‘Jerry, this place isn’t no smoking,’ I said. ‘What are you doing?’
He grinned at me. ‘Figure it might as well start being. Smoke isn’t good for the baby, is it?’
I was dumbfounded. ‘But - you said that when they passed the no-smoking law it would be over your dead body.’
‘Hey, I got to take care of my own, haven’t I? Besides, it might bring in that better class of punter you’re always on about.’ He finished hanging the sign and went to pound another one in the wall near the entrance. On the way he stopped to speak to two men drinking at a table; they looked disgruntled, but stubbed out their fags.
‘News travels fast around here,’ I said.
Hugh swallowed half his pint in one. ‘Just because you don’t want to be connected to anyone in this place doesn’t mean that they aren’t connected to you.’
He dropped a coin on the bar, reached past me with his long arm to grab one of the alphabetically arranged packets of crisps, and went to join Martha and Maud at their table.
Three to Six Months: Hormones
19
Lucy Sharpe threw herself down on her chaste single bed. What was the good of passion beyond your wildest dreams if it wasn’t going to last?
Her night with the Chancellor had been the most intense, most sensual experience of her life. She’d been thrilled when, afterwards, he’d invited her to be his date at the most glittering, star-studded charity ball of the season. And yet once they’d got there, he’d spent the evening flirting with a succession of women, barely sparing her a glance.
When the ball was over, and they were standing on her doorstep, Lucy tried to appear as seductive as possible, pouting and fluttering her eyelashes. But he left her with a friendly kiss on the cheek.
‘What am I doing wrong?’ she wailed aloud. The plain walls and dark windows of her one-bedroom flat didn’t answer her.
He was out of her league - an important figure in government, while she was a lowly P.A. And he was an accomplished, inventive lover. When they’d been in bed together, Lucy had felt like a blushing virgin: stammering, knock-kneed, uncertain.
But he’d wanted her once. What was stopping him from wanting her again?
Lucy pulled herself to her feet and looked at herself in the full-length mirror that was the only decoration in her bedroom. She wasn’t ugly. Her dark hair, though not elaborately styled, was glossy and thick. She wasn’t incredibly slim; next to the sylph-like celebrity women at the ball she’d felt clunky and big. But she did have good breasts.
She had to admit, though, that this black dress she was wearing - her only formal gown, bought years ago for a university ball - didn’t make the most of her assets. Her breasts, which should have been enticingly spilling out the front, were harnessed by a too-tight bodice. And the colour made her look washed out.
Lucy checked her watch, and then she went to her wardrobe, pulling out a low-cut, bright red top. She chose her best bra and knickers, a short skirt, and the high, high-heeled boots she’d bought on a whim the week before.
If she got a taxi, she could be at the Chancellor’s home in twenty minutes. And she’d see if she couldn’t make him notice her after all.
I snorted. Yeah, right. Lucy was obviously setting herself up for a horrible, humiliating fall.
I walked away from my keyboard and went into my bedroom. Lucy was supposed to be like me, but she was horribly naïve and pathetic. In contrast with her silly optimism, I knew for a fact that if I turned up on Hugh’s doorstep in nothing but cling film, he wouldn’t lay a finger on me. He’d compare me to a supermarket chicken and invite me in for some brownies.
My bedroom walls weren’t as bare as Lucy’s, and my chaste-ish bed was double, not single. But I did have a full-length mirror, and it showed me that, like Lucy, I needed a haircut. I turned sideways and looked at myself.
I’d lost weight in my first trimester because of sickness, but over the past few weeks I’d started to put it back on again. Still, I wasn’t pregnant enough to look definitely pregnant. I looked fat. My normal clothes didn’t fit me, and the maternity clothes I’d tried on in the shops looked enormous.
My breasts, however, were fantastic. They strained against the buttons of all my blouses and threatened to pop open my bras till I’d invested in new larger-sized models.
I pulled up my T-shirt and admired myself in the mirror. Now I knew why people who got implants were so happy. It was wonderful to be visited by the Tit Fairy.
Of course, Hugh hadn’t noticed them at all.
For nearly six weeks, it had been just as we’d agreed: we’d forgotten all about the kiss and carried on as normal.
Except it wasn’t normal. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
When we were sitting around watching television on his couch, I wanted to stretch out with him as we’d done before, every part of my body touching every part of him. When we were walking down the street, my hands itched to hold his. One time we were eating spaghetti and I’d had this whole fantasy about us sucking on the same strand of pasta and ending up kissing, like those two dogs in the Disney movie,
Lady and the Tramp
.
Maybe Lucy wasn’t more pathetic than I was after all.
There was one difference, at least: unlike the Chancellor, Hugh wasn’t flirting with a succession of beautiful women in front of me. He hadn’t brought a single girl into the Mouse and Duck for weeks. No, months.
In fact, June had been the last woman I’d seen him with. Maybe she’d spoiled him for anybody else.
More likely, he was conducting his love life out of my vision and earshot. Which meant that he was trying not to upset me. Which was even worse than if he’d flaunted his love life in front of me, because it meant that he thought I would be bothered by seeing him with other women.
Which probably meant that he was thinking about the kiss as much as I was, except that he was thinking about it in an ‘Eleanor-has-gone-off-the-rails’ sort of way.
Of course, that was the same way I was thinking about it, but I’d prefer it if he didn’t share my diagnosis.
I sighed noisily and pulled my T-shirt off. I grabbed a red, low-cut top and put it on. It made my breasts even more amazing.
At least Horny/Angry would appreciate them.
I went back to my keyboard and Lucy Sharpe. It was a lot easier to write sex scenes now that the morning sickness was gone. In fact, I seemed to be even more interested in writing them; the scene with Lucy and the Chancellor had ended up taking five whole chapters.
According to my how-to book, the second trimester of pregnancy was supposed to considerably enhance a woman’s sex drive. That was probably why I was obsessing so much about Hugh and sex in general. Pregnancy was obviously making me insane.
Lucy Sharpe, though, was another matter. She didn’t have an excuse for being so naïve. She was acting foolishly and she was heading for a fall.
Jerry’s new no-smoking policy didn’t seem to have cost the Mouse and Duck any customers; in fact, there were several people I didn’t recognise drinking at the tables around the room. The pub, without its customary haze of cigarette smoke, looked slightly brighter, though that made it easier to see that the walls and ceiling were stained tobacco yellow. At the moment, the worst of it was obscured by Christmas tinsel and a wonky artificial tree in the corner by the television. Jerry had started talking about a new paint job, which I would believe when I saw it.
Then again, with the way things were going, it was a possibility. He’d even let me do the entire weekly food order and didn’t say a single word when I added frisee to the side salad.
I was just wondering if I dared go down to Woolworth’s and buy a few new Christmas decorations to replace the ones we’d been using for years when Hugh came in with half a dozen people I recognised as some of his fellow chefs-in-training from the college.
He waved to me before he went to exchange a few words with Paul and Phil, who had gained a new respect for him since the
Reading Post
had labelled him a football hooligan.
All the other students were teenagers - these six, four boys and two girls, were the only ones old enough to drink. Whenever I met with them I felt ancient and horribly uncool. How did they know how to dress in the latest style, get the latest piercings, and how did they discover the music they put on their iPods? I was only in my mid-twenties and I seemed to have lost that ability - in fact, I didn’t think I’d ever had it. And now I was about to be somebody’s mother. There was no hope.
Among the boys, Hugh was a man. He stood half a head taller than them and wore a white shirt, a tie loosely knotted, and a suit jacket with jeans.
I tried to recall when, exactly, he’d stopped dressing like a geek. I seemed to remember it happening sometime during our last year at university, but I couldn’t remember the precise time or way it happened. Had he grown to fit his clothes, or had his clothes changed to fit him? I happened to know he still had the plimsolls with red and green laces, because I’d seen him wearing them while gardening. In fact, he still had that horrible tartan jacket, too, in his closet.
Anna and Brigid, the two girls of the group, came up to say ‘Yo Eleanor’ before going off to the ladies’ loo together. They were both willow-waisted and had impossibly fresh skin. Anna had a boyfriend who was learning how to be a paramedic and Brigid was a brunette and Hugh had never got off with either of them. I’d asked.
‘Evening, El,’ Hugh said cheerfully when he came up to the bar. ‘Did you hear the one about the horse walking into a pub?’
‘And the landlord says, “Why the long face?” ’ I put his pint on the bar and then I leaned forward. The action pushed my breasts forward and upwards. My red V-neck top strained and outlined. The cleavage effect was, from my point of view at least, quite spectacular.
Hugh laughed. He took his pint and drank a bit, his gaze never once dropping lower than my chin. ‘The old ones are the best. So I heard from the Harris hotel, and they said they definitely want me as a pastry chef. Starting next month.’
The Harris was the best hotel in central Reading, and an excellent career move for Hugh. I hugged him over the bar. ‘That’s brilliant, Hugh.’
My breasts flattened against his chest; my bare skin tingled where it touched his warm cotton shirt. Again, Hugh didn’t seem to notice at all. He hugged me back, let me go, and raised his pint.
‘I’m celebrating tonight. Will you get gins for Maud and Martha and pints for Paul and Phil and Jerry and Norman? And whatever this lot want?’ He gestured towards the students. ‘And you can push the boat out and have an orange and lemonade to toast me, can’t you?’
‘I can,’ I said, and went to get the drinks, disappointment weighing down my limbs despite Hugh’s good news.
I wasn’t trying to seduce him, because sleeping with Hugh was a very bad idea. But it would be good to have him notice me somehow, at least acknowledge that I was an attractive woman. Or a woman at all. Just to make my ego feel better at a time when my clothes didn’t fit and I felt like a crone and my hormones were making me crazy horny.
Hugh and I distributed the drinks and everyone, including the non-regulars, joined in a toast to his new job. He was smiling hugely and his eyes were shining with happiness and he was about the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
To check whether my tits were indeed as good as I thought, I casually leaned on the bar next to Horny/Angry as I wiped up a beer spill. His squinty eyes grew to the size of saucers and his breathing sped up considerably.
Then again, Horny/Angry could get turned on by a couple of unsliced lemons.
How did you seduce a man, anyway?
You’d think that after sixteen published erotica books, I’d know how this whole thing worked. But in fiction you could engineer situations. You could make the sexy man look at the heroine’s suddenly astounding cleavage and fall to his knees begging to take her right there and then, and if there was some spanking involved, too, that would also be nice.