by Hazel Osmond
‘I’m never going to take it off,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
Another child might have found a mirror to check what the hat looked like, but Hattie raised a hand and shouted, ‘Full steam ahead,’ before making for the door.
‘Yeah, tally-ho!’ Natalie said. ‘A hat made of paper and a bottle made of chocolate. It’s all kicking off here.’
Both Tom and Fran arrived at the back door at the same time.
‘After you,’ he said, ‘and … um … the tree house is over there.’
Why had he felt the need to point that out; it was a ruddy great house stuck in a ruddy great tree, but Fran’s face immediately looked like Hattie’s had done when she’d seen the hat.
‘You built this all yourself?’
He felt as if he’d constructed one of the great pyramids at Giza. ‘Well, me and Rob,’ he said, modestly.
Hattie had already climbed the ladder to the tree house and Natalie followed.
‘Dear Natalie,’ Fran said. ‘You can almost see what she had for breakfast, that skirt’s so short. She has such confidence.’
He did a pathetic laugh. Pathetic.
Standing on that part of the platform not taken up with the house, Hattie was finally being allowed to get the bottle out of the box.
‘Don’t shake it whatever you do,’ he heard Natalie say.
‘So what play are you going to see tonight?’ Fran was saying and he wondered how had he failed to notice during those first meetings how completely and utterly lovely she was. And smelled like … God, what did she smell like? Cut grass. No. Lemons. Scrambled eggs. Possum’s breath. God, he didn’t bloody know. What day was it?
‘The play, Tom?’ Fran said again, as if he were a younger child than Hattie.
Do I know the name of the play? Yes!
‘The Bricklayer’s Bequest,’ he said, and had enough confidence to add, ‘it’s about a workman who wins the Euro lottery—’
‘And spends it to help his friends sort out their lives.’
‘You know it?’ he asked, politely, while his brain bellowed, ‘Arrrrggghh.’
‘Yes. I went to see the preview. I’m extremely keen on drama, particularly from new playwrights.’
Of course you are.
He was going to have to do some homework before he came back tonight.
‘How’s the squirrel?’ he gabbled.
‘Nearly done. Planning on delivering it—’
‘Are you going to get up here, Fran?’ Natalie shouted. ‘And Tom, take some video and photos, will you?’
‘So bossy,’ Fran said with obvious delight. ‘She’ll make a wonderful lawyer. Oh well, up I go.’
Tom made a meal of getting his phone out of his jacket so that he would not be tempted to watch Fran climbing the ladder. When he did chance looking up at the platform, he saw Hattie was holding the bottle like a club.
‘OK,’ he shouted.
‘I declare,’ Hattie announced, ‘the Jolly Howard launched!’ She swung back the bottle and smashed it against the edge of the house where it shattered into pieces and released a shower of chocolate beans which fell on to the platform and rolled about, some falling down on to the lawn. Natalie and Fran clapped and cheered.
‘That’s why I didn’t want you to shake it, Hattie,’ Natalie said, bending down and picking up a chocolate bean. ‘Or you’d have realised they were inside.’
‘A chocolate bottle,’ Hattie squealed. ‘A chocolate bottle with more chocolate hiding in it.’
Tom didn’t say anything. He was too busy holding the camera steady and looking at Fran’s sweet, sad smile as she watched Hattie and Natalie trying to throw chocolate into each other’s mouths.
*
He was thinking of that smile as he walked along the corridor in the hotel. Room 432 this time. By now his mind should be free of anything but the prospect of abandoning himself in Grietje.
He looked at the numbers on the door. The 4, the 3, the 2 – like some truncated countdown for which he didn’t seem to be prepared. One particular part of him certainly wasn’t ready for take-off.
Trying to clear his brain of everything but who was on the other side of that door, he pictured Grietje in nothing but that sheer body and felt the draw of lust start in his belly and move down. Grietje running her fingers over whatever little surprises she’d brought with her this time. His need intensified and hardened. That was better.
‘Come,’ she called when he knocked on the door and he smiled.
That was exactly what he intended to do.
*
Hair still wet from the shower, he was on his knees, bending to kiss her between her legs. He took his time, enjoying how his tongue travelled over the roughness of hair to the smoothness of the folds within. Gently he pushed her thighs wider apart and slid his hands round her backside and buried himself deeper in her slipperiness, the taste and the scent of her hiking up his desire. Ah, there was the place he was after. He started to lavish all his attention on it and waited for her hips to rise and fall, the signal he was getting it right. He focused more intently – his lips, her lips, mouth, tongue.
He was thinking that usually this was more tricky because he had to keep pace with her movements, when suddenly there was a lot more movement than he expected and a dragging pain in the back of his head. Grietje was sitting up and she was pulling his hair to drag him up with her.
They were face to face when she disentangled her fingers. If this was some new game, he didn’t like it. Through watering eyes he saw that she did not have that heavy-lidded look she normally had when seriously turned on.
‘What are you doing, Tom?’ she said, her accent not sounding exotic, but harsh and accusatory. When he didn’t reply because he didn’t understand the question, she repeated it.
‘Trying to give you an orgasm?’ he said.
She clicked her tongue and muttered something in Dutch that obviously wasn’t complimentary, before saying in English, ‘I did not mean literally. I mean, what are you doing in this room?’
He looked around as though the bathroom might tell him.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ she said, and swivelled away from him and stood up.
‘No … look.’ He was scrambling to his feet too. ‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘Shall I put it in the simplest English for you? Why do you and I get together?’
He went for the simplest answer. ‘To have sex?’
‘Well done. To have sex.’ Her smile was patronising. ‘We come together to enjoy each other. Free of any emotions from our lives outside this hotel. But you … you have brought something in here with you.’
He felt so exposed that for the first time ever in her company, he wanted to put his clothes back on.
You know what she’s talking about. You’ve known since that day up in the forest.
Grietje shrugged, doing magnificent things to her breasts, and he tried to concentrate on them. If he said he was really, really sorry, would she let him cup them in his hands again …
She crossed her arms as if she’d heard what he had been thinking.
‘Tom,’ she said, almost conversationally, ‘I don’t mind that you have another lover. Why should I? But I do mind that you can’t leave her behind. Believe me, if I wanted a threesome I would ask.’
Without bidding, Fran walked into his head and into the room and he imagined her looking at Grietje and at him and probably finding the architectural detailing on the far wall more fascinating.
‘It’s not like that—’
‘Really, Tom, if you knew you couldn’t give me your full attention, we should not have met this evening.’ She walked out of the bathroom and left him with his thoughts scrambled.
Had his brain been sabotaging his body? Stupid brain and even stupider body – didn’t they both understand how much he needed Grietje and what went on here? How this thing with Fran could only ever be a mid-life crush?
He followed her, trying not to look desperate. She was al
ready pushing her arm into the sleeve of the flimsy robe that only recently he had taken off her and thrown on the floor. There was something very decisive about the way she was fastening the ties. Double knots, not bows.
‘Grietje, come on,’ he reasoned, ‘I don’t know why you felt I was distracted. I didn’t feel distracted.’ He chanced moving closer. ‘I felt right there in the moment trying to give you pleasure.’ He reached out and tentatively ran a finger down from her shoulder to the crook of her elbow and let it lie there. ‘Come on, forgive me. Or if you like, really punish me. Do your worst … make me pay.’
He saw that heavy-lidded look come back and a little cruel upturn of her lips. She studied him.
‘Maybe I will,’ she said slowly, the hint of a threat under the words. ‘Yes. You have treated me with disrespect, Tom. You have asked for this.’ She reached for his face, her hands grasping it roughly and kissed him hard on the lips. That tiny layer of wispy material between her nipples and his chest was really turning him on.
‘Perhaps you thought you could make me jealous, huh?’ she whispered before kissing him again, even more roughly. He fell gladly into the kiss, bringing his arms up around her and pulling her in. She was grinding herself against him and he thanked the argument for this added spice. The kissing was morphing into something almost obscene in its own right, her tongue demanding so much of his mouth. He knew she wanted to take the lead and he had to let her, but it was all he could do not to rip that bloody robe off her shoulders again and damn the knots.
She surfaced from one of the kisses with her mouth wet and her eyes barely open and, slowly, tantalisingly, ran a nail down his belly to scrape tortuously along his hairline before she was wrapping her hand around his cock. ‘Oh God, Tom. So hard. So turned on. Me too. Feel.’
He did as he was told and wanted to put himself where his fingers had just been.
‘So tell me,’ she hissed into his ear.
‘What? Tell you what?’
‘Tell me what you and this other lover do. How do you have her? Does she take you in her mouth? Do you—’
‘Stop it,’ he said, sharply, and stepped backwards.
As she was still holding him, it really hurt.
There was no thought driving what he had just said or done, only the need to stop Grietje talking about Fran in a way that was wrong, wrong, absolutely bloody wrong.
Grietje could look very frightening when she tried and she was definitely trying now. She pushed her hair back and stared at him. She didn’t blink – there was no respite from those eyes.
‘I see,’ she said, ‘that’s how it is. Well, it would appear that you have become the kind of Englishman who bores me.’ She looked past him to the window as if to prove how bored she was. ‘Provincial, Tom. And I thought you had no hang-ups.’
She raised one hand and ran her little finger along her bottom lip, first one way and then back, before rubbing her lips together. He didn’t know what it meant – perhaps she was underlining the fact there would be no more kissing. She moved towards the bathroom again and now her speech was matter-of-fact, as if she was winding up a business meeting. ‘Perhaps when you feel more … European,’ she said, ‘you will contact me. And please,’ she paused at the door, ‘when I come back out, do not be here.’
He didn’t try to stop her, but dressed quickly, fumbling with buttons and stuffing himself back in his pants. He had a fight with his socks before getting them sorted and putting on his shoes. At least concentrating on dressing meant he didn’t have to go back over what had just happened. That took place out in the corridor.
Why couldn’t he have pretended and just said anything? Yes, we have sex on the traffic island in the middle of town. Anything just to get through that moment.
At the lift, he jabbed the button to summon it. Would Grietje ever want to see him again? His body had a panicky response to that. How could he cope with the homework, the housework, standing in the school playground, the hours in the play park pushing the swings, reading the same bedtime story over and over again. With being bone tired, but still having to explain wrong from right and why wars happened and what rainbows were made of.
It was only when he was in the lift that he allowed himself to think about Fran properly. He knew next to nothing about her, yet she was making him feel grubby about all this skulking around and lying to everyone. Grietje was right, he was a hidebound, provincial guy with hang-ups.
Usually in this lift he felt exhausted but elated that he’d made love with a beautiful, vibrant woman and no one but Grietje and he knew about it.
And Grietje’s husband.
Oh God. Now he was feeling guilty about her husband.
‘I am bloody well entitled to a private life,’ he said out loud, just before the doors of the lift opened again. ‘I have nothing to hide.’ He stepped out into the reception area still fighting the misery in his head, but it abated long enough for him to notice the two people facing the reception desk. They looked incredibly like his mother and the rev. Holy Crap! It was his mother and the rev. As he watched, he saw the rev.’s hand move to rest on his mother’s bottom. It was a movement that said, ‘We are checking into this hotel to have sex.’
And Tom should know.
He staggered back into the lift and hit the button to close the doors and, as they came together, he flattened himself against the wall and selected a floor number, any number, just to get the lift to move. When it set off, he took in a huge gulp of air and allowed himself, very slowly, to slide to the floor.
CHAPTER 27
Thursday 29 May
1) It is not possible to choose your relations. If it was, I would have chosen Natalie as my sister – a woman who can climb in high heels and a pelmet and also knows a great deal about the impact of a possible reduction in maximum compensatory claims.
2) For a thirty-eight-year-old man, Tom has terrible trouble tying his shoe laces.
3) Tom has very good taste in socks.
4) Putting a small child to bed is exhausting – they can make it last for hours, especially if you are under the impression that you have to ‘do’ all the voices in their bedtime story.
5) You can listen to a young child telling you about their mother and know you should change the subject, but find yourself failing to do so – possibly because it is less stressful than having to field a raft of questions about your own mother and childhood. I think Hattie has inherited her questioning skills from Tom. Or maybe in a previous life she was a member of the Spanish Inquisition.
6) One can look at a photograph of a child’s mother and see how glamorous she is, but know without doubt that she is the kind of person who would blow cigarette smoke in your face and smirk out a ‘Sorry’. (Or perhaps say, like Victoria, ‘Not everyone can wear vintage’ – as though there’s some quota enforced by law.)
7) Actually, point 6 isn’t strictly accurate. Natalie’s stories of promised visits not made and ranting phone calls might have influenced me before I even saw the photograph.
8) Hattie has the most bizarrely dressed soft toys. I did not think it was possible to make a stuffed bear look so much like a hooker.
9) When a man is extremely evasive about the play he is going to see, it makes you wonder what he is really up to in Newcastle. Particularly when, on his return, it becomes obvious that he has only watched the end of that play.
10) Also in relation to point 9. If you are going to go in for distinctive socks, you should make sure that when you return home, one of them is not inside out.
CHAPTER 28
‘I cannot believe you have done this, Hattie,’ Tom said as they walked down the school corridor lined with paintings of castles, some of which even looked like castles. ‘You know, absolutely know, that stealing is wrong.’
Hattie looked ashamed of herself. ‘I didn’t know it was real stealing.’
‘Real stealing? What does that mean? And have you any idea how inconvenient it is for me to have to drop everything at work and come
into school to …’ He stopped talking, having spotted the young teaching assistant lurking at the far end of the corridor.
‘How did it go?’ she said when they got closer. She was a study in sympathy and bent down to Hattie’s level with her hands on her knees. ‘How are you feeling?’
Hattie shrugged and the teaching assistant said, ‘I know, I know,’ and straightened up. Turning to Tom she lowered her voice, ‘If it wasn’t part of a county-wide initiative, it wouldn’t be so bad.’ She raised her voice again. ‘Good to go home early, eh? Give everyone time to cool off over the weekend.’
Thirty-eight years old and getting called to the head’s office felt worse than when he was a teenager. Then it was only his own bad behaviour he was responsible for, now it was Hattie’s too. Shame was clinging to him like a damp jacket.
Out in the playground, he knew his parenting skills were about to get another bashing when he saw one of the women who belonged to a group he had nicknamed the ‘Smug Maternals’ tanking towards him.
Whereas he and Hattie’s friend Josh’s parents happily admitted to having lost the instruction manual for their children, this woman knew everything about perfect parenting.
In her eyes, her son Sebastian was not only a genius whose potential was unacknowledged by the school system, but he never misbehaved either. She unnerved Tom more than the mothers who were Plastics (always in full make-up and neat clothes, married to company men, only using the state system till the Common Entrance Exam came around) and the Power Tools (dads who made tits of themselves at sporting events by being too competitive).
He waited for the opening salvo.
‘Ah, I see you’re here,’ she said and Tom heard the unspoken ‘that’s no surprise’.
‘Well, looks like you’ve been called in too,’ he shot back. ‘I saw Sebastian waiting in the corridor.’
There was a patronising smile. ‘Sebastian is not an instigator, he’s a peacemaker. He will merely have gone along with the dominant character to avoid confrontation.’ There was a stare at Hattie to underline who that dominant character was.