T.J. Lebbon - The Family Man - An edge-of-your-seat read that you won’t be able to put down

I want to be Mr Black.

Does Emma wear stockings or tights? Can you steal some?

That was Tim Roth. Wasn’t it?

Or Muppet T-shirts, with holes for eyes.

Maybe it was Harvey Keitel.

‘No one will lose out, apart from the Royal Mail,’ Andy said. He was a shadowy silhouette, silvered by moonlight, a stranger who Dom hardly knew. ‘And do you know what effect a forty grand loss will have on them?’

‘What?’ Dom asked.

‘None at all.’

‘I’m going home,’ Dom said.

‘Sleep on it.’

‘No.’ Dom snorted, standing from the small park bench. ‘ No. I’m not sleeping on it. You might think I’m pissed, but I’m really not any more. To be honest, it worries me that I can’t tell whether you’re joking or not.’

Still seated, Andy smiled up at him and ate some more chips. He looked smug, confident, strong. Superior. Dom hated the way his friend sometimes made him feel.

‘You’re just taking the piss,’ Dom said. ‘I’ll walk home.’

‘Don’t always be a loser,’ Andy muttered.

‘What?’ Dom wasn’t quite sure what he’d just heard.

‘Huh?’ Andy asked, eyebrows raised. ‘Nothing. Thanks for a good night, mate. See you soon.’

‘Yeah,’ Dom said. ‘Soon.’ He walked through the children’s park to the gate, doing his best not to sway or swerve, head pounding with the promise of tomorrow’s hangover. With every step he felt Andy’s gaze upon him.

No one will lose out … no one will ever suspect us.

At the gate he glanced back, but Andy had already left.

At first Emma thought that Dom had gone to sleep.

She knew that he’d drunk more than usual, and he’d come through the back gate and thrown his arms around her, as if she was his one safe place. He’d kissed her and smelled her hair, and they’d hugged with an unusual strength. Usually it was an affectionate kiss before work or a fly-by hugging while they were busy around the house. But this was an embrace with need.

She’d wondered what had happened that evening. What he and Andy had been talking about. But when she’d asked his response had been, This and that. Can’t really remember .

He was breathing heavily, snoring very softly, lying on his back. They were both naked on top of the bed covers. If Daisy had been here they’d have covered up. But it was still swelteringly hot inside, even though it was almost midnight. Their house was a detached dormer bungalow, so essentially they slept in the roof. They’d talked for some time about buying an air conditioning unit for the upstairs, but it had remained just talk. The ceiling fan did little to alleviate the humid discomfort, but at that moment she didn’t mind being hot.

She was often the one to initiate sex. Especially after they’d had a drink, when Dom inevitably lasted longer, and inhibitions melted away. She lay on her side and stared at the shadow of him, listening to him breathing. Mandy was wrong. She didn’t think Dom was boring, she thought he was safe. Although sometimes, just sometimes, that might mean the same thing.

She reached across and rested her hand on his thigh. He was slick with sweat. He always perspired more after a few pints.

Emma closed her eyes. Her breathing came deeper. She was far from drunk, but she was tired and contented. The swish swish of the ceiling fan was soporific, and at last she was starting to feel a cooling chill where the shifting air passed across her own damp skin.

She dwelled in that nebulous dreamland between consciousness and sleep. Dom passed by her on a bike, chasing Andy but never catching up. They were on a desert road. The distant hills were snowcapped, the plain harsh and flaming here and there from the relentless sun. Even though he was way in the lead, Andy kept passing by where she sat at the roadside, grinning at her each time. He’s in the bath , she said every time he whipped past, dust roiling in his wake. But she spoke in his words, because it had been him who’d actually muttered them. Far across the plain a band played, their music silent but its anger painting the landscape around them red. From this distance she couldn’t see for sure whether it was Genghis Cant, the band she’d hung out with when she was in her early twenties, but she was quite certain it was. There was no other reason she’d feel the way she did.

Andy’s bike whipped past again and again, faster and faster, and the lead singer of Genghis Cant, Max Mort, suddenly screamed his most infamous song into her face, exhorting her to snort the heroin of life from the thighs of the dead.

Emma experienced a moment of dislocation as she snapped awake, but it quickly faded. Dom had rolled across and taken her in his arms. The safe night enveloped her and she sighed in comfort, and relief, and an overwhelming desire for the man who had been her husband for so long.

They kissed passionately, saying nothing. Their skin was slick where their bodies pressed together. She reached between them and grabbed him, slowly stroking. His right hand explored her body, moving across her stomach and down between her thighs. He breathed heavily into her mouth and then kissed her cheek. He smelled of alcohol and sweat, but it was a clean, honest smell.

He gently bit her neck just beneath her left ear. Emma gasped, and a shiver went through her. He might have been drunk, but he knew what she liked.

‘Let’s go outside,’ Dom said. ‘Do it in the garden again.’

‘Really?’ She wished he hadn’t spoken. It broke the moment. And he’d paused, his passion held back even though their bodies were entwined, hands no longer working at each other, only holding.

‘Do one thing every day that scares you,’ he said, propping up so he could stare down at her in the weak moonlight.

‘You sound like Andy,’ she said, chuckling.

Dom stiffened, then pushed himself off, flopping down on his back. The loss of contact was a shock, and Emma felt suddenly cold.

‘Why would you mention him?’ Dom asked.

‘I was only … I didn’t mean anything.’

‘But why bring him up, now, when we’re doing this?’

‘Dom, you’re being silly. Okay, we’ll go outside.’

‘Forget it. Don’t bother.’

‘Dom.’ He got like this sometimes after a drink. Horny and passionate, but angry too. Alcohol loosened him in many ways.

‘I don’t feel like it anyway.’

She rolled across and grabbed him, squeezing. ‘Part of you feels like it.’

‘Maybe in the morning.’ He sighed heavily and turned onto his side, back to her.

‘What the hell?’ she asked. But Dom didn’t reply. His breathing was heavier, but she knew he wasn’t asleep. They knew each other so well. ‘Dom?’

‘’Night,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ She sighed heavily and pulled a single sheet up to cover herself. She wished she hadn’t mentioned Andy. In a darkness suddenly made uncomfortable, she remembered that one awkward moment between them a year before. Neither of them had mentioned it since, and it had grown into nothing more.