Annie ready for bed:
Saggy PJ bottoms (La Senza)
Saggy white vest (M&S)
Pink maribou-trimmed mules (Agent Provocateur)
Frownies (Boots)
Créme de la Mer night cream (eBay)
Hand cream and white cotton gloves (Barielle)
Total est. cost: £370
‘Oh no… you can’t really be thinking about…?’
As Annie tiptoed into the dimly lit bedroom, Ed glanced over at her from his side of the bed. He frowned, and then, spotting the white gloves she was wearing, he began to smile.
‘Oh no,’ he whispered, so as not to wake the twins asleep at the end of the bed, ‘you’re not about to do a mime show, are you?’
‘For my hard-working hands,’ she informed him, also in whispers, ‘gloves are supposed to turbo-charge the hand cream’. The babies were like small unexploded bombs in the room; they could go off at any moment. As Annie walked round the bed, so she could get in on her side, Ed looked at her face, greased with a layer of cream and sporting those silly plastic strips that she taped to her forehead every night, supposedly to iron out her frown lines.
She lay carefully back on the pillow – face, layer of cream and Frownies facing upwards – then she placed her gloved hands on top of the duvet. ‘That looks so relaxing,’ Ed teased her, ‘You’re just going to nod off straightaway, aren’t you? Why don’t you put in your teeth-bleaching tray as well, just to help you doze off?’
‘Ed, babes, I am so tired, I could be on a lilo at the top of a waterfall and I would sleep like a…’ she paused. There was no point saying she would sleep like a baby because those two at the end of the bed woke up every two hours and bawled.
‘Log,’ he finished her sentence.
Annie closed her eyes but Ed, propped up on his elbow, continued to look at her affectionately.
‘Go to sleep,’ she told him.
‘I don’t want to,’ he whispered and reached over to tenderly put the strap which had slipped from her shoulder back into place.
‘Oh no… you can’t really be thinking about…?’ she began.
‘I’m always thinking about that… there’s no harm in just thinking,’ he said and ran his fingers gently round her shoulder; the merest touch, but it seemed to bring the hairs on the surface of her skin to life.
He touched the side of her neck with the same very gentle, tickling caress. ‘I’m not doing anything,’ she told him, but she did nothing to move his hand away.
‘Neither am I,’ he replied, but his hand was still on her skin, ruffling the downy hairs, touching the very tips of her nerve-endings and making them tingle.
When he slid the V-neck of her vest down, revealing her breast, she didn’t move, just lay with her eyes closed, perfectly still.
‘I’m just kissing your nipple,’ he whispered, ‘don’t read anything into it. Don’t expect it to lead anywhere…’
But then she felt his stubble and his tongue against her. Her nipple puckered up to attention and she immediately felt blood rushing to tingle between her legs. Ed’s fingers moved over the skin on her stomach.
‘Just kissing your stomach,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t read anything into it… don’t expect…’
But his fingers were touching expertly, finding absolutely… the right place. She didn’t want to move and not just because of the face cream, the Frownies and the cotton gloves. She wanted to do nothing, just lie back and let him and his tingling touch slide up and down against her.
But then came the moment of urgency and Annie was wiping off both Frownies and Créme de la Mer with her cotton hands, peeling the gloves off and throwing them to the floor. Her vest and pyjama bottoms followed and now she and Ed were naked with intent, gloriously getting it together in defiance of all the obstacles: the unexploded baby bombs, the beauty creams, the shooting schedule, the third series angst and the sheer, grinding, parenthood exhaustion.
A baby stirred.
A baby definitely stirred.
‘Don’t stop,’ Annie whispered against his ear.
‘No,’ Ed assured her.
They concentrated… this could be the only sex for weeks… it had to be good. It had to glow in their memories as a very happy moment; something definitely worth trying to get round to again.
‘Is this a good time to bring up the marriage question?’ Ed whispered against her ear.
‘No!’ she told him. ‘Definitely not. Just because you’ve got Owen to agree to violin practice doesn’t mean it’s your lucky night.’
‘Pleeeeease?’ he tried, ‘You’ve said yes, you’ve been wearing an engagement ring for nearly two years, why won’t you name the date?’
‘Babes, not now,’ she whispered. ‘Shhhh…’ she added, hoping this might soothe the stirring baby.
They moved back across the bed and lay as quietly as they could, Annie feeling Ed’s heartbeat thud on top of hers and his blood pulse inside her.
He kissed her neck, slow, warm kisses from the shoulder up to the ear, which made her shudder with pleasure.
‘If anyone’s going to scream tonight,’ he whispered against her ear, ‘I want it to be you… name… the… date…’
‘It’s just…’ she began, but it was hard to concentrate on thinking when this moment was all about feeling.
‘Please, babes, can we just concentrate on this?’ she asked, ‘because right now… I have no idea what kind of wedding I want. And even if I knew… how will I ever find one minute in the day to organise it?!’