by Heidi Rice
She tapped on the door and pulled it open.
Art sat on the bed, wittling a piece of wood with a wicked-looking knife she’d seen him use before. Her heart leapt at the sight of those large competent hands on the wood, the long scar she’d seen sewn up three months ago. A yearning ache pulsed deep in her abdomen.
He dumped the knife and the piece he was carving on the bedside table. But didn’t move towards her.
‘Ellie? What are you doing here?’ he said.
He sounded surprised to see her. Her heartbeat leapt, but she ignored it.
She was here now, and he didn’t look unhappy to see her, that was the main thing. ‘I thought we had a date?’ she said.
He got off the bed, but instead of approaching her, or smiling, he sent her the same blank look he’d sent her that afternoon before he’d stalked off after Dan’s arrival.
‘I didn’t think you’d keep it,’ he said.
Why did he look so tense? Of course, Dan. The fact of Dan, she had some explaining to do about that, which was precisely why she was here.
Get on with it then.
‘We’re separated, Art. We’ve been officially separated for over three months. I didn’t invite him here and I don’t want him here. He has no claim on me. And we both know that.’
‘You’ve put him up in Jacob’s old room.’
How did Art know that? ‘I know, it’s awkward, I realise that. And don’t worry, he’s going to a hotel tomorrow.’ She was also going to start the divorce proceedings. She’d held off on that until her return to Orchard Harbor – stupidly giving Dan false expectations in the process. But how could she have known Chelsea’s baby would end up being a phantom pregnancy? There was no point in waiting any longer, especially now there might be other possibilities. Alternatives to returning to Orchard Harbor once the summer was over. ‘But I didn’t come here just to talk about him, I came to talk about—’
‘I’m not worried,’ he interrupted her.
‘What?’ she said, surprised by the flat tone.
‘I’m not worried. What you do with your husband is your business.’
‘He’s not my husband.’ Why were they still talking about Dan, when she wanted to talk about them? About the possibilities she hadn’t even allowed herself to consider until this afternoon? ‘Not really.’
He shrugged, propping his backside on the bunk and crossing his arms over his chest. ‘This has got a lot more complicated than it was meant to be.’
‘Yes, I know. That’s why I wanted to see you. To talk to you.’ She crossed the small space, suddenly desperate to touch him. To see that lazy smile she’d become a little bit addicted to. Why did he seem so distant all of a sudden? This wasn’t the man who had leapt on her every night as soon as she arrived. Who hadn’t been able to tear her clothes off fast enough. Obviously Dan being here made her continued relationship with Art more problematic. But surely not that problematic. Dan had been her husband in little more than name for a very long time. She didn’t owe him any loyalty and she wanted Art to know that.
But how could he, when she’d never told him anything about Dan? She sucked in a careful breath. She had to tell him all of it. Not just her situation with Dan now, but what a pathetic doormat she’d been during most of her marriage.
‘Dan started cheating on me about two years after we were married.’ She swallowed down the wave of humiliation. This needed to be said, so Art would know her relationship with Dan had been over long before she’d come to Willow Tree Farm. ‘And he never stopped. I put up with it, because I think I had some warped idea that I could be better than my mum, that by not running from a bad marriage I could somehow make it better. I was wrong.’
Art raised a hand, palm up. ‘Ellie, that’s sad and the guy seems like a dick. But I don’t see how it’s any of my business.’
You don’t?
The flat tone, the dispassionate look on his face choked the rest of the agonising confession off in her throat. She tried to make sense of his attitude.
Why should she be hurt by his reaction? It shouldn’t feel like a blow. She was being paranoid. All he was saying was that her relationship with Dan had no bearing on his relationship with her.
‘You’re right. Of course, you’re right. And really I’m not here to talk about him. What I want to talk about is us.’
There, she’d finally said it, but instead of looking pleased, or even interested, his face remained blank. ‘What us? You mean the sex?’
‘No, not the sex, well, not just the sex, I mean…’ She was babbling and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to get her thoughts to join up properly, the blank look on his face making the fear suddenly huge. And all-consuming. What was happening here? Because this is not how she had imagined this going, during the five hours she’d been waiting to talk to Art.
Then he reached down, gripped the hem of his T-shirt and yanked it over his head. The sight of his chest, deeply tanned, the muscles bunching in his pecs as he flung away the shirt, had an inevitable effect. Her sex warmed, the throb of arousal thick and potent. But much more potent was the throb of hurt when he unhooked the button fly on his jeans. ‘Come on then, let’s get on with it. We haven’t got all night.’
‘What are you doing?’ she said, even though it was obvious.
He glanced up, his fingers pausing on his flies, the penetrating stare one she recognised, from nineteen summers ago. ‘Getting naked, that’s what you’re here for, right? A guaranteed orgasm?’
The phrase that they had laughed about once sounded flat and accusatory now.
‘No, I didn’t. I came to talk to you,’ she said.
‘But we don’t talk, do we? All we do is shag.’ Art didn’t sound dispassionate any more, he sounded annoyed.
The humiliation became so huge it started to choke off her air supply.
‘But I thought… this afternoon.’
‘What about this afternoon?’ he said, as if she were talking in Mandarin.
The crippling sense of confusion and shame was nothing to the agony eating away at her chest.
All those things she’d come to admire about him so much – his strength, his stoicism, his protectiveness – none of it mattered, because as far as he was concerned, the only thing they’d ever actually shared was sex.
How could she have lost sight of that so easily? Was it the trauma of Dan’s surprise appearance? The confidences they’d shared at the pond that afternoon? Confidences that had clearly meant much more to her than they had meant to him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice coming from so far away it felt as if she were on Mars.
He stared. ‘What are you sorry for?’
She opened her mouth, but she had no idea where to even start – the bankrupt apology sitting like a lump of coal on her tongue.
She felt as if she’d been slammed back in time nineteen years, because Art had looked as indifferent then as he appeared now.
He’d made her feel so small and insignificant and stupid that day. And she felt the same now. What she’d thought had been a friendship had never been more than a convenient hook-up – two weeks of convenient hook-ups – for him.
‘What are you sorry for, Ellie?’ he asked again. Patient, persuasive and utterly disinterested.
She pushed the memory back into the recesses of her brain marked ‘never going there again’.
‘I should go.’ She wanted to rail against him, to call him out for being such a bastard again. But what would be the point? She’d only make herself look even more pathetic.
It had been a mistake to come here, a mistake to think that this was anything more than what it was. A mistake that she would have to learn to live with. Again. But one thing she wasn’t going to do was give him the satisfaction of knowing a second time how much he’d hurt her.
‘Ellie, wait,’ he grasped her arm, but she shrugged off his hold, the touch of his fingers almost more than she could bear.
She had to get out of here now. Before s
he did something really idiotic like burst into tears – or punch him.
‘Don’t go off in a huff,’ he said.
She blinked furiously before turning towards him, locking her jaw to keep her face as calm and dispassionate as his.
‘I’m not in a huff.’ Because I’d have to care about you to do that. And I refuse to do that. Any more than you obviously care about me. ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be shagging each other while my husband’s here.’
She rushed down the stairs of the caravan and out into the night, all her beautiful, inspiring, empowering thoughts about maybe considering making a life here for herself and her son scattered at her feet like mud-soaked confetti.
It started to rain as she made her way back through the woods, refusing to look back, refusing to care. Art Dalton had only gone and shattered her a second time. But, worst of all, she’d let him.
*
Art watched Ellie dash down the side of the hill towards the tree line, the boulder on his chest growing to the size of an asteroid. He welcomed the pain, because at least it took the edge off the anger that had been driving him ever since her picture-perfect husband had stepped out of his Audi A6 convertible and the sunshine had glinted off the bastard’s designer sunglasses.
What had she expected him to say, for fuck’s sake? She said she was getting a divorce? That the guy had cheated on her all through their marriage. Which probably explained why Art had been itching to punch the bastard the minute he’d stepped out of the car. But how could he punch her husband? When he was nothing more than the rebound guy. Ellie’s casual sex fling. The guaranteed orgasm who got her rocks off each night, but who she didn’t even want anyone to know was her lover?
Every sigh and moan, every single sweet sob she’d uttered in his arms had come back to torture him as he’d trudged through the farmyard towards his workshop and spent the day and most of the evening slapping on another two coats of varnish the caravan didn’t even need, just so he could have something to do with his hands that didn’t involve putting his fingers round her husband’s neck and squeezing the life out of him.
She was sorry. For what, exactly? Sorry for looking at him like he meant something this afternoon? Sorry for getting involved in his daughter’s life without asking? Sorry for making him believe that just for a second he’d met someone who might actually care enough about him not to treat him like a piece of disposal rubbish, the way his mother had treated him? The way Alicia had treated him by always putting her next fix above him and their child?
He thumped the door of the caravan closed and finished undoing the buttons on his fly. After kicking off his boots and his jeans, he stretched out on the bunk.
His gaze roamed over the illustration of dragons and dwarves, ogres and elves.
It was his own stupid fault. Letting himself get spellbound by the sex and the hint of companionship into believing in a dopey romantic fairy tale every bit as fanciful as the one he’d painted years ago. He’d stopped believing in that shit as a seven-year-old kid, when he’d tried to protect Laura from a man who treated her like crap but whom she had loved more than she had ever loved him.
In the last couple of weeks, hell, months, while he’d watched Ellie work her butt off to make the shop a success, while he’d seen her connect not just with him, but with his daughter and her mother and with all the other co-op residents he’d started buying into the idea that he could make that fairy tale a reality without even being aware of it. That somehow she might stay, if not for him, then at least for her mum and the shop – and he’d finally admitted it to himself the moment her husband had stepped out of his Audi.
Because all he’d been able to think for a split second was that he wanted Ellie to stay. That he wanted her to choose him.
But why would she – when he had never been more than rebound guy? And why would he even want her to?
He leant over to blow out the lantern and let the darkness engulf him.
He was much better off without her. Him and Toto both. Why complicate their lives just for the sake of a great shag?
Especially as Ellie didn’t even want to do that any more.
Fine by him.
But, as he lay in the bunk, the asteroid crushing his chest turned into a supernova, sucking all his anger and frustration into a hollow aching void in the pit of his stomach.
*
‘Ellie, is everything OK?’
Dee stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding one of her teapots.
Ellie toed off her wellington boots in the hallway. What was her mother doing in the kitchen? Why hadn’t she gone to bed? ‘Yes, I’m fine, I just…’ What? The raft of lame explanations spun through her head.
She just wanted to get back to her room. And wallow in her misery. She felt like she was fourteen years old again. Fragile and pathetic. And she really wasn’t.
She’d made a mistake. A stupid, romantic mistake. That was all. Art wasn’t her friend, her soul mate. They’d just been having insanely great sex for two solid weeks. Plus, she’d been working herself to the bone for three months, dealing with a divorce, and then Dan had arrived out of the blue and tipped her over into insanity.
It all made perfect sense. Or it would in the morning, once she’d taken a sleeping pill, or possibly four, and got a decent night’s sleep for a change.
‘I didn’t expect you back so soon,’ her mother said, her voice gentle.
‘What?’ Ellie said, the idiotic tears that she refused to shed clogging her throat.
‘You don’t usually get back from Art’s caravan before 2 a.m.’
She just stared at her mother, the wellington boot she’d taken off fell over and hit the hall floor with a loud thump. ‘I…’ What did she say? Her mother knew. About her and Art. And had obviously known for quite a while.
She wasn’t sure what was worse – that she’d lied about it, that she’d been found out, or that it didn’t matter any more. Because she would never be making that 2 a.m. dash back through the woods again. Everything had turned upside down and inside out in the space of one evening. She wanted that sense of excitement and exhilaration back – to cover up the huge gaping hole in her chest, that choking sense of confusion, which felt as if it was never going to go away again.
Her mother lifted the teapot. ‘Why don’t you come into the kitchen and have a cup of chamomile tea.’
She didn’t want to talk to her mother about Art. Because it would just make her feel like more of a failure. And a nincompoop. For investing too much in a summer sex fling.
However close she and Dee had become in the last three months, however much of their relationship they’d managed to repair, talking to her mum about her sex life felt like a step too far.
Was that another reason why she’d been so determined to keep her relationship with Art a secret? Because she did not want to invite this sort of conversation? But, as her mother stood waiting for her response, Ellie stalled, too tired and dispirited to come up with another lame excuse. So instead of escaping upstairs, she nodded and trailed after her mum to sit down at the kitchen table.
‘Why don’t you have a slice of cake?’ Dee placed the remnants of the cake they’d eaten that afternoon when Dan had arrived onto the table and lifted the perspex cover.
Ellie shook her head, utterly unable to speak.
Dee sliced off a chunk of the sticky toffee and plopped it on the plate. Then placed it in front of her. ‘There’s nothing much a sugar rush won’t cure,’ she said.
Ellie nodded mutely, unconvinced, as she fidgeted with a few of the crumbs that had fallen onto the table.
She could hear her mother moving around the kitchen, filling the kettle, placing it on the Aga hob, going to the pantry to get the tin of dried chamomile flowers that grew wild in the hedgerows, the gush of water as she filled the kettle, the whistle of steam as the kettle boiled. But the sounds felt muffled by the pain in her sinuses, and the pounding in her ears.
‘I take it Art d
ecided to stay in the caravan tonight?’ her mother said.
Ellie’s gaze fixed on the caramelised almonds and fruit peel on the top of Dee’s cake. She blinked, trying to dispel the mist forming in front of her eyes.
Then Dee’s arms were around her, holding her head to the soft cotton of her lavender-scented T-shirt.
‘Just cry, Ellie, don’t hold it in.’
They came slowly at first, burning down her cheeks, and then it felt like a tsunami of choking sobs – a wild and turbulent storm wrenched from deep down inside her.
At last she stopped shaking, and Dee gripped her shoulders and drew her gently away. She pulled a tissue out of the pocket of the faded jeans she wore and dabbed at Ellie’s cheeks.
‘Better?’ she said.
‘Not much.’
Dee gave a weary chuckle. ‘I agree. I’ve always thought crying is overrated. I’ve done enough of it since Pam died, and it usually just makes me feel more crap.’
Ellie had to agree, finding the observation stupidly comforting.
Dee levered herself up. She took a strainer from the kitchen drawer, then poured Ellie a mug of the fragrant brew and passed it to her. ‘Let’s try this next then.’
Feeling weak and still shaky, and not even sure where the storm of tears had come from, or what they were for, Ellie picked the mug up and blew on the tea. She took a cautious sip of the chamomile, glad of her mother’s presence even though she still had no idea what to say to her.
‘How long have you known?’ she asked at last, because it seemed like the obvious question.
Dee smiled. ‘About you and Art? Did it start about a fortnight ago?’
Ellie put the mug down. ‘You’ve known all along? Terrific.’ She scowled into her mug. ‘Now I feel ridiculous as well as mortified.’
