Promoted: to Wife and Mother

intensity as she looked back at him.

Then he was pushing his way through the crowds towards her. ‘Excuse me,’ he said to her puzzled companion as Perdita stood numbly watching him. ‘I just need a word with Perdita outside.’

Taking her hand, he practically dragged her to the entrance, where a knot of smokers had escaped and were puffing desperately on their cigarettes. Ed muttered under his breath at finding yet more people around and strode round to the shadows at the side of the old building, Perdita stumbling unresisting after him. Barely out of sight of the smokers, he stopped abruptly and, without a word, pressed her up against the brick wall and kissed her.

It was a furious kiss. His hands were hard, his lips demanding, but Perdita met him halfway, kissing him back as if she were equally angry at the time they had wasted, time they could have been kissing like this. There wasn’t even token resistance in her response, only a dazzling explosion of relief that she was in his arms at last, that she could kiss him again, hold him again, run her hands over his back and feel that he was real and warm and solid.

Gasping his name, she blizzarded kisses along his jaw when they broke for breath and Ed gave a shaky laugh.

‘God, Perdita, what have you done to me?’ he asked in a voice ragged with desire. ‘I’m too old to be losing control like this!’

He held her face between his palms. ‘You’re driving me mad,’ he told her between kisses. ‘I can’t do this any more, I can’t just be friends…’

‘I know…I know…’ she whispered, her lips pressing hungrily against his throat.

Ed gave a great sigh and rested his forehead against hers. ‘What are we going to do?’ he asked despairingly. ‘I can’t get rid of my kids, Perdita, but I can’t stand not being able to touch you either…I haven’t known what to do with myself these last couple of weeks, and tonight…tonight Millie was the last straw.’

‘Millie?’ Perdita drew back and looked at him with a puzzled frown.

‘I think she did it deliberately,’ he told her. ‘Whenever I turned round, there she was, pointing out how fantastic you look and how pleased she is that you’re starting to show an interest in men again after being so hurt by Nick, and had I noticed how men were looking at you?’ Ed gave a bark of mirthless laughter. ‘Of course I’d noticed! It seemed like I was the only one who had to treat you like a friend, and then you looked straight at me and I just snapped…It’s a very long time since I’ve been reduced to dragging a woman out of a party so that I could kiss her!’

Perdita couldn’t help smiling. ‘Millie’s been playing a dark game,’ she said. ‘She told me that she was going to try and seduce you, and no doubt she could see perfectly well that I didn’t like that idea at all!’

‘She certainly didn’t try any seduction. She was too busy needling me about you.’ Ed’s smile faded as he twined her dark hair around his fingers so he could hold her head still and look deep into her eyes.

‘What are we going to do? I know why you don’t want to get involved with a father, Perdita, but there’s more than friendship between us, you know there is.’

‘Yes.’ Perdita met his gaze squarely. She couldn’t pretend now. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘So…?’

She drew a deep breath. ‘So I think we should get it out of our systems.’

‘Get what exactly out of our systems?’ he asked.

‘The physical thing…sex,’ she clarified with a hint of defiance as he raised his brows in mockery of her coyness. Her eyes were suddenly very direct. ‘I want you, Ed. I want you very badly. I’ve wanted you since that kiss down by the river, probably before, but…’

‘You’re still scared in case I’m like Nick?’ Ed finished for her.

‘I’m scared in case any relationship we might have turned out to be like the one I had with Nick,’ she corrected him carefully. ‘But maybe we could make it easier on ourselves by not trying to have a proper relationship. By not thinking about commitment or forever. By just enjoying the physical attraction between us while it lasts, and not having any expectations beyond that.’

Ed’s expression was impossible to read. ‘So you’d like an affair?’

‘Don’t you think it would work? Maybe if we got sex out of the way we could be friends after all,’ Perdita suggested hopefully, and he half-smiled.

‘I’m not sure it’ll be as easy as that.’

‘We could try,’ she said, willing him to agree. Putting her palms flat against his chest, she slid her hands up and around his neck. ‘Don’t you want to try?’ she whispered, and closed her eyes in relief as she felt Ed’s arms go round her to pull her hard against him.

‘Is that your best offer?’

She smiled. ‘For now.’

‘In that case, I’ll take it,’ said Ed, and then his mouth came down on hers once more and there was no more talking for a very, very long time.

Having an affair proved much harder to organise than either of them had imagined. Ed had to take Tom home from the party that night, Perdita felt that she ought to check on her mother every day, Lauren needed to be ferried to and from some netball match, Cassie wanted a friend to sleep over…

‘This is hopeless,’ said Ed. ‘Let’s go away for a weekend, where there will just be the two of us.’

Perdita gnawed her bottom lip, desperately tempted but uncertain. ‘I don’t think I can leave Mum alone that long. I know she has carers during the day, but there are still the evenings…’

‘Couldn’t you arrange for someone to drop in?’ he asked. ‘It would just be for a couple of nights.’

‘I suppose I could ask Betty.’ Perdita thought of her mother’s old friend, who was always offering to help. She felt a little awkward about asking, but Betty was delighted.

‘It’s time you had a break, Perdita,’ she said when Perdita mentioned the idea. ‘You’ll be no good to your mother otherwise. She’ll be fine with me.’

‘That’s Mum sorted,’ Perdita reported to Ed. ‘What about the kids?’

‘Cassie would say that they’re old enough to be left, but I don’t trust them,’ said Ed, resigned. ‘There would be a party the moment I’d turned the corner at the end of the road, and God knows what state the house would be in when I got back. Besides, Lauren is only just fourteen,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask my sister if she’ll come and keep an eye on them for the weekend.’

‘Won’t she want to know why you’re going away without the children?’

‘If I know Joanna, she’ll guess exactly why the moment I open my mouth,’ Ed said wryly. ‘She’s been pushing me to get a life for a year or so now, so she’ll be delighted.’

It was frustrating having to wait until the weekend, but Perdita told herself that made it a proper affair. This was just how it should be, a time away from their normal responsibilities. She tried not to look forward to the weekend too much, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was one huge smile, from the dopey grin on her face to the smallest fibre of her body, swelling and soaring with happiness, fizzing with anticipation and excitement. Over the last few years nothing ever seemed to have worked out the way it should have done, but maybe this time, just once, it would…

When she had been with Nick, the weekends they had planned had so often had to be cancelled at the last minute, and Perdita braced herself for the phone call, but no, Ed picked her up from her flat as agreed on Friday evening and drove up to a pub in the Yorkshire Dales where he had booked a room for two nights. There was no crisis, no urgent message telling them to turn round. Perdita hardly dared to let herself believe that it was really going to happen until Ed drove into the car park behind the pub.

The King’s Arms was an attractive old stone building and the pub was famous for its good food. Its spectacular location made it popular with walkers too, and the bar was crowded as they went inside. Not that Perdita noticed much about it. She was zinging with anticipation and her throat was so dry that she could hardly thank the fresh- faced girl who showed them to their room.

The first thing she saw was the bed. The big, wide, inviting double bed where she would be sleeping with Ed at last.

‘The restaurant’s very busy tonight,’ the girl was saying. ‘Would you like me to reserve you a table for later?’

‘Er…yes,’ said Ed, who couldn’t take his eyes off Perdita and just wished the girl would go.

‘Will nine o’clock be all right?’