Chapter 21
Jo fumbled in her wallet to find the notes to pay the grumpy taxi driver. She’d drunk at least two more than she should have, but the effect was already wearing off: she’d travelled home with the window down, clear cold evening air rushing onto her face, sobering her up.
She folded the wallet closed again and suddenly thought of Mike Madell, the deputy news editor up at the bar much earlier in the evening.
He’d seen her hauling out the wallet and he’d asked: ‘You still using that old thing? That’s nice.
Jeff went to a lot of trouble to find that for you…
phoning round shops all over London: did they have the right make?
The right colour? Did they have the right style?
Was it going to be big enough? I’m lucky to get a pint out of him on my birthday. ’
Now wasn’t that bizarre? Jeff had told her it was from the freebie drawer. Why?! Her fixed point seemed to be on the loose suddenly and it was… unsettling.
She paid the driver, hauled herself out of the cab, slung her bag and her computer carry-case over her shoulder and stepped towards her house.
Beautiful night. She stopped for a minute to look up at the clear sky.
She could see stars and that didn’t happen in London much, the lights were usually too bright for all but the most determined stars.
But tonight, the sky looked a deep, vibrant blue pinpricked with more stars than she remembered seeing for ages.
Must be some sort of freak atmospheric condition.
Savannah would know… or her astronaut friend.
The cab rolled out of the street and it was very quiet, house lights out all along the neat little row.
Jo walked towards her gate, still glancing at the stars, and felt for the latch.
‘Boo!’ said a voice coming at her out of the darkness.
‘Aaargh!!!’ was her instinctive response.
‘Sorry.’ The shadow stepped towards her and she saw that it was Marcus. Hair loose, curling on top of his shoulders.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Jo said, but she wasn’t cross with him. No, no, not at all.
‘I biked over.’ Now she saw the shiny cycle against her wall, wondered how she hadn’t noticed it before.
‘Have you been waiting long?’
‘No, just twenty minutes or so. Been stargazing – like you.’
She walked towards him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. She put her hands on his shoulders. Felt the collarbone, the warm, slightly damp T-shirt beneath her fingers. He moved his face towards her but stopped short when he was an inch or so away.
‘Hello,’ he said. She could feel his warm breath on her face; the tip of his nose was almost touching her.
Her lips were pricking with an anticipatory tingle but she held back from him just for one moment longer.
He put a warm finger up against her lips and smoothed over them. The prickle did not abate. She could hear her heart thud in her chest. Blood pound in her ears. All this just for the thought of a kiss with him.
His arms were round her waist, pulling her against him. Then he was against her mouth, pushing past her teeth with his tongue. And she was gone, all his. How did he do this?
Her elbows were on top of his shoulders, her body pushed into his. As close as they could be with their clothes on. Impossible not to think about the hard-on pressed firmly against her.
Her heart hammering so rapidly she was sure he must be able to feel it, Jo broke away, to be able to breathe, needing a long lungful of the night air.
‘Shall we go in?’ she asked, wishing her voice didn’t sound as shaken as she felt.
It didn’t feel right to be so bowled over by a kiss.
She should have outgrown this, be more adult, better able to cope.
Be more cool about it. It took several moments to find the lock with her key because her hand was trembling.
Inside the hall she turned on the light and this seemed to break the spell.
She hung up her coat and dropped her bags.
Marcus was walking ahead of her to the kitchen. He didn’t seem to like any other room in her house, always made a beeline for the kitchen or the shower. The shudder took hold of her again at the thought of him in the shower.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.
‘Nope.’ He stood, hands half jammed into his jeans pockets.
‘D’you want a drink?’ she tried.
‘Just a glass of water, maybe… No worries, I’ll get it.’ He turned to the sink and began to run the tap. ‘How about you?’ he asked.
‘Water would be good.’
‘How’s your day been?’ he asked, opening the right cupboard, taking out two glasses.
She could only give a little laugh in reply to this: ‘Interesting,’ she settled on finally.
‘Got a good scoop?’ he teased.
‘Not bad… there’s a better one “on the spike” in newspaper terms. But that, as they say, is another story. Shall we go next door? You know, if you don’t want food.’
Marcus flung himself across the sofa and she sank into the armchair opposite. His T-shirt slipped and she saw the smooth, honey-coloured hipbone jutting out from the top of his loose jeans.
She slid her eyes along his broad bare forearms, noticing the black plastic watch and the boy bracelets tied to his wrist on either side of it. His face was tilted up to the ceiling and she just wanted to go over there, ruffle him all up and throw her body on top of his.
He turned to look at her and she asked how his work had been.
‘Busy, busy,’ he said. ‘We were one short in the kitchen, so the rest of us were flat out. Saturday night always frantic—’
He added a little anecdote and ended with: ‘So there we are. That’s about it.
’ But it wasn’t. They were speaking simple, straightforward sentences.
But everything in this room was complicated.
Why was he over there? Keeping a distance?
Maybe he didn’t want to do this any more.
But then, did she? How interesting would she find him in a few more weeks’ time?
All this heady adrenalin-hit stuff was going to wear off.
She’d be left making small talk about Marcus’s favourite topics: cooking, shopping for cooking, CD burning, vodka and cycling.
‘Marcus, Marcus…’ she said.
‘Jo, Jo,’ he answered, which made her snort with laugher. It sounded so Primary Four.
‘What are we doing?’ she asked.
‘Hangin’ out,’ was his answer. ‘I’ve got two things to tell you.’ He sat up and opened the flaps of his bag: ‘I’m going to South Africa for the summer and I’ve bought you a present.’
She felt somewhere between relief and deflation with those words.
This was probably it. This was where they drew the line and said goodbye.
Jo found herself surprisingly touched by the handbag.
It was caramel coloured leather and small, but not too small, decorated with brass studs, a scattering of orange and pink appliquéd flowers with a tassel on the zip.
She slid open the brass zip and saw a bright pink silk lining.
With a smile, she told him, ‘I’ll hardly be able to get any of my stuff into this little bag. ’
‘Maybe that’s a good thing,’ he replied. ‘When you have this bag, you can just take what matters… and come dancing with me.’
Oh, that was perfect.
His turn to smile now.
She thanked him profusely but from something of a distance. In her mind was the thought that this should be goodbye, this was a good moment. End on an up.
And he seemed to feel the same. After a little more talk, he stood up and told her: ‘I should go. You’ve had a really long day and…’
And… well… he didn’t need to say the rest.
But in the hallway, in the semi-darkness, she made the mistake – or was that, had the good idea?
– of kissing him goodbye and found she was lost and disorientated.
All that heart hammering and blood rush.
It wasn’t exactly nice, wasn’t comfortable.
She had no idea what to expect next. Why did this feel like a rollercoaster?
All of a sudden, she wasn’t in the slightest bit drunk, wasn’t even tired.
She was wide awake, minutely conscious of every tiny movement.
His lips were soft, his mouth was a little dry, despite the glass of water.
He tasted of garlic and cigarettes. Something a little stale and unbrushed, un-minty.
Real. She realised her want for him was unbridled.
Unstoppable. There was no way she could let him out of the door.
He was pulling her skirt up. She didn’t want him to, not in her head.
Meanwhile, her hands were pulling the skirt up too.
Tights. Of course she was wearing tights. Was she expecting her twenty-something lover to be waiting at her door? They pulled them clumsily down too. ‘I can’t do this,’ she said, but it was in between kisses, in between feeling his tongue curl against hers, letting it fill up her mouth.
‘I don’t mind,’ was his answer, gasped out. ‘You just let me know— know what you want—’ Her hand was in his trousers feeling for him. And still she didn’t think they should be doing this. In her head.
Her fingers on the velveteen folds at the top. The fingers of her other hand between his teeth now, touching his teeth and tongue.
She put her lips down onto the soft, warm skin pulled tight over his collarbone. She didn’t even know why his collar and hip bones were such a turn-on for her. Maybe because these were the things she caught glimpses of when she talked to him, when she watched him.
‘Can we talk about this upstairs?’ he was asking.
In the bedroom, they took each other’s clothes off, kissing frantically.
Landing on the chill of the bedspread naked, they started to tangle together.
One of his hands was held tightly around her back and the other…
the other moved gently but deliberately against her, inside her, while his mouth stayed up at her ear, whispering against her lobe.
‘Here? Just here? OK? Move me to the right place…’
She closed her eyes, curled an arm around him and pushed her face into his hair.
Fell into a rhythm. At last, she felt in a private, enclosed space with him.
This was just about them. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought, didn’t matter what she thought, what Simon thought, or her mother, or Bella or…
anyone. It didn’t matter what anyone thought.
It didn’t even matter what she was supposed to think.
This was her, alone with him. Private and alone. His fingertips on minuscule parts of her. In a room, in a house, in a street, in a city, in a country, in the world, in the universe. Who cared? It was a tiny insignificant stiffening of muscles, blood rush, and tingling.
He was hard again and moved into her, kept a finger expertly in place; she moved to get a better grip on him.
Just one tiny, insignificant stiffening of muscles, blood rush, pulse and tingling. Tiny— insignificant— unimportant, abandoned, but— just— yes— that’s— yes—
She’d forgotten how real this was, how alive you were when this happened, how it could make colours explode in your head, behind your closed eyes.
The pit of the stomach excitement, the feeling of falling, plummeting.
She held onto him tightly, to keep afloat, to keep her bearings.
He came with a quiet gasp and gripped her tightly until they were both so hot and sweaty that he had to move off and sink face first onto the bed.
All quiet in the moment of exposure. She put her hand on his back.
‘It’s OK,’ she said.
‘Yeah… Who knows—?’ he murmured.
Who knows— It was just coming back to her that she hadn’t had any sleep. Hadn’t slept for two days. Suddenly she didn’t think she even had the strength to get in under the covers, she was so tired.