Our Little Secret (2 page)

His hand slides onto my hip and presses down as he slides a little deeper inside me. My nipples ache for him to return, but I already know he won’t. That this will be quick, the way he likes it in the morning. Urgent. No face-to-face. No morning breath. Just carnal. Focused.

For a minute, he slides in only so far, then withdraws and I know what’s coming, even before he’s moved and I’m turning, moving onto my knees. I can feel his cock quivering behind me, waiting for me to be in position. I know the drill.

On all fours now, he pushes easily – deliciously – into me and I can’t deny that it’s satisfying, both intimate and yet reassuringly familiar. This is, after all, what Scott and I do best.

We move together in a synchronized rhythm and, after a while, I pivot my elbows to slide my hands beneath me to seek out my nipples, which bump against the pillow.

I’m secretly fascinated by the graceful movement of my swaying orbs and, for a second, I imagine that they belong to someone else, that I’m beneath them, that it’s someone else’s hot, ripe nipples dangling above me. To whom they belong, I don’t know. They’re not attached to a body, a face, a person even, just a feeling. I stroke my soft skin and let the silver fish of disembodied fantasy slither through my mind as I raise myself to Scott.

He grips my hips, but I wish he would grip my buttocks, to splay them open and gaze at my bum. Touch it. Explore it. Something we’ve never done – never will do. I’m shocked by how filthy the thought is for this hour of the morning, and almost chuckle to myself at how unlikely it would be for me ever to tell Scott what I’m thinking. For all the frequency of sex we have, it’s still pretty conventional. Not that I’m complaining.

Through the curtain of my long brown hair, I glance sideways and catch sight of us in the mirror that is propped up against the wall. I can just make out Scott’s lithe and agile body in a sliver of street light through the gap in the curtain. His bum is firm and pert from playing football, the muscles on his thighs standing out where he’s kneeling on the crumpled sheet.

It’s hard to make out in the dark, but I know that all around us is the detritus of his bedsit – or ‘studio’ as he likes to call it. His crumpled jeans, boots and pants upright on the floor where he stepped out of them, next to two mugs, some sideways beer cans and an empty Pot Noodle. I close my eyes, too. Shut it out. This is why we have sex so much, perhaps. To pretend we live in a different kind of reality.

I do, anyway. Because, with my eyes closed, I can begin to believe we’re in a sun-drenched villa, like in a movie. Or on a plush four-poster bed in a five-star hotel. Not here, in a rain-soaked, recession-ravaged suburb of Manchester, where life is all mapped out.

I can feel Scott deep inside me now. Really deep. I’ve stretched to fit him, as I always do, but it still astonishes me how far he can push into me. There’s something triumphant in his thrust. Like he’s claimed me. I make a sound to let him know as much.

But it’s not true. He can’t claim me. Not all of me.

And before I can help it, the door has opened to the secret place. Just like that door opened on the last day of school five years ago on that hot, overwhelming summer’s day.

In my mind’s eye I see myself step inside into the library area and, just like then, my pulse is racing. I know he is waiting for me like we’ve planned. I sense his aura, like the huge presence he is, even before I see him. He’s standing, pretending to read by the corner shelf. He’s next to the window, which has its blind drawn down, casting him in a glow of sinner’s orange.

In the muffled silence of the romance section, I hear his breath as I walk towards him. He says my name. ‘Sophie.’ Like it’s a surprise. A delight. Like he feels like a child, too. But he’s not.

His hand reaches mine. We’re both shaking. We both know it’s too illicit. Too naughty. It could ruin us both. He’s older, married. My A-level teacher. But this is a roller-coaster thrill like never before, and I know when I look into his deep-blue eyes that we’ve tipped over the edge and neither of us can stop.

He pulls me to him suddenly, like time has just run out, like it’s the last moment on Earth. He kisses me, gasping with desire, like he’s never known desire before. His lips, his smell engulfs me, and the power. It’s a whole new kind of aphrodisiac. It hits my veins like a drug.
I made this happen
, I think, my senses screaming. It’s single-handedly the most exciting moment of my life.

Behind me, Scott speeds up and cries out as he comes.

3

Leticia lolls against the counter in the reception area, one long, elaborately decorated claw of a fingernail scratching against the corner of her TV magazine.

‘If there was a hell, do you think this would be it?’ I ask her.

Her dull brown eyes flick up at me and then lazily over to where the fifty or so under-fives are screaming around the shabby play area in the FunPlex Dome where we both work. Why doesn’t the noise bother her? How can she shut it out?

It’s Monday morning, but the place is still crammed with buggies and exhausted-looking mothers, who have brought their hyper toddlers to bounce in static joy down the bumpy slide. The sound is deafening, not least because the FunPlex radio-station playlist that Dean, the manager, insists upon us playing all day is thumping out Pink at full volume. I sniff the FunPlex uniform Aertex shirt I’ve had to borrow this morning, having come straight from Scott’s. It stinks.

‘Yeah, but’s it a job. Better than McDonald’s.’

Sometimes Leticia’s lack of aspiration floors me. But then her bovine attitude to life appears to mean that she suffers far less angst than someone like me, who feels like I’m suffocating most of the time; like I’m caught in an hourglass, the sand slipping away beneath me.

‘I thought you liked kids, anyway,’ she says, accusingly, flipping over the page to study the Photoshopped ‘fat’ pictures of some poor soap star.

She’s right. I do like kids, but this wasn’t what I imagined when I got the job here. I thought that working with children would be fun. That’s why I qualified as a nanny, after all. But nobody around here can afford a nanny, it seems. Even the footballers’ wives have been slow on the uptake to employ me, opting for Polish live-ins, who will empty the dishwasher, clean, iron and cook
as well as
doing the night-feed.

I haven’t told Scott, but I’ve sent my details off to an agency in London, but it’s a pipe dream, of course. Could I really cut it as a nanny for a posh family in Chelsea? Would I fit in with those cashmere Fionas, with their tight jeans and designer handbags? Would I be able to drive the family Range Rover around the streets of London, to drop the little darlings at the overpriced nursery school?

Yes, I would
, part of me thought as I sent off my application, kissing the envelope for good luck. I’ve imagined it, these past few days, spinning across the countryside to London, in a shimmering, sparkling, magical glow. But I’ve heard nothing back, and the truth has dawned. There are a million better-qualified nannies, with more experience and better references than me. Let’s face it, real-life Fionas want to be nannies themselves these days.

So I’m stuck here in FunPlex until something happens. And please, God, let
something
happen.

Leticia sighs and heaves her considerable bulk off the counter, as the door opens and there’s a blast of icy air and the next gaggle of women and kids pile through the door.

One of the women in the front is new. I haven’t seen her before. I notice her because she has nicely highlighted hair and her kid in the buggy is wearing a tanktop and cords. Posh, then.

She has tastefully done make-up and normal eyebrows, which is rare for our clientele. She has what looks suspiciously like a proper designer leather handbag on her arm, and she’s holding a large Starbucks coffee cup in her manicured hand. I watch her kid, a sweet little boy with curly blond hair, wriggle free from his buggy and make a beeline for the ball-pit.

‘Jasper, NO,’ the woman cries. ‘Wait.’ She lunges forward, accidentally chucking the contents of her coffee cup at me in the process.

I gasp as the hot liquid lands mostly on the desk and splashes all up the front of my shirt. It’s scorching.

‘Oh,’ the woman exclaims, flushing. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ I say, fanning the shirt away from my stomach with my fingertips. Leticia, unimpressed, moves her magazine away from the brown spillage and then the computer keyboard. She stares at me, like it’s my fault.

The woman dumps her toffee-coloured leather bag in a dry patch on the counter and quickly unpacks.

‘Here, take this,’ she says, handing me a bulky rolled-up magazine, then rummaging inside to find a packet of tissues, which she hands me, apologizing again. I mop up the coffee as she hurriedly pays and runs after the little boy.

‘What about your magazine?’ I call after her, but she flaps her hand. She clearly doesn’t want it. I unfurl it, to see that it’s
The Lady
. I’ve heard of it, but never read it.

I go into the staff loos whilst Leticia goes to get another shirt for me from the locker. Whilst I’m waiting, I flick through the magazine. At the back I see an advertising section for nanny jobs and greedily read through them. Why haven’t I looked here before? One in particular catches my eye:

Exclusive. I wonder what that means? But it’s in America. Wow! Upstate New York. I bet it is super-posh.

I stare in the chipped mirror at my shabby coffee-drenched reflection, the words whirring in my head.

‘Sophie, I’ve got a new shirt for you,’ Leticia calls from the other side of the door. ‘You decent?’

I’m twenty-two. I have good skin. Scott says I’m pretty. And I can pass as articulate.

Upstate New York.
Dare I?

‘Yes, I’m decent,’ I call back. Then I rip out the advert and fold it carefully, stuffing it deep into the back pocket of my jeans.

4

Tiff is sitting cross-legged on my single bed sucking a lollipop. Behind her is a pin-board with a montage of ancient photos – mostly selfies – of the pair of us, on the Big Dipper in Blackpool and in various pubs, and of me and Scott kissing at New Year.

‘What about this one?’ I say, looking over my shoulder at the back-view of the little black dress in the slim wardrobe mirror. This is the one I’ve selected for the interview in London tomorrow. I stand on tiptoes, as if I’m wearing heels. The dress is short, but it shows off my legs, which I know are one of my best assets. Dancer’s legs, like Mum’s were. I grab my hair and put it up, as if it’s already in the smart updo I’m planning.

I give my best glittering ‘give me the job’ look at Tiff, who tips her head over to one side, and the lollipop stick wiggles from side to side. She takes it out of her mouth and I can tell she doesn’t approve. But that’s why she’s here. Because she’s been my best friend since, well, forever, and she’s nothing if not honest.

It was Tiff who told me to apply straight away to the advert I ripped out of
The Lady
. Tiff who patiently peered over my shoulder and edited my CV, daring me to send it off. And Tiff who knew how much it meant when I got a call this morning asking me to come for an interview tomorrow. and so now she’s here, to help me prepare.

‘Isn’t it a job interview to be a nanny? They don’t want you to look like you’re going to a nightclub,’ she says. ‘Don’t you have anything . . . I don’t know. Mumsy? Frumpy?’

Her words throw me into despair and I growl in frustration.

‘This is my only good dress,’ I moan. ‘Scott bought it for me.’

Tiff’s eyebrows rise, one more easily than the other, which is pierced with a small silver hoop.

‘Ah, Scotty dog,’ she says, knowing that particular nickname annoys me. ‘I take it you haven’t told him yet?’

I turn to face the mirror, away from her searching gaze and into my own deceitful one, letting my hair fall around my shoulders. I lower my heels to the floor.

‘There’s no point. I mean, I would if I got the job, but it’s highly unlikely that someone is going to fly
me
to America,’ I tell her, but I can feel a secret quickening of my pulse. This is so fateful, so – I don’t know . . .
right
. Is that the word? The thought of jetting out of here to a new adventure on the other side of the world has filled me with a kind of longing I can’t seem to ignore, no matter how hard I try. I won’t think about Scott or what he might say.

‘You wouldn’t leave, though, would you?’ Tiff says. ‘I mean, if you got the job. You wouldn’t actually go. Not really. You wouldn’t give up all that sex, for a start. I mean, this is just to see if you
could
.’

I hear the hint of worry in her voice, despite her joke about the sex. She’s always astounded by how often Scott and I ‘do’ it. No wonder she thinks this is all a game. But it’s not. At least, it might have started out that way – the whole application thing – as a kind of a fantasy, a kind of dare. But what if I really do get given an opportunity to make it all come true?

Dad saves me from answering, opening the door to my room and poking his head in. I wish he’d knock. He’s grown a beard recently, which doesn’t suit him. It’s grey and makes him look even older than he is. Mum would never have let him grow it, if she were still alive. He has dark circles under his eyes, giving him a weary, hangdog look. The anti-depressants the doctor gave him were supposed to have kicked in by now, but I can’t tell the difference. He still looks, well . . . sad. And seeing him this way – well, it breaks my heart.

‘I’m popping out,’ he says, but he doesn’t look at me. We both know this is a euphemism for the fact that he’s going to the betting shop and then to the pub. ‘Make sure Ryan eats his tea.’

I can hear the noise of the PlayStation in the lounge where my little brother has taken up residence on the sofa. He’ll be there for hours. Dad relies on me like this, more and more. But lately I’ve started thinking that me being here to parent for him half the time might be what is stopping Dad from getting better. Or getting over Mum. If I wasn’t here, then he wouldn’t be able to go to the pub. He’d have to look after Ryan and that might help him move on.