She went in, shut the door and sat on the edge of the bath and let out a large sigh. It had been a stressful morning. The murder of the local girl had spooked them all but selfishly, she was consumed with confusion and guilt over her triangle with David and Peter. It occurred to her that most of the time she was trying to fathom out her feelings, she rarely spared a thought for Mae. She didn’t know when she had become so selfish. She had never been this way before.
‘Is this what hardship does to a person? Is this what death, poverty and war do to a person?’ she thought.
She had always been decent but the older she was getting, the less she seemed to care about certain things.
‘The heart wants what it wants,' she surprised herself with that thought. It was like someone else was taking over her internal dialogue.
She began to reason with herself.
The heart does want what it wants. No Martha. The heart can’t have what it wants. The heart must choose wisely. Don’t let the heart be foolish. She got up and splashed her face with some cold water in the sink and looked up to see herself in the mirror.
Little beads of water clung to her face and she watched as they slowly lost grip and began to roll down her cheeks, off the end of her nose and dropping off her chin. She picked up the hand towel and began to pat her face dry in the mirror. She realised she didn’t know who was looking back at her.
‘Who are you these days, Martha Henderson?’
It had been a while since she had an image of Johnny pop into her head with a reassuring message. Even Johnny doesn’t like me anymore, she thought as she put the towel back and left the room.
As she opened the door, she was instantly greeted by Peter who grabbed her arm while gesturing ‘shh.' He pulled her into her room.
‘What on earth do you think you are playing at? Staying at David’s for the weekend? Why are you doing this?’
He wasn’t angry. He was staring at her with pleading eyes, eyes that said show me you want me. The room was deadly silent apart from the sound of their beating hearts. He watched her chest rise and fall. He wanted her to be his and they both knew it. They knew it couldn’t be that way, but in this room, in this moment right now, neither of them wanted anyone else. It was like when they were alone, they forgot about the real world that existed. They forgot about their partners. They forgot about the children. They forgot about their morals. They forgot about their responsibilities.
She held his stare for a moment and then leaned right in and kissed him hard on the mouth. She kissed him and kissed him. He opened her mouth with his tongue. His hands were in her hair. He was kissing her neck. She was touching him everywhere. He began to undo her blouse and pushed her back so she fell on the bed. He was on top of her and she felt his hard erection press against her groin.
She felt instantly ready. She pulled his top off and ran her hands over his incredibly toned torso. Her heart was racing frantically. She wanted him and didn’t think she could say no.
They kissed passionately and let out quiet whimpers of passion. He undid his belt and she bit her lip. He hoisted up her skirt and started kissing her inner thighs. He pulled her pants down to just above her knees and began teasing her between her legs with his tongue.
She wanted to scream, she wanted to scratch her nails up his back but knew she couldn’t. She pulled at his hair and put a pillow over her mouth. He was incredible. His tongue was everywhere, soft and hard. Gentle and wet. He came back up and looked at her. With their eyes fixated on each other, he pulled down his trousers to reveal his very large penis.
His heart was racing now. He hadn’t been with anyone different in years and she was different to Mae alright. She was petite and delicate. He came in closer and lowered himself onto her body. She was panting. The tip of his penis teased her, he was about to go in and she already felt like she could explode at any second.
‘Peter. Peter. Quick.’
Mae shouted from the bottom of the stairs and the two froze in horror.
Peter jumped up and pulled up his trousers. He looked at Martha and then left the room in a panic. He left her there, pants down to her knees, breasts out, hair a mess and with a heavy heart.
She quickly redressed herself but was shaking like a leaf. She paced her room. Once again, the real Martha was back in the room and she knew a serious line had been crossed. This couldn’t carry on.
A silent tear rolled down her cheek and she sat down on the bed and began to sob.
Chapter 13
Peter ran down the stairs to find Charlie sitting at the kitchen table with a big gash in his head, blood trickling down his face and grazed knees.
He didn’t seem too upset by his run-in with the concrete garden path, but Mae was a mess. She always did overreact and he had told her several times not to do so in front of their son. He didn’t want him growing up to be a ‘pansy,' as he put it. There wasn’t much chance of that. Charlie was as tough as old boots. He was as tough as old boots or knew better than to show any emotion in front of his father; one or the other.
‘Oh dear, another bop to the head, young man. How have you managed that? Who were you at battle with? The Romans? A German soldier? An alien?’
Peter wet a cloth, knelt next to his son and began to mop his head.
‘Here you go, hold that against your head. It doesn’t hurt, does it? It would take more than a little scratch like that to bother you wouldn’t it, boy? We are made of tougher stuff, aren’t we?’
He squeezed his little chin and gave a rough rub to his ash blonde hair and stood up and turned to face Mae who had lost all colour in her face.
David was leaning against the kitchen counter, getting in the way and being no use at all as Peter could see it.
‘Mae, you really must stop getting like this in front of the boy. He is going to hurt himself. He is going to get cuts and bruises. That’s what happens to little boys. Get a grip woman, for heaven’s sakes.’
Martha came into the kitchen looking a little flustered.
‘Everything ok? Oh dear, someone has been in the wars.’
She gave Charlie a sad face by looking at him and frowning with a downturned bottom lip.
‘Don’t you start he’s already got his mother in a tizz,’ Peter remarked.
Peter was from a stiff upper lip type of family. Show no emotion. Men, not boys. Mae hated how tough he was on him sometimes. He was her baby boy and she would always mollycoddle him, but these days it would be mainly when Peter wasn’t looking.
Peter and Martha hadn’t noticed, but Mae was watching them both. She was observing them.
It had occurred to her suddenly that the two of them were behaving in an odd manner. Martha was restless and fidgety. Peter was more engaging, as if he was trying to distract the whole room from thinking. Mae just sat and watched them. The two of them were so focused on busying themselves, they hadn’t even noticed she hadn’t spoken for a while.
Martha was pottering around the kitchen and talking to David. Peter was patching up his son’s head and Willy was pretending to be an aeroplane in the back garden.
Not one person had noticed that Mae wasn’t talking. At that point, Mae began to wonder how long Martha and Peter had been upstairs. It dawned on her that they had been up there for about twenty minutes. Then she started to think about all the times the two of them would ‘disappear’ for twenty minutes since Martha moved in a short while back. All the times she had gone to bed, and Peter would stay down for a bit longer. He never used to do that. He couldn’t wait to get into bed with her before Martha moved in. Then she remembered a night when she had woken up and Peter wasn’t next to her but she fell back to sleep before she had found out where he had gone and how long he had been gone for.
She analysed the two of them a bit more. Martha was edgy around him, almost as if she feared him brushing against her. Peter was cocky and confident. David was oblivious, but not Mae.
No, something was very wrong here. She felt herself get very hot and qui
ckly became very nauseous.
She leaped out of her chair and ran upstairs to the bathroom and threw up. She had been very sick and after she had got it all out, she clung on to the toilet while trying to regain her composure. ‘Was Peter taking advantage of Martha?’ she pondered, terrified that her husband was a sexual predator.
She had seen how nervous Martha was around him. That would explain a lot of things. Mae knew Martha hadn’t been that interested in David, but almost overnight she had hurried into a relationship with him after making such a fuss about not wanting to rush into anything, about not introducing Willy to more change than she had to, about taking her time. She was using him to get Peter to back off.
She sat up and leaned against the bath and began to cry quietly. She didn’t care anymore if Peter didn’t want her but Martha was her best friend. She would not allow him to drive a wedge between the two of them. He already controlled how she was to mother her own son, but he was not about to get in the way of the one true friend that she had.
The door creaked open slowly and Martha popped her head in.
‘Can I come in?’ she said, and Mae accepted with a smile.
Martha sat down next to her friend. Close enough so that their bodies were touching. Martha wanted to touch Mae but didn’t feel like she could put her arm around her. She wanted to comfort her friend, but knowing she might be the cause of her friends upset made her feel like she couldn’t comfort her as she usually would.
She positioned herself next to her and almost slid her back against the small piece of bath that remained between her and the floor. As she did, Mae began to sob heavier. Martha was torn. She had been bad, she knew that, but she wasn’t going to be so bad that she would comfort her friend for the misery she was causing. She had to be quite strategic about her behaviour now. She didn’t know what surprised her more; the tangled web she was caught up in or how good she was at handling it.
‘I know what he’s doing, Martha.’
Martha stared ahead not saying a word but feeling her pounding heart, filling the awkward silence.
‘He is a pig. I didn’t see it straight away. I must’ve been so happy to see you here that I didn’t see what was happening. What was unfolding right in front of my own eyes.’
Martha sat in silence, as she had been, continuing to stare in front of her. She could feel tiny beads of sweat appearing on her top lip. She was keen to mop them away but didn’t dare move from the spot she was frozen too.
A million thoughts were rushing through her brain as to what Mae knew, what Mae was about to say next and as to what would happen from here. Her whole world was about to be turned upside down. Any minute now Mae was about to go mad. The two people she trusted the most. Her husband. Her best friend. The two people she could rely on.
Under her own roof.
Under her very nose.
Martha tried to imagine what she might say. How was she going to react? Would she be homeless within the next 5 minutes?
‘The trouble is, I suppose I deserve this. Karma has a funny way of catching up with you.’
Martha was alarmed by what she was hearing. Mae wasn’t going to scream at her. Mae was about to confess to something. Something that could potentially reduce some of Martha’s guilt.
‘What do you mean? What karma?’
Mae began to fiddle with her fingernails, picking at her cuticles and examining her tips. Martha was desperate to know what she had done.
‘Come on, Mae. It can’t be that bad.’
Mae snorted.
‘Bad? Bad doesn’t even come close. I have always been insecure about Peter’s wandering eye. I used to think he was a predator, that’s what I would tell myself. I tell myself he can’t be trusted. Sometimes I wonder if he knows and that’s why he torments me so. Then other times I wonder if it is my guilt imagining the torment and that he isn’t doing anything wrong, it’s just my guilty mind playing tricks on me.’
Mae continued to look into her hands and down at the floor. Martha was eager to know more but too afraid to seem keen for answers.
‘Look, Mae, whatever it is. You can confide in me. We are best friends and whatever you tell me won’t go any further. You know that. It might even help to tell me rather than bottling it all up. I bet it isn’t even that bad.’
Mae turned to look at Martha.
‘Charlie isn’t Peter’s son.’
The two women held each other’s stare, but Mae couldn’t hold it for long as her bottom lip began to quiver and a tear rolled down her cheek.
‘What? How?’ Martha was gobsmacked. She was not expecting that at all.
‘Peter was sent away with the troops as the war began. He was hardly here for the first couple of years. Probably the best part of three he was away for. He has only been around in the last year. He was able to visit occasionally, but I think it was four times in almost three years. While he was away some American troops were here for a while. It was one of them. It went on for months. After he had gone back to America, I realised I was pregnant. He wrote to me. I never told him.’
‘But Charlie is the image of Peter.’
‘Jim was the image of Peter. That was his name. James. Jim. Jimmy.’
Martha pulled Mae in closer to her and stroked her head.
She felt numb.
The two of them sat on the floor leaning against the bath. Martha stared at the pipework under the sink. She followed the pipes that ran along the bottom of the walls and out of the rooms. She stared at them with intent, taking in every detail. She looked at how they had been painted and how there were chips in places revealing old paint underneath the top coat. She noticed that the room was dusty and could do with a good clean. She looked at the little flecks of mould and mildew on the walls.
Finally, she began to think about what Mae had just said to her. She didn’t want to think of her friend harbouring this secret for all that time.
She would keep Mae’s secret. Knowing this new information didn’t make her feel any better about what she had done. She felt sorry for Mae. She tried to imagine carrying that burden for that long. Then she realised she carried a burden of her own.
Her escapades with Peter.
She didn’t know if she actually wanted him. Something was going on and she was curious as to how far it would go. She knew it was wrong but she was in it now and she didn’t feel like she could get out or even want to get out. She would have to find a way to try and stay away from him.
‘You promise never to repeat this, don’t you. Peter must never know. I think he would kill me. And Charlie. Charlie must never find out. They love each other so much. I don’t know how or why it happened. I was just lonely and desperate for attention. When I was with him I never spared Peter a thought. I’m going to hell, aren’t I.’
Mae leaned into Martha a bit more and sobbed.
‘No one is going to find out, Mae. I will keep your secret and I understand why you did it.’
‘That’s why I think you should move out. You should move in with David.’
Martha jerked from her slouched position to an upright one. ‘What. Why?’
‘There is too much going on here. Peter is sleazing around you, I can see it. I can’t handle it. I’m afraid if I challenge him then my secret night get blurted out and I can’t have that. Anyway, David is crazy about you. He would be thrilled.’
‘But I wouldn’t be. I’m not moving in with him; I have only just met him. You are panicking. Just relax, as I said, no one is going to find out.’
Chapter 14
There was a good turnout for the meeting with the local police that evening, to discuss the capture of Simon Paterson.
The arrest of the escaped convict, the murderer, the rapist, Simon Paterson.
The men were up in arms about the safety of their women. Their wives, their daughters, their sisters. Emotions were running high. The room was filled with testosterone. Peter had made David go along with him while the two women stayed at home with the boys.
David wouldn’t have gone if he hadn’t been forced into it by Peter. He was not one for confrontation and as much as some of the men were there out of genuine concern, there was an element of bravado from about a third of the room, in which Peter was included.
They were all trying to talk the loudest. Firing questions at the police officers and not giving them the chance to answer. Dumbing down their abilities, belittling them to make themselves look better, like ‘real men.'
David felt agitated. These men were not his kind of people. What the hell do they know about policing? he thought. He was sure they were doing what they could and he was sure they could do with support and any useful information anyone might have rather than taking time out to be bullied, branded fools and verbally assaulted by the locals.
He stood at the back of the cold village hall taking it all in. The room smelt damp. There were masses of cobwebs in the creases and hinges of the double entrance doors. David took his cap off and listened to the anger. He could understand it; if any harm came to his Martha, he didn’t know what he would do or what he would be capable of.
He noticed the officer attempting to quieten the crowd and gain their attention but to no avail. The boisterous men were all talking over the officer, shouting and demanding answers. David began to feel hot and clammy. His heart began to beat faster than usual.
He was irritated with these men who thought they could throw their weight around.
‘They came to listen but aren’t.’ he muttered quietly under his breath, while shaking his head at the morons.
‘Let the man God damn speak.’ he shouted, out of nowhere.
The noise slowly hushed and each man took a look at the quiet, little mechanic in the corner. Some acted out of the offence and were not happy to be put in their place but before anyone could do anything, Peter, not to be outdone by David, possibly, had the last word.
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