Love Nest

by Julia Llewellyn

  ‘Hello?’ she said, face on fire, sure it was him.

  ‘Lucinda? It’s me!’

  Oh, shit. Anton. Anton whom she hadn’t given a second’s thought to.

  ‘I’m back. A bit earlier than I expected.’

  ‘Hi,’ she said guardedly.

  ‘So how are things?’ He sounded so warm and needy. Lucinda cringed. ‘I was wondering,’ he continued. ‘Do you fancy dinner tonight? There’s this little fish place I know called J. Sheekey’s.’

  ‘Oh!’ Lucinda said. She gnawed a cuticle as she looked at her computer clock. 5:59. She did not want to spend the evening at home, willing Nick to call.

  ‘I mean, if you’re free.’

  ‘I am free,’ she decided. ‘What time?’

  ‘Really! Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ She felt Gareth watching her. She dipped her head, ashamed. But what was wrong with having dinner with Anton? Just as friends.

  To clear her head, she walked from the office to Sheekey’s, just off the hubbub of Charing Cross Road. The restaurant felt very clubby: wall-to-wall mahogany and black-and-white photos on the wall. Anton was waiting at a corner table. As soon as he saw her, he stood up. Her flesh crept at his eagerness.

  ‘Lucinda. What a treat. Would you like oysters? I’ve already ordered champagne.’

  ‘Lovely,’ she said, sitting down. He was so old, whole Everest expeditions could get lost in the crevices round his eyes. She thought of Nick and his smooth, hard body and shivered. She shouldn’t have come. She was wasting Anton’s time and hers.

  ‘Oysters for the lady?’ Anton enquired, as the waiter hovered into view. She nodded dumbly. But her silence didn’t seem to matter. Anton talked about his travels and some new building projects he was embarking on, and how he’d just seen the new programme for the Opera House and he really hoped Lucinda would be able to join him at Turandot.

  ‘Mmm,’ she nodded. ‘Yes. Could be nice.’ After all, she was never going to hear from Nick again, so why not? She might as well enjoy some opera. But then she felt her phone, buzzing in her inside jacket pocket. She whipped it out. Nick’s number.

  ‘Excuse me, but I have to take this.’

  ‘I don’t think phones are allowed in here…’

  But she’d already answered. ‘Hello? Hi… Oh.’ She held up a hand to Anton and to a waiter who’d rushed in to protest. ‘It’s OK, I’ll take this outside. Sorry,’ she mouthed to Anton, but she wasn’t really, she just wanted to be alone, talking to Nick.

  ‘Where are you?’ he said, once she was outside in the little courtyard at the back of some theatre.

  ‘In a restaurant,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yeah. Who with?’ He didn’t sound jealous, merely amused.

  ‘A client.’

  ‘Well, leave him at once. You need to come and see me.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, grinning so widely she thought her face might snap. ‘But I told you I’m busy.’

  ‘I need to see you now.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At yours?’

  That wouldn’t work – Benjie was in tonight, revising. ‘Sorry, that’s not possible. How about yours?’

  ‘No.’ No explanation. She knew why. Her mind contorted like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat as she tried to think of an alternative. And then it came. The Meehans. Away in Belfast. She’d just have dinner with Anton, then nip back to the office and collect the keys.

  ‘I can see you later. Maybe in a couple of hours.’

  ‘But I want to see you now.’

  ‘I’m busy.’ She knew she should play harder to get but it was so difficult. ‘An hour and a half? Back at the flat?’

  ‘Now!’

  Anton stuck his head round the door of the restaurant. ‘Lucinda! Are you OK?’

  She waved at him apologetically. ‘Be there in an hour,’ Nick said. ‘Or I’ll be gone.’ And he hung up.

  ‘All done now,’ Anton said eagerly. ‘Those oysters are waiting for you.’

  ‘Actually,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry but I’m not feeling well. I’m going to have to go.’

  Anton frowned. ‘Are you sure? You look fine.’

  ‘No, honestly, Anton… it’s women’s troubles.’ She knew that would have him backing right off. ‘I really think I need to get home. I’m so sorry, I thought I’d be OK but I’m not.’

  Anton’s face contorted with concern. ‘Oh dear. Let’s get you a taxi.’ He turned to the top-hatted doorman, who was watching the scene with an ‘I’ve-seen-it-all-before’ expression. ‘Here’s my card,’ he said, pulling his Amex out of his wallet. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. I just need to find this young lady a cab.’

  ‘Really. I’ll be fine on my own,’ Lucinda protested. ‘You go back in. Finish the oysters.’

  ‘I’m hardly going to enjoy them without you.’ He took her arm and led her towards Charing Cross Road, pushing through a crowd of babbling theatregoers. Fortunately, they saw a cab straight away. Anton flagged it down and helped her in.

  ‘South Kensington,’ he told the driver in his usual abrupt fashion. She climbed in.

  ‘Will you call me tomorrow? Let me know you’re OK?’

  ‘Of course,’ she assured him. The cab pulled away and she turned round to see him staring after her mournfully. For a second she felt horribly guilty, but then she thought of Nick waiting for her at the flat. It was if her nerves had been replaced by electric wires. She leaned forward and tapped on the glass.

  ‘We’re not going to South Kensington,’ she told the driver. ‘We’re going to Clerkenwell.’

  21

  Dear Gwen,

  So I had my ‘date’ with Richie. It went as well as could be expected, I suppose. I’m not sure we have all that much in common but he is very amiable. I’m sure I bored him silly, though! I don’t think there’ll be a re-run in any case and that’s probably no bad thing, I’m so busy packing up the house and…

  Grace stopped typing, suddenly overwhelmed with despair. The grandfather clock had just struck two, but she’d been unable to sleep. She’d goofed. Totally and utterly messed things up. She kept trying to tell herself that Richie Prescott was not actually so wonderful himself, that sometimes as he kept on and on about great property deals he’d done she’d been a little bored. But that didn’t matter. He was a man. He had asked her out. And he wouldn’t again. Because she’d been too fat. The only chance to escape from her ghetto, to join the world of people who married and had children, who lived like Sebby and Verity, had eluded her.

  Only one thing could fix this. She hurried down the stairs and along the cold dark corridor to the kitchen. She flung open the breadbin, pulled out two slices, threw them in the Aga toaster and slammed the hotplate lid down. The dogs, asleep in their baskets, stirred in confusion. Grace shushed them as she stared at the toaster, willing it to hurry up. Why had she thrown all the biscuits and sweets away? It had all been a waste of time.

  Before the bread was barely scorched, she pulled up the Aga lid and crammed the toast into her mouth. Carbohydrates rushed round her body and her mood temporarily soared. She shoved in two more slices as she chomped, and this time slathered them in rock-hard, fridge butter. Then two with peanut butter. Two with jam. Two with cheese.

  The bread was finished. She opened the pantry cupboard. A few bags of rice and pasta. It would take too long to cook them. Grace took a handful of dry penne and stuffed them into her mouth, crunching the dusty, dry chips. She washed them down with a pint of milk straight from the fridge.

  Then she buried her face in her arms and she cried and she cried.

  He wasn’t there. Lucinda paced up and down Flat 15, jumping at every sound. She checked her hair in Gemma’s bathroom mirror, splashed water on her face to help herself cool down, then decided her make-up needed touching up – but she had none to hand apart from the little compact and tiny bottle of Ô de Lancôme she kept in her bag.

  She didn’t dare help herself to any of Gemma’s cosmet
ics. She daren’t put on music, light a candle – any of the things she might have normally done to create an ambience – in case she left traces.

  Television was obviously out of the question, so she picked a paperback about American politics off the crowded bookshelf and tried to read. But after not taking in ten pages, she got up and stared at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door. She looked so square in her suit, like a girl from Geneva rather than a rock chick. She wondered if she should have gone home and changed, but even in jeans and a T-shirt and Benjie’s leather studded belt, her skin would have been too clear, her eyes too bright, her cheeks too flushed for her ever to masquerade as Amy Winehouse. And surely that was the kind of woman Nick would be into?

  Fifteen minutes later, however, she’d stopped fretting about pleasing Nick and instead was merely wondering why he hadn’t shown up. Was he stuck in traffic? Or was he with his girlfriend? She tried his mobile but there was no reply, not even his voice, just the O2 messaging lady. She didn’t say anything. She was on the verge of going home when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Hello?’ she said tremulously into the intercom.

  ‘It’s me.’

  As soon as he stepped through the door she was in his arms. They slid down to the floor, with her pulling his T-shirt out of his trousers and grappling with his belt. She couldn’t get it undone, so he helped her. She ran her hands along his pelvis, so beautifully hinged, like her school protractor. His eyes were dark and narrow. It was all so quick and hot and he was kissing her all over her face, her neck, her nipples. She held on to him and dug her nails into his back.

  ‘You’re so fucking sexy,’ he said.

  She wriggled out of her trousers, then grabbed his hand and guided his fingers inside her, desperate for him to feel her wetness. Her thighs were dissolving. She opened up her legs for him. It was the best sex she’d ever had in her life, in a different league from all those fumblings with nervous Pierres and Xaviers in spare bedrooms in ski-resort chalets that a gang of them had taken over for the weekend. She grabbed his buttocks to have him as deep inside her as possible, tilted her hips up at him, biting into his shoulder. She came with a shriek of ecstasy and he collapsed on top of her with a sort of roar. He rolled beside her and they lay quietly for a very long time.

  ‘Oh,’ she said eventually.

  They both started to laugh.

  ‘Did you like that, then?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  They giggled some more.

  Nick looked around the room. Huge, rather spooky shadows from the windows fell across the walls. ‘So why couldn’t we go back to your place?’

  ‘My brother’s there. Why couldn’t we go back to yours?’

  He was silent.

  ‘It’s because you have a girlfriend.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ he said, though he didn’t sound particularly surprised.

  She had enough nous not to tell him she’d been googling him. ‘I saw her at the gig.’

  ‘I see.’ For a second, he looked uncomfortable, then he said, ‘It’s all over. We’re on the rocks. That’s why I’m buying the flat. And she’s looking for her own place.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Lucinda’s very highly attuned bullshit detector didn’t quite buy this. But she wanted to believe him, so she decided that for now she would.

  ‘You are the most incredible woman I have ever met in my life,’ he whispered, running his fingers up her thighs.

  ‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she joked.

  He looked intently into her eyes. ‘No. I don’t.’

  She was thrilled. No one had ever singled her out in this way before, or if they had they hadn’t been worth it. To hide her excitement, she traced the edges of his blue-and-gold dragon tattoo with a fingernail.

  ‘What’s all this about then?’

  ‘It symbolizes protection. Strength. George V had one, you know.’ He flexed his long, thin arm. ‘Look, it’s as if it’s moving.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘Not really,’ he shrugged.

  Lucinda tried to envisage Henri De Villiers, the boy she’d lost her virginity to, with a tattoo hidden under his pinstriped shirt. She couldn’t. But she was distracted anyway, by Nick’s fingers, which had begun to probe inside her again.

  They had a near sleepless night, fuelled by a pizza they found in the freezer. They fell asleep just before dawn and woke around noon and made love again.

  ‘So what is it your dad really does?’ Nick asked, when they finally stopped for a breather.

  ‘He works in property. That’s why I’m here. Learning a bit before I join the family business.’

  ‘So he’s rich.’

  ‘It depends what you mean by rich. What does your dad do?’ she parried.

  ‘I wouldn’t fucking know. He walked out when I was six. Haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. He was a bastard. Treated my mum like shit.’

  ‘My dad doesn’t treat my mum too well, either.’ She paused. ‘He’s always having affairs. Various mistresses. We’re not meant to know anything about it, but it’s usually common knowledge. I mean, he goes on holiday with them and things. Calls them his PA but they’ll be the mother of someone from my class at school. Or the big sister on one occasion. I don’t know why Mummy doesn’t say anything. I guess she feels there’s too much to lose. I mean… our house is pretty big and she has lovely clothes and she’s very much a figure on the Geneva scene. And she came from a very ordinary background, so I guess she’s scared of what she might go back to, even though she’d get a ton of alimony. But I think she’s doing it all wrong. I think she should kick him out. I mean I love him. Love him more than I love her, but still. She needs to show some dignity.’

  It was probably the longest speech Lucinda had ever made about her family. She stopped, slightly astonished.

  ‘Well, my mum was right to kick my dad out but she’s still not exactly Mrs Happy. Living on the sixteenth floor of a tower block watching Jeremy Kyle all day. Stuffed full of Valium.’

  ‘My mum takes Valium too,’ Lucinda laughed at the unlikely coincidence. ‘Has done for years.’ She paused. ‘Have you really not seen your father since you were six?’

  ‘Nope. I’ve had a postcard once or twice. I wish… Well, whenever I’m in the papers or whatever, I sort of hope he might see me. When I do a gig I wonder if he might be out there. But I’ve heard nothing. Maybe he’s dead.’

  Lucinda was touched. Gently she pushed back a strand of his hair, which had fallen over his forehead. She felt a closeness to him she’d not felt towards any human being for years. She was so used to keeping it all buttoned up.

  ‘Maybe we should go for a walk?’ she suggested.

  ‘What for?’

  She was a little shocked. Didn’t Nick know that Fresh Air was a Good Thing that must be partaken of every day for at least twenty minutes?

  ‘People might see us,’ he said. ‘And that could be awkward.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Right.’

  For the first time in the past twenty-four hours her bubble was pricked. Why did he care if people saw them? She reasoned she didn’t want her family to know about him either. But his situation was different – he had a girlfriend.

  ‘How long have you been with her?’ she blurted out.

  He looked amused. ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she lied.

  ‘That’s weird. I’d be jealous if you had a boyfriend.’

  ‘You said it was all over between you. Why should I be jealous?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And how long have you been together?’

  ‘Why does it matter? Seven years.’

  ‘Seven years?’ Of course. She’d been his childhood sweetheart. Still, Lucinda felt bruised all down the front of her body, as if she’d been punched. ‘So it’s serious.’

  ‘It
was serious. But we’ve drifted apart. We like different things now.’ Nick hated himself for saying it. But it was true. Wasn’t it?

  ‘What does she do?’ Lucinda was persisting.

  ‘She’s a nail technician. Does manicures.’ He pulled her towards him. ‘It’s boring. I don’t want to talk about it. I want to fuck you again.’

  At around five, she insisted she really did have to leave.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The Meehans will be back at some point. And I have things to do at home. Like laundry.’

  Nick felt a sense of anti-climax. He’d begun thinking of Lucinda as some kind of goddess. Foreign. Obviously rich. Exactly the kind of woman he should be with. Why was she talking about laundry? That was a Kylie sort of remark.

  ‘Can you come back later?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I can’t. I’ve told you, I’m not sure when the Meehans return.’

  More disillusionment. ‘OK,’ he pouted. ‘I’ll see you then.’ He pulled on his jacket.

  ‘I’ll tidy up,’ she said, glancing round. ‘Make sure everything’s exactly as we found it.’

  ‘You do that. See you.’ He headed towards the door.

  ‘Nick! Wait!’

  ‘What?’ he said, looking bored.

  ‘I’ll… be in touch about the sale.’

  ‘Yeah, all right then.’ The door slammed shut and yet again Lucinda was left terrified and exhilarated, as if her world had just been struck by a meteorite and was now spinning, uncharted, into a black hole.

  22

  Max Bennett was sitting at his desk feeling hungover and irritable. He’d had another row with Heather last night – she’d been on at him again about moving in and he’d finally told her he didn’t want it.

  She’d cried, and he’d felt like a bastard, but then they’d ended up in bed together and in the morning she’d left while he was in the shower with a merry ‘Cheerio, then!’ and he’d been left covered in Imperial Leather suds, furious at his cowardice, at his inability to knock this thing on the head and give poor Heather, who really was a very nice girl, just not the one for him, a chance to settle down with a nice man.