by Julie Cohen
‘That wasn’t the plan.’
‘Then why did you insist on seeing me again, if you knew you were just going to leave?’
He caught her hand. ‘Because any time together is better than none? We have tonight, at least.’
‘I’m not spending the night with you! I hardly know you.’
‘That’s not what I meant. Well, I did mean it if that’s what you wanted, but if you don’t, then this is fine. Walking and talking with you. I just want to get to know you, Emily.’
‘But what’s the point, if you’re leaving tomorrow?’
‘This is the point,’ he said, and he pulled her to him and kissed her on the mouth.
His lips on hers, the roughness of his chin, the taste of red wine. Emily wrapped her arms around his neck without meaning to and she stood on tiptoes, pushing up towards him, pressing her lips to his.
This is what it feels like to be properly kissed, she thought. She closed her hand in the hair at the back of his head and he pulled her tighter to him. She felt not just his lips but all of him, his breathing, his heartbeat, his arms around her, the lean strength of his body.
She hadn’t known it would be so wonderful, or that she would crave to be even closer, or that nothing else would matter at all.
‘Wow,’ he whispered against her lips, and then kissed her harder.
The rain began with a sudden fall, instantly drenching their hair and shoulders. Robbie looked up, still holding her tight, and laughed.
‘Guess I’m not as good at the weather as I thought.’
‘Let’s get to shelter,’ she said. He wrapped his jacket more tightly around her and they ran for a shop doorway. By the time they’d reached it, her shoes were soaked and water was running down the back of her neck.
‘There, that’s better,’ he said, and settled himself back against the wall, with her pulled close to him. Raindrops rolled down his cheeks, dripping from his hair; she brushed them away with her own wet hand and he kissed her palm. ‘You look even better wet.’
Then he kissed her again, this time with his mouth open, and the heat of it warmed her through. Outside their shelter the rain fell and fell. It drummed on the roof and ran down the cobbles outside their shelter in a sheet. They kissed and kissed until Emily had to break away, breathless.
‘This was worth coming to England for,’ he murmured, his lips brushing her cheek and then the hair beside her ear.
‘We can’t stay here,’ she said, rationality asserting itself, despite the feeling of his breath in her ear and the shiver it sent down her spine.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s raining and we’ll catch our death, if a policeman doesn’t come along and turf us out first.’
‘I’d like to see him try.’ He began kissing her neck and she shivered again because it felt so exciting. She had never been pressed this close to a man before. Her chest up against his, her hips against his thighs.
‘So you want to kiss in this doorway all night until you have to leave in the morning?’
‘Sounds perfect.’ He tilted her chin up to kiss her again, but she shook her head.
‘Where are you staying?’ she asked.
‘Right here, I told you.’ He inclined his head to hers.
‘No, I mean, where did you stay last night?’
‘In a park not far from here.’
‘You slept outside?’
‘It was a nice night, and hotels are expensive.’
‘So what were you planning to do tonight?’
He shrugged. ‘I hadn’t thought much further than meeting up with you.’
‘How can you not even—’ Something struck her. ‘You’d been planning to spend last night with that woman you were with yesterday, weren’t you?’
‘Um . . .’ He looked sheepish. ‘Can I refuse to answer that question on the ground that it might incriminate me?’
‘And did you think that you were going to spend the night with me, tonight?’
‘I hadn’t planned anything. And as I said, this, right here, is absolutely fine with me.’ He kissed her and although Emily was beginning to get cross with him, she couldn’t resist kissing him back. Losing herself for a few more minutes in a world where the rain didn’t matter, other people didn’t matter, tomorrow didn’t matter either.
‘In my defence,’ he said when they had finished, ‘I didn’t spend the night with Cynthia. As soon as I saw you again, all I could think of was you.’
‘So you spent the night in a park.’
‘Thinking of you.’
‘Robbie, you can’t spend the night in a park again.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve spent the night in worse places. A little rain doesn’t bother me.’
Emily looked at the rain sheeting it down. As she made the decision, she was aware that it was probably the only rash one she’d made in her life so far.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’
She grabbed his hand and pulled him out into the rain. They ran together, through the empty streets, across the bridge and down Sidgwick Street until she saw the light above the porter’s lodge at Newnham. Then she stopped him and drew him into the shadows.
‘Can you climb?’ she asked him breathlessly.
‘Sure.’
‘All right. Go past the college, turn left, hop over the first wall you see into the gardens.’ She pointed along the side of the college. ‘Go right round to the back of the college, and wait. In a few minutes I’ll turn on my light and open the window and you’ll see which room is mine. It’s on the first floor.’
Robert grinned. ‘We’re doing a Romeo and Juliet, are we?’
‘We’re doing something bloody foolish and if I get caught I’ll most likely be sent down, so you have to be careful, Robbie.’
‘I will.’ He crossed his heart. ‘Swear it.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘So am I.’
‘Somehow I doubt you’re ever fully serious.’ Yet he appeared to mean it, and he couldn’t stay out here in the rain, so what else could she do? She kissed him swiftly on the lips and then ran to the lodge to sign in.
‘Got caught in the rain?’ asked Howard the porter, jovially.
‘The weatherman said it wouldn’t start till morning,’ Emily replied, and it was that exact moment that she realised she was still wearing Robbie’s jacket. ‘Goodnight, then.’
‘Miss Greaves!’ called the porter after her, and she turned around in dismay. ‘Almost forgot. Telephone message for you.’ He held up the slip of paper and Emily, hardly able to breathe, went back to retrieve it. Your mother rang to say your sister was home safe and sound and she hopes you have not fallen behind on work.
‘Could have told her myself, you’re never behind on work,’ said Howard, winking at her. She managed a smile in return and hurried out, towards her room.
What was she doing? She was risking her education and her career for a man she’d only just met? A man who slept rough and picked up women on a whim?
A man who kissed like an angel. But then again, he’d probably had quite a lot of practice.
She let herself into her first-floor room and turned on the light. Her essay was where she’d left it, on the bed. She could leave her window closed. She could pick up her essay and go through it one more time, as she’d planned to do. She could let Robbie take care of himself. He’d said he didn’t mind the rain, and he was leaving tomorrow, forever.
Emily went to the window. She couldn’t see Robbie outside, only darkness. Maybe he’d left anyway. Maybe he couldn’t get into the gardens. Maybe he’d had a better offer between the front and the back of the college – another student on the ground floor, maybe, with a more convenient window.
She opened the tall window and leaned out, into the rain, and he was there in the light cast by he
r lamp. ‘Romeo, O Romeo,’ he mouthed to her. She shook her head and pointed at the old lead drainpipe bolted to the wall. It was roughly halfway between her room and her neighbour Adrienne’s; she didn’t speak much with Adrienne, who was studying art history, but rumour had it that Adrienne had let in a boy last term.
Robbie slung his bag over his shoulder and began climbing immediately, hand over hand, like he’d been shimmying up drainpipes all his life. Perhaps he had. Emily assessed the drainpipe, wondering how he’d get from it to her window, but before she could consider it properly, he’d scrambled across using the ivy and was holding out his bag for her. She took it and pulled it in, and Robbie grabbed the sill with one of his hands and swung his leg over it.
Then he was in her room, dripping wet and smiling and hardly breathing heavily at all from his climb.
And oh dear, what was she going to do with him now?
She shut the window, drew the curtains, and put her finger to her lips. ‘You have to be very quiet,’ she whispered to him. ‘No one can hear you.’
He nodded. She took her towel from her peg and handed it to him, but he shook his head and pointed to her hair. She dried herself off first and then he took it. ‘Do you have any dry clothes?’ she whispered.
‘The stuff in my bag shouldn’t be too bad.’ He knelt and began to open it. Emily took off his sodden jacket and hung it from the back of her chair. She glanced down at herself and saw that her wet white blouse was stuck to her skin, revealing her white bra and the shape of her body.
Robbie’s shirt was stuck to him, too. He had broad shoulders and a dark shadow on his chest where there was hair.
She swallowed, for the first time really understanding what it meant that she’d done.
‘I’ll get changed in the bathroom,’ she said, grabbing pyjamas and a jumper from her chest of drawers. ‘There’s a spare toothbrush on the sink.’
She fled the room. The corridor was empty; she ducked into the bathroom she shared with four other girls and locked the door behind her.
In the mirror over the sink, her eyes were bright, her cheeks red. Her chin was pink from rubbing against Robbie’s beard stubble as they kissed. Her hair hung in damp rats’ tails around her face. She looked panicked and bedraggled, and . . .
Happy.
‘Kissing in the rain,’ she whispered to her reflection. It was a thing that Emily Greaves did not do. Emily Greaves who was so busy studying, always trying to please her exacting mother and her admirable father. She’d never had time or opportunity to kiss in the rain. She’d never met a man whom she wanted to kiss in the rain.
What was she going to do with him?
She stripped off her sodden clothing; she was wet to the skin. Robbie must be too – he hadn’t even had his jacket – but he’d seemed happy to stay in that doorway with her all night, until he had to leave in the morning.
She changed hurriedly, the pyjamas sticking to her wet skin as she pulled them on. A slip of paper fell out of her skirt pocket: the telephone message from her mother.
Her mother. Her mother would kill her if she knew Emily had a strange man in her room at night. The depths of her mother’s disappointment would know no bounds.
Emily was surprised to hear herself giggle.
She tiptoed down the corridor and had her hand on the doorknob about to rejoin Robbie when she thought, What if he’s not finished changing yet and he’s naked?
Cold and hot flushed through her all at once.
She listened at the door, but didn’t hear anything. But the thought of Robbie naked had started a whole new chain of thought. Would he expect her to have changed her mind about sleeping with him, since she’d invited him in? He was obviously experienced with women. He might expect her to be sophisticated, someone who’d had lovers; after all, she’d known exactly how a man could climb up to her bedroom.
Or worse. What if he knew she wasn’t? What if he’d been able to tell, by kissing her, that she was utterly inexperienced?
She knocked lightly on the door, heart in her mouth, and when there was no answer, opened it and peered in. Robbie had turned off the overhead light and turned on the desk light near her bed, filling the room with cosy shadows. He sat on the floor next to her bookcase. He was wearing a very rumpled white T-shirt and undershorts. Cautiously, she entered the room.
‘I like the PJs,’ he said.
They were flannelette, with tiny forget-me-nots on them; she’d had them since she was in school and they were a little too small around the bust. Emily entered the room, hugging herself, and decided that in this situation, with a strange, beautiful man half-naked in her bedroom, her best weapon was to be brisk.
‘I’m not going to sleep with you,’ she said.
‘That’s not why I gave you the compliment. You really do look adorable.’
‘I’m still not going to sleep with you.’
‘That’s all right.’ He turned his attention back to the books. ‘Have you really read all of these?’
‘Yes. Several times.’
He pulled her histology textbook off the shelf and began to leaf through it. Apparently she was completely safe. Perversely, the realisation made her frown.
‘Aren’t you disappointed that I’m not going to sleep with you?’ she asked.
He got up and came over to her. Her room seemed very small all of a sudden. When he kissed her, it was with so much passion and desire that she had to put her hand against the wall to steady herself.
‘I’m very disappointed,’ he said. ‘But it’s your choice.’
Robbie returned to the bookcase and sat cross-legged on the floor, perusing the shelves.
Emily stood there for a long moment, her hand on her lips. He wasn’t looking at her, but she could see rather a lot of him: his arms and legs, lean and muscular and covered with dark hair. The sole of his bare foot was presented to her – the skin there was darker than the skin on his legs, probably from walking around without shoes – and something about the underside of his toes, the way they curled into soft pads, was unbearably vulnerable and naked.
There was no pressure to sleep with him. Only temptation.
She straightened her shoulders. ‘You can sleep on the floor,’ she told him, taking a blanket and a pillow off her bed. She spread the blanket out on the floor, right next to her bed. There was nowhere else to spread it.
‘It should be better than a park, anyway,’ she said.
‘Much better. Thank you.’
He was looking at her now. He made no move to lie down on the blanket.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘It’s getting late, and I have a tutorial tomorrow.’
‘Yes. It’s late.’
How on earth was she going to sleep next to him? Knowing she could reach her hand down and touch him?
She needed a distraction, something to stop her from listening to his breathing.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You might like this.’
She had to kneel quite close to him to pull out the portable record player and the LP, and even closer to plug it into the wall socket. She put on the record, lowered the needle, and retreated to her bed before the first soft notes of the piano began.
Robbie recognised it immediately. ‘This is it. That music I heard yesterday. Something variations?’
‘Goldberg. It’s Bach.’
Quietly, listening to the music, Robbie lay down on the blanket. Emily arranged herself under her own and she reached over to turn off the light. In the darkness, the music filled the room, but she could still feel him beside her. Listening fiercely, with the same concentration he had given to her when he kissed her.
When she ventured her hand over the side of the bed, he found it and clasped it in his own. He held it until the record ended, and afterwards.
Chapter Thirty-One
Emily awoke to see Robbie gazing at her
in the morning light that filtered through the curtains. It was such a seamless transition from her dream that for a moment she wasn’t sure she was awake. But in her dream he’d been in bed with her, and in reality, he was still lying on the blanket on the floor.
‘Morning,’ he said to her, in a voice full of sleep and warmth and sexiness. He was lying on his side, his head propped up on his arm. It would be so easy to stretch out her hand to him, lift her own blanket and invite him in next to her.
In her dreams, his hands had been on her skin, unbuttoning her pyjamas, his lips pressing kisses in the hollow between her breasts.
She sat up. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Not particularly. It seemed like a waste of time.’
He’d been watching her while she slept? Could he see what had been going on inside her dreams? Had she said anything in her sleep?
‘You’re leaving today,’ she said.
‘My train leaves at eight thirty.’
Her clock said quarter to seven. ‘I suppose . . . I suppose we have enough time to listen to the other side of that record. It ends with the same aria it began with. It’s a hello, and then a goodbye.’
The word caused an unexpected lump in her throat.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
‘What? On the boat to Italy?’
He grimaced. ‘No, I doubt there’s room, unfortunately, unless you can sail.’
‘I can’t sail.’
‘I meant to Lowestoft. We don’t sail until tomorrow morning. I have to check in with the others today but I have the rest of the day free – we could spend some more time together.’
‘I don’t think I—’
He sat up and took her hand, the same hand he’d been holding as she fell asleep. ‘We might never see each other again, Emily. I can try to come back to England but I don’t know when that will be. You might have met someone else by then.’
‘I’m not looking for anyone.’
‘You weren’t looking for me, but you found me. I can’t bear the thought that I might come back to find you with another man.’
