A December to Remember (25)
They held on to the call for a minute more in silence, just breathing together. And then the green phone icon changed to red, and Evette was gone.
Simone could feel her throat closing, clogged up with all the emotions that she didn’t seem able to express in a safe way. Instead, her hurt seeped out as snide, hateful remarks that half the time she didn’t mean, while all the time the lump in her throat seemed to grow bigger. She could feel it, a physical as well as a metaphorical thing. When it had first started happening six months ago, she was convinced she had a tumor, but her doctor had diagnosed stress reflux and prescribed antacids. He told her she needed to learn to decompress. Her stress was literally choking her.
She could see into the sitting room of the cottage opposite her: a boy and girl were decorating a Christmas tree in the bay window. Outside, fairy lights wound around a potted bay tree shivered in a wintry breeze. She sipped her wine and sighed.
9
Maggie bit her lip to stop from crying out and collapsed onto Joe’s naked chest. She rested there, spent and loose limbed, both of them breathing heavily. Joe kissed her neck and held her tightly, absorbing her shock waves as they lay tangled together in her bed.
“Can’t they start without you?” he asked.
It was Tuesday evening, and the very last thing she wanted to do was go out again after a long day at work, but go out she must.
She basked in his arms, relishing the warmth of his skin, his smell, the taste of him. If only she could simply enjoy this for the fantastic sex it was.
“No. I wasn’t around for most of the day, I need to make an effort.”
Yesterday had been full-on. Between her dad’s surprises at the solicitors’ and the enforced proximity with her sisters hunting for Monopoly houses, she had devoted the whole day to North family matters. Today she had begun to adjust her daily routine to make room for Augustus’s demands alongside her ongoing commitments. Unlike Star and Simone, she was not on a hiatus from life. She still had a business to run and a child who needed dropping off and picking up from school and feeding and helping with homework.
Patrick was meeting friends in Tenterden, and Verity was tucked up in bed, fast asleep, exhausted after practicing her lines for the school Christmas play—A Christmas Carol, in which she’d been cast as a pomegranate.
Maggie had not intended to end up in bed with Joe this evening, but where Joe was concerned, she didn’t appear to have any willpower. It had reached the point where all he had to do was look at her a certain way, and she could practically feel her knickers sliding off of their own accord.
“Couldn’t you just stay a little bit longer?” he asked as she began to unwind his limbs, which held her in a very comfortable cage.
She smiled. If only. “As tempting as that is, we only found four houses yesterday. The sooner we find the rest, the sooner we can get things moving with the appraiser and get this shit sorted.”
Her knees were locked up from having straddled Joe, and they each let out an alarming crack as she carefully straightened them. Jeez, when did I get so stiff? she wondered. It was an effort not to make ungainly oof! noises as she hobbled about the bedroom. Another point against them: he was yet to reach the age where every joint seemed to have something to say about being asked to perform its basic functions. These days her neck, shoulders, elbows, ankles, and knees clicked when she got off the sofa, as though tutting at being disturbed.
“Such a ruthless businesswoman.” He was watching her, one arm behind his head. He looked delightfully ruffled and Maggie couldn’t help staring as she wriggled into her jeans. The moonlight shone in through a gap in the curtains, casting a sliver of light across his body. Her heart beat faster. She felt as though every cell in her body was reaching for him, yearning for him. She swallowed her feelings.
“I think we both know that’s not true.” She smiled. “Are you sure you don’t mind holding the fort while I’m gone?”
“Of course not.” He raised an eyebrow and added archly, “Although if you were to make an honest man out of me and let me move in . . .”
This was a joke that had started when they’d first begun sleeping together (the convenience of having a live-in lover, etc.), but like their feelings, the joke had gathered weight as time went on and now it had become a code for the elephant in the room.
“You forget, I’m being evicted. What would be the point of you moving all your stuff in, only to shift it all back out again?” She tried to play along, but it felt forced, tender, like pressing on a bruise.
“I’d settle for a sleepover.” He was negotiating.
“Too complicated.”
“Even if I sleep on the sofa?”
“You live five minutes up the road. What possible reason could I give the kids for you needing to sleep on the sofa?”
“Patrick knows about us, you know. And it’s pissing him off that we aren’t coming clean about it. He thinks I’m using you, and I don’t want him to think that; it isn’t fair.”
They’d left the protective circle of the joke, and she felt her familiar fight-or-flight response rising.
It would be easy to give in. Maybe for a couple of years they’d have a good run, but you could only keep reality at bay for so long before it comes knocking. Her reality would be HRT and graying pubic hair, while Joe’s would be missing his chance to meet a woman who could give him children. She didn’t want this wonderful man stuck with an aging greengrocer with thighs powerful enough to wear holes through industrial-strength denim.