Thanks again for the phone. So pleased we can talk. Will call you later. Xxx

Two seconds after I pressed send, my phone beeped which took me by surprise.

Careful yr dad doesn’t find it ;)

I will be.

I hesitated before adding: I miss you and pressing send.

This time there was a longer pause before he sent:

When cn I cu?

I frowned at the message before texting back:

Sorry don’t understand

When can I see you?

Of course. How stupid of me.

Soon I hope. But Dad’s really watching me … have to be careful.

OK. Let me know. Already hard thinking about u.

I blushed. I didn’t know what to say to that so I settled for:

Will do xxx

I stared at the phone for a few minutes but there were no more messages. Reluctantly I switched it off and shoved it to the back of the drawer. I couldn’t risk it making a noise and Dad hearing it.

Over the next weeks Fred and I texted a lot. When I wasn’t with Dad, I was pretty much on the phone while I pretended to be studying in my room. Late at night when I was sure Dad was asleep, sometimes I’d even call Fred and we’d whisper to each other. He liked me to talk about what I wanted to do to him when we were together, touch myself down there and tell him what I was doing and what it felt like. It was embarrassing and I didn’t really know what to say, but he told me all girls did that and I wanted to be like all girls, not the weird girl who always stays at home with her dad and never goes anywhere. He’d tell me he was picturing me wearing things like little red lacy pants, the kind of thing I could only imagine because I’d never seen anything like that, let alone owned or worn anything but the most bog-standard underwear. The phone only worked when the weather was good and the signal dropped out often, but I tried my best. I liked it better when we talked about normal things like what we’d been doing in the day than all the other pretend stuff.