“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

Anthea looked up at her mum as she sat down at the dining table. “Nothing is wrong,” Anthea responded watching as her mum hurriedly dried her hands with a tea towel.

“Is the baby okay? Are you okay? Is Jack okay?” she asked as her husband came into the room and pulled up a seat at the table.

“We’re all fine Mum,” she responded exasperated with her mum’s anxiety. “I have something to tell you.”

“Sit down Helen,” her dad snapped. “Give the lass a chance to speak.”

Anthea glanced up at him. She admired his calmness, she always had. He always seemed so self assured and in control. She picked up her mug of coffee as her mum sat down alongside him and took a long, slow sip.”It’s... it’s about the baby,” she finally said as calm filled the atmosphere.

“I knew it. I knew it,” her mum cried out.

“Mum, the baby is fine. There’s nothing wrong with her,” Anthea responded. Ever since she had announced her pregnancy five months ago her mum had fussed over her. Back at hone she had a kitchen drawer full of unopened packets of vitamins and as for the books on baby care lying on their bookshelves gathering dust...

“It’s about... it’s about her father,” Anthea said quietly before taking a deep breath. “She doesn’t belong to Jack.”

She saw the dropping of their jaws even without looking up and she heard her mum’s gasp. Her dad closed his mouth almost immediately but her mum’s remained open. She looked gobsmacked.

Still looking down at her coffee mug she spoke again almost in a whisper. “I have been seeing someone else these past few months and he’s her father not Jack.”

“Who?” her mum cried out. “Who have you been seeing? I thought you and Jack were happy.”

Anthea looked up at her. She had been dreading this moment. “We are happy. Very happy,” she responded.”

“But why? Why have you been seeing someone else?”

“I’d rather not go into it mum,” she responded. “It’s private and personal.”

Her dad shifted in his seat. “There’s no need to explain anything to us luv,” he said calmly. “It’s not any of our business. You’re a grown woman now. As long as you and Jack are happy then that’s all that matters.”

She smiled faintly at his response. She had always been his little girl but now he had used the term ‘grown woman’ for the first time.

“There was no need to come and tell us all this,” he told her with his reassuring tone. “It’s your business not ours. So let’s leave things there.”

She smiled again. He was the complete opposite of her mum. She would want to know the details; she always liked to get to the bottom of things. Her dad often used to say ‘if you’re going to lift up stones be prepared what might lie underneath!’

“The thing is the father is American, an African American.”

Her mother gasped loudly. “You mean he’s ... “

“Helen, please,” her dad cut in.

“It’s okay dad,” Anthea responded. “Yes Ben is black and obviously the baby will be coloured.”

Silence filled the room. Her mum and dad looked at each other, oddly, she thought. “I... we thought it best tell you now rather than wait another two months until you saw for yourself.

“Do Robert and Sandra know?” her mum asked.

“Jack is telling them right now,” she answered.

“Sandra will have a bloody field day with this.”

“We don’t care mum,” Anthea responded. “We don’t care what anyone else thinks. She’s our baby and that’s all that matters as far as we are concerned”

Her dad reached across and took hold of her hands. “You will both have our support,” he told her. “We will be proud of our granddaughter and both of you no matter what anyone else says.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks as she clung onto his hands. In her eyes he had always been the perfect dad. Always there for her and always supportive. “Thanks dad.”

The sound of the telephone ringing interrupted them and her mum got up and went to the hallway to answer it.

“I’m sorry dad,” she told him.

“Sorry for what?”

“For what I have done.”

“You are giving us a grandchild and that’s what we have always wanted. The child’s father is immaterial as far as I am concerned.”

She wanted to jump up and hug him but her mum returned. “That was Sandra,” she said, her cheeks red with anger. “That bitch has a really nasty mouth on her.”

Anthea’s mobile phone rang interrupting them all once again. It was Jack. She listened to him for a few moments. “Mum and dad are fine and very supportive about it,” she said before ending the call.

“Guess I’m not the flavour of the month in that household,” she looked up and told them with a smile. “I got called all the names under the sun.”

Her dad laughed. “It certainly will bring Madam Snooty Knickers down a peg or two in her social circle,” he said. “Make sure that you visit them regularly after the baby is born.”

She joined in the laughter. A few moments later her mum turned to her dad, “Can you give us a few minutes please?”

Her dad stood up and turned his attention to her mum. “Now don’t get upsetting her with your prying,” he told her. “It’s none of our business.”

Her mum nodded in agreement. “I’m not going to pry. I just want to talk about the future. Have you told anyone else?” her mum asked as the kitchen door closed.

Anthea shook her head. “No, just you and Jack’s mum and dad know.”

“What are you going to tell others when they ask because they will, you know that don’t you?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose we’ll wait until the situation arises. Ben has suggested that we could say that I went for infertility treatment and the clinic got things wrong.”

“Ben is the father I take it.”

Anthea nodded.

“Where’s he from exactly?”

Anthea told him that he was born in Detroit but his parents moved to New York when he was a child. “He got a scholarship to study over here, and he got a job when he got his degree,” she said. “He has his own IT Company.”

“So he’s a clever guy then?” her mum commented.

She nodded before taking another sip of coffee.

“So how did you meet him then?”

Anthea smiled briefly at her mum’s opening pry. “I’d rather not say just now mum.”

Her mum looked away for a moment. “Can I ask you a question?”

Anthea nodded.

“Did Jack ask you to cuckold him?”

The question almost floored her. She wasn’t expecting this. “Cuckold?” she asked wondering how her mum knew that term.

Her mum shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, cuckold,” she answered. “Some men like their wives to cuckold them; sleep with other men. I just wondered that was all.”

“Where on earth has all this come from?”

Her mum looked away. “I’d rather not say.”

Anthea smiled briefly and remembered the look that her mum and dad had given each other earlier. “You and dad,” she responded, “you’re not into that as well as you?”

Her mum’s face reddened. “No. No, we’re not but... “

“Are you saying that dad...? “

“Look I’ve said too much already, please don’t say anything to Jack or anyone else.”

Anthea shook her head. She was shocked; she couldn’t believe that her dad could be like that but there again she could have said the same about Jack a year ago too. Somehow she felt better about her situation now.

“We met at a party,” Anthea started to say as she looked down at her coffee mug. “Do you remember Becky from high school; we used to hang about together a lot?”

Her mum nodded. “Funnily enough I saw her mum in town a couple of months ago.”

“We bumped into her last Christmas at my office party at the St George; she was there with another office party going on. Anyway we got chatting about old times and she and her partner invited us to tag along to go to a party they were going on to afterwards, so we went. Turns out that most of them there were a bunch of swingers.”

“Swingers?”

Anthea nodded with a smile. “Yes, bloody swingers!” she retorted. “Seems that she and her partner are well into that stuff. Anyway, someone hooked a laptop up to the television and put on some porn. Turned out to be interracial stuff but the irony was that the guy that sat down next to me on the settee was black. So there am I watching interracial porn with a black guy sitting next to me and Jack perched on the arm of the settee the other side of me.”

Her mum’s laughter interrupted her.

“Well afterwards we got talking, me and Ben that is. He was obviously on the make and thought that we were into swinging. I put him straight on that and then he asked me if my husband allowed me to see other men. Again I told him that we weren’t into anything like that. Anyway after a while we decided to leave. Couples were already starting to pair off and we could see where the night was heading for. Ben followed us out and asked if we could put him up for the night. He had had a few drinks and didn’t want to risk driving. He promised that there would be no funny business and even offered us money to let him stay. I felt he was quite genuine, Jack did too, so we took him back with us. The house where the party was held was only a short walk away from us anyway.”

Anthea glanced up at her mum she was holding her cup tightly as she hung onto her every word.

“We didn’t do anything,” Anthea told her. “We just had a drink. Jack showed him to his room and we went to bed. Next morning I got up early; you know what I’m like in the morning. I made a cup of tea and Ben came down stairs. He was ready to go but I made him a cup of coffee and we sat and chatted. He apologised about the night before and pestering me but I was a bit curious so he started chatting about his life of cuckolding. He told me that he enjoyed meeting couples in the lifestyle. ‘It’s no hassle sex,’ as he called it. ‘Just fun and enjoyment all round.’ “

“So he persuaded you otherwise then?” her mum interrupted.

“Hmmm, not at first,” she replied. “But he made it sound as though lots of couples were into it these days. Anyway, after he left I went back up to bed and Jack was awake and I told him about the conversation with Ben and well... to cut a long story short... Jack had always been interested in it. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“And getting pregnant?” her mum asked.

Anthea shrugged her shoulders. “Well, about three months into our relationship I got talking to Ben in bed one night about Jack and me starting a family. It’s something that we had planned to do this year anyway. I told Ben that we would have to cool our relationship for a while so that Jack could get me pregnant and he asked me if he could father my child instead. It was always something that he wanted to do and that as Jack was into being cuckolded then this would be the ultimate form of it. ”

“Bloody hell!”

Anthea smiled. “I know. The bloody cheek of it,” she responded. “But when I told Jack what Ben had said he got very excited about it.”

“Wow.”

“I was shocked, I can tell you but well, to be honest... the whole thing turned me on as well. I was already into Ben in a big way by then and so we decided to do it. I mean, we did discuss it thoroughly before hand, before taking the first steps. Jack and I stopped having sex all together for the six weeks that I remained on the pill so that there was no chance of him being the father then I let Ben get on with it.”

Her mum smiled. “And Ben certainly got on with it, hey!”

Anthea smiled too. “Yes. It didn’t take him long.”

“They say... they say those guys are quite virile!”

Anthea laughed. “Well the proof is in the pudding.”

Both women laughed very loudly then there was silence as her mum went into a pensive mood. “Your dad’s always wanted me to cuckold him, you know,” she confessed after a while.

“You didn’t want to though?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t as though I didn’t want to,” she responded. “I just couldn’t be sure what it might do to us. We had you and John to think about as well.”

“Does he still ask you to?”

She nodded.

“You should do it you know,” Anthea responded. “If it’s what dad wants and you are okay otherwise about it you should do it.”

Her mum smiled. “You know they say that daughters try to marry a man just like their father, don’t you.”

Anthea smiled. “I was reticent at first as well but when I saw how much it excited Jack I went ahead,” she said. “Ben had left me his mobile number when he left that day and I gave it to Jack and told him that if it was he really wanted me to do it then he should call him.”

“And he did, obviously.”

Anthea nodded. A few minutes later she spoke again. “You should do it mum.”

She laughed. “Well if I do there’s no way I am going as far as you have.”

Anthea laughed and then went silent. “The sex was out of this world, you know, when we were doing it to get me pregnant,” she confessed. “It was such a risk, such a momentous thing to do and Ben was so determined.”

“Determined, hey.”

Anthea smiled. “We don’t regret what we have done, you know,” she said finally. “We know that people will talk when they see us with our daughter but we don’t care. We will carry on and be a happy family.”

Her mum reached across and gave her hand a squeeze. “Good for you, girl.”

Andrea smiled with relief. Their biggest obstacle had been overcome and they could move forward now.