Chapter Thirty-nine
A feeling of relief washed over me as the car carrying my husband Pete and our daughter Isobel passed through the gates and out onto the road, leaving me alone in the house. In a few hours' time she would be installed in the city flat that she would share with her University friends for the next academic year and would be out of my hair until December.
After the last week, that was something devoutly to be wished.
Deprived of the presence of the new boy in her life, her bed and her body, Izzy's behaviour had been every bit as intolerable as I had feared. Reverting to her previous short-tempered, judgemental, selfish side, she and I had argued almost every day.
As she explained, as if the idea of having a pregnant fifty-one-year-old mother wasn't embarrassing enough, having to watch the bump that would shortly be her new sister growing larger every day was more than she could take in silence. The words weird, disgusting and unnatural had been added to her already unpleasant vocabulary, as well as the normal teenage revulsion at the idea of her ancient parents ever having had sex at all.
Given Izzy was now in her twenties, I had hoped for a more mature, more tolerant attitude but this was not to be.
More than once, I thought how happily I would have swapped the embarrassment of having to hear my daughter's overloud orgasmic cries for the anger I felt hearing her cruel, judgemental outbursts.
By December, her new half-sister would have been born! God alone knew how Izzy would behave then.
And I didn't dare even think about how she would react if she ever found out that she and her new sister did not share the same father; that the new arrival would be, as my mother would have said, a lovechild.
The only positive was that all this tension in the house had distracted me from the terrible desire that had been growing strong and stronger ever since Izzy and Jack had got together; the infinitely inadvisable but increasingly compelling idea of letting his father Tony back into my bed and into my life.
I had to keep my wits about me; though suppressed during the day, the idea kept catching me unawares during the many broken nights my increasingly swollen belly was inducing. The arousal that followed was powerful, impossible to ignore and was growing steadily in intensity.
Still, away Izzy had now gone. When Pete returned, he and I could spend the next ten or so weeks as a couple before, for the fourth time in our lives, Armageddon descended upon us in the form of a new-born baby.
As far as that part of the process was going, nature was being her perverse self once again. My fourth and most unlikely pregnancy was going more smoothly than any of my previous ones. There was no denying that my belly was bigger than before - much bigger - but my blood pressure was normal, my heartbeat fine, my ankles were their usual size, my back ache was tolerable and despite the warm weather, my clothes were still acceptably comfortable.
Though I never voiced the thought out loud, it was almost as if I had been born to bear Darren's children.
With all three of my previous pregnancies and with Izzy in particular, all of these had been problems. She had been a tricky child even before birth and had been challenging throughout her life. But at least now she had returned to University, Pete and I had time for ourselves.
The first week of freedom from her judgemental attitude passed quickly and pleasantly.
By now, the scandal of a fifty-one-year-old Senior Scientist being pregnant had been replaced by other, more salacious rumours, not involving either Pete or me. This relieved the pressure considerably. My very obvious condition was no longer novelty at work which helped too. Though still a puzzle, fewer people stared at me in the corridors these days and Pete's positive attitude towards the prospect of being a father again had helped dispel any remaining rumours about the unlikelihood of his vasectomy having spontaneously reversed.
Though many of our friends were no doubt suspicious, they kept those suspicions to themselves and life was carrying on as normally as it would for any expectant mother.
Well nearly normal; my libido was still extremely high, as the persistent tired look on my husband's handsome face testified.
"Jesus Penn!" Pete gasped as he fell onto the sheet alongside me on Sunday night. "You're insatiable!"
He was quite literally right. I was insatiable; it had been some time since any form of sex with my husband had come even close to satisfying me. Even Pete's considerable oral skills had failed to deliver the orgasms I so desperately needed.
I had started to wonder whether being pregnant in my fifties had done so much damage that I might never climax again.
"I'm sorry," I sighed, closing my thighs and feeling the tingle of my swollen lips as they were pressed together. "It's me; I've gone a bit crazy, I know."
"No, I'm sorry," Pete replied, stroking my belly with his fingertips and licking his lips. He nodded towards my groin. "Shall I try again?"
"Thanks, but I'm too sore now," I lied. "Maybe I'll use one of my toys tomorrow."
There was a long pause.
"You called out his name again," Pete eventually said quietly.
"Whose name?"
"Tony's."
"Sorry, Pete."
"It's okay," he sighed. "If it helps you cum, you call out whatever you need to."
"It doesn't upset you anymore?"
"Not as much as it did," Pete dismissed the idea unconvincingly. "They say you never forget your first. I suppose that applies to first infidelities as well as first fucks."
There was another long pause. I could feel my husband's semen oozing out of my rather capacious vagina.
"It's not as if you're going to leave me for him now, is it?" he eventually said.
"That's certainly true," I smiled wryly.
"But you did come close," he added. "And not so long ago."
That was also undeniable. It had been the prospect of me wanting to leave Pete and move in with Tony less than a year ago that had frightened my lover into dumping me and showing me how shallow and unreliable he really was. I had come closer to losing my husband and family than I ever wanted to come again.
"Is he really that good in bed?" Pete asked.
It was the first time in many months that he had asked anything about that difficult time in our lives.
"I've had better," I replied, trying to lighten the situation.
"And younger," Pete smiled, stroking my bump again. "But none of them was your first. There must have been something special about him that made you decide to cheat after so many years.
"Your telling me it would be okay if I slept with other men did have some effect on my decision," I reminded him.
"I accept I said that, but you chose Tony rather than anyone else."
Pete was clearly not going to be put off this line of questioning easily.
"It was more a case of him choosing me," I told him honestly. "It's not an excuse, but he's very persuasive and once he's got you in his sights, he doesn't take prisoners."
"So I've heard, Pete replied. "That might explain the first time, but you were together for months. You'd been fucking him for four weeks before you even let me know it had started. There must have been something special between you."
"We've been through this before, Pete," I protested.
"I know. But this whole Izzy and Jack business has set it all off again in my mind."
"In mine too," I agreed.
"So what was it?"
"It's hard to say," I said, uncertainly. "I was flattered; he's very attractive and I've always enjoyed his company."
