The Home for Broken Hearts

by Rowan Coleman

  The woman slowly looked him up and down as if she were appraising a stud horse.

  “Okay then,” she said with a nod.

  “Okay then what?”

  “Okay then, I’ll shag you.” She looked him directly in the eye.

  Matt suddenly felt quite nervous, and quite certain that the parts of him that were basic requirements for such an endeavor had just shrunk away to nothing.

  “Really?” he squeaked.

  “Yeah, but on one condition.” She raised a flirty eyebrow, which made Matt think a million scary and exciting things.

  “Name it,” he whispered.

  “You’d better ask my husband first. After all, he is your boss.”

  “He’s… what?” He looked around to find the whole staff of Bang It! gasping with laughter and banging on the tables while Dan held up his glass and winked at him.

  “I said you should have asked me my name. It’s Aimee—Mrs. Aimee Sutherland. And that moisturizer line, that was Dan’s first line with me. It worked out a lot better for him.”

  Leaving Matt speechless, Aimee sashayed past him in her Gucci heels. Bending over her husband, she grabbed him by the collar. “Right, now you really owe me dinner. Come on—we’re going.”

  As Dan stood up and kissed his wife, he was literally crying with laughter. “That is the funniest thing I’ve heard in years,” he said. “Seriously, we should put that on the website. Babe, you were brilliant.”

  “What do you mean, put it on the website?” Matt asked miserably.

  “I mean that when I checked your phone, I called my phone and put you on speaker. That was brilliant!”

  “You? You bastard!” Matt proclaimed, picking up Pete’s drink and downing it in one shot. “That whole thing was a windup.” He looked miserably at Aimee. “Oh, God, I’m so embarrassed.”

  “You should be, love.” Aimee laughed. “Don’t know how you got your reputation for being a ladies’ man.”

  Matt grinned; he had no choice but to take it on the chin. It was pretty funny.

  “So am I fired then?” he asked Dan.

  “You should be, but I can’t bring myself to do it, you’re too entertaining.” Dan glanced at wife. “I’m too drunk to eat—how about a line and a club, yeah?”

  Matt shook his head while everybody else was nodding theirs.

  “You know what, I’m going to go back.”

  “Back where, to where you left your self-respect?” Raffa laughed.

  “No, I…” Matt stopped himself from saying that he wanted to get home, have a shower, and go to sleep in front of the telly. “I’ve got a bit of a project going on.”

  “A woman?” Pete asked.

  “Yeah, a real challenge, a little older—but, you know, really sexy.”

  “You mean like a cougar?” Raffa added.

  “Or a milf?” Greg put in.

  “Yeah, no—she’s a lady. You know, refined, quiet, and shy.”

  “And you reckon you can crack her?”

  “I reckon under those frumpy clothes she’s got a slamming body,” Matt said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Wait—are you talking about your landlady?” Pete slurred. “The one who’s taking in lodgers because her husband snuffed it?”

  “Whoa, low blow—you’re going for a woman on the rebound from death, mate; that tops trying to pick up your boss’s wife any day of the week,” Raffa said approvingly.

  “First, I didn’t know I was trying to pick up the boss’s wife, and second, her husband’s been dead nearly a year,” Matt said uncomfortably.

  “You are a dark, dark bastard,” Dan said approvingly. “Matt, the dark destroyer. Go for it, mate. There’s a features idea, what depths a bloke would go to to get his way, hey, Raffa?”

  Matt picked up his stuff and headed out into the mercifully cool air of the night; the sky was only just losing the last remnants of light even though it was getting on eleven. As he headed back to his much-longed-for room, his stomach churned and his head spun. It wasn’t just that mixture of beer and whiskey, either; he felt disjointed and out of place. Like when he’d woken up after a big night and knew that he’d done something to offend someone, only he couldn’t work out what, only this time he knew exactly what he’d done, exactly what he’d said, and he hated himself for it. He didn’t think about Ellen that way at all. He did think of her sexually—that was inevitable, she was a beautiful woman, with a body that hinted at much more, and he was a man. Of course he thought about her that way, but he didn’t think of her as a project, an easy target. That was the very last thing he thought about her. If anything, he had an unfamiliar urge to look after her, to protect her.

  As Matt turned down his road, his head hanging low, he considered turning back, finding his friends, and going out after all, but then he heard a noise in the shadows that stopped him in his tracks. He listened, uncertain of what he had heard.

  “Matt?” A figure lurched out of the shadows and stood under the streetlight. It took Matt a second to take in what he was seeing.

  “Hannah?” He stepped forward and caught the woman just as her knees buckled. Looking down, he saw her makeup smeared down her face, her eyes bloodshot and swollen, but there was more than that—a dark bruise inflamed her left cheek just under her eye, and her clothes were dirty and torn. “Fuck, Hannah, what happened?”

  “Will you take me to Ellen’s?” she asked drowsily, clearly still under the influence of something. “I need to go to Ellen’s, I need to tell her something. I’m trying to get there but it seems so far and I’m… I’m hurting.”

  Matt folded his arm around Hannah’s waist and bore her weight against his shoulder.

  “Hannah, what the hell happened?” Matt asked.

  Hannah swung her head around to look at him, her bleary eyes unfocused, her brows drawn together in a frown.

  “I don’t know,” she told him. “I don’t know what’s happened.”

  CHAPTER

  Fifteen

  In her dream, Ellen was in a library—no, not a library, the library, the one at college—where the tall, dusty shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling were so closely crammed together that the carpeted corridors that ran between them were narrow and dark. It was hot in the library, and dark; she felt sweat gathering at the nape of her neck. She was looking for something, looking for the way out.

  Searching for a clue, she ran her finger along the shelf of books, like none she had ever seen in the university library, each one a fat, well-fingered paperback; the purple, pink, and red spines were cracked along their length, as if each one had been avidly read. Ellen pulled out one book and saw an illustration of a woman on the cover, the tops of her arms gripped and pulled back forcefully by a muscular, topless man so that her breasts surged forward, straining against the laces of what appeared to be a white nightdress. Ellen frowned, trying to puzzle out what was so familiar about the image. She tried to make out the title, gold-embossed swirling letters, but they seemed not to make sense no matter how hard she looked at them. She stared and stared at the image of the woman on the cover, her expression caught somewhere between agony and ecstasy, the internal struggle between desire and propriety expertly caught by the brush of the artist. There was something familiar about the woman, her long, dark hair tumbling over one shoulder, her full lips bared in what might have been a growl or a groan of ecstasy. Then, with a heated flush of embarrassment, Ellen realized that she was looking at an illustration of herself in the throes of undeniable passion. And the man who was restraining her, his lips buried in her neck? She could not tell who he was; he was fair and well built, but she could not see his face. Perhaps it was Nick? She tried to remember if Nick had ever grabbed her so purposefully. Ellen moaned, remembering the gentle pressure of his palm on her inner thigh, the first indicator that he wanted to make love. His first move always, even before kissing her. Or perhaps it was Matt, perhaps it was Matt who was seducing her away from quiet respectability, his strong fingers grip
ping her so hard that they would surely leave their imprints on her flesh, branding her as his. At last she could make sense of the title: Ellen’s Escape.

  This was it, this would show her the way out of this maze she was trapped in where every corridor, every room, led her around and around in ever-decreasing circles, always back to where she began. The book had to have the answers.

  Desperately Ellen opened the book, anxious to see what secrets the words would reveal, but she flipped from page to page and each one was blank. Yellowing cream, slightly rough in texture, and entirely empty.

  “But what happens?” Ellen’s voice echoed between the shelves. “What happens to me next?” Perhaps she had to fill in the answers, Ellen found herself thinking. Perhaps to escape her story she had to write it.

  “Ellen?” She spun around. Matt was standing behind her, shirtless, just as the man on the cover of her book was, his muscled torso glistening with what might have been sweat but which smelled like rose oil, his well-developed pectoral muscles rising and falling as he took each heavy breath.

  “You’ve come,” she whispered. “I’ve thought about it and I’m ready for sex. Let’s have lots of sex.”

  “Ellen?” he questioned, softly insistent. “Ellen?”

  “Yes, the answer is yes, yes, I want you, I want you. As a strong, independent woman I will let you take me now!” She flung herself back, bracing her body along the bookshelf. “Rip off my clothes, only be careful with the buttons on this top, it’s my favorite.”

  Matt took a step toward her and gently shook her shoulder.

  “Ellen? Ellen, wake up. Wake up!”

  Groggily, Ellen opened her eyes and focused on Matt. She smiled, one hand lazily fluttering up to caress the side of his face. And she realized that she wasn’t dreaming anymore and that Matt was actually leaning over her bed.

  “Bloody hell!” She tried to sit up, but found herself pinned down by a tangle of sheets. With some difficulty, she unraveled herself with one hand while trying to maintain her modesty with the other. It would be tonight of all nights that she had finally conceded to the sweltering heat and given up Nick’s pajamas in favor of one of Nick’s cotton shirts.

  “What are you doing here?” Ellen asked breathlessly, dragging the sheet up over her chest. She could have been mistaken, but she thought that the look on his face didn’t exactly point to a seduction attempt.

  “I’m sorry,” Matt whispered, careful not to look at her. He sat on the edge of the bed, his weight causing her leg to roll a little closer to his. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought I’d better wake you. You were having a pretty radical dream.”

  “Have I slept in? Is it morning?” Ellen was confused and then a flash of her dream came back to her. “Oh, God, was I talking in my sleep?”

  “Nothing I could make out.” Whatever he had heard or seen, Matt seemed utterly disinterested, which Ellen found simultaneously disappointing and a relief.

  “Look, it’s not morning,” Matt went on. “It’s about midnight I think.” He paused, as if uncertain of how to say the next few words. “Hannah’s downstairs.”

  Ellen felt her shoulders relax and leaned back against the headboard.

  “Typical.” Ellen ran her fingers through her hair. “She worries us all to death and then turns up on the doorstep whenever she feels like it. Seriously, that woman thinks the world revolves around her. She has to learn, she can’t just turn up here attention-seeking at any hour of the day or night.” Ellen swung her bare legs out of bed and hastily put on Nick’s dressing gown, which she kept hanging on the back of the bedroom door. “I’m going to tell her she can bloody well go home and come back in the morning.”

  Just as Ellen reached the door, Matt put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her. She turned to look at him.

  “Ellen, you don’t understand.” In the half-light coming through the open door, Matt’s expression was unreadable, but something about the shadows under his eyes and the incline of his head sent an ominous shiver through her. “Look, I don’t know what’s happened, but Hannah’s pretty messed up.”

  “Drunk, you mean?”

  “Probably. She might have taken or been given something, too.” Ellen’s sigh was one of exasperation. “But wait, it’s not just that. Something’s happened to her, she’s hurt, and she can’t remember how. You need to come and see her, Ellen.”

  Matt took a step closer and finally Ellen saw his expression. He was really worried.

  “Oh, God, what’s she done now?”

  Ellen didn’t know what she expected to see when she pushed the living-room door open, but it wasn’t the sight that greeted her. Matt had left Hannah on the sofa, where she had curled herself up into a tight ball and appeared to be sleeping. Ellen flicked on a lamp to get a better look at her sister, who unconsciously screwed up her eyes against the invasion of light. The first thing Ellen noticed was blood in Hannah’s hair, dried now, a thick black lump matting the auburn strand. There was a bruise forming on her temple, and her lip was swollen and cut. The neck of her shirt was torn and there were scuffs of mud streaked along her skirt, which had ripped up the seam, revealing the tops of her legs. But the sight that sent ice through Ellen’s veins was the smear of blood, dried and flaking, on the inside of one of her thighs.

  Ellen pressed her hand over her mouth as she stared at her fitfully slumbering sister, forcing herself to stay silent. After a few seconds she peeled her fingers away from her lips.

  “Where did you say you found her?” she asked Matt, her voice strained.

  “At the end of the road; she just appeared out of nowhere, looking like that. She seemed really out of it. I think she’d been in someone’s garden. Maybe she passed out there, I don’t know, or how long she’d been there—but I think she was trying to get to you. I didn’t find her, she found me. If she hadn’t seen me I’d have walked right past her.”

  Hesitantly, Ellen knelt on the carpet beside the sofa, her hands hovering over her sister, uncertain of what to do. Then, biting down on her bottom lip, she gently touched Hannah on the shoulder.

  “Hannah, Hannah,” Ellen said softly, almost unwilling to bring her sister around, but knowing that she must. “Hannah. Wake up. It’s me, Hannah.”

  Hannah opened one rapidly swelling eye with some difficulty and looked at Ellen through the tender slit of her lid.

  “Ellen.” Her voice was cracked and dry. “I hurt.”

  “I know, I can see that,” Ellen said gently. Instinctively she pressed the back of her hand against Hannah’s forehead as her mother used to do to each of them when she suspected a fever. Hannah’s skin was cool, so she must have been outside for some time, Ellen thought. Unsure, she glanced up at Matt, who shook his head. He had no idea what to do, either. Ellen had to try to find out more.

  “Okay, Hannah, Hans?” Ellen waited for Hannah to open her eyes. “You need to sit up, okay? Let me get a good look at you.” Ellen was suddenly reminded of the last time she had nursed her sister, when they were both children, when Hannah had been her tiny little sister, utterly in awe of her and dependent on her for almost everything. Back when her mother’s friends used to look at the two of them together and say, “What a lovely little mother your Ellen makes.”

  Hannah moaned. “Don’t want to, Ellie, want to stay here. I like it here. Want to sleep now, hold my hand…”

  “I know, I know you want to sleep, and you can soon. But first I need to see all your hurts. Let me look…”

  Hannah grimaced in pain as Ellen awkwardly wrapped her hands around her and heaved her bodily into a sitting position. Hannah’s head lolled on her neck, but she smiled when she caught sight of Matt standing by the door.

  “My hero.” She grinned, reopening the cut in her lip. “Matt rescued me, Ellie, I was lost and he found me. He’s so brave and handsome—like a hero in one of your books.…”

  Ellen knelt in front of Hannah, placing her hands on the sides of her head so that she could look into her sister’s eyes;
one was now almost completely closed, the other heavy lidded and sleepy. Once, long ago, Ellen had been the designated first aider at the museum, and she tried desperately now to remember something about head injuries. Hannah could be drunk, or she could have taken a serious knock to the head. Gingerly, Ellen felt over her sister’s head for more cuts or bumps, but the only one she found was what looked like a fairly super-

  ficial cut on her forehead. Heads bleed a lot, Ellen remembered, but even so it was clear that someone or something had hit Hannah very hard.

  “Hannah?” Ellen struggled to hold her sister’s attention as her chin dropped onto her chest. “Hannah! Were you in a fight? Who hurt you?” Ellen asked, her eyes tracking the rest of her sister’s visible injuries. Her knees were cut and dirty, fingerprint-sized bruises were blossoming on her forearms, and there was dirt beneath her broken nails.

  “Don’t know,” Hannah said blearily, listing toward Ellen, who had to grab her shoulders to keep her upright. “Want to sleep.”

  “No, no you can’t sleep. She can’t sleep, can she, Matt? What if she isn’t drunk—what if this is a concussion? They always say on TV that you mustn’t go to sleep if you have a head injury.”

  “Shall I make her a coffee?” Matt offered.

  “Yes, good idea. Make her a strong coffee.”

  Matt looked relieved to have an excuse to leave the room, and Ellen didn’t blame him.

  “Look, Hannah, I know, okay? I know you’ve lost your job, that you’ve gotten into some kind of trouble at work. I know all of that, you’ve got nothing to hide, okay—so just tell me, what happened to you?”

  Without warning, Hannah flung her arms around Ellen’s neck and dropped her head onto Ellen’s shoulder, almost sending the pair of them tumbling back onto the carpet. “I’m sorry, Ellie.” She sobbed tearlessly. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  With some difficulty, Ellen eased her sister back against the sofa cushions.