Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Ludo
I roll over, tangled in bed sheets that need washing.
My pillows smell of the woods and Aidan, but I can smell sex too.
If I close my eyes, it’s as if time has stood still.
I feel Aidan lying over me, moving inside me, breathing beautiful sounds against my skin.
With my eyes closed, it’s like he’s still here, that dawn didn’t happen and he didn’t leave my bed to go to that stupid porta-cabin that holds him hostage all day long.
The maniac in me pictures myself creeping out in the dead of night and burning it down so he doesn’t ever have to leave me, but I catch the thought before it takes hold. Shake my head and laugh. Despite the fact that I’m all alone, I’m glad telepathy is fictional.
It’s early, but restlessness drives me out of bed and downstairs.
Aidan has already fed and walked Bella. Tidied the kitchen.
Straightened the living room. There’s nothing for me to do, so I pace around, thoughts jumping a mile a minute.
It’s days like this I need a schedule. And I have one, but I’ve misplaced it, and searching for it only distracts me for so long.
Wash the sheets.
I troop back upstairs and strip the bed. With the sheets bundled in my arms, regret hits me like a stone. I don’t want to lose last night, to wash it away. Even if Aidan’s coming back tonight, and the night after that, and the night after that, I don’t want my bed to ever not smell of him.
So put the sheets back on. But I can’t. I’ve disturbed them now, and they’ll never be the same.
I drop the sheets on the floor and flee the room.
Downstairs, Bella is in her basket, sleeping off whatever adventure Aidan took her on this morning.
Often she sleeps so soundly that I can hoover around her and she doesn’t stir, but she raises her head as I thunder down the stairs and lets out a low whine.
“Shh.” I bend to fuss her. “Don’t start, okay? I’m rattled because I miss him.”
Yeah. That’s it. Aidan has turned me inside out, and he’s not here to put me back together again. Irrationally, I blame him for that. I’m angry. I’m sad. But at the same time, I’m deliriously happy.
It’s up.
It’s down.
It’s yellow and black.
Aidan fucked me like he loves me. And I love him too.
You should tell him that.
The notion is terrifying, but it won’t leave me alone. I tear around the house, searching for my phone. It’s nowhere it’s supposed to be, but I blame Aidan for that too when I finally find it, half hidden by the clothes he ripped off me last night.
Still naked, I sit on the couch and tap out a text message. Erase it and write another. Words words words, but none of them good enough. In the end I settle for three, and I fire them off into the abyss before I can change my mind.
Ludo: I love you
Aidan
Bernard won’t stop talking. For the first time since the accident, I’ve accepted his offer of a pint after work, and this is my punishment.
I want to kill him, but I can’t think of a way to do it without seeming like the ungrateful arsehole I am. In my defence, though, I accepted before Ludo sent me that message, so I can hardly be blamed for wanting to get the fuck out of here and run all the way home to his house.
“So, do you think you’ll be fit enough to help with the RSPB project?”
“Huh?”
Bernard’s eyebrows dance on his lined face. “The RSPB project. They’re setting up the heron station by the quarry, remember? But there’s a lot to do before that can happen, and we’ll only get it done with all hands on deck.”
“All legs, you mean,” I retort. “There’s nothing wrong with my hands.”
“Very funny. How did you get on with your practice climb the other day?”
I search for the words to explain that it was a shit show I had no business attempting just yet, but my brain is so consumed by Ludo that I can only shrug.
He loves me.
Bernard rolls his eyes. “I liked it better when you had too much to say.”
“That’s never happened.”
“If you say so.”
Bernard insists on another pint, even though my glass is still full of the Coke he bought me the first time.
He ambles to the bar and I take my chance to fish my phone from my pocket.
I open WhatsApp and Ludo’s magic message.
I haven’t replied. I want to, but I can’t bring myself to tell him I love him right back via a stupid fucking message.
I want him to see me when I say it, so he believes me.
Because somehow I know it might take more than one attempt to convince him.
I click out of WhatsApp and put my phone back in my pocket. Leaving him with silence seems cruel, but I’m hoping he’ll forgive me.
Two pints of Coke later, I leave the pub and let the sugar rush carry me across town to Ludo’s house.
His house is usually the quiet, messy serenity I need after a day with other people, but as I raise my hand to knock on his front door, I notice two things.
One: the door is on the latch. Two: there’s music coming from somewhere inside the house.
I push the door open and immediately the scent of disinfectant hits me. It’s not quite the harsh, bleach-laced poison they use in the hospital, but there’s no mistaking what it is.
Curious, I step over the sofa cushions that are, for some reason, piled on the floor, and poke my head into the kitchen. Ludo is perched on the kitchen counter, surrounded by every pot and pan he owns, bent over his phone.
I knock on the doorframe. “Um, hello?”
His head jerks up and a smile splits his face in half. “Hey. You’re late. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. Bernard dragged me out for a drink.”
“A drink?”
“I had Coke. Two Cokes, actually. I think my face is melting.”
Ludo laughs. He slides off the counter and throws his arms around me. His embrace is fleeting but fierce, and it’s all it takes for me to feel brand new.
I cast another glance around the kitchen. “What are you doing?”
“Cleaning,” he says, picking up his phone again. “I couldn’t remember how many pots I had, so I got them all out, then I realised the cupboard needed scrubbing, and I couldn’t find my Zoflora stash, so I bought some more, and then I found it, so now I have too much.”
He stops for breath while I unpick the flood of information he’s chucked my way. “The fuck is Zoflora?”
Ludo jerks his head to the left. “Cleaning stuff that kills all the germs and smells nice. It comes in pretty boxes too.”
I follow his gaze to a plastic box hiding among his saucepan collection.
It’s stuffed to the brim with decorated cardboard boxes, all holding small bottles of disinfectant.
Damn. There must be more than a dozen in there, and why?
I mean, Ludo’s place is clean enough, but he never struck me as particularly diligent when it comes to housekeeping.
“What do you want for dinner? I was gonna offer you my terrible cooking, but I don’t want to make a mess if you’re trying to sort shit out. ”
“I ordered pizza.” Ludo is staring at his phone again. “You can take a shower if you want.”
“Um, okay.” I back up and retreat to the hallway. “I won’t be long.”
He doesn’t answer, and I troop upstairs, chewing on my lip like he does when he’s nervous, still chasing the scent of disinfectant.
In the bathroom I find the bath and shower spotlessly clean and the sink still smeared with Cif.
I rinse it off and consider the heap of toothbrushes smack bang in the middle of the floor.
For the life of me, I can’t think of a rational reason for them to be there, but I don’t move them.
He’s left them here for a reason, right?
I take the quickest shower known to man and dry off in front of the bathroom mirror before wiping that down too, and redressing in my tired jeans. Over the past few weeks, I’ve amassed a collection of clothes at Ludo’s place, but I have no clean T-shirts, so I don’t bother. It’s too hot anyway.
Eager to get back to Ludo, I hurry to the stairs, but a glance into his bedroom stops me short.
When I left this morning, the room was a haven of quiet breathing and sex.
Now it looks like a whirlwind has passed through.
The duvet is on the floor and the pillows scattered.
Curtains half-open, clothes spilling out of drawers.
The bed sheets are in a crumpled heap at my feet.
I pick them up, slowly, deliberately, but I can’t seem to pull together whatever my brain is trying to tell me.
I pad downstairs. Ludo is no longer in the kitchen, but the pizza has arrived while I’ve been gone, and two XXL boxes are teetering on a stack of frying pans. I rescue them and take them into the living room, but he’s not there either.
Nor is Bella. I set the pizza on the coffee table and check the garden and every other room in the house, but Ludo is nowhere to be found.
Worry licks through me. I call him, but his phone rings in the kitchen. Wherever he is, he’s left it behind.
He’s walking the dog, dickhead. Don’t freak out.
But even as I think it, more anxiety seizes my chest. I rub at it, recalling the many times Ludo has described the physical pain of a panic attack.
Is this how he feels every day?
A knock at the door rouses me. Spotting Ludo’s keys on the back of the couch, I hurry to answer it, but it’s not him. It’s another pizza deliveryman brandishing two more extra-large pizzas. Bemused, I pat my pockets for my wallet, but the bloke shakes his head. “You paid online.”
“Course I did. Thanks.”
I shut the door, the pizza boxes warm and soft against my palm as the scent of greasy meat, tomato, and cheese overtakes the lemony-floral cloud coming from the kitchen.
Nausea rolls my stomach. All the way here, aside from telling Ludo over and over that I love him too, all I could think of was getting clean, eating dinner, then getting dirty again, but as the second pizza order joins the first, I feel sick to my stomach.
Ludo has always been inexplicable to me, but there’s something up with this shit.
Something wrong.