She grinned knowingly at me.
“Jack, of course I’m angry, I never wanted this to happen, but that was just a hope; I knew, deep down inside, that this was always going to happen, one way or another. Come with me, I think you need to see something!”
I followed her down the corridor to Teruko’s room. I’d never actually been in inside her room before, and at first glance it looked like what I supposed a fairly ordinary teenage girl’s bedroom would look like, lots of soft toys, ranks of shoes, books and magazines piled everywhere. There was a hanging rack full of outfits, too many to fit in the closet, CD cases scattered around on the dresser, and photographs, lots of photographs, on the walls, on the dresser, on the nightstand, dotted around everywhere I looked. As I looked closer, I saw they were all of me, with Japanese characters scrawled across them. Mum picked up one at random.
“Look; ‘I love Jack!’, or this one, ‘Jack 4 me 4 ever’, or this one, wild horses couldn’t drag out of me what THIS says! And then there’s my favourite, ‘My darling husband’! I think she forgot I read Japanese better than I speak it! I’ve been watching her watching you for years now, all those adoring looks and happy little sighs, always hoping she’d grow out of it. That’s why I wasn’t really surprised, I knew this was bound to happen, I just hoped it wouldn’t!”
“She’s been in love with you for years, Jack, you never picked up on it at all, even with all the heavy hints she’s been throwing at you all this time. The fact is, I was starting to relax about the whole thing, because I was convinced you’d never discover how she felt about you!”
I was taken aback.
“So now it’s happened, what now? Are you going to tell me that now that the inevitable has happened, you don’t really disapprove?”
Mum looked sideways at me.
“Don’t be so bloody stupid, of course I disapprove; my kids are breaking the law! What I want to do most in the world right now is give you a bloody good kick up the backside, then knock both your heads together for doing what you’ve done, but what good would that do now? The fact is, you need her, you always have, and she needs you, and I won’t do anything because I love you both, even if the reason why temporarily escapes me!”
She grinned, looking a lot less annoyed than she had a few minutes earlier.
“On the plus side, at least I’m not losing my kids to strangers who I’ll get to meet once or twice a year. I may not be her birth-mother, but Teruko is my daughter, she’s my little girl, and I want only the best for my little girl. I think she found that in you, and no, that’s not just a mother talking; you’ve always been the best, most normal thing in her life, ever since you brought her home and made her a part of us, and yes, I’m angry with both of you for doing this, but I can’t deny that a part of me is also happy for both of you.”
She sat back down on the bed and absently trailed her fingers through the mound of jewellery.
“Your grandfather will be happy, at least; he’s known for years how she feels about you; Teruko and he are a lot closer than you think, and more than anything he wants her to be happy, so when you tell him, he’s going to be over the moon; his oldest friend’s granddaughter and his own grandson? He’ll be ecstatic! He already loves her like his own granddaughter, he absolutely adores her, and the only thing he wants for her is that she be happy, so if you plan on going through with this, you’d better make sure you get it right, or you’ll be answering to him!”
A question I had never bothered to ask her suddenly popped into my head.
“Mum, why did you and my father get divorced?”
Mum started scooping the jewellery back into the casket, stopping now and then to polish or admire a particularly fine piece.
“I thought you knew; he and I got married because our families thought we should; his father and daddy were boyhood friends, they went through the war together, they were best friends. When Georgie, your father, and I started going out, we were just going out as friends, but both families decided it was a love-match and pushed him to propose, so he did. To this day I don’t know why I said ‘yes’, but as soon as we got married we realised what a huge mistake we’d made; we tried to make it work, we had you, because we thought a baby was what we needed to cement us together, but we weren’t able to connect in that way, we were friends, best friends, even, just not in love. You know what happened, but part of the reason Grandad loves Teruko is that she’s Georgie’s daughter, and he loved George like a son. You’ve got a lot to live up to, Jack Cameron!”
Mum gave Teruko the pendant, making her cry, and then she joined in, and by now even the dog was looking a little teary, so I decided to take Teruko up to Oswestry to see Grandad and break the news to him. He was delighted, as mum had predicted, insisting on lugging out a bottle of his prized vintage Medoc and presenting it to us an engagement present, cue more hugging and blubbering.
After they’d dried up, or at last dried-off, he and Teruko went out to see her chickens, leaving me to ponder what to do next. I felt a little sandbagged by everything; I’d been gearing up for a fight, or at least accusations and recriminations, and mum’s pragmatic attitude had completely taken the wind out of my sails. Her injunction that we refrain from Hanky-Panky was not unexpected, but I was planning on taking Teruko out that evening, maybe we could find somewhere quiet for a little Hanky at least, possibly working in a little Panky too…
We eventually left once Teruko had rounded-up and hugged all her pet chickens, although how she could tell them apart was a little beyond me, they all looked exactly the same to me, like chickens everywhere; beady-eyed, mad little stares, running around with that ‘my panties are falling down’ bounding run that all chickens have, and making that guttural scraping sound that makes my blood run cold and is guaranteed to drive me completely loopy; the only way I can tolerate chickens is on a skewer with yakitori sauce…
At last she’d had enough of hugging those wretched creatures, so we headed home to get showered and changed; I was taking my girl on the town!
I took her to Beach, a beach-themed club in the centre of town, where we were able to blend anonymously into the crowd; I was fairly sure that no-one I knew would be there. I wasn’t ashamed of Teruko; far from it; she looked spectacular in a short, tight, slinky dress, exotic and hyper-sexy; I just didn’t feel like explaining to anyone we knew what my sister was doing rubbing herself all over me…
All was going well, and we’d had a few drinks, Teruko discovering that she liked Moscow Mule’s, when there was a tap on my shoulder, and when I looked up, there was Jack Fineman, of all the people I didn’t want to see, class creep and world-class pervert, grinning down at me and flicking the occasional covetous glance at Teruko, who was sitting on my lap feeding me Japanese rice crackers from a giant champagne glass and giggling.
“Hello Cameron, that’s a very friendly sister you’ve got there!” he smirked, leering at Teruko’s chest.
I slapped his hand off my shoulder.
“What do you want, Slimy? We’re out having fun and I really don’t want to see your ugly pan ruining my evening. Now we’re busy, so do me a favour and fuck off!”
Fineman stayed where he was, grinning like he had a plan, pissing me off just by his presence; he was a creep in school, I’d avoided him like the plague when I was there, and I didn’t really see why I should tolerate his presence now when I was out with my girl.
To my huge annoyance, he sat down opposite us, at our table, and leaned on his elbows, grinning like a Cheshire cat, arousing in me the almost irresistible desire to punch his creepy face down his neck and out of his arse…
“Yep, that’s a really friendly sister you’ve got there; I wonder, do you think she feels like being friendly to me?”
My blood boiled at the thought of Slimy Fineman touching her, and I held my temper in with difficulty as I leaned forward to stick my face in his.
“In your dreams, Slimy; the only thing you’ll ever get from my sister is her foot, shoved up your arse. Now fuck off before I hurt you!”
He leaned in even further.
“I don’t think so; I think she’ll look great in, say, my bedroom, so what say; she comes home with me, we have a little ‘adult’ fun, and it all ends there; or, all these good people here get to hear how the tall guy in the corner is fucking his chinky little sister? How would that stuck-up, snooty mother of yours feel once it gets around town that Mr. Clean, Big Jack Cameron’s been shagging his little sister? Make up your mind, Cameron, clock’s ticking!”
Promising myself the leisure to dismember him for what he’d called Teruko, I stood up, helping her to her feet and walked away. We’d gone a few paces when I turned and looked at him.
“Come on then, you want your fun, come and get it!”
For the gloating expression that crossed his face, I promised myself a further few minutes alone with him in a locked room, but for now I tried to look as non-threatening as possible as I walked out behind Teruko, Slimy trailing after us, probably congratulating himself on how well his sick little plan had gone.
As we exited the club he tried to put his arm around Teruko, probably already seeing himself as some kind of winner here, a player/playboy/man about town, but I intercepted him, holding his arm twisted as far up his back as I could shove it, ignoring his gasps of pain and threats until we were away from the club, then spun him round and clothes-lined him as hard as I could. I was the best Prop-Forward the school 1st XV rugby team had brought on in years, and I’d forgotten none of that, and ‘Slimy’ Fineman did a complete back flip as I gave him the full Monty, a full straight-arm with extra top-spin.