‘I just wanted to know if she … if the pair of you would be coming to the gala tomorrow? I know she must be verybusy. It’s only that she usually helps me with the set-up and I haven’t heard from her in a few days …’
There had been slightly too long a pause on Paul’s end of the line. Opal imagined him covering the receiver with his large hands and straining to hear the instructions being levelled at him from another room.
‘Yes, she has been very busy but we do intend to come …’ Another pause, and the faintest whisper of another disembodied order. ‘And am I right in remembering that Agnes is also invited?’
Opal’s stomach dropped. ‘Yes of course!’ Her voice was shrill, and, she thought, unconvincing, but Paul seemed relieved.
He let out a deep breath. ‘Great, great, I thought that was the case. I think Debbie was worried …’ He trailed off. By this point Opal was sure that Paul was speaking under duress. She wished she could speak to her friend directly.
‘I’m waffling, sorry, Pol. Yes we’ll be there, and so will Agnes, in all our finery!’ Opal wondered if Martin would do for her what Paul was doing for Debbie. She suspected he would tell her not to get so het up about a little Tory wife drama, that it was only women’s business after all.
‘No worries at all, Paul. I look forward to seeing you all there, and …’ Opal swallowed, surprised by the pang of sadness that caught in her voice ‘… send Debbie my love.’
‘Will do, thanks for calling, Pol.’ Paul had hung up then, but Opal had sat on the chaise in the hallway cradling the receiver to her ear long after the line went dead.
At least one aspect of the evening would satiate her morbid curiosity about the affair, and that would be seeing Agnes and Martin interact in front of her. It was a moment she had beendreading for so long but now that it was almost upon her she found it a perversely exciting prospect.
Downstairs in the hall, preparations were well underway. It was only just past lunchtime but guests were invited to arrive from three onwards for canapés and drinks on the lawn, so Opal was keen to get this outfit sorted.
No cuff, and a pale pink shawl draped over her shoulders softened the whole look. She touched up the bright red lipstick she was wearing, and a flash of an old memory came into her mind. It was a good few years into their time in Marylebone. They had been trying for a year or so and Martin had taken her to their favourite Italian, just off Covent Garden. As the waiter walked away from their candlelit table with their order, Martin cocked his head to the side and frowned lightly.
‘What’s wrong?’ she’d asked playfully. A heaviness had plagued their relationship ever since it had become obvious that their pregnancy would not be effortless, but Opal was doing her best to counteract it with plenty of good cheer. Her voice seemed to summon him back from somewhere and into the room. He shook his head dismissively at first and then leant back.
‘You never wear lipstick anymore,’ he’d noted.
She had giggled self-consciously, embarrassed by the justification she was about to give. ‘It’s because I want to be able to kiss you whenever I want.’
She hadn’t been able to maintain eye contact as she confessed and he had leant across the table slowly, reaching for her chin, taking it between his fingertips and tilting her gaze up to meet his. She could remember his smile, soft and the tiniest bit sad, like he was touched by her words. The room had seemed tococoon them in a time-standing-still kind of moment, and Opal remembered thinking how warm his eyes looked. In that light, they were no longer icy, but rather, misty.
‘In that case, I don’t think you should ever wear lipstick again,’ he’d said. And she hadn’t ever again, until they moved to Fairfax.
As she blotted a tissue against the scarlet, she thought about the sex they’d had that night. She couldn’t remember any specifics, but she knew she’d moaned louder than she usually did, that his hands had felt hotter on her skin, and his lips softer on her neck. In the morning she had snuck out of bed and down to the bakery. In the queue she’d excited herself with the thought of how strongly she smelled of him. She’d wondered if anyone else could smell it.
And then by the time she got back, he was on the phone with a colleague, perched on the edge of the bed and his eyes once again searching for that faraway somewhere. This time when she called for him with a hand on back and a kiss on cheek, he didn’t come. He gestured for her to leave him to his call.
Opal wondered how many times that scene might have played out in that flat since, but with Agnes. Or maybe she didn’t even bother to try and get his attention. Maybe someone like Agnes could lie next to a man who was ignoring her and know that it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with how desirable she was. Because it was undeniable. Instead she might pity him for having to interrupt his rapture of her pert body for something as boring as a business call.
Opal could only hope that they wouldn’t subject her to the embarrassment of turning up together.
Chapter 30
In the dream, Noah was always wearing the same thing: that pink silk shirt he loved, a pair of paint-splattered jeans and nothing on his feet. He wouldn’t notice Adam at first but then, suddenly he would look up and a breath would catch in his throat. Adam would reach for Noah and with one hand on his waist and the other grasping at the nape of his neck, Adam would bring Noah to his lips.
Soft, light kisses at first, and each time Adam pulled away Noah’s kaleidoscope eyes would be wide with wonder. Adam would take Noah’s hand and lay its palm on his bare chest. The next time their lips met there would be something hungrier there, less curious, more ravenous. As Adam pulled Noah’s slight but sturdy frame towards him, Noah would turn his head just enough to take Adam’s thumb into his mouth and then it was Adam’s turn to catch his breath. Then Noah’s hand would move downwards.
It was at this point that Adam would trail the silk from Noah’s shoulders and run his teeth across Noah’s collarbones just as he felt the tease of fingertips against his waistband. Adam heard himself panting, fixated on the scene before him. Noah was a little tentative at first, brushing and teasing againsthim. But with time, he would build up his confidence, his grip growing firmer.
And then there was his mouth and Adam was throbbing with impatience. Adam’s fingers would snake into Noah’s loose dark curls as he sank deeply into the satisfaction of being consumed. At the moment that he came, as his thoughts grew first frantic and then utterly still, he would open his eyes and find himself alone in bed. And the sheets dampened with the evidence of his wanting.
Adam lay still, catching his breath and waiting for his heart to stop beating as fast. This was the third night in a row that he had dreamt of Noah, and somehow Adam still woke up disappointed and ever so slightly disbelieving that it wasn’t real.
It had been a long time since he’d had a spate of wet dreams. He thought back to the first time, when he would wake up shaking with guilt and sweaty with shame. How he would lie to his mother the next morning and tell her that the sheets balled up in the laundry basket were stained with urine as the result of a nightmare. That had seemed like the better option, for her to think of her son as pathetic, rather than perverted.
And then there had been the times when he was living with Joshua. It had only been a couple of weeks and Adam was sleeping on the sofa, in the days before Joshua got his big break. Adam had woken up one early autumn morning to find his cock rock hard and sticky. He’d panicked and rushed around trying to find somewhere to hide the blanket he’d slept with.
Joshua found him, with his boxers soiled and frantically trying to stuff the blanket under the sofa. Adam had lookedup and locked eyes with Joshua, the familiar sting of shame prickling the skin all over his body. But then Joshua burst out laughing. Huge bellows of sound that caught Adam so off guard that he too began to giggle. Soon the pair of them were wiping tears from their eyes.
‘I think you might be even hornier than I was at your age, and that is saying something.’ Joshua’s words had felt like a balm on a wound so gaping that Adam hadn’t been able to face the pain of even acknowledging it. It was acceptance. It was the first time he had felt both understood and loved in the same instant.
