By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-09-26 16:51:36 | Updated at 2024-09-30 19:33:13
4 days ago
It was good to have a life after a painful divorce, said my therapist. When a parent's life came to standstill, they were not a good role model for the children.
Only it did not feel good, when six-year-old Emi, dressed like a sad clown in a ruffled skirt, stripy socks and sequins, wept in my arms on a rain-shined pavement.
'Whatever can I do?' she cried. 'I can't hug the babysitter!'
'Why not?' I said.
'Because she's not you!'
After more than eight months of living together after our split, my ex-husband Simon had moved out of the family home to a rented flat. He wasn't seeing the kids much. And now I, the only huggable one, was leaving my children to go and have sex with my hot young boyfriend.
Earlier in the evening, knowing this assignation was coming up, I hurried Emi, Hector, 14, and Maude, 12, through their dinner, as they chatted about Minecraft and didn't eat their vegetables.
'Are we annoying you very much?' said Emi. 'Because we can stop.'
'Darling, no you're not!' I said, guilt curdling in my throat. But they were so slow, I was late to meet Eliot. I'd been waiting to meet him all week, only now Emi swung against the radiator and didn't brush her teeth.
My daughter told me that women in their late 40s never starred in anything, but here I was at the centre of my own melodrama, writes Annabel Bond
'Come on!' I said.
I had drunk a large glass of wine already. In the mirror my face was feverish. I was not the mother I wanted her to remember. Furious, impatient, astonished that it had come to this – me doing all the baths, all the hair washes, all the dinners while Simon could spend evenings at the pub.
The doorbell rang, the sitter was here. I told Emi I had to leave and she started to cry.
'Wake me up when you get home. Pinch me awake. Promise you'll do it!' I promised, feeling horrible. How could I leave such a sad little girl? And why wasn't her dad here to comfort her? But my desire to see Eliot superseded everything. On the street the babysitter had to tear her away.
Boarding the train I could still feel the imprint of Emi's hands on my thighs. But I deserved to have a beautiful young boyfriend after the horrors of my divorce – to be having the best sex of my life!
The train was when I changed from mother of three to hot older woman. I peered at myself in the window as the dark tunnel flashed past; applied my new red lipstick in the camera of my phone. My situation seemed to be written all over my face. Maude told me yesterday that women in their late 40s never starred in anything, but here I was, centre of my own melodrama.
When I arrived at Eliot's flat in North London I was still self-conscious, trailing my old life, trying too hard. I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him, leaned too far forward. I tilted my chin and narrowed my eyes. He smelt of Sauvage, so he'd made an effort too, even though he wore just a pair of shorts and a plain white Tee.
I had dressed carefully in jeans and a French linen shirt, with uncomfortable sexy underwear beneath.
But I wasn't complaining: under his T-shirt Eliot's abs were solid. His chest was bigger every day, from all the weights he lifted. After we kissed, the transformation was easier: he made me dizzy with desire.
We ate the dinner he'd prepared – curry from scratch – sitting at his little table together, hoping his flatmates wouldn't come home early. I watched his big, beautiful hands, with their bitten nails, as he ate. I thought of them on my body. Finally, he held out his hand. 'Let's go to bed.'
In the bedroom Eliot took off my clothes down to my red matching underwear (found triumphantly in the mess of my bottom drawer) and touched me. I looked into his green eyes. He'd told me once that men had told him that, if they weren't straight, the colour of his eyes would make them fall in love.
'I'm aching for you,' he said. He bent his head to my breasts. I felt his shoulders, his strong neck. We fell on to the bed. When he pressed his weight on me, into me, it felt as if I might not exist.
My orgasm was so intense I had to turn my face away so he wouldn't see. I said: 'I'm glad it's dark. I feel scattered to the four corners and now I need to recollect myself.'
He said: 'What does it look like when you build yourself back together?'
I thought: self-awareness creeps back into the cracks and here I am again thinking about the washing up waiting for me and Emi crying herself to sleep. But I replied: 'A ship, a sail, patched together.'
We said goodnight at the bus stop, kissing in the way only those in love do. I wound my arms round him and tried to lose myself against him, succeeding for five minutes before the bus came.
And then I wheeled away crying with the rage of being in the sheer hard grip of him, and having to return to my life.
Annabel Bond is a pseudonym. Names have been changed.
