Sleepless Nights

by Anne Weale

  ‘It sounds very exciting. You won’t believe it but I’ve never been to London.’

  ‘Really? Then it’s high time you came,’ he said warmly. ‘What time do you usually go to bed, Mrs Anderson?’

  ‘I’m a night owl,’ she told him. ‘Sarah gets up very early, but I like to stay up late and watch television. Not all that nasty stuff they put on after nine o’clock. I mostly watch videos.’

  ‘In that case I’m sure you won’t mind if I take Sarah out for an hour. I’ve checked in at a hotel on the other side of town. It has a pleasant bar where we can have a drink. Then I’ll bring her back.’

  ‘I’m not dressed for going out,’ Sarah said tensely.

  ‘Then run and get yourself ready, dear,’ said her mother. ‘I’ll keep Neal company.’

  Although she objected strongly to being manipulated, Sarah wasn’t averse to the chance to tell Neal, in private, precisely what she thought of these unfair manoeuvres.

  What was worrying her, as she shot upstairs to her bedroom, was what her mother might tell him in her absence. Mrs Anderson had been on the point of mentioning Matthew when Sarah had interrupted her.

  She particularly didn’t want Neal to hear about her son from anyone but her. But it would be just like her mother, who doted on Matthew, to start extolling him to Neal, unaware that he knew nothing about him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BY THE time she came downstairs, after transforming herself with a speed a quick-change artist would have been pressed to beat, Sarah was fizzing like the champagne that, for some reason she could never fathom, victorious sportsmen shook up and sprayed over everyone near them.

  However, when she entered the lounge, there was nothing in Neal’s expression to suggest that he had just been told something surprising, even shocking about her.

  ‘I won’t keep her out late. Mrs Anderson,’ he said, rising.

  ‘Sarah’s a grown woman, dear. She comes and goes as she pleases,’ said her mother.

  He took her hand between his. ‘Then I’ll say goodnight. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.’

  ‘Hypocrite!’ Sarah glowered at him, as they paused in the hall for him to put on his jacket.

  He had closed the lounge door behind him, so thene was no danger of her mother overhearing her comment.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.

  She reserved her reply until they were going down the path. ‘Because the chasm between you and my mother is as wide as the Grand Canyon. You have absolutely nothing in common.’

  ‘On the contrary, we have a mutual interest in you,’ he said easily. ‘That’s not a bad start. Do you come and go as you please? I wouldn’t think so.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that?’

  His car was parked with the passenger door by the kerb. It had central locking. He opened the door for her.

  It wasn’t until he was in the driver’s seat that he said, ‘I mean that I think you have allowed your mother’s disability to dominate both your lives. After spending a short time with her, I can see she’s a couch potato and that isn’t good for anyone. You, I suspect, suffer from one of the syndromes that carers are prone to. You’re resigning yourself to a life that is too circumscribed. From what she’s told me, the trip to Nepal was the first time in years that you’ve had a proper holiday... and you had to be bullied into taking it by your friend Naomi.’

  ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing,’ Sarah exploded. ‘You barge back into my life, when I’ve made it clear I don’t want you, and you have the crass gall to tell me that I’m not running it right. I...I...’ She struggled for words to express the force of her anger.

  Neal’s response was so quiet as to be almost a murmur. ‘You don’t want me, Sarah?’

  He didn’t wait for her reply. The next instant she was in his arms, being kissed with a passion as explosive as her anger.

  At first she struggled, beating her clenched fists against his leather-clad shoulders and trying to wrench her mouth away. But he had his fingers in her hair, holding her head still. She couldn’t escape the devouring heat of his mouth. It wasn’t long before she no longer wanted to. Her body, flooding with desire, began to relax in his arms, her lips to soften, to yield and, finally, to respond.

  He was the one to end it. Looking down at her, his eyes glittering, he said in a husky rasp, ‘You want me, Sarah. You want me as much as I want you.’

  Then he let her go and started the car.

  They were halfway to the hotel, the only good one the town had, before she felt even halfway back in control of her feelings. They were on the ring road by now, but not travelling fast. In the sudden flare of light from the headlamps of a vehicle overtaking them, she saw that his jaw was clenched. But his hands weren’t gripping the wheel. They were relaxed and sure.

  It amazed her that he could drive. She knew she wasn’t fit to. Her concentration was so shot that she doubted if she could perform the most automatic routines.

  The neon-lit sign marking the turn-in to the hotel was now in sight Sarah had been there only once before, almost a year ago, when Naomi had organised a Christmas drinks party for their best customers.

  There were parking spaces for short-stay drivers in front of the hotel, and a larger parking area for patrons behind the building. Neal drove round to the back.

  They entered the reception lounge through the draught lobby at the rear. As he held the inner door for her to pass through, she was met by the ambience peculiar to good hotels designed to attract upper-echelon business travellers. In addition to excessive central heating, the atmosphere was a blend of cigars, costly shaving lotions and wet oasis from the elaborate arrangements of otherwise scentless flowers.

  Remembering where the bar was, because she and Naomi had had a bracer there before the party, she was moving in that direction when Neal caught her by the hand and led her into an open lift.

  ‘We’ll talk in my room. It will be quieter.’

  Sarah wasn’t happy about this, but his hold on her hand was too firm to shake off and just then they were joined by another person whose presence restrained her objection.

  As the lift doors slid shut and they were carried upwards, she realised that a public bar wasn’t the ideal place to have a heated exchange on a very personal subject. The privacy of his room would be better, provided...

  Her reservations were still unspecified when the doors slid back, revealing the first-floor corridor. The other passenger stepped out and they followed him, but turned in the opposite direction.

  Even when they reached his door, Neal didn’t release her hand. He had taken a slip of plastic from an inside pocket of his jacket. It released the lock on his door. He pushed it open, switched on a light and waited for her to precede him.

  By Sarah’s standards, the room was luxuriously comfortable with a king-size double divan and two armchairs on either side of a low table. One side of the bed had been turned down, and a chocolate and a fresh flower laid on the pillow.

  ‘Let me take your coat,’ said Neal.

  Somewhat reluctantly, she unbuttoned the hip-length wool coat she had flung on over a jersey dress. Neal helped her take it off and laid it over the back of an upright chair at a writing table equipped with a leather blotter and a rack of hotel stationery.

  Turning back to her, his eyes warm, his mouth starting to smile, he said, ‘Sorry about that rather rough kiss in the car. I lost my temper...something I don’t often do.’

  ‘I lost mine too,’ she conceded. ‘But that doesn’t alter the fact that you shouldn’t have come here. There’s no future for us, Neal. You know that as well as I do.’

  He came closer, putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘I don’t know any such thing. I know that we want each other. We’ve had time to cool off, but we haven’t. The minute I saw you again, I wanted to take you to bed, and that’s what I’m going to do...right now.’

  ‘No...no...’ Her attempt to back off and her protest were both futile. His arms en
folded her, his mouth closed over hers, and she was lost. The arousal she’d felt in the car needed only the smallest contact to set it off again. Her mind resisted, but her body betrayed her.

  For weeks she had been longing for him, starving for him, and now she was in his arms, alone in a room where no one would disturb them, with soft lights and a comfortable bed. It was madness. It was wrong. It could only make matters worse. But she couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

  Afterwards, when Neal had gone to the bathroom, she sat up and looked at their scattered clothes and then at the signs of their wild love-making on her body. I must be mad, she thought. How could I have done that?

  They were almost the same thoughts she had had long ago, she remembered. The circumstances were different, but the feelings were almost identical, except that all those long years ago they had been shot through with panic in case there were consequences too frightening even to think about.

  This time that wouldn’t happen. She could almost wish that it would. Although her intelligence told her it would be an act of insanity, in her soul she longed for Neal’s child. But even if there were no other obstacles, it would be unwise. The older the mother, the higher the risks, or so it was said by the experts. But sometimes the experts were wrong.

  Neal came back, wearing a white terry bath robe. He unzipped an overnight case lying on the luggage stand and produced something dark and silky. He tossed it onto the bed.

  ‘Do you want to put that on? I’m going to call Room Service. What would you like to drink? Wine?’

  When she nodded, he punched in some numbers on the telephone keypad and had a quick look at a menu standing on the night table.

  Sarah reached for what turned out to be his robe. It drowned her but it gave her a deep secret pleasure to wear it, even for a short time. She listened to Neal ordering cold beef and smoked salmon sandwiches, a litre bottle of mineral water and a sophisticated-sounding wine.

  ‘Hadn’t I better be dressed when the room waiter comes?’ she asked. ‘Are guests allowed to have women in their rooms?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Neal. ‘This isn’t a situation I’ve ever been in before. If I had my way, you’d call your mother and tell her you’re staying the night, and I’d change my reservation from one person in a double room to two people in a double.’

  ‘You know that’s impossible.’

  ‘Is it?’ He leaned across the bed, captured her hand and held the palm to his cheek. ‘Is it really impossible?’

  She reclaimed her hand. ‘You know it is. I can’t leave Mum alone. She has no idea that we...that we’re on these terms. It would come as a horrible shock to her. She has old-fashioned ideas.’

  ‘If she spends her life watching TV, she can’t be that old-fashioned. The soaps aren’t behind the times,’ he said dryly.

  ‘Seeing things in soaps isn’t the same as suddenly finding out that her daughter is spending nights with a man she didn’t know existed until this evening. I must get dressed.’

  ‘Must you? I like you en déshabillé...it’s nice being able to reach out and touch my favourite parts of you.’ He demonstrated by slipping his hand between the lapels of the robe and stroking one of her breasts.

  Sarah recoiled as if a stranger had caressed her. Yet not very long ago she had welcomed his hands and lips on her.

  ‘You’re not being fair,’ she protested. ‘You brought me here, knowing I didn’t want this to happen. Oh, all right—’ as he raised a sardonic eyebrow ‘—part of me wanted it. But not the sensible part.’

  Snatching up her clothes, she made for the bathroom.

  While she was there, she heard the floor waiter bringing the things Neal had ordered. She waited until she heard him say, ‘Thank you, sir. Goodnight, sir,’ before she opened the door.

  There was now a tray on the table, with a bottle of wine in an ice bucket, a vacuum jug presumably containing the spring water, one wine glass and one gold-rimmed plate with a knife and a linen napkin beside it, and a silver dish containing two rows of brown sandwiches garnished with parsley, curls of lemon and black olives.

  Neal, who had risen from a chair, gestured for her to take the other. He filled the glass of wine and handed it to her.

  ‘But that’s your glass.’

  ‘I’ll use a glass from the bathroom.’ He went to fetch one.

  Her eyes slid over his back view from the broad brown shoulders to the lean hips and sexy backside under the tightly wrapped towel. She knew she was looking at him in the lustful way men looked at girls.

  Was it only lust that she felt? The lubricious need of a woman long starved of physical release? Was she deluding herself that her feelings towards him were on a higher, finer plane?

  Neal came back and poured wine for himself. He offered her the dish of sandwiches.

  ‘I’ve already had supper.’

  ‘Have one to keep me company.’

  She took one and drank some wine. ‘Neal...this invitation you talked about...I think you made it up.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘I’m not sure...a kind impulse maybe.’

  ‘I’m not impulsive or kind. I want you to come for a weekend and the only way you’re going to do that is if your mother comes too. It would be good for her. I’ll drive up early one morning and on the way back we can stop for lunch somewhere.’

  ‘We couldn’t possibly put you to all that trouble. If we came, we’d do it by train. Naomi would run us to the station.’

  ‘It’s agreed, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I need to think about it.’ She drank some more wine. ‘We’re avoiding the issue. It didn’t matter in Nepal. We were strangers who happened to meet and had a good time together. But now we’re on home ground it’s different You know what I mean. I shouldn’t have to spell it out.’

  He put down his untouched glass and leaned towards her. ‘You’ll have to. I may be dense, but I haven’t a clue what you’re getting at.’ He appeared to be genuinely mystified.

  She drew a breath. ‘I’m older than you are.’

  ‘Oh...that.’ He gave a slight shrug, as if he had been expecting some quite different revelation. ‘Why is that an issue? You’re a few years older...so what?’

  ‘It’s more than a few years, Neal. It’s eleven years.’

  ‘You’re forty-seven? I wouldn’t have guessed it. I thought forty...maybe forty-one. You have some good genes going for you. They sometimes skip generations.’

  Sarah leaned back in her chair and gave an audible sigh. ‘You dismiss it as if it’s not important.’

  ‘Is it?’ he asked.

  ‘You know it is, Neal.’

  He picked up his wine. ‘If I were your age and you were mine, would it be important?’

  ‘That’s a different matter. Our culture accepts older men and younger women...not the other way round.’

  ‘That argument doesn’t hold water. Our culture is riddled with cant and dubious values. People who think for themselves work out their own code of behaviour. I think what you mean is that you aren’t comfortable with the age difference. I am.’

  ‘You may not be the first time you hear someone murmur something about toy boys.’

  He threw back his head and laughed. The lines of his long strong neck and the glimpse of his white teeth sent a flash of pleasure through her.

  ‘Toy boys are like bimbos, Sarah. They have distinguishing marks. I’m never going to be mistaken for one of them. Nor do you look anything like the kind of woman who has a toy boy in tow.’

  Sarah was on the point of retorting that the age gap might not hit people in the eye now but would become more noticeable as time went on, when it struck her that he might not be contemplating anything but a short-term relationship.

  The distinction between lust and love had been in her mind minutes earlier. Perhaps, as far as he was concerned, love wasn’t on the agenda. Yet, if that were so, why did he want her to meet his family and vice versa?

  Neal drank so
me wine and bit into one of the sandwiches. Before taking another bite, he said, ‘You take life altogether too seriously. That often happens to people whose lives are constricted by circumstances outside their control... in your case by having to care for an elderly mother. You were out of your shell in Nepal. Don’t go back inside it now.’

  She thought how lovely it would be if she could spend the night here, and wake in his arms, and have breakfast with him, the way they had in Nepal. But that was impossible now.

  ‘I must go,’ she said.

  ‘OK. Have some more wine while I’m getting dressed.’ He would have topped up her glass but Sarah put her fingers over the top. ‘There’s no need...I’ll get a taxi.’

  ‘You will not,’ he said firmly. ‘I brought you. I’ll take you home.’ He took her chin in his hand and swooped down to kiss her.

  Sarah watched him dress, putting his arms into the sleeves of his sweater and then pulling it over his head in the same way that Matthew did. She still hadn’t told him about Matthew but somehow that seemed a huge hurdle which she couldn’t tackle tonight.

  ‘When are you leaving?’ she asked.

  ‘After we’ve had brunch tomorrow. I’ll pick you up about nine. I’m sure your mother will understand that I’d like to have you to myself for a few hours.’

  Neal didn’t come to the door with her. He kissed her goodnight in the car, then stayed watching her walk up the path and only switched on his engine after she had unlocked the door and turned on the hall light.

  The TV was on in the lounge, but the screen was blank when Sarah put her head round the door. For the first time in Sarah’s memory her mother had zapped a film.

  ‘I didn’t expect you back yet, dear. Did you have a nice time?’

  Sarah wondered how her mother would react if she told her the truth: that she and Neal had been to bed together. With shock and distaste probably. Her parents’ marriage had been a master and slave relationship. Her father had never shown kindness or tenderness downstairs. It wasn’t likely he had been a different man upstairs.