SPOILER ALERT... SPOILER ALERT... SPOILER ALERT...
This story contains an amount of unintentional incest, the people concerned didn't know this initially and their relationship is revealed three quarters of the way through chapter 2.
If you want to know now, read now, otherwise move on to the next paragraph. Terry turns out to be Alison's long lost twin.
My sincere thanks for all the help I have received from my editor.
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In some ways this is a bit of a sad story. My parents were not nice people, Mum was a real virago and they were always getting into trouble with the police, both had spent several short spells in prison. They went out drinking nightly came home drunk and if we were lucky Mum would be too drunk to start shouting at or hitting me and my older brother and Dad was never far behind her.
Every place we lived in turned into a cold, dirty, smelly dump. We never had heat or enough food and regularly no electricity or gas due to lack of money.
For my eleventh birthday I had no presents because they forgot but made promises I'd get a better Christmas present instead. Two days later Mum was with the police again and Dad came home from the pub swearing and shouting.
I was alone in the house and pretended to be asleep but he came into my room, pulled the covers off the bed, ripped my pants off and raped me. The pain was horrendous and I really thought I was going to die. I was screaming and fighting with him but it only made it worse. He was lashing out with his fists all over the top half of me. When he finished he fell asleep on me then fell to the floor and threw up. The last thing I remember thinking was 'thank God it's over for another night.'
When I woke I was in great pain and it took me a while to realise I was in a hospital bed, with my sleeping brother holding my right hand from the armchair beside me. I called out for water and a nurse came to me quickly and waking my brother they explained: When he got home he went to the phone box to call for an ambulance.
My left arm and shoulder were badly broken as were several of my ribs. I'd had emergency surgery to repair a punctured lung and the damage to my rear end. I had a temporary bag fitted and a catheter. Most of my upper body was badly bruised, my left eye was swollen and closed and my left cheek had been sewn, having been ripped open against my teeth.
To put it bluntly, I think I was lucky to be alive. This was three days after the attack. Of all my injuries the hole in my cheek, having received some nerve damage, was the only one that gave me ongoing sensitivities.
Dad had been arrested and in fact spent fifteen years inside for the attack and a number of other charges. Mum was also imprisoned for a couple of years for the other bits too.
I healed quite quickly and surprisingly well, my brother and I went into care and our parents were never allowed to see us again.
I had successful counselling but very occasionally had nightmares about that evenings rape attack and Mum beating us. I could never identify the parts where I was hiding in the foot well of a car from some horrible attack, or where everything was falling on top of me, including blood. If I awoke, I'd not be able to get back to sleep for the rest of the night.
My brother had been lucky and got a brilliant job working with an engineer, he'd been in Sri Lanka for a while so I was all alone.
I got an apprenticeship with a national company and was so proud when at the age of twenty I left my foster parents and got my own bed-sit in the attic of a four story house. It was OK when I moved into it but bit by bit I decorated it as and when I could afford to and I kept it immaculate. Having lived through all the squalor, I turned very clean and tidy almost to the point of OCD as it's now known. My contract with the landlord stated monthly inspections but after three or four months he would skip my flat, not even coming up to the third floor when he was in the building.
At the age of twenty-two I was six feet two, thirteen stone (180lbs) with shoulder length almost black wavy hair. In the last two months I lost my virginity and had a month's relationship with Gisl, a woman of seventy-two and spent a glorious weekend with a gorgeous, slim, natural blonde girl of twenty-five called Alison. To save any confusion a different Alison features from here on.
I was working but my rent and other expenses accounted for more than eighty percent of my wages so I had to sell my car. I started a second job as an office assistant to the boss' wife in a small engineering company that I had been dealing with in my main job. I was there to replace Gissy, a woman of sixty who was about to retire after thirty-two years and I had to learn the job in her last month.
Gissy was short at a bit under five feet, very slim body with short black hair, big bright green eyes and small bust, in fact she looked much like Mia in the film 'Love Actually' but always wore clothes that were designed to hide her figure with full skirts to below her knees.
She was efficient, organised and little officious, almost standoffish but very helpful with every question I had and didn't mind when I asked the same question again some time later. After a few days she started giving me a lift home to my little bed-sit which was on her way home. As soon as we were in the car, she softened and was chatty, talking about the usual: Weather, sport, TV, our families etc. I felt really comfortable with her. She was so different outside of work. I developed a bit of a soft spot for her. A couple of times her daughter Alison, who is the same age as me, was waiting in the car park for a lift home too and like her mother, I got on well with her.
