My Sister's Secret Diary

happening.

Chapter One

It was a New Year which heralded all my aspirations. As the bells rang out on the thirty-first day of December, all my resolutions came into play. I felt the rise of ambition coupled with elements of success and fame supported by a great deal of hope for the future. All it did was to prove how wrong I could be. The resolutions were just like those of most other people at that time of the year which for reasons beyond my understanding fell as flat as an overcooked souffle.

It was by sheer accident that the diary of my sister fell into my hands. I found it on a table in the bedroom of her house after the paramedics had carried her away on a stretcher into the ambulance. They closed the doors of the vehicle and she was gone leaving me behind holding the great tome of her life. Her husband, Matthew, had telephoned me earlier to say that she had suffered some kind of a fit and had collapsed in the kitchen of their house and, as I lived nearby, I leapt into my car and drove there in haste. As I arrived, the paramedics were undertaking their task to save her life and they sedated her before taking her to the local hospital. Naturally Matthew went with her which offered me the opportunity to enter the house and go into my sister’s bedroom. It was in my mind to find a dressing-gown and some nightwear for her as well as a toothbrush and a flannel to ensure her comfort in hospital but my eyes fell on a weighty diary that looked distinctly personal. With great curiosity, I opened the book to discover a wealth of writing, identifying the personal feelings and activities of my sister from her early days. It was my sole intention of pretending that I hadn’t seen it and to make certain it was handed back to her when she returned but, contrary to human decency, I was more than curious to read its contents so I took it away with me. There was every reason for me to do so. As far as I was concerned, her past life was a complete enigma to me and I wanted to know all about it. Let me be clear about this... I loved my sister dearly and I would certainly never do her any harm but one has to recognise that the thoughts of each individual belongs to them and to them alone, so the details in the personal diary would lift the veil of what had happened to her in the past to let me know what had been in her mind at the time. It was something that had always eluded me and I was delighted to be able to learn how Fate had treated her.

My name is Simon Jenkins, born and bred of a Welsh couple who, to my discomfort, sorrow and misery never stopped arguing with each other from morning until night, but that‘s another story. I’m thirty-one years of age and I spend my time as an author writing books during the day and pulling pints at the local inn... the Red Lion... every evening except on Mondays. I wrote my first book two years ago but the quarterly royalties earned hardly cover the cost of two weekly groceries, and I live alone. My publisher, Sid Nelson, told me that I have a remarkable writing talent and he urged me to write another book which I have just finished. I’ve entitled it ‘Doom, Doom!’ and I’m waiting for his response in the hope that I may have scribed a best-seller. It’s about the ending of the world as a result of the rapid depletion of the ozone layer but I’ll come back to that later on.

As soon as I reached the age of fourteen my sister suddenly disappeared from our family life. She left for school one morning and never came back. As far as I was concerned, she simply vanished. I questioned my parents about the reason why she hadn’t come home but they remained complete tight-lipped, refusing to give me any kind of explanation. I sorely missed her for quite a while but time has a means of allowing us to lessen the pain in our minds and eventually she became a past memory, although it always bugged me to know what had happened to her. There was a lapse of over fifteen years before we met again, which delighted me to say the least, but she refused to tell me anything about what had happened to her since her disappearance so many years earlier. I could only presume that her past had been anything but pleasant so I made certain not to press her about it. She now looked completely different to the way I remembered her, being much more mature and grown up, dressed like an adult instead of a schoolgirl. However one thing was certain, I relived the warm feeling of love that emanates from one sibling to another which was instantly resurrected when we next met. Whatever had befallen her, at least I had my sister back again.

In truth, Helena was a normal woman in every sense of the word but, hey what did I know about women? I was thirty-one years of age and unmarried, living on my own, and it was my misfortune to have been dumped by those women who originally favoured me with the prospect of a relationship. There was only one woman who had stayed with me for a time. She was Lila, so beautiful, so lovely, and yet so betraying of me in the end. Her memory will remain with me for the rest of my life even though she rests in the arms of another man. Despite my experiences, or lack of them, in my earlier life concerning love and romance, what I knew about the female sex didn’t amount to a hill of beans but I knew in my bones that Helena had been through the mill in her lifetime. However, we always seem to live in strange times and whatever had happened in the past was gone. Whenever anything serious happens and mistakes are made, it is human nature to tell ourselves that we will learn from the experience so that it doesn’t happen again but we never do. Take wars for example. Mankind never seems to learn and they will continue until the Earth is succumbed by the Sun and no one on the planet is able to survive. I often wondered what was the point of all the conflict that took place. It never brought anything but disaster to mankind.

I caught up with my sister approximately fifteen years after she first vanished. In recent years, she had met Matthew and they had married. I knew very little about him because the subject never came up, although I understood that he was an architect working for a large firm in the City. After that, he was as much an enigma as Helena. I imagined that he had been married before but there was no evidence to prove that it was true. Regardless of her previous record, however good or bad it might have been, my sister was now significantly older and more than capable of maintaining a solid relationship. Within a short time of their marriage, they produced two children and the family seemed to be very happy together.

It was some time later that Monday evening, as I lay back in my bed, with the pillow pressed firmly behind my back, that I opened the book to examine the first page. In my mind, I imagined that I would see a great deal of scribbled notes, some illuminating text, numerous telephone numbers and odd remarks, but I was to be greatly surprised. As I started to read, I felt an element of guilt for not going out of my way to help her in her darkest hours, however bad they might have been, even though she had gone and her life was out of my control. I mean I was her brother, her only brother, who would have been always ready to support and help her if she wanted me to. In truth, I was of no use to her at all. Nonetheless. I was very pleased that she had found her feet and was able to start a new life for herself. It allowed me to let all my inwardly guilt-filled feelings about it to be expunged. As the words on the pages rolled out before me, I became absolutely fascinated with the text. She wrote so beautifully and descriptively that I soon became totally absorbed in the contents.

"I was a feisty fifteen year old schoolgirl with a pretty face, dark hair, and very long legs so that my extra height made me look far older than my age. Like most other young girls, I detested school and had little empathy for the teachers who fought to keep the rowdier element there at bay. There was only one thing that really plagued me to distraction... my home life! I found it to be in an awful mess. To say it was pretty miserable was an understatement mainly because I was a teenager who didn’t want to follow rules and who hated being constantly told what to do. Consequently I was always at loggerheads with my parents. My father was an impossible man, bound by tradition, exceedingly prudish, like a country priest, with definite boundaries identified for his daughter. He never failed to advise me, in his own indelicate way that I was to be in the company of other girls at all times, to be sure that I never walked the streets alone, and most importantly, that I never talked to strangers or approached any man, or men, for any reason whatsoever. I cannot count the times when he threatened me to say that while I was under his roof I was bound to have to follow his rules. My mother confirmed it by telling me to do what my father told me or I would be punished. As far as I was concerned, my father was paranoid that some male maniac would seduce me against a wall on some street corner or in an open area of parkland against my will. My mother was of no help to me at all. She was so straight-laced, never conceding anything in return for a peaceful life. She hammered me ever day with regard to me making my bed, tidying up my room, putting my clothes away each night, washing the dishes, and a whole host of nasty irrelevant nagging annoyances. I knew that living with them for years on end would drive me absolutely crazy and I intended to do something about it although any new venture was lost to me at the time. I came to the conclusion that they were really not my parents and that someone had left me in a cradle on their doorstep and they had adopted me. On reflection, I don’t think that either of my parents loved me... they simply tolerated me without the slightest understanding that the attitude of most teenagers was one of petulance in the process of growing up. The only redeeming feature with regard to the family was my younger brother, two years my junior, whom I loved. He was a dear soul who, unlike most other siblings, doted on me, and he looked on me as his icon. I was drawn to him very much but, as a teenager, I had my own agenda which failed to include him.

It was the day before my sixteenth birthday that I wandered into the school playground to be faced by Peggy Noon, the obnoxious school bully who, as usual, was accompanied by her two ugly overweight cronies. After being prodded in the chest and abused with foul language by her, for she came from a family that was as common as the day is long, I lost my temper and lashed out striking her directly on the nose which immediately gushed with blood. For that incident I was hauled up in front of the headmaster, who refused to listen to my pleas that I had been deliberately provoked, and he sentenced me to a one-hour detention on that very day. With regard to Peggy Noon, it always baffled me why some children were so cruel to others but I presumed that was the way of the world. By the same standard, I was even more angry that she had got off scot free while I, the victim, who was so sorely provoked, had to suffer the ignominy of the faculty with a detention. I reckoned that was another unfair element in life which could not be contested. So I made my way to the detention room at the end of the school day and sat alone on a seat at the back. I didn’t really mind suffering the punishment because Miles Stanford, the young history master, was the person who had to monitor me during the hour I had to spend there. I nursed a very strong schoolgirl crush on him for almost a year even though he was seven years older than myself and I looked on him as the only man for me... a true hero... a master of the universe. He was tall, lean, with dark brown hair, a handsome face, and he was everything I could wish for... at least I thought so at the time. I told myself that I was desperately in love and he saw me gazing directly at him in that detention room with love in my eyes, I could tell that he was uncertain as to how to treat me from the expression on his face so I set my long legs outside the desk so that he could see them. With the short skirt riding up well above my knees, I was certain to gain his attention more closely. After a while, he came over to me and I could smell his after-shave as he put his head closely to mine. To my utter surprise, and great pleasure, he leaned down swiftly and kissed me firmly on the lips for a long time. I was stunned and yet delighted for it was the one thing I wanted him to do, but then I lost my head in the heat of the moment, and returned the favour. He took me in his arms, continually kissing me, with his hands running over my body. His actions had the effect of sending me into ecstasy. He stripped my school uniform off me and lowered my panties. I knew that it was up to me to resist and tell him to stop but something inside me prevented me from doing so. Ultimately, after one of the most bizarre incidents of foreplay, I allowed him the privilege to let me lose my virginity. I truly believed that he had lost the plot at the time, especially as he was a schoolmaster with a duty to care and I was one of his students. I could see that he realised afterwards he had crossed the line but there was no going back. His lust had overcome him and I am sure that he was both annoyed and ashamed of himself. After all, he was a master at the school... someone who was respected... someone expected to take care of the students, not someone to seduce them at will. I knew that I was doing wrong but my hormones were changing me from a young girl to a full-blown woman, which meant that intimate sex with a man was technically slightly beyond my control when the chips were down. Quite frankly, I didn’t care. The fact that it was an illicit affair between a schoolmaster and a pupil made it even more exciting. Miles told me that we had to keep our relationship a secret for obvious reasons as the Heavens would fall on both of us if anyone ever found out. I agreed to tell no one, proud to hold a secret against the world of which no one else knew. However, suspicious eyes soon fell upon us as others noticed how we looked at each other and, despite all the precautions taken, it became clear that our secret would soon be discovered. When that happened we would either have to end the affair or establish something permanent.

It was a new phase of my life as Miles, try as he could, was unable to get me out of his mind or prevent his lust from overcoming him. As a result, we continued our illicit affair, schoolgirl and schoolmaster, meeting afterwards at his home where we continued to make violent passionate love. It was quite clear that he couldn’t get enough of me and, frankly, it was the same on my behalf. I couldn’t wait to strip off my clothes and jump into bed with him, feeling his warm body against mine. Naturally, there were many arguments with my parents as I came home late each evening, especially when I refused to tell them where I had been or what I had been doing. It meant that life at home became intolerable. Each evening they would wait up until I retuned to face me with an inquisition. Where had I been and with whom? What had I been doing? Why was I making their lives so miserable? It was questions, questions, questions! I had nothing to say, which infuriated them even further for I dared not tell them the truth. Quite obviously the situation could not continue indefinitely and one morning when I went to school, Miles whisked me out into the playground, took hold of my hand and led me onward to the local train station. I had no idea what he was doing but it was the last time I would ever go to school again. It meant that there would be no examinations to take at the end of the year and that all the hopes of my parents to send me to one of the many universities was forever dashed. I was rather bewildered at Miles’s action and kept asking him where we were going but he refused to tell me saying that it was a surprise. At the day’s end, we arrived at Gretna Green where one could marry without questions being asked. However, I did cause the official who undertook the brief ceremony some concern as I was dressed as a schoolgirl in school uniform with short white socks and black shoes. Regardless of that, we were soon married which, as far as I was concerned, happened to be the most important glorious thing in my life. Miles booked a room in an old terraced house nearby and we lived there being very poor with virtually no money. He was unemployed but we were very much in love which somehow overcame all the immediate problems.

On the second day of our honeymoon, we went for a walk, passing a newsagent’s shop and were shocked to see the headlines in the national newspapers which read ‘Pupil and Schoolmaster missing’. There were large photographs of both of us on the front page and the text related that there was a police hunt for both of us. It concluded with an allegation of abduction, a suggestion that had been put forward by my parents, but we soon rectified the matter by going to the police station to explain the position. This failed to help matters as Miles was informed that he had abducted an under-aged student which, in law, was a serious felony, Fortunately, it was a tiny police station manned by only two constables and the second one was out on the beat. Miles took me by the hand and we raced away catching the next bus to a town several miles away. We rented a room in a large dilapidated house under a different name to prevent our identities being discovered by the police but we were really on a hiding to nothing having made a poor decision that we would both regret in due course.

Life with Miles was exhilarating and great fun at first. Admittedly I was an immature teenager but he matched me with youthful exuberance. For example, one night when we were about to go to bed, he donned on a bowler hat, a black bow-tie and a slight moustache. Then he reached for a walking cane and did an impersonation of Charlie Chaplin in the silent films. I couldn’t stop laughing; it was so funny. As for me, I no longer had to study all of those nonsensical subjects at school. When reflecting the issue logically, I asked myself why I had to study them in the first place. I would never be a physicist or a biologist. Religion bored me stiff for I did not believe in God, while I could see no value in learning French or Spanish as it was unlikely that I would go to either country. Geometry and trigonometry would never feature in my future life. History was for those who were interested in the past while geography was of little help to anyone. Who cared what happened to be the capital of Greenland or Croatia? To my mind, the subjects that were being taught at school were a complete waste of time!

Four weeks later, still in hiding, I found that I was pregnant. It was to beginning of the end of a very loving relationship for I became very sick every morning and my changing hormones caused me to swing regularly from joy to depression and back again. It was not what Miles wanted in a woman at this early stage of a marriage. He said that he loved me but I think that only regular intimate sex was in his mind. He certainly didn’t want to go to pregnancy classes in preparation of the birth and, worst still, sex was out of the question because of a physical condition which prevented me from performing properly. In his mind, he was on a hiding to nothing. We started to argue, sometimes fiercely. My teenage spirit overcame reason at times which annoyed him greatly. It