‘Don’t say that,’ Jess implored her. ‘Come on, focus on the good. This is your fresh start in Brighton. Don’t be tied to your past, Carmen. It’s time for you to move on.’
Carmen sighed and took a sip of coffee. Logically she knew Jess was right, it was just that the past was like a thorn lodged deep inside her and she didn’t think she would ever get away from the sadness of not having a child, however much she could rationalise it.
12
Daniel lived a few streets away from Jess. It was very different from the red-brick, rather imposing houses Carmen was used to in North London. Here, many of the Victorian terraced houses were painted in pastel colours – pink, purple and blue seemed to be popular – and so the area had a cheerful, laid-back vibe. Daniel’s terrace house was no exception. It was a brilliant Mediterranean blue with a sunshine-yellow door and window frames. Even though it opened directly on to the pavement Daniel still had several large pots of plants outside and Carmen noticed a rose bush and a hydrangea cut back for the winter. She had rocked up at quarter to nine, keeping her fingers crossed that Millie would be safely tucked in bed. She needed more time with Daniel before she got to know Millie. She felt a mixture of anticipation, nervousness, excitement and lust – that Andrex puppy was working overtime.
Daniel opened the door. He had come straight from the shower. His hair was damp and he was naked except for an orange beach towel wrapped round his waist with the word ‘hot!’ emblazoned across it in red letters. I should say so! Carmen thought, taking in his beautiful, smooth brown skin, the colour of mocha. Hang on, she really couldn’t be channelling a Ricky Martin song could she? Lust could do most unsettling things to a girl, and right now on a scale of one to ten her lustometer was set to ten. ‘Hi,’ she murmured.
‘Hi,’ Daniel murmured back as he dipped his head down and kissed her, at which point Carmen was mightly relieved to have swapped the Chanel red lipstick for the sheer cherry lip gloss, otherwise the Chanel would have gone all over Daniel’s lovely manly chin and there would have been that awkward moment when she rubbed it off and wondered what the state of her own chin would be. But never mind about the lipstick, there was a much more interesting stick on her mind right now, actually not on her mind but making its presence known against her. Daniel was not unmoved by her arrival. Carmen kissed him more deeply while his hands slipped under her sexy, understated off-the-shoulder tee-shirt and caressed her bare skin. This was so hot. And then suddenly not, as Carmen took a step to the side and found herself on a skateboard. Before she could get off she shot down the hall, crashed into a table, fell off and landed with a heavy thump on her backside.
‘Ouch!’ she wailed, having suffered a severe bash to her coccyx and an even worse dent to her pride.
‘Why the fuck is there a skateboard here?’ she exclaimed, forgetting about the no-swearing protocol in the house of a small person. ‘Have you got a teenager you haven’t told me about?’
Daniel walked towards her and reaching out his hand hauled her to her feet. ‘Um, actually it’s mine,’ he said sheepishly.
Carmen shot him her most withering WTF look. ‘But you’re over thirty! Isn’t there a law that all skateboards have to be abandoned when a man enters his twenties?’
‘I’m really good at it, so I’m afraid not.’
Carmen took a minute to register the thought that the man she wanted to shag senseless, the man who had given her one of the best orgasms of her life, must also at times be a complete tit. ‘Just tell me that you don’t go around wearing your trousers halfway down your thighs and showing off your pants.’
‘Only occasionally.’ Daniel laughed as if this was a laughing matter!
Was he in arrested development? A man-child? Was he going to suggest they smoked pot out of a bong (Carmen hated pot, hated it!) and listened to Dizzee Rascal? The lustometer went down to five, further still when Millie appeared on the landing and called out, ‘Daddy, will you come and tuck me in?’
Daniel shot an apologetic look at Carmen before scooting up the stairs. ‘Go downstairs and pour yourself a glass of wine. I’ll be down in a bit. I promise.’
Gingerly rubbing the base of her spine, Carmen took a few minutes to survey her surroundings. The house had a similar layout to Jess’s and reminded Carmen of the Tardis, in the sense that it looked deceptively small on the outside while being spacious inside, and not in the sense that it was a time-travel machine. Directly opposite her was the bathroom, a Victorian roll-top bath taking pride of place. Carmen did love a Victorian bath – so much better to lounge in with your lover. Its size meant that one could lie back seductively and not constantly obsess about whether one’s stomach was sticking out, as was always the case in a smaller bath, where you were forced to sit up and breathe in. Evidently Daniel had an out-there approach to decor, as the bathroom was painted a deep cobalt blue, the fireplace was painted silver and the floorboards were purple. She peeked round the door to the small front living room, whose walls were painted orange, and took in a battered pink velvet sofa covered in purple cushions, a futon and a guitar, but fortunately no bong. The whole effect screamed bohemian artist. But never mind the decor and furnishings! Carmen’s attention was riveted by a painting above the fireplace. And not just any old painting. This was a huge portrait of a naked man, lying on a bed with his arms behind his head. A naked man who bore more than a passing resemblance to Daniel – in all departments. Wasn’t it a little strange to have it hung above your fireplace for the world to see just how well hung you were? She moved closer, trying to decipher the artist’s signature, only to find herself eyeball to private parts, like some pervert, at the exact moment Daniel walked in. She immediately turned round guiltily. Great, so now she probably had a penis sticking out of her ear. Perhaps she would need that bong after all. She moved sharply to the window.
‘Oh God, you’ve seen it! I keep meaning to take that down,’ Daniel said apologetically. He was now dressed in a baggy navy jumper and faded jeans, and looked as gorgeous as he had in the towel. ‘Imogen painted it.’
Carmen wasn’t sure that this revelation made it any more reasonable to have the picture in such a prime position. ‘So is she an artist, then?’
‘Artist, potter, knitter – you name it, she’s tried her hand at it. She’s not bad at painting but she was terrible at ever sticking at just one thing, which is no doubt why she chose to leave Millie and me.’
He sounded bitter, as if the memory of his failed marriage was still raw. Carmen thought he’d said they had split up two years earlier, and would have expected a little more distance. He was probably still in love with her. This certainly wasn’t turning out to be the seductive evening she had hoped for. She looked at Daniel, who seemed lost in his thoughts, none of them good given the frown causing a deep furrow on his forehead. Then he smiled. ‘Sorry, let’s go downstairs and have that glass of wine. Millie will be asleep in a bit.’
Carmen followed him along the hall, painted a hot Barbie-pink, and down the wooden staircase, painted gold. She was getting a headache from the clashing colours and was beginning to think that Marcus was on to something when it came to white minimalism. At the bottom of the stairs Daniel turned to her and said, ‘Imogen painted the house; she hates white but I love it. I’ve managed to decorate the top floor but haven’t got round to the lower floors.’ And so in the meantime Imogen’s love affair with colour continued in the kitchen/diner/living room, which was painted a shocking lime green.
Carmen wished she could rewind to their earlier passion. While Daniel opened a bottle of Rioja she strolled over to the fireplace where an impressive fire was blazing away and did another survey of the walls. Thankfully there were no more naked pictures of Daniel, which really would have made him a class-A narcissist, but something worse perhaps – a whole wall was devoted to family photographs. Imogen might have been crap at sticking to things but she was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. She had long blonde hair and the high-cheekboned, perfect featured, heart-shaped f
ace of a model, striking blue eyes and luscious long lashes. Your basic nightmare actually. There she was on her wedding day with Daniel, in a white silk sheath dress that clung to her slender figure as tightly as she was clinging on to Daniel, as the pair of them smiled their beautiful smiles to the camera; there they were posing on a beach, arms round each other, Imogen gazing at the camera, Daniel gazing adoringly at her. There was Imogen heavily pregnant and still managing to look gorgeous; there she was with a newborn Millie lying in her arms a few minutes old, looking knackered but radiant; paddling in a white bikini with a chubby toddler Millie in the sea at Brighton, her body snapped back into pre-baby top form. They were such intimate pictures that Carmen almost felt as if she was snooping. And as she gazed at the photographs, especially the ones where Imogen was cuddling Millie, she wondered what kind of woman would leave her child? What kind of man, for that matter? But somehow it seemed worse that Imogen was the mother and had left.
Daniel walked over and handed Carmen a glass of wine and obviously noticed she was staring at the photographs. ‘I left them up for Millie. After Imogen went I took them all down, but that made Millie even more upset, so I had to put them back up again. So now I have to live with them. But please don’t think I haven’t moved on because I really have.’ He was gazing at her, his hazel eyes warm and passionate. Carmen felt a reignition of the lustometer. ‘Come and sit by the fire.’
They sat at either end of the tatty orange velvet sofa and sipped their wine. It felt as if they were biding their time. They chatted about the kind of day they’d had – Carmen revealing that she was now nearly halfway through her sitcom, Daniel talking about the high-maintenance client he had who kept changing her mind about what kind of stones she wanted for her patio, but throughout the polite conversation all Carmen could think was how much she wanted him, wanted him so it was like a pulse, a throb, a beat going through her as if she was standing too close to the speakers at a rock concert.
‘I’m just going to see if Millie is settled,’ Daniel said, getting up from the sofa two glasses of wine later and padding across the stripped floorboards. He was barefoot and Carmen couldn’t help noticing that even his feet were attractive, and usually men’s feet, however much you fancied the man, looked like those of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. She took another sip of wine. She was determined not to look at the self-esteem-crushing gorgeous pictures of Imogen and so instead gazed at the fire. A few minutes later Daniel returned. This time he sat down next to her and put his arm round her. ‘All quiet on the Millie front, she’s zonked,’ he said. He ran his hand along her neck. ‘You’ve got a beautiful neck. You look like that twenties film star Louise Brooks, all seductive and mysterious.’ Carmen shivered at the lightness of his touch and thought, You’ve got a beautiful everything.
Then Daniel moved closer and kissed her neck, gently pushing Carmen back on the sofa so she was lying down. ‘How’s the bruise?’ he murmured.
‘I think I’ll survive,’ she murmured back.
‘I can kiss it better.’
And then it was on fast forward again as Daniel unzipped her jeans. ‘What about Millie?’ Carmen asked anxiously, as he slid the jeans down her legs. She didn’t want to be responsible for a childhood trauma.
‘Once she’s asleep she never wakes up.’
Carmen took his word for it, and after a few anxious moments when she was straining to hear a footfall on the stairs, she surrendered to the feelings – to Daniel’s delicious caresses of her body that were slowly driving her wild, to the feel of his body, to the feel of him inside her, and then it was intense and quick as if they both had to get the desire out of their systems and damn the rest of the world. Afterwards Daniel lay back and pulled her on top of him so her head rested on his chest. ‘That was so good. I’ve been thinking about you all day, and kept forgetting what I was supposed to be doing. It was all your fault.’
‘I’ve been thinking about you too. I couldn’t believe it when you opened the door in that towel – I just wanted to rip it off you and jump your bones.’
Daniel smiled. ‘Yep, that’s the thing about children, spontaneity goes out of the window. But I hope you thought the wait was worth it.’ He kissed her again. ‘You hungry? I was going to make tagliatelle con funghi. I remember you saying you liked it.’
The night just got better.
After supper, in which Carmen discovered Daniel was an ace cook, they returned to the sofa. By now it was after eleven and Carmen expected to have one more drink then hit the road. She had, however, packed her emergency overnight kit just in case: if on the off-chance she stayed she did not want to wake up in the morning looking like the Bride of Frankenstein. Her thirty-three-year-old skin had needs, expensive Dermalogica skin cream needs. But Daniel insisted that she stayed: ‘I want to spend the night with you.’
‘Aren’t you worried about Millie?’
‘I’ll make sure we’re up and dressed before she is.’
They tiptoed upstairs to a colour-free zone. The walls were white and bare, the carpet a neutral oatmeal. They passed Millie’s bedroom door which was ajar, a night light giving out a comforting yellow glow, and on to Daniel’s bedroom. In contrast to the clutter of downstairs it was as if everything had been stripped down to the bare minimum – just a bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers, all of which were painted white along with white walls. There was a single framed Picasso print of a woman’s back, from his blue period, but thankfully not a photograph of Imogen to be seen. Carmen quickly slipped under the white duvet. The heating had gone off and it was freezing, so she kept her tee-shirt on. She fervently hoped this hadn’t been the marital bed; she didn’t want to think of the lovely Imogen lying in it, with her lovely limbs entwined round Daniel.
After doing a last-minute check on his daughter, Daniel got in beside her, switching off the light next to him. This was always a telling moment in Carmen’s experience. Would he be a holder or would he roll over and go to the opposite end of the bed? Right now she was so cold she was really hoping he was a holder. And all the pictures of Imogen downstairs and evidence of his life with her made her long for reassurance. Daniel slid his arm over her and curled his body round hers, giving her a blast of heat from his bare skin. A holder. Carmen breathed a sigh of contentment and snuggled into him. She expected that they would talk for a while, but after a murmured goodnight, Daniel fell straight to sleep. Well, it was fair enough, the man had been working outside all day. But he was awake at the crack of half-six the next morning, awake and good to go. Carmen had never especially cared for sex before breakfast but for Daniel she made an exception.
A quick scout to the bathroom and Carmen was dressed and downstairs before Millie had even stirred, while Daniel got on with making his daughter’s packed lunch and Carmen made coffee. She felt uncertain if she should be there and was not at all sure she was ready to be in the midst of such a domestic scene.
‘You could walk to school with us if you like,’ Daniel told her. ‘It’s on your way home.’
Carmen was about to say that hadn’t she better leave before Millie woke up when Millie herself appeared on the stairs, bug-eyed with sleep, her hair wildly sticking up. There was no escape now. She tootled downstairs and slid on to one of the chairs. ‘Can I have porridge with honey, Daddy?’
‘Aren’t you going to say hi to Carmen?’ Daniel asked, walking over and planting a kiss on Millie’s head.
‘Hi,’ Millie said shyly. ‘Did you have a sleepover?’
‘Yep,’ Carmen replied and steeled herself for further comments.
Millie looked at her and her gaze fell on the silver charm bracelet. ‘That’s like Sara’s.’
Carmen’s antennae were alerted. ‘Is Sara one of your friends?’ she asked.
Millie shook her head. ‘One of Daddy’s. She had a sleepover here too.’
At that Millie reached for the pot of felt pens and began drawing a picture of a mermaid. Daniel hadn’t caught the exchange as he’d been rustling up porridge and
Carmen could hardly interrogate him in front of his daughter about who he may or may not have had over. But in her head she couldn’t help thinking that was three women in the last year, and Daniel had made out he was rusty on the dating thing. Was she just another in a long line? Were there more? She pushed her own bowl of porridge away, suddenly not hungry.
Daniel sat down opposite her and attacked his bowl with gusto. Millie took a few mouthfuls of her breakfast and then looked again at the charm bracelet.
‘I like the swallow best,’ she said shyly.
‘I like the swallow too,’ Carmen replied. ‘It’s probably my favourite.’ Where are you now, Will? she wondered. Having breakfast with Tash, chatting about her latest production, planning when to have the gorgeous blonde-haired Octavia?
She sipped her coffee and tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter how many women Daniel had over.
‘I think I’ll head off now,’ she told Daniel after he’d sent Millie upstairs to get dressed. How did Millie feel about having a stranger at her breakfast table? Maybe she was used to seeing women there. That was not a good thought.
‘We’re going in a minute anyway, let’s leave together,’ Daniel replied.
There was suddenly a frenzied hammering on the front door, combined with the sound of a little boy yelling ‘Daniel, Millie,’ through the letter box, loud enough to be heard three streets away.
Daniel rolled his eyes. ‘Damn, I thought we’d have left before they came round.’ He turned to Carmen. ‘Prepare to get scrutinised.’
Carmen looked at him blankly as he went on, ‘We always walk to school with Violet and her two kids.’ He paused. ‘You’ll probably find her a little surprised to see you.’
A Funny Thing About Love Page 19
