by Unknown
As she turned to close the door and blurt her thanks, he was out of the car and affecting an embarrassed expression over its roof. ‘’Fraid I need the loo. Would you mind awfully if I used yours?’
It wasn’t a very good line. In fact, it was so bad, Ellen stupidly believed him.
As she unlocked the door and greeted Snorkel, Lloyd bounded straight for the stairs.
‘It’s just to your right on the landing!’ she called, then realised that of course he knew where the main bathroom was – he had probably measured it and noted the fittings.
In which case, she wondered, why hadn’t he headed for the one beside the bootroom downstairs? It was far closer.
It took half an hour to find out. That was how long Ellen waited before following him upstairs to check that he was all right. She knew somehow what she would find, and it took her that long to pluck up courage.
He’d settled in the main bedroom, draped across the freshly laundered counterpane on the four-poster bed. He was propped up on the pillows waiting for her, wearing just a pair of black jockey shorts and that adorable white smile.
‘I lied about the underwear,’ he purred.
Ellen felt dangerously close to tears. He was so very handsome – his body magnificent. She’d worked with a lot of athletes and she knew fine-tuning when she saw it. Lloyd Fenniweather kept himself extremely fit. In purely aesthetic terms, he was the most appealing sight she’d seen in years. So why did she want to run away?
‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted out. ‘I really don’t want to go to bed with you.’
‘You don’t?’ He looked astonished.
‘No.’ She backed away. ‘I’ve just come out of a very long relationship, you see. Thirteen years. It’s too soon. You’re lovely. It’s so not you. It’s me.’ She wanted to close her eyes and scream. For Ellen that was a big-time confession, and it hurt more than her pride to lift the dressing on the wound.
‘I know just the thing you need.’ He rallied a seductive growl. ‘A one-night stand – to be taken lying down.’ He patted the bed beside him.
‘I’m sorry, Lloyd.’ She swallowed. ‘I think you’d better get dressed and go.’
‘It’s just sex.’ He held out his arms. ‘I’m good at sex.’
‘I don’t want to have sex with you.’
He sat up and rubbed his designer hair, treacly eyes rolling. ‘Okay – okay. I’m sorry. You want to take this more slowly. Of course. You’re a lady. We can have dinner again or something. Get to know each other better.’
‘It wouldn’t work, Lloyd. I’m going away soon, anyway.’
‘Where?’
‘The World.’
His perfect profile turned away, but his voice held a touch of the old mock-James Bond spirit. ‘That’s a long way to go to avoid a second date.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ve never met anyone as amazing as you before.’
‘You should get out more.’ She smiled sadly. As far as Lloyd knew, the World began on one ridge of the Lodes Valley and ended at the other.
‘Is it because I’m a bit of a fake?’ he asked hollowly.
‘No.’ She swallowed a great lump in her throat.
The huge eyes looked up at her, so full of sadness that Ellen just wanted to break down and cry, hugging him and apologising for leading him on and explaining that she was much more of a fraud than he was, with his phoney accent and big ideas. But then he ruined it.
‘I suppose a blow-job’s out of the question?’
She went into violent reverse, knowing that she had to bolt before she really did start crying – and that was something she never, ever did in front of a living soul, not even Richard. ‘Can you see yourself out? I’m going up to bed. Just don’t follow me, please?’
At that moment, Snorkel bounded in and leaped straight on to the bed, one scrabbling white paw landing hard in the middle of the black jockey shorts.
‘Yeeeooooow!’ Lloyd howled.
Ellen ran. She just made it to the attic before the salt water started breaking through the dam and the tension in her head, chest, shoulders and heart came pouring out. She locked herself into her room, put a pillow to her mouth to muffle the sound, and howled.
It felt like hours before the pressure started to ebb and the tears thinned out. By then, she was so drained that she gasped for breath, mopping her wet face on the pillow and rubbing snot from her nose with her wrist. She snorted with bitter laughter as she remembered how Richard had always known when she’d been crying because she had ‘bogey wrists’. He could be such a kid. Between them, they’d stopped each other growing up.
She picked up her mobile from the bedside table and read tonight’s messages. Just three. He was slowing down. The first read ‘TELL SNORK I MISS HER’, the second ‘GET SNORK TO TELL ELL I MISS HER TOO’, and the third – probably after a few late-morning beers – ‘TEXT ME BACK, YOU COW . . . AND PLUG IN YOUR COMPUTER TO DOWNLOAD EMAIL. ARE YOU DEAD?’
Ellen wiped her nose on her wrists again, laughing and crying at once. Maybe tonight she would be brave enough to text him back. She hit the ‘reply’ arrow. How could she put it? ‘HID IN ATTIC RATHER THAN CRY IN FRONT OF SEXY, NEAR-NAKED MAN. SEE? IT’S *NOT* JUST YOU.’ That would make him laugh.
But the glowing screen fell dark again long before she had typed a single letter and she put the phone back on the table, burying her head in the pillow to chew it again.
It was no good. The moment she had lifted the dressing, the wound had exploded open and was still haemorrhaging. She couldn’t hope to cover it up. Tonight she would have to bleed. It was time to think about Richard at last.
When she heard the car engine start up directly outside in the early hours, Ellen got up and crept to the window just in time to see the tail-lights of the Merc disappearing along Goose Lane.
She’d thought that Lloyd had left hours earlier – when she was crying into her pillow and could hear nothing but her pumping heart in her ears. Since then the house had been silent. She hadn’t heard him moving around, or calling up to her or even making himself a cup of tea.
She crept downstairs and looked into the main bedroom, where she found Snorkel curled up on the neatly made counterpane, occupying a recently vacated warm patch. Ellen curled up in it too, soaking up the warmth of another human being’s body – albeit at second hand.
‘Rich says he misses you,’ she told Snorkel, hugging her tightly. ‘And me.’
She rolled over on her back and played tailfin with her feet, swimming this way and that as she had as a child.
Richard had been her ocean and now she could only swim in tiny tanks like a trapped dolphin in a sea park. Tonight she longed to swim out to sea and never come back. Had she been in Cornwall, she would have been walking the coast path by now. As it was, she buried her face in Snorkel’s ruffed neck and started to cry again. ‘I miss Fins,’ she wept childishly. ‘I miss every fin.’
For the first time since she had arrived in Oddlode, Ellen slept late into the morning. And when she did awake, her eyes didn’t immediately spring open. They appeared to be broken. They wouldn’t open at all.
She lay curled in the twisted duvet battling to separate the fused lids, wondering if Lloyd had crept back into the house with a vial of Superglue, exacting revenge for the disastrous date. Perhaps he had stolen in on her and dabbed the potent adhesive on her eyelashes while she slept fitfully, half dreaming of Richard?
She could feel Snorkel’s chin pressing on to her ankles, pleadingly waiting for her morning walk.
At last one eyelid separated just enough for her to make out blurred outlines in the bright room – the corner of the bedside table, the lamp, a discarded sandal on the floor.
She unfolded herself slowly and tottered to the mirror above the basin, then groaned as she saw the blurred, distorted face peering back. Splashed with cool water and rubbed with a towel, her eyes finally opened as much as they could and took in the full picture. Crying late into the night had left her with
incredible plump bags and swollen lids, like shiny pink slugs, from which her normally clear blue irises peeped in miniature, the whites marked with tens of bloodshot red contour lines. Her nose and lips were red and flaky, as though she had climbed the entire mountain of her relationship with Richard last night then stood facing the icy wind for hours, not merely camped in the foothills crying into her sleeping-bag.
She turned to look out of the tiny dormer window at the lane, seeing the Saturday-morning village traffic jam – three children on micro-scooters, a dog-walker and two tourists on a tandem. The sun was elbowing its hot rays through a haze of pre-storm mist and vapour high above the valley; once again it was merciless in its strength. To do more than a brisk walk under its canopy would be torture. Ellen accepted the challenge gratefully.
‘Sorry, Snork.’ She winked one sluggy eye and went in search of running clothes and very dark glasses. ‘You can lie in the long grass and wait for me if you get too hot.’
Snorkel was only too happy to bound alongside Ellen as she hammered her way up the baked ruts of the bridleway, climbing through the heat-haze high above the river and its folly, passing fields of ripening corn, yellow rape and blue linseed. As soon as the sweat started running into her puffy eyes, it soothed them, and before long she was scoring an endorphin fix as her lungs gulped in oxygen to pump through her blood and into her muscles.
She was far less fit than she had once been. Two miles of uphill running was all she could take before she flopped on to a thick bed of clover-strewn pasture by a small wood, gasping, puffing and laughing. ‘God, that’s better!’ she breathed, wiping her hot face with her palms and rolling on to her belly to gaze down the valley.
Beside her Snorkel panted in the shade of the wood as they both watched a kite circling overhead, cocking their heads together as it swooped past.
‘Don’t let me cry again, Snork,’ Ellen puffed. ‘It doesn’t suit me.’
Snorkel turned her clown’s face to her, mad blue eyes blinking, a pink tongue lolling from her mouth.
Ellen looked out over the village again, spotting the tall chimneys from the Lodge poking out through Pheely’s jungle, and suddenly longed for strong coffee and one of her friend’s killer joints. But then she remembered that Pheely had Daffodil staying for the weekend, and also knew that she would insist on hearing all about her date. Given a few more hours to herself, Ellen would probably be able to make it sound screamingly funny, but right now she was determined not to think about it.
She sauntered back at a more leisurely pace, passing a group of ramblers coming in the opposite direction and wishing them a cheery good day. She was safe behind the dark glasses and baseball cap, and knew that while the bright smile wasn’t quite matched by the still puffy hidden eyes, it was getting there.
She stretched her arms above her neck and rolled her head to loosen the tension, rounding the corner by the lime tree, ready for a shower, coffee and the battle of the Goose Cottage garden.
Spurs Belling was sitting on the dry-stone wall beside the bunkhouse, smoking a cigarette and kicking an impatient foot against the lichen. He jumped down as Ellen crunched through the gate. ‘There you are.’
‘Hi,’ she greeted him cautiously, pausing on the gravel, fighting an urge to smile stupidly. If a short run was a quick endorphin fix, an encounter with Spurs Belling gave a far faster and easier high. But even though her heart-rate bounded into treble figures once more, his unfriendly, deadpan expression stopped her welcoming him too warmly.
Snorkel had no such hesitation and threw herself at him in her usual flirtatious fashion, licking his ankles ecstatically before upending herself and presenting a speckled belly. Spurs stooped to rub it, looking up at Ellen through the curly fringe, his freckled face unsmiling. ‘I came about the auction lot.’
She nodded, not sure what to say. Even standing ten yards away from him in the open made her anxious – not just because of all Pheely’s dark warnings, but because he was so totally, unashamedly X-factor that she wanted to turn and run straight back up the hill, dead legs or not. From the tips of his wild curls to the toes of his tatty trainers, he was devilish, decadent and very dangerous – a fallen angel dressed like a tramp. He also seemed to be edgy and impatient.
‘The three wishes?’ he reminded her, straightening up.
Scruffy, poker-faced and arrogant, he was an unlikely genie. Given that all Ellen wished for right now was a long shower, her eye-mask and a day’s solitude, she wished he’d stayed in his lamp – at least until her eyes adjusted to the light. She’d forgotten just how luminous that silver gaze was.
‘Yes, I remember.’ She whistled for Snorkel, who was gearing up to plunge through the long grass towards her favourite Cochin-watching spot. ‘It was only a ten-pound donation – you really don’t have to honour it.’ She guided the collie towards the dovecote and clipped the lunge rope to her collar.
He followed her. ‘I always honour my promises.’
Still crouching, Ellen smiled to herself as she stroked Snorkel’s black ears. She doubted that very much: from what she’d heard, honour had never been one of Jasper Belling’s greatest qualities. And at this precise moment, she wanted to forget all about her accidental bid at last week’s auction.
‘Honestly, I’m happy to let it pass.’ She glanced over her shoulder, not wishing to appear rude but anxious to get rid of him.
He crossed his arms and looked down at her, the silver eyes suddenly flint-like. ‘C’mon – you can think of a wish, even if it’s just that you hadn’t drunk so much at the Duck last night. I know a great hangover cure – one wish and it’s yours.’
Ellen didn’t want to be reminded of the previous night. If she could wish for anything, it would be that she’d never agreed to go out with Lloyd in the first place – but she wasn’t about to tell Spurs that. ‘I’m not hung-over, thanks.’
He looked down at her for a long time, tapping his fingers against his arms.
‘I have nothing to wish for right now,’ she hinted.
‘There’s really nothing little Ellen Jones could wish for?’ He narrowed his eyes.
It was an obvious taunt. That stony, petulant gaze was practically throwing pebbles at her dark glasses. ‘It’s Jamieson,’ she pointed out. ‘And no.’
‘Nothing in the whole wide world?’ he goaded. ‘Spoilsport.’
He was a spoilt brat, spoiling for a flight, Ellen told herself. It wasn’t her idea of sport. She knew a red light when she saw one. But she’d always run red lights. It was a lifelong weakness.
‘Put like that,’ she stood up again and faced him thoughtfully, ‘then I guess there would be a few things I’d like – like no wars, no exploitation, no religious bigotry, no racism or sexism or ageism or body fascism. And I wish women could come as easily as men. Do you want to pick out three?’ She flashed a smile to let him know she was pulling his leg.
But he didn’t return it. He just carried on gazing at her. ‘Those don’t qualify. The wishes you bought are for personal use only.’ He made them sound like recreational drugs. ‘Those are just boring. I’m not God.’
He was watching her very closely now, and Ellen was uncomfortably aware that he was looking through her dark glasses and into her eyes. She remembered only too well that Pheely had called his promise three ‘death’ wishes. Yet, facing him in the bright sunlight, she didn’t feel intimidated so much as hot, bug-eyed and flustered. She was irritated that he’d caught her on an off-day and that he was so humourless. She had a curious feeling that he was having an off-day too, which made it doubly annoying that he had come here to vex her.
‘All you have to do is make a wish. It’s easy. Try it,’ he demanded snappishly, still monitoring her eyes through their tinted Perspex veils.
Ellen ran another red light: she refused to drop eye-contact first. She no longer cared how puffy-lidded and cried-out she was. He was far too accustomed to intimidating people, and she’d encountered enough self-styled bad boys over the years to find it
– or his village-hooligan reputation – scary. If he really wanted to grant her wishes, then he’d have to stop the Mephistopheles act, brandishing his magic wand like an Uzi.
‘Any wish I like?’ she asked, pondering her options. Wishing he had a sense of humour might be a start.
‘Yup,’ he snapped back. ‘If I can’t make it come true, I’ll give you your money back.’ Still he stared, until the unblinking, flinty eyes seemed to shower her face with hot sparks and Ellen’s sunglasses felt moments away from melting right off her face.
‘In that case, I wish . . .’ She willed herself to say it. I wish you’d go away. But, to her irritation, she found she couldn’t. To her even greater irritation, she had to look away before her eyeballs burst into flames. Then, seeking visual sanctuary in the verdigris haze of the garden, she saw a way to get rid of him very quickly indeed.
She ran a hand through her sweaty hair and fanned her T-shirt. ‘Okay. Right now, I wish could cut this lot back before the weather breaks.’ She nodded at the wilderness. See how you like that, posh boy, she thought with satisfaction.
He followed her gaze, assessing the gargantuan task. ‘It looks like it hasn’t been touched for months.’
‘It hasn’t,’ she sighed, ‘and I’ve got to make it look like something from Homes and Gardens in just a couple of days so that the cottage stands a chance of selling.’
His silver eyes narrowed as he stared across the huge, messy jungle. ‘Two days isn’t long, but it’s a bloody good wish.’ Suddenly he smiled – a wide, genuine smile. ‘And I thought you were just going to wish I’d piss off.’
Ellen glanced at him guiltily and was almost blinded. She should have just wished for that smile: it was the loveliest thing she’d seen in ages – as cheering, compelling and catching as the giggles. The Belling bone structure, which made a sulk look petulantly beautiful, made a smile simply breathtaking – the broad, high cheeks creasing those big silver eyes, the dimpled chin lifting high above the broad neck like a thoroughbred stallion sniffing the air.
