He told her, long after hearing it could have had any influence whatsoever, that her mother had been old-fashioned.   That her attitude was narrow-minded, a product of her own, equally narrow-minded, mother.   But that didn’t fully explain it, for surely her mother’s younger sister, who also happened to be her favourite aunt, had the same mother, the same upbringing?

This aunt was as up-to-date, as with-it as you could hope a grown up to be.   Knew that Rowdy Yates was dreamy, that at fourteen thoughts were turned to possibilities, to wondering and wanting, while at the same time wary, wanting not to be discovered ignorant.  

But although by the time he said it, her mother had been dead three years, and the damage had been done (for she recognised that, however unwilling, her mother’s repugnance for sex had infiltrated and she ever had to tie down her own knee-jerk response before knowing what she really felt.) it sometimes hard to forgive.

As for why he hadn’t intervened at the time, she did not need to ask, because she’d inherited that trait from him, too.

Take it Away (Tuesday) He told her/She told him...