Chapter 23
At home later, Emma laid the pretty dress on her bed and dealt with Nicky’s shower and tea. Rohan wasn’t home and she began to feel relieved at the legitimate reason for not going on the date with Christopher. Rohan clattered through the front door at six o’clock, when it was already dark and his face looked haggard and filled with worry. “Hard day?” Emma asked kindly, dishing up a plate of macaroni cheese and laying it down on the counter, next to where Rohan stood emptying his pockets of keys and a train ticket.
“Yeah. Thanks for this.” He gave her a tired smile and ran his hands through his hair.
“Did you go to London again?”
Rohan nodded and dragged a fork from the cutlery drawer. “Kensington. It seems warmer in the city than here. There’s a big freeze coming.” He pushed a forkful of the yellow mixture into his mouth and closed his eyes. “This is nice. I love coming home to you and Nicky and tea on the table.” Crow’s feet appeared in the corners of his eyes as he smiled. “I really love it.”
Emma smiled and went through to the dining room to deal with Nicky. “Sit with me, Mummy,” he begged. “After you bring me back some more mac and cheese.”
Emma sat and sipped a cup of tea while Nicky polished his plate with a piece of bread. “That was gorgeous, Mummy. I wish we’d had food before when we lived up Lincoln then you could’ve cooked this for me all the time.”
His mother masked her hurt and worried about her son’s precarious future in her hands. Rohan scraped out a chair and sat with them, eating as though starving.
“It’s nice ain’t it, Uncle Ro?” Nicky chattered and Emma flushed with embarrassment and tried to hush him, putting a finger over her lips. Rohan smiled and nodded to the boy as both males shoveled their food into hungry mouths. “I din’t know Mummy could do cooking.”
“Will you be in tonight or have you got plans?” Emma asked Rohan as he finished his food. He knitted his blonde brows and stared at her.
“Why?”
Emma shifted uncomfortably under his gaze and looked at the grains of life in the wooden table. “I wanted to ask if you’d babysit Nicky so I could go out with some new friends.”
Nicky’s eyes widened in surprise. “Go out? Wivout me?”
“No, you’re right. I don’t need to go. I’m probably too tired anyway and I don’t have money for drinks and stuff. Ignore me. I’ll just clear up the kitchen.” Losing her fragile nerve, Emma rushed away with Nicky’s plate, loading it into the dishwasher in a fit of activity. Disappointment ate at her, demonstrating her inability to completely squash the desire to get out for a while and be normal.
“I’ll look after Nicky.” Tiredness made Rohan’s speech lazy and his mother tongue heavily accented his sentence. He stood in the doorway and Emma felt his eyes on her.
She fought a rush of hormones as her body heated up at remembered whispered endearments in dark stolen moments, too long ago. The flame in her stomach for him vied with her attraction to Christopher, who at least seemed available. “Just then, you sounded like you did when I first met you,” she mused. “A confused nine year old boy who lost his father and thought he was going home to Russia.” Emma sounded wistful, clattering the cutlery. “You stood in my father’s living room in Lincoln and said, ‘I vant to go home!’ I thought your accent was so exotic.”
“Then Anton did this huge fart,” Rohan smiled, the pain of his grief fresh and unmasked.
“And you stayed.”
“Em...”
“No, it’s fine. I won’t go.”
Rohan moved slowly towards her as Emma clanked a saucepan against the metal sink. “Em?” His arms were firm on her shoulders as he turned her, ignoring her wet hands and drawing her body into his. She felt his heartbeat through the thin blouse covering her chest, her breasts pushed up against him. “Emma, dorogaya...” Sweetheart.
Emma held her breath, waiting for something impossible. When Rohan spoke again, she felt her heart clang in her chest and it hurt so badly. “Emma, I need to sort my affairs out. I have some documents I need you to look at...”
“Oh.” Emma jerked herself back, horrified at his casual allusion to their divorce. It had to come, despite what he maintained. Felicity expected a ring and a sexy weekend and clearly Rohan needed to oblige. She didn’t look like the kind of girl to hang around while Emma played house with her boyfriend. Felicity and Alanya’s combined threats chilled Emma’s heart and she pursed her lips. “Can we sort this later? If I’m going out, I need to get ready.”
Emma slunk out of the small space between Rohan’s body and the sink and skulked off upstairs, seeing the hurt in blue eyes which seemed even bluer as he observed her with a strange look on his face.
She showered in her ensuite, scrunched her hair until it was a mass of damp curls and pushed it off her neck. Allaine’s clip mounted it on the top of her head in a cascading waterfall of dark brown ringlets. Emma used the very last dregs of her compact powder, drew thick black lines above her upper eyelids and scraped out some mascara from the ailing tube. In the absence of lipstick, she used an old chap stick to gloss her full mouth. “That will have to do.” She wiggled into the dress by stepping into it and pulling it upwards, jumping at the sight of Rohan’s long body leaned against the doorframe of her room.
“Stop doing that!” she squeaked at him. “I haven’t got a bra on!”
“I know.” His lips curved upwards. “I always loved it when you did that little wiggle thing in your school uniform. It still does it for me.”
“Do you realise you sound like a pervert?” Emma bit, poking her breasts into place and buttoning the tiny pearl seeds up the front of the dress. She felt naked without a bra, but hers were a manky shade of grey from over washing and did little to prop up her breasts anyway. The red fabric rose from the first button in her cleavage, sliding left and right in a gentle gradient until it brushed the bones of her shoulders. There was no room for dingy grey bra straps. Emma stood in front of her walk in wardrobe door which housed a mirror, peering at her reflection. Her underwear showed through the silky material and made her feel self-conscious. The lines and ridges of her belly knickers left the illusion of a beautiful woman in a stylish red dress, wearing a nappy. With a snort of exasperation, Emma reached under the dress and yanked them down, stepping out of them with ease. She heard Rohan inhale and then hold his breath, enjoying his frustration with an unfair sense of vengeance.
“You can leave the room any time you like,” she said, turning and facing the handsome blonde man in her doorway. He watched her with a predatory expression in his eyes but didn’t move. Emma shrugged and pulled her suitcase from under the bed, rifling through it by feel rather than sight. Her fingers closed around the G-string her neighbour gave her for Christmas last year as a joke. They were from the Pound Shop and she got them all one each. Emma looked at the flimsy dental floss holding the garment together and wondered if it would hold for a full night of dancing and revelry, deciding she actually didn’t care. She balled it into her palm and closed her hand, desperate for Rohan not to see the extent of her choice of undies and stood up. “Just get out, please. Ro, you said you didn’t mind looking after Nick. I didn’t realise it meant watching me get ready.”
“You’re not going out like that!” He spat the words and stood up straight, his head nearly touching the underside of the door frame. “You’ve got nothing on underneath that dress.”
“I remember you finding it horny once upon a time.” Emma’s eyes danced with mischief and she watched Rohan struggle. His eyes darkened to an unusual blue and she recognised the signs of a man losing control. She watched with interest and saw unsatisfied desire turn quickly to rage.
“You’re not going out like that!”
“And you’re not my father!” she shouted. “He’s dead, remember?”
Emma heard Nicky run from the living room downstairs and make his way towards the stairs. “Mummy?” he called, sounding alarmed.
“I’m your h
usband!” Rohan hissed, hearing the boy breach the stairs behind him.
“Yeah, well not for much longer!” Emma bit back.
Nicky pushed around Rohan’s body to get to his mother, his little face full of concern. “Why you shoutin’?” he began and then his face broke into a wide smile. “Mummy, you’s so bootiful. I didn’t know you looked like that!” Childish delight filled his eyes and guilt ate at Emma’s heart. What am I doing?
Her son’s brain switched to more interesting facts, once he fulfilled the criteria of admiration drummed home to him by his teacher at the Lincoln school.
‘Always tell a woman she looks beautiful.
Never ask her age.
Never, never ask if she’s expecting a baby. Remember that one, children. It’s for your own good!’
Nicky gave Emma a hug and smoothed his hand along the soft material from her hip to her thigh. He sniggered. “You’re rudey dudey under there!” He looked bashful. “Like Shaz on the estate. She din’t wear knickers, remember? The wind blew and she showed her...”
Emma fixed her free hand over her son’s mouth and gave him a warning look. He slobbered on her hand and she pulled it away with a look of distaste. “Don’t be disgusting! It’s nearly time for bed.”
“No, me and Uncle Ro is gonna make the slingshot in the tool shed in a minute,” Nicky whined, immediately on a different trail altogether. “He promised!” His eyes flicked towards Rohan with hopeful expectation.
“Well give me a kiss and then you can both get on with it. I need to leave now.” Emma ignored Rohan as she planted a gentle kiss over her son’s lips. Nicky wrinkled his nose.
“Strawberry chap stick. Yuk!”
“Go!” Emma pointed to the door and both males left, one more reluctant than the other. In her ensuite bathroom, Emma wriggled her bum into the G-string, a horrified look planted on her face. The cotton thread was uncomfortable and she looked in the mirror and practiced a face which didn’t betray her horror at the need to keep yanking the thing out of her nether regions. She bent down and picked up the bright red stilettos, keeping them in her hand to broach the steep, split level staircase.
As Emma opened the front door, she let out a squeak. Felicity stood in front of her with her hand raised and her mouth open. “You look...amazing!” the other woman conceded, with considerable reluctance. “Where are you going?” She looked behind Emma with suspicion on her face, obviously expecting Rohan to be following her.
“Out,” Emma replied, without explanation. “Ro’s in the shed with Nicky. They’re making something together.”
“Oh, damn.” Felicity waved a bottle of red wine in Emma’s face. “I was hoping for some alone time with him.”
Emma shrugged and pushed her way out the door, feeling the frozen concrete underneath her bare feet. “See ya!” she intoned with a smirk, avoiding the splinter laden wood of the front gate as she slipped into the street. She almost laughed out loud at the memory of Rohan’s face as he watched her slip into the dress. She knew every twitch and expression of that man’s body language and his discomfort filled her with amusement. “Impotent my ass,” she sniggered. “He just doesn’t fancy you, Felicity darling.”
Half way down Newcombe Street, Emma was forced to stop and put the shoes on. The ground made her feet feel numb so at least the shoes didn’t hurt initially. “You look like a hooker!” she chastised herself, her shoulders bare to the wintry night. “I hope I don’t see anyone...oh, hello.”
The dog walkers nodded and stared and Emma cringed. She made an incongruous sight in the depths of November, walking the street in a cocktail dress and high heels. Against her better judgement she used the darkened alley ways to reach Northampton Road, clattering noisily through the most risky places at a run, her heeled feet sounding like gun shots and probably drawing more observers from behind closed curtains than she wanted. At the entrance to the motel, she paused, primped her hair and started up the stairs.
“Hey.” Christopher leaned against the door frame with an air of casualness that was instantly calming.
“Hi.” Emma felt her heartbeat fighting to return to normal. She stood frozen at the bottom of the steps.
“You look amazin’.” His lyrical Irish accent sounded sexy.
“That’s good then,” Emma allowed herself a smile. “You’re the second person to say that tonight.”
“Rohan?” Christopher said the name with something of a sneer and Emma shook her head.
“No. He said something very different.”
Christopher took a last drag of the thin cigarette and stubbed it out on the brickwork, before flicking it into the hedge. His confidence shrouded Emma in protection and she admired the close cut of his suit in the lamp light from the motel as it fitted neatly over his trim figure. He strode easily down the stairs and bent to kiss her, his lips tasting of nicotine and gin. Emma didn’t expect to like either but surprised herself. “I didn’t know if you’d come,” he whispered.
“Nor did I,” Emma replied, masking a tiny, inappropriate giggle at her daring and courage. The dental floss underwear exacted its revenge and she winced. Christopher’s brow knitted and Emma placed her index finger over his lips. “Don’t ask.” She smiled.