by Sandie Jones
Unconvinced, I waited by the phone, eager for news. I didn’t know what I was more nervous about; it not being Tyson, or Thomas discovering that it was all a ruse and decking the guy.
When it rang, I said a quick Hail Mary on both fronts.
‘I’ve got him,’ said Thomas.
My hand flew to my mouth in relief and my chest seemed to cave in as it rid itself of the stress and anxiety I’d been holding within it.
‘Oh thank God,’ I cried. ‘Was it okay? Any problems?’
There was a long enough pause to make me think that all was not well and panic gripped me once again.
‘By the time I got there, the bloke said he wouldn’t hand him over for a penny less than three grand.’
‘Oh,’ I said, more concerned about where Thomas had got the extra thousand from than having to pay more to get Tyson back. No amount of money would have been too high a price.
‘So suffice to say, the idiot lost out. He should have stuck to his original price, because his audacity pissed me off so much that he only ended up with a thousand.’
‘Is that all he ended up with?’ I asked cautiously.
‘I’ll drop him back shortly,’ he said, ignoring the question.
The knock at the door came just after seven, and I raced towards it, narrowly avoiding the chewed-up ball that Tyson loved to play with. To see him there with Thomas on the doorstep, his tail wagging, made my heart feel as if it was about to burst.
I beamed as Tyson leapt up to greet me. ‘Where have you been?’
I fell to the floor as he whirled about like a dervish, not knowing whether to jump onto me, nuzzle my hair or lick my face.
‘Thank you,’ I said, looking up at Thomas. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘I’m sorry that it cost you so much to get him back,’ he said.
‘I would have paid much more,’ I said, laughing, as I ruffled Tyson behind the ears. ‘You coming in?’
‘No, I need to go and see my mum.’ He looked down at the ground and I felt as if I should say something. He’d not divulged any information about his background or his family – mind you, neither had I.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he said, slipping the envelope, with what looked like the surplus cash, onto the hall table before leaning in to pull me up.
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ I whispered, our faces almost touching.
‘I’m just so happy that I was able to get him back for you.’
His lips brushed mine and I so desperately wanted him to stay. If it hadn’t been his mother he was going to see, I would have done everything in my power to convince him to. I was that close to letting him know how I felt, regardless of the consequences. If he ran in the opposite direction then so be it, but I needed to get across the effect he was having on me because it was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
When he didn’t call the next day, and the weekend had been spent staring at the phone, willing it to ring, I convinced myself I’d done something terribly wrong. What had I said? Nothing, yet. But the power of the unspoken word should never be underestimated. Had he known what I was about to say? Was he scared that I wanted to take our relationship one step further? I didn’t know what that was yet, but I couldn’t let him go. Though perhaps, in not saying something, I already had.
‘Are you sure he’s not married?’ asked Maria in the pub after work.
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I said, having wondered the very same thing the night before.
‘Would you carry on seeing him if you found out he was?’
‘Absolutely not,’ I said, taking umbrage that she even needed to ask. ‘I would never cross that line and besides, that isn’t the type of relationship I’m looking for.’
‘What type of relationship are you looking for?’ she asked. ‘Because, honestly, right now, it seems that this one is based on sex.’
‘But it’s really good sex, M,’ I sighed.
Maria rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t suppress a grin. ‘You can’t allow that to cloud your judgement,’ she said. ‘There’s more to a relationship than mind-blowing orgasms.’
I raised my eyebrows as if questioning the validity of her statement. ‘Is there?’
‘A relationship cannot survive on sex alone; it has to have something more. You need to be compatible in life, not just in bed.’
‘We’re harmonious in many ways,’ I said. ‘We talk . . .’
‘A few post-coital words do not constitute a conversation,’ she said, laughing.
‘We’ve got something deeper than that. Well, at least I thought we had.’
‘Does he know that?’
I pulled an apologetic face.
‘Oh great,’ she said, lifting her hands in frustration. ‘So you’re now pining like a love-sick puppy for a man who doesn’t even know that you’ve fallen for him. Have you gone this long without speaking before?’
I nodded.
‘So, nothing’s changed apart from how you feel. And just because you’ve now decided you want more, he’s supposed to jump to?’
I nodded meekly.
‘Jeez, the poor man’s not telepathic, Beth!’
‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘I will talk to him, if I ever get the chance.’
She took hold of my hand. ‘Listen, this may not be what you want to hear at the moment, but I’m being serious when I say there has to be more to a relationship than—’
‘I understand your concern,’ I said, patting her hand like my grandmother used to do to me.
‘Stop taking the piss,’ she laughed, pulling it away.
‘You’d be surprised how intellectually stimulating we find each other as well.’
‘I’ll bet,’ she said, rolling her eyes.
‘I mean it!’ I exclaimed. ‘We’ve spoken at length about the value of wine, its investment potential and the upsides to repack sales.’
She looked at me blankly. ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’
‘Aha! See? We’re connecting on a far more cerebral level than you give us credit for.’
I thought it wise not to mention that straight after said conversation, he’d almost made me climax on a packed train.
My phone rang, and smiling, I showed Maria that ‘Hot Guy’ was ringing. ‘Looks like it’s time for my bootie call,’ I said, as she choked on her wine.
‘Well, if you’re remotely serious about this guy, I suggest you change that to his actual name.’
‘Hey, it’s me,’ he said, as I stuck out my tongue at Maria.
‘Me?’ I queried, letting him believe that he could be one of a hundred.
‘Do you have many men’s faces buried between your legs?’ he asked.
Touché.
Still, I stayed silent for a few seconds, as if waiting for the penny to drop. ‘Oh, hi,’ I said, eventually. ‘How are you?’
I thought I heard him snigger. ‘I’m good, how are you? How’s Tyson doing after his little adventure?’
‘He’s all good,’ I said. ‘Thanks to you, he doesn’t seem any the worse for it, as far as I can see. What’s going on with you?’
‘I was just sitting here thinking about you and I wondered if you were around tonight to hook up?’
‘Tonight?’ I repeated, for Maria’s benefit, though I immediately regretted it as the voice of reason was shaking her head and wagging her finger at me. ‘Er, I can’t really do anything tonight. I’m in the pub with my friend Maria.’
‘How late will you be?’ he said. ‘I could meet you afterwards.’
There was a very real flip in my stomach at the idea of ‘hooking up’. It must have been written all over my face as Maria rolled her eyes theatrically and threw her arms into the air in exasperation.
‘Why don’t you come here?’ I said, throwing a curveball, not thinking for a second that he’d knock it out the park. Maria’s eyes widened and she looked down at herself before shaking her head.
‘Sure, where are you?’
Oh. My. God, I mouthe
d to Maria, as I ran a background check of myself in my head. What underwear did I have on? When did I last shave my legs? Was the flat tidy?
‘We’re in the Tiger’s Head in Woking,’ I said, my voice belying the panic I felt. ‘The one overlooking the green.’
‘Okay, I’ll be there in around forty minutes,’ he said.
‘Cool, see you then.’
‘Well, you played hard to get,’ said Maria after I’d hung up. ‘And now you’ve thrown me under the bus as well. Look at the state of me.’
‘You look gorgeous,’ I said, fluffing up her dark curls. ‘Anyway, I thought you weren’t about all that superficial bollocks. It’s not about looks and physical attraction, Maria. God, you’re so shallow.’
She swiped me across the arm, probably all too aware that I was only taking the mickey out of her to stop myself from spontaneously combusting with excitement.
‘Oh, so he’s here then,’ she said a little while later. I briefly marvelled at how she knew when she had her back to the door, but I realized my wide grin must have given the game away.
‘Hi,’ I said, way too over-enthusiastically. I lent up to kiss his cheek, but he turned and gave me a kiss on the lips. ‘This is Maria.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, offering his hand. She looked a little miffed that she wasn’t getting a kiss and I had to suppress a giggle.
‘You too,’ she said, in her clipped telephone voice.
Two bottles of wine later and Maria’s ancestral Scottish lilt was beginning to make itself heard. My accent, on the other hand, had apparently become more Italian, as Maria had laughingly observed.
‘So, you’re in the wine business, eh?’ she asked Thomas. ‘How much would this . . .’ She took a look at the label. ‘So, how much would this Merlot be?’
He smiled as she pronounced the T. ‘Well, this bottle wouldn’t be worth more than you paid for it, other than you’d expect to pay twenty pounds more in a restaurant and five pounds less in a supermarket.’
‘So, where’s the big money angle? Cos me and my Jimmy would be up for some of that.’
I looked at her and rolled my eyes. She and Jimmy barely made it through the month, but maybe that was all the more reason to invest.
‘Well, it’s all about the fine wines,’ he said. ‘Their values increase and decrease, and you just have to know when’s the right time to buy and sell, much like stocks and shares I suppose. But this is much more of a dead cert than the London Exchange could ever be.’
‘So, we’d be buying wine?’ asked Maria.
‘Yes, but not to drink.’ He laughed. ‘You’d keep it in a safe place, in optimum temperatures, until you wanted to sell it. All of my clients make over a two hundred per cent return, minimum.’
‘But who would we sell to?’ she asks, her expression confused.
‘Well, you’d normally sell it to the highest bidder, and because I’ve always got clients who are looking to invest large sums of money, I’m normally able to outbid anyone else because I’ve got people lined up who want it.’
She gave me a nudge in the ribs. ‘So, we wouldn’t really need to do anything, your “hot guy” would do it all for us.’
‘O-kay, it’s time to go,’ I said, not wanting Maria’s loose tongue to reveal any more secrets.
She wound her window down as she got in her taxi. ‘You two lucky ducks go and have a fun time,’ she said, blowing us kisses. ‘Go give each other multiple orgasms.’
I turned to Thomas, wide-eyed and laughing. ‘I am so sorry. She has an alcohol threshold that should never be crossed.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he laughed, pulling me towards him. He took my breath away as he kissed me, his hands entwined in my hair. He almost knew to support me as my knees threatened to buckle. ‘So, what about it?’ he whispered into my ear.
‘What about what?’ I asked, breathlessly, not wanting him to stop.
‘Let’s go give each other multiple orgasms.’
18
I was too busy being kissed as I fished for the keys in my bag to notice that the front door to the flat was ajar. It wasn’t until I went to put the key in the lock that my blood ran cold.
‘Come on, what’s taking you so long?’ said Thomas as he nuzzled my neck, seemingly oblivious to Tyson’s frantic barking.
‘Look,’ I blurted out, not even thinking that I might alert whoever was in there. ‘It’s open.’
Thomas looked up and instinctively walked around me, so he was between me and the door. ‘Call the police,’ he said authoritatively, holding an arm out to stop me moving forward.
‘Don’t,’ I said, my breath catching in my throat as he pushed the door slowly open. ‘Someone might be in there.’
In a split-second panic, I ran through the items that a burglar might take that could never be replaced; the necklace from my dad, his wedding ring, framed photographs of us on the mantlepiece. I could see them all so clearly, being carelessly shoved into a holdall, their value so paltry to anyone but me. The very thought was enough to cause a ripple of pain through my chest and my bottom lip to wobble.
‘Just call the police,’ Thomas repeated, and I nodded, adrenaline rushing through me, making my hands shake. I could barely hold the phone in my hand, let alone make a call.
‘Please be careful,’ I begged as he stepped into the darkness, whilst I waited on the front step, holding back tears.
The seconds turned into minutes as I watched lights going on one by one. When Tyson’s barking and whining eventually subsided, I knew Thomas must have reached him. I allowed myself to believe that if they were okay, it was okay. That maybe I’d just left the door open. Again.
I realized I’d been holding my breath when Thomas came back with a worrying grimace on his face.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, as my heart sank. ‘You’ve been burgled and it’s a bit of a mess. Tyson’s okay, a bit shaken up. Looks like he was shut in the kitchen – he’s nearly scratched the door to ribbons.’
Sobriety hit me like a sledgehammer.
He pulled me into him and kissed the top of my head. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I haven’t called the police yet,’ I said. ‘I was hoping it might be a false alarm.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘Tyson’s barking might have scared them off eventually. But I doubt they’d make such a mess and not take anything.’
‘Is it definitely safe?’
He nodded. ‘It looks like they came and went through the front door.’ He ran a finger down the door frame and I could see that it was splintered a little.
‘Bastards,’ I spat, before cautiously following him inside.
Nothing can prepare you for how it feels to have your home violated. To see all your personal possessions, things you’ve worked hard for, strewn across the floor. Every drawer was pulled out and upturned and every cupboard emptied in an attempt to find . . . what? It was a normal two-bedroom ground-floor flat, pretty basic, nothing special. But it was mine, and to know that someone had been in there, rifling through my letters, trawling through my underwear drawer and helping themselves to whatever took their fancy, made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach.
I fell to my knees on the floor where my jewellery box had been upended, too frightened to turn it over, in case I couldn’t see what I so desperately wanted to see. I forced myself to take a deep breath.
‘I’ve popped Tyson back in the kitchen until the rest of the flat is straightened out a bit,’ Thomas said as he entered the bedroom. ‘Are you okay?’
I nodded and counted to three in my head, psyching myself up. Please don’t do this to me, I prayed silently to whichever God was listening. If you’ll just make this okay, I promise I’ll come to church more.
‘Can you see if anything’s been taken?’ he asked gently as I turned over the box.
‘Yes,’ I sobbed, my heart breaking. ‘The necklace my dad gave me, his wedding ring, some earrings.’ I ran a hand over the carpet, willing my fingertips to fee
l the sentimental items I treasured. ‘The other stuff doesn’t matter, but my dad’s . . .’ I couldn’t hold back anymore.
‘Ssh, it’s okay,’ said Thomas as he knelt down on the floor and rocked me in his arms. ‘We’ll call the police, they might be able to get it back.’
‘No, no they won’t – they never do.’
‘They’ll try. Is there anything else?’
I stood up and rubbed at my head, trying to work the fury and frustration out. I couldn’t even remember what used to be there just a few hours before. Did I still have that fancy camera I treated myself to a couple of years ago? Or had I lent it to Maria? Was my laptop at home or at school? I couldn’t think straight.
The living room was even more of a mess; every piece of paper had seemingly been pulled out of the dresser, where I had developed my own haphazard filing system, and thrown onto the floor.
I looked around the sea of invoices, bills and payslips that lay at my feet. My mother’s will, which she had given me on the strict understanding I wasn’t to open it until she passed away, lay next to its ripped envelope. After twenty years of it being in my safekeeping, I’d allowed a stranger to come along and destroy that trust.
Even seeing the cards that the children from my class had made for me, lying forlornly on the floor, made me cry. Their bright colours and kind words so at odds with the sickening scenario they were now a part of.
‘It’s difficult to tell,’ I sniffed.
Thomas nodded and punched digits into his phone. ‘Hello, I’d like to report a burglary,’ he said, before giving my address. ‘They could be here in five minutes or five days,’ he said as he hung up. ‘There’s not much manpower left in the burglary squad these days.’
‘Can you stay?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’
It wasn’t until I really looked at the chaos surrounding me that I realized how many secrets my home held. I considered myself to be a private person, only letting those closest to me in, yet in just a few minutes, a criminal had found out so much about me. He knew that I was a primary school teacher at St Mary’s in Guildford and how much I earned. He now had all my bank account details and my current balance. Even the seemingly innocuous details about me, such as my eclectic fashion sense, my love of yellow, the book I was reading, and my fondness for the Brontë sisters were all laid bare, making me feel overtly vulnerable. It was only as my eyes caught sight of the solicitor’s headed paper, which my mother’s will was attached to, that I realized that the son of a bitch also knew things that I didn’t even know myself.
