Page 113 of Has Anyone Seen My Sex Life?
I haven’t thought about these smaller details but I am relieved that someone shares this burden with me to help Danny feel fulfilled, happy. Danny has got to an added contract at the back of the pile – a letter is attached. He pauses for a moment. He smiles. He hands me the document. It’s an employment contract. For the mill.
Time to think about yourself, brother. After I’m done in Chamonix, I’ll come back for a year or two, try my hand at this paper business. I’ve let you do this for so long…time to do my bit, eh?
Danny stops for a moment. This was probably the most telling action of all. Because for once, young Stu wasn’t thinking about himself. He’s taken a moment to think about this wider arc of family and is finally giving something back to them. It was something I couldn’t do. I didn’t have it in my power to help Danny like this but Stu did. It’s gracious and endearing and dare I say it, a little grown up.
‘Christ, we’ll be buying him a pair of chinos next.’
I smile. But I still can’t read Danny’s reaction. Is this what he wants? Something tells me that he’d have preferred it if the parcel had been a box of value biscuits. He sighs quietly, exhaling air. He gets out of bed and starts pacing.
‘I should be angry, you two hid this from me.’
‘I didn’t know what he was up to, seriously. He gave us advice with Tim and the paper but this was all him.’
‘But you hid the fact you showed him the letters.’
‘You hid Captain Mintcake from me for a whole year.’ Touché.
‘I’m still not sure I want it to be a thing. I don’t know what I want…?I want a quiet life. My family.’ He stares me out. ‘I mean, what do you want?’
It’s the first time he’s asked me this since it all started. I’ve thought about this a lot recently. Pre-discovery of Mintcake I was actually doing OK. I was a bit tired and worn and my sexual self was somewhat lacklustre but Danny had given me a life up here in these Lakes that I had grown to love, and that had become everything. I think I was actually happy. So what I want more than anything is the same happiness for those I love, Danny in particular. I want for someone who’s given me so much to own the person who he is, this person he’s created, and turn it into something that will make his soul sing.
‘You.’ I whisper. His eyes glaze over and he comes back to lie next to me. ‘All the versions of you. Captain Danny Mintcake Morton.’
‘That’s a mouthful.’
‘It’s just all innuendo with you now.’
He laughs. ‘You think this could really be a thing?’
‘It could. There could be merchandise.’
‘Like T-shirts?’
‘Condoms? Dildos? I could create you a logo. The only other Captain I know makes fish fingers though.’
‘Oi oi, we could do a promotional tie-in.’
There’s silence as we process this small step into the unknown.
‘I can’t process this, Meg. I’m a bit scared.’
We sit here in silence. He squeezes my hand tightly and our feet meet in the same place under the duvet where they’ve been meeting for years and years. It’s rare to see Danny like this. He doesn’t admit to fear. He craves security, our little bubble, that much I know and this element of risk is foreign to him. I cradle his head on my boobs, a classic hold of ours. He seeks comfort there when he needs reassurance in the same way a newborn listens to its mother’s heartbeat. We’ll be OK, Morton. Something rises in me which could still be drunken nausea, but it’s excitement, for him: new chapters, new pages, the story going in a different direction.
‘You’ll stick around, right?’ he asks.
‘Well, I’m not going anywhere, it’s just getting interesting.’
He sticks a tongue out at me. ‘This could go tits up.’
‘Quite literally.’
He guffaws a little unattractively then burps loudly. The scent of cherry and shop-bought mince pie lingers in the air.
‘I feel ill.’
‘That’s the sausages talking.’
‘Don’t mention them sausages.’
