Not with money, anyway.
I slid my fingers down and toyed with the solid mass against his belly. He bucked his hips, shoving it into my palm and moaning.
“You’re a wicked tease,” I said, brushing the hair from his face.
“I don’t want to tease. I want–”
Floorboards creaked in the hall. Voices were low and lazy.
“Ugh.” Matt released me and sat up for a moment, listening. “We’re going to be interrupted soon.”
“I think God never wants us to have sex again.”
“We can be alone tonight though, yeah?”
I thought through the day quickly: get on train, visit parents, arrive home, collapse.
“Please.”
He bent to give me another kiss. “I’ve waited long enough–I can do a few hours.”
I tugged on the most decent clothes I could locate—a t-shirt, and his boxers from the previous day–and took an armful of toiletries down to the bathroom.
The girl who opened the bathroom door to me looked horribly familiar.
“Erm.” I didn’t know where to look. “Hi, Niamh.”
“Hello, Leila.”
She was beautiful with no make-up and scrunched hair; it suited, in fact. Something of the wild had her, and it made me envious.
“I came back with Toby,” she said quickly, as if she could read the words on my eyeballs. “Just to talk and stuff.”
“Oh. Well.” I stepped from one foot to the other, trying not to drop two tons of Dermalogica. I felt like I should apologize, but then I got angry. This wasn’t my fault. “I hope you had a good night,” I said, looking swiftly down.
“Do you know about me and Matt?” she asked sharply.
“Some of it. He told me yesterday.” I made myself look her in the eye without wincing. “I didn’t know on Friday. I’m sorry.”
If that surprised her, it didn’t show. “If you want to put up with it, it’s your choice. Whatever.”
Charlotte wanted to say I’m not the one who conveniently spent the night with Toby in order to spy on my ex, but I managed to retain sympathy for Niamh. Just. “It is my choice, yeah.”
She edged past me and stalked down the hall. I stared after her, half expecting her to fall through Matt’s door and start throwing vases.
The shower felt coarse and stifling. I rushed in and out, tucking my hair into a neat plait and throwing on a dress and boots. Matt tapped on his laptop as I returned.
“Niamh’s here,” I blurted out.
“Are you serious?”
“She was in the bathroom. Said she came home with Toby–”
“Toby?” he said incredulously. “She doesn’t even like Toby. Oh, fucking hell.” He started to pull on his jeans.
“Are you feeling adequately punished yet?”
“I’m going to go and talk to her.” He sighed. “Is that all right? I could be a while.”
“I’m not going to head down to breakfast like everything’s normal, but I think I’ll cope.” I played with the mouse on his laptop. “Good luck.”
“Unlikely.” He stomped off down the corridor still bare-chested, the floorboards trembling as he went.
I sat for a moment, glancing around awkwardly. I had often panicked about being caught by a client’s partner–it happens–but I’d never been this close. Without the paying element, it was somehow worse.
In another room, two voices began to talk over each other. Had Niamh actually slept with Toby? The two brothers were very alike, save a few inches in height. Oh God. Matt had said Niamh smothered him, and now the earth of them had blown away, the roots of that tree were painfully visible.
Not that he could talk, though. One minute he was a paying client and the next, a self-confessed jealous lover. Last night, he’d told me I belonged to him. I had always been the type to linger–or panic–over becoming half of an actual couple, but glancing at his laptop, it seemed Matt had already changed his Facebook status to in a relationship. Fortunately, I didn’t have a page–Facebook did no favours for whores–and he couldn’t specify me personally.
Ah...imagine Joseph’s face if he logged on and saw that.
I tapped a foot nervously. What was wrong with me? I wanted to be normal, to be part of a couple. Someone to come home to. Someone looking out for me. Smug evenings on the sofa with hot chocolate and bad television.
Didn’t I?
My body said yes. My body usually said yes though, so that wasn’t exactly reliable.
The dream had unsettled me. I needed to shake it off.
Niamh’s heels cracked against the stairs, and the front door slammed. Matt returned a few minutes later, and his hair stood up all over the place–he’d been tugging it the way he always did in that fretful manner.
“Well?” I said.
“Well, Tobe said he didn’t ask her back. She just kind of tagged along with him.”
“You said sorry to her, didn’t you?”
“I tried. There wasn’t really a lot of that going on.”
“Oh?”
He sat down on the bed, his head in his hands. “She asked me if I still loved her… I said no. I’ve never been able to say it before, but it just flew out. She didn’t have much to say after that, really. I did apologize.”
“Did you say it’s not you, it’s me?”
“It would be true.”
“As much as it ever is.” I reached over to rub his shoulders and he relaxed into my hands.
Breakfast was more of a solemn affair. Nate was already out on the farm and Amy sat with us over dregs of coffee and toast, commenting on this song on the radio or that traffic update from London. Nobody mentioned Niamh, but the episode hung in the air like a bad smell.
We were sitting in peaceful silence on the motorway–Toby had stayed behind–when it occurred to me that we’d passed the train station some time ago.
“Matt?”
“Yep?”
“Would it be okay if you stuck me at the next station? I’m meant to be seeing my parents for lunch.”
He smiled at me in the mirror. “I know.”
“The next station would be good, then.”
A pause. I knew exactly what was coming.
“I thought maybe we could, you know…go together.”
I should have been pleased that he wanted this. His enthusiasm should have been endearing but instead, it opened floodgates of inner panic and the knives gushed forth.
“I…they aren’t expecting you,” I said weakly.
“Would it be a lot of trouble? Could you ring ahead?” He said these things so effortlessly now, as if we had been together for ages.
“I suppose I could.” It wasn’t as if Mum would be cooking, ha.
Zone out for a bit and think about fucking him later. Remember what a roughly-sculpted vision he is without those clothes.
Nope, no good. When I rang, Mum’s elated shrieks made my ears vibrate.
Matt eyed me as I came off the phone. “Is it all right?”
“Oh yes.” I paused, embarrassed. “I’ve not brought a man to meet them before. Not since in school, anyway.”
His cheeks flushed in that cute, healthy way. “Should we stop by and get them some flowers or something?”
“Oh no. No. Trust me–where we’re going, there’s no need for that.”
As he drove, I stroked his inner thigh and he gazed down at me languorously, a teasing grin stretching his pink mouth. A daydream emerged: pulling over in a lay-by, riding him in the back seat as the thick smell of tarmac poured through the windows. Messing that gorgeous mop of hair up all over again while his hand moved between my legs, exactly the way I’d taught him. We could have done it, too, were we not now on a collision course for my parents at one.
Ugh.
The scenery turned green and luscious as we neared my parents’ estate.
“I know you said they were in trouble,” Matt began. “Is there anything I shouldn’t say?”
I chewed my bottom
lip. “Your daughter has sex for money probably isn’t the way to go.” I watched him in the mirror for any sign of a sense of humour over the issue.
He didn’t reply.
We pulled off the main road and meandered up the drive, past the rows of chocolate box cottages and the newer barn conversion. The pool house, with its gorgeous stained glass dome, sent splinters of coloured light careering down on the windscreen.
“Jesus,” Matt said. “When you said property business, I thought you meant they rented out houses or something.”
I shook my head. “Holiday homes. They bought the estate not long before I was born and did it up. That,” I nodded back at the pool house, “is where the trouble started.”
“Dip in trade?”
“Dip in trade, rise in utility prices, general lack of financial planning…they could never afford to build it but ignored the accountant anyway. Couldn’t do the repayments and had to re-mortgage. There still wasn’t enough money though, and then when they tried to sell, no interested buyers.” Finally, I could get–hell, launch–this off my chest. My parents were so ashamed of their predicament that I’d never told anyone else. “The place is too big for just one of them to manage, so they couldn’t get jobs. The bank lost patience and I had to go in and make a deal with them. I pay them every month.”
“I can see why you love the place so much. To think, you were waxing lyrical over my house. Cheeky cow.”
“What? I love your house!”
“Yeah, but it’s not like this. I feel like I should’ve bought a bottle of port or something.” Gravel cracked beneath the tires as he parked.
“My parents aren’t really port people,” I said dryly. “They’re…” How to put this? “A bit, erm, interesting. I’m warning you now, okay?”
He grinned at me. “I’ll behave.”
“Oh, no need for such drastic measures, Matthew.” I poked him in the ribs. “Turning a blind eye will suffice.”
My mum met us both at the door with an excited yelp. “Leon!” she called over her shoulder. “Leon, get down here!”
Dad shouted something obscene from upstairs and I did my best to pretend I hadn’t heard it.
Mum looked Matt over and her eyes widened in approval. “You must be Matt,” she breathed. “It’s wonderful to meet you. We’re so pleased, aren’t we–Leon!”
Dad hurried up beside her, trying to pull the wrinkles from his evidently un-ironed shirt. “For crying out loud, Bridge. Christ.” He gave Matt’s hand a hard, brief pump. “Well don’t just stand there like lemons. Come in and have a drink.”
The conservatory looked out over Dad’s thick fruit bushes and gushing boughs of elderflower. I took Matt through, knowing Mum would have laid out the table, parked him on the sofa, and left him at the mercy of both parents while I poured glasses of Appletise.
“You’re doing the same as Leila, then,” said Dad, planting himself beside Matt. “Are you local?”
“Salisbury,” Matt said, accepting a drink. “We’re at the same firm right now.”
“She’s never mentioned you before.” Mum kicked me just a little bit too hard with her clunky heel.
“This is, erm. A recent development.” I nudged Matt up the sofa so I could sit on his other side. His hand sought mine and our fingers knotted. “It’s still new.”
“Well it’s nice to meet someone from Leila’s city world. We’re not really town people,” Dad explained. “Has Leila told you much about us?”
“Only good things,” Matt said carefully.
“We’ve been running this place since I was pregnant with her,” said Mum, gesturing back out to the cottages. “I was doing my MA when I met Leon, he was lecturing and struggling to find tenure again…then he came into some money and we stumbled on this place on one of his field trips.”
“Dad lectured in plant biology,” I said.
What a peculiar dance of manners. Matt did his best to look impressed, Dad was still deciding whether Matt seemed decent, and Mum might as well have mounted him herself. Ye-haaw.
“My dad has a farm, so you might well share some interests,” Matt said.
“Is that back in Wiltshire?” Dad asked. “Isn’t it traditional for you to take it on?”
“Yeah. I’ve got three brothers, so I imagine one of them will join Dad eventually…it was just never my thing.” Matt swirled the liquid in his glass awkwardly. “He’s okay with it. He’s training one of my cousins at the moment.”
“Nice to keep things in families.” Mum smiled. “Leila used to do our accounts. She was only in sixth form, too.”
“I made a mess of them,” I muttered.
“You did better than we did!” Dad laughed, getting to his feet. “The accountant was pretty impressed, if I remember. Are you planning on staying in London, Matt?”
“No, actually…I’ve just been offered a job at home so it looks like I’m moving back.”
“You’ll have to make use of us as a half-way house,” Mum insisted, “what with Leila staying in London. Not long to go until you both qualify now.” She leaned over to squeeze my knee. “You know how proud we are.”
We wandered into the dining room and got comfy at the glass table. My old school photos peered back at us from the walls and Matt studied them: me aged four with a terrible mushroom haircut and crooked teeth, aged nine, playing the violin for a concert, aged fourteen and strutting about in my netball uniform. His features softened in amusement.
Mum put lunch on the table and he stared at it for a moment, fingers stretching toward his fork cautiously.
“Ikea meatballs.” I grinned. “Best food ever.”
“I…didn’t know you could buy them to take home,” he said weakly.
I watched him roll one around his plate, avoiding the berry jam with a lip-twitch of disgust.
Dad dug in noisily. “Mum’s a feminist. She doesn’t believe in being a slave to the kitchen.”
Mum tutted as she swallowed. “It’s not that I don’t like cooking, Matt, because I do. It’s the time it takes that I could be doing other things–you’d be amazed at how much work a place like this is to run. Have you read any Butler?”
The chair creaked as he shifted uncomfortably. “No. Um. Should I?”
Mum waved a skewered meatball like a trophy of war. “Fascinating stuff. Gender performativity. That’s all cooking is, you see–the act of being a woman according to social tradition. It’s not in my genes and I don’t have to do it. Ikea does it for me.”
“And they do a lovely job,” Dad said slowly, rolling his eyes at me. “Matt. Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, yeah. Of course.” The poor boy brought a limp chip to his mouth and chewed slowly.
I shot him a teasing smirk. He squashed my foot under the table–harder than I think he meant to–and left it deliciously sore.
“I didn’t do pudding, so you best make the most of it,” Mum said. “Leila always used to do our desserts.”
“What did you used to make?” Matt asked.
“Flapjack. Cookies. A lot of sorbet. Feminism says it’s okay because I did manly things too, like, um…climbing trees. And accounting.”
“We had sorbet coming out of our ears at one point,” Dad said wistfully. “The pink grapefruit one was particularly nice.”
“I’m more of an ice cream person, but I could put up with sorbet.” Matt smiled.
Ginger ice cream, a cold spoon in my lap, a kiss in a dark flat. In that moment, it had been like we’d never touched before.
I wasn’t going to last until we got home–I didn’t want to.
The chair creaked as I shifted. “Is it all right if I show Matt around the estate before we go?”
Mum waved a hand. “Of course it is. Only a few of the houses are full at the moment, anyway.” Her eyes narrowed as she finished the sentence.
“Thanks. Sorry I’m not around for long today…busy, busy.”
“We know you are, darling. Anyway. It’s nice to be busy. So slow out
here.” Dad topped up all of our glasses, pale green froth splashing about in the bottle. “We don’t normally serve guests with this, you know, Matt. But when Leila said you were driving, we thought it’d be mean to get out the wine.”
“Dad makes his own wine,” I explained.
“Oh, right.” Matt seemed relieved to have an excuse to stop eating. “What kind?”
“Blackberry mostly. Some elderflower. It’s good stuff. You’ll have to grab a few bottles to take home.”
Idle chatter meandered and I ate what I could. The atmosphere was pleasant enough, but tension fizzed, popped and whirred–I knew Matt couldn’t shake the idea that my parents didn’t know.
Mum got a box of shortbread out and we sat for a while, telling Matt about the business. Dad explained how they’d renovated all the old barns and Mum got rather too excited over her choice of soft furnishings, nail-bitten hands flying everywhere–not that soft furnishings were a job for women, of course–she project managed the whole thing.
Matt asked questions and did a good job of looking interested. I was grateful for that.
Eventually, we made our excuses and I went to ferret out a bunch of keys. I took Matt by the hand and led him out onto the gravel again, handing him one of our maps.
“Shall we start over by the pool house?” I said.
“Yeah. Whatever. Nice to escape.” The flush cast rosy freckles across his cheeks.
I gave him a sharp little spank. “Less of that, please.”
“They’re lovely, Leila. They’re just so bloody happy.”
I pulled him down the drive. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. Not used to it, that’s all.”
I squeezed his hand. “Happy parents or being happy?”
He tugged me back and wound an arm around my waist. “Maybe a bit of both.”
We walked through the gardens that Dad maintained so beautifully, past the fruit trees and the arches teeming with summer roses. The thick scent of lilacs hung in the air, sinking into my skin, anointing me. I’d done it all for this. It was good to be home.
The pool house was magnificent in the sun, the water painted by coloured glass, varnished in sunlight and waving gently. The aroma of flowers and freshly cut grass overpowered the smell of chlorine.
Breaking Leila Page 18
