by Freya North
As soon as Merry Martha took off her motley and Pip put on her clothes, her confidence evaporated. Every swipe of cold-cream-clotted cotton wool took off a layer of her effervescent self-confidence along with a layer of slap. She brushed her hair with the repetitive vigour of a sufferer from obsessive compulsive disorder, not because she wanted to comb out the kinks from the pigtails, but because she needed more thinking time. Actually, she just needed to think. The trouble was, she couldn’t focus. The trouble was, she really would have to emerge from Benji Richardson’s bathroom sooner rather than later. Why had she written on the balloon? Why was she still standing in the bathroom in W9 when she should be hurrying home, wolfing down a bowl of soup and heading out of London to the Peak District with her sisters? Fundamentally, why was she excited to see Zac, wilfully flirting with him, when until she’d seen him upside down half an hour ago she’d successfully convinced herself that he was unsuitable and that she had no interest in him? Why did she think that closing Benji’s bathroom door behind her as quietly as possible, that tiptoeing along the corridor, would make any difference to the inevitable posse awaiting her downstairs?
Tom threw his arms around her waist. Benji’s mother shook her hand with gratitude. The birthday boy himself looked sorely disappointed that in real life, she was not particularly exotic nor appeared to have anything in her pockets. Zac simply winked at her and smiled in his inimitable, attractively lopsided way.
‘Cash OK?’ Benji’s mum asked, handing her an envelope addressed to Ms Martha. ‘There’s a little extra for you. Marvellous! Thanks so much.’
‘Thank you,’ Pip said. ‘I must dash.’
A couple of meters to the front door. A quick walk to the tube. You can do it! You can do it because you must. Go on! Go.
‘Can we give you a lift?’ Zac offered, holding the front door open for her. ‘We’re headed north as it is.’
Pip told herself, implored herself, to decline.
You’re meant to be heading north yourself, you silly cow. True north. North as in Derbyshire. In the next hour or so. Cat! Fen! Django! Do your duty! Go north.
‘Thanks,’ Pip was horrified to hear herself accept, ‘that would be great.’
Zac held the car door open for her and in she climbed. Billy and Tom fired questions at her, non-stop, from the back seat. It meant nothing to them that Kentish Town was on the way to Holloway. Thus, they didn’t notice that Zac made no effort to drop her off there, nor that Pip made no request to be dropped off there, or even thereabouts, either.
Ruth was well aware that Zac’s passenger seat was occupied despite his commendable efforts to distract her on the doorstep by blocking her view and asking about the state of her headache. The boys had scampered into the house, manic in the final throes of hyperactivity due in part to the additives in the luridly iced birthday cake.
‘Do come in for a drink,’ Ruth said, with a scheming glint to her eye which Zac mistook as a symptom of her headache.
‘No no,’ he declined, ‘I ought to head home.’
‘Of course – you have work to do,’ Ruth reasoned, with a nod of her head towards his car which Zac misread as a headachy twitch.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, thinking that his sister-in-law was really bearing her headache bravely to be so chatty and attentive.
‘See you tomorrow,’ Ruth said, smiling commendably for one suffering so. ‘We’ll expect you around lunch-time.’
‘Sure,’ said Zac. ‘Bye, Tom. See you.’ He waited for Ruth to close the front door before he headed back to his car. Ruth, however, darted to the study and peeked through the venetian blinds.
Zac and Pip sat there for a while, looking directly ahead. ‘Your place or mine?’ Pip asked.
‘My turn to play host,’ Zac replied. He started the car and they headed off.
While he drove, Pip made a call from her mobile phone. ‘Fen? Hiya, it’s me. Listen, I think I’ll come home tomorrow. That kids’ party has given me a sodding headache. I’m going to go directly to bed.’
They snogged like teenagers, did Zac and Pip. Though how many teenagers own an Audi Quattro and have a residents’ permit bay outside a beautifully maintained conversion in Hampstead is open to question. They snogged like teenagers who had snuck into a parent’s car. Zac had nosed into his parking space and the ensuing silence in the car was louder and more loaded than when the engine had been running and the radio on. Zac cleared his throat in a bid not to voice ‘Home sweet home!’ which was on the tip of his tongue. Pip turned to him as if she was about to say something, too. Nothing. So they stared intensely at one another momentarily before instinctively grappling each other close and thrusting tongues into each other’s mouths.
They necked with the voracious hunger of adolescents; none of the fancy lip work, the refined nibbling and sensuous tongue-flickering they’d perfected over the years. They simply gorged on each other, slurping and sucking and gobbling each other’s gobs. Like a lust-soaked youngster, Zac pawed at Pip’s breasts through her shirt. He wasn’t so much fondling as grabbing and kneading. On her part, Pip had one hand locked around the belt-loops of Zac’s trousers while the other scuttled up and down his torso. If Pip’s jeans hadn’t been so tight and if the pitch of the car’s seat hadn’t been just so, Pip and Zac would have delved down to Base 3. As a somewhat poor second, Pip travelled her hand over the bulge surging sideways and twitching behind Zac’s trousers. It was nearing 7.00 and people heading for the Well’s Tavern enjoyed the spectacle in the Audi.
I’m that age, some thought enviously, and I haven’t snogged like that since I was a teenager!
God, thought others, when was the last time I made out like that – let alone in a car!
‘Not much more we can do in here,’ Zac panted.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Pip panted back.
‘Not much I can do about that for a few minutes,’ Zac rued, looking reflectively at the lopsided marquee his straining cock had made of his trousers.
‘Well, if I don’t get out soon,’ Pip parried, ‘I won’t be able to move – I’m starting to stick to my knickers as it is.’
They giggled, felt as flushed as they looked.
‘Come on,’ Zac said once his trousers were hanging more decorously, ‘let’s go inside and get squelching.’
Pip didn’t know whether to giggle or gasp on entering Zac’s apartment. She didn’t know whether she was in the midst of some post-modernist joke or merely standing in a flat that had been disastrously decorated by a previous and colour-blind tenant.
‘Home sweet home,’ said Zac; Pip stifled a chuckle.
‘It’s very, um –’ she faltered, not wanting to make a fool of herself nor offend him, ‘zany.’
Zac regarded her. ‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘God, no!’ Pip protested. ‘But it’s certainly a blaze, a bombardment of colour in here,’ she defined.
‘Compared to your place, sure,’ Zac said tartly. ‘Remember – I’m an accountant. I have to have some colour in my life or else the greyness of it all would consume me.’
Pip looked around quietly and considered the surroundings.
It’s certainly different.
It’s quite good.
It could grow on me.
Mind you, I don’t think I could live with it myself.
‘Drink?’ Zac suggested.
‘Whatever you’re having,’ said Pip.
He handed her a Budvar. ‘Doritos?’ he offered.
‘If you’re having,’ Pip said. Zac opened a bumper-sized packet and they stood in the middle of his sitting-room, sipping lager, munching corn chips and contemplating an intensity of colour that would have had Matisse rapturous.
‘It’s very neat and tidy,’ Pip said, looking further afield.
‘God!’ Zac exclaimed, clutching his brow. ‘Not another sign of my latent gayness? I have a cleaner twice a week – there!’
Pip laughed and slapped his arm, leaving salty finger marks. ‘I rather think I have i
t on good authority,’ she said with a lick of her lips and some coy eye contact, ‘that you’re rampantly heterosexual.’
‘Actually, Pip,’ Zac said gravely, quite startling her momentarily, ‘I’m rampant, full stop, just now.’ He came close and took her ear lobe into his mouth. ‘Sex first,’ he murmured, ‘we can do the guided tour later.’ With that, he took the Dorito which was approaching her mouth, took her beer bottle, and placed both on the window-sill. He then led the way through to his bedroom. Pip was so focused on satisfying her lust, she didn’t even notice the bright orange rug.
They stripped each other of clothing and inhibitions; the curtains remained wide open, the sash window up. And when they took to Zac’s bed, after a lengthy prelude of vertical foreplay, they fell on top of the covers, their feet at the pillow end. Pip was aware of her nakedness and his. The light, the lightness; the breeze and breeziness. It excited her. It was very different from Caleb’s flat. That had been more of a den – enclosed and darkened and secret. In contrast to Hoxton, Pip was aware of fresh air and height in Hampstead. It was filtering in through the open window, licking at her body. It was light outside and in. She felt comfortable, all topsy-turvy on Zac’s bed, just three days after first having sex with him.
The foreplay had been good but the snogging in the car had been better and, similar to the sex at Pip’s flat, the penetrative element was more the end of the means than the point of it all.
‘A good fit,’ Zac had murmured on pushing up deep into her. He didn’t so much desire to make love to her just then, more he had a basic need to release the pent-up orgasm that had been looming since their frolicking in the car.
‘Feels good,’ Pip whispered back, thinking that if Zac kept that angle and pace, she could come quite easily, quite soon.
‘Are you close?’ he whispered, his skin prickling with sweat, his breathing pacy.
‘Yes,’ she gasped, placing open lips against his shoulders and tasting salt.
Fuck! Not that close, Zac. Slow down! Wait up a little longer! Damn.
Zac bucked against her, groaning; pinned himself as high up as he could penetrate and closed his eyes to appreciate every spasm. Finally, he gave a long, appreciative soft whistle. ‘Fuck!’ he marvelled, looking at her with triumph and gratitude.
Though it turned her on greatly to feel his orgasm so precisely, because this was only the second time they’d had sex, Pip didn’t feel comfortable enough to continue to hump and grind against Zac’s spent cock to reach her own climax. However, as her body calmed down, she found her mind drifting back over the whole afternoon. Back to the party, the charged atmosphere after dropping off Tom and Billy, the frantic nooky in the car, having sex on top of the covers in a room with the windows and curtains open. Here she was, lying diagonally on a bed, as sweaty as the man next to her, a man who made her laugh and made her gasp and made her a day late for a visit home to Derbyshire.
What price an orgasm, she pondered? In some ways, sex with Zac had begun on spying his legs upside down through her handstand. It had continued in Benji’s hallway, they were still at it in traffic on Junction Road, even with Billy and Tom in the back of the car; there was a momentary pause to drop the boys off in Holloway, resuming it when driving back to Hampstead and, of course, at it like rabbits when stationary outside Zac’s flat. Perhaps they were still having the same sex from two days ago, when her hair was in plaits and her make-up was smudged. Maybe that’s what it’s about, Pip. Perhaps you shouldn’t see sex as unique, distinct encounters, with a beginning, a middle and an orgasm. Maybe the best sex is a continuous session, sometimes lasting a lifetime, replete with interruptions and variations, friendliness and franticness, coming, going, hot passages and cold, colourful moments and noisy interjections amidst a pervasive sense of give-and-take pleasure. Maybe that’s what making love’s about. Is that how you make love? How love is made?
Pip looked over to Zac. He looked sleepy.
‘It was fun,’ she confirmed, ‘a good fit. God, I’m hungry.’
After a sushi dinner and a stroll around Hampstead, they returned to Zac’s and chatted about personal trivia into the early hours. Pip curled up in his Eames chair, he sat relaxed on the ample matching footstool. They talked about school and college and losing their virginity and what drugs they’d tried and how if it wasn’t for the Stone Roses there could have been no Oasis. Zac had been to Reading Festival a couple of times and Pip had juggled at Glastonbury. However, neither fancied doing the tent-and-mud-and-spliff thing again. Pip confided that she didn’t even much enjoy gigs any more, too much heaving, too noisy to hear, the floor too sticky with spilt beer.
‘I’m a bit of a limbo lad, I guess,’ Zac defined. ‘I’ve grown out of it, too – but I’m simply not a classical-concert type of bloke. If truth be told,’ he whispered as if deep in confession, ‘I actively dislike opera. It’s not that I don’t “get” it. I just don’t like it at all.’
‘As for me,’ Pip declared in low tones, ‘I don’t care for the theatre – I prefer the movies.’ Her voice became stronger on seeing Zac nod. ‘Theatre is bloody expensive, uncomfortable, too, and I simply don’t like the artifice of it all. Curtain calls infuriate me – I feel ripped off, like I’ve been had. I thought I was meant to believe in the character, not applaud some actress smugly taking a bow for faking it. No, for me, film is far more compelling.’
‘You can’t beat a good John Grisham,’ Zac proclaimed.
‘Nor a classic Jilly Cooper,’ Pip laughed.
‘Do you remember a band called China Crisis?’ Zac suddenly asked, sure that she would.
‘Oh God!’ Pip exclaimed. ‘Bloody marvellous song they had, “African and White” – tell me you have a copy!’
He did. Zac had an awesome collection of vinyl and a sleek, state-of-the-art Linn hi-fi system appropriately and amusingly called the Klimax 500. After China Crisis, they played A Flock of Seagulls, and then they pranced around the sitting-room to ‘The Safety Dance’ and sang along to the Go-Gos and Pip did a passable impression of Clare Grogan on whom, Zac revealed, he still had something of a crush. Then, as they chilled out to Pink Floyd, they reminisced their way through all the Watch with Mother programmes they could remember, often impersonating the characters, too. Pip could do the mice from Bagpuss perfectly. Zac could remember practically every plot line from Mr Benn. All at three in the morning. Maybe it was all part of the same thing. Pip confessed to having had a penchant for, and a sizeable collection of, puff-ball skirts; Zac admitted to a mullet hairstyle with extravagant highlights and even had a photo to prove it. If sex earlier had been fun, all of this was too, maybe even more so.
Eventually, they shuffled back into the bedroom and folded into one another in Zac’s bed, sleeping soundly with inner smiles coating their dreams. As she drifted off, Pip knew she wouldn’t have forsaken this for Derbyshire, in fact she wouldn’t have missed this for anything.
When she awoke the next morning, however, Pip McCabe had a complete change of heart and mind. As soon as her slumber had lifted and she was aware of the here and now – the orange rug, Budvar on the window-sill, the fact that it was Saturday morning – she modified her attitude drastically. She disregarded all the qualities of the situation, overlooked the many merits of the man and disparaged the glow of contentment she’d experienced so positively the previous night.
She swiftly decided to be appalled at waking up in Hampstead, in Zac’s bed, bombarded by garish walls, furniture shaped like giant fruit and rugs the colour of kids’ poster paint. The flock of seagulls had flown off and she was desperate to go-go.
Jesus, she concluded to herself, as if closing the deal on the whole disastrous idea of it all, even sex with my vibrator is better – at least I climax.
She was desperate for Derbyshire. She’d shower there. She’d buy breakfast at St Pancras. It would do – she wasn’t that hungry. Her priority wasn’t food or personal hygiene or even, truthfully, to get to Derbyshire. The most pressing need in Pip’s
life that Saturday morning was to get out of Zac’s flat as fast as she could and flee the memories altogether.
Unfortunately, creeping away was not going to be possible. Zac wasn’t in bed; he could be heard humming Soul II Soul from the kitchen whilst operating a noisy gadget. The scent of warm croissants drifted through. Pip chanted to herself that she wasn’t hungry, she rebuked herself for already missing the first train to Chesterfield. She hurled back the duvet and at that moment, Zac entered his bedroom, proffering a tray of breakfast.
‘Oh, I do like to start the morning with split beaver,’ he remarked deadpan, while Pip lay there stark naked, spread-eagled, horrified. She whipped the duvet back over herself.
‘I’m late,’ she said, ‘I really need to go.’
‘Sure,’ Zac shrugged amiably. He’d woken charmed by the presence of Pip and the memories of the previous night. ‘Breakfast?’
‘Not hungry,’ Pip all but barked, though she eyed the croissants and the jug of whatever it was that Zac had been so sonorously juicing. Zac wafted the basket of pastries beneath her nose and she found herself unable to resist. She was famished. Sushi is all very well in that one never goes to bed afterwards feeling bloated or stuffed, but it hardly tides a person over for very long. So Pip had a croissant. And a long drink of juice (pink grapefruit, passion fruit, kiwi and banana).
‘Wake up and smell the coffee?’ Zac joshed, pouring Jamaican Blue Mountain from a gorgeous Alessi cafetière. Pip sipped. She felt physically revived but emotionally still in free fall.
