Carly and I had been back together for nearly two months since we split up. We lived in a two-bedroom semi-detached house in Kent, England, owned by Carly’s parents. We paid them rent every month, which suited us fine as we couldn’t afford anywhere else with our limited salaries. The condition for our reduced rent was that we had to look after Carly’s younger sister, Helen, until she’d left school. This enabled Carly’s parents, whom I didn’t get on with anyway, to live at their holiday home in Cornwall.

I had forgiven Carly for a number of misgivings, including ‘attempted’ cheating. I’d discovered that she’d been planning to meet up with some guy she met on the internet for a night of wild, hot sex. She had defended her actions, saying that I never liked to go out with her. She’d probably find that if we liked the same places, we would go out together!

So, two months into our new relationship, a clean slate, fresh start, and we had fallen back into the same old routine. Carly had suggested some sleazy nightclub, and she knew I hated it.

I’d said, ‘Can’t we go somewhere a bit more civilized? I mean, the place is full of underage kids and druggies! How about that new pizza place down on Temple Street?’

‘All you ever want to do is go to pizza places! Pizza Hut, Tony’s ... and now Temple Pizza! Besides, all my work friends are going up to the club.’ Carly’s work friends were all self-centered, superficial bitches, and I couldn’t stand them on the best of days. I think the feeling was mutual too!

‘Well, I’ll just stay in, I don’t mind.’ I said, almost sulking. ‘I don’t get paid till next Friday anyway, so it’d leave me short on cash.’

‘Fine!’ she sighed. As if on cue, Carly’s friend Lisa pulled up out front and sounded the horn of her little town car, one of the new shape Minis. ‘Don’t wait up, the club doesn’t close until 3 a.m., and if I’m paying ten pounds to get in, I want to get my money’s worth. Bye, sweetie.’

As she slammed the front door shut and ran out to the car in her awkward high-heels, I realized it was the first time she’d said ‘bye’ without saying ‘I love you’. Perhaps I’d annoyed her. My watch beeped, signaling that it had just reached 9 p.m., and I wondered what to do with myself for the rest of the evening.

On any normal Saturday night, I’d have stayed up till 1 or 2 a.m., watching movies or surfing the net. Unfortunately, I’d done a double shift at the supermarket where I worked as a trainee manager and was starting to nod off to sleep in the comfy living room armchair. I glanced at my watch; it was approaching 10 p.m. ‘What an early night for me!’ I thought.

I switched off the film I’d been watching and headed to the bathroom for a quick shower before bed. As I showered, my thoughts started to drift, and I found myself wondering what Carly was doing at that exact moment. The club she’d picked was a shit-hole. It really was the law of the jungle in there, and it wasn’t uncommon to see people fucking in the darker areas of the club, perhaps getting off on the thought that people were watching. I wondered whether Carly had secretly met up with her internet friend or with some other guy and what they might be doing if they had. If she was cheating, her friends were certainly not going to tell me about it.

Just as I was getting quite jealous and angry, especially for letting her go to that awful place without me, I was separated from my thoughts by the sound of the front door slamming. It sounded just the same as when Carly had left, so I wondered if she’d fallen out with her friends and come home.

As I walked out of the bathroom, wearing a big blue towel around my waist and steam billowing out into the adjacent kitchen, I heard the sound of crying coming from upstairs. Instinctively, I grabbed a toilet roll and walked upstairs to the bedroom.

I found our bedroom to be empty, and realized that Helen’s door was open, and that it was there that the sobbing was coming from. I could see she’d discarded her clubbing clothes (her blue high-heels, and an expensive blue silk dress which Carly had picked out for her that afternoon) on the floor, so I politely knocked on the door.

‘Helen, are you decent?’ I asked. I’d known Helen since she was 15, and I used to help her with her homework when I visited Carly. Not that Helen wasn’t bright, she just had trouble with the sciences, which were my strong point. Ever since I’d had a string of rather erotic dreams about Helen, back when she was 16, I’d harbored a little crush on her, and now that she was nearly 18 and quite stunningly attractive, I found it difficult to ignore my girlfriend’s pretty younger sister.

We were very close, and Helen had always felt comfortable confiding in me, so I wasn’t surprised when she said ‘Yeah, come in, Jason.’ Helen was sitting cross-legged on her bed, wearing a pair of her boyfriend’s football shorts, and a small white T-shirt. I could see she wasn’t wearing a bra, as her cute nipples were quite visible through the shirt. Her mascara had run all down her face, and her tears were dripping from her chin onto her long smooth legs. I glanced also at her feet, and she’d obviously taken a lot of time painting her toenails in a glossy, glittery blue finish to match her dress and shoes.