by Tess Stimson
The radio crackles again, telling us the thieves have fled the scene and run into an underground car park. We do an immediate one-eighty, and turn sharply into the multistory we just passed, jolting over the speed hump at the entrance. Two figures are racing towards a low wall at the far side.
“Stay here!” Lee barks.
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I watch breathlessly as the two cops leap out of the police car and give chase, Xan’s fingers stroking my clitoris with infuriating slowness. Almost immediately, they catch up with the fleeing figures. The cops slam them none too gently against the wall, yanking their hands behind their backs and cuffing them just like they do in the movies.
“Guess we’ll have to make our own way home,” Xan says, releasing me and opening the car door. “Brendan and Lee will need the backseat for the villains.”
For fuck’s sake! I so need to get laid!
I sit up and straighten my skirt. “Where the hell are we, anyway?”
“Darkest Fulham.” He grins at my expression. “Don’t worry, we’re not far from my flat.”
Twenty minutes later, we fall through his front door. I fumble for his belt buckle, hampered by the impressive erection straining his zip. Buttons skitter noisily on the floor as I yank his shirt off his shoulders. He pulls my dress to my waist and slides the straps of my bra down my arms, freeing my breasts. Mindful of the lifetime it will take me to pay for the Alaïa, I quickly shimmy out of it before it becomes another casualty of lust.
Half hopping with his jeans around his knees, he carries me into the sitting room, throwing me in a magnificent but slightly painful gesture onto the leather chesterfield. Winded, I squirm impatiently against the cold leather, spreading my legs ready. He shucks off the remainder of his clothes, and slides between my thighs, his cock nudging my knickers.
At the last moment, he stops. “Are you sure?”
“Christ,” I pant.
“I won’t be around for long,” he warns. “This isn’t the start of something.”
I grab his buttocks with both hands and pull him towards me. “Would you just fuck me already?”
He fumbles under the sofa. Seconds later, I hear the sound of a condom wrapper. Clearly the chesterfield has seen plenty of action. I don’t care; actually, it’s rather sexy. I’ve had enough of grown-up relationships to last me a while. I want some dirty, uncomplicated sex from a man who’s been around enough to know exactly what he’s doing.
Xan’s turquoise eyes fasten on mine as he pulls my knickers off and thrusts into me in one seamless, practiced movement. No need, now, for foreplay. The pulse of his cock inside me is all I want. I come moments later in thunderous waves, screaming my appreciation with scant regard for the neighbors.
“Now that’s over,” Xan murmurs against my neck, “the fun begins.”
On Sunday evening, I stagger up Clare’s front steps like John Wayne. It wouldn’t be accurate to say we haven’t got out of bed all weekend. Au contraire: We’ve made full use of the kitchen table, the bathroom cabinet, the sofa (four times), the staircase, the fridge and (once) the bed. I have blisters, friction burns, and a blossoming case of cystitis. I have never been so sated, sore, or hungry.
The house is cold and silent when I let myself in; Clare and Marc aren’t yet back from Davina’s. I offer up a silent prayer of thanks. The last thing I need is for her to recognize Xan’s shirt and cutoffs.
I stumble down the hall, knocking my elbow on the under-stairs cupboard door. I yelp, hopping up and down and rubbing it as my funny bone tingles painfully. Flicking on the lights, I try to shut the door, but it jams on something. I bend down and pull on the end of a leather holdall, trying to wedge it back in amongst the jumble of tennis rackets, umbrellas, wellies, and baby crap. I succeed only in upending it into the chaos, spilling the contents.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
I crouch down among the odd shoes and tennis balls and pick up the large, rectangular block of money in disbelief. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much cash in one place before. I run my fingers down the side of the brick, swiftly calculating the number of zeros I’m holding in my hands.
A hundred thousand U.S. dollars. At least.
Why on earth would Marc have so much money in his gym bag?
Fisher • Raymond • Lyon
8–12 Andrew Street, London EC4A 3EA •
Tel 020 7668 3100 • Fax 020 7668 3101
[email protected]
Mr. M. Elias
97 Cheyne Walk
London SW3 5TS
Our Ref: TDR/1653-1/ea June 15, 2009
Dear Mr. Elias,
Many thanks for your letter dated June 11, 2009. I am afraid we are unable to represent you in your matrimonial proceedings on this occasion.
If you wish us to refer you to an alternative family law firm, please do not hesitate to contact our offices again.
Yours sincerely,
Nicholas Lyon
CHAPTER TWELVE
Marc
Maybe it’d be different if she hadn’t cut off my balls over the money.
Shit, I know I screwed up. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d freaked and gone off the deep end when she found out; I was ready for flying crockery, tears, a slap around the face. After months lying awake worrying about it, I was almost looking forward to having it out in the open. She’d yell, I’d apologize, hopefully she’d get over it, and that would be that.
But no. She had to be so fucking superior and disappointed.
I cling onto the strap as the subway rattles round a sharp corner. Must be nice and sunny up there on the moral high ground. Where the fuck does Clare get off? Telling me I can’t “handle” my job. Banning me from seeing Hamish and the boys. Christ! Who does she think she is, grounding me like a fucking eight-year-old?
Felix is right. I am pussy-whipped.
When I was a kid, Mom took charge of all the household stuff. She picked out curtains and decided if we could afford a new sofa. She was the one who yelled three ways to Sunday if any of us came home with bad grades, not Dad. It was much easier to hit him up for cash, rather than Mom; it was him we went to when we were in trouble with her and needed someone to fight our corner.
But there was no doubt Dad called the shots when it really mattered. Mom might choose the color scheme, but Dad picked the house. He let her win the small battles, because he knew damn well who’d come out on top in the war.
I realize women expect marriage to work differently these days. I never minded Clare working and building up her business till she was ready to have kids. I guess I just expected that when the babies came along, the flowers would take a backseat for once.
The subway train rattles into Sloane Square station. I elbow my way through the crush of commuters up into the daylight, ignoring the newspaper guy as I pass through the ticket barrier. He ignores me right back. I love the British. You’d never know we spent Christmas Eve sharing a bird’s eye view of my wife’s cunt.
It’s a pleasant evening, with a mild summer chill in the air. I cut down a couple of side streets and stroll along the Embankment, thankful I’ve survived another Friday cull. Four dealers on the trading floor had to clear out their desks today. Clare has no idea the pressure I’m under. Doesn’t she read the bloody newspapers? It’s carnage out there. Every Monday, a few more faces are missing from the trenches. Any one of us could be next.
As I mount the front steps and let myself into the house, I hear shouting from the kitchen. I drop my briefcase in the hall, and walk into total fucking chaos.
Clare, covered with some kind of chocolate Jell-O, is screaming at Rowan at the top of her lungs. The poor kid bursts into tears as Poppy cowers in a corner, terrified and bewildered. An upturned bowl drips more shit on the floor. Every surface is covered with dirty plates and cups. We could be on a sink estate in Peckham, rather than in a multimillion-pound house in one of the most expensive streets in London.
I snatch up my son before Clare do
es anything worse than scream. “You don’t have to shout at him. He’s only a baby. He didn’t mean to do it.”
Clare glares venomously. She’s hated the poor bastard from the start. “I’ve been dealing with them on my own for the past four hours!” she yells. “I’ve put in a full day at work, too, Marc! The last thing I need is to come home and clear up after these two monsters!”
“Monsters?”
“They’ve been absolute horrors! As soon as I get one settled, the other one starts. It’s a total nightmare—”
Rowan hiccoughs miserably in my arms. There’s something wrong with Clare if she can’t see how helpless and vulnerable the kid is. “Can’t you control two small babies for five minutes?”
“It’s not that easy!”
I wipe Rowan’s snotty nose. “My mother had six children under eight. She managed.”
“She didn’t work!”
I could point out that when Clare didn’t work, the situation at home was even worse, but I can’t be bothered. “Your choice.”
“If I didn’t have the company, we’d be on the streets right now,” she sneers.
Change the fucking record, you ball-breaking bitch.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” I snarl, “that you drove me to take chances? Flaunting how much more money you earn, how successful you are. Too successful to look after your own children—”
Clare throws the scrubber, with which she has been trying to sponge her ridiculously impractical white linen skirt, into the bowl of chocolate sauce and splatters it further around the kitchen.
“You try it,” she shrieks. “It’s impossible. They’re impossible. They hate me. They’ve been fine all day with Jenna. It’s me they can’t stand. I’m a terrible mother.”
She bursts into noisy sobs, heedless of the children whimpering in confusion. I scoop Poppy up along with her brother, sheltering the two kids in my arms.
What does she want me to say? Don’t be ridiculous, darling. Of course you’re a good mother, of course your children love you. You’ve just had a bad day; it’ll be better tomorrow.
Like hell. First all the fuss over breast-feeding, then the near-hysteria when she had to cope with them on her own at home. She practically ignored Rowan; poor bastard was lucky he didn’t starve to death. And the house looked like a bomb had hit it. Heaps of filthy laundry all over the place, dirty plates piled in the sink, stinking diapers in the bathroom, and nothing to eat in the damn cupboard. Clare bloody gave up. Most days, she was still wandering around the house in her crappy dressing gown when I got in from work. Hardly the kind of home a man wants to come back to.
Admittedly, Jenna knocked things back into shape, but Clare took her arrival as carte blanche to drop her mothering charade once and for all. Until the salt business with Poppy put her front-and-center stage again.
Call it Munchausen’s, depression, neglect—I don’t give a shit why she did it; I’m just damn sure it wasn’t an accident. She can’t be allowed to spend time on her own with them again. Jenna’s a bolshy little cow, but I know she’d die for the twins. Much as I’d like to get rid of her, I need her to keep an eye on things when I’m not there. Until I come up with a better plan.
Poppy and Rowan bury their damp faces in my chest. I stare coldly at my wife over their heads. If Clare’s waiting for reassurance, she’s not going to get it from me. It’s my children I care about now.
“I should never have had them,” Clare whines. “They’d be better off without me.”
“Yes. Maybe we would.”
I leave her to stew in self-pity and take the twins into my study, settling them on the thick silk rug in front of the unlit fire. They immediately roll onto their tummies and start to trace the vibrant colors with fat fingers, burbling nonsense at each other. I watch them play happily for a few minutes, my anger at my wife building. I’d give my right arm to be able to stay at home with the twins, to be there for every smile. How can she not want this?
I pick up the phone. “Hamish? Look, I’m sorry to bother you on a Friday night, but I need a favor.”
“I wish I could say it’s a level playing field, but I’d be doing you a disservice,” Stephen Morton tells me. “In this country, the woman still holds all the cards when it comes to custody.”
“But I’ve explained. Clare doesn’t want the children—”
“Look, Marc,” the lawyer says, getting up from behind his vast mahogany desk and perching cozily on one corner, “I don’t want to rain on your parade. If your wife is as agreeable to your having full custody as you say she will be, we won’t have a problem. I just want you to be fully cognizant of the situation should she prove less accommodating than we hope.”
Stephen Morton wasn’t my first choice. He’s smug, patronizing, and smarmy. But Nicholas Lyon refused to represent me; his wife Malinche is an old school friend of Clare’s, though as far as I know they haven’t seen each other for years. Lyon is also notoriously conservative, which could have made things a little sticky when it came to the business over the second mortgage and my borrowings from Clare’s company. Morton didn’t bat an eyelash. I just hope Lyon extends the same scruples if Clare approaches him. There’s no question he’s the best in the business; although, from what Hamish says, Morton comes a close, if less fastidious, second.
The lawyer returns to his side of the desk. “We need to prepare for the worst, even if,” he adds, holding up one hand to forestall my protest, “it turns out to be unnecessary. I take it your wife is financially able to support her children without your help?”
“Yes,” I say bitterly.
“The Court will want to know you’d be prepared to give up your job and care for them full-time.”
I narrow my eyes. “She’d have to pay me, then, wouldn’t she?”
“If you were their primary caregiver, then yes, she would be required to pay you maintenance and child support.”
“And I’d get the house?”
“In all probability. It’s helpful that she put the house in your name, not hers. She would be left with her company, of course, and enough funds to put a roof over her head.”
“The damn company’s all that matters to her anyway,” I say sourly.
Morton pulls a pad of foolscap towards him. “Marc, I’m sorry to be blunt, but right now, this is all academic. Unless you have a very good reason, the Court rarely gives custody to the father when the children are this young.”
“She tried to kill my daughter. Is that good enough?”
For a moment, Morton appears lost for words.
“Would you care to explain?” he manages finally.
His flashy gold fountain pen scratches as I talk. I describe in detail the sudden dash to the hospital with Poppy, Clare being dragged out of bed by the police at midnight; and I tell him her latest wild claims of salt diabetes and miscarriages of justice and low levels of vaso-something. I don’t believe a word of it, and I can tell from Morton’s expression that neither does he. This is some bullshit Clare’s cooked up to throw me off the scent.
When I’ve finished, he leans back, reads through his notes, and taps his pen thoughtfully against his mouth.
“Was the postnatal depression ever formally diagnosed?”
“She was a basket case. Crying all the time, snapping at everyone, it was obvious—”
“But not medically diagnosed?” Morton puts his notes down and folds his hands on top of his pad like a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis. “Marc. I’ll be honest with you. As far as the issue of your wife hiring the nanny goes, we’ll have to tread very carefully. It’ll depend entirely on which judge we draw. Some of them are very old-school on the subject of working mothers, but others … especially the women … I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. We can play that by ear. But the salt business,” he adds, picking up his pad again and thoughtfully pulling on his lower lip. “That could be very interesting. Obviously, from our point of view it’s unfortunate no charges were brought, but we could make a lot
of hay with the midnight arrest nonetheless. No smoke without fire, all that sort of thing.”
I find myself warming to the man. I’m certain Lyon would be far less enthusiastic about playing dirty. But I don’t want a gentleman in my corner; I want a brawler who’ll do whatever it takes to win.
“Let me do a little research into Munchausen’s and this salt diabetes,” he says briskly, scrawling in the margin. “If there’s any question about the children’s safety, the judge will err on the side of caution, which in this case serves us well.”
“Will I be able to stop her seeing them altogether?”
“That’s a little more difficult. Our case for custody is fundamentally circumstantial: If we can throw up enough doubt over the salt poisoning, together with the postnatal depression, and her clear reluctance to care for the children herself, as evidenced by the hiring of the nanny against your express wishes … yes, it could be enough to swing custody in our favor. But unless we can prove the children are in immediate danger, we’d be unlikely to deprive your wife of access altogether. Let’s take one step at a time for the moment.” He stops writing and looks me in the eye. “One other thing. I need to know if there’s a third party involved. I couldn’t give a damn either way, but I don’t want to be ambushed by the other side when we’re trying to build a case based on your concern for your children—”
“There’s no one else,” I snap.
“And what about your wife?”
I laugh harshly. “Hardly. Not unless you count the bloody nanny.”
“It happens,” Morton says neutrally.
I glance at the flowers on his desk. Camellias. Like the ones Jenna brought home the other day for Clare.
There is something strange going on between them: An intimate, secret bond that excludes me. As soon as Jenna joined us, I was shoved out of the nursery, even though I was the one who’d looked after Poppy on my own for her first two weeks of life. The two women created a mysterious, feminine world full of secret smiles and laughter at my expense. Every time I tried to do anything with the twins, I was gently, but firmly rebuffed. This is our world. We don’t need you.