Safe With Me

by Helen Lowrie

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ he muttered, his step faltering, his eyes scanning the room to establish that we were alone. In two strides he’d closed in on me, pulling me into the firm, wet heat of his body with a groan. We kissed hard, as if our desire for each other had been pent up for days rather than hours. His hands moved up my skirt, dragging my knickers down over my knee-high boots, while I wrenched my shirt off over my head and unhooked my bra. ‘Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Kat? How much you mean to me?’ he muttered, lifting me off my feet and effortlessly carrying me into the shower cubicle.

  Wearing only a pair of boots I leaned back against the wall and he sank to his knees, kissing me between my legs. I moaned, dragging my fingers through his wet hair and gripping his broad shoulders for support. Here I was, a ‘tramp off the street’, with a handsome young god-of-a-man knelt before me, pleasuring my most private parts, in a place reserved for strong naked men. The idea of all that testosterone, combined with Jamie’s reverent attention, made me feel like a goddess.

  Drawing back, Jamie looked up to meet my gaze, his eyes darkly dilated with desire as he continued to stroke me with his fingers.

  ‘I think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you in that cafe,’ he said, his voice even but low and heavy with need. ‘No, before that – the first time we met – the moment my parents abandoned me, Kat, I became yours.’ Tears of emotion sprang to my eyes even as he stoked up the fire inside me, my muscles tightening, my fingers digging into his back. ‘I’d do anything for you, Kat. Anything.’ And with that I took off, my body splintering with release, my nerve endings jangling and my mind adrift.

  As I returned to earth Jamie rose to his feet, pressing soft kisses up my neck to my ear and spreading goosebumps across my flushed skin. I hooked one booted leg up over his hip and he leaned his strong body into me. Taking a firm grip on my bottom he lifted me up off the ground, high enough that I could see right over the stall and across the empty changing room. Throwing my other leg around his waist, I locked my ankles together across his firm butt as he braced my back against the wall. Holding me still he looked into my eyes, into my soul, in the way that only he could – as if he really knew me, as if he’d always known me and always would. ‘You are safe with me,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I breathed.

  I clung to him as he made love to me, his hips thrusting, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration, and my core tensing in anticipation. And then the door to the changing room opened across the room.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ I gasped as Liam’s gaze met mine.

  Jamie, oblivious to his best mate’s presence, continued to drive us on, pounding out a perfect rhythm inside me. In the doorway, Liam raised an eyebrow with a wry grin and then held up a bunch of keys for me to see before placing them on a bench. Biting my lip, I desperately held back a second orgasm as Liam stepped backwards through the door. As it swung closed he winked at me before disappearing out of sight and I exploded, my release ripping through my body, as Jamie came with a yell of exultant relief.

  * * *

  Once we’d recovered and made ourselves decent, Jamie locked up the rugby club and we walked over to the White Bear. Jamie made no particular reference to the club keys, when he returned them to his friend. And Liam, despite my apprehension, behaved like a true gentleman, betraying no hint of what he’d witnessed. The sun had returned and we spent the rest of the evening in the pub garden, surrounded by friends and enjoying the last of the light. I sat comfortably on Jamie’s lap to leave space for other people to sit down while we drank, chatted and laughed about the game. With Jamie’s arms around me and my new friend Maire to talk to, I felt supremely blessed.

  I even spent some time getting to know Poppy, the redhead I’d seen flirting with Jamie. She turned out to be Adam’s younger sister and initiated a friendly conversation with no hint of jealous rivalry. While Jamie was away at the bar she told me she was glad we were together because I obviously made him happy. I was immensely grateful to her for her kindness, and slightly in awe of her as she described how she’d set up her own events planning business. Some of what she said got me thinking about Southwood’s Garden Centre and its potential for holding more workshops but also book clubs, painting classes, family fun days, barbecues – the possibilities were almost endless.

  As the sun set and the air cooled, Jamie wrapped me in his jumper and we walked home together hand-in-hand. Every few feet we stopped to kiss and smile and stare into each other’s eyes like lovesick teenagers, illuminated now and then by the occasional passing car. For once in my life I felt happy, confident, secure – and by seeing myself through Jamie’s loving eyes I was even starting to like myself.

  Back at the cottage I set about making coffee while Jamie checked the answerphone for messages. The first was from a neighbour, a friend of Jamie’s dad, offering him free firewood if he would be prepared to go round and chop up the logs himself. As the kettle started to boil I moved into the living room to better hear the second message as it started to play. Jamie stood by the window, sifting through the pile of post in his hand, as a distantly familiar voice filled the room,

  ‘Ah hello there, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to return your call. We’ve been out of the country you see – staying with family in Australia – and we’ve only just got back. It’s Josie Plumley by the way.’ Jamie’s head snapped up, his eyes locking with mine in shared surprise, and as the kettle grew louder I stepped closer to the answering machine, anxious not to miss a word. ‘Anyway I’m pleased you got in touch; I do remember you – and Kat, of course. I’m not sure I’ll be much use to your search but I’d like to help if I can. I always thought you two might be blood relations; y’know brother and sister – the signs were all there – so I’d like to help you find Kat if I can.’ Jamie’s face paled, the post in his hand dropping to the carpet as he stared at me. ‘Anyway, call me back, God bless.’ The message ended with a prolonged beep, the roar of the boiling water merging with a high-pitched ringing in my head. And then the kettle clicked off and a profound silence set in as Jamie and I stared at each other, dumbstruck, across the seemingly endless room.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  My limbs locked with incomprehension as Kat sank gracefully onto the settee behind her, her face white, her eyes glazed with shock.

  ‘No,’ I said, my voice hoarse. ‘She’s got it wrong; she’s misunderstood. She must be quite old now – she must be thinking of someone else, not us.’

  Kat didn’t reply and the silence stretched out, heavy with potential pain.

  I cleared my throat. ‘This is ridiculous – it’s a mistake. I’ll call her back and sort it out,’ I said, reaching for the phone and pressing the handset to my ear.

  ‘No,’ Kat said, her voice eerily calm, ‘it’s gone midnight.’

  ‘So what? I’m not having this hang over us all night.’

  ‘But what if it’s true?’

  The dialling tone buzzed impatiently in my ear as fear crawled through my mind. We don’t even look alike, Kat and me; we have different-coloured eyes. Admittedly we don’t look vastly different from each other but – ‘It can’t be true.’ Exhausted I hung up the phone and collapsed into an armchair, a voice in my head screaming in horror. How could this be happening? We were so happy; it felt so right. We can’t just go back. I need her. It has to be a mistake.

  ‘What signs?’ Kat muttered, a frown creasing her forehead.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She said, “the signs were all there” – what signs?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know, Kat, she’s wrong.’

  ‘What’s your blood type?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your blood type – what is it?’

  ‘A positive.’

  Kat looked like she might throw up.

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything, Kat; it’s one of the most common blood types there is!’

  ‘Is that why we’re so close? Is that why we feel such a connection?’ Delayed p
anic was rising in her voice. ‘Because we’re –’ Kat abruptly bolted from the room and projectile vomited into the kitchen sink, her whole body shaking. Following I reached out to gather her hair in my hands but she cringed away from me. ‘Don’t,’ she spat.

  I recoiled as if burned and a fresh sense of terror swept through me. ‘Don’t do this, Kat; it’s not true, it’s all a mistake – don’t pull away from me, not again.’

  She rinsed her mouth and splashed water on her face before hiding it in a tea towel. ‘Didn’t I warn you?’

  ‘What?’

  She looked up at me her eyes flashing with fury. ‘I knew this could never work between us; that we could be together – I just knew it would end badly. You should have let me go! You should have let me leave!’ Tears spilled from her eyes betraying her pain as I shook my head and automatically reached out to wrap her in my arms. But she stepped away, swiping angrily at her tears.

  ‘We’ll find a way, Kat. We’ll work this out – even if it’s true. I’m not giving you up, not now.’

  ‘It might not be up to you,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t just assume the worst, please; this will all be sorted out in the morning.’

  We went up to bed and Kat insisted on sleeping alone in the spare room. All night I lay awake in agony, my mind reeling at a hundred different questions and possibilities, my ears pricked for any sign that Kat was trying to leave. When she emerged at dawn I was relieved to see her but upset by the dark shadows around her eyes and the bone-chilling resignation in her expression. We sipped coffee across the table from one another, in silence, while the clock on the wall ticked away the hours.

  ‘It’s eight o’clock; I can’t wait any longer; I’m calling her,’ I said, setting down my empty mug.

  ‘What are you going to say?’

  ‘I’m going to tell her I’ve found you and ask her if we can go and see her.’ Kat’s knuckles were white as she gripped her own empty cup. ‘I won’t ask her anything else, or tell her anything, until we are both there with her in person, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Mrs Plumley finally answered the phone the third time I rang her number. She was out of breath and irritated. Having apologised for the early hour, and exchanged pleasantries, I arranged for us to meet her later that afternoon on the London estate where she and her husband now lived. I felt physically sick as I hung up afterwards, the taste of coffee unusually bitter in my mouth. Kat was already out the door, clearly determined to work in the garden centre all morning as if it was a normal day – as if our life together didn’t hang precariously in the balance.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Mr and Mrs Plumley lived on the fourth floor of an ugly block of flats. The lift was out of order and the concrete stairwell we climbed reeked of skunk and piss. As I followed Jamie up the steps, prickling with cold sweat, I tried to focus on deciphering the multicoloured tags graffitied across the walls. Every now and then Jamie tried to take my hand out of habit but I wouldn’t let him. I desperately wanted to feel his skin against mine, to allow the soothing warmth of his love to spread up through my arm, ignite my blood and arouse my soul. But I couldn’t do it – I didn’t want to acknowledge the intoxicating chemistry between us if it was about to be ripped away for good.

  The last time I’d seen the Plumleys was when I was twelve years old and they were evicting me. I still remembered Josie Plumley standing with her arms crossed and her back to me as my case worker led me away. The prospect of seeing her again, a ghost from my past, would be unsettling enough without the weight of the bombshell she now held over us.

  Since hearing that crackly recorded message everything had changed. All our recent happiness and everything I’d pinned my hopes on was tainted. Our love for one another, the time we’d spent together, the things we’d said and done to each other – it was all mired in shame, suspicion and, as yet untold, pain. When I was a child I used to wish with all my heart that Jamie was my brother, that he was my blood relative, my family, so that I wouldn’t be alone. The phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ now taunted my every step.

  Josie Plumley opened the door before we’d even knocked, a sure sign she’d been watching our approach through the peephole. She’d always been a large lady, tall and muscular with wide hips and an ample, cardigan-swathed bosom, her sleeves stuffed full of tissues, her pockets loaded with lemon drops and fluff. Now she looked older and saggier, her shoulders rounder and her hair grey, but familiar – right down to the balled tissue in her hand and the sickly sweet lemon scent of her breath.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she said, ushering us into the stuffy confines of a small sitting room decked out in lurid shades of pink and green. ‘My, aren’t you both tall! Sit down, sit down; Alan’s out at the moment so there’s plenty of room. What would you like to drink? Coffee? Tea? Fruit Juice? Pop?’

  ‘Coffee would be lovely, thank you.’ Jamie said, sounding his usual relaxed self as we lowered ourselves onto a tartan couch. He turned to me. ‘Kat? Coffee?’

  Josie was smiling expectantly as she waited for my answer and I nodded my head, not trusting myself to speak. ‘Lovely! Two coffees coming up.’ Blowing her nose she bustled into a tiny kitchenette and started to clatter about.

  ‘You OK?’ Jamie said, gently.

  I nodded again but my skin was crawling under the blank stare of hundreds of pairs of eyes. An army of twee porcelain figurines filled almost every available surface, the little bodies crowded together on shelves and inside cabinets as if jostling to get a better look at me. One wall of the room was covered in framed portrait photographs of all shapes and sizes, a gallery of faces grinning down at us from above a seventies-style gas fire. There were no house plants or flowers in the room, not even artificial ones, and I wondered if that was something I would have noticed a year ago.

  Mrs Plumley brought out five bourbon biscuits, neatly spaced on a plate, and set them on the glass table in front of us before returning with two cups of instant coffee and a mug of tea for herself. She spent some time nestling her bottom into an armchair with a sigh of satisfaction before smiling and blowing noisily on her tea.

  ‘Are these all photographs of your family?’ Jamie asked politely.

  ‘Yes, more or less. My three are all grown up now. I think they were still teenagers when you came to us but they have kids themselves now. I have fourteen grandchildren would you believe! Terrors the lot of them!’ She grinned, revealing pink lipstick smeared on her teeth. ‘My eldest lives in Oz, hence our big trip out to visit them, and the rest are foster kids and their families; you know, the ones who kept in touch anyway.’

  ‘That’s amazing – quite a legacy,’ Jamie said and Mrs Plumley flushed with pleasure.

  ‘And what about you two? Have you got families of your own?’ I took a large gulp of flavourless coffee and it burned its way down my throat, while Jamie shifted in his seat.

  ‘Not yet, no,’ he said. ‘But maybe one day, y’know.’ He shrugged and smiled.

  ‘You’re young; you’ve got time.’ Her smile faltered almost imperceptibly as she shifted her gaze to mine and then back to Jamie again. ‘So you two are doing all right for yourselves? And you clearly managed to track each other down, so, is this just a social call or is there a reason for your visit?’

  Jamie cleared his throat and I stared hard at a patch of swirly carpet, swallowing back the bile trying to escape from my stomach. ‘Well, first of all I think we’d both like to thank you,’ he began. ‘Kat and I have good memories of our stay with you and we’re grateful to you for looking after us – we appreciate it can’t have been easy.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ she flapped, turning pink and dabbing at her nose again. ‘You were good kids for the most part – especially you Jamie. It was a pleasure, really.’ I clenched my teeth.

  ‘The thing is,’ Jamie said, his hand trembling slightly as he set his cup down, half empty. ‘You said in your message that you thought that we, that Kat and I, might be blood relat
ions –’

  ‘Oh that!’ she interrupted with enthusiasm, making me jump. ‘Yes of course; I’d almost forgotten – have you looked into it? Was I right?’ She leaned forwards in her seat.

  ‘Well, I, we – what made you think that?’ Jamie stammered.

  ‘Oh your circumstances, of course. You were both abandoned at about the same age, around two years old if I remember correctly? Which is unusual you know, not unheard of, but unusual – most babies are abandoned as newborns before the mother has a chance to get too attached.’ She reached for a biscuit. ‘And you were both found in the same place – in that old community hall on Bridge Street. It’s long gone now but you were both found there, in a box in the porch, just a few years apart.’ Josie shrugged as she took a large bite and started crunching. ‘Stands to reason that you might have been left there by the same person, come from the same place; maybe even shared a mother or father,’ she mumbled with her mouth full. Absently she brushed crumbs from her bosom and swallowed. ‘And then of course you took to each other immediately, struck up a friendship, became inseparable – are you all right dear?’ she said, squinting at me.

  I could taste blood where I’d bitten my cheek. I nodded and tried to smile, aware of Jamie’s concerned eyes on my face but unable to meet his gaze. An awkward silence permeated the room while Mrs Plumley waited for us to offer some sort of verbal response. But we didn’t.