What was that?
It came again, an insistent kind of tap-tapping. I looked around the room. Was the snow leaking in through the roof? But I was downstairs. And besides, it was a harder, more brittle sound. I tweaked the curtains open to look out onto the road again. ‘Holy shit!’
Outside my window was a dark shape, arm raised, making scratchy little noises against my front window. It was hideously misshapen, hunched and deformed, with a hooded head that looked far too big for the body. I stood, frozen, looking out at it as, very black against the white snow, it raised the arm again.
And this time it pushed back the hood and showed me its face.
‘Aiden? Aiden? What the hell …?’ I dashed to the front door where Aiden, swathed in layer after layer of coat, fleece, scarf and really stupid hat, met me. ‘Why didn’t you just knock?’
‘I didn’t know if you had company.’ He stamped his feet free from snow and took off an upper layer. ‘I didn’t want to intrude.’ He nodded towards the street. ‘Drove down this afternoon.’
I stared at him. He came into the house and was peeling off more and more layers, like an Ann Summers version of pass the parcel, and had got down to jeans and T-shirt. ‘Stop now. Why are you here?’
‘I wanted to see you. Wanted to talk.’ He threw himself down on the sofa and stretched out. ‘Okay?’
‘Um,’ I said, staring at him. Aiden was good looking in a put-it-on-the-mantelpiece way, small and fine-boned like an oversized china figurine. That had been the attraction, his looks. That, and the fact that he’d been delighted to meet a woman who wanted nothing more than the undivided attention of the contents of his jeans now and again. I’d never asked for dinner or flowers, or even for him to keep in touch – it was easy enough to find him when I wanted to, Scotland not exactly being coast-to-coast with film directors, whatever the tourist board might want you to think. I was surprised he’d managed to find my house; he’d only been here once, passing through on his way to London and stopping off for a night of, as I remembered it, the kind of sex you had to change the mattress after. Looking at him here, staring at me from under his dark-blond hair with a blissed-out expression, I wondered if, maybe, I’d been wrong to keep it going this long. ‘Tea?’ was all I could think of to say.
‘I’ve brought whisky.’ Aiden groped behind him in the pockets of the shapeless coat and brandished a couple of bottles.
I frowned at him. ‘You know I don’t like whisky.’ I’d told him so often enough when we’d last met, but he suddenly seemed to regard whisky as absolutely necessary to all Scotsmen. Could have been worse, could have been haggis. ‘What’s wrong with tea, anyway?’
‘Hey I spent the last five hours freezing my bollocks off in a car. Tea is not going to cut it. But if it’s what you want … all the more whisky for me.’
When I went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on, he followed, like a restless dog. ‘This is new?’ He picked up my carefully colour co-ordinated toaster. ‘Nice. Yellow to match the walls.’ He unscrewed the top of the whisky bottle and started tipping it to his mouth.
‘So, how come you’re here?’ I turned my back to him so he couldn’t see my face. I was still shaken by his arrival.
‘Like I said, I want to talk.’
‘But, you were in the middle of filming!’
‘We wrapped early.’ He sounded confused for a moment. ‘Not sure how, things were going to hell when you came up. But everything seemed to … click, somehow. So, I had these days free, and, I dunno, got to thinking about you.’ He came up close behind me and wound his arms around my waist. ‘Thinking about you a lot.’ His mouth nuzzled my hair, then down to my neck. ‘Next thing I knew I’m in the car, half way down the motorway.’
‘But the snow,’ I turned around in his embrace and his mouth rose to meet mine. Aiden always had the knack of pressing all my buttons, even if he did taste of Glenmorangie.
‘It’s only round here. Forty miles north, there’s nothing.’ He spoke against my skin. ‘Forget the tea, Holl, let’s go to bed.’
I must admit the clinch with Kai that afternoon had left me with a lot of spare desire slooshing about, and the relief that Nicholas was safe added to that. And once Aiden slid his hands up inside my shirt, it all got added to by his own particular appeal. ‘Okay.’
‘Why did you really come?’ It was snug in my bed, listening to the lack of sound from outside. Even the neighbourhood cats didn’t feel like fighting in this weather, and the lad from two doors down, who usually came home at three a.m., engine revving, had clearly decided that tonight was not the night to be cruising the streets in a souped-up Micra.
Aiden’s eyes were very dark. ‘Told you.’ His fingers were tracing along my arm, raising little hairs. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’ Our faces were very close together, sharing the same pillow. The other one was on the floor somewhere, bounced from its moorings by vigorous sex, along with a set of handcuffs that Aiden had brought with him. I’d kept a hold on the duvet; this was no night for naked sleeping.
‘You keep telling me that. But you haven’t said anything apart from “oh God, do that again” since we got up here.’
‘Maybe that’s all I wanted to say.’
I smiled. His hair was fanned out behind his head so he looked less like something you’d want as an ornament now, unless your decorative tastes ran to debauched satyrs. Which they might, I’m making no judgements here. ‘Want to say it again?’ I slipped my hand down his torso, sliding it over the scatter of lighter hair that lay across his belly.
He grabbed my wrist. ‘This whole shag-buddy thing. I think we should stop.’
‘Ah. Right, noticing you waited until after we’d fucked like rabbits to say that.’ I shook his hand off. ‘A phone call usually suffices.’
He didn’t smile. ‘Holly, the other day … I suddenly realised my feelings for you had changed. I think I want more.’
‘You think!’ I sat up and freezing air shot under the duvet like a frightened ferret. ‘Well, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to be sure, before you came all this way?’ I looked down on him, sprawled beside me, skin still flushed with sex. He was gorgeous. Why was every molecule in my body dumb with panic?
‘Yeah, it was really weird, like, kinda romantic. There I was last week, middle of the afternoon and I’m just sitting in my van mid-shoot, minding my own business and suddenly … it was like the earth shifted, y’know? And I realised I wanted us to have a chance to be together. Properly, like a couple. That’s why I’m chucking it all in. Giving up on the film stuff. Thought I’d get something round here, maybe an ad agency in York would take me on, with my background. Move in, take it from there.’
Now panic wasn’t the word. Mindless, wordless terror was more like it. Last week? When we did the spell? Oh, please, no … ‘But, Aid … we don’t really know each other.’
‘Know you well enough.’ A lazy smile spread over his face. ‘We could get married, d’you fancy that? Big white wedding. I saw your church over there, bit posh but it’d suit.’
‘Hold on.’ There had to be a TV show behind this. One of those that sets you up and films your inevitable downfall? ‘Firstly, we’ve hardly ever had a conversation before, I think you’ve just spoken more words to me in one night than in the last three years. Secondly, yeah, the sex is great, fabulous, but there’s more to a relationship than good sex, Aiden. And thirdly, I don’t want to get married.’
The smile was still there. Wasn’t he listening? ‘Aw, come on, Holl. Give it a try. We make a cracking couple. All right, maybe marriage is a way off, but couldn’t you stand coming home to this every night?’ He waved an arm to indicate the bed and the tumbled bedthings. ‘Perfect antidote to workplace stress.’
‘There’s someone else.’ I’d blurted out the words before I’d even thought them. ‘Another man.’
Aiden frowned. This simply drew more attention to his sculpted cheek bones. ‘But you’re here, in bed with me. Where’s he? Nowhere, that’s w
here.’
‘No, you don’t understand. We’re not sleeping together. But … he and I … it’s …’ And the memory of Kai, intense eyes and long body, came sweeping through. ‘It’s something I can’t describe.’
‘Och, Holly.’ The smile was back. He really was very pretty, Aiden. Pretty and bloody persistent. ‘But I can be indescribable too you know.’ Fingers crept under the covers. ‘And I’m here, you’re horny – let’s see how we go, shall we?’
Okay. So, attempt one to talk him down, epic fail. But … oooh, it had its compensations.
We woke next morning to almost clear streets. The ploughs had spent the night keeping the snowfall under control and although the pavements were heaped and cars were quite often blocked in by huge lumps of ice, driving itself wasn’t a problem. My first thought was of Nicholas, and I rang the Old Lodge, the phone being answered by a slightly testy-voiced Cerys.
‘It’s still dark, Holly. I’m only up because I just performed my twenty-third trip to the loo and I’m waiting for my medal. Honest to God, I never knew there was that much liquid in the human body, I should be desiccated to the size of a walnut. And your brother isn’t awake yet, probably won’t be for a few more hours to be honest – when Kai brought him in he was so out of things that he thought I was you. I know drugs are supposed to be bad for you, but anything that makes a nine-month pregnant blonde look like a matchstick-skinny redhead is something I want to start taking as soon as possible.’
‘So Nicholas is still in bed?’
She sighed. ‘Yup. Come round mid-morningish. By then Kai should be up too and I should have passed my entire bodyweight in fluids, so we can chat properly. Okay? I mean, I’d stop and chat now, but I think I might have to go to the loo again.’
Aiden pressed himself against my back and began whispering into my ear, and I barely had time to hang up in a civil way, but at least he made me breakfast when I told him I had stuff to do. He seemed to think it was work – which I suppose meeting up with Vivienne was, in a warped kind of way – and that this was a sign that I was already adapting to his moving in. ‘I’ll get my stuff shipped down,’ he said, pouring fresh coffee from the machine I’d had since I moved in and never unpacked. ‘My furniture can go in storage, until we can find a bigger place.’
I forced my boiled egg down a dry throat and reminded myself that this was Aiden McCullough, the Scottish Spike Jonze, sitting here opposite me. Scourge of many a set, known for his exacting standards and his starlet shafting; at twenty-six still a wild child with a penchant for bondage and walking off set in high dudgeon. And he wanted to marry me? I’d only have been slightly more surprised if Barack Obama had popped up in my living room, told me Michelle was history, and how about a quickie before the next press call.
The freezing air of outside was the sweet air of freedom to me. ‘I’ll wait up for you, if you’re gonna be late back,’ Aiden called, waving me off, wearing only my dressing gown. ‘But don’t be too long, don’t want these to get cold.’ He shook the handcuffs and grinned his old, sexy grin as I fled for the car and starting digging it out with an energy borne of the dread that he might get dressed and try to come with me.
Vivienne looked a bit surprised to see me, which was perfectly understandable, it was only eight thirty. I sat in her living room on the, thankfully well-padded, couch, drank tea and jittered.
‘So, you think the spell should work faster?’ The cup rattled as I put it in the saucer. It had been one hell of a night. ‘I think I might die.’
Vivienne raised her eyebrows. ‘So it’s working for you?’
I thought about Aiden and his sudden declaration. ‘Well, I seem to have rather more excitement than usual, yes. Although some of it is pretty horrible.’
‘Then you should have thought to wish for something a little more specific. I mean, some people’s idea of excitement is a show at the theatre in Scarborough. It’s not really the spell’s fault that it doesn’t know what you find exciting. What were you expecting, torrid sex?’
‘Got that.’ I thought of Aiden and gave a, not completely horrified, shudder.
‘Death?’
Nicholas’s disappearance had certainly made me scared that he was dead. ‘That too.’
‘Oh, I don’t know then. A man who wants to take you away from everything and shower you with gifts?’
‘Yes, and that.’ Although I wasn’t entirely sure it was gifts that Aiden wanted to shower me with. He still seemed to think that we could build a relationship entirely based on never getting out of bed.
Vivienne’s eyes widened until I could see her rather inexpertly applied eyeliner. ‘Well, I suppose it’s only natural that the spell would work best for you. You supplied ingredients from the warlock’s house, after all.’
‘Is there a way to make it stop?’
A big tabby cat was eyeing my lap. I gave in and leaned back, but it sniffed at me in a generally disapproving manner and settled on the back of the sofa. ‘Stop? Why would you want it to stop?’
‘See above.’ I closed my eyes. A night with Aiden rarely contained much sleep and I must have dropped off because the next thing I was aware of was Isobel and Eve arriving together in the Isuzu.
‘Gosh, you must have been up early,’ Isobel came in first and immediately started to sneeze. ‘Damn.’ Her head disappeared into her oversized handbag as she began the frantic search for a tissue. ‘I ought to start keeping them up my sleeves.’
I gave her cardigan, Laura Ashley frock and old-lady ankle boots the once over. ‘No, don’t,’ I said.
Eve came in, limping. She’d lost a little weight, I thought, and changed her lipstick to a more flattering pale pink. She and Isobel seemed to be on opposite ends of the self-improvement see-saw. ‘This cold plays havoc with the sciatica,’ she said. ‘Horrible.’
‘Ah, Holly, you’re awake.’ Vivienne rattled in with a refreshed tea pot. ‘Did you have a nice snooze?’
Of course everyone then looked at me as though I was about a hundred. ‘Late night,’ I explained.
‘Torrid sex,’ Vivienne put in, with a face that seemed to indicate that torrid sex was only one step up from ritualised buggery. ‘Holly has been complaining about the results of the spell.’
The other two piled in, talking simultaneously. ‘Results? You think there’s been results?’
‘What sort of results? I’ve not had anything yet. You are lucky, Holly.’
‘Why would you complain? I’d settle for the milkman smiling at me.’
‘I’d settle for the milkman’s horse smiling at me.’
I waved a feeble hand. ‘Let’s just say that excitement isn’t as exciting as you might think.’
There was a sudden commotion outside the cottage, and cats went flying round the room with their ears flat to their heads, like furry bullets. The cat flap rattled like a saloon door, and Megan entered, being dragged along by a grey panting creature with more teeth than I’d ever seen on display in a mouth that didn’t belong to something in the Winners’ Enclosure at Ascot.
‘Oh my God, Little Red Riding Hood’s gone native.’
‘Don’t, Holl. I didn’t like to leave him all cooped up on his own. He needs a walk, and I thought, if we were going up the hill anyway …’ The big grey dog sat in the middle of the room, scratched, and looked pleased with himself. ‘I’m calling him Rufus.’
A lone cat, less adept at reading an atmosphere than the others, wandered in. There was a brief moment of total confusion and when it sorted itself out, I was standing on the sofa holding the teapot above my head. Isobel had a cat clinging to her shoulder like a Halloween witch costume, Eve had been shunted into a corner and Meg and Rufus were hurtling around outside the front door with her shouting ‘Stop it! Down, boy!’ ineffectually. Rufus, I noticed, was grinning. ‘I’ll keep him out here for a while,’ she shouted, completing another circuit of the small front garden. ‘Try to tire him out a bit.’
Isobel sneezed and the cat fell off. ‘Perhaps … some
fresh air?’ she snuffled.
‘Wait, I need to collect our workshop ingredients,’ Vivienne bustled about looking as though she was doing something really important. Maybe she was, but I wasn’t really convinced, after all, the spell seemed to have worked big time and we’d used some decidedly unorthodox make-dos for that. It hardly seemed necessary at this stage to have exactly the right shade of red for our broom handles.
Eventually, when Vivienne was satisfied, we set out for the hill. Eve stayed behind to keep the fire banked up for our return, pleading sciatica. I wasn’t convinced. Her breathlessness seemed more than mere unfitness and her limp didn’t look entirely sciatic either, but if she wanted to keep to her story, who was I to blow it out of the water?
Megan went first, dog-propelled. Isobel and I wandered up through the snow more slowly. There was no track, other than the double-skid marked out by Megan and Rufus, and the snow was deep enough to cascade over the tops of our boots.
‘So, nothing happening for you on the “centre of the world” thing?’ I asked.
She shook her long, chestnut hair. She had lovely hair, I noticed. If only she’d get a prescription for some antibiotics for the acne and wear something that didn’t look hand-knitted by an elderly spinster, she’d be quite pretty. ‘Nope. I did think that a man was looking at me in the library the other day.’ She sighed.
‘Well, that’s a start.’
‘No, it turned out he’d lost his glasses and thought I was his mother.’ Another sigh. ‘Maybe nothing will happen. Ever. And I’ll stay here, living in Malton and working in the hospital, and spending every evening with Mum and Dad telling me how I should join a club to meet more people …’ She sounded angry. Or as angry as she ever sounded, which was not very.
‘Look, the spell seems to be working for me and I wish it wasn’t. So don’t worry too much if nothing happens, it looks like nothing is the better option.’
Isobel shrugged under her ugly knitted coat. ‘I’d just like something to compare nothing to. I’ve never even … you know, with a man. I’ve only been kissed once, and that was by mistake.’
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