‘And so what else is new with you?’ Sophie asked. ‘Aside from that husband of yours being like a fumbling adolescent around your new jugs?’
Rebecca thought about mentioning that the whole issue of sex with James had got a bit cagey since the pregnancy was discovered. Sophie would be horrified and fascinated, but she didn’t want to confirm her friend’s suspicions of the horrors of family life too much. The stuff with her dad, Sophie would love too, and want all the gory details of. Rebecca would be able to say anything she wanted about it, without any judgements or repercussions from her friend, just her usual blunt ‘telling it like it is’ declarations getting to the heart of the matter. It might be helpful, ahead of the weekend’s Sunday lunch playing Happy Families. She could tell her everything she’d been bottling up for the last month.
‘No, that’s it. Nausea, knockers, not much else,’ she finally said.
The part of the conversation about her was now officially finished. Sophie could get on to the main purpose of her call, without fear of interruption.
‘Well, work has been hell for me. There’s this horrible sexual harassment case with my boss going through internal procedures at the moment. I mean really, it’s just a bit of fun, and if he doesn’t like it he shouldn’t dress like he does around the office. But of course, you can’t say that to them…’
With the careful precision of a bomb disposal expert who’s just had five pints, James guided his house key towards the front door lock. Just a couple of goes dinked the metal disc of the Yale lock before he heard the crunch of the key finding its home. He turned it 360 degrees for the first click, and again for the double lock, before gently leaning his frame against the door to ease it open silently. Inside he twisted the knob to retract the locking mechanism into the door as he closed it gently, and then slowly released it into the jamb before slipping down the snib with a muffled click. He worried that maybe coming into the house so quietly might actually be a bad idea – that Rebecca might get a fright if the first she heard of him coming in was when he got to the bed. She might confuse him with a silent cat burglar. Then he walked into the coat stand, kicked over her heeled boots, and sent two umbrellas clattering onto the wood floor.
‘Sorry! Sorry,’ he whispered as loudly as he could, ‘just me. I’ll get some water. Sorry!’
Navigating the kitchen, the stairs and a wee sitting down, James crept into bed next to his wife.
‘Good work, darling,’ she mumbled into her pillow, ‘if you hadn’t knocked over the plants, I’d have been worried you were a rapist.’
‘Thanks. It was umbrellas.’
‘Your knees are freezing.’
‘You’ll help me warm up,’ he said softly into her hair, snuggling into her back. A low guttural growl emerged as he slid his arm over her side and his hand found a home on her breast.
‘How was Kam?’
‘Good, good. Seething slightly about everything as usual.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘Yep.’
‘Was he excited?’
‘Oh y’know, he squealed, we hugged, we both cried. Guy stuff. How was your evening?’
‘Sophie.’
‘You tell her?’
‘Yep.’
‘Excited?’
‘Same reaction as Kam. Although she did also mention I’m stuck with you now I’ve ruined myself for other men.’
‘I did that to you a long time ago,’ he said, squashing his groin in closer to her bum.
‘Easy, tiger,’ she said. She knew that he knew that any time spent talking to Sophie was likely to get her a little…revved up. But she had just been in a lovely cosy snooze when he’d woken her with the constant tip-tapping of his key against the edges of the lock when he was trying unsuccessfully to hit the target to get the door open. That doesn’t bode well, she smiled to herself, as she backed further into him, her foot sneaking between his calves.
‘Everything all right in there?’ he asked as his hand trailed down from her breast, and over her belly. He wasn’t going to mention it at a time like this, but he was pretty sure Bompalomp was making his presence felt now on her lower half as well as on the top.
‘All good. Ben & Jerry’s with crumbled ginger nuts on top makes us both happy.’
‘You seem pretty awake now,’ he said, his hand travelling further down towards her thigh, ‘and sexily un-nauseous’.
‘What’s that?’ she asked as an insistent nudging presence reached her lower back.
‘Well, you know. I’m awake, you’re half-conscious, it’s been a while.’
‘You’re not too…?’
‘Worried about waking up Bomp? I was being silly. The blighter’s big enough to look after itself now. Isn’t it?’
‘I was going to say pissed.’
She turned around to face him, slipping her hand into the elastic of his underpants.
‘So all it takes for you to get over being a bit squeamish is four pints and a bit of male bonding?’ she said with a smile. ‘Wish I’d known earlier.’
‘Five pints actually. And some crisps. And Maryland Chicken from outside the station.’
He leant in and they kissed. He thought that he couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a proper snog. He couldn’t understand why they’d left it so long as he manoeuvred his hand around her pajama buttons.
Then he jerked his hips slightly as she snapped the waistband of his briefs back in place.
‘Go brush your teeth first,’ she said, and smiled as he hopped out of bed and across the cold floor to the bathroom, tail wagging ahead of him.
‘Gay men are being prosecuted in a way that’s almost Victorian – no, worse than that, it’s positively Thatcherite,’ said Margaret.
‘I think the point is rather it’s not gay men, it’s just men,’ Howard replied. ‘Ordinary decent men. And it’s this post-New Labour Tory party that are kowtowing to the arse-backwards political correctness, which is getting us caught up in it.’
‘Funny you should mention the word Victorian,’ said Ben. ‘Of course it was the architecture of the public lavatory system they built, with typically twee facilities that looked like traditional countryside homes, that gives us the term cottages for public toilets. This evolved into the term still used today, although the internet is making it somewhat obsolete.’.
‘Kids were flashed all the time when you were at school, Becky,’ said Howard. ‘I didn’t see it doing you any harm. You had a shriek and a giggle and ran away from the funny little men. They’d be on the comedy shows all the time, being chased around the park.’
‘Not that your father is a flasher of course, Becky. He’s not a flasher, James,’ Penny chipped in.
‘I was wearing my mac on the night mind you. Maybe that’s it, they were prejudiced against my coat!’
‘With all this emphasis on family values that this throwback Prime Minister throws about to justify his raping of the social security system, ridiculous prosecutions such as this were just waiting to happen,’ said Margaret.
‘My Burberry is a victim of society!’
‘I think I’d