“You cannot compare Stiff Little Fingers to the Undertones.”

Charlotte slipped into the empty seat beside Emma, trying not to interrupt Dave whilst he was in full flow. The source of his wrath appeared to be a cute looking guy with a red mohawk who had seemingly dared suggest that Stiff Little Fingers were a great Northern Irish punk band.

“They slagged off the Undertones for not singing about the Troubles but the Undertones were living in it. Stiff Little Fingers were four posh boys pretending to be punks while their songs were written by an English journalist from the Daily Mail.” Dave paused long enough to take a swig of his beer before delivering his closing argument. “The Undertones sang about what we wanted. We wanted the escapism of songs about chocolate and girls, not more bombs and Armalites.”

“Fair enough, I suppose.”

The guy smiled and took a sip of his Guinness while running his eyes over Charlotte.

“Hi, I’m Turlough, I’m another one of what Dave would call posh punk wannabes.”

He had a soft melodic accent, quite a contrast to the harsh nasal tones of the typical Northern Irish one.

“I can tell you’re not from around these parts,” she giggled.

“I could say the same about you” he replied, clocking the Liverpudlian accent that almost a year in Strabane had failed to dent.

“So what brings you here?” He inquired, gazing into her eyes.

Charlotte swallowed. His gaze was so intense. Hypnotic ice blue eyes locked with hers.

“My dad got a job in the knicker factory here. Wasn’t much work back in Liverpool so we upped sticks and moved here.”

“Is it temporary?”

“Well, they’ll probably stick it out a while longer but I’m off to art college. So it’ll be ‘Sayonara Strabane’ soon enough.”

“So where are you headed?”

Charlotte gave a lopsided grin. “That’s the sixty-four million dollar question.”

She decided now wasn’t the time to let him know she couldn’t decide which lesbian lover she wanted to follow so instead told him she was waiting until all the offers or rejection letters came through before deciding.

“What about you, Emma?” Turlough had noticed Dave had gone to the bar so had brought her into the conversation. Charlotte liked that about him. He seemed to notice the little things. Like how when Dave put the pints down, Turlough moved them away from the edge of the table in case they got knocked over.

The rest of the evening panned out like every other night. Charlotte drank a little too much, got a little bit too tipsy and then swayed her way out of the pub. This time, however, Emma was walking hand-in-hand with Dave whilst Charlotte and Turlough followed behind, Almost on auto-pilot, without it being discussed, the four of them ended up back at Dave’s.

Emma had obviously been here before as she moved around like the hostess finding cans of beer and clean glasses while Dave and Turlough argued over which record to play. Once the opening bars of The Cult’s ‘She sells sanctuary’ were blasting out of Dave’s antique looking hi-fi, Turlough sank into the sofa beside Charlotte while Emma sat on Dave’s lap, the four of them drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.

At some point, Emma and Dave disappeared upstairs and Turlough turned and kissed Charlotte. His hands seemed to be everywhere at once and Charlotte thought this might be what making out with an octopus would be like as she felt his fingers caressing her boobs, her hips, her inner thighs and her neck almost simultaneously.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered in her ear as she felt his breath on her neck. Her nipples were reacting to his touch and he was pulling and tugging at the right one through her top as he nibbled her earlobe with his teeth.

She glanced at the door, worried that Emma or Dave would come back in again but Turlough noticed and told her to relax, that they were upstairs fucking and they wouldn’t be disturbed for hours. She smiled as if agreeing with whatever he wanted and in response, he tugged her top up over her head. The black lace bra starkly contrasted with the pale white of her skin.

“You have such perfect tits. I don’t like ones bigger than a handful, yours are just the right size.”

He squeezed them together, his thumbs rubbed against her nipples before he scooped them out and bent his head to suckle first one then the other.

Charlotte squirmed. Despite his forwardness, she was getting turned on. She loved her tits being played with and she could feel herself getting damp. While Turlough moved his mouth from one nipple to the other and back again, his fingers were pushing her skirt up and wriggling inside, trying to grip the elastic of her knickers.

She lifted her ass off the sofa to help him slide them down then watched as he unbuttoned his jeans. He had his cock out and was getting into position before Charlotte put a hand on his chest.

“Easy, tiger. Any chance you could put a condom on first.”

“I don’t have any. Do you?”

‘Fuck,’ Charlotte thought. ‘Why is it always the woman's job to remember?’

She shook her head.

“No, I don’t.” she looked around the room.

“Do you think Dave has some?”

“Fuck, no.” Charlotte went pale at the thought. “I can’t go and ask Dave.”

Turlough knelt there with his cock out. Charlotte could see it deflating in front of her eyes as they negotiated who would ask Dave. In the end, Turlough got up and sat on the sofa beside Charlotte.

They turned to each other and kissed but it was only a minute or so before Charlotte felt Turlough’s hand on the back of her head, slowly pushing her down, guiding her head down towards his cock.

She slid off the sofa and got on her knees as it was more comfortable than the position Turlough was steering her towards. He kept his hand on her head and whispered “Good girl” as she kissed the tip of his cock. There was a bead of precum oozing from the slit and she scooped it up with her tongue. Salty, she decided. She gazed up at him and saw him watching her with a leer on his face. She thought she must look such a slut with her boobs scooped out of her bra and her skirt around her hips and her knickers dumped somewhere. Was she really that easy?

Then he pressed down on the back of her head and she felt his cock fill her mouth. She managed to relax in time and moved her lips up and down his shaft. He lay back and released the grip on her hair, letting her set the pace. She wrapped her fingers around the shaft and continued to wank him off as she moved her mouth up to just suck on the head.

With a groan, he came so fast he caught Charlotte unawares. The first splurt splattered against the back of her mouth before she realised what was going on. Rather than risk him cumming on her hair or in her eye, she clamped her lips around his cock and sucked the remaining spurts of cum down her throat.

When he slumped back onto the sofa and his cock deflated, Charlotte climbed back up beside him. She reached across and picked up her top and rearranged herself while Turlough tugged up his jeans and refastened the buttons.

“Thanks for that,” he blushed. “It’s been a while, as you can probably tell.”

“Hey, it’s no big deal. Hopefully, next time we’ll remember the condoms.”

‘Shit,’ Charlotte thought. ‘Did I just agree to a next time?’

“I like the sound of a next time too.”

“Good,” Charlotte whispered as she kissed him again.

“I should probably head home,” Charlotte admitted after another half hour of kissing. “My mum is getting very heavy about studying and my exams.”

“See you next Friday, perhaps then?”

Charlotte nodded.

‘OK, then. See you next week.”

Charlotte slipped off the sofa, put on her knickers and headed home.

Sunday night, Charlotte pushed open the door of the rehearsal room. Deirdre and Jenny both jumped up, exclaiming “Charlotte!” at the same time. After a quick hug, Jenny hurriedly sat down behind the drum kit and picked up her sticks.

“Now you’re here, we can get started,” Jenny told her. Charlotte looked around.

“But Emma’s not here yet?”

“Are my ears burning?”

Emma grinned at Charlotte as she opened her guitar case and plugged in her bass.

“Aren’t you the naughty girl?”

Charlotte’s head whirled. There’d been so many things lately that Emma could have been referring to that she decided to play dumb.

“Turlough,” Emma prompted.

“Well, you and Dave disappeared so there wasn’t much else to do.”

Emma shook her head and was about to say something when Deirdre coughed and asked them if they were ready to play, pointing out that they had another gig on Friday night.

The rehearsal went well and afterwards, Charlotte gathered her stuff up and headed out with Emma. They’d only just got outside when Charlotte remembered she’d left her flanger pedal in the room.

She stepped back into the rehearsal room and froze when she saw Deirdre and Jenny kissing. Jenny was still sitting on the drum stool and Deirdre was facing her, straddling her lap. Jenny had her hands up inside Deirdre’s tee-shirt while Deirdre ran her fingers through Jenny’s hair.

“Sorry, don’t mind me,” Charlotte giggled when the girls noticed her.

Deirdre went red and tried to get off Jenny’s lap but Jenny just held her in place and the two of them watched and waited until Charlotte had picked up her pedal and headed back outside.

“Did you know about Deirdre and Jenny?” Charlotte demanded when she got back to Emma.

Emma giggled. “Yeah, that’s the second drummer she’s gone out with.”

“What happened to the whole ‘Don’t sleep with the drummer, you’ll break up the band’ thing?”

Emma shrugged.

“And I thought Deirdre was going to be a nun? That’s hardly very nunnish?”

“I dunno. All those women cloistered together. I bet there’s loads of lesbian nuns.” Emma paused. “Anyway, I think she’s going off the idea of being a nun. She might do primary school teacher training instead.”

“You don’t seem surprised about Deirdre and Jenny?”

“We’ll, Deirdre’s always been into girls. She went out with Fiona for a bit.”

“Deirdre and Fiona? How do I not know about this?”

Emma shrugged.

“Deirdre didn’t want it broadcast around the school or anything. I’m sure she’d have told you eventually.”

With that, Emma said she was going to call round to Dave’s and would see Charlotte at school. Charlotte watched her go then turned and headed home, with thoughts of Jenny wrapping her thighs around Deirdre’s face. Jenny wasn’t Charlotte’s type, too butch really. Charlotte preferred a wait-like physique but the image of Jenny taking Deirdre from behind with a strapon did excite her.

Charlotte shook her head to clear the images that the brief glance of Jenny pawing Deirdre’s tits had created but only succeeded in thinking about Deirdre and Fiona instead. Charlotte couldn’t believe no one had mentioned any of this before.

Even though Charlotte was pretty sure she’d get into Art College with an unconditional offer, her mum was insisting she studied for her A levels. So, in an attempt to ward off a fight about going out on Friday night, Charlotte sat down to do some studying.

She opened her Art History notebook and read the marked sections again. She grimaced inwardly at the memory of Sister Aloysius's face when she described Titian’s painting, ‘Sacred and Profane Love’ as ‘The Madonna and Whore’. There had been uproar in the classroom. The nun visibly trembled as she pointed her finger at the door and ordered Charlotte to take herself and her dirty English mouth out of her classroom and to go straight to the Headmistress. Charlotte had attempted to explain this was the term used by Sigmond Freud and had even mentioned James Joyce’s book “Portrait of the Artist as a Young man’ as an excellent example of the polarity of the madonna and whore. But the mention of Joyce just seemed to incense the nun further.

“Get out of this classroom, Madam, and don’t you dare mention that blasphemer's name to me ever again.”

Charlotte was made to sit outside the Headmistress’s office for over two hours until her father was able to come and collect her. She could hear him through the door.

“You have dragged me out of my work to come all the way down here to be told my daughter is being suspended for the rest of the day for mentioning Joyce and Freud in the classroom?”

Charlotte couldn’t hear the Headmistress’s reply but eventually, her father came out and told her to gather up her stuff and come on. It was only when they were in the car and driving out of the school that her father turned and smiled at her.

“You know there’s no point in being clever with the nuns, it just goes over their heads.”

Charlotte grinned back. “You said that about the soldiers last week after we got through that checkpoint.”

“Well, it’s true.” He shrugged. “What I mean is, don’t wind them up. They don’t like anything that challenges the status quo. Joyce was very anti-catholic and Freud was obsessed with sex. That’s just like waving a red rag at the nuns. Keep your head down. You’ll be out of there in a matter of weeks.”

Charlotte nodded. She’d waited until they were almost home before summoning up the courage.

“You won’t tell Mum, will you?”

He’d laughed and asked her, “What do you think?”

Her recollections were interrupted by her Mum who had brought her up a cup of tea.

“How’s the studying going?”

Charlotte rolled her eyes, waiting for the lecture and was shocked when her mum reached out and stroked her hair.

“We’re really going to miss you when you go away, you know. Your Dad would never say it but we are both really proud of how you’ve adapted to living over here. I know you miss Liverpool and the big city life and everything. So thank you for not making our life hell.”

“Are you feeling alright, Ma?”

Her mum smiled and gave her a quick hug, then went to leave the room. She paused at the door and looked back.

“I suppose you're planning on heading out at the weekend?”

Charlotte nodded.

“The band’s playing on Friday night.”

Her Mum nodded back. “Good idea. You need a break. Too much studying can be bad for you.”

She went, leaving a dumbstruck Charlotte staring at the closed door.