Ellen shrugged. “Well, I’m not sure I have been out in the last month. But that’s not that unusual for me. I mean, I work from home, I have to be at home for Charlie when he gets in from school. My life is in this house—there isn’t any need for me to go anywhere.”
“No need, perhaps, but don’t you even want to go for a walk to the park, sit on a bench and enjoy the sun on your face?”
“That would all be very well if I had time, but I don’t have time. Time is not something I have,” Ellen insisted. “I really don’t think it’s that big a deal.”
Sabine glanced at her watch again. “I expect you are right. Now I must go and talk to my husband. I hope you manage to get in touch with Hannah. I’m sorry that I worried you and Charlie so much.”
“Don’t be; I’m glad I know that something’s going on with her, it sort of explains why she’s been the way she has recently. It will be some big Hannah drama, some man at the bottom of it no doubt. Sooner or later I’ll find out what it is and it will all blow over. Good luck with Eric.”
“Thank you,” Sabine said very politely, leaving Ellen sitting alone in her kitchen once again.
After a second Ellen rose from her chair and preheated the grill for Charlie’s fish fingers. Then she started to get out the ingredients she needed to make Allegra’s risotto primavera.
As she stood at the kitchen sink filling a pan with water, she looked down the length of the back garden toward the back gate, which had long been obscured by undergrowth, at the line of rooftops that serrated the skyline beyond it, silhouetted against the stubbornly faultless blue sky.
When was the last time she had gone out? she wondered as the water began to run over the edges of the pan, numbing her reddening hands as she stood there motionless. Ellen thought of the empty calendar that lay open on the table behind her, void of dates and memories. Her mind tracked back over the preceding months, struggling to recall anything particularly memorable in any of them. There had been Charlie, her books, and the pain—the horrible gaping, seeping, open wound that losing Nick had dealt her—and that was all she could remember. Each day—which at the time had seemed like an uncrossable desert that she had to claw herself across from dawn ’til dusk—now seemed like one featureless globule of time, a mass of existence that had been occupied by very little besides her treacherous body’s continued insistence on staying alive, no matter how she felt about it.
The truth was that Ellen couldn’t remember the last time she had ventured farther than her front door. Dropping the pan in the sink, and slopping freezing water everywhere she turned, with numb fingers she picked up the pristine calendar of Sussex views, gazing at each empty month, stretching her mind as far back as it would go, to last Christmas.
It had been a dark, desolate affair made all the more despairing by the effort that had gone on around her and Charlie to make it at least bearable. Her parents, confused and embarrassed by her grief, were driven up from Hove by Hannah, bringing Christmas lunch with them packed neatly in her mother’s twenty-year-old Tupperware. After giving and receiving unwanted gifts, the five of them had labored over lunch in what would have been silence if Ellen’s mother hadn’t insisted on filling them all in on the details of Mrs. Hopkins’ hysterectomy. Hannah had drunk herself slowly into oblivion; Charlie had bolted to his room at the first available opportunity; and Ellen, paralyzed by the memory of how Christmas used to be, of what it should have been like then and how it would never, never be the same again, had sat through the queen’s speech with her mother while her father snored in the corner.
With a shock Ellen realized that she had no memory of going out of the house even then. What little shopping she had done had been online. Her family and a succession of well-meaning but unwanted visitors had come to her. Was it truly possible that she hadn’t left the house in six months?
Suddenly feeling sober and filled with the kind of dread that she got when she had forgotten something important but wasn’t exactly sure what it was, Ellen forced herself to scratch around in her memory for anything, any detail or incident in her life since Nick had died that would allow her to get some foothold on some happening. As much as she racked her brain, she could find no landmark event in her life until just a few weeks ago, when Hannah had told her that she had to take in lodgers.
Ellen sat in her chair and looked around at her kitchen, frigid with horror as she realized the truth.
She had not left this house since her husband’s funeral. She had not been out in almost a year, and worst of all—she had not noticed.
CHAPTER
Fourteen
Your round, rookie,” Pete told Matt, his sweaty, booze-saturated face looming far too close for comfort. “Get ’em in, son.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay—when do I stop being a rookie?” Matt asked, gathering up a selection of half-empty glasses and taking orders for the assembled staff of Bang It! magazine. It was Thursday night and that week’s issue had just been put to bed, after what Matt was beginning to realize was a routine that involved panic, shouting, and large amounts of swearing blind that the whole thing was going to shit, even though somehow it didn’t. Naturally, after they had pulled off their weekly miracle of getting Bang It! to press, everyone went down to the pub to celebrate by getting as many beers as possible straight down their throats in the shortest period of time, or in Pete’s case, the whiskey that seemed to seep out of his pores. It was an exhausting and strangely dissatisfying routine that Matt still struggled to really feel a part of. He’d expected to thrive on the adrenaline rush of putting a weekly magazine together in a matter of days, but when the first fresh copies rolled in, looking and reading almost exactly like the previous week’s, he’d found himself wondering what the point was. Then he’d reminded himself that this was his dream job, and that soon enough he would have killed so many brain cells through alcohol abuse that he wouldn’t worry about it anymore anyway.
“You stop being a rookie when I say so,” Pete told him, accompanying him to the bar, where Matt waved a twenty at one of the bar staff, knowing full well that he’d need at least another one of those to pay for everyone’s drinks. “You’re still on probation, and so far you haven’t exactly excelled.”
“What?” Matt said. “Bollocks.”
“I’m serious, mate, you’re not stretching yourself—you look lazy.”
“Lazy?” Matt protested. “I’ve worked my arse off since I got here. Literally.”
“Look, the writing’s good, funny and that—but so far you’ve pulled two girls who work in the same building as you and rehashed a load of old stuff. We need more from you, more derring-do and adventure. Birds from the same office building are okay, but they’re easy pickings. Our readers want you to be what they’re not—the hunter, the master, the maestro—the man that can have any woman anytime. The dark destroyer. You need some variety in your shagging, mate. A policewoman maybe, or a nurse.”
“So you’re saying I should base my column around your top ten all-time-favorite stripper costumes?” Matt shook his head.
“It’s not my worst idea.” Pete shrugged, taking as many of the assembled drinks as he could carry, including his own large single-malt whiskey, and teetered off to the tables where the waiting hordes greeted him with a cheer after he’d lost only one of the drinks. Downing his own shot in one gulp, Matt ordered a replacement and went back to join his colleagues. They’d been in there for an hour and already he could feel his head swimming with the heat and the alcohol, not that he’d want any of them to know that; being able to drink like a bastard and still turn up for work the next morning was one of the job requirements, but for some reason Matt just had not been in the mood for it recently. The pub made him feel restless and uneasy, and he realized with something of a shock that just at that moment he’d much rather be at Ellen’s house, sitting at the kitchen table while she pottered around, drinking cups of tea and seeing whether or not he could make her laugh. Steeling himself, Matt ordered another shot and dow
ned that, too. He was far too young to want to be in instead of out; he’d have to drown the impulse with booze before it took hold completely and he bought a pair of slippers and started planning his life around television.
“I was just saying…” Pete belched at Dan. “I reckon we need more of a challenge for young Matt here. Give the readers something to be impressed by. I mean that Carla, anyone could have had her if they could be bothered with the stringy little thing.”
“Everyone has,” Raffa joked with a wink directed at Matt.
“Ha, ha,” Matt said dryly.
“And that little blond tart downstairs, from the tarts’ magazine—she’s always got her arse and tits hanging out, looks like a hooker. Pulling her took about as much effort as scoring a burger from a drive-through McDonald’s.”
Matt chuckled as he gazed into his beer, but privately he was thinking of Lucy marching out of the lift, her eyes glittering with rage. He had the distinct feeling he’d underestimated her. Almost as if he hadn’t seen her, even when they’d been in bed together.
“Drive-through shags, there’s an idea,” Dan said, stroking his chin. “Look that up on the internet, Raffa—do it now, son. If there isn’t a drive-through brothel somewhere in Nevada, the next round of drinks are on me. If there is, which there will be, then, Matt, I want a feature on that by Monday, cool? Interview some of the girls, the punters, get some pics—you should be able to do it all online and on the phone.”
“Sure,” Matt said, wondering how the hell he was going to pull that off, imagining himself making a call that went, Oh hello, are you the madam? I’m a journalist from England you’ve never heard of, writing a piece for a magazine you’ve never heard of. Please can I interview your hookers on the joys of working in a drive-through brothel, and would you mind sending me some pictures? But only of the fit ones.
The sad truth was, that was exactly how the conversation would go.
“I’ve got it!” Pete bellowed, making Matt wince. “We pick his next victim. All of us tonight. We pick a girl from this pub and that’s the bird he’s got to bed for his next column, and his challenge is to make it happen, no matter who we choose.”
“Right, well, hang on a minute,” Matt started to protest, but he was shouted down.
“What, like pull-a-pig night?” Raffa chimed in. “Like we pick a proper minger and he’s got to do her no matter what?” The assembled men guffawed at the idea.
“Er, I don’t think so,” Matt countered, feeling the alcohol tingle in his fingertips, his head swimming as he was swept along on a tide of testosterone. If he was going to survive this, he’d have to man-up and go with it; they’d eat him alive if they knew that the last thing he wanted to do tonight was chat up some random girl and that really he’d like to go home and drink tea with Ellen. “I’m the man, the master—the maestro. Anyone can pick up an old dog grateful for a sniff of any bloke. If you’re going to challenge me, then find me something special, something that’s going to take a bit more effort than batting my lashes and giving her a smile.”
“He’s right, the readers want fantasy, not fact,” Dan said. “We’ve got to pick a fittie. Tell you what, to make it more interesting, we get to decide what your opening line is.”
“Yeah, and you have to secretly record it on your phone so we know you’ve done it,” Greg chimed in.
“And you have to get a picture of her tits on your phone, too.” Raffa nodded. “Close-up, no face or nothing, just tits—then we can print them in the magazine and score them one out of ten.”
“Oh my fuck, that’s a genius idea.” Dan clapped Raffa on the shoulder.
“Whoa, okay,” Matt said, laughing to cover his discomfort. “And if I pull this off?”
“Or if she pulls you off.” Raffa snickered.
“Your probation ends tomorrow,” Dan told him. “You’re on the team.”
“And if I don’t?” Matt countered.
“Same deal, only you’re off the team.” Dan raised an eyebrow. “Got the balls to take that bet?”
“Don’t need balls to take that bet. Fucking piss easy,” Matt assured him with a beer-based bravado that he didn’t enjoy.
“Okay then.” Dan twisted in his seat, scanning the bar for a likely target. Matt felt uneasy as he watched him. What Dan was doing was no different from what he might do on any night out, looking for a girl to chat up—but when he did, it was random, chance, there was always a possibility that it wouldn’t work out. Having Dan pick a girl out for him that he was definitely supposed to have sex with really did make it seem like they were choosing a victim, and Matt never liked to think of any of the women he spent time with as that.
“Her.” Dan nodded in the direction of a pillar where two women, dressed in short, flowery summer dresses, showing a good deal of bare, tanned legs tapering down to high heels, were talking, their heads close together as they sipped from straws in some vodka-based cocktail.
Matt was dimly aware of sniggering and elbow digging as Dan made his selection. It had to be said that he’d picked the fittest women in the bar and, more than that, proper women. Well dressed and confident-looking, as if getting chatted up by a man was the very last thing on their minds. This really would be a challenge.
“Blonde or brunette?” Pete asked, with a death’s-head grin that Matt found unsettling.
“Brunette; brunettes always have the best nipples.” Dan nodded, making Raffa’s shoulders shake with uncharacteristically repressed laughter. “Are we all agreed?” The group cheered their rowdy assent in unison, causing the unsuspecting woman to glance up briefly in their direction. Matt caught her eye and held it for a second until she lowered her lashes, turning back to her friend and whispering something that made the other woman laugh. If it was about him, Matt was fairly sure it wasn’t complimentary. She looked about thirty, the high-maintenance type who obviously took a lot of care with her skin and her hair, and clearly worked out, judging by her lightly muscled thighs and arms. There wasn’t a crease on her forehead or a line around her full-lipped mouth, she was perfect, and yet, if Matt had been making his own decisions, she would have been the last woman whom he would choose. There were no secrets there for him to discover, he was certain. She would have any hint of imperfection covered up.
“Yeah, I like her,” Dan said. “She looks hot, like a right goer—might teach you a thing or two, Matt my son. And she’s got a great pair, so she couldn’t be more perfect. Off you go, son.”
“Wait a minute. I can’t just pile in there,” Matt said. “I need to do a bit of groundwork first—fleeting eye contact, shy smiles, that sort of bollocks.”
“Er, no you don’t, you big gay,” Dan told him. “Get in there and set your phone to record. You opening line is… ‘I’ve never seen skin as beautiful as yours, do you moisturize?’”
The table erupted in laughter.
“Are you trying to make me look like a fucking serial killer?” Matt shook his head.
“Yeah.” Dan nodded, taking Matt’s phone off him to check that he wasn’t cheating. Satisfied, he handed it back and nodded toward the girl. “Go on.”
“Well, don’t all look, okay?” Matt asked in vain. He downed his drink and headed for his target.
The woman spluttered into her drink when Matt delivered his line, glancing briefly over his shoulder at his assembled colleagues, who were now all suspiciously silent.
“You on a dare or what?” she asked, looking him up and down with barely concealed contempt.
Matt pulled out his self-deprecating “I know I’m a bumbling fool but look how cute I am” grin.
“There, that was a shocking line, wasn’t it,” he said. “But it is true—you have beautiful skin. Seriously, you look about sixteen.”
The woman smirked. “So do you,” she told him. It wasn’t a compliment.
“Yeah, I am youthful, but that’s not a bad thing.” Matt tried his “I know where your clitoris is” eyebrow raise. “It means I’ve got the stamina to give a wo
man what she wants.”
“What, a pair of Gucci shoes?” the woman retorted, quick as lightning.
Matt took a second to regroup, all too conscious of the baying pack of hounds at his shoulder, ready to rip him to shreds at the first opportunity. He needed to try another tack.
“Did you know that you could be a model?” he asked, cringing inwardly.
“Yes,” she said. “I do know. I am a model. Model-slash-presenter, actually.”
“Oh well, there you go. I was right then.” Struggling, Matt listened to line after line fall totally flat. He’d always thought he was a proper charmer and mad with the X factor—but maybe that was because the women he normally picked were a lot more drunk and a lot more susceptible than this one, keen to lap up every hackneyed compliment as if it were gospel. Maybe he always sounded so shallow, like he got his lines from a Christmas cracker; maybe he’d just never heard himself properly before. Matt wondered what his chances were of finding another job. Maybe Lucy would put a word in for him at her magazine. But then again, maybe she wouldn’t.
“Come on then,” the brunette pressed. “You’re trying to pull me, aren’t you? Don’t give up now—God loves a trier and so do I.”
“Okay. You are an intelligent, sophisticated woman, you don’t want any of the bullshit.” Matt took a breath, pinning his career on the next few words: “The truth is, I really want to make love to you. What do you say?”
The brunette exchanged a deadpan look with her friend.
“I say if that was your best shot, you’ve blown it. Seriously, mate, you didn’t ask me my name, or anything about me. Are you on the clock or something? Seems to me like you’re just trying to pull any bird so you can write some sleazy magazine article about it.”
“I… but… okay, how do you know?” Matt said, his words almost lost in the cacophony of jeers behind him. “You’ve been in the magazine, haven’t you? Look, I know that makes me look like a prick, and I have no idea how I haven’t remembered a woman as beautiful as you, but I promise you, that is not what this is about.”
The Home for Broken Hearts Page 22
