“No!” I said abruptly, then feeling this could be open to misconstruction added, “I liked it, Leo. It was good. Lovely, in fact. I’d like to do it again sometime.”
“You’re the first woman I’ve…since… It’s come as a bit of a shock to me. Finding you attractive. Must admit, I feel a bit guilty about the whole thing.”
Now he was going to come out as married. Or, I supposed, to top it all, a married Catholic.
“My wife—” He stopped again, went very quiet until he’d unlocked the doors to the Land Rover and we were both sitting inside.
In the heat, it smelled strongly of baked dog and I wound the window down to avoid suffocating. Leo’s knee hovered very close to mine and I wondered what he’d do if I touched his leg. Did I mind that he was married? Did he? Was it worth the risk? Was he inwardly quivering, poised and waiting for some sign that I wanted to take things further? Was this respectable behaviour for a mother-of-one?
The big engine shuddered into life and I watched him drive for a while. Capable hands, lean, long legs, a body like an action-packed adventure and the face of a thriller. He looked like a poster boy for Poetry Please. “Sorry, what was I saying?” he seemed to come to, to remember I was there in the car with him.
“You were telling me about your wife.” I decided to be brave and upfront about it. “How long have you been married?” Maybe it was seven years. Maybe I was the loofah to scratch the itch. Did I care?
“Sabine was killed. Drunk driver. Paris, two years ago. We’d been married for eight years.” Totally factual, totally emotionless.
“Oh. God, I’m sorry, Leo.”
Two years ago. And Isabelle had printed his poems. His wife had just died and she thought it would make him feel better to have his love for her nailed down in words on paper? The woman was barking.
“It… There were things… It wasn’t like…oh bugger!” The Land Rover twitched to one side, pulling towards the verge with a dragging sound. Leo stood hard on the brake but forward momentum carried us until, with a lurch and a bang, we came to rest in the hedge. “Sod. Puncture. You all right, Alys? You sure?”
“Fine.”
I was glad that Leo was happy to do the macho thing with jacks and wheelbraces while I sat on the verge. I’d thought he was too good to be true. He’d not shown any of the signs that men who wanted to date me normally displayed, i.e., travelling everywhere by bus with a stolen pensioner’s pass. Now he was, whoa, taking his shirt off. There was a sudden, almost reverential, lapse in my thinking ability while I watched a Diet Coke ad come to life in front of me. He didn’t even have the decency to have a hairy back or a disgusting tattoo emblazoned across his torso. When he turned around to tell me the wheel was fixed, I could feel my eyes getting sucked down from his face towards his navel, registering the tidy whorl of hair which encircled it, fighting with myself not to let my stare go any lower.
“Alys?” He was coming at me out of the sun again. “Are you really sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” I managed to roll my tongue back into my mouth. “Got a bit of a headache, that’s all.”
So there I sat, next to Mr. Perfect-except-for-a-dead-and-adored-wife, for the rest of the run into Exeter. I tried a few times to reinitiate the conversation we’d been having, but he would change the subject immediately, almost as though ashamed of having said as much as he had. Unfortunately the only other topic available to him at short notice was the stud and by the time we reached Exeter station, I had more knowledge about stallion management than I suspect anyone who works in a bookshop could have found a use for.
“Well. Goodbye, Alys.” There was a brief, awkward hug exchanged, as though the kisses of the morning had been an aberration on his part. “Could I have your telephone number?”
I wanted to have the mental strength to tell him that I didn’t think that was such a good idea, unless he could manage not to be gorgeous when we next met. Oh, and if he could have some kind of electric-shock treatment which caused him to totally forget his deceased and no-doubt-also-gorgeous wife. But I didn’t. I had no mental strength at all as I wrote my home number on a slip of paper provided by the man in the booking office.
My train pulled slowly into the station, and Leo looked down at his feet. “I will call you,” he said as I pushed through the crowd to get on board. “I will call you!” he raised his voice to shout.
“Yes. Please.”
As the train jerked out of Exeter, I could see Leo standing and watching it go, one hand raised in a salute of goodbye as I wibbled my way down the aisle to my reserved seat. Reserved was a good way of describing Leo, I thought. But stonkingly beddable was better.
I’d meant to spend the time reading, catching up on Mrs. Munroe’s brave book-group submission of The Lovely Bones but the daydreams I fell into became dreaming for real. York station caught me unawares so I felt greasily sticky and disgruntled when I disembarked and entirely justified in using some of Simon’s cash to get a taxi back to the flat. The streets were crowded with summer’s night visitors taking horse-drawn tours around the minster or just wandering about. Bunches of foreign-language students formed little clique-knots outside pubs, like the United Nations going clubbing.
The windows of the flat shone yellow and welcoming as I paid the taxi driver and added a generous tip. Florence must be home.
“Hello, darling.” I greeted the flat with blanket coverage but there was no response, so I trailed through to the living room and tried again. “Hello, dar…”
“Hiya, sweetie,” Piers drawled back. “Good trip?” He was sitting cross legged on the floor reading a newspaper.
“Very clever. Where’s Florrie? And why are you here again? You’re becoming ubiquitous, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Totally. In fact, I’m going for omnipresence next.” Piers stretched out his legs to reveal that he was wearing striped jeans and an equally stripy shirt. “Flo’s run down to the pizza place on the corner, we were both kinda hungry.”
Grainger appeared out of my bedroom, treating me with the disdain he reserved for anyone who’d been missing for more than a couple of hours and cheap cat food. I stroked his sticky fur and realised I could feel his backbone. “Grainger? Are you okay?” I watched him sway towards the kitchen. “Do you think Grainger could have worms?”
“Nah. He’s all right, aren’t you?” To my horror, Piers swept Grainger up off the floor and contained him against his chest.
“Piers, be careful. He…” But Grainger just let out a throaty kind of grumble and submitted to the petting with the embarrassed air of someone trying on a new suit that they secretly think makes them look really good. “…he actually likes you,” I finished, slightly puzzled.
“Yeah. Seems to.” Piers let Grainger jump to the floor. “But you’re right, he does look a bit…”
“Manky. He looks manky.” I glanced up at the sound of the front door opening and Florence entering, rustling plastic bags. “Don’t you think he looks a bit manky, Florrie?”
“Oh, hi, Mum. Yeah, completely. It’s a shit outfit, Piers.”
“Not Piers, Grainger. Although you’re right, it is a horrible combination. What happened, did you get dressed under the influence?”
“Hey, no ganging up on me, girls.” Piers backed away, hands held in an attitude of surrender, but he looked furtively rather pleased. Florence went to put the pizzas onto plates in the kitchen and Piers followed me back through, helping me to pull the table out so we could all sit round it. “It’s not that bad, is it, Alys?”
“I can’t honestly tell, Piers. I can’t focus on it for long enough.”
“Ah well. At least it gets me noticed.”
“Lucky it doesn’t get you arrested.”
Florence came back with slices of pizza arranged haphazardly on too-small plates. I was hungry. Leo hadn’t provided any breakfast and anyway, he was so gorgeous that my appetite knew when it was beaten. All three of us ate in a companionable silence.
�
�Mum…” Florence eventually broke the chewing silence. “I’ve got something to ask you.”
“Yeeeeeessss?” I said, dubiously. She was being way too nice for this to be good.
“Do you promise you’re not going to be mad?”
I became motherish. “I think you mean angry not mad. You’re getting influenced by Piers and his dreadful mid-Atlantic phraseology.”
“I’m American! I can’t help that,” Piers joined in, less indignant than he sounded; instead he looked sparky, animated. “And I think you mean being influenced not getting influenced. I might be American, but I can still do grammar.”
“Shame you can’t do dress-sense,” I said waspishly but he laughed.
“Oh, Alys, I am wounded.” He held a hand to his chest, rings gleaming. “To think I don’t appeal to you because I have no sense of style. You shallow, shallow woman.”
Florence was watching this exchange with a baffled expression, obviously desperate to say yes, enough of this, now let’s talk about me, but intrigued enough not to.
“I didn’t say you didn’t appeal to me,” I said without thinking, laughing despite myself at his ridiculousness. “I just said—” But Piers had leaped up and was grabbing his leather jacket from the back of his chair.
“No more! I am deeply offended, and I’m going. Leave you two females to your heavy talking. Oh, and Alys.” He leaned forward and almost breathed in my ear. “Next time I’ll try and wear something that does appeal to you, yeah?”
Both Florence and I were giggling helplessly as he walked out, but I managed to control myself enough to shout, “That’s try to, not try and. Bloody Yank!” and heard an offended huh in reply as the front door closed. “Piers is growing into a really nice lad.” I picked up the last slice of pizza. “Funny too.”
“Yeah, yeah, a real stand-up, our Piers.” Florence watched me eat. “Look, Mum. I want to go to London. It’s okay, not on my own or anything. Oh, and not with boys either, if that’s what you’re thinking. My friend Keisha, you know Keisha, from school? Her sister lives in Highgate, and she’s asked Keish to visit and bring a friend and Keish asked me—and I’d really, really like to go!”
“Oh.” I was taken aback. “When would this be?”
Florence seemed encouraged by my not immediately shooting her down in flames. “Not for nearly two weeks, after the exams are over. But Lex, that’s Keisha’s sister, she’s said she’ll take us to the Tower of London and on the London Eye and stuff like that and I’ve never even been to London before, have I, Mum? It would be fantastic. So, what do you think?”
“Welllll, as long as I can speak to Keisha’s mum first, to check things out. Not that I don’t trust you, darling, it’s just to make sure that it’s all right with Lex.” I knew Keisha and her sister, two improbably beautiful girls. Florence would have a whale of a time with them. “Then yes. Of course you can go.” Bonus, I’d have a couple of weeks to myself, maybe get to see Leo. I mean, I liked spending time with Florence—when Alasdair and I had parted, we’d become a tight little unit she and I. But since she’d hit her teens, she’d become so worldly-wise it sometimes felt as though she were the adult and I were the child. A little time to be me would be welcome.
“Wow.” Florence looked stunned. She’d obviously thought she’d have to put up more of an argument than that. “That’s great! Thanks, Mum. Oh and you don’t have to worry about spending money, ’cause Dad’s already said he’ll let me have a grand. For clothes and stuff.”
Florence skipped out of the room, leaving her dirty plate on the table and me with a flare of resentment firing off in my chest. Maybe I was wrong, telling Alasdair that I wanted no money from him, and if he wanted to give Florence something that was between them. Okay, so it ensured that she never went without school uniform or riding lessons or anything else it entered her head to ask for, but was it giving her a sense of values? A thousand pounds, just for a couple of weeks in London? I swallowed the knot of bitterness in my throat.
Perhaps she could lend me a tenner.
Chapter Eleven
I went back to work, and Jace and I settled back into our usual pattern of bitching about Simon during his absences and working conspicuously hard when he was present. The book group met, Mrs. Searle’s book choice proving to be a romantic novel which Simon refused to stock and I’d had to borrow from the library where they’d only had the large-print version. I’d read it in one evening and it was like being shouted at by Barbara Cartland.
Leo hadn’t rung. Maybe it had been one of those Brief Encounter things.
“What I am not understanding is”—Jacinta heaved a huge box of books across the floor—“why you are not asking him about his wife?” She slit the cardboard side of the box and books spilled out. “Maybe he is hating her and is hiring a missionary to kill her.”
“Mercenary.” I sorted through the tumbled books which lay like stunned pigeons over the matting. “And it’s not really the sort of thing you can come out with, is it? ‘Oh, sorry your wife was tragically killed, did you love her at all? And, by the way, how would you say I compare in the looks stakes?’ Urgh, no. After all, what would I have done if he’d spent the next hour telling me how gorgeous and wonderful she was and how much he missed her?”
“Helped him to miss her a little less?”
“He’s not really like that, Jace.” I clasped a rather dog-eared Keats to my sweater. “He’s shy and kind of hidden. Keeps everything under cover. If I hadn’t read his poetry I’d probably think he was a bit cold, but he’s so much more than that underneath.”
“Then you must get underneath him.” Jace started ticking books off the packing list.
“If only it was that easy,” I began, but she looked at me sternly.
“Alys, I know a lot about men, and this I know, they do not tell you things that you need to know, they tell you that which they are wishing to say. And if you are being serious over this man, you are needing to be talking much with him over things which are not said. They are the important things, Alys, the things which are in the head.”
“But he hasn’t rung me, so how can I talk to him? Maybe he wasn’t really that keen on me.” I remembered the kiss in the stable. “Or at least, maybe he didn’t feel the same way after I’d left.”
“Are you thinking seriously about him?” Jace handed me the book list.
“I’m not sure.”
“What he looks like?”
“Oh, about six foot, dark hair, needs a good cut, green eyes. Nice face, he’s got the whole cheekbones thing going on. Long legs, good body, I mean—whew, yes, good body. He looks a bit unkempt, a bit slept in. Oh, and he bites his nails.”
“Alys, if you want this man you must show him that you are wanting him! If you really want him then you will find a way.”
All the way home on the bus, I thought about Jacinta’s words and by the time I’d arrived I was determined. Okay, so I didn’t have his number, but he ran a commercial business. He wasn’t going to be Mr. Elusive, was he? It was obvious—he doesn’t ring me, so I ring him. Would he think I was chasing him? But, did it matter? If you really want him, Jacinta had said, and I did really want him, didn’t I?
As I went through the front door, I became aware that the flat smelled strange. But I ignored it, desperate to carry out my plan before Florence got home and started asking awkward questions. I found a directory service, got the number for Charlton Hawsell Stud, and was halfway through dialling when my foot found the source of the odd smell.
“Grainger!” I bellowed, my toes squishing about in a puddle of semisolid coldness. “You complete bastard.” Grainger half raised a bleary eyelid as he lay in his current comatosery, a basket of clean but unironed washing. “What do you think your litter tray is for?” I hopped off across the floor, berating the cat all the while, although he had long since furled his eyelid back down like a blind, proclaiming him to be a cat Seriously Asleep.
While I was standing poised on one leg with the other foot i
n the sink like an inferior Degas painting, Florence came bustling through. She was laden with bags and carrying a bunch of flowers which had definitely gone past their best. She poked them individually into the tops of the glass jars and bottles awaiting their visit to the recycling bin.
“I’m not even going to ask,” she said, watching me perched less-than-athletically, sponging off my offending foot under the tap.
“Well, I am. What on earth are you doing with those flowers?”
A superannuated lupin drooped pathetically from the neck of a milk bottle and Florence dreamily tried to re-erect it. “They’d been left next door with Mr. Roberts last week. But he had to go down to Sheffield because his mother had had another fall, and he completely forgot that he’d got them. When he saw me coming up the stairs he gave them to me. There’s a card.”
I found it, sticking wetly to the stem of a white carnation. Looking forward to seeing you again. Regards, Leo. I grasped the damp square of cardboard as though it was a message from the gods. He’d sent me flowers! But—I regarded the senior citizens of the bouquet world slumped in the assorted glassware—that had been last week and he still hadn’t rung. I mean, he’d had his chance, hadn’t he?
Oh, what the hell. I could at least ring to say thank-you for the flowers.
“Charlton Hawsell Stud, Leo Forrester speaking.”
“Horny. I mean, hello. Hello, Leo, it’s Alys. Alys Hunter?”
“Yes, Alys, I know who you are. It’s so lovely to hear from you.”
Well, he sounded genuinely pleased. I thanked him for the flowers and he apologised for not having rung me yet, but explained that, “I’ve been blue-arsed fly busy here.” There was a bit of a pause after that, long enough for me to think that he didn’t really want to speak to me at all. Then he cleared his throat. “Um, Alys, look.” Here it came, the big brush-off speech. “I’m really crappy on the phone. I can come up to York, leave my stud manager in charge of the place for a couple of days. I wondered, would next Tuesday be all right?”
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