by Anna Bloom
I nodded as much as I could and he smiled, kissing my mouth.
“Okay, boys, let’s eat up and then tidy away quick. Then we can move the furniture around.”
“What?” I’d just taken a sip of coffee and it threatened to come back up again. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve decided Hannah needs a room. Jack and Ewan are going to bunk up.” Matthew waved his hand like this was a mere trifle on a Saturday morning. I thought about their beautiful rooms, each decorated uniquely for them.
“Oh, no. Really that’s not necessary at all. I promise, please don’t.”
Matthew completely ignored me. Well if he heard me, he didn’t pay me any mind. “Right. Carlings, let’s go.”
He squeezed my shoulder as he got back up from the table, momentarily wiping my memory of my horror at kids having to share a room because of us, with the scrunch of his delicious back muscles.
“Dad?” Jack blinked up at Matthew as he stood and brushed crumbs off his pyjamas and all over the floor. “Shall we get Hugo? He hates being at Grandma and Grandpa’s. We could get him today?”
Matthew shot me a sharp glance. “Don’t you think the five of us of a week is enough? This house is hardly huge.”
He said that, but as I stared around, I didn’t think there could be anywhere more perfect. Warm, cosy, and oozing a comfort that felt alien to me.
Until Jack and Ewan both tried to wedge themselves through the door at once. Matthew and I watched them as they negotiated the simple act of walking out of rooms.
“I worry for them, I truly do.” Matthew grinned at me.
“They seem okay?” I tried to read the ordnance survey map that was his face; each line, pinch of skin, telling me things I wasn’t sure he would.
Matthew had depression. I saw the signs so clearly now. I could only wonder how long I’d missed them all before.
Every mistake we had laid between us, every turn and slight of our history morphed into a new shape in light of this new knowledge.
A deep hurt settled in my stomach that he’d never spoken of the shadows that had chased him. But then, I could hardly talk—literally.
“They’re fine.” Reaching a large hand for me he rubbed it up my arm. “Ronnie, I’m sorry I behaved so appallingly. Julie…” Pain scored across his face and my chest squeezed. “She always knows the words to say.”
“Yeah, well. So do I now.” I grinned. Hilarious that I had now become the one with the capacity of speech—after two telephone consultations… Definitely cured. “Get the dog, Matthew. Hell, if we’ve managed to convince three kids that we should all live together for the week, I really can’t see what difference a dog will make.”
“Yes!” Hannah gave a fist pump—truly I’d forgotten she was even there. A fact she well knew because she stuck her tongue out at me. “I’m going to go and get dressed.”
“Towels are in the airing cupboard at the top of the landing and make sure you lock the door; Jack has no sense of boundaries.”
I loved the way they looked at one another. Mutual respect. It felt too good to be true.
In fact, I knew it was too good to be true. The Hannah leaving the kitchen had harnessed the wild beast of Godzilla proportions. Could she make it a week?
As soon as she’d gone, Matthew snaked quick arms around my waist and reeled me in tight. “Does she seem okay to you?” I searched his face.
“She’s lovely. Great with the boys, Ron. Maybe she always wanted siblings to order around.”
I pulled a face.
“What? You and Paul never thought of having more?”
I winced at the mention of Paul’s name. “No, I don’t think so.” I pulled away but he held me firm.
With a laugh he let go with one hand and motioned a circle around us. “This is a truth circle. We can’t keep hiding things from each other.”
“I know. But there are some things that I don’t need to talk about.”
“Like the fact Paul never helped around the house? Never helped with Hannah?”
I studied the floor with great intensity. “That easy to guess?”
“No.” A kiss landed on my cheek. “Hannah mentioned a few things this morning that’s all.”
I lifted my face to his, falling into the deep pool of heaven and slate gaze. “His trip skiing in Austria—it wasn’t the first he’d been on that spring.”
“He left you a lot?”
“I sometimes think I made him leave a lot. I made a fundamental mistake the night I told him about you. Stupid, youthful despair made me talk about you, and I think he probably never forgot, even though we never spoke about you again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“For not walking in that bloody pub. For not fighting harder. I’m going to fight for you now though, okay?”
“Hahaha, I don’t think you need to ask my permission.”
His face shadowed and I lifted a hand to cup his cheek, marvelling at the fact once again that I could do it. He was mine. I was in his house. This… we… were a thing. “You did what you needed to do to help your dad. I’m not going to say I think the pressure he put you under was right, but it is what it is.”
He nodded but his gaze dropped, lost someplace deep in the past that I couldn’t go to. Maybe when he realised I would never judge him like Julie always had, he would trust me more, tell me everything.
The only way to do that would be to launch into this. Headfirst.
“So Hannah’s getting a bedroom?”
“Yep.’ He smiled, a passing flicker of relief on his face making me know I’d chosen right to change the subject.
Matthew was a nut; tightly shut. I knew it would take a crowbar and some muscles to get him to let me in. Just as well I planned on working to build up the strength.
“You know you are spoiling her? She could have slept on the couch.”
“On the couch! You are obsessed with people sleeping on sofas. No, I want her to be comfortable. To feel at home.”
“Bite me.”
He kissed me instead, thoroughly, searching me deep with his tongue. His hands were on my skin and in my hair, anchoring me to him until I suspended breathless, my headache forgotten about.
“Matthew!” Hannah screamed down the stairs.
We leapt apart, his smile and the clutch of his hands as he pulled me into a tight hug, making tears threaten to overspill from my eyes.
“Yes?” he shouted back.
My poor Ma would never cope with this.
“Why’s your house purple?”
I chuckled against him, pressing my face into the fabric softener smell of his vest, nuzzling against his muscles.
“Ask your mother.” He shouted back and then he hugged me once again and we sat on an island of hope in a sea of change.
“Fuck it’s freezing.” I grumbled, ducking my neck down in my coat like a turtle. Lennie, who seemed to be wearing a light sports jacket without the need of gloves, scarves, or a woolly hat, laughed and wrapped her hand around me. Hannah had taken Beth and Leah off to find some insects in the small woodland area to the right of the rugby pitch. I had one eye on her though, not just because she was in charge of two small children, but also, I didn’t want to lose her.
This was wild Scotland… I might never find her again if she wandered off. Although I had no fear that she would be swiftly returned if someone found her and realised how reptilian she was. So far so good though. We’d got through moving the bedrooms around, all of us getting showered and ready to leave the house and getting to the rugby club all without a tantrum. Me having a tantrum—obviously.
“You’ll become hardy in no time.” Lennie laughed as I jumped up and down.
“So you come every week for Matthew’s boys?”
“Of course. Ryan would normally be here too if he hadn’t got so damn goosed last night.”
I studied her, lips pursed, and then had to ask. “Sorry. Goosed?”
“Aye, drunk, you know?”
&n
bsp; I rubbed my head at the merest mention of alcohol. “Yeah. Goosed, hey?”
“Pissed, sloshed, half-cut, sottered.” Her smile grew. “And my personal favourite, “Tram-lined,” which that wee bugger will be if he keeps getting drunk like that at his Mam’s kitchen table.”
“Oh God. She’s not going to hate me, is she? I didn’t mean to get that drunk.”
Lennie scrutinised me with a flash of dark eyes. “Pissed were ye?”
“My headache tells me so. Honestly, I can’t remember.”
Lennie laughed, throwing her head back. Mist bloomed out of her mouth. How could she not be cold? “Not to worry. That’s standard at the Carlings'.”
I wrapped my arms tight around myself. “It’s nice. I don’t think Hannah knew what to make of it.”
“She’s a rare blether that one.”
“Pain in the arse? Yes.” I nodded, wishing to hell I could remember a larger percentage of the evening before.
“No, talkative. She likes to chat.” Lennie stared at the pitch, where somewhere Jack was covered in mud and no longer recognisable, and then hollered some abuse at the children that made my ears ache.
“Not normally,” I continued once she’d stopped encouraging the youngsters to stop passing like their mothers, with questionable parentage. “So why do you and Ryan always come to practice?” I watched her two daughters play at kicking dirt.
“Ryan’s got it into his head that if we surround ourselves with boyish activities, the next bairn shooting out my fanny will be a boy.”
“I’m not sure that’s scientifically proven.”
Lennie shrugged. “Sore spot it is, Matthew and Liam getting the boys.”
“But Liam’s boys don’t play rugby on a Saturday?”
Lennie cackled and my right temple winced, still not forgiving of the night before. “Ha, no. I’ll leave you to ask him why.”
That’s a sure sign if ever there was, not to ask anything at all.
“So you come here in the hope to get yourself a baby boy and to…”
She signed and turned for me, her expression pensive. “Because Julie’s a fucking bitch and she will be here, holed up at the bar, making herself at home and then the boys will get confused and want Matthew to stay with her while she gets bladdered all afternoon.”
“Oh.” I turned and glanced over my shoulder. “She won’t come today, will she?” I didn’t know how I felt about a showdown with my old nemesis.
Although, to be fair, I doubted she had a clue who I was. Why would she? I was just the girl he once used to know, and I doubted very much that she remembered me.
“Nah, she’s hiding out at her parents pretending that Barb is ill so she doesn’t have to look after the kids.”
“Why doesn’t Matthew try for sole custody if she’s so unreliable?”
Lennie’s smile turned down at the corners. “Because she’s always made him believe he’s not good enough. That his dark moods aren’t safe.”
“What?” I puffed out my chest like a cock about to go into a fight. “He’s an amazing dad.”
“Aye, we all know. But she twists things. She’s a manipulative bitch. He should never have married her.”
“He wanted to help his dad though.”
Lennie bit down on her lower lip and shrugged.
“What?”
She scrunched her face. “Okay, that’s not all I heard. I heard she was weaving lies even back then.”
“Who told you?”
She shrugged.
“What lies?”
With a small smile she patted my gloved hand. “Listen, Ronnie. Don’t worry about it. You can’t change anything now. The best you can do is help him realise that he is more than capable of bringing those boys up without her poison.” She shook her head. “She’s not right, Ronnie. I worry about what she will do some days.”
“To the boys?”
“No.” Her words chilled my stomach and my teeth chattered. “No. To Matthew. She just won’t let him go. You need to remember that: for him, for the boys.”
“I will. Thank you. Although,’ I forced a giggle, “you’ve freaked me the fuck out.”
“What has?” I breathed out an extended sigh as Matthew jogged up to my side. His face flushed with the sting of the cold. Matthew after running up and down the side of a rugby pitch was a spank bank memory I would store for the rest of my life.
He pressed his cold nose into my cheek, and I wanted to lick it like an ice lolly. Not the only thing I wanted to lick. Porno Ronnie missed out on make-up sex due to being off her tits—I needed a fix.
“I’ve been telling Ronnie here what the match will be like later.”
Matthew gave his best attempt at glowering from under his dark brows, but the wide smile underwrote his sterling effort. “Ryan still feeling poorly, is he, Lennie?”
“He’ll be back to whip your arse under the table later.” She bolstered herself, crossing her arms.
“No need.” Matthew held his hand out in defence. “We’ve got a family dinner later, so we won’t be getting wasted.”
“Family dinner?” I lifted an eyebrow.
“Sure. The boys want sausages. That okay with you?”
“Ease up, Matty,” Lennie’s eyes glinted. “You don’t want to overwhelm her with all your sausage in one go.”
Shops and Pictures
Ronnie
Lynn’s house was crammed with people again. The Saturday match was a long-time tradition in the Carling house, that from what I understood, had moved from the pub to their mother’s house when all the boys had their children.
And when I say family, I’m not talking the green coloured Ryan, still determined to drink beer despite his obviously debilitating hangover, and Liam and their families. No, I mean all of them.
“So, Lassie, tell me again where you live?” Auntie Ethel clutched her sherry and leaned close to me across the sofa we’d become wedged onto together, the cushions caving under her and squeezing us into close proximity.
“Kingston.” I smiled and tried not to focus on the wiry grey strands bristling from her chin. “It’s near London.”
“Aye, I know where it is, Lassie. A Royal borough if I may believe.”
She had me there. I tried to recall the shield shaped signs down by the River Thames.
“Aye, Henry the Eighth, I believe—”
She was cut off by Matthew perching on the arm of the sofa and handing her a glass of sherry. “There you go. I noticed you were low again.” He shot me a wink and a smirk and I sunk into his chest. Leaning close to my ear, he whispered, “Mam’s worried we are nearly out again.”
I cast my glance around the room. How many people could fit in one house on a regular basis? “Is it like this every Saturday? How does your mum cope?”
Matthew chuckled and I relished the feel of him pressed against my back. His hand stretched around, running down my arm and entangling his fingers in mine. “They aren’t here for the match, Ronnie.” His smile curved into a boyish grin. “They are here for you.”
“Me?” My body temperature scorched to nuclear the moment I spoke.
Liam, who sat on the sofa nearest the television, swearing so the air around him curled with blue smoke, glanced over. “Aye up, Matty, be truthful. We are all here to see you crack a smile on your face.”
Matthew zapped him the V-sign and then chuckled against me and kissed my ear. For a paralysing moment of clarity, it hit me. This was happening.
Last weekend at home, with him under my mother’s roof, I’d known it was, but it had still felt like a dream you caught wind of just before waking.
Now the dream seemed tangible, so that I could chase it, touch it, own it.
“Indeed.” Ethel had downed her new glass of sherry. “When Hampton Court was built, the market town of…”
“I’m sorry, Ethel. Mam needs Ronnie in the kitchen. I’ll bring her back to you as quick as I can.” Matthew helped me from the sofa, lifting me from where I crammed in the c
orner with an almost suction-like squelch.
“Saved you,” he whispered in my ear. “She’s obsessed with the royals. Ob-sessed.”
I glanced over my shoulder to where she’d dropped her chin, her empty glass tilting forward. “Is she asleep already?”
“Instant, talk to sleep in a split second. It’s a family disposition from my father’s side.”
“What does your mum want?”
Matthew laughed and pressed me into the hallway wall. “She doesn’t, but I do.” His mouth sought mine, our teeth clinking as I gasped at his intense kiss.
I melted between the wall and him, my legs becoming numb; my fingers sliding into their favourite place, his hair. Loud voices came from either direction, but I couldn’t do anything other than sigh in appreciation of his lips against mine.
His hand slipped around my hip, edging me closer to his body and I chuckled into his mouth as I met a firm prodding of his arousal.
“What?” He muttered into my mouth. “I’ve barely been able to touch you since you arrived.” I shivered at the low note of desire in his voice. “What with you being drunk and having three kids running around.”
I shifted back and met his gaze. “It’s crazy, I can’t believe any of this is happening.”
The shine in his eyes dimmed a shade. “Listen, I don’t want to ruin the good mood here, but I’ve got to go and pick up the dog from Julie’s parents.”
“Oh, have you spoken to her then?” The muscles in my face dropped no matter how hard I tried to freeze them into my smile.
He smiled slow and pushed a kiss onto the corner of my mouth. “Only on text.”
“Oh.” Like while I was wedged into the sofa by your whiskered aunty?
“Ronnie. I just want to get the dog for the kids, and then we can have an amazing week together. I can’t believe you are going to be here for the whole week. It’s more than I ever dreamed.”
My heart plummeted at the thought of going home. I mean, I knew it would happen. Hannah needed to get back to school. I had to pack the house for the sale… had to get back to work.
“What’s wrong? Are you cross I texted Julie?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I just don’t think a week is going to be enough.”