Through the Bedroom Window

"Oscar, I'm sick and tired of telling you, stop kicking your sister under the table."

"Yeah, Oscar."

"Don't you dare start mouthing off at him, Ella, I can see you pinching him when you think I'm not looking."

"Yeah, Ella. Stop being a bitch."

I fixed Oscar with my strongest mum-glare. "What have I said about bad language, Oscar?"

He just rolled his eyes.

"And calling your sister that word is disgusting anyway, it's misogynistic and I am sure I didn't bring up a son who is misogynistic."

"Mum, he's kicking me again," Ella whinged, screwing up her face to make herself look more upset.

"No I'm not," Oscar insisted.

"You are."

"I'm not."

"Mum, he is, tell him to stop."

Oscar did a fake cough. "Bitch."

"Lee, stop looking at your bloody phone and tell them," I hissed at my husband, who was sitting at the other end of the kitchen table, engrossed in something on his phone screen.

"Huh?" he asked, looking up, confused.

"These two are raising hell again."

"Dad, isn't saying 'bloody' bad language?" Oscar asked with an evil look.

"Listen, Holly, sweetheart, I've got two hundred and fifty quid riding on the Arsenal game, I should be watching it on TV and judging when to cash out," Lee said, his whinging tone showing exactly where Ella got it from. "Let's finish eating on the sofa."

"That wasn't what I asked," I said, ready to argue, but freed from the shackles of sitting at the table, Oscar and Ella grabbed their plates and made a dash for the living room. Lee looked at me and shrugged.

"Decision made," he said, smugly, picking up his own plate.

I was seething at him. "The kids are acting up because you never seem to give a shit," I said, pointing my finger at him.

"How has this got anything to do with me? You've been at home with them all day, I was out at work."

"I've been working from home!"

"Yeah but that's just the temp job, it doesn't really count."

"It fucking well does, Lee. It's hard work, and I have to constantly break up Oscar and Ella's fights."

He shrugged and shoved his hand under his belly, scratching the area where his tummy fat rolled over his waistband, making everything from his neck downwards jiggle. "I've got to watch the match, I'm missing it," he said, the closest he ever got to apologising, and he sloped off, leaving me sitting there, head in hands, grinding the heels of my hands into my eyes to force the tears of rage back in.

I took deep breaths and counted to ten. Then twenty, then thirty. I felt slightly calmer. Calm enough to get up, plaster a smile on my face, and pick up my plate to join the rest of my family in front of the TV. Staying in the kitchen would make me seem petty.

"Mum, I forgot my juice," Oscar said the second I walked in. Lee had the TV on loud and the room was bathed in a green glow from the screen and the football pitch it was showing in ultra high definition.

"I'm not a waitress, Oscar. And you should say please." I knew before I said it how futile it would be.

"Actually, sweetheart, I could do with another lager out of the fridge, if you're going," Lee said, already looking at his phone again, shovelling spaghetti bolognese into his mouth with the fork in his free hand.

"I'm not blood- I mean, I'm not going," I said, trying to remain calm.

"If Arsenal don't score soon I'll lose all this money, come on."

"Yeah, Mum, come on."

I glared at Oscar, nostrils flared, but he was getting it from his dad and there was nothing I could do. "Just this once," I said, slamming my plate down on a side table, the cutlery making a metallic jangle. "And don't expect to catch me doing the washing up."

Nobody replied.

I poured Lee's lager into his empty glass from the kitchen table, crushed the can and put it in the recycling, muttering to myself the whole time about how ridiculous the situation was and how ungrateful everyone was being. Then I snatched up Oscar's juice glass and marched back to the living room, opening my mouth to give them all another lecture about taking me for granted, when one of the sofa cushions came flying out of nowhere and smacked into me, sending me staggering and slopping the contents of both glasses all down my front.

"What in the living fuck is going on?" I screamed, looking in disbelief at the mixture of sticky yellow orange juice and sticky yellow lager soaking into my black work blouse.

"Sorry, Mum," Oscar said, jumping up to grab a wet cloth.

"Here, sit down and put your feet up," Lee said, making room for me on the sofa.

"Let me get you a drink," Ella said, smiling at me and coming over to give me a hug.

For about half a second, I fantasised that I had a family like that.

"Goooooooal!" Lee yelled, punching the air, his outstretched arm making it clear it was him who had thrown the cushion, and his delighted expression also made it clear he hadn't even noticed where it had gone.

Oscar just pointed at me dripping wet and began laughing, collapsing sideways on the sofa and dripping bolognese onto the cushion as he howled with mirth.

Ella screamed something incoherent at the top of her voice, just to join in.

"I have had enough!" I screeched at them, slamming the two spilt glasses down onto the coffee table.

"Just won two hundred and fifty, sweetheart-" Lee began, but I fixed him with a look of white hot fury.

"I don't care about your stupid fucking bet, look at what you've done!" I shouted, pointing at my soaked shirt.

"You're overreacting, it'll be fine in the machine," Lee said, dismissively, as Oscar continued laughing his head off.

"Are you going to put it there?"

"Eh?"

"Are you going to put it in the machine?" My hands were shaking.

"Well, no, that's your job, sweetheart, you know I haven't got time with work and-"

"Yes I bloody well know about your fucking work," I shouted, right in his face. "I'm going to bed, you can sort the kids out."

"Honestly, it's really- Listen, Holly, you're just being unreasonable, it's two hundred and fifty-"

I slammed the door and stormed upstairs, stamping on every step of the staircase, then threw open the bedroom door and slammed it behind me too. I hated myself for losing my temper and I hated getting angry in front of the kids, but just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Lee had to go and do something completely ridiculous. Throwing a cushion around was something that even Oscar and Ella had grown out of, and they were fourteen and twelve, for goodness' sake. I switched on the light and examined the sticky mess that my blouse had become, unbuttoning it quickly and peeling it off, trying not to think about it. Miraculously my bra was dry, but then to my horror when I looked in the dressing table mirror I realised that some of my curly ginger hair, probably my favourite feature even if I did have some grey at the roots, was darkened with liquid and had stuck together in a rapidly drying sugary clump.

A full shower including hair wash would take me the best part of an hour and I put my head in my hands, fighting off sobs. Why did this have to happen to me? Why was every night like this? Why were there still two weeks of the school summer holidays left? Why did it have to be me who was laid off from my decent customer manager job which meant I had to take the awful, shitty call centre work-from-home job that paid half as much and shredded my nerves every day? Why did Lee drink too much and bet on stupid football matches and then piss all his winnings away every fucking time?

Despairing, I looked at the photo on the wall beside the bed. It was from our wedding, fifteen years ago, Lee looking handsome and trim, laughing naturally at a joke his best man had told, while I sat beside him, looking a lot more than fifteen years younger, holding his hand and beaming, the happiest day of my life. Where did that man go? Why had turning forty turned my life into this shitty mess?

Pull it together, Holly, I told myself. Complaining wouldn't get me clean. I could shower, calm down, get into comfy pyjamas, go down and apologise to the kids, help them clean up and salvage something from the evening. And anyway, sitting around in my bra with the bedroom curtains wide open and the light on wasn't the best idea if I wanted to keep on the right side of the neighbours.

Then I saw him. Our house, on the corner of the cul-de-sac, didn't quite face square-on to the next door neighbour's, so from this bedroom you could see a corner of their bedroom and vice-versa. That was the corner my dressing table was in, close to the window to get the best light in the mornings for doing my makeup. And over the summer while he was home from university, our neighbour's son, Connor, used the corner of his bedroom for his gaming chair. That's where he was sitting at that very moment, controller in hand, looking at me.

In an instant he was looking away, back at his TV or whatever he was playing games on, but I knew he'd been looking. What had he seen? I'd been parading around in my bra for a few minutes: had he seen all of it? Or just the last few seconds? My back was partly turned, anyway, so he couldn't see much more than the side of my bra. And in any case, my plain black work bra wasn't setting anyone's pulse racing. I'd worn more revealing bikinis in public, so this was hardly a striptease.

But there was still... something. A flutter of excitement. He'd been looking at me. I was just in my bra and he'd been looking at me. Me. Holly Alderman, middle-aged mum who lived next door. It was flattering. I didn't think I was past it by any means; I still looked good in tight jeans and being blessed with big tits made the classic hourglass figure easier to achieve. And my hair, in my experience, helped to draw the male gaze too.

I smiled to myself in the mirror, but then checked myself. Maybe he wasn't really looking, but he just noticed me there and looked away because he didn't like what he saw? It was definitely possible. When I discreetly looked back in his direction, he was glued to the game again. Perhaps I imagined his gaze on me and he was just looking at something else out of the window. Regardless, I was still sitting here, hair sticky, wearing no shirt with the curtains open. There was only one way to know for certain, a voice in the back of my head said.

Reaching behind my back, I unhooked my bra. My heart was racing now and my mouth was dry, but once my mind was made up, I never hesitated. The bra strap slackened as the tension went, and I held my arms in front of me, letting the shoulder straps slide down, and I put the bra on my dressing table. God, it felt good to take it off after the day I'd had. I reached up and grabbed my boobs, lifting them up, feeling the relief in my back muscles.

Then I stood up and turned to face the window. I didn't look directly at him, but from the corner of my eye I saw Connor react, his head turning away from the screen, hands still pressing buttons. I walked across the room to the other side, where the curtain was, my tits out on display, bouncing gently against my chest as I took each light footstep. Connor was looking at me. I could see it. I risked a look: his eyes were on my chest, no doubt about it. He was looking. I felt my face getting hot as I took hold of the curtain and began to draw it, moving back the way I'd come, pretending I hadn't noticed him. Then I reached over for the second curtain, pulled it, and closed them completely, hiding me from view.

My heart was beating so hard I was sure my whole body was being shaken by it. My hands felt sweaty and my nipples were achingly hard. Fuck, I hadn't realised how aroused that had made me. How could something that had taken no more than five seconds turn me on so much?

Heavily, I sat down on the corner of the bed. The room was dark now, the curtains keeping the light out, and I could hear the faint drone of the TV downstairs. Surreptitiously I slid my hand down inside my work trousers and felt inside my knickers. I was wet. I felt a powerful rush of arousal go through me. Exposing my tits to Connor had made me wet.

I resolutely unfastened my trousers and pushed them onto the floor, spreading my thighs and rubbing my clit, my hand inside my knickers. I'd shown the neighbours' son my tits, deliberately. I'd taken off my bra for him. He'd seen my big pink areolas, the freckles that extended down my cleavage, he'd seen how big they were and how heavy and how the left one was somehow slightly rounder than the right. Oh fuck, he'd seen my tits. I rubbed myself fast, realising that all of my anger and frustration had suddenly turned into this intense arousal, adrenaline surging through me. I'd done something naughty. Something slutty. I did some quick mental maths. He must be either nineteen or twenty. Half my age. Oh fuck, I'd shown someone half my age my boobs. I was acting half my age, like a horny teenager.

All this was rushing through my head as I rubbed myself, getting closer and closer, my thighs tensing and my back arching. Unconsciously, I began strumming my hand over my clit, which was always the way I made myself cum. I was so close. And then the thought came to me.

Maybe he would touch himself and think about me.

About my tits.

About fucking them.

About fucking me.

The orgasm washed over me like a big wave suddenly striking me, arriving earlier than expected and catching me off guard. I breathed hard, letting it course through me, and then relaxed and enjoyed the sensation of it ebbing away with each breath, with each beat of my heart.

And then the guilt hit me even harder.

As I showered, combing the congealed juice out of my hair, the same things were whirling around my head. 'You're disgusting'. 'What if he tells his parents?' 'You're married'. 'He's half your age'. 'You've got kids'. To counter this, I desperately tried to rationalise it. Ever since the redundancy, Lee and I hadn't had sex. At first, I'd blamed myself, with all of the stress of losing my job and needing to find another one killing my libido. But over time I'd realised that it was as much him as it was me. He just didn't seem interested in sex any longer, or at least, not with me. He found it more physically tiring as he gained weight and even when we'd occasionally been cuddly and touchy on the sofa when the kids were asleep, he'd struggled to get hard. This evening was just a reaction to a dry spell. A sudden venting of sexual energy.

And, I told myself as I dried my hair with the hairdryer, wrapped in two towels, I'd been so angry and worked up, it was my way of lashing out. Trying to regain control. It wasn't a healthy way of doing it, no, but it would have been just as unhealthy if I'd thrown something across the room or eaten an entire slab of chocolate to compensate. In any case, no matter which line of thinking I went down, they all led to the same, firm conclusion.

It wasn't going to happen again.

With just a week to go until school started again and the August bank holiday in the rearview mirror, the weather seemed to suddenly remember it was supposed to be summer and the sun came out. I yearned to be one of the wholesome families that threw over work, all jumped in the car, drove to the beach and enjoyed a day of unforgettable summer memories, but that absolutely was not our family. Oscar and Ella would have fought the whole way there and back in the car and Lee didn't like being outside when it was hot. Instead, I took half a day off work to drag the kids around the local outlet shopping centre in pursuit of new school uniforms. I'd thought that doing this during the working week would mean we could avoid the crowds, but the fine weather seemed to have brought everyone out of the house and after battling for a parking space in the furthest possible corner of the car park, we'd endured queue after queue everywhere we went, whether it was queuing for the checkout or queuing for the ladies' toilets. Oscar wouldn't wear a sun hat, got too hot and then turned grumpy, playing with a half-drunk bottle of lukewarm cola in the most irritating way possible. Ella tried to ingratiate herself with me all day in the hope I'd buy her a new phone, but when I finally refused to countenance it she had a tantrum and didn't speak to me again. Releasing them back into the house was a relief, especially as Ella went straight to her room and shut the door, so I left Oscar watching a kung-fu movie he'd found on TV and wearily went outside into the sunshine again to bring in the washing from the line.

"Hello Mrs Alderman," someone said from the other side of the garden fence as I approached, basket under my arm.

I peered over. "Oh, hello Connor," I said. I'd not actually seen him since 'the incident' and I fought to keep myself from blushing, thinking firmly about the laundry and not about anything else. He was lying on a sun lounger in his garden, shirtless, wearing designer sunglasses and beach shorts with a palm frond motif. Three empty cans of beer were discarded on the grass and I got the impression I might have woken him up from a siesta. Admittedly, he did look good: he was in good shape and his suntan suited him, and over the summer he'd let his hair get a bit longer which gave him a laid-back, bohemian kind of look. No, Holly, don't think about it. Focus on the laundry.

"Weather's turned nice, hasn't it?" Connor said, obviously talking to me even though I had turned to face the washing line.

I looked over the fence at him again out of politeness. "Yeah, it really has," I agreed, and then, incapable of leaving it at that, I said, "How was uni, this year?" Even as I said it, I chastised myself for talking to him, but ignoring him would have seemed even more suspicious.

"Yeah, pretty good. Passed all my exams, at least, which was a relief."

I nodded. I had never been to university and so had no idea what it was like. He lifted his head and looked over at me, and I was deeply conscious of wearing a t-shirt I'd sweated in all day and trackie bottoms, which wasn't screaming sexy. But I didn't want to look sexy, he was the neighbours' son. My head was so mixed up.

"How are your mum and dad?" I asked, deflecting as I began taking the clothes off the line.

"They're good. Thinking of squeezing in a weekend away if the weather holds that long, I think. Somewhere in Wales."

"Oh, right."

Conversation lapsed. I piled the washing into the basket, put away the pegs, and said a casual "See you," as I went back inside. He nodded in response and carried on sunbathing. See, I could handle it. Nothing was weird at all. Nothing out of place.

"I'm not being unreasonable, Lee, I'm asking you to clear up the kitchen so I can have a bath," I said, trying to keep the exasperation out of my tone.

"You could clear it up and just have a five minute shower," he protested. "You always take ages in the bath."

"And what are you going to do while I do the clearing up?"

"I'm supposed to be going to the pub with Alan, he-"

"When did you agree to this? I don't remember you saying anything about going to the pub-"

"I don't need you to approve my social life, I am an adult after all, I can-"

"It's not about being an adult, it's about not pissing off to the pub and leaving me to do every-"

"I've been at work all day and you've been off, why should I have-"

"I haven't been off, I've been taking the kids shopping-"

"Oh, shopping, well that sounds like a complete nightmare, women hate shopping-"

"Lee just fuck off, just fuck off if you're going out. I'll sort it all out."

"Alright, I will."

I was almost sure he muttered the word 'bitch' under his breath as he grabbed his wallet and phone, but I wasn't sure enough. And anyway, a blazing row would wake Ella. I expended my energy flinging dirty pots and pans into the dishwasher instead, ignoring the sound of Lee leaving. I didn't want to be the nagging wife but I didn't see what else I could do; if I left him to his own devices he'd walk all over me. It felt impossible.