by Freya North
‘It’s lovely.’
‘You like it?’
He turned to her. ‘I do. It’s your home.’
‘Would you like to come in, sir?’
Scott turned her chin with his thumb and kissed her. ‘You bet.’
Frankie had taken Scott on juddering FaceTime tours of her home so he felt he’d already sat with her in the living room, at her kitchen table, on the back steps while she had a cup of tea. He’d lain down next to her on her bed many times. But stepping inside for the first time that afternoon, what struck him was how all the senses are needed to truly figure out someone’s home, how they live. The feel of a door stripped of its old paint to reveal its worn wood, the bounce of her sofa and wobble of her dining chairs. The sound of the stillness and quiet which wasn’t so still or quiet because he could hear an irritated fly, a groan from the water pipes, the creak of a floorboard underfoot. The scent of washing powder in the utility room and the lemon cake on a rack in the kitchen, the sight of Frankie bathed in afternoon sunshine which streamed through her bedroom window and touched the tips of her eyelashes with gold. When she placed her arms around his neck, when she raised her face and brought her lips against his cheek, he inhaled deeply. Now he could detect the fragrance of her shampoo and laundry powder mingling with the scent of her skin which had remained so vivid for him; providing both comfort and torture whilst he’d been back home.
Home.
The simple word was now such a crazy concept – that there could be two of these, parted by thousands of miles of land and ocean and yet connected.
She was kissing his neck lightly, the sound of her hastened breathing as seductive as the feel of her hands wandering over his back, his arms. He tilted her face and put his mouth against hers, his fingers in her hair, his body up close. They tumbled down onto her bed, shedding clothes and bringing skin against skin, hard against soft. He lay on his back, caressed by skeins of her hair on his face, his neck, his stomach as she worked her way down his body in a long line of feathery kisses. The intense sensation of Frankie lowering herself down onto him a millimetre at a time, the exquisite feeling of her body closing, hot and moist, around him while he pushed up deep inside her. Scott drank in all that was on view. She was flushed and smiling, her lips wet, her skin glistening, her hair in damp whorls and slicks against the curve of her neck. Frankie and Scott making love, in her bedroom with the curtains drawn back and the window wide open. Nobody can see in, no one can hear them, nothing to hide from, to cover up or to shut out. Outside, just the land, just nature. Not unlike his own bedroom actually.
It was decided that Frankie would collect Annabel on her own and that Scott would stay back. Frankie had told him of Sam’s apparent circumspection so a little man-to-man bonding time was deemed to be a good idea.
‘Is he here?’ Annabel asked, slipping her hand into her mother’s as they left the playground. ‘Did he come?’ Frankie squeezed her daughter’s hand, noting how fast her little legs were taking them to the car. For the first time ever, Annabel didn’t even look in the glove compartment hopeful for a chocolate bar to have magically appeared, nor did she ask her mother to go via Howell’s in the village. She spent the car journey chattering full speed about the minutiae of the day so that she wouldn’t have to waste time doing so once at home.
‘We’re home!’ Frankie called out.
‘Hey.’ Scott came through to the hallway. ‘Well,’ he said, looking at Annabel with obvious amazement. ‘The famous Annabel – I’m really pleased to meet you.’
Frankie, who’d been half-expecting her daughter to run into Scott’s arms, sensed Annabel immediately deflate and then bristle, as if steel rods had been inserted into every vein.
‘Hello,’ she said and her voice was taut and small.
‘So how was school?’ Scott tried. ‘Do you have a bunch of homework? I’m pretty good at math you know. I reckon your mom isn’t, on account of her working in words and all.’
‘I have English and my project,’ Annabel told her mother.
‘What’s your project about?’ Scott asked.
‘Nothing,’ Annabel mumbled at Frankie.
‘It’s on the Tudors,’ Frankie told Scott, focusing on Annabel. ‘Isn’t it?’
Suddenly, Annabel looked immensely tired. ‘I’m just going up to my room for a bit,’ she told the floor. ‘Then I’ll do my homework.’
And off she went.
Frankie watched her go, looked up at the ceiling, following the clump clump clump of her daughter trudging across to her room, the squeak and creak of her bed being fallen upon. She looked over to Scott who shook his head kindly in a don’t-worry-about-it way. She shrugged apologetically as she walked towards the door to the kitchen, Scott catching her arm and pulling her close, kissing her, brushing her hair from her face, kissing her again.
‘Cuppa?’
‘Sure.’
‘Sam,’ she called as she opened the door, ‘do you want anything to drink?’
‘Sam’s not home yet,’ said Scott.
‘What?’ He should have been home before Frankie. She checked the time. The bus had never been this late. ‘That’s odd.’ She checked her phone and there was her son’s text.
Getting the late bus.
‘Oh!’ Frankie said pushing lightness into her voice. ‘He’s getting the late bus,’ she said as if she’d clean forgot though she knew well enough that Sam only stayed late on a Tuesday. It was Thursday.
Annabel reappeared half an hour later. ‘What’s for supper?’
‘Toad-in-the-hole.’
‘I’ve never eaten a toad,’ Scott told Annabel. ‘Does it taste good with ketchup?’
Annabel glanced at him before glaring at her mother. ‘I hate toad-in-the-hole,’ and she stomped off again.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ Frankie muttered to Scott and made her way up to her daughter’s room.
‘Young lady.’ Frankie’s whisper had a hiss to it. ‘What on earth are you playing at? Why are you being so rude?’ Annabel was lying on her bed, facing the wall, motionless, resenting her mother’s indignance. ‘What will Scott think?’
‘I don’t care what Scott thinks.’
‘Well you should.’
‘Why should I?’ She turned briefly.
‘Because –’ Frankie paused. What she wanted to do was shout at her daughter: don’t spoil this! This isn’t about you – it’s about me. For once – it’s about bloody me. She swallowed hard on the urge. ‘Because he’s lovely and he wants to get to know you.’
‘He’s stupid.’
‘Well you’re just horrid,’ said Frankie. As she left Annabel’s room she caught sight of Sam hovering in the garden, glowering at the house.
Frankie thought, give me strength. She descended the stairs on one long inhale and exhaled measuredly before opening the front door. She grinned and waved in a slightly manic way and decided then and there not to mention the bloody bus.
‘Hi darling! Hi! I’m just making hot buttered toast.’ Sam scuffed his way up the path while she resolutely smiled and nodded. ‘Scott’s here,’ she said, breezing off to the kitchen, busy busy busy with the butter and the toast and faking happy fucking families. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Sam slouching in, headphones on, fixated by his phone.
Very slowly, Sam raised his eyes and eventually took out one earpiece. ‘Oh,’ he said to Scott, ‘hi. I’m Sam.’
Scott offered a handshake which Sam wasn’t expecting. He shook Scott’s hand, popped his earpiece back in, increasing the volume despite knowing the tinny half-music would infuriate his mother. What had eaten her children, she wondered, and spewed them out as these alien reprobates? Frankie boiled the kettle again to drown it out. Bringing tea and toast through to the table, she saw that Sam was lost in music on the sofa.
‘I’m sorry about my revolting offspring,’ she said very quietly to Scott.
‘It’s cool,’ he said. ‘The Brady Bunch isn’t going to happen overnight.’ He had his g
uitar and was quietly picking out a tune she knew but couldn’t quite place. ‘Wait till you meet Jenna,’ Scott said. ‘She’s already sticking pins in a voodoo doll.’ Frankie looked so crestfallen he had to reach and stroke her face as he laughed. ‘I’m joking. But this –’ he tipped his head to signify Sam sullen on the sofa and Annabel stomping around upstairs – ‘it’s perfectly natural.’ He shrugged. ‘They’re younger, it’s new to them – who the heck am I?’ And there they sat, Frankie feeling so wretched that it took the taste from the tea and turned toast into cardboard. Scott, though, remained steady; sipping his drink, taking a bite of toast, picking out that tune again, adding chords, playing it a little louder.
And that’s when Frankie was aware that Sam was hovering, wearing a completely changed expression. He was standing at the furthest end of the table, just staring at Scott’s guitar. And then Frankie realized why she knew the tune. It was one that her son frequently played on a loop. It was the one that, right then, was coming out of his headphones in a compressed and tinny stream, Scott now playing along in perfect time. Sam took both earpieces out and then he did the unthinkable: he switched off his phone.
‘Foo Fighters hey?’ Scott said to him though he didn’t look at him. ‘That’s a pretty cool choice for a kid your age. Who else do you like? Audioslave?’
‘Yeah,’ said Sam, and his tone of suspicion trailed away. ‘And Kings of Leon.’ And his supposed cool voice could have reduced Frankie to tears.
‘You heard of Silverchair?’
Sam paused. ‘Yeah.’
‘You like them?’
Sam shrugged. ‘They’re OK – I really like, y’know, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.’ He glanced at his mother and then focused on Scott. ‘My mum likes Alice in Chains.’
‘So that means you can’t like them?’
Sam smiled and reddened.
Scott laughed.
‘Great band,’ Scott said. He was playing Kings of Leon’s ‘Closer’ and Sam was transfixed.
‘Sometimes, my mum plays them really loud,’ said Sam as if Frankie wasn’t there. ‘It’s really annoying – it makes the cool uncool. She does this stupid dance.’
Scott laughed. He’d love to see that.
‘Does she like Green Day too?’ Scott decided to ask Sam, still standing a few feet away, not Frankie, sitting next to him.
‘Yeah,’ said Sam. ‘She plays that one song over and over and over.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Scott and he segued into the gentle melody of ‘Good Riddance’.
Sam and Frankie just listened, the familiar song beautiful enough as they knew it but somehow, sung very softly right there at their kitchen table, new and magical.
‘I don’t want toad-in-the-hole but I might want fish fingers,’ said Annabel and the other three looked over wondering how long she’d been standing in the doorway.
‘Well, it’s toad-in-the-hole and that’s that,’ Frankie said levelly.
Scott tapped his guitar three times and launched into a new tune.
‘Oh God.’ Sam put his hands over his ears. ‘Not One Dimension.’ He looked at his sister who was biting her lip pretending she couldn’t hear a thing but standing there all the same.
‘It’s One Direction!’ she shouted. ‘Shut up.’ And she disappeared off again. Frankie gave Sam and Scott a stern look that they knew was mock and she left the room.
‘Ignore your brother,’ she said, sitting next to Annabel on the floor of her room.
‘I’ll ignore you all if I want to.’
‘You can ignore me,’ Frankie said. ‘But not Scott – not yet. You don’t know him well enough to ignore.’ She nudged her daughter. ‘Please let him see the lovely you.’
‘I’ll be the real me if I want,’ Annabel said. ‘But I am quite hungry and I suppose toad-in-the-hole will be fine.’
Frankie yawned. Scott was desperate to be tired too but was still lagged in West Coast hours as if walking in thick clay. It was gone ten o’clock; an hour had passed peacefully since the children had gone to bed, an hour spent on her sofa, occasionally chatting, mostly just happy to sit there close and enfolded.
‘You think it’s OK for me to be in your bed tonight?’
Frankie looked at him, puzzled.
‘I can sleep right here – or in your spare room. It’s OK.’
Frankie thought about it. She shook her head. ‘I’ve been very honest with the kids. I don’t want to deny who you are – what we are. That’ll send a mixed message. Kids like clarity.’
‘But for Annabel –’
Frankie thought about it. ‘No,’ she said but she didn’t sound so sure.
‘If she wakes in the night – if she needs you.’
‘What do you think we should do?’ She liked the way Scott looked when he was thinking hard. Little muscles in his cheeks flexed and his lips parted and then closed.
‘I think we should make out right here,’ he said, kissing her neck and sliding his hand up her top. ‘Then I’ll sleep in your spare room with a smile on my face.’
Frankie giggled. ‘It’s like some weird age swap – doing naughty things behind your kids’ backs. Sometimes – very occasionally – I’ll have a cheeky ciggy at the back door, terrified that Sam and Annabel will catch me. So I smoke it fast and get whacked with an almighty headrush.’
Scott laughed and kissed her.
‘But the thing is – when I was a kid, I was at the bottom of the garden having a smoke terrified my mum would catch me.’
Scott raised his eyebrow. ‘So the moral of the story is that smoking isn’t just bad for your health, Frankie Shaw – it’s hell on your nerves.’ He took the tip of his index finger and traced a path down her forehead, her nose, over her lips, her chin, her neck, her arm before trailing his hand up to her breast and cupping it gently while he kissed her.
Making out on the sofa. Moving against each other fully clothed, ears peeled for the patter of small feet. Their bodies buzzing with desire while their souls soared. Their combined years of experience, the relationships they’d had that had failed, the trials and errors of the mating game, some good times and a fair few regrets all fused so that they understood how their pasts now had purpose and their future was simply in the singular. They felt ageless and weightless, supported by the swell of positive emotions. Frankie and Scott falling in love; the energy that it brought heightening every sense.
What a day. Now, with Frankie off to collect Annabel from school, Scott sat quietly in her garden. He liked it all. He’d liked lying in bed this morning listening to the household trip over each other downstairs, the scurry and cussing of being late, we’re always bloody late, get your shoes on now, Sam – no Annabel I haven’t seen your pencil case and your hair looks like a bird’s nest. You have not brushed it, young lady. And every now and then shh! Scott’s sleeping. Will you hurry bloody up, kids. Shh. Not funny – come on. I don’t even have time to count to ten. Get. A. Move. On. Shh – Scott’s sleeping.
The bang of the front door, voices fading down the garden path still snipping at each other; the angry start of the car engine, the crunch of tyres on gravel, the fading, the coming quiet. How to capture such sounds in music? The family drama of the everyday? He lay awhile and wondered. Then he got up, showered and stood in Frankie’s house on his own, listening and watching, taking in the smells and the feel of the place. He liked it that the kitchen drawers were mostly well organized, all of them except the very bottom one which was a jumble of old cloths, odd keys, string, takeaway menus, a screwdriver and used candles. Everyone needs an outlet for chaos in one part of their life, he thought, and if this drawer signified Frankie’s then that was OK with him.
He made toast and coffee – terrible coffee – instant and bitter. He discovered that thick-cut marmalade was ambrosial and made more toast in its honour. He scrolled through his phone. Nothing since Jenna had replied to the picture message he’d sent her capturing a corner of the rustic kitchen and the open cottage window.
Sooooo quaint! Jxx
He thought about it. Quaint suggested old – and all of this to him sparkled newness.
Sitting in the garden now, at teatime, this morning seemed so long ago. They’d done so much in the handful of school hours, that returning here had offered a familiarity that was comforting. Just relax, Frankie had told him, make yourself at home. And that’s precisely how he felt. He looked at his hands around one of her mugs. Hot drinks in other countries usually tasted so different to back home – something to do with the water, the milk, he was never sure what. He was drinking tea out of a mug that said Supermum and it tasted perfectly normal to him. He yawned, closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sun, hazy behind high cloud but still warm. His first visit to a new part of the world and, to be honest, as beautiful as the beaches were, as charming the villages, as delicious the lunch, what had made the day for him was just being with his woman; the laughter and the talking. Once or twice he’d thought to himself, if Aaron could see me now, he’d have something to say. When they’d been younger and wanting to chat up girls, it used to frustrate the hell out of Aaron, strong silent Scott letting Aaron do all the talking. If Aaron could see me now. And then Scott thought how much he’d like Aaron to see him now.
He watched a snail make its determined journey over the paving slabs. The grass needed a cut. He thought, I could do that for her. He regarded the trampoline with its safety screen. He thought, sometimes you just need to leap, with hope in your heart outweighing the risk in your head. That’s what he’d done. He’d be homeward bound tomorrow, via a four-hour stopover in Paris. He didn’t mind but oh, he could have done with a few more days right here. Another week. A month. OK, so it wasn’t possible this time – but maybe next time, maybe for longer.
But Jenna.
So, maybe next time Frankie could come to him. Looking at her garden, terracotta pots that needed weeding, paving stones that could do with a scrub, an old barbeque that ought to be chucked out, he thought what would Frankie make of his garden, his view, his stamping ground, his people? And then he thought, how exactly do I get her over to me?
