Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [31]
Creed turned off the car and went into the house. The big building was empty, its rooms airy and silent, windows open to catch the summer breeze.
With a family of three children the place was never normally this quiet. To Creed the silence seemed almost religious, magical. He savoured it as it held for a wondrous moment before being rudely broken by the sound of Cynthia and Eve clattering into the kitchen arguing about a jar of peanut butter. Then there was a volley of shouts from the back yard.
Creed looked out of the window and saw Ricky, and two of his teenage friends, working on the vintage Ford Mustang they’d been painstakingly restoring all summer. The boys had spotted the car at a police auction two months ago. They’d taken one look at it and then raced home to borrow the maximum they could raise from parents, big brothers and sisters.
Creed had gently, but firmly, said no. He wanted Ricky to get his problem at school sorted out before he began to reward his son. And a first car, even one shared with two raggedy friends, was quite a reward for a fifteen-year-old boy.
But when he’d refused the money to Ricky, Justine had simply dug out her purse and offered her own credit card. It had enraged him. As parents they were supposed to be a united front and something had to be done about Ricky.
Justine was the first to say as much, so why the hell was she undermining his authority?
But, right now, Creed was willing to forgive her that.
Because Justine had been washing the car with the boys and this had obviously degenerated into a water-fight. Someone had dumped a bucket of water on Justine, and now she was chasing Ricky and his friends around the car with a hose.
Creed came out of the kitchen, stood on his lawn, and watched his wife.
She was running around the car, shouting with laughter as her feet skidded on the wet grass. She was wearing a T-shirt and no bra. Watching her breasts bounce Creed felt a stupid grin forming on his face. Even after all these years of snot, diapers, madness and children she still turned him on.
In addition to that clinging soaked T-shirt, she had on a pair of skin-tight, cut-off black jeans. Creed remembered walking up those stone steps in London with Justine. The night they met, all those years ago. And then later, in that old musty patrician bedroom, snapping her bra off and discarding it in the darkness.
Now, he watched her racing around the car, whooping and throwing water, barefoot and brown and wild. She paused, panting and leant against the side of the car. She picked up a can of beer that was resting on the Mustang’s roof and took a swig, half-sitting on the hood of the car, bare feet dug deep in the grass to feel the cool moisture on her toes.
All thoughts of Amy Cowan vanished from Creed’s mind.
Suddenly he was doing some lightning calculations.
Ricky and his friends would go out tonight, like they did every Saturday. Cynthia would spend the evening over with Lysette McCracken, probably helping her mother slay a black ram at the centre of a pentagram, or stick pins in wax effigies.
Which left Eve to be accounted for, but if Creed could get a baby-sitter at short notice that would free up the entire evening. He would tell Justine to get her glad rags on, then he’d take her out to a very classy bar, then an even classier restaurant and then to a very sleazy motel.
To a very sleazy motel bedroom. The kind with mirrors on the ceiling.
And afterwards Creed would drive a warm, tousled Justine home, nodding off to sleep on his shoulder. And he’d spill her into bed and drive the baby-sitter home. Then he’d return to his sleeping house, step through the door and savour the silence. He’d turn off the lights and do a quick inventory, to make sure none of the children had been decapitated or kidnapped. Then he’d slip back into the master-bedroom to wrap his arms around a sleepy, grinning Justine and see if they could re-enact that evening’s motel visit, with improvements.
It would blow a hell of a hole in this month’s budget,