He could feel her under him, the familiar outline now
taking on a new geography of flesh and muscle and breasts. Her hands were in his hair, one of his had found its way to her thigh.
He had no idea how he was breathing any more, there was just her body and her mouth and his own need to take this further.
More kissing until, as if one of them had spoken some kind of instruction, they pulled away from each other.
‘Come upstairs with me, Fran,’ he said and she was staring at his mouth again.
‘No, I couldn’t. That’s Hattie’s place. I’m sorry, it just wouldn’t seem right.’ She was kissing him again and it was a while before he felt inclined to pull away and say, ‘Not the tree house, the other one. Come on.’ He peeled himself off her and stood up.
A hand extended and taken, and she was laughing at her mistake as they were moving towards the back door, but making terrible progress because he wanted to know what it felt like kissing her standing up and because they had to go back for his house keys which were in his bag on the lawn.
Inside, they were Tom and Fran, a gang of two giggling their way conspiratorially past all the normal flotsam and jetsam of his life which suddenly looked magical.
He was hanging back so Fran would go first up the stairs
and he could cup her bottom and she was turning and saying in mock outrage, ‘Tom Howard. Really!’, her face flushed and her hair awry.
Into his bedroom, with the bed that had never been used for this. But he couldn’t get her on to it. She danced away, held out an arm to make him stop. ‘Wait.’ A giggle and a swoop to lift her dress and pull it up, up and over her head and his emotions rising with it. No agenda, just taking her clothes off for him. Then her bra. Then her knickers, slipped down her thighs, a shimmy of her hips.
And suddenly he was on his knees worshipping her, fingers parting and tasting her until she wouldn’t have it any more until he took off his own clothes.
He had only got his shirt off a little way when she was behind him, kissing his shoulders, running her hands over them, turning him round.
‘Always had a thing about shoulders, Tom. Powerful shoulders.’ Everything came off after that, with only the briefest nag of self-consciousness about what she would think of him, because she was making it very clear what she thought with her hands and her smile and a smoulder that didn’t have anything of brisk Fran in it.
The bed still didn’t get a look-in. They were on the floor, him learning what turned her on and hunting for a
condom, before all logical thought went and it was just actions and sensations. Gentle and slow to begin with and then that point where it didn’t matter how he wanted to play this, he was losing himself in her, someone new and unknown yet so dear to him already that it felt like a homecoming. A coming anyway, her arms cradling him and hands soothing him.
And afterwards, in whispers and gentle words, her turn to tell him everything would be all right.
*
By the time he went to pick up Hattie, he knew a lot more things about Fran Mayhew. The way she arched her back and reached out for his free hand when she came; that she had a graze on her left knee and the fact that her second toes were longer than her big ones.
The last two things he had discovered when they finally made it to the bed and explored those parts that had got overlooked in the first mad dash into each other. Lying face to face, they had talked in low tones as if they had reached a new level of intimacy that was only for their ears – even in a silent house.
He asked her that question that he’d never got an answer to in her kitchen – why had she changed her mind about working for him?
‘Because I envied the relationship you had with Rob – it
made the thought of sitting alone in that bungalow quite nauseating.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Well, I felt that you were actually a
Tom
. It’s a name I think belongs to a man who has certain … admirable qualities. Up until that point you hadn’t really lived up to your name, but in the cemetery with Rob, you did.’
He reached a hand over her hip and gave her buttock a gentle pat. ‘You mean, you started to fancy me?’
‘That’s another interpretation.’
‘Can I ask you something else? What made you think working for the magazine was going to please Mrs Mawson?’
‘Because I am a naïve idiot.’
‘Naïve,’ he agreed, ‘but never an idiot,’ and kissed her until he felt her palm on his chest giving him a gentle push.
‘
If
I could be allowed to finish …’ she said with a not very convincing stern look, ‘I hoped that if I did a really good job and Mrs Mawson was delighted, she’d think more kindly of me when I went to see her. I’d convinced myself that as my mother had never been in contact, or asked for anything, they would believe me when I said I didn’t want anything either.’ She paused. ‘Actually that’s not strictly true, my mother did send Charlie a postcard on the day I was born.’
‘From San Diego.’
She looked surprised. ‘Monty told you that? Charlie showed it to him? Oh, really, the more I hear about my father …’ She pressed her lips together and Tom felt he’d lost her until she said, wearily, ‘I don’t know, I started off hating him for abandoning my mother, then moved on to still disliking him, but feeling sorry he didn’t seem to have a happy life. And now? Now I think he wanted the best of both worlds – to be a free-spirited artist but have someone else pay emotionally and financially for it. I’m not sure that he and I would have got along.’
He chanced giving her a consoling kiss.
‘So I suppose Monty also told you about Charlie’s wife trying to buy my mother off?’
Tom shifted to ensure more of his leg was in contact with more of hers. ‘Yes, but that was about the extent of his knowledge. And really, Fran, don’t be too hard on Monty. He seems to have kept it quiet all these years. And I did submit him to some fairly intensive water torture.’
Fran looked askance at that, but didn’t press him for any more details.
‘What happened to your mother after Charlie?’ he asked, gently.
‘Went home to her parents first of all.’
‘To San Diego?’
‘Yes.’ He couldn’t work out what Fran was thinking in the pause that followed. ‘The thing you have to understand about my mother,’ she said when she spoke again, ‘is that she had buckets of pride. She only stayed in San Diego until I was born – that’s about as much help as she’d accept from her own family. And accepting money from Charlie’s or asking him to acknowledge his child would have been hateful to her, I imagine.’
‘Why do you have to imagine? Didn’t she tell you?’
Fran wriggled against him as if she too needed to have more of him in contact with her. ‘No. Never. Sometime between having the affair with Charlie and marrying Mr Mayhew – when I was about two – my mother re-invented herself as a woman of spotless character. I don’t know whether something snapped after Charlie, or she was like that at heart and he’d just snuck in under the wire, but she became very righteous indeed. She got religion, in a big way …’
‘You make it sound like rickets.’
The way Fran said ‘Hmm’ told him that she might have preferred that.
‘My birth certificate said Mr Mayhew was my father. My grandparents never let on that he wasn’t. Only later did I learn that he’d been around when I was born and had stepped up to the plate as far as the legal niceties were concerned.’
‘Mr Mayhew – didn’t he have a first name?’
‘Glenn, but it doesn’t seem right to call him that. I didn’t know him well – my mother and he parted company about a year after they married. Religious differences, apparently.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Probably wanted to play the guitar on a Sunday or have a beer without putting on a hair shirt.’
Tom was beginning to build up a picture of Fran’s childhood, one that made him want to hold her even tighter.
‘As often happens, it all came out after my mother died. I found a neat little file with plastic wallets and in it was the photocopy of the cheque Mrs Coburg had sent. God knows why my mother had kept it – actually, God would probably know. I should think she did it to prove she had the moral fibre to resist temptation.’
Tom felt Fran needed a bit more physical contact – she was starting to look morose.
‘In the wallet as well was some kind of contract – accept the money, no further claim on us, etc. A couple of photos of Charlie and my mother on a seat in front of a mountain cafe. Her just “showing”, as they say. One or two letters from Charlie. Also a photocopy of that postcard. So typical of my mother, that folder. As if she’d filed her emotions away. But she definitely wanted me to find it.’
Fran stopped and burrowed even further against him. ‘Sorry, I’m making her sound very strict and unyielding. She
wasn’t, not all the time. And really, she was the person she punished the most. I think she never forgave herself for that slip of hers with Charlie. Goodness knows why they clicked. I suspect it may have been because she had a thing about strong men, and he was strong and charismatic. She probably worshipped him and his ego must have responded to that.’ Her laugh this time was less bitter. ‘There weren’t any more romances after Mr Mayhew, but my mother always ended up attached in some way to strong men – priests, preachers. I suppose God was the ultimate one.’
‘Poor Fran.’ He smoothed down her hair and got her to look straight at him. ‘I can understand what a huge shock it must have been, discovering all that.’
Her face seemed suffused with light and she clutched on to his shoulder and gave it a shake. ‘Good grief, Tom. No. It was the best thing in the world. When my mother died, I thought I was completely alone. My grandparents were already gone and then I found I had this family. This huge family.’ The light dimmed a little. ‘Unfortunately that family wasn’t as pleased to see me as I was to see them. Apart from Jamie. He’s on the outside too, you see. Can’t imagine what kind of home life he’s had in that bleak house.’
Tom told her what he’d been reading when he waited for the Mawsons to see him.
‘How apt. I should have read
Hard Times
. That’s what they gave me. They assumed I’d come for money. Accused me of being a fraud, even though I showed them the copy of the cheque and the contract, the photographs – everything. If they wanted me to, I’d take a DNA test.’
‘It’s all about protecting the family assets and their reputation. And, maybe, if your visit was the first they knew of your existence, it would have been a shock. There’s nothing to say that Charlie’s wife shared the news about your mother’s pregnancy with anyone.’
‘I can see that, Tom, but I made it abundantly clear I only wanted to get to know them. I’m not even asking to be acknowledged publicly. I’ve said I’ll keep quiet.’ There was a sigh before Fran flopped on to her back and he tried not to let that distract him.
‘I really don’t know how the world operates, Tom. And now I’ve provided Natalie and Jamie with a bolt-hole, that’s not going to make the Mawsons like me any better.’
‘You just let your heart rule your head, don’t beat yourself up.’
‘That’s a kind thing to say, but I should have thought how Deborah would feel.’ She turned to look at him. ‘I mean, I appreciate how hard this is for her. I’m reminding her of a horrible time in her life – poor woman hadn’t
been married long and was expecting Edward when Charlie left.’
‘I’d have bloody left if I’d known Edward was on the way,’ Tom said and Fran burst out laughing and he watched what that did to her body.
‘He is particularly unpleasant,’ she agreed, settling into his chest again. ‘I sensed that even before he shoved me and sent me into the gravel.’
‘What? Literally?’ Tom pulled away to check on her and saw the quick nod. He thought of the graze on her knee and determined at the first opportunity to do something unpleasant to Edward Mawson. Although he was afraid that when they found out about him and Fran, it would probably be a case of the Mawsons doing something unpleasant to him. Especially if Mrs Mawson suspected that he’d known about Fran’s parentage all along.
This bed, rather than the tree house, now seemed like a place of sanctuary – the calm before a great big Mawson-shaped storm.
‘We’re going to have to try our best to keep this a secret,’ he said. ‘Hard – Rob and Kath will have to know. My mother. Probably Natalie and Jamie—’
‘And Liz. No, really, Tom. If you don’t tell her, when it comes out, she won’t feel she can trust you about anything again. Oh dear. I’ve really dropped you in it, haven’t I?’
Fran ran her finger along one of his eyebrows and down his cheek. ‘First working for you, now sleeping with you. Not the wisest actions, hmm?’
He grabbed her hand and put it to his lips. ‘You make me sound like a passive bystander in all this. I wouldn’t change anything to be lying here with you.’
‘How long before you have to pick up Hattie?’ she asked, suddenly.
‘Long enough.’ He expected there to be more kissing, but she said, very seriously, ‘And how long after you pick her up do you have to turn your sock inside out and not see a
play
?’
When, struck with a huge grip of panic, he didn’t reply, she added, ‘Oh, it’s not Thursday, is it? My mistake. It’s only Wednesday.’ Her eyes were so wide he knew she was mocking him.
‘Fran,’ he started and she put her fingertips over his mouth.
‘Calm yourself, Tom … I don’t really want to know what you got up to, I just want you to know that I suspect it was not choir practice. Now … We’re short of time, so …’ Her hand drifted down his belly and wrapped itself around him. ‘Ah, I see that famous “flaccid python” you mentioned is not at home.’
‘Thursdays,’ he said, fighting his way past his arousal, ‘were before you. In the past.’
Her voice had a new edge – he heard it even though what she was doing with her hand was making his brain dissolve, bit by bit. ‘Hope so, Tom, otherwise I’m going to have to be quite strict with you. Maybe still ask Natalie to babysit on that night and take you to my bungalow and lock you in. Or just tie you across my bed. Make you stay there while I go and watch the play and write the review.’ A low, dirty laugh before she leaned in to him and whispered in his ear, ‘Then, when I came back, I’ll do exactly what I want with you. How does that sound, Mr Inside-out-sock-Tom?’