by Hannah Pearl
‘Countryside?’ I suggested.
‘Dung.’ Eli started marching past the bush where I’d seen the chocolate bar wrapper and let himself out of the gate.
‘We have to make sure we shut this or the sheep will get in and eat the plants.’ Eli didn’t pause when I spoke and continued walking past his car and up the hill. ‘Where are you going?’ I called.
‘To find breakfast. There’s got to be somewhere round here that does a good fry up.’
‘There is, but not within walking distance. Didn’t you notice last night how quiet it was when we drove in?’
‘I was just busy trying to keep my eyes open,’ he admitted. He unlocked the car and I let myself in. ‘Guide me to the nearest café. I need caffeine and bacon as quickly as possible.’
As Eli used the last of his toast to wipe clean his tyre-sized plate, I finished my coffee and spread some raspberry jam on my tea cake. He finally seemed more alert. ‘So who do we talk to first?’ he asked.
I showed the waitress Ben’s photo as she cleared our table. She took the time to look carefully at his picture, despite every table being full of customers. I found myself holding my breath as she looked, but eventually she shook her head.
‘Sorry love,’ she said, tucking her pen into the wispy bun of white hair on top of her head. I stared at Eli, waiting for him to come up with a brainwave of what I should ask next, but he didn’t. He was too busy hiding behind a newspaper and trying to look inconspicuous. It wasn’t working. Most of the women in the café, and a few of the men, were glancing at him appreciatively. I wondered just how he stayed incognito when he worked. There was just no hiding how good-looking he was. I poked the edge of his paper down so I could see him. He had a grin on his face, despite how worried we both were about Ben. Mind you, it seemed he’d proved himself to be resourceful enough to get as far as the cottage, so hopefully he was okay. I just needed to see him to be sure. My brother didn’t march to the beat of anyone else’s drum and it was too ingrained in me to keep an eye on him to go without finding him now.
‘Is he in trouble?’ the waitress asked. I read the name badge with curled edges that was pinned to her white apron. The letters were lifting off as the plastic came away, and it took me a minute to decipher that it read ‘Rhonda’. Most people in the cafe seemed to know her already, certainly no one looked surprised that she was chatting rather than taking orders, and no one shouted or called out anything rude to get her attention. The world outside of London was truly different, and I was beginning to appreciate it more and more. Even though she hadn’t seen Ben, she wasn’t in any rush to move on.
‘No,’ I assured her. ‘He’s my little brother. He’s really clever and really, really kind. He can do anything with computers, he just struggles a bit in the real world.’
‘We all know people like that,’ she assured me, pulling over a seat from the table behind me and joining us. I was tempted to offer her the pot of coffee to make herself more comfortable. ‘You don’t live around here do you.’ It wasn’t a question. She could tell from our accents that we didn’t. Besides, she probably knew everyone who lived within ten miles of the village.
‘He got a bit upset at home the other day and we think he might have decided to come up here for a break. We have lots of happy memories here from when we were kids.’
‘Have you visited recently?’ she asked. I shook my head. ‘It will have changed a bit since you were last here then. There’s a new amusement park by the beach.’ The elderly man sat at the table behind her sniffed and set his cutlery down on his plate with a clatter. ‘We have a few problems with the kids who hang out sometimes, but if your brother likes computer games, maybe you should try there.’
I thanked her, paid the bill and left twice the tip I would have in London. We’d had more than twice the usual amount of attention we’d have got back home. It also still cost less than the last breakfast Lily and I went out for, and Eli had demolished the biggest meal on their menu. Outside, I stopped by Eli’s car.
‘Nothing is within walking distance here,’ I said.
‘I don’t mind the driving.’ I was beginning to mind however. The roads that led to the beach were winding. Eli grinned as he drove. I held onto the door with one hand and braced myself against the dashboard with the other.
‘These roads are two way,’ I pointed out. ‘You might want to slow down a bit.’ There were no pavements and if he judged a turn incorrectly we were liable to drive either into a tree or over the side of a hill. It was beautiful but utterly, utterly terrifying to a city girl. The biggest dangers I faced at home were getting in the way of incompetent cyclists trying their luck on a hire bike or getting stuck behind a crowd of slow-moving tourists. Mind you, having to wait behind a particularly leisurely group of sheep crossing the road at one point did seem a little familiar.
‘I’m going ten miles slower than the speed limit,’ Eli said, as I went into the brace position as we crested one hill. I shut my eyes until he parked, switched the engine off and turned to face me. ‘You can take your seat-belt off now.’
‘If I get out and kiss the floor like the Pope does when he gets off an aeroplane would you be offended?’
Chapter Sixteen
The lights were off when we arrived, lending the amusement park an air of being a deserted shell where pocket money and teenage romances came to die. The windows were covered in a thick film of grime, but I got as close as I dared and peeped inside.
‘Is this the kind of place Ben might have come?’ I asked Eli.
‘He does like his games, though I’m not sure he’d enjoy the crowds of an arcade usually. This place could be perfect for him.’
I looked at the torn canopy that hung over the door and the hand-written sign, complete with spelling mistakes, which said that the arcade wasn’t open on Mondays. ‘Somehow I don’t think crowds are going to be a problem here. Looks like we’ve got the rest of the day to ask around. If we don’t have any more luck, maybe we can come back tomorrow.’
The thought of spending another night next to Eli wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it was a little too tempting. Crawling into bed after a long journey hadn’t seemed too intimate, just sensible. We were exhausted and needed to sleep. The idea of doing the same when we were both awake enough to know what we were doing felt entirely different. I found myself blushing, then getting cross with myself for even thinking such thoughts when we hadn’t yet found my brother.
‘If you’re worrying about your lack of pyjamas, I have no problem with you wearing that little set you had on last night,’ Eli said. I cursed him for being able to read my mind. ‘I didn’t need to,’ he said. ‘Your cheeks are nearly as red as those knickers you had on last week. You didn’t happen to bring those too, did you?’
I didn’t answer, not least because there was a spare pair in my bag, and I didn’t trust myself not to end up wearing them for him. I knew that I ought to suggest that one of us slept on the sofa, and yet the words didn’t seem to want to leave my mouth. ‘We’re here to search for Ben,’ I reminded him. And myself. Which is why we spent the rest of the afternoon visiting every shop, pub and café for miles around.
The people that we met made a stark contrast to those I’d tried to talk to in London. Without fail they listened to me explain why we were looking for Ben and looked at his photo, before shaking their heads and wishing us luck. The lady in the bakery had felt so sorry for me that she had given us free sandwiches and cakes, but by dinner-time my feet ached from walking, my throat hurt from talking and my eyes were sore from having to blink back tears.
‘This is the last pub in this area that we haven’t visited yet,’ Eli said, opening the door and letting me walk past him. There was a roaring log fire set into the wall opposite the bar. Had I not been so distraught at running out of places to try it would have been a cosy and a welcome place to relax. Eli guided me to a comfy leather armchair and waited until I’d sat down before he went to the bar to fetch us drinks and menus. Coming
back to the table he handed me a tall glass of sparkling wine. He opened the black plastic folder, took a quick glance before closing it and going back to the counter.
‘What the hell, Eli?’ I demanded when he sat back down. ‘Do I have to order my own food now?’
‘Relax,’ he told me. ‘They only had one vegetarian option on the menu. You’re having mushroom stroganoff. I already ordered it.’
‘What if I’d wanted it—’
‘—with chips instead of rice? Then you’d be in luck, because that’s what I asked for.’
Sometimes it was nice to spend time with people who knew you so well. Sometimes it was infuriating for exactly the same reasons. I didn’t ask how, despite sniping at each other for so long, he still knew exactly what I liked. I was scared he’d think that I was referring to the bedroom too. I tried to change the subject. ‘Had they seen Ben in here?’
‘The manager said the photo looked familiar, she thinks he might have been in here the night after we argued. Hence the cava. It was the closest they had to champagne. This could be our first break of the day. The waitress who worked the last couple of days is due in at eight. They reckoned she would know for sure.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘That gives us two hours. There’s no point in running anywhere else in the meantime. We’ve already tried every other place nearby. I suggest we take the universe’s hint and have a rest. I don’t know about you, but I need one.’
When I finished my drink and went to the bar, I returned with a whole bottle of wine. ‘To help us relax,’ I told him when he cocked a questioning eyebrow. By the time the waitress came in, I’d drunk most of it myself, having conveniently forgotten when I had ordered it that Eli was driving. We’d cleared our plates and split a serving of sticky toffee pudding with ice cream.
‘You’re looking for your brother?’ the woman said, taking her coat off and hanging it up behind the bar. She wore a T-shirt identifying herself as a student at the University of Gallifrey. If anyone would have noticed Ben and made him feel safe enough to chat, it would be her.
I nodded and showed her a bunch of photos of Ben on my phone. ‘He looks like a grown man, and I know I shouldn’t worry, but he’s pretty innocent. I’m nervous that he’ll get into trouble if we don’t find him soon.’ Not to mention that Dad would kill me if he got home to find that I’d lost my brother.
‘He was fine when he was in here yesterday lunchtime,’ she assured me.
‘Are you sure it was him?’
She looked through some more pictures. ‘Definitely, but he looked a bit more pale in person.’ Yup, that was Ben.
I turned, threw my hands around Eli’s neck and planted a kiss on his lips. His hands went round my waist, and he held me for a few seconds, before we pulled away and both took a sip of our drinks. The waitress began pulling a pint for the man stood next to me. I felt embarrassed at my display of affection for Eli, but no one else in the place knew our history or batted an eyelid at us. ‘We’ve nearly found him,’ I said excitedly, bouncing from foot to foot, the alcohol fizzing around my system.
‘We’re going to bring him home,’ Eli said, putting his arms around me again. Still no one was looking, so when he kissed me again I didn’t stop him.
It took a few minutes after we finished kissing before I could form a coherent thought that wasn’t along the lines of ‘wow’. Finally though, I pulled myself together and managed to ask a few more questions. Ben had only been in once, and the waitress only remembered him because he’d come to the bar to order a Coke and on hearing her complain about her phone refusing to unlock, he’d taken it from her and fixed it.
‘I gave him his drink for free. He was chuffed. The girl sat next to him kept shooting me dirty looks, not that I talked to him any more after that. We were busy in, there was a game on the big screen. When I got back from serving some meals he was gone.’ I assumed that she was mistaken about Ben being with a girl, perhaps he had sat next to one and she wasn’t happy about it, but apart from that it sounded very much like my brother. I squealed again with relief and excitement that we might finally be getting close to Ben. Or perhaps it was the wine going to my head.
‘Let’s go,’ I told Eli. I tugged on his arm, enjoying the feel of his biceps. It was easier to enjoy it now that I was less worried about Ben. I tugged again, or at least I meant to, I suspect really I was just stroking Eli’s muscles. He grinned at me.
We stopped at a garage on the way home for petrol. When Eli climbed back in after paying he stopped at the boot to drop a bag in. When we pulled up in front of the cottage, he had to help me out of the car because the world was spinning too fast for me to walk by myself. He stopped to get his bag out of the boot.
Letting ourselves back in, I swore when I felt how cold the cottage was. ‘Let me guess,’ Eli said, ‘a cottage this old doesn’t have central heating?’ He began to light a fire, but his city boy ways let him down again, and as I brushed my teeth upstairs I could hear him cursing as the fire refused to catch.
I took a quick shower, but had to hold myself up using the walls. It had been a while since I’d drunk so much. Pulling on a new pair of red knickers, I dropped the towel on the side of the bath and tucked myself into bed, ready for Eli to find when he came up. He must have been a while though, because the next thing I was aware of, it was morning. My head was pounding, and Eli was sat up, duvet down around his waist, grinning at me.
‘I like the pants.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘Did we …?’ I asked Eli.
‘I was a perfect gentleman,’ he assured me. ‘I assumed that you wanted to, hence the frilly red pants.’ He lifted the duvet and had a second look. I screamed and batted the covers back down again. ‘I was surprised that you weren’t wearing anything else with them, I have to say.’ I slunk down and pulled the cover up over my head, but he tugged it down again so that he could see my face. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but not only were you already asleep by the time I made it upstairs, but you’d drunk virtually the whole bottle of wine by yourself, and I didn’t think you were in any fit state to decide if it was what you really wanted to do. I like vocal consent, not drunken fumblings. If we were together, I want to know that you really, really are enjoying what we’re doing.’
This time he didn’t stop me from pulling the covers up again, and I hid as waves of embarrassment and shame washed over me. I think Eli knew, as I could hear him chuckling as he pottered around the room getting dressed. I envied Lily’s body confidence. If she wanted something and had a willing partner then she viewed sex as a perfectly good form of personal expression. She wouldn’t have wanted the ground to swallow her up just because someone had seen her almost naked. Lily had tried to persuade me any number of times to learn to accept and enjoy my own sexuality. I thought about calling her to tell her what I’d done. She didn’t bear Eli any grudges for the number of partners he’d had over the years – he had been free to do what he wanted technically – but she might still be cross about how upset I’d been at having to see the seemingly never-ending parade because I had never quite managed to move on in the same way. She would probably just caution me about risking having my heart broken again, and I wasn’t quite strong enough yet to admit to myself that I was in very real danger of that happening if Eli didn’t feel the same way as I did. As soon as Eli left the room I got out of bed and dug a couple of paracetamol out of my handbag. Sticking my head under the tap in the bathroom, I managed to get enough water to swallow them. It was easier to shower now the world had stopped spinning like a fairground ride, but not by much as the noise of the pump made my head hurt all over again. Eli tapped at the door and opened it.
‘Get out!’ I shouted. His hand reached just inside and set a cup of coffee on the floor though the rest of him thankfully didn’t follow. The caffeine helped, and once the painkillers had kicked in I felt human again, though I didn’t go downstairs immediately. In fact, I didn’t go down at all, unready to face him after I’d made my need for him all too c
lear, until eventually Eli came to find me.
‘Breakfast is ready.’
‘When did we get food?’ I asked, because it was easier to talk about that than to broach why I’d been waiting for him in just a slip of red silk and lace the night before.
‘There was a small grocery section in the petrol station. You were so drunk I thought you might need a recovery breakfast today.’
‘I wasn’t that drunk.’ I pouted.
‘So you were sober when you dressed, or undressed, for bed last night?’
I shut up after that and continued to drink my coffee. ‘Let’s review where we’re up to,’ I said eventually. ‘Ben was definitely in Wales, and probably stayed the first night here, so we’re hopefully several hundred miles closer already?’
‘And he was fine when the waitress saw him, that’s reassuring.’
I tried to ring Ben’s mobile yet again but he was still refusing to answer. I hung up, swore loudly and with no other ideas, began to draw up a list of places to revisit. Eli pulled the pad towards himself and read it out loud. ‘The amusement arcade.’
I didn’t say it was a long list. ‘We tried everywhere else yesterday,’ I reminded him. I wasn’t as much of a whizz online as Ben, but I could use Google as well as the next person. I pulled up a list of hotels. ‘Then I think we should come back and make some calls. Ben clearly hasn’t been back since we’ve been here, but without a vehicle he’s limited to how far he could have got.’ We headed out to the car.
Eli was turning the key in the ignition as my brain finally sparked into life again too. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid,’ I muttered, smacking my forehead with my open hand.
‘If it’s any consolation, if you had been sober then I definitely would have but drunkenness doesn’t equal consent. You looked amazing. I had to have a very cold shower before I came to bed last night.’
I turned to face Eli, ignoring his response, though the butterflies in my stomach were evidence that my body was replying to his statement. ‘How did Ben get to the pub? It took us ten minutes in the car. It must be three miles from here. The arcade is a good few miles on the other side. He’s got to be getting around somehow.’
