My head swam as I held my breath to protect myself from the warm scent of Joe’s skin and when placed his hand in my open palm, my fingers automatically curled around his.
‘Why is it that every time I’m with you, I’m apologising?’ Joe asked. His huge hand swallowed up mine, strong and warm.
‘Because you know when you’re beaten?’ I suggested, tiptoeing precariously close to the edge. This was it. This was our moment.
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Yes,’ I tried to say. The air that left my lungs passed over my lips too softly to make a sound.
‘Are you more upset that I said I wrote the book or that your family were so impressed by it?’
The moment passed.
With a feeble shove, I pushed him out of my way and stormed back inside. ‘You might want to get your stuff back before the foxes run off with it,’ I said, leavinghim out on the porch. ‘Some of it looked expensive. Tacky but expensive.’
‘Are you going to help me?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I replied, grabbing my phone and the cottage keys from the bedside table, just in case he had the bright idea to lock me out. ‘I’m going to clear up your mess. Don’t wait up.’
The door closed behind me with a satisfying slam.
Most of the house lights were out and all the curtains were drawn, only my sister’s room, the landing and the kitchen still showed signs of life when I found myself standing at the back door. I had no more idea of what I wanted to say than I had when Charlotte marched out of the cottage brandishing my manuscript but I knew I had to say something. It didn’t have to be difficult. All I needed to do was stick to the facts.
Joe isn’t Este Cox, I am.
He didn’t writeButterflies, I did.
Then I would remind them it’s a feminist masterpiece with absolutely no pegging and all of this nonsense would be behind me forever.
With my hand on the doorknob, I took a moment to visualise a happy outcome with proud parents and an adoring sister rather than an angry mob waving pitchforks, then I stopped. Two blurred figures walked into the kitchen, their features obscured by the pebbled glass, both speaking softly but still loud enough to carry out the latched open window.
‘It’s very interesting, I can’t think of another example,’ Mum said in between the opening and closing of cupboard doors. ‘I’ve only flicked through it but, I have to say, men rarely write so sensitively about female desire.’
‘Men rarely do anything sensitively when it comes to female desire,’ a second voice said. Jericka, mum’s friend, the overly intense critic. ‘That’s why these books do so well in the first place.’
‘And the things he writes about,’ added a third voice. ‘I’ve never read anything like it. Not that I usually read those sorts of things, you understand.’
‘Yes, Carole, we know,’ Mum replied. ‘You only read it on behalf of your church group.’
‘Know thy enemy,’ she confirmed.
‘I don’t remember that line from the Bible,’ Jericka said. ‘Which book is that exactly?’
I pulled my hand away from the door and pressed myself up against the wall beside instead. Explaining the truth to my mother was one thing, confessing in front of Jericka and Auntie Carole was another.
‘It does demand a re-evaluation of the text,’ Mum said, the dishwasher creaking open as she spoke. ‘Joseph has obviously connected to something in a lot of women.’
‘Sometimes it takes an outsider to see us more clearly,’ Jericka offered. ‘One might even say there’s something almost satirical about it. Not only has he believably aped the genre, he’s excelled in it.’
‘Goes to show most of these books aren’t worth the paper they’re written on when a first-time male author can wipe the floor with the lot of them,’ my mother agreed. ‘Shame he doesn’t want to come forward, he’s a good-looking boy. The PR team would have a field day with him.’
The dishwasher slammed shut, smothering murmurings of agreement.
‘Didn’t Sophie used to talk about writing a book?’Carole said as I crouched down underneath the window to hear them more clearly.
‘She did. And then she went into teaching.’
Maybe I didn’t need to hear more clearly after all.
