A Wild Rose Unleashed

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Boys and Footballs

It was Ria's half term holiday... and so she was travelling up to Yorkshire to visit Andy and the others... all on her little own... on the train...

And I was nervous... like... quite stupidly nervous. I mean... I basically had the whole mother hen thing going on!

I'd collected her from school and taken her to the railway station... then checked she had her phone and her ticket and the spare phone... and the extra sheet with our numbers on it... and then I basically had to let her go.

Of course I waited to see that she had got on the right train... and then I waited to see that the train left properly... and then I phoned to check everything was OK.

And, when I got home, I just had to phone her again to check that everything was still OK.

And the only reason that I hadn't basically been phoning her up every ten minutes was that my master had threatened to string me up in my old bathroom if I tried.

And he wouldn't even let me pace around nervously.

In the end, he got fed up with me sort of secretly checking that everything was OK with the train on my phone, so he told me to go upstairs to take a bath.

"But..."

"If you don't do as you are told straight away, I can think of any number of less pleasant ways with which I can... occupy your time!" he sort of threatened me. I mean... I basically knew he was only joking... but I wasn't quite prepared to risk it! "You may take your phone with you," he told me, "but you are to leave it on the side and not touch it unless she actually phones you!"

"Yes, Master," I said with a bit of a sigh as I got to my feet.

"But, before you go, come here," he told me. When he did, he pulled me onto his lap and snuggled me for a bit. "She'll be fine," he told me. "You know that really."

I sort of nodded into his shoulder.

"And I'm not going to tell you not to worry because I endeavour to avoid giving you instructions that you are not able to obey. However you do have to stop letting her know you are worrying. It could have the unintended consequence of undermining her self-confidence."

Another nod. I guess he was right about that too.

"Now go and get your perfectly pulchritudinous posterior in that bath!"

Of course I gave him a bit of a look.

"'Pulchritudinous', it is a poetic word for beautiful."

"You'd better send me a reminder to put it in my vocab book," I said as he put a hand under that very pulchritudinous posterior to help me to my feet.

"Done," he told me before I reached the door, "although I'm not sure it's really worth it. That word is significantly... over the top... in the majority of contemporary contexts.

"Just like you!"

"Babygirl!" he sort of pretended to growl at me as I scurried away.

"Yes Master?" I replied in my most innocent voice.

"I'll be up in a little while to wash your back and help you with your hair!" he said. I could hear he was smiling so I knew I was safe... probably!

So I ran the bath, chucked in the bubbly smellies, lit the candles, put on the soothing Celtic music, hopped in... and then I tried to relax.

I must have managed to turn off a bit because I was woken out of a sort of snooze thing by my master giving me a kiss on the nose. "Ria is fine and her train is just north of Birmingham."