Chapter 3

Bondy and I looked at each other, horror clear on both our faces. Almost as one, we each took an arm and towed her, unprotesting, to a nearby bench where we all sat down.

“You father has been doing that to you for six years?” I hissed.

She nodded. “Nearly. It was just before Christmas, and it was the first anniversary of my mother’s death.”

“Oh shit,” I whispered. Some of the things about her became clear. She was aloof, slightly arrogant, never actually a bully, but could be cold and horrible. She knew how to destroy people, make them hate her, drive them away from her, but she also knew how to make people worship and love her. It was all a defence mechanism.

“It’s not your fault,” whispered Bondy.

“I know,” she whispered. She paused, then added, “but it doesn’t feel that way. An’ I have to keep doing it to protect my little sister.”

“Fuck, how old is she?” Asked Bondy.

“She’ll be fourteen in November.”

I had an epiphany. “Is she your second concubine?”

“If she’s still thirteen, then no, but she’s supposed to come with me anyway. If she’s over fourteen, then yes.”

“You do realise that you’re the one in charge,” I said. “He can’t become your concubine if you don’t want him to.”

“But he won’t let me go with anyone else.”

“If it happens like that, just tell the Confederacy people that you don’t want him, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”

“But he might hurt me. Worse, he might hurt Amber.”

“Amber’s your sister?”

“Yeh. The only reason I haven’t left home is because if I did he’d start raping her.”

“How do you know he hasn’t?” Bondy asked. “For all you know,” he broke off at Talulah’s wildly shaking head.

“He hasn’t. He’s told me he hasn’t. He told me, threatened, that if I ever leave he will go to her, and use her as he’s used me.”

“Then when you get collected you need to take her, but not him,” I said. Bondy nodded.

“Shit,” she exclaimed. “I’m late.” She stood up hurriedly. “Dad always collects me from school. Collects us. To make sure I’m not going out with any boys. He’ll kill me if he finds out I’ve told anyone, or that I’ve ever talked to a boy.” She turned on us suddenly. “And I’ll kill you if you ever tell anyone.”

“We won’t,” we both assured her.

She glared at us, fright clear on her face, and dashed off. We followed her more slowly, and saw her getting into a black Mercedes.

“We’ve got to help her,” Bondy said.

I nodded. “But how?”

“I dunno,” he sighed. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Dad,” I said at the first opportunity I had to get him alone that evening. “Can I ask your advice?”

“Sure. What do you need? Girls? Money? School?” He smiled encouragingly at me.

“Well, girls, sort of, but not in the normal way.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a girl at school,”

“Oh, and you think you’d like her to be a concubine?”

I frowned at his interruption. “No. No, she’s a sponsor.”

“Oh. Okay. What about her?”

“She being forced to take her father and her younger sister as her concubines.”

“Who’s forcing her to do that?”

“He is. Her father.”

There was a long silence, and slowly his frown got deeper. “Is this what I think it is?” he asked heavily.

“He’s raping her.”

Dad nodded slightly. “How do you know?”

I explained about what had happened today at school. Going right from the start and my first approach to Bondy. It was long and convoluted in the telling as I kept forgetting bits and having to go back and fill them in, but not once did Dad interrupt me. When I’d finished he just stared at me. “What do I do?” I asked plaintively.

He smiled slightly, “You? Nothing. You’ve done exactly what you need to do. Me? I’m going to see if I can include her and her sister in the collection, and exclude him.”

“How are you going to manage that?”

“Don’t know yet,” he said slowly. “What’s her name?”

“I can’t tell you. She begged us not to tell anyone, and if I tell you that, I’ll have broken my promise.”

Dad looked at me. He gave me a soft smile. “You think you’re protecting her by not revealing who she is?”

I nodded.

He nodded for a moment before giving a little sigh. “The problem is, if you don’t tell anyone, then she can’t get the help she needs. Just by telling you she may, unconsciously, have been asking for help. If you do tell me, I absolutely promise I won’t go charging into the school and making trouble. I absolutely promise I won’t go to the police or Social Services. Not yet anyway. I do absolutely promise to see if I can think of a way to protect her and her sister, such that there’s no comeback on them.”

He looked at me for a long time, a serious but open expression on his face. He was inviting me to tell him, without pressuring me.

“Talulah Evans,” I eventually whispered.

“Evans?” I can think of three Evans’, I don’t suppose you know his first name do you?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“What’s her sister’s name?”

I had to think about it. “Erm. Amber.”

“Amber Evans. Talulah and Amber Evans. And you say their mother has died, and it’s just the two of them?”

“I think so. I don’t think we asked about any other brothers or sisters.”

“All right. Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Can I tell her you’re trying to get her extracted?”

“Nnnnnnnnnn,” Dad started. “No,” he said slowly. “Not yet. I’ll let you know. Okay?”

I nodded. “Thanks Dad.”

“Be a good friend to her. Don’t tell anyone else at school unless she asks you to, and gives you permission to do so. Do not even hint at it, even to anyone else who appears to be a close friend of hers. If she wants to talk, let her. Do not tell her it’ll be all right. I hope it will be, but it might all go pear-shaped. Do tell her it’s not her fault. Don’t force her to speak about it, let her do all the driving. If she does tell you anything, you can tell me if you think it’s important, but no one else. Not yet. She’s in a very vulnerable position. Even more so because she’s now told you. She may even be scared, scared of you. She’s started to open up, so she needs protecting more than ever. You and your friend, Bondy?” I just nodded, not interrupting him. “You need to protect her in school, but out of school the only way you can protect her at the moment is by not talking about it. Her father must not know she has talked, nor even suspect she might have.” He smiled at me. “Do you think you can do all that?”

I nodded. “I’ll try,” I said fervently.

“Good boy.”

That evening I stole a pair of Joanne’s knickers. I would wear them that night, and again the following night, but not at school as I had PE on a Thursday.

As I put the soft, skimpy, knickers on, I got a huge boner, and began to wank. I thought of Joanne, as I often did, imagining her naked, but after a few moments my thoughts drifted to Talulah Evans. At first my boner got harder - she was after all very good looking and with a lovely bod, but as I remembered what she had been through, I softened and shrank. I couldn’t wank over someone being abused and raped.

Talulah avoided both me and Bondy for the next few days. She spotted us looking at her, I smiled but her eyes widened and she turned and hurried in the other direction.

“You’ve obviously got an ugly smile,” Bondy told me.

“She’s scared of us.”

“I know. But we can’t go near her. We have to wait for her to come to us.”

“But she needs to know she can come to us, so we have to go a bit nearer to her,” I insisted.

“We can always just invite her to join us. Beckon her over.”

“Might work. Can but try.”

The following Wednesday, at lunch, Bondy and I were sitting at a small table, a small gap between us and anyone else. “She’s coming this way,” Bondy whispered.

“Try and invite her over,” I said, fighting the urge to turn and look at her.

“She saw me, but she went and joined her normal crowd of hangers-on,” I was told a few moments later

“They’ll protect her in their own way, I guess.”

Then it was the weekend, and on Monday she nervously approached us. “You haven’t told anyone.”

“We said we wouldn’t,” Bondy assured her.

“We are your friends. You can come and talk to us at any time, about anything, and if you tell us it’s for our ears only, then it’s for our ears only,” I said softly.

“You’re not my friends,” she whispered.

“If we weren’t your friends,” Bondy said equally softly, “then we wouldn’t care about how you feel, and we might have told someone.”

She looked at us, pale, determined, scared, beautiful.

“True friends,” I said, “don’t hang around you when you don’t need it, but will be with you when you do. True friends will keep your secrets if you ask us to, but will help you and support you if you decide you do have to tell. True friends will do what is best for you, not for them.”

“And how do you decide what’s best for me?” she asked quietly, a hint of anger in her voice.

“What’s best for you, is what you tell us is best for you. But that includes more than just you physically. That includes you emotionally. We could have told the police or someone like that and had them take you away. You would be safe, but what about your sister? You know what might happen to her and if it did, that would hurt you emotionally.” I shook my head. “I want to tell someone, I really do. But until you tell us we can, we won’t. But we will support you. We will be your friends in need.”

She looked at us for a few moments longer then walked slowly off.

“Where did that come from?” asked Bondy.

“Um. Look, you’ve finished, so let’s go outside.”

“All right,” he frowned at me slightly, in puzzlement.

“All right, give,” he said a few moments later.

I told him all about the conversation I’d had with my father.

“You idiot,” he said furiously. “She told us not to tell, and you’ve told.”

“Did you tell anyone?” I asked.

“Of course not,” she said scornfully, “she told us not to.”

“You idiot,” I said, equally crossly. “She opened up to us. She might not know it, but she’s asking for help. Yes I told my dad, but he doesn’t know who she is, so all he can do is guide me, help me to help her.”

“You haven’t told him her name?”

“Yes. But he doesn’t know her. Evans isn’t exactly an uncommon name, and since we don’t know where she lives, or her father’s name, he’s not going to be able to find out.”

“Is she on your friends page?”

“I don’t have one.”

Bondy stared at me in shock. “You don’t have one?”

I shook my head. For the rest of the lunch break we talked social media. By mutual consent the subject of Talulah Evans was put to one side, but the pair of us started to become friends.

As I was walking to my maths class the following morning, a girl whom I knew hung around with Talulah came up to me. She wasn’t in any of the same classes as me and I didn’t know her name, but she was a very scary looking girl. She was quite short, slightly stocky in build with short almost white-blonde hair often fashioned into spikes. She had dark lipstick and eyeshadow, and black boots with metal studs on them. Sixth formers were not required to wear school uniform, though many did. This girl took full advantage of the relaxation of the uniform rules and dressed like a biker Goth. She was, and looked, very scary. She stopped me by simply standing in front of me, her black eyes flashing angrily.

“Do you know about Talulah?” she demanded.

“What?” I asked, surprised, and a little worried.

“Do you know about Talulah?”

“That she’s got a sponsors card? Yes. That she can be a stuck up bitch? Yes. That she thinks she’s the queen of the school and can do as she wishes? Yes. And she’s so wrong. That she’s shallow? Yes. There isn’t anything else to know.”

The girl glared at me, pink spots on her cheeks where her anger was showing.

I turned away and continued to walk.

“Keep away from her,” she called after me, “or you’ll regret it.”

I ignored her though it took a great deal of effort as I was genuinely scared of her and went into class.

That was Thursday. Friday, at morning break, Talulah approached us. “You didn’t even say anything to Sandra, did you?”

“Who’s Sandra?” Bondy asked.

Talulah ignored him and looked at me. “You just told her I was shallow and a stuck up bitch.”

“Sorry about that,” I told her softly, “but she ambushed me and I didn’t want her thinking I knew something about you. Something she didn’t know, maybe. She did seem very protective of you.”

She looked at us. “There’s only three people that know,” she whispered. “You two and Sandra.”

I looked at her for a moment, shocked. “How long has she known?” I asked eventually.

“Almost from the start.”

“She is a true friend then,” I said. “She hasn’t abandoned you. She hasn’t told anyone else. She’s protecting you. I like her now.”

Talulah gave a tremulous smile.

“She’s my only true friend,” she said softly.

“We’re also true friends,” Bondy said. “Not close friends, but still true friends.”

The following week Talulah gradually came and spoke to us more and more often. We listened, told her we cared, told her we wouldn’t hurt her in any way, and told her anything she said was absolutely privileged information.

“More,” I told her with a smile as I knew she wanted to study law, “more privileged than between a lawyer and her client.”

Her own answering smile was both amused and more relaxed. “Thank you,” she said, softly.

From that moment on she finally relaxed with us, and the three of us started to become good friends.

About ten minutes later, Sandra stalked up to us and glared at Bondy and me. “It’s okay,” said Talulah. “Sit. They know.”

“Know what?” Sandra asked, glaring at us.

“I know you are a true friend to Talulah,” I said. “I know you are only trying to protect her. Well now so are we.”

“From?” demanded Sandra, still very suspicious of us.

“They know about my father,” whispered Talulah. “They’ve known for a couple of weeks and they’ve told no-one. There’s been no rumours or hints of rumours.”

“There’s been other speculation though,” said Sandra.

“About what?” Bondy demanded.

“About you three.”

“What about us three?”

“That’s just it. No one knows. Everyone is speculating about why you three are so tight together.”

“Well just tell people who ask, or who get too ridiculous in their speculations, that we are a self protection group. We are all sponsors, and we don’t want to be mobbed by people wanting to be rescued, so we have a self-protection group.”

Both Talulah and I smiled at that. “What?” asked Bondy, mock innocence written all over his face. “It’s perfectly true. After a fashion.”

“Well I’m not a sponsor,” Sandra said with a sigh.

“Do you have a CAP score?”

“Just under five. Don’t really know what it means except that I would have to be someone’s sex slave.”

“Could you go with Talulah?” I asked.

“I’m not a dyke,” she snapped.

“I didn’t say you were, but she has to take two people. You and a male.”

“I need to take my sister as well,” Talulah interrupted,

“Well that’s okay if she’s under fourteen. She goes as your dependant.”

“My father would never let her go, and we may not be together if I was collected.”

“Ah,” said Bondy. “But dependents don’t have to be with you. You just tell the Confederacy that you wish to take your sister as a dependant, and they’ll go and collect her.”

“But Dad would never let her go.”

“I bet you,” I said, “If you were to tell them what he’s done, what he will do to her, and they’ll collect her. Over his dead body if they have to.”

“But what happens when she’s fourteen?”

“Well, if she hasn’t taken her CAP test, you might just be able to swing it anyway, with the same story. Otherwise, we’ll just have to come up with another plan,” Sandra said slowly. In that moment Sandra joined the ‘club’, accepted that Bondy and I were full members of the ‘Protect The Evans Sisters From Their Father’ club.

Sandra was actually quite pretty in her own scary way, and now that we had actually talked civilly and she had relaxed around us, I slowly began to realise just how ‘nice’ a person she really was.

Sandra commiserated with Bondy about having to take his little sister. “But at least you’re not forcing it,” she said. “If you were forcing it, if you were happy with it, I don’t think I could like you very much. How does she feel about it?”

“Only marginally happier than I am.”

“Does she go to this school?”

“Yes, she’s in year ten.”

“I guess your sister is in year nine?” I asked Talulah.

She nodded.

“How about, we get them here as well. They don’t need to know about, well, you know what, but we can try and rearrange things so that things aren’t so bad.” I suggested.

“What do you mean?” Bondy looked suspicious.

“You could just swap. You take Talulah’s sister, she take yours. Or I could take one or the other. Of course, we don’t know whether your sister,” I nodded at Talulah, “will get a sponsor score yet, but if she doesn’t, then that’s one solution.”

“Amber doesn’t know Dad’s plan yet, and I’d rather not tell her. Not yet anyway.”

“Ah. Selena does. That’s my sister,” Bondy added as the girls both looked at him in puzzlement.

“Well ask her over,” I suggested. “I haven’t got anyone yet and I need to find four people. If she says no, then she says no, but if she says yes, then we’re only talking theoretically here anyway. We haven’t actually been collected yet, so it’s not as if anything’s actually gonna happen.”

Bondy sighed. “I’ll talk to her tonight.”

Apparently she said “maybe.”

A couple of days later, as the four of us were sitting, chatting, fortunately about nothing particularly important, two other guys came over and asked to join us. Both had 6·6 CAP scores.

“I heard you were a sort of self protection club,” one muttered.

“Why? What’s happened?” Sandra asked in a tart voice. “You getting girls throwing themselves at you”

“Yeah,” said one, a guy I knew as Higgis. I think his first name was Tom, but I wasn’t certain.

“An’ it’s really stupid,” said the other, Blish. I had absolutely no idea of his first name. Not even an initial. “It’s not as if we’re courting them. We keep telling them we’re not interested.”

“Why aren’t you interested?” Sandra responded.

“You should know,” Higgis responded a little crossly. “You were the one who outed us last year.”

“Ohhhhhh, that’s right, you’re gay.” She frowned. “Sorry. That was an accident. I didn’t actually,”

Higgis waved it off. “You only did a bit more publicly what we were allowing to happen naturally.”

“So you’re not cross with me?” The innocent wide-eyed expression on her face made us all smile.

“No,” said Blish with a sigh. “We’re not cross with you. Irritated at the time, but not cross.”

“Mmmm.”

“Yes,” Bondy said slowly. “That could be quite awkward. Being gay yet also being expected to take a couple of girls.”

“I don’t know what to do.” Blish muttered.

“Can we join you?” begged Higgis.

“It’s not really a Sponsors protection club,” I said. “We’re just friends, that’s all.”

“Oh. Okay. Sorry to have bothered you.” Higgis looked so down.

“Oh sit down,” I muttered. Lunch break was almost over anyway.

After that the two of them joined us fairly regularly, but sometimes we waved them away.