The Lady and Tay Page 15

  Tay nodded, so she started her video, holding it out on a selfie stick and came towards him. He held her face, stroked her cheek, moving her curls out of the way before leaning in to kiss her. She broke off after a few seconds, grabbing his hand and pulling him, laughing, running towards the visitor centre, then turning towards the steps up to the cathedrals, “Your turn,” she said, stopping her phone and then draping herself over the steps.

  Tay started his phone, then crawled over to her, filming himself kissing her boots, her ankles, her legs, her outer right thigh, her belly, skimming over her breasts, then her neck. “Shit, we’re making out in front of the cathedral. We’re going to hell for this,” he murmured into her ear.

  She giggled, “In the long list of bad things I’ve done, this is probably quite low in my list of demeanours. And as long as we’re there together, it’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

  Tay filmed a few close ups of their faces, smiling, eyes crinkling, hair blowing in the slight breeze, and then they headed towards the old cathedral ruins, but they were locked up and not open until 9am, so they weren’t going to be able to film in there. “Probably for the best. There’s bound to be some restrictions on that,” said Tay.

  They filmed a bit around by St Mary’s Guildhall, Annie doing some twirling and dancing on the cobbles, before they looped back round to Lady Godiva’s cathedral ruins, old Bluecoats School, a brief look at the Peeping Tom clock but it wasn’t near being on the hour, then walking down Trinity Street to the Whittle Arch, deliberately stopping to kiss where they’d been papped earlier that week, then back up Fairfax Street to their car.

  They drove out of the city, heading towards Brinklow to reach Coombe Abbey, then changed their clothes in the car, giggling at what they were doing.

  “Shit, this tank top’s a bit lower than I remember,” frowned Annie, the top curves of her breasts on display.

  “Looks absolutely fine to me,” grinned Tay, loving how hot she looked in whatever she wore.

  The medieval abbey, now an exclusive hotel, loomed large, but they thought they probably shouldn’t film around there without a licence, so headed into the grounds, walking down past the lake and going over the bridge to access the woods. Here, they took it in turns to film each other together, separately, running, cuddling, kissing, climbing trees, jumping off logs. They found a clearing on the far side and set the picnic blanket down, Annie sitting down between Tay’s legs, her back against his chest and his arm over her chest as she hugged him close. They filmed that from a few angles, then opened the food and poured the coffee, filming themselves eating, drinking, feeding each other. Their batteries were getting low by this point, so they packed up and walked back to the car.

  Back home, they walked back to film Tay carrying Annie on his back up Spon Street and walking up into Watch House. It was quarter ten by the time they walked in, the rest of the gang sitting in the kitchen.

  They explained the plan to everyone, and Will immediately wanted to get involved.

  “I didn’t want to overload you, Will?” asked Annie, concerned.

  “No, I’d love to. I don’t get much chance to be creative these days, so I’d love the chance to splice it all together. If you share your videos to the Watch House cloud, I’ll start later while you guys are presumably practising the song? I’ll dig out the ‘week in the life of’ material which we can reuse as we’ve got consent forms for everyone who was filmed, and then we can set up shots of all you guys doing day to day stuff, before we do the final filming tonight.”

  “So, erm, Will, Hilly, how was your evening?” asked Annie slyly, looking at them under her eyelashes.

  Will sat back and grinned, “Fantastic, thank you. How was yours?”

  “X-rated. Yours?”

  “PG. Well, maybe not quite PG, maybe a 12A.”

  They fist-bumped over the table, and Tay looked at Hilly who was gazing at Will with a grin on his face. “You ok, Hilly?”

  “Never better. I like this place here, I think there’s something restorative in the air.”

  Adie messaged to say his train was getting in just before 11 and Sasha had arranged for Hilly to get his hair dyed at 10.30am, so they agreed Will would go with them to film, plus then they’d go shopping for some shirts to show off the new Hilly.

  Will checked his watch. “That gives us 30 minutes. Do you want to grab some informal shots, Tay and Con, maybe you two playing guitars, working a new tune out, that sort of thing?”

  “Yeah, ok.”

  “Right, go change your clothes, I’ll get the equipment. Tay, can we use your studio as the light will be best in there at this time. Annie, you tidy up,” he ordered.

  “Bossy,” Annie screwed up her face, but started clearing the breakfast things away.

  With a sense of purpose, everyone got to their feet and the plan was put into action. Will got some quick shots of Tay and Con sitting facing each other with their acoustic guitars, just enjoying playing together, chatting, writing music or words down. He then left with Hilly and Sash, while Adie turned up a short while later, and after a brief setting up of the drums, coupled with an emergency call to the music shop for an additional piece of drum kit, he ran through his part, making a few adjustments.

  Eventually everyone was back in the same room at 1pm, exclaiming at the amazing brightness of Hilly’s hair, agreeing to have some lunch before practising all together.

  Will suggested a bit more filming, “How about if you guys are trying to make lunch, all domesticated, and Annie and Sash are up on the kitchen table, partying, dancing and getting in the way of what you are doing, stepping into the bowls of crisps and so on?”

  “Love it!” chimed Annie and Sasha. They ran to change into party clothes, while the lads worked out what they would be getting ready for the lunch; Con on sandwiches, Adie making tea and coffee, Hilly opening bags of crisps, and Tay chopping fruit. Will found some small single glass bottles of Prosecco for the girls to drink with straws, while the men would be drinking the hot drinks out of china teacups.

  Will stuck some music on and Tay and Con helped the ladies up onto the table. “Ok, and go for it, just do what you wanna do and I’ll film you all.”

  It quickly descended into a riot of laughter and flying food, the men doing their best to ignore them as Annie and Sasha danced, and then Will got Annie to stamp on the edge of a bowl of crisps, so they went flying everywhere. It was an utter mess by the time they finished, but the laughter and bonding continued over lunch, powering them through the afternoon until they were all note-perfect on the song.

  Annie asked if they could get the intro of her and Tay talking out of the way, so Will set them up on the edge of the stage. He set his camera up on a tripod and sat next to it, quietly telling her to look into the camera and start when she was ready.

  They introduced themselves, Annie using her full title, and then she spoke, telling how she’d grown up wanting for nothing materially, but missing love from her life. She spoke of not knowing who would be there for her at night, of the absence of laughter and joy in her childhood. She acknowledged she’d not known violence or fear or poverty, but that now she was using her money to try and help those that had. She told how on her 14th birthday, her mother had deliberately set her up, how she’d been given so many drinks and drugs that she had no way of giving conscious consent for her virginity to be taken in front of a group of boys, and that she was taken advantage of sexually from that point on. She said how her parents had just laughed at the state she was in when she returned, her mother saying they’d called her Annabel after the nightclub they’d met in, but maybe Tramp would have been more appropriate, and that she’d get her put on the pill, and how her father’s response had just been to give her the family drug dealer’s number to use their account.

  “I said no, and I got laughed at and told to grow up, so I spent the night crying and being sick. I was scared and hated this new life that was being put on me, a life I didn’t want and wasn’t ready to choose
.” She held her scarred wrists up, “I tried to commit suicide the next day, and was told by my parents as the ambulance was on its way, not to say anything, not to embarrass them, so I kept it all in. Bottled it up. Tried to be what everyone wanted from me, because everyone seemed to like that version of me.

  “I was told repeatedly that I was a good girl, the good-time girl, the crazy party animal, the wild child, for the next seven years by so many men, endorsed and enabled by my parents, until I hit 21 and decided to stop living the lie, and take control of my life. I stopped the drugs, I stopped the excess drinking, I stopped the sleeping around, and I don’t think my parents had been more disappointed in me, needing me to be the same as them to validate the choices they made. Luckily, drunk and on drugs, they wrapped their car around a tree shortly after that and died, so I was freed from their hold.

  “Since then, I have tried to be positive. I stopped all the destructive behaviours and took on new life-affirming ways of living. But I wasn’t dealing with the pain inside, I’d gone numb and shut down, telling myself I’d never be free of the inner torment, telling myself I’d never be worthy of a good man’s love, telling myself I was a bad person because I hated my parents. I hated that it was their damage that spurred me to set my charity up. That their bad taints my good, and I’m still getting used to the idea Tay has insisted is correct, that it’s your good actions that count more than your bad thoughts, so to cut myself some slack on that.

  “But the negative labels circled my head at night; slag, slut, whore, bad girl, good girl, over and over to the point where sleep was worse than the daytime. I was exhausted and I pushed it all inside, masked it.

  “But then I met this man. This wonderful, gorgeous man, here. It’s a long story, but I had a hat over my face so couldn’t see him, didn’t know who he was, and just had to listen to him. The second he touched me and told me how he saw the real me, how he could physically see my internal struggles through my micro reactions, in a way that no-one else had ever noticed me, he swept every pretence away. He pushed and made me confront my issues in order to tell him about them, and the shell just crumbled to leave me exposed.

  “And you know what? It wasn’t half as scary or life-changing or huge as I thought it was going to be. It was just…right. It was just a relief, an easing of something, a letting go inside, like how the tiniest correction of an out-of-place joint can make your whole body feel better. I’m happier right now than I ever have been in my life, and it’s because being seen by him set me free to be me inside and out, the real me, not the masking-wearing, role-playing me that tried to live up to everyone else’s expectation of what I was, who I was.

  “So, this is me. With matching insides and outsides. And I love this me. And I love him. I hope that each and every person watching this video meets their Tay.” She kissed Tay’s hand and then he took over.

  “I’m so proud of this woman sitting here and I can’t wait to see how our life together is going to pan out. But everything she said about herself, I can relate to myself as well. In my 20s and early 30s, I was given access to so many drink, drugs and women, and I took full advantage to the point where I didn’t know who I was anymore without them.

  "I’m so sorry to everyone I hurt. It cost me at least a decade of my life. It cost me friendships, very nearly my band, certainly my sanity, and it cost me the biggest price of all, my brother. He was caught up in the same whirlwind, and after my ill-advised brief marriage to a woman who I hope has found her happy now, I decided I needed to quit all these abuses.

  "Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Charlie wasn’t able to carry on with his life and committed suicide. Did he need more of the substances to keep going? Was he scared for himself at me stopping them? Was something else bothering him and I was so wrapped up in myself that I couldn’t see? I don’t know, and me and my family will never know, and that’s been the biggest barrier in letting him go.

  “His unanswered questions have been the trigger for so many panic attacks, for a breakdown spanning several years of my life, and for so many lost nights of sleep tormenting myself with the why question. It’s almost caused my family to break, but this woman hurricaned into my life, saw my mask straight away, and within days had us all healing as a family, accepting Charlie’s final decision and saying goodbye in the most joyful, personal celebration of his life.

  “I wore the mask, I played the role, but meeting Annie has freed me, and we have both agreed it’s time to hang up our masks. This is me, this is us, and I love being an us, and I love her. I’m working on forgiving myself, and I hope you all get to meet your Annie, the one who sees the real you.

  “Me and Annie wrote a song together about this subject, about being truly Visible to the one who sees you, and we’d like to play it for you now.”

  Will stopped filming and everyone breathed a collective sigh. Sasha was crying and came over to Annie to hug her, Annie not realising that she was crying as well, until Tay reached over Sash’s shoulder to wipe the tears away. She needed to touch him, needed to be touched, and she smiled at Sasha, then moved to straddle Tay’s lap, crushing herself into him as much as possible.

  Tay stood, his arms around Annie’s arse to hold her to him as he strode towards their wing. “Thanks Will; you’ve been great today. Occupy yourselves for a bit, guys. Help yourselves to drinks.” He punched in the code and walked them upstairs, telling Annie how proud he was of her, how much he loved her and how amazing their life together was going to be.

  He lay her on the bed and stripped her clothes off, taking a moment to admire her gorgeous body laid out in front of him, running his hands over her soft skin. She felt adored and soaked in the love he was showing her, feeling no embarrassment or shame as his eyes and hands freely roamed her curves.

  He leant forward to kiss her, his body above hers and she ran her hands up his back, feeling his muscles lightly defined under his skin, then reached over the top of his shoulders as he broadened out, allowing her to circle around his shoulders, across and down the top of his chest, over his pecs and back out to his biceps. As he kissed her, she tweaked his left nipple, causing him to hiss at her as she smiled.

  He ran a hand down over her left breast, cupping the pliable flesh and sucking his breath in through his teeth in admiration, watching her breast flex as he squeezed her gently. He flicked her nipple several times, making it enlarge and stand proud, repeating on the other side and then rolling alternate nipples in-between his thumb and forefinger, pinching and squeezing and rolling and repeating, over and over.

  She groaned and flicked her hips at Tay, wanting his attention down there. He laughed gently at her, bending his head to suck a nipple, until she huffed and grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling him off her and onto his back, then straddled him, stroking his cock until he was rock-hard, and pushing him up into her entrance, rubbing her clit furiously. She rocked on him, planting a hand on his chest, grasping at his flesh, and bending to kiss him, biting his bottom lip between her teeth.

  He brought his hands up over her hips, following the curve of her waist, holding her in place as he rocked his own hips into her, watching her breasts bounce.

  She felt herself tense, and then the blessed relief flooded her as she came, the tremors cascading across her body, causing Tay to hit his own orgasm as he pounded into her.

  They shouted each other’s name, then she collapsed down onto him, as he turned so they lay face to face. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, stroking her back as she stroked his, and they both came back down to earth.

  She smiled, fully relaxed, but then the reality hit her as she became aware of the wetness between her legs. “Fuck, Tay, we didn’t use a condom!”

  “Shit! I…I’m so sorry…I just didn’t think. Would…would it be a problem if you did get pregnant?”

  “No, no, of course not. Not for me anyway. What about you?”

  “Nope, other than I’m not going to be here for six months. Apart from that, I’d happily
get you pregnant right now.”

  “Well…you just may have. I’d probably prefer until you were around to share the experience with me, but truthfully, I’d be so happy whenever it happens.”

  “Ok, so how about, we carry on using condoms where we can until the end of the tour, but it’s not the end of the world if we don’t, and it’s amazingly wonderful if you fall pregnant during these next six months? So, we’re not actively trying, but it’s ok if it happens?”

  “Deal. But go and run me a bath now. I think I might be pregnant, and I need one.”

  “Whoa, hold on a minute, Lady, this isn’t how this is going to go down!”

  “Oh, I think it is, so go do it, loverboy.”

  Tay grumbled but did as he was told, secretly hoping that his sperm had just impregnated her. And surely they would, because surely he had super-sperm. Most definitely.

  He moved around the bedroom, tidying up as she soaked in the bath and sang along to their playlist, when an idea hit. An idea that he couldn’t dislodge, smiling as he worked out what he needed.

  ◆◆◆

  Annie and Tay dressed for the evening, Annie choosing an outfit Sasha had picked out for her, a black leather bralet and hotpants, with a light blue organza sleeveless overlay which hung in strips, gathered at the neck and the waist, then floating down to knee-length. Revealing but not, it looked amazing, and she teamed it with stiletto-heeled, knee-length, lace-up black boots.

  “Oh Annie, fuck me, you look sensational,” whispered Tay hoarsely as he pulled her into his arms. “You ready for tonight?”

  She nodded, “Yeah. I can’t wait to see our video when it’s all done. Even if it’s only a handful of people that see it, I’ve really enjoyed doing it.”

  They walked out downstairs to find everyone sitting at the kitchen table, ready for the night. Sasha jumped up, exclaiming at the outfit and moving the strips around slightly into place.

  Con stood, “Shall we do one last run-through and then go and get some food?”