Page 50 of Hard
You like being tied?Χ
You don’t?Χ
‘Come on. Let’s go get cleaned up and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’
‘Clean? I think we’ll need bleach and a scrub brush.’
‘That’s just charming.’ I chuckle, taking in her expression.
‘I’m serious! Do you know how many people have had sex on this comforter?’
‘Strangely enough, I don’t.’
‘That’s the point,’ she answers all animated now. ‘We’d need a black light and a forensic team to be able to tell! I’m serious,’ she says as I laugh, dragging her closer to my chest. ‘We’ll be lucky to get away without some kind of skeeve.’
‘Skeeve, you say?’ Using my lower body, I buck up into her, the momentum moving her off my lap.
‘Hey!’
‘There’s only one thing for it. A bath.’
‘How come you’re free the whole evening?’
The water sloshes up the side of the large bath as Paisley lifts her hand to move a few damp strands of her hair. Pressed skin to skin—her back to my front—we’re slick from the heat of the water.
‘Sorcha has Brownies on Fridays, then she goes to her grandparents for the evening. I won’t see her until I pick her up from her ballet class.’
‘So not Agnes—her other grandparents.’
Though I don’t need to navigate these waters, I decide I will. ‘Agnes isn’t my mother. At least, not by blood. My own mother was a bit of a fuckup in the parenting department.’ As well as a whore. ‘Agnes was a local shopkeeper—she and her husband. Anyway, she kept me right. Kept me fed. Made sure I was safe.’ As safe as anyone can be when they live with a crack whore. ‘When things got really bad, she and Alf, her husband, took me in.’
‘Wow.’ She tries to turn, but I’m not ready to let her see my face, so I tighten the band of my arms across her chest, then bury my nose in her hair. How the fuck does she smell like the summer anyway? ‘Agnes and Alf must be very special people.’
‘They are—were. Alf died before I finished university. When Sorcha was born, Agnes said she’d come to London to help.’ I inhale deeply. ‘She never went back.’
‘But she’s like a grandmother to Sorcha. You can absolutely see that in the photographs you showed me on your phone.’
Strange that she would see that, yet at the poncy school I pay for Sorcha to go to, the other parents treat her like the hired help. I mean, I do pay her, but mainly to ease at least a little of my guilt. But Agnes doesn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks, least of all a bunch of stuck-up snobs. And so long as she’s got a few pound notes in her wee purse—which she assures me she always has—and her “party money” put aside in her bank account—that’s money she’s put away for her funeral, the morbid bugger—she says she’s just fine.
‘So that must mean Sorcha is with herothergrandparents.’
‘You could be the new Sherlock Holmes.’
At least my ex’s parents want to maintain contact. We have aprickly relationship, and we don’t often see eye to eye. Although we do have a consensus when it comes to their daughter: we’ve all washed our hands of her. I think a lot of the issues between us stem from their pain. How could they have raised a daughter who was willing to abandon her own child? But I’m sure they also blame me for offering her money in the first place. In my defence, I was hurting—I never in a million years thought she would accept my offer. Friday sleepovers are a relatively new thing. For all of us.
‘I’d look good in one of those funny hats—you know—like Sherlock Holmes?’
‘A deerstalker?’ She nods. ‘You’d look good in a sack.’
‘And you are a sweet-talking man.’
‘With a gorgeous wet girl in his hands.’
‘If wrinkled and prune-y does it for you.’
‘Youdo it for me,’ I reply, tightening my hands. But fuck if that wasn’t a little too much—too much truth. Too heartfelt.
‘That was an awfully big sigh.’
