"Now, this subpoena" He looked up "There never was an actual enquiry, because the patient" He looked down again to check the details "Corporal Mackintosh, is that right?" Molly nodded "Well, the post mortem showed that he died of natural causes, that he actually had an aneurism, which is ….."
"Yeah I know what an aneurism is" She couldn't stop herself from interrupting then regretted it, it felt as if she'd been rude, but her sense of relief was so enormous that she could feel beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead and under the hair on the back of her neck, it was still awful that he'd died like that, but he hadn't got hold of any drugs or hoarded his sleeping pills or nothing, he hadn't killed himself and she couldn't in any way be responsible. She'd kept on saying to everyone that had asked her that she was sure she'd watched him take his pills because that was what she did, but there'd been a small nugget of doubt in her head and she'd never been entirely sure that people believed her, because had she? Or had she just assumed that that's what she'd done because that's what she always did?
"Fair enough, now what I haven't been able to establish is whether there is going to be a Coroner's Inquest. Army Legal Services are notoriously slow to answer any sort of requests for information, but if there is an Inquest it will mean that your subpoena is still relevant, or whether, as is far more likely, that it all went away when they established the cause of death. Now, the best course of action that we can take is for us to write a grovelling apology on your behalf for not keeping the court informed of your whereabouts, because even if it does all go away you must never ignore a court, military or civil. As I believe I told your father, Charles, it was unlikely you'd be sent to jail, that even if there had been a warrant issued you'd probably be looking at a fine, but, and you should make no mistake about it, a subpoena is a court instruction, an order if you like, and if the circumstances had been different you could well be looking at being charged with contempt and for that you could have been jailed" As she listened to his lecture she couldn't help feeling like naughty schoolgirl who was being well and truly ticked off, although she knew that he was right "But let's not worry about that now, we'll hold off on sending the letter until we hear back from ALS as to what's happening, but I think you can probably relax. We'll let you know when the letter's ready for signature and if you will need to attend an inquest, so be sure and let us have your change of address if you move" He smiled to show that the last bit had been intended as a bit of a joke admonishment.
"Really? That's it?"
"Certainly that's it, just come in, sign the letter when it's ready and that's it"
Molly felt the tingle of tears prickling her eyes as Charles stood up and shook Clive's hand, the pair of them discussing some mutual acquaintance, and Clive asking him to pass a golf club message onto Mr. J while she didn't take in a word they were saying to each other and for a second or two didn't even notice that his hand was extended towards her waiting for her to shake it and say goodbye.
"What about the bill?" She whispered to Charles as they left Clive's office, bracing herself for getting ready to ask if she could pay in instalments.
"That's the beauty of dad being secretary of the golf club, there's always someone useful and no bill" Charles put his hand on the back of her neck sliding it under her hair and steering her towards the stairs which led back to the exit onto the High Street, and then grabbed her hand and began to pull her along behind him slightly.
"Come on, slowcoach, we need to celebrate that we don't have to ask anyone to bake a cake with a file in it"
"Bleeding comedian"
She didn't know whether to laugh or cry as they got to the bottom of the stairs and out of the door to the street where Charles swept her up in a hug and spun her round despite the bitterly cold wind and the rain that was coming down in torrents. Molly pulled up the hood of her parka and tugged up the zip but Charles was soaked through in the seconds it took him to struggle into his jacket, his expensive cashmere jumper was sticking to him and his hair was flattened against his skull as the raindrops ran down his face and dripped off his nose.
"Shit, what are you crying for? " Rain was also dripping off her face but it was now mingling with the tears that were pouring from her eyes "There's nothing to cry about, come on, it's over, it's finished with"
"Tell you what, it might be best if you just please go away and leave me alone, you don't have to stay, I'll get the train back, I'll be okay"
"Don't do this to me" He muttered as he wrapped his arms round her and pushed the hood of her parka back a bit then brushed her hair away from her hot, damp face and kissed her forehead "Don't push me away" He tried to laugh as he kissed her forehead for a second time "Come on, let's go and get in the car where I won't be standing in a puddle getting my bloody feet soaked"
They sat and looked at each other as they sat in the front seats of the car and he leaned forward and kissed her forehead again then pushed the wet hood of her parka down to her shoulders and kissed across the bridge of her nose and, when she closed her eyes, onto her closed eyelids as she began to cry again, deep searing sobs that wracked her body and sent torrents of tears and snot down her face. She tried to wipe it off with her hand, and then with the handkerchief he pulled out of his pocket, a handkerchief that was almost as wet with rain as her face was with tears.
"Why are you crying?"
"I dunno, I was so bleeding scared … and now I just can't seem to stop"
"Come on" he started the car "Let's get you home"
"I'm not going to your mum and dad's; I wanna go home to Weston"
-OG-
She'd stopped crying by the time he found a space on Shore Road that didn't mean him parking on the double yellow lines, but although she'd got to the trembling breath stage her eyes were red rimmed, all her make-up long since washed away and she looked exhausted. As they walked along to the door by the bookmakers neither of them said a word but this time he didn't ask whether he was invited up or not, he just took the key out of her hand and unlocked the door, then stood back to let her go up the stairs first and followed her.
He kicked her bedroom door shut behind them as he turned her round and pinned her back against it, their mouths meeting in a kiss that was so fierce it was almost clumsy, their teeth clashing until he moved his mouth to one side slightly and the kiss became everything she remembered. He began to move backwards staggering slightly as their lips were still locked together until he fell backwards across her bed, Molly on top of him.
"I've been wanting to do that ever since we were on that balcony at that bloody auction"
"Have you?"
"Yep, you know what else I've been wanting to do?" He rolled her onto her back and his voice was little more than a whisper, soft and teasing and accompanied by fleeting butterfly kisses down her neck, kisses that were so gentle, they were barely there.
"You'd better get that wet jumper off first or you're gonna catch yer bleeding death"
They separated as he sat up and pulled his damp sweater off and then the shirt that he was wearing underneath which also had damp patches on the shoulders and down the front. Molly lay back on the bed and watched him, then started to giggle.
"What's funny? There's nothing funny is there?" He turned round to look at her and saw the huge smirk that was pasted across her face.
"Thought you was gonna do the whole Full Monty there for a minute"
"Do you want me to?" He raised one eyebrow "I will if you want me to"
He didn't wait for her to answer, just laughed then turned back and began to kiss her again. He started to undo the buttons of her shirt, his eyes never leaving her face so that he fumbled slightly as he moved down from button to button, his bottom lip caught between his teeth when he finally pulled her shirt away from her body, slowly as though he was unwrapping a present that he'd been waiting for for months. He eased it off her and threw it on the floor next to his wet clothing then pushed one bra strap down her arm kissing down her body until he fastened his lips on her exposed nipple and tried to undo the clasp at the back one-handed while he stroked her other breast over the lace cup, his thumb rubbing lightly over the tip.
Her bra eventually ended up on the floor with the rest of their clothes and she put her hand on the back of his head and arched her back upwards towards him not wanting him to stop, and knowing that he could actually make her come without doing anything else if he kept it up for long enough. She could feel how much he wanted her, how hard he was against her leg and the desperate rise and fall of his breathing, but there was a tiny corner of her brain that wasn't completely sure that they should be doing this. A bit of her that wasn't sure that she wanted to fall in love with him all over again, she couldn't help remembering how badly it all had gone to shit the last time.
He took a deep breath and rolled away from her "We shouldn't be doing this, I'm sorry, I haven't got anything"
She didn't know whether to be relieved or sorry, perversely now that he'd said that they couldn't because he hadn't got a condom, she desperately wanted to and felt a huge temptation to roll on top of him and make it incredibly difficult for him to carry on exercising the sort of self-control that he'd needed to stop what they had been doing.
-OG-
Cuddling up under the duvet on a wet, cold afternoon in December and watching the light fade through the window where she hadn't drawn the curtains made the room feel almost cosy although they hadn't put the light on so the grottiness was shadowed and they were bickering slightly as to who was going to get up and put the fire on. Charles was pretending to be indignant at the suggestion that he should do it, saying that he'd get cold and that it was her room so it was her responsibility and that he wasn't that much of a gentleman, but Molly won the argument, as she was always going to anyway, he hadn't been seriously refusing to do it, but had been enjoying the way she was trying to persuade him by threatening to keep on touching and teasing with her hands so that he'd ended up growling at her that he would get his revenge, she just had to wait and see. He'd then got up and turned the fire on, feeding the meter as per her instructions and closing the curtains, shutting the winter afternoon out. The room was almost dark but he didn't switch the light on, there weren't any lamps, just the harsh overhead light and neither of them needed to be able to see anything apart from each other.
"I'm sorry I was all whingy 'n that earlier, you know, bawling me bloody eyes out like that"
"You don't whinge"
"Yeah, I do"
"No, you don't, you didn't even whinge when you were telling me about all the stuff that had happened"
"Yeah I did, I sort of remember whinging quite a lot actually"
"I don't want to argue with you, but you didn't, not even when it was obvious that your life had come apart at the seams and that it was all his bloody fault and anyway, you probably don't remember it that well" He laughed "You were pretty pissed at the time"
"Yeah, there was that" she bit her lip "But I don't want you to be sorry for me"
"I'm not sorry for you" he lied "I just want you to have the chance to carry on being brilliant"
"What does that even mean; I don't understand what that means"
"It means ….. that …. I love you"
"Do you?"
"Of course I do, I've loved you ever since you stood by my hospital bed and gave me hell and I keep hoping that you love me a little bit too, because I'm not sure that you'd have been quite so upset with me when it all went to shit if you didn't, love me a bit I mean"
"I weren't that upset" He raised one eyebrow and looked at her "Alright, yeah I was"
He pulled her even closer to him, winding a lock of her hair round his finger into a ringlet as their heads shared a single pillow and he had to keep on telling himself not to start something they couldn't finish, whatever the temptation.
"Mum and dad want you to come and stay for Christmas"
"What about you?"
"They have to let me stay, it's my home, I live there" He laughed, deliberately misunderstanding her.
"No, dickhead, do you want me to come for Christmas?"
There was a very long pause when he raised one eyebrow and smirked at her, then laughed out loud "What a question, Miss Dawes, I'm really not sure how I should answer that"
"Oi, behave yourself" She giggled "I was wondering whether I should go and see me family for Christmas, mum and the kids 'n that"
"Tell me about them" He tried hard to make sure there was no note of disappointment in his voice.
Listening to her describe her childhood in east London and talk about her mother and her many brothers and sisters, Charles was certain that he'd have difficulty remembering their names, there seemed to be so many of them, but he realised just what a wrench it must have been for her to have no contact with them for so long. Yes, it sounded as though there might have been problems when she was growing up and by the sound of it when she'd first joined up, but her deep love for them all, including her grandmother, was abundantly plain, so that he was a bit envious. Being an only child of two only children had meant that they'd had a very small family circle when he was growing up, no aunts or uncles or cousins and now that all his grandparents were dead, it was just him, his parents and Sam and he wondered what Sam would make of a huge extended family. For as long as he could remember the army had been his extended family and he knew how he would feel if it was all suddenly taken away from him, indeed how he had felt when that had seemed like a distinct possibility.
She didn't talk about her father, just mentioned him in passing, and she didn't say very much about her schooldays, just that she'd hated them, but she talked at length about how she'd come to join up and what her career in the army had meant to her, about the lads she'd served with during both tours of Afghan and how happy she'd been, and what had happened when she'd won her medal.
As Charles lay and listened he could hear from her voice just how much she missed it all and he had this feeling of impotent rage boiling away in the pit of his stomach, he hadn't come up with any sort of plan of what to do about her stalker …... yet. They'd needed to get today over with first, but the little shit who'd taken it all away from her had to be dealt with, Charles just wasn't sure yet how he was going to achieve that, apart from taking him down some dark, deserted alleyway somewhere and beating the crap out of him, which, tempting though it was, probably wasn't the best solution.
-OG-
Molly had gone off to east Ham early on Christmas Eve much to Norm's dismay, he'd said he needed her to work, but Charles was pretty sure that what he really meant was that he would miss her when she was away with her family, and that, like him, Norm was a bit worried that she would decide to stay up there with them.
After two days at home Molly felt almost as though she'd never been away, the initial excitement of seeing everyone and everyone seeing her and everyone talking at once and Nan threatening to box her ears for her if she ever pulled a stroke like that again and it being Christmas had now faded back to the normal routines of family. Christmas day had started indecently early and now in mid-afternoon when dinner was finished, the kids were over-tired and bickering, both her dad and her Nan were dozing in chairs and she was sitting at the table with Belinda demolishing a box of liqueur cherries which were making her feel slightly sick, Charles rang.
The minute she'd heard his voice and his Merry Christmas she'd jumped up and gone into the kitchen to talk because she realised just how much she was missing him, so much so that she felt slightly tongue tied and didn't want her mum to notice.
"Yeah, Merry Christmas to you too"
"Are you having a lovely day?"
"Yeah ….. well, sort of, are you?"
"Yep, but it's a bit quiet without you or Sam, when are you coming back? I miss you"
"Do you want to come and get me? Tomorrow?"
"What's the address?"
-OG-
Author's notes: Thank you for your reviews, sorry I couldn't upload this last night as I was asked, by the time I got the request and went to do it, our bloody broadband went down again. I think Richard Branson's got it in for me!