by Beth O'Leary
Me: Implausible. How are you so nice, and also very pretty? You’re a myth, no? You’ll turn into an ogre at stroke of midnight?
Tiffy: Stop it. Bloody hell, you have low standards! Why shouldn’t I want to come to your brother’s appeal? He’s my friend, too. I actually spoke to him before I spoke to you, I’ll have you know.
Me: I’m glad you didn’t meet him first. He is much more attractive than me.
Tiffy wiggles eyebrows.
Tiffy: Is that why you didn’t mention the appeal date?
Scuff feet. Thought I’d told her. She squeezes my arm.
Tiffy: It’s all right, honestly, I’m just teasing.
Think of the months of notes and leftover dinners, the never knowing her. Feels so different now I’ve met her. Can’t believe I wasted all that time—not just those months, but the time before that, the years of dawdling, settling, waiting.
Me: No, I should’ve told you. We should get better at this. We can’t keep relying on snatching days together as and when. Or on colliding by accident.
I pause, testing a thought. Could switch to the occasional day shift? Stay in the flat one night a week? Open my mouth to suggest it but Tiffy’s eyes have gone wide and serious, almost nervous, and I freeze, suddenly sure it’s the wrong thing to say. Then, after a moment:
Tiffy, brightly: How about a calendar on the fridge?
Right. That’s probably more appropriate—it’s early days. Am being far too keen.
Glad I didn’t say anything now.
53
TIFFY
I stare up at the very distant, very spiderwebby ceiling. It’s absolutely bloody freezing in here, even under a duvet and three blankets, with Rachel’s body heat to the left of me like a person-shaped radiator.
Today has been an extremely frustrating day. It’s unusual you get to spend an entire eight hours staring at the person you fancy. If we’re honest, most of my day has been spent fantasizing about all of the other people in this castle being vaporized, leaving just me and Leon, naked (the vaporizer also took our clothes), with many exciting places to have sex in.
I’m still clearly a mess about Justin, and as things progress with Leon I can feel nice-scary tilting toward scary-scary a little more often. When Leon started talking about making more time for each other, for instance, the panicky trapped feeling tightened right in again. But beneath that, when I’m thinking clearly, I have such a good feeling about Leon. He’s where my mind goes when I’m feeling my best. He makes me even more determined to get over what happened with Justin because I don’t want to be carrying the weight of that with Leon. I want to be light and footloose and fancy-free. And naked.
“Stop it,” Rachel mumbles into her pillow.
“Stop what?” I hadn’t realized she was awake, or I’d have had that whole little thought episode out loud.
“Your sexual frustration is making me tense,” Rachel says, turning over and dragging as much of the duvet as possible with her.
I cling on and yank it back an inch or two. “I’m not frustrated.”
“Please. I bet you’ve just been waiting until I go to sleep so you can hump my leg.”
I poke her with a very cold foot. She yelps.
“My sexual frustration cannot be stopping you sleeping,” I say, conceding the point. “If that was possible, nobody would ever have been able to sleep in Victorian times.”
She turns over to squint at me. “You’re weird,” she says, rolling away again. “Go sneak out and find your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say automatically, the way you learn to from the age of eight.
“Your special friend. Your beau. Your squeeze. Your—”
“I’m going,” I hiss at her, throwing back the duvet.
Hana is gently snoring on the other bed. She actually looks like quite a nice person while she’s sleeping, but then it’s hard to look bitchy when you’re drooling into your pillow.
Leon and I have come up with a plan to see each other tonight. Martin has for some irritating reason moved Leon into a double room, sharing with the cameraman, which means we can’t sneak into bed together. But, with Hana and the cameraman fast asleep, there’s no reason why we can’t slip out and go for a castle adventure. The idea was that we’d each go get some rest and then meet at three in the morning, but I’ve been too excited to sleep. Still, just-woken-up is nowhere near as good a look as Hollywood would have you believe, so it’s probably a good job I’ve been lying here awake for hours thinking inappropriate thoughts.
I hadn’t counted on it being this bloody freezing, though. I’d imagined I’d wear just my underwear and a dressing gown—I brought sexy negligee-style underwear and everything—but right now I’m in fleece pajama bottoms, woolly socks, and three jumpers, and there’s no way I’m taking these off. So I just slick on some lip gloss, give my hair a ruffle, and ease the door open.
It creaks so much it borders on cliché, but Hana doesn’t wake. I slip out of the door as soon as it’s just about wide enough, and pull it closed behind me, wincing at all the groaning noises.
Leon and I are meeting in the kitchen, because if anyone finds us there we’ve got a good excuse (given the number of biscuits I consume at work, nobody will have trouble believing that I need a midnight snack). I powerwalk down the carpeted hall, keeping a close eye on the rooms that line the corridor in case anyone else is up and about to spot me.
Nobody. The powerwalking is warming me up a bit, so I take the stairs at a jog, too, and by the time I arrive in the kitchen I’m slightly out of breath.
The kitchen is the only bit of the castle that looks loved. It’s been redone recently, and, to my absolute delight, there is an enormous Aga at the far end. I plaster my body against it like a girl who’s found a former One Direction member in a nightclub and doesn’t plan on leaving without him.
“Should I be feeling this jealous?” Leon says from behind me.
I look over my shoulder. He’s stood in the doorway, his hair freshly smoothed back, in a loose T-shirt and jogging bottoms.
“If your body heat is higher than this Aga’s temperature, I’m yours,” I tell him, turning to warm my bum and the back of my legs, and to get a better look at him.
He closes the space between us, casual, unhurried. There’s this understated confidence to him sometimes—he doesn’t show it much but when he does it’s impossibly sexy. He kisses me and I get even warmer.
“Did you have any trouble sneaking out?” I ask, breaking away to push my hair back over my shoulders.
“Larry the cameraman is a very heavy sleeper,” Leon says, finding my mouth again and kissing me slowly.
My heart is already thundering. I feel a little dizzy, like all the blood that usually hangs around in my head has decided it has other places to be. Our lips barely parting, Leon lifts me up so I’m sitting on the Aga warming plate, and I wrap my legs around him, linking my ankles behind his body. He presses against me.
I become gradually aware of the heat from the Aga working its way through my flannel pajama bottoms and beginning to scald my bum.
“Ahh. Burny,” I say, pushing forward so Leon takes my weight. He lifts me up, koala-bear style, and moves me to the sideboard instead, his lips slowly beginning to trace patterns all over me—neck and chest, lips again, neck, collarbone, lips. My head is starting to spin; I’m barely thinking. His hands find the narrow opening between my jumpers and pajama bottoms, and then his hands are on my skin, and barely thinking becomes not thinking at all.
“Is it bad to have sex on a surface where other people prepare food?” Leon asks, pulling away, breathless.
“No! It’s just … clean! Hygienic,” I say, pulling him back to me.
“Good,” he says, and suddenly all my jumpers are off in one go. I’m not cold at all any longer. In fact, I could do with wearing fewer clothes. Why the hell didn’t I wear the negligee?
I yank off Leon’s T-shirt and tug at the waistband of his jogging botto
ms until he slips those off, too. As I slide my body up against his he pauses for a moment.
“OK?” he asks hoarsely. I can see the control he’s taking to ask the question; I answer with another kiss. “Yes?” he says, mouth against mine. “This means OK?”
“Yes. Now stop talking,” I tell him, and he does as he’s told.
We’re so close. I’m almost naked, he’s almost naked, my head is full of Leon. This is it. It’s happening. My inner, sexually frustrated Victorian almost weeps with gratitude as Leon pulls me toward him by the hips so I’m pressed up against him, his body back between my legs.
And then, there it is. The remembering.
I stiffen. He doesn’t clock it at first, and for three deeply horrible seconds his hands are still moving over my body, his lips still pressed against mine. It’s very hard to describe this feeling. Panic, perhaps, but I’m completely immobile and feel strangely passive. I’m frozen, trapped, and have the odd sensation that some crucial part of me has detached itself.
Leon’s hands slow, coming to a halt on either side of my face. He lifts my head gently to look at him.
“Ah,” he says. He disentangles himself from me just as I begin to shake all over.
I can’t seem to get that part of me back. I don’t know where this feeling came from—one moment I was about to have the sex I’d been fantasizing over all week, and the next I was … remembering something. A body that wasn’t Leon’s, hands that were doing the same thing but I didn’t want them there.
“You want space, or a hug?” he asks simply, standing a foot away from me now.
“Hug,” I manage.
He gathers me to him, reaching for the heap of jumpers on the counter as he does so. He drapes one over my shoulder and cuddles me close, my head pressed against his chest. The only giveaway of how frustrated he must be feeling is the thud-thud of his heartbeat in my ear.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter into his chest.
“You never should be that,” he says. “Not sorry. OK?”
I smile shakily, pressing my lips to his skin. “OK.”
54
LEON
Am not usually an angry person. Am generally mild-mannered and hard to rile. It’s always me who stops Richie fighting (usually on behalf of a woman, who may or may not need any assistance). But now something primal seems to be happening, and it’s taking enormous effort to keep my body relaxed and movements gentle. Hostile posture and tenseness will not help Tiffy.
But I want to hurt him. Really. Don’t know what he did to Tiffy, what in particular triggered her this time, but whatever it was, it has hurt her so much she’s trembling all over like a kitten come in from the cold.
She surfaces, wiping her face.
Tiffy: Sorr—Um. I mean. Hi.
Me: Hi. You want a tea?
She nods. Don’t want to let go of her, but holding on after she’s expecting me to is probably a bad plan. Dress again and head to kettle.
Tiffy: That was …
Wait. Kettle begins to boil, just a quiet rumble.
Tiffy: That was really horrible. I don’t even know what happened.
Me: Was it a new memory? Or something you’ve already talked through with the counselor?
She shakes her head, frowning.
Tiffy: It wasn’t like a memory, it’s not like something came into my mind’s eye …
Me: More like muscle memory?
She looks up.
Tiffy: Yeah. Exactly.
Pour the teas. Open fridge for milk and pause. It’s filled with trays of little pink cupcakes iced with F and J.
Tiffy pads over to join me, sliding an arm around my waist.
Tiffy: Ooh. These must be for the wedding happening after we leave.
Me: How closely do you think they paid attention to the quantity?
Tiffy laughs. Not quite a full laugh, and a little wet with tears, but still good.
Tiffy: Probably very. Although there are so many.
Me: Too many. I’d estimate … three hundred.
Tiffy: Nobody invites three hundred people to their wedding. Unless they’re really famous, or Indian.
Me: Is it a famous Indian person’s wedding?
Tiffy: Lordy Lord Illustrator didn’t explicitly say so.
Pinch two cupcakes and give one to Tiffy. Her eyes are still a little pink from crying, but she’s smiling now, and eats the cupcake in almost one bite. Suspect she needs sugar.
We eat in silence for a while, moving to lean against Aga side by side.
Tiffy: So … in your professional opinion …
Me: As a palliative care nurse?
Tiffy: As a vaguely medical person …
Oh, no. These conversations never go well. People always assume they teach us all the medicine in the world at nursing school, and that we remember it five years later.
Tiffy: Am I going to freak out like this every time we’re about to have sex? Because that is literally the most depressing thought ever.
Me, carefully: I suspect not. May just take some time to work out triggers and how to avoid them until you feel safer.
She looks at me sharply.
Tiffy: I’m not … I don’t want you to think … he never, you know. Hurt me.
Would like to dispute that. Seems he has hurt her rather a lot. But it’s definitely not my place, so I just go and fetch her another cupcake and hold it up for her to bite.
Me: I’m not presuming anything. Just want you to feel better.
Tiffy stares at me, then, from nowhere, pokes me in the cheek.
Me, with a yelp: Hey!
Cheek-poke is a lot more startling than I’d realized when I did it to her earlier.
Tiffy: You’re not real, are you? You’re implausibly nice.
Me: Am not. I’m a grumpy old man who dislikes most people.
Tiffy: Most?
Me: There are a small number of exceptions.
Tiffy: How do you choose them? The exceptions?
Shrug, uncomfortable.
Tiffy: Really. Seriously. Why me?
Me: Um. Well. I suppose … there are some people I just feel comfortable with. Not many. But you were one before I even met you.
Tiffy looks at me, head tilted, eyes holding my gaze for so long I twist on the spot, itching to drop the subject. Eventually she leans forward and kisses me slowly, tasting like icing.
Tiffy: I’ll be worth the wait. You’ll see.
As if I’d ever doubted it.
55
TIFFY
I lean back in my desk chair, taking my eyes off the screen. I’ve been staring at it for way too long—the castle knitwear photos have been picked up on Daily Mail’s “Femail,” and it’s weird. Katherin is officially a celebrity. I can’t believe how quickly this has happened, and also can’t stop reading comments from other women about how hot Leon is in those photos. I obviously already know he’s hot, but still, it’s simultaneously horrible and kind of good to get external validation.
I wonder how he’s feeling about it. I’m hoping he’s too technologically incapable to scroll to the comments section on the Daily Mail, because some of the comments are really quite X-rated. There’s obviously a few racist ones in there as well, this being a comments section on the Internet, and everything briefly descends into an argument about global warming being a liberalist conspiracy, and before I know it I have circled my way into the plughole of the Internet and wasted half an hour following people’s outlandish opinions on whether Trump is a neo-Nazi and whether Leon’s ears are too big.
I go to counseling after work. As per usual Lucie sits in borderline uncomfortable silence for a while, and then, seemingly spontaneously, I start telling her awful, painful stuff I mostly can’t even bear to think about. How cleverly Justin made me believe I had a bad memory, so he could always say I’d misremembered things. How brazenly he convinced me I’d thrown a bunch of clothes out when really he’d just been chucking stuff he didn’t like me wearing to the back of the wardrobe.
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How subtly he turned sex into something I owed him, even when he’d made me so sad I couldn’t think straight.
It’s all business as usual for Lucie, though. She just nods. Or tilts her head. Or sometimes—in extreme cases, when I’ve said something out loud that almost physically hurts to utter—she says a supportive “yes.”
This time she asks me at the end of the session how I think I’m getting on. I start with the usual stuff—“oh, this has been so great, honestly, thanks so much”—like when the hairdresser asks if you like the cut they’ve just given you. But Lucie just stares at me for a while so then I think, how actually am I getting on? A couple of months ago I couldn’t face saying no to Justin taking me out for a drink. I was expending most of my mental energy keeping memories at bay. I wasn’t even willing to acknowledge that he’d abused me. And now, here I am, talking to Someone Who Isn’t Mo about how what happened with Justin wasn’t my fault, and actually believing it.
I listen to a lot of Kelly Clarkson on my way home on the tube. Facing my reflection in the glass, I throw my shoulders back and meet my own gaze, just like that first train journey from Justin’s place to the flat. Yes, I’m a little teary-eyed from counseling, but this time I’m not wearing sunglasses.
You know what? I am extremely proud of myself.
* * *
The question of how Leon feels about the photos in “Femail” is answered on my return to the flat. He has left this note for me on the fridge:
Didn’t cook dinner. Too famous for that now.
(i.e., got Deliveroo to celebrate Katherin’s/your success. Delicious Thai food in fridge for you.) x
Well, it seems he’s not let it get to his head, so that’s something. I stick the Thai food in the microwave, humming Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You), and reach for a pen while it whirs. Leon’s working until Wednesday, then off to his mum’s; I won’t see him in person before Richie’s trial on Friday. He’s keeping busy—he’s off on his last Johnny White visit tomorrow morning, planning on taking the earliest train he can to Cardiff and getting back in time for a nap before he’s back to work. I’d point out that that’s not enough sleep for him to function on, but I can tell he’s not sleeping well even when he’s here, so maybe it’s better for him to be out and about. He’s finally finished The Bell Jar, a sure sign he’s awake in the daytime, and seems to be surviving on caffeine mostly—at this point in the month we are not usually running this low on instant coffee.
