by Hazel Osmond
Ellie took a sip of tea that was far too hot and felt it burn its way down her throat.
‘I should have started by telling you that I love you, Ellie. That last night we spent together, well, I knew then that I was in trouble.’
‘Trouble?’ Ellie slammed her cup down on the table. There he went again, talking about her as if she was something to be avoided, something bad that had happened to him.
‘Damn,’ Jack said, and rubbed his hand over his chin. ‘I used to be able to talk in a straight line without putting my foot in my mouth.’ He picked up her cup of tea and held it out for her to take. ‘I’m sorry, just … just drink your tea and give me another go.’
His tone once again swayed her and she slowly reached out and took the cup from him, but the familiar flip of her stomach that had greeted the phrase ‘I love you’ had now fizzled away to nothing. If Jack loved her, and it was a big ‘if’, he had a funny way of showing it.
She saw Jack shift in his chair. ‘I don’t find this easy, talking about Helen, laying out all my emotions as if they were things at a car-boot sale for people to pick over.’
Ellie looked down the garden and focused on how the heat was making little mirages of water appear on the lawn. She wanted to tell Jack that she wasn’t any old ‘people’, but it was his turn to talk, not hers.
Jack bent down, picked up a piece of loose stone from the patio and looked at it as though it had upset him in some way.
‘Helen dying was incomprehensible,’ he said sadly. ‘I’d known her for nearly seven years, four of them we’d been married, and then it was all gone. A matter of months. I had everything I wanted and then I had nothing.’
‘Afterwards … being around everyone I’d grown up with, I couldn’t do it. So I took myself off to Manchester and just ate and slept and worked.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘For the best part of two years I didn’t even think about anyone else.’
Ellie didn’t comment, just kept concentrating on the lawn and the shimmering heat haze.
‘Then one night I went out to a bar and picked up the first woman I could. The sex was good. I woke up in a sweat in the morning half expecting to find Helen’s hands round my throat, but there was nothing. So I kept on doing it.’
Ellie had a vision of Jack hanging around the bars in Manchester and felt intensely sad.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Ellie. I know it wasn’t a good way to act.’
‘I wasn’t judging you, Jack.’
He looked unconvinced. ‘Well, anyway, it wasn’t always one-night stands. Sometimes it was two nights, a couple of weeks, a few months. Nothing heavy, though. It worked for me. Every time I had sex it was like putting two fingers up at fate. Like proving I was still alive.’ Jack looked down at the stone and transferred it to his other hand.
‘I told people in Manchester nothing. Let them think I was what they saw. Made it easier – I’d had a bellyful of “poor widowed Jack”.’ Ellie saw him scowl and the stone ended up on the patio.
‘When I moved to London, it became even easier. More women who only wanted to keep it cool. Of course, every now and again I’d get it wrong. Someone would start getting a bit keen. But I knew the signs. They’d cook a meal for me, or buy me a tie, or a book.’ Jack shook his head. ‘Books. What is it with women and books? My sisters were the same. They were always buying books for boys they fancied.’
Ellie bent down and picked up the stone and put it on the table. ‘It’s like sending a love letter without having to write it yourself,’ she said softly.
Jack studied her for a while and then turned his face away. His voice when he spoke again sounded dry and tired. ‘Well, I didn’t want their books or ties or lovingly prepared meals. When that happened, I bailed out. I know it was horrible, that I was turning into the kind of heartless bastard I used to sneer at, but I didn’t want to get emotionally involved again. I gave the impression that I did, but at the end of the day I couldn’t have given a toss.’
He reached out and picked up the stone again. ‘So how did I find myself a few months after meeting you, having a good time playing Scrabble with your great-aunt and getting genuinely upset that both your parents were dead?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I guess at the start you came up on my blind side. I couldn’t recognise you for what you were. I saw a scruffy, tricky, underachieving member of staff. I suppose I should have twigged when I found myself getting so irritated by you …’ Jack palmed the stone again and closed his fingers over it. ‘Then when I did realise why you were irritating me, it was too late. All I could hope was that the sex was going to be rubbish, or once I’d had you, I’d lose interest.’ He snorted. ‘Well, those two ideas crashed and burned spectacularly.’
Despite her earlier resolution to keep looking at Jack to a minimum, Ellie had found herself watching his face as he talked, particularly his eyes. She couldn’t believe how miserable he seemed. Like he was describing some kind of accident that he’d been in. He had her emotions zigzagging all over the place. Should she be pleased she had at least had some effect on him? That he had been shaken up by her even though the whole experience had obviously been so unpleasant for him?
Then, quite unexpectedly, Jack laughed. ‘That first time in my flat, you were so … surprising. You weren’t pretending to be cool or experienced. You weren’t playing any little power games. You were so damned open. When you actually thanked me, in my kitchen, for making you less timid, I felt … God, I don’t know … like I’d done something great for once. Almost something honourable.’ He shook his head. ‘Then the sex bit kept getting better and better and I started to like you more and more and …’
Ellie had that old familiar somersaulting-stomach feeling again.
‘Every time I tried to end it, I couldn’t. I knew I was scrabbling to stay upright and remain in control. It bugged the hell out of me. I wanted to shake you and tell you to leave me alone.’ He darted a glance at her. ‘Going to New York seemed the best solution and even then … your visit … I …’
Jack pressed his lips together tightly and Ellie waited.
Everything in the garden seemed to be holding its breath along with her.
‘No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about you,’ he eventually said. ‘What you were doing, what you were thinking. Even what you were eating for your bloody lunch.’
The intensity of Jack’s stare ripped through Ellie’s determination to be quiet. ‘But you didn’t want me to replace Helen. I was right, wasn’t I? You can’t let her go.’
Jack shook his head. ‘No. Helen’s been dead ten years. She’s a huge part of who I am, but I’ve had to get on with life.’ He put the stone very deliberately back on the table, and when he spoke next, it was so quietly that Ellie had to strain to hear him.
‘It wasn’t about Helen’s death, it was about yours.’
For a second Ellie could not even make sense of the words.
‘Mine?’ she said incredulously.
Jack shot her a look of the blackest misery. ‘Yeah, your death. I was afraid you might die too.’
‘I don’t—’
‘When I began to care about you, it all started up again. That feeling of worrying about someone else and then … well, then that bastard with the scythe came back. The one who came for Helen.’ Jack’s gaze shifted away from her as though he was too embarrassed to maintain eye contact. ‘Every time we got together there he was grinning at me, telling me he could whisk everything away whenever he wanted. Who the hell was I to think I could be happy again? I couldn’t bear it, Ellie. I couldn’t go through it all again.’
She saw his hand go to his eyes and was unwilling to embarrass him by staring. She could hear him struggling to keep in control.
‘It’s not like in the movies … someone lying there and drifting gently away. I mean, it might be for some people, Edith perhaps … And for Helen at the end … but there were times, Ellie, when I didn’t think I could bear to keep watch any longer. I was so scared. And
none of those things you normally tell people to comfort them were going to work, were they? “Don’t worry”? “I’ll look after you”?’
He took his hand away from his eyes and looked straight at her. ‘When I realised that I really, really loved you, I had to run, try to get back to not caring about what happened to you.’
Ellie felt a tiny little flame of elation spring up as Jack said ‘really, really loved you’. Everything she had believed she had seen in his eyes on their last night together had been there.
Then just as quickly the flame was extinguished by the realisation that there was absolutely no future for them. He had been unable to comfort Helen with the usual platitudes and now Ellie was going to fail to comfort him. How could she tell him nothing bad would ever happen to her? She was not immortal.
She got shakily to her feet, feeling as if her lungs were full of sand and she was barely managing to dredge up a breath. There was a man here who loved her desperately, but he couldn’t push aside that grinning skull to get to her.
She had to move away from the table or she would suffocate.
‘There’s nothing to be done, then, Jack,’ she managed to say, and took a step towards the house.
Jack’s hand shot out and grabbed one of hers. ‘No … don’t go … I haven’t finished,’ he said, his voice panicky. She was aware of his face tilted up towards hers, but she didn’t dare look at it.
‘I got it wrong, Ellie, so wrong. Sitting in Central Park one lunchtime, I realised I’d killed you off myself. I’d done exactly what I’d been scared of. It hadn’t taken an illness or an accident. If I was never going to see you again, you might as well have been dead.’
Involuntarily Ellie’s gaze went to the patch of earth they had dug yesterday and Jack turned his head too.
‘Yeah, that hit a nerve last night,’ he said. ‘Henry might as well have died – the end result for Edith was the same.’ He turned back to look up at her. ‘I thought about you still being out there in the world without me, making a life with someone else, lying beside him in bed, having his babies …’
Suddenly Jack was on his feet and he grabbed her other hand and held it tight as if he was afraid she was going to make a run for it. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to get lost, Ellie. The way I treated you … the things I said in that restaurant … the pain I caused. I’m not sure if you’re going to be able to forgive me for that. I don’t even know if I deserve it.’
She felt him squeeze both her hands. ‘But whatever you decide, you have to know that for the first time since Helen died I’m not thinking about what might go wrong in the future. I’m thinking about what I could have right now with you.’ She felt his thumb start to rub along her knuckles. ‘I love you, Ellie. I want to take a chance again and bugger what might happen.’
He gave her hands one more squeeze and then let them go. It was a movement that said, ‘It’s up to you now,’ as clearly as if he had spoken the words.
Ellie looked at him and thought how much it must have taken for him to admit his fears to himself, let alone to her. How hard it must have been for him to lay bare all those feelings he’d kept buttoned up.
All the love that she’d been trying to beat away over the past weeks came pouring back into her and she reached out and grabbed him firmly with both of her hands.
‘Come here, you idiot,’ she said, and wrapped herself around him.
Jack made a strange gasping noise and brought his head down on to her shoulder. His hair lay against her neck and she felt his chest convulse. She said nothing, just rubbed his back gently until whatever it was had passed.
When he finally lifted his head, the look in his eyes made Ellie raise one of her hands to his face and this time he didn’t pull away. He took it and kissed the palm and then bent and kissed her on the mouth. It felt like an affirmation of everything she had believed: Jack Wolfe loved her.
She could feel his heart hammering in his chest as strongly as her own.
When they stopped for air, Jack said, ‘I can’t tell you that I won’t nag you about getting taxis when it’s late or force you to go for all your check-ups. I’d wrap you in cotton wool if I could. But I don’t want to know what’s ahead any more.’ He cradled her face in his hands. ‘The future seems too vague and distant a thing to ruin what I’ve got here.’
‘And the man with the scythe,’ Ellie said, ‘he’s not standing behind me?’
Jack rubbed his thumb over her cheek. ‘Bugger him. I know where the fish slice is kept and I’m not afraid to use it.’
He leaned in to her and Ellie was aware of his stubble rough against her face and then his mouth was on hers and they kissed again for a very long time. The deep, searching kisses left both of them breathless in the heat.
‘We’ll get sunstroke if we stay out here much longer,’ she said, reaching up and touching the top of his head. ‘Your hair feels so hot.’
‘It can burst into flame for all I care.’ He pulled her into him. ‘Ellie, I love you and I want to come home.’ Ellie knew that if Jack had not been holding her at that point, she would have fallen on to the grass and melted in the heat.
He ran his hands down her body as if he were checking that everything was still there and it seemed right to grind her hips against him, feeling his lovely, familiar hardness. His mouth came down on to her neck and this time his kisses had more hunger behind them.
He stopped and took a step back from her. ‘Oh hell, I’m sorry, Ellie. You don’t need this today. Not so soon after …’
His eyes strayed to her shoulder, where the kimono had slipped a little. Ellie saw him swallow and she tried to pull the material back up. When it simply slipped again, he stood there looking at her shoulder and breathing hard.
‘Perhaps I should go in and get dressed,’ Ellie said. ‘It’s been an emotional twenty-four hours. I’ll just …’ She made a move to go, but after all the talk of death and sadness she wanted to feel exhilarated and alive again, and she wanted Jack to feel like that too. She shot out her hand and pulled him towards her. ‘I need to feel your heartbeat,’ she said, and wrenched his shirt out of his trousers.
In an instant Jack had her kimono down round her waist and Ellie felt the sun on her bare breasts, closely followed by Jack’s fingers. Her hands burrowed under his shirt to find the warm skin of his back.
Jack was cupping her breasts, trailing his thumbs gently over them. ‘Sorry,’ he panted, ‘I’ll stop … I just needed to touch you again … We should take it—’
‘Slowly,’ Ellie said, and tore his shirt open.
Everything seemed to speed up after that and they were both naked and down on the grass. Ellie felt it hot against her back and the ground was hard and dry and all she could think about was getting Jack inside her. Jack was scrabbling through the pockets in his trousers until he managed to find what he was looking for, even though by then Ellie already had her hand wrapped round him, caressing him.
‘Hell’s teeth,’ he hissed at her, and, after a few tortuous moments of waiting and one dark, dangerous look, he pushed himself into her in a way that suggested he was never, ever going to be persuaded to pull back out again.
‘You little Southern tart,’ he growled at her, and Ellie let out a cry that made Jack try even harder.
They thrust and clutched at each other, rediscovering how it felt, oblivious to the noise they were making. The sun poured down and everywhere their skin touched was soon wet and slippery. Ellie tried to pull Jack deeper into her and then she felt him get his hand between them and his thumb was moving across that very place, that very place that was already on fire. Ellie could not stand it any more. She tried to get away from him, but he held her close and finished her off, smiling down at her as she called out something incomprehensible. Then she heard his own cry and saw him fight to catch his breath.
‘Good God,’ a voice said, ‘don’t tell me you’re planting seeds this time.’
As much as two post-orgasmic people could freeze, Ellie
and Jack froze. And then Jack took a quick look round at the people standing transfixed on the patio and tried to grab his discarded trousers and shield Ellie’s body with them. It was a limited success and Ellie screwed up her eyes tight to try to shut out the view of Pandora, Constance and Gerald standing there open-mouthed. Frank was holding on to one of the chairs and laughing.
Finally Constance said in a little strangled voice, ‘We left some papers behind. We came back to collect them.’
Jack bit his lip. ‘Right,’ he said, half turning and then abruptly resuming his original position. ‘Right. Well, if you go and get them, we’ll see you later.’
The group shuffled back into the house, all of them silent except for Frank, who continued to make rude puns about gardening.
Ellie opened her eyes and tried not to laugh, but when she failed, it bubbled out, lovely and clear and uninhibited.
Jack felt Ellie’s laugh ripple all around him, and could not remember ever hearing a better sound. He put his head down on her breast and started to laugh himself, a strong, rumbling laugh that he felt low in his belly. Then he rolled off her. They lay there, side by side, helpless with laughter and squinting up at the sun.
When they had calmed down and their breathing had softened, Jack saw Ellie turn towards him. ‘I bought you a book, you know,’ she said. ‘Never had the chance to give it to you.’
Jack groaned, ‘Oh, Ellie, and you cooked me a meal – that salmon, remember?’
‘Hey, you cooked me a steak. And you bought me a dress. I never bought you a tie.’
She had a point. Jack turned his head to look at her properly, her curls around her shoulders and her body long and soft and naked in the grass. If she wasn’t careful, some delicate, usually covered-up bits of her were going to get scorched. He placed his hand over one of them.
‘What was the book?’
‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’
Jack gave a huge laugh and decided to protect her from burning with the whole of his body. He rolled back on top of her and brushed her hair gently away from her face before bending his head to kiss her on the lips. It was a gentle kiss, but he still felt her toes wiggle against his leg. ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, eh? Was I really that bad?’
