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Then, I’m lying on the bed with Jess.
Their bed.
And, we’re going to have to learn to share him.
‘Fuck off!’ I tell him.
‘It's a fantasy,’ Luke tells me and he’s terribly stern - he’s wearing a business shirt but it’s unbuttoned and open. I don’t know where he is, because he’s not in the bed with Jess and me now and we’re not in his kitchen. Instead, he’s on his sofa at home, the leather one. He’s on the couch, with his red wine and the macadamia nuts that he likes and he’s hanging up the phone on me.
He’s wearing his suit trousers and I look down and he’s hard through the fabric. He puts down his drink and he’s sliding down his zipper and, there he is - the Luke I’ve never seen, is stroking himself as he thinks of me. ‘Come here,’ his voice is as I’ve never heard it, this low sensual tone that makes me shiver. I stand there in his study and I watch him. I'm not using the vibrator any more, I mean, I can hear it, but it’s Luke that’s filling me. I can hear his breath in my ear and his back beneath my fingers.
‘We can’t,’ I tell him, resisting him still, but his mouth is on my breasts, tasting them as if he’s longed for them.
‘We’re not,’ he assures me. ‘It's just a fantasy.’
But whose fantasy am I in though?
It’s all different again.
Despite the night, the air is hot and I can hear the lap, lap of the water as Luke moves inside me. My legs are wrapped around him and my back scratches a bit on the wall of the pool but I don’t care, because it’s something to lean on as he takes my sunburnt breast in his mouth. I’m pissed and we don’t have to worry about who’s driving, because soon we’re going back to the hotel room. He lifts his head from my breast and he pushes me down harder onto him. We’re locked in eye contact, I’m about to come and so is he. He’s pushing me down harder and then I hear a moan, a feminine moan, but it’s not from me… I look beyond Luke and I’m watching my husband screwing Jess. Yes, I get that we’re in Portugal; I just don’t want to be here. This, I don’t want to see.
Is that the price I’d have paid for a pony?
‘Fuck off!’ I say and scramble back on stage to belt out Les Miserables but that's not working. I try Robbie. I’m the girl he chose from the audience and he’s taking me behind the curtains but nothing’s working. Where’s David Beckham when you need him?
‘It’s okay…’ Luke hauls me back to his kitchen. It’s the words I need to hear. ‘Lucy, it’s okay.’
I feel my terror leave.
I’m scared that this is wrong but he kisses me till I know it’s right.
Till my silver grey knickers are down on the floor and I honestly don’t have the mental capacity to work out who took them off, I just know that finally he’s inside of me.
Finally.
But then we’re back to his couch.
‘You’re a bitch.’ Luke says, as if to remind himself, his hips lifting from the couch.
‘I’m not.’ I plead. ‘We’re not doing anything - it’s just a fantasy. I let myself go with it, I just give in to it - it’s Luke that’s on top of me it’s Luke that inside of me, it's to Luke that I come.
So does he.
I hear him groan.
I feel his relief and then I swear I feel his guilt, his regret, and his disgust in himself and in me as he returns to his sofa.
Because I feel it too.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
‘We’re not disturbing you?’
Jess must have seen the startle of panic on my face when they drop around the next morning.
I’ve been up since five, just mortified by what happened and this is the last thing I need, but I don’t say that of course. ‘Not at all.’ I let them in. ‘I just picked Charlotte up from her sleepover,’ I say as we walk through to the kitchen. ‘I got some nice bread in the village, do you want…’
‘No thanks,’ Luke interrupts. ‘We’re not staying long.’
I flick the button on the coffee machine.
‘Can I have a bacon sandwich?’ Charlotte calls.
‘In a bit,’ I answer, because I just want to make a quick coffee to be polite and to get Luke gone. I can hardly stand to be in the same room as him but, of course, Jess hears the word bacon and tells me to put some on for her and then Luke gives a tight shrug, and, oh shit, it looks like they’re staying.
‘How was last night?’ I ask Jess.
‘Good,’ she says. ‘You know, you really ought to come along, Lucy.’
‘It’s too soon,’ I say.
‘It’s dinner,’ Jess says but I shake my head. I don’t really like going out. I haven’t got agoraphobia or anything, I just like being in my house, watching movies, reading. I like going out sometimes but as a couple. I don’t want to go to dinner and clubs and pubs with the girls.
I never have.
I’ve always been in a couple, ever since I was sixteen but Jess won’t let it go.
‘It’s better than sitting in on your own on a Friday night,’ Jess says. ‘So, what did you do?’
My face is burning.
‘Mum!’ Charlotte calls from the living room. ‘The remote’s not working.’ I add bacon to the pan and I can hear it sizzling, much the same as my face. ‘There aren’t any batteries in it.’
‘Get some from your DS.’ I shout back.
I swear to God I am never using a vibrator again. I’m going to wrap it in newspaper and put it at the bottom of the bin.
I can’t believe the places my mind went to last night.
‘You’ve been busy,’ Luke says, glancing around. The house is gleaming and, for once, I’ve got some make up on.
I really am making an effort.
We eat our bacon sandwiches and finally we address the real reason that Luke is here.
‘You need to get a job.’ He’s as blunt as ever. ‘No bank’s going to approve you without proof of income.
‘It’s too soon.’
‘It doesn’t have to be a big job,’ Jess says. ‘They just need to see you’ve got some form of income’
‘I can’t think of working,’ I shake my head. ‘It’s way too soon.’
‘Lucy,’ Luke snaps. ‘Most people get two weeks compassionate leave. You’ve had six, nearly seven.’
‘It might be good for you to get out a bit.’ Jess is far gentler than Luke. ‘I can make a couple of calls.’ I feel this sort of lurch of hope as she chats on, because she knows someone and they’re looking for personal shoppers. I could do that, I think. I know all the labels and I love clothes and I could really do that but then I feel my eyelashes fluttering in a rapid blink as I realise Jess is not talking about Debenhams, she’s talking about the supermarket.
‘No!’
Fuck that!
‘No.’ I shake my head as I say it again - I am not doing other peoples shopping for a poxy five quid an hour. ‘It’s hardly going to cover a mortgage.’ Not the one I plan to take out on the house anyway.
Except, Luke has other ideas, because it’s a tiny mortgage that he’s suggesting I apply for.
I wanted a year.
He can maybe wrangle a year.
But I’m going to have to work for it.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
I’m too embarrassed to go to Ricky to get my roots done and so two weeks later, I find myself in my local supermarket, buying a home bleaching kit and hair dye.
I’ll be working here tomorrow.
I’ve got this very wobbly arrangement with Simone about dropping off and picking up the children. Charlotte is not pleased that I’m starting work and she questions me as I try to sort out my hair.
‘So what do I do when I get home?’ She’s standing at the bathroom door as I part my hair and smear peroxide over my roots.
‘What you always do,’ I say to her. ‘Go on Facebook. Or you can stay at Simone’s till I get home – I’ll be back by five.’
‘I don’t want to go to go there after school.’
‘Charlotte.’ I am doing my best to be patient, I know it’s a change, I know she’s used to having me home but I’m doing this so that bigger changes don’t have to happen. ‘It’s two days a week that I won’t be here after school.’
‘And some weekends,’ Charlotte says.
‘Charlotte…’ I look at her in the mirror and her eyes are so accusatory as they meet mine. ‘Lots of mums work,’ I point out. ‘Felicity’s mum works.’ Charlotte just stares at me for a full a minute, she doesn’t say it but I know she’s thinking it.
Felicity’s mum and her other friends mums have careers or hobbies or just live at the gym or shops.
They don’t work at the supermarket.
My shift starts at eleven and will finish at four forty five.
I’m told what to do, in a painfully slow voice, by this really annoying woman, whose name is Yolanda. She keeps calling me “love.”
‘You have to be thorough, love, and you have to be quick.’
I have a special trolley and it has a board that holds the computer printout of the order.
‘If we haven’t got what they’ve ordered,’ Yolanda says really slowly, ‘then you look down here and see if they’ve ticked that they’ll take alternatives.’
