'We've got to organise this properly!' Susan was laying sets of underwear, matching shoes and a couple of bikinis in two rows on the bed. 'You'll start in the red bikini I bought for you, as you'll be looking after the pool. If you want to wear shoes, then wear the ones you've been wearing this afternoon!'

'This one!' Alex picked up the bikini. 'Not this afternoon's thong!' She noted that it was on the bed.

'No!' Susan dropped the towel and sat naked on the end of the bed. 'We don't want to frighten anybody too early! I suspect some might be a bit apprehensive if we get a lot of nakedness!'

'I'd agree with that!' Alex was nervous enough herself! 'When do you want me to change?'

'Don't worry about tonight! It'll all go fine!' Susan started to check and expertly touch-up her blood red toe-nails. 'When everybody is getting ready for dinner, you can change to match me in the red! After that we'll follow the sequence down the bed! The light blue! Possibly the mauve and then the other dark blue!'

'That sounds sensible.' Alex looked at three sets laid out for her. She picked up the dark blue which she hadn't seen before. 'I see you decided that in the end, thongs were to be worn!'

'It depends how it all goes!' She smiled a wicked grin. 'We don't want to be under prepared or out-dressed do we?'

'I would think that doesn't happen very often with Susan Derby!'

'Never!' Susan moved from her feet to her hands. 'I'll do yours in a minute.'

'How's that?' Alex was now wearing the bottom of the bikini and she had put the top over her head. 'Can you do it up?'

'That's fine!' She was now finishing by painting the nails of her right hand. 'In a minute. Sit down and I'll do your nails first! Feet first, please!' Alex complied and offered her foot to Susan, who just changed hands and carried on painting.

'This is silly!' Alex offered the other foot. 'They've never been painted before!'

'Shame on you!'

'You're so fast!' Susan took her left hand. 'I've tried doing my hands and I take about half-an-hour and make a complete mess of it!'

'You should do them every day! Practice makes perfect as they say!' Susan carefully finished the last nail. 'Now give them enough time to dry. Most women are far too impatient! Stand up and I'll fasten the top!'

'Thank you!' She looked at herself in one of the many mirrors. 'Am I ready now?' Alex was getting impatient.

'No!' Susan beckoned her over to the dressing table. 'Both of us and especially you, need to have the full warpaint! Then there's all the jewellery!'

***

'Hello!' Alex had opened the door to find three striking dark-haired, brown-eyed girls in identical shoes, jeans and t-shirts. 'You must be the waitresses! You're not triplets are you?'

'Yes! I'm Alice!' She shook hands with Alex and walked straight past her towards the kitchen.

'Bella!' She followed her sister.

'And Celia!' She was wheeling a largish case. 'Where are we performing? This is our music!'

Alex helped Celia take it to the dining room and stow it by the sideboard, before taking her to the kitchen.

'Celia!' Susan hugged and greeted her. 'You know all the duties as you've done it before. I've briefed Alice and Bella and they're getting changed.'

'In the pool changing room?' Celia moved towards the pool.

'Yes!' Susan grabbed a kettle. 'Would anybody like some tea?'

***

'Where did you find them?' Alex was laughing.

'They're Julian's god-daughters! So I suppose they're mine now!' She paused. 'Thinking about it, I'm surprised you've not met them before. They didn't come to the wedding, as I think they were all abroad studying or something.'

'They're absolutely identical. Do they always dress the same?'

'They are! And they do, when they are together!' Susan remembered a story and started laughing. 'Apparently, even their respective husbands can't tell them apart!'

'Go on! Tell me what you find so funny!'

'Two of them! I think it was Alice and Celia, met in Cambridge with their husbands for lunch. So they went to the loo together, swapped rings and handbags, and then came out and sat in the other's seat.' She was collapsing with laughter. 'It was only when they were going to bed, that they said that they had better go home!'

***

Just as Susan finished making the tea, three identical French maids in short black uniforms with white aprons came back into the kitchen. 'How do we look?'

'You all look wonderful, Alice!'

'How do you recognise it was Alice?' Alex was puzzled. To her, the triplets were even more identical, now that they had completely matched their hair, makeup, nails and shoes.

'Right hands forward girls!' Each obediently obeyed and Susan held each in turn. 'See these rings, which Julian gave them! Alice has an amber band in the gold! Bella's is blue!' She took the last hand. 'And Celia has a cerise one!'

'There is another way!' Alice spoke. All three then lifted their skirts and aprons to show stocking tops, suspender belts and three black thongs, with an appropriate silver A, B or C.

'You got Bella and Celia wrong!' Alex was even more puzzled and laughed uncontrollably!

***

'Do we actually know which triplet is which?' Alex spoke as she sat with Susan by the pool finishing the tea.

'It's happened before. They swap rings. Answer to the wrong name. Knowing them, there's probably three thongs with A's etc. I usually end up calling them all waitress!'

Alex shook her head and took a sip of her tea. 'Are we ready then?'

'With luck, we'll have fifteen minutes or so of calm before Alistair arrives.' She checked her watch again. 'He's in the front room next to mine!'

'Will he stay there?'

Alex did not get an answer to her question as the door bell rang and both of them immediately downed the cups. 'I'll take this to the kitchen and you can get the door!' As Susan spoke, she gathered up the tray and almost ran towards the kitchen.

Alex walked slowly and opened the door, to be greeted by a tall, greying distinguished man carrying a very large bouquet of flowers. 'Hello! Alex!' They had met before several times. He bent and proferred a kiss! 'I'm sorry I'm early, but my driver didn't hang about!' He indicated a female figure with her back to the door in a very short, black leather suit, boots and a leather chaffeur's cap stuffed over very unruly blonde hair. She was smoking a cigarette. 'My chauffeur's mad!'

'Alistair!' Alex returned the kiss. 'I didn't expect to see you at a party like this! Come to think of it, I didn't ever think I'd be at one!'

'Susan said you were coming, when she phoned late last night!'

'Did she?' Alex remembered the place card. 'I think I have a bone to pick with my mother-in-law!'

'I hope I haven't dropped Susan in it!'

***

'Hello! Susan!' Alistair repeated his greeting with Susan in the kitchen. 'These are for organising tonight!' He handed her the flowers! 'I know your attitide to chocolates! You look wonderful in the red underwear! It really suits you!'

'Thank you!' She took the bouquet and smelt them. 'They're gorgeous! Glad to see they've got their own water! If you don't mind I'll leave them until the morning.' She placed them prominently on the large oak table in the centre of the kitchen! 'That looks good!'

Alex could see the chauffeur outside. 'Who's the lady?' She now stubbed out the cigarette and made for the door.

'It's Tamsin! Have you met her, Alex?' He thought for a few moments. 'You probably haven't! But Susan know's her well!'

'I'll go and let her in!' Alex volunteered.

'How is she?' Susan was quiet and vaguely confidential. 'She was rather a problem a few years ago!'

'Don't worry!' Alistair kept his voice quiet too. 'She qualified as a solictor the hard way and has managed to get this job in a big City Bank. Apparently, she has a rather good legal brain! She's doing well!'

'I wonder where she got that from?' Susan smiled at the man, who'd taught her an awful lot during the first part of her career at the Bar.

'Her mother was the better lawyer!' Susan had forgotten that Alistair's wife, a noted QC, had always earned more than he had! She should have remembered, as he got teased mercilessly for it!

***

'Tamsin! How are you?' Susan greeted Alistair's daughter with a hug. Susan was surprised it was reciprocated. 'Except for your mother's funeral, it's been a long time.'

'It is! I wasted a lot of my life!' Tamsin put her arm round both Alex and Susan. 'I'm so sorry about David. He was a great guy! I should have taken him for myself! We were within a month of being the same age, after all! But I fucked up! Badly!'

'You did!' Susan was forthright. 'But no matter now! Your father tells me you have qualified and have a very good job!'

'I did! The job is good though. It's also very hard. But I enjoy it!'

'Why the uniform?' Alex was intrigued as to why she was wearing a leather theatrical chauffeur's jacket, with two rows of buttons up the front.

'I understand this is a sex party ...'

'Perhaps more of a sexy party!' Susan interrupted.

'Even better!' Tamsin put her arms round the two other women again. 'I may have been a complete arsehole, with drugs and boose and everything, but I do appreciate fun! And that's what you've always been about! So when Dad told me about it, I just had to come!'

'But why the uniform?' Susan asked this time.

'It's Dad's day, so he had to be in style! And looked after! I don't drink now, so I could drive his Jaguar! I quite like that! And I really thought that I should dress the part.'

'It suits you well!' Susan spoke. 'It's just like in that Joe Orton play. Very Mr. Sloane!'

'They said that where I got it! Except that I'm very different underneath!' She started to undo the buttons of the jacket, gradually revealing a miniscule leather bra, which emphasised her cleavage dramatically. 'He didn't wear one of these!'

'Knowing Joe Orton's work he might well have done!' Alistair broke in! 'I don't know what to think! Susan! How do you feel about what Alex is wearing? That's rather brief too!'

'I like Alex's bikini!' Susan hugged Alex. 'After all, I bought it for her! Show us the skirt, Tamsin!'

Tamsin removed the jacket, to show a skirt that sat exceedingly low on her hips. 'Do you like it, Dad?' She turned around to show the strings of a thong and an expansive tattoo across her lower back.

'It would be fine on someone else!' Alistair paused. 'But whatever you do, you will always be my little girl!'

***

'Do you think my father minds?' Tamsin and Alex were lazily swimming up and down the pool.

'Mine would have hated the tattoo! He'd have probably cut me out of his will for it!' She giggled as she thought about his unfashionable views on ladies and what they should and should not wear. 'That's the only thing you can't undo! Tattoos wouldn't be for me anyway!'

'But I'm twenty-eight! Surely, I can do what I want!'

'Yes!' Alex stopped and stood kicking her legs at the side of the pool. 'His face was a picture when you took the skirt off. What are those stockings made of? They're very black and shiny!'

'Rubber! I thought they would be ideal for tonight! especially as rubber ones stay up very well by themselves!' She joined Alex at the side. 'Leather underwear and rubber stockings! It's mild to what I've worn sometimes to go clubbing!'

'Oh! Do you know I've only worn stockings once before tonight? And that was on my wedding day!' Alex was giggling at herself this time. 'I'm so innocent!'

'I suspect you won't be after tonight!'

***

'Can I join you?' Alistair was standing at the end of the pool. When the girls nodded he dived in and swam several lengths of energetic crawl. As he pulled to the side, the two bassets entered the pool area, through the gate that he had left open. They sat behind him! 'Hi! Girls! Do you swim?'

'Susan will be annoyed if they do! There'll be water everywhere!' She quickly climbed out of the pool. 'Here! Sharon! Tracy!' They looked at her with complete indifference, until she walked behind them and shooed them back through the gate and up the stairs to the patio. She dived back into the pool and swam to Tamsin and her father.

'This is a real pool! With two beautiful bikini-clad mermaids!' Alistair spoke. 'You can dive and swim about for hours! I suspect, if I got into trouble, you two lovelies would rescue me!'

Alex and Tamsin twisted and swam up the pool and came back to him! 'Is that your bikini?' He knew that he'd brought their bags into the house. 'It's very nice. If a bit on the small side! But I like the stripes!'

'No!' She was giggling! 'Susan thinks of everything. There's a whole rack of these identical bikinis and matching trunks neatly laid out on hangers in different sizes! I don't think they'd fit a large lady or man with a sizable paunch though!'

'I sometimes thinks she only likes the beautiful to share the pool. Or at least those who aren't too fat or don't smoke!' He pointed a finger at his daughter. 'Susan does keep it so nice and beautifully warm too!'

'Hang on!' Tamsin was trying to stop, but was failing badly. 'But have you seen the changing room? And the jacuzzi?' Tamsin pointed towards the stairs that led down under the patio. 'It's like a Sheikh's harem or an upmarket Parisien brothel down there. All marble, murals, columns, glass, stainless steel and panelled wood! I've never seen anything like it in a house before!'

'My dear daughter! What would you know of up-market Parisien brothels?' Alistair was defending. 'So that's where you disappeared to? And why shouldn't Susan indulge herself? And her friends for that matter? She can afford it! Your mother and I were here about five years ago when she redecorated it and installed all the new decor and plumbing. That was another party to be remembered!'

'Poor Mum!' Tamsin cuddled up to her father. 'I hope she enjoyed it! Mum wasn't very well then, was she?'

'Mum did and she wasn't!' Alistair remembered the night about six months before she finally gave in to the cancer. 'We were all sitting there in that jacuzzi! Six of us I think! Drinking pink champagne, telling tales, flirting, kissing and generally degenerating and being more than a little bit rude! It was a good night! No! A very good night! Mary enjoyed it! And enjoyed it a lot!'

'Was she very ill then?' Tamsin asked the question. 'I feel so guilty in that I wasn't around enough!'

'Don't feel like that!' Alistair was handing down a judgement. 'You and your brothers have your own lives. She was my life! Mary was getting very weak then! She was also painfully thin and she'd lost most of her breasts! But she insisted on dressing for playing in the water in one of Susan's bikinis!' He smiled! 'Susan made her up to kill! It was as if she was spitting at approaching death showing an amazing resolve! I seem to remember a doctor telling us that she should have died a year previously!'

Tamsin gipped her father's hand. 'But she hadn't!'

'No! Those last eighteen months were very precious!'

Copyright 2004 by Ewart Higgins