"Daddy, I'm hungry"
Shit, Molly jumped away from Charles as though she'd been shot as Sam arrived at the kitchen door, Charles had been so busy kissing her ear that they'd sort of forgotten all about Sam, well not forgotten him as such, but had forgotten to check what he was up to, and had forgotten that he could get fed up with playing in the garden at any second and would then come in to find one of them.
"Right, hungry, okay, I'm cooking"
Charles had very definitely recovered his equilibrium much faster than she had as he grinned at his son and winked at a very flushed and extremely flustered Molly.
"But Daddy, I wanted coco-pops, Molly said I could have some today, she said that I could help her finish off the packet"
"I am going to cook scrambled eggs for all of us, I'm going to show Molly how they should be cooked"
"Oh, very funny, your dad thinks he's hilarious, Sammie, but he's not, he's just being horrible to me 'n I've told him before, it weren't me that cooked 'em, it was Piotr in the kitchen, I never cooked nothing"
"Oh yes, Piotr, I remember him"
Molly didn't grace that observation with a reply as Charles lifted his eyebrows then smirked at her obviously enjoying himself hugely.
"But Daddy, I've said before, I don't think I like strangled eggs"
Sam's plaintive wail and horrified little face made Molly nudge him with her shoulder and giggle conspiratorially as she whispered, in something of a very loud stage whisper, that they could always sneak some coco-pops later, once Charles had finished pretending that he was auditioning for Masterchef. Sam's giggles made his father start playing up to his audience so that he embarked on a running commentary, turning round to demonstrate what he was doing with each of the ingredients, splashing milk all over the cooker hob as well as into the pan before putting in about half as much butter as he should have done and then brandishing eggs around before cracking them and beating them madly with a fork picking the bits of shell out as he did it, so that a giggling Molly asked him to please let them know when it was time to start the applause.
"I'll give you applause" He turned round again to look at her, doing his level best to try and put on a stern army Captain face "I really don't know what you're taking about Miss Dawes, I'm obviously a culinary genius who should be doing this all the time, and anyway if you are not very careful I'll put you on a charge"
"You can't do that Daddy" Sam was now almost beside himself with his giggles at the way his father was behaving "Molly's not in the army"
"Oh no, she's not is she? I forgot, never mind I'll think of something"
"I'm sure you will, but" Sam wasn't the only one who was giggling furiously, Molly pointed to the cooker behind him where he'd turned the gas full on under the pan with the eggs in it "Culinary genius or not, you might wanna check your eggs, oh and your toast as well cos I think I can smell some'ing burning"
"Oh bugger" Charles turned back to the cooker and did his best to rescue his culinary masterpiece by yanking the toast out of his very temperamental toaster and yelping as he touched it, then blowing the flames off and frantically stirring the over-cooked eggs.
"Daddy that's a bad word" Sam was now giggling even harder than before "Molly, when can we have our coco-pops? Can we have them now please?"
"Yeah" She was also giggling even harder as she got the packet and waved it about in Charles' direction "Oi, Jamie Oliver, do you want some?"
"Nope, I'm going to have eggs, you two don't know what's good for you" He looked for a few moments at the mountain of dried out scrambled egg which he'd piled on top of the singed toast on his plate "On second thoughts, maybe I'll just have some toast instead, have we got any Marmite left?"
"Bleuugh, that's horrible Daddy"
Sam was quite obviously enjoying the very relaxed company of his father as he pulled a disgusted face at the slice of toast Charles was eating whilst making exaggerated faces of ecstasy at each bite.
"Calm down, mate, it's only a bit of toast"
Sam had almost finished running his fingers round his empty cereal bowl trying to make sure that there wasn't a single drop of chocolatey milk left clinging to the sides, when he decided to drop his nuclear bomb into the room.
"Daddy?"
He'd stopped giggling so that he had this serious expression on his face as he kicked his feet against the underneath of the table, something he'd been told repeatedly not to do "You know how you said that maybe Molly could come and take me out sometimes after I've gone back to school?"
"Yup"
"And you know how she's got all those brothers, I mean, she's got three and I haven't even got one, and she said she'd take me to play with them one day, so can I? Pleeeeeaase"
"We've already talked about this Scamp and do you remember what I said? That you'll have to ask your mum, remember?"
"Yeah but Daddy, Molly's your girlfriend now isn't she?" Sam was puzzled as he looked from one to the other knowing from the sudden atmosphere at the breakfast table that there was something wrong but not knowing what it was, so decided to back up what he'd said "I saw you kissing her this morning before breakfast"
Shit, Molly waited in vain for Charles to say something as he got to his feet and leaned against the cupboards instead, okay, what she was actually waiting for was for him to tell a bloody whopping great lie to his son, to issue some sort of formal denial instead of which he just bloody well stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, his hands tucked under his armpits while he looked down at the floor, a stance that she hadn't seen since the day he'd made Piotr leave her the fuck alone. She didn't know whether he was mad at her or at Sam or at himself, or if he was mad at all, it was impossible for her to read how he was feeling as he stood there, silent, looking down but she had this horrible sneaking suspicion that he was smirking.
"It was just a friends sort of a kiss, Sammie, me and your Dad well, we're friends, it was just to say that you and me, well we've had a lovely time, we've had a lot of fun, haven't we? and your Dad was just sayin' well, …. It were just a friendly kiss goodbye, that's all, nothing more"
Sam's face was a puzzled mask of dismay as he looked at her, then turned and looked at Charles before turning back to look long and hard at her, narrowing his eyes, before turning back once more to Charles, his eyes now filling with tears as he spoke. There was a tangible atmosphere in the room that he didn't understand, but every instinct he had was telling him that he was somehow responsible for whatever it was that was going on, that it had something to do with what he'd said, but there was an important point that he wanted them to understand and pay attention to. He was right and he knew he was right and he couldn't understand why Molly was telling him he was wrong.
"No, that's not right, Molly, Daddy and you, you were kissing each other …. well, Daddy was kissing you like when people kiss each other on television or in films, like that film we saw the other day, I know, 'cos I saw"
"Shit, what's he been watching?" Molly heard Charles' muttered comment as she moved to hug Sam, the last thing she wanted was for him to be upset on their last morning as she shot an appalled look at Charles who didn't seem to see what a fucking disaster in the making this was. Sam only had to say something to his mother for everything to go tits up again, there was no way that Simon was going to turn a blind eye, especially as it was true this time.
"That Quantam of Whatsits, but don't start kidding yourself, you're not James Bond" She was suddenly giggling as she hissed at him, realising that he wasn't a bit phased "Come on Sammie let's go and make sure you've got all your Lego and don't worry I'm sure Mummy will let me come and take you to play with me brothers"
"Are you? I'm not"
Molly hoped that his lip reading skills were in full working order as she shot him another infuriated look, he still hadn't moved from his position up against the kitchen cupboards, and was definitely smirking as she mouthed the words 'Shut the fuck up' over Sam's head, he was not helping in the least.
-OG-
"MUMMY"
Sammie had been going backwards and forwards to the window checking the empty street for any sign of his mother's arrival for the past hour or so even though both Molly and Charles had told him that she wouldn't be there for ages. Molly gave Charles a tentative little smile as Rebecca's car drew up outside, she was very aware of how difficult this must be for him and that despite all that clowning around at breakfast time, and then that lovely conversation with Sam which he seemed to think was bloody funny, he had to be feeling sad, but he'd retreated behind that shuttered expression of his so that he gave her only the slightest lift of the corner of his mouth in response.
Sammie flew to the front door and flung it wide open, not giving his mother any time to ring the bell, or to use her own key, she was early, of course she was early, almost an hour earlier than she'd said she'd be there, the way people always do show up early when you're dreading them turning up at all, and Molly had been dreading her arrival. She started swearing under her breath because she realised that the bloody woman turning up this early meant that there wasn't going to be any chance whatsoever of her kissing Charles goodbye, getting rid of Sammie for a couple of minutes was one thing, but getting shot of Rebecca? Probably not a snowball's chance in hell! She would see him later, she knew that, well that was the plan anyhow, so it wasn't that, well, not really that, but there was still a bit of her that was worried that as soon as she disappeared he'd have second thoughts. She wanted to say goodbye to him properly and to just say that she'd ring him later, or really she just wanted to see that expression on his face to keep her going until, well … .
But Sammie was thrilled to see his mum and flung himself into her arms and was now chattering away nineteen to the dozen telling her all about the things that they'd been doing and the places that they'd been and to Molly's sensitive ears her name seemed to crop up with an alarming regularity, she was shit-scared that he was going to drop his bombshell again any second.
She'd forgotten just how sort of 'expensive' Rebecca was, she was very posh and very well-spoken and looked very well-groomed, so that she made Molly feel like a scruffy urchin, something she'd forgotten about his ex-wife. There wasn't a hair on her sleek blonde head that was out of place and her make-up was immaculate, she hadn't even got any wrinkles in her clothes from sitting in the car for hours, clothes that Molly was bloody sure had never seen the inside of the changing room at Top Shop.
Standing off to one side watching and listening and pretending that she was a happy little soldier, a Mary Poppins as Charles had said, and doing her best to look cheerfully 'nanny like' and to paste a genuine looking smile on her gob, she could see that Rebecca was equally pleased to see Sam and that the 'wicked witch' persona she'd attributed to her was, as Charles had said, a load of old cobblers. It was plain to see that Sam adored her, and that she adored him, which was nice, even if she'd personally have preferred it if the woman had been just a little bit of an horrible old cow.
Of course she was well pleased for Sammie that his mum was …. okay, but it was just that she hated watching the woman put talons dripping with blood, or not really blood and not really talons either, but manicured nails that were varnished with bright red polish, not a bitten edge or a scruffy chipped one in sight, but still, they looked like they was dripping with blood and they were mauling Charles' arm. She was clutching at him, holding onto his arm like she had it in a bloody vice, and she kept on moving her hands all over him, well, up and down his arm. Molly wanted to run across the room, go right up to them and swipe her bloody hand off him. And Rebecca was doing her fucking best to shut her out of the conversational circle, was side-lining her very effectively by keeping on standing right up close to him with her back to Molly and then whispering in his ear, so that he kept on bending his head to one side towards her to listen, which meant that Molly didn't only want to swipe her hand off his arm, she wanted to smack her one as well.
She knew that Charles kept on trying to catch her eye over the top of Rebecca's head, that he wanted to make some sort of reassuring face at her, but she was avoiding his eyes, she wanted him to suffer for some reason she couldn't define. Sammie began to tell his mum all about them going on the trip to Hengistbury and how his dad hadn't taken him down to the beach this time like he had when they'd been there before with all of them, Rebecca as well as Charles, a statement that made Charles shoot a quick and very uncomfortable glance in Molly's direction, he didn't look at all happy at where this conversation was heading.
"The sea was too rough Mummy and Daddy said we wouldn't go down there because Molly was a bit scared when it was rough like that and that it wouldn't be kind to make her go any closer to the big waves or to leave her standing at the top on her own"
Fuck, Sammie, that was a gem, Molly looked at Charles beseechingly, trying to beg him with her eyes to get in there and change the bloody subject before Sam got onto the 'girlfriend' bit, to contradict him or something, because apart from anything else she couldn't remember Charles saying any of that, but supposed that he must of done, cos Sammie wouldn't have made it up. She just hoped that he hadn't told Sammie that she couldn't swim so he could tell his mother all about that as well, although she couldn't remember now whether she'd told "Captain Big Mouth" that or not, still she couldn't remember telling him that she was scared to go down to the beach either. As far as she could remember he'd said it was because it was going to rain, nothing to do with her.
Standing off to one side of this delightful family reunion and looking everywhere but at Charles, Molly had the same bloody feeling of being a spare part at a sodding wedding that she'd had when she'd first arrived in this house. It weren't that Rebecca was horrible to her or nothing, it was just this feeling that this woman was looking straight down her nose at her and she had no bloody right to be doing that. Rebecca hadn't really acknowledged her properly when she'd arrived, she hadn't looked at her face once, in fact she'd looked straight past her shoulder whenever she'd said anything to her, mind you, there hadn't been a whole lot of that, she hadn't even asked her how Sammie had been, in fact for all that she and her family were so bloody loaded she had no bleeding manners at all, was just plain bloody rude.
Charles caught her eye and jerked his head for her to follow him into the kitchen on the pretext of checking whether or not she'd got all her stuff up together, but Rebecca managed to put a stop to any chance they might have had of a private chat by following right behind. She'd sent Sammie off to check his bedroom on his own, something that Molly thought was taking a hell of a chance, he was only seven for fuck sake, not even eight yet, which didn't make him exactly reliable.
Eventually and inevitably the car was packed and a tearful Sam was strapped in his booster seat. His father was standing next to the car with his hand on the roof, face a blank expressionless mask as he listened to whatever his ex-wife was saying while Molly stood off to one side, out of earshot and asking herself whether she was totally bleeding nuts to be leaving him like this, without even a proper goodbye, when every instinct she'd got was telling her to go and hug him and tell him she'd see him later.
-OG-
"Hello" He motioned her into the house with his head, a huge grin of surprised welcome plastered all over his face "I thought you were going to ring me, I was going to come and get you, wasn't I?"
"You lied to me, how could you lie to me like that?"
-OG-
A/N: Thank you for your reviews, I am so pleased that so many of you are staying with me and this, Chapter 13 is almost ready so will be asap.
