by Susan Lewis
‘No, he’s hoping to be back by nine, and God knows I get to see little enough of him as it is. But give Elaine and Don my love.’
Carla would probably have forgotten about the conversation then had she not, to her astonishment, bumped into Elaine on the King’s Road a couple of hours later. Carla had just finished measuring up at the new flat, and had popped into the Conran Market to get a few supplies before heading home. Elaine, it seemed, had been carrying out the very same errand.
‘But aren’t you having dinner with Chrissie?’ Carla said, looking at the delicious deli-prepared meals in Elaine’s basket.
‘No. What makes you say that?’ Elaine replied, looking genuinely confused. Then, clapping a hand to her head, ‘My God, don’t tell me I arranged it and then forgot.’
‘I think you must have,’ Carla laughed, ‘because she only told me a couple of hours ago that she was having dinner with you and Don tonight.’
Elaine was shaking her head. ‘You know that’s weird, because I haven’t spoken to her in over a week. Maybe Don arranged it and forgot to tell me.’
‘That’ll probably be it,’ Carla said, lifting an arm to wave down a passing taxi. ‘Anyway, nice seeing you.’
Carla was almost home before she opened up her mobile phone, and without really knowing why, got a number for the Ivy and called it.
Yes, Chrissie Fields was there, they’d get her to come to the phone.
Carla rang off quickly. She didn’t want Chrissie to know she was checking up on her, and why else would she be calling except to say she’d changed her mind and was coming over to join the party. But what party? Who was Chrissie there with, if not Elaine and Don? It was so bizarre to think that Chrissie might have lied, that Carla was already out of the cab and paying the fare before she noticed that the lights were on in the flat. Immediately her heart lightened, for obviously Richard had managed to get home earlier than he’d expected. She was being so keen to see him that the mystery slid effortlessly from her mind as she ran up the stairs to join him.
‘What’s all this?’ she laughed, opening the door to find the table laid out with starched white linen, glinting silver cutlery and flickering candles. ‘And what are you cooking? It smells heavenly.’
‘The meeting got cancelled,’ he told her, coming out of the kitchen to greet her, ‘so I thought I’d give you a treat.’
Tall though she was, Carla always felt deliciously swamped by his superior height, and wonderfully feminine in the encompassing fold of his embrace. ‘Mmmm,’ she murmured after he’d kissed her lingeringly on the mouth, ‘I’ve been thinking about that all day.’
It was all the encouragement he needed to kiss her again.
‘You know I hate it so much when you go away,’ she told him, feeling incredibly turned on, ‘but I can’t help wondering if that’s what keeps it so good.’
His eyebrows arched. ‘You think we couldn’t keep it up all the time,’ he teased.
‘Actually, I think we could,’ she replied, and moaned softly as he pressed his erection against her. Then, easing gently out of his arms, she went to take off her coat and change into something a little more appealing than the navy sweatshirt and jeans she’d been in all day.
‘How’s this?’ she said, appearing at the kitchen door a little while later.
He glanced up from the stove, and the look that came into his eyes when he saw her almost melted her bones. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he murmured. And turning off the gas he came towards her, his eyes burning with desire as they swept over the beauty of her body whose only covering was the same shimmeringly transparent robe she’d worn last night. When he reached her he stood looking down at her, allowing his eyes to speak the words in his heart.
Then he drew her to him, pressing his mouth to hers and pushing his tongue deep inside. ‘Can dinner wait?’ she asked hoarsely.
‘Oh yes,’ he answered, and taking her hand he led her back into the bedroom, where she’d already laid out the special sheets they used for this particular kind of love.
After watching her robe slip to the floor, he undressed himself too, then lying her down on the bed he took a long, agonizingly sweet time to coat her entire body in one of the thick, perfumed oils he’d brought back from the East. His hands were hard, and soft, probing and demanding, and maddeningly elusive to the parts she most wanted him to touch. Her nipples throbbed and ached for his fingers; her legs longed to open so that he could fill her full of himself. But it was an almost unendurable time before he finally began the most intimate part of the massage. And when at last her legs were apart and he was rubbing her lovingly with oil, she started to climax with such slow and sensuous contractions that they seemed to spread their pleasure to the very depths of her body and beyond.
Then he was lying beside her, holding her tightly in his arms. He was so hard that she knew if she touched him he would come. And he wasn’t ready to yet. She wasn’t ready for him to, either. And rolling him on to his back, she spread his arms first, then his legs and after tying his wrists and ankles to each of the bedposts, she began rubbing her body all over his, until he too was covered in the thick, musky oil. Then she knelt over him and gripped the head rail, as she rubbed the flavoured oil he’d massaged between her legs over his face. His tongue moved into her, sharply, commandingly, and she cried out for more – and more.
Then she moved off him, and went to sit between his legs, facing him. She began to caress and fondle herself, showing him all the ways she liked to be pleased. After a while she removed her fingers from herself, and ran them wetly over his penis, down between his legs, then deep into his anus. His eyes closed in unspeakable ecstasy.
Then she swung herself over him, sat astride him and began to ride him towards a climax that he had no way of stopping or controlling. She knew how desperately he wanted to touch her, and yet how powerfully it turned him on to know he couldn’t. She rode him hard, knowing he was watching his cock plunging into her. He spoke in harsh, crude words that inflamed her further, then, as they both shuddered into the throes of a tremendous climax, he spoke the most beautiful, lyrical words of love that she had ever heard. And he continued to recite them, fluidly, passionately, then utterly soothingly, as, exhausted, she lay on his chest and closed her eyes.
She might have slept then, she wasn’t sure, all she knew was the grumbling of his stomach finally reached her and made her laugh. She eased herself gently from him and stood looking down at him.
‘Just think, I could keep you tied up here and never let you go,’ she said.
‘Do you hear me objecting?’
She smiled, then almost said, ‘Do you suppose one day I might regret not doing just that,’ but stopped herself. She had to stop tormenting herself, and him, with so much fear and imagined disaster. If she didn’t, then there was every chance that the power of her own thoughts was going to make it happen. He’d told her that. He’d warned her just how effective thought could be. And she knew it, which was why she had to stop doing it.
After they’d showered, they ate dinner and talked about the new flat, which was so ludicrously expensive she could hardly bring herself to think of the price, for despite her modest success she was really a very long way from being able to afford such an exclusive address. Unlike Richard, who’d inherited a large sum of money when his mother had died, and whose earnings were so far and away above Carla’s that she doubted she’d ever match up.
‘It’s not a contest,’ he told her, when she brought the subject up. ‘It doesn’t matter which of us is putting the most into the flat, we’re both going to be owning one hundred per cent of it. Well, us and the bank.’
‘I know you keep saying that,’ she responded, pausing to take the sliver of duck he was offering her, ‘but you do understand that if …’
‘Carla,’ he interrupted.
‘No, listen. If we can’t get it together with a new series …’
‘I’ll take over the repayments completely,’ he said. ‘Now, when are we going t
o see your family?’
‘The day after tomorrow, I think. I’m trying to push my meeting with Sky on to next week, so we can have a long weekend together. Chrissie’s flying to Zanzibar next Tuesday, so I’ll have to be back in the office by then. Do you know Zanzibar, by the way? Can you give her any contacts?’
‘Never been there,’ he said. ‘But I’ll ask around. Someone’s sure to come up with something. How is she, by the way?’
‘OK. Well, actually, maybe not. I don’t know, something’s going on with her that she’s not telling me about. At least I think there is.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘A couple of things, actually. Rosa and Jilly were talking about her at lunch time, saying she hadn’t been herself lately, which I hadn’t noticed … But then tonight, I think she lied to me about who she’s having dinner with.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘God knows. And, Rosa, in typical Rosa fashion, has put it into my head that she might be ill, though that hardly explains a secret dinner date. The other theory they came up with is that Chrissie’s hitting some kind of mid-life crisis now she’s about to turn forty, and I just couldn’t bear the idea of her going back into one of her depressions.’
‘Forty’s not so tough,’ he commented. ‘Look at me, I’m handling it OK.’
‘Only a man could give that response,’ she admonished. ‘For a woman who wants children and doesn’t have a boyfriend, it’s tough.’
‘What about … What’s-his-name?’
‘Bob. I don’t know what’s happening there, but God forbid she should ever have children with him. Unless she wants to go it alone, of course, because with Bob Simcoe that’s what it would mean.’
He nodded thoughtfully, then, dismissing the subject, he said, ‘Did you give notice on this place yet?’
‘Yep. The inventory’s being done the week we move out. I’ve managed to get some props guys I know to do the move.’
‘We can afford a removal company,’ he reminded her.
‘I know. But I like doing a deal. And these guys need the work. What are the chances of you being here for the move?’
He thought about it. ‘I’d say pretty good. I’m going back in the middle of next week, so I should be out of there by the end of the month.’
Carla’s fork was back on the plate, her heart was in free fall. ‘Next week!’ she cried. ‘Oh Richard, I thought you were going to be here at least a fortnight. I mean, apart from everything else I need you here to help organize things, and to give me support with this transmission issue, and to be there when I’m choosing fabrics and furniture … All right, all right, don’t look at me like that. This Kosovar family’s need is greater than mine. I know that. And you owe them. I just wish … Well, I just wish I could be really bloody selfish for once and say I matter too.’
‘You matter most of all,’ he said, surprised. ‘It’s just that your needs are …’
‘Less urgent, I know. Not even approaching desperate.’
He was smiling, and, resting his chin in his hand, he gazed into her eyes and said, ‘I keep asking myself, how did I ever get so lucky? A woman who understands me, loves me and ties me up and fucks me.’
Picking up her wine she took a sip and said, ‘Yeah, I’d call that lucky.’
‘So when do I get to tie you up and fuck you?’
‘Oh, I’d say, round about …’ She looked at her watch, ‘Now.’
Laughing, he brought her mouth to his and kissed her. Then, reaching out for her, he pulled her on to his lap and held her close as he carried on kissing her.
Later, after they’d made love again, they lay in each other’s arms, talking for a long time about their future, their pasts, and the extraordinary feeling they both had that maybe they’d known each other before, in another life that had somehow bound them together for all eternity.
He was very good at making it all sound credible, and she was always fascinated by the way he could bring the metaphysical to bear over the mundane. After all, she didn’t really love him more than any other woman had loved any other man, it just felt that way. And the feeling that they had arrived on this planet, at this point in time, just to be with each other, was a feeling that millions of other lovers had shared throughout history. She just wished that whenever she compared them to a truly great love story, which she actually believed they were, she didn’t always manage to come up with one that had a tragic end.
‘If you only see things in terms of this life,’ he said, ‘then there can never be anything but a tragic end, because we all die, and on the whole we think of death as tragedy.’
‘What else is it, if you leave someone behind who loves you?’ she asked.
‘Maybe a blessing.’
She shook her head. ‘Never that.’
He smiled, and, cupping her face in his hand, he said, ‘Believe me, there are times, for some, when death is a blessing.’
‘Don’t,’ she whispered, ‘it makes me think of all the terrible things they could do to you, if they caught you, because then yes, death would be a blessing.’
*
Valerie Craig was an attractive woman in her mid-fifties, with dark, bobbed hair, lichen-green eyes and the same startlingly sultry mouth as her daughter’s. Also like Carla, she was five foot eight, and in good shape, though was perhaps a little heavier around the hips, and smaller in the bust. By the time Valerie was twenty-five she’d given birth to all three of her children, Mark first, then Greg, then Carla. Her husband, their father, had vanished with his female boss when Carla was only two years old, so Valerie, with the help of her mother, had brought the children up alone. It had never been easy, mainly because money had always been tight, but they’d managed, and perhaps as a result of the hardship they’d always been an extremely close family. At least until Greg had married Eva, an embarrassing social climber from Essex, who deeply resented Greg’s relationship with his mother. Over the past several years Eva, or Evil, as Mark and Carla preferred to call her, had managed to make life so unbearable whenever she and Greg came to visit, that it was a relief all round when he’d finally stopped bringing her.
Now Greg only ever came for a couple of hours at Christmas, when Valerie insisted they see each other alone in order to avoid the bitter scenes that invariably erupted whenever he, Carla and Mark were in the same room. Spineless was a word that got thrown around a lot during those visits, along with tart, jealousy, bitch, and a whole lot worse. Mark and Carla were extremely protective of their mother, couldn’t bear to think of anything, or anyone hurting her, so it stood to reason that they’d attack Greg and his wife, when it couldn’t do anything but hurt Valerie to be virtually estranged from her youngest son.
Five years ago, just after Mark and Sonya’s second child was born, Valerie had given them her three-bedroomed house on the outskirts of Bath and moved into the tiny cottage she’d grown up in, where her mother, Beatrice, still lived. Granny was everyone’s favourite, for Granny’s love of mischief surpassed even that of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and it was hilarious watching her being scolded by Valerie, or stuffing herself in a cupboard to hide when Maudie Taylor, the nasty old lady with whiskers, came knocking. It had been a great blow to them all when Granny died, but most of all to Valerie, who still missed her sorely and spoke to her, in her mind, all the time. Now Valerie lived alone at the cottage, and for a long time no-one had understood why she stayed, when the village was in the middle of nowhere and Valerie’s part-time work as a nurse in a children’s hospital, and intense studies to become a child psychologist, meant she had to make an eighty-mile round trip into Bristol several times a week. Then one Sunday morning, not long ago, while Carla and Richard were on a romantic weekend break in the Cotswolds, they walked right into the reason why when they went down for breakfast and found Valerie and Graham Foster, the crime writer, on the next table, apparently enjoying a romantic interlude themselves.
Of course they’d all known for ages tha
t Graham had a crush on Valerie, heaven knew she took enough teasing about it, but it had never occurred to Carla that her mother might actually be involved in an affair with a married man. Quel horreur! The woman who had vowed, repeatedly, that she would never do what had been done to her, was actually sleeping with another woman’s husband. However, Graham had been extremely quick to inform Carla and Richard that his wife knew about the affair, and had given it her blessing, so there was no question of deceiving anyone, nor was there any discussion of divorce or marriage, mainly, Valerie insisted, because she’d been a single woman for a long time now, was too used to her independence to give it up, and too afraid that marriage might spoil what she and Graham had.
‘And Betty? She really approves?’ Carla said, stunned that any wife could.
‘Believe it or not, yes,’ Graham smiled, taking Valerie’s hand in his, though he still appeared anxious about what Carla might be thinking.
‘I’ve talked to Betty myself,’ Valerie said, as Carla glanced at Richard to see how he was reacting. ‘I don’t want to go into the intimate details, but rest assured, we wouldn’t be doing this if anyone was getting hurt.’
Looking at Graham’s gentle, concerned eyes, Carla thought she could guess the truth, and her heart went out to him, for Betty was probably one of those women who didn’t enjoy sex, and was only too happy for her husband to seek his pleasures elsewhere. Carla almost hugged him then, for knowing Graham and how honourable and kind he was, he’d probably never been unfaithful before, had no doubt suffered quietly and with his unfailing dignity for years on end, before Valerie had come into his life. And how happy and youthful they looked together now, the two of them. So happy, it almost brought a lump to Carla’s throat.
After that, though Valerie and Graham didn’t exactly flaunt their affair, they no longer tried so hard to hide it, and very soon it was as though Graham had become a member of the family, in much the same way as Richard had.
