Rag Doll Ch. 08.2.1 - Connections

His expression was haunted his face suddenly lined and suddenly old-looking, and his eyes were hooded, looking at something I couldn't see.

"Her little girl, Cherie, her name was, but mum called her Sherry-baby, after that old Frankie Valli song, she was only a baby, just a few months old. She was totally unharmed. Her shit bag father had dropped out of sight by then; obviously he wanted nothing to do with bringing her up, and she was taken in by her married half-sister, her father's daughter from his first marriage."

Daddy sighed, running his fingertip gently around the picture of the two little girls.

"I don't know what happened to her; after mum died we lost touch with Sherry's sister. I hadn't started university yet when Rosa went off with Sid, she was still in her teens, just gone seventeen, she left with him one day and next thing I know she's married, or so mum claimed, and she had Cherie pretty much right way, and then she was killed, and that's all I know. Sherry would be two, maybe three years older than Jamie, if I've got it right."

He knuckled his eyes, trying to pretend he was yawning, but I know Daddy too well, so I didn't say anything.

"Barbara, I don't know where she is. She married a man called Brian Davis, and they moved to Coventry I think, after that, I don't know. I haven't heard from her in over twenty-five years, not since before Jamie was born. I don't know where she is, what she's doing, if she's even still alive... "

Daddy's lip was quivering, so I closed the album. I could tell I was raking-up old hurts here. He didn't need this, not from me, but now I was more than intrigued. I never knew daddy had family other than Jamie and me, he'd never mentioned anyone, never talked about his parents, never gave a clue in all my years that he had lost his sister, maybe both of them.

The news that he'd had two sisters at all was bombshell enough for me.

Daddy took the album from me and opened it, flicking through the pictures until he came to an 8 x 10 glossy on its own page.

"This is Barbara, sweetheart..."

She was beautiful, a real looker, I could definitely see some of my grandparents, and quite a lot of Jamie, especially the cheekbones and her expression, but a lovely teenage girl in her own right. She had styled, sculpted, softly flicked back light golden-brown hair, like daddy and Jamie, and large, expressive, dove-grey eyes, just like her mother, full lips and a sweet, open, friendly smile.

Daddy flicked through a few more pages and there was another 8x10, this time of a pretty, elfin girl probably no more than thirteen or fourteen, with very pale skin and glossy, jet black hair cut in a typical 80's dramatic style, what they used to call a "wedge", very short on one side and at the back, with a long, sweeping fringe across her face and over one eye, just like one of the New Romantic girls on the covers of The Human League albums Daddy had in his record collection.

She had those intensely blue Morrison eyes my grandfather, daddy, Jamie, and I all shared, and a wide, cheeky grin.

"This is Rosa, Nugget. I think she was the most determined out of all of us, whatever she wanted, she went for it. She was fun, though, and a real sweetheart, one of the nicest, gentlest people you'd ever meet, and I miss her so much... "

Daddy slid the picture out of the clear plastic sleeve so I could look more closely at it. I turned it over, and in the bottom right-hand corner in ballpoint pen was written "Rosalie Jean Morrison 14 Aug 1989". Scribbled across the back was "Happy Birthday Jamesie, I'm broke so you get this! Luv you Bruv! Rosa."

"She was thirteen when she gave me that..." said daddy, his voice quiet but I heard the quaver in it, saw the sad, angry look in his eyes.

"What happened, daddy, and why don't I know about her?" I asked, genuinely puzzled. Daddy looked really angry for a second, the anger rippling across his face for just a fleeting instant before his normal, composed expression reappeared.

"She met a real scumbag, his name was Sid Young. Good old Sid was nearly the same age as my dad, with a grown, married daughter he'd walked out on years before. I tried to tell Rosie, she didn't want to know, Sid had changed, he loved her, love transcends any barrier, the heart wants what the heart wants, blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, rubbish he'd filled her head with."

Daddy looked furious, his eyes narrowed with anger at the memory, and his knuckles were white.

"Dad was absolutely furious, mum was horrified and disgusted. I remember the one time Rosie brought him to the house, dad literally threw him out the door with a size 10 boot imprinted on his creepy old arse, he made threats, dad took after him with a cricket bat, he took off like an Olympic runner, and that was the last we ever saw of that disgusting old cradle-snatcher."

He sighed.

"Mum said he married her, but I had my doubts about that, I believed then and I do now that it was just a title of convenience because mum didn't want to call it what it really was; that scummy old shit wasn't going to tie himself down with a pregnant teenager. When he got what he wanted, up and off he went, just like he'd done before."

Daddy looked grim.

"Last time I saw Rosa alive was the year I left for university, she was seventeen, going on eighteen and heavily pregnant. I'd deferred for a year, so I was nearly twenty by then. Good old Sid left her soon after Cherie was born, I mean days after, how low is that, but no real surprises there, leopards changing their spots and all that.

Rosa and the baby were staying with Sid's daughter after Sid ran out on her; she wasn't even eighteen yet, younger than Sid's daughter, which had to be weird for both of them. Cherie was about four months old when Rosa was killed at that bus-stop. Sid never showed up for the funeral, and we never heard from him again; no doubt he went on to do the same thing again."

He sighed heavily.

"I left for uni, even though I didn't want to, but mum and dad persuaded me to go, they'd deal with Brian and Sid, but Mum passed away just a few weeks later, heart attack out of the blue, and dad followed soon after, they called it a "Widow-Maker" while I was still trying to arrange bereavement time-off and study leave to help him get through Mum's passing. I don't think he even knew what hit him, which is sort of a blessing, I suppose. They said it was due to a congenital heart defect, but Barbie and I knew better. Losing his baby-girl and then mum was the last straw, he just gave up, and it was just Barbara and me."

He paused, looking into the distance at something only he could see, but then shook his head and carried on.

"Some time earlier, Barbara had met Brian Davis, if that was really his name, and he was still hanging around after dad passed away; I overheard Barbie call him "Robert" a few times, and that set my senses twitching, because he really didn't like that. I never liked him, everything about him seemed off. Even Buster, my old black Lab couldn't stand him. He used to growl at him non-stop, and the look that bloke always gave Buster, like he'd kill him if I wasn't there, then call it an accident.

He frowned vaguely, his eyes far away.

"I couldn't stay, I'd already deferred once, if I didn't take up my place I'd lose it, so I went. I met Laura the year I graduated, and the way he'd ogle her whenever she'd come home with me told me everything I needed to know about him. Barbara was planning to go to uni when she took up with him, she'd already trained as a kindergarten teaching assistant, and she wanted to get a formal teaching qualification, but she dropped out and married that bloke instead, and that was it."

He stopped to grin wryly.

"Barbara loved him, though, and I didn't get that at all. She had such good instincts about people, that's probably what made her such a good TA, and would have made her a top-notch teacher. She used to teach the five and six year-olds at Ravenstone Primary school down in Balham, and she loved it."

He looked angrily at her picture, before patting it vaguely and turning the page.

"She should have taken it further, but she gave it up for him because he didn't want her working. With all her smarts, she never once clocked that guy for what he really was. They got married, I gave her away, and honestly, it felt like the worst, biggest mistake I'd ever made."

He passed his hand over his face, and I could see his hand trembling. I squeezed his arm, and he smiled at me, before continuing.

"I wanted to jump up when the registrar asked if anyone had any just cause to stop it, I wanted to shout out that he was a dirt bag and she was making a huge mistake, I felt like I was handing my little sister over to a conniving, evil monster, and he was going to hurt her."

His expression was harsh, angry, obviously he was still feeling it, even after so long.

"I can't explain it, I just got a continuous bad vibe from him, and I hated him. He had this permanent smirk on his face, like he'd put one over on all of us, like he was so smart and we were all so stupid. I hated him just for that. I wanted to smash him in the face with a claw-hammer and wipe that creepy smirk off permanently and stake his body out so I could kick his arse every day as I walked past his corpse; he gave me the major creeps, but not Barbara, she never saw it... "

He trailed off, staring off in to the distance, squinting, like he was trying to remember something.

"Y'know, I don't even know if Barbara had kids or not; after they left I got a couple of Christmas cards that said nothing, and then nothing more; letters I sent were marked "returned to sender" or "not known at this address." I took my eyes off my baby sisters and they just dropped completely off the radar... "

I hugged him, and left him to his memories. I needed to think about this. For one thing, Jamie needed to know that literally half our family was missing, and I also thought perhaps Mummy might know something, something she and Daddy might have talked about, or she, Daddy, and Jamie's mother.

Mummy has a memory like a whole herd of elephants, and she and Laura had been closer than blood-sisters; if she and Daddy had ever talked about this, she'd remember literally every word.

I decided to wait on bracing Mummy, though; Mark was at Brockwell Park playing football with "the terrible trio" aka my little tomboy Laura and her twin, Jamie junior, and Mark and Julie's very own little blonde tomboy tearaway, Markie, the three of them thick as thieves and twice as devious.

Julie was herding her two toddlers, Nia and Jayce, and my little Julie-Anh, the smallest but definitely the loudest. They were all due back soon, then would come the organised chaos known as teatime, baths, and bedtime, so it would have to wait.

*****

Bobby:

The kids had been fed, they were down for their nap, and Yaz had put her two boys down as well. She and Ricky were on babysitting duty, huddled together on the couch with a pile of quilts, pillows, six-packs of coke, and tins of chocolate biscuits, watching Hallmark romances, their unbreakable Saturday afternoon tradition. That freed me up to hunt for my wife, because I hadn't heard a peep from her in almost four hours.

As I climbed the attic stairs there was absolutely no sound coming from the attic, but when I pushed open the oddly-shaped little door at the top of the stairs, there was Shari, sitting cross-legged on the floor under the single bare light bulb. She was surrounded by printed papers, folders, document wallets, old ledgers, literally mounds of the stuff.

I knew there was a lot of this stuff up there, the Crown Prosecution Service had gone through dad's paperwork with a fine-tooth comb, not just from his office, and all around the house, but from storage places dotted around Carlisle, mostly lock-up garages and self-storage places we knew nothing about, and everything that wasn't evidence was dumped back here with us.

There were forty or fifty plastic tea crates full of what I'd assumed at the time to be rubbish. The CPS had obviously thought so, judging by the 'No Evidential Value' seals across the lid of every crate. But this was also where Ricky had found the clues that led him to Shari, Yaz, and their mother, so maybe Shari was right, and there was actually more to find somewhere in that huge heap of random paperwork.

"Hey baby, welcome to my little slice of paradise!" she grinned, shoving a pile of stuff away so I could sit next to her. "So far nothing; your father kept every single piece of paper that ever came his way, and I mean everything... look at this."

She handed me a twenty year-old till receipt from a newsagent for a bar of chocolate with a grin.

"What kind of mentality needs proof of purchase of a candy bar? I mean, really? They changed "Marathon" to "Snickers" years ago, why hang onto this? We always knew Robert had some major screws loose, but this?" She shook her head sadly.

"I think you've done enough for the day, baby." I suggested, "let's get cleaned up, and dinner tonight, let's order in, I don't want you stressing over dinner, and Yaz has been barricaded down most of the day while the wild things went on a rampage, she needs a break too, so Chinese? Thai? Indian? Pizza? The world is your oyster tonight, speak, and I shall obey, oh moon of my delight."

Shari slid closer to me, a wicked grin on her face.

"I think I'd like some alone-time with you, husband of mine; the kids are all asleep with Yaz and Ricky three floors away, at the other end of the house, and we've got this big old empty, echoing space all to ourselves, what say we make a little noise, baby-daddy?"

I could feel myself hardening at the thought, although these days, when Shari was near me, it didn't take much; her being pregnant made her so delicious, so desirable, I'm surprised I managed to get any work done at all...

I pulled her onto my lap and kissed her, while she squirmed and wriggled, feeling my hardness.

"Why Bobby, sweetie, is all that for me?" she cooed, smiling minxily and fluttering her eyelashes innocently, falsely, as she wriggled and slowly ground herself against me.

"Bobby, you dog, I do believe you've got a big old present for me!"

That was more than human flesh could withstand, and I spun her around so she was sitting astride me, rotating her hips as she began seriously grinding against me, kissing me playfully at first, but her kisses grew more intent, sexier, demanding. I clamped my hands around her taut, world-class little apple bottom, only her panties and slipover shift dress standing between her and complete nakedness, and didn't I just know it.

As she kissed me, she yanked her dress up, and in one movement tugged it off and threw it to one side.

That was my cue to slide my hands into her panties, my eager fingers greedily exploring her round, firm little bottom while she writhed and ground herself against me, and her swelling breasts with her dark, sexy, mushroom-cap nipples, yet one more sign of impending motherhood, brushed my lips.

She giggled as I gently trapped her nipple, trying to not put too much pressure on the increasingly tender nubs, but flicking them with my tongue-tip was enough to make her groan softly and move even more definitely against me.

"Naked, Bobby... get naked... now!" she gasped, slipping off me and jumping to her feet to slide her panties off. I was stripping of as fast as I could, pulling my polo shirt over my head while unbuttoning my jeans. As I slid my zipper down, Shari yanked my shoes off and grabbed the bottoms of my jeans, yanking them off as I raised my mid-section off the floor.

Shari grinned as she threw my jeans over her shoulder, and as I slid my shorts off, she licked her lips happily.

"Oooh, I was right, it is a nice big prezzie!" she cooed, "Can I play with it now, Daddy-man?"

My answering grin was all she needed, and she slipped onto the floor next to me, kissing my neck, licking my ear, and biting my jaw while she toyed with my aching erection. Luckily the floor was clean; the kids played up there sometimes, so we kept it spick and span for them. Naked and pregnant, she'd never looked so desirable, and I wanted her so badly.

Every time I looked at her, at her serene smile, her lithe grace, and her sexy pregnant belly, I started thinking things, and Shari would look up and smile her enigmatic smile, like a Madonna in a Byzantine Icon, and I knew she knew exactly what I was thinking.

She was absolutely irresistible, and she knew it, but she didn't torture, tease or deny me. Shari loved to make love as often as I did, and when time and family permitted, we'd while away a few hours pleasuring each other, renewing that connection first forged so many years ago, and basking in the warmth of our passion. I

loved my wife with a burning intensity, she'd rescued me, she'd literally saved my life, and I made sure I never let an opportunity slip by to tell her just what she meant to me.

"Shall we be naughty, Bobby? Shall we be very, very naughty little boys and girls? What do you think, Bobby, you wanna get naughty?" she breathed in my ear, and that was all I needed.

"Up here...please..." I murmured, because Lord yes, I knew what I wanted to do.

Shari grinned, a long, slow, naughty grin, and knelt up next to me.

"Ooh Bobby, that's naughty, bad Bobby, bad, bad Bobby!" she smiled, her eyes huge and innocent, making me groan with lust, before leaning down to kiss my chest, and trail a series of soft kisses down my chest and past my navel. She looked back at me, a devilish smile on her lips, before she poked her tongue in my navel, making me buck against her.

I groaned as she kissed and nibbled lower, and then she was tickling me with the tip of her tongue, making me jump and my cock twitch. Shari gave me those huge, grey, innocent eyes, framed by sooty lashes, and the naughtiest smile ever, before slipping her plump lips over the head of my cock. This was almost too much to bear, as hot and cold shivers ran up and down my spine.

Once upon a time, this never really did much for me, but over the years Shari had shown me just how hot and sexy it could be, and now I felt cheated if we never went there during the course of our lovemaking.

"Come here..." I groaned, stroking her smooth, sexy thighs and kneading her tight, plump bottom.

Without disengaging, Shari swung her leg over me, and now she was lying on top of me, my cock in her mouth and her succulent pussy right where I wanted it. She groaned as I slid her closer and kissed her labia, taking in her sweet, spicy scent.

"Yessss, Bobby, ooh yess...just there, yesss...!" she moaned as I probed her, flicking my tongue rapidly over her swelling clitoris just to hear her squeaks of pleasure.

My wife is delicious, her scent a mixture of earthy, sweet, tangy, and something else, something uniquely "Shari." Whatever it is, one taste of her is never enough, I would gorge myself on her, and she loved that I feel like that, it made for some extended sessions, believe me.

As I licked, and sucked, and teased and tormented, she sucked me deeply into her throat, working her throat to massage my cock even as she shuddered and trembled atop me. Finally she could take no more, her pussy twitched and trembled as orgasm swept through her, a flood of her sweet, tangy, salty juices filling my mouth and ramping me even higher, and her deep groan of fulfilment around my cock nearly set me off too, but I wanted more.

Shari slumped down, trembling as aftershocks raced through her, before raising her head and grinning back at me.

"Let me guess, baby-daddy, your turn, huh?" she teased, swivelling around to kneel astride me. "How does this feel, hot-daddy?" She smiled, that adorable, lip-biting grin of hers as she fondled my throbbing cock, before raising up slightly and s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y, teasingly, sliding down onto me, only stopping when I was fully embedded in her.