The First Last Kiss (12 page)

‘The first thing you have to know about Jackie,’ Dave announces proudly as he digs into a silver-foil tray that has been put on a grand silver platter, ‘is that she don’t cook. In fact, we actively encourage her not to cook. Firstly, because she’s too busy keeping us all on track, making herself look beautiful, doing her charity work, running my accounts and keeping the house looking nice. But also because she’s
bloody awful
at it!’

‘Well that’s good,’ I laugh, touching Ryan on the knee. ‘At least he won’t ever expect too much from me, I can’t cook either!’

Jackie smiles good-humouredly at me. ‘Good on you, Molly babes!’ She turns to Dave.

‘You’ll fit right in here, gal,’ Nanny Door says to me, digging into her overflowing plate like she hasn’t eaten in weeks. ‘Every weekend I come here praying that my Jackie ain’t tried to make anything herself. I don’t know who she gets it from.’ Her wicked smile suggests that she knows only too well.

‘Well, culinary skills or not, it didn’t stop me falling in love with her, did it, Jacks?’ says Dave with a loving wink at his wife.

‘Oh Dave, you big softie . . . ’ Jackie flaps her hand, her diamond-encrusted eternity ring catching the light as she does so.

‘I knew it as soon as I saw her walking down Southend Pier with her mates. It was 1969 and she was wearing this tiny minidress and white wet-look boots.’

‘And he had this luscious long hair and a tight roll-neck on with flares,’ Jackie adds dreamily. ‘He told me I looked hip, offered me a cigarette and then kissed me.’

‘I was only seventeen, but I knew I’d met the girl I wanted to marry,’ Dave continues. I note how they tell the story as seamlessly as relay runners. ‘When you know, you know, right Jacks?’ he says, offering her the story baton.

‘You do, Dave,’ she says with a smile. ‘And we did.’

‘Hey Dad, I bet if you’d known Mum couldn’t cook you’d have changed your mind about marrying her!’ Carl pipes up with a deep laugh but Dave just looks lovingly across the table at his wife. It is like the rest of us are no longer in the room.

‘Nothing would have changed my mind about this girl,’ he says solemnly. ‘As soon as I saw her, I was a goner.’ And he takes his napkin off his lap, stands up and blows his wife a kiss across the table. I watch in disbelief and a little bit of horror as Jackie stands up and pretends to catch it and put it down her cleavage. I want to laugh, but I sense that this would absolutely be the wrong thing to do. Then Dave shakes his head as if he’s just come out of a trance and smiles widely around the table at us all as he lowers himself back down into his suede-backed dining chair.

‘They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I’m living proof that ain’t true!’ And he picks up his knife and fork as if with these words he has just gained philosopher status.

‘The only living proof I can see is that fast food ain’t good for your waistline!’ chips in Nanny Door with a cackle and everyone laughs, including Dave.

‘Ryan learned to cook out of necessity more than anything, didn’t you, bud?’ Carl says, rolling his eyes at his dad. ‘Has he cooked for you yet, Molly?’

I smiled. ‘No, there’s been a lot of talk, but no action so far . . . ’

‘Ooooh!’ chorus Jackie and Dave.

‘No, what I meant was . . . ’ my voice trails off and I stare desperately at Ryan, but he’s too busy laughing to save me. Instead, Nanny Door stretches out her hand to me and squeezes it. ‘We laugh a lot in this family, darlin’,’ she said. ‘You’ll soon get used to it.’

And that’s when I start laughing too.

It doesn’t take me long to realize that despite the lack of cooking skills, Jackie is not to be underestimated. After lunch I watch in amazement as she efficiently marches around her house, the sergeant major to Ryan, Carl and Dave’s soldiers. She organizes Ryan’s teaching calendar and after-school coaching. She files Dave’s invoices whilst advising Carl on negotiating a fixed-rate mortgage on the three-bed property he’s hoping to buy. Half an hour later she’s looked at the plans of his house, proposed an extension, found a spare slot in Dave’s diary for his company to do the build, called her solicitor and asked him to work on behalf of Carl, organized a charity event at the school, called a gardener to mow Nanny Door’s lawn and contacted a local furnishings store and asked for them to send carpet and fabric samples for Carl’s future house. That he hasn’t even bought yet. She’s a one-woman marching band, and she doesn’t play a duff note.

‘Your mum’s a force to be reckoned with,’ I say to Ryan later that afternoon as we’re lazing on the leather sofa in the lounge.

‘I know,’ he smiles, ‘she’s pretty amazing.’

I lift my head off his chest and look at him. ‘Do you think they like me?’ I ask, suddenly desperate to be accepted into the bosom of this warm, loving family that’s so far removed from my own.

‘I
know
they do,’ he replies, and strokes his finger across my cheek as he draws me in for a kiss.

When it comes to saying my goodbyes that evening, Jackie pulls me into her arms once again whilst Ryan is busy bear-hugging his dad and swapping football banter with Carl. But this time I’m ready for it. I’m surprised to find I even enjoy it.

‘It was lovely to meet you at last, darlin’,’ she smiles and brushes a little clump of my fringe off my face in such a maternal way that it makes me want to cry. I’m not sure I’ve let my own mother ever do that. The last time I let her touch it she was trying to tug it into two tight, neat plaits. That was just before I cut it all off and dyed it Molly Ringwald red.

‘It was lovely to meet you too,’ I reply with a shy smile. ‘Now I can see why Ryan has always been so reluctant to move out . . . ’

I glance around the hallway again and instead of being disparaging of the giant photo displays, it becomes clear that this is a genuinely happy family. It makes my throat ache when I think of the single, stilted wedding photo of Mum and Dad that sits on our mantelpiece next to a particularly horrifying school picture of me looking like Wednesday Addams.

Jackie laughs and hugs me again. ‘My boys are my life,’ she says. Then she holds me out at arm’s length and studies my face carefully like she did earlier, her carefully painted pink lips now drawn into a serious line. ‘I just hope you’re ready for Ryan to be yours. He’s fallen hard for you, Molly darlin’, and I don’t want him hurt. My little boy isn’t used to heartbreak. He came out of the womb smiling and I want him to stay that way.’

I shake my head dutifully, wanting to please her so badly.

Jackie smiles and kisses me on the cheek, leaving a pink imprint, and turns back to her son. ‘You got a good one here, Ry,’ she smiles.

Ryan doesn’t answer he just strides over and kisses me full on the lips as his family whoops and cheers around us.

‘That’s one for the wall!’ Jackie says, clapping her hands in delight. ‘Get the camera, Dave!’ she says. Maybe we have more in common than I thought. ‘Now do it again!’ she cries. And Ryan and I stand in the doorway and kiss. I never thought I’d say this but maybe I could get used to these PDAs after all.

As Ryan shows me out of the house, his mum standing behind him, I realize that we’ve just become an official couple. But I’m not sure who made the final decision: Ryan or his mum.

Just Can’t Be Away From You Kiss

It’s impossible for anyone to understand the complete lure of love until you’ve been in it. Before Ryan I was the Queen of the Commitment-phobes. I swore I’d never give myself wholly to a guy, that I would keep my independence, retain the biggest part of me for myself, my career and my best friend, Casey. My main concern in life was to have freedom, excitement, adventure and travel – not love.

Funny how things can change in a heartbeat, isn’t it? Because suddenly Ryan was there and all I wanted was to be with him all the time. He was intoxicating, addictive. In those early weeks, being with him was more alluring than anything else I could have imagined; you could have offered me a flight to the moon and I wouldn’t have gone if it had meant being apart from him.

I know some people are dubious of someone experiencing a volte-face like this. But I bet they just haven’t been there yet themselves. They haven’t felt that overriding thrill of meeting the person that they want to spend every minute of every hour of every day with. Someone who understands you more in a few short weeks than the people who have known you your whole life.

But I was always burdened by the feeling that this kind of sudden, intense relationship wasn’t meant to happen to a girl like me. I just didn’t believe I deserved it.

Now? Now I would give anything to feel that way again. That’s why the best advice I can give anyone is to not be afraid to give love your all. Even if you end up hurt or bruised, it is, as Tennyson acutely observed, and I duly realized albeit too late, ‘Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’

FF>> 29/09/01>

I’m in the place that has become the most natural and comfortable place in the world for my body in the past four weeks, spooned in Ryan’s arms on his black leather couch and sipping on a fresh berry smoothie that Ryan has made. Well, not
his
couch, it’s his parents’. It’s a Saturday afternoon and we’re at his house. It’s where we’ve been for the past three Saturdays, spending every delicious moment of the day together. After wasting so many years actually getting together, now we’re like children with sweets, gorging on the pleasure of each other’s company.

‘Molly . . . ’ Ryan says softly into my ear. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Sure I say’, turning my face up towards him. He strokes my hair and nuzzles his lips into my neck and I close my eyes in rapturous delight.

‘You know how much I love being with you like this, don’t you?’ he whispers.

‘Mmmm,’ I reply, as he kisses my neck again. I love it too. I open my eyes and glance at the film that I’ve been so easily distracted from. Saturdays have become our movie days. Today we’ve watched
10 Things I Hate About You
. We’re now watching
The Champ,
which apparently is one of Ryan’s all-time favourites.

I twist my body around so I’m facing Ryan and realize he’s been crying.

Ry sniffs. ‘It just always gets me this film. And then I was thinking how happy I am with you and it made me think, Molly, I was just wondering how you’d feel about . . . ’

I sit up as Dave walks in. ‘Alright Champ, you’re not crying at this mush again, are you?’ he chuckles and rubs his youngest son’s head affectionately.

‘Argh, geddoff, Dad,’ Ryan pushes him away good-naturedly, and Dave jogs around the sofa and fake-pummells Ryan’s stomach. ‘C’mon, son, gimme your best pop!’

‘ You know I’d never take a swipe at an old, out-of-shape man! ‘Now Dad, can you give us a minute . . . ’

‘Old!’ Dave exclaims, ignoring Ryan’s hint. Ryan rolls his eyes and smiles apologetically at me. I’m desperate to know what he was trying to ask. ‘I’m only forty-seven, mate! And I’m in peak condition!’

‘Pops, you’re embarrassing Molly, stop now!’ Ryan laughs. ‘If you stopped eating all those big breakfasts, you’d look alright for your age. But you need to start exercising. You built a gym in the house – why don’t you use it?’

‘Ahhh, these fitness lunatics, Molly, they’re always trying to convert those of us who are perfectly happy as we are, am I right?’

‘I hear you, Dave, I hear you,’ I smirk at Ryan cheekily. ‘Just because he spends his life running around a football field telling people what to do, he thinks he can do it to us too!’ I smile, thinking about how easy it always is being here and how at home I feel. Dave is raising his eyebrows in confusion at his son and as I glance back at Ryan I spot him pulling a desperate ‘privacy please’ face.

‘Well, ahem, so,’ Dave says, edging out of the room. ‘I should go and leave you kids to . . . you know, it. I’ve got things to do. Busy, busy, busy that’s me, eh, Ryan? Busy working hard to pay for this big house that could easily fit more people . . . ha ha. Anyway, must go!’

I laugh as I settle back into Ryan’s arm on the sofa. The film has been paused and for a moment we sit in silence. Ryan coughs and I look at him.

‘Sorry about that,’ he smiles.

‘Don’t be. Your dad’s great.’

‘Yeah, he is.’ He takes my hand. ‘So, Molly . . . there’s this thing I really need to talk to you about . . . ’

‘Hello my darlin’s!’ Jackie appears in the doorway and Ryan groans and buries his face in his hands. ‘Can I get you kids a little tipple?’

‘No thanks, Mum,’ Ryan replies uncharacteristically edgily.

‘Are you sure?’ She comes and perches between us on the couch. ‘A little cheeky Saturday afternoon glass of vino? Or a beer? Tea, coffee? Coke? Milk?’

‘No thank you, Mum,’ Ryan says, ‘we’re just happy
talking
, you know?’

Whatever hint Ryan is trying to give his mum, she isn’t getting it.

‘Maybe we can get a Chinese and watch
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
together tonight then?’ she says brightly. ‘We haven’t had a proper family night for ages.’

Ryan leans across and smiles at his mum. ‘That’d be nice, thanks.
Later
sounds good.’ He looks at her straight in the eyes and then she throws her hand over her mouth and giggles.

‘Of course! Silly me! Yes! I must go and . . . ’ she looks at Ryan desperately. ‘Cook dinner?’ And she skips out of the room.

I settle back on the sofa again and go to press play on the remote but Ryan stops me. ‘Do you mind staying in tonight?’ he asks, stroking my fingers.

‘Course not! You know I only come here so much because I’m in love with your family!’

I go to press play again but Ryan stops me, again, and leans over me, kissing me gently on the lips.

‘Good. Because, well I was wondering . . . ’ Ryan looks at the door as if checking for any more interruptions.

I stroke his hair. ‘What’s this all about, Cooper?’

‘I just had this crazy urge to ask you something, Molly,’ he says. ‘I wanted to say it earlier, it’s something I’ve been thinking about and I know it’s not been long but . . . ’