Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
It was Sunday morning and I was woken by Luke’s kiss on the back of my neck. We were in my bed, the duvet tangled around our hips, the air around my body telling me that the day was already warm.
Luke’s body was warmer. I shuffled closer to him, into the angle where his torso met his hips, feeling his arm wrap around me and pull me closer still. My eyes were still closed but I could see brightness against my eyelids.
Still half asleep, I let myself luxuriate in the promise of a long, lazy Sunday: perhaps going for a walk by the canal, finding a pub for a Sunday roast, maybe helping Orla bake bread or scones or gather the blackberries that were ripening in the warm August sun on the brambles in the garden.
But there was something else I wanted to do first – wanted to do more.
I turned around in Luke’s arms, my eyes still closed, and my lips found his. His kiss was languorous, as if we had all the time in the world. In that moment, it felt as if we did – our relationship was still new, each kiss still full of promise of a future I was sure we could share. Whatever doubts I had about Beatrice, about what might happen to the life I’d hoped to build at Damask Square, vanished when I was alone with him like this.
He ran his hands over my bare shoulders. I could feel the roughness of his palms from manual work, the strength of his chest where it pressed against mine, his hair tickling my face. Like the first flicker of a candle flame, I felt desire ignite inside me, along with another, deeper feeling that was less familiar.
Is this love? Is this what love feels like?
Then all thoughts and emotions were swept away as his hands moved over my skin, his tongue teased mine and I moved on top of him, my body taking over so it felt as if he and I, the bedsheets and the sunshine, the room surrounding us and the house beyond it, were all just one living, gasping thing.
Afterwards, we flopped on our backs, sweat sheening our skin, holding hands and laughing.
‘All right?’ he asked.
‘Nah,’ I joked. ‘Terrible. B minus, please see me.’
He squeezed my hand. ‘Seriously, Liv. That was – you are – off the scale.’
I propped myself up on my elbow to look at him, suddenly serious too. ‘What does the scale look like, then? Am I in the top fifty? Top ten? Top five?’
I’d never asked him about his past relationships before – or not-relationships, the numerous casual encounters I assumed a man like him must have had before me. He’d mentioned an ex-girlfriend casually in the past, apropos of nothing much: My ex was obsessed with Coldplay; I never got what the fuss was about. My ex used to drink snakebite and black. Once, when I’d commented on Beatrice’s hair: My ex is blonde but I’ve always liked brunettes best.
‘Top one, for sure. How about me?’
‘Top one, too.’ My body cooling, I moved closer, resting my head on his shoulder. ‘But you haven’t had that much competition, to be fair.’
‘Really? You must’ve had loads of blokes before me.’
I shook my head, the hollow between his chest and bicep feeling like it had been made especially for me to lie in.
‘I was a slow starter,’ I admitted. ‘At school I kind of didn’t expect people to want to be with me, so I stood back and watched while everyone else snogged behind the bike sheds. Well, not exactly watched, but you know what I mean.’
‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’ His voice was teasing. ‘There’s a word for people like that, you know.’
‘Stop it!’ I laughed. ‘Anyway, I had a serious-ish boyfriend at uni but it didn’t work out. He cheated on me.’
‘I’m sorry. That must’ve hurt.’
‘Yeah, of course. But we weren’t right for each other, no matter what I thought at the time. I’m over it now.’
He kissed my forehead. ‘I should hope so.’
‘And if I hadn’t been, I would have got over it, like, five minutes ago. How about you?’
‘Oh, I’m over him too.’
I dug my elbow into his ribs. ‘I mean, what about your ex? The blonde one?’
‘Caroline? She was years ago.’
‘Okay, how about the one that was obsessed with Coldplay? Was that Caroline too?’
‘Nope.’ His voice was more serious now. ‘That was Rachel. She was more recent.’
Rachel. Okay. I felt a brief stab of jealousy, even though I knew it was irrational and unnecessary.
‘Right. Rachel, then. How recent, exactly?’
‘Oh, about a hundred years ago. Back in the mists of time, before I met you.’
I smiled. It was like he’d known how I would feel and was giving me reassurance without me having to ask for it.
‘Seriously, though. Were you together for long?’ I asked.
‘Two years. We met at uni, same as you and your bloke.’
Two years? ‘That’s a long time. When did you and her split up?’
He hesitated, then said, ‘A week before I moved in here.’
I was jolted. I didn’t expect Luke to have lived like some kind of monk for years and years, but that was recent. Like, recent recent. He’d split up with Rachel, moved into the house on Damask Square, and a few weeks later met me.
‘So when you said you had nowhere to live and you were thinking of moving back to live at your mum’s in Leicester, that was why?’
I felt the movement of his head as he nodded. ‘Basically, yeah. I realised I couldn’t live with Rachel any more.’
‘So why… why couldn’t you live with her any more?’
‘Cos she kicked me out. Well, she didn’t kick me out, but she gave me an ultimatum. She said, “You’re not going to make a living painting pictures and trying to sell them on market stalls. You need to get a proper job and stop messing about, or get out.”’
‘And you decided to get out?’
I felt torn. Despite how I felt about Luke, I could see Rachel’s point – I wouldn’t want to be holding down a job and paying all the bills while the man I lived with haphazardly pursued a dream of being an artist. No one with a decent head on their shoulders would.
‘It wasn’t just that. Well, that was the catalyst. She was right – I’d stayed with her for too long without pulling my weight financially. I sold a painting here and there, did casual decorating labour, but it wasn’t a steady income. And it brought home to me that we wanted different things.’
‘What did she want?’
‘To settle down. Buy a flat. Picket fence, the whole shebang.’
‘Marriage and kids?’
‘Eventually, yeah, I guess.’
‘And you don’t?’ I felt as if I was feeling my way through a dark space, not afraid exactly, but not wanting to reach out and touch something that wasn’t meant to be touched.
‘Not right away. I probably will – I don’t know – but it felt too soon.’
‘I know what you mean. That stuff’s for grown-ups, right?’
He stroked my hair. ‘We are grown-ups. Just not like that.’
‘There’s so much other stuff to do first,’ I said.
‘Right. I’d love to go travelling, maybe to South East Asia, even Australia.’
‘Like Orla?’
‘Like Orla. Although maybe not for as long.’
I remembered what she’d told us – fragments, really, scattered through various conversations over dinner in the kitchen.
‘She’s been all over the place, right?’ I said. ‘Africa, Asia, South America. And now she’s here.’
Luke nodded. ‘I wonder if she would’ve come back. If it hadn’t been for the house, I mean?’
A thought struck me. ‘I wonder if she was running away from something. And the house was like – I don’t know. An excuse to come back.’
‘It was never her home, though. She’s not even from London; she grew up in Ireland.’
‘She did?’ Orla had never told me that, but it would explain the ghost of an accent I’d noticed in her voice, long since overlaid, almost erased, by having spent time in other places with people who spoke differently.
‘That’s what she said. She studied fine art, same as me, only at Trinity College in Dublin.’
There was a note of something almost like reverence in Luke’s voice and I wondered how he felt about having been so passionate about something and then having had to put it aside to paint walls instead of pictures.
‘And now she’s getting to be an artist again,’ I said. ‘Maybe you will, too.’
‘Maybe I will. If I’m any good, I guess I’ll have to find a way.’
I remembered the pictures he’d shown me: the bold, abstract canvases with their sweeps of brilliant colour, the way he could capture the essence of a person with a few strokes of a pen.
‘You are good.’
‘That’s what you told me, like, ten minutes ago.’
I laughed. ‘Not at that. Well, at that too.’
Luke stretched, releasing me from the cradle of his arm. ‘Anyway, you’ll get to meet Rachel, if you want.’
‘What? When?’
‘Her best mate Belinda’s having a Halloween party. It’s her thing – she’s obsessed with it. Does it every year, plans it months in advance. She texted me and asked if I’d come and I said I’d think about it. She and I always got on well. She said Rachel wouldn’t mind and I could bring someone if I wanted.’
‘Wouldn’t that be weird?’ Meeting Luke’s ex-girlfriend certainly felt like it would be weird. But even more than that – I had the sensation I’d had before, when I saw Emily or went to the pub after work, of a life outside of Damask Square that I almost ceased to be aware of when I was here. When I was with Luke.
‘She’ll have to meet you sooner or later. It wasn’t a bad break-up and we’ve got loads of friends in common, and anyway – I mean, you’re part of my life now, right?’
His words gave me such a thrill of pleasure that I forgot all about Orla and her past and even about Rachel – at least for the time being.