‘I’ll have it ready for seven o’clock, is that okay with you?’ It was Gladys’s afternoon off. She usually left Edwin a plated cold supper on Friday.
‘What a treat!’ Edwin smiled. ‘I’ll tell Gladys not to make me anything.’
‘Yes, you do that.’ Joan wished she could be a fly on the wall when Edwin told Gladys. She’d instantly know why and spend the night panicking that Joan just might find out what was going on at Carlton Hall, because sure as hell something was.
Chapter 35
Val brought no blanket to spread on the ground, nor were there any crystal glasses waiting to receive iced champagne, only a can of warm Chardonnay and a bottle of beer to drink, some prepacked sandwiches that looked like they had come from a garage and an already opened packet of McVities chocolate digestive biscuits.
‘Thirsty?’ asked Val, pulling on the ring pull of the wine can and handing it to Clare. She took a throatful of it and winced inwardly. She was sure it would strip gloss paint in one application.
Next, Val offered the sandwiches. ‘Any preference? Got roast beef or egg mayo? Or shall we have one half of each?’
‘I don’t mind,’ replied Clare, though she was a bit funny about beef. She hated fat on her meat.
‘One of each it is, then.’ He handed a triangle of each flavour to Clare, who was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, then sat down beside her and gobbled his egg mayonnaise sandwich in two clean bites.
‘Just come back from Wellem,’ he said. ‘Picked these up on the way. Didn’t have time to do the proper picnic thing with the basket and sausage rolls. Sorry.’
‘What were you doing there?’ asked Clare, softened by his apology. ‘Work?’
‘Work?’ He seemed amused by that prospect. ‘Well, I suppose you could call it that. Dropping something off for someone. They paid me to do it. Best ask no more questions,’ and he touched the side of his nose with his finger.
He made whatever he was doing sound secretive and exciting. She bet it wasn’t dropping off hanks of wool for the local knitting shop.
‘Sounds illegal,’ said Clare, quickly swallowing the piece of beef fat she had just felt in her mouth before she gagged.
‘Not that illegal,’ replied Val, licking his fingers. ‘I’m not stupid. Wouldn’t want to embarrass the family by being put in prison.’ And he laughed again to himself. Everything seemed to be a private joke to Val Hathersage.
‘I’m gathering you don’t get on with your brothers.’ Clare abandoned the vile beef sandwich and Val was quick to leap on it and polish it off.
‘Mr Angry and Mr Stupid? No, I don’t. I never have got on with them, really. They’re only my half-brothers anyway.’
‘You don’t live with Frank at the farm then?’
‘You must be joking.’ Val roared with laughter. ‘The very thought! I don’t have a house. I don’t want to be tied down to property. Where I lay my hat down is my home. And at present, my hat is in a room above a garage.’
He took a mouthful of beer and then leaned over to Clare, seized her behind the neck and placed a kiss on her lips. His breath tasted of alcohol and smoke. Then he released her and reached for the biscuits. ‘Sorry, just had to do that. You’re beautiful.’
‘Why are we here?’ asked Clare, her insides vibrating as if they were a washing machine set to spin.
‘Why not?’ Val grinned. ‘You obviously fancy me. I fancy you. Girls on holiday want some fun. You look like a girl who needs some fun.’
‘What do you mean?’ Clare felt herself blush.
Val chewed quickly on his mouthful of biscuit so he could speak again.
‘I can tell that you haven’t had fun in a long time.’ He studied her. ‘Let me make some guesses about you: you’ve only ever had boring boyfriends but you dream about being thrown on the ground and made love to. Your whole life is just one big frustration. I can smell frustration on women; they wear it like a perfume.’
Clare tried not to let her amazement show on her face. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said, but it came out more breathlessly than she intended.
‘No, I’m not,’ he replied. ‘Shall I show you what I mean?’
‘Absolutely not,’ laughed Clare as he leaned towards her. ‘Eat your sandwich.’
‘I find you very sexy,’ said Val, shrugging his shoulders at her rebuffal. ‘You remind me of someone.’
‘Let me guess: Gywneth Paltrow? Jessie J? Cheryl Cole?’
‘Cleopatra.’
Clare chuckled. ‘Bump into her a lot around here, do you?’
‘Not recently. Think she’s moved to Wellem.’ Val grinned. And boy was he working those green eyes. Clare would have bet that those eyes had managed to loosen quite a few sets of knicker elastic.
Clare took a long drink of the wine. It was revolting but at least swilled away the taste of her sandwich. It wasn’t exactly one of Lud’s picnics. He had taken her to a boating lake last summer and they had feasted on the cutest cucumber, salmon and Caerphilly sandwiches all cut into heart shapes. There had been strawberries dipped in dark chocolate, petite pastry parcels, spiced chicken goujons and ice-cold Prosecco with raspberries.
‘Finished then?’ Val’s voice broke up the memory.
‘Yes, I think so,’ replied Clare, brushing crumbs from her skirt. When she lifted her head, Val was at her side. His green, green eyes were staring down into hers.
‘You really are lovely,’ he said and leaned closer.
‘Am I?’ Clare swallowed, feeling his breath on her cheek, feeling his hand in her hair, feeling his lips fall onto hers. Oh he really was as good a kisser as she thought he might be. He pushed her backwards so she was lying flat and his soft lips travelled down her face to her neck which he nipped delicately between his teeth. His fingers tripped down her arm, skimming past her breast. She gasped with delight. Then, without warning, he pulled apart from her and sat up.
‘That was nice. Want a biscuit?’
‘A biscuit?’
‘Yes. I don’t want you getting too carried away.’
Clare pulled herself up. Of all the things she had been expecting next, a bloody McVities digestive wasn’t one of them.
They resumed their seats on the fallen tree trunk again and Clare took a biscuit from the pack, although she didn’t really want one. Val lit up a cigarette as if they’d had more than just a snog.
‘My ex used to love having sex in these woods,’ said Val, exhaling a long breath of smoke. ‘She was a wild woman. Always dragging me up here, she was.’
Nice, thought Clare. Just what every woman wants to hear, a good old ex story.
‘Is she still in the village?’
‘Naw, she was too bored by this place. Packed her bags and went to London. The roads are paved with gold there, as you know.’ He took a long, satisfying drag on his cigarette. ‘She’d done all the things she wanted to. There were no fresh challenges for her.’ His accent on the word ‘challenges’ made it sound as if he meant ‘men’.
‘There seem to be a lot more men in the village than women, why is that?’ As she spoke Clare dropped the biscuit to the grass. It tasted soft and old. ‘I’ve only seen a couple – Shirley, Daisy . . .’
‘Don’t get me started on that bitch Daisy,’ said Val. ‘And Shirley wasn’t born here; she was adopted. Girls don’t tend to be born in Ren Dullem and, if they are, they aren’t anything to write home about. Have you met Jenny yet? Pretty enough face but she’s been twenty stone since the day she was born. Now Colleen Landers was an exception.’ His face softened as he said her name. ‘She was a freak of nature in this village was Colleen – a real beauty.’
Clare felt slightly peeved that the man she had just been passionately kissing was extolling the virtues of an ex. Still she couldn’t stop herself asking questions.
‘Miss her a lot, do you?’
He shrugged casually. ‘Not much point. If Colleen had wanted to be with me she wouldn’t have gone. Whatever Colleen wanted, Colleen got.’
‘D
o you think she’ll ever come back?’
‘Not a chance.’ Val laughed. ‘There’s no one to come back for. She ate everyone up and spat them out.’
‘What about coming to see her family?’
‘Colleen doesn’t do duty.’
Clare decided immediately that she didn’t like the sound of Colleen Landers. She could imagine what a spoiled, self-obsessed little madam she must be.
‘She had hair like sunshine,’ said Val, with a nostalgic expression on his face. ‘Long, golden silk and eyes the colour of chocolate.’ He seemed lost in his reverie, but Clare noticed that he threw her the quickest of sly glances so she knew that he was trying to wind her up and inflame her to envy. Head games. Not that it should come as much of a surprise. Val Hathersage, she was realizing, was just one big head game. She imagined Colleen Landers to be exactly the same.
‘Why are no women born in Ren Dullem, then?’ asked Clare, moving the conversation away from the paragon of beauty that was Colleen Landers.
Val grinned. ‘Has no one explained the legend of Ren Dullem to you?’
‘No,’ said Clare, leaning forward with interest.
‘As if there’s really a legend. I’m joking!’ said Val. ‘Just one of those things. Must be something in the air. We’re cursed. We must be if the best-looking woman born in the village is Daisy Unwin . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Frank is a fool if he marries her. He doesn’t love her. He just feels sorry for her because—’ He pulled his words up short.
‘Because she’s in a wheelchair?’ suggested Clare.
‘No, because he put her there. They’d only been going out a short while, and he crashed the car they were in. She’s made him suffer ever since and the stupid bastard puts up with her. Feels guilty and that he has to atone.’
‘Oh, no! That’s terrible,’ said Clare. ‘How awful for them both.’
‘More awful for him,’ said Val. ‘She’s the biggest cow you could ever meet. Don’t make eye contact with her or the snakes on her head will come out and get you.’ He curled his fingers over and wiggled them.
Clare giggled. Well, he certainly was very different from Lud. He might not have put a lot of effort into the picnic, but she had never met anyone like him before. He was a free spirit who obviously didn’t give a toss what anyone thought about him.
‘I have to make a move,’ he said suddenly, killing the cigarette and placing it behind his ear. ‘Same time tomorrow?’
‘I can’t. I’m busy,’ said Clare. Damn. Still, it wouldn’t do him any harm to hear that she wasn’t going to jump to attention whenever he clicked his fingers.
‘Are you now?’ There was a challenge in his green eyes. ‘I might be busy the day after. We’ll have to see, then, won’t we?’
‘Yes, we shall,’ said Clare, lifting her eyebrow ever so saucily and hoping she didn’t look like Roger Moore.
Val Hathersage leaned towards her but his lips merely butterflied past hers, then he stood up to go.
‘I bet you’re fantastic in bed,’ he said, and left her with a quickened pulse and a Tesco carrier bag full of packaging.
Chapter 36
Lara was up and eating a huge omelette stuffed with melted cheese, a wedge of thickly buttered bread on the side, when Clare arrived back at the house. She had taken a slow walk back to Well Cottage, her brain busily picking over what had just happened. That Val Hathersage was a tease of the highest order was the one thing to come out of her deliberations.
‘Hiya, where have you been?’ Lara smiled, shaking Clare out of her in-depth analysis. ‘What the hell is that on your neck? A lovebite?’
Clare gasped in horror and checked herself in the mirror. It was. How could she get out of this one?
‘It looks like a bruise. Haven’t a clue how I got it. Unless it was when I caught myself on a rock in the lagoon yesterday.’ She made a mental note to keep dabbing it with some spot cover.
‘You must bruise like a peach,’ Lara said with a laugh, getting up from the table to put her plate in the sink. ‘Fancy a brew?’
‘I’d love one,’ said Clare, sitting down quickly in case there were grass stains on her skirt. ‘How’s May?’
‘Still asleep. I checked on her about five minutes ago. At least while she’s sleeping she’s not feeling ill.’
Lara turned on the tap to fill the kettle. No water came out. She tried the other tap – nothing.
‘I don’t frigging believe it. We don’t have any sodding water now.’ She raised her eyes heavenward. ‘Please God, please tell me that I don’t have to go down to that man’s house again.’
She counted to three and twisted the cold tap again, to no avail.
‘That’s it. I’ve had it. If he thinks he can get away with charging us all this money for a stupid house with no stupid water he’s got another think coming.’ Lara stomped over to the door to put on her shoes, and then she stopped. ‘I can’t. I can’t go down and see him. I might be tempted to breathe fire on him.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Clare, smiling at the image of Lara incinerating Gene Hathersage with dragon breath.
‘Thank you,’ said Lara, very happy to be relieved of seeing that damned man again.
Clare set off and shut the door behind her, but the latch didn’t catch and it swung open again. Lara didn’t bother to shut it. The day was warm and the air was nice and fresh as it drifted into the kitchen. She wished it could blow into her ear, collect up all the rubbish in her head, and blast it out of the other ear.
Lara’s spirits were in a dip today. After Clare had woken her up, she had fallen back into another sleep and had the most awful dream about James. In it, he was holding her at arm’s length and telling her all the ways in which she was inferior to Tianne. She wasn’t as intelligent, her hair wasn’t as long and it was the wrong colour, and she was soooo much older. Behind her, Tianne, who in the dream was Keira Knightly, and Keely were laughing hard at everything James was saying to the extent that they were bent double. ‘I’m just saying this for your own good,’ James kept repeating as he reeled off another list of her inadequacies, and however much Lara tried to get nearer to him, to be held against his chest, his arms wouldn’t bend. She had woken up in tears on the sofa, feeling as if she had been run over by a steamroller.
More than anything she wanted to hear his voice. She wanted to make a lie of that dream and hear him say that he missed her and wanted her back. She wanted his arms around her and for it to feel like the first time they wrapped around her. She remembered it exactly: they had just come out of a restaurant on their first date and the cold air of the night had blasted them like a machine gun.
‘Come here,’ he had said and pulled her close to him. Then, just as her brain started smiling with pleasure, he made it faint with ecstasy by tilting up her chin and kissing her masterfully on the lips.
It was all gone, though, smashed with a big hammer. She would never be able to clear her head of that picture of him and Tianne on the bed.
‘Fuck you, James Galsworthy,’ she said aloud. It felt good, cathartic, to say his name wrapped in profanities. So she said it louder. ‘Fuck you, bastard.’ And louder. ‘Fuck you, sodding bastard sodding prick-face shithouse tossing wanker knobhead penis.’
‘Er, Lara.’
She turned round to see Clare standing there, with the saturnine figure of Gene Hathersage darkening the doorway. From the amused glint in his eye, he appeared to be enjoying the foul-mouthed floor show.
‘I met Mr Hathersage outside. He was just coming up to tell us that the water was off for half an hour in the whole village,’ said Clare, cringing for her friend.
‘I’ll be off, then,’ said Gene Hathersage, a big fat smirk apparent under his mad beard, Lara noticed. His face wanted to make her swear even louder.
Clare shut the door and walked over to Lara with a look of great concern. ‘Are you okay, Lars?’
‘The Tourettes, you mean?’ No, Clare, I’m not. I’m hurting, I’m confused, I’m lost. ‘Yeah, co
urse I am. I was just checking out the acoustics in the cottage.’
‘I didn’t know you could swear like that.’
‘Neither did I .’
‘Seriously, are you okay?’ Clare looked concerned.
‘I’m fine. Sort of. Oh, I don’t know, Clare,’ said Lara, dropping down onto a chair at the thick pine-topped table and letting her shoulders slump as if she were deflating. ‘Do you ever feel that you are on a treadmill and daren’t get off because if you do you’ll realize you’ve been on the wrong one?’
Clare opened her mouth to answer: All the time, Lars, all the fucking time.
‘Oh, ignore me.’ Lara shook her head as if trying to whip up some sense in it. She was being a miserable cow and Clare didn’t deserve to listen to her woes. She put the stopper back in her bottle and clapped her hands. ‘How about I come with you and take a swim in your lovely lagoon?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Clare, her eyes gleaming with pleasure. ‘That would be fabulous.’
‘Jesus Christ, Clare,’ said Lara, shining one of the BOGOF torches down the steps. ‘Are there even more steps than there were before?’
‘Oh, stop moaning. We’re nearly there.’
‘Is there a stairlift?’
Clare laughed. ‘Think how much good it’s doing your leg muscles.’
‘It’s killing my heart though.’
Clare stepped down the last turn. ‘Look, we’re here.’
‘Oh, my. It really is lovely, isn’t it,’ said Lara. She was looking forward to getting into the water. She only wished she could get as much out of swimming as Clare did.
When she slipped into the warm water she sighed with delight. ‘Oh, yes, this is definitely worth the ordeal by stairs. It’s nearly as nice as the pool at the Wellem Spa.’ She winked over at Clare.
‘It’s far better,’ came the answer just before Clare dived down into the lagoon. The water was gin-clear and so very deep.
Lara didn’t take up Clare’s invitation to swim over to the front of the cave and out into the open sea with her. She wasn’t as strong a swimmer as Clare and was happy enough staying in the warm waters of the lagoon. After half an hour, Lara got out and sat on a rock to dry herself off. She was so glad she had ventured down to Clare’s secret watery place. She could understand why her friend was so delighted with her find.
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