Page 54 of Has Anyone Seen My Sex Life?
‘Aye Danny, you’re like Banksy. Better than that, Wanksy.’
Neither of us laugh. I look over at my husband. It takes him thirty seconds to dress Polly, bundle her into his arms and kiss her on the forehead. She giggles. Stu looks on in amazement.
‘Look, people want to know who he is. And if Danny doesn’t want people to know then it’s our job to protect him. So, Danny…you stay upstairs and get the girls to bed and Stu and I will go downstairs and entertain Tim.’
They don’t question it. I can hear the girls squabbling next door and feel I have drawn the better straw given the wine is downstairs.
‘And you…’ I point at Stu. ‘Next time, I’ll give Eve Haribo for breakfast and you can deal with that?’ Danny casts him a look in agreement.
‘Guys, is that a strap-on lying on the floor?’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Didn’t know you were into all that nonsense?’ Danny kicks it under the bed and glares at his younger brother.
‘I’ll bloody ‘ave you. Behave!’
‘Bunch of pervs.’
I hold my head in my hands. Too many different threads to pull together tonight. I’ve got a guest in my kitchen, sex toys on the floor, a kid high on gummy sweets and wine to drink. In another life, that would be a perfect chain of rap lyrics. I clap my hands and literally push Stu out of the room. ‘Get the oven on for pizzas. And I want alcohol.’ Danny and I retreat to the girls’ room where Eve is going through the hallucinatory part of her sugar high. Soon, she will come down and lie there crashed out with her tongue hanging from the corner of her mouth like a sleeping puppy. I kiss Tess on the head.
‘Daddy’s doing bedtime tonight.’
‘Don’t get too drunk.’
Oh, geez. She assumes I abandon her because I’m out to drink all the wine. I don’t feel like a failed parent at all. Danny laughs under his breath.
‘Anyway, Daddy does the voices better when he reads the stories. You always say my Scottish pig sounds Jamaican.’
I go to the bookshelf and pick something substantially thick with multiple characters that Tess will demand have an array of accents for reasons of authenticity. I smile to myself.
‘I’ll send Stu up with some milk. Night.’
I look at Danny as I exit the room. How many things are left unsaid between us? It worries me that one day, Polly will finally fly the coop and we’ll be left with four walls and the time and space to finally resume a conversation we started eighteen years previously.
Danny needs to stay upstairs because I know what will happen. We’ll start talking about it. There will be comments where I’ll be unable to hold my tongue and I’ll unmask him. Tim will have the glory. Danny would be a front page story on the Wezzie. We’d be social pariahs and he’d never be able to sell paper in this town again. I tiptoe down the stairs. I can do this. I won’t drink all the wine. I’ll be the calm and professional journalist that he’s come to know and respect and have the poise and steeliness of Anna Wintour about my person.
‘So I hope you like a meat feast?’ asks Stu as I enter the kitchen.
‘I could handle a meat feast?’ replies Tim looking a little confused.
‘I’m so sorry, Tim. Kids, bedlam. Have you had more wine?’ Maybe the key here is to get him so drunk that he will have no recollection of this evening and forget even if the information is leaked. ‘Has Stu been entertaining you?’
‘Naturally,’ interjects Stu dryly. Tim laughs awkwardly. I find my wine glass and refill it. Tim picks up a letter on the kitchen counter and hands it to me.
‘Have you read this?’
It’s on the school trademark mint green letter paper and I scan over it quickly. There’s a meeting in the school hall in a few weeks about the sex education debacle. I hadn’t really heard anything about it since that woman at the gate wanted me to sign her petition. Tim’s face doesn’t look wholly impressed with the content.
‘What’s that?’ asks Stu.
I wave the letter in his face. ‘Some letter. Are there others?’
He looks at me, blankly. ‘There was something about them all having to wear red for a charity thing, I think on Friday.’
‘Head to toe red?’
‘I weren’t really listening. And they want us to collect milk bottle tops to save the hedgehogs, or maybe it were badgers. I think.’
Breathe, drink. Tim is giggling. Must distract the company.
‘So, Tim…how do you like living in the Lakes?’ It is the most unnatural lead into a conversation ever. I take a huge swig of wine and let it sit in my mouth before swallowing it.
