Sweetly, he whispers poems and sonnets in my ears as we make love, our kisses soft and tender, our bodies warm and gentle. He kisses every inch of my body and makes me come with his tongue, then his cock. I feel like jelly after he’s done with me. I know I’m his.
“I don’t want to repeat the past,” I tell Sam, as we’re cuddling in the aftermath.
“In what way?”
“By regretting what may have been. I don’t want any regrets.”
“What are you saying?” He looks a little worried.
I lift myself up so I’m leaning over him, looking down into his eyes, my hand on his cheek. “I don’t care about marriage. I don’t care if we don’t share the same name. I just want us to live together, somewhere new we can make our own. Something that’s us, me and you. I want us to start building something better, as lovers and life partners, as people who share everything and take nothing for granted. I just want you, every day, every night. Just you and our home, a life for us all, to be happy.”
He looks so shocked, I decide I’ve said the wrong things. I begin to fear I’ve mucked it all up. Then he whispers, “Yes. To all of that. Yes.”
And then he kisses me.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I’M PACING THE FLOOR, BITING my nails, worried sick he’ll hate it. He’s bound to hate it! Having finished the first draft of my play, I decided it was time to bring it to an audience I can trust – Sam – and now I am eagerly awaiting a verdict. He’s propped up in bed with the printed copy on his raised knees, his glasses on so he looks even more sexy than usual.
It’s been two weeks since I found out I’m not John Browne’s daughter at all. I was somebody else’s, all along. Rather than ask questions about my biological father in the days since, I’ve found myself exploring the side of me that I feel at one with now: my creative passion, which I no doubt got from my father. How strange! To finally know where I come from, and finally, to be able to understand my identity! My parents Carol and John didn’t scrape any qualifications between them in their school days. I always felt strangely out of place in a family of such underachievers. I never strove for more because I never thought myself capable. I always knew my mother was cleverer than my father, but she seemed content to diminish herself and somehow, that must have made me feel that it was the way women must be. That was until Jules Jones became my teacher and spotted my talent – made me realise who I am and what I’m capable of. It hardly even seems real that I’m with Sam. Not only am I with him, but I’m allowing him to read my first written work. He’s the sort of man I never thought I deserved, and yet he’s everything I want and need. Luckily, he feels exactly the same way. This way of life once seemed so glamorous and out of reach, but now I’m here, living it, and there’s nothing about it that I don’t like.
Finally, after nearly two hours of biting my nails, pacing and waiting, Sam turns the last page. He organises the pages back into a pile and keeps me hanging even longer. I just need to know! If I need to work on it, he just needs to say! I just need to know.
“Come here,” he says, removing his glasses and putting them on the nightstand.
I sit on the edge of the bed next to him, still biting my nails, still waiting for his verdict. He shakes his head and beckons me closer, to sit on his lap in fact.
I sit in his lap and he holds his big hands at my waist, looking up into my eyes. I shake his shoulders, and demand, “Sam, please just tell me how bad it is! Please!”
He lowers the sheet from his waist and shows me his massive erection. I burst out laughing and can’t help but continue to laugh, when he says, “This is how bad it was. You’re so sexy, I could cry. How do I fuck this big, beautiful brain of yours, hmm? How do I get in there?”
He moves in to kiss me, toying with me at first, giving and then taking away his soft touch, his gentle licks. Then his mouth is on my throat, pressing against my flesh, his tongue tasting my skin.
“Sam, please,” I beg, tugging his hair. “Oh, god.”
He throws me onto my back and urgently peels down the straps of my silk nightie. I’m frantically trying to catch up to his state of mind as he licks between my breasts and pushes his erection against my thigh.
“God, Liza. I love you. You’re the best thing in the whole world. I love you so much.”
“Sam, just tell me how bad it was.”
“It wasn’t bad… it’s bloody brilliant. Now, I’m going to have you because I’m horny. Your mind has made me horny. Tell me if you don’t want me.”
“You’re a bastard.”
We snicker in each other’s ears and then I grab his face, bringing his lips to mine. He kisses me fiercely, stirring the heat in my belly, awakening my desire instantly and violently. The pulsing in my groin overcomes me to the point where I would probably say yes to anything he might suggest right now.
“Do you need me to lick you,” he asks, between madly kissing my throat again, “or can I just…”
I grab his stiff cock and slide my nightdress upwards. “Do it.”
He pushes into me all the way, my head falling right back, my nerves seized by the sudden invasion. Quickly adjusting, I pin my eyes on his again and grin.
He rears back and plunges in deeper and I can only moan with pleasure. I love everything about making love with Sam. There’s nothing I don’t like about him. He’s not moved all of his stuff in yet, but he’s been staying over a lot more, and I am just as happy being fucked quick and roughly like now, or slow and sensually which he seems to prefer most of the time.
“You’re the perfect woman,” he growls, holding onto my hair. “Built like a goddess with tits and arse and sparkling eyes, but then this fucking brain as well,” he groans, surging even harder inside me.
I would tell him to stop because the headboard’s hitting the wall, but luckily the en suite is behind the wall my headboard leans on – and my kids would sleep through an earthquake.
I dig my nails into his buttocks and latch onto his nipple with my teeth, biting hard. He roars with pleasure and yet, feels the need to pin me down and have his way.
“My beauty,” he purrs, our hands entwined, his body in control of mine.
“My beast.”
I watch the muscles in his legs and hips as he fucks me thoroughly, long glides in and out of my body. He watches my tits and stares at how his cock sinks easily into me, back and forth, back and forth.
I lift my hips an inch off the bed and close my eyes, jerking in sync with his rhythm. Within seconds, I’m coming, his cock hardening even more, his sperm spurting inside me as my contractions start small, then grip him tight. I lather his cock in my cum and he keeps ramming into me, eking out his pleasure, his animalistic groans signalling he’s satisfied. His arms shake as he tries to hold his weight up, and when he can no longer manage it, he slips slowly out of me and rests his head on my belly. I dangle my legs down his back and tug gently on his hair, catching my breath.
“You really like it?”
“Yes, I do. I really like it.”
“You think I should start sending it out?”
“Yes, I think so. Why wait?”
“Okay.”
I trust him, so I’m going to believe him.
***
WITHIN A WEEK of me sending my play out to theatre directors and producers, I begin receiving one rejection letter after another. Most are generic responses:
Dear Mrs Fitzpatrick,
Thank you for sending us your work to consider.
However, we are not looking for anything like this right now.
Best,
Blah blah blah.
As in, they haven’t got time to read something by a nobody, so I may as well be on my bike.
I receive some responses by email, and some by the post, depending on the format in which the recipient requested the play be sent. When one copy of my play is sent back “return to sender”, I hide it from Sam so he doesn’t see that someone didn’t even open the package I sent them. I don�
��t want him to be ashamed of me. I don’t tell him how many rejections I’ve had by email, and when the letters arrive, I stuff them straight in the recycling bin.
I almost convince myself that the couple of theatre directors who have yet to respond must be seriously considering my work as a viable stage play, but then I get one letter which makes me seriously rethink this whole thing:
Dear Liza,
I read your play and wanted to give you some advice…
While your work shows some merit, in aspects such as characterisation and empathy, I would quit while I was ahead if I were you. I think you are very mistaken in your own abilities.
I know this business and it’s tough. You clearly don’t have the quality to write something punchy. Instead, you’ve opted for safe. Your voice is also naïve and it’s a little bit arrogant of you to think your first play might be good enough to transfer straight to the stage. It takes years to become the full product, believe me. Years of practice. I should know.
I’m just trying to save you a lot of heartache and despair. I’ve been around the block.
Yours,
Anita Heron, Yorkshire Theatre Company
I spend a lot of time rereading her letter. I can’t decide if she’s being straight-up mean or she had a bad day and took it out on me. It’s like some people in this world don’t want to admit that new talent will eventually topple the old – and that new voices are going to bring about change, whether the old guard like it or not.
I’m at home alone, poring over this bitch’s response, my cup of tea on the kitchen table going cold as I try to understand what it is I could have done to make this woman hate me so much. Then I wonder whether people like Anita Heron send out letters like this to test whether a writer like me is really serious about what they’re doing. It makes me wonder.
Her words are telling me to give up now before I make an even bigger fool of myself.
Arrogant. She thinks I’m arrogant.
I can’t help but wonder if Sam told me it was good, just to get a really good fuck out of me.
However, it’s not just Sam’s opinion I value. I value my own too, and I worked day and night on this play. I worked really hard and in all of my letters, I made it clear I wanted to find a company that would help me develop the play into something we could put on stage. I can’t believe this Anita woman could be so cold and not give me any real idea of where I’ve gone wrong. How nasty.
My play is called ‘Chip Shop’ and is set in a fish and chip shop, surprisingly.
Maybe I’m not a playwright, after all. Maybe I’m a novelist. Still, all my life I’ve been obsessed with plays, ever since an SAT paper on ‘Romeo and Juliet’ earned me a mark in the top two per cent of the country. That has to count for something, right?
I always loved going to the theatre with Mum. It’s one of her few vices, she always tells me. We’d occasionally even head to London, just me and her, and those times were the best of my childhood. Writing for the stage – to see actors perform my ideas, night after night, is my dream. So why is some bint trying to destroy my dream? Everyone is always saying you should write what you know. Well, I know about living above a chip shop – and working in one.
In the play, chip shop owners Mark and Suzie don’t have much of a life outside the shop, being that their only friends are the punters. Their chip shop is one of the focal points of their village community and Suzie feels as though they’re providing a service to the people. They can’t help but overhear conversations as people wait for their fish and chips, and Suzie in particular has a memory for details and stores people’s conversations in her mind. After their evening shift every day, she regales Mark with stories she overheard from their customers as she worked up front while he was behind the counter frying fish.
The big story of the play is this: it’s been reported in the local news that an unclaimed lottery ticket was bought from the newsagents next door to the chip shop – worth £30million due to a rollover. Practically everyone who comes into the chippy is talking about it.
Suzie says she’s going to see if she can help find the winner, so she asks everyone who comes into the shop if they’ve checked their ticket. A plethora of characters come in and out of the chippy, and it’s the characters the play focuses on – how they exist among one another.
Along the way, we discover Suzie and Mark really have nothing in common outside of the chip shop. She suggests trips and outings he’s never interested in. Then their relationship in the flat above the shop begins to play out a little more and becomes the main bulk of the play. We realise they are very ill-suited and she doesn’t really love him.
Suzie decides it must be one of the old dears who never checks their ticket and takes it upon herself to start doing mobile fish and chips. It’s just something for her to do. She’s determined to be the one who uncovers the owner of this lucky lottery ticket which hasn’t been claimed yet. She even gets it into her head that the ticket may have been stolen by one of the carers looking after the elderly in the village, and takes it upon herself to start investigating who may have wronged the real ticket holder.
Then one evening, Mark decides he’s had enough of her chasing after this lost ticket and demands she put the whole thing to bed. He says that if someone had stolen somebody else’s ticket, surely, they would have already claimed it by now. He tells her if nobody claims it, the money will go to charity and it’s in no way a waste, so he doesn’t understand why she’s pursuing this.
The next day when the shop opens for business, Suzie decides she’s too ill to work, so Mark calls up their part-time assistant to help out. While Mark’s busy downstairs, Suzie tears up the flat and finds the lottery ticket beneath the carpet.
She and Mark have always played the lottery, but when she asked him if he’d checked their ticket, he said yes. They always get a lucky dip (they never put the same numbers on every week), so she didn’t know what numbers were theirs because Mark always buys the ticket.
Suzie takes the ticket and claims the money, leaving Mark behind as he knew she always would. In the final scene she’s pictured on a beach, sipping her sangria alongside a new man in her life. The light fades out and another scene comes into focus, showing Mark frying fish at the chippy, neither sad nor happy, just content to keep frying fish.
I thought I’d written something clever and telling. I thought I was being satirical and allegorical, all at once. I worked really hard on getting all the characters right, but I guess it just wasn’t good enough.
I burn Anita’s letter in the sink and decide that for now, I’m going to focus on Sam and my family. I don’t need people like Anita in my life anyway.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Two Months Later
I’VE JUST PUT THE KIDS to bed when the doorbell goes. I’m not expecting anyone in particular so it could be anybody. Why is it always at seven o’clock at night when people arrive? I want to be in the bath with a book, not answering the door to unwanted guests. I’m ready to give it both barrels if it’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses, when I’m surprised to discover Hetty on my doorstep.
She looks different to the last time I saw her. She must’ve stopped breastfeeding because she’s lost all that retention she was carrying. She’s wearing her signature Doc Martens, has pink hair and a new tattoo on her midriff reading, Betty in very swirly writing. She’s back to her old self, then.
“Gained the weight back, I see,” she says.
“Lost the baby blubber,” I retort.
“Gonna invite me in then, Liz?”
“I was actually going to dunk myself in the bath.”
“Tough, I’m here now.”
She strolls into my house and heads straight for the kitchen, helping herself to my kettle, but not before plonking a large folder of work on my kitchen table. It’s like it never even happened – like the fact we haven’t spoken in three months means nothing now she’s back.
Well, we’ll see anyway.
“What do yo
u want?” I ask, standing in the doorway with my arms folded.
“Help,” she says.
“Yeah? With what?”
“A proper launch,” she tells me, gesturing at the folder on the kitchen table.
“Sam’s going to be home any minute. You’d better make three cups,” I suggest.
She turns and stares at me. “Sam? So, it’s…”
“Yeah, still going strong. He still has his flat, but I suppose he’s living here now. Sort of.”
He keeps most of his things at his flat, and spends the odd night there when he’s got a lot of work on, but he’s mostly living here.
She sets up another cup with a teabag in it.
“So, what have you been up to? Apart from shagging your fancy man?”
I throw my head back on a chuckle. “Oh, you…”
I don’t know where to start with where she thinks she gets off. The trouble is, I know why Hetty’s so forward like this, and I understand.
“So, he’s not fancy? And not a man?”
I walk further into the room and tap my feet on the floor where I stand. “I’ve been busy…” …receiving dozens of rejections and stewing on them until deciding I shall never write again. “Why, what’ve you been up to?”
“I’m rebranding the shop and expanding the online side. Got a couple of new recruits…” She walks towards the folder and pulls a few things out, spreading them around the table.
“It’s called Pimp Your Rags. I did a couple of invite-only evening classes on how to rejuvenate old clothes and they were a success. Now I’m going to do it on a regular basis… in the workroom above the shop, with more people. Like a proper class, sort of thing. Craft stuff and all.”
I look through her promo material and slogans. Not bad. “So, why do you need me? You’ve got everything here?”
“You’re a better seamstress than me.”
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