by Freya North
TWENTY
Pip knew something was amiss when an itchiness woke her. Something was prickling her cheek and spiking at the corner of her mouth. Though drowsy, she brushed the back of her hand against her face with panic, assuming it was a spider or an earwig or some other creature from a dream, come to life. It wasn’t. it was her hair. It was her hair braided into a pigtail. Her clown’s hair. What on earth! Slowly, she opened an eye and tried to focus and define a strange configuration on the floor by her bedroom door. What was that? Was there something under it? The fog of reverie and fug of hangover began to lift and her gaze alighted on Dr Pippity’s white coat. First the plaits, now the coat. Honestly! Over there, her knickers. What’s this under the sheets? Tights? Pip McCabe never ever leaves clothing strewn around her room like this. Pip McCabe always puts her clown away as soon as she’s home from work. Someone, it seems, took the clown to bed.
Oh
bloody
bloody
hell.
Pip turned over very very slowly. The man in her bed was sleeping soundly. Turned away from her. His breathing was as rhythmic and un-intrusive as the steady phut-phutting of her quartz clock. In her head, however, alarm bells were ringing cacophonously. Not only had she had sex, she’d let the man sleep with her the whole night through. In her bed. She didn’t remember him asking. She didn’t remember offering. But here he was. It struck her – how on earth could she have slept so well? A man in her bed the whole night through. How could that have happened? Yet she’d slept fine. Undisturbed. That in itself was disturbing enough. And he was still there. She had a slight headache. Not too bad.
Badoit.
Bottles of it.
She remembered.
He turned over, yawned. Pip was somewhat surprised that she wasn’t repulsed by the sight of him. He looked quite nice, actually, in a cosy, crumpled, morningish sort of way. A tiny speck of spittle had collected in the corner of his mouth and stripes and furrows from the pillow’s creases were indented on his cheek. She had no idea what on earth she was meant to do next. She lay as still as she could without actually holding her breath. She wanted nothing to rouse him until she had a plan of action. She contemplated the best way forward, staring hard at a spidery crack in the ceiling for focus.
Zac watched her for a good few minutes. Her face was still smudged here and there with blurs of slap. Her hair was bristling out of the pigtails and, having been slept on, they were twisted this way and that like broken ribs. She looked like a discarded doll. She was almost motionless, staring with great intensity at her ceiling. The sheets nearly covered her. She obviously didn’t realize that the areola of her left nipple was just visible. Zac, though, was very aware of it; he would really rather like to kiss it. The thought of a lazy morning hump was very appealing. For Zac, there was something fantastically slovenly and decadent about sex in the morning before showering, coming just hours after sex at night without showering. His cock was certainly wide awake. But a part of him, the softer side – the gay side, as Pip had so guilessly defined it – was actually happy just to observe the girl; to think how pretty she was, how peaceful he felt in her bed, how nice it was to wake up to her make-up-stained face and starched fuzzy hairdo. Yin and yang. His cock appreciated her for the one, his head and heart for the other. He closed his eyes and with a hastily contrived sleepy sigh, rolled over so he was nearer to her. She didn’t seem to react, she was still scrutinizing her ceiling. If he puckered his lips, he could reach her bare shoulder to kiss it. So he did.
‘Morning,’ Zac said.
‘Oh, hi,’ Pip replied as if she’d been so deep in thought that she’d been completely unaware of his presence, and that his presence was no big deal.
Actually, Pip wanted the day to be well under way. She wanted to leap out of bed with a clichéd cry of ‘Goodness, is that the time?’ For the first time ever, Pip McCabe wanted the excuse of a proper job – an office, a commute, a contractual 9.00 to 5.00 – to rush off to. She wanted a long hot shower, to use classic Nivea to cleanse and treat her face, Neutrogena products for her neglected hair and itchy scalp. Now, most of all, she wanted to curl up on her sofa with a cup of camomile tea. All on her own.
But she just lay there. She couldn’t leave the bed because she was acutely aware that she was naked. Laid bare. She didn’t want to be observed. Though Pip actually has commendably few self-indulgent body complexes, that morning she felt intensely shy about revealing her nudity. She was aware of her niggling headache, but was unsure whether this was a hangover or the pressure of her anxieties. She’d rather not think about it. It was difficult to think of much else. And she hadn’t even let her mind venture to Caleb.
Zac stretched his arms above his head, exposing a swatch of dark underarm hair and a good line of muscle along his torso. He turned to her again, kissed her shoulder a second time.
‘God,’ he murmured, ‘is that the time?’ He scrambled out of bed, his bum and balls and semi-stiff cock all on display, and padded naked across her bedroom, turning to face her at the door to the bathroom. ‘Have you a towel?’ She nodded, not quite knowing where to look, slightly startled that he seemed so at ease while she felt somewhat out of her depth – in her own home. ‘Mind if I borrow your toothbrush?’ She shrugged and focused her gaze on the door handle to the bathroom, just left of Zac’s groin. ‘Are you a tea or coffee person? Either’ll do me,’ he said cheerfully with a grin and a wink and disappeared into the bathroom. She glanced at his bottom before he closed the door. Shapely. She wanted to giggle. Of course, she didn’t. There was something about his ease – though it startled her, she wasn’t actually taken aback. She had the feeling that if the venue had been his home, he’d have offered her toothbrush and tea – without her having to ask.
She listened to him pee. Heard him fart. Again, she wanted to giggle. Of course, she didn’t. She heard the taps being turned on, blasting at first, then quickly moderated. She listened to him brushing his teeth. With her toothbrush. Then the shower started. Should she tell him how temperamental the hot tap was? No, he could figure it out. She could hear the shower curtain being adjusted and the change of the watercourse as it hit his body.
‘Ouch! Fuck!’
He can figure it out, Pip thought, leaving her bed. He’d started to whistle. She knew the tune but couldn’t place it. Damn. What was it? She hummed it softly as she went through to the kitchen to boil the kettle. It was a song from the sixties but the version she knew best was a cover in the early eighties. Bugger – what was it?
Zac had appeared, dripping water in her kitchen, his modesty concealed by a towel secured sarong-style around his waist. Pip was too full of thought to fancy him though she did take note, somewhere in her subconscious, that physically he was what she’d acknowledge appreciatively as ‘buff’.
‘Great,’ he said when she handed him a mug of herbal tea. He took a sip and looked as if he was going to cry or throw up. ‘Jesus, what is that?’
‘Morning Refresher,’ she said with a faint frown, ‘orange and lemon zest, ginger, green tea and meadow herbs.’
‘It’s –’ Zac took another sip as if he were at a wine-tasting. He spat into her sink. ‘It’s utterly vile. Meadow herbs? More like motorway grass verge or farmyard dung heap. Haven’t you any Darjeeling?’
‘It’s in the cupboard,’ said Pip, pointing. ‘Help yourself. I’m going to have a shower.’ Off she went, our house-proud, personal-space-protective, secrecy-guarding girl – leaving a half-naked, damp man with the run of her flat.
She locked herself in her bathroom. Pip was as ill at ease in her own home as Zac was comfortable, mooching around and helping himself. She wished she was miles away. Anywhere. Just not here. Somewhere else. Just alone. Zac wished she’d hurry up. It would be nice to have breakfast together before he left for work.
Zac discovered she was out of Darjeeling, but there was some Earl Grey and English Breakfast. ‘Please God let there be more than soya milk in her fridge,’ he murmured, stoop
ing low to see inside. Marks & Spencer organic semi-skimmed. And a packet, already opened, of Dairylea processed cheese triangles. He laughed. He had a little search of her cupboard when he put the tea bags back and was comforted by the presence of KitKats and salt-and-vinegar Hula Hoops nestling furtively behind all the biodegradable organic herbal righteousness at the front.
He took his tea and a KitKat through to her sitting-room. He sat but momentarily, soon enough wandering over to the shelves and looking at the few framed photos. There were the sisters. And some old chap – possibly the cranky uncle or the late father. A Derbyshire stone farmhouse. A small dog with a ragged ear. He couldn’t see any of the mother – there were probably volumes of photo albums in those low, flush cupboards though. He spied a copy of Heat magazine tucked into the beechwood newspaper rack alongside Vanity Fair and Traveller. He flipped through it and was soon engrossed in a double-page spread of particularly scurrilous goings-on in the celebrity world. Much as he’d like to continue nosing, much as he fancied intruding on Pip’s shower and having sex with her again – perhaps up against her bathroom wall or dripping wet on her bedroom floor – he really needed to head off. Meetings and spreadsheets and office politics all awaited him. He gathered his clothes, sniffed each item briefly, and dressed. He hovered by the bathroom door. The shower was finished. He knocked politely and waited. ‘Pip?’ he called. ‘I’m off to work now.’
‘OK,’ she called back politely, sparsely. He was slightly taken aback.
‘Have fun,’ he said to the door, gently.
‘You too,’ she replied, with contrived lightness, through the wall.
‘Bye,’ he called a final time, her front door open.
She didn’t reply, she assumed he wouldn’t be able to hear her from there, with her still barricading herself in her bathroom. And Pip McCabe doesn’t raise her voice.
Pip emerged from the bathroom, somewhat tentatively, once she was sure he had gone for good. She was struck immediately by the state of her bedroom. Her bed had been made. The decorative cushions had been arranged almost exactly to her very precise specifications. Dr Pippity’s coat and tights were draped neatly over the back of the bedroom chair. Last night’s knickers were placed discreetly beneath them. Pip dried herself and dressed. Her initial reaction was praise; that here was a man as anal as herself. Her second thought played upon the anal: ‘He must be gay,’ she decided. ‘How many straight men can there be with innate design savvy for cushion display?’ She thought of Caleb. Though he might obsessively fold his crisp packets into neat triangles, his pillows were always annoyingly unplumped. Lumpy. He merely straightened the edges of his duvet. ‘Well, that was all about surface appearance,’ she concluded stroppily and started humming the tune Zac had been whistling but which she still couldn’t place.
In lieu of a conventional job and bustling office to rush off to, she turned to that camomile tea and meditative snuggle on her sofa that she’d been craving since waking. Oddly, Zac’s derision of ‘farmyard dung heap’ did make her laugh and think fleetingly of grubby grass verges on motorways. So she had coffee instead. Instant. With sugar. And a KitKat to dunk. She noted that the photo frames had been moved, however fractionally. She saw the copy of Heat magazine. Though she had a brimming conscience to unravel and analyse, she found herself flipping through the magazine instead, gladly switching off her mind and putting her soul on hold. How on earth would she know where to start with her scampering thoughts? Much better to put a pause on the lot for half an hour and look instead at pictures of young actresses-models-whatevers falling out of a succession of London bars.
She read the magazine from cover to cover. She wished she didn’t have a day off. She was desperate to be Merry Martha, even Dr Pippity, so that she had a reason not just to sit there and be Pip McCabe with all this thinking time on her hands and all this weighty contemplation to undertake.
Zac’s day was so busy it really should have precluded even a couple of seconds’ focusing on anything other than planning meetings, dealing with office politics and checking spreadsheets. His mind, however, kept darting back to Pip, swivelling in his chair, commenting on the Scottish Colourist lithograph, marvelling at his coffee percolator. He could still sense her presence. If he closed his eyes, he could conjure her scent. If he listened carefully, beyond the phones and the clatter of the office, he could hear her voice. He opened his eyes and could see her so vividly, staring at her bedroom ceiling with her grubby face and ridiculous hairstyle. He felt good and yet just a little uneasy, too. There had been no open arms that morning, just a closed bathroom door. There had been no gentle joking or affectionate ‘see-you-later’s. Just a brief instruction to have a good day. In fact, she’d merely been politely replying to him. She’d instigated nothing. Zac refused to countenance that maybe he’d been no more than a one-night stand to her.
He left work on the dot of 6.00. The tube was there for him and he was home within forty minutes. He took a chilled Budvar from the fridge, picked up his cordless Bang & Olufsen phone, and settled into his banana chair. No. Not right. He tried the Eames. Oddly, it really wasn’t as comfortable as it usually was. He went through to the bedroom and sipped his lager whilst looking out over downstairs’s garden. He put the beer bottle on the window-sill and dialled Pip. He was nervous. It both amused and baffled him.
The phone’s ringing, Pip. Aren’t you going to answer it?
‘Hey,’ says Zac.
‘Hullo,’ says Pip because it’s too late to turn her voice into a hastily disguised answering machine message.
‘Good day?’ he asks. ‘Did you have some me-time?’
‘I did,’ Pip says. She’s hardly used her voice all day. It sounds odd and feels strange.
‘And your hangover?’ he enquires.
‘Nothing one of your Nurofen couldn’t fix,’ she says.
They both sigh into an awkward silence.
‘Good day?’ Pip asks.
‘Great but manic,’ Zac says, racking his mind for what it was he was phoning to say and how he was going to phrase it.
‘Cool,’ says Pip, ‘well,’ she says, ‘yep – great.’ She notes how quickly the conversation has become so stilted.
‘Anyway,’ Zac says, ‘I’d better go. Just thought I’d give you a quick call, you know?’
‘Ta,’ says Pip, ‘good.’
‘Bye then,’ says Zac, at once regretting the entire call.
‘Ta-ta,’ says Pip.
‘Bye then. How do you feel today?’ Zac suddenly launches, ‘About – stuff?’ Could he really have been just a drunken one-night stand to her? What about the cream tea? And daft conversations about swans?
Pip is flummoxed. She has no idea how to answer because she’s spent the entire day trying to avoid wondering how on earth she feels about ‘stuff’.
‘Pip?’ Zac interjects into her silence. ‘It’s just – well – I was wondering if you wanted to do something tomorrow night – it being a Thursday.’
‘I’ll get back to you,’ she says, after a lengthy pause. ‘I think I’m seeing my sisters, you see,’ she adds slowly after some time.
‘Sure,’ says Zac with an easygoing vocal shrug that belies the discomfort he feels. However, perhaps it’s his attuned feminine side that tells him to give her the kind of space a bloke would need. Not to push, not to pry. ‘No probs.’
‘How was your day? In your fancy chair presiding over Pod-land?’ Pip hurries because, although she doesn’t think she wants to see Zac tomorrow night, she also doesn’t want to be on her own just yet.
‘Fine,’ Zac replies, ‘as I say, rather manic.’
It’s all gone cringingly stilted. Both Zac and Pip are aware that the awkwardness is really quite inappropriate for two people who have traded bodily fluids and shared the sanctity of a deep sleep together, but it is probably symptomatic of it all anyway.
‘Um,’ Pip murmurs, ‘well, I ought to let you go now. Thanks, though, for calling. And thanks for the offer – you know, about t
omorrow.’
‘Sure,’ says Zac with his trademark equanimity, ‘pleasure. Thanks for last night.’
‘Yes,’ says Pip.
‘If not tomorrow,’ Zac presses courageously, though he tells himself to shut up, ‘perhaps soon enough?’
Pip makes a noise in her throat that, for five minutes after the call, Zac thinks was mostly affirmative. Soon enough, though, he’s convinced he was merely a shag for a pissed girl on the rebound.
Pip had managed to pass the entire day without interruption from her inner thoughts. Whether this is a commendable achievement, is open to debate. However, once she had soaked the day away in the bath with new fizzing bath tablets from Space NK, hung out the washing and triple-checked that all was spic and span in her flat, it really was time to tidy below the surface.
She wanted to go to bed and fall straight asleep. However, when she slipped between her sheets, she could vividly sense the man who’d been in her bed, in her body. His sleep-crumpled face, funny specks of spittle, his peaceful soft breathing. The smell of him. She remembered, with a pronounced twitch of desire, how he’d stretched across her to see her clock. His armpit. How she’d felt his skin, sensed his strength and drawn in his scent, and been turned on by his masculinity. She looked over to her bathroom door and could conjure him facing her, buck naked and full frontal, asking about towels and toothbrushes.
What is it about Zac? Is it that he’s so at ease with everything: himself, me, my world? I mean, I had him to stay the night with no second thought, without even being asked, with no shadow of doubt. He’s seen me looking my worst. I can’t even remember much about the sex per se, but I am well aware of the desire that drove it.
You’ve never met anyone quite like him.
Perhaps not.
Many people never will.
Perhaps.
Think of your friends, your sisters, who fall for men with none of his qualities.
Exactly.
But?
For Christ’s sake, think about it! Zac’s plus points are that he’s mild-mannered, handsome and makes me laugh. But remember, my first impression was one of mistrust. Not to mention the fact that he’s an accountant. He’s mid-thirties and single. To top it all, he has a kid. Can you imagine the weight of his bloody baggage?
