“Why Darryl, are you thinking about doing wicked-naughty things with me, you bad man?” she whispered, wriggling against my suddenly interested cock. “I’m a happily married woman, I’ll have you know… wait, what’s that, oh you did not, oh God, you’re so bad!” she teased, grinding her bottom against me, “you can’t, you mustn’t, every time you play Bad-Daddy with me you make me preggers, is that your plan?”
The thought of Lena pregnant always does deeply, profoundly hot things to me, something she knows all too well.
“Remember once upon a time we talked about this, sweetheart?” I grinned, and she smiled possibly the dirtiest smile she had in her arsenal.
“‘Course I do, Dar; we agreed one would be lonely, two would fight, three meant two would gang-up on the third, so to give them an even chance we should have four. Know what? I’m ready when you are, so let’s make sure the tribe’s properly chained-up for the night, and then you and I are going to play Boom-Boom music.”
*****
Bobby:
Shari and Yaz looked up from the laptop they’d been huddled around, and shook their heads. Shari looked chagrined, which made sense; she’s a perfectionist, if things don’t pan out exactly how she wants them to, she gets wound-up and annoyed, and then everyone gets some.
“No good, Bobby, I can’t get anything from Ancestry. com, or MyHeritage. com, not without creating a family tree and we don’t have one, just us, we come to Robert The Bastard and come to a dead stop. I tried looking to see if the parish register for this St. Leonard’s church in Streatham is online; apparently it’s not, or it’s stashed somewhere else.
It looks like our next move is either the Electoral Roll for the Borough of Lambeth, or the Registry Offices in Sutton, Lambeth, Merton, or Croydon, because Barbara’s birth-family, or her brother, even, could have been registered in any of those districts. Thing is, Bobby, one of us, Bobby, will have to go there, Bobby, to each one of them, Bobby, and pay the fee in person, Bobby, and read through the relevant year, Bobby; I wonder who gets the short straw, Bobby…?”
I know when I’m beaten, so I “volunteered”, in fact I volunteered her and me, which probably wasn’t what she had in mind, but what the hey; this was her itch, she was going to scratch it with me. Shari, however, didn’t see it that way; she wanted to stay at home, she and Yaz, because of the kids, yeah, yeah, excuse, excuse, duck and dive etc.
Rick and I got voted-in, shouted-down, and volunteered whether we wanted to or not. To be honest, I didn’t mind. Obviously, Shari cuddled up to me at night at when I was a long way from home appealed enormously, and Rick, for all that he was my brother, just didn’t appeal that much, but the girls were adamant; we went and did the digging, they’d keep the home fires burning.
So it was decided, and the hunt was on.
*****
Ricky was interested, and a little bemused, at being co-opted out of his job in the business and into what he saw as kind of a wild goose chase. He readily acknowledged the fact Barbara was our birth-mother, and he understood my need to connect with any part of her I could find, but emotionally, he was bonded to Ayesha by ties he’d probably never be able to break, nor want to.
Ayesha was his mum as far as he was concerned, she’d been that guiding presence and heart of his family that he’d needed so much, and while he mourned her loss every day, he’d also had her and loved her as a very real mother-presence in his life.
Ricky had bonded and imprinted on Ayesha in a way that he never could have with Barbara; he just didn’t need closure with her the way I did. He’d told his story and found catharsis, he was at peace because his mother had been very real and present for him, and he didn’t need anyone else. His family was right here, everyone he needed was right here, and any time he needed his mum all he had to do was look at my little Ayesha to see her and feel her presence again.
To his credit, he came with me solely because I’d asked him to; he had no unresolved family issues to lay to rest, because his world was complete.
So where did we start?
First off, we knew where Barbara was born, we had her immediate family and their full names, and we finally had her date of birth, so we needed to hit the registry offices in any of the London boroughs her family birth, marriages or deaths might have been registered in, then search the electoral roll in the district they lived in.
We hoped in this way to find Barbara’s parents and their last known address. We could do those on-line, but that was just the beginning; somewhere she had family, real family. This ‘James Blake Morrison’ was at least one that we knew of, and the way to find the rest of our family was to go find him and knock on his door. Shari was quite definite, and actually perfectly right about that.
So, with many misgivings, and a slight sense of injustice at being press-ganged into trudging around the London suburbs, all the way at the other end of the country, Ricky and I set off try and pick up my mother’s trail.
At least we had a starting point of sorts, it was better than nothing, and we’d all agreed one thing: if we’d found nothing definite in a week, we were coming home, we’d have taken our best shot, and Shari would let the whole matter drop.
*****
Nia:
After much pointless debate, and yakking back and forth with Julie, Lena, Mummy, and various combinations of same, we still had no real plan going forward. Names, I had, and birthdates, and nothing else. We’d already drawn a blank with one name; unless we somehow developed psychic powers and clairvoyance we were never going to crack Rosa’s whereabouts or who the baby was given to, it was too long ago, and too little was passed down through the family for us to look.
One might as well stick a pin in the phonebook and call that number just on the off-chance it actually was Cherie’s home number; those were the kind of ridiculous odds we were up against.
I spent several days mulling it over, losing more and more hope, and basically biting poor Jamie’s head off at every opportunity; it got to the point where Mummy said “enough, leave him be or ask him, but not blame him.” Huh, trust her to take his side…
(Actually, that’s monumentally unfair; poor baby wasn’t to blame, but I had to vent somewhere, and Jamie was big enough to take it.)
Eventually I de-psycho’d long enough to really think what I was doing and where I was going with this, and ate humble pie to ask Jamie to give me a clue where to go. Jamie pulled me onto his lap astride him and nibbled my lips as he squeezed and kneaded my bottom, his favourite way of gathering his thoughts.
“The way I see it, “he began, “is you’re approaching this whole thing from a false premise, that with Cherie there is actually a trail to follow. People who are not trying to hide are usually the hardest to find; they don’t drop clues like litter, they don’t leave paper-trails with a set start-point, they don’t sneak around looking furtive and drawing attention to themselves. Cherie’s sister isn’t hiding, she’s probably living her life out in the open and completely unaware of who we are or even that we’re looking for her or Cherie.”
He gave my bottom a sexy little jiggle and smack.
“As long as we don’t have any information about her, she’s going to remain hidden, not because she’s hiding, but because she doesn’t know to look for us because she doesn’t know we exist. It’s a coin-toss: one side of the coin is us not knowing enough about her to know where to start looking, flip the coin and there she is not knowing anything about us, so she’s never going to wonder about us or start looking for us, and that’s the simple, sad truth: that whole search is futile, the trail is too old, and too cold, a dead-end over twenty years old.”
He shifted me more comfortably on his lap, his lips soft on my cheek and his big warm hands clutching and kneading my bum possessively as he nibbled me.
“Now, when it comes to Barbara, we know a couple of important things. We know who she married, well, mostly. We know she moved to Coventry with her husband. We know they ducked out of there almost immediately, with no word, and we know dad and Barbara were close, so she wouldn’t have just dropped out of sight without somehow notifying dad, at least not willingly, he believes. Right away there’s that suspicious activity that’s drawing attention to her, that thing that says she’s being hidden. We know who she married, so he’s who we start with, and with the “who” comes the “why.” Why is she being hidden from us, what does Robert or Brian Davis have to hide, and from whom? This is where we should be looking: it’s a trail that’s not quite cold yet.”
Jamie kissed me on the forehead even as he jiggled and squeezed my bottom, but I didn’t mind; he’s Jamie, he’s far too gorgeous to get mad at!
“I think I’ll have a word with Steve Norton,” he mused. “You don’t know him, but Steve went to school with me; his father owns a tracing and background-checking company, dad uses them at the bank, and Steve works with him; they even have an office in Chicago now, doing something they call ‘skip-tracing’, locating people who run out on their debts, change their identity and disappear, so he knows how and where to dig for information. He also has some useful links with Interpol and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. I’ll see if he can put out some feelers and get a line on this “Brian Davis” or whoever he really is; if anyone can do it, Stevie can, plus he owes me for introducing his company to dad’s bank, and I know he likes a challenge. He likes people to think he’s a gumshoe, perhaps he can be one for real, whaddya say, Princess?”
I should have known; Jamie has always had a way of unravelling things and laying them out that made even complex problems resolvable. I should have pulled him into this from the very beginning instead of trying to be Daddy’s hero-daughter. Jamie’s a thinker and a problem solver; that’s why he’s in such demand.
“When, baby?” I asked him, and Jamie gave me that grin that makes my knees weak and my tummy flutter.
“I’ll go see him tomorrow, I’m up in Canary Wharf most of the day, and I’ll meet him for lunch. With mum and dad taking a long weekend down in Minehead and Julie and Mark in Bristol with Darryl we’ll need to keep on our toes, baby, no free babysitting this weekend. That’s why I’m clearing down my week now, I can’t work this weekend and leave you to deal with the wild-bunch all on your own. Still, now that’s tomorrow taken care of at least, what shall we do tonight?”
He combed my hair back from my face with his fingertips and looked deep into my eyes.
“The kids are all fast asleep, any ideas, my Nguye’t?” he murmured, his “Jamie wants to play” grin flashing on.