by Various
Watching Patsy go, one of them said, ‘She looks just like Lara Croft.’
On the way back from the airport I made that pledge.
Steve had been up since about six, cooking. Things had been marinating in olive oil and lime juice for days. Such a fuss! The girls were out the front, decorating the front door and the gate with balloons and banners which clattered and fluttered in the wind.
‘She’ll be freezing when she gets here,’ they said, clumping into the house in their new high heels. ‘She’ll have forgotten how foul winter is.’
‘You mean they’ll be freezing,’ Steve yelled from the kitchen. He was wearing a daft apron with a hairy he-man logo. He thought it would make Patsy feel at home. But it just made him look suddenly old and ridiculous. ‘Don’t forget this Mike fellow she’s bringing.’
‘Michel, he prefers apparently,’ I said, lacing up my trainers. ‘Who does he think he is?’
‘Her boss. That’s who. Up and coming young hot-shot chef.’
‘Up and coming!’ The girls giggled and nudged. ‘Wonder if he’s a stud!’
‘Mum says Gordon Ramsay’s a stud!’
Steve laughed. We all did. ‘That’s why we’ve got to get this meal just right.’
‘I’d have given them shepherd’s pie.’
‘But then you wouldn’t eat it, and what would Gordon think about that?’ Steve slapped my rump with his wooden spoon. I tensed up, waiting for the flab to wobble, set a ripple in motion down my thigh. Old habit. He whacked at me again. ‘Taut as a drum. She’s not going to recognise you.’
‘Oh, I doubt she’ll notice.’ I rubbed my sore buttock. The burning sensation felt good where my husband had slapped it. Often I made him do that when we were alone. Slap me, rather than fuck me. He liked the new masochist in his bed. It kept him away from screwing the other women. It turned him on to hear me squeal, watch me rub myself raw and wet on the sheets or against the sofa or on the carpet while he did it. At least it kept him happy, because I wasn’t ready for fucking. I told him I was clutching onto the fat woman’s inhibitions. But now I was starting to like it when others touched me. Strangers bumping me in the supermarket, shop assistants zipping me into tight dresses –
‘Where are you going, Mum?’
‘Just my usual run!’
‘But Patsy will be here in half an hour.’
Nervous? Sure. As hell. But now, instead of stuffing my face with a packet of chocolate biscuits to kill the nerves, I wanted to be on the move. I left my warm house and my restless family and ran down the street, over the zebra crossing, off on my usual route. No rippling flesh now. No wobble. My thong was trapped between my tight butt cheeks. My breasts in the sports bra barely moved. But now that my nipples were back where they should be, pricking forwards instead of drooping somewhere near the floor, I could feel them, if I concentrated, shrinking in protest at the cold air.
Blood heating me up, speed making me breathe harder. Would Patsy notice? Did I care? This wasn’t for her. It was my pledge, to myself. I reached the wine shop and reluctantly started the return journey. She had stopped all that diving and swimming and sporty stuff. She’d gone back to Sydney to work in a restaurant. Front of house, she called it. That’s where she met the Frenchman, presumably. The stud.
I bit my lip, remembering my giggling girls, and jogged on the spot waiting to cross. Michel. What would he be like? Gallic and glowering? The thong wriggled up my damp crotch, string chafing at my pussy. The skin within, so fragile and tender, would be buzzing red-hot messages by the time I got home. My cheap thrill. Or would he be blond and chunky like a surfer? Would he and Patsy hold hands and make a coy announcement? Or would they kiss and fondle and make us all embarrassed, hands all over each other?
A low-slung car stopped at the zebra. I sprinted past. Slushy rain started spraying across the windscreen. The wipers slid once, lazily, to clear the glass and when I waved thanks the driver winked.
I pounded down the pavement towards my house. I felt as if I was flying through the rain. I was showing off. I wondered if he was watching. The car overtook. I shut my eyes, grunting with the effort of the home stretch. I sounded as if I was being rogered. I couldn’t run like this two years ago. I couldn’t even walk up the stairs without bursting a blood vessel.
I dodged through the side-gate and in the back door.
‘Honey, they’re early!’
I could smell the drink and the log fire in the sitting room and a fresh, nostril-pricking cologne.
‘Mum?’
‘Give me a minute –’
I wasn’t ready. I bent over to catch my breath, sweat catching in my armpits. Still bothered by a small tyre of stomach I’d never shift. Well, it was never my intention to look sixteen from the back, sixty at the front. It’ll always be there, unless I have it tucked. The swell of flesh round my middle reminding me. I’m a mature woman, after all. A mother with a daughter home from her travels. Introducing her rich boyfriend.
The new dress was laid out on my bed upstairs. The girls had chosen it, and the shoes. Fit or not, I couldn’t face them yet. Would she notice?
I could hear Patsy and her sisters, already vying for who could screech the loudest. The booming approval of their dad.
‘Steve said to bring the wine in here?’
A deep voice with the Ozzie question at the end of it. Michel was behind me. Between my knees I could see a pair of brown bare feet. What a sight. He must be staring straight up my bum. What would he call it? Up my Lycra jacksie. I straightened, unrolling my spine like they’d shown us in exercise class. Tits out, stomach in. The movement scraped the thong against my clit.
‘Hey!’ He was standing there, holding a crate. ‘The jogger!’
Gallic, but not glowering. Grinning, actually. Dark stubble prickling around full lips which looked wet with kissing. Black hair, too long, and wet with the rain. He was so tall I had to continue my stretch like a ballerina.
‘Hey!’ I repeated. I was still out of breath. ‘The driver!’
The moment elongated, because I couldn’t speak. My sweatshirt clung round my ribs, right around my breasts. There was hubbub from across the hall, glasses chinking. I was level with his wet mouth. I saw a white flash of teeth.
‘So you’re the mum.’
My breasts juddered as I struggled to get my breath. I put my hands on my hips, trying to look casual, but I guess it only made me look brassy. My shirt pulled tighter, thrusting my breasts out. They looked bigger. His tongue ran across his lower lip. Sweat was cooling down, making my skin shiver. Hot and cold, I couldn’t work out which. I watched him watching me. My nipples pricked harder again and my shoulders pulled back to show them to him. My breath got louder and he took a step closer.
‘Hurry up, Michel, a girl could die of thirst!’
It was Patsy, crashing into the kitchen. With his back to her Michel went on looking at my breasts in the open, greedy way young men do, as if it’s a gift barely wrapped, all new. I held my arms out stiffly to her, like a doll.
‘Here you are, my prodigal daughter!’
A frown flickered under the fringe she’d had cut into her hair. It made her face look square. Her mouth dropped open exaggeratedly, like actors in American soaps do to register surprise. ‘Mum, what on earth are you wearing? What happened to you?’
The others crowded in behind her.
‘She looks great, doesn’t she?’ one of the girls prompted. ‘All gorgeous and slim just like she used to?’
Patsy nodded, over and over, looking me up and down. Then she came into my arms. We were right in front of Michel. I looked over Patsy’s shoulder, my eyes reaching as far as his neck, a point pulsing beneath his ear.
‘It’s like hugging myself. There’s nothing to you,’ Patsy said, letting me go. ‘I can’t believe you’ve lost all that weight!’
‘Good, huh?’ I said in a silly high voice. They were all staring at me. I started to go red. I flapped my arm. ‘Now, then, this isn’t how I pla
nned your homecoming! I was meant to be all tarted up in your honour. Go on with you. Get some drinks. I’ll be ready directly.’
‘Amazing.’ They shuffled back across the hall, Patsy still looking me up and down. She called to her boyfriend. ‘Coming, babe?’
The girls tittered again.
‘Sure, doll. Just sorting the wine.’
He put the crate down on the counter with a crash. His hands were free now and waiting by his sides. I stood still where Patsy had left me.
‘Mother and daughter, eh?’ There was a shaft of air between us. He came closer, crushing the air as he pressed up, pushing me against the counter. ‘How horny is that?’
‘You think we’re alike?’
The edge jabbed into my back, forcing the words out in a kind of smiling gasp.
‘Oh, yes.’ He nodded. ‘But different. You can take pain, for one thing. I wonder if you like it?’
I just ran my tongue across my dry mouth.
‘A girl would have whined at me for bashing her. She’d have killed the moment.’
‘Oh? What moment is that?’
Staring into my eyes, he dashed the tips of his fingers across my nipples. They went rigid, and I gasped again. I didn’t think they could get any harder. His eyes were very dark brown, with gold flecks, watching my reaction. Inside I was sliding. I gritted my teeth and shoved my body, my breasts, hard into his hands, urging his fingers to fan out, grip round the soft flesh.
He looked down at what he was doing, as if it surprised him. We both looked down. All this in silence. His brown fingers caged my breasts, knuckles flexing as he moulded them. My breath came out in a shudder. My breasts are my centre. He squeezed harder, until it began to hurt. How did he know? My head fell back, my knees giving way. I gripped the counter for balance and he pushed his knee between my legs, jabbed it into my crotch so that I was straddling his thigh. I rocked myself once against his leg, and there was the insistent thread of my bloody thong, rubbing me red raw inside.
The sitting room door opened.
‘Stop this. We can’t,’ I whispered harshly, yet tipping desperately against his thigh bone for relief. ‘I’m Patsy’s –’
‘I want the mother,’ he whispered back, eyes so close I lost focus.
I pushed my finger onto his lips. The chatter flooded out into the hallway, and on his bare feet he was gone.
He was lifting my hand towards his mouth.
‘Goodnight, Mum.’
Halfway up the stairs, Patsy snorted. ‘How many times, Michel? She’s Angela!’
He was unshaven like a rock star. Now I’d had all evening to study him I saw that, like all rock stars, underneath it all he was still very young.
His curved lips parted in a smile over my skin and I wanted him to lick me. I wanted to stuff my fingers between his teeth so that he had to eat them.
‘It’s late.’ Steve was being the hearty father, locking up. ‘Can’t believe you’ve kept us up so late gassing, you two.’
Michel kissed the back of my hand. The tip of his tongue tickled my cold skin. He closed his eyes briefly, his nose still pressed against my knuckles, and that’s when I knew it for sure, because it was real desire. No one else could see.
But I gave a silly, fluttering laugh and scrunched my shoulders like a child aping pleasure. I turned to my husband. ‘You kept us up with all that delicious food.’
‘Too much of it, though.’ Patsy patted her stomach. ‘And Michel feeds me too much at work, don’t you?’
Michel dropped my hand. We all looked up and saw how her body had thickened. The khaki shorts would never fit her now. A flowing turquoise garment covered her. It was exactly the precious gesture I used to use.
‘Bed, my girl,’ said Steve, following Patsy up. At the top he turned all the lights off. He kissed her cheek and they went their separate ways. I started up the stairs, too. My thighs brushed restlessly as I took each step, and then a hand was right up between them, curving round, snaking into my bush.
‘I want to know what you look like naked.’
I stopped at the top, still with my back to him. The darkness was intoxicating. I lifted the silky skirt of the dress my girls had chosen, right up over my hips, and parted my legs. I wore stockings and no knickers for no other reason except that he was here, in my house, at my table, next to my daughter, opposite me and watching me all evening.
I opened my legs for him in the vague dark from the landing window and he came right up behind me, his fingers digging through the fur there, forcing open my throbbing sex to slide inside.
‘I won’t sleep,’ he said, breath hot on my neck, cupping me so that one long finger was positioned to jab into me so roughly that I nearly cried out. ‘I want to fuck the mother.’
My wetness drew on his finger. We could both hear the lap and suck of my cunt as he pushed further inside me, his other arm trapping me round my stomach. I staggered a little, spreading my legs further, and another finger, maybe his thumb, stroked my clitoris while he continued to finger fuck me.
‘This is what teenagers do,’ I whispered, lowering myself onto his finger.
‘Not so long ago, then.’
‘Oh, please –’
Laughter bubbled quietly in his throat, right next to my ear, and he speeded up the motion. I gasped and grappled about for him. I wanted to feel his dick. In my hand, if I couldn’t have it inside me. I found his hips, his stomach, a buckle, his buttocks, but he had me pinned too close to the banisters, bending me over them, so I couldn’t get to him.
The top step creaked as my cunt squeezed violently round his finger and I started to come in a short, violent burst. There was an answering creak of pacing footsteps from my room, maybe Steve coming to open the bedroom door to see what, or who, was keeping me.
‘We can’t,’ I bleated, for the second time that day, staggering forwards. His fingers slid out of me, smearing juice. ‘This is crazy, don’t you see? We can’t –’
‘We already have. Oh, you’re a pricktease, Mrs Patricks. I bet you were a tease when you were Patsy’s age.’ I didn’t turn to look at him in the dark. I’d forgotten about her. ‘And, as a punishment, I’ll just have to go now and fuck your daughter.’
I pretended I had a headache. A hangover. Whatever they liked to call it. I lay there the next morning and let them peep round the door, let Patsy sit on the edge of my bed and tell me how she was going back to Australia straight after Christmas. This wasn’t really the grand homecoming. I didn’t listen to any of it. I told them all to go to Grandma’s as arranged. I wanted to tell them all, the lot of them, my loved ones, to fuck off.
I wanted to lie in my bed with my fingers probing and fidgeting between my legs. I wanted to raise my hips off the sheet and feel the frustration throb up me as my sex closed round them. I listened to them chattering downstairs, borrowing coats, sorting out car keys. I thought about the sleepless night.
Last night, just down the hall, Michel entered the guest room where my frisky Patsy was lying in readiness for him, her turquoise garments discarded, wriggling with glee because she was allowed to sleep in there with her boyfriend. Yesterday morning I made up the bed with the prissy sprigged linen kept for visitors and turned up the radiator and didn’t think twice about it. Now, all I could think about was that mean little bed and Michel tensed on top of it, fucking her, and I was stiff with jealousy.
She would have waited for him, her arms and legs spread wide open. That’s what youngsters are like, isn’t it? The girls always have the hots. The boys permanent hard-ons. Any bed, anywhere, anyone, will do.
I lay there all night. They were deliberate about it, and brazen. Maybe that was his idea. Or maybe Patsy reckoned this was a grown-up rite of passage, to fuck openly and noisily in front of her parents, under their roof. Steve was already asleep, but I heard it. It was brief, and violent, but Michel was fucking her for my benefit. Don’t care if that was big-headed of me. I knew it was true. His hard-on came from me, not her. It was only a mome
nt after he’d shut the door that the spare bed started banging against the wall. Patsy yelped then let out a long sigh as if he was squeezing the life out of her.
You’d have thought I’d cringe and cover my ears. This was my adult daughter screwing, for God’s sake. But she was invisible to me. I could only see Michel, what he was doing, his urgent movements in the cold spare room. Ripping at his jeans. I’d already loosened them. Crashing onto the bed, his knees knocking hers open. I bet he surprised her, taking out this great stiff cock, shoving it into her before she was really ready.
When the banging and grunting stopped I went to sleep. When I woke I thought for a moment it was all a dream, until I reached down and felt the stickiness on me and smelt my own fingers.
I had no headache. I had never felt so alive.
When they’d all gone I wanted to run. This is what they mean by letting off steam. I was going to explode. I lifted my jogging pants to my nose and smelt the tang of last evening’s arousal. I wanted Michel. I pictured his young buttocks half out of his jeans, flexing and thrusting, making the spare bed creak. I tossed the pants aside, pulled on a baggier pair which kept slipping down my hips like pyjamas, and a cropped green sweater. I grabbed the toast Steve had brought me, gobbling wetly like a starving person, licking butter off my lips.
I was about to run down the stairs when a door banged. The house was full of draughts and open windows. I clicked my teeth, housewife again, and bustled along the landing. Perhaps the vase in the spare room had knocked off the windowsill, spilling lilies and water.
Spare rooms are always cold and prim and uninviting, aren’t they? Anyone would think you wanted to get rid of your guests. The curtains were billowing, but the vase was still standing. I looked at the scattered clothes on the floor, all Patsy’s, the open suitcases stacked neatly by the wall, and then I looked at the bed. Rumpled, of course, pillows halfway down the mattress. Had he dragged her down the bed when he came in last night, heaped the pillows under her to raise her fanny up to him, rammed his hard cock into her just a few feet away from where I was lying?