Catterick Garrison
September 2022
Charles
He parked and looked around for Molly's car which was missing from the driveway, so he checked his watch and began to wonder where they were, it was too late for them still to be on the school run and she hadn't mentioned any plans this morning at breakfast. Mind you, he smiled to himself; breakfast was so chaotic in their house, the noise level reminiscent of the Dawes household, that it was sometimes hard to remember who you were, let alone anything else, especially if you compared it to the almost cathedral quiet of his parent's home in Bath. It had often occurred to him in the middle of the chaos how much he had missed out on when he was a kid, how lonely it had been by comparison and how different it was for his kids, although he was pretty sure that Molly would swap some of the noise and mess for bit of peace and quiet, even the chance to be bit lonely sometimes, impossible with three kids, and he wondered if that was a bit of what was wrong with her.
She hadn't been herself for a while, nothing you could put your finger on, just not the Molly he remembered from their Salisbury days, which might have been a bit of an unrealistic expectation, too much had changed in the last four years to expect everything to stay the same, but he missed the Molly who hadn't been able to keep her hands off him, who had taken the piss out of him at every turn and had been feisty and funny and very kind, even to his old bat of a mother. Oh, she was still all those things, except maybe for finding him quite so irresistible in bed and he missed that, but he put it down partly to the sheer exhaustion of dealing with Millie all day.
Millie was their honeymoon baby. They hadn't actually been able to get away for two weeks or even two days of sun and sand and glorious sex until they had been married for over three months. The fact that Molly had still been breastfeeding Marcus meant that she couldn't go away and leave him behind, not that she wanted to, so they had waited until he was weaned and had then, with a fair amount of anxiety, left Chloe and Marcus with his mum and dad who had come up to stay for two days. Molly was anxious because she said she was convinced that she soon as she was out of sight, her mother-in-law would be potty training 6 month old Marcus to try and match the achievements of his father who had, apparently, been born walking, talking, completely potty trained and able to feed himself with a knife and fork. Charles had shrugged and said that he couldn't help it if he was born perfect.
They'd had a weekend break on the coast at Hunstanton in Norfolk, far enough away so that it felt like a break but close enough that they could get home quickly if there was a problem, and it was well away from grass and trees, which Molly still maintained gave her the willies, even though their house had a two acre garden with masses of both. There hadn't been any sun or sand, it was midwinter after all and pissing down with rain, but there had been lots of glorious sex. The honeymoon had been fun; they had behaved as though they had no responsibilities at all and had drunk probably far more than was strictly sensible, as they reminisced about a certain New Year's Eve on tour, hence Millie. Charles maintained that Millie was planned, they had agreed after Marcus that their next baby would be, so Molly had asked whether his planning had been done on the back of a fag packet, and if so, could she see it, because she couldn't remember anything about it, hastily adding that it was the planning she meant, not the sex, she hadn't been that pissed.
Charles went in to check the wall calendar in the kitchen to see if he could get a clue as to where they were and saw it was Chloe's dance class this afternoon, but knew it was very unusual for Molly to take the other two with her, especially Millie. One of the other mum's usually took Chloe with her daughter and Molly went and collected them, keeping Millie quiet and in one place for an hour, especially when there was music and other kids were dancing, would be a challenge for anyone.
Charles adored his younger daughter, well he adored all four of his kids if you include Sam, but Milly was special, she was a total nightmare, feisty, disobedient, defiant, downright naughty most of the time and at almost two, a complete tyrant, with an enchantingly loving side to her. The most commonly heard phrase in their house was "Stop it, Millie" and her first and most used word was 'no', closely followed by 'not' which she used to describe anything she wasn't going to do no matter how hard you struggled to distract her, strong willed didn't begin to describe it. She didn't look as much like Molly as mirror image Chloe, but she smiled her mother's enchanting smile, and her personality was pure Molly as she had been when he first knew her. So much so that he had a hard job not to laugh when she stood, tiny and utterly defiant in front of him saying "NOT" in almost exactly the same way as her mother had done when challenging him over an order.
He loved Molly as much now as he had done the day she'd met him at Brize Norton when 2 section had found out about them, the day he had realised just how lucky and happy he was, and he had loved her then as much as he had when they were stationed in Afghan, and he was scared that there was something going on with her at the moment, something she wouldn't talk about, something that she wasn't sharing with him.
Molly
His car on the drive drew a huge sigh of relief from Molly, at least tea time would be less of a disaster than the rest of the day had been, and she was totally knackered. The fact that Chloe's little mate hadn't been well enough to go to dancing this afternoon had been a bit of a blow, Molly had considered giving it a miss as well, but it didn't seem fair that Chloe should miss out on something she loved, just because her little sister was a total bleeding nightmare when the mood took her, and the mood had taken her this afternoon, big time. Taking Marcus with them was no problem, he was a good little boy, just wanted everyone to be happy, shy enough to worry his dad and not a bit violent, but even he'd lost his cool this afternoon and punched her back when she'd pulled his hair and bitten him with a big grin on her face, all because he wouldn't give her his sweets, she'd eaten hers. Molly knew she should tell him off, but there was only fifteen months between them and there were times when she felt Millie asked for it and she couldn't really blame the other two for fighting back.
Chloe undid her seat belt and then freed Marcus from his car seat, but refused point blank to undo Millie's straps to let her out of the car asking her mother why they couldn't just leave her there till tea time. Molly grinned at and shook her head then released the toddler who was now trying to undo her own straps and yelling 'not' and followed the other two to the front door where Charles was waiting, a big smile of welcome on his face and she felt the pang of lust that she always felt when he smiled at her. Millie stopped screaming and wriggling to get down from her arms and ran to her father, huge grin on her face and attached herself, as she always did, to his lower leg like a limpet so that he had to hobble. She didn't want him to pick her up, just loved to be attached to his leg like a manacle. He was laughing as he kissed Molly on the cheek,
"Hi, beautiful, you okay? Has she been a bloody nightmare?"
"Yup and yup" Molly laughed, glad that he was home, Millie was still naughty for him, but it did mean that she didn't have to deal with it. She knew that the way she felt wasn't to do with Millie, alright they clashed, they were almost bound to because she knew her baby was just like her, and that didn't exactly help, but she also knew that she was allowing Charlie to draw wrong conclusions because it avoided her having to be honest with him.
She knew she should be grateful, she had everything that she had ever wanted when she was a little girl enduring a grim childhood in East Ham. She had a lovely house with a lovely garden, even if it had far too many trees for her liking, her own car, a drop dead gorgeous husband who treated her as if she was perfect and three healthy, mostly happy kids and enough money to bring them up properly, so she had nothing really to worry about at all, and she was fucking miserable.
Chloe had settled in nicely to the little school that Charlie had insisted on, although Molly thought it was poncey, especially the uniform, and that Chloe would be fine in the garrison primary school, which she would have been, but Molly had to admit she was thriving in a school that only had 16 kids to a class. Marcus had just started nursery class at the same school where there were only 10 to a class and it suited him being with a small group of kids. He was tall for his age, thank God being his father's response, he had been scared that Marcus would be as tiny as Molly, and was painfully shy, hating to draw attention to himself so that he reminded Charles of himself before he went to boarding school. Molly kept saying that he was still a baby and that they had years before they needed to worry, and anyway he'd go to boarding school over her dead body.
The misery she felt had nothing to do with her husband or her kids, it had its roots in a conversation which she'd overheard in a Ladies cloakroom when she'd been five months pregnant with Millie and no matter how hard she'd tried, she hadn't been able to wipe it from her memory, even though it was more than two years ago now, she could still remember every word.
Author's notes: This is for all those who wanted to know what happened as a consequence of Charles and Molly being posted to Catterick 4 years ago. The first chapter is really setting the scene of their lives with their children and a hint of things to come. Please review for me.