Love to Hate You: Three's a Crowd

Chapter 13 - Daddy Issues

Whilst Xander was panicking over Amy's wood burner and insulting her staircase and teacups, Byron Becker was being laid to rest. Aunt Vee had attended the funeral with her sister, Ramona, whilst Rudy had lingered at the back of the church with Vicky, taking care not to interact with his mother at all. Verity Anderson was sad to see the coffin – to know that the great love of her youth lay dead inside it – but she was a formidable woman. She determined to let no emotion show, lest Rudy notice and feel badly for her. She listened to the service with only half her attention; not interested in how Byron had lived his life. She did not care for his achievements and exploits. She felt only nostalgia for the brief period in which she had felt loved by him. He gave her her beloved son, but he had not been his father; Carl had filled that role, and it was Carl who would be waiting for her at home. This knowledge kept her temper even as she eyed the coffin with regret.

If only you'd reached out to him... made the effort. You'd have known him for the wonderful son that he is. But Byron had done no such thing. He knew of Rudy, but did not know the man himself. Could now never know him. This was what pained her; what stung the mother's heart, and she couldn't help but think of her son, lingering at the back of the church. She wanted to hold him. To press him to her breast and stroke his hair as a mother cherishes her young child. Vicky would have to do, and do a good job she would, for she had no loyalty to anyone but her husband. Vicky would not be moved by her own emotions, but by Rudy's.

'Are you alright?' Ramona asked, as the congregation rose to sing a hymn; farcical, that the man had chosen a religious ceremony, when he'd not had a Christian thought in his life.

'I feel sad for the pair of them; for what he missed out on, and what he denied my boy.'

'And for yourself?'

'The sex is far better with Carl,' Verity said, heedless of the mourners around her; of the house of God in which she stood.

'Vee!' Ramona scolded.

'Well, it's true. Carl's a very patient, generous man, but he can be rather forceful when I want him to be.'

'I wasn't so fortunate with Adrian,' Ramona admitted, with a pensive note to her voice.

'No. Adrian always struck me as the sort of man who had no idea where the clitoris was; mostly through lack of interest.'

'We are in a church, at a funeral,' Ramona reminded her sister, in a shushing whisper.

'At Bryon's funeral, and he'd love that I just said "clitoris",' Vee smirked.

'In which case, I'll ask now, because I've always wondered, but never felt it my place to bring it up...'

'Yes?'

'You and Carl. Are you into dominance and submission?'

'Only in terms of sex,' Verity confessed, without an ounce of embarrassment. 'When we make love, it's all very normal, like a Richard Curtis film. When we have sex – and by that, I mean f*cking – we –'

'Don't swear!' Ramona scolded.

'Anyway,' Vee continued, 'when we f*ck, yes, he's very dominant and I'm completely at his mercy.'

'It's always the quiet ones,' Ramona sighed, thinking it very unfair that her younger sister got to "make love" and "F*ck", whilst she got to be the widow to a man who struggled with the concept of a clitoris, let alone a G-spot. 'I fear,' she said, 'that were Mattie privy to this conversation, she'd been calling Carl a Bugatti Veyron and Adrian a Renault Clio.'

'Oh, not a Renault Clio. Adrian was manlier than that. He'd have been a Skoda Yeti, at least.' She took her older sister's hand and squeezed it; their slender, age-spotted hands bound tightly together. She did not let go until the service was over and she was in the privacy of Ramona's car, when she finally, mercifully, let her tears fall.