A Funny Thing About Love (25 page)

‘Oh God, you've seen it! I keep meaning to take that down,' Daniel said apologetically. He was now dressed in a baggy navy jumper and faded jeans, and looked as gorgeous as he had in the towel. ‘Imogen painted it.'

Carmen wasn't sure that this revelation made it any more reasonable to have the picture in such a prime position. ‘So is she an artist, then?'

‘Artist, potter, knitter – you name it, she's tried her hand at it. She's not bad at painting but she was terrible at ever sticking at just one thing, which is no doubt why she chose to leave Millie and me.'

He sounded bitter, as if the memory of his failed marriage was still raw. Carmen thought he'd said they had split up two years earlier, and would have expected a little more distance. He was probably still in love with her. This certainly wasn't turning out to be the seductive evening she had hoped for. She looked at Daniel, who seemed lost in his thoughts, none of them good given the frown causing a deep furrow on his forehead. Then he smiled. ‘Sorry, let's go downstairs and have that glass of wine. Millie will be asleep in a bit.'

Carmen followed him along the hall, painted a hot Barbie-pink, and down the wooden staircase, painted gold. She was getting a headache from the clashing colours and was beginning to think that Marcus was on to something when it came to white minimalism. At the bottom of the stairs Daniel turned to her and said,
‘Imogen painted the house; she hates white but I love it. I've managed to decorate the top floor but haven't got round to the lower floors.' And so in the meantime Imogen's love affair with colour continued in the kitchen/diner/living room, which was painted a shocking lime green.

Carmen wished she could rewind to their earlier passion. While Daniel opened a bottle of Rioja she strolled over to the fireplace where an impressive fire was blazing away and did another survey of the walls. Thankfully there were no more naked pictures of Daniel, which really would have made him a class-A narcissist, but something worse perhaps – a whole wall was devoted to family photographs. Imogen might have been crap at sticking to things but she was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. She had long blonde hair and the high-cheekboned, perfect featured, heart-shaped face of a model, striking blue eyes and luscious long lashes. Your basic nightmare actually. There she was on her wedding day with Daniel, in a white silk sheath dress that clung to her slender figure as tightly as she was clinging on to Daniel, as the pair of them smiled their beautiful smiles to the camera; there they were posing on a beach, arms round each other, Imogen gazing at the camera, Daniel gazing adoringly at her. There was Imogen heavily pregnant and still managing to look gorgeous; there she was with a newborn Millie lying in her arms a few minutes old, looking knackered but radiant; paddling in a white bikini with a chubby toddler Millie in the sea at Brighton, her body snapped back
into pre-baby top form. They were such intimate pictures that Carmen almost felt as if she was snooping. And as she gazed at the photographs, especially the ones where Imogen was cuddling Millie, she wondered what kind of woman would leave her child? What kind of man, for that matter? But somehow it seemed worse that Imogen was the mother and had left.

Daniel walked over and handed Carmen a glass of wine and obviously noticed she was staring at the photographs. ‘I left them up for Millie. After Imogen went I took them all down, but that made Millie even more upset, so I had to put them back up again. So now I have to live with them. But please don't think I haven't moved on because I really have.' He was gazing at her, his hazel eyes warm and passionate. Carmen felt a reignition of the lustometer. ‘Come and sit by the fire.'

They sat at either end of the tatty orange velvet sofa and sipped their wine. It felt as if they were biding their time. They chatted about the kind of day they'd had – Carmen revealing that she was now nearly halfway through her sitcom, Daniel talking about the high-maintenance client he had who kept changing her mind about what kind of stones she wanted for her patio, but throughout the polite conversation all Carmen could think was how much she wanted him, wanted him so it was like a pulse, a throb, a beat going through her as if she was standing too close to the speakers at a rock concert.

‘I'm just going to see if Millie is settled,' Daniel
said, getting up from the sofa two glasses of wine later and padding across the stripped floorboards. He was barefoot and Carmen couldn't help noticing that even his feet were attractive, and usually men's feet, however much you fancied the man, looked like those of Bilbo Baggins in
The Hobbit
. She took another sip of wine. She was determined not to look at the self-esteem-crushing gorgeous pictures of Imogen and so instead gazed at the fire. A few minutes later Daniel returned. This time he sat down next to her and put his arm round her. ‘All quiet on the Millie front, she's zonked,' he said. He ran his hand along her neck. ‘You've got a beautiful neck. You look like that twenties film star Louise Brooks, all seductive and mysterious.' Carmen shivered at the lightness of his touch and thought,
You've got a beautiful everything
.

Then Daniel moved closer and kissed her neck, gently pushing Carmen back on the sofa so she was lying down. ‘How's the bruise?' he murmured.

‘I think I'll survive,' she murmured back.

‘I can kiss it better.'

And then it was on fast forward again as Daniel unzipped her jeans. ‘What about Millie?' Carmen asked anxiously, as he slid the jeans down her legs. She didn't want to be responsible for a childhood trauma.

‘Once she's asleep she never wakes up.'

Carmen took his word for it, and after a few anxious moments when she was straining to hear a footfall on the stairs, she surrendered to the feelings – to Daniel's
delicious caresses of her body that were slowly driving her wild, to the feel of his body, to the feel of him inside her, and then it was intense and quick as if they both had to get the desire out of their systems and damn the rest of the world. Afterwards Daniel lay back and pulled her on top of him so her head rested on his chest. ‘That was so good. I've been thinking about you all day, and kept forgetting what I was supposed to be doing. It was all your fault.'

‘I've been thinking about you too. I couldn't believe it when you opened the door in that towel – I just wanted to rip it off you and jump your bones.'

Daniel smiled. ‘Yep, that's the thing about children, spontaneity goes out of the window. But I hope you thought the wait was worth it.' He kissed her again. ‘You hungry? I was going to make tagliatelle con funghi. I remember you saying you liked it.'

The night just got better.

After supper, in which Carmen discovered Daniel was an ace cook, they returned to the sofa. By now it was after eleven and Carmen expected to have one more drink then hit the road. She had, however, packed her emergency overnight kit just in case: if on the off-chance she stayed she did not want to wake up in the morning looking like the Bride of Frankenstein. Her thirty-three-year-old skin had needs, expensive Dermalogica skin cream needs. But Daniel insisted that she stayed: ‘I want to spend the night with you.'

‘Aren't you worried about Millie?'

‘I'll make sure we're up and dressed before she is.'

They tiptoed upstairs to a colour-free zone. The walls were white and bare, the carpet a neutral oatmeal. They passed Millie's bedroom door which was ajar, a night light giving out a comforting yellow glow, and on to Daniel's bedroom. In contrast to the clutter of downstairs it was as if everything had been stripped down to the bare minimum – just a bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers, all of which were painted white along with white walls. There was a single framed Picasso print of a woman's back, from his blue period, but thankfully not a photograph of Imogen to be seen. Carmen quickly slipped under the white duvet. The heating had gone off and it was freezing, so she kept her tee-shirt on. She fervently hoped this hadn't been the marital bed; she didn't want to think of the lovely Imogen lying in it, with her lovely limbs entwined round Daniel.

After doing a last-minute check on his daughter, Daniel got in beside her, switching off the light next to him. This was always a telling moment in Carmen's experience. Would he be a holder or would he roll over and go to the opposite end of the bed? Right now she was so cold she was really hoping he was a holder. And all the pictures of Imogen downstairs and evidence of his life with her made her long for reassurance. Daniel slid his arm over her and curled his body round hers, giving her a blast of heat from his bare skin. A holder. Carmen breathed a sigh of contentment and snuggled into him. She expected that they would talk for a while, but after a murmured goodnight, Daniel fell straight
to sleep. Well, it was fair enough, the man had been working outside all day. But he was awake at the crack of half-six the next morning, awake and good to go. Carmen had never especially cared for sex before breakfast but for Daniel she made an exception.

A quick scout to the bathroom and Carmen was dressed and downstairs before Millie had even stirred, while Daniel got on with making his daughter's packed lunch and Carmen made coffee. She felt uncertain if she should be there and was not at all sure she was ready to be in the midst of such a domestic scene.

‘You could walk to school with us if you like,' Daniel told her. ‘It's on your way home.'

Carmen was about to say that hadn't she better leave before Millie woke up when Millie herself appeared on the stairs, bug-eyed with sleep, her hair wildly sticking up. There was no escape now. She tootled downstairs and slid on to one of the chairs. ‘Can I have porridge with honey, Daddy?'

‘Aren't you going to say hi to Carmen?' Daniel asked, walking over and planting a kiss on Millie's head.

‘Hi,' Millie said shyly. ‘Did you have a sleepover?'

‘Yep,' Carmen replied and steeled herself for further comments.

Millie looked at her and her gaze fell on the silver charm bracelet. ‘That's like Sara's.'

Carmen's antennae were alerted. ‘Is Sara one of your friends?' she asked.

Millie shook her head. ‘One of Daddy's. She had a sleepover here too.'

At that Millie reached for the pot of felt pens and began drawing a picture of a mermaid. Daniel hadn't caught the exchange as he'd been rustling up porridge and Carmen could hardly interrogate him in front of his daughter about who he may or may not have had over. But in her head she couldn't help thinking that was three women in the last year, and Daniel had made out he was rusty on the dating thing. Was she just another in a long line? Were there more? She pushed her own bowl of porridge away, suddenly not hungry.

Daniel sat down opposite her and attacked his bowl with gusto. Millie took a few mouthfuls of her breakfast and then looked again at the charm bracelet.

‘I like the swallow best,' she said shyly.

‘I like the swallow too,' Carmen replied. ‘It's probably my favourite.'
Where are you now, Will
? she wondered.
Having breakfast with Tash, chatting about her latest production, planning when to have the gorgeous blonde-haired Octavia
?

She sipped her coffee and tried to tell herself that it didn't matter how many women Daniel had over.

‘I think I'll head off now,' she told Daniel after he'd sent Millie upstairs to get dressed. How did Millie feel about having a stranger at her breakfast table? Maybe she was used to seeing women there. That was not a good thought.

‘We're going in a minute anyway, let's leave together,' Daniel replied.

There was suddenly a frenzied hammering on the
front door, combined with the sound of a little boy yelling ‘Daniel, Millie,' through the letter box, loud enough to be heard three streets away.

Daniel rolled his eyes. ‘Damn, I thought we'd have left before they came round.' He turned to Carmen. ‘Prepare to get scrutinised.'

Carmen looked at him blankly as he went on, ‘We always walk to school with Violet and her two kids.' He paused. ‘You'll probably find her a little surprised to see you.'

Surprised and jealous about summed it up when Daniel opened the door and Violet caught sight of Carmen pulling on her black suede UGGs in the hall. Her jaw didn't quite hit the pavement, but it wasn't far off. Meanwhile her children were on scooters and whizzing up and down the pavement like mad dervishes.

Daniel did the introductions, ‘Violet, you remember Carmen from the workshop?' There was a ‘hi' from Carmen and a muttered ‘hi' from Violet.

‘You got the Crocs back okay?' Carmen asked, desperately making conversation. Today Violet was Croc-free in biker boots, leggings, a denim mini and black fake-fur jacket. Violet's ‘um' did not encourage further conversation.

There followed a chaotic few minutes while Daniel tried to locate Millie's book bag, she grabbed her scooter and Carmen waited outside, next to a silent, brooding Violet. She clearly had issues – issues with Carmen seeing Daniel.

Finally Daniel had the book bag, had persuaded
Millie to put on her coat, she was on her scooter and had joined the other children. Violet had a ten-year-old daughter who was a mini me and was dressed just like her, a big no-no in Carmen's book, while her seven-year-old son was dressed like a teenager in skinny jeans, Converses and a sweatshirt with a retro picture of Jimi Hendrix on it. Carmen had a thing about children wearing tops with trendy pictures or slogans, which were always more about the parent than the child – like saying, ‘Look at my cool kid, everybody! Aren't I such a cool parent?'

‘I bet OAPs avoid going out during the school run,' Carmen joked as the three scooters whizzed past, narrowly missing her.

It was meant as an observation rather than a criticism, as Carmen thought it looked like great fun scooting to school. But Violet took it as a negative. ‘Yeah, well, I think it's good for the kids to get some exercise first thing, that way they'll concentrate much better in class. So much more preferable to those mothers in London who drive their children to school in four by fours.'