by Ashley Croft
‘I’d had a string of bloody loved-up brides all week long, rattling on about their gorgeous fiancés, and their wonderful bloody boyfriends and weren’t they lucky and blah di blah until I wanted to stick my fingers down my throat, not that I need any help to throw up these days. And then Cassandra Burling said her dove looked like a pigeon – a fucking pigeon! – and wanted me to find her an owl or a hippo or something and I can’t – and then he called, the bastard, going on about me dragging my feet over the sale of the cottage …’
Sarah dabbed at her eyes with a soggy piece of toilet paper.
‘And – and – then Niall told me he was moving in with Vanessa.’
‘Oh my God, no! He can’t do. I thought he said that shagging her was a mistake.’
‘He did but now he’s changed his mind. He said he needs a place to live and he wants to give things a chance with her.’
‘But she’s a health nut, isn’t she? She’s not up his street at all … apart from the kinky sex I guess.’
Sarah let out a cry.
‘Sorry, Sarah but I can’t believe it.’
‘Neither can I. I thought he’d come round to grovel and to be honest I wasn’t sure how I was going to react. I almost told him about the baby I even – oh God – I even considered letting him have another chance for a nanosecond. Then he told me that we’d had an offer on the house and then he dropped the bombshell about Vanessa.’
‘Now, I understand why you had a meltdown, hon. Damn, I’ve run out of tissues. Here, have this.’ Molly shoved a piece of blue lab roll from her bag into Sarah’s hands. ‘It’s clean. No gorilla jizz.’
‘I never want to be within fifty miles of any kind of jizz, ever again, human or animal. I’m sorry f-for whingeing again. It’s my hormones. I can’t seem to control them. One minute I’m together and stable and the next I want to hide in a corner and howl or puke. I meant to be cool and calm with Niall but I just flipped. I threw him out – again – and then I came into the workshop and I did this.’ She waved her hand at the carnage. ‘I don’t know why.’
Molly sighed, her heart breaking for her sister’s distress. ‘I’ll help you clear up when you’re feeling a bit better but, Sarah, you’re going to have to tell Niall about the baby at some point. He’s going to notice sooner or later, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, but he’s so dead against having a family, I don’t know how he’ll react. I could just about handle things when I thought he’d only wanted Vanessa for the sex. He swore she didn’t mean anything and that he still loved me. Even though I didn’t really want him back, God help me, I actually thought about having him back for a moment … it’s hard to let someone go when you’ve been together that long, Molly. I can’t expect you to understand that.’
Molly held her tongue, even though Sarah’s last comment had stung her.
‘No, I can’t,’ she said, forcing herself to remember that Sarah was going through hell.
Sarah leaned against the worktop. ‘Now I can’t bear the thought of him with her. The idea of them having a relationship makes me feel sick. It’s completely irrational because I loathe him but I do still love him too. Sometimes I think anything would be better than feeling like this … You know I didn’t want him to still love me but now he’s gone off with Vanessa, I really do. Does that sound crazy?’
Molly thought Sarah’s hormones were screwing up her judgement. There was no way on the planet she would ever have forgiven Niall or wanted him back but she kept her thoughts to herself. Sarah was in no state for tough love at the moment.
‘Not really. Not at all, in fact.’ Molly thought of her own “irrational” feelings towards Ewan with his own wild mood swings and tried to empathise with her sister.
‘Oh hon. I’m so sorry. The hormones can’t help and I don’t blame you for being upset but you can’t possibly want Niall back …’
‘He’s a shit but a shit who I still love. And despite everything, I wish he loved me.’ Her voice trailed off and she stared at her surroundings, finally seeming to register the thousands of beads, flowers and findings littering the workshop floor.
‘Oh shit,’ she said quietly. ‘What have I done?’
Molly put her arm around Sarah, hoping that she’d feel better when she’d had some sleep and time away from the workshop mess. ‘Look, hon, you know I’d do anything I could to help you feel better. For now, let’s go into the cottage. I’ll make you a cup of tea and then I’ll clear up this mess while you get some rest.’
A couple of hours later, Molly had cancelled her spin class and was returning the final few beads to their plastic tubs. Scrabbling around on the floor for the tiny objects had given her sore knees and eye strain and she was sure Sarah would be finding bits and pieces for months to come.
Sarah had tried to put her feet up but soon joined her and seemed to have calmed down a little. Maybe the action of being busy had helped more than sitting around dwelling on her situation.
Sarah closed the lid on the plastic box she’d refilled with seed beads and sighed loudly. ‘Molly …’
Molly got up and felt her spine click. She was still sore from a mammoth training session with Ewan. ‘Yup.’
‘You know that thing I said – how if only there was a way of making Niall fall in love with me again so he’d come grovelling back and I could keep the cottage?’
Molly paused, midway to screwing the lid on a jar. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck seemed to stand on end. ‘Ye-es …’
‘And how you said you’d do anything to help me if you could?’
Sarah’s eyes were strangely bright and there was a smile on her face. She looked almost feverish.
Molly’s blood seemed to run cold, even though she knew that wasn’t actually possible. ‘Yes, I did, but I can’t do that.’
‘I haven’t said what “that” is yet …’ Sarah said.
‘You don’t have to and I’d crawl on my hands and knees to Australia if I thought it would make you happy, Sare, but I can’t possibly do what you’re thinking.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we don’t know if it will work. Because we haven’t tried it on people yet. Because it’s still theoretical. Sort of.’
‘But you said it does work …’
‘Yes. We know it works in some specific applications but it’s only been trialled so far in the military and for soldiers with trauma … and psychiatric disorders where people have difficulty empathising fully. There’s a long process to go through before it could be certified for manufacture and the Research Ethics Committee would only approve it for one use at a time.’
‘You also told me that it could be used as a next-generation aphrodisiac,’ said Sarah.
Molly wished she’d never even joked – or mentioned – the Bug with Sarah.
‘Eventually. A few years down the line …’ she said.
‘You said it was already more powerful than anything on the market and that Ewan was a genius for coming up with it. You said he was the Stephen Hawking of the sexual behavioural ecology world.’
‘Hawking? Ewan? I never said that! Hell, when did I say that?’
‘At the New Year’s Party when you were really pissed.’
Molly took a deep breath, regretting ever going to the party in the first place.
‘OK, the Love Bug could in theory be used for that purpose but it hasn’t had any clinical trials yet. And using it is at the very least serious research misconduct and unethical, and giving it to Niall could be – is – technically assault or administering a noxious substance or something even worse. I could go to jail for it and you’d be in serious trouble too and you don’t want your baby born in jail, do you? You don’t want to be one of those women in a Channel 4 documentary. You know Knocked Up and Banged Up …’ Molly tried, hoping humour would make Sarah realise the craziness of what she was asking her to consider.
‘Of course not. I was only wondering …’
‘And even if I did design a Love Bug that worked, both
for you and Niall, and I don’t know if I can, ask yourself this: would you really want to live with Niall, knowing that his feelings weren’t genuine? Could you spend the rest of your life with him, knowing that it was only the Love Bug that made him stay with you? Not that I could guarantee the effects would last, either, and then you’d be back in the same boat, only worse because you’d feel guilty about conning him.’
‘When you put it like that, the idea sounds bonkers but … I just want the chance to remind him what he’s missing. Once he got used to the idea of the baby coming, or being here, he’d be over Vanessa and realise what true love is.’
Molly lost patience. ‘Oh, Sarah! Don’t let that bastard make you desperate.’
‘I don’t care if I am desperate … and be honest, Mol, aren’t you just a tiny bit desperate to know if the Love Bug works? Imagine if you had actual proof? How useful that could be to your work? You could make giant strides forward. Even the Great Ewan Baxter couldn’t possibly match that.’
Molly paused, letting her mind dwell on the idea of knowing that the Bug worked; the secret knowledge, how it might advance the project … In the past great scientists had taken risks for the greater good. They’d experimented on themselves, risked everything … and although she wouldn’t dream of telling Sarah, in some of the more maverick parts of the scientific world, it was exactly the sort of thing that went on.
But not in her world.
With a shudder, she snapped back to reality. ‘I can’t. In fact, as I said before, I shouldn’t have even told you I was working on it. Because the Love Bug doesn’t exist, right, Sarah?’
Sarah sighed. ‘OK, I respect your decision. I wouldn’t want to ruin your career. It was probably a mad idea anyway, so let’s just forget about it.’
Driving home, Molly felt bad about being so harsh with Sarah but she needed to nip any idea of using the Love Bug on Niall in the bud. Sarah wasn’t thinking straight and she was desperate: she had to be to want Niall back for any reason.
She turned in to the parking area at the back of the flats where she lived behind the pub. Some idiot had thought it was fun to kick over a wheelie bin and the rubbish was scattered all over her parking place. Molly cleared away the worst of it with her boots but there was no way she was touching the rubbish.
After locking the car, she went into the flat and sat on the sofa.
She wished she’d never mentioned the Bug to Sarah.
Then she wouldn’t have had to lie to her sister. Because while the Bug was experimental it had undergone more clinical trials than she’d let on. A very similar hormone had been tested in a North American lab recently and it had been proven that it did work. In fact, it had worked a bit too well as it had made individuals very friendly to their “in” group and more aggressive to outsiders.
But her – and Ewan’s – version of the Bug was slightly different. Different because it was designed to be even more powerful and its effects even more long-lasting. In fact, that was the problem: she and Ewan weren’t really sure, yet, how long-lasting it was or if there was a way of reversing it. So there was absolutely no way she was going to help Sarah. Her sister was just going have to get real and accept that Niall had chosen to be with Vanessa.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
What a way to spend a Sunday, thought Molly, hunched over the handlebars of the tandem. She could barely see because the wind was making her eyes water continuously. Her nose was running too but she didn’t want to stop to wipe either of them. She had a goal: a pub on the edge of a Fenland village where she intended to stop before they turned around, whether Ewan moaned or not.
She’d spent most of the day before helping Sarah at a wedding fair at a local hotel. The event had gone well, with Sarah taking tiara commissions and selling heaps of jewellery sets as Valentine gifts. She’d seemed more stable, seemed to be enjoying focusing on her business and hadn’t mentioned using the Love Bug on Niall again, to Molly’s huge relief. As for Ewan, he’d either been out of the office or back to his usual morose self.
But there was no escaping each other now. Ewan shouted something that Molly assumed to be “go faster” or “don’t stop”. She pushed down harder on the pedals, motivated by the thought of a hot meal and a cosy fire in the pub. It had to be just around the next bend in the road.
‘Molly! Stop!’
Molly squeezed the brakes harder than she’d meant to and they both almost fell off.
‘Arggh.’
She slowed down. ‘What’s the matter? I almost crashed!’ she called behind.
‘Something’s wrong,’ said Ewan. ‘Stop!’
He was right. The bike did feel strange. In fact, it seemed the wheels had almost stopped turning. It stuttered and came to a halt.
‘Careful!’
‘What’s up with it?’
They climbed off the bike. ‘I don’t know. I heard a bang as we came around the last corner and then the bike just didn’t feel normal.’ He crouched down, examining the rear wheel while Molly held the bike upright.
‘Shit, we’ve broken a spoke.’
‘You’re joking?’
Ewan poked at the broken spoke. ‘Sadly, no.’ He stood up, hands on hips. ‘That’s it, then. We can’t ride it home or anywhere until it’s been repaired.’
‘Maybe we should get a new bike,’ Molly said. ‘We could ask Pete if he could help …’ she added mischievously.
‘Over my dead body. I don’t want to ask anyone in the lab for help or Pete’s bound to hear about it. We’ll have to get it repaired. The layoff will eat into our training time but we’ve got no choice.’
Ewan held the tandem while Molly stretched her arms. God, her shoulders were so stiff she could hardly lift them over her head. ‘How are we going to get back?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ewan. ‘We’re almost thirty miles from home. Christ, we’re in a different county …’
‘We’re going to have to call someone to come and get us though God knows who, unless you know anyone with a van or a bike trailer.’
‘No, I don’t. This is what comes of not having a support crew,’ muttered Ewan, staring at the spoke as if it had bitten him on the bum.
‘We could always ask Mrs Choudhry and that bloke from the supplier who fancies you …’
Ewan laid the bike on the verge. ‘It’s not funny. The spoke will have to be replaced and the wheel will have to be re-trued and that’s if the bike shop has the right length spoke and the nipple to fix it in stock.’ He aimed a kick at the bike and winced as his toe made contact with the frame.
Molly started giggling. She was freezing, her nose was running, they were stranded in the middle of the most godforsaken part of the Fens and Ewan was talking about nipples. She couldn’t help herself.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.
‘N-nothing,’ she said, wiping her eyes with a tissue.
‘Then why are you having hysterics?’
‘It’s you, going on about s-spokes and n-nipples.’
‘I’ll have you know that nipple is a technical term,’ he said.
‘I know but … kicking a bike?’ Molly laughed so hard, her stomach hurt and she suddenly realised how much she wanted a wee. She had to get a grip.
Ewan stared at her and then, suddenly, a smile spread over his face. ‘Well, it deserved it, bloody thing. And we will need a nipple,’ he said, stressing the word and setting Molly off into gales of laughter again.
‘Remind me … why the … hell we’re doing this?’ she squeezed out between hysterics.
‘Because neither of us wanted you to be doing it with Pete Garrick?’
Had Ewan just said what she thought he had?
Ewan picked up the tandem again and wheeled it over to her.
‘I could have just said no to Pete. I am capable of telling him to piss off without you rescuing me.’
‘I know that. But you could also have told me to piss off too.’
‘I still might.’
‘
Not before you’ve worked out a way of getting us and the bike home, I hope.’ The moment had passed. Ewan retreated into his normal brisk and morose mood, while he tried to find a signal on his mobile. They’d both realised they were going to have to fork out for a van to fetch them and if they couldn’t use their phones, they were going to have to drag the bike to the village until they could get a signal or use a landline.
It was hopeless so Molly took out her phone. After walking a few hundred yards up the lane, and a few dropped calls, she managed to reach Sarah.
‘Oh, thank God for that. Sarah, it’s me and I have to make this quick because it’s a lousy signal. This is a long shot, but do you know anyone who could rescue us and the bike from the middle of Suffolk?’
Molly could almost hear Sarah’s cogs whirring. ‘I don’t know … um …’
Even while Sarah hesitated, Molly had a sudden rethink. It might be better if she didn’t risk bringing Sarah into Ewan’s presence at all. Despite the fact Sarah hadn’t mentioned it again, she didn’t entirely trust her not to mention the Love Bug in front of him. Under normal circumstances, Sarah could be relied upon but nothing was normal about the circumstances they were in at the moment.
‘Don’t worry. It was just an idea in case you knew someone. We’ll try to get a people carrier taxi or a van or something. But you might have to call one for us because the signal is well dodgy here. The GPS says we’re half a mile on the B4542 south of Ditchfield …’ she rattled on.
‘Hang on, wait … Give me a little while and I’ll get back to you.’
‘OK. We’re not going any—’ The phone went dead. Well, it was too late now, thought Molly as her teeth had started to chatter. Now she wasn’t working hard on the bike, her damp clothes felt clammy and cold. If Sarah did find someone to help, Molly would have to manage the situation and she would be very grateful to be warm and dry and in a mode of transport that didn’t require thigh-burning effort and a massive masochistic streak.
Ewan carried the bike towards her. It was heavy for one person and as he walked, his arm and thigh muscles flexed. He was a little out of breath and dumped the bike down when they met.
