‘Come on Kai.’ I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the alley. ‘Let’s go home. You need to think about this properly, and here is not the place.’
Jerkily I led him back to the car park. He still kept stopping to look at mothers, staring to such an extent that one or two gathered their children to them, halting their pre-Christmas wonder with a firm grip around wrists and glaring at Kai. He didn’t even notice the animosity, just switched his stare. I had to almost drag him past two pregnant girls enjoying a shared pasty outside the bakers’, his head swivelled as we drew level to keep them in eyeline.
‘Fuck off, you fucking weirdo,’ one of them called as he gazed at her swollen middle, shoving its way between the curtains of her unbuttoned coat.
‘Come on.’ I tightened my grip and increased my pace until by the time we reached the car I was panting. ‘Do you want me to drive?’
‘No. I want you to … just be here, Holly. It’s knowing you’re here that’s stopping me falling apart right now.’
We drove back to Barndale. Kai was driving on automatic pilot, accurately but too fast, and when we hit the snow-belt again even the Jeep was struggling to cope with the combination of speed and frozen road. I didn’t dare say anything, he was lost in his head and I had to trust that he’d got enough experience in these conditions not to kill us both. ‘Put the radio on,’ he said after about ten miles of silence, and made me jump. ‘Apparently there’s weather warnings going out for more snow.’
It was so off-topic that I had to get him to repeat what he’d said. ‘Seriously? You’ve got all this on your plate and you’re worried about the weather?’
He looked at me slowly and I winced as the Jeep slid a few yards. ‘This has always been on my plate. Always. You never forget it, Holly, that your mother didn’t want to know you, couldn’t bear to have you around even for a few days. She didn’t even try …’ His knuckles whitened on the wheel and he was silent for a few seconds. ‘If it comes in to snow again, I’ll need to go and pick up some supplies. We’re nearly out of bread and tea, and Cerys …’ another second where the only sound was the roar of the four wheel drive chewing its way through the diesel, ‘you know she likes her toast.’
I put the radio on without another murmur. We sat through a selection of 70s hits and they seemed so out of place, so inconsequential that I went to turn it off again but Kai stopped me. ‘Please,’ was all he said, so I left it and tried to ignore Marc Bolan and the Bay City Rollers chanting about their great loves.
The forecast came and surprised me by being far more localised even than the York station usually gave. ‘North Yorkshire is predicted very high winds with more snow, giving rise to structural damage and disruption on the roads. Police are warning motorists not to travel if it is not essential. Local businesses are closing early and everyone is being told to stay at home until the storm has blown itself out, around teatime tomorrow.’
‘Teatime?’ I frowned at the radio. ‘That’s not very precise. I mean, I often have tea around sevenish, but Megan likes hers at half past three.’
Kai gave a weak smile. ‘Split the difference and expect it to stop around quarter past five.’
‘And it’s only our area. Normally storms like this go right up the east coast.’
‘Maybe this is more of your excitement.’
‘Still not the sort I really wanted.’
‘Then what did you want?’ His question echoed Vivienne’s. ‘What did you have in mind? If it wasn’t Nicholas going AWOL or your man turning up, or ferocious snow storms, what did you want?’
I shrugged. Couldn’t think of anything to say.
Kai dropped me, without another word, at my car. ‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’ I hesitated with my key to the lock. There was a wildness in his eyes that I didn’t really like the look of, the look of a man who wants to destroy something and might destroy himself if nothing else presents itself.
‘I need to think.’
‘Yes. You do. Maybe talk to Cerys …’
He cut me off with an angry gesture. ‘No. Cerys knows nothing about this. Merion and I … we kept it all from her, never wanted her to think she’d been conceived just to get us out of the shit-pit we were in. I mean, to a certain extent she was, but … no. Not Cerys. And especially not now, with the twins so near and everything.’
‘Okay.’
He revved the Jeep engine. ‘But thanks for being there.’
‘Any time, Kai. And if you need me, you know where I am.’
He nodded, back in his own private world again, and sent the Jeep leaping between the two huge elms which guarded the entry to the track through the woods. I wondered for a moment about following him, collecting Nicholas and heading home to sit out the snow storm. But then I remembered Aiden, and decided that, all things considered, Nicholas was better off where he was.
To delay the Aiden moment, I went home via Megan’s.
‘Have you seen the weather forecast?’
‘Well, I’ve heard it.’ I took the tiny portion of sofa that Rufus wasn’t occupying. He raised his head from his paws and gave me a toothy stare but let me sit down.
‘They’re saying there’ll be trees down and drifts up to the roofs and no one will be able to get out of their houses.’
‘They always say that. Every winter. And what happens? Two branches come down, we get three inches of snow and the trains don’t come north of Doncaster. Every year, Megan.’ I patted Rufus’s long back. He wagged his tail and nearly knocked me off the sofa. ‘Have you found his owner yet?’ With a slow yawn and a stretch that elongated him so far that he was almost next door, Rufus got up and went over to Megan. He laid his head in her lap and looked at me as though I’d suggested she have him put down.
‘I’ve … asked around.’ Meg plonked a kiss on the hairy nose and Rufus gave me smug eyes. ‘But I was thinking, he was soooo thin when I brought him in, and he had fleas and everything – whoever owns him can’t have looked after him.’
‘You’re going to keep him, aren’t you?’ I looked around at the tiny flat. ‘Perhaps you could train him as a carpet. Or just use his hair.’ I wiped my hand on my trousers again. Rufus wasn’t only slightly sticky he was positively adhesive.
‘I might look for a place in York so I can get home at lunchtimes and walk him, a basement flat, so we’d have access to a garden or a yard or something. It’s great you know, Holl, going out with Rufus. Everyone stops to chat. They all ask what breed he is, which is a bit awkward so I think I might make one up, but I’ve been for a drink with two guys so far who got talking to me while we were out with our dogs. Admittedly, Rufus tried to eat one and screw the other one, but he’s so good natured nobody really minds.’
‘Rufus tried to screw a guy?’
Megan giggled. ‘His dog, silly.’ She stood up and headed for the kitchen. With a sigh, Rufus followed her as though he was attached by string. ‘Anyway, I’m going to go to bed, snuggle down with some DVDs and let the storm blow itself out.’ She came back in with a packet of biscuits and sat down again.
‘Meg, those guys on the hill today. They weren’t playing games, you know.’
She gave me a cautious look. ‘I know. But going to the police … like Vivienne said, they’d be all over us for what we were doing up there.’
‘We could, you know, lie.’
Rufus, sensing her wandering attention, came back and rested his gigantic head in her lap, conveniently close to the biscuits. He dribbled, in an attention-seeking way. ‘But what could we say?’
‘We could go and get the candles for a start. Scrape up the blood, so there’s nothing to find. Then, I dunno, just say we were out for a walk. Walking Rufus, or something. And these guys attacked us in a Land Rover. Without any signs that we’d been doing magic, it’s the men’s word against ours, and we weren’t the ones going armed.’
‘Weeelllll,’ Megan cast a dubious look at the window. The sky was darkening rapidly. ‘I suppose we could. But not tonight, not
with the forecast.’
‘No, not tonight. But maybe tomorrow, or the next day. Get up there, clear up any sign of spells, then ring the police, tell them we were so shocked it took a couple of days to get round to reporting it.’
‘Maybe.’ Whilst Megan was busy eyeballing the sky, Rufus stuck his head in the packet and gobbled half a dozen biscuits, one eye on me to see if I was going to stop him. When I didn’t, he grabbed the packet in his jaws and hurtled off into Megan’s bedroom, where we heard him leap onto the bed, and then the crunchy rustling sound of the entire packet, plus wrapping, heading down the gullet of a big dog.
Megan didn’t even get up. ‘I’d better take him out. He always … well, after he’s eaten he gets quite … and I’ve already changed the bed once.’ She pulled her cute, furry coat off the back of the sofa. She looked like Fozzie Bear in it, and the big hat with earflaps added to the fluffy-bunnikins appeal. No wonder men got talking to her when she was out with Rufus; she would look like a child being dragged away by a man-eating wolf.
‘Right. I’m off … home,’ I said slowly, waiting for her to invite me to come along. But she didn’t.
‘Okay. Well, we’re off to Brambling Fields. There’s a lovely guy there who has a greyhound, and he and Rufus enjoy chasing each other. He’s so nice, really adorable, all blond and sort of spiky. Great sense of humour.’
‘And you can’t say that about many greyhounds,’ I muttered.
Since I couldn’t put it off any longer, I went home.
Chapter Sixteen
You know I managed to kid myself that you were dead? That maybe you’d died giving birth and no one had told me, or that you’d been unable to live with what you’d done and ended it all?
Because I was there when Cerys was born. Wasn’t meant to be, of course, not much more than a kid myself, but when she started coming and it was too late to get Merion to the hospital … well, I stayed, held her hand while some woman we’d had to shout at from the window came in and sorted things out. And so I held Cerys, seconds old, face all screwed up as though this world was the nastiest thing she’d ever seen. Held her, covered in blood and mucus, the colour just coming to her limbs, watched her take her first real breaths and make her first real noise. I held her and I cried.
Because I saw what it cost Merion to give birth. How it hurt. How she had to work and pant and push that baby out of her body; the pain and the blood and, oh yes, the swearing. And despite all that pain, her first thoughts, her first words were for her baby. ‘Hello, love’ she said. ‘Hello, my little girl’.
All that suffering, and she could love immediately. She was consumed with it, wanting to hold Cerys, whispering to her, words even I wasn’t allowed to be part of. Mother and child, together. And I was nowhere. So, afterwards, while Merion got cleaned up and this lady made her a cup of tea, I stood and I held my daughter as she squirmed and yelled in my arms, treating me like no more than some weird bloke who’d wandered in to her life; feeling gravity for the first time. Wanting her mother, wanting the person who’d carried her for nine months, wanting the familiar smell and the comfort. Wanting what I’d wanted for sixteen years.
Hadn’t known I wanted it until I was ten. Had my parents then, not birth parents but that hadn’t mattered, they’d been all I knew, all I loved. And then – they were gone, you were gone – they hadn’t wanted to go but you had. You’d left me on purpose. And there was Cerys, crying for her mother, and Merion, who would hardly let go of her long enough to get washed … and me. Whose mother hadn’t even held him long enough to leave an impression.
And now I know that you didn’t forget. I have to rethink what I thought about you all these years – you loved me. Does that make it better or worse? Did you think of me with that kind of half-pleasurable pain that I get when I think of some of the women over the years? Had to leave them, no other way, but the sense of freedom made it worthwhile, that terrific, buoying sense of not having to consider another human being’s feelings any more. Of being my own person. Did you enjoy it, the way I did? That self-flagellation that gives you the shudder, remembering what you did, hoping and wishing until it’s real in your head, that it all turned out well. For the best.
And then you come shouldering your way back in, trying to hand me a guilt I never wanted.
Suddenly, sex isn’t enough, it won’t blot it out any more. Can’t use heat and friction to drive you away as though you’re some kind of evil spirit to be kept at bay with fire and light. And when sex isn’t enough – what else is there? What steps into the breach? I need something I don’t understand, something I’m not sure I can recognise, something that will soak up all this confusion and anger and turn it to the good. Another hand to hold.
Someone. Her.
Chapter Seventeen
Aiden was still there. I could tell from outside. And from the flickering inconsequential nature of the light I could see from behind the curtains, he’d either lit candles or set fire to the tablecloth.
‘Great, you’re back.’ He was dressed, for which I was very grateful, but in leather, for which I wasn’t. A tight black shirt clung to his upper body like a shaved monkey and the trousers were probably measurable on the Richter scale, judging by the noise they gave off when he moved. I had the feeling he thought he looked really sexy. ‘I got takeaway. Chinese suit you?’
Okaaaayyyy. And yes, while it was nice to come home to dinner and a lovely man … there’s something rather clinical about a guy who orders in takeaways and then meets you at the door in leather. A bit like, he’s acknowledging you need to eat (to keep your strength up for the contents of the leather) but can’t actually be bothered to cook anything. I mean, there were ready meals in the freezer, he wouldn’t have had to strain himself. But still. He’d thought a bit.
‘Thanks. Chinese would be great.’
He’d fetched all the candles I owned and put them in the living room on saucers. He’d even found the obscene one that Megan had brought me back from an Ann Summers party, where she’d won it for being the most straight-laced attendee. Unfortunately, this had now burned half way down, and the result was anything but sexy. ‘So. How was today?’
I took the proffered tinfoil container and fork – washing up was also clearly not on tonight’s agenda. ‘Tough.’ I wasn’t going to say anything else, but the image of Kai’s confusion was burned into my brain. ‘Went to Leeds with Kai.’
‘Right. That’s your man, isn’t it? The one you’re just … seeing?’
‘Yes. Aiden …’
‘D’you think he’d like to come out to play?’
‘Actually, I have no idea.’ I thought about Kai and his confessions about drinking too much and wild living and then wondered how I could have thought anyone like him could be otherwise. ‘But I …’
‘Maybe we should give him a ring, I’m feeling like a bit of the hard stuff.’ Aiden sucked on a bit of lemon chicken and winked at me. ‘Oh, and I downloaded some possible wedding venues onto your laptop. Take a look.’
He genuinely didn’t see any dichotomy in discussing wedding plans and almost simultaneously proposing a threesome with another guy. Maybe there were women out there for whom this was a huge turn on, all I know is, I wasn’t one of them. And he hadn’t even given me the chance to say so.
‘Aiden. We need to talk about this.’ The takeaway was really good though, and I hadn’t realised how hungry I was. ‘After dinner.’
‘Seen the weather forecast? Tomorrow’s going to be really mental. How about we spend the day in bed?’ Aiden undid the top two buttons of the leather shirt and scrumpled up his hair, ‘It’ll be cracking.’
‘There’s more to life than self-indulgence.’ I wondered how Kai was. How he was feeling, whether he’d come to any decision yet. I wanted to phone, but decided to leave him alone, give him a chance to think.
‘Och, I give great hedonism.’ Aiden grinned at me. ‘Why, what else would you be doing, on a day when it’s not safe to go out?’ He dropped his lemon ch
icken and gave me a kiss that went on longer than was decent, then stood up to reveal the leather trousers straining with something longer than was decent. ‘In fact …’
‘Aid, I’m knackered.’ I fought to keep hold of my prawn balls. ‘Can’t we, I dunno, watch TV for a bit?’
‘After. Aw, c’mon, babe. You never wanted to watch TV when you visited me on set, did ya?’
I was too tired to fight him. Besides. You know. Those trousers. And he was stunningly good.
During the night the wind rose. And kept on rising, somewhat similar to Aiden himself, although the wind slapped the rooftops not buttocks and moaned in chimneys not in a baritone.
We did get some sleep. We must have done, because I was woken by the phone ringing.
‘Leave it,’ Aiden groaned as the wind hit the side of the house with a smack and whumph that made the windows rattle like teeth in a punched mouth. ‘They’ll go away.’
But they didn’t. The phone rang on. I crawled across to look at the display through blurry eyes. ‘OL? Who’s OL?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’ Aiden burrowed deeper under the covers. ‘Lie still, darlin’, you’re letting the cold in.’
There was an almighty bang from outside as something blew into something else. It sounded like wood on metal. Snow was strafing the windows, more solid than fluffy, and the wind had started howling like a thwarted animal. It was still dark outside, but, in this weather that didn’t mean much, it could have been any time from six to breakfast.
‘Old Lodge!’ I sat up suddenly and Aiden groaned again, pulling the duvet tight to his body. I snatched up the phone. Did Kai need me, after all? ‘Kai? Is that you?’ But at the other end no one spoke. The line between us sounded hollow. ‘Cerys? Nick?’
Hubble Bubble Page 14
