Special Relationship

by Fox, Alessandra

  "Yes, Swedish shower, not dodgy plumbing."

  "It was certainly invigorating."

  "And now, young lady, the highlight of your trip, Nick's full English breakfast. Poached, fried or scrambled?"

  She smiled. "Poached, please."

  "Wise choice. I am not a snob but I do get worried by guests who choose fried."

  He handed her some apple juice and promised that coffee would follow as soon as he had mastered the intricacies of the machine. While he struggled turning knobs one way and the other, she apologised again. "I'm sorry about my emotional outburst last night. It was really nothing to do with you."

  "Just as well or this could make for an awkward couple of days," he said, laughing it off.

  "I think we should have some newspapers at the door if you want them," he told her as he peered into the top of the coffee machine.

  She went to find The Times, The Guardian and The Sun all waiting on the mat outside. "That's an eclectic choice of papers," she said, using both hands as she carried the pile of them back to the kitchen.

  "Best to know what the country is thinking."

  Then, having finally cracked the making of coffee, he handed her a latte. "Now, breakfast," he said while she was reading a Sun story about Britain sweltering in a prolonged heat wave.

  They ate eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and tomatoes with toast. "Better than Frank's," she said honestly.

  "Yep, but I charge more than Frank's," he joked.

  After breakfast, Alex went upstairs to get dressed, putting on pastel peach shorts to show off the long legs that had already been tanned jogging in London, and a white vest. They had decided on a morning walk, some lunch and then to spend the afternoon on the beach.

  The beach at Sandbanks was as lovely as she'd seen, a wide space of sand sparkling against the sun and the further they walked along the coast the busier it became with more and more people laid out on bath towels and in loungers enjoying the weather.

  "Did you bring your phone, Nick?"

  "Nope,"

  "Me neither."

  They had been walking for nearly an hour and with the extra effort required by the sand, she had to admit she was tiring, so they stopped at a cafe at Branksome Beach and ordered a jug of iced tea.

  She took off her sunglasses, hooking them to the front of her vest, and looked at him. "You know, if you don't mind me saying, you don't strike me as the sort of guy who is up there in The Sunday Times Rich List and said to be one of Britain's most eligible bachelors."

  "Really?" he replied. "I hope you haven't been checking up on me."

  "Well, obviously we did a little research, just for business of course. And I don't mean it in a bad way. Just that you are so normal. I expected you to be the playboy type, you know private clubs, exclusive nightclubs, Monte Carlo and all that stuff.

  "I mean this is a gorgeous location but it's accessible by all. We've been to Frank's, Hampton Court, we are here now in a nice cafe, but it's just not the lifestyle I envisaged for someone so wealthy."

  "You are disappointed?"

  "No, I love it! I love it that you are so normal."

  "I still enjoy doing the things I did as a kid and the family had a caravan not far from here. Men never grow up, you know that, don't you? Most people in my business were born rich, so that's why they do Monte Carlo and all that because that's what they did when they were kids. This is what I did as a kid."

  "You didn't do helicopters as a kid."

  "You've got me there, but that was practical, just to get us down here in the shortest possible time, not to live the playboy lifestyle. I loved our breakfast at Frank's."

  Alex looked into his dark eyes and tried to assess how much and how fast she was falling for him. If he disappeared from her life tomorrow, how would she feel? Were they kindred spirits or was he just a rich man playing a game, as the texts suggested.

  They walked on to Bournemouth and along the pier, where in the amusements they placed ten-pence bets on mechanical horses running along a green felt track. "You've won fifty pence," she shrieked. "You are rich!"

  She noticed how happy he looked as he collected the coins and handed them to her, telling her, jokingly, to treat herself.

  Outside, she won a very small teddy bear on the rifle range, while he won nothing, and she ribbed him about it as they stood at the edge of the pier with ice creams and watched the ever-growing number of people bathing in the sun.

  They skipped lunch and took a taxi back to Sandbanks so they could enjoy their own beach time. She put on her swimsuit and looked at herself in the mirror from various different angles before deciding there wasn't much to be worried about.

  She put a T-Shirt and shorts on top, and a book, some sun cream and her mobile into her bag. Then she grabbed some towels from the bathroom to lay on.

  "Let's hit the beach, Mr Hensen," she shouted across the hall.

  She felt self-conscious as she pulled off her shirt and shorts after they had laid down the towels, but if Nick was looking at her in her swimsuit he was doing so surreptitiously. With him wearing sunglasses, it was hard to tell where he was looking. His head, was not pointed in her direction but his eyes might have been.

  Her quick glimpses at him showed strong arms, a well-formed chest and neither too little or too much body hair for her preference. Wait till I tell Kerry, she thought as she laid down beside him, pretending to read her book.

  "Glad you came?" he mumbled.

  "What's not to like?" she responded quickly, although nearer the sea a young boy and a girl were playing with a beach ball and giggling loudly, and Alex had to look away.

  "Restaurant tonight?" he asked.

  "Sounds good...unless you want to do another of your famous breakfasts."

  "You know what someone once said, that to eat well in England you should eat breakfast three times a day."

  "No, English breakfast, curry for lunch and fish and chips for dinner," she replied.

  She looked up again. The children who had been playing were no longer in her view and she watched a small boat, white, with a red top, bobbing on the sea. She thought of how her life had changed since she had moved to England .

  She glanced at Nick who was dozing in the sun and thought about texting Kerry but she was wary about switching on her phone for fear of what messages might be waiting. When she eventually found the courage to press the 'on' button she was relieved to find none.

  She typed out her message. "On the beach, nice walk earlier, so far so good x" and pressed the 'send' button.

  Switching off the phone, she laid down again and watched the one cloud in the sky move slowly to block the sun for a short time. She then closed her eyes and thought of how she could be blissfully happy and desperately sad at the same time and which extreme might win through. She decided that, at best, it could only ever be somewhere in between.

  Later, she finally got into the book, and read four chapters of The Magus - whose main character, ironically, was named Nicholas - before she decided to rouse him from his slumber. "You are going pink, Nick," she said prodding him in the stomach.

  "Oops, where's the sun-cream fairy when you need her?" he asked casually.

  "The sun-cream fairy has been reading her book," she replied. "And now she is going to take a dip."

  He watched her walk towards the sea and pull down the bottom of her swimsuit to cover her buttocks as she falteringly entered the sea, giggling as she she plunged in.

  She swam strongly away from the beach and far enough that Nick could barely pick her out. When she came back towards him, with wet long blonde hair and water droplets sparkling off her bronzed arms and legs, he thought that there could be no more beautiful woman on the planet. It only puzzled him that she could still be single.

  She dried herself, with a fresh white towel, looking at him as she shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. "That was bracing," she said."Even in the sun the sea is none too warm."

  They packed and went back t
o the house where, after she had changed out of her swimsuit and back into shorts, he opened some wine and put some jazz on the music system.

  "First drink today, I think?"

  "Pretty good by our standards," she laughed.

  They talked about the day and how Alex would keep the teddy bear as a memento. "I think I'll call him Victor to remind me that I won and you lost," she teased him. They went to the balcony with the newspapers and and talked easily between themselves as they read.

  Alex read more on the Oscar Pistorius story and discussed the case with him. "Do you think he meant to kill her or did he really did believe there was an intruder in the house?"

  "Seems an unlikely story," Nick said. "But then South Africa can be a dangerous place. That is somewhere I have made use of minders, not that I've been there often."

  "The thing I can't get my head round is that if she is sleeping with a guy why she felt the need to lock the bathroom door to have a pee."

  She then checked the financial pages and was relieved to see no scandals involving the man sat on the lounger next to her.

  They talked of the music being piped softly on to the balcony. "Reminds me of New York," she remarked, listening to a piece dominated by the sound of the saxophone. "You know when the vapour rises off the buildings and the sidewalk gratings and you look up and there's a guy, who you imagine has come up from New Orleans, sitting on a balcony playing the sax to the neighbourhood. Sorry, I'm sounding mushy."

  He had never liked the description 'soulmate', believing it to be a word used by people who grew their own vegetables and made their own knitwear and did up old Volkswagen vans to spend time "finding themselves". But now he was with Alex he could appreciate the meaning of the term.

  Nick brought up the topic of jazz clubs in New York, particularly the Village Vanguard, which he was intending to go to before he ended up in bed with Katherine. He then realised his mistake when Alex asked him whether he made it there on his recent trip.

  "Oh, sadly not, there were some early morning meetings the next day, so, you know, business first."

  "You has some leisure time though."

  "Yes, I told you, didn't I, that Katherine and I spent a day at Coney Island. I'd never been there and, since it's so iconic I couldn't wait to see it."

  "You like your seaside places," she remarked.

  He was worried that she might ask more about the New York trip. "Have you seen the time? We'd better get ready for dinner. "

  She went up to her room to change and shower, and came back down wearing a coral chiffon evening dress, beautifully cut with a high waist and full skirt that contrasted perfectly against her her tanned legs. Nick couldn't hold back. "You look stunning," he said.

  "Why thank you sir," she said.

  The taxi came ten minutes later to take them back to Bournemouth and the WestBeach Restaurant which, he had promised her, offered both a great location right on the beach and superb fresh seafood. She was not disappointed as she watched the sun set across the sea and they shared Grand Fruit de Mer.

  "Eating seafood can always be a bit messy," said Nick, cracking open a lobster claw.

  "But absolutely delicious," she replied. "With all the seafood we're eating we'll look like lobsters by the time we go back." Then she ribbed him. "Mind you, if you don't start using the sun cream..."

  He frowned at her. "Alex I have a dark complexion, I don't cook as easily as you blonde people who only became blonde due to your ancestors' lack of sunlight."

  She kicked him gently under the table.

  Nick told her that when he was about sixteen and made his first solo trip abroad, to Paris, he had eaten at a seafood restaurant near the Gare Du Nord, waiting for the train to take him back to London.

  "The Channel tunnel had just opened and I had an hour to kill before the return train. So I went into the restaurant and ordered some seafood. I can't remember what it cost, but it was dirt cheap, so I was expecting like a few mussels and prawns. They actually came out with enough seafood to feed an army and more implements than you'd need to perform heart surgery.

  "Everyone in the restaurant was looking at the English boy who obviously didn't have a clue what to do with all the paraphernalia set before him."

  She smiled at him.

  "So, feeling very embarrassed, and realising that I had nowhere near enough time to finish the feast before the train departed, I ate all the easy stuff first and made an half-hearted attempt at opening some crab...and then made a hasty exit with the locals looking on at me as though I was an ignorant and stupid Englander."

  "But if they could see you now," she said.

  He skipped dessert but she couldn't resist spiced plumb crumble with vanilla custard, or 'crème anglaise', as the menu put it. After coffee, and an aged malt whisky, which made Alex think of Tavis, they took a stroll along the beach before she used her iPhone app to call them a taxi.

  "Tired?" he asked her on the way back to Sandbanks.

  "Not at all," she replied. "I know the sea air is meant to make you sleepy, but it's not working on me. When I get back I was thinking of using your fancy music machine to play some stuff I brought with me."

  "Only if you let me listen too," he replied.

  Chapter eighteen: Runaway.

  Alex went to her room to collect her iPad and then to the living room where Nick was switching through the TV, spending seconds at a time on 24-hour rolling news channels and late-night tacky game shows.

  He pressed the red button to turn the TV off. "Jazz?" he asked.

  "Not exactly," she said. "How do I work this thing?" trying to find where iPad fitted into the music system. Nick took the iPad from her and connected it wirelessly. Looking at the screen, he remarked "'Yeah, Yeah Yeahs', I don't know them but a bit of a 70's name. Are you sure?"

  "Absolutely. They are a band from New York started in two thousand and something which is why I feel some connection towards them. I've seen them in New York and at Glastonbury and I just love the music, I love the lyrics and if I was ever going to give lesbianism a try it would be with the singer Karen O, because she is sexy as hell, very clever and has cool to die for."

  "OK, I'm hooked." he said, sitting on the sofa.

  "Quite loud, but not too loud," said Alex, hitting the volume button on the remote control.

  As the music started playing, she sat on the floor with her back to the edge of the sofa, just about within reaching distance of him but not too close.

  "Banking types might not like this sort of music," she said.

  "Please don't stereotype me, Miss Anderson, we gave up wearing bowler hats in the city of London years ago."

  She laughed at that comment, but as the music played her mood changed.

  On the iPad, Nick opened the internet browser to look up the lyrics to the song that was playing. He Googled: "Runaway lyrics and meaning."

  "Extremely painful to listen to," said one poster who decided the lyrics were about someone running away from a tragic loss but at the same time wanting to keep the person they had lost close to them.

  He looked at the back of her head and knew that she was crying, just like the night before. One verse he translated as the story of her leaving New York for England on the ship. But what was she running away from and who was it that she wanted to keep?

  He said nothing as the next track, ' Turn Into', played but did another internet search.

  Nick knew what the words meant to her. She was girl who had somehow been dreadfully hurt in her past and what she heard in her head were nagging doubts that she would be hurt again. So she was keeping windows closed while longing to be like everyone else.

  She wanted to 'turn into' anyone else, without, apparently, the hurt that she had to cope with daily.

  "Alex, this is fucking you!" he said when he could resist no longer. "Why are you so scared of relationships, why do you keep people out and what the fuck did you run away from?"

  Her shoulders shook but he persisted. She had thought, wr
ongly, that she'd had such a good day and that she had heard the songs so many times she would be able to get through them without crying.

  "It says here that you want to keep people out. This is you Alex! This is fucking you! What has happened to you? And it says that you would like to tell someone about it. Then fucking tell me."

  She turned around. She was now crying near uncontrollably and he hugged her and wiped away her tears with his hands.

  "Alex, I am falling in love with you, please let me in. Tell me what you so desperately don't want anyone to know. If it's a man, he was a fool for letting you go, but this long after you are still missing him? I don't get it. And how comes you are still single after all this time?

  "Or maybe, you are not single?" he said directly.

  Alex looked at him, the tears still rolling down her beautiful face. "Nick, I am single and I like you a lot but I don't want a serious relationship, not with you or anyone."

  He looked at her as confused as ever. Tavis had warned him off this girl because he was convinced she was not who she says she was. Maybe he was right to warn him off.

  "Do you mind if I go to bed now? I'm so sorry."

  "No, go Alex, but trust me, you are a wonderful, beautiful person with so much love to give and whether that's with me or anyone else I don't know. But please don't let your past rule your future."

  She went to bed, saying nothing, leaving her iPad behind.

  He played more songs from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and watched them perform at Glastonbury on YouTube. Somewhere in that huge crowd of four years ago would have been one Alex Anderson. The girl who so captivated him and whose mysterious past so puzzled him. Not for the first time he Googled 'Alex Anderson New York' but again he could find no Alex Anderson who matched.

  He switched on his phone and among other messages there were three from Katherine, asking whether he was in Sandbanks, what he was doing and why he hadn't been in touch. He stared at the phone for far longer than it took to read the message.

  He then went upstairs with the iPad in his hand. He was convinced clues to her past lay in these songs and he was determined to listen to them over and over until he could make some sense of what might have happened to her.