I nod my head and gather my thoughts and then I throw myself onto the sacrificial altar.
‘You’re right,’ I lie. ‘I’m laughing because I wrote Ashley Dunsford a detention note.’
Dogger pads across the hallway and stares at me balefully.
‘You are a terrible parent,’ my daughter lovingly hisses. ‘There are literally hundreds of people at our school and yet you decided to single him out. Why couldn’t you have chosen another kid to punish?’
I push myself off the ground and look her in the eye, my relieved laughing fit over. I don’t need her to tell me that I’m not going to be winning Mother of the Year anytime soon. I’m pretty sure that the award criterion doesn’t include spending your days trying to figure out the sexiest way to describe a penis.
Although for what it’s worth, in my esteemed opinion there is no sexy way to describe a penis.
‘Because it wasn’t “another kid” who was vandalising school property with a can of spray paint, was it?’ I give her a firm look. ‘It was Ashley Dunsford and quite frankly, he should consider himself extremely fortunate that I only gave him a detention and not community service or a prison sentence.’
‘I don’t think that’s your jurisdiction, is it?’ enquires Nick, relief plastered across his face. ‘I’ll make us some tea.’
‘Can we get back to the game?’ Benji asks Dylan. ‘I think Scarlet’s stopped yelling at Mum now.’
Dylan nods but I see him giving me another curious glance before he disappears back into the living room and I know that he’s suspicious. I’m going to have to cover my tracks even more carefully if he’s going to start sniffing around my business.
‘Have you stopped yelling?’ I ask Scarlet, once the door is closed.
She nods, her face flushing pink.
‘And do you have anything else that you’d like to say to me?’ I enquire. The terror that my secret was out is abating and I’m ready to address the appalling manners of my daughter.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbles and I resist the urge to ask her to enunciate her apology more clearly. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I was just really embarrassed that you’d given Ashley a detention. It makes me look bad.’
‘It doesn’t have anything to do with you,’ I tell her. ‘He did something stupid and now he has to deal with the consequences. That’s the end of it.’
‘I just thought that he might, you know…’ Scarlet shuffles from one foot to the other. ‘He might blame me for you giving him a detention and then he might go off me.’
‘Oh darling, that’s not going to happen!’ I say.
More’s the pity.
‘Not that I really like him anymore,’ she rushes on. ‘So don’t go thinking that I care or anything, because I don’t. I’ve got bigger stuff going on like running for Head Girl, which is way more important than boys.’
She pauses and flicks her hair over one shoulder. ‘And he doesn’t even think about me like that now we’re in the Sixth Form. Obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ I agree, as she starts to head up the stairs. ‘But perhaps you could inform him that if I catch him graffitiing the words “Scarlett Thompson Is Blazing” on the wall of the gym ever again, I will not be held accountable for my actions.’
Her head whips round.
‘Is that what he wrote?’ she asks. ‘Oh my god! He’s such a dick. I’m never going to live this down at school. I’m mortified!’
The huge grin plastered across her face suggests otherwise.
‘You can also tell him that Scarlet is spelled with just one “t”. If he likes you enough to get a detention for you he should take the time to learn how to correctly spell your name.’
But my words are lost in a draught of floral body spray as Scarlet dashes upstairs, her phone out and her thumbs darting across the screen as she rushes to update her friends on this new and scintillating detail.
‘Here you go, Hannah.’ Nick hands me a mug as I step inside the kitchen. ‘That was a bit of a close call, wasn’t it?’
I shudder and wrap my hands around the warm tea.
‘I really thought they’d found out about the book,’ I tell him. ‘I think I’ve aged about ten years in the last ten minutes.’
Nick nods and sinks down onto a chair. ‘I know what you mean. But I suppose we should think about what we’re going to say when they do find out. Because they will find out, Hannah – you know they will.’
I sit down next to him, resisting the urge to ditch the tea and pour a glass of wine instead.
‘We can’t let that happen,’ I tell him. ‘They are in no way mature enough to understand what I’m doing – they’d totally get the wrong end of the stick and it’d all get completely out of hand.’
He nods again thoughtfully and stares out of the window. ‘We’re just going to have to be more careful. You can’t panic like that again – you almost told them everything.’
I make a huffing sound. ‘It’s a shame you didn’t think about that when you sent off my manuscript to an agent then, isn’t it? None of this would even be a thing if you and Cassie hadn’t stuck your big noses into my business.’
He turns to look at me, the corner of his mouth twitching. ‘Right. So you wish we hadn’t helped to launch your porn writing career, then? You hate everything about it and you’re never going to write another word?’
For the love of all that is holy. If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him fifty gazillion times; I do not write porn. I write tasteful, informative and highly accurate erotica.
And I don’t hate it.
I actually love it.
It’s the first time in forever that I’ve had something that is purely just for me and, on the days when I’m stressed about my teaching job or the kids are driving me insane or everything just seems like hard work, my writing is a warm little secret. It makes me feel special and daring and unique.
I take a sip of tea and think about what just happened. Nick does have a point. The kids don’t know about the book but I almost blew the whole thing. I’m going to have to be much cooler if I want to maintain my anonymity, which I absolutely must do at all costs. There’s no way that I can allow anyone to find out about my side-hustle. Other than Nick, my best friend Cassie, and my mother, nobody knows that Twinky Malone, the author of More Than Sex, is really me – and they never can.
I’ve shared every aspect of myself since becoming a wife and a mother but I’m not sharing this. Even if sometimes I want to shout about my triumphs from the rooftops, I know that I have to keep quiet. Not that I don’t imagine myself being interviewed on daytime television sometimes (mostly when I’m in the bath after having drunk a couple of glasses on Wine Wednesday). The presenter will ask me how I came to write erotic fiction and I will smile at her coyly before telling her what I told myself on the day that I stumbled onto this particular side-hustle.
I wanted a job that I loved and I wanted my teenagers to see me as more than just ‘Mum’. I also needed to make some money so I had a good, long think about what sells and the answer was right there because, as everybody knows, there is one thing in the world that has always sold.