Ella tried the door; it wasn’t locked—people had been coming up to check out the progress all evening. But it was empty now, as the crowd filled the bowling club.
Jake and Ella had it to themselves.
She gave him the royal tour in those hot pink boots that got him hotter and hotter, talking about what still had to be done, and he listened with his mind on her, and her earrings, and the squiggles in the material of that crazy dress and the boots. He didn’t hear a word about the pool, and if there was a test on all this later, he was fucked.
‘Okay, Ella. That’s all great. Now sit down here for a second.’
Jake sat on the lowest tier of three concrete bleachers that ran the length of the pool. Space for parents to watch the action, and space for kit bags and kids’ towels. He pulled her across his thighs and Ella sat, with the pink boots kicked out to one side like she rode him side-saddle.
Jake stroked her chin, and he couldn’t stop there; he had to remember how soft she felt. He trailed his index finger across her top lip, then the fatter bottom one. Then he finally, finally, got to kiss her, and God, if there’d been any water in the pool they would have steamed all that new glass right up.
Jake shifted Ella’s weight on his lap.
‘Can you feel how much I want you, Ella? Can you feel what you do to me?’ he murmured into her hair. ‘I want you like you wouldn’t believe. Can you come home with me?’
Even as he said it, he knew he was an idiot. She had Sam.
‘I’ve got Sam,’ she said, and she sighed in a way that let him know how she was tempted. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Can we get a babysitter?’
Ella giggled. ‘We can’t get a babysitter for an hour. It’s not like stopping in at a hotel.’
‘I want the babysitter for longer than a fucking hour,’ Jake said into her hair, only half joking.
Ella lowered her forehead to meet his. ‘I can’t, not tonight. It’s hard to be spontaneous when you have a kid.’
‘Yeah. When is Erik coming down next? Or is Sam going up to Perth to spend any time with his dad soon?’
Ella stiffened on his lap. That took him a bit longer than normal to notice, only because there was a lot of stiffness going on in his lap at the time.
Her arms unwrapped from his neck, leaving him suddenly cold, and she disentangled herself from his thighs and stood up, facing him.
‘Jake?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I have to tell you something important, about Erik and Sam. I almost told you weeks ago, the day we were at the dam.’
‘You’re not getting back with him,’ he blurted, before he could think.
‘No, no, nothing like that.’ She swung away, scanning the building for listening ears. ‘It’s about Sam.’
‘What, Ella. What about Sam?’ Suddenly, he could have sworn she’d gone paler than the fluorescent lights bouncing off concrete, cement and tile. ‘Honey, you’re scaring me.’
‘Erik isn’t Sam’s biological father. Erik isn’t his real dad.’
‘Okay.’ What did that mean? What he thought it meant? Or something else. ‘Biological father? As in, like, birth father?’
‘Erik was with me when Sam was born, but he isn’t his real dad.’
‘Does Sam know?’ Jake stood, because his heart was thumping so hard he couldn’t sit anymore, and because Ella wouldn’t meet his gaze. She was looking everywhere, rather than at him. Eventually, Jake caught her shoulder. She trembled under his fingers. ‘Does Sam know, Ella?’
‘He knows Erik isn’t his real dad. He doesn’t know who his real dad is.’
‘Do you?’
That got a reaction. Ella’s gaze was like a stab. ‘Of course I do.’
Maybe the bloke had no idea. Maybe Sam’s dad was as much in the dark as Jake had been with Cassidy. Maybe the decisions got made without him.
All the hairs rose on the back of his neck. ‘What did you tell Sam?’
‘We told him that his biological father lived a long way away. Very far away. And that Erik was the one who wanted to live with us.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Jake muttered, and then he couldn’t not ask. ‘Does the real father know?’
Ella wouldn’t answer.
The question lodged in Jake’s throat, and he had to swallow hard to get around it. ‘Did you tell Sam’s real dad, Ella?’
She licked her lips and her eyes slid away.
‘Ella!’
‘I tried, okay. He didn’t want a bar of me after … after we were together. He said terrible things.’
The words worked through Jake’s clenched teeth. ‘Did. He. Know. About. Sam?’ He had a right to know. All fathers had a right.
‘I don’t know!’ She wrung her hands. ‘I don’t know, okay? I wrote to him when I found out I was pregnant, and I got the most awful letter back from his swim coach telling me, telling me … never mind. And I wrote when Sam was born, and nothing came back. Then I— Erik was in my life after that. I never wrote to Sam’s father again. I hated even thinking about him.’
‘His swim coach?’ Jake said. ‘Sam’s real dad is another swimmer?’
Ella’s face drained of everything: colour, structure, hope. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Who is he?’ Jake said, not certain he wanted to know the answer. Did it matter?
The glass entrance doors burst open, and they heard running feet slapping concrete. Jake forced himself to release Ella’s shoulder; his fingers had dug in—he hadn’t even known he was doing it—and it took something to unclench and let the grip go.
‘There you are!’
It was Ollie, out of breath. The shirt that had been so neatly tucked in three hours ago now hung loosely, grass clippings all over his good shoes.
‘What’s up, Ollie?’ Jake said.
‘Have you seen Sam? Mum said he could have a sleepover at our place tonight if Ella isn’t ready to go home yet. Mum said he had to come and ask you. Someone
