by Lily Morton
“It’s Asa,” I hiss. “Come on. I thought you wanted to go for a drink.”
“Ah, your daddy.” He looks over his shoulder again. “Goodness, he looks very cross. Did you not clean your room?” He shudders theatrically. “Is he going to spank you? Oh, let him, Jude. Just for me. I could totally get off on that, and I wouldn’t be able to see your current feral hairstyle if you were face down over his knee.”
“Malachi,” I hiss. “I don’t want to speak to Asa at the moment.”
“Too late,” he says happily and swings us round just as Asa rocks up to us. He’s wild-eyed, his hair is down, and he’s missing his jacket.
“Where’s your fucking coat?” I snap. “You’ll get cold.”
Malachi smirks. “Oh, good grief. You older people don’t need that. You’ll come down with sciatica and corns.” He pauses. “And whatever other ailments you daddies get.”
Asa had been alternating between staring imploringly at me while trying to catch my eye and casting fulminating glares at Malachi’s hand on my arm. At his comment, though, his head turns slowly. “I’m sorry, who are you?” He pauses. “And did you just call me a fucking daddy?”
Malachi shudders theatrically. “A very cross daddy. Jude, you naughty boy. You should be spanked and then sent to bed early so your pensioner friend can get an early night.” Asa looks bemused, but it turns to anger as Malachi carries blithely on. “I’m Malachi, an occasional fuck friend of Jude’s.”
Asa turns to me accusingly. “You’ve fucked him?”
“Not today,” I scoff. “Years ago, for fuck’s sake.” I pause before saying poisonously, “Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t I mention the fact that I shagged Malachi a few times? What a silly addle wit I am. The next thing that happens is I’ll be forgetting men I’ve slept with for two whole fucking years. How fucked up would that be?” Asa makes an aborted move towards me, but I sidestep him. “Don’t bother, Asa. Fuck off back to Hayden.”
“No, Jude,” he begs. “Stop please, sweetheart. I was going to tell you tonight, but the phone went and…”
“Oh dear, you got interrupted tonight. How unfortunate. Especially when you consider that you’ve had six fucking months to tell me. Every time I spoke to him, you should have been working out how to tell me, but you didn’t. Why?” I pause and then say with a sense of dread, “Hayden said it was because you still want him, that you’d be together now if he’d come out.”
“That’s bullshit,” he groans. “It meant nothing to me. He means very little to me apart from as a friend, and I’m telling you, that’s over too tonight.”
“Why?” I can’t escape the feeling of gladness.
“Because of what he did, Jude. I—”
Malachi interrupts with a loud, theatrical yawn, and Asa stares at him incredulously.
“This is all very Devonshire amateur dramatics,” Malachi says. “But Jude and I were going somewhere.”
“Where?” Asa demands loudly. “Where the fuck were you going with him?”
Malachi shrugs. “Well, I was hoping to get him naked, but he’s proved infuriatingly uncooperative so far.”
Asa turns to me, levelling a glare. I raise my hands. “What? You heard him. I wasn’t going to do fuck all, and you know it, Asa. We were just going to the pub.”
“Come on,” Malachi jeers lightly. “I know you, Jude. You’d have given in.”
“I would not have given in,” I say disgustedly.
I’m drowned out by Asa declaring, “You know fuck all about him.”
“I know he’s got an arse like a fucking peach,” Malachi says as flippantly as ever.
Asa shakes his head. “That’s all you know. You know nothing. You don’t know that he loves thunderstorms, and when one blows up in the middle of the night he’ll wrap himself up in a blanket and sit outside to watch it roll in, but I have to do it too because he gets cold. You don’t know that his feet are always freezing and you have to let him rest them on you in bed. You don’t know that he hates Marmite but loves Branston Pickle, and his bacon has to be cremated rather than merely cooked. That he can vanish into a book and be deaf to everything, and that Christmas adverts make him cry. That he won’t wear a coat but will always want to borrow yours when out on a walk. That he watches horror films through his fingers because he insists they’re less scary when you have fingers over your face.”
He pauses, breathing hard, and I stare at him. “Asa,” I say softly, and he instantly turns to me, grabbing me into a hug and kissing my hair.
“I’m sorry,” he says fervently. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. I never meant to, but you have to know that he means nothing to me.”
“But you split up because he wouldn’t come out.”
“No, I let him think that. I just wanted to go back to being friends. We didn’t work, and we were never together in that sense anyway. Jude, I love you. It’s only you and it only ever will be you. I don’t see anyone else, and it guts me that you thought I’d leave you.”
His warmth floods into me and the rage suddenly dies away, because this is my Asa. I know he wouldn’t cheat on me. I trust him. “It was the fact that you didn’t tell me about him,” I say quietly. “You made me look an idiot, and the thought occurred that you might replace me.”
He looks utterly bewildered. “Why would I replace you, Jude? I could never find anyone like you. I’m so lucky to have you in my life.” He looks at me in a determined manner. “When we get back to the hotel we’ll go over both of our sex lives, and tell each other everything.”
“Oh, I don’t think I need that,” I say faintly.
Malachi, who is leaning against the wall and staring at us as if he’s at the theatre, drowns out my statement, saying, “If he says anything less than superb about my penis, he’ll just be sparing your feelings, Daddy.”
“I am not a fucking daddy,” Asa says through gritted teeth.
“Malachi,” I say warningly.
He chuckles. “Well, lovely as this trip down memory lane has been, I must be off.” He pauses. “Actually it was fairly sweet, and I’m alarmed that I’m not vomiting right at this moment. Jude, tell me something horrible quickly.”
“You’re getting wrinkles on your forehead, and your lips are too thin.”
He breathes in deeply. “Thank you, oh split-ended, feral-hair boy. Well, if you and your elderly lover aren’t inviting a third into your bed…?”
“We’re not,” Asa grits out.
“I’ll be off, then. Goodbye, Jude. Au revoir, stern-faced Daddy.”
We both stare after him as he wanders off and vanishes around the corner.
Asa turns to me. “What—” He starts again. “Who was…?” Finally, he shakes his head. “Never mind. I’ll just chalk it up to him being one of your work colleagues.”
I nod slowly. “Probably best.”
“So we’ll talk when we get back,” he says anxiously.
“I don’t need to know everything. I just need to know if I’m meeting someone you’ve slept with, and I only need to know about the important people.”
He raises his hand and tangles it in my hair, tilting my skull so I look up at him. “Then it’ll be a short conversation,” he says softly. “With only one name on it. You’re the only one that’s ever meant anything to me, Jude. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, the best lover, the person I turn to above everyone else for the happy and the sad. You’re my comfort and my joy.”
“You use all the best words,” I say softly. “How can I say anything more?”
“Tell me you love me,” he says earnestly. “That you forgive me for being so stupid and that you’ll always love me. That’s all I need to know.”
“I do,” I say and nestle into him. “I do all of those things, Asa, to the absolute heart of me.”
He kisses me softly and tentatively, and then harder and more frantically until finally I pull away gasping.
“What about Hayden? Is this going to make things difficult for you on set?”
“I’m cross at him,” I say faintly. “But there’s no need to go to extremes.”
He laughs and hugs me, resting his face on my hair for a second. “In book three, he dies. Hayden’s problem is that he doesn’t read enough.”
“Luckily that’s not a problem of mine,” I say, and he nods happily. “Who kills him?” I say lightly. “It’s been a while since I’ve read the books. Was it an ex-lover’s boyfriend?”
He hums. “Someone with a bit of the old green eye.”
I push back indignantly. “Hey now, you were just as bad.”
He laughs and throws his arm over my shoulder. “I definitely was.” He smiles. “I used to say that I wasn’t possessive and never got jealous.” He pauses and laughs again. “I think that’s because I never meet anyone worth settling down with until I met you.”
“I’m glad I’m an exception,” I say happily.
He flags a taxi and pushes me into the warmth. “You’ll always be my exception. You’re irreplaceable.”
Jude’s Christmas
This is set after the end of Deal Maker and before the epilogue. It’s the first Christmas that Asa and Jude spend together.
Jude
I stumble into the kitchen, rubbing my eyes and yawning. “Jesus, it’s bright in here,” I protest.
Asa looks up from his seat at the kitchen table. Papers and folders are piled in front of him. He grins. “Aww, is it too bright for your hungover arse?”
“Don’t take the piss out of me,” I say pitifully, wandering over and throwing myself into his lap. He grunts but his arms come up and hug me tight. I nestle my face into his neck, inhaling his warm scent. “I’m ill,” I say in a sad voice.
He laughs. “Jude, you had a staff Christmas party. That really shouldn’t mean incipient death.” He pauses. “Although I have to say you trainee teachers are wild.”
I shake my head. “I know. What den of iniquity have I fallen into?” I sit up. “Was I that bad?”
He bites his lip. “When I picked you up, you were lying on the pavement outside the pub singing a song about a little worm in a garden.”
“That bloody song. I sang it once with my class, and now it’s in my fucking brain forever,” I say fretfully. “All those concerts I went to over the years with brilliant musicians, and the only thing that’s stuck is about a shitty worm that lives at the end of the motherfucking garden.”
“I hope that isn’t the verse you taught your reception class,” he says primly.
“Maybe.” I look at his face and tap his reading glasses. “I like these. They make you look intelligent.”
Laughter dances in his eyes. “Maybe I should keep them on at all times.”
“Oh, Asa, men aren’t attracted to clever men. It’s a proven fact.”
He laughs, and I get off his lap to open the fridge door where I hang for a while, staring at the contents.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to work up the energy to make something to eat,” I say disconsolately. “If you were a proper partner, you’d help me.”
“Well, unfortunately, I have my clever spectacles on, so I’m unavailable to break away from running the country to make your breakfast.”
“I don’t know who told you that you were funny, but I’d get a second opinion.” He snorts, but I exclaim in triumph and retrieve a Tupperware box from the back of the fridge. “Yes! Result!”
“What have you found?”
“Peggy’s chocolate mousse,” I say in a reverent tone. “How is it that this is still here?”
“Because you hid it there yesterday in a Tupperware container that you labelled liver and onions,” he says patiently.
“Ah, yes. I remember. I don’t need to borrow your glasses, Asa, because I am obviously at genius level already.”
I peel the lid back and fish a spoon out from the drawer and take my first mouthful. “Umm,” I say throatily, licking the spoon and looking at him out of the corner of my eye. “Sooo good,” I groan.
He shifts in his chair. “Fuck off starting something you can’t finish, hangover boy.”
“Them’s fighting words,” I say, licking the spoon again in a very lascivious fashion.
He grins at me, his whole face lighting and warming and making my stomach clench. “I love you,” he says affectionately.
I open my mouth to reply, but there’s the pattering of footsteps and Billy appears in the door dressed in Star Wars pyjamas and fluffy slippers and trailed by Stanley Atkins. “It’s Christmas Eve,” he shouts. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Ouch!” I groan as his high voice seems to punch into my brain.
“Are you okay, Jude?” he asks anxiously. “Have you got a headache?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Because Daddy said you would.” He climbs onto Asa’s lap and cuddles up. “Was that you singing ‘There’s a Worm at the Bottom of the Garden’? Because you got all the words mixed up.”
“It might have been me,” I say cautiously. “Did I wake you up?”
“Oh no,” he says sunnily. “Stanley and me were keeping watch in case Father Christmas came early.”
“He doesn’t normally, baby,” Asa says.
Billy shakes his head immediately. “You never know. He’s very quiet and clever. He could be on the roof and in your bedroom before you know it.”
“He’s not a ninja.”
“He’s better than that. He’s Santa,” he says indignantly. Then his eyes sharpen. “What are you eating, Jude?”
Involuntarily my arm tightens around my bowl of chocolate goodness. Thinking hard, I smile at him. “It’s marmite casserole.”
“Oh, I hate marmite,” he says despondently.
“I know,” I murmur, watching him jump down from Asa’s lap and wander out of the room.
“I’m going to see if there are any Christmas films on,” he shouts. “Sky has got a lot.”
Asa shakes his head. “I remember when there were two channels, and you watched what was on. In fact, the children’s stuff was on in the morning, so children actually went outside and did something apart from staring at the TV.”
“Had TV been invented when you were a child?” I ask slyly. “Didn’t you just go out riding penny farthings and chasing hoops?”
“No, we settled for flat-out lying about what we were eating for breakfast.”
“Asa, don’t judge. It’s chocolate pudding,” I protest indignantly. “I love him, but this is bloody chocolate pudding.”
“I knew it,” Billy shouts from the lounge. “Save some for Stanley and me.”
“That child has got bionic ears,” I say wonderingly. “Of course I will,” I shout out while shaking my head and mouthing no at Asa.
His lip twitches. “It’s chocolate that has this effect on you. It’s terrible how you can’t share it.”
“I can share it,” I say indignantly.
“Really? So, it wasn’t you last week helping Billy to look for the chocolate from the cupboard when you’d actually already eaten it?”
“You’ve gotten very judgemental since we moved here. I think it might be the sea air,” I say airily. I push the spoon away. “It’s actually defeated me. I might leave this for Billy anyway.”
“Put it away until he’s had a proper breakfast.”
I look around the kitchen. “Where are Peggy and Amos?”
“Amos took her into Exeter for some last-minute shopping while he gets the rear tyre on the car looked at.”
I put the kettle on and slide into the seat next to him. “What are you doing?”
He looks at me over the top of his glasses in a way that never fails to make me hard. “Looking at the script for next month.”
“Any good?”
He nods, taking a sip of his coffee. “Not bad. Three decapitations, two disembowelments, a
nd one orgy.”
I blink. “Wow. It’s like a mad version of ‘A Partridge in a Pear Tree.’” I shake my head. “It’s going to be a busy January. Are you in the orgy or just glowering in disapproval on the sidelines?”
“In it,” he says indignantly. “I’m not grandfather age yet.” He pauses. “Actually, we need to discuss this. What do you think of nudity?”
“In general or on film?”
“On film. Would you have any problems with me going nude?”
“I never have any problems with you being nude. I don’t think I’d mind it on film. I mean, if you’ve got it you should most definitely flaunt it. And at the end of the day, it’s all mine.”
“Of course it is,” he says gently.
I wrinkle my nose. “I’m not sure what Billy would think, though.”
“Billy’s banned from watching it, anyway.” He frowns and pushes the script away. “Still, the other children might make fun of him for it.”
“I think Billy’s fairly unconcerned with that. He said the other day that one boy kept taking the piss out of him for having two dads.”
He straightens in the chair, outrage written all over his face. “What the fuck?”
“Calm down, Arnold Schwarzenegger. You were in Ireland, so I went to school about it. They sorted it out straight away, but the teacher said that Billy had already put a stop to it himself.”
“How?”
“He hit the other boy.”
He blinks. “I hope you told Billy it was wrong.”
“No, I corrected his stance. Of course I told him that he shouldn’t deal with problems by using violence. Then I bought him ice cream for tea.”
He grins and holds out his fist for a fist bump. “Exactly what I’d have done.” He lowers his hand, his smile falling away. “I hate that he gets crap because of us.”
I stand up and plop down on his lap. “Asa, if it wasn’t that, it would be something else. Kids are cruel. Lord of the Flies sometimes reads more like an instruction manual on child behaviour than fiction.”
He huffs a laugh and hugs me, looking up as Billy wanders back in and asks, “Can I have apple cake for breakfast?”