Chapter Nineteen

Making sure the front door to the cottage was securely locked, I took the only course of action I could think of and prepared to settle in for some very serious thinking in the best possible place for the task.

The bath.

I sank into the tub like sugar slipped through the foam on a cappuccino, my troubles dissolving away into the water. Daytime baths were better than night-time baths, this was my most fervently held belief in life. They were so much more decadent – who had time to soak in a giant tub full of hot water and bubbles in the middle of the day? Rich people, that's who. People who gave guided tours of their homes on the Architectural Digest YouTube channel always had a massive bath next to a window which meant they had too much money and no neighbours. There wasn't a problem on earth that couldn't be fixed with a soak. So many of my best decisions had been made here, the decision to give teaching a shot, finally realising sheet masks were just slimy tissues with holes cut in and the realisation I was allowed to DNF Infinite Jest to name but three. Even the initial inspiration for Butterflies came to me during a bath.

The memory was so clear. CJ was out again, another literary event he couldn't or wouldn't take me to. It was late and he still wasn't home when he said he would be when I lay back in the bath and closed my eyes to picture my life exactly how I wished it was. Instead of a teacher, I was a writer. Instead of living in the suburbs of London, I was on holiday in America, and instead of an emotionally and physically absent English arsehole, there was a gorgeous, manly cowboy in my bed, one who knew exactly what he was doing with every single part of me and would kill any other man who even dared to look in my direction. When CJ could only manage a five-minute fumble, Eric took his time. When CJ forgot my birthday, Eric celebrated Jenna's with multiple orgasms. I gave Jenna all my problems then created Eric as the solution. The only problem was, I couldn't make my fantasy true.

But what to do now? Decision number one, school. Abbey Hill was notoriously small ‘c' conservative in a big ‘c' Conservative town. Mrs Hedges, our headteacher, wasn't exactly known for her liberal attitude, and I couldn't see her, the board of governors or the parents' association jumping up and down with joy to find out their new head of year five had been secretly churning out smut on the weekends. I'd been so proud when she offered me the job back in the spring but now I wasn't so sure. I could handle a lot, more than was probably healthy, but writing, teaching and being head of year? It was a lot of responsibility, and you couldn't half-arse teaching. Well, some people did but they were terrible human beings and only made more work for the rest of us.

Writing had always been my dream but would I still love it as much if it was my full-time job? And what if my next book bombed, was I giving up a steady career on a whim? There was no way to know. That was the first decision to be made – was I prepared to sacrifice my teaching career to take a chance on writing?

Decision number two, what to do about Joe. I was still swinging wildly between wishing I'd never met him and wishing he'd bent me over and taken me in the karaoke room, deposit be damned. The man hadn't even kissed me but what had happened in the stockroom had been more erotic than my entire relationship with CJ. Once, when I dared to suggest our love life could be a little spicier, I came home to find him standing naked in the middle of the living room, reading Henry Miller aloud. According to him, it was supposed to be sexy but the only thing it spurred in me was a desire to turn up the heating. He was evidently very cold.

Just the thought of Joe's mouth on my neck, his fingers between my thighs, was enough to make me sink lower under the bubbles until the only things above water were my wide, dilated eyes, wallowing like a sex-starved hippo. My nipples puckered as my hand retraced Joe's journey, and I closed my eyes, surrendering to the fantasy and very much hoping an imaginary go on Joe would be enough to clear my mind.

‘Sophie?'

There were only two people with keys to the cottage.

I was one of them. The man currently starring in my fantasy was the other.

‘Don't come in the bathroom,' I shrieked, pressing my naked body against the side of the bathtub, water splashing everywhere. In my rush, I'd locked the front door but the door to the bathroom was only pushed to. All Joe had to do was take two steps to the left to see me in all my glory.

‘Why, what's wrong?' he asked, taking two steps to the left. ‘Oh.'

‘Oh,' I agreed, still clinging to the side of the tub, chin hooked over the side. The bubbles were dissipating at a dangerous rate. ‘I thought you'd be gone ages. How did you escape Charlotte so quickly?'

He stayed where he was but, in a partial-gentleman move, kept his eyes on the ceiling.

‘Your mum texted and said she needed me back at the house.'

‘For what?'

‘Don't know. Maybe she needs a big strong man to do something big and strong and manly.'

For now at least, I was definitely swinging towards wishing I'd never met him.

‘I'm expected in the conservatory in five minutes,' he said, ‘or your mum is going to send her minions after me.'

‘She'll have a stopwatch going,' I replied, trying to move as little as possible. ‘But everything went OK with Charlotte and Este?'

He brushed imaginary fluff off his shoulders.

‘Your secret is safe. Turns out I'm a natural at this author business. If you hadn't come on to me in the stockroom like that, I wouldn't have been so mixed up in the first place. You were panicking over nothing.'

‘Me come on to you?' The water swirled around my waist and I shifted my position, surging against the sides of the bath. ‘You came on to me! All I did was sit in a chair. And you were the one panicking, not me.'

‘Recollections may differ,' Joe said with airy dismissal. ‘Agree to disagree.'

‘I agree to nothing.' I reached for a towel that was just beyond my fingertips, straining over the cold edge of the tub. ‘Can you close the door so I can get out please?'

The gentlemanly fa?ade slipped away and Joe's eyes found mine, that crooked smile appearing on his face. He didn't budge.

‘Joe, please,' I said with a frustrated groan.

‘Oh, I like that. Say it again,' he whispered, unfastening the top two buttons of his shirt.

The water moved against me again, lapping at every inch of my exposed body like soft warm fingertips. ‘Joe, I'm serious.'

‘So am I,' he replied with darkening eyes. ‘I like it when you ask nicely. Makes me wonder what else you might ask for in the right circumstances.'

‘You've only got five minutes,' I reminded him, aiming for sarcasm but landing closer to a genuine query. ‘Is that enough for you?'

‘Not for me but you'd be amazed at what I can do for you in that amount of time.'

He showed no sign of moving, the devilish smile on his face fixed and daring. Still warm in the water, I weighed up my options. Stay where I was, completely at his mercy, or get out the bath and close the door myself.

So many of my best decisions were made in the bath.

If he wanted to play games, we'd play games.

‘OK then,' I said. ‘I'll get my own towel.'

Before I could talk myself out of it, I stood up, warm water running off my body and nothing but judiciously placed bubbles to cover my blushes. A quick check on Joe showed he was still standing but only just. With one hand on the wall, I climbed quickly but carefully out of the tub, reaching for the thick white towel waiting for me on the stand beside the bath. Joe gaped in the doorway, eyes like saucers and a conspicuous bulge straining against his jeans.

‘You're testing me, Sophie Taylor,' he breathed as I wrapped the towel around myself.

‘And I reckon you're down to about two minutes,' I replied, heart pounding all the way up into my throat. ‘Probably wouldn't go back up to the house with a hard on if I were you.'

We both looked at his crotch at the same time, Joe adjusting his trousers. Full of fake confidence, I sashayed past him into the living room where the curtains still separated our sleeping areas to grab the first set of clothes I could lay my hands on.

One thing was for sure. Joe definitely didn't need me to turn up the heating.

We didn't share a single word on the way back to the house. I had to double my usual pace to keep up, Joe's long legs striding purposefully as though he were trying to outrun the memory of what had just happened.

‘Don't you have better things to do than follow me around?' he said as I skipped around the bench halfway up the garden to get a couple of feet in front of him. ‘Surely you could be working on your next book or coming up with new and exciting ways to torture me?'

‘I'm not following you,' I replied, tucking his last comment away for later. ‘It's lunchtime, I'm hungry. I'm going to my parents' house to make myself a sandwich if that's all right with you.'

He grunted as he hopped over a plaster cast of Horatio's skull, one of Dad's favourite Shakespeare-themed garden ornaments.

‘Sophie, I'm begging you,' Joe said with a look of true anguish on his face. ‘All I need is a five-minute break where I don't have to think about Butterflies or Este Cox or you, naked or otherwise. Is that too much to ask?'

The sleeves of my cardigan hung over my hands and I tucked my fingers into little fists as I stepped aside to let him past.

‘I got us into this mess, I'll get us out,' he added. ‘Until then, I'll play author.'

‘So you're going to carry on pretending to be Este Cox?'

‘It's not as though I don't know women,' he replied with a well-timed little snort. It was helpful, I was overdue a reminder of his reputation. ‘What I mean is, I have lots of female friends. My best friend is a woman.'

‘Course she is.' I nodded even though my expression did not match my words. ‘And I'm sure you're very close to your mother.'

‘Close enough not to lie to her about writing a bestselling novel,' he retorted, making me snap back with surprise. ‘You go and make your sandwich, I'll continue to save your arse. Really, how hard could it be?'

He stormed off into the conservatory, leaving me standing outside without a response. I'd spent an awful lot of time thinking about how all of this was affecting me and not a single second wondering what it might be doing to Joe. He seemed almost as annoyed about the whole thing as I was, so why offer to continue with the charade? This was an interesting development.

‘Joseph,' I heard my mother gush. ‘Come in, come in, we're so thrilled to have you join us.'

Us? Who else was in there?

Too nosy for my own good, I followed him inside and closed the door behind me. The blinds had been dropped to shade against the sun but there was still plenty of light coming in from the glass roof, more than enough to illuminate the circle of half a dozen or so chairs, each of them occupied by one of my parents' literary luminary friends. Jericka was back, along with several other writers and editors I recognised, every single one of them a prize winner or critical darling or both, and they were all beaming at Joe.

The only person who wasn't smiling was CJ.

‘What is this?' I asked on Joe's behalf since he hadn't moved a muscle since he came inside and seemed to have lost the ability to speak.

‘Sophie!' Mum looked up at me with surprise as though she'd suddenly remembered I existed. ‘Just a small gathering of pals. Every couple of months we throw together something of an informal salon and since everyone was coming for the party anyway I thought it might be fun to have a little lunchtime get-together and chat with Joseph about his beautiful book.'

‘His beautiful book … you mean Butterflies?' I cast an eye around the room to see they were all clutching the same pink paperback. How things had changed in the last twenty-four hours.

‘You're welcome to join us,' she replied, searching for a spare chair but finding only a floor cushion that had seen much better days and pointing me towards it. ‘But I must ask you not to bring a negative energy to this space. We're all entitled to our opinions and, while I believe artists can only grow from constructive criticism, this is not a critiquing session. Joseph is an invited guest and we want him to feel this is a safe space for him to discuss the work.'

‘Discuss the work?'

This time Joe was the echo. Springing into life, diaphanous blue blouse floating around her like a Marks Spencer's Finest forcefield, Mum directed Joe into the only empty chair left in the room, reaching up to her full five feet of height to push down on his shoulders until he sat, facing the crowd. Not knowing what else to do, I obediently trailed over to the floor cushion, and circled it before settling down, tail between my legs like a bad dog.

‘I know it's your first time, so we'll be gentle,' Mum said with a sly smile I did not care for one bit. ‘Everyone here has been sworn to secrecy so there's no need to worry about your identity getting out. If only because Charlotte would murder me in my bed if it did.'

The pain I'd seen in Joe's eyes slowly transformed into panic as he realised what was happening.

‘Mrs Taylor, I'd love to discuss the book with you but now isn't a great time—'

‘Now is a perfect time,' she replied. ‘Now, who wants to start us off?'

‘But it's Hugh's day.' Joe stood so quickly he bumped his head on the slanted ceiling. ‘We should be celebrating him, not banging on about a book. The book. My book. And please call me Joe.'

‘Hugh's gone to the train station to pick up that ingrate, Nelson Allen,' Mum said as she coaxed him back into his seat. ‘We're all here, we've all read the book and we've all got questions.'

His bottom lip quivered as he took in all the eager faces. ‘You've all read it. All of you?'

‘Some of us more recently than others.' Jericka made a show of holding up her copy, making sure everyone could see the cracked spine, even though I was fairly sure she hadn't even glanced at it until last night, as she shot CJ and his pristine book a filthy look. ‘Writing can be such lonely work, especially when one is operating under a pseudonym. We want you to know we're here for you.'

‘That's very kind.'

With woeful surrender, Joe tucked his feet under his chair and slipped his hands between his tightly squeezed thighs as though trying to make himself invisible.

‘Shall we start with an easy one?' Mum suggested and Joe nodded readily. ‘Your book approaches female sexuality with such vulnerability, always tying the sex to Jenna's emotional growth, even in her most daring and graphic encounters. I would love to get some insight into your process when it comes to putting yourself so squarely in a woman's position.'

A hush fell over the room and I rested my back against the wall, unable to stop a tiny little smirk from appearing. What was it he said? He could play author, how hard could it be? We were about to find out.

‘That's an easy one, is it?' He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and slowly, studiously rolled them up to the elbow. Damn a man who knew the power of a nicely turned forearm. ‘In all honesty, Mrs Taylor, I don't know. I didn't really think that much about it.'

It was, to be fair, the same answer I would've given.

‘An instinctive writer,' Mum breathed. ‘The naturalistic approach certainly comes through in the dialogue.'

Incapable of holding her question back a second longer, Jericka jumped in. ‘It's such a powerful gift, to be able to translate a woman's desire into words. What made you want to explore the female experience in this way rather than the man's?'

A murmur of approval ran around the room but Joe only stared at them all with his mouth open, a six-foot-five goldfish floundering in the bowl of my mother's conservatory.

‘Sophie was telling me, I mean, I was telling Sophie about my inspiration earlier on,' he said, stumbling over his words and looking to me for help I wasn't quite ready to give. ‘It was a fantasy. That's right, a fantasy inspired by an ex-boyfriend. I mean ex-girlfriend. I mean, an unfulfilling relationship.'

‘No one in this group is here to judge a person's sexual experimentation or identity,' replied a frail older gentleman who had to be ninety if he was a day. ‘We're very open-minded. As you must be, considering the content of chapter five.'

‘It was a girlfriend,' Joe insisted, deepening his voice and glancing in CJ's general direction. ‘A pretentious, boring girlfriend who didn't know a good thing when she had it.'

‘Was she the one who gave you such insight into the female orgasm?' asked Jericka, her book falling open easily to the page she was looking for. ‘Here, in chapter twenty-nine for example, I felt dizzy as he filled me up, stretching me to meet his needs, to make me his and claim me as his own. The rhythmic movements of my hips surrendering to his more frenetic pace as that exquisite sensation, a whisper that started far away began to sing sweet and clear, threatening to overwhelm me as his thick, heavy cock drove—'

‘Yes. No. Well, it's very hard to say,' Joe spluttered, cutting her off as everyone else in the room scoured the book for the relevant section. ‘I think too many people get caught up in the sex. Don't you think the overall story is more important than the shagg – sorry, the sex?'

Out the corner of my eye, I saw Aunt Carole watching from the door that led to the living room. She looked as though she'd just got back from some kind of strenuous activity, her face damp, cheeks highly coloured and, in her shaking hand, she carried the most battered and well-read copy of my book – of any book – I had ever seen.

‘I would argue the sex is the story,' Jericka replied as my aunt crept in, pressed up against the wall like a shadow. ‘So often we see the female character's self-actualisation channelled through the male gaze, leaving us with either an underdeveloped na?f awakened to the wonder of ecstatic sex by her lover, or a promiscuous but invariably unhappy woman who cannot connect to her emotions until the hero shows her how. You have presented us with a real, multi-layered, nuanced woman and that's so rare, Joseph—'

‘No, it isn't,' I said, the words out my mouth before I could second guess them.

‘Sophie.'

My mother said my name like a warning shot across the bow.

‘But it isn't,' I insisted, all eyes on me. ‘There are hundreds of books out there with "real women" in them, thousands, but you haven't read them because you think they're beneath you.'

It was not a suggestion that went down well.

‘Soph, it's not that we consider your opinion invalid,' CJ leaned forwards, condescending as ever, ‘but you've said yourself Bridget Jones's Diary is your favourite book of all time. A masterpiece, I think, is what you called it when I asked you to defend the position.'

‘There's nothing to defend,' I replied as I stood up. I would not take this sitting down, literally, and as usual, he was begging for a slap. ‘It is a masterpiece. Not one of you would argue if I said Pride and Prejudice was my favourite book and the only thing that separates them is two hundred years.'

‘Personally, I've always considered the canonical importance of Austen to be overblown,' CJ directed his response to the frail older gentleman who nodded in agreement. ‘Northanger Abbey aside, obviously.'

‘Obviously,' the old gent snorted in agreement.

‘Sophie, we're not here to debate a genre,' my mother admonished. ‘We're here to listen to Joe. Who else has a question?'

‘Are you Eric?' Aunt Carole blurted out, the book grasped tightly in her sweaty hands. ‘Is he based on you and your … physical attributes?'

‘Joe, we should get going,' I said before she could cross the room and demand he drop his trousers so she could see for herself. ‘I, um, I promised my friend, Sarah, we'd meet her down at the fête and help her … do stuff.'

‘I think a literary discussion takes precedence over guessing the weight of a fruitcake,' Mum said sharply. ‘You go and help Sarah, Joe can stay here with us. I know Maggie wanted to ask something about your background reading.'

Maggie, a bright-eyed woman with canary yellow hair, raised her hand. ‘Thank you, Pandora. My question is, would you say you drew more from the writings of Ana?s Nin or Mary Gaitskill for your erotic scenes? There is less overt sadism in your writing, perhaps, but I for one felt it was always hovering at the edges, hidden in the subtext?'

‘What are you talking about?' I answered before Joe could. ‘There is no sadism, hovering or otherwise. It's good sex, happy sex. Nothing and noone is tortured about any of it. If anything, I'd say it was influenced by Christina Lauren but I doubt you've read them.'

‘Darling, please, don't be irrelevant,' Mum said, sounding chippy as I watched Aunt Carole open the Amazon app.

‘I'm being entirely relevant,' I argued while my aunt downloaded a sample of The Unhoneymooners to her Kindle. ‘It's context. Butterflies wasn't published in a vacuum, there were hundreds of other brilliant books that paved its way but you're pretending they don't exist and my book is some kind of anomaly when it isn't.'

‘Your book?' Carole's head snapped up from her phone. ‘What do you mean, your book?'

‘My book, our book, the book,' I said quickly. ‘Este's book.'

The whole room sat in silence while they debated whether or not to accept my explanation.

‘Joe's book,' I added with weak defeat. The conservatory breathed a sigh of relief and everyone started talking again happily, turning away as if I'd never said a word in the first place. Only CJ continued to stare, as if trying to read some very fine print on my forehead.

‘Where is he? Where's my bestselling boy?'

It would have been more helpful if Gregory had chosen to appear ten seconds earlier but I was still unbelievably grateful to see his mutton-dressed-as lamb self stride into the conservatory. He pushed his way through the room looking like a large uncooked sausage in his baby pink tracksuit, and tackled Joe into a bear hug that knocked him out of his seat.

‘Look at my son!' he bellowed. ‘My brilliant, beautiful, million-copy-selling filth-monger. Giving the ladies what they want, like his old man.'

‘Gross,' I muttered, not as quietly as I should have.

‘Proud is not the word,' he went on regardless, helping himself to his son's chair. ‘Awe. I'm in awe of you, son.'

‘You've read the book, Gregory?' Maggie asked politely as he pulled Joe down into his lap like Santa Claus if Santa Claus was halfway through a midlife crisis, dyed his hair an improbable shade of brown and half the breadth of the child on his knee.

‘Read it? Fuck no. I thought it was chicklit shit like the rest of you. But I will now. I'm so proud!'

Joe broke his father's grip around his waist and stood, everyone's eyes going with him.

‘Anyone would be proud of their kid for achieving something like this,' he said, sending a not at all subtle look my way. ‘Isn't that right, Mrs Taylor? If Sophie had written Butterflies or something like it, you'd be over the moon.'

The split second it took for my mother to paste on a smile told me all I needed to know.

‘We're proud of all our children,' she said. ‘But if Sophie were to write a novel, this wouldn't be her sort of thing, I don't think.'

‘I always knew you'd do something great,' Gregory said, the dollar signs in his eyes almost visible. ‘You must've made so much fucking money.'

Joe forced his way through the guests to grab my hand. ‘Sophie, you're right, we really should go and help …'

‘Sarah.'

‘Sarah,' he finished. ‘Thanks for that, everyone, good chat.'

‘But I've got more questions!' Carole wailed. ‘Have you ever been to Texas? Can you ride a horse? Is it really possible for a woman to have more than one orgasm during coitus?'

‘Poor Uncle Bryan,' I said as Joe almost yanked my arm out its socket in his rush.

‘Never quote me on this but poor your Aunt Carole,' Joe replied, leading me away and letting the door to the conservatory slam shut behind us.