I can hardly speak

My heart is beating so

It's been six weeks now and her majesty the Duchess has visited the last couple of weekends as usual, but she's hung about a bit which she never used to, I've got a feeling she don't approve of us being friendly although she hasn't got anything to worry about. Yeah, we're getting on okay and I'm really gonna miss him and living here when it comes to the end, although I have starting making some plans which is not like me, but I'd be kidding meself if I thought there was any chance of there being more between us than what there is. I remember what I thought the first time I clapped eyes on him and I still think he's drop dead gorgeous, probably one of the best looking blokes I've ever seen, and he really isn't the total arse I thought he was, but I have to be very careful not to think about him as anything more than me boss and maybe a sort of friend, because if I do I get very sort of uncomfortable when I'm around him. He's way out of my league and I don't wanna do anything to spoil my last few weeks here, like jump him or something cos that would be really stupid.

"Hey" I didn't see it straight away, mainly because I do try not to look at him too closely these days, just a quick glance then look away cos I'm shit scared he'll be able to tell, but I had to when he asked me straight out if I'd noticed "Notice anything? God, you're so unobservant, it's just as well you're not in the army"

"What am I s'posed to have noticed?"

"No crutch"

"Oh yeah, that's good innit?"

"You might sound a bit more pleased"

"I am pleased for you, course I am"

I'm telling the truth, I'm really glad that he's getting there but what the bloody hell does he expect? He seems to have forgot that once he's properly back on his feet, can manage the stairs 'n that, he'll be off home back to Bath or into Headley Court and I'll be down the road on me bike, so I'm hardly gonna be thrilled am I, however bad or selfish that is.

"Come on, tell me what's wrong" I really thought that she'd be happy to see the back of the crutches, I know I am, but I know her well enough now to know when something's not quite right.

"You'll be off home soon and I'm really, really pleased for you, I am, honest, but it means I'm gonna have to look for something else, I don't wanna end up in another nail bar and I don't want to start burning people's skin off again"

"Are you trying to get rid of me? Stop talking about going off to torture people, it'll be a few weeks yet before I can even think of going home or anything like that happens, so let's stop worrying about it and go and watch some mindless drivel instead"

I have got no idea what I'm going to do about her, I hate the thought of not seeing her face light up when she laughs or the look she gives me when I take the piss out of her, or of not being able to watch her when she's concentrating on something and doesn't realise that I'm there and the way she colours up when she does notice me looking.

I got a lecture from my bloody mother last weekend about being careful about distances and boundaries and other bloody rubbish, so I guess she must have noticed that I have got very fond of Molly, that I'm drawn to her, and mum's probably right when she talks about different worlds, although I wouldn't tell her that, but what Molly just said about having to leave is the first clue I've had about how she feels, because most of the time she doesn't even look at me properly.

The thing that does worry me a lot is that I haven't said anything to her at all about Rebecca, or Sam for that matter, and I don't think my mother can have mentioned them, because Molly has certainly not said anything to me that would indicate that she knows. I don't know why I haven't said anything, it's just that the subject has never come up.

We talked about her family today, or at least she did, I just listened. She talked about her mother who sounds about as far removed from mine as it is possible for two women to get, even bearing in mind that her mum is a lot younger, but she sounds nice, if a bit downtrodden, which would explain Molly's fierce determination to be independent. She talked about her grandmother who has obviously passed on her 'stroppy' genes to her granddaughter, together with a slightly weird sense of humour and she talked about her brothers and sisters, of which there appear to be several hundred. She obviously misses them all dreadfully and loves them all dearly and I envy her.

I used to long for a sibling when I was a kid, not a sister because I didn't know anything about girls when I was a kid, I didn't even know any so they were a totally alien species, but I wanted a brother desperately. He'd have to be younger so that I could boss him about of course, but still a brother to play with when all my friends were busy doing other stuff and to share things like Christmas and family holidays.

She only talked a little bit about her father, who she called the 'fuckwit' and her relationship with him, makes my relationship with my dad look almost close. My dad spent most of my childhood as an 'absentee' father, he felt like a stranger who popped in and out of my life. I know now that it was not his choice, but because he's in the diplomatic corps, or he was, he's retired now, and he was always being sent to places which mum considered outlandish or unsuitable for me, but I wonder now whether that was because she didn't fancy them herself.

I am very aware of the way I felt as a child when I think about Sammie, both being an only child and having a father he rarely sees, I haven't seen him for months now because Rebecca uses my access time with him as a stick to beat me with for my failures as a husband.

Molly reckons her dad has done his level best to fuck her life up, she says he's drink dependent, or anyway spends a hell of a lot of his time and what money he has got in the pub or just plain pissed and that keeping her off school or allowing her to stay at home to help with whichever was the newest baby is just one of the things she blames him for. Now that she's grown up she doesn't want anything more to do with him, which is very sad. I really felt like giving her a hug to try and wipe that expression off her face.

-OG-

I talked a bit about my lot today and it made me homesick for mum and the kids, but it's a home that I'll never live in again, no matter what happens when Charles goes home and I leave here, I won't be going back there. I was beginning to get a bit, well you know, so I needed to change the subject and there was one of them old films on Film 4, so I told him that I'd read about it in the paper and that I wanted to watch it.

"Oh Christ, not another one of your creaky old black and white things?"

"You were the one what told me to watch old films, and anyhow they're not creaky, they're classic"

"Who says?"

"Clever blokes, well the one what wrote the blurb in the paper anyhow"

"Oh well must be true then"

"Sarky bugger"

-OG-

I've gotta admit that he was right, these people in the film, which was so old it was all sort of grey and grainy which made it bloody hard to see what was what, they was all talking as though they had marbles in their gobs, all terribly posh and I'm sure they was reading it from a script that we couldn't see. He was being really bloody annoying and laughing and picking holes in everything they was saying and then wouldn't shut up about the way they was saying it, so I started arguing with him, not because I thought he was wrong, he wasn't, but because I was actually enjoying bickering with him and getting up his nose. He still don't seem to realise when I'm winding him up.

We were having this great long squabble about whether someone would actually say "Hi honey, I'm home" when they come in through their own front door. He reckons it was pretty bloody stupid because it was obvious who had come in, they had a key, and who else would just walk in and where else would they just let themselves in like that, except their own home? It took quite a while for me to realise that he was only winding me up and that was after I started arguing with him for the sake of it and that actually I agree with him that it's a pretty dumb thing to say.

"It's just one of them things that people say, innit?"

"Not the people I know"

"Smartass"

-OG-

I wanted to wipe that slightly lost expression off her face when she finished talking about her father, so I was deliberately winding her up when we were watching this dreadful old film, I was trying to take her mind off the discussion about her family, but then she started getting annoyed with me and sometimes I really do find it very hard not to laugh at her when she does that. Not that the film was in any way watchable, it wasn't, it was absolutely bloody dire, terrible cut glass BBC type accents, wooden acting, if you could call it that, and a non-existent plot, it all combined to make a film that was almost funny it was so bad. Molly argued with everything I said, although I could see that she was now arguing for the sake of it and was struggling to keep a straight face as she pretended to be enthralled by the film, she just wasn't going to admit how bloody awful it was. Sometimes she can be as stubborn as me.

Eventually I shut up and started reading my book, or trying to, but I could tell that she was bored stupid by the film, anyway we'd missed most of it when we were arguing, so I don't think she had a clue what was going on, but just wasn't prepared to give in and switch it off. I was also very aware that she kept flicking little glances in my direction and then looking back at the screen really quickly because our eyes kept meeting as we glanced at each other at the same moment and then both of us smiled and looked away as if we were having a conversation without any words.

Every instinct I've got was telling me to just go over there, put my arms round her and kiss her and there was something about the way she kept looking at me that told me that she wanted me to do exactly that, but it wouldn't end there and I wasn't sure any more where it was heading. Well, I know where it would be heading at that moment, but it was the long term I was getting concerned about.

-OG-

I went to make a cup of hot chocolate after that bloody film finished, God it was absolutely bleeding awful, but I wouldn't turn it off before it was done because I was suddenly worried about what I would do next. I knew he kept on looking at me and the look on his face and his smile meant that I had to keep reminding meself that I'd made a resolution that I wouldn't jump him cos it would most likely be the most stupid thing I could do, and anyhow what if I was wrong, what if it was just me what felt like that, how bleeding awkward would that be?

I never went back in the sitting room after cos I could hear him watching the news and I wasn't sure what I'd be going back in there for, so I just called out that I was going to bed to read and that his hot chocolate was in the kitchen and not to let it get cold. He shouted something back like "Yes Mum" and I laughed and went to me room and closed the door, then spent more than an hour lying there on the bed wondering whether he was gonna knock and come in or whether I could get up enough guts to go and knock on his.

-OG-

I slept badly so it was really early when I went in the kitchen to make a cuppa, not even properly light yet. I thought about getting some breakfast , maybe eating some coco-pops, he's been making me try different stuff, but none of it tastes as good as coco-pops, but I was still all churned up inside so that I didn't know if I was hungry or felt a bit sick so I was checking to see if I'd got any e-mails instead when he made me jump out of me bleeding skin. I thought he was still asleep cos I couldn't hear him moving about and he's normally a noisy bugger in the mornings, crashing about putting that Nespresso thingy on, he don't ask me to do it no more, not since he had to buy a new one cos I forgot the water and buggered the other one.

"Okay?"

"Shit, you scared the shitting daylights out of me, what you doing up so bleeding early?"

"Sorry, I could say the same to you, couldn't you sleep?"

I shrugged, I really, really didn't want to talk about why it had taken me a week to get off last night and why I'd kept waking up during the night and had been wide awake at the bloody crack of dawn. Mind I felt really awkward standing there in the kitchen in me knickers and 't' shirt because whatever it was I felt had been there last night was still bloody there wasn't it.

"Molly, I wondered if you'd like to go out tonight, with me I mean? We could go out and get something to eat"

"Are you having a go at my cooking again?"

"Of course" he laughed "What do you think?"

"I'd love to" Is he kidding, what did he think I was gonna say? NO? "Are you sure you're up to it?" Oh well done Molly, suggest it's not a good idea, why don't you? magic ….. not!

"Of course I am, I'll have a rest this afternoon, just to make sure I don't fall asleep in the soup so that you won't have to carry me home, okay?"

"Okay"

-OG-

I didn't sleep well last night, my mind kept turning over with 'what if' and 'if only' so that when I heard her moving about at sparrow's fart, I gave up trying to get any more sleep and got up to make a coffee. I knew she wouldn't make it for me, she won't touch the bloody thing since she wrecked my old one, not that I cared particularly, it was temperamental and it'd had some pretty hard use, a lot of it in a dusty, dirty war zone, so it was about due to be replaced anyway, but poor Molly was horrified, so if I want coffee I have to get up and make it myself.

At some point in the sleepless small hours I'd decided that I would ask her to come out with me for a meal tonight, it would be good to get out of here, to go and eat like a normal couple on a normal date, to go somewhere neutral where we can talk and see whether it's at all possible for us to make any plans. I really can't imagine letting her go out of my life and I don't give a flying fuck what anyone else, and that includes my interfering mother, has got to say about it.

-OG-

I am trying to sleep because I promised her I would while she's out doing God knows what since she says she's worried about whether or not I'm up to going out tonight, I mean I know I'm a lot older than her and I know she's only saying it because she cares, but for fuck's sake, that makes me feel a bit like the 90 year old victim of some geriatric disease.

-OG-

A/N: Thank you for your feedback, please keep on letting me know if you are enjoying this.

Lily is a Beagle, I know, I know, everyone kept telling us not to get a Beagle because they're hard to train (try impossible?) but they are a really good breed if someone is allergic to dog hair, like my cockwomble, because they don't shed. She is also adorably pretty or just plain adorable, even if she does career madly round the garden for 20 minutes, and we have a biggish garden, and then decide to come in and pee on the carpet!