‘I know. But can't you see the quarry dispute is only a small part of our problems? Isn't it obvious to you that we both want different things now; you want more money to retire early and live the high-life abroad. But I'm perfectly happy ambling along in our village.’
He thumped the top of the bar with his fist and it made her jump. ‘No!’ he shouted, ‘You've got it all wrong. You mean more to me than any amount of money.’
She saw his familiar eyes mellow and soften with tenderness. He put his hand gently on her cheek and turned her face towards him, ‘Sue, I couldn't live without you, whether it be here or abroad.’
‘Oh, Bob, are you s...sure?’ she asked, choking back tears.
‘I've never been more sure of anything in my life,’ he said and put his arms around her. ‘I've been such an idiot, and to think I nearly lost you because of my silly pride and madcap ideas.’
She snuggled into his arms as he murmured softly into her hair, ‘Forgive me, love.’
*
Anne took the magazine into work to show the chef and Sharon. She also posted a copy to her mother in Spain, along with photographs of Emily. When Anne returned to work after her maternity leave, she’d been promoted to junior developer working alongside the chef, and now created some of her own ideas into the ready-meal selections. The company had a new retailer who wanted more meal solutions for the bottom end of the market which needed to be reasonably priced, using basic ingredients. This, Anne had felt, was more her domain and she’d thrown herself into the project, loving every minute of her new-found confidence.
For one particular meal she’d suggested using sweet corn cobs instead of the standard sweet corn kernels, hoping the customer would eat them dripping with melted butter. The retailer had been delighted, especially when she proposed a change in the shape of the tray to make room for the chunky cobs. When she’d managed to source the trays at a cheaper price than their standard trays, the chef had been impressed and challenged her to look at the other current meals they produced to incorporate more modern updates.
Anne relished each new challenge he gave her and it had, she told Sharon one day in the canteen, been the making of her.
‘I just feel so much more confident in everything I do now,’ she said to Sharon. ‘Not just at work, even at home I’m ruling the roost, as they say.’
Sharon smiled, devouring a cheese roll. ‘Yep, you’ve certainly turned the tables on Tom – and not before time. But I’ve got to give credit where credit is due, because you know I didn’t like him much at first, but he’s certainly come up trumps now,’ she said, laying the magazine down on the table in front of Anne. ‘I loved the story.’
Happily, Anne flicked to the page with his story and glowed; she loved to see her husband’s name in print. She looked at Sharon and giggled. ‘I know you didn’t see eye to eye at first, but that’s okay, because Tom always says he couldn’t stand the sight of you, either.’
They both looked at each other and burst into laughter.
‘Noo,’ Sharon spluttered as she swallowed the last of the roll. ‘But seriously, Anne, it’s so good to see you happy at last. Emily is such a little darling. You must be very proud of her.’
‘I am,’ Anne nodded. ‘But you know, Sharon, most of it is down to Tom. He’s absolutely besotted with her. It makes it easier for me being at work as I wouldn’t feel confident leaving her with anyone else but him. She couldn’t be in better hands because he really is the best father any little girl could have.’
Sharon smiled and scrunched the empty wrapping from her roll and tossed it into the waste bin. She sighed, ‘Yeah, and I have to admit I did think this writing malarkey was a waste of time, but he’s certainly proved me wrong,’ she said, tapping the top of the magazine. ‘He’s made a real go of it all.’
As Anne ambled back to the office, where she now had her own desk, she allowed her thoughts to wander back to the early days when Tom had started to write, and in particular, the dreadful day when she’d found out about his affairs. She shuddered and felt a cold sensation travel down her spine with the memories. But, she thought, life had a strange way of turning around sometimes, and things couldn’t have worked out any better. It had often crossed her mind how awful her life would be now if she hadn’t given him another chance and had ended their marriage that day in the market. As she booted up her computer she smiled, remembering a quote that Tom had found for them in a book: ‘if you really love someone, even if there are many reasons to leave, you will always look for the one reason to stay’.
Anne stared at a particular recipe that she was working through on the screen and sat back in the chair, folding her arms behind her head. Her strength of character had grown quickly following the promotion, as the more the chef had praised and encouraged her work, the more she thrived. At home she’d taken to being a mum as though she had been born for the role, and she loved her daughter to distraction. With Sharon’s words of wisdom, she in turn had taught Tom how to care for their baby; and care for her he certainly had. When Emily, as a new-born, had suffered with colic for two weeks, it had been Tom who walked the floor during the night, cradling her for hours.
Anne chuckled, remembering how he’d changed from a man who could sleep like the dead to someone who slept on instant alert. The mere snuffle from Emily and he would leap from the bed, hurrying to her cot, but only after insisting that Anne should stay in bed and go back to sleep. When she’d felt like crying with frustration at her daughter, Tom had shown endless patience, to the extent that sometimes it made her feel lacking in the tolerance department. The night Emily came home from hospital, Tom had insisted her cot should stay in their room, because as he often told Anne, no child of his was going to be alone and scared through the night. He often joked that their daughter could still be there when she was eighteen.
Sharon, as a mother of three, had instilled upon them both how important a sense of routine and family meal times were. Tom, therefore, had concentrated on not only Emily’s diet, but on all of their meals, and never wavered from a healthy regime. So much so that Anne herself had now lost over a stone in weight, which was something she’d failed to do in the past. Tom often teased that he missed her big bottom and chunky thighs, but she knew now he would love her no matter what size she was.
Anne smiled at her look of satisfaction reflected in the mirror above the computer, and twirled a strand of her hair between her fingers. Is this because I feel so much more confident in myself? Since the day she’d met him Tom had insisted that her size didn’t matter, but she’d never quite believed it. Smiling, she pulled her shoulders back and decided that these insecure doubts were in fact, a thing of the past. I’m a confident, professional woman, with a loving husband and beautiful daughter, she thought, and curbed the impulse to whoop with joy and contentment. Instead she opened the recipe tab and began to work.
*
At the same time, Tom had Emily warm and snuggled in her pink fluffy onesie and securely fastened in her buggy.
‘Keep them on,’ he tutted, bending over Emily and putting her mittens back on for the third time since he’d started to get them both ready for their trip to the supermarket. Tom talked to her all of the time they were together, and he was certain that, although she had just celebrated her first birthday, her gobbly-gook vocabulary was far superior to other babies of the same age. But, he grinned, heading out of the door and bumping the buggy over the front step, he was bound to think that because everything she did amazed him. She was the light of his life and he couldn’t imagine existing on a daily basis now without the sight of her gorgeous little face grinning at him.
Anne had told him that children liked routine, therefore Tom kept their days to a strict timetable from Monday to Friday while she was at work, although the weekends were a little different, as Anne naturally wanted to spend as much time with Emily as possible. Nowadays, he got out of bed at six when Anne’s alarm sounded and, with a cup of strong coffee, he wrote for a couple of hours u
ntil Emily stirred and they had breakfast together. After games and reading to Emily he took every opportunity to write on his tablet throughout the day. During her nap after lunch, which was a godsend, Tom could often get a couple of hour’s text written down as he watched over her sleeping.
Tom strode down the West Road towards Tesco, pushing the buggy and chanting a nursery rhyme to Emily while mentally going through his shopping list, which included vegetables, fresh mangos, as Anne adored them, and chicken breasts. He planned to make sweet and sour chicken with basmati rice that evening and, he decided, he might even throw a bag of prawn crackers into the basket. Tom pulled his jacket collar up against a chilly wind on the back of his neck and quickened his pace. Although he knew Emily would be warm enough in her buggy, he still wanted to be home in time to prepare their meal, as Anne finished work early on a Friday.
The supermarket was busy when he entered the main doors and, balancing the basket in one hand, he expertly manoeuvred the buggy up the aisles with the other. Bending over in the vegetable aisle, Tom chatted to Emily as he selected carrots and onions and she answered him with gurgles and sloppy noises. He tickled Emily under her chin, which she loved, and she squirmed around, which meant she was hoping to escape the buggy.
‘Not today,’ he muttered, ‘we haven’t got time, Emily.’
Throwing three mangos into the basket, he headed towards the poultry aisle and just as he picked up a tray of chicken breasts, the basket tipped and one of the mangos rolled out on to the floor.
‘Damn,’ he cursed under his breath as he heard Emily giggle and hang over the side of the buggy, watching the mango roll away from them. Tom stumbled a few paces to catch it before it rolled under the Easter egg display. With his head bent and not wanting to let go of the buggy, he tried to grab at the mango, then noticed a pair of black, high stiletto heels. A woman’s hand with long, red-painted finger nails clasped the mango and he raised his eyes slowly, looking at the shapely legs. His eyes travelled upwards to a short, tight-fitting pencil skirt which stretched easily across the woman’s flat stomach and a wide, black, shiny belt which held a white blouse in place at the waistband.
Tom’s pulse began to quicken as he finally looked at the woman’s face. He smiled as she handed him the mango.
‘There’re slippery little things, aren’t they,’ she purred.
Tom swallowed hard at the most exquisite face he’d seen for a long while. With long blonde hair tousled loosely around magnificent cheek bones, and huge green shining eyes, Tom only just stopped himself sighing with appreciation at such beauty.
‘Er, thanks,’ he muttered, and laid the basket down on the floor. He put his hand out to take the mango from her and as he took a step nearer to her his nostrils filled with a heavy, decadent perfume which almost made his head swim.
He looked into her eyes and felt the warm heat in the palm of her hand as he took the mango from her. Transfixed, she returned his stare and Tom felt all the old feelings of desire and longing flood through him. He held the mango pathetically in his hand as she trailed one of her long fingernails across the back of his hand, and he felt all the hairs on his arm stand to attention. Desire stirred inside his trousers and the zip tightened, letting him know that the hairs on his arms weren’t the only thing jumping to attention. It was like an electric current running up his arm and through his entire body.
Tom shuffled his feet and tore his eyes from hers to gaze at her glossy pink lips, which were moist and parted in welcome. His eyes wandered down her slim neck to where the top two buttons of her silk blouse were open, revealing her bulging cleavage. The silk was fine and he could see white lace from a half-cup bra cradling her breasts. He licked his dry lips, imagining the taste of them. Instantly, he thought of Gillian Anderson in the BBC 2 drama, “The Fall”, and all of the commotion that her blouses had caused in the press. It was unbelievable, he thought, how one article of woman’s clothing could do this to a man, but it was doing it to him now, and he felt quite powerless.
She moved back slightly against the display and raised an eyebrow, taunting him. Tom knew she was his for the taking and he imagined pushing her back against the stand and pulling open her blouse.
Suddenly, a loud, demanding, Da-Da, made Tom jump. The sound of his daughter’s voice surged into his mind and he swung around to the buggy. Christ, he breathed heavily, he’d almost forgotten about Emily – how could he? A rolling sensation hit the bottom of his stomach as he crouched down and checked that she was okay. She grabbed his finger and gave him a big gummy smile which melted his heart all over again, as though it was the first time he’d seen it.
He looked up to see the woman pout and draw her pencilled eyebrows together in puzzlement. It was almost as though she was peeved that his daughter was receiving more attention than her. Momentarily, Tom glanced from his daughter to the woman and knew there was no competition; his daughter and wife were far more beautiful than this woman, or any other woman could ever be.
He smiled and thanked her again and hurried towards the checkout. As Tom walked quickly down the aisle with Emily chattering in her gobble-de-gook, he broke into a cold sweat and his heart began to thump. His hands shook as he gripped the handle of the buggy and he berated himself. I nearly did it, he raged; I nearly slipped back into my old self and was tempted to cheat again. Tom paid for his shopping, tucked the items into the bottom rack of the buggy, and almost ran from the shop and across the car park to put the sexy woman as far behind him as possible.
Leaving the car park Tom turned out on to the road and slowed his pace. He took long, slow deep breaths until he felt his heart rate return to normal, and sensible reasoning fill his mind. The most important thing in what had just happened, he thought, was that although I nearly slipped, I didn’t, and walked away unscathed. It was the first time in over a year that he’d been tempted, or had been in what he would call a close encounter with another sexy woman, other than Anne of course.
Turning the corner on to his street, he sighed with self-disgust at the thought that he could have had those lecherous imaginings in front of his daughter. Although his voice of reason prompted that she was too young to even understand what his feelings had been towards the woman and, apart from his thoughts and feelings, nothing concrete had actually happened. He did, however, feel ashamed of his behaviour and was amazed at how fast his body and mind had reacted to the woman.
Once they were both through the front door of the house he bent down to unstrap Emily from the buggy and caught sight of his reflection in the long mirror in the hall. He shook his head in disbelief at why the woman had come on to him in the first place, because as well as a character transformation he certainly didn’t look anything like his former self. Where Anne had lost weight, he’d actually gained ten pounds and had succumbed to wearing jogger bottoms with an elastic waistband, a sloppy jumper that hid his slight paunch, and a pair of old comfy trainers. He’d crossed the bridge from being uncomfortable in trendy tight clothes to feeling comfortable in easy-wear clothes and he grinned as he lifted Emily out of the buggy. Yeah, he thought, I sure look like a typical family man now.
Placing Emily into her play-pen in the middle of the lounge floor, Tom poured himself a slug of brandy to steady himself and gulped it down in one go. He thought about the woman’s sexy outfit, her body and her smell, then leant over and lifted his daughter out of the playpen, snuggling his face into her neck. He inhaled slowly and relished the warm, clean baby smell of Emily. This is the only smell I want now, he thought, and of course, the smell of my gorgeous Anne.
He looked up at the fireplace where Anne had stood the black and white photograph back up, next to one of herself cradling new born Emily. The day Tom had seen the photograph re-appear was the day he knew he’d been forgiven. He smiled looking at Anne’s face; hers was the only face and body he wanted. She was the one, the only one whose blouse he wanted to tear open, and make love to over and over again until they were too old to do so any more. In truth,
he thought, I want to grow old with her. He sighed, remembering how she had stood by him during the last year, and swallowed hard. Sometimes it takes my breath away just to think of her, he mused. He knew without a shadow of doubt that he would never have got through the family reunion in Brighton without her, and would never have made the transition from a modern day Casanova, which was how he liked to think of himself, to a family man.
During the months when Anne was pregnant, his mind had often veered from mild panic to blatant hysteria at the fact that he was going to be a father and responsible for a baby, but, with Anne’s encouragement and support, he’d done it. And, he thought, Anne herself had grown into a strong confident woman, which he found a real turn-on in itself, and there wasn’t a day went by that he didn’t want to ravish her body. It was an honest, deep love that he now felt had grown stronger and stronger since Emily was born. Thinking about the supermarket incident, Tom knew that the reason he hadn’t made further advances was not only because he had changed as a man, but because he didn’t want to. The glamorous woman in the supermarket wasn’t his wife, and no other woman ever could be.
Anne sailed through the front door shortly after five and pounced on Emily, scooping her up in her arms. Nowadays, Anne’s routine had changed and instead of hanging up her coat and switching on the kettle, understandably she couldn’t wait to get her hands on her daughter. Tom knew she missed Emily while she was at work, and when she’d first returned Anne used to get upset if Emily had turned a milestone in her development and she wasn’t there to see it. Purposely now, Tom didn’t tell Anne if something had happened during the day, and waited until she was with them so his wife could watch Emily, or in some instances, actually think she was the first to discover Emily’s new learning. Anne had been in raptures the first time she’d heard Emily say, Da-da, and Ma-ma, and Tom pretended it was the first time he’d heard it too, although he’d actually heard her utter the words the day before, but on this Tom kept silent.
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