Free Home Truths by Freya North Page A

and lacklustre, hollow and haggard, she thought. Then she thought, poor old Matt. Fancy coming home to this every evening. Not much to fancy at all. So she rummaged around in her long-forsaken make-up bag and turned to her faithful Clarins mainstays for assistance. Just closing her eyes and slowly, properly, cleansing her face felt as heavenly as a spa facial. Exfoliate. Moisturize. A careful dab of concealer under the eyes, a swipe of mascara, a lick of lippy for the hell of it. Lastly, a few pinches to her cheeks which made her eyes smart a little but gave her cheek-bones a comely emphasis. Matt's key in the door. Hear Matt sigh. A dormant butterfly taking wing in her stomach. Here, Matt, this'll make you feel better.
    ‘Hullo,’ Fen said, walking downstairs, carefully tucking her hair behind her ears.
    ‘Hiya,’ Matt replied. ‘You look – have you got make-up on?’
    ‘Yup.’
    ‘Why?’
    Fen frowned and wondered which way to take this. She felt helpless not to opt for the wrong way. ‘Because I feel a frump and I feel I look worse than I feel,’ she snapped.
    ‘Are you fishing for compliments and craving attention?’ Matt teased her. Fen felt embarrassed.
    ‘Well, I think you look very pretty,’ said Matt, ‘and It's a nice distraction from the baby puke on your top.’
    Fen didn't know which to take off first, the make-up or her messy top.
    By the end of a rerun episode of Taggart , Fen was chanting to herself, I will instigate sex; I will, I will. But by the end of News at Ten half an hour later, she was willing herself to simply stay awake.
    ‘Tired?’ Matt asked.
    Ruefully, Fen nodded.
    ‘Go to bed,’ he suggested with a friendly pat to her knee.
    And therein lay the calamity. As much as Fen feared the platonic mundanity of Matt's knee-patting, she loved his suggestion that she go to bed. She still wanted Matt to desire her, she thought she wanted to desire him, but actually her strongest inclination at the moment was to go to sleep. She sat beside him, torn between what her body was shouting at her and what her conscience was whispering and what her partner was sweetly telling her.
    ‘I was trying to be all vampy for you,’ she confessed, ‘like the girl you fell for. But I'm just a tired old frump.’
    ‘Fen,’ Matt said, ‘don't worry about it. Just go to bed.’
    Fen had looked nice. Matt thought about it as he zapped TV channels. The messy top didn't matter. He felt a little badly for her – She'd made an effort but an effort it had obviously been. There was nothing on television. Matt looked around the living-room. A soft towelling rabbit on the armchair, one tiny sock under it. A muslin square, scrunched up, on top of yesterday's Evening Standard . A glob of something orange just above the skirting board. The all-pervasive scent of laundry washed in hypo-allergenic powder. But suddenly, Matt didn't want to smell drying babygros. He snapped his eyes shut. He didn't want to see any of these accoutrements of fatherhood. Actually, all he wanted to see was tits and arse. Quietly, he tiptoed up to the bedroom. It was dark, Fen was sleeping. Could he wake her? Would she mind? Dare he risk it? But realistically, was there really much point trying? He went instead to the cupboard, eased open the door, waited a moment to see if She'd woken. She hadn't. By feel, he differentiated between the suits that were hanging there, found the PaulSmith one according to its superior cloth. He slipped his hand into the pocket and tiptoed his fingers along the edges of some discs. One would do. It didn't matter which. Though Fen slept on oblivious, Matt still felt obliged to tuck the DVD up his jumper and hurry from the room as noiselessly as He'd entered.
    Porn. Odd stuff, really. In reality, pneumatic women had never been Matt's type, let alone the stuff harboured in secret fantasies. He'd never pursued a situation of sharing a girl with another bloke, exotic underwear had never really turned him on and he