Lots of Love

by Unknown

Ellen couldn’t stop the punch of recognition that winded her, bringing pleasure with its pain. He was jealous. He was jealous!

  ‘What bloody business is it of yours who I sleep with?’ she breathed.

  He didn’t answer, eyes gleaming furiously.

  ‘I haven’t fucked Lloyd.’ She squared up to him. ‘But that doesn’t mean you can lob dead wildlife on my bonnet just because some jumped-up estate agent happens to offend your precious pride by calling you a gypsy.’

  ‘Jesus! Read – my – lips. It wasn’t me!’

  ‘And read mine.’ She turned away and pointed defiantly at her bottom. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  But before she could walk away, he grabbed her shoulders, twisted her round and glared down at her. ‘I am so – SO – glad that Touchy Pheely popped by last weekend to ask all about your sordid night with Ken-doll. To think I almost mistook you for someone I could trust. Someone who could have fallen from the sky, she was so different.’

  ‘I did fall from the sky,’ she howled, wriggling frantically. ‘You happily dared me to do it. I could have been killed.’

  ‘I was trying to mend that sodding great hole in your heart.’ His fingers dug into her skin.

  ‘You weren’t interested in mending holes; just accessing them.’

  ‘You were the one who wanted to jump. You wanted to fly away, with your fairy wings on your back.’

  ‘I guess I flew too close to the son of a bitch.’

  ‘And I had no idea you were after another sort of jump entirely.’

  ‘Bastard!’ She fixed her eyes on his.

  ‘Bitch!’ He locked back on target.

  But they were no longer arguing. Their mouths moved closer together, not caring what words were being uttered through them.

  ‘I love—’

  ‘I hate—’

  ‘I love—’

  ‘I love—’

  ‘I hate—’

  ‘You . . . you . . . you . . . you . . .’

  Lip slammed lip, body slammed body, bones clashed, muscles played washboard friction and fingernails dug hard into leaping skin. Mutual mistrust, desire and adoration conspired as they kissed, freefalling from their ivory towers.

  When Ellen felt the blow against the back of her skull, she thought at first that Spurs had coshed her. She was vaguely aware, as she slumped forward under the impact, that whatever had hit her smelt bizarrely of oranges, before also realising that she wasn’t falling over as expected.

  Woozily, she sagged in mid-air, head throbbing, held up by Spurs’ tight grip on her shoulders, wondering how he was planning to finish her off. That’s when it occurred to her that he couldn’t have hit her at all – both of his hands were stapled to her shoulders. They had been all along.

  Pressing her face into the crook of his neck and moaning because it smelt like home, she passed out.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was lying on a very wet bench on her own in the manor garden. She groaned and felt around her pounding head, exploring carefully for open wounds and splintered skull but, apart from a disappointingly small bump, there was no evidence that she had been crowned by an evil manor burglar streaking away after looting Hell’s Bells’ remaining silver.

  Moments later, Spurs appeared from behind the yew-tree curtain.

  ‘They’ve scarpered.’ He was clutching a Hooch bottle, catching his breath from running. ‘Thank God you’re all right.’ He crouched down beside her, taking her hand. ‘Does your head ache? Is your vision okay?’

  ‘Did you go for a takeout?’ she asked blearily, as she tried to focus on his bottle. ‘Nice of you to hang around and make sure I was still alive.’

  He watched her face with concern. ‘Are you feeling groggy? I’ll drive you to Cheltenham General – ambulances take hours round here.’

  He was rubbing her hand now, his fingers against her knuckles, sliding up to her wrist and stroking his thumb against the soft skin beneath it. Ellen watched for a moment, mesmerised by his sudden gentleness.

  ‘God, I’m so sorry.’ He pressed his forehead to her hand. ‘It shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘You weren’t the one who hit me over the head.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about that,’ he breathed into her fingers, wet hair tickling her arm.

  Still dazed, she wondered what he was talking about. Instinctively, she reached out her other hand and stroked his damp curls. For a moment his whole body seemed to relax, yielding into the caress. Then he jerked back his head. ‘We’d better get you checked over by a doctor.’

  ‘I’m fine – I don’t need to go to hospital,’ she insisted, standing up and battling not to sway, noticing as she did so that Spurs was still holding the bottle. ‘I’m not a big Hooch fan, thanks all the same. I thought one was supposed to have hot sweet tea at times like this.’

  ‘This is what hit you. It came over the wall.’

  She went cross-eyed as she studied at it, watching the bottles multiply. ‘Makes a change from ten green ones.’

  ‘Or talking to a brick one.’ He sighed, put the bottle on the bench and straightened up.

  ‘Eh?’ She blinked a few times.

  ‘I didn’t leave the dead badger.’ He pulled his hair back from his face. ‘I swear on my life.’

  ‘Of course. The badger. Shit.’ Ellen started to feel nausea grip her belly, her head throbbing painfully. ‘I’m going home.’

  Spurs moved closer, watching her face worriedly. ‘You look bloody pale. You have to come inside and sit down for a bit, at least.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She held her head with one hand and the back of the bench with the other, waiting for the garden to turn the right way up again. ‘I take it that was intended for you?’ She nodded at the spinning bottle.

  ‘Probably just kids – with the pub so close, we’ve always had a lot of empties hurled in. Mother thought about employing a potman at one time, before the money ran out. Are you really okay?’

  ‘I’ll live.’ She was peering groggily at her bare foot, trying to remember where her shoe had gone. Then, it all flooded back – the badger with the cut throat, tramping across fields in the rain, throwing her shoe, the heated argument, the kiss and then the knock-out. She swayed as she remembered that they had kissed. How could she forget? She couldn’t trust herself. She had to get away and lie down.

  ‘May I hop you home?’ He offered his arm.

  Now unable to look at him, she shook her spinning head. ‘I’d rather have my trainer back.’

  ‘Then come inside and fetch it.’ Spurs made to take her hand and steer her towards his door.

  Ellen took a nervous hop back.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already gift-wrapped the dead weasels and hedgehogs ready to deliver in the morning,’ he muttered. ‘There’s a fallow-deer carcass on the coffee table, but I can cover it with a tea-towel.’

  ‘It’s not funny.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Ellen, I wouldn’t dream of frightening you like that. Not you, the woman I love.’

  ‘Cut out the love crap.’ She took a few deep breaths, fighting to find a place where the world would stop spinning.

  ‘Would you like me to cut my heart out and leave it on your bonnet to prove it?’

  ‘It’s so small, I’d probably drive off without noticing it.’ She forced herself to look up.

  His eyes moved between hers, silver linings to black clouds as his pupils stretched wide in the darkness to take in every feature on her face.

  And suddenly Ellen realised that the world wasn’t about to stop spinning. However many bottles hit her on the head, her life would keep revolving while he could make her feel like this just by looking at her.

  ‘Fuck off back to where you came from, Belling!’

  Ellen and Spurs both spun round to see several more bottles sail over the high wall towards them.

  ‘Get down!’ He pulled her out of the way, tucking her under the crook of his arm and deflecting one with his back.

  ‘You should
have been left to rot in prison, you murdering bastard!’ yelled a voice from the lane, followed by the sound of running feet.

  Pressed hard against his body, Ellen could feel Spurs’ angry breaths punch air in and out of his lungs. She glanced nervously up at him. ‘Kids?’

  He swallowed, and gazed at the shattered glass where one bottle had crashed on to a stone path.

  ‘I don’t want you to have anything more to do with me,’ he said suddenly, standing up.

  ‘What?’ She rubbed her head and struggled to her feet, too.

  ‘You heard. I want you to keep your distance.’ He stared at her, his face in shadow, his voice hard. ‘Don’t try to see me again before you leave. We agree to forget about the auction lots. You’d be better off if we’d never met.’

  ‘Why?’

  He let out a hollow laugh, turning away from her. ‘I knew coming back here would mean facing a whole new punishment. And now that my life sentence has been passed, I find something I’ve been searching for all my useless life. If there is a God, I hope he’s bloody well cracking up.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Ellen asked, her arteries flooded with a heartbreaking wave of rushing blood – the biggest tube she’d ever surfed through, sweeping her off her high horse, her board and her wet feet.

  ‘Just do as I say, Ellen. You need me like a hole in the head.’ He started walking back towards his kennel flat.

  ‘At least tell me why.’ She stumbled after him. ‘What do you mean by “life sentence”?’

  ‘Go away, Ellen.’

  ‘No! Tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘What do I have to do to make you leave?’ he stormed, turning back to her.

  ‘Tell me what you were going to say on the night of the storm. Tell me the truth.’

  He stared at her for a long time, his eyes unblinking. Then he shouldered the black door open. ‘Don’t glorify this with any great significance, Ellen. You were right all along. I only ever wanted to fuck you. Then I found out that the estate agent had already dropped off a deposit and I withdrew my offer.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ Ellen gasped.

  He closed one gleaming eye. ‘Oh, I do.’ As the door opened, spilling light past him, his face disappeared into shadow. ‘You’re not that hot.’ With that, the door closed.

  Ellen saw red, not even thinking before she started screaming at the door, ‘Yeah, and I’m going round the world as soon as I leave this dumbass backwater!’ She hopped rabidly on the spot. ‘So you can just fuck off and play with your dead badgers, you twisted bastard!’

  Heart hammering, she stumbled back through the kennels towards the old footpath that led directly to the Goose Cottage paddock. Had she glanced up at the grain-hatch window as she passed it, she would have spotted her trainer swinging from the model aeroplane.

  A moment later, Spurs removed it carefully and then slumped on his sofa, hugging it to his chest.

  Late that night, long after Pheely had been dispatched to the Lodge, stoned and whisky-soaked, rambling that Spurs should be arrested for leaving a potentially concussed woman to walk home alone, Ellen wrote to Richard.

  It is over, but I’ll never, ever be out of touch if you need me. Thirteen isn’t always an unlucky number. There were more good years than bad, and there are more good memories than bad ones.

  Believe me, it’s best that we finally came to this decision. I’m in bits, but I know that every little bit will eventually glue itself back together and I know that we did the right thing. Every little bit of me loved you at one time. That love still lives in a corner of my heart and will be treasured there as long as I live. You are my sea and my ocean. Exxx

  Those two paragraphs took her hours to write and she found herself weeping stupidly over them, hardly able to bear to part with them because it was like ripping out her hollow heart, knowing that another had filled it. Pressing ‘send’ was switching off a light that could never be turned back on.

  Which made it doubly galling when a blunt reply came winging straight back.

  you bitch. i bet you don’t fakey it with him. you always did with me.

  Far beneath her leaden feet, Richard was online, reading between lines and playing back old lines.

  There was nothing like the shorthand between a long-term couple, the greatest of friends and the longest of rivals. He always knew when she was in love. Although never unfaithful, Ellen had fallen in love many times in recent years.

  Fakey – riding the board with one’s left leg in front of the right, as Ellen surfed – had been a private, pillow-talk joke. Richard, a notorious stayer, could take hours to come – and Ellen occasionally faked orgasm to hurry him up. Her fakeys were something they’d laughed about once. Until she had done it every time they had sex. Then it was no joke.

  She looked at the kitchen clock, and saw it was past four – early afternoon in Oz – Richard’s favourite beer and alternative surfing hours. In Oddlode, it was almost light, the birds chorusing. She hadn’t even noticed. Her head was still throbbing from the flying Hooch bottle and from staring at a small, flat computer monitor.

  Not always.

  She sent the reply and closed her eyes. ‘You’re not that hot,’ she whispered, wincing at the memory of Spurs’ final taunt. He was right. She was far from hot. Richard had spent hours twiddling and stroking and licking, and she had remained as cold as ice.

  Within seconds a window popped up on her screen, to the accompaniment of a seagull call. Above a little text box, a message read

  Surfdood21 wants to chat. To reply, type below. This private chatroom is not monitored. For your own safety please do not exchange home addresses.

  Below it, in a jaunty red font, Richard had decided to open his heart, his secret Internet world and the can of worms she’d dreaded.

  how often?

  She closed her eyes. Too often to count.

  Hardly ever

  is he better than me?

  The reply flew back and then, seconds later, another line appeared.

  forget that, i miss your body

  I miss

  Ellen looked at the flashing cursor and realised she didn’t really miss him at all. She just missed talking to somebody who knew her so well – better than her parents or her greatest friends. It was a horribly selfish reason to miss someone. More so because Richard only knew who she was when she was with him, and she already felt estranged from the Ellen who had shared his life.

  She tapped the backspace button for six strokes and typed,

  Be happy

  Do you want cyber sex?

  A little icon appeared beside this message, a face with a tongue hanging out and an animated winking eye.

  She looked at the empty box waiting for her. Was this how easy it was to turn thirteen years of friendship into a disturbing conundrum of two strangers typing into small out-of-context boxes?

  Slowly, she closed the lid of her laptop, sealing the time capsule, and went upstairs, leaving Richard alone in his chatroom.

  The phone started ringing as she was cleaning her teeth.

  Ellen looked at her guilty reflection and rubbed her gums raw as she let it ring on for minutes before he gave up.

  Three fields away, a damp trainer flew out of a skylight. Inside it was a mobile phone. As it crashed into a wet flower-bed, it went into redial.

  When the phone rang again, the birds on the telegraph wire outside Ellen’s bedroom window launched into a competitive impersonation chorus until they resembled the BBC switchboard after a heated lesbian handbagging in the Queen Vic.

  Pulling the pillow over her head, she wished with all her heart that it was Spurs calling and not Richard. But that was one wish he couldn’t grant. He had pushed her away, rejecting her big-time. He might excite her more than a thousand Richards, but to him she was just a horny blonde on the rebound and not worth the effort.

  It rang on and on.

  ‘Hello?’ she answered wearily.

  Nothing but birdsong gree
ted her. Clutching the receiver to her chest, she buried her face in the pillow and dreamed of her gorgeous wings.

  Poppy, the eager young estate agent, suited her name perfectly. Her dark eyes popped out of their sockets with enthusiasm, her poppy red car was always parked outside Goose Cottage and she took to popping in when Ellen was least expecting it. As soon as she had secured the appointment to sell Goose Cottage, she appeared daily in her glossy scarlet Golf to ‘spruce things up’ for the procession of buyers to follow. She liked to add a personal touch, she explained, and always insisted upon being present at the viewings. Soon every vase was filled with freesias and stargazer lilies from Morrell on the Moor Tesco, real coffee bubbled in the Jamiesons’ filter machine throughout the day, the toilets all acquired little scented rim blocks and never had their seats left up, the dining-table was laid for six and the breakfast-table for four – and Snorkel found herself tethered to the dovecote come rain or shine. Poppy was, as Ellen had promised her parents, very good at her job. But she set Ellen’s teeth on edge.

  ‘An absolutely enchanting cottage with medieval origins . . .’ She’d wave would-be buyers from room to room in a waft of Givenchy, her sing-song voice resembling a fifties fashion commentary. ‘Lovingly restored by the current owners, who now live overseas. It has wonderfully versatile space and, being in such a premium Cotswold village, it represents a superb investment.’

  ‘Lovely people,’ she said, after every visit. ‘I think they’re keen.’

  Each enthusiastically hosted viewing brought a new spin to her patter: ‘As you can see the garden is beautifully established and provides almost total privacy, although the neighbours are terribly nice.’

  ‘Yes, lots of wildlife – birds, deer, foxes, hedgehogs. Have you seen much during your stay, Ms Jamieson?’

  ‘Mmm – a badger.’

  ‘How gorgeous!’

  When Poppy suggested politely that Ellen might like to tidy herself up a bit, as though she were a dog-eared sofa that needed a neutral Ikea throw to hide its garish upholstery, she decided to steer clear of the daily influx.