by Bankes, Liz
“Finally,” says Cleo as we get to their table. She’s wearing a black loose-knitted sweater that falls off one shoulder and skinny jeans. She pats the seat next to her, and I go to sit down. Suzy and Ben both compliment me on my dress.
“I feel underdressed now!” says Cleo. She pushes a glass of wine toward me. “You look hot.”
As with Jamie, her approval gives me a thrill, and I smile and thank her. But her eyes stay on me a few seconds more, and I feel her questioning me. I try to shut her out and make my face unreadable.
Jamie sits in the seat opposite me. Cleo is talking about her holiday. Her stories about creepy guys following her are making everyone laugh. She’s just so blunt and can completely rip someone to pieces with a few well-chosen, offensive words. Soon I’ve turned to face her and am giving her my full attention, laughing and asking her questions. Despite everything I’ve been doing, I still want her to like me. I don’t want to lose her.
I feel something brushing against my ankle, and I glance up at Jamie. He’s also looking at Cleo. His foot moves slowly up along my calf. I turn to Cleo again but don’t move my legs. I start to tell them about the various awful people we encountered at Dezzie’s birthday. His foot moves farther, exerting a light pressure, which is tantalizing. I struggle to keep my voice even as I feel the pressure on the inside of my thigh and higher.
And then he stops. I swallow at a break in my story and look at him. His eyes flicker over to me for only a second.
I’ve trailed off, and everyone must think I’ve finished my story. Suzy announces that she has to go. Ben, who is possibly a little in love with her, announces that he does too and they can walk out to the parking lot together.
“Oh, good …,” says Suzy. She says good-bye and then starts walking back toward reception at a brisk pace. Ben scrambles after her. So it’s just the three of us. I use the opportunity to go to the bathroom.
I’m just about to leave the stall when I hear someone else come in. I pause for a moment. I know it’s Cleo. She doesn’t go into a stall, but stands waiting outside mine. I take a breath and open the door. She stands there with her arms by her sides and watches me while I wash my hands. I walk up to her, and to try to break the tension, I say, “You okay?” and at that moment she grabs my shoulders and pushes me up against the wall.
She lets go but stands right up close to me. Since she’s taller, my eyes are about level with her lips. But when I look up into her face, I get a shock.
She looks worried.
“You know what I asked you to do?”
I nod.
“So … What happened?”
“Nothing. I mean, he didn’t sleep with anyone or anything. That I know of.”
“No one?”
I shake my head.
Cleo looks around and then bites down on her thumbnail.
“I thought you’d be … I mean, isn’t that a good thing?”
She laughs emptily, still gazing off to the side of me. “It’s not the ones he sleeps with that I need to worry about.”
I feel my stomach lurch. Like her words are digging hooks into me and dragging me out of this dark room I’ve made for myself, where I don’t have to face anyone or acknowledge what I’m doing. I clench my hands into fists.
Cleo turns back to me. She twirls a strand of my hair in her fingers. “It suits you,” she says. I’m looking down at her chest rising and falling.
“Mia, please don’t—” She swallows. The room is charged. Something real has opened up between us, and I fight to shut it down. I don’t reply.
Suddenly she moves her hand back and drops the strand of hair. Her expression has returned to its usual unaffected, bored look.
“Come on,” she says, and we leave.
Jamie is still in his seat when we get back. He has his head thrown back and is staring at the ceiling.
“Jesus, you’ve been in there for about a year.”
“Mia had a bit of”—Cleo gestures to her stomach—“tummy trouble,” she mock-whispers.
“What? No, I—”
“I’ll meet you in the pool house, Jay.”
As she goes, I’m left facing him. His eyebrows are raised and he looks mildly amused at my outrage. “Where will you be?”
I could bow out now. Get a taxi home. Tell Mom and Jeff I decided not to stay at Gabi’s after all. Leave Jamie and Cleo to their twisted relationship and just have my normal daytime life. He twists his mouth to the side and frowns at me. I think of his lips on my skin. Of lying on the grass. Of Cleo’s face when she said, “Please don’t.”
“I’ll be in the shower.”
Chapter 27
After weeks of using the shower in the well-heated pool house, the cold stone floor of the servants’ quarters is a shock. I’m shivering in the rogue guest towel I found as I push the door closed.
I don’t lock it.
Hot water runs over me. But instead of feeling alive, I’m starting to feel numb. Have I just made a complete fool of myself? Why am I getting involved? I can’t even understand why I’m doing things at the moment or why words come out of my mouth. It just happens.
I wanted to know what he would do.
Then I hear the door open.
I don’t look around. There’s a gap between the shower curtain and the wall. He can see me. I stand there, and the thought that I’m letting him look at me starts a burning through my body. I run my fingers through my hair and turn to the side.
“Got a towel?”
He laughs. “Of course.”
He takes the white towel from the side and holds it up.
“Don’t look,” I order him.
He obediently bows his head behind the towel, and I step out of the shower and take it from him. As it passes between us, he looks up for a moment. His eyes run over my breasts and hips, and I hear an intake of breath as I wrap the towel around myself.
We stand there for a moment, and then he puts his hand on the back of my neck and pulls me to him. Our lips are almost touching, but not quite. “I want to take you somewhere.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he replies, the corners of his mouth curling into a smile.
He takes my hand and leads me back out into the corridor. We run, me still holding my towel around myself, looking around us constantly for any sign of people. My heart is beating a million times a minute, and I can’t decide whether I’m thrilled or terrified. Then we reach a door. One of the old wooden ones, like the one I saw on my interview day. As the door opens, I glimpse wooden paneling. Once we’re inside, Jamie closes the door and we’re plunged into blackness. There’s only the sound of our breathing.
The silence and the darkness make me nervous. “Where are we?”
He steps closer. “There are secret passageways all over. They started out as escape routes for priests.” He moves my hair away from my shoulder. I can feel his breath on my neck. “But the fifth duke was a randy fellow and used them to get servant girls into his room.”
We both start laughing, and he takes my hand, leading me away from the door. I have my other hand keeping my towel on me, so have to trust he won’t walk me into anything.
It feels like the passage runs alongside the corridor to the servants’ quarters, but the darkness is so disorienting that I could be going in any direction. After a few minutes, he stops. Still holding my hand, he moves it upward and I touch cool metal. I feel around and realize it’s the curved banister of a spiral staircase.
“It leads to the master bedroom,” he says.
Then his hand is on my other hand, the one holding the towel. He gently moves it upward and the towel slips down. Both my hands are gripping the banister rungs. My skin is on fire, and I just want him to touch me. As he starts kissing my shoulder, a small cry escapes from my lips. His fingers are running over my back and down my legs. He kisses the top of my chest and then runs his mouth down between my breasts and over my stomach and down. The fire running through me has a pulsing center between my leg
s, and I ache to feel him there.
But just as he gets there, he stops.
“Imagine I’m kissing you there,” he says. He kisses me softly at the top of my thigh. And then more firmly on the other side. And then on the inside of my thigh. I feel the tip of his tongue and the graze of his teeth and sometimes only the brush of his lips. Everywhere around, but never there.
There’s a tingling feeling building in me and I’m breathing quickly. Then his lips are moving upward again, and his fingers travel up the inside of my leg, higher and higher. The tingling throbs between my legs. The pressure of his hand on my thigh switches to the lightest of touches just as he reaches—
I shake and for a second see colors pass in front of my eyes. I cry out as a sweet explosion spreads from between my legs throughout my body, and as I do his mouth finds mine. I push my lips against his fiercely as waves of tingling break over me and he clutches me to him, absorbing every last movement.
And then we’re pressed together, listening to each other’s breathing, and the fire I was feeling subsides into a warm glow.
“So …,” I say and feel him laugh.
He pulls his head back. “How are you doing, Joseph?”
“I’m … increasingly aware that I’m naked.”
He steps back from me, and a few seconds later I feel the towel being wrapped around me. I sink forward into his chest, and he squeezes his arms around me and breathes in. Then he kisses me once on the forehead, but leaves his lips there for a while.
“I suppose we should sleep,” he says. “Will the master bedroom do?”
“Don’t your parents sleep there?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
“You’re, like, kiddng, right?”
“Yes, I ‘like’ am.” He grabs my hand again. “They figured out that they can rake in even more cash by letting guests stay there. But it’s empty tonight.”
The spiral staircase leads to a room that must be tiny, because I can stretch out my arm and touch the wall on either side and can feel the ceiling not too far above my head. Jamie goes ahead of me, and I hear steps creaking and the sound of him loosening something. There’s a cracking sound, and then rays of blue light suddenly break through. He’s opening a trap door.
The four-poster bed is enormous. I slide my legs around on the duvet as Jamie goes back down to the showers to get my stuff. He leaves me his T-shirt to wear.
There’s a huge window covering most of the opposite wall, so the room is flooded with moonlight. It looks out over the grounds at the back of the castle. If I went and looked out, I would be able to see the pool house. Where Cleo is waiting. I shift on the duvet again, more uncomfortably this time. What happens now?
I’m interrupted by the trap door opening and Jamie lobbing my bag into the room.
“Watch out! You’ll break my … clothes,” I say.
He lifts himself up into the room and doesn’t acknowledge my comment. He’s wearing only his jeans, and the moonlight bounces off his muscled chest. I get a flashback to the passageway, and an echo of what I felt ripples through me.
Then he stands at the end of the bed and drops his jeans.
Slightly in shock, I say the first thing that comes into my head. “Easy, tiger.”
He completely cracks up. I start laughing too and struggle to get my words out. “That … was ridiculous, though. What … What are you doing?”
“Sleeping. Are you going to take up the whole bed, tiger?”
We both slide under the covers and lie there, looking up at the ceiling.
The question forms in my head, but I can’t say it out loud.
What happens tomorrow?
“Oh my God, tomorrow!” I make him jump.
“What?” he says.
“It’s when we get our exam grades.”
“I don’t suppose you have anything to worry about.”
“No … Well, I don’t know. I need five Bs to stay on track for university. It’s just … I’d hoped to … do something else. Like, travel or something. It feels like from tomorrow, everything’s set.”
He doesn’t reply. I realize I don’t even know what he’s doing next year.
“What about you?” I ask, turning to face him.
He stays on his back, looking upward. “Nothing.” He frowns.
“Didn’t you get in—”
“I didn’t apply. My parents don’t know yet. They think I’m off to Durham.”
“How?”
“I faked some letters,” he says, like that’s not a big deal.
He turns onto his side, facing me. “Mom will have a stroke when she finds out. Dad will brush it off with some comment about how you don’t need a degree to succeed in the city. I’ll reveal I’m not doing that either, and he can have his stroke then.”
The mention of his dad sends a wave of bitterness across his face. And then he leans forward and kisses me on the lips. For a moment, I feel what I do around Dan. Warmth, easiness, and something real.
“’Night,” he says.
“’Night,” I reply, but we keep facing each other, eyes open.
We talk for hours, to the point where we can’t keep our eyes open and what we’re saying starts to not make sense. Silence falls, and I give into the tiredness.
It’s a light sleep, though, because with a creak of the bed my eyes snap open again. I’m facing away from Jamie. The mattress moves as he slides off. I don’t give any sign that I’m awake. I lie there listening to him pulling his jeans back on and opening the trap door quietly and carefully, then shutting it with only a small thud.
Mentally plotting out his route, I slide out of the bed and go to the window. I have it exactly right. He comes out from underneath the window, where the archways are, and heads onto the path to the pool house.
The warm feeling in my chest slowly disintegrates.
I wonder if he’ll turn and look at the window, but he keeps walking, hands thrust into his pockets. A few moments after he enters the pool house, the lights come on.
Chapter 28
I barely sleep. I’m mostly just staring up at the ceiling and rerunning the night’s events. Alone in this big room, I’m struggling to remember how I could have felt so confident. The sheets are startlingly white and clinical. And cold.
When the sky starts to brighten, I get up and look out the window again. There’s mist hanging over the grounds, and the whole landscape looks still.
I decide I’ll sneak out now and walk to Gabi’s. Her mom’s taking us in to get our grades. I’m not even sure what time it is, but I can find a bench to sit on or something if it’s too early for her to be up.
I take off Jamie’s T-shirt and lift my bag up onto the bed. I’ve taken to bringing extra clothes with me after all these nights staying out, so I have a normal dress and leggings to wear. I keep looking through the bag for my phone to find out the time, but I can’t find it. Damn. I must have left it behind the bar.
I try to make the room look unused and pray that the cleaners get to it before Julia does. I go to the trap door and pull on the iron ring to heave it open. Going down the steps, I stumble briefly and let go of the door. It shuts with a crash above me. I feel my way through the tiny room and onto the staircase, along the wall, and stop at the first door I come to. I’ll just have to hope it’s the right one.
I want to punch the air as I come out into the servants’ quarters. I slip out, shut the door, and walk straight into a cleaner. She frowns at me.
“Good morning,” I say and bow my head, which I don’t think she finds particularly normal. I hurry away before she decides to alert someone.
Now to retrieve my phone from the bar and leave. I’m beginning to think that it’s actually pretty fun, this sneaking around—I’m playing the James Bond theme in my head, and … Oh, crap. It’s Dan.
I do what no sane person would do and dive under a table. I watch Dan’s feet go past as he walks through the restaurant to the kitchen. I plot out a sprint to the bar and then th
e quickest route to the door.
“Dan!” Julia’s feet appear at the restaurant entrance. And now more feet. She calls him back over and explains that these guests have to get a flight and so have asked for an early breakfast.
Soon Dan’s leading them over to a table. My table. Of course. There’s the creak of a seat as some pinstriped legs and shiny black shoes appear on my right, then a more delicate creak as tights and slightly too small slip-on heels appear to my left. I literally have no idea what to do.
“Tea or coffee?” says Dan.
“Coffee, please,” says a nasal male voice.
I really need to tell someone I’m here.
It’s decided for me when, as the woman asks for tea, she nudges the slip-on shoes off her feet, stretches out her leg, and kicks me. There’s a shriek, and then a heavily made-up fifty-something face appears beside me.
“Hello! I’m just cleaning under this table.” I start rubbing the floor. With my hands. Then Dan’s face appears.
“Hi, Dan. I’m just … cleaning.”
“I think it’s clean now,” he says. I can’t decide whether he’s looking at me with fear or pity.
I crawl out, dragging my bag after me, and stand up. “Good, well, that’s clean. Tea or coffee?”
“We’ve ordered,” says the man, who looks a little like a weasel in a suit.
Dan escorts me to the bar, where he starts making the tea and coffee. He makes an extra cup of tea and plunks it in front of me before he goes back to the couple. While he’s gone, I grab my phone and stuff it into my bag.
He walks back over. “What … ? Why?”
“I finished late last night—there was this table that stayed forever. So I slept here.”
“Under a table?”
“No! In the servants’ quarters.”
Unsurprisingly, he’s still interested to know why he found me hiding under a table, cleaning the floor with my hands. I come up with some ridiculous explanation that I thought he was Julia. Although that doesn’t explain anything, he seems to accept it, which makes me slightly concerned about his level of intelligence. But then, I suppose, why would he think I would lie?
