Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Giving up on my reflection, I move back to my case with the vague hope that I might’ve missed something, when a shrill squeal I’d recognize anywhere makes me rush to the balcony. I look down, my fingers tight on the railing as fear floods out of me, because there, in the shallow end of the pool, Archie and Hugh stand knee deep, laughing and flicking water at each other.
“Mummy!” My littlest man pushes the brim of his floppy hat from his eyes as he spots me. “We went through a jungle to get to the beach, and I saw parrots!”
“Hurry up and come down,” Hugh complains loudly, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Uncle Van says we can’t swim until you’re here.”
“Put your hat on the right way,” Archie complains, pointing at the way his brother is wearing his cap back to front. “Then you won’t be all squinty.”
“That’s very responsible of Uncle Van,” I call back, interrupting the brewing argument. “Where is Uncle Van, anyway?” The boy’s answers are drowned out as my eyes snag on the blond Adonis standing on the far side of the pool under the shade of a palm tree. He’s shirtless, unmoving, and staring up at me like a starving man staring at a hearty meal. And the worst of it is, I suspect I’m looking at him with the same kind of hunger.
“Mummy, come on!” Hugh shouts.
“Yes, all right.” Tearing my gaze from all that tanned and taut torso, and those burning eyes, I jerk from the railing. As an afterthought, I move back again. “Have you both got sunscreen on?”
“Yes, hurry up!” they shout back.
I leave the balcony, unable to resist my reflection one more unhappy time. I suck in my stomach, examine the stretchmarks on my thighs.
“Bugger it,” I decide. “Marry me, marry this body.” Grabbing an oversized cotton sarong, I fold it around me and tie the edges halter neck style around my neck and make my way to the stairs.
My bare feet are almost silent as I make my way down the staircase and through the house. French doors lead out to a shaded terrace, the air warm and sticky on my skin. I begin to wonder what happened to the shouting and splashing when I step out onto the sun warm terracotta tiles. But then I see them through the dense foliage of some potted palms. Their backs to me, my little men sit quietly either side of Van. Archie’s hair looks like he was recently electrocuted, while my suddenly too-cool-for-school ten-year-old still has his baseball cap on back to front.
“Is that why you’ve brought us here?”
At the sound of Hugh’s serious tone, my heart sinks, my footsteps slowing to a stop as I wonder what prompted this. He wouldn’t—I know it. Niko wouldn’t be so cruel as to frighten my children with the events of yesterday.
“No, of course not.” Niko’s body shifts until he’s looking into the face of my son. “Of course not,” he answers gently. “This was meant to be an opportunity for us to get to know each other better. I didn’t think you’d mind missing school,” he adds lightly.
“I don’t mind!” Archie interjects, bouncing in his seat. “I don’t mind if you want to be Mummy’s boyfriend, either.”
“I think I’m a little too old to be anyone’s boyfriend.”
“That’s what she said,” Archie chirps. “But Daddy has girlfriends and he’s going bald.”
I press my hand to my mouth to suppress a chuckle.
“What has hair got to do with it?” Hugh leans around Niko to glare at his brother.
“Just that Uncle Van’s still got all his hair so he can’t be that old. But even if you were bald,” he adds earnestly, turning to Niko, “I’d still like you. You make Mummy happy.”
“It’s very kind of you to say so, Archie.”
“I like to see her smile,” my youngest adds. “Not that fake smile she wears sometimes.” A sudden finger pokes at my heart. My lovely, slightly strange, perceptive little boy.
“Does she wear a fake smile often?”
Archie nods. “She wears it when she’s worrying.” Hugh makes a noise of disgust, causing Archie to lean around again. “She does, and you know it, Hugh. Like last week at breakfast when she made us pancakes instead of porridge just because we caught her in coming in from the driveway wearing her coat over her pajamas. She put on that smile,” he adds, turning to Niko now, “and made us pancakes so we wouldn’t ask what she’d been up to.”
“And what had she been up to, do you think?”
“She’d been filling the holes in driveway with a bucket of gravel. She thinks we don’t notice the holes make her sad, but we do.”
Pressing my hand to my mouth I swallow over the lump in my throat. Potholes don’t make me sad. The futility of the exercise does. The fact that I can’t afford to get it fixed. My lovely, slightly strange, perceptive, big-mouthed child. I’m going to need a better fake smile. I begin to move again, keen to stop further revelations.