For a moment longer, Joe Watson let his eyes rove over Molly’s unsuspecting countenance. The more his gaze lingered on her, the sharper became his need for her. At last, he thrust his two hands into his jacket pockets and turned away sharply, consoling himself with the pleasing thought that there would be time enough to show Molly how strong were his feelings towards her. Time enough, later, when the Watson brood were all abed and Molly’s three were also tucked up for the night.

In the short time that Molly had stayed under his mother’s roof, Joe Watson had come to know her routine like the lines on his own hand. After she had made sure her offspring were quietly sleeping, Molly would creep through the silent house to the back steps, to the very spot where she sat even at this minute – there she would stay until the night grew darker and colder, wistfully looking up to the shifting sky and its scurrying shadows, searching for some elusive distant thing that was known only to herself.

During these dark, quiet hours, Joe Watson had stayed hunched against his bedroom window above, watching, needing, and wonderfully intrigued by the lovely secret creature that was Molly. Of late his longing for her had become an obsession that he could no longer control. Any feelings of decency and respect that he might have had towards his mother’s unlikely lodger were in danger of being hopelessly smothered by other, more urgent feelings: of greed and lust, of selfish appeasement and the driving desire to take Molly to himself, even against her will if needs be. The ugly strength of his feelings was a disturbing revelation to him.

Now, as he left the house to make his way to the nearest public bar, Joe Watson smiled to himself. ‘Oh, yes, Molly me beauty… there’ll be time enough for me to tell you how much I want you, when there’s only you and me… and the dark to hide in, eh?’ He chuckled aloud and went on his way with a livelier step at the thought of Molly, naked, leaning into his arms and gazing up at him with big dark eyes ablaze with a desire to match his own.

By the time he strode into the bar, Joe Watson had convinced himself that the lovely Molly wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her. Oh, that wasn’t to say that she had ever given him any encouragement, because she had not, other than to indulge in a friendly conversation and to express her gratitude at his willingness to ‘put up with me and the young ’uns for a while’. No, he could not claim that Molly had ever betrayed her deeper emotions to him. But then, she was one of those rare women who possessed a quiet tongue and kept her innermost secrets to herself. And wasn’t it a known fact that often, when a woman said no, she was only being coy and meant yes all along?