by Jane Lark
‘Or scary… I’m probably as scared as you were of that cliff. What if she hates it, hates me?’
‘Kids are hard not to impress.’
‘I hope so. But I don’t have any safety harness.’
‘Her mother is on the end of a phone…’
‘Yes, I suppose so, but I don’t want to use that get-out.’
She smiled. ‘No, you wouldn’t… But you’ll be in control, you’ll be fine.’
My gaze travelled down Ivy’s body, then up again. ‘Did you dress up for me, or were you planning on going out and I stopped you?’ My lust devil was definitely not dead, not for her. She had on a silver dress that slipped off one shoulder at an angle, and the hem was also on an angle, rising up to show an awful lot of thigh coated in that black starry stocking.
She pulled her hat off and threw it on a desk. She’d done her hair too, curled it so the curls fell in a less-cluttered cloud of mauve. ‘I was going to my best friend’s party, but her boyfriend, Steve, is Rick’s best friend, and she rang me an hour ago to say don’t come. Apparently Rick has been a pain in the arse for everyone. Even Mum is on my side now. He got cross with her at Christmas when she told him there was no way she could change my mind, it had to be my choice. She said he expected her to ground me like I was a kid unless I took him back. I think he said some horrible things. She’s not speaking to him any more, and so my parents have fallen out with his parents.’
‘It’s all been kicking off, then, while you had your phone turned off.’
‘It sounds like it. Milly, my best friend, said Steve thinks if I go tonight Rick will make a scene. He’s been around there every night since Christmas trying to find out from Milly what I’ve been doing and why I haven’t answered his calls.’
‘Are you okay about not going to their party?’
‘Yes. But it was nice to hear your voice. I thought I was going to end up watching the telly. How dull is that for New Year’s Eve?’
I smiled. ‘Dull. I never watch TV.’ I turned and picked up one of the bottles of ale I’d left on the reception desk. I don’t know why I’d chosen to buy ale, I didn’t drink it very often – but I’d been drinking it all week with her.
I flipped off the lid with a cheap bottle opener I’d bought to accompany them and held it out to her.
She took it. ‘I’d already guessed you never watch TV. Do you even own one in London? You never had one up there, either in the house or in the cottage.’
‘I do own one in London. Sharon has one. I haven’t got one in the place I’m in now. I can’t concentrate on TV – my brain is too busy thinking about work, or whatever comes next.’
She looked hard into my eyes for a moment. ‘Have you been smoking a joint?’
‘A couple, but over an hour ago. Why?’
‘Because your pupils are dilated.’
‘Are they…’ I smiled at her; she’d probably been looking up FRANK since we’d got back; what did that scary grass do to me? ‘Let’s sit in my office.’
‘And what?’ She looked wary of me.
‘Talk, maybe… Look at London…’
I held my hand out for her to walk ahead of me. This may have been a bad idea, asking her here. It was going to make things a hundred times harder when we had to work together the day after tomorrow. It had been selfish taking Ivy away. I was still being selfish.
Sharon had yelled at me numerous times in the last few months that I was a selfish bastard because I’d fucked off and taken all my money and her free ticket to a good time with me. That hadn’t been selfish. But Ivy should be yelling it at me right now – she had good cause.
If I hadn’t asked her, though, she’d be at her place, alone.
I sat on the desk and slid back on it, with my legs dangling from the knee. She leaned her bottom against it and looked out over London.
We talked then, about nothing and everything. We said more about ourselves than we’d probably said in the whole time we were away, while the cannabis ebbed from my blood. We didn’t drink much, either. It was like catching up with a friend, chatting over a drink.
But then I turned and looked at my phone, it was nearly midnight. I found a radio app and we left it playing on a show that would do the countdown.
When we heard Big Ben’s first chime, it silenced our conversation, and we looked at one another counting the chimes as they rang-out.
‘Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.’ Midnight became the first minute of the new year!
The first fireworks boomed into the air, a splendour of colours, red, white and blue. My arm wrapped around Ivy’s shoulders as the fireworks continued, explosion after explosion, while my phone played out the music they were erupting to. Colour filled the night sky above London, bright and bold, and when the last firework died out and fell, I turned to Ivy. ‘Happy New Year.’
‘Happy New Year.’
I pressed my lips to hers and she leaned her body up against mine. My tongue slipped into her mouth and her fingers gripped my bum through my jeans. My hands slid down to grip her bottom cheeks through the cheap, thin fabric of her dress.
In the other room her phone rang out. We broke apart and she ran to answer it.
I heard her say, ‘Happy New Year…’ I didn’t listen to her conversation beyond that, I turned my phone on to music and put Calvin Harris’s album, Motion on. That wasn’t breakup music.
She came back in holding her phone, by her side. ‘My mum – she always calls me at midnight for New Year’s.’
‘I’d ring Daisy, but she’ll probably be in bed—’
‘There’ll be lots of years to call her at midnight.’
Oh my God, a vision of the future played out before me, of me calling Daisy when I was old, when she was my age. I couldn’t imagine where I’d be then? For the first time in my life I had no idea what the future was for me. The box of my life, that fate had shaken up, had left everything out of place this year – last year. I’d always had a plan, a vision I was working to. Now all I knew was I wanted Daisy in my life, but I couldn’t see how that would fit with anything else.
I gripped Ivy’s hand and pulled her close again. She put her phone down on the desk and then her hand came up to my neck and we carried on from where we’d stopped.
I didn’t try to take her dress off, just slid it up and pushed down her thong, while our lips remained locked. Her thong fell on the floor and she unravelled her feet and high-heeled shoes from it, then I lifted her on to my desk, undid my jeans, slid my boxers down to my thighs and pressed into her as I kept kissing her. We kissed the whole time as I pressed into her over and over, while her hands ran over my hair and gripped at my hips and my bare bottom.
I’d imagined having sex with her in here. But I’d imagined her bent over the desk and I’d never imagined it would feel like this.
Her fingers gripped the back of my neck and my bum cheek while she kissed me like her life depended on it. I felt as if I depended on it and when she came I didn’t even try to fight her body’s call, my orgasm piled in on me, catching me in its white foam as if I’d been in the tunnel of one of those massive Hawaiian waves and it had collapsed on me. I sighed into her mouth, then breathed in the breath she breathed out.
Heady.
Her phone rang.
I was still inside her. I slipped out of her and started sorting myself out as she picked up her phone. She didn’t answer it. ‘It’s Rick.’
Instinctively I snatched the fucking thing out of her hand and pressed the answer icon. ‘Hey, mate. Fuck off. Can’t you get the message? She’s moved on. She doesn’t want to talk to you.’ I didn’t wait for his answer – I ended the call and threw her phone down.
‘Jack!’ She yelled at me, but then she laughed and then she took a breath as though she didn’t know what to do. ‘He’ll know I’m with you.’
‘He won’t, he won’t know it was me. But hopefully it’ll get him off your back.’
Her eyes said she was still deciding if that was a good thing as she pulle
d her dress down.
I moved between her parted legs again before she could jump down to get her thong. My hands settled on her thighs. ‘We can’t go back to mine, I’m sorry, Sharon’s probably having the place watched to get more evidence for her divorce claim. But what about going back to yours?’
Her lips twisted up, in an uncertain look. But she answered, ‘If you want.’
‘I want.’
‘Alright. But you’ll have to bring the ale, I haven’t got anything in.’ I moved back and let her slide off the desk. She bent and picked up her thong, then slid it on awkwardly over the top of her high-heeled shoes. She picked up her phone then and turned it off when she walked out of the office ahead of me.
She glanced back over her shoulder. ‘You do realise my place is one room with a kitchen in it, and a shower room attached and I only have a single bed. You’re leaving all your luxury behind. You don’t pay me enough to have any of that.’
‘Then maybe I owe you a pay rise.’
‘No way. That would be paying me for sex … I AM NOT a prostitute, Jack.’
‘I know. I didn’t mean it like that. It was a throwaway comment.’
She turned around and waited ‘til I caught up the couple of steps between us. I thought we were going back to the prostitute conversation, but instead she gripped my shirt either side of my waist and pressed a quick kiss on my lips, then looked into my eyes, trying to judge my thoughts. ‘It’s no big deal. But for the record, I earn what I should for my job. I’ll work my way up to better pay, not earn it in bed with you.’
I nodded at her, then laughed. She was so different to Sharon.
Chapter 8
January the 1st
My phone vibrated on the the chest beside my bed. ‘Hi Mil—’
‘Ivy, you sneak. Who are you seeing? Rick told Steve he rang you last night and a guy answered your mobile.’
I took a breath to answer Milly, but I didn’t get a word out.
‘Why haven’t you told me? Who is he? Where did you meet him? Are you sleeping with him? Is he fit? What does he look like?’ The barrage of questions finally dried.
‘Which question do you want me to answer first?’
‘Are you sleeping with him?’
‘Yes…’ The word came out on a sigh of memory. I was still in bed, and my sheet was warm and creased from where the two of us had squashed up in my bed. We’d had sex and then he’d slept here. The smell of his aftershave lingered on the pillow.
‘Oh my God, you whore!’ Milly laughed. ‘It’s only been weeks.’
‘I know, for God’s sake don’t tell Rick. Mum said he was acting weird enough over Christmas.’
‘He was weird last night, crying into his lager and staring at his phone all night.’
‘He wasn’t just staring into his phone – he texted me ten times and then he rang at about quarter to one in the morning.’
‘When he left here… Well, now Steve has taken him out, to take his mind off you, and I’m sitting here on my own. Come over and you can tell me all about this new fella. Is he fit?’
‘Oh God, so fit … What other question did you ask? Oh yeah, and the sex is amazing… I spent Christmas with him too, and it’s been the best time ever. He makes me feel alive, Milly. I’ve never felt like this.’
‘You have to come over and tell me!’
‘I’ll be an hour. I have to get dressed first.’
‘You aren’t in bed with him now?’
‘No. He left about two hours ago. He had somewhere to go.’
‘He’s not a player.’
‘No, or maybe he is, but I know where he had to go, he wasn’t running out on me. I’ll tell you all about him when I get to yours.’ I wouldn’t tell her everything, though. I was keeping Jack’s identity my secret.
‘Okay. See you soon.’
‘Yeah. See you soon.’
When I walked through the revolving doors into the ground-floor reception at work, the bass rhythm in my chest lifted to a heavy thudding sound. It made me think of the Arctic Monkeys’ album, which had been Jack’s sex soundtrack most of the time we’d been away.
When I walked up the stairs the memory of the music made me recall some of the explicit details of the sex it had accompanied.
But I’d thought about the sex all the way into work too and it had been really hot on the cramped rush-hour tube train. I’d been sweating inside my coat, and turned on, recalling all the stuff Jack and I had got up to. How was I going to look at him today and act as though it hadn’t happened?
As I reached the office door, my heart beat manically: so fast I felt as if I’d run to work. I took a breath but the air wouldn’t go into my lungs. Giving in to panic wasn’t going to make this easier. I could’ve called in sick, but that would’ve only delayed the inevitable. If I still wanted my job I had to do this.
I wish he’d talked about work before he’d left yesterday. He was the boss, he had to play the lead in this, and he could have said I’ll see you at work and smile at you to say hi – or something like that, so I felt easier.
I felt embarrassed, terrified and awkward. It was like this was my first day again – only a thousand times worse. Because he hadn’t said anything.
‘Morning, Ivy. Did you have a good holiday?’ Tina greeted me as she always did, like she did everyone when they walked through the door.
‘Yes, it was okay. You…’ I bet I blushed as memories of how okay it had been tumbled around in my head.
‘Really good, thanks. But here we are back at work, and it’s a new year.’
‘Yeah.’ A new year. A new start. ‘Happy New Year.’
‘Happy New Year,’ she acknowledged.
I took my coat, scarf and the hat Jack had bought me off and noticed he was already in his office. I tried not to look. I couldn’t remember how to naturally glance his way. Yet I’d watched him loads before we’d snuck off and been naughty together. Instead I stared bizarrely at the coat rack, hanging everything carefully.
My heart dropped to my tummy and bile gathered in my throat when I turned around. In my head the whole room watched me. Of course, no one was watching, not even Jack. I didn’t even know if he knew I was here yet, and if he did know, I didn’t know if he cared.
When we’d agreed on our naughty, nasty sex expedition, he’d said we’d come back and act like normal, and while we were away he’d focused on the moment, not the future – there had been no other conversations to use as a compass to help me navigate this. From what we’d agreed, he was supposed to be nothing but my boss today. But on New Year’s Eve he’d blurred the boundaries, he’d asked me up here, and we’d had sex in his office and then he’d spent the night in my bed… and what now? I hadn’t heard from him since he’d left yesterday.
I sighed when I sat down and turned my laptop on.
‘Happy New Year,’ Phil said across the desk.
I looked up. ‘Happy New Year.’ Then I looked at Mary, who sat next to me. ‘You too, Mary. Did you both have a good time?’
Phil was replying when Tina’s phone rang on an internal tone. ‘Hi Jack.’
All my attention was pulled away and my heart pounded. I glanced into his office. I still wasn’t sure if he knew I was here.
‘Yes, okay, sure,’ Tina said.
When she put the phone down she shouted out. ‘Jack wants us all in the creativity room in fifteen! So he said get a drink or have a pee if you need one!’
Half the room laughed, some of the other half groaned. But that was Jack – full-on inappropriate. People stood up to fetch drinks, but then someone suggested a proper coffee run. I didn’t volunteer, and I tried not to look when Tina went into Jack’s office and asked him if he wanted an espresso.
When Tina came back with the coffees and Jack walked out of his office, a shiver ran up my spine. This was too weird.
I stood up when everyone else did and followed him towards the creativity room, picking up my coffee. But my heart raced like he was leading me
by the hand and then backing me on to the cushions in the cottage.
At least when we were in the room I always sat in the same place, so it wasn’t difficult choosing where to sit. But usually through the Monday-morning meetings Jack’s gaze kept catching on mine and he’d give me a quirky little smile. Today when he started the meeting he looked everywhere but at me.
He talked through all the work we had on and made everyone do an update on where they were and say whether they needed any support. I thought he would look at me and ask about the Berkeley account, but he didn’t ask about it and all the stuff I’d been working on was still all over the wall behind his head. Surely that wasn’t just strange to me.
‘So that’s it, then. Everyone get to it. New year, new start and all that jazz.’
I’d used that phrase in my head an hour ago. I hated it now. New year, new start… What did he mean by it? That I was forgotten – over and done with.
The prick.
Anger bubbled up when I left the meeting. I probably had volcano spume coming out of my head when I sat down at my desk. Phil came to stand by me a couple of minutes later.
I was working out a way to go into Jack’s office and tear up at him.
Phil leaned on my desk and spoke in a quiet voice. ‘Jack just asked me to manage the Berkeley account with you—’
‘What? Why? I’m managing it. He said I could. It’s my start-up account.’
‘I know. I’m not taking it off you. He just said would you report to me about it, not him. He’s busy with the Mack’s account.’
He wasn’t fucking busy! I glanced into his office. If he hadn’t been on the phone I’d have gone in there and made a huge scene that would’ve given us away. But he was on the phone. Instead I bit my lip, looked at Phil and nodded.
It meant Phil would be asked to update next Monday. It meant I had no good reason to talk to Jack at work.
‘I saw all the stuff on the wall in there. It looks like you’ve some ideas forming if you want to talk about them…’
‘No.’ I couldn’t talk to anyone right now. I swallowed back my anger. ‘The plans aren’t ready yet. I’m still coming up with ideas.’
