by Jo Watson
“You knew about this?” he asked Ash.
“Those ladies were desperate for some excitement,” Emelia said, “especially when the Viagra ran out in town.”
“The WHAT?” Mike sat up straight.
“Remember just before Joe retired from the pharmacy, before Hector took over?” she said.
“Yes?” Mike sounded like he was bracing himself for something he didn’t want to hear.
“Towards the end, when he went a bit . . . you know, forgetful, he didn’t place any orders for Viagra for months. But, since Hector took over, that’s all fine. Blue pills all round!” She shot Mike the thumbs up and he face-palmed.
“How do you know all this stuff?” he asked.
“I supply the ladies’ weekly book club with eats. It’s amazing what you overhear.”
“And that’s when you decided to start buying them those books?”
She laughed. “It’s not like it’s illegal.”
“Really?” Mike pointed at me. “Take your book out, Becca. Because I’m pretty sure that that is totally illegal.”
I scrounged in my bag and pulled out my book and held it up.
“Oh, yes, I remember that one,” Emelia said.
“Wait, give that to me.” Ash laughed and snatched the book out of my hands and opened a random page.
“His scales were both hard and soft to the touch. I ran my hands over the wondrous things, glistening and glimmering in the prehistoric sunlight. I had never known this kind of desire before—so primitive, so carnal and so unexpected. My brontosaurus tilted his head and looked at me with those sexy, reptilian eyes. He was so handsome, and I wanted him more than I had . . . WHOA!” Ash put the book down and looked at us. “Tell me I’m not reading what I think I’m reading.”
Mike nodded. “Apparently, dinosaur erotica is a thing.”
Emelia burst out laughing. “I was just ordering what was requested.” She quickly looked over at Ash. “I’m not into that—promise.”
“Eeewww.” Ash cringed. “I should hope not.” She turned to Mike and me and held the book up. “And they are all reading this stuff?”
I shook my head. “No, some are reading about merman threesomes,” I quickly added.
“What?” Ash looked at me, appalled. “Is bondage and S & M not kinky enough for them anymore?”
“I think it’s cool,” Emelia announced. “I hope I’m still having sex at that age. Just because you get older, doesn’t mean that part of you dies.”
“No dinosaur erotica allowed in our house.” Ash wagged a finger at her.
“I promise,” Emelia said.
“We did find something else, though,” I said, pulling the other thing out of my bag.
“What’s that?” Ash asked.
I stood up and walked over to her and placed the painting in her hands. I didn’t need to say anything to her; she inhaled sharply when she saw it. Emelia moved over to get a closer look and, when she did, her hand flew up and covered her mouth in shock.
“This is him,” Ash declared.
“Yes,” I stated.
We all sat in silence and I could see that Ash and Emelia were looking at the picture in exactly the same way as I had—with a sense of absolute wonder.
“What’s this?” Ash pointed at the corner.
“What?” We all moved closer.
“It looks like writing. Look—can you see it?”
“Vaguely,” I said, not sure if I was seeing letters or not.
“Wait. I’m coming back.” Ash put the picture down and raced out of the room. Moments later, she came back with some bottles of liquid and a few cotton buds and brushes.
“I need more light.” She looked up at the ceiling—the light in this room was naturally dim—and, at the same time, we all took out our cell phones and flicked our torches on. We shone the light down on to the canvas that Ash was now carefully working on. As we watched, I could feel the collective holding of breath as something started to emerge from the ash and dirt and dust. She continued to work and soon it became clear what we were looking at.
“It’s a letter,” she said. “It’s an . . . an . . .”
We all leaned and squinted.
“A!” Ash yelled triumphantly. “It’s a bloody A!”
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “It is an A. She calls him ‘A’ in her diary.”
“What else can you see?” Mike asked.
“Okay, give me some time and space.” Ash swatted us back with her hand and we moved. “This might take a while; you’ll have to give me at least half an hour.”
“Shall I make dinner, then?” Emelia asked.
“Pleeeassse.” Ash looked over her shoulder and smiled at her fiancée. “And I could seriously do with a little glass of vino.”
“Me too,” Emelia said, walking towards the door. “All this detective work makes me thirsty.”
“Me too.” Mike started following Emelia out the door.
“Are you coming?” Emelia asked me. “You heard the lady—she wants some peace and quiet.”
“Uh . . .” I looked at Mike; he was looking at the floor. “It’s okay. I’ll just go and chill in my room for a bit. I wouldn’t want to disturb family dinner—”
“Oh, don’t be an idiot!” Ash swung around and looked at me. “What are you talking about? Go, drink wine and relax, and we’ll all have dinner together soon.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about me. I’ll go grab something somewhere.” It was less about disturbing a family dinner, and more about getting away from Mike. The uncomfortableness between us since the cave was making my skin burn.
“God, you are a martyr, aren’t you?” Ash said. She looked over at Emelia. “Sort her out,” she said to her.
“Yes, ma’am.” Emelia walked up to me and looped her arm through mine. “Come,” she said. “You can peel potatoes.” And, before I knew what was happening, I was being dragged off by her.
CHAPTER 63
“I don’t really drink,” I said, after the glass of wine had been poured and passed to me.
Emelia looked at me and did a fake double take. “And why ever not?” she asked.
“Well, it’s kind of embarrassing, really,” I said.
Both Mike and Emelia looked at me expectantly now.
I sighed. “I go red,” I said.
“Red?” Mike asked.
“Yes—very.”
They both looked at me blankly, as if they didn’t understand, so I elaborated.
“It’s like a mini allergic reaction. So I try and avoid it, especially when in public and especially on first dates; it can get quite embarrassing.”
Mike and Emelia looked at each other and then looked back at me. “What do you mean, red ?” Emelia asked, with a smile.
“Bright red. Tomato red,” I qualified. “But not an even red—that would be okay. I go blotchy.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Just my face,” I said. I was embarrassed just talking about it.
Mike and Emelia then shared a smile.
“This, I’ve got to see.” Emelia walked over to me and gently pushed the glass to my lips.
“No. Really. It’s totally embarrassing and I look ridiculous and you’ll all just laugh at me—”
“You’re among friends. We won’t judge you, as long as you don’t judge my bad singing after I’ve had two glasses.” We shared a small smile and I lowered my lips to the glass. I took a sniff. God, I missed wine. The smell, the taste, the whole experience.
“Your friends must love watching you go red when you go out for drinks. It’s like a party trick,” Emelia said casually, but the statement struck me hard.
“I don’t really go out drinking much . . . with friends,” I said quietly.
“True. Neither do we, really. We’re more home drinkers. Dinner parties at home, you know. I think we’re all getting older.”
“Mmm . . .” I mumbled. “I meant more the ‘with friends’ part.” I said this so quietly that I wasn�
��t even sure they heard it.
“What do you mean?” she asked, turning to look at me properly now.
I shrugged. “I don’t really, well, have many friends.”
“I suppose you’re so busy writing that you don’t get to see them that much,” Emelia said.
“No, not really. I mean . . . I just don’t have many, you know, friends.”
Emelia blinked at me. “What do you mean, you don’t have many friends?”
I took another sip of wine—a rather large one, and immediately started feeling the effects. When you don’t drink, two sips is enough to send you on your merry way. “I’m not so good at making them, I guess,” I said.
Emelia looked at me expectantly, as if she needed more information.
I took another quick sip and started rambling a little. “I kind of moved around a lot when I was young. I was never in one place for long enough to make any friends, I suppose. Besides, wherever I went, I didn’t really fit in—well, not until I made myself fit in. And then, I suppose, when you’re pretending to fit in, you don’t really make friends, because you don’t actually have anything in common with anyone. Or something like that.” I took another sip. My tongue was loosening. I never spoke to anyone about these kinds of things, and now it was all just flowing out of me. “I’m probably just bad at making any kind of meaningful connections with anyone. It’s like if you’ve never learned to cook and then suddenly someone asks you to cook something, you’ll probably be bad at it, even if you have a recipe!” I concluded, after another gulp of wine. “Mind you, I don’t even think I was ever given a recipe. Or I was given the wrong one. It’s like I’m trying to cook coq au vin, but someone gave me a pizza recipe.”
Mike and Emelia looked at me blankly for a while, and I realized that I had lost them with my cooking analogy.
“Bottom line,” I stated, “I’m just not good at making and keeping friends. I’m probably just not friend material.”
Emelia looked at me for a while and then started shaking her head vigorously. “That’s such crap! What are you talking about? I’ve known you for five minutes and I like you a lot. I was thinking how much I’d like to be friends with you.”
“Really?” I asked softly.
“You’re so wrong about that,” she stated, matter-of-factly.
“You sure?” I asked.
She nodded again. “You probably just haven’t met your tribe yet.”
“My tribe?” I said thoughtfully.
“Everyone has a tribe!” Emelia said. “And, I’ll have you know, most tribes prefer to eat pizza, not coq au whatever. So, maybe you do have the right recipe, you just don’t know it.”
“Huh?” I looked at her, confused for a moment or two, trying to work out how my analogy had come full circle, to this, and if it even made sense anymore.
“You’re so easy to get along with,” Emelia continued. “Don’t you think, Mike? It’s sort of impossible not to like Becca.” She turned and looked at Mike, who’d been standing silently during this conversation. “Don’t you think?” she asked again. This time, her voice had taken on a strange, knowing tone.
Mike didn’t answer and, on that rather awkward note, Emelia walked out and left us alone together.
I quickly took another sip of my wine and tried not to look at Mike. I could see that Emelia’s rather pointed statement was having the same effect on him as it was on me. That was obvious from the way he was shuffling his feet from side to side. The silence dragged on until it was broken by Emelia bursting back into the room. She stopped when she came inside.
“God, I could cut the tension in here with the back of a spoon.” She put her hands on her hips and gave us both a suspicious look.
I shrugged. “What? It’s nothing. It’s . . . you know . . . nothing.” I drank more wine and deliberately avoided looking at Mike.
“Nothing,” I heard Mike say.
“Well, obviously, it is something, or you wouldn’t both be saying ‘nothing’ so emphatically.” She looked from me to him and back again.
“Well, I guess it was something, and then, I guess, it wasn’t,”
I said.
I heard Mike clear his throat. “There was a very clear reason for it being something and then suddenly not being something,” he said pointedly. “And that hasn’t really gone away fully.”
“Um . . . sure,” I said, “I know that, but it seems that, in light of what’s happening now, maybe that something shouldn’t be such a something, after all?”
“Trust me, that something is still something. Just because everyone else is over it, doesn’t mean I am.”
“You seemed over it an hour ago, when you had your arm around my—Shit!” I cut myself off and put my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“Arm around your what?” Emelia asked, as if she was enjoying this far too much.
“Nothing,” I quickly said.
“Something!” Emelia reiterated.
“Nothing,” Mike exclaimed, a little too loudly.
“It was something!” I said, as loudly as Mike had spoken. Oh dear, the wine seemed to be acting like a truth serum now, and all my true feelings were tumbling from my lips. “And it meant something,” I whispered into my glass.
“Interesting,” Emelia said, after a moment’s silence. “So, what I’m getting from you two,” she said, smiling ear to ear, as if she was finding this highly amusing, “is that something happened between you . . . Actually, shall we just be adults and call it what it is? You had sex. And, now, I’m guessing that you’re not having sex anymore—except for that moment where Mike had his arm around you—because something else happened. And now nothing is happening, but you’re both struggling with that because it may or may not have meant something to both of you. Have I summed it up?” she asked.
I looked over at Mike. We held each other’s gaze for a few seconds and then both looked away.
“I’ll take that awkward semi-eye-contact interchange between you two as a Yes, I’ve summed it up,” she said.
“Mmm,” I mumbled, under my breath, sipping the wine and feeling the rush of it through my veins.
Emelia looked at Mike for confirmation, raising one of her pierced brows at him.
“Mmm,” he mumbled back.
“Good! Good to get things out in the open!” she exclaimed happily. “We can work with this. Perhaps, Becca, you could share with Mike your first childhood memory?”
“Huh?” I said, looking at her.
She burst out laughing. “I’m just fucking with you. I’d make a terrible therapist! I’d be too damn direct.”
“So, be direct,” I said to her.
“I don’t know. Not sure you two could handle the truth.”
Mike suddenly pulled a chair out and sat down at the dining-room table. “We can handle the truth. Although, I’m pretty sure it will be way off.” He looked at me and patted the chair next to him. I sat down quickly.
“Fine.” Emelia sat down, too, and we all looked at each other for a while. “Should we hold hands and sing ‘Kum Ba Yah’ first?” she joked, and then laughed again.
Mike shot her a disapproving look and she stopped laughing.
“God—so serious. Be cool,” she said to him. “Mind you, I guess going to a nudist beach and stripping down to your birthday suit is probably the definition of cool.”
Mike’s cheeks went a little red, and I’m sure mine did, too, as memories of what had almost happened in the cove came flooding back to me.
“Aaaaah,” Emelia said. “I see . . .”
“See what?” I asked.
“Did something that means something, that could have been something, happen on the beach, perhaps?”
We looked at each other briefly.
“Oooh, I’m getting good at this stuff. Screw the bakery—I’m becoming a psychologist.” Then she sat back in her chair and put her hands together in that thoughtful, psychologist way. “You know what I think?” she asked.
We both shook our heads.
“I mean, the sexual attraction between the two of you is undeniable. You can see it a mile away.”
“Pssshhht, please,” I said defensively.
Emelia raised a brow at me. “No amount of pssshhhting will convince me you’re not attracted to that man. I mean, I’m a lesbian, for heaven’s sake, and even I am attracted to him!” She turned to Mike. “And you—I’ve seen the way you look at her when she’s not looking.”
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.” Mike looked uncomfortable now.
“He’s always staring at you when you’re not looking,” she said.
“Staring?” I asked.
“You make it sound creepy,” Mike piped up. “I might steal the odd glance, from time to time. I certainly don’t stare.”
“No, you basically stare,” Emelia confirmed. “And, as for you—” she returned her attention to me now—“I’ve noticed all the little coy looks and the prolonged sighs you make when he’s around.”
“I don’t make prolonged sighs!” I objected.
“Yeah, you actually do,” Mike said. “You sigh a lot.”
“I do not. Perhaps I exhale a little loudly sometimes, but I certainly don’t sigh.”
“You sigh,” she said. “You are a sigher and—” she looked at Mike again—“you stare. So, you’re a starer. And I can only assume that all that staring and sighing indicates that the two of you want to, you know, do something that meant more than nothing that could have been something, again.”
A moment’s silence.
“And, from where I am literally sitting, I see no reason why you shouldn’t do that something. It’s clear you like each other, or you wouldn’t be acting like an old, angry married couple and moping about like this.”
“We’re not acting like a married couple!” we both said, at exactly the same time.
Emelia laughed. “Sure, and that’s why you’re finishing each other’s sentences now, too. Besides, you met on a fence.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” I asked.
Then she leaned in, she looked at us closely and mysteriously, and, in a voice that one would expect to hear from some kind of dramatic, pretend psychic, she whispered, “Oh, I think it has everything to do with it . . . everything.”
