After the Honeymoon

by Fraser, Janey

  Then he held her hand and Rosemary knew she never wanted him to let go.

  Looking back, as she did again and again over the years, Rosemary couldn’t explain why she had allowed herself to break all the rules that she and Gemma had set for themselves – including nothing above the waistline unless you’d been going out with a boy for at least six months. (As for below, that was inconceivable!)

  The only excuse she could come up with was that being with Charlie felt so right that it couldn’t possibly be wrong.

  It wasn’t just that she felt physically drawn to him. It was the way he talked to her that made her feel special: something that she hadn’t experienced since Mum had died. He felt the same.

  ‘Sure you don’t mind me being bald?’ he’d asked one evening when they’d been sitting on the beach, their arms around each other, watching the waves edge further out. He took her right index finger and ran it over his head. ‘I’ve always wanted to ask girls,’ he added tentatively, ‘but never had the courage to do so until now. Yet you … you make me feel I can say anything.’

  His head did feel odd, all smooth and shiny. But it was part of him, and frankly, anything that was part of Charlie was fine as far as Rosie was concerned. More than fine, in fact. ‘You wouldn’t be the same if you had hair,’ she offered.

  ‘Thanks.’ He began to tickle her, which made her scream with laughter. Together they rolled on the pebbled beach like puppies before catching their breath. The mock play-fighting was, she instinctively knew, a distraction for both of them. Otherwise they might so easily do something else, something that should be saved for marriage.

  ‘You know,’ said Charlie, gently positioning her so that she sat between his legs, ‘I lost my hair by falling out of a tree at prep school when I was ten. The shock made my hair fall out.’

  He said all this in such a matter-of-fact manner that she almost didn’t take in the significance.

  ‘How awful,’ she breathed.

  ‘Better than being paralysed, which is what the doctors said might have happened.’ His arms encircled her, pulling her gently backwards into his warm body. ‘My grandmother, who brought me up, told me that I could either spend the rest of my life feeling insecure about being bald or I could make it into one of my strengths. So I did. When I came back to school, one of the kids said something spiteful.’

  His voice was hard, harder than she’d ever heard it before. It spoke of pain and also anger. ‘So I took him by the scruff of his neck and told him that my baldness gave me a special strength. If he wasn’t careful, I could make him lose his hair too.’

  The gleeful way he said this disturbed her. It didn’t fit with the kind, warm Charlie she’d come to know in the last few weeks. ‘What happened after that?’

  Charlie grinned down at her. ‘I got made head boy. The same happened when I went to senior school.’ He shrugged. ‘Ended up as head boy there too.’

  Then he began to massage her neck, so deftly that she felt herself melting.

  Somehow, she managed to keep their relationship hidden from her father, with the help of Gemma and her mother, who both thought it was very romantic. Her English teacher wasn’t so approving. ‘You’re going to have to do better than this,’ she told Rosemary disappointedly when her next essay – on Shelley this time – was a week late and not up to its usual standard. ‘Is everything all right at home?’

  Rosemary would have liked to have confided in her young English teacher, but something held her back. What she and Charlie had was precious, something that she didn’t want to share with anyone else. Besides, how could she describe that feeling adequately? That fear in the throat if he was a few minutes late for a secret meeting. That hot wave that passed through her when he kissed her, making her feel as though she hadn’t lived before they’d met. That awful heavy anticipation because he was going to be sent away soon.

  They’d agreed to spend their last evening together, sitting quietly in the park. It was summer: a wonderful warm July when it was acceptable for her to make excuses to Dad about needing ‘a breath of fresh air’ and slip out after dinner. Purposefully, she wore her mother’s lavender dress, to remind him of their first meeting.

  ‘I’m going to miss you so much,’ said Charlie, his arm around her waist as they got up from the bench and walked down to the harbour. But as he spoke, she could see that his eyes were fixed on the cluster of boats bobbing around on the water and she knew he was also desperate to go.

  ‘I’ll miss you too,’ she murmured, burying her head in his chest. They stood there for a few moments, rocking gently back and forth. She could feel a hardness against her. Was that what she thought it was? Suddenly she felt very bold.

  Naturally, they’d kissed. And his hands had explored her breasts – initially above her jumper and then next to her skin, which made her go all hot to think about. Once he had suggested that he explore down below her waist but she had guided his hand away and instantly he had apologised.

  But tonight, it was the other way round. Right now, it was her hand which was guiding his, as though it belonged to someone else. ‘You are sure?’ asked Charlie, his voice thick with surprise.

  She nodded: shocked, herself, by her blatant daring; prompted perhaps by the bottle of wine they had shared and the awful searing pain of their imminent separation. He was being posted to somewhere in Europe, he’d confided, although he wasn’t even meant to tell her that. He certainly wasn’t allowed to reveal where, exactly. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. They had to make every minute count.

  ‘There’s a boat, down at the harbour.’ Charlie was walking alongside her, his hand stroking her arm and giving her electric tingles. ‘On the west side.’ He sounded embarrassed. ‘Some of the men use it … It might not be empty.’

  But it was.

  She should have – could have – said no. But that night, another girl was in her body. One that didn’t heed rules any more because, as Mum had shown, you didn’t live for ever.

  ‘Oh God,’ he breathed as he sank into her. ‘You’re so beautiful.’

  The day after that, his ship sailed. Two months later, she and Gemma had nervously gone into a chemist on the outskirts of town where no one knew them, to buy a pregnancy testing kit.

  ‘You’re up the duff?’ her father had roared when she’d summoned the courage to tell him. ‘With that coffee-coloured sailor you’ve been seen out with?’ He slammed his fist down on the kitchen table. ‘Don’t think I didn’t know, but I’d hoped you’d come to your senses. I suppose you expect me to allow you to stay here with some black kid, do you?’

  ‘No.’ Rosemary heard her voice sneer with a strength she hadn’t known she possessed. ‘I’m not living here a minute more than I have to.’

  Within a few minutes, she was downstairs again with a suitcase and her savings book, which contained just about enough to buy a ticket on the overnight boat to France. Europe, Charlie had said. With any luck, she’d find him.

  In the meantime, she’d write to him, asking him to reply to Gemma’s address. She’d call, she assured her friend, to see what he said.

  ‘Penny for them?’ said Greco, looking down on her in bed.

  Rosie shook herself. ‘I was just thinking, that was all.’

  ‘Too much is bad for you.’ He smiled. A warm, jaunty smile. ‘Let’s hit the city, shall we? It’s our last night in Athens, after all. Tomorrow we go back to the island.’

  His words filled her with foreboding.

  ‘I’m hoping it won’t change things, my beautiful Rosie. We are special together. Do not you think?’

  TRUE HONEYMOON STORY

  ‘We bumped into my old boss at the airport on our way to our honeymoon. I decided not to tell my new husband that we used to date.’

  Sylvia, about to celebrate her silver wedding anniversary

  Chapter Ten

  EMMA

  So! That glamorous couple on the plane had actually had their children flown over. Or rather, her children, judging from t
he overheard conversation on the beach.

  Even if she hadn’t eavesdropped on their argument, Emma would have guessed that the cheeky-faced boy and the rather precocious girl (strutting along in high-heeled sandals and face plastered with make-up) belonged to the woman, just from the body language.

  Emma prided herself on understanding ‘movement psychology’, as Gemma Balls called it, especially during staff meetings. It was something you learned to recognise in the school canteen when one of the kids was sitting away from the others or was muttering, eyes fixed on the ground, that they’d ‘forgotten’ to bring their packed lunch in. Much more likely that they didn’t want it or that a parent hadn’t bothered to make it.

  The handsome bald man’s body language (arms folded and tight lips) suggested that he wasn’t very happy about having his wife’s kids around.

  ‘I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before,’ Emma said to Tom when she returned to the cottage with a bowl of salad. ‘I just can’t think where, that’s all. She’s vaguely familiar too.’

  Tom gave a little moan. ‘Are you still feeling awful?’ sympathised Emma, immediately feeling guilty that she’d been thinking of something as trivial as the other couple.

  There was an affirmatory groan. ‘It might be the sun.’ He put his hand across his eyes and turned over, burying his face under the pillow.

  It was true that Tom, with his pasty complexion, wasn’t a great sun-lover. When they occasionally got a scorcher at home, he was the one who stayed inside while she liked nothing more than to lie outside on their little patio (until one of the kids needed her, of course).

  But that’s what Greece was, wasn’t it? Sunny.

  ‘It makes me sick,’ he added, still under the pillow.

  ‘I thought it was the travelling,’ said Emma edgily. ‘Or the vol-au-vents.’

  He groaned again. Louder this time.

  ‘Then why come away at all, if you don’t like the journey or the weather?’ she found herself demanding rather tersely.

  ‘Because it was a present.’ Tom sounded almost irritable, which wasn’t like him at all. ‘And you love the heat. So I just went along with it.’

  Emma’s heart melted. He’d done all this for her without saying a word. Yet in a way, she wished he hadn’t. What good was a honeymoon if your husband was flat out in bed, unable to get up and share things with you – like the lovely white sand outside and the swimming pool where she’d just seen the new kids messing about?

  They’d have been better off walking the hills at home or maybe taking the children down to Tom’s sister near St Mawes.

  The children … The mere thought of them punched a hole in her stomach. When Emma had seen the glamorous woman’s kids by the pool, her insides had curled up with jealousy. How she would have loved to have her lot here too: cuddling up to them and knowing exactly where they were.

  On the other hand, there was so much here that wouldn’t have been safe. The shiny terracotta floor tiles in the villa which might have made Gawain slip. The swimming pool which could have been lethal for little Willow. The heat, which might well have brought them out in a rash.

  ‘Don’t mind me.’ Tom was still buried under the pillow. ‘You go outside and enjoy yourself.’

  Emma hesitated. ‘I can’t, without you. Besides, you ought to eat something. Look, I’ve brought you a salad.’ She held it out, knowing as she did so that Tom wouldn’t be very impressed. He was a steak-and-kidney man: lettuce and tomato wasn’t ‘real food’ in his book.

  But, hang on, he was actually coming out from under the pillow and casting a suspicious eye at the bowl.

  ‘What’s that stuff?’ He was pointing at the white cubes of cheese.

  ‘It’s feta cheese.’

  ‘Haven’t they heard of Cheddar?’ moaned Tom, his head dropping back on the bed. There was another groan.

  ‘Have some water,’ she urged. ‘It doesn’t matter if you don’t eat anything as long as you get your liquid in.’ That was better. Mind you, they were almost out of the complimentary bottles that had been left in the fridge. How weird not to be able to drink out of taps. As for the toilet (something she needed to clean after Tom’s last bout of sickness), it was downright dirty having to put the paper in the bin at the side.

  ‘Please go,’ Tom murmured. ‘I need to sleep.’

  ‘You don’t want me?’ Emma couldn’t help feeling hurt, but at the same time, there was a tinge of relief. ‘I’ll just be outside then,’ she added. No answer. He was already snoring with the funny adenoidal sound that had taken some getting used to when they’d first started living together.

  Maybe, thought Emma as she stood outside the cottage, listening to the new children splashing in the pool on the slopes above, she’d go up there herself for a dip. She might also try to ring home again if there was enough reception for the phone up there.

  ‘Mum? It’s me. Everything all right?’

  ‘Get off!’

  ‘Sorry.’ Emma shielded the phone with her hand to try and block out the noise of the precocious girl and cheeky-faced boy who were trying to push each other into the deep end. ‘I didn’t catch that.’

  ‘Piss off, or I’ll tell Mum!’

  ‘Then give me back my phone – you’ll get it wet!’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ Those two were making such a racket she couldn’t hear properly. Still, she’d seen it all at school before.

  Walking up towards the villa, Emma tried again. ‘Mum. It’s me again. Yes, I know. I couldn’t hear you either but it’s better now. Is everything OK? Can I talk to the children?’

  Her heart pounding, Emma sat down on the slope. The grass felt rougher than the type at home. Almost rubbery. ‘Gawain? Is that you?’

  There was a silence. Emma could just picture her little boy, his blond fringe, which had been trimmed for the wedding, no longer flopping over his forehead.

  ‘Say something to Mum,’ she pleaded. Normally, Gawain didn’t need any encouragement to talk on the phone. In fact, he usually grabbed the receiver as soon as it rang and had to be coaxed off it. ‘Are you having a lovely time with Granny?’

  No answer.

  She tried again. ‘What are you doing?’

  Still no response, although she could hear the blare of the television in the background. ‘He’s gone, love.’ It was Mum again. ‘Got a bit tongue-tied.’

  With his own mother? Emma felt her stomach dip with rejection. ‘What about Willow?’

  ‘Just fallen asleep. There’s no need to worry, you know.’ Her mother sounded a bit tense. ‘’Sides, I told you. It disturbs them to hear your voice.’

  ‘But how are you feeling?’

  ‘A bit queasy. Hang on …’

  There was a long pause before she returned. ‘That’s better.’

  ‘Have you been sick again?’

  ‘Stop fussing, Em. It’s driving me mad. Now you go and have a good time.’

  But how could she, if Mum wasn’t well? She knew what it was like to feel poorly and look after the kids.

  ‘Tom on the mend, is he?’

  ‘Not really.’ As she spoke, Emma heard voices. It was the glamorous woman coming back. She had the kind of figure that looked as if it had never given birth. Emma suddenly felt frumpy in her baggy tee-shirt and pink shorts.

  ‘Just make sure he has enough water and then leave him to sleep it off,’ said Mum dismissively. Emma felt hurt on behalf of her husband. She knew her mother found Tom boring, but that was better than a man who couldn’t be trusted, wasn’t it?

  Dad’s wedding card flashed into her head. For a minute, she considered telling her mum about it but then, almost instantly, changed her mind. No point in upsetting her.

  ‘Make the most of your holidays,’ added her mother tightly. ‘No, Gawain, don’t poke your sister like that. You’ll wake her up. You’ll soon be back to the real world, love. So have a break. You deserve it. Gawain, I said no. Hang on. I need the bathroom again.’

  ‘I’ll ring tom
orrow,’ promised Emma desperately, but the line had already gone dead. As she slipped the phone back into her shorts pocket, Emma caught the eye of the glamorous mother. There was a warm smile, the sort that said I know what it’s like.

  ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ asked the woman, dipping her head to one side.

  ‘I’ve been thinking the same,’ admitted Emma, blushing, admiring the other woman’s gold sandals which made her own flip-flops look really boring.

  ‘Where do you live, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘A small town called Corrywood.’ Even as she said it, Emma felt a longing to be there right now, safely with the children and with a doctor round the corner to take a look at Tom. ‘It’s near …’

  ‘I know it!’ There was an apprehensive edge to the other woman’s voice. ‘We live there too. Are your children at the school?’

  Emma nodded, glancing at the boy and girl who were still shoving each other around on the side. ‘My daughter’s too young – she’s only two – but my son will be starting in reception after the summer.’ She blushed again. ‘I work there as well.’

  For some reason, the woman seemed really twitchy now. ‘You’re a teacher?’

  If only! ‘Just a dinner lady.’

  Don’t say that, Tom was always telling her. ‘Just’ was one of those words that did you no favours in life. Besides, dinner ladies did some great work.

  ‘Then maybe you’ve come across my lot.’ The woman gave a little sigh.

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m in charge of the infants, although I did help out with the after school club last term when one of the others was ill.’ She’d quite liked that, she almost added. It was a bit of extra money and Mum hadn’t minded babysitting. But then the woman she’d covered for had come back, and although Emma had made it known she’d like to be considered again, nothing had happened.

  ‘Maybe that’s where we’ve seen each other,’ said the woman thoughtfully.

  Come to think of it, Emma could remember a brother and sister – the same sort of age as those two – squabbling over the computer. Their argument had got quite heated until one of the other after-school club helpers had divided them.