Dawn O’Porter - The Cows

‘Any special requests?’ Hmmmmm. Maybe it’s a little too soon to tell her that he loves the idea of her whipping her hair all over his body? It’s just his thing, he can’t explain it. It’s nothing seedy, or weird. He just loves women with long hair. Of which she had plenty. Long, thick brown hair. It was the first thing he noticed but luckily sense got the better of him and he didn’t entertain the idea out loud. He could really do with some sex though; it’s been a while since anything notable. He texts back.

I think we’ll …

And just at that moment, a cyclist crashes into him. The guy falls off but quickly picks himself up and gets back on his bike and speeds off. Was he embarrassed? Escaping someone? Jason doesn’t give a shit, all he cares about is the fact that his phone flew out of his hand and disappeared down a drain.

Tara, and her number, gone.

FUCK.

As the train passes through Seven Sisters, I look around me. My carriage is empty. I’ve got that heaviness inside me. That dull thud of my libido like a heart thumping in my underwear. I could wait until I get home to give it what it wants, but then here I am. Alone on a train. Gently drunk and reeling off the back of an electrifying encounter. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this fluttering of excitement. Why wait?

I see a copy of the Metro on the seat and lay it over my lap, then slip my hand inside my trousers and then into my underwear. My head falls back against the wall of the train and I think about Jason’s body pressing against mine. I imagine us in that doorway, naked now. My legs wrapped around his waist as he pushes me against the door, not caring if anyone sees. Totally locked into my fantasy, I rub hard, it feels so good. My knees fall apart and I feel cool air filter through my pubic hair as the newspaper falls to the floor. The train starts to slow. I’m running out of time, but I can’t and won’t stop. I press harder, think harder, breathe harder until I come harder than I have in a long, long time. The train slows down. I know I have to move. Just one more second in this moment.

I hear a sniff.

My eyes bounce open and I see a kid – white, blond, in a tracksuit. He’s holding a phone. Taking a picture? Or God, is he actually filming me?

‘What the fuck?’ I scream as I launch myself at him. But as the train stops I’m jolted forward and end up face down in the aisle with my trousers around my ankles. The youth’s feet disappear as he runs off the train.

‘PERVERT,’ I scream to a closing door.

What the hell did I just do?

Over a breakfast of black coffee and scrambled eggs on toast with an enormous dollop of ketchup, Cam is sitting at her kitchen table wearing a t-shirt and knickers, making a few finishing touches to the column she’s been writing since Mark left to go to the gym at nine a.m. As she’s reading through it, searching for missing commas and spelling mistakes, her doorbell starts ringing so aggressively she thinks there must be a fire. Launching herself into her bedroom to pull on some leggings, she runs to the intercom saying, ‘What? What?’ only to hear her sister say, ‘Cam, it’s Mel. We were on our way to the Heath and thought we’d come to say hi.’

She buzzes them up, instantly hearing the stampede of Mel’s three children racing up the stairs. She opens her door and in pelts Max, eleven, Tamzin, nine, and Jake, four. They all run straight to the window and start naming all the London landmarks that they can see in the view.

‘Morning,’ she says as they pass her. ‘MORNING, AUNTY CAM,’ they shout in reply.

Behind them comes Mel, trudging up the stairs, weighed down with beach bags and a cool box. ‘Here, let me help you,’ says Cam, rushing to help her.

‘This is the most un-kid-friendly flat I’ve ever been to; how many stairs are there? Oh, Cam, you haven’t got a bra on!’ says Mel, disapprovingly.

‘There are forty-six steep steps, it’s an old building and I don’t have kids so it’s fine for me. And I am not wearing a bra because I’m at home. Alone. Or at least I was.’

‘I know, but still. You could have put one on before you opened the door.’

‘Mel, you’re my sister?’

‘Yes, but, the kids … anyway.’

Cam shuts the door and sarcastically mouths, ‘Welcome’ under her breath.

Mel drops all of the bags onto the floor, puts her palms on her lower back and arches backwards. She lets out a loud sigh but it doesn’t hide the sound of her cracking bones. She looks exhausted.

‘The place is nice,’ she says, looking around. ‘It’s big, won’t you get lonely?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Cam says. ‘Tea?’

‘Better not. I’ll need a wee in the park if I do.’

‘Right,’ says Cam, putting on the kettle anyway. She fancies more coffee, and is grateful her bladder allows it. ‘All well?’

‘Not really, Mum is worried sick. She thinks that your website is inappropriate and she’s too embarrassed to go to her ladies’ club because she thinks all the other ladies think you’re a bra-burning lesbian!’

‘Well I guess that would explain why I’m not wearing one.’ Cam gives Mel a ‘touché’ look, and thinks back to the post she wrote last night about having a younger lover. Her mother will hate it, but at least it will help with the lesbian part.

‘Is there anything you can do to make her feel better, it’s literally all she talks about?’

‘Mel, there is nothing I can do to make Mum feel better, I am who I am. I’ve told her multiple times not to read my blog but she keeps doing it. If it tortures her so much she should just stop.’

Mel waddles over to the window. ‘OK kids, five minutes. I want to get to the park before it gets busy and someone steals our tree.’ She turns to Cam. ‘I need to sit in the shade or my blood gets too warm and my veins bulge.’

Cam looks at her sister and isn’t sure what to say. She looks terrible. Mel never really coped with having kids, not physically or emotionally. She used to be sporty and have a great body, but progressively after each kid she got fatter and fatter and now she’s a hefty size eighteen. Unfortunately, she carries most of her weight on her bum and thighs, so she suffers from chafed skin during the summer months and is largely uncomfortable on hot days. She’s very pretty, possibly even beautiful, but the stress of life and a lack of sleep, as well as coping with three kids, makes it hard to spot the smile that used to attract so many boys at school. She got post-natal depression after every baby, and her marriage is holding on by a shoestring. Cam is sure Mel’s husband, Dave, is having an affair, and she doesn’t really blame him. Mel’s turned into a complicated person with a lot of anger issues in regards to how her life turned out. She’s the best advert for not having kids that Cam has ever seen.

The truth is, Mel is more like Cam than she would ever like to admit. She was never maternal, she never needed to be in relationships to be happy. But she was weaker when it came to standing up to tradition. Their mother saw no future for her four daughters other than marriage and babies. The two eldest, Tanya and Angela, were happy to conform. They both married guys they met at university and have seven kids between them. Tanya teaches yoga and Angela runs a daycare; it’s all pretty sickening and ideal in Cam’s view. Like they read House & Garden and try and live within one of the pictures. But Mel, like Cam, wasn’t designed that way. She was clever, academic and top of the class. She wanted to study law and work in the city. She had plans well beyond being a stay-at-home mum. But then she met Dave and got pregnant with Max. She stupidly told their mother, despite Cam warning her not to, and the guilt laid upon her for even considering an abortion was too much for her to fight against. So she had a kid at twenty-six, even though she didn’t want it. And ever since then, she has lived a life that she wasn’t supposed to live.