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Bernie gave an almost theatrically large yawn as she exited the en suite. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table: 9.30. A bit early really, but she was shattered. Serena was already in bed, apparently engrossed in a battered paperback. Tired after a busy week, Bernie didn’t notice Serena’s attention wander from her book to Bernie, watching appreciatively as Bernie discarded jeans and t-shirt in favour of pyjama bottoms and vest.
Serena closed the book and placed it on the table beside her. “Please don't take this the wrong way,” she said, closing her eyes and laying back on the pillows. “You know I love Charlotte dearly and I adore Oscar, but it's always something of a relief when they leave.”
Bernie grinned. “No offence taken. I'd forgotten how utterly exhausting toddlers can be.”
“Mhmm. Once they find their feet they just don't stop. And they insist on starting the day so early!”
Bernie made a paltry effort to conceal the derisive snort. “I'm sorry, I seem to recall I was the one up at 5.30, explaining to an eighteen month old that no, Nanny Serena can't play trains because she isn't awake yet.”
“You're always awake by six anyway,” Serena pointed out, not entirely unreasonably.
Bernie rolled onto her side to face her wife. “Not always,” she whispered. “I may be a naturally early riser, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a lazy morning in bed.”
Serena opened one eye. “I should hope so! Or I’d think I'd quite lost my touch.”
Bernie leaned forward and kissed her. It's deep and unhurried, languorous even. Kissing for kissing’s sake, not with any further destination in mind.
Except Serena clearly hadn’t got the memo because she moaned delightfully into Bernie’s mouth, igniting a flare of arousal. “Definitely haven't lost your touch,” she breathed.
Serena chuckled, her hand wandering down Bernie’s torso to cup her arse through her pyjamas. “As I recall, I wasn't the one who decided to take a vow of celibacy because there was a child in the house. How on earth did you manage when yours were little…” Serena tailed off.
Bernie blushed. “Charlotte in particular was a ridiculously light sleeper and, well, it wasn't exactly a high priority, not, well, not for me, not then.”
Serena’s smile was sympathetic. “And now?”
“Now, it is very, very much a priority.” Bernie promised, rolling Serena onto her back and kissing her again. Bernie slid the thin strap of Serena’s nightdress from her left shoulder, exposing her breast. She took the erect nipple in her mouth and sucked, eliciting an audible gasp.
Bernie chuckled in response. “Eager are we?”
“It's been a week Bernie!”
“Five days Serena, not a week.”
“It's been a week: we were on opposite shifts last weekend to free us up for Charlotte’s visit.”
Serena was right. It had been a week. A week was an awfully long time. At least it was now, for her and Serena. Once upon a time, she had been accustomed to months on tour without sex and it hadn’t really bothered her.
Bernie renewed her assault on Serena’s nipple, first sucking lightly and then biting down, harder.
“God, Bernie, please don’t stop.” Serena’s fingers tangled in her hair.
Bernie slithered upwards to kiss Serena once more, letting her hand slide down the length of Serena’s body and toy with the hem of her nightwear, before slipping under to caress the smooth expanse of thigh. She inched upwards and brushed her fingertips over Serena’s pubis, grazing her wife’s clit with the pad of her thumb.”
“Fuck, Bernie, please.”
Bernie slipped a finger inside Serena.
“More.”
Index finger of her right hand still caressing Serena, Bernie reached over the side of the bed with her left hand and slid open the bottom drawer of the bedside cabinet. She rooted inside, feeling for the items she wanted: the smooth silicon of the vibrator and the hard plastic of the bottle of lube.
Instead she encountered something unexpected. Small and hard, painted wood maybe, irregular in shape. And were those wheels?
The fingers of her right hand stilled and Serena mewled in protest.
“Bernie?”
She withdrew her hand from the drawer, frowning, the unfamiliar object still clutched in her fingers.
“Is that?” Serena raised an incredulous eyebrow, propping herself up on one arm.
Bernie nodded mutely, staring at the object in her palm. A small, blue, wooden train.
“Well there’s no prizes for guessing who left us that particular gift,” Serena said with an amused grin.
“But what was he doing in here? How did he even get in?”
“Toddlers,” Serena replied with a shrug. “They’re like Houdini: you try to contain them but they always find a way to get where they shouldn’t. Just thank your lucky stars he isn’t talking much yet.”
Bernie stared at her, horror struck. “How can you be so calm about this? What if he’d found, well- you know- and taken it to show Charlotte?” She had a sudden and terrifying vision of Oscar appearing in the living room clutching a bright purple vibrator and asking what it was he'd discovered in Grandma Bernie and Nanna Serena’s bedroom.
“Charlotte’s 29, darling. I’m sure she’s well aware that we’re having sex.”
“There’s being aware of it, and there’s being presented with tangible evidence of it!”
“Hmm. I think she got that at our wedding party, didn’t she?”
Bernie flushed at the memory of a mortified Charlotte backing out of the en suite, muttering something about both the master bath and the downstairs loo being in use, and protesting that she had knocked, they’d just obviously been too engrossed in one another to notice.
“Oh Bernie, honestly your face! It's really not that bad. Oscar’s far too young to have had any clue what he was looking at and even if he had shown something to Charlotte, well, it would be mildly embarrassing but hardly worth angsting over.”
Bernie flopped back on her pillows. “You’re so sanguine about it.”
“There are far worse things than having a healthy sex life my love. Besides, I’ve been friends with Sian for the best part of forty years. I'm fairly unembarassable where sex toys are concerned. Try to see the funny side, darling.”
Bernie rolled onto her stomach, suppressing a smile.
“What?”
“It's nothing,” Bernie replied, a little too quickly.
“Bernie.” Serena spoke in that stern tone of hers. The one that made recalcitrant F1s quake and Bernie’s stomach do somersaults.
“It's just, when I was reaching in the drawer earlier and I first felt- well, I thought at first you'd bought something new. I was having a devil of a time trying to work out what the damn thing was.” Bernie dissolved into honks of laughter and her mirth proved catching as Serena too, succumbed to giggles.
“I suppose,” Serena said when she'd recovered her composure. “I mean, I'm sure we could find some kind of use for him, with a little creative thinking.”
“You can't possibly be serious?”
“Why not? Oscar would never know.” Serena’s face was the picture of innocent suggestion.
They continued to stare at one another, Bernie incredulous and Serena guileless, until the latter’s eyes twinkled and her lips broke into a broad smile. “You are so easy to wind up.”
Bernie launched herself at her wife, pinning her to the bed. “For that Mrs Wolfe, I shall be forced to extract substantial penance.”
“Substantial, you say?”
“Substantial,” Bernie replied gravely.
“Might it perhaps be sufficiently substantial to require us spending the morning in bed tomorrow?”
Bernie pretended to ponder this. “It might be.”
“Oh what a shame. I'll try my best to bear it.” Serena’s expression was practically feral.
“You do that.”
“Bernie?”
“Yes, my love.”
“Before Oscar next visits, we’re installing a lock on the bedroom door.”