‘Did you know this was here?’ he asked.
She turned her smile from the creature to him. ‘I looked it up when you stepped away from the table.’
The mysterious moment with her phone, he remembered. She’d been on the internet, looking for a way to embrace something important to him. No wonder she’d seemed coy afterwards. She’d been plotting this surprise.
‘I wasn’t going to point it out to you,’ she said. ‘You said it was important that you find them yourself.’ Her smile widened. ‘So I was prepared to stand here moving my arms above my head for as long as it took.’
He kissed her laughing mouth, and turned her on the spot.
She waited while he took a photo for his collection, then they walked the rest of the way to the station. He didn’t see her beaded sleeves again, for they parted ways at the ticket barriers which divided their different lines, but he thought about them late into the night. He also thought about the cobblestones they had danced upon, and the creature she had found.
When he got home he went straight to bed, and he fell asleep smiling.
Chapter 13
Satisfaction
Abigail struggled to keep her mind in the moment on Saturday. With Brittany not working, there was little to distract her from thoughts of mouths and moments, save for the occasional customer. Dillon kept coming to mind. His laughter, his eyes. But mostly his mouth. The way it had felt against hers, and the way her body had responded to its first bit of tenderness in what seemed like an age.
She would see him again today. After her shop closed, he would meet her here and they would go somewhere. She didn’t care where. It wouldn’t matter if they didn’t leave the Yard, so long as his mouth found hers again.
She touched her fingertips to her lips and smiled, then she shifted gears.
Alone, she turned a slow circle in the middle of the shop floor, and regarded the stock on offer. She wanted to introduce more themes within her range. More occasion bouquets, and a greater variety of flowers. Roses were solid sellers, and she was so practiced at them they required hardly any thought now, but the world was full of floral fascinations, and Abigail wanted to bring some of those curiosities through the door.
She was in the mood for something romantic.
It was many months until Valentine’s Day, but that didn’t matter. People fell in love every day. People danced with lust from weekday through to weekend. There was an opportunity to be seized. And she had an idea.
Abigail opened the search bar on her phone and described a vague memory, something she’d once seen on a clickbait list. The results loaded, and her smile stretched so wide her lips pulled back from her teeth.
Psychotria Elata.
It was perfect.
The Psychotria Elata flower was a small, white star shape, but the waxy leaves—or brachts—that surrounded it looked like something else entirely: two bright red lips, pursed for a kiss.
The pictures of it looked Photoshopped, but it was a real flowering tree from the rainforests of Central and South America. It had the unromantic nickname Hooker’s Lips, but was otherwise perfect for a lover’s boucake. She saved the clearest pictures and stepped through to the kitchen to gather the materials she would need to attempt to create one.
She set up a miniature work area behind the front counter, and lost the next two hours to creation. Through trial and error, she determined that the lips better suited miniature cupcakes. This kept the lips a comparable size to those on her face. She didn’t include the small flowers, and it took a while for her to create a pucker over a pout.
When she was satisfied, she wrote down the piping heads she’d used then sprayed the best cake with an edible glaze.
She took a few photos then packed all the cakes in an air-tight container and put them out the back, ready to show Brittany on Monday. Abigail could imagine Brittany’s reaction. She’d squeal and express her excitement through some kind of dance, then she’d throw herself into recreating it and promoting it on social media.
To keep ahead of her, Abigail spent the rest of her workday at the counter on her laptop. In between serving customers and talking them through options for custom orders, she designed a poster to promote the new product. She’d make a full boucake next week and photograph every inch of it, but at least for now all the template work was done.
Every customer got an extra-wide smile until close.
At 3pm when the lights were off and the door was locked, Abigail found Dillon waiting in one of the colourful chairs in the Yard. His expression brightened when he spotted her, and he flashed her one of his top-teeth smiles that she was coming to need in her day.
‘I must thank you,’ she said before he’d stood and closed her within his arms.
He kissed her temple, then her cheek, then the corner of her smiling mouth.
‘Okay,’ he murmured. ‘For what?’
Her answer was delayed by a knee-weakening kiss. She curled her arms around him and grasped his clothes with her fingers. Warmth bloomed from her stomach and delight pulsed from her heart. She pulled him closer, and he came willingly.
When they eventually parted, she said, ‘You inspired me.’
‘Yeah, how’s that?’ His question was soft. Not in volume but in power. He spoke as if breathless. It made something inside her somersault and crash.
Rather than explain it, she showed him a photo on her phone.
It took him a moment to understand what he was looking at, then he threw his head back and laughed. He grasped her wrist when she began to move away, and eased the phone closer so he could look again.
‘Did you make that up, or is it a real thing?’
She grinned. ‘It’s a real thing.’
‘I love it. It’s so clever and sexy. You’re not going to be able to make them fast enough.’
Her idea earned her another kiss, this one longer than the last, and infinitely sweeter.
They moved apart and linked hands.
Together they searched for the seven noses of Soho, another street art treasure hunt. They took turns reading fun facts aloud from their phones as they walked from one location to the next, and made each other laugh with false sightings and wild theories. Apparently, the artist had been incensed by the installation of CCTV cameras throughout London and had protested via these instalments.
They celebrated each find with a picture. Their first photo together was beneath the nose mounted outside Milkbar, an artisan coffee shop on Bateman Street.
‘There’s a myth,’ Abigail said, reading from her phone as Dillon led her by the hand towards the next location, ‘that if you find all seven noses you’ll be infinitely wealthy for the rest of your life.’
Dillon checked for traffic and they crossed the road. ‘Why are there not more millionaires?’ he asked over his shoulder. ‘Are these noses that hard to find?’
‘Maybe,’ she said, coming alongside him when they were on the footpath, ‘it’s not money wealth, but, like, happiness wealth.’
‘Rich in satisfaction.’
‘Yeah. I think I’d prefer that anyway.’
Dillon glanced at her, and his smile was strange. It made her feel like what she’d said had been ignorant, but then he said, ‘Yeah, I think me too.’
She smiled and pointed ahead of them. ‘Towards satisfaction!’
Dillon sang a poor rendition of The Rolling Stone’s ‘Satisfaction’ for the next few minutes, making her laugh and blush as passers-by looked in their direction. When they arrived at the next nose, he finished the last line of the song against her mouth quietly before he kissed her.
Abigail fell just a little further into lust as she kissed him back.
Their hunt took them back into Covent Garden, and as far south as the Admiralty Arch near Trafalgar Square. It turned out one of the noses—the one on Meard Street—was part of a Living Streets project from a decade ago and not a Rick Buckley original. But they counted it anyway and celebrated their success at The Lord Moon of The
Mall, a craft beer pub in a historic building.
Abigail didn’t mean to monitor him, but she was pleased when Dillon limited his drinking to two half pints before suggesting they move on. As far as she knew, he hadn’t drank in excess since the night before they’d argued.
He looked at her strangely when he returned from the men’s room to find her on her phone, checking emails, but she supposed he was wondering if she’d researched another Space Invader location whilst he’d been gone. She could tell he wanted to ask, but he didn’t. And because she hadn’t been, she didn’t explain. It had just been custom order requests.
Her mind whirred as they stepped outside. Her thoughts were so consumed by competing priorities and schedules, and custom orders and everyday business, that by the time she realised Dillon had asked her a question, she suspected that he’d asked it more than once.
She shouldn’t have checked her orders. Work could have waited. But now her business mind was engaged, and her date mind was struggling for real estate.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said as a double-decker tourist bus rumbled past. ‘What did you say?’
The traffic stopped and the pedestrian crossing light began to flash. He took her hand and kept her close to his side. ‘I asked,’ he said, refusing to let a group of tourists come between them, ‘if you were busy tomorrow. But you’ve got a far-off look in your eye.’
They reached the other side of the road and stepped out of the way of the passing crowds.
‘Was it your ex-friend again? The one who’s marrying your ex?’
Abigail pushed her hair back from her face and shook her head. ‘Isobelle? No. But it was work. I’ve got a lot on next week. But—’ she raised her hands in an exaggerated shrug, ‘—nothing tomorrow. What did you have in mind?’
His smile—all teeth and scheming—made her lift an eyebrow.
He leaned in close and kissed the end of her nose. ‘All I’ll say is, it calls for jeans and sensible shoes.’
(Before)
Purple
Abigail was only free to leave the house when Mal left for work on Monday morning. Two whole nights and one full day, locked in with her abuser, had emptied Abigail of her tears. Now, alone at last, she went next door and asked to use her neighbour’s phone. Mal had confiscated her wallet, keys and phone immediately after he’d hurt her, and had yet to return them. He knew she’d leave the house today, but he’d ensured it was an inconvenience to. It was her punishment for speaking against him, he’d said.
She rang her mother on the unfamiliar phone with the hot pink case. Not because Marissa Mullins was likely to care for Abigail, but because Marissa’s was the only number Abigail had memorised. Abigail would have to do something about that. Especially because Marissa came to her rescue with poor grace. That kind of person didn’t deserve the compliment of someone remembering their number.
Abigail was sitting on the low brick fence in front of the house when Marissa’s aubergine Nissan Qashqai eased around the corner. Abigail had left the house unlocked in case her mother didn’t take her away from here, but even if she did take her away, Abigail would probably leave it open now. She didn’t care if the house was robbed. There was nothing in there that she wanted anymore. Everything was tainted. The paintings she’d loved had witnessed her incarceration. The rug she’d bought from Turkey had been behind her head when Mal had pressed his forearm over her throat, and it had still been there when she’d eventually regained consciousness. She’d hurled all the crockery at him, so there was also that mess to contend with. Which she had no intention of cleaning up.
The whole house could burn for all she cared.
He’d bent her arm over the back of a kitchen chair when she’d clipped his cheek with her favourite mug. She supposed he hadn’t broken it because it would have been evidence against him.
Sitting on the wall now, Abigail was not an exhibit of domestic abuse. Her neck and arm were unbruised, just sore. She was starving and exhausted, as she’d had no appetite and she’d feared sleep. She had nothing beyond her word. Against a man revered by the community.
Getting to her feet, Abigail waited by the kerb then pulled open the passenger door before Marissa had come to a stop. She dropped onto the seat without invitation, and pulled the door closed.
Bemused, Marissa’s fingers hesitated on the keys in the ignition. After a moment’s thought, she left the car running. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I need you to take me to the police station.’
‘What for, were you robbed? Is Mal okay?’ She craned her neck to see past Abigail to the house, then refocused on Abigail. ‘Why didn’t you just call the police? What am I doing here?’
Abigail waited out the questions, then repeated herself. ‘I need you to take me to the police station.’ A beat. ‘Mal attacked me. I can’t drive myself because he took my keys, and I had to call you on my neighbour’s phone because he took mine.’
An image of her mother handing over the spare house key to Mal shimmered into her mind. It wasn’t Marissa’s fault, but things would have been different if the woman’s primary loyalty had been to her daughter. If she’d only asked questions. Just enough of them to delay him. Abigail had almost been out the door.
Marissa’s expression had changed from confusion to disbelief, and was now hovering between irritation and discomfort. ‘He did no such thing,’ she said, slapping the steering wheel for emphasis. ‘He would never hurt you, why would you say such a thing?’
‘He would and he did. Drive. Please. I’ll tell you all about it on the way.’
‘I’m not leaving. Show me the bruises.’
Something in Abigail’s body pitched forward then wobbled, and her skin felt like it was too close to a flame. She turned gingerly in her seat. Her mother noticed the halting movement and huffed noisily.
‘Are you serious? In any case, I can’t,’ Abigail said. ‘He didn’t leave any.’
‘He attacked you,’ Marissa returned, ‘but he didn’t bruise you? What, he punched you through a pillow?’
Abigail stared at her. ‘Would that kind of assault be believable to you? If I said he did that, would you take me to the police?’
Marissa killed the engine and crossed her arms.
Mother and daughter stared at each other, each as unbalanced and disbelieving as the other.
Why, Abigail wondered, had she called her mother? Why hadn’t she used her neighbour’s phone to call the police? It had made sense at the time. It had seemed natural to want someone to support her. But now it seemed foolish. She was wasting her new-found freedom trying to prove she’d been abused, to her mother of all people. She should have called a taxi or an Uber. Or a fire engine to put out the house fire she should have lit, so that they could contain it before it reached the neighbours. She should not have called Mal’s ally. Years of enduring this unnatural alliance should have prepared her for this moment and helped her to avoid it.
She’d thought first of her sister, but the distance disabled the kind of physical help Abigail needed right now. Their mother had seemed, at the time, like the next best thing to Louisa. Except Marissa was proving to be just another abusive relationship to escape.
‘You are going to ruin everything,’ Marissa said. She was pressing her fingers to her temples now and her eyes were closed. She was thinking, of course, of status and reputation. Fearing, perhaps, that they were about to lose both all over again.
‘What is even happening?’ The words exploded out of Abigail, making her mother jump. The sound bounced around in the small space, amplified and angry. ‘How is it possible that you don’t believe me?’
‘Because,’ Marissa said, looking only a fraction recovered from the outburst, ‘I’m not sure when this “attack” is supposed to have happened! Was it just after the two of you snuck away from the party together? After that loved-up apology text, maybe? The one that sent me running around to your guests to make your excuses? Or was it yesterday, after that Facebook post? Or after your text t
his morning?’
‘What text?’ Abigail demanded. ‘What Facebook post?’ But the answer came to her like a slap.
He’d had her phone. He’d sent things and posted things, posing as her. It had distorted the timeline. He’d texted her mother this morning, as Abigail, and now here Abigail was a short time later, raging and acting like she’d had a personality transplant.
He’d stitched her up.
‘You can’t be saying these things.’ Marissa’s voice was a hiss now, low and furious. ‘I don’t care if the pair of you fought, this is not the way. You don’t barrel out of your front door making wild accusations just because you didn’t get your way, or something. Mal is an important man. His reputation is your responsibility as much as it is his now. Don’t you get it? You keep your fights private and your business as exactly that: your business.’
A horrible, twisting, compressing silence followed this.
Abigail had been struck again, and again she wouldn’t bruise, because these were just words. But she could feel something deep inside of herself fissure and crack. She thought it must have been that last connection between her heart and her mother’s, because suddenly everything felt different.
This woman was the reason Abigail didn’t have a sister she could call. Marissa had driven Louisa out of the country with her judgements and constant interference, and her wild ideas about who was good enough for the family name, and who could elevate it back up to the perch it had once enjoyed. Marissa, a deeply flawed, boundlessly selfish woman, widowed shortly after bearing her second daughter, had spent almost half of her life trying to reclaim the reputation her late husband had cost her. Once a deeply respected Justice of the Supreme Court, the Right Honourable Lord Mullins had fallen spectacularly from grace and departed the world a gambler and a drunk.
As a much-loved Member of Parliament, Mal was Marissa’s ticket back into the social graces of those she longed to be associated with.
When Abigail spoke, her voice was hollow. ‘You know, it’s funny that you didn’t ask how he attacked me. You demanded to see bruises. He could have verbally attacked me. He could have come at me with a knife. But I say “Mal” and I say “attack”, and your instincts tell you he hit me.’
Have Your Cake Page 15
