Chapter 22
Molly
Cassandra Davison is the worst kind of mum.
To clarify, she’s the worst kind of mum if you’re a fellow parent in her class. Although, I wouldn’t much like her as a mother, either.
Case in point: she named her son Caspian.
Exactly.
Poor little kid.
Unfortunately for me, Caspian and Toby have become thick as thieves this term. And while I find Cassandra ghastly, I have to admit her son is a sweetie pie. More importantly, he’s proving a nice little friend for Toby, and I’ll take nice little friends over class bullies any day.
Toby and Max tell me that Tristan is still engaging in low-level acts of arseholery in class, at lunch break and during rehearsals for the nativity.
Nothing major, nothing that’s easy to define or mount a complaint over.
Just tiny pokes and nasty laughs and obvious instances of talking about Toby behind his back.
I spoke to Mr Pratt last week at pickup and he assured me he’s on it, but I feel like I’m permanently on edge, poised for news of another infringement of basic human decency by the little shit, at which point I will march in there and let the school have it.
Meanwhile, though, the cottage is alive with rowdy shrieks of delight from upstairs, and I’m grateful that Caspian and Toby are indulging in the kind of hijinks that eight-year-old boys should.
I suspect they’re not the only ones causing a racket.
Max has taken Daisy up for a bath, and though I protested, they both insisted.
He said he was happy to help, and Daisy said Max is far more fun at bath time than I am, so there you have it.
I’ve been quietly cleaning up after dinner (bolognese, the aftermath of which always resembles a crime scene) and enjoying the solitude of the warm kitchen. Just me and festive choral music on Classic FM and the backdrop of squeals and shouts. Perfect.
Until Cassandra rocks up, shattering my peace.
She’s looking around my kitchen, stroking her glossy BMW car key like it’s a pet mouse, one perfectly micro-bladed eyebrow raised judgementally as she surveys the relative chaos.
I mean, it’s not a total disaster, but it’s not Cassandra’s preferred aesthetic of showroom-chic.
I’d like to think that if she was on her feet, baking for other people from five-thirty every morning, she’d be a little more dishevelled too.
As it is, she epitomises the put-together Kent yummy mummy.
Honestly, I’m surprised Caspian is at state school, though she’s mentioned repeatedly that they only believe in ‘state till eight’, so I imagine she’ll be out of my hair next year.
Speaking of hair, hers is that expensive blonde that features a perfect spectrum of shades from honey to butter to platinum.
It’s gorgeous. Not natural, of course, but stunning.
It’s beautifully blowdried. The sunglasses on her head (purely for effect given dusk was a good couple of hours ago) are Chanel, with adorable black sequins on the frames.
She’s in some kind of winter white ensemble that definitely does not suggest she’s been cooking spag bol anytime recently.
I eye her with as much interest, and probably as much judgement, as she eyes my kitchen.
If she’s had work done, it’s been done very well.
Her skin is flawless. Her nose is flawless.
She has that telltale swollen look around her lips that suggest they’ve had a bit of help, but honestly, the woman is gorgeous.
I know for a fact she’s well into her forties—Caspian is her youngest—but she looks fantastic, especially since it’s now seven in the evening and she’s presumably been wearing this all day.
‘This is so charming,’ she says now, eyeing the stack of unopened mail on my kitchen table with a barely concealed shudder.
‘It’s so quaint. It must be difficult for you, Molly darling, doing all this single-handed.
You’re doing a fabulous job. I hope you’re getting yourself some me-time, though.
’ She waggles a diamond-encrusted finger at me, her trio of gold, platinum and rose-gold Cartier love bangles clattering on her wrist. ‘It’s very important. ’
In the Venn diagram of my life, the only overlap between me-time and must-do is showering, but Cassandra doesn’t need to know that.
‘I’m fine.’ I lie. ‘I don’t need much maintenance.’
Her laugh is a silver bell tinkle. ‘Oh, darling, I can see that. But it’s important, you know, to make an effort.
Both for oneself—for one’s confidence—but also to get a man.
It’s a bloody zoo out there. So many divorced women, and the divorced guys are laughing.
They have women throwing themselves at them, left, right and centre. ’
She reaches out and pats me on the arm. ‘You could be in with a chance, darling, but you’ve got to get your act together.’
I’m speechless. Radiating fury. She has no fucking idea what my life is like, holding down the job I do and bringing up two kids on my own and barely making it through the day before crawling into bed at nine, every bone in my body exhausted.
I stare at her, my ears ringing so loudly with a righteous fury that I barely register the heavy clatter of manly footsteps on the stairs.
Max bursts into the kitchen, and oh. My. God.
He’s shirtless, in just his worn-out, orgasmic jeans.
Jeans that angels must have fitted to his bum and thighs.
One hand rakes through his wet hair, and the other holds his sopping wet t-shirt.
It’s dripping on the kitchen flagstones, but I couldn’t give a shit, because I’ve never seen anything hotter in my life.
He’s grinning. His spectacular torso glitters with drops of water, the moisture showing off every sculpted curve of his pecs and biceps and abs.
Holy fucking shit.
His torso is not the only thing that’s moist.
The man is a walking Diet Coke ad. Or a walking erotic dream, to be more accurate.
Cassandra’s jaw hits the floor at the same time mine does. We both eye-fuck him so hard I’m surprised we don’t spontaneously combust into orgasm right there by the AGA.
He holds up his dripping t-shirt and approaches. ‘Daisy fucking soaked me. Little minx. Sorry. Didn’t know you had company.’
I recover first. Cassandra looks like she’s ready to drop to her knees right in front of him. This time, I’m not judging her. Her husband is ‘older’ (I’m being charitable here), and I suspect it was not his looks that attracted his beautiful wife to him, if you get what I’m saying.
‘Cassandra.’ I swallow. ‘This is—um. Max. He’s my—’
Max cuts me off. ‘Mol and I are very old friends. Right, baby?’ He follows this up with a luscious kiss to my mouth and a resounding slap to my arse, before pulling back and winking at me.
‘Right,’ I echo dumbly.
‘How do you do, Cassandra?’ he asks her, crinkling those hazel eyes at her while he extends his hand. There’s nothing flirtatious in his expression, I note with a dizzying amount of relief. I don’t think I could bear it if Max flirted with her.
‘I… Hi.’ She returns his shake. Thank God she’s as dumbstruck as me. My lips are still smarting from the brief, hot pressure of Max’s mouth on mine.
‘Excuse me. I need to change.’ He stops at the bottom of the kitchen stairs and turns to me. ‘She’s out of the bath, don’t worry. I’ll mop up the carnage in a sec.’ He takes the stairs two at a time.
Cassandra’s conversational skills are still blissfully, miraculously unforthcoming when Max clatters back down again a second later, tugging a soft grey t-shirt over his obnoxious abs.
I want to tug it back up.
I want to run my tongue down that central dip. Relearn how it feels. How he tastes.
We both turn to appreciate the broad heft of his shoulders and back as he disappears into the hallway. The fine, fine way his body tapers down to a narrow waist, and that arse.
Once he’s gone upstairs, she jerks a thumb towards the door.
‘Are you and he…?’
I hate myself a little as I feign nonchalance and tell her yeah.
The self-hatred grows over the course of the evening. I’m grateful to Max, and to my lie, for getting Cassandra out the door more quickly than I hope. I suspect she came down with a nasty case of sour grapes. Unless, of course, she suddenly had an urgent date with her vibrator.
I could definitely sympathise with that.
But I’m pissed off, and I’m not exactly sure why, or with whom. I’m pissed off at Cassandra for being such a raving bitch, and a bit with Max for being so impossibly sexy and unavailable, even if he did have the world’s best timing when he faked our relationship status for Cassandra earlier.
And I’m even more pissed off with myself.
Not for the lie itself. After all, it was an amazing feeling to throw that in her face.
To know that, as she drove home in her gleaming BMW, she’d do it believing Max and I were a couple instead of spending the journey congratulating herself on her superior lifestyle and marital status.
I think what’s making me angry is that I felt the remotest need to lie to her. What the hell does it say about me that, aged thirty-seven, I still feel the need to lie to grown-up mean girls like Cassandra Davison in order to feel good about myself?
Why couldn’t I just have told her where to go?
Assured her I was perfectly happy and functional on my own, thank you very much?
Or, at the very least, dropped my date with Paul into the conversation? At least that was real.
But no.
Instead, I had to pretend I had something going on with Max.
And that makes me completely pathetic.
The self-satisfaction I thought I’d get from the look on her face was horribly brief, and now I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth.
Because, despite what Cassandra thinks, the truth is that my circumstances are pretty shitty.
Not disastrous, by any means, but shitty enough that I allow a bout of self-pity to take me over.
And the absolute shittiest part of the entire situation is that I can’t stop thinking about my house guest.
Not just about his body. About how it felt to have him curled up behind me, cocooning me. About how it would feel to have allowed him to, as he so sweetly put it, slip his dick inside me as we lay there. To fill me up. To touch me. To show me I turned him on as much as he turned me on.
Unfortunately, my thoughts run deeper than that, to places I promised myself I’d never revisit twelve years ago.
To places I buried deep in my heart.
Places I have no business revisiting.
And so I pull back. I attempt to ignore Max for the rest of the evening.
I eat my dinner in front of the fire in the living room while watching a little of the weekend’s Strictly footage with Daisy.
I brusquely refuse his offer of help with putting the kids to bed.
I don’t need him being all sweet and caring and faux-paternal, thank you very much.
That won’t help any of us.
When I get back downstairs, he’s waiting for me in the kitchen, prowling up and down the narrow space between the AGA and the wooden-topped island.
‘What’s going on?’ he demands, stopping in front of me and crossing his arms over his chest.
I make the mistake of glancing down at said chest, its firm pecs clear through the thin grey fabric of his t-shirt. Fuck’s sake. Hasn’t he got the memo that it’s December?
‘Nothing. I’m just tired.’
‘Bullshit. You’ve been weird with me since that woman left—Caroline, or whatever her name was.’
I’m inordinately pleased he can’t remember her name.
I decide gaslighting is the only way forward for what’s left of my self-respect. ‘No I haven’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Max comes closer, planting a hand on either side of my body. Caging me in against the island.
‘I’ll say it again. Bullshit. Is it because I gave you a kiss? Smacked you on the arse? Is that it? Because I’m sorry if I offended you. I had no idea you were so easily offended these days.’
I narrow my eyes at him. ‘You didn’t offend me. Actually, I’m glad you did it. She was being a right cow to me before you came in, and that definitely shut her up.’
‘Good. I saw your faces when I walked in, and I had an inkling she was giving you a hard time. Don’t ask me how. I just—you looked… stricken, and she looked smug as fuck.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Smug as fuck is a pretty good summary. She was telling me how I won’t find a husband if I don’t make more of an effort.’
‘Is that right?’ he asks quietly, his eyebrows rising.
‘Yes. So having you walk in like, you know.’ I gesture at his chest. I may accidentally brush his pec slightly, but he’s not exactly giving me much space to work with here. ‘It helped.’
His mouth curves into a small but undeniably sexy smile. ‘Like what?’
‘You know.’ I swallow. ‘Topless.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Oh, give me a break,’ I splutter. ‘You’re very aware you’re in good shape.’
‘I am. So why are you pissed off with me?’
‘I’m not pissed off with you.’ I avert my eyes downwards. It’s better for me to gaze at his pecs than at the goddamn sexiness in his warm hazel eyes. ‘I’m pissed off with myself. With the situation, really.’
‘How so?’ His voice is deadly calm. ‘Spell it out for me, Mol.’
I sigh and risk a glance back up at his eyes. Big mistake. They’re twin pools of amber heat that I want to drown in.
‘Because, no matter how fun it is for a minute or two to pretend to some smug cow that I’m…
you know, involved with the half-naked god that’s walked into my kitchen, I’m all too aware that none of it’s real.
You can kiss me and grope me in front of random, unwelcome visitors, but it’s all just for show, and now I feel even shittier, knowing that I have to lie and pretend just so people don’t think I’m some pathetic train wreck. It makes me feel like a total loser.’
There’s a pause, and then Max’s hand comes to rest between my waist and my hip. His thumb hooks up the hem of my sweater and brushes against my skin.
‘You think none of it’s real, what’s going on here?’
I stare at him, my insides unravelling as I take in those eyes and that mouth, so close to me. At the soft, but unmistakeable, touch of his thumb on my bare skin. My lips part, but I’m incapable of speech right now.
He leans in. ‘Because I think it’s fucking real, Mol. I don’t think it’s ever stopped being real. Ever.