Hubble Bubble

by Jane Lovering

  Still no answer, just the sea-like sound of an engaged phone line, and if I listened hard I thought I could hear breathing. ‘Is it the babies? Are you in labour? Where’s the guys? Where’s Kai?’

  And now a change in the tone. If I really strained I could make out the word come, repeated with a breath’s pause in between. ‘Shit. I’m on my way.’ I hung up and struggled from under the covers. ‘I’ve got to go out. Someone’s in trouble.’

  ‘Fuck ’em.’ Aiden reached out a long arm and grabbed my shoulder. ‘You can’t go out in this, Holly. Listen to it.’

  As though prompted the wind roared down the street like a teenage driver in a Porsche.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’ The duvet was thrown back to reveal Aiden in all his naked glory. And he was quite glorious, although a little absence would have made my heart grow fonder, also my tender places a little less tender. ‘Come on.’

  And Kai’s words echoed through my brain. Was this it? Was this what I had to look forward to for the next twenty-or-so years, until I found myself too old and tired to indulge in the sexual carnival tricks? Rampant guys wanting no connection other than the purely plugged-in kind? I tried to extricate myself gently. ‘Aid, all this. You and me. It can’t work, you know it can’t. We’re not compatible.’

  ‘Sure we are.’ He wouldn’t let go of me, kept trying to drag me back into the bed.

  ‘But what if … what if, for some reason, I can’t have sex? Like, say, if we have babies or something and I have to have a bit of time off?’ I pried his fingers off my arm.

  ‘Hey, that’d be no problem. After all, there’s always some chick up for a good time until you were ready for it again.’ He grabbed at me and managed to unbalance me backwards onto the bed. ‘How about I show you what I learned in Morocco? Or, tell you what, I could come with you, find out if this Kai is my cup of tea. No point in dragging the guy in if I don’t fancy him, is there?’

  I thought of Kai, his desperate, broken look yesterday. Needing someone. And there I’d been, perpetually trying to seduce him into bed, wanting no more connection than the plugged-in kind. Stupid. Shallow. I closed my eyes slowly. ‘Aiden. What part of the word no is it that you don’t understand?’ When I opened my eyes I saw the handcuffs we’d let fall onto the floor again. I picked them up.

  ‘Oh yeah, you are such a tease.’ Aiden watched me fasten one around his wrist. ‘You want it as much as I do, don’t you?’

  I snapped the other half of the cuffs onto the wrought iron headboard. ‘I don’t think there’s an untreated sex maniac anywhere who wants it as much as you do, Aiden,’ I said. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’re rational at the moment, and I really do have to go.’

  He pulled against the cuffs but they were real and solid and so was the bed. ‘So, you’re gonna come back and do me, that right?’

  I sighed. ‘I’ll see. The key is on my key ring, so don’t even bother ransacking the bedroom for it. I’ll let you out when I get home, don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you to starve to death or anything.’ I shoved a mid-sex snack of crisps that we’d left beside the bed and a glass of water over to him. ‘Now, behave yourself.’

  I dressed in two pairs of woollen tights under jeans, three T-shirts, a sweater and my warm coat, plus wellies. Outside it was a little lighter but day was still struggling to dawn past a pus-yellow sky and the air was thick with wind. When I opened the front door it was instantly whipped out of my hand and slammed back against the wall, cracking the metal knob in two with the force of it.

  The air stung like lemon juice. Snowflakes bit my skin and the wind made keeping my eyes open almost impossible. It was stepping out into sensory overload. My body was tugged and driven, this way and that, I could hardly draw breath and all the while the wind yelled and shrilled into my ears. It took me five minutes to get to my car, and it was only parked three yards from the doorstep.

  A few hasty minutes scraping and shovelling and blowing on the keyhole, and I was in, where at least the wind and snow stopped hitting me. Instead, they hit the car, which zigzagged across carriageways, bouncing gently off the banked snow on either side and then swivelling around on the icy road surface until I was no longer sure whether I was driving in the right direction. The only fortunate thing was that there was hardly any other traffic. A couple of cautious tractors, front ends loaded with feed for distant sheep and cattle and a four by four with skis tied to a roof rack edged past my random trajectory; we all gave each other weak ‘are we stupid, or what?’ grins as we ricocheted by.

  It took me an hour and a half to drive the ten miles and when I slowed down near the entrance to the wood I saw that one of the huge elms had blown down and the trackway was blocked to vehicles. But that was okay because the snow lay so deeply along the track that I didn’t think I would have been able to drive down it without hitting a gigantic rut and grounding completely. I steered the car to roughly where I imagined the kerb to be and touched the brake. A jarring skitter told me that the ABS was doing nothing to stop us and I jammed my foot down hard in a panic, causing the back end of the car to swivel around. The car rotated in its own length, shying the width of the road like a horse imagining something truly terrible in the opposite hedge, then hit something under the snow with a huge bang which threw me against the steering wheel hard enough to make me swear.

  When I got out I could see the car listing dramatically to the left, the whole of the undercarriage buried in snow up to the hubcaps. By now I was half-blind with ice crusting on my eyelashes, and right this minute I didn’t care what was wrong with it. I was more concerned with getting to whoever needed my help.

  I locked the Renault against car thieving yetis and battled my way into the wood. At least once I’d got under the trees the wind couldn’t get to me. It was too busy working the treetops, forcing the fingertips of branches to rake the sky and all the while sounding like an incoming tide. I plonked on through the snow, and even though I tried to avoid drifts, I only managed to avoid the obvious ones and kept dropping into patches which went up to my waist.

  There was no sign of the Ginger Menace. I guess even psychos stayed at home in front of the fire on days like this. I dug my ungloved hands deeper into my pockets, hunched my shoulders and struggled on, sweating under my clothes even as any exposed bits of skin puckered and screamed against the cold. At last the Old Lodge came into view as a golden light streaming out across the snow from the kitchen window, a single plume of smoke rising from the chimney. There was a newly chopped pile of wood outside the door on top of which a robin perched. It looked like a jigsaw box lid.

  The robin stared at me aggressively as I knocked. At first no one came, then, after I’d readdressed the door with extreme prejudice because I was bloody freezing, Kai appeared.

  ‘Holly?’

  ‘No, the fucking Christmas fairy,’ I stamped my numb feet. ‘Please let me in. The wind keeps trying to force snow up my nose. I’m going to be the first person to drown whilst standing chatting.’ And then I laughed a hollow little laugh.

  ‘All right, Missus Brittle.’ Kai stepped back and I almost fell with thankfulness into the warm hallway. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Up?’

  ‘Yeah. Why are you here? It’s God-awful o’clock, Cerys isn’t even out of bed yet and your brother is watching CBBC.’

  ‘But you rang me.’ I peeled off my coat, sweater and the first of the T-shirt layers. ‘A couple of hours ago. At least, I thought it was you, the line was all weird and faint.’

  Kai shook his head. ‘Like I said, Cerys is asleep and I’m fairly sure Nicholas’s been nowhere near the phone, not when The Sarah Jane Adventures omnibus has been running since six thirty. Unless Cerys has taken to sleep-phoning and, bearing in mind it takes her half an hour to get out of bed, I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘But … I drove through this!’ I waved an arm at the window where the snow, illuminated black, was swirling past the window. ‘And now I’v
e wrecked my car!’ A thin prick at the back of my eyes as shock tried to make itself felt past the chill factor.

  ‘Come and have some tea.’ Kai went through to the kitchen, but I diverted and popped my head around the living room door.

  ‘Hey Holl.’ Nick was hooked over the sofa watching TV. ‘Children’s TV is really good.’ He was just sitting, not even fidgeting. There must be something calming in the air here.

  ‘Did you ring me?’

  His eyes never left the screen. ‘No. What, you mean today? No. I’m watching this, it’s meant for kids but it’s brilliant.’

  ‘Yeah, well, far be it from me to try to compete with a Dalek.’ I went back into the kitchen, gently kicking shut the door to the living room as I passed.

  Kai was plugging in the kettle. ‘By the way, Holl,’ he said with his back to me, ‘thanks for yesterday.’ There was a careful casualness about his tone that told me not to ask any questions, to dismiss his thanks as an idle recognition of my taking the morning off to accompany him.

  ‘’S okay,’ I replied, trying to mirror his casual tone.

  ‘You … you were great.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything. I was just there.’

  ‘Yeah. Which is more than I had a right to ask from you.’ His hand, I could see, was tight on the kettle handle, and the other was bunched in front of him. ‘You cared,’ and now his voice was a hoarseness only just audible over the bubbling rattle of the boil.

  ‘Well, you seemed to need …’, and then, to change the subject, because there was an air of deepening emotion in that room that I couldn’t deal with in wet socks, ‘are you sure you didn’t ring? This place came up on the number ident.’

  He shook his head. ‘Maybe the weather has shorted something out.’ He picked up the handset from the kitchen dresser. Looked at it, listened to it and then shook it gently. ‘Looks like the lines are down now anyway.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t want me, maybe I ought to go back. I’ve left Aiden …’ I grinned to myself. ‘Well, he’s not going to be a happy bunny if I leave him for too long, put it that way.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Kai put a mug of tea down on the table. ‘No way am I letting you go out in this again. Listen to it, it’s getting worse.’ The incoming tide had suddenly become a running flood, the wind booming and cracking in the treetops and even making it down to ground level now, where it sent snow whirling and crashing like insubstantial, and rather bad, waltzers.

  ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘Aiden.’ I turned back to look for my coat again. ‘I have to go, Kai.’

  ‘No.’ His voice was absolutely definite. ‘You are not going anywhere. Not now. And anyway, I thought you said you’d wrecked your car?’

  ‘Lend me the Jeep.’

  ‘Can’t. There’s a tree down across the garage doors. I made a start on chopping it up, but I’ve only done some of the major branches, there’s a whole trunk to go and I am not going out again until the weather sees sense and calms down.’

  I looked out of the window. The snow was making a sound like fluttering birds. ‘I have to do something, this could go on for hours.’

  ‘Ring your friend? Would she go round?’

  ‘Phones are down.’

  ‘Mobile?’

  I held mine up. ‘No signal.’

  ‘No, mine neither. Mast gone in the wind or something.’

  ‘Besides, Megan hasn’t got the handcuff key.’

  ‘The …’ Kai rolled his eyes at me. ‘Holly. What have you done?’

  So I told him. I didn’t even edit out the leather trouser incident. ‘But, Kai, I honest-to-God don’t know what’s got into Aiden. We’ve never … there’s never been any talk of making anything permanent, we’ve never watched TV together or gone anywhere … it was always just the sex. And I thought he was all right with it, and then he turns up on my doorstep swearing undying love and a permanent hard-on and talking about threesomes and banging other girls like we’ve agreed it all!’

  ‘And now he’s handcuffed to your bed.’

  ‘He was going to come with me. And take a look at you.’

  ‘At me.’

  ‘With a view to seducing you into bed with us.’

  Kai stared at me, then started to laugh. He laughed until he spilled his tea. ‘And whose idea was that?’ he managed to say eventually.

  ‘Aiden’s. I told you, threesomes, blokes, girls, he’s a bit obsessive.’

  ‘God, that’s cheered me up.’ Kai rubbed his face. ‘Oh, and for the record, Holly, I’m a strictly one-on-one guy.’ He grinned and raised an eyebrow and I came over all flustered for a moment and had to change the subject.

  ‘Vivienne,’ I said suddenly. ‘If I can get across the wood to her cottage, she might lend me her car.’

  ‘We’ll have to walk,’ Kai nudged my tea closer to me. ‘So drink that down. You’ll need to be warm inside as well.’

  ‘Don’t. That sounds like something Aiden would say.’

  He looked at me, suddenly serious over the scrubbed table. ‘I don’t want to be anything like Aiden.’ His eyes were dark, almost brown this morning, hollowed with tiredness and shadowed with something else, something deep.

  ‘Kai …’

  ‘The other day, up in my room. You remember?’ He stretched out a hand across the table and touched my cheek. His fingers were warm from the tea mug. ‘I’m tired of the games, Holly. Tired of the lies and not facing up to myself. And now, all this, my past coming out of the woodwork … I want …’ His voice trailed off and he started to concentrate very hard on the tabletop.

  I let the silence sit for a moment. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want something more. Not just a body to fuck and a face to go out to dinner with. Something settled, something to rely on. Somebody in here.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Where you are.’

  ‘I’m …’

  ‘Ssshh. This is just me, just what I’ve been coming up with. Your input – welcome, of course but – I wanted to lay it on the line for you. You are the first woman who’s been there for me, Holl. Not wanting anything, not in it for the glory or the perceived glamour or wanting to be seen with a guy who’s made his name … for me. Just me, as I am. I know you’ve got your own demons …’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Oh yeah. I just think you’re too close to see them, that’s all. To you they look like normality but to everyone else … But I want to be there when they start to become visible; there for you. For me, it’s all or nothing now.’

  He stood up and I stared at the lean length of him. Wondered what the hell it was that I wanted. ‘Kai.’

  ‘Tell me, Holly. Tell me what it is you feel. What you think is happening here with us.’

  ‘I don’t … I don’t know. You’re … just so … so … When I turn round, there you are, and you keep telling me things about myself, about Nicky and the way I am and all that, and there’s all the’—I made a rather feeble wave of my hand—‘leather and stuff, and it’s like you’re built out of solid Understandium or something and …’ I ran out of words and all that came out now, was breath.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, coming over to where I sat. ‘Yeah, I know.’ Long fingers drew me up and his mouth came down so that we met in the middle in a kiss that warmed me more thoroughly than the tea had.

  The kitchen door opened, and behind Kai’s shoulder I saw Cerys appear. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I guess you want some privacy.’

  ‘You guess right,’ Kai said without looking at her. Looking, in fact, right into my eyes, down, through to my soul. ‘Shut the fucking door, Cerys.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ I heard her grumbling as she dragged the door closed, then the muttering as she joined up with Nicholas in front of the TV.

  Then Nicholas’s yell of, ‘She’s what?’

  Kai and I grinned at each other. His eyes were softer now, and his mouth had lost the sardonic upturn it perpetually wore. ‘God, I want you,’ he said very quietly.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Short and inte
nse, wasn’t it?’

  A slow nod. ‘I have the feeling that it’s going to be pretty intense, yes. But I think that you want something else too, now.’ He was still gazing down into my eyes. I felt the orbital tug of his stare. ‘Tired of the games?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to marry Aiden, I know that much.’ Cautiously I reached up, touched his cheek. It was sharp with stubble and his bones seemed very close to the surface. ‘But my life is pretty good, apart from that. I don’t know if I’m ready for someone … for you.’

  He laughed, a sudden rip through the calm air. ‘Yeah. I guess I deserve your uncertainty. There’s still stuff you need to work through, I can’t make decisions for you, Holl. Like I said, from the outside it’s obvious what’s been going on, but you need to arrive at that conclusion for yourself. You need to arrive at your own destination.’

  I let my hand fall. ‘But for now I’d better try to get to Vivienne’s. Aiden might be desperate for a pee and that’s a new duvet. What are you doing?’ Kai was wrapping a scarf, that looked as though it might have been knitted by Cerys – or at least someone with more enthusiasm than ability – around his neck.

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I’ll be fine, I’ll follow the track. Even I can’t get lost following a track five yards wide.’

  ‘You can in snow. Hold on, I’ll get my coat.’

  I looked at Kai, pulling on a ghastly overcoat and tucking the scarf down inside it, his hair stringing along the collar. He was different. How different I wasn’t sure. But his whole appealing, sexy, insightful, slightly crazy thing was definitely causing a major shift in my relationship paradigms. And, damn if my nipples weren’t chafing too.

  We wrenched the door open and stood for a moment on the apocalyptic threshold. ‘Bloody hell,’ Kai stared out into the blind whiteness.

  ‘You don’t have to come,’ I said again.

  ‘You can’t go alone. I don’t want your frozen body found huddled feebly at the root of a tree. It’d be too much of a cliché.’

  ‘Kai,’ Cerys appeared again, in the hallway this time.