Chapter Seventeen
Aiden was still there. I could tell from outside. And from the flickering inconsequential nature of the light I could see from behind the curtains, he’d either lit candles or set fire to the tablecloth.
‘Great, you’re back.’ He was dressed, for which I was very grateful, but in leather, for which I wasn’t. A tight black shirt clung to his upper body like a shaved monkey and the trousers were probably measurable on the Richter scale, judging by the noise they gave off when he moved. I had the feeling he thought he looked really sexy. ‘I got takeaway. Chinese suit you?’
Okaaaayyyy. And yes, while it was nice to come home to dinner and a lovely man . . . there’s something rather clinical about a guy who orders in takeaways and then meets you at the door in leather. A bit like, he’s acknowledging you need to eat (to keep your strength up for the contents of the leather) but can’t actually be bothered to cook anything. I mean, there were ready meals in the freezer, he wouldn’t have had to strain himself. But still. He’d thought a bit.
‘Thanks. Chinese would be great.’
He’d fetched all the candles I owned and put them in the living room on saucers. He’d even found the obscene one that Megan had brought me back from an Ann Summers party, where she’d won it for being the most straight-laced attendee. Unfortunately, this had now burned half way down, and the result was anything but sexy. ‘So. How was today?’
I took the proffered tinfoil container and fork — washing up was also clearly not on tonight’s agenda. ‘Tough.’ I wasn’t going to say anything else, but the image of Kai’s confusion was burned into my brain. ‘Went to Leeds with Kai.’
‘Right. That’s your man, isn’t it? The one you’re just . . . seeing?’
‘Yes. Aiden . . .’
‘D’you think he’d like to come out to play?’
‘Actually, I have no idea.’ I thought about Kai and his confessions about drinking too much and wild living and then wondered how I could have thought anyone like him could be otherwise. ‘But I . . .’
‘Maybe we should give him a ring, I’m feeling like a bit of the hard stuff.’ Aiden sucked on a bit of lemon chicken and winked at me. ‘Oh, and I downloaded some possible wedding venues onto your laptop. Take a look.’
He genuinely didn’t see any dichotomy in discussing wedding plans and almost simultaneously proposing a threesome with another guy. Maybe there were women out there for whom this was a huge turn on, all I know is, I wasn’t one of them. And he hadn’t even given me the chance to say so.
‘Aiden. We need to talk about this.’ The takeaway was really good though, and I hadn’t realised how hungry I was. ‘After dinner.’
‘Seen the weather forecast? Tomorrow’s going to be really mental . How about we spend the day in bed?’ Aiden undid the top two buttons of the leather shirt and scrumpled up his hair, ‘It’ll be cracking .’
‘There’s more to life than self-indulgence.’ I wondered how Kai was. How he was feeling, whether he’d come to any decision yet. I wanted to phone, but decided to leave him alone, give him a chance to think.
‘Och, I give great hedonism.’ Aiden grinned at me. ‘Why, what else would you be doing, on a day when it’s not safe to go out?’ He dropped his lemon chicken and gave me a kiss that went on longer than was decent, then stood up to reveal the leather trousers straining with something longer than was decent. ‘In fact . . .’
‘Aid, I’m knackered.’ I fought to keep hold of my prawn balls. ‘Can’t we, I dunno, watch TV for a bit?’
‘After. Aw, c’mon, babe. You never wanted to watch TV when you visited me on set, did ya?’
I was too tired to fight him. Besides. You know. Those trousers. And he was stunningly good.
* * *
During the night the wind rose. And kept on rising, somewhat similar to Aiden himself, although the wind slapped the rooftops not buttocks and moaned in chimneys not in a baritone.
We did get some sleep. We must have done, because I was woken by the phone ringing.
‘Leave it,’ Aiden groaned as the wind hit the side of the house with a smack and whumph that made the windows rattle like teeth in a punched mouth. ‘They’ll go away.’
But they didn’t. The phone rang on. I crawled across to look at the display through blurry eyes. ‘OL? Who’s OL?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’ Aiden burrowed deeper under the covers. ‘Lie still, darlin’, you’re letting the cold in.’
There was an almighty bang from outside as something blew into something else. It sounded like wood on metal. Snow was strafing the windows, more solid than fluffy, and the wind had started howling like a thwarted animal. It was still dark outside, but, in this weather that didn’t mean much, it could have been any time from six to breakfast.
‘Old Lodge!’ I sat up suddenly and Aiden groaned again, pulling the duvet tight to his body. I snatched up the phone. Did Kai need me, after all? ‘Kai? Is that you?’ But at the other end no one spoke. The line between us sounded hollow. ‘Cerys? Nick?’
Still no answer, just the sea-like sound of an engaged phone line, and if I listened hard I thought I could hear breathing. ‘Is it the babies? Are you in labour? Where’s the guys? Where’s Kai?’
And now a change in the tone. If I really strained I could make out the word come , repeated with a breath’s pause in between. ‘Shit. I’m on my way.’ I hung up and struggled from under the covers. ‘I’ve got to go out. Someone’s in trouble.’
‘Fuck ’em.’ Aiden reached out a long arm and grabbed my shoulder. ‘You can’t go out in this, Holly. Listen to it.’
As though prompted the wind roared down the street like a teenage driver in a Porsche.
‘I have to .’
‘No, you don’t.’ The duvet was thrown back to reveal Aiden in all his naked glory. And he was quite glorious, although a little absence would have made my heart grow fonder, also my tender places a little less tender. ‘Come on.’
And Kai’s words echoed through my brain. Was this it? Was this what I had to look forward to for the next twenty-or-so years, until I found myself too old and tired to indulge in the sexual carnival tricks? Rampant guys wanting no connection other than the purely plugged-in kind? I tried to extricate myself gently. ‘Aid, all this. You and me. It can’t work, you know it can’t. We’re not compatible.’
‘Sure we are.’ He wouldn’t let go of me, kept trying to drag me back into the bed.
‘But what if . . . what if, for some reason, I can’t have sex? Like, say, if we have babies or something and I have to have a bit of time off?’ I pried his fingers off my arm.
‘Hey, that’d be no problem. After all, there’s always some chick up for a good time until you were ready for it again.’ He grabbed at me and managed to unbalance me backwards onto the bed. ‘How about I show you what I learned in Morocco? Or, tell you what, I could come with you, find out if this Kai is my cup of tea. No point in dragging the guy in if I don’t fancy him, is there?’
I thought of Kai, his desperate, broken look yesterday. Needing someone. And there I’d been, perpetually trying to seduce him into bed, wanting no more connection than the plugged-in kind. Stupid. Shallow. I closed my eyes slowly. ‘Aiden. What part of the word no is it that you don’t understand?’ When I opened my eyes I saw the handcuffs we’d let fall onto the floor again. I picked them up.
‘Oh yeah, you are such a tease.’ Aiden watched me fasten one around his wrist. ‘You want it as much as I do, don’t you?’
I snapped the other half of the cuffs onto the wrought iron headboard. ‘I don’t think there’s an untreated sex maniac anywhere who wants it as much as you do, Aiden,’ I said. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’re rational at the moment, and I really do have to go.’
He pulled against the cuffs but they were real and solid and so was the bed. ‘So, you’re gonna come back and do me, that right?’
I sighed. ‘I’ll see. The key is on my key ring, so don’t even bother ransacking the bedroom for it. I’ll let you out when I get home, don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you to starve to death or anything.’ I shoved a mid-sex snack of crisps that we’d left beside the bed and a glass of water over to him. ‘Now, behave yourself.’
I dressed in two pairs of woollen tights under jeans, three T-shirts, a sweater and my warm coat, plus wellies. Outside it was a little lighter but day was still struggling to dawn past a pus-yellow sky and the air was thick with wind. When I opened the front door it was instantly whipped out of my hand and slammed back against the wall, cracking the metal knob in two with the force of it.
The air stung like lemon juice. Snowflakes bit my skin and the wind made keeping my eyes open almost impossible. It was stepping out into sensory overload. My body was tugged and driven, this way and that, I could hardly draw breath and all the while the wind yelled and shrilled into my ears. It took me five minutes to get to my car, and it was only parked three yards from the doorstep.
A few hasty minutes scraping and shovelling and blowing on the keyhole, and I was in, where at least the wind and snow stopped hitting me. Instead, they hit the car, which zigzagged across carriageways, bouncing gently off the banked snow on either side and then swivelling around on the icy road surface until I was no longer sure whether I was driving in the right direction. The only fortunate thing was that there was hardly any other traffic. A couple of cautious tractors, front ends loaded with feed for distant sheep and cattle and a four by four with skis tied to a roof rack edged past my random trajectory; we all gave each other weak ‘are we stupid, or what?’ grins as we ricocheted by.
It took me an hour and a half to drive the ten miles and when I slowed down near the entrance to the wood I saw that one of the huge elms had blown down and the trackway was blocked to vehicles. But that was okay because the snow lay so deeply along the track that I didn’t think I would have been able to drive down it without hitting a gigantic rut and grounding completely. I steered the car to roughly where I imagined the kerb to be and touched the brake. A jarring skitter told me that the ABS was doing nothing to stop us and I jammed my foot down hard in a panic, causing the back end of the car to swivel around. The car rotated in its own length, shying the width of the road like a horse imagining something truly terrible in the opposite hedge, then hit something under the snow with a huge bang which threw me against the steering wheel hard enough to make me swear.
When I got out I could see the car listing dramatically to the left, the whole of the undercarriage buried in snow up to the hubcaps. By now I was half-blind with ice crusting on my eyelashes, and right this minute I didn’t care what was wrong with it. I was more concerned with getting to whoever needed my help.
I locked the Renault against car thieving yetis and battled my way into the wood. At least once I’d got under the trees the wind couldn’t get to me. It was too busy working the treetops, forcing the fingertips of branches to rake the sky and all the while sounding like an incoming tide. I plonked on through the snow, and even though I tried to avoid drifts, I only managed to avoid the obvious ones and kept dropping into patches which went up to my waist.
There was no sign of the Ginger Menace. I guess even psychos stayed at home in front of the fire on days like this. I dug my ungloved hands deeper into my pockets, hunched my shoulders and struggled on, sweating under my clothes even as any exposed bits of skin puckered and screamed against the cold. At last the Old Lodge came into view as a golden light streaming out across the snow from the kitchen window, a single plume of smoke rising from the chimney. There was a newly chopped pile of wood outside the door on top of which a robin perched. It looked like a jigsaw box lid.
The robin stared at me aggressively as I knocked. At first no one came, then, after I’d readdressed the door with extreme prejudice because I was bloody freezing, Kai appeared.
‘Holly?’
‘No, the fucking Christmas fairy,’ I stamped my numb feet. ‘Please let me in. The wind keeps trying to force snow up my nose. I’m going to be the first person to drown whilst standing chatting.’ And then I laughed a hollow little laugh.
‘All right, Missus Brittle.’ Kai stepped back and I almost fell with thankfulness into the warm hallway. ‘What’s up?’
‘Up?’
‘Yeah. Why are you here? It’s God-awful o’clock, Cerys isn’t even out of bed yet and your brother is watching CBBC.’
‘But you rang me.’ I peeled off my coat, sweater and the first of the T-shirt layers. ‘A couple of hours ago. At least, I thought it was you, the line was all weird and faint.’
Kai shook his head. ‘Like I said, Cerys is asleep and I’m fairly sure Nicholas’s been nowhere near the phone, not when The Sarah Jane Adventures omnibus has been running since six thirty. Unless Cerys has taken to sleep-phoning and, bearing in mind it takes her half an hour to get out of bed, I shouldn’t think so.’
‘But . . . I drove through this!’ I waved an arm at the window where the snow, illuminated black, was swirling past the window. ‘And now I’ve wrecked my car!’ A thin prick at the back of my eyes as shock tried to make itself felt past the chill factor.
‘Come and have some tea.’ Kai went through to the kitchen, but I diverted and popped my head around the living room door.
‘Hey Holl.’ Nick was hooked over the sofa watching TV. ‘Children’s TV is really good.’ He was just sitting, not even fidgeting. There must be something calming in the air here.
‘Did you ring me?’
His eyes never left the screen. ‘No. What, you mean today? No. I’m watching this, it’s meant for kids but it’s brilliant.’
‘Yeah, well, far be it from me to try to compete with a Dalek.’ I went back into the kitchen, gently kicking shut the door to the living room as I passed.
Kai was plugging in the kettle. ‘By the way, Holl,’ he said with his back to me, ‘thanks for yesterday.’ There was a careful casualness about his tone that told me not to ask any questions, to dismiss his thanks as an idle recognition of my taking the morning off to accompany him.
‘’S okay,’ I replied, trying to mirror his casual tone.
‘You . . . you were great.’
‘I didn’t do anything. I was just there.’
‘Yeah. Which is more than I had a right to ask from you.’ His hand, I could see, was tight on the kettle handle, and the other was bunched in front of him. ‘You cared ,’ and now his voice was a hoarseness only just audible over the bubbling rattle of the boil.
‘Well, you seemed to need . . .’, and then, to change the subject, because there was an air of deepening emotion in that room that I couldn’t deal with in wet socks, ‘are you sure you didn’t ring? This place came up on the number ident.’
He shook his head. ‘Maybe the weather has shorted something out.’ He picked up the handset from the kitchen dresser. Looked at it, listened to it and then shook it gently. ‘Looks like the lines are down now anyway.’
‘Well, if you don’t want me, maybe I ought to go back. I’ve left Aiden . . .’ I grinned to myself. ‘Well, he’s not going to be a happy bunny if I leave him for too long, put it that way.’
‘Uh huh.’ Kai put a mug of tea down on the table. ‘No way am I letting you go out in this again. Listen to it, it’s getting worse.’ The incoming tide had suddenly become a running flood, the wind booming and cracking in the treetops and even making it down to ground level now, where it sent snow whirling and crashing like insubstantial, and rather bad, waltzers.
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘Aiden.’ I turned back to look for my coat again. ‘I have to go, Kai.’
‘No.’ His voice was absolutely definite. ‘You are not going anywhere. Not now. And anyway, I thought you said you’d wrecked your car?’
‘Lend me the Jeep.’
‘Can’t. There’s a tree down across the garage doors. I made a start on chopping it up, but I’ve only done some of the major branches, there’s a whole trunk to go and I am not going out again until the weather sees sense and calms down.’
I looked out of the window. The snow was making a sound like fluttering birds. ‘I have to do something , this could go on for hours.’
‘Ring your friend? Would she go round?’
‘Phones are down.’
‘Mobile?’
I held mine up. ‘No signal.’
‘No, mine neither. Mast gone in the wind or something.’
‘Besides, Megan hasn’t got the handcuff key.’
‘The . . .’ Kai rolled his eyes at me. ‘Holly. What have you done?’
So I told him. I didn’t even edit out the leather trouser incident. ‘But, Kai, I honest to God don’t know what’s got into Aiden. We’ve never . . . there’s never been any talk of making anything permanent, we’ve never watched TV together or gone anywhere . . . it was always just the sex. And I thought he was all right with it, and then he turns up on my doorstep swearing undying love and a permanent hard-on and talking about threesomes and banging other girls like we’ve agreed it all!’
‘And now he’s handcuffed to your bed.’
‘He was going to come with me. And take a look at you.’
‘At me .’
‘With a view to seducing you into bed with us.’
Kai stared at me, then started to laugh. He laughed until he spilled his tea. ‘And whose idea was that ?’ he managed to say eventually.
‘Aiden’s. I told you, threesomes, blokes, girls, he’s a bit obsessive.’
‘God, that’s cheered me up.’ Kai rubbed his face. ‘Oh, and for the record, Holly, I’m a strictly one-on-one guy.’ He grinned and raised an eyebrow and I came over all flustered for a moment and had to change the subject.
‘Vivienne,’ I said suddenly. ‘If I can get across the wood to her cottage, she might lend me her car.’
‘We’ll have to walk,’ Kai nudged my tea closer to me. ‘So drink that down. You’ll need to be warm inside as well.’
‘Don’t. That sounds like something Aiden would say.’
He looked at me, suddenly serious over the scrubbed table. ‘I don’t want to be anything like Aiden.’ His eyes were dark, almost brown this morning, hollowed with tiredness and shadowed with something else, something deep.
‘Kai . . .’
‘The other day, up in my room. You remember?’ He stretched out a hand across the table and touched my cheek. His fingers were warm from the tea mug. ‘I’m tired of the games, Holly. Tired of the lies and not facing up to myself. And now, all this, my past coming out of the woodwork . . . I want . . .’ His voice trailed off and he started to concentrate very hard on the tabletop.
I let the silence sit for a moment. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want something more. Not just a body to fuck and a face to go out to dinner with. Something settled, something to rely on. Somebody in here.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Where you are.’
‘I’m . . .’
‘Ssshh. This is just me, just what I’ve been coming up with. Your input — welcome, of course but — I wanted to lay it on the line for you. You are the first woman who’s been there for me, Holl. Not wanting anything, not in it for the glory or the perceived glamour or wanting to be seen with a guy who’s made his name . . . for me. Just me, as I am. I know you’ve got your own demons . . .’
‘Have I?’
‘Oh yeah. I just think you’re too close to see them, that’s all. To you they look like normality but to everyone else . . . But I want to be there when they start to become visible; there for you. For me, it’s all or nothing now.’
He stood up and I stared at the lean length of him. Wondered what the hell it was that I wanted. ‘Kai.’
‘Tell me, Holly. Tell me what it is you feel. What you think is happening here with us.’
‘I don’t . . . I don’t know. You’re . . . just so . . . so . . . When I turn round, there you are, and you keep telling me things about myself, about Nicky and the way I am and all that, and there’s all the’ — I made a rather feeble wave of my hand — ‘leather and stuff, and it’s like you’re built out of solid Understandium or something and . . .’ I ran out of words and all that came out now, was breath.
‘Yeah,’ he said, coming over to where I sat. ‘Yeah, I know.’ Long fingers drew me up and his mouth came down so that we met in the middle in a kiss that warmed me more thoroughly than the tea had.
The kitchen door opened, and behind Kai’s shoulder I saw Cerys appear. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I guess you want some privacy.’
‘You guess right,’ Kai said without looking at her. Looking, in fact, right into my eyes, down, through to my soul. ‘Shut the fucking door, Cerys.’
‘All right, all right,’ I heard her grumbling as she dragged the door closed, then the muttering as she joined up with Nicholas in front of the TV.
Then Nicholas’s yell of, ‘She’s what ?’
Kai and I grinned at each other. His eyes were softer now, and his mouth had lost the sardonic upturn it perpetually wore. ‘God, I want you,’ he said very quietly.
I cleared my throat. ‘Short and intense, wasn’t it?’
A slow nod. ‘I have the feeling that it’s going to be pretty intense, yes. But I think that you want something else too, now.’ He was still gazing down into my eyes. I felt the orbital tug of his stare. ‘Tired of the games?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to marry Aiden, I know that much.’ Cautiously I reached up, touched his cheek. It was sharp with stubble and his bones seemed very close to the surface. ‘But my life is pretty good, apart from that. I don’t know if I’m ready for someone . . . for you. ’
He laughed, a sudden rip through the calm air. ‘Yeah. I guess I deserve your uncertainty. There’s still stuff you need to work through, I can’t make decisions for you, Holl. Like I said, from the outside it’s obvious what’s been going on, but you need to arrive at that conclusion for yourself. You need to arrive at your own destination.’
I let my hand fall. ‘But for now I’d better try to get to Vivienne’s. Aiden might be desperate for a pee and that’s a new duvet. What are you doing?’ Kai was wrapping a scarf, that looked as though it might have been knitted by Cerys — or at least someone with more enthusiasm than ability — around his neck.
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘You don’t have to. I’ll be fine, I’ll follow the track. Even I can’t get lost following a track five yards wide.’
‘You can in snow. Hold on, I’ll get my coat.’
I looked at Kai, pulling on a ghastly overcoat and tucking the scarf down inside it, his hair stringing along the collar. He was different. How different I wasn’t sure. But his whole appealing, sexy, insightful, slightly crazy thing was definitely causing a major shift in my relationship paradigms. And, damn if my nipples weren’t chafing too.
We wrenched the door open and stood for a moment on the apocalyptic threshold. ‘Bloody hell,’ Kai stared out into the blind whiteness.
‘You don’t have to come,’ I said again.
‘You can’t go alone. I don’t want your frozen body found huddled feebly at the root of a tree. It’d be too much of a cliché.’
‘Kai,’ Cerys appeared again, in the hallway this time.
‘We won’t be long. Stay here with Nicholas.’
‘No. I mean . . . ow.’
‘Ow?’ I looked at her. ‘Is this ouchy, or mortal pain time?’
Cerys gave me scared eyes. ‘At the moment it’s ouchy, but I think this is it, Holly.’
‘Sit tight. Phones are down here but we might be able to call from Vivienne’s.’ I patted her hand. ‘You’ll be okay.’
Kai looked at both of us. ‘What on earth are you on about?’
We rolled our eyes at each other. ‘Your daughter is going into labour.’
‘What!’ He nearly skidded down the steps. ‘Now?’
‘Er, Kai . . .’ Cerys waved at her enormous belly. ‘Don’t tell me it’s come as a shock.’
‘But . . . I mean . . .’ Kai looked from me to Cerys, then back again. ‘I should . . .’ he performed a little pirouette on the spot, obviously trying to be in two places at once. ‘This . . . Holly, we could stay here . . .’
‘We’re going to need an ambulance.’ I was torn too. Cerys was obviously scared and in need of comforting, but she was most definitely going to be in need of obstetric assistance as well. Twins, I knew, could be awkward. ‘I’ll go to Vivienne’s, Kai, you stay here.’
‘You can’t go alone, it’s too dangerous. How about if I go?’
‘Vivienne’s not going to let some bloke she’s never met into her house. She’s not stupid.’
We all stared at each other for a moment. Then Cerys made the decision. ‘Both of you go. It might be a false alarm, and we’re going to look totally mental if we all sit in the house and I’m still here going “ow” in three days’ time. And even if it’s not, labours take hours and Nick’s here to look after me.’ She paused, and rubbed her back. ‘Just.. Holly, you will come back, won’t you?’
‘We’ll both come back,’ Kai said firmly. ‘It’s Yorkshire. Bears aren’t going to eat us, you know.’
‘I meant . . . I want Holly with me. If the twins are coming, now, here, I want Holly there when they arrive.’
‘Gosh,’ I said, pleased. ‘All right. I’ll ask Vivienne to drive over to my place, and get straight back.’
‘Go and sit down,’ Kai said. ‘Don’t . . . I dunno, jump off any tables or anything.’
‘Okay, boss.’
He nodded. ‘Still ought to hurry though.’
‘Oh yes.’
The cold took our breath away and the wind took it even further. Stepping out onto the track was like being punched by feathers. I put my head down and walked, Kai in front acting as a partial windbreak. He’d jabbed his hands into fists and swung them as we went, using his bodyweight to carve a way through the spiralling snow and I plodded on behind, exhausted after the first half mile. Every time I looked up there was a Kai-shaped hole in the air in front of me, I walked into it and he made a new one. Trees were down all over the place, several across the track and we had to divert through rapidly accumulating snow to get round them, and the walk began to feel endless.
After a mile or so, he stopped and turned around, his face nothing but a nose, two eyes and a bearded chin poking through a veil of rapidly melting flakes. ‘Not far now,’ he said. ‘You okay?’
‘Think so,’ I gasped back. ‘You look like Frosty the Snowman.’
‘I’m pissing wet through. I hope this Vivienne is in, because if we’ve come this way for nothing I will be dropping your name into the next article I write on antisocial behaviour.’
But through the trees I could see the light spilling from Vivienne’s cottage. ‘Just be careful. Vivienne is like the Wicked Witch of the West without the redeeming characteristics.’
‘That good?’
‘She’s trying to get her husband to kill himself.’
‘Charming.’
‘Literally, in her case.’ I staggered towards the front door and rapped on it firmly. There was going to be no case of anyone collapsing with hypothermia from no one hearing the knocker.
A curtain twitched and a few seconds later Vivienne appeared in the doorway. ‘Who is it?’
‘’s me. And my trusty Sherpa.’
‘Good heavens, Holly. What on earth are you doing here?’ She was clutching the front door to her, probably to prevent the wind whipping it open, but it gave her the air of a spinster in a bath towel. ‘This weather is awful, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘it is. Can we come in?’
Vivienne held the door open and, like two polar explorers, Kai and I stomped our boots free from snow and walked in.
Isobel was sitting on the sofa. ‘Hello,’ she said, somewhat nasally. ‘Did we have the same thought?’ I watched her eyes widen as she looked Kai over. Due to the fact that his jeans were soaked and clinging to his legs and he’d unbuttoned his coat to reveal an equally wet shirt, I wondered if she thought all her wishes had come true at once.
‘This is Kai. Kai, Isobel and Vivienne.’
Everyone shook hands. ‘I came to make sure Vivienne was all right, alone out here in a storm like this,’ Isobel said. ‘And even the Isuzu didn’t like the hill much.’
‘Is your phone working? Kai’s daughter is in labour. Twins. We need an ambulance. Oh, and a guy in handcuffs needs letting out.’
Two sets of eyes went moon-sized. ‘Golly,’ said Isobel faintly. ‘That spell is really working for you, Holly, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
We checked Vivienne’s landline, all the mobiles and even her broadband link. All down.
‘Shit,’ Kai screwed his eyes shut. ‘Cerys.’
‘I’ll go.’ Isobel stood up. An otherwise invisible cat slunk away from under the sofa. ‘It’ll take too long to drive right round the outside of the woods to pick your daughter up, but the Isuzu should be able to get back to Malton, if I take it steady. I can get to the hospital and at least send a midwife out to you.’
‘That would be great,’ he gave her the smile at full wattage and I watched her notice his eyes.
‘And, could you go round to my place, please? There’s . . .’ I coughed. ‘There’s a bloke, um. He’s, well. He’s . . . Aiden, nice guy but, um. Naked. Handcuffed to my bed. Probably a bit annoyed, by now. Could you, um . . .’
‘I can’t make up my mind whether you hate me or like me very, very much.’ Isobel pocketed my keys. ‘Tell me where your house is.’
I gave her my address and she started putting her coat back on. ‘Vivienne? Do you want to come with me? You could stay with my mum and dad. They’ve gone all “Blitz Spirit” and all the neighbours are round playing charades.’
Vivienne shook her head. ‘I’ll stay here. This will all be over soon. Besides, I’m waiting for news .’
Isobel raised her eyebrows at me. ‘What sort of news?’
Vivienne gave a secret smile. ‘Yesterday a friend rang. My husband . . . ex -husband’s company has gone into receivership. He’s bankrupt.’ Her tone suddenly ran up the gleeful scale. ‘Isn’t it wonderful ?’
‘We’d better get back,’ Kai sounded a bit affronted by Vivienne’s viciousness. Maybe he thought she’d start on him next. ‘My daughter, you know.’
‘She must be awfully young,’ Vivienne looked at him with her head on one side. ‘Is . . . you know, is the father on the scene?’
‘Yeah, he’s building them a Stickle-brick house, and as soon as he’s potty trained they’ll all live together in it.’
‘Holly . . .’ Kai poked me with his elbow. ‘We’ll be off then.’
‘I’d better go too.’ Isobel pulled her knitted coat from under a cat. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right, Vivienne?’
While they were making their farewells, and after I’d instructed Isobel to put my keys back through my letterbox once she’d released Aiden, Kai and I dragged our damp coats on again and started out into the snow. It was even harder this time because we were walking into the wind and it found every pre-soaked crevice and dug its nails in.
‘Come on Holly.’ Kai stopped to let me catch up.
‘Oh sorry, am I holding you up?’ I panted. ‘That’ll be on account of me being normal sized and you having legs that can step over fallen trees.’
‘I’m worried about Cerys.’ The wind boomed and roared like a train passing three yards away and the rest of his sentence got lost.
‘First babies take ages to arrive. And second ones too, if you ask my mum; I think she wanted to put me off ever having any of my own. Apparently she nearly split in two.’
‘Yes, well, Cerys isn’t an amoeba.’ Kai set off again. ‘And if Isobel can’t get through to the hospital . . .’
‘Don’t worry, I bet you Cerys’ll still be in early labour this time tomorrow.’ I tried to copy his easy jump over a snowdrift but landed unceremoniously half in it. Snow seeped into my underwear. ‘It might not even be labour, she might just have indigestion.’
‘I knew I should have sent her back to Peterborough,’ Kai groaned. ‘I don’t have any baby stuff.’
I rolled my eyes at him, although he probably didn’t notice because my eyebrows had icicles, and plodded on.
As it happened, I was one hundred per cent wrong about the indigestion thing. When we finally struggled back to the Old Lodge, Nicholas was hovering in the hallway. He’d obviously had his face pressed to the front window waiting to catch sight of us, there was a big smeary mark where he’d been blowing on the glass.
‘Cerys is . . .’ he said, and then performed a complicated mime which seemed to indicate that she was struggling to lift a very heavy weight. ‘In her room.’
All three of us dashed up the stairs. Kai and I stripped off soggy outer layers as we went.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Cerys was crouching on her bed, knees drawn up to her belly. ‘Is the ambulance coming?’
Kai and I looked at each other. ‘Yes,’ I said firmly, before he could do the fatherly thing and tell her the truth. After all, it wasn’t a lie, more of a time-dependent falsehood. ‘How are you doing?’
Nicholas rubbed the bit of her back he could reach, as she rolled and gyrated her hips. ‘She keeps making really weird noises.’
As he finished speaking we got a practical demonstration, as Cerys rose suddenly onto all fours and let out a huge groan, which went on far longer than I would have thought she had breath for. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, collapsing back onto the bed again. ‘I thought there would be pethidine. Or morphine. Instead I’m going to give birth in a house where there isn’t even any aspirin .’
‘The doctor is on his way,’ I crossed my fingers behind my back. ‘Make yourself comfortable and he’ll be here before anything happens.’ I started eating her glucose tablets. I was going to need all my energy, and some of someone else’s.
‘Comfortable!’ Cerys gave an outbreathed kkkkrrrrrrrrr kind of noise. ‘I haven’t been able to make myself comfortable since June.’ Then she did the rising groan noise again, which went on even longer this time. I looked at her bedside clock.
‘That was only a minute or so.’
‘What?’ Kai was looking a bit helpless and lost.
‘Between contractions. I’ve got a feeling . . .’
‘Fuck the ambulance,’ shouted Cerys suddenly. ‘I want to push!’
I stared. Nicholas bolted for the door. ‘We have to boil water,’ he said, grabbing Kai by the shoulder. ‘Boiling water. I just watched an episode of Tracy Beaker with birth in, and that’s what they had to do.’
‘When Cerys was born, they told us to boil scissors? And string?’
‘I’m having twins, Kai, not a fucking parcel,’ Cerys said, between gritted teeth.
‘For the . . . you know, cord and stuff . . .’
‘Look . . . just go and boil everything you can find, all right?’ I said.
‘Don’t leave me,’ Cerys had hold of my hand. ‘Holly, please don’t leave me. I can’t do this, I can’t . . .’ She suddenly broke off and her eyes bulged. ‘Oh God, oh God . . .’
‘Right. Looks like all those hours spent watching Call the Midwife might have been useful after all. You two, get shifting.’
The two men went through that bedroom door so fast that there were scorch marks on the frame. I heard them rush down the stairs, Kai saying, ‘and I remember there being a phenomenal amount of newspaper involved,’ and then Cerys was gripping my hand so tightly that I heard the little bones begin to grind.
‘Holly, they’re coming,’ she whispered and suddenly she was panting and heaving like a bogged horse, and all I could do was hold her hand and, when it came to it, run round to the other end, catch the first baby as it slid out onto the bed. Fortunately she was so astonished by this that I could take thirty seconds to dash down the stairs, collect the newly-boiled scissors and string, sustaining third-degree burns in the process, and rush back to tie and cut the cord.
And then I stood, with a blood-and-mucus-covered baby in my arms, splattered with seven kinds of gore, and laughed. ‘It’s a boy.’
‘I know that,’ Cerys gave me a preoccupied smile. ‘He’s . . . oh, no, not again . . .’ and there was more pulling and pushing and sweating and his sister joined us.
I cleared the babies’ mouths and noses. They were both breathing, becoming a more healthy colour and had started to unscrew their faces enough to cry. ‘They’re fine,’ I said, passing them to their mother, who was staring at them as though she couldn’t believe it. ‘Fine. Healthy.’
‘Big.’
‘Well, they look a good six pounds each, maybe a bit more.’
‘From this end they both weighed at least as much as a sack of potatoes.’ Cerys relaxed back onto the pillow. ‘And were covered in barbed wire.’
‘I’ll call the boys up,’ I headed for the door but she stopped me.
‘Can I . . . you know, could you help me sort of clean up a bit first? Kai not so much, but Nicholas — I don’t want the first time he sees me non-preggers to be this kind of outtake from Saving Private Ryan.’
So I helped her get sorted, changed the bed, and used the mysterious newspaper to wrap and dispose of the placentas, rushing up and down to the kitchen past the two men, who glued themselves to the wall whenever I ran past, like teenagers caught in a slasher flick. Eventually Cerys was what she considered presentable, and the babies were wrapped in two clean towels. Their faces poked out of the bundles looking slightly surprised and a bit aggrieved at having arrived in such a precipitate fashion.
Then I left her to show the babies off to her father, while Nick and I made lots of tea, so as not to waste the rest of the boiling water.
‘You’re shaking,’ he observed.
‘It was scary.’ Then Kai came downstairs. I took one look at his face and pushed a mug into Nicholas’s hand. ‘You take her up some tea. Find out if she’s got any names yet.’
As soon as Nicholas left the room, Kai started to cry. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, closed his eyes and let the tears roll down his face, unchecked.
‘Hey.’ I put my arms around him and gave him a hug. ‘Kai.’
A trembling breath. ‘Oh God, Holly.’
‘It’s okay. Everything’s fine, mother and babies doing well.’ I fought the urge to join in. The full shock had worn off now and left me weak.
‘I have to meet her now. I have to know . . . Cerys is up there . . .’ his voice faded and he scrubbed the back of a hand across his eyes. ‘I have to know if my mother felt any of that for me. Because, if she did, and she still gave me up . . .Why? If she felt one-tenth of what Cerys is going through, then how could she have done it, what was going on that was so terrible that she couldn’t keep her baby? And four hours old . The blood wasn’t even dry.’
He collapsed onto a stool at the table and cupped his face in his hands.
‘She must have had her reasons.’
Yellow eyes fixed mine. ‘Maybe that’s what I need. Reasons. Or, I guess, it may be excuses — everyone thinks they’re doing things for the right reasons, don’t they?’ A look that maybe meant more than the words said. ‘It’s this uncertainty I can’t deal with. Either she wanted me but couldn’t keep me, or she never wanted me in the first place — and seeing my daughter, up there, her face . . . even though those babies are, what, five minutes old? Cerys would kill for them already. How could . . .’ a small, choked cough, ‘ how could she leave me? ’
‘Then get in touch. Ask her.’
He shook his head and dark hair curtained his face briefly. ‘I’m so fucking scared.’
‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ I touched his shoulder. ‘Honestly. Hasn’t the worst already been done to you?’
‘She could tell me she was glad to give me up. That I was some bastard’s bastard, that she never wanted to be reminded of him and certainly not by having to bring up his child.’
‘You read the letter. Did that sound to you like a woman who was glad to have given you up? Because it sounded to me like she’s tortured herself every day since you were born for the choice she made. And, yes, I saw Cerys when the twins were born, I was there , looking in her face when she saw them for the first time and I’ll tell you this, the woman who gave you up? She hurt , Kai. And if you can stop her hurting, just by seeing her one time . . .’
‘You’re right.’ He rubbed his face. ‘No, you’re right, of course you are. I’m being a coward.’ He laughed a thin laugh. ‘Stupid. When I think of some of the things I’ve done . . . and this is such a small thing.’ He was very pale, or maybe that was the light bleaching the colour from his skin and eyes. I still felt flushed and pink from the trek through the snow and the subsequent events. ‘Such a small thing,’ he repeated.
There was a cacophony of feet on wooden stairs and Nicholas launched himself into the kitchen. ‘Zac and Freya. The twins. Zac and Freya, Cerys says.’
‘You’re a grandad,’ I said quietly to Kai under the sound of Nicholas extolling the twins’ virtues. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Yeah, I am, aren’t I?’ He made a clear effort to pull himself together. ‘Sod tea, who wants champagne?’
‘You have champagne in the house?’ I grinned at him.
‘Always, Holly, always.’
‘Posh git.’
‘Well, I never know when I might win another award. Get the glasses, Nicholas.’
‘If you’re drinking down there . . .’ A faint voice percolated through the floorboards, ‘. . . just remember who did all the work, and bring up a glass for a new mother.’ One of the babies squawked and she instantly lowered her voice, ‘or you can all die horribly. Your choice.’