“Mummy, we saw the dolphins!” Leah beamed once she found her mother in the living room. 

Helena grinned at her little girl as she climbed on the sofa beside her. “Wow!” She exclaimed, “Where they very big?”

Leah nodded, “But there was a baby one, too, with the mummy dolphin. And turtles, a really big one.”

“And sharks!” Nicky stated, coming into the room now with Andrew and Peter, “They were right above us and Leah was scared-”

“-I wasn’t scared-”

“-but they swam right over us!” Nicky exclaimed, gesturing with his hand, “We were in a tunnel, they were this close,” he widened his arms to show the distance as Helena offered her son a mock-alarmed expression.

“Wow, it sounds exciting!” She grinned, then glanced up at Andrew and Peter with a smile, hoping an oblivious blush wouldn’t give her and Dylan away. 

“Hey, you okay?” Andrew asked, noticing the rather dazed and peculiar expression upon her face.

Helena merely nodded and stood from the sofa while the children talked about their trip out. “I’m fine,” She told her brother, “feeling a lot better, now, actually.” 

It was at that moment that the toilet flushing sounded from above and Helena was instantly relieved that Dylan had figured out a way for it not to seem strange to be coming from upstairs. “Who else is here?” Andrew asked suddenly.

“Dylan…” Helena answered, and he gave her an odd look; she almost thought he had figured them out. 

When Dylan reached the living room, smiling at the children as they shyly – or, in Nicky’s case, not so shyly – greeted her, she offered a greeting of, “Hi,” to Andrew and Peter. 

“Hey, I wasn’t expecting you,” Andrew told her, and Dylan could tell by his expression that he was not angry at her presence, just slightly suspicious. She hoped her friend wouldn’t be able to see the tell-tail signs over her face and figure out she had just fucked his sister. Helena met her gaze once, blushed, and glanced away quickly.

“When did you get back?” Peter asked then, smiling at Dylan and trying to tactfully ignore the obvious suspicions he harboured. 

“This morning,” Dylan answered, and then realised that it probably sounded extremely odd that she would come here straight away. 

She tried to supply a rational answer when Helena cut in, “I asked if she’d come around…” At Andrew and Peter’s odd looks, she nodded, “I know, I felt awful dragging her all the way over here. But you were out and I started to feel better…and bored.”

Dylan nodded, accepting the dubious cover story. “I had a free afternoon, and you know how I hate to be cooped up inside.” Andrew and Peter merely nodded, each showing various degrees of belief when it came to their story, though if either doubted them they did not say. “Anyway,” Dylan began, hoping to ease some tension and knowing that staying around would do nothing for either her or Helena’s masking, she continued, “I better get going.” She made sure to check the time on the clock before stating, “Yeah, I have to be somewhere… so, I’ll see you later.”

Andrew nodded and told her, “Yeah, you will,” with a smile, though an undertone of curiosity in his voice sent a cold chill up Dylan’s spine and she knew her friend would stay true to his words. Peter and Helena both offered Dylan their own goodbyes, and the Brit hoped her brother and his boyfriend couldn’t detect her slight discomfort. 

“Right, who wants a drink?” Peter asked, moving into the kitchen while the children followed him, each asking for different flavours of juice. Helena called back that she was fine without, though soon noticed Andrew watching her. Her heart thundered in her chest and she knew he must have seen some incriminating piece of evidence, her flushed chest, a bite mark, perhaps, that had given her and Dylan away. Hiding her dread with a seemingly all-too-easy smile, she made an excuse to leave the room and headed upstairs, both in search of her elusive underwear and the space to breathe away from her elder brother’s knowing eyes.