‘It felt nice,’ I say sincerely – which is the biggest compliment I can give him.
He wraps his arms round me. ‘You’re the first woman, other than Gina, that I’ve slept with in many a long year. Thanks for not making me feel like an idiot.’
I toy with the buttons on his shirt and it takes all my strength not to start opening them again. He stays my hand. ‘Time for breakfast, madam.’
‘Sounds wonderful.’
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I need to face up to the kids and I’d rather we were in the kitchen than coming out of the bedroom together. I don’t mind them knowing that Daddy had a sleepover, but I’d rather it was on my terms.’
‘You think they’ll be OK about it?’
‘We’ll soon find out.’
So we go downstairs and I’m put on toast duty while Joe gets the necessary bits together for our fry-up. We’re working quite well as a lean, mean breakfast-making team when the kids emerge. Tom’s black eye is livid purple and his lip is swollen. He’s moving like a zombie from The Walking Dead.
‘How are you doing, champ?’ Joe asks, gently ruffling his son’s hair as he passes.
‘I hurt,’ Tom complains, smoothing it down again as best he can. ‘I hurt all over.’
‘I have the cure for that,’ Joe says cheerily and cracks eggs into a pan. ‘One full English coming up. It will put hairs on your chest and lead in your pencil.’
Tom grimaces. ‘Gross.’
Daisy, clad in pink ‘I’m a Princess Get Over It’ pyjamas, raises one hand in greeting. ‘Hey.’ It looks as if several birds have nested in her hair overnight.
They both slide into seats at the table and busy themselves on their phones. That, so it seems, is the full glare of attention that my first night in their family home warrants. Perhaps it was better happening like this than us both making a big fuss about it. Whichever way, I’m certainly glad that it did. I have a little bubble of happiness around me. While Joe multi-tasks with the breakfast, he winks at me and I smile back. First hurdle jumped, I guess.
We eat breakfast together and then Joe checks over Tom’s injuries again and decides that a family outing to A&E isn’t necessary. His wounds seem to look worse than they are and he’s given painkillers and a coating of antiseptic cream. So Tom collapses onto the sofa in front of the television while Daisy is cajoled into helping with the clearing up. I’m just stacking the dishwasher when the doorbell goes. Tom, washing the grill pan in the sink, wipes his hands on the towel and heads to the door.
The next moment, a woman who can only be Gina bursts into the room. She’s beautifully groomed in tight white capri pants, a black shirt and gold heels even though it’s eleven o’clock on a Monday morning. She has Aviator shades perched on top of her long, glossy black hair.
‘Where is he?’ she says, breathlessly. ‘Where’s my baby?’ Then she pulls up short when she sees me. ‘Who the hell are you?’
Joe is at her shoulder, his face dark with suppressed anger. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is my friend, Ruby.’
‘Oh.’ Gina looks me up and down and is clearly not enamoured by what she sees. I, in turn, am wishing that I had on designer clothes or at least not her husband’s band T-shirt and yesterday’s pants. Some make-up wouldn’t go amiss either. I probably bear the look of a thoroughly shagged woman. Which I am. Stick that in your pipe, Gina the Ex.
Joe adds, ‘She came to Tom’s rescue last night.’
‘Did she now?’ She scowls at me and I’m glad that looks are actually unable to kill or I’d be a goner. Gina turns her attention to Joe. ‘And where were you when our boy was in trouble?’
‘At work,’ he says calmly. ‘Where were you?’
She purses her lips at that and is rescued from making further comment by the appearance of the walking-wounded Tom.
‘Hi, Mum,’ he says and is instantly swept into Gina’s embrace.
‘My baby, my baby,’ she coos, then bursts into tears and cries all over him.
‘I’m OK.’ He tries to wriggle loose. ‘Just don’t hold me that tight, it hurts.’
She holds him away from her and exclaims, ‘I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you. I came as soon as I could.’
Nobody points out that they’ve been trying to get hold of her for the last twelve hours or more, but it hangs in the air. Try as I might, I can’t imagine Joe being with this glamorous but brittle woman. He’s so down-to-earth and caring yet, even standing here with her broken son, she seems to want all the attention.
Not to be left out, Daisy goes and twines herself round her mother. ‘My darling,’ Gina purrs. ‘How I miss you both.’
Joe looks at me over her head and raises his eyebrows.
‘I should go,’ I say. ‘I’m in work later.’
Joe nods tightly.
How things change in an instant. It was all going so well and, despite me being the one who Tom turned to in his hour of need, I now definitely feel superfluous to requirements.
‘I’ll walk you to the door,’ Joe says, embarrassed.
I hold up a hand. ‘No need.’
‘I’ll call you later.’
Gina takes a moment from fussing over her son to shoot me another black look. Bitch.
Picking my bag up, I head to the door and close it softly behind me. I sit in the car in Joe’s drive, gripping the steering wheel and I could cry. It was all so lovely and then, as quick as a flash, I’m suddenly outside of this tight little unit and by myself.
And I realise with blinding clarity that this relationship is never going to be anything but difficult.
Chapter Seventy-Five
I work my shift, telling Charlie everything that happened last night and this morning in short snippets whenever we manage to cross at the bar.
‘She sounds like a bagful of trouble,’ is Charlie’s assessment and I fear she may be right.
‘We had such a great night,’ I whisper over my two plates of harissa lamb with minted couscous for table four. ‘Why did she have to come back and spoil it all?’
‘That’s the job of ex-wives,’ she says, sagely.
Joe hasn’t called me and that has my stomach in knots. I’m feeling mean-spirited and disgruntled. I really, really want to see Joe again. Preferably tonight, wrapped up in the warmth of his arms. Well, it looks like that’s not going to happen, is it? Sigh.
When I’ve finished moaning about Gina, Charlie tells me all about her dinner with Nice Paul and how they went back to the theatre and managed to catch The Barlow coming out. Her night, it seems, was more uniformly successful than mine.
We finish work a bit early as there aren’t many people eager to be in the Butcher’s Arms on a Monday night, which I’m grateful for. My feet are killing me and the lack of sleep from last night is definitely catching up with me.
Charlie is in a rush to leave. ‘I’ll catch you tomorrow, chick,’ she says and heads for the door. ‘I’ve got an appointment with a forum.’
‘Laters,’ I say and, as she’s leaving with more haste than usual, I wonder if Nice Paul is part of it.
While I’m getting my bag out of the staffroom, I hear a noise behind me which makes me jump. When I turn, Mason Soames is leaning on the door frame.