‘I think that’s only because she felt bad and she didn’t want to have to admit to you that she’d overreacted. Especially after she’d been through it all with me.’

‘What did you say to her to get her to calm down?’

‘I don’t even know really. I mostly made dumb dad jokes until she couldn’t take it anymore and she had no choice but to crack a smile.’

‘Nice work.’

‘Thanks, had to pull out some of my best material. She’s promised to try and make it up to Tara tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes.’

‘I can’t believe one daggy dance could cause this much trouble.’

‘You know I haven’t even seen the video in question. Give me a look.’

Mimi picked her phone back up, found the video and passed it over.

Pete watched it with a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth and then he looked sideways at her.

‘What? What’s that look?’

‘I don’t think it’s daggy,’ said Pete. ‘I happen to think you look pretty damn sexy.’

‘Oh stop, I do not!’

‘I’m serious,’ said Pete. ‘You’ve got some moves, woman.’

Mimi grabbed the phone back off him. ‘Stop making fun of me!’

‘I’m not! I’m telling you, I’ve always liked the way you dance. You’ve got nice . . . hip movements.’

Mimi finally stopped arguing and smiled back at him. ‘Really?’

‘Seriously.’

She rolled over onto her side to face him. ‘You want to, you know . . . do stuff?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘What kind of stuff would you be talking about?’

‘You know what kind of stuff I mean.’ She reached down under the covers to make her intentions clear.

They’d only had sex two or three times since the twins were born. First there was all the waiting for Mimi’s body to be ready again, and then with the constant interruptions throughout the night, it meant that every minute of potential sleep had been too precious to give it up for sex. But suddenly Mimi was feeling too turned on to give in to sleep. She’d liked seeing that look in Pete’s eyes as he talked about the way she danced. It was nice to feel desired again.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well now see, I did wonder if that was the sort of stuff you were talking about, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up in case I was wrong.’

‘Go ahead and get them up,’ she said, stroking her hand around the outside of his boxer shorts.

‘Oh, they’re up,’ he said. ‘I think you can feel that for yourself.’

Mimi laughed and flicked the waistband of his shorts. ‘You are such a dork,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he replied. ‘That’s why you love me.’

*

Darren