The other woman

🙄 kids.....

Alex groaned internally when she got back to see Gisela's metallic blue Volkswagen Touareg parked in the yard, it meant that the kids were back from Kindergarten already. She was not ready to face this, not at all. Breaking late to make her bike skid to a halt in the stones, she looked up at Seb's expansive home. The former mill was all white walls and dark, almost black wooden beams although the white paintwork was getting discoloured by the weather and was flaking away in parts. Looking up she could see a couple of kid's paintings stuck up in one of the windows upstairs and outside there was a kid's pink bike complete with attached stabilisers and a small red three wheeled scooter. There was a small patch of land at the front where a small heart shaped garden had been dug out into the grass, the ground looked like it had been recently worked over and was ready for planting. She'd not looked around the outside of the house yet and wondered if the garden was Seb's handiwork or if they had a gardener come in, she certainly couldn't see Gisela being someone who would like getting her hands dirty.

Seb stopped behind her, they'd not spoken at all on the way back and he wondered if she'd spent the entire ride back thinking about her parents. Noticing how she was looking at the garden he hopped off his bike and wheeled it to stand beside her. "I did that." He pointed to the heart shaped patch with his head. "It's a little project I'm working on with the kids when I have the time, though they left me to do the hard work. It's going to be a little wildflower meadow, the girls are quite interested in bugs and stuff at the moment and we wanted to see what sort of things we could attract with the flowers. We'll be seeding it soon."

"Wow." Alex was impressed, she had no idea that Seb was into stuff like that. "You have a gardener though, right?" She added, thinking of how big the garden was that she'd seen out of the windows at the back of the house.

"No, I like to do it all myself." He smiled, to him this was verging into 'personal' territory and he was happy to talk. "We just have a cleaner come in twice a week, Gisela is quite busy with the kids and her jewellery business."

Jewellery business? Alex had got absolutely no idea of what Gisela actually did, not that she'd asked or really cared.

"It's handmade costume jewellery, she's doing quite well with it though the business is in her old name and not her married one. She likes to make her own money without using my name to do it." He said proudly. "Let's put the bikes in the garage and head in."

So the WAG actually makes her own money? Maybe I underestimated her, maybe she's not the bimbo that I first thought she was. Alex kept her thoughts to herself as she followed Seb across the yard towards one of two large garages. She waited outside while he took the bikes in and then the two of them wandered back towards the house. The moment she'd least been looking forward to had just arrived.

Following Seb inside, she kicked off her muddy trainers in the hall. Already she could hear the sounds of children's laughter. What's sweeter than the sound of a child's laughter? The sound of silence from not having any fucking kids. Stowing that thought away, she noticed the smile on Seb's face and how it got even bigger as two eager, blonde, curly haired little girls appeared from the lounge and ran towards their father with all the energy of overexcited Springer Spaniel puppies.

"Girls!! Calm!" He laughed and managed to pick them both up, they clung to him like little Velcro monkeys.

Alex tried to force a smile while inside the sight of Seb 'the father' was stirring up all kinds of emotions that she'd tried to forget.

"Let's go through to the lounge and I'll introduce you." He smiled before heading to the lounge, with a small child on each hip.

Pull yourself together, the sooner you meet his damn kids the sooner you can get out of here. With a couple of blinks and a squaring of her shoulders, she followed.