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It wasn't me that changed but you
The dinner party had been all her idea!
The addition of the Captain and his snotty cow of a wife definitely hadn't been part of her plans; her ambitious bastard of an old man had done that bit all on his own, only telling her afterwards what he'd done, when it was far too late for her to put the kibosh on it. He'd told her that it would help him on his 'career path' something Molly had never heard him talk about before but was convinced was total bollocks and that it had more to do with crawling up the boss's bum than anything else, something she didn't want to even think about.
Half way through the afternoon of the party she'd come to the conclusion that her menu was maybe a little bit ambitious, bearing in mind that she'd never really cooked any of this sort of food before, but after watching a lot of Bake Off and MasterChef, she'd come to the conclusion of how hard could it be? Well, apart from all the poncy decorating stuff of course which she wasn't even going to attempt. You Tube had helped a lot, together with the recipe book with nice pictures in it that they'd had for a wedding present and making a lot of lists of how to do stuff and timings and things. She would have done some dummy runs during the week before the party but she'd managed to spend every penny of their food budget for the rest of the month, plus a bit more, and had still had to send him out for more cream in case the filling curdled again as it had every bloody time that morning when she'd tried to cook the sodding lemon tart. The pastry was alright, that had cooked okay seeing as how it was ready made and frozen, it was the filling that was being a bastard.
Ian, her nine month married other half had disappeared off to get more cream and to get more wine because he reckoned that the Tesco's stuff she'd bought wasn't good enough to serve to his posh knob of a boss or to his wife, who Molly called "their Royal bleeding 'ighnesses" and Ian had reckoned that he had to go to Waitrose to get it, which meant that he'd been missing for the best part of the afternoon. She'd ended up wandering around straightening towels in the bathroom, wiping imaginary marks off the basin and taps, eating handfuls of Pringles and drinking the dreaded Tesco's wine, muttering to herself all the time about how bleeding long could it take to get to sodding Waitrose and back, and where was he for fuck's sake? He wasn't answering his phone, probably, as she knew only too well, because he could see that it was her ringing him and he knew she'd lose it completely if she spoke to him.
At times like these Molly wondered why the hell she and Ian had got married, apart from the fact that he'd had trouble keeping his hands off her, and she'd married him because he was, on the whole, quite kind, especially if he was randy and wanted to get her into bed, which was a lot of the time, and because she'd desperately wanted to get away from home. She'd known that he would give her the sort of life her mum had never had, that she wouldn't be bringing up her kids on benefits, and that she wouldn't be spending her days hiding from debt collectors or even worse, bailiffs, so, here she was, 21 years old and married to a 28 year old Sergeant in the sodding army so that she'd ended up living in a tiny, poky Edwardian terraced house off the base. Living out hadn't stopped him from continually going on at her that squaddies' wives were not in the same social whatsit as them and that she should be looking to make friends with the other Sergeants' wives, who all seemed to live in married quarters which meant that they were a sort of clique, not to mention the fact that she hated them all, mainly on principle because Ian kept on at her to make friends with them.
One of his 'lower social standing' wives and her old man, Steve, were coming to the dinner party, something that had infuriated Ian more than somewhat when she'd first told him, but Laura was Molly's best friend and she'd thought she'd most likely gonna need her moral support to get through it, in case it turned into a nightmare. The other guests were two of Ian's fellow Sergeants, a female he worked with called Jessie, and her partner, a girl that Molly barely knew but who totally intimidated her because Jessie was blonde, sleek and well spoken, with legs up to her bum, obviously middle class and well up herself, everything that Molly wasn't, and her boyfriend, Justin, who worked in advertising apparently, a bloke that neither of them had ever even met but a bloke who was bound to have a clever mouth. Laura had described Jessie as a bookend with the boss's wife, another sleek and superior blonde called Rebecca who had a reputation for looking down her snotty little nose at everybody and everything. The other couple were Jock, a taciturn Scottish Sergeant, Molly didn't even know what his real name was, and Ian certainly didn't, and his mousy wife Lydia who never seemed to say a word to anyone, so that Molly was now convinced that the whole thing was going to be an unmitigated disaster. She'd got no idea what she was going to talk about with any of them, except Laura, who was bound to get pissed and Steve, who would most likely follow his wife's example.
Ian had eventually pitched up less than an hour before the first torturer was due to show, when Molly was past saying anything apart from "Where the actual fuck have you been?" far too late to have another go at the lemon tart if it had curdled, which it hadn't by some miracle, and with only enough time left for him to have a shower and a shave, which meant that Molly had had to go and clean and tidy the sodding bathroom again and find some more clean towels. He'd insisted that the traffic had held him up, that there'd been some sort of accident, but Molly was now past caring whether anything was edible or not, she wished that she'd just gone to Marks during the week and bought ready chilled stuff, bunged it in the freezer, then done a quick defrost and microwave job as Laura had suggested and then she could have pretended it was all home cooked. Laura said that that's what she always did when her in-laws visited.
Molly prodded the chicken dish dubiously with a fork, it looked as if it was cooked, might even be a bit dry maybe but at least it wasn't still bloody and wouldn't poison anyone, the dauphinoise potatoes smelt as if they might have a touch too much garlic in them; it was just possible that she'd got confused between cloves and bulbs, but then everyone was eating them so she told herself that it most likely wouldn't matter that much.
A critical look in the mirror underlined her conviction that her dress hadn't looked nearly so short and tight the last time she'd worn it, and her 'fuck me' shoes with their 5 inch heels were decidedly uncomfortable, in fact she could hardly walk in them they hurt so much, but she'd had Laura's total seal of approval for her appearance, which was possibly a bit of a mixed blessing. Laura was wearing some long floaty ethnic type skirt which you could see knickers and legs through, a la Princess Di, and a very, very low cut black top with spaghetti straps and no bra, so that Steve kept telling her not to lean forward for anything because she had, to say the least, generous tits which she was in real danger of flashing.
The starter went down well, both Molly and Laura had agreed that she couldn't do much damage to mixed bits of melon and it was quite nice because it had been in the fridge and it was a steamy hot evening, so that even with all the windows open it was so hot in their dining room that they were all sweating and drinking too much. The dining table was a bit cramped, it only comfortably sat four or maybe six at a pinch if you didn't mind other peoples elbows, so they were almost sitting on top of each other on a mixture of chairs, some proper ones but others from the bedroom and even the one from the bathroom, and one that she'd borrowed from Laura. However it was cool in there in comparison to the kitchen which was fast approaching the environmental atmosphere of a tropical rain forest. Going backwards and forwards into the kitchen meant that Molly had drunk bottle after bottle of water from the fridge, she would have miles preferred to neck bucket loads of cold white wine, like the others, but was sure that getting hammered wouldn't be her brightest plan, however tempting it was and however much everyone else seemed to be putting away.
The only other sober person was Ian's boss, 'call me Charles', and he was driving so he was on the water as well, and he'd actually made a valiant effort to eat the dried out chicken and the potatoes that were so garlicky they made your eyes water, which was more than his bloody wife had done. She'd pushed the food round her plate and then put her cutlery down neatly on the side of it and accepted another bread roll and glass of wine, so that Laura, who was well on her way to getting totally hammered, had smirked at Molly and nodded exaggeratedly in Rebecca's direction, pulling a face. Everyone else had eaten the food, well, as much as of it as they could stomach anyway, and Ian's boss had smiled at her as she'd collected up the plates, giving her the benefit of his lovely even white teeth and his exceptionally good looks. He had the sort of looks that intimidated her, looks that made her feel self-conscious, which just made her hate him even more than she already did. By now she hated all of them, even her husband, well, especially her husband, and had totally forgotten that this had all been her idea in the first place.
Jessie had said that she was going out to the garden for an after-dinner cigarette, and Ian got up to join her, so that Molly was on the point of reminding him that he was supposed to have given up, but then decided not to. He'd drunk a hell of a lot and he always used to smoke a lot when he was drunk, before he'd so-called given up that is, so she decided she'd save it for later to have a go at him, when everyone had gone home. Justin and Rebecca were putting the world to rights about something which sounded like politics, but which could have been anything and might as well have been advanced dolphin for all the sense she could make of it, while Charles chatted with Jock who was a totally miserable sod who'd hardly said a word all evening, apart from 'yes please' and 'no thanks', mainly 'yes' to more booze and 'no' to more food, and was, in fact, so quiet that Molly had at one point wondered whether he could speak, and his wife wasn't much better. She'd said bugger all and was now just sitting and fiddling with her wine glass and cutlery, looking bored shitless and still saying nothing.
Steve and Laura helped Molly clear the table and she got the dreaded lemon tart out of the fridge, and then patted herself on the back as she grated some chocolate on the top as per the recipe, thrilled that it did actually look like it was supposed to from the picture in the cookery book.
What didn't look like it was supposed to, even in the small amount of light that was shed through the kitchen window, was the sight of her husband in the shadows on one side of their tiny patio with his tongue down Jessie's throat, his hand down the top of her dress and her hand ferreting away down the front of his jeans.
Molly had gone outside to tell them that she was dishing up the pudding, and she knew from the instant she clocked them that this wasn't the first time, there was something about the way they fitted together that made it obvious that they were a couple who were used to shagging but who couldn't at that moment for some reason and she was most likely looking at why it had taken him all that time to get to bleeding Waitrose and back. It was staring her in the face where he'd been while she was at home having a grade 'A' panic and that her shit had just become real ….
She didn't say a word to anyone when she went back to the dining room and then waited until they came back, laughing and joking together about their lack of self-control in still being smokers in the face of all the disapproval, and, as they sat down ready to eat the lemon tart she'd been so proud of, the one she now felt like throwing at them, she'd tried very hard to keep a lid on the way she felt, to save it for later.
"Enjoy that did you?" She saw from his face that he knew her well enough to know that something was up and he shook his head slightly at her, dreading whatever was coming next and hoping desperately that he was wrong. "You're shagging her, aren't you?" She gritted her teeth and snarled into his face and then started yelling, unable to sit on it until the audience had gone home "and don't bovver fucking denying it, I saw you, and was that where you was all sodding afternoon, when you was supposed to be home here helping me?" Her total disregard for the audience who didn't know where to look meant that she slammed her glass down so hard that the wine slopped out and spread across the white sheet she was using as a tablecloth. That was enough to make her charge towards the door as quickly as her shoes would let her, bashing Ian's arm out of the way and ignoring him as he tried to stop her and say something to her about being wrong, and about how she should just wait a minute and that they'd talk about it later, while the rest of their guests sat in a sort of stunned and embarrassed silence.
"Molly" 'Call me Charles' murmured her name and started to get up when she pushed past him, he sat down again hastily when she screamed in his face that this was none of his fucking business and then flounced out of the room, slamming the front door hard on her way out to the street, all set to escape from the scene she'd just created.
-OG-
She couldn't walk another step because her shoes had become instruments of torture that had made her hobble after less than five minutes when the adrenalin of flouncing out had worn off, so that she'd had to find somewhere to sit down and was now sitting dry eyed on a low wall in front of someone's house, trying very hard to re-group. She didn't want to go home, well she couldn't just walk back in the house like nothing had happened in case they were all still sitting there eating their pudding. She had no phone, no money, no cards or anything, not even her keys, so she had no choice but to sit and try and disappear into the shadows created by the huge trees on the edge of the garden and to re-live what had just happened.
The longer she sat there the more her imagination went into over-drive, so that she'd convinced herself that most of them would have gone home by now so that Ian and that little slag were most probably shagging the life out of each other on the sofa, or even in her bed. She wanted to scream at him and ask him whether Jessie had ever been to the house before, maybe sleeping there when she'd been spending the night in east Ham, although sleeping probably didn't have much to do with it or whether Jessie was the reason he was often so randy when he came home, whether he'd been lusting after her when he'd tried to jump Molly as soon as he came in through the front door, and she wanted to kill him. She bit her lip and looked up at the sky and willed her angry tears to go back where they'd come from.
It was still a very hot and sticky night and she could smell barbecue from somewhere near, which reminded her that she hadn't actually eaten anything very much all evening and the smell was making her starving hungry and that drinking all that water had been a bit of a mistake because she now needed to pee quite desperately.
A couple of drunks on their way home from the pub had paid her a lot of attention and now there was some kerb crawler who'd been driving slowly up and down the road, obviously looking from side to side, and who'd now stopped his car alongside where she was sitting. She had the feeling that whoever he was he'd mistaken her for a hooker, but if he thought that this was going to turn into his Pretty Woman moment then he was going to be sadly mistaken. She was aware that the cheeky fucker had leaned across, leaving his engine running, and had opened the passenger side door so she got off the wall and started hobbling away as fast as her bloody shoes would let her, she wished now that she'd taken them off while she was sitting on the wall and had abandoned them to walk on in her bare feet.
"Molly" The voice that was calling her was familiar, as she determinedly kept on walking without looking at him "Get in the car"
"Leave me alone" She knew exactly who it was "I told you, this is none of your fucking business"
"Oh, just be a good girl and get in the bloody car" His voice sounded weary and resigned, as if he was talking to a very small and very badly behaved child "I've been driving up and down these fucking roads looking for you for well over an hour and I'm not leaving you here now I've found you. If I follow you I'll get arrested for kerb crawling, so just stop being bloody stupid and get in the car. We've had enough drama for one night without you getting yourself raped and murdered and I'd never forgive myself if they found your body in a skip in the morning"
-OG-
Author's notes: We had a little break, a short holiday in France where my brother lives, how come the weather was lovely before we got there, allegedly, and then it promptly p***ed down every day? Ended up spending the last couple of days getting out my lap top …..
Oh and thanks to Dusty Springfield…..