‘You only do it once a month?’ asked Jeanie, her brow knitting. ‘But that’s terrible, Holly. Don’t you like sex?’
I pursed my lips and did a bit of eye-rolling for effect. If only she knew the truth. Instead I said, ‘What’s wrong with once a month?’
Jeanie pulled a face. ‘Nothing. If you’re fifty.’
‘My husband has a stressful job. Have you any idea how many mouths Alex peers into every day?’
‘Good thing Alex isn’t a gynaecologist then,’ said Jeanie with a sniff. ‘Scrutinising umpteen fannies Monday to Friday must be a major turn-off.’
‘Do you have to be so coarse?’
‘Hark at you!’ said my best friend, adopting a highfalutin voice. ‘I remember when you used to like nothing more than discussing the number of times we all did it – and how and where. Didn’t you let Malcolm Hodge give you one in the back of his dad’s car?’
‘Most certainly not,’ I lied. ‘You must be thinking of Caro.’
‘I could have sworn it was you,’ said Jeanie, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.
‘Talking of Caro, where is she?’ I was anxious to get off the subject of sex and what we’d all got up to pre-marriage. That was the downside of still being mates with two besties from your secondary-school years. Caro and Jeanie knew all my secrets, as I did theirs. The good, the bad and the downright filthy. But talking about sexual adventures as giggling eighteen-year-olds was one thing. Discussing it a couple of decades later just seemed wrong.
‘I did text her and invite her for a cuppa after the school run.’
‘Caro had to take Joe to the dentist.’
‘Really? Alex didn’t mention he was seeing Joe today.’
‘She’s taken him to an NHS dentist.’
‘Why?’ I asked in surprise. ‘Alex has always seen Joe. What’s happened to change things?’
‘Cost,’ said Jeanie simply. ‘Your hubby charges like a wounded rhino.’
‘Have you any idea how expensive it is to run your own practice?’ I replied, put out.
‘But do you have any idea how many fillings Joe needs?’ countered Jeanie.
‘Well Caro shouldn’t allow her son to scoff so many sweets,’ I huffed. ‘That boy has amalgam in every other tooth and recently had two extractions.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Jeanie said, raising her eyebrows.
‘And nor are you meant to,’ I added hastily, realising I’d been remarkably indiscreet about patient confidentiality.
‘Anyway, enough about Caro,’ said Jeanie, topping up her mug from the enormous teapot hogging half the kitchen table. ‘You were saying…?’
‘Saying what?’ I replied, deliberately vague as I gazed beyond my kitchen window. In the late afternoon sunshine of an early and very golden September, the garden still looked beautiful, although autumn had made her presence known, touching some of the trees and turning several leaves lemon and brown.
‘You know perfectly well,’ said Jeanie crossly. ‘You were telling me about your sex life.’
‘No, you were asking nosy questions.’
Jeanie took a noisy slurp of tea. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know. When did you go off it? Recently? Or years ago? Is that why you only had one child?’
‘For goodness’ sake, Jeanie. What is this, an inquisition?’ I picked up the teapot and stalked over to the kettle, flicking the switch.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ Jeanie said, nodding at the kettle before helping herself to an ‘Extra Special’ biscuit. Special or not, they tasted like chocolate cardboard.
‘Do what?’ I growled.
‘There’s no water in it.’
I snatched the kettle from its base just as it made a strangled noise and puffed a scalding cloud of steam over my wrist.
‘Bugger,’ I squeaked, nearly dropping the wretched thing. Turning on my heel, I stomped over to the sink and stuck the kettle under the tap. A fountain of water immediately rose up, hitting me squarely in the chest and drenching my top.
‘It helps if you flip back the lid,’ my friend pointed out.
‘Thank you,’ I snapped. ‘I’d forgotten you had a degree in Stating the Bleeding Obvious.’
‘My, my, my,’ Jeanie blew out her cheeks, ‘we are in a tizzy today.’
‘I am not in a tizzy.’ I grabbed a tea towel and mopped my bosoms in agitation.
‘Two minutes ago you were gleefully gossiping about Alex’s practice manager and how her bunions were worse than Victoria Beckham’s, but the moment the conversation veered towards good old-fashioned bonking, you got all hot and bothered and started chucking water around the kitchen. Your face matches the colour of your kettle.’
I switched on the bright red cause of my soaking, and briefly drummed my fingernails on the worktop as we waited for it to boil. I broke off to stab a forefinger in Jeanie’s direction. ‘I’ll have you know that my sex life is AMAZING.’
‘Oh grim,’ said my daughter, pushing through the kitchen door, her customary scowl in place. Sophie, not quite fourteen, tossed a look of disgust in my direction. ‘The last thing a child wants to know is that her parents still do it. Especially at your age.’
Jeanie hid a smile in the palm of her hand while I volleyed back my daughter’s glare.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I blustered, my face now the colour of an aubergine and probably clashing violently with the hateful kettle. ‘Jeanie and I were… were practising our lines. We’re thinking about starting up an amateur dramatics group.’
‘In that case, you’ll be a natural…’ Sophie gave me a withering look as she raided the biscuit tin, ‘because there can’t be many actresses who are able to blush to order.’
I turned away, letting my hair fall across my flaming face as I refilled the teapot and tossed another teabag in for good measure. Behind me the door slammed. Sophie had left the kitchen – the child was incapable of shutting a door quietly. I swear that the very second my beautiful, cuddly, super sweet, smiley baby had blown out the thirteen candles on her birthday cake, she’d morphed into a sullen, bad-tempered, sneering stranger with more lip curl than an angry Rottweiler.
‘Blimey, you’re so red I can feel the heat coming off you from here.’ Jeanie picked up my latest copy of a gossip magazine and began fanning herself.
‘Oh do give over,’ I said sulkily, banging the teapot down on the table.
‘You’ll be telling me you’re menopausal next.’
‘I know someone who went through the menopause at thirty-eight,’ I huffed.
‘Holly, we both know you’re not going through the change’ – Jeanie arched an eyebrow – ‘and judging by the way you fluttered your eyelashes at the proprietor of Serafino’s Cucina last week, you’re clearly not past it either.’
‘Luca Serafino is married. I wouldn’t dream of flirting with someone else’s husband.’
‘Hmm, try telling your eyeballs that. Every time he came over to our table your pupils dilated to the size of his meatballs – and we all know how big they are.’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I said, feeling a rant coming on. ‘You’ll be shining lights in my eyes and threatening torture next.’
Jeanie reached across the kitchen table and took my hand. ‘Hey,’ she said gently, ‘I’m one of your oldest friends. I’m concerned, that’s all. It just seems that, well, lately you’ve not looked very happy, and I wondered if it might have to do with you and Alex.’
‘I’m deliriously happy!’ I snarled. ‘Listen, Jeanie, just because Alex doesn’t come home to a wife dressed like a French maid, who pulls him by his tie up to the bedroom, whips down his trousers and proceeds to tickle his fancy with her feather duster, does not mean there is anything wrong with us between the sheets. I mean, do you and Ray still rip each other’s clothes off the moment he comes home from the office?’
‘I’d like to,’ answered Jeanie calmly, ‘but regrettably the kids are always around.’
‘But… but you can’t possibly!’ I protested. ‘You’ve been married the same number of years as me and Alex.’
‘A year longer, actually,’ Jeanie reminded. ‘Sixteen years of wedded bliss to your fifteen.’
‘Well bully for you.’
Jeanie’s prying had touched a nerve, although she didn’t know the whole reason why. I’d considered my marriage perfectly happy until last Christmas when, quite by accident, I’d happened upon a series of flirty texts on my husband’s mobile. If the sexts hadn’t made Alex’s trousers swell, they’d certainly made my eyeballs bulge. And overnight, everything had changed.
Reading what ‘Queenie’ had wanted to do with my husband’s private parts had transformed our marriage from one that occasionally sizzled and popped, to one full of distrust on my part. That said, our lovemaking had never been particularly wild or experimental, not even when we’d first started dating.
Back then, I was a newly qualified dental nurse and had been delighted that the surgery’s practice manager had partnered me up with their new recruit. Alexander Hart, BDS Hons, was every girl’s dream guy – good-looking, educated, charming, ambitious and hard-working. He’d also had an elusiveness about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Shyness? Naïve sweetness? Whatever the heck it was, it ignited my interest, somehow making him even more wildly attractive. I’d pursued him like a heat-seeking missile. Alex was what my mother called ‘a good catch’. And I’d caught him.
Pre-marriage, intimacy was erratic. Our incomes were at junior level and there was no spare cash to splash on dirty weekends away. We were both still living with our parents who were old-fashioned enough not to permit us to share a bed in their homes.
Post-marriage, and finally in a starter home, there were moments where Alex and I engaged in a sort of frantic, almost desperate, sex, that left us both reeling. He would hold me close afterwards, murmuring loving endearments. But it didn’t last. I told myself that all relationships settled into a rhythm. That couples didn’t carry on bonking like bunnies forever. I tried not to mind too much when Alex yawned his way across the bedroom, and hugged his pillows rather than me. Eventually I got used to his apologetic shrugs accompanied by, ‘Sorry, darling. Another time.’
There was only one point in our marriage when I was ruthlessly determined to pick up the pace of our sex life again. Jeanie and Caro were both trying for a baby, and I didn’t want to be left out. We’d moved into a family home by this point with spare bedrooms crying out to be filled with cots and teddies. My mother always said the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. So I regularly plied Alex with oysters for dinner laced with chilli peppers and avocado. Oh yes, I’d done my aphrodisiac homework, and we weren’t talking Ann Summers’ sexy lingerie.
On one particular evening, armed with temperature charts and ovulation kits, I’d seduced Alex’s taste buds yet again and nearly wept with joy when he’d torn his eyes away from the rugby to briefly roll on top of me. Less than a minute later, he’d turned his attention back to the screen, happily watching a bunch of muddy men head-butting each other. I’d lain with my legs up against the wall reading a celebrity magazine full of glamorous stars hugging baby bumps. Oh, how I envied them all. But the food of love paid off. A triumphant sperm cosied up with a ripe and ready ovum, and nine months later our daughter burst into the world.
In the year following Sophie’s arrival, there was absolutely no intimacy between Alex and myself. He had taken himself off to one of the empty bedrooms to avoid my broken nights impacting upon his patient list.
‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ he said, after I’d been particularly tearful and asked if he no longer found me attractive. ‘You’re gorgeous. But we have a little baby, and her needs must come first.’
‘But what about my needs?’ I bleated, refraining from telling him that so desperate was I for male attention there had recently been an exchange of chit-chat with the lorry driver who delivered our fuel. Without quite knowing how, our banter had quickly descended to smutty innuendo about the length of his hosepipe, the size of my oil tank, and the importance of regularly filling it up. Too late I’d noticed the glint in his eye as he’d adjusted his scruffy trousers. Horrified, I’d questioned what the hell I was doing flirting with a pot-bellied, jowly-faced man with dubious body odour, and then backed off faster than a Scalextric car in reverse. That evening I’d sat my husband down for a frank talk, but both my efforts and libido went unrewarded.
‘You simply have to understand, sweetie,’ Alex reasoned, ‘that right now your needs – and mine,’ he hastily added, ‘must be put aside. Sophie is the priority.’
And right on cue our sleeping daughter had stirred in her cot, opened her eyes and screamed the house down for her feed.
Eventually our intimacy had resumed, but it lacked fire. I devoured the problem pages in every mother and baby magazine where this was, reassuringly, frequently discussed. So many new mothers complained about their husband’s lack of sexual interest. All sorts of reasons were given by Aunty Sue or Dear Dorothy, the most common being the ‘Madonna-whore complex’ in which, after childbirth, some men didn’t feel it ‘right’ that the mother of their child should behave like a trollop between the sheets. I did try talking to Alex about it, but he quickly became irritable. Anxious that I’d offended him – no man likes having their prowess challenged – I’d backed off, telling myself that I should be grateful for our once-a-month lovemaking which, a few more months down the line, became every other month. Alex was always attentive on these occasions, but I couldn’t help feeling that it somehow smacked of duty on his part. I made a point never to grumble for fear of offending him again, but also because he always complained about tiredness and work stress, and said he was amazed he could even raise a smile. So I convinced myself that this pace and pattern was quite normal in new families, and told myself to be thankful for what we had together, even if our sex drives were so obviously mismatched. Several years later I’d convinced myself that couples like us had settled into a domestic rhythm, enjoying companionship rather than lust. So, we snuggled together whilst watching telly, or enjoyed laying side by side in bed reading – me with a pile of paperbacks full of bodice-ripping hunks and breathy heroines shrieking, ‘No, Sire, no, no, no, oh go on then yes, yes, yessssssss!’ and Alex with a stack of dental magazines full of riveting articles about plastic dentures.
But last Christmas, this harmonious slide into premature old age had shattered like a dropped chandelier. Our respective families had descended for the annual festive dinner complete with figgy pudding. Making sure everybody’s glasses were filled, I’d disappeared into the kitchen to baste a turkey so vast it had surely been genetically modified. Our recently acquired and food-obsessed rescue dog, Rupert, had immediately walked to heel, willing me to drop the enormous baking tin so he would have an excuse to claim the bird as his own. Shooing Rupert away, I’d squashed everything back into the oven, then checked the slow cooker. A homemade alcohol-laced creation was gently steaming its way to perfection. It was then that a finger of cold dread had prodded me in the stomach. Despite spending hundreds of pounds on food, I’d forgotten to buy enough milk to make the custard.
‘Fuckity-fuckity-fuck,’ I swore, as Alex came up behind me.
‘How long are you going to be in here, Holly?’
I turned to him with wild eyes. ‘I’m cooking dinner!’
‘Can you come back to the lounge? It’s rather bad form, darling, not socialising.’
‘I’m doing my best,’ I snapped. I began randomly opening cupboard doors. There had to be some Long Life somewhere. ‘Surely you can cope with topping up a few champagne glasses and offering around a bowl of nibbles?’ I banged a cupboard door shut and wrenched open another, nearly taking it off its hinges.
‘Your brother has arrived.’
‘And?’ My eyes flicked over jars of herbs, condiments, and tins of baked beans.
‘I think it’s best if you deal with him. Tensions need to be diluted. You know how he and I have never… well, hit it off.’
I reversed out of another cupboard and glanced at my husband. ‘Well try and get along. Just for today? After that you can resume being vile to each other.’ I turned my attention to ransacking drawers. There was an outside chance I’d popped a carton of Long Life in with the tea towels during a hormonal moment. ‘Just remember, you’re not alone. All over the country, families have been thrust together – relatives who abhor each other, cousins who can’t stand the sight of one another, even brothers-in-law who don’t see eye to eye. It’s what folk do at this time of year – buy lavish gifts for people they detest.’
‘Simon is something else.’
‘He’s gay, Alex,’ I pointed out, throwing tea towels everywhere, ‘not an alien from outer space. Are you homophobic?’
‘Of course not!’ my husband blustered. ‘He’s just… so rude.’
‘You mean bitchy,’ I said, sweeping tea towels back into one drawer and emptying the next of tin foil and greaseproof paper. ‘He actually has a fabulous sense of humour if you take it with a pinch of salt.’
This wasn’t entirely true. Simon was every cliché you could think of. Ultra-camp, he had a habit of tossing his head if annoyed, flicking his hair if flirting and mincing about like a Strictly contestant, right hand permanently extended as if an invisible handbag was dangling from one wrist. He didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘tact’ and delivered his barbed comments in a voice that made Alan Carr sound like Brian Blessed. Simon also loved winding people up, and when they finally lost their cool he would deliver his catchphrase:
‘Stop being so sensitive. I’m only kidding.’
Although everybody knew he wasn’t.
‘Anyway, why were you swearing just now?’ asked my husband, stepping to one side as I slammed the last drawer. My temper was starting to fray.
‘There isn’t enough milk for the custard.’
‘So?’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll have the pudding without.’
‘Are you mad?’ I asked, plonking my hands on my hips. ‘Or just plain stupid?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Alex, looking affronted.
I narrowed my eyes and began speaking in an enunciated tone – the sort used on idiots. ‘The. Pudding. Will. Be. Too. Dry. Without. Custard.’
‘Don’t. Speak. To. Me. Like. That.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ I roared, clutching my temples dramatically. ‘All my efforts are going to be ruined.’ My bottom lip jutted out, and began wobbling violently. ‘This is just typical,’ I whimpered, eyes filling up. ‘I’ve been a good wife, a good daughter, a good daughter-in-law, a good mother, a good bloody everything to bloody everyone, slogged my guts out, brought all and sundry together for one – ONE! – chuffing day of the year in the faint hope of playing happy families, and what for? Hmm? All my cooking will be for nothing. All the hours – no, days – spent wrapping presents, not to mention months sourcing the damn things, and for what?’ I clawed at my throbbing head. A migraine threatened. ‘Everything’s spoiled!’ I sobbed. ‘All because there’s no TOSSING MILK FOR THE CUSTARD!’
My voice bounced off the kitchen walls. From the next room, the murmur of conversation ground to an embarrassed halt.
Alex raked a hand through his hair. ‘Are you due on?’
‘Yes,’ I cried.
Alex grabbed his car keys from the kitchen table. ‘I’ve not had a drink. I’ll go and get some milk.’
‘It’s Christmas Day,’ I wept, grabbing a tea towel and trumpeting into it. ‘Nothing will be open.’
‘Mr Patel’s shop will be.’
‘But his shop is in the next village!’
‘I’ll be five minutes,’ Alex promised. ‘Dry your tears, turn the hob down on those veg, then go into the lounge and make conversation with our two families that have absolutely nothing in common apart from us.’
And with that he’d driven off in a spray of gravel – leaving his mobile on the worktop, and me to compose myself. When his phone had dinged with a message, reading it had been unavoidable.
Heyyy there, Mister Sexy!
My eyes widened. Alex had programmed in the sender’s name. Queenie. Who was this woman? Evidently someone he knew. Why else add a person to your list of contacts? I’d barely gathered my thoughts when it dinged again.
Did you like what I did to you last night?
I gasped and leaned against the worktop, palms flat and splayed out to stop me from reeling.
Dingggggg.
Would you like me to do it again?
Dingggggg.
I keep thinking of that song ‘Genie in a Bottle’. It makes me think of what I want to do to you…
Dingggggg.
I’m wiggling my hips and wanna make your day, dance for you, lots of rhythm and sway… dooby do, dooby do (and I absolutely LURVE your dooby do)
Dingggggg
Rubba-dub, rubba-dub, gimme rubba-dub-dub
Dingggggg
Dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
With a shaking hand, I picked up the phone. I didn’t know Alex’s passcode. Why would I? I’d never had cause to go through his mobile – until now. I pressed the home button. The messages instantly disappeared to reveal the numerical keypad for passcode entry. I entered Sophie’s date of birth. The screen prompted me to try again. I tapped in my birthday. No. Alex’s. Nope. Gordon Bennett, what was the combination? I was still stabbing away at the screen when Alex walked back in with the milk. He froze. In a nano-second his eyes flicked from me to the phone and then back to me again. And then his face drained of colour.
‘It’s not what you think,’ he said, but his knuckles were as white as the carton of milk he was gripping.
‘Like hell it isn’t,’ I spat. ‘Who is she?’
‘She isn’t anyone.’
‘That’s funny,’ I said, giving a mirthless hoot of laughter. ‘Because it says “Queenie” here.’ I stabbed the screen to underline my point.
‘Look, Queenie is—’
‘—a genie in a bottle,’ I interrupted, snatching the six-pint carton from my treacherous husband and brandishing it like a lethal weapon. I wondered if it was possible to kill him with it. I could imagine the newspaper headline now. MAN BLUDGEONED BY MILK CARTON AFTER MARRIAGE CURDLED. I shook my head. God, I was going nuts. ‘According to this text, she likes rubbing your dooby-do. What do you have to say about that, eh?’
‘Absolutely nothing, because it means absolutely nothing.’
‘WELL IT MEANS SOMETHING TO ME!’ I bawled.
‘Holly, can we have this discussion later? We have our fam—’
‘Ay say!’ squawked a plummy voice from the next room, ‘is everything awl right?’
Alex’s mother. I really couldn’t cope with Audrey right now. As far as my mother-in-law was concerned, her son was Mr Golden Balls. He could do no wrong. If he’d robbed a bank at gunpoint, she’d have insisted his ulterior motive would be to give money to the poor. If I told her my husband was porking genies, she’d likely tell me I wasn’t providing enough bedtime satisfaction, so it must be my fault. I had no doubt that Audrey would then whip out her iPhone and order me an Aladdin outfit off Amazon, complete with magic lamp.
‘Everything’s fine, Mum!’ Alex called. ‘Just a small custard catastrophe.’
I shoved the carton of milk into Alex’s chest. ‘This conversation isn’t over,’ I snarled. ‘And YOU can make the chuffing custard.’
‘Darling, don’t be silly, I don’t know how to make cus—’
‘Then google it! You wanted me to deal with my brother, so that’s what I’ll be doing. That, and getting drunk.’
‘Holly, this is all a storm in a teacup. You do realise you’re being quite irrational?’
Dingggggg.
Wishing you the horniest Christmas ever, baby xxx
‘Look at this!’ I sneered, waggling the phone I was still holding at my husband. ‘Am I still being irrational?’
‘Absolutely,’ Alex insisted.
‘Well if you’re going to continue claiming I’m being unreasonable, then I might as well behave in an unreasonable way.’ Without missing a beat, I stalked over to the slow cooker where the Christmas pudding was quietly simmering, and dropped Alex’s phone into the pot. ‘Oh dear,’ I said sarcastically, ‘it looks like Queenie is in hot water.’
Alex rolled his eyes and gave a theatrical sigh. ‘It’s of no significance to me, Holly. In fact, I’m glad you did that.’
Too late I now realised that I couldn’t demand Alex show me any previous sexts from Queenie.
‘I’ll level with you,’ said my husband. ‘Queenie is a patient. Well, an ex-patient. She took a shine to me, so much so I had to tell her I couldn’t treat her any more. She didn’t take it well.’
‘How did she get your mobile number?’ I demanded.
‘It’s on . . .
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