Doctor George's stories 04 - Nina in Aversion Therapy Story index at the bottom
By Doctor George
by Doctor George » Fri Jun 28, 2013 6:02 am
Aversion Therapy: Part 1
“Mum, I want to be tied up!”
“You’ve asked me already and I’ve said no.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Suzanna finished the sleeve she was ironing, tipped the iron up onto its heel and turned to face Nina, her 12-year-old daughter. She sighed and counted off reasons on her fingers. “It’s probably scarier than you think being tied up; it’s likely to hurt you; I haven’t got any rope and it’s not a very nice thing for a mum to do to a little girl.”
“But it will be fun and I’m bored,” Nina declared.
“There’s lots of things you can do. It’s a nice sunny day, so you could play in the garden or you could go for a walk or you could go for a ride on your bike or go and see your friends,” Suzanna suggested.
“Mm,” Nina grunted and wandered out of the kitchen.
Suzanna opened the back door to let the summer air in and resumed her ironing. A few minutes later, Nina returned with something tucked under her arm.
“Have a look at this, mum.”
Suzanna put the iron down again and squatted beside her daughter who had opened the scrapbook she had been carrying on the floor. The theme of Nina’s scrapbook was immediately obvious: page after page was filled with cuttings from comics. Some were originals and others were scans or photocopies. All showed the characters tied up or otherwise restrained in various ways. It was obvious that Nina had been assiduously collecting these for some time.
“See? It happens to lots of people and they don’t get hurt,” Nina explained. “It looks fun and I want to see what it’s like.”
Suzanna sighed again. ”Yes, but these are all characters in stories, not real people,” she pointed out. “Besides, I’ve already told you, I don’t have any rope.”
Nina scrambled to her feet and opened one of the kitchen drawers. She extracted a huge ball of hairy sisal string and plonked it down beside her mother.
Suzanna picked up the string and unwound a short length and said, “Hold your hand out, Nina.”
Nina stretched out one hand and Suzanne rubbed the string vigorously back and forth across the back of her daughter’s wrist.
“Ow!”
“See? If you were tied up with that stuff, it would really hurt.”
“Not if it wasn’t against my skin,” Nina countered.
An idea dawned in Suzanna’s mind. “All right, I’ll tie you up.”
Nina clapped her hands in excitement.
“But there are conditions. I’ll tie you up properly so you can’t move and I’ll leave you like that until tea-time, even if you decide you don’t like it and even if you ask me to untie you.”
“That’s OK, I know it’ll be fun,” Nina interjected.
Suzanna continued, “And the string would hurt your skin, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts like that, so you’ll need to wear more clothes.” She reeled off a list of garments.
Nina picked up her scrapbook and scampered out of the room. Suzanna switched off the iron, picked up the ball of string and gathered some other items together.
When Nina returned, she was wearing a thick pink sweater and black leggings tucked into grey socks and a pair of pink legwarmers crumpled around her ankles.
“Did you remember the tights?” her mother asked.
Nina pulled down the waistband of her leggings to reveal the purple wool tights underneath.
“And your yellow top?”
Nina lifted up the hem of her sweater to reveal a yellow thermal top. “I’m a bit hot wearing all this.”
“Well, it’s a warm summer day,” Suzanna conceded, “but it’s better being too hot than getting grazes from the string. Now hold your hands out.”
Nina raised her hands and watched as her mother pulled a pair of woollen mittens over them and worked them up over the sleeves of her sweater.
“All ready to start tying you up now,” Suzanna announced brightly. “Turn round and put your hands behind your back.”
Suzanna arranged Nina’s hands so her wrists were crossed then wrapped a dozen or so turns of string around them, cut it to length and knotted it. The binding had gone horizontally around her daughter’s wrists; so she reinforced it with another binding going vertically.
After a pause for thought, Suzanna unwound a length of string from the ball and tied the end of it around Nina’s left arm, just above her elbow. She picked up the ball and wound string around her daughter’s arms and body, paying it out as she went. When she finally knotted it off, Nina’s upper body was cocooned in a web of string from waist to shoulders.
“How did you learn to tie people up?” Nina asked.
“I learned how to tie knots when I was in the Girl Guides,” Suzanna replied, sidestepping the question. “Now, I’ll do your legs next.”
Suzanna helped Nina sit down on the floor with her legs stretched out in front of her. She rearranged Nina’s socks so they were pulled well up over her leggings and her legwarmers so that they covered her knees. She wrapped string around her daughter’s ankles and then cinched the binding with a few turns between them before knotting it. She repeated the process twice more, below and above Nina’s knees.
“Well, young lady, I do believe that’s you all tied up,” Suzanna announced. “All I need to do now is to gag you so I can have a bit of peace and quiet.”
Suzanna hoisted herself to her feet and left the room, saying, “You just wait there,” and laughing at her own joke.
Nina was puzzled at the heap of items than her mother dumped beside her when she returned.
Suzanna picked up a long sock and tied a knot in the middle. “This is your gag,” she explained. “The knot goes in your mouth.”
Nina dutifully opened her mouth top allow her mother to seat the knot inside and then tie the ends of the sock behind her head.
“This is to keep it in place.” Suzanna picked up a short yellow scarf, wrapped it across Nina’s mouth and nose and knotted it behind her head.
“And these are just to make it a bit scarier.” Suzanna tore two small pieces off a hank of cotton wool and carefully inserted them in Nina’s ears.
“If you can see you might be able to work out a way of escaping, so I’ll do this to make sure you can’t.” Suzanna used a blue knitted headband with a snowflake pattern, which Nina usually wore to keep her ears warm in winter, to cover her daughter’s eyes.
“One of the pictures in your scrapbook had someone getting rid of a blindfold by rubbing it on the carpet,” Suzanna said. “I’m going to finish off by making sure you can’t do that.” She picked up the last of the things she had fetched, a purple ski mask that Nina wore for cycling to school on particularly cold winter days. She worked it down over her daughter’s head so that only the snowflakes on the headband showed through the eyeholes and small patch of yellow scarf at the mouth vent.
“There, that’s you all done,” Suzanna announced with a touch of pride at a job well done.
There was an incomprehensible mumble from Nina which might have been, “Thank you.”
“Now, I’ll park you in the lounge so you’re not cluttering up the kitchen and leave you to it.”
Suzanna carried her bound and gagged daughter to the lounge, laid her on the floor and put a cushion under her head before returning to her chores. She looked in from time to time. Nina was in a slightly different position every time but showed no sign of escaping her bonds.
About 6 pm, Suzanna returned to the lounge again, taking a pair of kitchen scissors with her. She began by removing her daughter’s balaclava then her blindfold, gag and earplugs. It was immediately obvious as she did so that Nina was a hot, sweaty mess, just as she had hoped.
“Mum, that was brilliant!” Nina exclaimed as soon as she could speak again. “It was so much fun being tied up and not able to move and it really didn’t hurt a bit. I got a bit too hot though, so next time we do this we’ll have to find something else to tie me up with that won’t hurt my skin.”
“Next time?” said Suzanna weakly, realising that her cunningly planned aversion therapy had failed completely.
__________________________________________________________________________ Doctor George's stories
The fake robbery idea is going to be several instalments away. In the mean time, here's the second round of Suzanna attempting to put Nina off TUGs...
* * *
It was the end of August and a new school term would be starting soon. Nina had grown a bit over the summer and her mother had set her the task of finding out what clothes still fit her. She was methodically trying on every pair of school tights she owned. Most were opaque black nylon but a few were ribbed wool for winter. It was clear that her legs were a good deal longer than they had been back in the spring when she had last worn tights. There only seemed to be three pairs that still fitted, presumably a later purchases than the rest. She rolled them up and put them back in the drawer.
Nina’s gymnastics leotard was in the same drawer as her tights. She decided that she had better check that for size too. She removed her skirt and t-shirt and wriggled herself into the stretchy black lycra garment. She inspected herself in the long mirror on her wardrobe door. The scoop neckline didn’t look any lower than it should. The sleeves came to just below her elbows, but that was how the leotard was designed to be. She concluded that all her growth had been from the waist down.
The outgrown tights were in an untidy heap on the bedroom floor. Nina hesitated before gathering them up as an idea occurred to her. She selected one of the opaque black nylon pairs and snipped it into two separate legs with a pair of scissors. Sitting on the floor, she wrapped one of the legs around her ankles and tied an overhand knot. It turned out to be absurdly easy to kick her legs free, so she tried again, pulling the binding much tighter and tied a double knot. That felt far more satisfactory, so she repeated the process with the second leg just above her knees. After kicking away at her bindings for a few minutes, Nina untied herself. The knots had tightened down to small black nylon knobs, so this was quite tricky to do. She examined her legs and was delighted to see that there were no marks on the skin. This looked to be something she could be tied up with that wouldn’t need the layers of padding her mother had insisted on before.
Still dressed in her gym leotard, Nina excitedly ran downstairs with the outgrown tights bundled up in her arms. Her mother Suzanna was sitting at the dining room table working on her laptop. Suzanna said nothing as Nina entered the room but briefly raised one hand. Nina understood this signal as meaning that her mother was following a train of thought and needed a few minutes to reach a sensible point to pause. Nina waited politely in silence.
“Are those the ones that are too small?” Suzanna asked, turning to face her daughter.
“There are only three pairs that fit,” Nina confirmed, “but my top half doesn’t seem to have grown much at all.”
“We can go shopping for more tights tomorrow,” Suzanna suggested. “That lot can go in the bin.”
“I’ve got a better idea – you could tie me up with them.”
“I thought you might have got that out of your system after last time.”
“It was really fun being tied up,” Nina insisted. “It was just a bit hot wearing all those clothes.”
“That was to protect your skin from being roughed up by the string,” Suzanna reminded her.
“That’s why it would be so good with tights,” Nina explained. “I tied my legs together with them and they don’t leave marks.”
Nina pointed downwards and Suzanna looked down at her daughter’s legs. Sure enough, there was no sign that she had been tied up.
“Maybe not, but being tied up with them still might not be as much fun as you think.”
“Being tied up was brilliant fun,” Nina insisted. “Can I be tied up again?”
Suzanna hesitated. Her previous attempt at putting Nina off tie-up games had been an utter failure. She wondered if the idea of giving her daughter more than she bargained for might nevertheless be a sound policy.
“OK,” Suzanna said, coming to a decision. ”I’ll tie you up, but I’ll decide how and how long for and there will be no chickening out if you don’t like it.”
“I’m sure I will like it,” Nina replied confidently.
“So, what have we got here?” Suzanna asked, looking at the bundle of tights in her daughter’s arms.
“Six pairs of black nylon opaques, some 40 denier, some 60 and I’ve already cut one pair into two separate legs. There are also two pairs of woolly ones for winter.”
“We might need more than that,” Suzanna said. “I’ve got some old pairs we can use, and they’re a lot bigger than yours. You wait here while I get them.”
Suzanna left the room. While she was gone, Nina took the opportunity for a quick trip to the bathroom, not knowing when she would next have the chance.
When Nina returned, she saw that her mother had dumped a pile of her own tights on the floor. They all seemed to be opaques, some in black and others in various colours.
“Show me your fingernails,” Suzanna said.
Nina held her hands out.
Suzanna inspected the nails critically. “You might be able to claw your way through nylons with those, but I know a solution. Put your hands behind your back, Nina.”
Nina crossed her wrist behind her back.
“Not like that – stretch your hands out behind your back.”
Nina adjusted the position of her arms and Suzanna pulled a pair of Nina’s outgrown black woollen tights over her hands and worked the legs up her arms. When she was done, Nina’s hands were in the feet of the tights, the waistband elastic ran across the back of her neck, down in front of each shoulder and across her shoulder blades.
“OK, you can relax now,” Suzanna said.
Nina let her arms drop by her sides and watched as her mother sorted through the pile of tights, finally selecting a pair of her own footless exercise tights in a cheerful shade of canary yellow. Suzanna snipped a hole in the gusset with scissors then turned to her daughter again.
“Hands up in the air, please.”
Nina raised her arms and her mother worked the modified tights down over them so they were upside down on Nina’s upper body with her head through the hole.
“Now hug yourself.”
Nina wrapped her arms around herself, the legs of the tights covering her hands and the excess length dangling loose. Suzanna stood behind her daughter and took hold of the ends of the tights’ legs. She pulled them round behind Nina’s back, stretching them considerably, and knotted them together. Going in front of Nina again, she reached between her daughter’s legs and brought the ends of the tights forward and up, wrapping them around Nina’s forearms and knotting them securely.
“We’re not finished yet,” Suzanna said, “You ought to sit on the floor for the next bit.”
Suzanna supported Nina’s weight and helped her sit down. “Feet together,” she instructed.
Nina watched as her mother picked up one of the legs of the pair of tights that Nina had already chopped in two. She bunched the fabric up and pulled it over both Nina’s feet then worked it up her daughter’s legs. With both legs inside one leg of what was already a pair of tights that were too short for her, it reached to just below Nina’s knees, clamping her feet firmly together.
“Now this is how you make a good binding out of a pair of tights,” Suzanna said, picking up another of Nina’s outgrown nylon opaques. She deftly turned one leg inside out and pushed it down inside the other leg so that they formed a double-thickness stocking.
“That’s clever – I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Nina commented.
Suzanna wrapped the binding several; times around her daughter’s ankles and knotted the ends securely. “That’s to make sure your feet stay together while I do the next bit,” she explained.
Suzanna selected another pair of tights, a pair of her own navy-blue opaques. She bunched up one leg, pulled it over Nina’s feet, smoothed it up over her daughter’s legs and worked it under her bottom so that the top of the leg ended up at Nina’s waist level, with the other leg loose on her lap. Suzanna used three more pairs of Nina’s outgrown tights to make up more of the bindings she had demonstrated. She used them on Nina’s ankles, going slightly above the previous one, then both above and below the knees.
“I feel as though my legs have been glued together,” Nina commented happily.
Suzanna made another of the one-leg-inside-the-other bindings using a pair of her own black tights and wrapped it twice around Nina’s arms and body before knotting it at the front.
“Now lean forward and let’s see if there’s enough stretch in the other leg of my pair to go over your head,” Suzanne said.
Nina leaned forward and her mother slid the leg of the tights that covered her legs down below her bottom so that she could stretch the waistband up over Nina’s head and down her back. She snipped the toe of the tights and worked the fabric into position so that the waistband was behind Nina’s back, one leg was taut over her legs as before and the other leg covered her upper body and her head emerged from the hole where the toe had been cut away.
Suzanna folded another binding from the last of Nina’s outgrown pairs of nylon opaques and tied it around her daughter’s waist to stop the package from slipping.
“Now, how’s that?”
“I think I know what an Egyptian mummy must feel like,” Nina replied, exercising the small amount of freedom she had to squirm.
“All you need is a gag and a blindfold and that’s you finished,” Suzanna said.
There was still one leg left over of the pair of tights that Nina had snipped in two. Suzanna pulled it down over Nina’s head. She snipped the remaining pair of woollen tights into two separate legs.
“Open your mouth,” Suzanna instructed. Nina did so and her mother wrapped the tights leg twice around her head passing between her teeth both times and forcing the nylon covering her face back into her mouth. Suzanna finished off with a secure knot at the back of her daughter’s head. She used the second leg of the woollen tights as a blindfold wrapped twice across Nina’s eyes and knotted behind her head.
“Almost done,” Suzanna said as she picked up pair of her own black winter tights. She snipped one leg off and discarded the rest then worked the leg down over Nina’s head as far as it would go. There was still a long tail hanging off it, so she knotted it at the top of her daughter’s head and snipped off the excess.
“Finished,” Suzanna announced.
There was a surprisingly long mumbled sentence from Nina, now lying completely cocooned on the floor. Suzanna asked her to repeat it. At the third attempt, with Nina delivering her words a syllable at a time, Suzanna got it. “You want a photo for your scrapbook?”
Nina nodded enthusiastically.
Suzanna wondered if that would just be encouraging her daughter too much. Nevertheless, she retrieved Nina’s camera from her bedroom and took several photographs.
Two hours later, Suzanna decided that Nina had probably had ample time to become bored with her situation and set about unwrapping her head. She was disheartened at the sight of Nina’s bright excited eyes as she peeled the inner layer of stocking off her daughter’s head.
“Thanks, Mum,” Nina said. “That was brilliant. You’ve thought up the best tie-ups both times we’ve done this” Nina managed to tip her head up enough to plant a kiss on her mother’s cheek.
Suzanna felt oddly proud at her daughter’s approval, even though her attempt to put Nina off being tied up seemed to have had the exact opposite result.
Friday at school was the best day of the week. Not only was it the day before the weekend, but at Nina’s school (and indeed at all the local schools) it was a half day. Classes finished at 12:30 and with a bit of luck, she could be on her bicycle and home by 1 o’clock.
Nina parked her bicycle in the garage and let herself in through the kitchen door. She greeted Suzanna, her mother with a quick “Hi, mum!” and went through to the coat cupboard in the hallway. She took her helmet off and hung it on a hook. Although it was early autumn, it wasn’t at all cold, so Nina was just wearing a yellow reflective vest over her school uniform of purple sweatshirt over a white polo shirt with a grey skirt and black tights.
“Much homework?” Suzanna asked as she and Nina shared a snack lunch of cheese on toast.
“All done!” Nina replied with a grin. “The geography teacher was off today, so we were allowed to do homework instead,” she explained. “There was only maths and it didn’t take the whole period.”
“So, the weekend begins here?” Suzanna replied, reflecting her daughter’s evident glee.
“Yes!” Nina replied with feeling. After a pause, she asked, “Are you busy this afternoon?”
“I have work to do, but no deadlines or anything. Why, is there something you’d like me to do?”
“Could you tie me up, please? It’s been a few weeks since you did the thing with the tights.”
Suzanna had been anticipating another demand like this. She was unhappy with Nina’s enthusiasm for being tied up. She had hoped that by acceding to her daughter’s requests, but giving her far more than she bargained for, that she might put the girl off this obsession, a sort of aversion therapy. The twice she had tied this approach so far had been dismal failures and seemed only to have stoked the fires of Nina’s passion further.
“I don’t see why not,” Suzanna replied, much to Nina’s surprise. “Change out of your school uniform and I’ll be ready for you when you come back downstairs.”
“Do I need lots of padding to protect my skin?” Nina asked a little apprehensively, remembering the first time her mother had tied her up.
“No, just dress for comfort, but it might be a good idea to have your arms covered.”
Nina went upstairs. She went to the bathroom first, used the toilet and brushed her teeth. In her bedroom, Nina took off her school sweatshirt and skirt. She dithered over the polo shirt but decided to swap it for a t-shirt in case she popped a button or something. She kept her opaque black nylon tights on but added a pair of denim cut-off shorts. Her mother had suggested that Nina cover her arms. Most of Nina’s sweaters were a bit too warm for indoor wear on a mild autumn afternoon. She had a lightweight cardigan, but that was meant for school wear and she didn’t want to risk damaging it. After a little thought, inspiration struck: she owned a crossover-style cardigan that she sometimes wore with her gym leotard. It wasn’t too warm and it would cover her arms. Better still, the sleeves came right down over the palms of her hands with thumbholes, so her wrists would be protected from the rope or whatever her mother planned to use. (Nina hoped it would be rope, so it would be a proper tie-up like in books or films.) She pulled the black cardigan on, wrapped it around herself, threaded the tie belt through its hole and knotted the ends in a neat bow.
When Nina returned downstairs, her mother had several scarves of various lengths laid out on the floor. She seemed to be comparing their lengths.
“Have I seen those before?” Nina asked.
“No, I picked them up at a church jumble sale. I thought they’d be ideal to have handy if you asked to be tied up again. They’re soft so they won’t leave any marks on your skin and they didn’t cost much, so it doesn’t matter if they get stretched or damaged.”
Nina’s secret hope for being tied up with rope was dashed, but she would still be tied up and with the number of scarves on hand, it looked as though it would be quite an interesting experience.
“Turn round with your back to me,” she instructed. Nina did so. “How close together can you get your elbows behind your back?”
“I can make them touch,” Nina replied, demonstrating, “but it’s a bit of a strain, so I don’t want them tied like that.”
“How about this?” Suzanna asked, holding her daughter’s arms so the elbows ere about eight or ten centimetres apart.
“Yes, that’s fine,” Nina confirmed.
“OK, you can relax for a moment,” Suzanna said.
“Nina let her arms drop and turned to face her mother.
Suzanna picked up the longest scarf, a monster getting on for three metres long, knitted in purple wool. She deftly tied a knot in its centre, so that two loops were formed like a shoelace bow.
“How did you do that?” Nina demanded. “I didn’t think you could tie a bow in the middle of something without handling the ends.”
“It’s called a tomfool knot,” Suzanna explained. “It’s not actually a real knot at all. Look – if I pull the ends of the scarf, the loops in the bow get smaller and, if I pull a little harder, it disappears completely.” She demonstrated then re-tied the knot.
“But if something was to obstruct the loops, then they wouldn’t disappear?”
“Something like your arms, for instance? No, you’d end up with something like a pair of woolly handcuffs,” Suzanna said. “Now turn around again and we’ll do just that.”
Suzanna slid the two loops of the knot up her daughter’s arms until they were above her elbows. She pulled gently on the scarf, steadily drawing Nina’s elbows together. She stopped with the elbows separated about as much as they had been a few minutes earlier. She tied the ends of the scarf together in a half hitch then tied another to lock the first, ending up with a fat knot between Nina’s arms and two long ends of scarf dangling free. She tossed the ends over Nina’s shoulders, crossed them on her chest and took them back under her arms. She fastened them around the earlier knot, adding to the bulky lump of wool between Nina’s upper arms.
“Does that feel all right?” Suzanna asked.
“It’s fine – it doesn’t hurt and I don’t feel any strain on my shoulders.”
“OK, that’s you tied up then – run along and enjoy it while I get on with some work.”
“But all you’ve done is tied my arms,” Nina protested.
“Yes, so you’re tied up. Your arms are behind your back and I guarantee you can’t get out of that. In my book, that’s tied up.”
“But you haven’t tied my feet or gagged me or anything.”
“I said I’d tie you up and I have. That’s all you’re getting today, so just be content with it. Now scoot – I need to work.”
Feeling somewhat cheated, Nina left the dining room and went up to her bedroom. It seemed improbable that one scarf would leave her completely helpless, so she explored the limits of her freedom. Twenty minutes or so later, she conceded defeat. She had inspected her predicament carefully, looking over her shoulder at her reflection in the long mirror on her wardrobe door. It was clear that she couldn’t reach the knot with either hand. The scarf was tied around her body in such a way that she couldn’t wriggle out of it and it wouldn’t stretch enough to permit her to force either elbow through the loops of the knot.
Nina went back downstairs. Her mother now had her laptop open on the dining room table and was hard at work. The household protocol was that Nina should wait until Suzanna had reached a point in her work where she could pause, but Nina was in no mood for niceties. “It’s no fun being tied up like this,” she blurted out.
Suzanna carried on typing for a few moments, resisting the urge to say “Yesssss!” and punch the air. “The rules are that I decide how you get tied and for how long,” she reminded Nina, “and this is how I decided to do it this time. If you don’t like it, that’s too bad.”
“It’s not bloody fair,” Nina said, losing her temper. “I’m not properly tied up at all. You said you would and you didn’t.” She stamped her foot for effect.
“I set the rules and I played by them,” Suzanna stated bluntly. “So if you’ve quite finished, I need to get on with this.”
“No I bloody haven’t finished. It’s not fair.”
“Watch your tongue, young lady. I can still gag you, you know.”
“I wish you would – it would be better than this,” Nina ranted.
“As you wish,” Suzanna said, getting up from her chair. She left the room and returned with a crumpled cotton handkerchief and a short tartan scarf that Nina recognised as one of her mother’s jumble sale purchases.
“It’s clean, just not ironed,” Suzanna said, holding the handkerchief in front of Nina’s mouth.
Nina opened her mouth and allowed her mother to push the handkerchief inside. Suzanna folded the scarf in two along its length to make a narrower band of fabric then worked the middle of it between her daughter’s teeth and knotted the ends tightly behind her head.
“Now leave me to get on with my work,” Suzanna said, resuming her seat.
Nina headed into the lounge. She hadn’t meant to lose her temper in quite such an unseemly fashion, but truly hadn’t realised how frustrated she was until her outburst was well underway. Provocation, albeit unintended had earned her a gag. She needed to find a way both to apologise to her mother for her tantrum and somehow still to provoke her further. After a few minutes’ thought, she had a plan. The question was whether it was achievable.
Nina sat down on an armchair. She forced her arms as far to the right as she could and reached as far out and up as she could with her right hand. She rested her forearm on the arm of the chair to force it to go further and at the same time ducked her head as far down and to the right as she could. With a great deal of effort, she could get her thumb under her gag and grip it with her forefinger. The gag was tight but she was able to drag it down, working her jaw from side to side to persuade it to ride down over her teeth, past her lower lip (painfully) and eventually down over her chin. She spat out the handkerchief and paused for breath.
After waiting a few minutes to centre her thoughts and to consider how to approach the coming encounter, Nina picked up the discarded handkerchief and returned to the dining room. Suzanna looked up briefly than did a double take as she realised that Nina was no longer gagged.
“Mum, I’m really sorry about losing my temper,” Nina began. I didn’t realise how frustrated I was until I opened my mouth and then I just sort of lost it. Sorry.”
“And you managed to get your gag off just so you could tell me that?”
“Well, I really am sorry and I felt I had to say it, but I just had to get the gag off when I worked out that I probably could. I’m not sure why.”
“Like needing to struggle when you’re tied up?” Suzanna asked. “The urge to test the limits of your bonds?”
That was a bit philosophical for Nina but she understood enough of it to nod agreement.
“So what do you want me to do?” Suzanna asked, with a hint of impatience.
“Can you put my gag back and maybe tie my hands together so I can’t get it out again?”
“Very well,” Suzanna said, standing up.
Suzanna substituted a clean handkerchief for the soggy one that Nina offered her and carefully pushed it into her daughter’s mouth. She slackened off the knot in the gag, repositioned the scarf between Nina’s teeth and tightened the knot again.
“Not too tight?”
“Nnh,” Nina replied, shaking her head.
Suzanna took another scarf from the jumble sale collection, a knitted one in blue and grey stripes, about three feet long. She positioned Nina’s hands palm-to-palm then wrapped it around her wrists twice and used the remaining length of the scarf to form a neat cinch pulling them tight.
“OK, off you go and let me get on with my work.”
Nina returned to the lounge. As she had worked on removing her gag last time, she had thought of a more efficient way of doing it. She pushed the door shut with her shoulder and knelt down beside it. The door handle was a smooth aluminium lever. By ducking her head down and pressing her cheek against the door handle, she was able to work the end of it behind her gag. Thad done, all she had to do was to turn her head and pull back to drag the scarf out from between her teeth and down below her jaw. It took her less than a minute.
Nina kept the handkerchief in her mouth for the moment as there was no easy way for her retrieve it after spitting it out with her wrists tied. She turned her back on the door and fumbled for the door handle. She pushed it down by bending her knees slightly then walked forward to pull the door open. She made her way to the small utility room next to the kitchen and spat the handkerchief into the sink before returning to the dining room where her mother was working.
“Sorry, mum, I got my gag off again,” Nina offered apologetically. “I thought of a way to get it off and I just had to do it.”
“How did you manage that?” Suzanna asked, intrigued.
Nina explained and her mother nodded as she pictured the process in her mind’s eye.
“Most ingenious, but I’m not going to get my work done if you’re back here every five minutes. Shall I just untie you and we’ll call it a day?”
“No, I like being tied up,” Nina replied, “and I’d like to stay tied for a bit longer.”
“Well, I’ll just have to tie you a bit more, I suppose,” Suzanna said with a sigh. “Let’s go up to your room.”
Nina worked hard to suppress the triumphant grin that threatened to spread across her face as she led the way upstairs, her mother following with a the rest of the charity shop scarves in her hand.
Suzanna took a clean handkerchief from the chest of drawers in Nina’s room shook it out to unfold it, balled it up and inserted it in her daughter’s mouth. She untied the scarf that was loose around Nina’s neck, repositioned it between her teeth and re-tied it with a firm double knot.
“How’s that?”
“Umnh,” Nina mumbled, nodding her head.
Suzanna put her hands on Nina’s shoulders and steered her to the foot of the bed the applied a firm push. There was a muffled squeak as Nina fell face-down on her bed. Suzanna took hold of her daughter’s feet, which were sticking out beyond the end of the bed and pushed, sliding her bodily across the top of the duvet until her face was on the pillow.
“Feet up, please,” Suzanna instructed.
Nina obediently bent her knees so that her feet were in the air. Suzanna rearranged Nina’s legs so that her knees were apart and her ankles crossed at approximately right angles. She used a grey knitted scarf to lash them tightly together, wrapping it both north-south and east-west and knotted the binding securely.
“OK like that?” Suzanna asked.
Nina turned her head to one side and nodded.
Suzanna took up a long red scarf. She wrapped it around Nina’s ankle binding, forming a clove hitch which covered the knot and pulled it tight. She applied a little pressure to Nina’s feet to bring them slightly closer to her bottom. She pulled the ends of the scarf towards the purple scarf that had been the first element in tying Nina up and fastened them around the fat knot between her upper arms.
There was one scarf left, a fairly short pink one, so Suzanna tied it across Nina’s eyes as a blindfold.
“Right, young lady, that should stop you disturbing my work,” Suzanna said firmly but not unkindly and, with that, left Nina’s bedroom.
It was close to 6 pm when Suzanna returned to her daughter’s bedroom. Nina was still exactly where she has left her. The duvet was a little rumpled, suggesting that some struggling had been going on, but the bonds all looked to be intact and secure The blindfold and gag were also both still in place.
Nina turned her head as she heard her mother enter the room.
Suzanna sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned over to undo the knots securing Nina’s gag and blindfold.
Nina swallowed hard a couple of times then said, “Thanks, mum,” a little hoarsely. She watched in silence as her mother methodically released her from the scarves in the reverse of the order in which she had been tied: hog-tie first then ankles and wrists with upper arms last.
As soon as she could, Nina sat up and gave her mother a hug. “That was brilliant,” she said. “Being tied up in scarves is fun – it doesn’t matter how hard you struggle, you can’t hurt yourself. My feet got a bit cold when I stopped struggling though.” Nina leaned forward and started rubbing her feet vigorously.
“Not tingling?” Suzanna asked in concern.
“Nothing like that, just cold from being up in the air and not moving. My fingers were a bit cold too.” Nina stood up, took a pair of thick socks from her chest of drawers and pulled them on over her nylon tights. “I’ll wear socks and gloves next time we do this.” She gave her mother another hug.
Suzanna was only surprised by the degree of enthusiasm her daughter expressed and a little embarrassed by the effusive thanks given that she was still hoping to put Nina off the idea of being tied up. Maybe she should have stood firm and not tied Nina up beyond the initial scarf that very clearly had displeased her.
“Less is more” Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), minimalist architect.
“Less is a bore” Robert Venturi (1925-), postmodernist architect.
“Too hot, too hot, tooooooooo hot!” Nina declared as she let herself into the kitchen at 1 o’clock one Friday afternoon. Her mother Suzanna was chopping salad vegetables into a bowl as Nina bustled through the kitchen and into the hallway.
Nina paused at the hall cupboard to hang up her cycle helmet and her yellow cycling jacket which was tied around her middle by its sleeves. She took her bulging schoolbag upstairs and dumped it on her bed. She kicked off her trainers and attended to her number one priority, getting her purple woollen tights off.
It had been a cold grey September morning when she left for school. She had felt appropriately dressed with woolly tights under her short grey skirt and with her purple school sweatshirt over the white polo shirt she still wore. She had added her windproof yellow cycling jacket, black gloves and a pair of black joggers for the six-mile ride to school and at the last minute wrapped a scarf around her neck. Somehow the cold morning had transformed into a glorious sunny day by noon and the temperature climbed to over 20 celsius. Along with her classmates, Nina had shed the excess layers which were now stuffed into her schoolbag.
Nina decided that a lukewarm shower would be the most pleasant way to spend the next few minutes, so she headed for the bathroom. On her return, she put her sweatshirt and skirt back in the wardrobe and dumped the rest of her clothes in the laundry basket. She pondered what to wear for a moment, then went to the lowest drawer of the tall chest of drawers. After scrabbling at the back for a while she pulled out a bright red tankini with white polka dots, which she put on. Happy with her choice, Nina padded downstairs barefoot.
“I’m surprised that still fits you,” Suzanna commented as her daughter entered the kitchen.
“I’ve grown a bit,” Nina conceded, “but I don’t seem to be any wider. My legs are longer and there’s probably more tummy showing than before, but it still fits where it needs to.” She indicated her chest and hips. “Besides, this is probably a one-day hot spell and it’s probably my last chance to wear it.”
“Possibly not even a whole day,” Suzanna said as she picked up the completed bowl of salad. “The weather forecast says we might be back to cold and grey again by this evening, so how about we eat outside while we can?”
“Good plan,” Nina agreed, gathering up cutlery and following her into the garden.
“Not-quite-Niçoise salad,” Suzanna said as she handed the salad servers to her daughter.
“Not quite?”
“Sardines instead of anchovies because neither of us like them, no olives because you don’t like those, tinned new potatoes and chopped bell peppers added, and I used some balsamic dressing because I couldn’t be bothered to make vinaigrette.”
“Probably,” her mother agreed. “Much homework this weekend?”
“Lots of reading for English, but I’d prefer to leave it until Saturday or Sunday if that’s OK.”
“As long as it’s done before Monday, that’s fine,” Suzanna agreed. “And I notice that cunningly leaves you with a free afternoon in the sunshine.”
“So it does,” Nina replied with mock surprise. “I was thinking that a good book in the garden might be nice.”
Ten minutes later, Nina had put on a pair of sunglasses and was lying on her back on a tartan travel blanket that she had spread out on the lawn. Her book was lying face down on the grass.
“Book not good?” her mother asked, looking out from the kitchen door.
“The book’s fine, but I’m not really in the mood,” Nina replied. “I did think of asking you to tie me up, but it’s much too hot to be bundled up to protect my skin from string or to be tied up in tights or scarves.”
Suzanna glanced up at the sky then at her watch. “We could try using tape,” she suggested.
“Like sellotape? Surely that’s not strong enough?”
“I was thinking of duct tape. Some of the pictures in your scrapbook have people tied up with that.”
“That sounds fun,” Nina said, then after a moment’s consideration, added, “Won’t it be a bit sore on bare skin?”
“I think we’d just have to be careful pulling it off afterwards. If there are any sticky bits left behind, they should come off with a bit of surgical spirit.”
Nina pondered for a moment then said, “OK.”
Suzanna went into the garage and emerged with a partially-used roll of silver duct tape and a new one still in its cellophane wrapper. She put them down on the blanket next to Nina’s feet and went into the house, returning with a pair of kitchen scissors.
Nina sat up and crossed her wrists behind her back.
“You’ll be more comfortable with your hands in front so you’re not lying on them,” her mother suggested.
Nina crossed her wrists on her lap. “Like this?”
“Actually, it might be easier if I do your top half while you’re standing up.”
Nina scrambled to her feet and crossed her wrists again.
“Hold them out a bit so I can get to them, but keep your elbows tucked in against your sides,” Suzanna instructed.
Nina complied and watched as her mother pressed the end of the tape down onto the back of one of her wrists then carefully wrapped it around both wrists, pulling it tight as she did so. “Not too tight?” she asked.
“No, I think that’s OK.”
Suzanna wrapped the tape around another three times and then snipped through it and smoothed the end down.
“That’s a lot of tape,” Nina commented.
“Well it’s not all that strong in direct tension,” her mother pointed out. “You can snap a single layer with your hands quite easily. I’ve occasionally had things come adrift with two layers. I thought three might actually be enough, but did four just to be sure.”
“Just to be sure your daughter doesn’t get loose?”
Suzanna just smiled in reply then said, “Tuck your elbows in as tight against your sides as you can.”
Nina squeezed her arms in as tightly as she could and her mother stuck the end of the tape to her left arm just above the elbow before running the tape across her back to the other elbow then across her chest to complete the wrap. She added another three layers before snipping the tape and pressing the end in place.
“Now press your forearms against your tummy.”
Suzanna went behind Nina and stuck the end of the tape to the middle of her back just above waist level. She wound the tape around her daughter much as she had done before, the first wrap applied very carefully and pulled tight with three more to reinforce it.
“I’ll do your legs with you lying down,” Suzanna said, “otherwise you’ll probably fall over.”
Nina leaned back against her mother’s hands, allowing them to take her weight and guide her down to resume her former position lying on the blanket.
“Press your ankles as tightly together as you can,” Suzanna said, pulling the end of the tape away from the roll. After the first few centimetres, it was obvious that she was now ripping the innermost layer of tape from the cardboard core so she put it down and unwrapped the new roll. She scrabbled away at the tape with her fingernails before finding the end.
“Keep your ankles together,” Suzanna reminded Nina, who had let her feet relax while her mother was struggling with the tape.
Nina pressed her ankles together again and Suzanna applied the four layers of tape she had used elsewhere to produce a snug binding.
Lifting Nina’s feet onto her lap, Suzanna repeated the process a little below her daughter’s knees and half way up her thighs.
“Do I get gagged with that stuff too?” Nina asked.
“Only if I’m absolutely sure you’re not going to get a blocked-up nose.”
Nina took several deep breaths through her nose to prove that it was clear. “That stuff is quite tight around my chest when I breathe in like that,” she commented.
“Not too tight?”
“No, just surprising.”
Suzanna snipped off a length of tape. “Any last words before I stick this on?”
“No, just go for it,” Nina encouraged.
“Right, purse your lips, so the tape doesn’t stick to the pink bit.” Nina did as instructed and her mother carefully placed a strip of tape so it went horizontally across her mouth, ending just in front of her ears at each side. She smoothed it into place then cut off another piece of tape which she positioned so that it ran across Nina’s moth diagonally going from high up on her cheekbone at one side to her jaw-line at the other. She finished off with a second piece on the opposite diagonal.
“That’s you all done,” Suzanna announced. “Enjoy.” She picked up her scissors, the roll of tape, its discarded wrapper and the cardboard core from the first roll and went back into the house with them, leaving Nina to her thoughts.
A couple of hours later, Suzanna looked up from her computer, glanced at her watch and then at the view outside. The sky which had been so blue at lunchtime was now slate grey and the temperature had plummeted, just as the weather forecast had predicted. She had been watching the weather deteriorate for about half an hour and was trying the judge the balance between an uncomfortable experience for Nina and actual hypothermia. She decided that the time had come and stood up from her work. She picked up the scissors on her way through the kitchen and went out into the garden.
Suzanna had expected to see Nina shivering uncomfortably on the blanket, but that was not quite the situation she found. Nina was still lying on the blanket, but had contrived to roll herself up in it, her toes just visible at one end and the top of her head at the other.
“Ready to be cut loose?” Suzanna asked.
One end of the bundle moved, indicating that Nina was nodding her assent.
Suzanna rolled Nina over bodily to extricate her from the blanket, as if she was unrolling a carpet. A few strategic snips were all that was needed to free Nina enough for her to move.
“Come on, I’ll get the rest of the tape off you in the kitchen where it’s warmer,” Suzanna said, leading the way.
Nina followed, still gagged and with bits of tape stuck to various parts of her body.
In the comparative warmth of the kitchen, Suzanna carefully and gently peeled the tape off her daughter’s face.
“Ow,” Nina complained as the last bit came away.
Removing the fragments of tape from Nina’s limbs and body was a joint effort. Suzanna then methodically removed the residual stickiness from her daughter’s skin using surgical spirit and cotton wool. As she worked, they discussed the experience.
“It felt very odd being able to move just a bit with that tape around me,” Nina commented, “but it was good fun. I thought about trying to escape when it got cold out there, but I couldn’t think of anything I could reach to rip the tape that wouldn’t cut me too.”
“It was clever of you to think of wrapping yourself up like that,” Suzanna pointed out, not letting on that it had actually foiled her plan to spoil Nina’s enjoyment of being tied up.
“Umm... actually it took me a stupidly long time to realise that I was lying on nice a warm blanket,” Nina confessed. “It was quite hard to get myself into it all taped up like that, but it’s fun seeing what you can still do when you’re tied up.”
“I’m glad it was fun,” Suzanna said, slightly deflated.”
“It was,” Nina confirmed, giving her mother a brief kiss, “but my feet are freezing and I want another shower to warm up.” She scampered upstairs, leaving her mother to clear up the discarded pieces of tape.
The odd reminders of summer that had appeared from time to time in the first couple of weeks of the school term were nothing but a distant memory as Nina battled her way home from school in a torrential downpour one Friday. School finished at 12:30 on Fridays, so it was a little after 1pm that Nina parked her bicycle in the garage and let herself in through the kitchen door.
Nina closed the door and tried not to move too far into the kitchen as the rainwater dripped off her.
“You poor little drowned rat!” Nina’s mother Suzanna exclaimed. She turned down the gas under the pan she was stirring and came across to help her daughter.
Nina unslung her schoolbag from her back and handed it to her mother. She attempted to force her feet out of her trainers, but they were too tightly laced so she waited while Suzanna undid them then stepped out onto the floor, revealing the soaking wet feet of the purple woollen tights she wore underneath. Nina fumbled with the fastening of the strap on her helmet before realising that she couldn’t do it with her black cycling gloves on. She tugged unsuccessfully at her left glove then let her mother peel it off and drop it on the tiled floor with a damp smack. Suzanna removed the other glove and Nina reached up and successfully unfastened her helmet. With that off, she was able to unwind the soaking wet purple and white striped scarf that had been pulled up over her nose as some protection from the rain.
Nina dumped the scarf on the floor and said, “I think I can manage on my own from here, thanks.”
While Nina took off her yellow cycling jacket and black waterproof trousers, Suzanna stuffed her trainers with newspaper and put them in the bottom of the airing cupboard. The soaking wet scarf and gloves were hung on the kitchen radiator to dry. Suzanna put the jacket and trousers on separate hangers and put them in the airing cupboard to dry off.
“Schoolbag too?” Suzanna asked.
“Yes please,” Nina replied. “There’s a plastic carrier bag inside in case the zip leaks, so the books and everything should be OK.”
While her mother dealt with the schoolbag, unloading it and putting it in the airing cupboard with the other things, Nina peeled her tights off and took them into the utility room to add to the clothes awaiting washing.
“I’ve made a pot of soup,” Suzanna said as Nina headed out of the kitchen.
“Sounds good, but I need a long hot shower first.”
Upstairs, Nina shed her school uniform and spent a good ten minutes enjoying the hot water. She towelled her hair partly dry then chose some warm clothes to wear before using a hair dryer.
When Nina returned downstairs, she was wearing a thick hip-length cream sweater with a high collar and jeans tucked into warm slipper socks. For good measure, she had a pair of grey fingerless gloves on her hands.
“Warm enough now?” Suzanna asked, serving two bowls of vegetable broth.
“Just about,” Nina replied with a smile. “I’ve got another sweater and a pair of woolly tights on under this.”
Nina sat down at the dining table and spread butter on one of the hot crusty rolls her mother had provided to go with the soup. As they ate, Suzanna and her daughter compared notes on the day so far.
“Much homework?” Suzanna asked.
“Not much left,” Nina replied. “PE was cancelled today as the gym roof had sprung a leak, so we had a free period and I got most of it done then. I just have some maths to do. Would it be OK if I left it till the weekend?”
“When you ask that, you usually follow it up by asking to be tied up,” Suzanna pointed out.
“Actually, I was just feeling lazy after coming in from all that weather and I hadn’t thought of asking,” Nina said.
“Well, the offer is there if you feel like it,” her mother replied.
This was rather uncharacteristic of her mother, who usually resisted requests to be tied up. “Nina thought for a moment, then said, “That suggests that you’ve though of a new way of tying me up and you want to try it out.”
Suzanna had the good grace to grin sheepishly. “Well, I was thinking about the way you wrapped yourself up in the travel blanket when it got cold when you were taped up in the garden. I thought you might like to find out how it feels being properly tied up in a blanket.”
“If this is one of your super-complicated tie-ups, I expect it’s something more than a tartan blanket and a bit of string.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of Egyptian mummy,” Suzanna said.
“Sounds interesting.”
A few minutes later, Suzanna and Nina were in Suzanna’s bedroom. Suzanna was standing on a chair rummaging on a high shelf of her wardrobe. She passed a polythene-wrapped bundle down to her daughter.
“I didn’t even know we owned any blankets,” Nina commented. “I thought we’d always used duvets.”
“We have,” Suzanna confirmed, “but when you were born, my mother was quite insistent that I needed a proper baby blanket and she bought this.”
Suzanna ripped off the tape that was securing the polythene wrapping and drew out a cream-coloured cellular wool blanket.
“It’s gorgeous,” Nina commented, running her hand across the blanket, “but how big a baby was Grandma expecting you to have? It looks huge.”
Suzanna unfolded the blanket and held it so it hung vertically. “Well, it’s square and the sides look to be about the same length as your height.”
“So, one-and-a-half metres,” Nina said. “That’s still a bit big for a baby’s cot.”
“Much too big and impractical to keep wool clean. With all respect to you, my darling daughter, babies are fairly messy creatures.”
“So you never actually used it?”
“Only once,” Suzanna replied. “Do you remember seeing the photo of you on your christening day?”
“So this is the thing I’m bundled up in?”
“Yes and Grandma saw that her present was being put to good use.”
“And it’s been back on the shelf since then?”
Suzanna nodded.
“It’s appropriate that it should be used for bundling me up again,” Nina said, with a laugh, “but I think my feet will stick out this time.”
“Not if we use it diagonally,” Suzanna said. “And it will pull round you more snugly on the bias than square.”
Nina did a quick mental calculation. “1.5 metres on the side should be about 2.1 on the diagonal.”
“Or about 7 feet in old money,” Suzanna added, having converted the 1.5 metres to 5 feet to do her own calculation.
Suzanna laid the blanket out on her bed diagonally. It was a double bed, about 1.4 metres or 4 feet 6 wide, so the corners hung over the edges at the sides and foot of the bed.
Nina tugged her slipper socks off, showing the feet of the grey woollen tights she wore under her jeans and climbed onto the bed. She adjusted her position so that she was lying in the centre of the blanket and felt the distance from the top of her head to the corner of the blanket.
“Looks like it’s going to work,” Suzanna commented, experimentally wrappimg one of the side corners across her daughter’s body.
“I don’t want to wreck the blanket on my belt buckle,” Nina said, slithering herself off the bed, “So I’ll go and swap my jeans for something else.”
“I’ll bring the blanket and the other bits we’ll need,” Suzanna called after her ash she left the room.
When Suzanna arrived in her daughter’s bedroom, the blanket and an assortment of scarves and other items bundled in her arms, she saw that Nina had exchanged her jeans for a pair of pale grey ribbed leggings with grey marl hiking socks pulled up over them.
“A proper Egyptian mummy probably ought to be wrapped in white or cream, but this was the closest I could manage,” Nina explained, pointing at her legs.
“I had the same thought,” her mother replied, dumping a tangle of white, cream and grey items on the floor and spreading the blanket out on Nina’s bed.
“Knowing you, you’ve probably already worked out exactly how you’re going to truss me up,” Nina said with a smile.
“Well, yes...” Suzanna replied, momentarily wrong-footed by her daughter’s directness.
“So how do we do this?” Nina asked, climbing onto her bed and lying down.
“Well, I think I need to tie you up a bit before I wrap you up,” Suzanna replied, regaining her composure, “otherwise you’ll wriggle out of the blanket in no time. Take your sweater off for a moment.”
Nina stood up and pulled her heavy cream sweater over her head, depositing it on the bed. “And this one?” she asked, indicating the thinner round-necked grey sweater she wore underneath.
“No need,” her mother replied. “Now put these on and pull them up over the sleeves of your sweater.” Suzanna handed her daughter a pair of long pale grey woollen gloves that came up almost to her elbows. Those will keep the sleeves of your sweater from sliding up when I pull these up your arms.” Suzanna held up a pair of cream coloured rib-knit leggings.
“Is this going to be like the tights straitjacket when you tied me up in lots of tights?”
“Same idea,” Suzanna confirmed. “Now put your arms slightly behind you.”
Nina stretched her arms out while her mother worked the leggings up her arms. Eventually, the elastic waistband ran across the back of Nina’s neck, down in front of her shoulders and across her back. The ends of the leggings hung down well below her hands.
“Take pictures for my scrapbook, please,” Nina requested. “My camera’s over there on my desk.”
Suzanna smiled indulgently at her daughter and picked up the camera to record Nina’s current predicament.
“Thank you. Can you take another picture at each stage?”
“Will do,” Suzanna replied, bunching up the loose ends of the leggings. “Now hang onto these while I get your sweater back on,” she instructed, helping Nina to grasp the bundles in her hands. She pulled Nina’s heavy cream sweater over her head and guided her hands into the sleeves.
“You can let go now,” Suzanna said as she tugged the body and sleeves of Nina’s sweater into position.
“Like this next?” Nina asked, crossing her arms across her body.
“That’s right,” Suzanna said, taking the ends of the leggings and pulling them around behind Nina’s back, where she knotted them together.
“You know, I think I could get out of this by working my arms up over my head,” Nina said.
“That’s why I’m going to use this,” her mother replied, picking up a grey woollen scarf. She looped it over the ends of the leggings where they were knotted in the middle of Nina’s back and guided the ends of the scarf between her daughter’s legs and up in front. She wrapped the ends of the scarf around Nina’s forearms and tied a knot.
“Neat,” Nina said appreciatively. “Photo, please.”
Suzanna took another photograph then said, “Sit down on the bed and lift your feet for the next bit.”
Nina did as she was told and watched as her mother picked up a cream coloured legwarmer. “I didn’t know you had legwarmers, Mum,” she said.
“I can’t remember when I last wore them,” Suzanna said. “They’ve been at the back of my sock drawer for years – they’re older than you.”
“And they’re huge!”
“That’s the length they were in the late eighties – long enough to go from your ankles almost all the way up to your bottom and loose enough to wear on top of jeans. Keep your feet together, please.”
Nina clamped her feet together and watched as her mother worked a single legwarmer over both her legs. When Suzanna had finished, it went from Nina’s feet, with just her toes showing, right up over her knees.
Nina tried some experimental wriggling, but to little effect. “You might as well have glued my legs together,” she commented.
“Let’s get you onto the blanket next,” Suzanna said, lifting Nina’s feet and sliding her bodily into the middle of her bed.
“Photo before you start wrapping,” Nina prompted.
Suzanna took another picture then folded the bottom corner of the blanket up so that it covered Nina’s feet. Standing alongside the bed, she picked up the nearest side corner of the blanket and pulled it across her daughter’s body. She rolled Nina slightly towards her so that she could tuck the corner of the blanket under her body then allowed Nina to roll back as she had been before. She reached across Nina to pick up the corner of the blanket at the far side and pulled it towards herself , making sure it was tight across her daughter’s body. Keeping the blanket taut, she pushed the corner under Nina’s wrapped body, sliding it between the other layers of blanket and the duvet cover.
“Now, don’t move,” Suzanna instructed, picking up a long white scarf from the floor. She pushed the scarf under Nina’s body, taking care not to disturb the wrapping, then over the top of her daughter and underneath again, finally knotting it off so that it formed a band around Nina’s waist. She repeated the process with another long white scarf from the jumble sale collection, going slightly above Nina’s elbows this time, so that when she finished, Nina’s straitjacketed arms were trapped between two tight bands of woollen scarf keeping the wrappings in place.
“I can’t move my arms at all. I can barely even wiggle my fingers,” Nina commented, smiling.
Suzanna picked up a bundle of socks from the floor, some white, some grey and some cream.
“Those are insanely long socks,” Nina said.
“Also lurking at the back of my sock drawer and hardly ever worn,” Suzanna said.
“Why didn’t you wear them?”
“Well, if it’s cold enough to want to wear a pair of socks that come half way up your thighs, it’s probably cold enough you want to wear tights under a skirt to keep your bottom warm too.”
“Good point,” Nina agreed and watched as her mother wrapped one of the socks twice around her ankles, bunching the blanket around them.
Suzanna adjusted the blanket to keep the wrapping neat then tied another sock just below Nina’s knees followed by one above her knees and one at mid thigh.
“That’s most of the tying done,” Suzanna said. “I’ll tie another scarf around your neck, but you won’t see that.”
“Because my head will be all wrapped up too?”
“Exactly. Anything to say while you can still speak?”
“Just to say thank you for all the hard work,” Nina said. “This is brilliant fun so far.”
And completely pointless as an exercise in putting her off this tying-up thing, Suzanna said to herself. “Tell me if it’s still fun when I unwrap you,” she said aloud.
“I’m sure it will be,” Nina replied confidently.
“You’re going to get a gag and a blindfold,” Suzanna said. “Would you like earplugs too?”
“That will make it even more intense,” Nina replied. “Yes, please.”
Suzanna unwrapped a pair of silicone gel earplugs and carefully pressed them into her daughter’s ears. “How’s that?” she asked.
Nina shook her head.
“HOW’S THAT?” Suzanna repeated loudly.
“OK,” Nina replied, also much too loud and nodded her head.
Suzanna took another photograph then picked up the partner of the legwarmer she had used on Nina’s legs. She pulled it down over Nina’s head and tucked it into the collar of her sweater then gathered up the loose end and tied it into a knot above the top of Nina’s head.
Suzanna picked up a white over-knee sock and slid it under Nina’s head so it was centred. She brought one end around to Nina’s face. She felt for her daughter’s mouth through the fabric of the legwarmer. Nina realised what she was doing and helpfully opened her mouth. Suzanna guided the sock between Nina’s teeth, pushing a fold of the legwarmer into her mouth as she did so. She pulled the other end of the sock across Nina’s face so that it covered her mouth rather than going into it. Finally she knotted the ends behind Nina’s head.
Another sock was used in much the same way to form a blindfold layer covering Nina’s eyes on top of the legwarmer.
Suzanna took another picture then pulled the top corner of the blanket down over Nina’s face and tucked it into her wrappings. After tidying the blanket a little, Suzanna wrapped a white scarf twice around Nina’s neck, taking care not to pull it too tight. She knotted the ends and stood back to admire the cocooned form of her daughter. She took several more photographs and planted a kiss where she judged Nina’s forehead to be. It was acknowledged with a muffled grunt.
Suzanna paused before leaving Nina’s bedroom and felt the radiator. It was stone cold as usual. Nina always seemed to prefer wearing more clothes than heating her room, except in the depths of winter. Suzanna thought about opening a window, but judged that it was cool enough in the room that Nina was unlikely to overheat excessively, even bundled up as she was, but would probably get uncomfortably hot.
Something over two and a half hours later, Suzanna returned to her daughter’s bedroom. Nina was still as she had been left: a vaguely human-shaped cocoon lying on top of the bed. She was, however, no longer exactly in the middle of the bed and was now at a slight angle. The duvet underneath her had been quite smooth but was now a rumpled mess, suggesting that Nina had engaged in some quite energetic struggling, apparently to no avail.
Pausing to take another photograph with Nina’s camera, Suzanna untied the scarf around her daughter’s neck and unfolded the corner of the blanket covering her head. She removed the socks forming Nina’s gag and blindfold then pulled the legwarmer off her head. She gently extracted the earplugs from Nina’s ears and smiled down at her daughter.
“How long was that?” Nina asked, a slight frown wrinkling her brow.
Suzanna glanced at Nina’s alarm clock. “Almost two and three quarter hours.”
“Wow,” Nina said. “I really hadn’t a clue. I think I’ve been asleep some of the time, but it felt like hours and hours and it felt like about ten minutes at the same time.”
“It’s called sensory deprivation. You can seriously mess with someone’s head if you do it to them for long enough.”
“I can believe it,” Nina said. “Truly weird.”
“How was it apart from weird?” Suzanna asked.
“OK, I think. I’m not sure I’d choose to have this done to me too often, but it was interesting. Thanks for doing me up like this.”
“Not too hot?”
“Not quite. It’s very cosy, but there’s some sort of microclimate going on in here so I’m not boiling.”
“Being asleep some of the time will have kept your body temperature down too,” Suzanna pointed out, trying to hide her disappointment not to have made it more uncomfortable for Nina.
“I did get a bit hot early on when I was struggling,” Nina said.
“I can see that you must have had a go at getting loose from the state of the duvet,” Suzanna said with a smile. “Why did you do that, when you wanted to be tied up?”
“Ummm...,” Nina said, wrinkling her brow again. “I think it because I really need to know that I’m properly tied up and really can’t get loose. The only way to be sure is if I try to escape and find I can’t.”
“That’s why you kept escaping that time I tied you up with scarves?”
“Yes, I really had to just because I could.”
“But you can’t get out of this?” Suzanna asked.
“Not a chance,” Nina replied with a grin. “I don’t think I could, even without the blanket.”
“Do you want to try?”
“No thanks, I think I’ve had enough for today. Could you just untie me, please?”
It briefly occurred to Suzanna that this was a golden opportunity to give her daughter a less then than enjoyable tying-up experience, but decided that it would cross the line into unnecessary cruelty. Instead, she set to work to free Nina.
Fridays were always good school days for Nina because they finished at 12:30. This particular Friday near the end of October was especially good because it heralded the beginning of the week-long half-term holiday. Usually, Nina went straight home on a Friday, but on this occasion, she undertook a brief shopping expedition to the local hardware shop and to a charity shop.
Arriving home about 1:15, she parked her bicycle in the garage and let herself in through the kitchen door.
Suzanna, Nina’s mother, was standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter top and enjoying a cup of coffee. “I’m going to do an omelette for lunch,” she said, gesturing towards a glass bowl containing beaten eggs, “but I won’t start cooking it until you’re ready.”
“Sorry I’m a bit late, Mum,” Nina replied. “I stopped off for a bit of shopping on the way home.” She raised the white plastic bag she was carrying in addition to her schoolbag to illustrate her point.
“Hardware shop?” Suzanna commented, reading the logo on the bag. “What did you buy?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.
“I’ll tell you over lunch,” her daughter said as she left the room.
Nina paused in the hallway to take off her helmet and her yellow cycling jacket which she hung up in the coat cupboard. She unwound her purple and white striped school scarf and hung it on the same hook. She checked that her mittens were still in the jacket pockets then closed the cupboard.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Nina put her schoolbag down next to the desk she used for homework and dumped the plastic carrier bag on her bed. She quickly changed out of her school uniform, and dressed herself in a warm pink sweater and a pair of jeans. She pulled a pair of thick grey slipper socks and tucked the ankles of her jeans into them.
Once she was dressed, Nina picked up the carrier bag and looked at her purchases. Three 30 metre rolls of 6 millimetre braided white cotton sash cord from the hardware shop accounted for most of the weight. A brown paper bag inside the plastic bag contained two cotton bandanas from the section of the charity shop that sold new fairtrade items. They were both in the traditional Paisley pattern for bandanas, one with a red back ground and one blue. She put everything back in the bag and took it downstairs with her.
“What’s in the omelette?” Nina asked as she returned to the kitchen.
“Cheese, parsley, tarragon, chives and some paprika to give it a bit of a kick, and there are some fried potatoes keeping warm in the oven.”
“Sounds good,” Nina said, watching as her mother poured the omelette mix into a frying pan. She took the glass bowl from Suzanna and rinsed it under the tap while the omelette was cooking.
Over the meal, Nina and her mother discussed the events of the day so far.
“No homework, I take it?” Suzanna asked.
“Only some reading for English,” Nina replied. “I’m going to leave it until next weekend, otherwise I’ll have forgotten it all by the time I’m back at school.”
The conversation drifted on until Suzanna’s curiosity got the better of her. “So, what’s in the bag?” she asked.
“Well...” Nina began, “you know my scrapbook?”
“The one with all those pictures out of comics with people tied up? Yes, I certainly know that one.”
“Most of the really good pictures in my collection have people tied up with proper rope and I wondered if you might be OK with tying me up like that.”
“So you went to the hardware shop and bought some rope?”
Nina nodded and lifted the plastic bag onto her lap. She took the three bundles of rope out and laid them on the table together with the paper bag containing the bandanas.
Suzanna read the printed label on one of the bundles of rope. “30 metres – that’s about 100 feet! And you bought three of them!”
“I wasn’t rally sure how much you need to tie somebody up, so I though I ought to make sure there was enough,” Nina said defensively.
“Well, you could certainly tie somebody up very, very thoroughly with this lot.”
Nina wondered how her mother knew that with such confidence, but didn’t pursue the matter.
Suzanna picked up the brown paper bag and opened it. She drew out the two folded squares of printed cotton. “Bandanas? Going for the tied-up cowgirl look?”
“Not especially, but lots of the gags in comics look like that, so I thought they’d be fun to try.”
“They’re certainly practical – good strong cotton and easily washable,” Suzanna said, unfolding one of them.
“A good size too,” Nina pointed out.
“So you want to be tied up in 300 feet of rope and gagged with a bandana?”
“Well...” Nina hesitated. “Actually, the rope seems a bit scary now I’ve bought it. I’ve only been tied up with fairly soft things so far. I thought maybe just wrists and ankles first time, just so I can get the feel of it?”
“It would feel much more snug if I did your knees and arms too,” Suzanna offered.
“Can I see how wrists and ankles feels first, please, Mum?”
A few minutes later, the lunch things had been cleared away and Nina had put on a pair of fingerless woollen gloves to protect her wrists. Suzanna cut two lengths of rope off one of the bundles.
“Ready?” Suzanna asked.
“Think so,” Nina replied, turning her back towards her mother and crossing her wrists behind her.
Suzanna rearranged her daughter’s hands so they were palm-to-palm. She wound three turns of rope around Nina’s wrists, leaving it fairly loose, then twisted the ends of the rope around each other so she could form a series of cinching coils to draw it tight. She finished off with a knot, keeping it out of reach of Nina’s fingers.
“That’s not very good,” Suzanna commented, mainly to herself. She loosened the knot and retied it. “How does that feel?” she asked after tugging the new knot tight.
“Very secure,” Nina replied, “but it doesn’t feel as tight as I was worried it would.”
“You’ve mostly been tied with fairly stretchy stuff. Rope doesn’t have any give to it so it has to be loose enough not to stop your blood circulation,” Suzanna explained. “You should be able to turn your wrists inside the coils of rope but not pull your hands out.”
Nina experimented for a moment. “That’s exactly how it is,” she said with a grin.
“Right, sit down and I’ll do your ankles next,” her mother instructed.
Nina perched on the edge of a chair and watched as her mother applied much the same binding to her ankles. “OK?” she asked.
Nina explored the small amount of wiggle room she had then agreed, “Yes, that’s fine.”
“So, knees and arms as well to finish it off?” Suzanna asked.
Nina hesitated for a moment then said, “Oh, all right, why not?”
Suzanna cut off another length of rope and repeated the cinched binding just below her daughter’s knees. “Tuck your elbows in against your sides,” she said.
Nina squeezed her arms tight against her body while Suzanna paid out a long length of rope. She wrapped it around her daughter’s upper arms and chest and secured it with a knot at the front. Suzanna frowned at the knot and retied it twice before she was satisfied with it. “Now, how does that feel?” she asked.
Suzanna picked up one of the bandanas and attempted to fold it into a suitable shape for a gag. “I don’t think we can use these today,” she said.
“Why not?”
“It would be like trying to gag you with a piece of cardboard – there’s some sort of dressing in the fabric, making it far too stiff,” Suzanna explained. “You know how new jeans sometimes feel stiff and uncomfortable until they’ve been through the wash once? It’s like that.”
“Can you use something else then?” Nina asked.
“I’ve got a big red spotty hanky that would do the job,” Suzanna said, leaving the room.
While her mother was away, Nina squirmed contentedly in her bonds. She hadn’t been sure what being tied up with rope would be like, but she was very pleased with the result so far.
Suzanna returned a few minutes later with two handkerchiefs: a white one which she balled up and carefully pushed into her daughter’s mouth, and the promised large red one with white spots which she folded into a band and tied between Nina’s teeth.
“Right, that’s you all done up,” Suzanna announced, scooping her daughter up in her arms. “I’ll just park you in the lounge while I get on with my work.”
Suzanna carried Nina into the lounge and laid her on the sofa before returning to the dining room to open her laptop and start work.
Nina lay on the sofa, simply enjoying her predicament for several minutes before the inevitable urge to test the limits of her freedom kicked in. She engaged in some fairly unfocussed struggling until she realised that something was happening. The band of rope around her arms and chest had definitely moved. She experimented with pushing one elbow out as far as it would go and raising the corresponding shoulder. There was a definite movement in the ropes. She repeated the manoeuvre with the opposite arm and achieved another small movement. Repeating the same action with alternate arms slowly but surely worked the band of rope towards her shoulders. Eventually the highest turn of rope slid up over one shoulder and the whole binding became much looser. It took only a few minutes to reach the point where it was hanging loosely around her neck. With her arms now much more mobile, Nina was able to push herself into a sitting position and by leaning forwards to jettison the coil of rope onto the floor.
Buoyed by her success, Nina wondered if it would be possible to free herself completely. The obvious next move would be to see if she could free her ankles. She shuffled forwards on the edge of the sofa and dropped forwards onto her knees. She felt behind her, but she was sitting on her feet and couldn’t reach her ankle binding. She allowed herself to overbalance sideways, breaking her fall with one elbow. Flexing her spine back as far as she could and bending her knees, Nina reached out with her fingertips for the rope securing her ankles. She was eventually able to hook a fingertip through the rope around one ankle. She pulled hard, bending her back even further until she could find the cinch and the knot between her ankles with the fingers of her other hand. A little probing showed that the knot was not particularly tight and it didn’t take much to reduce the reef knot to a simple overhand which in turn yielded to more tugging. As she worked away at the knot, she reflected that she would have been completely stuck if she had been wearing mittens instead of her fingerless gloves and even gloves with fingers might have made it impossible to untie the knot. Once the knot was gone, a combination of tugging at the cinching coils and kicking her feet soon loosened the binding to the point that she was able to kick it off completely.
She knew it was unlikely to work, but Nina tried to see if it was possible to reach her knee binding in the same way. Several vigorous attempts convinced her of the impracticality of that approach. She knew that, at least in comics, a standard approach to escaping from ropes was to get her hands under her bottom and in front of her body. She now had enough freedom of movement to sit herself upright on the floor fairly easily. From that position, she tried to force her wrist binding under her bottom, but without success. After trying several other approaches, Nina discovered that the most promising position was kneeling but leaning forward so that her bottom was in the air and her forehead on the carpet supporting some of her weight. It was slow progress, but Nina was able to force the rope steadily downwards until at last it slid smoothly over the curve of her bottom. She tipped herself over onto her side again for a breather.
After a few minutes rest, Nina explored the rope binding her knees with her fingertips. The knot proved surprisingly easy to reach, despite being between her legs. Fiddling it loose was more difficult as she could only bring the fingers of one hand to the job and it was quite cramped working behind her thighs and between her knees, but eventually, she had it undone. A combination of tugging and kicking once again loosened the binding to the point where it could be kicked off.
With her legs completely free, it was quite easy for Nina to work her bound wrists under first one and then the other foot, so that her hands were, at last, in front of her. She sat upright on the floor and reached up to her gag, intending to pull it down. It proved to be tied too tightly for that approach, so she grasped the fabric where it crossed one cheek and pulled hard, sliding the whole gag around her head until she could reach the knot with her fingers. The knot in the handkerchief proved far harder to untie than the knots in the rope had been, but eventually it yielded to determined picking with her fingernails.
Nina tossed the gag and the handkerchief that had been stuffed into her mouth down on the carpet beside her and brought her wrist binding up to her mouth to work on the knot with her teeth. Once the knot was undone, it took only a little tugging at the rope with her teeth and some vigorous twisting of her wrists to free herself completely.
After a pause to stretch the kinks out of her spine, Nina picked up the soggy handkerchief that had been in her mouth and wrapped it in the slightly drier one that had formed her cleave gag. She gathered up the discarded ropes and returned to the dining room.
“I escaped,” Nina announced to her mother, rather stating the obvious.
Suzanna looked up from her work in obvious astonishment. “I’m really impressed,” she said. “It’s not much more than half an hour since I tied you up. However did you manage it?”
Nina related a move-by-move description of her escape. Suzanna listened with obvious interest and asked occasional pertinent questions. Nina had previously wondered how her mother had acquired her skill in tying; now she was further surprised by her apparent informed appreciation of escapology.
“The knots were amazingly easy to untie,” Nina said in conclusion, “but it was only because I could get my fingers to them that I escaped.”
“I had trouble getting good knots in the first place,” Suzanna pointed out. “The rope does seem surprisingly stiff – I wonder if it’s been treated with something to make it less liable to kink.”
“Like the new jeans again?”
“Exactly like that. Let’s see what happens if we wash a piece of that rope,” Suzanna said, standing up.
Nina selected the shortest of the cut pieces of rope, which had been her wrist binding and accompanied her mother to the kitchen.
Suzanna soaked the rope in the kitchen sink and flexed it under water a few times. “It’s getting more supple already,” she commented. “I think we just need to put the rope and the bandanas through the washing machine.”
“Can you do that with rope?” Nina asked.
“Well it’s just cotton, so a 60 centigrade wash cycle should be fine. If we put it in the mesh bag that I use for washing tights, the rope won’t be able to anything nasty to the machine. The machine’s empty right now, so we can do it straight away,” Suzanna said. “The wash cycle takes about an hour, but I expect rope takes a while to dry. We can leave it in the airing cupboard overnight.”
“Do you think that will really make it knot better?” Nina asked.
“We’ll find that out if I tie you up again tomorrow,” Suzanna replied with a grin. “And I think I’ll put socks over your hands to keep your fingers under control.”
From September to April, Nina’s Saturday mornings were generally spent on the hockey field. Despite being in the school half-term holiday, this Saturday was no exception as the opposing team’s school had a slightly different holiday.
It was about noon when Nina let herself in through the kitchen door, having just parked her bicycle in the garage. She had her hockey bag containing her stick and boots slung diagonally across her back. In addition to her purple school fleece and tracksuit trousers she wore a pair of black cycling gloves and a black knitted ski mask under her cycle helmet.
“Is it really that cold outside?” Suzanna asked.
“There was frost on the Astroturf when we started,” Nina replied, “and I was in goal today, so I put this on under the goalie’s mask to stay warm standing in the goalmouth.”
“And maybe to look a bit more intimidating to the opposition?”
A broad grin was visible through the mouth vent of Nina’s mask. “Could be,” she admitted as she unfastened her bike helmet.
“How did you do, anyway?” her mother asked.
“Four-nil.”
“Ace goalkeeping – maybe the mask helped a bit too.”
By now, Nina had shed her gloves, cycle helmet and mask. She unzipped her fleece and hung it on a chair, revealing the purple and white quartered hockey shirt underneath. She took off her trainers so that she could remove her tracksuit trousers. As it was a cold day, she was wearing black woollen tights under her hockey skirt and striped socks. She pulled the socks off so she could slide the protective shin pads off her legs.
“Are you planning to do a complete striptease in the kitchen?” Suzanna asked.
“I just thought I’d dump everything in the utility room now, instead of bringing it all back downstairs,” Nina explained.
“Well go and do it there,” Suzanna instructed. “You can wrap yourself in a clean towel and take it up with you.”
“Sorry, Mum,” Nina apologised, heading out of the kitchen.
Before reaching the door, Nina stopped. Her eye was caught by a neat coil of white rope on a chair with two laundered and ironed bandanas on top. “Is that my rope?” she asked. “How did it turn out?”
“Feel for yourself.”
“Soft and bendy,” Nina declared delightedly. “And it feels dry already.”
“It might not be bone dry in the very middle, but I can’t wring any water out of it,” Suzanna said.
“Thank you!” Nina exclaimed, rushing over to hug her mother.”
“After your shower, if you don’t mind, young lady,” Suzanna said holding her daughter at arm’s length.
“Oops, sorry,” Nina said. “Back soon.”
Nina went to the utility room to finish undressing then upstairs. A moment later, the bathroom shower could be heard running.
When Nina came back downstairs, she had a second attempt at hugging her mother. Suzanna was much more receptive, now her daughter was clean and sweet-smelling, and responded with a pick-up-and–twirl hug.
“I thought maybe we could try out the ropes again after lunch,” Nina suggested, “so I’ve got some extra layers on for comfort.”
Suzanna looked her daughter up and down. Nina was wearing her heavy pink sweater with the collar of a thinner black sweater visible at her throat and black fingerless gloves covering her hands. She was wearing a pair of tight-fitting stretch denim jeans with thick socks pulled up over them. “I’ve got leggings on under these too,” Nina pointed out.
“Very prudent,” Suzanna observed. “It also means you’ll be nice and warm for going out to lunch.”
“Out?”
“As it’s half-term, I thought we might treat ourselves by going out to the Timewarp Café.”
“Yes, please,” Nina replied enthusiastically. “I’ll get a jacket.”
Two minutes later, Nina was ready to go out. She had added a pair of Doc Martens boots and a bright yellow duffel-coat-style jacket to her clothing. A bright blue woollen hat was pulled down over her hair, a matching scarf wound around her neck and not-quite-matching blue mittens on her hands. Suzanna had put a sheepskin jacket over the sweater and jeans she had been wearing and wore an orange hooded scarf covering her hair and wrapped around her neck. She had a pair of Ugg boots on her feet with the tops of warm socks just visible inside them.
The Timewarp Café was something of a local institution. The name across the shopfront actually read High Street Milk Bar, the name it had been given when it first opened in about 1960 when milk bars were the latest thing. It was initially successful but declined with the advent of fast food chains, becoming steadily shabbier and more neglected until it closed in the late 1990s. The present owner chose not to change the underlying character of the café when she reopened it but to restore its former glory. The fittings and furnishings were mostly new but perfectly captured the early 1960s with shiny Formica tabletops, chairs with oddly splayed chromium-plated legs, startlingly intense colours enhanced by bright fluorescent lighting. A Gaggia espresso machine hissed and gurgled behind the counter while a Wurlitzer jukebox played classics from the period. The local paper had used the name Timewarp Café in their review when it reopened and the name had stuck. The whole place was spotlessly clean, the staff cheerful and attentive and the food expertly cooked from the best ingredients. The signature dish was a formidable all-day breakfast big enough to fuel a builder through a full day’s heavy manual work. Nina favoured a lesser version of this, which was still substantial enough to be satisfying after a morning on the hockey field, so while her mother ate a Panini, she tucked into a plate loaded with a sausage, a rasher of bacon, a small slice of black pudding, a fried egg, a hash brown and a large spoonful of baked beans.
Nina’s greasy plate was whisked away as soon as the waitress was sure she had finished. She rested her elbows on the table and cradled her mug of tea in both hands. “Thanks, Mum,” she said contentedly. “That was a brilliant treat coming here.”
“Plans for this afternoon?” Suzanna asked.
Nina looked back in astonishment. “But I thought we’d agreed to try out...” She looked around her then leaned forwards and whispered, “To try out... you know.”
“Just checking if you were still up for it after all that food.”
“Definitely,” Nina replied firmly.
“OK, let’s pay and go,” Suzanna said, standing up and taking her jacket from the back of the chair.
“Seems even colder when we’ve been in a hot café,” Nina remarked as she and her mother made their way home.
“I’d have thought all those clothes you have on would have made you a bit hot in the café.”
“Maybe a bit,” Nina conceded, “but they’re nice and cosy out here and I think I’m probably going to need plenty of padding this afternoon.”
When they returned home, Nina shed her hat, scarf, mittens and jacket and took her boots off. She went upstairs and used the toilet then cleaned her teeth carefully; she suspected that even slightly greasy teeth might be quite unpleasant when gagged.
When Nina came back downstairs, she found her mother in the dining room. She had laid out the rope in separate pieces. There were the three short and one long cut pieces from the previous day’s session, a larger coil which was the remainder of that 10-metre bundle of rope and two more coils formed from the remaining uncut bundles. A large pair of sharp scissors was set out beside the rope, as were the two bandanas, a clean handkerchief and two balled-up pairs of socks. One of the dining chairs was on its own in the middle of the room.
“You’re going to tie me to a chair!” Nina exclaimed excitedly, examining the chair as if seeing it for the first time.
“That’s the idea,” Suzanna confirmed.
Nina continued to study the chair. There was little remarkable about it. It was a straight-backed wooden chair. Its slightly concave plywood seat was supported by a rectangular wooden frame which was in turn supported at the corners by plain square wooden legs. The two rear legs rose up past the seat to form the side members of the backrest. They were linked by a sturdy wooden bar at the top and four thinner bars below which were gently curved for comfort. The legs were stabilised by wooden stretchers, one on each side joining front and back legs. A third stretcher ran across the width of the chair, linking the centres of the other two. Nina already knew this chair and the five others like it in the house very well; not only did she sit on one every day, but she had helped her mother assemble them from the flat packs in which they arrived.
“Take your pink sweater off for a moment,” Suzanna instructed.
Nina was surprised, but did as she was told. The thin black sweater she wore underneath was revealed, with her black fingerless gloves pulled up over its sleeves.
“Hold your hands out,” Suzanna said picking up one of the pairs of socks from the table, separated them and shook them out. She put one back on the table and bunched the other one up before pulling it over Nina’s left hand. It was a black and grey striped knee-length sock belonging to Suzanna, so when she smoothed it out, it came right up to her daughter’s armpit. She repeated the process on the opposite arm with the other sock.
With her hands covered, Nina needed some help to get the pink sweater back on. Suzanna picked up the second pair of socks, thick grey woollen ones, and pulled them over Nina’s hands too, coming up over the sweater well above elbow level.
“I don’t think these will be much use for untying knots now,” Nina said, looking at her hands.
“That’s the general idea,” her mother replied with a smile. “Now, do take a seat and we’ll begin.”
Nina sat down on the dining chair that was obviously waiting for her. She straightened her back and put her arms behind the chair’s backrest. “Like this?”
“Just keep your arms out of the way for now,” Suzanna answered. “I’m going to start by tying your body to the chair.”
Suzanna roughly measured out a length of rope and cut it from one of the coils on the table. She fastened it to the vertical at one side of the chair-back, wrapped it several times around Nina’s waist and the back of the chair, finishing off by hitching it to the opposite vertical.. Suzanna repeated the exercise with two more coils of rope, one about level with the bottom of Nina’s sternum and one higher up, just below her arms.
“OK so far?” Suzanna asked.
“It’s amazing – I can feel the ropes tightening as I breathe. It’s like being glued to the chair.”
“Arms next in that case,” Suzanna announced. She picked up one of the cut pieces of rope that had been used in the previous day’s experiment and wrapped it around Nina’s left arm just above her elbow and the woodwork of the chair, finishing off with a secure knot. She used two more pieces of rope, one just below the elbow and one at the wrist, so that Nina’s arm was pulled back very slightly and straight down the side member of the chair.
“How much can you move that arm?” Suzanna asked.
“Not much,” Nina told her, testing her freedom. The only movement she could manage was to flex her shoulder forward a tiny amount.
Suzanna rectified the situation with several turns of rope going under Nina’s armpit behind the top rail of the chair and over her shoulder. With her chest and arm already tied in place, this involved careful threading of the rope. Satisfied with the result, Suzanna bound Nina’s right arm to the chair in exactly the same way, but started with the shoulder rope while its position was still easily accessible.
“How’s that?” Suzanna asked.
“It’s not quite the classic hands-behind-the-back arrangement I was expecting, but it’s very secure,” Nina replied.
“And comfortable?”
“Well, I’m tied to a chair, but, yes, not bad.”
“OK, I’ll do your legs next to make quite sure you’re not going anywhere.”
Suzanna used two lengths of rope to tie Nina’s right ankle back to the front leg of the chair. She made sure that the turns of rope went both above and below the point where the stretcher joined the chair leg to prevent it slipping vertically. She applied another coil of rope to tie Nina’s leg back to the chair leg just below the knee. After shuffling across to the other side of the chair on her knees, she tied Nina’s left leg in the same way.
“I definitely won’t be going anywhere,” Nina commented as her mother stood up.
“Not done yet,” Suzanna said as she went back to the table. Using a long length of rope, she wrapped it across Nina’s lap and under the chair seat half a dozen times before knotting it off.
“Now you’re done,” Suzanna announced.
“Nina did an experimental wriggle. “Well, I can move my hands, feet and head, but that’s about it,” she concluded.
“So I just need to gag you and leave you to it, in that case,” Suzanna said. “Any last words?”
“Just ‘thank you’,” Nina replied.
“Anything for a quiet life,” her mother replied, screwing a handkerchief into a ball. “Open wide.”
Nina opened her mouth and Suzanna carefully pushed the handkerchief inside, taking care to get it behind her teeth. Suzanna folded one of the bandanas into a triangle then into a neat band which she positioned between Nina’s teeth and double-knotted behind her head.
“Is that OK?” she asked.
“Ink fo,” was Nina’s muffled reply.
“You’re going to be sitting still a long time,” Suzanna pointed out. “You’ve got lots of layers on to keep warm, but do you want a hat as well?”
Despite being securely bound to a chair and gagged, Nina managed to convey a sense of indecision by the angle of her head and the way she said, “Mmm.”
Suzanna’s face suddenly brightened. “I know exactly what you need – the monkey hat!”
After an absence of two or three minutes, Suzanna returned to the dining room with a brown knitted item in her hand. The monkey hat had been a joke Christmas present to Nina from one of her aunts. It was a very skilfully knitted full face mask in various shades of brown to represent a cartoon monkey’s head, complete with jug ears either side. Unlike most balaclavas, it was shaped to fit the contours of the chin quite closely and was a snug fit around the neck, so much so that there were buttons at the back of the head to fasten it. It had eye holes but no opening at the mouth. The monkey’s nostrils and the line of the mouth were represented by embroidery and the whole of the mouth area had some internal padding to give it an appropriately simian facial profile.
Suzanna slid the mask down over her daughter’s head and did up the buttons. She stood back to admire the effect. “One little monkey all tied up!”
“Amwa,” Nina mumbled.
“Camera? For the scrap book?”
The monkey nodded.
“One moment,” Suzanna said as she left the room.
When she returned, Suzanna had her daughter’s camera and a short scarf in blue and grey stripes, which Nina recognised as one that had be bought from a jumble sale expressly for tying-up games. Suzanna tied the scarf across the monkey’s mouth, knotting the ends behind her head.
“That’s perfect,” she declared as she started to take photographs from various angles. “Now you can see that the monkey is gagged as well as tied up.”
Suzanna put the camera down on the table. “After all that hard work,” she said, “I think I deserve a cup of tea and a sit-down with the newspaper. “Too bad you can’t join me.”
Nina was left to her own devices as her mother went off in pursuit of a leisurely afternoon.
It was late afternoon and already dark outside when Suzanna returned to Nina. She had looked in a few times to check that nothing was obviously wrong but hadn’t actually entered the room up until then. Nina was sitting in semi-darkness, with only light from other rooms penetrating into the dining room. Suzanna switched on the light as she came in.
“It’s getting on for tea-time, so I think it’s probably time to turn you loose,” she said.
Nina nodded her agreement.
Suzanna quickly untied the scarf and took the monkey mask off Nina’s head. She undid the knot securing the bandana and removed it from her mouth. Kneeling down beside the chair, she gently teased the handkerchief out of her daughter’s mouth.
Nina swallowed a couple of times, but seemed to be unable to speak.
“Water?” Suzanna asked.
Nina nodded.
Suzanna fetched a tumbler of water from the kitchen and held it so that Nina could drink.
“That’s better, thanks,” Nina said, getting her voice working again.
“How was it?” Suzanna asked as she started to loosen the knots securing her daughter.
“Frustrating.”
She was careful not to react, but a small beacon of hope lit up inside Suzanna. This was the first indication she’d had of Nina not enjoying being tied up. Perhaps her daughter’s obsession with tie-up games was waning. She adopted a sympathetic tone. “Well, sitting tied up for hours unable to move must be quite frustrating.”
“No, being tied up is fine – I really enjoyed that,” Nina said firmly. “The problem was that I don’t dare move at all.”
“Well, surely all tied up like that, you can’t move anyway?”
“I can’t move much, but I’d have liked to have had a good struggle to see how well tied up I I really am.”
“But you didn’t do that?” Suzanna asked, still not understanding.
“No, the joints on the chair are all so loose now that it feels as if I’d break it if I tried. If you get me untied, I’ll show you.”
There were a lot of knots to untie and a lot of rope to unwind, so it took a few minutes for Suzanna to get her daughter completely untied.
Without waiting for the socks to be taken off her hands, Nina stood up as soon as she was free. She grasped the top of the chair back and demonstrated that it could be rocked back and forwards by about a centimetre without the chair’s legs loosing contact with the floor. It could be flexed from side to side and twisted by a similar amount.
“I see what you mean,” Suzanna said. “I hadn’t realised just how wobbly the chair was getting.”
“I’m not sure that tightening the joints up would do much either.”
“I think you’re right,” Suzanna said after examining the chair. “The metal fastenings that hold it together have crushed the wood a bit, so they won’t go completely tight any more.”
“Anything else we could do?”
Suzanna thought for a moment. “I think so. You can buy metal reinforcements to stiffen the corners under the seat and we could drill and screw all the joints to strengthen the whole chair.”
“It would be worth doing,” Nina suggested.
“I agree,” her mother agreed. “I may have enough screws in stock, but we can pay a visit to the hardware shop after church tomorrow to get the corner reinforcements and anything else we need.”
“Yes, please,” Nina said struggling to get the socks off her hands.
Suzanna watched her daughter’s efforts for a moment. “I think you’re stuck,” she said with a broad smile.
“I think I am too,” Nina replied, holding her hands out helplessly.
“So you can’t do a thing, if I do this...” Suzanna picked up the discarded handkerchief and bandanna and re-gagged Nina.
“And you’d be even more helpless if I did this...” She took the unused bandana from the table, folded it into a band and blindfolded Nina with it.
“And if I do this, you’ll be completely and utterly stuck!” Suzanna picked up the knitted monkey mask, put it over Nina’s head and fastened the buttons, tucking the neck of the mask inside the collar of Nina’s sweater.
Nina felt her masked head with her paw-like sock-covered hands, but there was nothing she could do to unfasten the buttons and the mask was far too tight a fit to be pulled off with the buttons still done up. Muffled mumbles of protest came from inside the monkey head.
Suzanna used Nina’s camera to take a few photographs of the monkey-headed girl blundering blindly around.
“Come on, I’ll take you upstairs,” Suzanna said eventually. “There’s less chance of you getting hurt in your bedroom.”
Nina allowed herself to be led by the hand to her bedroom.
“I’ll go and tidy up all that rope,” Suzanna said as she left the room.
Fifteen minutes later, Suzanna had tidied the rope into an old canvas shopping bag and put the scissors away. She had made herself another mug of tea and was sitting on the dining room floor examining the underside of the chairs when Nina came downstairs, minus her pink sweater and carrying the socks that had been over her hands and the monkey mask.
“Now that was frustrating but fun,” Nina said.
“Quite the little Houdini,” Suzanna said with a smile. “That’s twice in as many days. How did you do it this time?”
“I managed to wedge the toe end of one of the socks in the door of my wardrobe, held the door shut with my foot and pulled by leaning back, then the same to get the other thick one off. I was able to use my fingers to pull the stripy ones off once I got my sweater off.”
“And all while you were blindfolded! That’s pretty good.”
“I think I’m due a shower and a change of clothes next,” Nina said turning to leave the room. “Thanks for the games, Mum.” She blew her mother a kiss and could be heard running up the stairs.
Nina was a little oddly dressed. She wore a thin ribbed black sweater with a round neck and a pair of black cotton leggings with thigh high socks in light and dark green stripes and with a pair of thicker ankle socks in bright orange on top. This sort of combination wasn’t unusual on a Sunday as it formed a comfortable base layer to wear under an ankle-length cassock for singing in the church choir. The cassock was kept in the choir vestry, so there was the small matter of actually getting to church. She added some layers on top: a pleated knee-length skirt in a soft moss green, an orange sweater and a bright green cardigan. Satisfied with the effect, she brushed her hair, braided it into a neat plait and went downstairs to join her mother for breakfast.
Suzanna was already on her second mug of tea when Nina arrived. In addition to an empty plate scattered with toast crumbs on the table in front of her, there were several small plastic boxes containing varying numbers of different sizes of woodscrews. The lids of the boxes were dusted with sawdust to as a result of being kept in the garage which Suzanna and Nina also used as a workshop. A ballpoint pen lay on top of a notepad with a diagram, a few dimensions and some calculations on the top page.
“Parts list for renovating the chairs?” Nina asked as she sat down with a bowl of cereal and a mug of tea.
“Yes, and seeing what we’ve already got in stock,” her mother replied. Suzanna turned the notepad around and pushed it towards Nina. “I thought if we added some wood to the framing under the seat then we’d have nice square corners to reinforce instead of the awkward shape around the tops of the legs.” She pointed to the diagram with the pen as she explained it.
“That’s a clever idea,” Nina acknowledged. “Gluing or screwing?”
“Both. The screws will just act as permanent clamps, but that way we won’t have to wait for anything to dry.”
“So is that the shopping list?” Nina asked, still examining the notepad. “That’s a lot of screws.”
“Well, we’ll do all six chairs, if you count the joints up, allow three screws each side for reinforcing the seat frame and four for each of the metal corner reinforcements, that’s 52 screws per chair.”
“312 screws, but not all the same length though,” Nina pointed out.
“We only need two lengths – 25mm for the bits around he seat frame and 50mm for everything else. I’ll get 200 of each – it’ll be cheaper than getting the exact number in smaller packets.”
“The people in the shop will be wondering what we’re doing after all the rope I bought on Friday,” Nina commented with a mischievous grin.
As mother and daughter set out on what proved to be another frosty morning, Suzanna was wearing her brown sheepskin coat with similarly-coloured Ugg boots pulled up over the black denim jeans she wore. She had a long wide black woollen scarf over her head and around her neck with the end tossed over one shoulder. It was pulled up to cover her chin and mouth. Her hands were thrust into the coat pockets. Nina had put on her yellow duffel jacket with the hood pulled up over a dark green knitted beret that covered her hair. She had a matching scarf wound around her neck over the hood and wore black knitted gloves. Her orange ankle socks were just visible over the tops of her Doc Martens boots.
When she wasn’t fully engaged with the morning’s hymns and with the harmonic complexities of Karl Jenkins’ Sanctus which was sung as the anthem, Nina found her mind drifting onto the woodworking project that she and her mother would be undertaking that afternoon.
The visit to the hardware shop was accomplished without difficulty and Suzanna walked back home with two lengths of softwood propped on her shoulder while Nina carried all the hardware they had bought in a plastic carrier bag.
Lunch was soup with cheese on toast. As Suzanna and Nina ate, they discussed the most efficient way to work together on rebuilding the chairs.
As soon as they had finished eating and had cleared the plates away, Nina rushed upstairs to change into working clothes. She removed her skirt, cardigan and orange sweater but kept on the black sweater, leggings and socks. She added an old sweater of her mother’s. It was beige, a colour Nina detested, but thick and warm, even if both elbows had worn through. It was vastly too long for her, coming right down over her bottom and needing both sleeves to be folded back a long way. On top of that, she added a one-piece navy-blue cotton boiler suit, again a discard of her mother’s, with the sleeves and legs chopped to length with scissors and roughly hemmed to prevent fraying. An old pair of Suzanna’s walking boots were were no longer waterproof, but provided some protection against anything being dropped on her feet. They were too big for Nina even with the addition several pairs of socks.
Nina made her way back downstairs and discovered that her mother had already taken the chairs out to the garage. She let herself out through the kitchen door and into the garage. Suzanna had one of the chairs upside down on the workbench and was measuring the lengths of wood that would be needed to reinforce the seat frame. She was wearing a blue boiler suit similar to the one that had been cut down for Nina. Her hair was hidden under a colourful cotton headscarf worn around her head like a turban. A protective dust mask covered her mouth and nose and a pair of goggles were pushed up on to the top of her head.
“Got your mask?” Suzanna’s slightly muffled voice asked.
Nina replied by pulling a navy blue ski mask out of her pocket and pulling it down over her head. The mouth vent had been sewn up; this had been Suzanna’s solution to workshop protection for Nina when she was younger and too small for a proper dust mask to fit. It also kept sawdust out of her hair. Unless noxious chemicals were involved, Nina far preferred this arrangement to a conventional mask for workshop wear.
“We’ll do one chair right through, then go onto a production line basis,” Suzanna said. “If I do the sawing and you can do the clamping and gluing.”
Nina settled her own goggles in place as her mother prepared to operate the bench saw.
Work progressed smoothly and the first chair was completely refurbished in about an hour and a half. Nina sat on the chair and deliberately shuffled her weight back and forward and from side to side. “No movement at all – I think we’ve done it!” she declared.
Suzanna tried the chair out and also tried leverage on the chair back with her hands. “I think you’re right,” she agreed. “One down, five to go!”
With the first chair complete and all the drilling angles for screws already measured, the production line approach worked well. All six chairs were complete by early evening, even with a lengthy break for tea and toast in the late afternoon.
A little later, four of the chairs were back in their accustomed places in the dining room and the other two back upstairs, one in each bedroom. Suzanna and Nina had shed their boiler suits and head coverings but were still wearing the old sweaters and leggings that had been underneath.
“I can’t be bothered to cook – how about we order a Chinese?” Suzanna suggested, taking a menu out of a kitchen drawer. “I think we’ve earned it.”
“Brilliant idea,” concurred Nina, studying the list of dishes. “Let’s just sit on the chairs to eat – we can play games with them tomorrow.”
Despite it being the school half-term holiday, Nina got up only a little later than she would on any other Monday. She peeped out between the curtains and confirmed that there was an early morning frost just as there had been over the last few days. She showered quickly then thought about what to wear. She hoped that her mother hadn’t gone off the idea of another experiment with tying her to a chair, especially after the hard work they had put in to reinforce the dining chairs. From her experience so far, Nina knew that several thick layers worked well to protect her from the ropes. It would also keep her warm when she might get chilly just sitting around on a cold morning.
After her underthings, Nina started off with a black long-sleeved thermal top and a pair of black woolly tights. She added the black cross-over cardigan she sometimes wore on top of her gym leotard. It not only had sleeves that were long, but they came right down over the palms of her hands with thumbholes, just like fingerless mittens. She put her jeans on next with a pair of thick socks and then her grey slipper socks pulled up over them. Lastly, she pulled on her heavy cream coloured sweater which had a high collar and came right down over her hips.
Nina went down to the kitchen and discovered that she was ahead of her mother that morning. She filled the kettle and switched it on then put some bread in the toaster. She unloaded the dishwasher from the previous night’s run while she waited for her tea and toast.
She was sitting on one of the newly-strengthened chairs, so, between sips of tea and bites of toast, Nina put her arms behind the chair and tried to imagine what it would feel like to be tied like that. She decided that it was going to be much better than Saturday’s experience because not only would she be sitting on a chair robust enough to stand some struggling but also she would have her hands tied behind her back, which she regarded as the canonical tied-to-a-chair position.
“Practising for later?” Suzanna asked, seeing what her daughter was up to.
“More or less,” Nina admitted. “I started out seeing how my arms would fit around the back of the chair and then I was sort of imagining how it will feel.”
“Well, you’ll soon find out. Do you want to go and get ready while I’m getting myself breakfast?”
“I pretty much am ready,” Nina said. “I’ve got lots of layers on again and I really just need to use the toilet and clean my teeth.”
“Just a moment,” Suzanna said, leaving the room. She returned a few moments later holding a pink object in her hand. “I thought you might want to wear this in case you get caught short while you’re tied up.”
Nina examined the item she had been handed. “It’s a nappy!” she exclaimed.
“Well, it’s called an adult incontinence pad,” Suzanna said, “but, yes, it’s just an oversized Pampers.”
“Are you planning to keep me tied up a really long time then?” Nina asked.
“I thought we’d leave it open-ended and see how you get on.”
Nina’s brow furrowed in thought for a moment, then brightened. “OK,” she said. “Back in a few mins.”
After visiting the bathroom, Nina returned to her bedroom. She undressed from the waist down then ripped open the clear polythene wrapping around the nappy. She glanced at the printed diagram on the wrapper and concluded that the easiest way to get the thing on was to lie on the floor as if she was a baby being changed.
With the self-adhesive tabs in place securely, Nina stood up again and examined her reflection in the full-length mirror on her wardrobe door. She couldn’t help giggling at her ridiculous appearance. Her reflection made it clear that she had an immediate problem: her tight-fitting stretchy jeans were never going to go on over the nappy. She rummaged through her sock drawer for the largest pair of woolly tights she possessed. There was a grey pair she never wore. They had been passed to her by her mother, who had bought them for herself and discovered they were too small. They were still slightly too big for Nina, but might work in this situation, she thought. She pulled them on and found that they were a little long for her but a good fit around the bottom.
After a little thought, Nina selected a pair of black ribbed acrylic leggings. She wore these as an extra layer for winter cycling and knew they were stretchy enough to go over other leggings or cycling shorts and would probably work in her present situation. What amounted to two pairs of woolly tights would give her legs less protection from the ropes than the woolly tights plus jeans that had been her intended outfit. She wondered what else she could add to the mix. After a moment’s thought, she remembered the enormously long socks that her mother had lurking in her sock drawer.
A short search in Suzanna’s bedroom yielded a pair of over-knee socks in a jaunty Norwegian-style pattern (complete with reindeer) in various shades of blue. She worked them up her legs over the tights and discovered they went all the way up to the top of her legs.
Pleased with the discovery, Nina returned to her own room and put on the black leggings then her heavy grey slipper socks. She looked at herself in the mirror and was amused to discover that when she turned sideways, she had the typical outline of a nappy-wearing toddler.
Nina made her way back downstairs, acutely aware of the slight rustling noise from her hindquarters as she moved.
“Ready?” Suzanna asked, her voice coming from the kitchen.
“Think so,” Nina replied, following the voice.
Nina was surprised to see that one of the chairs had been moved into the kitchen. The stock of rope was laid out on one of the counter tops.
“It’s half-term for you but it’s a working day for me,” her mother explained. “I’ll be on my computer in the dining room as usual and I don’t want to be distracted by you squirming around on a chair and grunting.”
“Fair enough,” Nina acknowledged with a smile. “I’ll probably be doing quite a lot of that.”
“Right, let’s get started – I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
“I thought you were going to do that while I got ready.”
“I was, but I thought you’d probably turn up while I was still eating, so I decided to wait.”
“Better hurry up and get on with it then,” Nina commented cheekily.
“OK, socks on hands first. Take your sweater off,” Suzanna ordered.
Nina removed her heavy sweater and dumped it on the chair.
“I thought these might work well,” Suzanna said producing a pair of heavy navy blue socks with a white polka-dot pattern.
“Ski socks?” Nina queried. “But you don’t ski.”
“Cheap from the camping shop,” her mother explained. “Nice and thick but close-fitting and they don’t have shaped heels to make an awkward lump where the ropes need to go.”
Nina held her hands out while Suzanna slid the socks up her arms. They came well up over her elbows. “Nice and smooth inside, she commented.”
Suzanna helped her daughter put her sweater back on then picked up a long length of rope while Nina settled herself onto the chair.
Suzanna wound the rope several times around Nina’s waist and the back of the chair then knotted it at the front.
“That’s fairly slack, Mum,” Nina pointed out.
“It won’t be after I’ve done this,” her mother replied.
Suzanna prepared another piece of rope which she threaded through the left side of the chair back immediately above the coil of rope around Nina’s waist. She pushed the other end through below the waist rope and walked around the chair to stand behind Nina. She took the ends of the rope across the back of the chair and crossed them over then pushed the ends through the chair back again, one above and one below the waist rope. Standing in front of Nina again, she gently pulled on the ends of the rope causing Nina’s waist binding to squeeze much more closely around the girl’s midriff.
“I see that you mean,” Nina observed drily.
Suzanna pushed the ends of the rope through the chair back once again, retracing the route across the back of the chair to her starting point, where she secured it with a knot.
“Tell me if it gets too tight,” Suzanna instructed.
“Fine so far. It’s not squashing anything, but it’s holding me in place very effectively.”
“That’s what’s supposed to happen when you tie someone to a chair,” Suzanna pointed out with a smile. “Now put your arms behind your back. See if you can get your forearms horizontal.”
“Like this?”
“Perfect.”
Suzanna adjusted the position of Nina’s hands slightly, so that the narrowest part of her wrists were in line then wound several turns of rope around them then finished off with a few horizontal turns between the wrists forming a cinch. The loose tails of rope were long enough to fasten one off to the top of the backrest and the other to one of the horizontal members lower down the chair back. She followed this with two shorter lengths of rope lashing Nina’s forearms to one of the horizontal bars midway between her wrists and elbows. Each of these bindings also had long tails of rope which Suzanna knotted off to the cinch of Nina’s wrist binding and to the vertical side members of the chair, thus preventing them sliding in either direction.
“If I’ve got that right, nothing should be too tight and the rope will support the weight of your arms,” Suzanna said.
“I think you have got it right in that case,” her daughter confirmed, “but there’s nothing to stop me trying to pull my hands out of the rope around my wrists.”
“I’m just about to fix that,” Suzanna replied, measuring out a long length of rope.
Suzanna wound the rope around Nina’s chest and upper arms and the chair back, forming a deep band of six or seven turns of rope. She knotted it off at the front.
“I suppose this is going to be tightened up the same way?” Nina asked.
“You suppose right.”
Suzanna used two shorter lengths of rope to form cinches between Nina’s arms and body, drawing the chest ropes more snugly around her. “Top half done,” she declared.
“Could you possibly bring the hall mirror through here? I’d really like to see what it looks like,” Nina asked.
“No problem,” Suzanna replied. “I’ll get your camera while I’m at it.”
Suzanna returned to the kitchen a few minutes later with one hand through the wrist strap of Nina’s camera and carrying a tall narrow mirror which she had taken down from its hook in the hallway. She propped the mirror up against one of the kitchen cupboards and adjusted the angle. “How’s that?”
“Brilliant!” Nina replied. “This is what being tied to a chair is supposed to look like.”
“It will be when I’ve done your legs.”
Suzanna positioned her daughter’s feet so that her ankles were directly in front of the chair’s front legs. She started on Nina’s left leg, lashing the ankle back to the chair leg, making sure the turns of rope went both above and below the point where the horizontal stretched joined the leg, and finished off with a few cinching turns between the sock-covered ankle and the woodwork of the chair. Another similar binding held Nina’s leg back to the chair just below her knee. A third binding was a simple lashing going above Nina’s knee and under the chair seat just behind the chair leg. With one leg successfully secured, Suzanna repeated the process on Nina’s other leg.
“Almost done,” Suzanna said as she measured out another piece of rope.
Kneeling beside the chair, Suzanna fastened one end of the rope to the top of the left back leg of the chair, just below the seat. She took the rope across Nina’s hips to the corresponding point on the right rear chair leg, looped it behind the leg and brought it back across Nina’s hips. She repeated this process until there was a band five strands of rope and knotted the rope off at the right back leg of the chair.
“That’s it,” Suzanna said, standing up. “You’re as thoroughly tied to a chair as I know how.”
“Thanks, Mum” said Nina, examining her reflection in the mirror. “You’re very good at this, but you still haven’t told me how you came to be so good.”
“I told you I learned to tie knots in the Girl Guides,” her mother replied. “This is just lots of knots.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Nina protested. “You know all about putting ropes in the right places and making sure they’re just the right tightness.”
“Enough chat. I want my breakfast, so it’s time to gag you.”
Suzanna picked up a handkerchief that was lying on a kitchen counter top, shook it out, soaked it under the tap and then wrung it out almost dry. Nina opened her mouth to allow the damp hanky to be pushed unto place behind her teeth. Suzanna deftly folded one of Nina’s bandanas into a band, positioned it between her teeth and knotted it behind her head.
After filling the kettle and putting two slices of bread in the toaster, Suzanna picked up Nina’s camera and took a series of photographs of her daughter from different angles. Shortly after that, she left the room, taking her tea and toast with her.
Nina studied her reflection in the mirror appreciatively for some time then started to explore the limits of her freedom within her bonds. She was surprised to find that she could move a little, but quickly discovered that she was nevertheless completely trapped. She paused to consider whether there might be a more methodical approach to escaping.
Having paid close attention to what was happening as her mother tied her up, Nina could quite accurately visualise the arrangement of ropes securing her arms. She knew that the key to escape would be to pull her hands out of her wrist binding, but the chest ropes which also held her upper arms to the verticals of the chair back prevented that. She engaged in some quite strenuous struggling to see if she could work either elbow up out of the chest ropes. There were a few worrying creaks from the chair frame as she did this, but no significant movement of the joints. It soon became apparent that Suzanna had thought of this line of attack as the combination of the wrist binding being fastened to the chair back and the ropes securing her forearms prevented any significant vertical movement of her elbows.
Nina was still straining against her bonds when her mother returned to the kitchen with her empty plate and to make another mug of tea. “I really don’t think that’s going to work, dear,” she said as she refilled the kettle.
On her own once more, Nina relaxed in her bonds. Now that she had satisfied herself that she really was helpless, she was content just to enjoy the sensation of being tied up. Periodically she looked at her reflection in the mirror, but mostly she was just lost in her own thoughts.
Some time later, Suzanna returned to the kitchen again. “That’s about two hours now, Nina,” she said. “Would you like some water?”
Nina nodded in reply.
Suzanna carefully removed her daughter’s gag and took the soggy handkerchief and bandana to the utility room. Back in the kitchen, she put some water in a cup and held it while Nina sucked it up through a straw.
“Thanks, Mum, I was ready for that,” Nina said appreciatively.
“All part of the service,” her mother replied, as she switched the kettle on. “How’s it going so far?”
“Brilliant!” Nina replied enthusiastically. “It’s really good fun being tied up properly like this.”
“ ‘Properly’ as in like in the pictures in your scrapbook?”
“I suppose so. It’s the way I think being tied to a chair ought to look, anyway.”
“And everything’s still comfortable?”
“Just fine,” Nina confirmed.
By this time, Suzanna had made herself another mug of tea. “I need to get back to work, so it’s gag time for you again.” She re-gagged Nina exactly as she had before with a clean handkerchief and bandana then picked up her mug and left the room.
Nina was still quite content being tied up, but found that time seemed to be passing more slowly than it had before.
Eventually Suzanne returned to the kitchen once more. “Lunch time,” she announced. “Do you think you can manage soup and a sandwich if I help you?”
Nina nodded in reply.
“OK, I’ll get it organised.”
Suzanna gathered up the pile of spare rope which was still occupying the kitchen counter top and carried it out of the room. She then set to work to heat a tin of tomato soup and to make some cheese and ham sandwiches.
Once the food was ready, Suzanna untied the knot securing her daughter’s gag and eased first the bandanna and then the handkerchief out of her mouth. As before, she took them to the utility room to add to the waiting laundry.
“Water first?” Suzanna asked.
Nina swallowed hard but nodded rather than speaking in reply.
Suzanna half filled a mug with water and put a straw into it so that Nina could drink at her own speed.
“Thank you,” Nina said after a long slurp. “I don’t quite see how a wet hanky can dry my mouth out, but it seems to anyway,” she mused.
Suzanna tied a tea towel around Nina’s neck as an improvised bib then offered her bites from a sandwich and sips from a mug of soup. She managed to feed herself at the same time. Once Nina had finished eating, her mother carefully wiped her lips with a tissue and offered her some more water to rinse her mouth out.
“I’ve used both the bandanas now, so the next gag will need to be something else,” Suzanna said. “Will you be OK with a sock?”
“Actually, Mum, I think I’ve had enough of being tied up for today. Could you just untie me now?”
There was a pause then Suzanna said, “Well, I’ve told you the rules before. I get to choose how you’re tied up and how long for. And you’ve agreed to that.”
“I know, but it’s been nearly four hours now and I’ve really had enough. Can we stop now, please?”
“Are you in actual pain?” Suzanna asked.
“No...” Nina replied hesitantly.
“Well then,” Suzanna said leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken.
Suzanna left the room and returned with Nina’s purple and white striped hockey socks which she had picked up from the utility room. “These are clean – I’ve washed them since hockey on Saturday – and they’re thick enough to make a good gag,” she said.
Nina had no option but to submit to being gagged again with a damp handkerchief and a sock pulled between her teeth and tied behind her head.
Suzanna spent some time clearing up the lunch things, emptying the kitchen bin and giving the work surfaces a wipe-down. In the absence of any chance to voice her displeasure, Nina settled for favouring her mother with a baleful stare, following her around the room with her eyes.
After meeting her daughter’s stare a few times, Suzanna avoided making eye contact, but glanced out of the corner of her eye from time to time. Eventually Nina’s stratagem provoked a reaction, but not the one she had hoped for. Suzanna snatched up the partner to the hockey sock that had been used to gag Nina and blindfolded her with it. Nina immediately started trying to rub the blindfold off against her shoulder.
Suzanna’s countermeasure came swiftly. She fetched the black ski mask that Nina had worn for hockey on Saturday, now also freshly washed, and pulled it down over her daughter’s head. Completely stymied, Nina gave up struggling.
Now that Nina could no longer see a clock, she lost track of time, aware only that it seemed to drag by interminably. Some time after being left alone, she realised that she would have to make use of the incontinence pad she was wearing, something she had been hoping to avoid. It was some relief to discover that it was quite effective and she didn’t feel afterwards as though she was sitting in a puddle as she feared the case might be. It was humiliating nevertheless.
Eventually, Nina heard her mother’s voice. “That’s just over six hours. Do you want to be untied?”
Nina had allowed her chin to droop against her chest. She raised her head and nodded in the hope that her mother’s offer was genuine.
With the ski mask, gag and blindfold removed, Suzanna gave Nina another drink of water.
“Still like being tied up?” Suzanna asked.
“I really enjoyed it this morning,” Nina said. “It was fun to be tied up and fun seeing if I could escape, even though I was sure I wouldn’t be able to.”
“Not so much fun now?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean it was any less fun to begin with. You seem to be quite happy to tie me up these days, so why do you keep trying to spoil it for me?”
“I’m trying to show you that being tied up isn’t as much fun as you think it is,” Suzanna replied.
“But being tied up is fun,” Nina insisted. She paused to gather her thoughts. “Mum, it’s like eating ice cream. Just enough is a nice treat, but too much is... well, it’s too much.”
Suzanna hadn’t anticipated this reaction from Nina but she wasn’t about to give up her campaign. She pondered what she could do next as she set to work to untie her daughter.
Nina pedalled her bike home through bone-chilling cold of a mid-November Wednesday afternoon. She had been attending the school gymnastics club after lessons had ended, so it was pitch dark by the time she headed home. Her reflective yellow cycling jacket and the bright LED lights on her bicycle made her fairly visible to other traffic, but she still didn’t much enjoy cycling in these conditions.
After parking her bicycle in the garage and remembering to turn its lights off, Nina let herself into the house through the kitchen door. After the intense cold outside, the heat of the house was almost too much, so, even before taking the heavy schoolbag off her back, she lost no time unfastening her helmet and pulling the purple ski mask off her head,. She had just got as far as unzipping her jacket and unwinding her purple and white school scarf from around her neck, when a gloved hand was clapped over her mouth from behind.
“I’ve got the kid,” a voice said.
Nina tried to control the panic the bubbled up inside her as she was forced to walk backwards by the person behind her, the hand still pressed firmly over her mouth and pulling her in the direction of the dining room.
Without warning, Nina found herself being swung around to face into the dining room. If it hadn’t been for the hand over her mouth, she would have cried out in shock at the sight that met her eyes. Suzanna, her mother, was sitting securely bound to one of the dining chairs and gagged.
“We don’t want Mummy to get hurt, do we, girly?” the person holding Nina said.
Now that the initial disorientation of being grabbed was subsiding, Nina was able to register that the person who had grabbed her was a woman. She shook her head in reply to the question.
“So you’re going to do exactly what I tell you, aren’t you?”
There was something faintly familiar about the voice. Did Nina actually know this person, she wondered. She nodded in reply to the question.
“Right. I’m going to take my hand away and you’re going to stand perfectly still and keep quiet.”
Nina stood still as she was instructed. Again, there was that familiarity of the voice, but she still couldn’t quite place it.
Suddenly, Nina became aware of another person in the room. She had been so focussed on her mother’s plight that she hadn’t noticed a figure sitting at her mother’s laptop on the dining table until the moment that person stood up. Nina surreptitiously turned her eyes in that direction. The person was tall and thin and obviously female in her figure-hugging black clothing. Nina ran her eyes from the person’s feet up to her head. A black sleeveless unitard covered most of the person’s body. Under that she wore a thin black roll-necked sweater. Her whole head was obscured by an opaque black stocking and her hands were covered by black gloves.
The woman who had grabbed Nina in the kitchen now came into her line of sight. Like her companion, she was dressed entirely in black: black long-sleeved leotard and tights and, like the other woman, a black stocking over her head and a pair of black gloves. Nina was not surprised to see that she was holding a coil of rope.
“Right, girly, I’m sure you’ve worked out what’s going to happen next,” the woman said. “Take your jacket off, first.”
Nina had already unzipped her jacket, so she wriggled her arms out of the sleeves and let it fall to the floor behind her. She had come directly from gymnastics club and had simply put her black woolly tights and her purple school sweatshirt on over the leotard and footless tights she wore for gymnastics. Accordingly, she felt a little underdressed and that made her feel rather vulnerable.
“Hold your hands behind your back and tuck your elbows in to your sides,” her captor ordered.
Nina saw that the rope was soft brown cord about 6 millimetres in diameter. It was about the same thickness as her own white cotton rope, but looked to be much more flexible. She watched as the woman found the centre of the rope she held and folded it in two along its length.
“OK, hold still,” the woman instructed. She wrapped the doubled rope around Nina’s arms and chest and threaded the loose ends through the fold in the rope, so it formed a sort of noose around her. She adjusted its position so it was just above her elbows with the crude running knot that had been formed in the middle of her back. She tightened it, pressing Nina’s elbows against her ribs then reversed the direction of the rope and brought the loose ends across Nina’s chest again, rather higher up and around to the back again. She threaded the loose ends through the fold of rope again and brought it forward under Nina’s left arm then up in front of the two bands of rope already in place, across the back of her neck and down in front of the ropes on the tight before going under them and around to Nina’s back again. After threading the loose ends of rope through the growing nexus of rope, she took them up to the pair of ropes across the back of Nina’s neck, separated them and fastened them off, pulling the shoulder ropes down and tightening the rope harness that girdled her arms and chest.
As she was being secured, Nina watched the woman seated at her mother’s computer, trying to work out what she was doing. She presumed it was some sort of commercial espionage, although she couldn’t imagine that the work her mother did was important enough to justify this raid and, judging from what she could see on the screen, it didn’t look like her mother’s data that was being accessed.
The woman tying Nina up positioned the girl’s hands so that her forearms were horizontally across her back. She lashed Nina’s wrists together and cinched between them then fastened the ends off to the rope forming her chest harness. Nina’s fingerless woollen gloves gave her some protection from the rough rope.
“Right, sit down, and I’ll do your legs next.”
The pronunciation of the R in ‘right’ was oddly indistinct, Nina noticed. She was careful not to show it on her face, but Nina suddenly realised that she did recognise the voice. She knew exactly who her assailant was.
Awkwardly, Nina lowered herself to the floor, going down on one knee first then down onto her bottom with her legs out in front of her. She shuffled herself backwards so that her back was resting against a wall.
The woman knelt down to tie Nina’s ankles, lashing them together then cinching between them. She applied similar bindings, below and above Nina’s knees. She stood up, took a couple of steps and, to Nina’s surprise, retrieved a sock from the dining table. Nina recognised it as one of a pair of heavy knee-length grey boot socks belonging to her mother.
“Open,” the woman ordered.
It was obvious what her intention was, so Nina opened her mouth. The sock was pushed firmly between her teeth and knotted tightly behind her head. Nina bit down on the rough wool, but the sock was thick enough to prevent her closing her mouth around it.
“This will be running for a while,” said the woman sitting at Suzanna’s laptop.
Nina paid close attention; if she recognised one voice, she should surely recognise both. The voice was a little muffled, but Nina was certain of its owner’s identity.
“OK, we can check out the rest of the house,” the woman who had tied Nina up replied.
Both black-clad women went out of the room, leaving Nina and Suzanna and whatever operation was running on the computer.
Nina looked round at her mother. She was wearing her usual work clothes of a thin sweater and a pair of jeans and was very securely tied to her chair with the same brown rope that had been used to bind Nina. There was a band of rope around her waist and the back of the chair while another band was positioned above her bust and under her arms. One lower down, below bust level, also encircled her upper arms and this one was tightened by cinching coils between her arms and body each side. Nina couldn’t see her mother’s hands, but assumed the wrists were bound and probably also secured to the back of the chair. Suzanna’s ankles were tied back to the front legs of the chair and her knees secured with ropes below her knees and around the chair leg and above the knees and over the corner of the chair seat. She was gagged with the partner of the sock that had been used on Nina and judging from the darkness of the saliva-soaked wool, she had been gagged for some time.
After briefly debating with herself the wisdom of attempting to escape, Nina decided that being left alone was too much of an opportunity to waste. She drew her knees up and dug her heels into the carpet, slowly sliding her back up the wall she was leaning against. The soles of her black trainers gave a much better grip than the slipper socks she usually wore around the house. Because her ankles were tied with a bulky cinch and not lashed tightly together, Nina was able to shuffle her feet back to gain more leverage once her legs were nearly straight. Eventually, she was standing fully upright against the wall with her weight entirely on her feet.
Taking the tiny steps that her leg bindings allowed, Nina inched her way across the room towards her mother. She turned her back and reached out behind her with her finger tips. Eventually, she found a position where she could just reach Suzanna’s gag if she bent her knees slightly. She carefully worked a forefinger between the sock and her mother’s cheek, reflecting as she did so that it was only possible because her gloves left her fingers bare. Gripping the gag between finger and thumb, Nina pulled it outwards and down, bending her knees and leaning to use her body weight to provide the force while taking great care not to overbalance.
Suzanna moved her head to assist Nina in her efforts, grunting with discomfort as the gag pulled her lower lip down. Finally, the sock slid over her chin and settled around her throat.
“Thank you,” Suzanna said hoarsely.
Nina straightened up and paused to take stock, wondering how she could position herself so that her mother could return the favour by getting her gag off. She solved the problem by sitting sideways on Suzanna’s lap, which positioned her gag exactly level with her mother’s mouth. It was impossible for Suzanna to reach far forward as she was securely bound to her chair’s backrest. Accordingly Nina leaned in, her right cheekbone almost in contact with her mother’s nose.
After a couple of false starts, Suzanna managed to get a firm grip with her teeth on her daughter’s gag. “OK, try pulling,” she said indistinctly through clenched teeth and a wad of wool.
Nina understood the instruction and tilted her head away from her mother’s face, tipping it back to encourage the sock to slide down towards her chin. She had to endure a certain amount of violence to her lower lip, as her mother had, but eventually the gag was down around her neck.
“Thanks, Mum – well done,” Nina said. “And thanks for setting this up. It was really scary until I worked out what was going on, but it’s really brilliant.”
“What?” Suzanna asked, frowning.
“Well I know it’s Aunt Callie who tied me up and the one doing things to your computer is Theda, so I thought it must have been your idea.”
Calliope Wolf-Bassenthwaite, was a lifelong friend of Suzanna’s and strictly speaking only an honorary aunt to Nina, but had always been known by her as Aunt Callie. Similarly, Nina regarded Callie’s college-age daughter Theodora, known as Theda, as her cousin and Theda reciprocated the sentiment.
“Well, Callie and I sort of cooked it up between us,” Suzanna admitted, “but we didn’t think you’d recognise her so quickly.”
Nina pondered this for a few seconds then asked, “So, was it supposed to be much scarier for me?”
Suzanna made no reply, but looked a little embarrassed.
“This was one of your schemes to try and put me off being tied up, wasn’t it?” Nina demanded crossly.
Before Suzanna could make any reply, Callie and Theda returned to the dining room, both still in their all-enveloping black disguises.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Callie exclaimed, picking Nina up bodily. She laid Nina face-down on the floor. and swiftly untied her gag, put it back in place and reknotted it. Nina felt her feet being lifted off the floor and her knees bent until her heels were touching her bottom. Theda handed her mother a piece of rope and when Callie let go of her, Nina discovered that her ankle binding had been linked to her chest ropes, keeping her folded up.
“The game’s up, Callie,” Suzanna said. “She’s already worked out who both of you are.”
“Oh good,” Theda said, with evident relief. “I’m dying of claustrophobia in here.” She pulled the black stocking off her head to reveal a tight fitting black lycra balaclava with left only her eyes showing. She took that off too and her mass of brown frizzy hair exploded into a cloud around her head as she did so. She ran her gloved fingers through it to loosen it further. She removed a plastic mouth guard from her top teeth, which explained the slight distortion to her voice.
“Well, I think we’ll go and get our proper clothes on again,” Callie announced, not bothering to remove her mask. “Nina seems to be quite happy.” She looked down at her adoptive niece who was enthusiastically exploring the limits of her hog-tie. “And I’m sure you’ll be all right too,” she added to Suzanna.
Callie paused long enough to untie and then restore Suzanna’s gag before she and her daughter left the room.
Suzanna watched helplessly while Nina kicked and squirmed in her bonds before eventually relaxing. It was difficult to read Nina’s expression with a gag between her teeth, but she seemed to be smiling.
When Callie returned about ten minutes later she was wearing what was for her conventional clothing. She was quite tall and her height was emphasised by the high-waisted green tweed skirt reaching down to mid-calf level and a matching waistcoat with a gold watch chain across the front. She wore a white blouse with Edwardian-style sleeves, puffed at the shoulders and tight at the forearms. It had a rather masculine wing collar which showed off her canary-yellow silk necktie. Her posture hinted at the corset she wore as a foundation to her outfit. The bright yellow was echoed by the colour of her stockings which could be seen between the hem of her skirt and the brown lace-up ankle boots she wore. Callie’s unruly mass of curly grey hair had been tamed by being pinned into a heap on top of her head. Callie’s eccentric style of dress was appropriate to her role as proprietor of a second-hand and vintage clothes shop called Wolf’s Clothing. Whether her choice of occupation was driven by her taste in clothing or vice versa was debatable.
Theda’s outfit echoed a later period. She wore a pale orange skirt reaching just below her knees with a subtle flare towards the bottom, a hip-length Fair Isle patterned v-necked sweater and a long chocolate brown cardigan reaching almost to the hemline of her skirt. Opaque brown stockings and a pair of brown brogues with blocky heels completed the 1930s look.
Callie picked up a dining chair and set it down in front of Suzanna. “I think we need to have a chat about Nina.”
Suzanna was still gagged, so she could only grunt in reply.
Theda knelt down beside Nina and untied her gag. “How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m OK,” Nina replied. “It’s all been brilliant fun, but I really need the toilet now. Could you untie me, please, Theda?”
Theda set to work and a few minutes later, Nina was completely free of her ropes. As soon as the last knot had been untied, Nina fled upstairs to the bathroom. She emerged shortly afterwards and went to her bedroom to change out of her odd mixture of gym clothes, school uniform and cycling leggings. Aunt Callie and Theda always made Nina feel a little underdressed by comparison so she decided to make a little more effort than the jeans and sweater that would be her usual attire on a winter evening.
Nina started with a blue knitted dress which she still liked, even though it was getting a little small for her, which made the sleeves a trifle short and the hemline a little more daring than it had originally been. She added a pair of plum-coloured ribbed leggings both for warmth and for decency under the abbreviated skirt length. Nina inspected herself critically in the mirror. The effect was smart but more conservative than she was aiming for. After some more thought, she put on a knit tank top in horizontal purple and blue stripes. She carried the purple theme on by twisting her hair into a bun and pushing it into a purple crocheted chignon cap that neatly covered it. Nina’s feet were still bare. She usually wore a pair of grey slipper socks around the house in winter, but her outfit really demanded blue, so she helped herself to a pair of her mother’s heavy navy blue walking socks. Nina stood in front of the mirror again. She really wanted something more flamboyant than she had achieved so far. She rummaged through her wardrobe in search of inspiration and found it in the form of a shawl that had come from Aunt Callie’s shop some time before. It was crocheted from very fine wool in a dark purple, almost black, and was a little large for her. She positioned the centre of the long edge behind her neck and crossed the shawl over on her chest. The ends were long enough not only to cross behind her back, but to come around to the front of her waist, where she knotted them. Turning sideways in front of the mirror, Nina observed that the point of the shawl came right down to her knees behind her. She decided that it nevertheless added the degree of panache she was aiming for. She finished off her outfit with a pair of fingerless gloves in the same shade of plum as her leggings.
When she returned downstairs, Nina glanced into the dining room. Her mother had now been relieved of her gag but was still tied to her chair and seemed to be engaged in an earnest discussion with Aunt Callie. Nina decided that she would probably be intruding and went instead to the kitchen where she could hear the kettle being filled.
“Our mums are having a heart-to-heart so I thought I’d leave them to it and make myself a cup of tea,” Theda explained as Nina entered the kitchen. “Do you fancy a cup too?”
“It does seem to be getting a bit serious in there,” Nina agreed as she took two mugs and a box of teabags out of a cupboard.
“My mum said there were a few things she wanted to get straightened out. I think she’s a little bit concerned about you.”
“I think I’m OK, but my mum does seem to have a funny attitude about tying up games,” Nina conceded.
Theda filled the cups from the kettle then removed the teabags and transferred them to the bin while Nina added a little milk.
“We could sit in the lounge,” Nina suggested.
Theda followed her cousin to the lounge, each girl carrying her mug of tea.
“I’m really sorry I had to cut the game short,” Nina said after taking a sip of her tea. “I usually like being tied up for a lot longer than that, but I was bursting for the loo.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Theda replied. “I can tie you up again if you want some more.”
“I’m not sure I’m really dressed for it like this.” Nina tugged at the edge of her shawl to make her point.
“Being tied up shouldn’t do your clothes any harm,” Theda assured her. “Besides, it’s fun being tied up when you’re all dressed up sometimes. I’ll go and get some rope if you’re up for it.”
“In that case, yes please,” Nina said with a shy smile.
Theda took another sip of tea and left the room. When she returned a few minutes later, Nina had drained her mug and set it aside.
“It’s easiest if you stand up while I do your arms,” Theda said, sorting out the tangle of rope she had retrieved from the dining room.
“Should I take this off?” Nina asked, indicating her shawl again.
“No need,” Theda said. “It’s a really cute outfit and you’ll look great tied up in it.”
Theda arranged Nina’s hands so that they were palm to palm in front of her. She wrapped the centre of a long length of rope several times around her cousin’s wrists then formed a cinch between them. When Theda tied off the binding in a secure knot, there were two long tails of rope left. She took these around Nina’s waist, crossed them behind her back and brought them to the front again where she knotted them. There was still enough rope left to tie the cinch of Nina’s wrist binding back to the waist rope, pulling her bound wrists firmly against her tummy.
While Theda was sorting out some more rope, Nina explored the limits of her freedom. She could touch the rope between her wrists with her fingertips, but the knots were well out of reach.
“What kind of rope is this?” Nina asked. “I didn’t see anything like this in our local hardware shop.”
“It’s braided hemp. If you get rope from an ordinary hardware shop, it will probably be nylon or cotton.”
“I got cotton because it felt nicer.”
“Good enough reason,” Theda said. “This stuff is more flexible than cotton and it takes knots better, but it can be a bit rough on bare skin.”
“It’s not going to damage my clothes?” Nina asked anxiously.
“I suppose if you struggled hard enough for long enough you could theoretically wear a hole in something, but the worst I’ve ever seen is the occasional brown fibre left behind.”
“I was a bit worried about my shawl. I don’t wear it often, but I’d like to keep it nice,” Nina said.
“I promise I’ll be careful,” Theda said, picking up a length of rope which was still bundled up into a skein. She shook it out onto the floor and located an end.
“However much rope is that?”
“Ten metres,” Theda replied. “Hang on to this end.” She handed Nina one end of the rope then started to wind it around her upper arms and chest. “Tell me if it gets too tight,” she added winding turn after turn around Nina. Eventually, she ran out of rope and took the end of the rope from Nina and fastened it off to the other end that she held herself. Nina was now enmeshed in rope from her elbows to her shoulders.
“I counted twelve turns of rope around me,” Nina commented.
Theda did a quick count. “It’s thirteen – you didn’t count the ends that I knotted together.”
“It feels amazing anyway.”
“Now, if you sit down, I’ll do your legs,” Theda said, sorting through the pieces of rope that had been used to bind Nina earlier.
Nina reversed up to an armchair and carefully lowered herself into it.
“The rope should be fine on top of woolly tights like that,” Theda said as she positioned Nina’s feet side by side.
“Actually, they’re leggings,” Nina corrected.
“Better still – they’ll be that much thicker.”
Theda wrapped a length of rope around Nina’s ankles about six times then said, “One of the great things about hemp rope is that you don’t even need to use a proper knot sometimes.”
As Nina watched, Theda took one loose end of the rope and simply fed it under the coil of rope around Nina’s ankles then fed it under a second time. She folded the other end of the rope and pushed it under the binding, leaving a loose tail a few centimetres long.
“All I have to do is to pull on this rope and your ankle binding will come undone,” Theda explained. “You could do that too, only you can’t reach it all tied up like that,” she added with a grin.
Theda repeated the same binding, secured in the same way, below and then above Nina’s knees.
Nina strained to reach the leg binding closest to her hands but conceded defeat after a moment or two. “You’re right – I’m completely stuck.”
“The way I’ve tied your hands, you wouldn’t be able to reach a gag either,” Theda pointed out.
Nina experimented to see if she could reach her mouth and quickly confirmed Theda’s assertion. “You’re right – I always imagined that your hands would have to be behind your back for that,” Nina said. “How did you and Aunt Callie get so good at tying up?”
“We’ve played games like this for years,” Theda answered. “I think my mum first tied me up when I was about 5 or 6.”
“And you never played them with me until today?” Nina’s tone was bordering on accusatory.
“Your mum always insisted it was off-limits.”
“Until today?”
“Today was your mum’s idea too. She told us that you’ve taken a liking to being tied up recently and there’s nothing she can do to put you off it. I think the idea was that you would be so scared thinking this was a real robbery that you wouldn’t want to be tied up ever again,” Theda explained. “We didn’t think it would work, but we thought it might be fun for you anyway, so we decided to go along with it and see what happened.”
“I wasn’t the least bit scared as soon as I knew who you were and realised it wasn’t real,” Nina said.
“You seeing through the disguise rather cut the script short – we had quite a complicated industrial espionage scenario worked out and didn’t get to use it.”
“Sorry to spoil all the preparation,” Nina said, her grin making it clear that she wasn’t in the least bit sorry. “One question though: what were you actually doping to Mum’s computer?”
“Oh, that – I was running a clean-up on it to get rid of some of the crud it had accumulated. She should find it boots much quicker now,” Theda replied, then added, “You haven’t told me how you knew it was us.”
“Your mum’s R’s,” Nina answered succinctly.
“Pardon?”
Nina mentally reviewed what she had said and giggled before amending, “Sorry, it was the way Aunt Callie pronounces the letter R.”
“Ah, not much we can do about that,” Theda observed. “Actually I’m glad you just treated it as a game.”
“It was good fun,” Nina acknowledged. “It’s fun being tied up now too,” she added.
“I think I’ll leave any more explaining until our mums have finished working things out between them,” Theda said. “Besides, I’m getting envious of you being all tied up when I’m not.”
“I don’t think I can help much,” Nina pointed out.
“My mum’s busy, so I’ll have to do a do-it-yourself job, but you will definitely be able to help.”
“How?” Nina demanded.
“Watch and learn, cousin dearest,” Theda replied with a wink.
Theda sorted through the rope on the floor, setting aside a long piece that was still wound into a skein and selecting two shorter pieces. She perched on the edge of a chair and leaned forwards. Using one of the shorter lengths, she tied her own ankles together, wrapping the rope around them several times and forming a fat cinch between her legs.
“I’ll need a bit of scope for shuffling,” Theda said, experimenting to see how much freedom of movement she had.
Satisfied with the ankle binding, Theda hitched up her skirt and the silk petticoat she wore under it. As she did so, Nina was able to see clearly that Theda was wearing stockings not anachronistic tights. Theda wound the second short length of rope around her legs just above her knees and knotted the binding tightly, without a cinch.
“This rope doesn’t do stockings any good at all, but I’m wearing nylon ones rather than proper period silk, so it won’t matter too much.”
Theda picked up the skein of rope she had selected, worked the end out from where it had been tucked in and shook the bundle loose. She found the ends and put them together before sliding the rope through one hand to fold the whole length in two. Returning to the cut ends of the rope, she quickly formed a two-in-hand slip knot and made sure it would slide smoothly without either coming loose or jamming. She then loosely coiled the rest of the rope.
“Now for the fun bit,” Theda said, sliding off her chair onto her knees and awkwardly shuffled herself closer to Nina.
“You get to help by looking after this. Hold on to the end tightly and pay the rope out as I need it, keeping it tight as you do so,” Theda instructed, handing Nina the coil of rope.
Nina gripped the folded-over centre of the rope with her left hand with her thumb through the fold to make sure it was firm. She used her slightly more dexterous right hand to hold the coil.
Theda picked up the slip knot and folded its noose over to double again the already doubled rope. Holding the loop in one hand, she shuffled herself around with her toes, rotating on her knees until she had her back to Nina. Still holding onto the rope, she put both hands behind her back and worked them through the noose from opposite directions.
“Hold on tight,” Theda prompted Nina as she tugged against the rope to tighten the slip-knot against her wrists.
With her wrists now tied together and her forearms horizontal across her back, Theda continued turning herself with her toes. She bent her knees more to lower herself so that the rope would go around her upper arms and chest as she turned. “Keep the rope as taut as you can so it doesn’t slip down,” she reminded Nina.
It was fairly slow work, but Theda was able to make three complete rotations, building up her chest binding.
“I don’t think there’s enough left to go round again,” Nina told her cousin.
“OK, just keep it tight while I get a bit closer,” Theda instructed, shuffling herself slowly backwards towards until her feet were under Nina’s chair. “Now hand me the end you’re holding.”
Nina pushed her hand as far forward as her bonds would permit while Theda leaned backwards and took the end of the rope from her cousin’s outstretched fingertips. Nina watched fascinated as Theda manipulated the end of the rope behind her back. She passed it behind the beginning of the band of rope around her chest where it ran up from the slip knot encircling her wrists. Next she pushed it up under the chest rope with one hand and grabbed it with the fingers of the other. She pulled down sharply, which had the effect of pulling her wrist binding up towards the chest ropes. Still keeping the rope taut, she wrapped it around the rope leading up from her wrist binding again and, holding the loop open with a thumb, fed the end through it. A gentle tug pulled the knot tight.
“Nina, can you reach that loose end and give it a hard pull?” Theda asked, leaning back against Nina’s knees.
“Think so,” Nina replied, straining forwards with her fingertips. She caught the rope between her finger and thumb and, hooking a finger through the fold in the rope, gave it a sharp tug. The knot tightened visibly.
“Thanks – that’s me all tied up now,” Theda said. “The next tricky bit is getting back onto my chair now.”
Theda leaned forwards then straightened up so that she was vertical from the knees upwards, Using the small degree of freedom in her ankle binding, she was able to propel herself slowly across the carpet, sliding on her knees. “This doesn’t do stockings much good, either,” she commented.
Eventually, Theda reached the chair she had been sitting on. She rotated herself until she was side on to it and leaned sideways, so that one elbow was on the chair seat. By pulling with her elbow and pushing with her feet, she got her hip up as far as the front edge of the seat. After that, a series of inelegant squirming motions got her bottom onto the chair. She shuffled herself back so that she was leaning against the backrest and heaved a huge sigh.
“Brava!” exclaimed Nina. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible to tie yourself up like that and get back onto the chair. Can you escape from that or are you stuck now?”
“If I’d put a release loop into the slip-knot when I tied it, I would be able to escape just by pulling on the end of the rope, the same way you untie shoelaces, but I didn’t do that, so I’m just as helpless as you are,” Theda explained.
“So we just have to sit here and chat until one of our mums arrives,” Nina said with a grin.
“That’s right,” Theda agreed, returning the grin.
About half an hour after Theda’s self-bondage tour-de-force, Callie came into the room, closely followed by Suzanna, now freed from her bonds.
“I see you two have been busy,” Callie said, looking at the two girls.
“Not busy at all – in fact we can’t move,” Theda replied with a perfectly straight face.
“So sharp she’ll cut herself,” Callie commented to Suzanna.
“I know who she gets it from,” Suzanna retorted.
“Suzie and I are going to organise some food,” Callie said. “I was looking for volunteers to peel some potatoes, but it looks like I’ll have to do it myself while you two are enjoying your quality time together.”
“We’ll help if you untie us,” Nina offered earnestly.
“There’s a casserole in the oven already, so it really is just potatoes that need doing,” Callie explained. “It won’t be much trouble and I think your mum and I need to talk a bit more. We’ll have a proper family conference over supper.”
While the two mothers busied themselves in the kitchen, Theda and Nina resumed their conversation. “So, what’s your favourite way of being tied up?” Theda asked.
“I’m not really sure,” Nina replied after a moment’s reflection. “I quite liked that thing Aunt Callie did to me today where she pulled by feet up behind me and tied them to the ropes round my chest.”
“We call that a hog-tie,” Theda explained. “Sometimes it’s done by putting a rope between your ankles and wrists, but that can put a lot of strain on your arms.”
“I think I still like being tied to a chair more than that,” Nina added after another pause. “What do you like best?”
“I don’t think I’ve got just one favourite,” Theda replied. “I like being tied to a chair too – if it’s done well, it can be really soothing, just comfortably sitting still, not being able to do anything. I like my straitjacket too.”
“You have a real straitjacket?” Nina demanded excitedly. “What’s it like?”
“We found one at a jumble sale about a year or so ago and Mum and I couldn’t resist buying it. It’s meant for a small woman, so it’s much too small for Mum, but it fits me, even though it’s a bit on the short side for my height.”
“But what’s it like to wear?”
“Surprisingly comfortable, which makes sense if you think about it. Straitjackets are intended to stop deranged people hurting themselves, so it would be silly if they caused more hurt themselves. You can try it next time you visit – it should fit you.”
“Yes, please,” Nina declared firmly. “Can you do the Houdini thing and escape from it?” she added as an afterthought.”
“Not a chance,” Theda answered. “If the straitjacket is the right size and it’s strapped up properly, you’d have to be a real expert to get out of it – which I’m not. I do like escaping from being tied up when I can.”
“I’ve only managed a proper escape once,” Nina said, “and that was only because my mum didn’t tie me up securely enough.”
“That’s still pretty good going,” Theda said. “It’s really satisfying when you do get free though, isn’t it.”
Nina nodded and smiled. “It felt like I’d won a race or a competition or something.”
“I know exactly what you mean. I like it best when it’s been a real struggle and I’ve only just managed to escape. It’s not nearly as much fun if it’s too easy.”
“You must have been tied up a lot to be able to say that,” Nina pointed out.
“Like I said earlier, Mum and I have been playing tying-up games for years. Quite often, the game is that she ties me up and challenges me to escape.”
“And do you?”
“About half the time, but that’s escaping from a tie-up that Mum expects me to have some chance of escaping from. The challenges have got harder as I’ve had more experience, of course. And sometimes I’ve surprised her by escaping from something that she doesn’t think I could possibly get out of.”
“What about the way you’re tied up now?” Nina asked. “When I asked before, you said you were just as helpless as me. I think you were avoiding the question just a little bit.”
Theda grinned broadly. “Guilty as charged,” she admitted. “It would be quite hard work, but I could probably get out of this. If I managed to work the chest ropes up towards my shoulders, I might be able to find enough slack in my wrist binding to pull a hand free.”
“So, not just as helpless as me, then?”
“The way you’re tied up would be harder to get out of, but it might not be completely impossible with time and a lot of hard work.”
The conversation continued on more everyday topics until it was interrupted by Callie and Suzanna returning to announce that food was ready. Each of the women untied her own daughter and the four returned to the dining room. All the rope had been packed away, Suzanna’s computer was sitting on the side table where it usually went when it was not in use and the dining table had been set for the meal.
“That smells good,” Nina said as she inspected the contents of the casserole in the middle of the table.
“Theda’s doing,” Callie said. “She made that last night. All I’ve done is to reheat it and help Suzie with the potatoes and veg.”
There was a faintly uncomfortable atmosphere around the table as everyone helped themselves to food and carefully avoided mentioning the events of the evening.
Theda eventually broke the ice: “Mum, you mentioned a family conference, but I’m not sure we exactly count as family.”
“Yes you do,” Suzanna said before Callie could reply. “You might not be strictly blood relatives, but I’ve known your mum since we were little girls together and she’s the nearest thing to a sister I’m ever going to have. The two of you are definitely family.”
“I’m glad you still think so after the things I said to you earlier, Suzie,” Callie said with a smile.
“You’re my big sister,” Suzanna replied. “It all needed saying and I needed to listen. I...”
Suzanna seemed to find herself at a loss for words. Callie reached over and squeezed her hand. “Would you like me to summarize?”
Suzanna nodded her assent.
“This is mainly about you, Nina, so I’ll address everything to you,” Callie began. “Over the last few months, your mum has been telling me about the fascination for being tied up that you’ve developed. I can’t say I’m surprised – she and I spent a lot of time tying each other up when we were your age, so it looks like you’re definitely your mother’s daughter.”
“You used to play games like that too? It explains how Mum comes to be so good at tying me up,” Nina exclaimed.
Callie raised a finger. “Questions later, please, Nina,” she said. “We did, and we got a lot of fun out of it but, as I said, this is mainly about you. Your mum was worried that this tying up thing might be something of an obsession. Looking back, I can see that it was close to that for us when we were little. She didn’t want to forbid tying up games, so she just tried to make sure they weren’t as much fun as you expected in the hope that it would just be a passing phase and you’d move on to other things. I didn’t think that would work and I told her as much but she decided to pursue that policy anyway. She called it ‘aversion therapy’. From what she told me, it was fairly clear that none of the things your mum did to you put you off being tied up, but just made you a bit wary of the unexpected consequences. I warned your mum that if she persisted, it could damage your trust in her. I think she could tell it wasn’t working anyway,” Callie shot a glance at Suzanna, who responded with a tiny nod, “but she recruited Theda and me in a last-ditch attempt to scare you off by staging a pretend hostage situation. I reckoned that you were smart enough to be able to draw a distinction between being scared by being tied up by masked intruders and ordinarily enjoying a tie-up game. I hadn’t counted on you being smart enough to see through the deception immediately.”
“Not quite immediately,” Nina said, “but as soon as I’d worked out who you were, I knew I could relax and enjoy it, even though I did realise Mum had probably put you up to it to scare me.”
“Well, OK, nearly immediately,” Cassie amended. “The way you reacted, thanking everybody for setting up the scene made it quite clear that you were prepared to enjoy being tied up, even when you knew someone else had a different agenda.” She looked sharply at Suzanna, who avoided her gaze.
After an awkward pause, Nina asked the obvious question: “But why?”
“I think you need to answer that one, Suzie,” Callie said.
Suzanna swallowed hard then spoke quietly: “What Callie says is true: she and I did get a bit obsessed with tying up when we were little. We did other things together too, but we used to tie each other up a lot. I think our mums got a bit annoyed by it sometimes – they had to untie us quite often when we got stuck – but they never stopped us. There were a few of our friends who liked to join in sometimes, but they never got into it in quite the way we did. The problem was one girl in my class who found out about our games – she never joined in – and started telling stories around the school about how weird I was. I was so embarrassed it was an ordeal going to school and having people whisper and giggle about me.”
Suzanna’s face crumpled and a tear trickled down her cheek. Callie moved her chair closer so that she could put a comforting arm around Suzanna’s shoulders.
“Didn’t they tell the same tales about you, Aunt Callie?” Nina asked.
“They tried, but don’t forget I’m two years older than your mum and so I was a lot older and bigger than the ringleader. Let’s just say I showed her that I wasn’t going to tolerate it. Suzie was a much easier target.” She gave Suzanna another squeeze.
Suzanna managed to control herself enough to continue speaking: “I really didn’t want you to go through the hell that I did at school, so I thought it would be best if you just lost interest in this tying-up business so the situation wouldn’t arise.”
Nina digested this for a few moments before replying, “That was really sweet of you, Mum, but perhaps if you’d just explained it to me, so I knew why you were so opposed to tie-ups...?”
“Nina has a point,” Callie pointed out. “She’s a smart kid and quite old enough to have an informed discussion about your experience.”
“The message I’m getting from this is that I should be really, really careful about who knows about these games,” Nina said.
“Can I ask a question?” Theda said, having sat silently through the discussion. “Aunt Suzie, I know what you were thinking when you tied Nina up for her games – you’ve just explained that – but what did you feel?”
There was a long pause before Suzanna answered: “Well, I was a bit envious of the fun she was obviously having because I remembered the fun I used to have playing games with Callie.”
“And when my mum tied you up earlier on this evening?” Theda asked.
“It was just like the old days. I had to keep reminding myself that I had a serious purpose to being tied to a chair and that it wasn’t just a prank we were staging.” There was another pause then Suzanna added, “It really was brilliant fun, Callie. I realised how much I missed games like that, even though it wasn’t really supposed to be a game.”
“From where I’m sitting,” Theda said, “it sounds as if you two could get a lot of fun out of these games if Aunt Suzie just dropped the hidden agenda and Nina was careful about who else knew about them.”
“Sounds about right to me,” Callie agreed.
“Mum?” Nina prompted.
Suzanna smiled, looking as if a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. “Shall we make a fresh start with these games you keep going on about, Nina?”
“That would be nice, Mum,” Nina replied.
“Sounds like mission accomplished,” Theda said, getting to her feet. “I’ll put the kettle on for some tea.”
“You can’t just say you played lots of tying-up games when you were little and not tell me about them,” Nina said to her mother and aunt.
“I want to hear about them too,” Theda called from the kitchen.
“There were so many,” Suzanna said.
“Well, start with the best ones or the funny ones,” Theda said, standing in the doorway waiting for the kettle to boil.
At first, Suzanna was quite reticent but with encouragement from the other three, she and Callie told of their escapades as children and teens, often triggering forgotten memories in each other.
After the teapot had been drained, refilled and drained again, Callie said to Theda, “I think we should do the washing up and leave these two to have a quiet sit-down.”
This was obviously a pre-arranged signal as Theda immediately replied, “I agree – we should definitely do that.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Nina asked.
“I’m sure it does,” Theda replied. “It might be prudent to take a trip to the bathroom at this point. You too, Aunt Suzie.”
Suzanna and Nina went upstairs and took turns to use the bathroom. On their return to the dining room, two of the chairs had been moved away from the table. Callie and Theda were busy disentangling and sorting out rope.
“You do Nina and I’ll see to Suzie,” Callie suggested to Theda.
“Right you are, Mum,” Theda said, ushering Nina towards one of the chairs.
Theda began by forming a band of rope about half a dozen turns of rope around Nina’s waist and the backrest of the chair, finishing off with a knot at the back. She had Nina hold out her hands in front of her palm-to-palm and bound her wrists with four turns of rope followed by three more between them to form a snug cinch. She used the tails of the binding to attach it securely to the waist rope.
“Now lean back with your back straight,” Theda instructed.
Nina straightened herself up and Theda tied one end of a long length of rope to one of the vertical side members of the chair back, just below the lowest of the horizontal bars that formed the backrest. She proceeded to wind the rope around Niua’s arms and chest and the chair back, spiralling it upwards as she paid the rope out.
“This is more-or-less what you did before but with a chair,” Nina pointed out.
“Pretty much,” Theda agreed as she continued to wind rope and then fastened it off to the top of the backrest.
With Nina securely bound from the waist up, Theda knelt down to tie her legs. She bound and cinched Nina’s ankles, leaving two long tails of rope dangling from the knot. This was followed by similar bindings above and below Nina’s knees. Theda returned to the ankle binding and tied off the tails of rope to the chair legs. She fastened the tails of the knee ropes to the tops of the chair leg then stood up.
“That’s Nina done, Mum,” Theda said. “How are you doing with Aunt Suzie?”
“Almost finished,” Callie answered. “Could you find some clean gags?”
Theda left the room and could be heard going upstairs. A few moments later, she returned with a pair of Nina’s purple and white hockey socks and two white handkerchiefs. She put one sock and a handkerchief on the table for her mother to use and turned to Nina. As Nina watched, she shook the handkerchief out then balled it up. She bent down and held it in front of Nina’s mouth.
“Mum’s used exactly that gag on me before,” Nina said opening her mouth and and allowing her cousin to position the handkerchief behind her teeth. Theda positioned the sock between Nina’s teeth and double-knotted the ends behind her head.
“Is that OK?” Theda asked.
“Unnh,” Nina replied, nodding her head.
“Right then, we’ll go and sort everything out in the kitchen,” Callie announced, leaving the room with her daughter.
Nina had really only been paying attention to what Theda was doing while she was being tied up but now had the opportunity to see what Callie had done to her mother.
Suzanna and Nina had been positioned so that they were facing each other a metre or so apart. Suzanna’s arms were behind the chair, so Nina couldn’t see how they were tied. She guessed that they were probably arranged with the forearms horizontally as her mother’s upper arms were approximately vertical and she could see her elbows .There was a band of about half a dozen turns of rope around Suzanna’s arms and chest and the back of the chair, just above her elbows and below her bust. It looked quite tight but didn’t seem to be cinched. Another band of rope held Suzanna’s waist back to the chair. A pair of ropes came over Suzanna’s shoulder, were fastened to the waist rope and disappeared out of sight over the other shoulder. Nina wished that she could see the back view of her mother’s tied up to see how her wrists were secured and how the waist, chest and shoulder ropes were connected. Suzanna’s legs were tied to the chair legs at the ankles and just below the knees and she was held down by a coil of rope over her lap and under the chair seat. Her gag was much the same as Nina’s but with the added refinement of a knot in the sock.
It was hard to read Suzanna’s expression with a gag in her mouth, but the crinkles at the corners of her eyes suggested to Nina that she was smiling. Nina smiled back and hoped her mother could make the same interpretation.
Nina and Suzanna sat looking at each other while sounds of dish washing could be heard in the kitchen. Nina was thoroughly enjoying the shared experience and assumed that, in the light of the earlier discussion, her mother must be too.
Eventually, Callie and Nina returned to the dining room. Nina was surprised to see that they were now dressed to go home. Callie had added an Inverness cape in a slightly duller green than her suit and topped off her outfit with a rather battered-looking trilby while Theda wore a double-breasted brown tweed overcoat with a rust coloured scarf around her neck and tossed over one shoulder.
“I think we’ll head back home now,” Callie said.
There was an unintelligible but indignant-sounding muffled squawk from Suzanna at this.
“I thought it would be fun for you to see if you’re still as good at getting loose as you used to be,” Callie said, apparently in reply. “Give me a call when you’ve done it.”
“Don’t worry – my mum says your mum is very good at escaping,” Theda said to Nina.
Shortly after that, Nina heard the front door open and then close.
There was a muffled snarl from behind Suzanna’s gag then she began to struggle systematically against her bonds. From Nina’s point of view, there wasn’t much to see, just the small movements of her arms and upper body permitted by the ropes restraining her. Her eyes had an unfocussed look as she concentrated on her efforts. Once again, Nina wished she could see the back view so that she could see just what her mother was doing.
For a long time there seemed to be no visible progress, but Nina eventually noticed that the band of rope around Suzanna’s arms and chest was no longer horizontal; it was slowly but steadily being worked down towards her right elbow. Nina watched fascinated as the first strand of rope reached the elbow and slid below it. The rest of the coil followed quickly after that. With the tension largely off that rope, it dropped below the left elbow as well and Suzanna was able to move her arms a little more. It was only a few minutes later that Suzanna’s right hand emerged from behind her back. She reached up to her gag and attempted to pull it down. As that failed, she reached behind her head and worked at loosening the knot. Her left hand remained behind her back; Nina guessed that her mother’s wrists must have been tied separately to the back of the chair.
Suzanna succeeded in removing the sock from between her teeth and tossed it to the floor. She extracted the handkerchief from her mouth and threw that aside too. “It’s just a question of untying knots now,” she told Nina, her eyes bright with excitement.
Nina was delighted a that her mother was clearly enjoying the challenge she had been left. As she watched, Suzanna systematically freed her left arm then the ropes securing her upper body before leaning forward to untie the ropes across her lap and lastly to free her legs.
Now completely free, Suzanna stood up and turned her attention to her daughter. She untied Nina’s gag and carefully eased the handkerchief out of her mouth.
Nina swallowed a couple of times to get her mouth working again then said, “That was brilliant, Mum. Could I learn to escape like that?”
“I’m sure you could,” Suzanna replied, “but it will take a lot of being tied up for practice.”
Wow. Thorough descriptive story. I really like that first time. Two hours blindfolded gagged and ear plugged. Then being released all hot and sweaty but wanting more
