It didn’t work.
“He and I have talked about it. About what happened, I mean…about liking each other. We agreed that when all this is over–”
“What do you mean, all this? Do you mean me?”
I nodded slowly.
“You actually like him?”
“Is it any of your business?”
He squeezed my leg harder. “Yes. It is.”
The waiter arrived and Joseph ordered for both of us. I hadn’t even looked at the menu.
“Are you angry with me?” I asked finally.
He smiled. Gulped down the Champagne. “No. A little surprised, maybe.” He released my leg, sitting back. “Why would I be angry with you?”
“I don’t know what the rules are in this game. I don’t know whether I’m bending them or breaking them entirely.”
“Who says we’re playing a game?”
“That’s what it feels like.” I reached for my own glass and the bubbles burst sharply on my tongue. “I mean, feel free to enlighten me. Any time you like.”
He smiled again, taking the glass from my hands and circling his fingertips over my wrist. “I like you. Can’t you tell?”
“Yes, but…” I squirmed in my chair. “I’m not sure where this is going.” Please don’t offer to shack me up as your mistress. Please, please…it’s so unoriginal.
“Me either, especially if you’re planning on running off with Gordon as soon as I untie you.”
I considered tugging my wrist away but his warm, warm skin…I loved the way it simmered against mine.
He was checking my pulse. Measuring the snares. Jesus.
“Should I be considering another offer?”
“Consider whatever you like, Leila–just be fucking honest about it.”
Our starter arrived–a pea and mint risotto–and I busied myself with the cutlery. Why was he being so roundabout in his proposition? What exactly did he think he’d bought?
The food signalled a change of subject and we slipped into a discussion about my possible contract–the one I hadn’t officially been offered yet. It dragged awkwardly through the main course and, feeling both nauseous and guilty, I declined desert. The Champagne and its frosted loveliness made me doubt my own self-control.
Our walk back to the office steered through a park where the trees swayed in the sunshine. Joseph reached for my hand. I should have pulled away, shouldn’t I? Friends could knot fingers, but that wasn’t what we were.
Our palms warmed together. His thumb slid over mine. Cyclists pedalled past and he tucked me behind him–like we’d done this a million times.
A group of sixth form school girls sat cross-legged in a copse of silver birch. Their green blazers and checked skirts looked fresh against the turf. They giggled, threw bits of paper at each other. One brushed another’s hair as they poured over a magazine.
Joseph watched them.
“You can blink, you know,” I teased.
“I’m not looking.”
“Liar.” I elbowed him in the ribs. “Maybe I’m looking, too.”
“Oh?” He squeezed my hand. “So I’m looking. They’re hardly my type, though.”
I thought back to the old uniform I had worn for clients on occasion, the one I would have worn with Aidan tonight. “You sure about that?”
“Leila. Schoolgirls are like sports cars. They’re nice to look at, but they’re impractical. In the end, they don’t do what you need them to do.”
I had to stifle my smile, he looked so serious. Then I stole a glance back at the lithe-limbed shadows beneath the trees. “Is that so?”
“It’s true. They won’t let you take them up the arse. They’re rubbish at sucking you. You want to ride them at a hundred miles an hour, but you end up doing forty in the sixty zone because you’re too fucking scared of damaging them.”
A giggle trembled to a riotous guffaw. I couldn’t stop.
“You’re meant to be appalled.” He laughed.
“Oh, I am–”
“No, you aren’t.” Another hand squeeze, then he let it slip away. “Best not do that near the office.”
I bit my lip and thrust my numb fist into a pocket. “No.” A beat. “Thank you for lunch.”
“My pleasure. Now…back to the playground, hmm?”
* * * *
We escaped early–just past five–and I found Matt in the lobby.
“Do we have time to run to Selfridge’s?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Sure. Why’s that?”
“I need to pick up a wedding gift.”
We fell into a heaving exodus of people at the tube station, all hurrying off to start their weekends. As we boarded the carriage, Matt took my hand to keep us together. The heat I’d felt from Joseph flashed up my arm and settled to a contented simmer. I was ever a slave to the thrill of two.
When we re-emerged in daylight, I let him lead me through the busy suits and the swinging laptop bags, the scraping heels and the buzz of a thousand iPod headphones. Selfridge’s porcelain department seemed comparatively quiet.
I held up a square white plate, its paper-thin edges curving gently upward.
“What do you think?”
He stared at it hard for a moment. “I’m not sure I have an opinion on Wedgewood, Leila. Except for the fact that the cost of one dinner service would probably pay for a whole team’s worth of rugby kit.”
“Okay. No Wedgewood.” I lowered the plate onto the display panel and followed him through to the liquor department. “Maybe alcohol would work?”
“When does it not?”
We stared round at walls lined with glass barrels and wooden tankards.
“How come you’ve left it until now, anyway?” he asked, inspecting a huge vat of green spirit called Sea Monster.
“I changed my mind at the last minute.”
“What were you going to get?”
I paused, holding up a bottle shaped like a boat and pretending to size it up.
“I…you don’t want to know, Matt.”
He came up behind me, easing the bottle from my hands and setting it down. “I don’t want us to have any more secrets, okay?”
I gulped, remembering what Aidan had said. He might react better than you think. I turned to face him. “I was going to…erm. Tonight. I was going to perform for some of Will’s friends.”
Matt’s brow furrowed. “Perform?”
“With a guy I used to do jobs with.”
“Oh.” He stuffed his hands into neat trouser pockets. “You mean, like a show?”
“But I said I wouldn’t do it now,” I said hurriedly. “So not to worry. I’ll just get something else instead.” I couldn’t look him in the eye, and stalked off to browse the whisky.
He followed. “Did you used to do that kind of thing all the time? Perform, I mean?”
I shrugged. “Only once.”
“Was it in front of a lot of people?”
“Maybe four or five.”
His breath disturbed the curls at the back of my neck. “With the same guy? Who is he?”
“Yeah. He’s a good friend. He taught me a lot when I first started.”
“Were you ever involved with him?”
I squared my shoulders defensively. “Aidan? No. Well, for work, obviously.”
“But not afterward.”
There was this one time…
“No.” I selected a large bottle and let it fill, brown liquid dribbling slowly from the barrel. “Is that all?”
“I want to know what you did, Leila,” he admitted. “What it was all like. I thought about what you said, that I should accept that I hired a–well, you–and I figured I should be less prudish about the whole thing.” He stood at my side now and I smiled up at him.
“That’s fair enough.” I corked the bottle. I didn’t say it, but I knew his thinly veiled curiosity exceeded fascination. He deliberately tortured himself. Dystopia writhed behind those eyes and each time he broke off a piece of Charlotte, she grew legs and claws to bat
ter at the inside of the closet.
“You’re aware that the whisky is called Deep Throat, right?”
“Rather fitting, don’t you think?”
The sigh came from somewhere deep in his chest. “If only.”
* * * *
I had also left it until the last minute to pack.
Back at the flat, I threw all three of the outfits I had yet to decide between into a suitcase. Then I remembered about Matt’s burlesque request and chucked in several corsets. I owned many–there was nothing more flattering. I only mourned the fact that I couldn’t wear them in the office. Heels followed in rather classy plastic bags, as well as a deluge of toiletries. I was half-way down the stairs before I had to scrum back for knickers...and I am resisting all puns on that line.
Matt and Toby waited in the car. He drove a neat little Peugeot, shiny enough to indicate that it only came out on weekends and didn’t suffer much city smog. Matt leaped out to wrestle my suitcase into the back.
“We’re going for two nights,” he grumbled, “not two months.”
“I hope you brought your floral tie,” I said cheerfully.
Toby vacated the passenger side and held the door open for me.
“Cheers.” I smiled at him graciously.
He shrugged. “I’ve been told to be nice to you on pain of death.”
“Long, slow death,” Matt added, ushering me in, “serenaded by Genesis.”
“He knows how to torture me,” Toby said from the back.
“Our parents played nothing but Genesis on road trips,” Matt said as he pulled out. “We used to cry out with lines from I Can’t Dance in our sleep. We scared the people in neighbouring tents.”
“I can’t dance, I can’t walk!” shrieked Toby, launching into a rather impressive shimmy. “The only thing about me is the way I–”
“No more!” Matt squealed in mock agony. He fiddled with a pile of CDs on the dash and fed one in. A guitar crunched and yelped like a cat being run over, while I recoiled in my chair.
“I forgot about your death metal fetish,” I said, rolling my eyes.
He grinned at me, eyes flashing. “Is it a deal breaker?”
I bit my lip. “We’ll see.”
“Oh, give it a rest already,” Toby grunted, kicking the back of my chair. “You’re revolting, the pair of you.”
“Heh. He’s so charming.”
“So at this wedding,” Toby began, “will there be people, like, servicing each other?”
I shoved my tongue into my cheek and waited for Matt to bite. This would be an amusing journey.
The tower blocks, the traffic jams, the smoke-smudged skyline all melted away into suburbs and silver birches, rolling hills and thatched cottages. The transition, surprisingly mellow given the thrash metal soundtrack, seemed to help Matt relax. Part of his process. He was going home.
I was going exploring.
We talked about inane things: Toby’s biochemistry degree, the camping trips they went on as teenagers, the slightly more glamorous holidays I went on with my parents. That led to a debate on the merits and pitfalls of being an only child. They couldn’t believe I’d never been lonely.
“I was just happy in my own company, most of the time.” I shrugged.
“But what if something had happened to your parents?” said Toby.
Matt frowned. “Leave off it.”
“Seriously though,” Toby went on, “what if there was a problem? You’d have no one to lean on, you’d have to sort it all yourself–”
“As it happens,” I cut in, “I have dealt with that. And I coped very well, thank you.”
I wanted to add in that I had found a pseudo-sibling in Aidan–who really had been of help in sorting out my parents’ crisis, one way or another–but I kept my mouth shut.
“When Mum left with–”
“I mean it. Give it a rest,” Matt snapped.
“Jesus. Sorry I spoke.” Toby recoiled in the back seat and an awkward silence descended in the fading light.
Matt broke it with a sigh. “What he means is that when our Mum left a few years ago, Tobe and I had each other. It was hard work, supporting Dad. He was pretty broken up.”
“You said you have a stepmother now. Is she nice?”
“Amy? Yeah, she’s…she’s okay.”
“She’s not Mum,” Toby grumbled.
“She’s just…she’s a bit…” Matt trailed off. “Over enthusiastic? She tries way too hard with us, I think.”
“She’s obsessed with us all being a big family and it doesn’t work like that. We’re not little boys. She’d have put name tags in my clothes when I went back to uni, if I’d have let her.” Toby cringed. “She needs a hobby.”
“It could be worse,” I said. “She could have been evil.”
“I suppose.” Matt pulled into a little country lane. We were almost there. “It would have been hard either way, though. It’s a weird situation.”
“Does she know I’m coming?”
“Yeah.”
“Um…what did you say about me? I mean, about us?”
“He told her to book the marquee and start thinking about a wedding breakfast.” Toby shimmied again and Matt reached back to thump him.
“I said you were a friend from work. It’s not like we’ll be sharing a bed or anything.”
“You’ll be too busy listening to Dad and Amy.” Toby shuddered. He leaned forward, eyes wide. “They are loud.”
I laughed. “Older people have sex too, you know.”
“But they sound like some sort of charging wildebeest!”
“You watch way too many documentaries.”
The car swung down a long dirt path and pulled up outside a large cottage with a sloping, thatched roof.
“Oh wow,” I breathed. “It’s like something from a Christmas card. Did you grow up here?”
“Yeah. It’s been in the family for a long time.” He turned the engine off and we slid out of the car. “You like it, then?”
I gazed about in the blues and purples of evening light. Hills nestled into each other, trees reaching up to the clouds like open hands.
“It’s amazing. I thought I grew up in the country, but it was nothing like this.” Suddenly, he stood close beside me, his breath warm on my neck. I stepped back and his hand sat at the top of my buttocks, where it melted, meant to be there.
“Come on,” said Toby, shattering our split second of intimacy. “It’s not getting any earlier.”
Matt took my hand and led me in, cocking his head at the empty space on the drive. “Dad’s still out. They have dinner at the local on Fridays.”
“Does that mean Amy’s not left us anything? I could eat…well, her food,” Toby moaned.
I peered round into a massive farmhouse kitchen, where Toby already abused the fridge.
“Make some sandwiches, Tobe. I’m going to show Leila around.”
“What am I, your fucking slave?”
We walked back through the narrow hall and into a long lounge. The ceilings were beamed and I could smell the lingering remains of a fire. Sofas, overstuffed and piled high with hand-stitched cushions, called out with seductive little moans.
“You need to take me out of here before I collapse on that,” I warned, pointing to a couch in cracked brown leather.
“We can’t be having that.”
He showed me the conservatory and its view of the vast orchard, two little bathrooms with inviting waterfall showers, a dark wine cellar that could only be inspected with the light of a candle. Finally, he took me upstairs to his room.
It was probably the size of my entire flat. A four-poster pine bed dominated the centre and looked comically out of place in its surround of sports posters and rugby trophies.
I giggled. “You do realize, that with a bedroom like this, you ought to be…what’s the term you use? A public school twat.”
“Like you?”
I shoved him.
“You’re just jealous,” he said.
I wandered over and hauled myself up onto the bed. The mattress was deep and sumptuous, and my feet barely touched the floor.
“You’re quiet,” he said finally.
I smoothed the sheets over with a fingertip. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
I looked up at him and bit my lip. “All the girls you’ve made love to in this gorgeous bed.”
“Bollocks–did I actually carve notches?”
“Oh, be quiet.”
He smiled. “You are jealous.”
“A little.” I fell back into pillows and the waft of clean sheets. “I like it in here.”
“Good, because it’s where you’re sleeping.”
My stomach flipped. “With…?”
“I’ll be in with Toby,” he added quickly. “It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, Leila. I just don’t trust myself in the same bed.”
“I suppose I should take it as a compliment,” I grumbled, trying not to look wounded.
“I’ll fetch your bag. We should be getting ready.”
He returned a few minutes later with my embarrassingly well-stuffed hold-all and a flabby sandwich.
“Chef Toby was in one of his less imaginative moods.” He gestured to the plate. “I think it’s ham but knowing Amy, it could be otter or something.”
“Thanks.” I pulled my hair loose from the ponytail. “Exactly how rock is this place we’re going to? Should I be going for thigh-high boots and fishnet gloves?”
His eyes lit up and it made me laugh. “Do you own those?”
“Well…no. But I’m sure I could improvise.”
He lingered for a moment as I undid the knot on my wrap dress.
“Are you watching?” I asked.
His cheeks flushed in a streak of pink as he nodded.
I peeled the dress away and stepped out of my heels, staring straight at him. He drank in the sight of my nude lace bra and little thong, swallowed, hands writhing in his pockets. I bent over quite deliberately to fetch my clothes out of the bag, letting my hips sway from side to side so he could see the thong balancing just between my cheeks. All these little tricks I’d learned…they had never felt so wicked and delicious.
I slid into Clemmie’s jeans and let my hair fall into my eyes as I fastened them. Then I pulled two corsets out and wandered over to him, holding them up.
“The green or the purple?”
Breaking Leila Page 11
