The Adulterer's Daughter: A Novel Read online

  “I can’t picture it.”

  “What?”

  “You and me having sex when I’m ninety-nine and you’re eighty-six.”

  “Are you saying I need to find myself a younger man?”

  “No, of course not. I love you. I want to have a child with you.”

  “Several.”

  “Several children with you. I promise I’m going to get you pregnant just as soon as I can get this fellow working again.” He grabbed his crotch.

  “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear.” Serena smiled. “Fiona and Steve have got a sex dungeon, you know.”

  Eric chuckled. “So I gather. How did you find out?”

  “Fiona got rather drunk on Saturday night and spilt the beans.”

  “I can’t picture that either: Fiona the dominatrix, clad in black leather and thigh-high boots, whipping poor old Steve, chained up and stark naked apart from his gimp mask. Oh, shit! Now I have pictured it. There’s an image I’m not going to be able to get out of my head.”

  “Don’t you think it could be fun? Having a room equipped with all sorts of sex toys and kinky stuff.”

  “I’m not sure Chantara would approve.”

  “We could convert the wine cellar. Chantara never cleans down there.”

  “What a preposterous idea.”

  “Why is it preposterous?”

  “Where would I store the Châteauneuf-du-Pape and the Chianti Classico?”

  “In the shed?”

  “In the shed! Some of those bottles are worth over six hundred pounds. And you know they have to be kept in a dark room at thirteen degrees Celsius.”

  “We never drink any of them.”

  “We do. We drink the cheaper ones. The expensive bottles are more of an investment. I’ll tell you what; when I get you pregnant, we’ll open the most expensive bottle to celebrate.”

  “And who’s going to drink it?”

  “We will … Oh! I see what you mean. Would you object if I drank it on my own?”

  “If you get me pregnant, you can drink the whole lot on your own. Not all on the same day, obviously.”

  “Obviously.” Eric looked out of the window. The promised rain had already begun to fall on the lush green lawn. “No picnic then. Any other ideas?”

  “We could go shopping together.”

  “What for? Clothes? Furniture? Antiques?”

  “I was thinking maybe we could pop into a sex shop. Ann Summers or something similar. Choose a few sexy roleplay outfits. What do you think?”

  “You don’t need me for that. Why don’t you go to the shops and I’ll get a round of golf in? I don’t mind playing in the rain. I need something to slow down my putts. And the exercise will be good for me.”

  “But what shall I buy?”

  “I don’t know. Surprise me. Let’s meet back here this evening and watch a movie or something.”

  “Or I could try on my new costumes and we could make love?”

  “Yes, or that.”

  ◆◆◆

  When Eric arrived home that evening – wet, bedraggled and disheartened after completing eighteen holes in a hundred and twenty-seven strokes, his worst score for nearly forty years – he thought the house was on fire. Foul-smelling fumes were wafting from the kitchen, and all the smoke alarms were going off in a cacophony comparable to the Brazilian rain forest at dawn.

  “Serena!” he called, panic in his voice. “Serena, we have to get out.”

  He ran towards the kitchen and arrived at the door just as his wife was coming through to block his way.

  “No, no. You stay right there, silly. I want it to be a surprise.”

  “But the house …”

  She interrupted. “You go and have a shower and get changed, and meet me in the dining room in half an hour.”

  “But …”

  And she walked back into the kitchen.

  ◆◆◆

  Thirty minutes later, showered and changed, Eric made his way to the dining room and knocked tentatively on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Serena was seated at one end of the long table, smiling and resplendent in an azure blue dress and sparkly earrings.

  She was wearing her hair up, causing Eric’s penis to twitch, as this was often a pre-cursor to oral sex.

  “What’s all this?” he said, taking in the candles, the dim lighting and the disgusting aroma emanating from two steaming bowls.

  “I thought we could have a romantic meal before I dress up for you. I found some outfits I think you’re going to love.”

  “Nice. Erm … this meal … did you make it or did you order in?”

  “I made it.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sure it’ll be fine. You can’t go far wrong with mushroom soup.”

  “Apparently you can. This is linguine with sauteed calamari.”

  “Is it? It looks very … wet. But it’ll probably taste delicious.”

  Eric sat at the other end of the table, selected a weapon, and tried a bite. It didn’t taste delicious.

  “Mmm. The pasta’s interestingly … crunchy.”

  “I just followed the recipe.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Something about Al Pacino.”

  “Might that have been ‘al dente’?”

  “That’s it. What does it mean?”

  “Cooked, but still firm.”

  “This is still firm.”

  “Very.”

  Eric put on a brave face and ate every mouthful, suspecting as he did so that he might come to regret it later. He offered a surreptitious loaded fork to Stumpy beneath the table, but the wise old dog merely whined, ran upstairs and hid under the bed in the spare room until it was safe to come out.

  Serena left most of hers.

  After a dessert of chocolate mousse, which was tasty but had an unusual texture, Eric was idly tonguing a stringy bit of raw egg stuck between his back teeth – which he vaguely recalled from A Level biology was known as the chalaza – when Serena smiled a wicked smile.

  “Right, I’m going upstairs to get changed into outfit number one. You wait here and think naughty thoughts. I’ll be five minutes.”

  She was fifteen minutes.

  Outfit number one was a nurse’s uniform, but not like any nurse Eric had ever seen. The tiny, figure-hugging white dress barely reached the top of Serena’s shapely thighs. The incongruous fishnet stockings were only given verisimilitude by the token red medical cross on the suspenders which matched the cross on the nurse’s cap (popularised by Florence Nightingale in the 1850s and subsequently abandoned in the U.K. in the early 1990s once it was discovered they were a haven for bacteria). The high heels looked extremely impractical, but that wasn’t the point.

  Eric was reminded once again how beautiful and sexy his wife was, but his penis remained stubbornly disinterested.

  “What do you think?” Serena asked.

  “You look good enough to eat,” Eric replied. Unlike your cooking, he thought.

  “Anything stirring down there?”

  “I’m afraid not, but it’s not you, it’s me. You are stunning.”

  Serena beamed. “I’ve got a good feeling about outfit number two. Don’t go away.”

  “I’m staying right here.”

  “Coming, doctor,” Serena called as she tottered out of the room.

  She returned garbed as a French maid. In many ways not unlike the nurse’s outfit. Obscenely short dress – this time black and white with a lacy frill – stockings, heels, headpiece and feather duster.

  “Ooh la la! You ’ave somezing on your trousers, monsieur.”

  Serena tickled Eric’s crotch with her duster.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “Sorry, babe. While you’re at it, you couldn’t get rid of that cobweb on the chandelier, could you?”

  Serena stood on her tiptoes and stretched up to the light fitting.

  “Like zis, monsieur?” she said in her terrible French accent.

&n
bsp; “Perfect.”

  “I ’ope you aren’t checking out my cute little derriere.” She wiggled it, just in case Eric had missed her intention.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he lied.

  Serena stood coquettishly in front of Eric, hand on hip, and said, still in faux-French, “It is customary in my country to give your serving maid a big tip, if you know what I mean.” She winked.

  “I wish I could, my dear.”

  “Not to worry, monsieur. I ’ave one more outfit that will be sure to titillate your trouser snake.”

  Eric laughed as Serena once again tottered from the room, pausing briefly to remove non-existent dust from a high picture frame, accidentally drop the feather duster, say “Oops!” and retrieve it in an impressively flexible but most immodest manner.

  Fifteen minutes later she was back again, timidly knocking on the dining room door. “May I come in, headmaster?” she said in a small voice.

  “You may.”

  The door swung open to reveal Serena apparelled in what could only loosely be described as a schoolgirl’s uniform. The tiniest of tartan mini skirts. The obligatory stockings and suspenders. A white crop-top blouse, knotted at the sternum. And a superfluous school tie nestled between two plump brown breasts. She was innocently sucking a lollipop.

  “Mr Bigcock sent me. Apparently, I’ve been a very, very naughty girl.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got a few answers wrong in his lesson.”

  “That doesn’t sound very naughty. What were the questions?”

  “How many degrees are there in a right-angle?”

  “What was your answer?”

  “Sixty-nine.”

  “Not a bad guess.”

  “Also: How many vertices does a cuboid have?”

  “And you said …?”

  “Sixty-nine.”

  “You weren’t even close that time.”

  “I can’t help it if I’m not a maths genius. At least I’m pretty. Do you think I’m pretty, headmaster?”

  “Extremely. Did you get any other questions wrong?”

  “Only one. That’s when Mr Bigcock sent me to see you.”

  “And what was the question?”

  “Name a number that’s got rotational symmetry of order two. I said …”

  “Yes, I think I can guess what you said.”

  “But that’s right, isn’t it, sir? Sixty-nine is the same upside down.”

  Briefly failing to remain in character, Eric said, “How come you know so much about maths all of a sudden?”

  “I rang Mia. She helped me out.”

  “Ah.”

  Serena sucked her lollipop. “I have a confession to make, headmaster. I’m not wearing proper school uniform.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I seem to have completely forgotten to wear any knickers today.” Serena raised the front of her tiny skirt to reveal a freshly shaved, completely hairless pudendum. “I’m so sorry, headmaster. Are you going to punish me?”

  Eric swallowed. He tried to speak, but his voice betrayed him, so he nodded, eyes glued to an unobstructed view of his wife’s external genitalia.

  Serena knelt in front of Eric, unzipped his trousers, and skilfully used her mouth and tongue to convert his weapon from semi automatic to fully automatic, locked and loaded. Then she mounted her husband, now rigid in his chair, and rode him hard and fast until they both climaxed.

  ◆◆◆

  Serena was the first to wake in the night.

  “Uh-oh,” she said and sprinted to the bathroom where she exploded from both ends simultaneously.

  Ten minutes later, Eric knocked lightly on the door.

  “Occupied,” she sang.

  “Hurry up. I need to go.”

  No reply.

  Eric waited as long as he could and knocked again.

  “Fuck off!”

  “But …”

  “Use another bathroom.”

  He ran for the spare bedroom, but only made it as far as the mezzanine before he too threw up his guts.

  It was a long night for both of them.

  Chapter 37

  Tuesday 14 October, 2003

  O’Connor kitchen, 8:10 a.m.

  “They’ve arrived!”

  Steve rushed into the kitchen clutching a roll of black bin bags in one hand and a roll of purple ones in the other. He held them above his head and shouted with glee. “It looks like we might save the planet after all.”

  He kissed Fiona on the forehead – which was wrinkled in a frown – and then chased Ava around the kitchen table. “Come here and give your old man a hug.”

  She giggled and fled. “I’m late for school, Dad. I’ll see you later.” She grabbed her bag and beat a hasty retreat through the front door.

  “There’s a leaflet too,” he said to no one in particular. “It explains what we can put in the purple one.”

  “That’s nice, dear.”

  “The black one is still for all the usual household rubbish that can’t be recycled, but the purple one is the game-changer. Food tins, drink cans, biscuit tins, metal jar lids, all plastic bottles, yoghurt pots, ice cream tubs … are you listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “Newspapers, letters, leaflets, phone directories, cardboard packaging. This is great!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Do you understand what this means, love? Instead of being dumped into a landfill, all this stuff is going to be re-cycled. Melted down, processed and used again.”

  “What about glass?”

  “No, glass still has to be taken to the bottle banks. But all the other things on this list can be put into one of these magic purple sacks and sent off to be processed.”

  “Do I have to clean them first?”

  “It says ‘rinse the tins, bottles and containers’, but I reckon we should give them a thorough clean.”

  “We?”

  “I’ll help too.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m very excited about this.”

  “Yes, I can tell.”

  “We’ll need a second bin for the kitchen. One for recycling and one for the other shit.”

  “Steve …!”

  “Sorry, love. I’m determined to make this work. I’m going to give it a hundred and ten percent.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard me.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. A hundred percent is everything. Maximum effort. You can’t give more than that.”

  “It’s my way of saying I’m going to go beyond that. This means so much to me that I’m going to make a superhuman effort to recycle better than anyone else in the village. Heck, better than anyone else in the country.”

  “Then why only a hundred and ten percent? Why not a hundred and twenty? Two hundred? Why not a million percent? It’s a stupid saying, and I’d prefer it if you never use it again. Now, where are my keys? I need to get to the office.”

  ◆◆◆

  That evening, as Steve was painstakingly removing the label from a baked bean tin, and polishing the inside with a cloth until it reflected like a mirror, Fiona said, “You do realise you don’t have to do that? The leaflet says to leave the label on and just rinse it.”

  “I’m a perfectionist. If I do a job, I do it properly. This tin is going to be perfect.”

  “But they’re only going to melt it down to re-use it. It won’t matter if there’s a tiny morsel of baked bean left inside.”

  “That’s not the point. I don’t want anything to contaminate my tracking device.”

  The plate Fiona was washing slipped out of her soapy rubber gloves and smashed into a hundred pieces on the tiled floor. “Oh, arse!” she said. “Now look what you’ve made me do.”

  “I didn’t make you do anything. I merely mentioned my tracking device and you …”

  “What are you talking about? What tracking device?”

  Steve beamed. “I’ve come up with a plan to hold the Government
to account. I’m going to make sure they stick to the terms of the Household Waste Recycling Act.”

  “How?”

  “Simple. Back in a sec.”

  Steve left the kitchen and returned two minutes later with a tiny electronic device nestling like a baby mouse in the palm of his hand.

  “What is it?” Fiona asked.

  “This, my dear, is a Nanomag X229 Black-ops Real-Time tracking device.”

  “Why have you got one of those? Something to do with work?”

  “No, I just saw it on eBay and thought, What a good idea. I can use that.”

  “What for?”

  “Duh! It’s a tracking device.”

  “So?”

  “I’m going to follow it?”

  “How?”

  “In my car.”

  “When?”

  “On Friday when the first recycling sack is collected.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to make sure it’s being done correctly. I’d feel like a right twerp if I was doing all this work – identifying and separating and cleaning – and then all our re-usable waste was just being dumped into the ocean.”

  “Does it matter? Who cares if one of our tin cans doesn’t get recycled?”

  “I care. If everyone had your attitude, we’d be back where we started. We need to buck the trend now before it’s too late. If we all circle the wagons and ensure our recycling gets done properly, we can save the world for our children and grandchildren.”

  “Forget the ‘bucking’ and the ‘wagons’. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t important.”

  “Well, it’s important to me.”

  “Haven’t you got to work on Friday?”

  “I reckon I’m due some time off.”

  “What if someone has an electrical emergency?”

  “That would be shocking.” For the three thousandth time, Steve laughed hysterically at his own joke.

  For the two thousand nine hundred and ninety-ninth time, Fiona failed to laugh along with him. “I can’t tell if you’re serious.”

  “Oh, I’m as serious as a heart attack.”

  “What exactly do you envision happening?”

  “I’m going to superglue one of these little fellows onto the inside of an empty tin can; pop it into the purple recycling sack; wait until the bin men come and pick it up; and then follow it using the app on my phone.”