Starting Over

by Sue Moorcroft

  ‘Absolutely.’ Tess wiped her hands again, wondering whether to invite Angel to stay. Or to offer to help find the dog.

  But a fresh subject was already on Angel’s lips. ‘I want the kids to sleep so they won’t be grizzly this evening. Simeon says he’s invited you to the bonfire bash?’

  Tess nodded, unsurprised that Angel and Simeon knew each other. Such was village life.

  A laughing-faced springer appeared casually at the door, head on one side, much like Angel. ‘Here’s McLaren, look!’ Angel lunged with the collar. ‘Don’t put your dirty paws on the nice lady’s floor!’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘He’s like his master, never knows when he’s not welcome.’ Angel laughed, the comfortable laugh exchanged between friends. Tess felt a warmth awakening in response.

  Backing towards the door with the dog, Angel kept up a stream of chat. ‘So shall I see you tonight? Oh, stupid dog!’ Angel giggled as McLaren, applying the brakes, slipped collar and lead again to have another look at Tess, tongue lolling. Tess laughed, too. ‘Yes, I’ll see you at the bonfire party.’ Simeon seemed easy, amiable company, Angel open to friendly overtures. Maybe a few friends would lift her, make everything fall into place. Middledip could be a kind of emotional Wonderbra.

  ‘Tess, if you’re there, pick up! It’s Kitty.’

  Kitty, forthright, brisk, clear-sighted, was Tess’s agent, working from a large desk in a small office in the King’s Road, flicking through work submitted on spec by ‘supplicants’ and caressing a marmalade cat. Her enthusiasm, when Tess finally announced her readiness to return to full book work, had been reassuring. Kitty valued a good illustrator.

  Tess snatched up the phone, frowning at her hair in the mirror. It needed to be washed before the bonfire party. ‘Hi Kitty! Been to Bologna?’ Kitty would’ve spent a hellish, frenetic few days at the children’s book fair discussing the agency portfolio with a different publisher every half an hour, stirring up interest in her artists. Tess was hoping to benefit.

  ‘Haven’t I just and haven’t I got such a job for you!’ Kitty’s enthusiasm rang down the line. ‘The Dragons of Diggleditch is being relaunched – possibly the whole series – and they want a new illustrator!’

  Tess forgot her hair, bonfire night, Middledip and Simeon Carlysle. The Dragons series had been legendary, stories from ancient Britain; of Slider skating on oversized feet, Winder slithering like an enormous worm, and Slinker, a sort of dachshund of a dragon. In a time long before this, these mischievous dragons had inhabited Pennine caves above a hard-working village, stirring up trouble between the villagers and other forest creatures. Always, the dragons, naughty rather than bad, after a rampant adventure of greed and magic, ended up satisfactorily bested by the honesty and intelligence of the villagers.

  ‘The original illustrations are dated. They like your work!’

  Tess’s mind began to fill with visions of grinning dragons, pot-bellied and gorgeously coloured. She picked up a pencil, drawing a spiky tail with quick, sure movements. ‘Wow, will they use me?’

  ‘Can you hack it?’

  ‘Positively!’

  ‘The first anthology will be nine stories, two full pages, a half and two decorative borders to each story, plus end papers, plus jacket. Probably at least two further anthologies later.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘I can’t recommend you if you feel any doubt. Particularly in view of the further anthologies in the pipeline.’

  ‘Didn’t I get those jacket roughs to you on time? Honestly, don’t worry, I want to do this.’

  Kitty’s friend-voice replaced her business-voice. Theirs was about the only friendship that had survived the Olly Age; Kitty, not only necessary to Tess’s career, was not easily put off by a possessive man skilled in separating his woman from influences other than his own.

  ‘I don’t want you going backwards health-wise because I suggest a commission that’s too much for you. Olly rather put you through the wringer.’

  Tess closed her eyes, wishing she could shut her mind so easily against the chilly knowledge that she hadn’t been strong when she’d needed to be. ‘I don’t know how I could let a man submerge me like that. Why I tried to be his idea of what I ought to be.’

  ‘First love’s meant to be painful. You get over it and make way for something genuine and lasting and totally beautiful.’

  ‘But what if second love turns out to be painful, too? At the moment I feel as if I’ll never even want sex again, because ...’ The words jammed in her throat.

  Kitty’s voice softened. ‘Because of the miscarriage? That’s going to hurt you for a long time.’

  Tess looked away from the mirror. ‘Every day. Just because the baby wasn’t planned doesn’t mean I wanted it to die! I should have known it was there, protected it. I must’ve done something to cause what happened.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘Then why did I haemorrhage? That doesn’t just happen.’

  Kitty sighed. ‘Come on, Tess, we’ve been over this. What did the doctors say?’

  Silence. Then, ‘Sometimes it just happens.’

  ‘That’s right. It doesn’t matter how careful the mother is. Sometimes it just happens.’

  It just happens. Tess could see the hospital ward, cheerful lemon-yellow curtains around the beds full of empty women. Hear the doctor’s voice, ‘I’ve no neat explanation to offer, it just happens’. Words said a thousand times to a thousand bewildered women. Savagely, she changed the subject. ‘Tell them yes to the Dragons commission.’

  Buoyed by such fabulous luck, she strolled up to Gwen Crowther’s crammed shop for hair conditioner and a face pack.

  Forget Olly and the crippling disappointment; leave behind the brief pregnancy, rise above the illness. She had a great commission and there was a party to look forward to.

  But, later, at the party, in the dark night, Tess was having a horrible time.

  The muddy field was an oasis of bobbing orange light from a bonfire built to burn all evening. Stalls sold beer, hot dogs and lanterns to the inhabitants of Middledip, who churned the mud as they waited for the fireworks.

  What had become of the sweet man who’d escorted her courteously off the Carlysle estate? He’d vanished, to be replaced by a drunken arse. Simeon had dived into the hot rum punch the moment they arrived and then swilled beer by the gallon. Tess had begun to hate everything about the big, dizzy lump with his insistent, heavy arm dragging on her shoulders.

  The evening had promised better.

  In jeans, boots and a long black coat, newly conditioned hair slithering in a curtain down her back, she’d been fairly satisfied with her reflection.

  Simeon had arrived promptly in a tiny, dark-green sports car. ‘Frog-eyed Sprite, Ratty got it for me. Let me help you with the seat belt.’ He’d adjusted the sliding buckles of the belt, the old fixed kind, the backs of his fingers brushing her shoulder, her chest, finally her lap. That should have rung the first alarm.

  But the bonfire party had been fun, at first. Simeon knew everybody. Angel and Pete had stopped to chat, Jos waved and Ratty raised a brief hand, passing his gaze over her. Everyone, mingling with easy familiarity, was jolly and friendly.

  But it hadn’t lasted.

  Simeon’s arm became an intrusive fixture as he drank, dragging her from group to group, his cheek meatily against hers as he roared with loud, beery-breathed laughter. Miserably, Tess lifted her face to the metallic rain of fireworks as all the children went, ‘Ooooooh!’, wishing that she’d brought her own vehicle so that she could scarper.

  Angel reappeared after the firework display, frowning, clasping a sleeping toddler. Pete carried Toby on his shoulders. ‘We’ve got to take the kids home. Simeon’s well oiled, isn’t he?’

  Tess attempted again to escape the possessive arm while its owner honked at a conversation she was ignoring. ‘Can I have a lift with you? I’m not going to get in a car with this drunkard!’

  Ange
l made an agonised face. ‘There’s no room in our car between the two kiddie seats. Ratty will have space, though.’

  She might prefer to ride home bare-arsed on a porcupine’s back than ask Ratty. But, ‘Right, thanks,’ she said.

  Watching Angel and Pete pick their way to their car, a happy family with their sleepy offspring, she felt a settling of disappointment. Light and friendliness seemed to drain away as the families departed, leaving only adults indulging in serious drinking in the bonfire’s sinister dipping light.

  The crashing of Simeon’s conversation was unrelenting. A headache pounded between Tess’s eyes, her feet were cold to the bone.

  Maybe she ought to sidle over to Jos – or even Ratty as she was getting desperate – and cadge a lift? Simeon was in no fit state to drive. Yes, she’d pick her moment and do that. In fact she’d do it now.

  But her effort to escape the insistent arm seemed to focus Simeon’s attention. He paused at last, staggering and beaming. ‘C’m’over here a minute. Before we go.’

  ‘You’re drunk. I’ll get a ride back to the village.’ She made another attempt to free herself.

  He smiled as his arm tightened, crooning with drunken emphasis. ‘You’re very nice and I want to show you something.’

  ‘Get lost, Simeon! I’m getting a lift.’

  ‘OK, OK!’ He swayed, dolefully. ‘Take you to the car park.’

  Glad to be heading in the right direction, she allowed herself – actually allowed it, she must be thick – to be steered through the mire towards the darkness of the parking area.

  Simeon slid to a halt by a parked camper van, propelling her towards the denseness of the shadows. ‘Just a minute.’ He balanced his beer carefully on the van roof. And with unexpected precision swung her expertly between his body and the van side.

  ‘No!’ Too late. Her squawk was snipped off by the accuracy of Simeon’s plunging mouth. Strong arms pegged hers to her sides, his weight pinning her to unyielding metal.

  Unprepared, she was trapped. She couldn’t avoid his tongue thrusting into her mouth, nor his body pushing against her. It was abrupt, overwhelming, awful! Could she bite him hard enough to make him stop? Stop, she should scream, no! Her nails should be finding his eye sockets, her knee jabbing into his groin. But his mouth kept hers propped unwillingly open, her body locked by his weight. The tongue intruded unrelentingly in her mouth as Simeon proved his kissing stamina. If it could be called kissing.

  He broke away eventually to pant, ‘You sexy handful!’ Tess turned her face to avoid his lips, struggling for breath and, fruitlessly, to yank her arms free. ‘No!’

  Leaning harder, Simeon bit her neck sharply. ‘Yum!’

  ‘Stop!’ The protest was again choked off by his wet, returning mouth.

  His greater height blocked her vision, his weight engulfed her. She couldn’t even free a hand to slap him. Leaning heavily on her chest, he panted, ‘It’s OK.’

  Her frantic wheezes, ‘No!’ and ‘Don’t!’, were lost as he crushed her against the van, blocking her airway with his repulsive mouth and tongue until her ears rang.

  It was going on, on forever! No breath, no voice. Dizzy. Suffocating, she was suffocating under the mouth mashed over hers, panicking, no air, God-God, no air, screaming inside. Would nobody notice? A heart-chill. What if he tried to go further?

  Simeon’s teeth scraped her lips, her chest heaved on empty, unconsciousness waited with the black swarms edging her vision.

  ‘Having a good time, Simeon?’ Those hard, accentless tones, she’d never dreamt of being so glad to hear them. Relief! Simeon would back off with Ratty watching. Twisting, reducing the burden, ignoring Tess’s pained whoop as sufficient oxygen finally entered unwillingly deflated lungs, Simeon rested his forearm casually across her chest. ‘Ratty! Just the man! Got a condom?’

  ‘What?’ What was intended as an enraged scream emerged as a croak. ‘What?’

  ‘Some in the car. Struck lucky?’ Ratty laughed, shortly.

  Tess’s fear turned to bloody red fury.

  ‘Think so! Gorgeous armful, don’t you think? Love –’

  ‘Basta-a-a-rd!’ Rage and relaxation of Simeon’s grip gave Tess’s knee such upward impetus into his softest parts that she was free before his shrill howl had died. Bursting past Ratty’s smirk and Jos’s puzzled frown, humiliation, rage and mortification fuelled her jerky, slithering strides. ‘Keep away!’ she flung hoarsely behind her. ‘Keep right away, you shits!’

  She heard, behind her as she floundered, away, away, must get away, a sudden cold snap in Ratty’s voice. ‘Things getting out of hand, Sim?’

  And Simeon groaning sulkily. ‘Only a bit of fun. Only what she’d expect.’

  ‘Don’t think she liked it.’ The last word coincided with a dull, metallic clang.

  Tears blinding. Slipping feet running. Pausing, retching. Brushing past the parked cars and puffing into the lane. Sniffing, stumbling. Bastard, bastard men. Three miles home behind the hedges, shrinking into the hawthorn every time a car passed.

  Bastard men.

  Chapter Four

  She fell out of bed, the carpet burning her knees, fumbling for the lamp, heart banging, ears rushing. It’s OK, OK. OK. Safe in her bed, bedroom, Honeybun Cottage, Middledip.

  Trembling, she slid into her robe, wiping her clammy face with the cuff, heart still galloping.

  Astounding after Simeon’s pass, so brutal and ruthless, that her nightmare should feature e-mail. E-mail! The age’s most popular method of communication. E-mail and Olly.

  Wadding her hair into a scrunchie, she padded down the twisted staircase, thinking about Olly, his passion for computers, his sensual lips caressing words like virus and network.

  Olly never turned off his mobile. Even lovemaking could be interrupted by a client’s call. And why should Tess feel insulted? It was Olly’s work.

  And Tess’s work? Well ... it was a job. Its demands weren’t so precise, if the deadline was a month away, she had today, tomorrow, whenever, to work.

  He never saw her argument that a month’s work, after all, took a month.

  When she met Olly she’d just moved from a shared house into her own flat in a leafy street in Finchley, off the main road and under the railway bridge. Olly specialised in systems for private clinics and hospitals; they seemed in a position to afford him. None of her previous relationships had prepared her for what she’d feel for Olly. She’d been infatuated. Obsessed, even.

  Olly was gorgeous. Olly was popular, glad-handing his way across a favourite pub. Olly was exhilarating.

  Tall with a squared, cleft chin, curtains of Nordic-blond silky hair, ice-blue eyes to sweep down to fix on Tess. Before she was ill, of course. Olly was lustful.

  A lustful, exhilarating, gorgeous ... control freak. With a temper.

  Initially, Olly’s intensity had been flattering. ‘I just want to be with you!’ It must have been obsession that prevented her from resisting as her friends gradually faded away. How could she have tolerated it? Or his attitude that, neither creativity nor kids being his thing, illustrating children’s books was a risible occupation.

  He and his friends had careers in IT. Real work.

  Despite the permanent question mark she felt she wore in her relationship with Olly, she was flat on her face in love with him. And in lust. Something else he used to manipulate her.

  Olly couldn’t bear not to get his way. She shuddered as she made herself tea. Once or twice ... well, he’d slapped her face. Not a heavy blow, no bruise to show, just a short cut to Olly winning his argument. And then he’d be horrified and remorseful.

  She sipped the tea, drawing her chilled, bare feet under her cotton robe as she looked out into the moonlit garden of Honeybun Cottage.

  Even now that she could see Olly Gray for the self-orientated phoney he was, she understood that there had been plenty good in the relationship. They’d had a blast with Olly’s friends and their girlfriends, clubs and dinner parties – usuall
y at Tess’s flat. Olly wasn’t keen on having his space invaded, the apartment with one bedroom and a grey office. Then a diamond ring, the proper announcements, the unusual and expensive presents from Olly’s clients. The house hunt; Olly settling, eventually, for the town house in Brentwood through James’s contacts. (Olly liked James; he’d never tried to get between James and Tess.) Tess’s flat was sold to provide the deposit, and Olly’s rented flat kept on.

  ‘It’ll be easier for you to move first,’ he said, ‘with me working from home.’

  ‘But I work from home!’

  Olly laughed and kissed the sentence from her lips. ‘I know you do but it’s not the same. I’ll need time to organise the relocation.’

  So she moved into the new house alone for the months leading to the wedding that would be in a smart hotel frothing with spring flowers. And it was a lovely bay-windowed house of lofty, airy rooms.

  Olly hadn’t been able to contribute to the mortgage payments, with rent still to manage along with his everlasting finance company commitments. ‘Keeping up with technology is expensive! All right for you technophobes.’ He talked as if funds just fell into her hands and her work wasn’t a valid earner. She knew she was good in her field but it was difficult to access the appreciative part of Olly.

  ‘Technophobe or not, I can manage the mortgage alone!’ she hadn’t been able to resist.

  He’d glared, and then decided to smile, running his knuckles down her back. ‘Yeah, who’d have thought you’d be so good with dosh?’

  With two days to the wedding, Tess was in the midst of chaos as she tried to find places for presents. Was Olly ever going to get on with his move? Unlikely though it seemed, was he in the grip of pre-wedding nerves? These days he was preoccupied, absent-minded or just plain absent. Where was he?

  She unwrapped their third non-stick wok, telling herself not to worry. He’d turn up any minute, with a plan of the way his hardware was to be organised in his new office, downstairs to give him space. Tess’s workroom, upstairs, had been fully functioning for ages.