A Real Man in My Life Ch. 05

Bradley pretty much spent his time in his room, in the Jacuzzi or in the home cinema and never bothered Sam; I know that my Tom still watched him for signs of any kind of disquiet.

Bradley was so unimpressed that when I announced to the family that I was pregnant, like Adrian Mole, he whined that the screaming would interrupt his revision for his exams, the exams he didn't normally care a monkeys about because his real education would be at the 'University of Life' with his Dad.

"What the hell do I tell my friends?" he snapped as if I had fallen pregnant just to annoy and embarrass him, his Father's son to the last.

"What on earth does it have to do with your friends?" I said, "Are they interested in your family then?"

While we now lived some distance out of town, I still drove Tom and Bradley there and their respective educational establishments so he was still in touch with his few friends, one of which was very interested in his family.

His slimy friend Si had started to drift away from him once word spread that his Dad's business was going down the toilet, but when Bradley had started to complain that his mother's damned lover was making them all move out to his damned place in the country with a swimming pool and home cinema Si became a bit more animated. I disliked Si and said to Bradley that I didn't particularly want him at the new house because I trusted him and his slimy Dad as far as I could throw both of them.

So Si would cycle the two and a half miles out of town specially and would ring the bell then adopt a Roger Moore eyebrow style, fold his arms, lean on the nearest suitable support and try to adopt the 007 laconic smile hoping desperately that Bradley's gorgeous older sister was around.

"Fuck off Simon," Gem would whisper to him if she was.

As Bradley settled in and got comfortable he started to adopt a far more parochial approach to the wonderful house we all lived in now. After he showed Si his huge bedroom I watched as Bradley showed him the pool, covered against leaves and other winter detritus, and the Jacuzzi that needed just the flick of a switch to bring it to warm and frothy life in less than five minutes.

He also showed him all of the electronics in the downstairs rooms he was so cool about and the size of the drinks cabinet; I looked on in disbelief as his scummy friend took out his phone and prepared to take pictures. I stopped him, showed him back to the kitchen and asked why exactly did he needed photographs of the inside of our house.

He tried the same smug 'trust me' smile his equally scummy father and sometime partner of Parker had used but failed to respond verbally so I sent him on his way on his bike, pointing out that the place was covered by CCTV and intruder alarms adding that it wouldn't be wise for anyone to try a screw the house of one of the cleverest and successful prosecutors in the country.

Parker? Well, his business is still his business although no one quite knows what it is these days. His old... sorry his classic BMW is just about running.

As soon as he found out that he would still need to pay Bradley something to be his apprentice, that job, like so many of Parker's promises throughout his life, turned out to be just so much more of his shit.

Bradley was stunned and I could read the real hurt in his face this time. Bradley, who looked up to his wayward and unreliable father as the font of truth and wisdom, had based his entire future on the crap his Dad had sold him and didn't really try with any of his exams and as Tom got 'A star' marks for his first years of 'Advanced level' exams, Bradley received perhaps the worst set of scores his normally excellent school had ever had, the best being a 'D' for I.T. and half a dozen 'U' - for 'ungraded'. I wrote to the head master apologising for him knowing that this kind of thing could seriously affect the schools Ofsted (Office of Standards in Education) report.

Parker's response was to blame the school for not teaching him well enough, the economy for the drop in his business to not enable him to pay Bradley, me for... well he never got around to that, then finally Bradley who had actually spent the last year of his schooling playing computer games, surfing the Internet, hanging around with Si and generally disdainfully slagging off anything that wasn't an apprenticeship with his Dad's 'Firm'.

Gray came to the rescue once again though, and found Bradley sat on the bench seat looking out across the surrounding countryside with tears in his eyes. He took Bradley gently by the shoulder told him it would be OK and without fuss or blame drove him to the Further Education College he had gone to and helped him sign up for the classes he would need to do to retake his exams, just as he himself had done had all of those years ago.

Bradley settled into his college life with its more adult atmosphere and showed a real aptitude for I.T. He retook his exams and passed and is now on a computer programming course working for a small programming firm in his spare time.

His hormones finally kicked in and he cut his silly hair, learned to ride a bike, learned how to talk 'to' people rather than 'down' to them and stopped being the arsehole we'd all put up with for the last three years - mostly.

My six months of maternity leave stretched into a year and Gray has asked if I absolutely want to go back to work and I do. He has offered that I can become a stay at home Mum to James if I want to with his total support, or work at home doing some clerking for his chambers. I desperately want to do both of course and the thought of leaving James with a childminder just as he becomes a little person is heartbreaking. But I have done it three times before of course. As the spring edges into summer, the option of stay at home Mum becomes much more interesting.

As I stood staring out across the countryside from my new patio, a mug of tea in my hands he came up behind me,

"Penny for your thoughts Nats?"

I smiled and rubbed my cheek against his,

"It's just all this," I said turning with his arms still holding me, "I can't believe that what we have is so perfect."

"Yeah, and it's going to go on being perfect," he kissed me again.

The sun started to sink and I felt his hot hands on the cheeks of my bottom

"Yeah," I said smiling into his lovely face, there was no way I could leave this place for a job. "Perfect; tell me more about how I could work for your chambers from home..."

The sun went down, we kissed some more, all was well with the world.