The McCabe Girls Complete Collection

by Freya North

  ‘I’m perfectly happy with the amount agreed with the Tate,’ James had replied graciously. ‘I really wouldn’t want the works going anywhere else.’

  Margot F-M-L didn’t want James going anywhere else that afternoon either. She’d manicured and pedicured and primped and preened that morning in anticipation of his visit. To her amazement first and foremost, and secondly to her disappointment, he informed her (whilst she was flicking her tongue fantastically over spoonfuls of zabaglione) that he really had to make this a day visit and needed to catch a train in an hour or so.

  James had lied. He had gone directly to a small, insalubrious but nevertheless clean and orderly hotel in Paddington to wait for Fen. Fen, as we know, doesn’t lie. Accordingly, that day she had three cups of coffee on an empty stomach, gave herself a headache, told Roger and Bobbie the truth that she had a headache and left work three hours early.

  Fen took two ibuprofen on the tube and felt her headache shifting by the time she alighted at Paddington.

  ‘I hope you haven’t brought the oil sketches,’ James said, when she arrived.

  ‘No,’ Fen laughed, ‘they’ll be back next week – I’m intending to return them the following weekend.’

  ‘Let’s go to Whiteley’s,’ James said, gathering his wallet and picking up the room key. Fen had envisaged Tate Modern. Or the Wallace Collection. ‘I fancy a matinee,’ said James, ‘something trashy.’ As always, whether on a walk through the country or in bed, James was leading the way and setting the pace. Usually, it turned Fen on. Today, though, she’d planned on a cream tea at Brown’s Hotel. Not nachos in the afternoon whilst watching Bruce Willis rampage around the big screen.

  ‘Where can a guy get a gal a candlelit dinner?’ James had asked, to Fen’s delight, after the film. Fen didn’t want to stray too far afield. They found a gorgeous Moroccan restaurant where they lounged on tapestry cushions on low benches. James held her hand between courses. He kissed her neck when he topped up her glass. She was so hungry for him that she lost her appetite for cous-cous.

  ‘Let’s go back to the hotel,’ James suggested. ‘Now.’

  The room seemed more cramped on their return. And overheated. And just as a small hotel room should be, where urgent sex is concerned. Though the establishment was clean and well maintained, there was a seediness to it all. But it turned James and Fen on all the more.

  Fen had excused herself during the meal to leave a message on Matt’s answering machine. Just for a moment, she hated what she was doing. Sneaking away from James. Making excuses to Matt. She left a message saying that, although she was feeling a little better, she would probably end up staying the night with Cat. Probably, she said. Not definitely. Just a possibility. No untruths told.

  So Fen has two suitors and she wonders only now and then whether she will at some point have to make a choice, make her mind up. At the moment, there is balance; there is therefore no need to weigh up the situation by gazing from one hand to the other, or one man to the other. Her heart beats steadily, beats as strongly for Matt as for James. Her mind runs with ease, day by day, week after week. It’s summer now. Bright and breezy. Fen feels life could not get much better.

  Matthew took her home to Gloucestershire for a weekend not long ago. For a girl whose mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, to be welcomed by two fabulously maternal women – Matt’s mother and nanny – was the realization of a day-dream years old. Matt found Fen’s story in some ways quaint. ‘I mean,’ he’d reasoned to Jake, ‘you hear of women who run off with the milkman, or the husband’s best mate – but only Fen could have a mother who left for a cowboy.’ Matt’s mother found Fen’s story horrific – and was alarmed that the child’s upbringing had been entrusted to an artist-cum-jazz-musician-cum-whatever.

  ‘Derbyshire, dear?’ Susan Holden had repeated, as if perhaps she had heard incorrectly. ‘Wasn’t it terribly cold and – wild?’ She’d always craved a daughter but her body would allow her only one child and she reasoned it was fitting that it should be a son and heir to the Holden name and fortune. However, had she had a daughter, no cowboy – not even Cary Grant – would have tempted her away from providing the very best, safest, most privileged childhood. ‘Poor duck,’ she said to nanny, ‘but she seems well adjusted. And doesn’t Matthew adore her!’ Nanny had agreed. ‘I believe,’ Susan continued, ‘Matthew has fallen on his feet. I do so hope they’ll make it work.’ Nanny looked out of the window at Matt and Fen strolling hand in hand across the lawn. ‘They do seem dreamy,’ she commented with an approving sigh.

  After some furtive corridor creeping, Matt snuck into Fen’s bed. She lay in his arms, sleepy but awake, in a room of beautiful proportions, cosy in the soft silence of the Gloucestershire night. And she nestled closer to him. She felt incredibly lucky, happy too. It was only in the silence of the early hours that she could admit to herself that she was falling in love. And though she was apprehensive about this, she was essentially happy and excited.

  I want nothing to come between us.

  And just a few weeks later, as she lay awake while James slept on the other side of the bed in the hotel in Paddington, Fen knew that she was in love with this man. In the darkness, the accompanying feeling of warmth which seeped along her veins, felt like a very good thing.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Django sat with his head in his hands. His supper of cod in beer batter had turned cold on the kitchen table. He had no appetite. He had no desire to watch Coronation Street despite the previous episode having ended on a cliff-hanger of vertiginous proportions. The phone was ringing but he had no inclination to answer it. In fact, Django had no time to think on anything other than the scene he had witnessed that afternoon. It wasn’t that his niece hadn’t told him of her visit to Derbyshire. He’d always encouraged his nieces to live their lives with vigorous independence. Derbyshire was her stamping ground too; he did not own it. It was not betrayal that he felt, though he was a little hurt that she could be within a stone’s throw and yet had not contacted him or his new answering machine. Django’s head was in his hands, a weary weight on his shoulders, not because he perceived Fen to be deceitful. No, Django’s discontent derived in whole from his fear that the grown-up Fen exhibited traits more akin with her mother than with her father, his late and beloved brother. That’s what troubled him so. The duplicity of it. The insincerity. How could she tell him how lovely her boyfriend Matthew From Islington was when it was plain she was also gallivanting around Derbyshire with Another Man? Django had seen her, in the Cross Oaks, cosy as you like, nestling into the neck of a man very obviously not Matthew From Islington.

  Django took his head from his hands and regarded the battered fish. ‘An older chap,’ he told it, not quite sure whether he spoke to the head end or tail end, the batter being thick and dark enough to cover up any vestige of either.

  He really didn’t want to flatter Fenella’s mother by wasting too much thinking time on her. But his brother’s desolation when deserted still made Django wince; the vivid memory of the three tiny girls, wide-eyed and out of sorts, still made him weep. He blamed his brother’s untimely death in part on the trauma of his ex-wife’s action. The woman had never acknowledged her daughters’ birthdays, or Christmas. The last time she had made contact was a year after she left, when she phoned her ex-husband to say that she and her cowboy were moving from Denver to Albuquerque and that, once settled, she would furnish him with the address. But she never did. So when her ex-husband died, Django was unable to contact her. When Pip was picked to represent her county at gymnastics, there was no way of letting her know. Nor when Fen achieved a double distinction from the Courtauld Institute, nor when Cat broke both ankles and one wrist in a fall from her bicycle. Ultimately, what irked Django so was that, though he had utter confidence in his parenting skills and was convinced that the girls had wanted for nothing, he felt fundamentally that they should have had a mother. He felt that, at the very least, they should have had a mother who hadn’t behaved the
way theirs had.

  And now there’s my Fenella. Lying in the arms of one man whilst lying to another. I can’t judge the chaps in question, for I have met neither. But I can judge Fen. She should have one or the other. Not both. She should know that. It isn’t wholesome. Someone will get hurt. Is she morally inept? Damn her mother. God rest my brother. God bless my girls. God knows what I’m meant to do with this information.

  ‘When will I see you next?’ Fen asked James sleepily, with a beguilingly childlike petulance to her voice. She was lying naked in his bed, her head in the crook of his shoulder, her fingers skating patterns over his chest. ‘I’ve returned your art, secured your funds – you no longer have any need of me.’

  ‘Quite true,’ James jested, ‘you’ve served your purpose – and served it well.’

  ‘And you’ve serviced me and serviced me well!’ Fen laughed, slipping her hand down his body and finding that a particular part of him was very wide awake indeed. Not even the archaic central-heating system, groaning and protesting and whistling and spluttering, could intrude on the peace felt between Fen and James. The curtains were open but of course there’d be no one to look in. An early owl could be heard in the distance. The window was ajar and a breeze filtered over their bodies. Fen reacted with goose bumps which James stroked rhythmically away. Couldn’t they just never get up? Fen wondered. Suspended moments like these were blissful. She’d never experienced them before. They were unique to this man, this place.

  I’m sure I couldn’t achieve this sense of centredness in London. Or with anyone other than James.

  ‘When will I see you next?’ Fen asked again.

  ‘Well, I assume that you’ll be visiting your uncle? Soon?’ James said. ‘And of course, you really ought to check up on me – I might store the paintings incorrectly, might position the sculpture in the pond as a water feature.’

  ‘I don’t want to check up on you,’ Fen said softly, ‘I just want to know that I’ll see you. Soon. When?’

  They began to kiss. Though he was taller than Matthew, James’s physique was softer, rounder here and there. Yet, without comparing the two men, the unique and precious sensation Fen always derived from James’s embrace was that she was utterly enveloped and safe. His age, his experience, his self-containment all contributed to this. She nuzzled against him, feeling him soft here, very hard there. Their groins rocked gently, automatically. Their kissing became deeper. Lust started to seep through love and soon enough sexual desire and satisfaction became their prerogative. James’s post-coital habit was to withdraw almost immediately, to lie on his back, on his side of the bed, eyes closed, and sleep. Fen didn’t mind. She rather liked feeling that the experience of making love with her could render a man speechless and exhausted.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

  Henry Fielding

  The smell of her. Matt’s eyes closed with heady pleasure.

  ‘Can’t we hook up once you’ve seen Cat and Pip?’ he murmured, his lips touching her ear lobe, his hands grasping her buttocks and pulling her tight close against him. It was stuffy in the Archive but he didn’t notice. The door was ajar but he didn’t care. His desire for Fen was so strong that he would tolerate an audience, and subsequent dismissal, if only she would let him take her here and now.

  ‘Let me take you from behind,’ he said hoarsely. Fen giggled. ‘Come on,’ he said, deadly serious, leading her hand to the rod-stiff protuberance in his trousers, ‘fast and furious. What do you say?’ He fondled her breasts, the intensity of desire causing him to stay only just within the limits of being downright rough. Fen gasped. It turned Matt on. ‘God, Fen – it might sound clichéd and cheesy but I find you so bloody horny.’ Fen felt herself melt and throb, offered her mouth to Matt and drifted away from the Archive into his arms.

  There was a knock at the door. Fen and Matt sprang apart.

  ‘For the love of Jesus,’ Otter declared with theatrically exaggerated disapproval, covering his eyes with one skinny hand whilst feigning a faint by grasping on to the desk with the other. He cleared his throat and stared hard at the middle distance: ‘It’s the Burlington Magazine on the phone for you, Ed.’

  Matt was facing away from him, in a valiant attempt to hide his hard-on. ‘Coming,’ he said.

  ‘In the conventional sense only, I hope,’ Otter said with great disdain, opening one eye, ‘and watch you don’t knock over that entire shelving unit when you turn around, big boy.’

  Fen laughed and bit her lip.

  ‘Strumpet!’ Otter growled at her before flouncing out of the room.

  Matt turned around and Fen raised an eyebrow approvingly at the tent pole holding his trousers out. ‘I shouldn’t be long this evening,’ she said, touching his cheek tenderly. ‘Pip said it was a family matter – Cat’s off to the Tour de France soon, I presume we’re to assess whether this is a good or bad idea.’

  ‘Just head over,’ said Matt, ‘whenever.’

  He didn’t dare look at her, let alone kiss her. He had only just physically calmed down sufficiently to leave the Archive for his office and take the call from the Burlington Magazine.

  Recalling the afternoon made Fen smile intermittently during her journey home. She strolled up Camden High Street with a spring to her step. It was nice and early – she’d nip home, have a bath, pop over to Pip’s and then head straight to Islington. Once home, she took her post into the kitchen and flicked the kettle on. She wondered, as she did every month, why her bank statements always arrived on the same day as her credit card statement. The latter demanding that she pay X whilst the former proclaimed that her funds were basically minus X minus a whole lot more. She tucked the envelopes into her back pocket and made what Django would term an NCT. A Nice Cuppa Tea always soothed problems, whether of a financial or emotional nature, even if it was in a chipped Spice Girls mug. She took a KitKat and decided she’d have the NCT in her bath, rather than waste time watching TV. She wanted to see Pip and Cat and then head over to Matt’s as soon as she could.

  Oh God.

  Unmistakable.

  Fen hovered at the bottom of the stairs, listening to the creaking bed springs, male grunts and female groans from upstairs.

  Which one, though?

  Because recently, she’d spent so much time at Matt’s flat, she’d not been confronted with the unsavoury reality of her boyfriend’s best friend bedding both her housemates.

  Unfortunately, in a very literal sense, that’s precisely what she’ll have to confront now.

  Fen sighs as she makes her way up to her room. She can feel that the KitKat is starting to melt against the mug of tea so she slips it into the pocket of her shirt. The moans are increasing in regularity and intensity.

  It’s Abi. That’s a relief. Hopefully it’s over between Jake and Gemma.

  Up she goes. Only, the door to Abi’s room is wide open, as are the curtains, and there’s no one in there. Fen crosses the landing and climbs the next flight of stairs. Gemma’s door isn’t shut.

  But I can still hear Abi. I’ll just walk calmly by. I’m carrying a hot mug of tea, after all. And, after all, I’m home early. Abi would presume she had the house to herself so I’ll just tiptoe quietly and quickly past.

  Now, Abi is a great giggler, but the short laugh of delight that rings out just as Fen approaches is at odds with the sprightly trill that is Abi’s trademark. Deludedly, for one moment, Fen justifies that Jake must be doing something quite extraordinary to so alter the timbre of her voice. It really doesn’t sound like Abi at all. Listen.

  Don’t look don’t look don’t look.

  But as she passes by the threshold of Gemma’s room, and hears the squelching and the panting and the creaking and the giggling, Fen’s head is turned against her will. And her eyes alight on a feast of flesh writhing around Gemma’s bed. It is Abi. Of course it is. And it is Jake. Of course it is. But it is Gemma too. Without a doubt. No need to do a body recount. Gemma, gloriousl
y butt naked, is part of the mêlée. The door is open but only ajar. Fen cannot be seen and though she doesn’t want to see, she is rooted to the spot, unable to take her eyes from the action.

  Gemma.

  Jake.

  Abi.

  Jake and Abi enjoying Gemma.

  Gemma, by all accounts, enjoying it very much indeed.

  Jesus Christ.

  Fen is as intrigued as she is horrified. Though she adores both her flatmates, she has never felt the slightest inclination to snog either of them. Certainly not to fondle their breasts or have hers fondled by either of them. And most definitely not whilst being penetrated by a man who isn’t officially her boyfriend. But that’s what’s going on in there. Abi’s boyfriend is having sex with her best friend whilst Abi’s tongue flicks over her. Wait a minute, Abi is now straddling Jake and Gemma is embracing her.

  ‘God I’m close,’ Jake says and Fen can see that his cock looks as though it will torpedo right off his body. ‘OK, ladies, ready for tea-time?’

  For someone fully clothed, holding a very hot mug of tea, with no proclivity for a threesome, let alone a smidgen of sexual attraction for any of the participants, Fen finds Jake’s words risibly ridiculous. Not only does his huskily drawled term ‘ladies’ make her toes curl, but the fact that he has referred to his imminent climax as ‘tea-time’ has caused her to spill hers. Jake might be hot, but Fen’s tea is hotter.

  ‘Fuck!’ Jake yells.

  ‘Fuck!’ Fen yells. As she drops the mug and tea spills all over the carpet, Jake drops his load – his ‘tea’, as he has so delicately termed it. Fen is already bolting down a level to the bathroom to hold her hands under the cold tap.

  ‘Fen?’ Abi calls down.

  ‘Fen?’ Gemma calls down.

  ‘Fen?’ Jake calls down.