round instead!’ They trailed down the stairs to radio silence as Anna reached for her coat.

‘Shame, as he has a Grand Design himself!’ called Neill. ‘Don’t you want to see?’

‘What is that, a pun?’

‘Ha! Nailed it. I would say come get an Eiffel but it’s more the Shart!’

‘Hmph. God help us if you really were a headteacher.’

‘Go on, fuck off back to packing bags in Sparksies,’ Neill muttered.

‘Rich, my chances of nailing anything have just gone into the coffin of whatever spark I had with that—’ They watched Anna’s rotund bottom march off like two pistons into the garden, swinging her shoulder bag firmly over her.

‘No matter Ed, because you’re gonna have a sore pair of bollocks all the same for taking us here. Now, where’s she gone?’ He leant up the balustrade. ‘LITTLING-TON!’

‘Coming!’ Natalia flashed down the stairs. ‘I was just checking out the servant’s dull grey attic room - that’s where the stuffed cat is!’

‘And you, a millennial of more grey area than Ed’s fucking awful shirt,’ he cupped her neck and hissed at her ear, ‘lestyou be brainwashed tantamount to an ally, are going to be both cuffed and stuffed till you’re squirting like a cherry tomato whilst we teach you what a real fucking man is. Naked and spread-eagled on your back with an ashtray between your tits, sucking on a beer bottle whilst we watch every sports programme going…’ He marched her out blushing onto the path back to the tearooms.

‘Wait, where’s the ladies? I couldn’t find them in the house…’

‘Right behind us.’

‘I meant the toilets!’

‘They’re up by the tea room, dear!’ called Sarah.

‘Not so fast,’ Neill seized her shoulder. ‘Ed, she needs to go to the toilet. But you know what’s gonna happen.’

‘What’s gonna happen?’

‘You know what. She’s gonna wank. She’s gonna wank over what I just said. I could already smell it on her fingers.’

‘Neill,’ she giggled, ‘I’m—’

‘Oh, we can’t trust you. We already know that. We have to take her.’

He bustled them up the path, looked left and right, then chivvied them inside the disabled toilet where he locked the door.

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‘Oh my god, guys…’

‘The look on her face is priceless. Don’t worry, we’re not going to bang you. Ed, cuff her.’

‘Neill! It stinks in here—’

He pulled down the baby change table, bent her over, seized her wrists and beckoned Ed.

‘There you go, mate…’

She throbbed in perturbation as she felt Ed duly follow Neill’s orders - she was wordless, he was wordless - just clasping Neill’s girlfriend’s wrists in metal after Neill fucked up his date, and now her hands were fused like Siamese twins and her wee is spurting a drop already.

‘God I love cuffs,’ Neill whispered excitedly. ‘I’ve no idea why I haven’t bought her a pair of these to basically live in. Ok, you can go to the toilet now…’ Natalia gasped in surprise as he pulled down her knickers. ‘Ed, face the other way.’

‘Shit, Neill, the toilet seat has piss on it—’

‘It’s only Sarah Ponsonby’s. There,’ he wiped it. ‘Now sit.’

Ed was facing the corner like a somewhat lower-terror Blair Witch project. ‘Is she… done?’

‘I just have to be careful,’ she glanced back into the bowl.

‘There’s no turd. Ok Ed… wait, hang on—’ Neill stood her up, blotted her with tissue, re-robed her nethers and sat her into his lap upon the seat, her face flushed and intoxicated.

‘See that?’ Neill gripped Natalia’s chin softly as Ed turned. ‘That is the face of a girl who is halfway to orgasm and I haven’t even touched her.’

‘That is the face of a girl you’ve banned from wanking.’

‘And this is what a man who’s been listening to three lampoon lezzas lecturing him for the past hour does to that girl…’

He shoved her dress hem to the ribcage, filled his fist with a breast, knocked her backwards into the sink and deep-throated his tongue for at least thirty seconds - writhing his crotch against her, moaning deep and fervently, she gasping and moaning back - till the intrusion of Welsh accents and a dog’s yapping at the propped open little window,had him flip her face back down into the baby table - squeezing her bottom till she yelped with the dog.

‘Ok Ed, unlock her. She’s right, it stinks in here.’ Neill lifted the lid and began taking a leak.

‘You had the keys.’

Neill rummaged in his pocket, mid-dribble. ‘Nope, you must have them.’

‘Mate. I haven’t.’

‘They must be in the car!’

‘I’m really pretty sure they weren’t.’

‘Fuck!’ He zipped his fly. ‘Are they at home? How are we going to—’

He caught sight of bent Natalia’s sly sideways grin. His eyes followed to where the fingers of her cuffed hands were pointing.

‘Ohh, boy. Or should I say girl,’ Neill groaned, ‘my fucking, naughty little girl—’

He pulled her to standing, giggling, right at Ed in the face.

‘What, guys?’ For all Ed’s ribaldry, he was slow on the uptake - deputy dog, one step behind in comprehension, as Neill nodded: ‘Close the window. We need to drown her out, in more than one way’ - words that confused Ed more - ‘Pull the flush, Ed, make some noise!’ and Ed promptly pulled the pipes to noisy gushing; Neill’s arm necklocks Natalia rigid, his other hand plunges down her back hem - and as a wiry middle finger braces to enter - the moment of contact was conveyed on her face to Ed’s as clear as a video screen.

‘Hu-uhhh! Hohhh—’

Her lips parted, whilst Ed’s face bears an unnerved impassiveness like a teenager watching porn for the first time. Neill hips-dips a deeper lunge into the soft, saucy Welsh Rarebit that holds the key, and she gasps from what her audacity has led to, receiving what she wanted in the toilet that morning - and as the duck is hooked, ‘gosh it’s deep,’ Ed pretends to be occupied watching the toilet bowl replenish its fluids, helplessly glancing back again to the last blow of her lips as the soft scrape of miniature metal emerges like a stinger from a limb.

‘Now you can unlock her.’

Bent back over, Ed she presumes, is fiddling that pokey metal into her proxy metal vagina lock. She rubs her wrists, Neill pockets the cuffs and Ed murmurs, ‘mate, wait. I need to go myself.’

‘I guess I’ll have to keep an eye on you too! Go buy yourself a Siocled Poeth to go, Natalia,’ he pushed a fiver into her hand and her out the door.

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The view of the River Dee was glorious. Llangollen’s famous bridge, one of the seven wonders of Wales, towered over the babbling weir as a heron flew over, and rafters and kayakers paddled past to waves and smiles from the diners up high - with the V sign from Neill, Ed and eventually Natalia too. They’d ordered toasted sourdough with goats cheese and rocket, till Natalia’s distaste for the balsamic sauce had her opt - with their encouragement - for beans and sausages from the kids’ menu, from which they’d pilfered most of the chips.

‘Give me some Marlboro filth,’ she plucked from Neill’s fingers in return.

What happened in the toilet was not talked about, only woke politics and Natalia mooning that she wished she’d said more in the debate but it was ‘too much pressure to play Miss Littlington,’ till nuzzling-Neill insisted how much he loves sweet Miss LOL-ington, and that ‘trumpet ranting is the antithesis of valiance; everyone opens their mouth too quick and long these days.’

Ed wiped a chip in the last of Natalia’s beans. ‘Mate, I still think we could have cured her, if you’d closed yours.’

‘Look, I saved you, trust me…’

‘Are you trying to get me back?’

‘Pardon?’

‘For you know who,’ Ed’s narrow blue eyes flickered to Natalia’s.

‘Trumpet for a strumpet,’ murmured Natalia, as silence fell between them, all for river foam gushing on the rocks, tinkling forks and a girl talking loudly on her AirPods about how ‘I can’t just glue his kayak back together!—I gotta rent one here, Baz, I gotta pay to rent one from Riverbanc.’

Ed fingered his teabag label. ‘CBD Calm you got me, hm? And let me guess… this right-wing, rabbit hole, Epstein guy. That’s from another one of—’

‘Justin’s documentaries.’

‘Ah, always Justin. We should block the fucker.’

‘Ed! Those girls aren’t right in the head. Don’t even dip your wick - haven’t you heard the limerick?’

‘What limerick.’

‘The one all the Leeds uni girls say.’ He nudged Natalia.

‘Oh yeah! It goes: There was a… woke woman from Kew—’

‘Who filled Ed’s mind with…’

‘No, filled her vagina… with… glue! And she said, with a grin—’

‘You pay to get in…’

‘…Gotta pay to get out again too!’

Even Ed’s fair stubble creased into laughter. ‘You pair of fuckers.’

Neill nodded toward a large-breasted woman in at least three necklaces. ‘What about her, Ed?’

‘Her jowls have jowls. And her finger a gold band.’

‘Or her?’ Neill’s eyes went to the goose-necked girl with the AirPods, drinking Coke through a straw.

‘Mate, she’s wearing a Juicy Couture t-shirt. I have no hope with you two here.’

The waiter slipped the bill to the table as Ed picked it up, and Natalia looked to his pale sausage-like fingers, contemplating that her own juices had touched there via the cuffs keys, that Neill definitely did not wipe, just an hour earlier - the time it had since taken them to explore the village high street.

‘So what else is there in Llangollen apart from a tea towel shop, a tourist centre with an animatronic handwriting monk, and a taxidermy studio straight out of Vertigo?’

‘The A5 home. I’m off to the bogs first.’

‘Did you steal the monk’s hand?’ Natalia giggled.

‘Well it’s all he’s left me!’

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Neill sprawled full-bellied on the back seat, letting Natalia take the front. ‘So what sports on tonight, Ed?’

‘Oh yes! What’s on tonight, Ed?’

‘Excuse me? Since when are you excited about sport?’

‘I’m getting into football a tiny bit. Who’s playing, bluebirds and dicky birds?’

‘The Meringues v The Old Lady.’

‘Didn’t we watch that in the Spar yesterday?!’

‘Champions League. Check when’s kick-off, Rich.’

‘Have we passed Eliseg’s Pillar yet?’ Natalia frowned into her phone.

‘What the fuck’s Eliseg’s Pillar?’ said Neill.

‘I saw a replica of it in the information centre next to the animatronic monk.’

‘I already saw three at the Ladies’ house,’ Neill replied.

‘Three?’ frowned Natalia. ‘Thought there was one… oh!’

Silence fell for a moment. ‘Speak in tongues to play the skin flute,’ Ed chuckled. ‘Can’t believe the cunt fell for that.’

‘We almost cured her. Here we go—’ Neill read off his phone: ‘Eliseg’s Pillar is a 9th century shaft of a cross erected in honour of the King of Powys. Basically a giant rock cock. It even has a foreskin - and grass pubes at the base! It is an offence to injure or deface it, it says. Deface? Someone already has - right on the shaft.’

‘That’s an inscription,’ Natalia peered over.

‘What does it say?’

‘Juventus v Real Madrid, A Quarter to the Hour of Eight. Ye Must Watch It Down The Pub.’

‘No!’ Natalia exclaimed.

‘You wanted the pub last night.’

‘Too risky you two drink-driving home again. Unless I learn to drive! Give me a theory lesson now!’ She looked down at Ed’s hand. ‘Is this an auto like Neill’s then?’

‘Oh, aye, easy peasy from the days of manual! Just D for drive, R for reverse, P for park.’

‘Why’s yours in S?’

‘Ah, super mode! I can toggle it back, from—’

‘Look out, Ed,’ Neill warned.

Ahead, a sheep had jumped over a wall and following it were two lambs.

‘Oh, god! How cute!’ Natalia squealed. ‘Oh, I want one!’

‘You only ate his brother the other night, darling. Slow down, Ed, slow down… one’s rather frolicsome…’ They approached the animals who stood with their ears twitching.

Ed mused: ‘Why did the sheep cross the road?’

‘Let’s hope this one doesn’t. Slow down, Ed—’

‘Because he identified as a chicken,’ Natalia prompted, and Ed cackled - just as one lamb butted the other’s bottom, making it leap into the air, right at the last moment - landing somewhere below the windshield, and with a wild slam of the brakes, there came a CLUNK-THUD.

Silence— all for the frenzied piano riff of ABBA’s Mamma Mia.

‘You didn’t. You fucking didn’t.’

The car stood in the middle of the road, the three of them gaping at the mother sheep ambling off to the other side of the road - with only one lamb.

‘Fuck! Fuck! You’ve fucking hit the fucking lamb, you stupid fucking bastard!’

‘Oh fuck,’ Ed fiddled with the door.

‘Get us off the road first! We don’t want to get hit too!’

‘Right, right…’ Ed swung them close against the stone wall, then flung open the door as Natalia and Neill scrambled out.

The lamb was laying on the road, one leg bent with blood, bleating weakly.

Natalia cried out.

‘Look at what the fuck you’ve done to lambkins!’ erupted Neill.

‘Well, err… she said she wanted one!’ Ed welped.

Neill looked left and right. ‘Jump back in. No one saw. Let’s get out of here.’

‘That’s a hit and run on poor lambkins!’ Ed exclaimed.

‘And we can’t just leave him!’ Natalia cried. ‘He’s suffering!’

‘It’s roadkill. You’ve never hit a pheasant, Ed? A pigeon? A fox?’

‘Mate the law’s different for farm animals. They need to be reported - they’re livestock, they’re worth money—’

‘Edward, there’s no fucking way we’re reporting shit. I’m not going to the police, the RSPCA, or even Farmer Fucking Giles to show him his lamb we’ve given a limp. Look, he’s fine… off you go, little fella!’ Neill began picking up the lamb as it screeched in pain.

‘Neill, stop! That’s more than a limp!’

‘Drag him,’ nodded Ed, ‘drag him over the wall at least, he’ll die where no-one can see him.’

‘What!’ Natalia threw up her arms. ‘No! He’ll suffer for hours! Maybe days!’

‘His mum will hop back over, and—’

‘What? Make him tea, hoof-gag him to sleep with valium?’

‘Natalia there’s nothing else we can do. We’re lucky not a single car has come past, now get back in the car you two, I’ll swing Shaun over the wall and let’s get the fuck out of here.’

‘Neill—!’

He stopped mid-wrestle with the lamb, looking up to Natalia whose face shone with tears.

‘Please don’t! I’ll be thinking of him all night! Worse than… you know who! We need to at least put him out of his misery!’ - whilst ABBA thumped away in the car:

‘One more look and I hear a bell ring! One more look and I forget everything!’

‘Alright, alright… gah! Not here at the side of the road. Ed - open your boot!’

Natalia had already pressed it open, the music now ringing out. ‘My, my! How can I resist you!’

‘Rich what the fuck are you doing? What if that thing is microchipped?’

‘His ear is tagged. They can’t afford to chip hundreds of these things.’ He scooped up the shivering body as Natalia spread out a blanket. ‘How far are we from home?’

‘Rich,’ Ed groaned, ‘we’ll get into worse trouble for lambnapping!’

‘Will you shut the fuck up! You said you wanted anything to shag - think of it as your lucky day, you even get free red lube!’

‘Car coming,’ Ed called, just as Neill hummed the boot closed.

‘Here comes farmer with his gun! Fucking drive, now!’

They scrambled inside and Ed screeched off till the other car was a pinprick in the rear view. The sound of the lamb’s feet clumped against the boot door; its bleats getting shriller.

‘It’s like a fucking newborn baby. Faster, Ed…’

‘Yeah, just don’t want to mow over his mum!’

‘I only wish he would die and end his misery!’ wept Natalia now as Neill put his arm around her. ‘Don’t worry honey. Once we’re back I’ll fetch Ed’s gun, ok?’

‘Ok,’ she sniffed.

‘And I’ll direct Ed to do it.’

‘Local stolen farm animal shot with the gun of local chaste-cheugy Englishman. Excellent start to the holiday and front cover for the Sibrydion.’

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Natalia finally uncovered her ears from the frenzied bleating as they pulled up at Ed’s.

‘Go get the gun Ed. I’ll shoot him in the boot. Natalia, go with Ed into the house and stay there till it’s done.’

‘What will you do with him after!’

‘I guess we could bury him.’

‘Fuck that! There’s £150 of meat there.’

‘You’re not serious Ed! You want to eat him?’

‘Why not? If we have to slaughter Henry why not give him a happy ending with a good roasting?’

Natalia was now apoplectic. ‘After seeing his, his face… his suffering?!’

‘You never watched factory farm videos then?’ Neill blinked. ‘And trust me, we’re saving a lamb from a Welshman’s happy ending. Plus he died doing what he loved - bounding out in front of Ed’s Q7.’

Natalia ran after Ed into the house and watched as he rummaged in a drawer for his gun, then followed him back to the car.

‘Rich said you’re better in the house?’

‘I want to see,’ she said firmly.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Ed as they returned.

‘No, give me it here, Natalia wants me to do it.’

‘Mate, it’s my gun—’

‘I’ll do it!’ Natalia piped up. ‘Let me!’

They stared. ‘No way,’ said Neill. ‘Only the men touch this gun, Natalia.’

Ed was examining the lamb.

‘Be careful with him, oh please be careful! He had blood on his side!’

‘No, that’s his smit mark. Farmers mark the lambs, you see. Thought I saw blood on his neck. But it’s all from his leg. Right in his thighbone - the femur, it’s bleeding out. Poor fella.’

‘Are you fucking Rolf Harris now? Do you want to film this for Animal Hospital? He’s fucking suffering, Natalia’s right - give me that gun.’

‘What are you saying Ed? Can we bandage it up?!’

‘Oh for—’

‘I’ll need a roll of cotton.’

Natalia had already run to the house before a word could be said, and came back panting hard as the men stood waiting.

‘You’re going to have Shaun bleed to death through your polyester one-piece?’

‘His name’s Henry,’ Natalia said.

Ed was already winding it round Henry’s leg, as they stood back and surveyed.

‘Why, Henry, you look fucking sexy.’

‘He’s stopped bleating…’ Ed touched his head.

‘He’s probably numb with shock by now. Look how pale he is.’

‘Seriously… is he dead?’

‘Nah. Bang-bang time, let’s make sure he’s at peace. Right in the brain I reckon.’

Natalia stroked the lamb’s tufty head, guarding where Neill was now cocking the shaft. ‘Poor Henry. You were brave, I love you…’

‘Out of the way, Florence Nightingale—’

‘I want to cover his eyes as you do it!’

Neill scoffed. ‘Or should I call you Alana. She’ll be joining the Vegetarian Society after this.’

‘To be honest I see their point,’ she said glumly.

‘Natalia, you are not turning vegetarian. Not on my watch.’

‘Oh?’ She rubbed her face defiantly. ‘Just you watch!’

‘Don’t touch your face after touching the lamb for heaven’s sake! You might get an infection!’

‘Can you two fucking get this done and have your barney later?’

The lamb lifted its head and blinked its eyes open at Neill.

‘Oh, look Neill! Oh, Henry! He’s saying goodbye… and thank you…’

‘Thank you for what?’

‘For trying to help him.’

‘Oh Christ. Wound’s stopped bleeding it seems…’

‘He might be ok!’

‘Doubt it. Can’t be hobbling round on that.’

‘Can’t we take him to a vet? Leave him outside a vet’s? There’s one nearby!’

‘Oh Lord, now you’re touching your phone!’ Neill despaired.

The lamb’s head was still up, mouth hanging open.

‘Is he dead?’

‘He needs water…’ Natalia grabbed her bottle and dribbled it into the lamb’s mouth. He shook his nose and flicked out a spiny pink tongue. ‘Take a moment, pet, take a moment…’ she whispered.

‘Let’s get him inside,’ said Ed.

‘Shall we offer Henry a fucking Peroni while we’re at it, give him our King room? You don’t allow me to smoke in your Airbnb but you’ll take in bleeding farm stock?’

‘Round to my shed then.’

Neill glanced to the hope in Natalia’s eyes and cleared his throat softly. ‘I’ll carry him.’

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Ed had gone to a farm shop for grain and hay, Natalia spent an hour pulling grass, and they’d built a corner in the shed with a toilet pile of hay - as Henry lay blinking, leg twitching as Ed checked it over and rewrapped it.

‘I’d better stay with him for a bit,’ said Natalia, ‘it says you have to be careful not to overfeed lambs.’

‘Righto.’

When Natalia returned, she found Ed in the middle of watching a lamb butchering tutorial.

‘Ed! I thought you hadn’t given up hope?’

‘Well, once our Sparksies supplies run out…’

‘You’re still serious about eating him?’ chuckled Neill from the kitchen.

‘Not till he’s been hung a few days, skinned and cured.’

‘Oh, god! Can’t we just take him to the vet? I feel like it’s my fault he got hit, I was busy distracting Ed,’ Natalia lamented.

‘His ear’s marked darling,’ said Neill. ‘They might know whose farmer he belongs to, and then they’ll have questions for us.’ He sat and patted her. ‘You know if it weren’t for you, he’d be guts in the field or inside Ed’s oven by now. Paella’s ready in ten, let’s all get a thorough shower and chill out for the evening, yes?’

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She brushed her hair till it fell in soft bunches, as her thoughts that had been panic-stricken on the lamb rescue mission for the past three hours, fell softly to the controversy of last night. The thrill still panged in her shoulders from being handcuffed, twice, at the mercy of Neill and his stammering spectator - and, now, recalling his sordid words in the museum today, and the look on his face when he realised where she’d hidden the keys.

That look was the antithesis of the pure disgust she’d watched slowly roil from his face at Not So Smart Girl, Ally-Anna. And it was the same look of quiet zeal that’d been on hers, when she’d stepped over the guard-rope in Mary Caryll’s room, alone, hovered over the stuffed cat murmuring ‘hello, kitty,’ and pushed the keys inside. The triumph that his galvanising Gipton girl had out-filthed him today, so she could bank on him doing the same this evening.

She redid her kohl eyes just enough for an evening indoors; put on a cute top and flowery skirt. Oh, she wanted to play scrabble again, and for him to win-win, but it was better that he spy and tease it out like two fingers either side of a pimple. She curled up on the opposite couch, posed for all the world like she wasn’t seeking anything. Except, for the way she looked at him, and the way he looked back at her.

‘Has the lamb stopped screaming, Clarice?’

‘His heart’s beating much steadier.’

‘Come here… and let me raise yours.’

She came and sat down next to him.

‘Have you washed your hands?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good girl. And why do you have a bra on?’

‘Well… this top is quite see-through otherwise. Er, Neill?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t tell me that nicotine is good for you…’

‘You know I give you everything that’s good for you darling.’

‘Mm. And, Neill, um… I didn’t know you lived up north before…’

‘Oh - well, more like the midlands. First wife had a post in Nottingham. So Ed’s been telling you about my past strumpets and strife?’

‘Nothing more than what you’ve said. He didn’t even know the name of the first one.’

‘Ahh. But all three of us know the name of the third.’

‘Ah, haa…’

‘Natalia?’

‘Ye-eah?’

‘Go take the bra off.’

‘Haa… I don’t know…’

‘I do.’ He studied her for a second, as she twisted herself this way and that - then caught eyes and he said: ‘Oh, yes. You do. And you have sixty seconds to do a wee-wee too.’

She went off and returned to find Ed showing Neill something on his phone. She idly potters the perimeter of the opposite couch, as Neill nudges Ed, then is whispering something about ‘puppy,’ ‘attention,’ ‘don’t look at her’ - as Ed amusedly raises his eyes every few seconds to Natalia creeping closer, and now she hears the word cuffs, and Ed arises.

‘Did you do it, Natalia?’ Neill turned to her.

‘Yes…’

‘Come here.’

She shifts over next to him, feeling lightheaded.

‘Put your arms back. Elbows up in the air.’

She half-raises her elbows. ‘Neill, what are you… ohh…’

He cups her face. ‘Do you trust me?’

Seaside eyes melting into hers, she smirks. ‘Ye-ess… no?… mghh—’ His thumb wiggled into her mouth, just as Ed returns to see her elbows up behind her head, her top stretched taut - and her nipples pointed like sultanas.

‘Ahh,’ Neill purrs. ‘She did.’

His thumb is still wedged, she’s not sure to drop her arms yet, and hastens to suck before the saliva drips and makes her err on the sensual side of infantile, levelling her gaze at Ed who was softly biting his lip in almost the same way, somehow a reassuring mirror to her ambivalence. ‘Mm… mmh,’ she bleats, her elbows falling - just as Neill pulls her down in a flash.

Her forehead fell into Ed’s thigh next to him, and she is silently panting, gasping in excitement - then pushed up slightly more so that her face now chafes into Ed’s inner thigh, and wrists twisted behind her back.

Oh fuck. Here we go.

‘Get those cuffs out of Ed’s pocket.’

‘Hmmhhh…?’

‘Holy moly, Rich.’

‘Get those cuffs out of Ed’s pocket,’ he kept hold of her wrists. ‘You have teeth, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know which… I don’t know which…’

‘Better find out.’ He keeps hold of her wrists whilst she nuzzles her nose to Ed’s right pocket closest to her. ‘I can’t feel it’ - ‘Oh? Better try the other one’ - as he gives her slack to extend over Ed’s lap. ‘Keep still, Ed.’ For all the tension she feels in Ed’s legs, she can only imagine what his face is like, for his breaths of disbelief may as well be hers, as she wiggles her way across the unfamiliar landscape of that deep floral, citrusy Boss scent, and knobblier thigh bones with an apologetic ‘ooh!’

‘Passed Eliseg’s Pillar yet?’

For sliding past her throat was King Eliseg’s replica, the appendage of a different man, fluttering at her throat - Mr Twitch Two, giving a little wave as she hurries past to bite the metal arch protruding from Ed’s pocket slit. ‘I’ve got them’ - she grabs them in her teeth like one of those sordid I’m A Celeb challenges, waiting for Neill to drag her face back into his thigh, where he tightly cuffs her.

She lay there, bloodstream sloshing from head to foot whilst their grunts continue to the football. A goal is scored to Real Madrid and their thighs are roaring like a Mexican wave with Natalia upon them tossed on denim and corduroy seas like a perturbed boat. ‘What’s wrong, little baby,’ Neill tousles her nape as it sinks, whimpering with self-consciousness into the gap between his leg and Ed’s - ‘aren’t you ok?’ Reassuring Marlboro-filth-fingers fumble down the gap and wriggle behind her top teeth whilst chit-chatting with Ed about offsides, fouls and Spanish referee etiquette. The fingers wriggle in query. ‘Did you want to watch it with us?’ and her suck is assent. ‘Let’s turn you round.’

Now she is flipped like a hair-strewn burger, facing up to Neill’s jaw, whilst his two fingers stroke her tongue. ‘You see Ed, she was lying,’ Neill smoothed her hair, ‘she loves ball games. Pass that from up there on the shelf and we’ll show you some golf.’

‘Neill—’ She cranes up her head.

‘Or do you want to fetch it, Natalia?’ Which was better, jumping up like a maimed dog at a tree, or having her warm dentist send his assistant?— whilst she relaxes, just as the seat behind her head rises, as though it really was a dentist chair, and Ed passes ‘what in gob’s name is this?’ to Neill who bites open the packet.

‘Open wide. Ed, you do the honours.’

‘Thought you said, everyone opens their mouth too quick and long these days?’ Ed chuckled softly.

‘Precisely. She’s getting her turn.’

‘I don’t know. Does… she want me to?’

‘Ask her.’

‘Natalia, do you want me to…?’

Natalia is squirming and looking to Neill in hesitation, then both their attention is back on the football, alerted by some near-goal, with a normality that was remarkable to her, as casual as flicking off a beer lid or pouring gin into a candle cup, and Ed’s calm geniality at the gobstopper is the reason she doesn’t bolt up and run back upstairs. She could be back in Lake Tegid with the water lapping at her leotard and one guffaw from him would be the gwyniad snapping at her shins to make her flap back ashore.

The ball eclipses the ceiling and fills her jaw. And now, jaw-jacked, heat beating her body, she gives a gentle suck as the first layer of chalky-sweet sheds itself on her tongue. Armless, supine over four man thighs, legs under the weight of Neill’s right arm, gobstopped with a ball of sugar, sucking it like a giant cough sweet, with the admiring glance down from Neill, who now speaks - whilst outrageously, but so exceedingly intoxicatingly - the stroke of Ed’s right hand is on the crown of her hair.

‘Say Llangollen now.’

‘Llll…ahhn… gohck…luhn.’

It’s too much, and out of self-consciousness she squirms till her head tilts and the ball pops, till Neill cups her cheek back centre and thumb-weights it in place. Football reaches half time, a stentorian woman presenter quacks on about Ronaldo’s ‘amazing bicycle kick’ and how he scored so early on a wet pitch; Ed clicks his lighter at the door and hands a drag of ‘doobie’ to Neill whilst he’s babysitting his lamb, rhythmically rolling the ball like he is sucking that, too, with her.

‘Is she ok?’

Neill’s hand is on her gusset. ‘She’s more than ok.’

Ed sits back down, Neill’s body shifts, and she is pushed half up into Ed’s lap. Craning her head in mild alarm, Neill says: ‘She knows not to let the ball out. But hold it, like I did, and stroke her.’ Now Ed’s thumb is pressing the ball in, sort of harder but without Neill’s precise firmness, as she hurriedly sucks and gulps the pooling sugar liquid at the back of her tongue. ‘There we go,’ says Ed as though baby had been transferred to an unfamiliar nurse, for mother now had her knickers down mid-thigh - skirt curtained from Ed - and reporting as though Ed himself had flooded his pants:

‘Mamma mia, Ed.’

She’d never know what Ed whispered back at that moment for all she can hear is her own long, sorrowful siren of a moan. Neill is stimming her clit, slowly, and casually dipping her cunt between breaths of football commentary. She can feel the stop-start tension in Ed’s hand, and his body, whilst Neill’s is as relaxed as the sofa itself. Ed’s soft gasps had slowly, minute by minute, began to go along like an apprentice to this new sport they were playing; as intriguing as the televised one of old. Neill’s young, rarebit girlfriend shared like a beer or a pet dog, wrists fastened beneath with handcuffs from an old conservative girlfriend, a blue-red-streaked white gobstopper held down in her mouth whilst she is masturbated out of her wank ban.

‘Lay it back!’ Their football voices blur into one. ‘All he’s got to do is lay it back!’

She is whimpering, wriggling, squirming, as Neill - two fingers still inside her, leaned his face right into hers, and licked across her gobstopped mouth.

‘Jeez. You’re gonna be awake all night. Think that’s enough sugar before bed…’

His fingers retreat, slide move lower and, without warning, one pushes wet through the tight sphincter there - her body buckles with ‘OOH!’— expulsing the ball from her mouth, to the floor where it shatters in two pieces, just as a third goal scores.

‘What a game!’

‘Footie or Pop Up Pirate?’

‘Three-nil to Real Madrid. No surprises. They’re basically bankrolled by the Spanish government.’

‘Did, she just… you know?’

‘No, no. I’m just teasing her…’ as Natalia finally sat up in her sweat-patched top.

‘Bed then… are you going to take her up, and—?’ Ed watched her now melting into Neill’s chest.

‘Oh no, no - I’m saving her. I haven’t fucked her since last Wednesday.’

‘Whah—?’ Ed gasped. ‘Serious?’ A week tomorrow?’

‘I’m curious how a break of seven days fares from seven seconds.’ Neill leaned over and picked up the two broken shards of gobstopper, threw one in his mouth and passed one to Ed muttering about munchies. ‘Unlock her, Ed,’

‘Er, keys?’

‘They’re in her pocket.’ Neill sat back, mouth full of sugar, his eyes now levelled wickedly at Natalia’s.

‘Rich,’ he coughed. ‘I can’t… you know…’

She’d given Neill a slurry nod, and he one back, and now forward over his thighs, Neill positioned her skirt over her womanhood. ‘Close your eyes, Ed. Bring your hand here. Right here…’

‘Does she…?’ Ed softly scoffed, ‘I mean, will she… er, Nat?’

‘She wants you to take it. Look at her bottom squirming for you.’ Neill smooths down her hem as she parted her legs, and she feels what she assumes now is Ed’s finger pushing. A cautious prodding, through the outer labiascape, and the little shock inside it, that she’s humoured to sense, as it enters the warm darkness, and she’s grinning now to herself, that edifying-knobhead-Ed is touching there. Touching her, not Anna - but he may well be just a third arm of the man whose voice dominates:

‘Doesn’t it feel fucking beautiful, Edward? Like, ripe ready to be fucked tomorrow?’

Another of those polite soft grunts of reply, for now he was Edward, not Ed, and his finger is not even inside properly, more like someone edging round the front door looking for their gun that is deep inside a drawer in a bedroom. He takes a breath and goes deeper, deeper until Natalia’s ‘oh!’ - partly exaggerated on her sly part - makes him retreat like a swatted fly.

‘They’re… they’re not in there,’ he reports, like Pinky to the Brain. ‘Or they’re too deep?’

‘Aw… tut tut. You have to go looking for her up north, Ed…’

‘What?’

‘They’re in her other pocket.’

Before Natalia, craning round, could finish the words, ‘oh my god, I knew it!’ - she was swivelled round face down now in Ed’s lap, and the smooth touch of Neill, who out-Brained two Pinkies, latches and burrows his pinkies all three places, machinating now, the distinctive trembles he must know, know what they mean… but to be sure, she murmurs:

‘Please. Please, please, sir…’

And he keeps going. Keeps going until she descends into that wild wiggle, that lack of control she can huff into Edward’s citrusy leg, her eyes wide shut, all safely hidden for her moans to escalate into the hug of Ed’s kneecap.

‘She’s there, almost. Squeeze her neck, Ed.’

Caught in a spider’s web of man and metal; fists, fingers, and thighbones, she zones out, implodes, just as she births Neill’s forefinger and key from her bottom, and the only thing stopping her from being utterly ashamed, is the absolute bizarreness of this orgasmic evacuation, of the cuffs now too, that her wrists sing relief from, and Neill’s planting kisses all over her clammy face as if to congratulate a lambing job well done.

‘Come…’ she murmurs drowsily, ‘come…’

‘Yes? You came.’ Their little manly chuckles now, like Neill has multiplied.

‘Yes… oh!— I’m sorry…’ She sits up, rubbing her eyes, spying the bulges in their pants like two more lambs waiting to be born.

More chuckles. ‘Silly billy, do you want more? Right here? Take these off, you’re all hot and sweaty…’

‘No, no… come with me to bed. I mean, the shed! To check on Henry. I’m… I’m scared to go alone.’ She feels trippy, like she’s breathed weed in from their trousers.

‘Come on, floppy bacon. I’ll carry you.’

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‘It’s actually a girl. Henrietta,’ Ed whispered, as he locked up the shed after them.

‘Ohh… I just want to say… thank you, thank you so much guys. For not shooting her…’

‘Guess tomorrow we’re staying in to lambsit then.’

‘Can you get the tag off, Ed? Neill? Please? And the smut mark? It’s like someone’s melted a stick of lipstick all over her…’

‘We’ll have a look in the morning. And I’ll shear ‘er.’

‘More football?’

Sillier chuckles.

‘Ed can felt the wool onto his farmyard-screeching stool feet.’

‘Smart girl!— Even when she’s almost asleep. I need to fetch a glass of water. Piggyback her to bed, Ed.’

*Go now to www.headmastersflame.com to read the NEXT TWO CHAPTERS of The Headmaster's Flame and be updated on new chapters FIRST, on my all-free, dedicated, slick website created especially for mobile phone screens, and you can subscribe your email for a free Kindle book.*12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw099WVkv1P

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