Chapter 20.
It’s late by the time we make it back to Norwich. Despite the rollercoaster in my head, I’ve been aching to kiss him for most of the ride home. For most of the afternoon in fact. As we drove up the coast to Brancaster Staithe. As we stopped at the pub for drinks on the terrace overlooking the salt marsh. As we climbed back into the car, and I felt the air between us contract, my mind turning to thoughts that felt irresistible.
I lean over to him as soon as he’s switched off the ignition. Our mouths meet, and the wild feeling inside me uncoils. He tastes of hunger and sea breeze. Pretty soon his hands are in my hair, and mine are skating down his back, gliding up beneath his T-shirt.
I feel him smile as we kiss, and I do too, because I know what he means.
I push aside all thoughts of Jamie. Because right now, I know it is Ash I want.
After a few minutes, a group of people passes the car, and we draw apart, catching our breath. His eyes dance across my face. He pushes back my hair with one hand. My heartbeat is ridiculous.
‘Neve, can I ask... I like you, a lot, and... I’d like to see if this could go somewhere. But I need to know... are you... looking for something right now?’
I realise, at last, that the answer is yes. I want to do this. I want to make space in my life for this man. ‘I think... I’m looking for you,’ I breathe.
‘Thank God,’ he says, leaning in to kiss me again.
I can’t resist any more. I want him too much. I can ignore the complicating factors. Analysis can wait. ‘Do you want to come in?’
‘Yeah, I really do,’ he says, and then we get out of the car and head inside.
I’d been planning to put on some music, make coffee, freshen up. But as soon as we’re through the front door, I feel his hands on my waist, spinning me gently round so he can kiss me again, and I think, Screw the coffee. I only want you.
We make our way into the living room. I leave the lights off. The house is warm and still. I am molten with anticipation.
I’m not feeling my way now, and neither is Ash. We both want this. He mirrors my movements, letting his fingers skate from the small of my back up to my shoulder blades and then down again, every knot and hollow of my body flexing with his touch.
He lifts my sweater over my head, then takes off his T-shirt. We move towards the sofa, too impatient to make it upstairs. But then I remember Jamie’s framed photographs on the mantelpiece, watching us, and I grab his hand. ‘Come on,’ I whisper.
Upstairs, the bedroom is deliciously dark. He presses me gently to the wall. I can feel his heart pumping like an animal’s. His hand moves to my jeans, unbuttoning then unzipping. I tug myself free, kick them to the floor, and then together we make it onto the bed. I changed the sheets mere hours ago. The scent of fabric softener still lingers. Our bodies are already damp and hot and arching for more, our breathing ragged, our movements primal.
Finally, I move on top of him, feeling desire like I’ve never experienced before.
Somehow, I seem to know exactly what he wants, and he understands the same in return. I feel as though I am already familiar with every last touchpoint of his skin, the path of his hands, the press of his body.
His hands are on my hips. We quickly get frantic, a blur of bodies and gasped names and sweat-slick skin. We unravel each other entirely, again and again, unable to stop, our gazes locked tight.
Morning. I blink and drink in cold, white light, take a moment to orientate. Then a rush of fresh pleasure as my body remembers. We hardly slept last night. I recall a grey-feathered dawn starting to edge around the blinds, and saying to Ash, through our millionth kiss of the night, ‘It’s getting light.’ And he laughed, and began to say something, then checked himself. So I elbowed him and told him he had to tell me what he’d been going to say, and he laughed some more and said, ‘I was going to say, “That’s got to be some kind of record,” before I realised that would be just about the worst thing that’s ever left my mouth.’ And I smiled and said true, but that it was a record for me too, so let’s just be proud that we’re the kind of people who set records in bed, and then we both started laughing until we eventually began to drift off, wrapped sleepily in each other’s arms.
I saw his lightning scars for the first time last night, too. Faint pink tendrils, like feathers. They stretched across the ridges of his abdomen, marking the place where nature had struck him.
I drew a finger across the patch of marked skin, marvelling at the madness of it, feeling the scars’ tiny seams.
‘They usually go away,’ he whispered. ‘After twenty-four hours, or so. But mine never did. I guess I must scar easily.’
‘I guess you must.’
‘I like to think they’re a reminder to live for the moment. If that’s not too corny.’
‘It’s not corny at all.’
‘I’ve not always loved them, if I’m honest.’ He was tracing my skin with one finger too, absent-mindedly, a circle on my shoulder. ‘People have made comments, sometimes.’
‘You mean, when you’ve been . . . with them?’
He nodded. ‘And trust me, nothing kills a moment of passion like someone exclaiming, Oh, you’re the lightning-strike guy! I get people coming up to me sometimes, too, asking for selfies.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Unfortunately, yeah.’
I returned my gaze to his scars. ‘Do they hurt?’
‘They did a bit, at first. Not so much now.’
‘I think they’re beautiful,’ I whispered. ‘Mad and beautiful all at once.’
He laughed softly. The sound of it touched me deep inside. ‘Mad and beautiful. Thank you, Neve. I’ll take that.’
And then he dipped his head to my collarbone, the exact same spot Jamie was always drawn to, and kissed me there. The sensation felt so familiar, so much like a love I knew well, I had to swallow away tears.
The space next to me on the mattress is empty now. I check the time – still early, though I can hear the rumble of cars on the road outside.
I ease out of bed and pull on a hoodie. As I do, I catch sight of my old battered copy of On Decorating on my nightstand. I retrieved it from the box beneath my bed after I bumped into Lara. It was the first time I’d felt able to look at it since we fell out. Even flicking gingerly through its pages brought her kindness rushing back to me in gusts. How much she believed in me. How she only ever wanted the best for me.
I head downstairs, hoping Ash is there, praying there’s no note to say he had to go, or some other evidence of second thoughts.
To my relief, he is barefoot in my small galley kitchen, wearing yesterday’s T-shirt and jeans. The air is sweet with the scent of coffee and warming butter. At the edge of the room, I pause and smile, my heart on a high-wire. ‘Morning.’
He looks up, concentration subsiding into a smile. ‘Morning. Hope you don’t mind, but... thought you might fancy breakfast. Took the liberty of raiding your fridge for eggs.’
I want to assure him that looting my kitchen for ingredients with which to cook me breakfast definitely counts as one of the lesser morning-after crimes.
‘That’s the opposite of a liberty.’ I lean against the door jamb and watch him for a couple of moments.
‘You look lovely,’ he says.
I run a hand through my unruly mass of bed hair, hoping I don’t resemble my mother. I’d been so impatient to get down here, I forgot to so much as glance into a mirror.
‘And you,’ I say. And it’s true – every time I catch sight of him, my stomach skips. Tall and dark, melt-in-the-middle eyes, the suggestion of a smile always moments from his mouth. And the way he was last night – intense and feverish, gripping and teasing me, dismantling me inch by inch.
After so many years of feeling not quite myself – like some component part of me went missing when Jamie died – I feel a strange sense of ease this morning. It’s as though I’ve finally found what I lost, glistening like a gemstone in the mud left by a turning tide.
Ash lines up chives on a chopping board. My attention lurches sharply to what he’s holding. ‘You’re not seriously going to...?’
‘What?’
‘It looks as though you’re going to try to chop those with that .’ I indicate the enormous knife, which is better-suited for skinning elk than it is for chopping herbs. It was part of a mystifying Christmas gift from my mother one year – a knife block I suspected to have fallen off the back of a lorry – and this one, I have never used, because it is terrifying.
Ash smiles. ‘Chopping fast is literally my only party trick.’
‘If I tried that, I’d have no fingers.’
‘It’s actually pretty easy. You just need a decent knife. Which, fortunately, you have. Come here, I can teach you.’
I smile, enjoying for a moment the idea of him standing behind me, his hand over mine on the knife, showing me how. ‘No, you’re all right. I quite like having all my ligaments intact.’
‘Come on. It’s easy.’
I hesitate, then relent. The urge to be pressed up very tightly to him as he demonstrates is just too strong.
I take a couple of steps towards him. He pulls me close, moving behind me so we’re both facing the worktop.
I have no idea what possessed me to buy chives. Then again, I’d be hard-pushed to recall my own name if someone asked for it at this precise moment.
‘All right,’ Ash whispers into my ear. His body is firm against mine. ‘Lesson one.’
I shiver. ‘You really can’t do that if you want me to go anywhere near a sharp blade.’
He laughs softly. ‘Okay. Sorry. So, pick it up.’
‘How do you know I’m not left-handed?’
‘Are you?’
‘No,’ I admit.
‘Just so you know, I’m not going to fall for distraction tactics.’ He places one hand over mine, and together, we position the knife. ‘All right. I’m going to move it, you just... go with it, okay? Don’t try and control it.’
‘Okay.’
‘You sure? Ready?’
‘Ready.’
‘You trust me?’
‘Yes,’ I say, realising it perhaps for the first time. ‘Yes, I do.’
He guides the knife effortlessly through the chives with a rocking motion that feels very different to the way I usually hack into things with whatever blunt blade I have to hand.
‘See?’ he whispers, when we’re done. The chives are lying in a little pile on the chopping board. ‘It’s not so hard.’
Against the worktop, I turn to face him. Steam from the stove is starting to wet the air. I start to speak but he smothers my words with a kiss.
Pretty soon after that, the breakfast gets abandoned. I might have felt bad about all the effort he went to, if what we go on to do together didn’t feel so insanely good.