sneak back into Joe's room? Impossible.
Tess went to her room and dressed while Em pulled out the contents of the bottom drawer. What am I meant to do now? Tess wondered. Do I go back to his bedroom with Em in tow? Take him up a cup of tea? Do I wait for him to surface? If he wakes and I'm not there, is the connection gone?
‘Was it the heat of the moment in the dead of night?’
Tess asked forlornly. ‘Em – not that. No, naughty Em. Give it to Mummy. Good girl.’
‘Woof.’
‘Yes, let's go and see how Wolf is feeling this morning.’
As they made their way down one flight of stairs, Tess cast a longing look down the corridor to Joe's room, before they descended the next flight. Dear God, let him wake up and want more.
Em didn't appear to notice the surgical lampshade contraption encasing the dog's face, nor the fact that his tail was now a fraction of its original length and the stump was sheathed in a wedge of bright green bandage. She didn't pay much attention that his foreleg was bandaged in blue to the elbow and that he was currently standing a little splayed and drunken like a newborn foal. Em just knew that the dog was back and that made her happy so she toddled over and grabbed her usual handful of coat that rose in a coarse roan tuft at the base of his neck.
‘Careful!’ Tess said, because Wolf looked as though he could be toppled but she saw that the dog was unconcerned. In fact, she thought he probably appreciated this gesture of normality more than the solemn visits from the midnight nursing staff who used to be his master and his master's house-sitter.
‘Breakfast?’ she asked.
They looked at her beseechingly.
She made them all eggs. Two for Wolf, hard boiled, which she fed him by hand because the walk to the kitchen had obviously been a bit much for him as he was now standing like a wind-hammered scarecrow and staring at the tiles. Em, meanwhile, stabbed buttered Hovis soldiers into a soft-boiled egg. Tess's egg remained unbashed on her plate, with triangles of toast and a mug of tea.
And then Joe came in and said, morning all, and he sat down, pulling Tess's plate over, tucking into her breakfast, mashing the egg onto the toast and taking hearty swigs of her tea.
‘Morning,’ she said, trying not to let a grin spoil her mock indignation. She made more toast, boiled another egg and guided Wolf to the back door. As she stood in the porch, watching Wolf dodder off for his ablutions, she put her hand on her chest and felt how her heart pounded. This was one of the best mornings in her life so far – and she hadn't a clue what to do next. Ultimately, Wolf solved the dilemma for her.
‘He did a wee!’ was what she announced even though she thought it was probably the stupidest thing to say.
But Joe just laughed. He'd finished his breakfast, or her breakfast. He rose from the table and took his plate to the sink. On the way back, he touched Em's curls. And then, as he passed by Tess, he put his hand on the back of her neck as he went, his touch gentle but emphatic, and he said, I'm going to have a shower. And there she stood, transfixed by the significance of his touch for long after she heard the tank belching out the hot water.
She turned to Em. ‘When you're a teenager,’ she told her, ‘and someone touches you like that, you'll be saying to me, Mum, I'm never going to wash again.’
But then she thought to herself how Joe's touch hadn't make her feel like a teenager, actually it had made her feel like a woman.
She turned to Em again. ‘When you were a baby, you'd go down for an after-breakfast nap, you know. For a good hour.’ She tapped Em on the nose. ‘And that's when Mummy could have a really long shower.’ She listened to the sound of Joe taking his. ‘More's the pity,’ she said to Em.
After dressing Em, Tess checked Wolf's dressings and as she did so, she wondered about the day ahead in view of the night just gone. Was she meant to loiter for Joe – might they spend time together today? Or was she meant to proceed with the day alone, and was last night just an anomaly? Her heart hurt at the thought of that. She scrambled around her memory for evidence to say otherwise.
But he wouldn't have touched my neck in the kitchen! He could have just said he was going to take a shower! In fact, he needn't have said anything!
But what was she meant to do? And why did it demand so much thinking and fretting? That can't be a good sign. She felt anxious.
In whose hands was it, to carry today what was formed last night?
Or was nothing formed – was it just a shag?
It hadn't felt that way to Tess. In her opinion, they'd made love.
‘But who am I to judge? It's been a long, long time for me.’
‘What has?’
Tess started and turned from squatting by Wolf in the hallway. Behind her, Joe was leafing through the post.
‘What's been a long, long time for you?’
She was stuck how to answer him. She couldn't think of anything clever, or even plausible, to say and the truth wasn't an option because it felt too risky to lay herself bare at this time in the morning.
It's been a long, long time since I nursed a dog.
It's been a long, long time since I saw that much post.
It's been a long, long time since I last saw my father.
It's been a long, long time since Em and I had an ice cream.
It's been a long, long time since I felt this way, Joe – happy and frantic and alive.
It's been a long, long time since I last had sex and, come to think of it, I don't think I've actually been made love to before.
As if. She wasn't going to be saying any of these things.
She felt suddenly shy and stupid. And because she felt shy and stupid, she sensed she'd gone red. So there she was, actually aware that only two minutes previously she'd been deeming herself a woman to whom Joe had made love, but now she was just standing there like a gormless, blushing teenager. She really didn't dare glance at him, but her body conspired against her and her eyes met his and he raised his eyebrow quizzically. All she could do was shrug at him. But he answered that with a wink; an easy, affectionate wink. And she thought, oh God, what shade of red have I gone now? So she said to him, I'm just going to take Em out for some fresh air, do you want anything? And he answered with another wink, this one unmistakably lascivious. And she thought, if I don't go right now, my face will look like beetroot and there'll be no more winking from Joe.
She meandered around town, absent-mindedly pushing the buggy here and there while focusing on her recollections of the night with Joe and trying not to taunt herself with what if it was a one-off. The girlfriend in France sprang into Saltburn out of nowhere. Not a girlfriend – a casual, sex-only set-up totally off Tess's moral radar. The thought of it made her shudder and she felt intimidated by it. Too shy to ask about it. She'd strolled right to the other side of town and suddenly she felt too far away, out of range, out of sorts. She began to walk home at some pace, feeling that she'd ventured too far and been gone too long. It was as if the further away she was from Joe, then the less vivid she felt herself to be. Like a cordless phone, she mused, taken too far
