Chapter Twenty-Two
I stood on the edge of the field and watched Megan chasing after Rufus. He was treating it like a game, waiting for her and then dodging away just when she thought she’d got close enough to snap his lead on. ‘You could help, Holly,’ she said crossly, sprinting past me for the third time. ‘Head him off.’
‘Nicholas, head him off.’
‘She asked you. And anyway, it might wake Zac.’ He jiggled the buggy containing a sleeping baby.
‘I thought that was Freya?’ I looked at the bundle, double-wrapped against the chilly wind and wearing a pink knitted hat.
‘Cerys wants to avoid gender stereotyping. Don’t you?’ He called over his shoulder to Cerys, who was sitting gingerly on a bench, rocking a rainbow of blanket, bootees and mittens.
‘Yeah. Plus he’s been sick on everything else.’
I went and sat next to her, blatantly ignoring Megan’s increasingly desperate accelerations. ‘So, you’re off tomorrow.’
‘ Mmm .’ Cerys wiped her face with a gloved hand. ‘I’m going to miss you. Please come and visit as soon as you can. I need to go now, I can’t stay forever, I’d cramp your style too much.’
‘What do you mean?’
A snotty giggle. ‘Oh come on. You and Kai carefully keeping your hands to yourselves. Half the time I needn’t be there when you come over, you spend the whole time looking at him like you want to eat him. I don’t know why you don’t just fuck it out of your systems.’ She winced. ‘Ow. It even hurts to mention sex. That can’t be right, surely.’
A quick, bright blush crept up my face. ‘I don’t, do I?’
She nodded. ‘Yep. What are you waiting for? Move in with him, Holly, he needs you. Well, he will when I’m gone; how are you at ironing?’
‘I don’t iron.’
‘Oh. Oh well, I’m sure you have other talents.’ Cerys nudged me. ‘Did he appreciate them the other day?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ The blush had reached my hairline where it clashed almost audibly with my hair.
‘Holly, you came in to talk to me wearing Kai’s shirt and no bra. You’d either just got out of his bed or you’d decided to let your inner slut run free. And he was singing all morning and, while I don’t usually appreciate karaoke Muse, it was great to hear him so happy. But since then you’ve been all hands-off.’
Almost, I thought, and the blush deepened. ‘We want things to go slowly. Not to rush anything.’ And besides, collectively we had more issues than The Times.
‘Bollocks to that.’ Cerys didn’t seem to have anything to follow up with, so we sat in quiet contemplation for a moment, appreciating the comedy potential of a small, chunky brunette chasing a huge athletic dog.
Eventually Nick, being a gentleman, gave in. He got up and went over towards Rufus, clicked his fingers and then patted the dog’s head. Rufus sniffed at his hand for a moment then stood, stock still, with a look of incredulity on his face.
‘How did you do that?’ Megan snapped the lead on and Rufus, instantly contrite, plodded alongside her rolling his eyes and trying to look at his own teeth.
‘I gave him a toffee. It’s all right, it was a vegetarian one.’
Rufus crouched down and tried to shove his paws in his mouth. ‘Well, at least it worked. We’re supposed to be going over to see Vivienne this afternoon, and I didn’t want to have to cry off because I couldn’t catch my dog.’
‘Are we?’
‘Yep.’
‘It’s not another “commune with the mother earth in the hopes that some idiot bloke tops himself” is it? Or are we still trying to find men for Isobel and Eve?’
‘I’m not sure. She says there’s news, not sure if it’s good or bad, but we ought to go and express our solidarity.’
‘And we ought to get back and finish packing.’ Cerys wound her arm through Nick’s. He’d already been mistaken for the twins’ father twice, which he quite enjoyed even though it made Cerys laugh until she was nearly sick. ‘Kai is keen to get rid of us as early as he can tomorrow. I can’t think why.’ She rolled her head towards me. ‘Can you, Holly?’
‘Can’t imagine.’
‘It’s going to be great. Just think, Peterborough.’
My heart raced at the thought of him being so far away, but I kept my voice light, didn’t want to scare him. Couldn’t really believe that he’d go, not like this, not really go . . . ‘Er, Nicky, you do know that Peterborough isn’t the same as Los Angeles, don’t you?’
‘Don’t care. It’s somewhere new. Somewhere different.’
‘Come on then Holly. Let’s take Rufus home and then we’d better go in your car to Vivienne’s. He did something nasty in the boot of mine yesterday and I can’t get the smell out.’
‘Yeah, all right.’ I kissed Cerys, hugged Nick and touched the twins’ cheeks. ‘I’ll come over and see you tomorrow. Before you . . . go.’
‘Making sure we leave the premises,’ Cerys began pushing Freya’s buggy over the muddy field. ‘Doesn’t want us hiding round the back and sneaking in when she’s deep in a bit of literal how’s-your-father.’
‘That whole wishing thing has really worked out for you, hasn’t it?’ Megan sounded a bit forlorn. ‘Your “excitement”. Is he really . . . you know . . . exciting ?’
‘He’s a lovely man. A bit confused about things, but lovely.’
‘Better than Aiden?’
‘Meg, the Creature from the Black Lagoon would be better than Aiden. Kai is . . . something else. On a completely different scale. Totally . . . just wow.’
‘I always thought . . . one day, you and Aiden . . .’
‘. . . and Aiden’s friend and his friend, and his friend’s girlfriend. No, Megan, I was never going to end up with Aiden.’ We walked back to Megan’s little flat with a docile Rufus striding along between us.
‘Take no notice, I’m just jealous it didn’t work for me.’ She reached down to fuss Rufus’s head, although she didn’t have to reach very far. He turned his eyes up to her.
‘But it did.’
‘Oh yeah, I’m being worshipped by invisible men. Just my luck.’
‘Meg, look at him.’ I pointed to Rufus. He was still staring at her face, ears rising and falling like a comedy puppet’s. The string tail wagged when she glanced down. ‘If he isn’t worshipping you like a goddess, then I don’t know what it looks like. He’s devoted to you.’
‘But . . .’
‘Did you specify it should be a man?’
‘Can’t remember,’ she said sulkily.
‘He adores you utterly. You can do no wrong. Even when you shout at him, he won’t leave your side. To him you are God.’
‘I wanted a man.’ But her fingers curled around the knobbled top of the dog’s head and ruffled his ears. He beamed.
‘And I was kind of inclining more towards winning the lottery. I think, maybe, we should have been more specific.’
‘Next time,’ Megan began, but I stopped walking and put my fingers in my ears.
‘No, no, no, lalalalala, I can’t hear you. No next time. Never, ever again am I doing anything as stupid as a wishing spell.’
‘Not even if the others want to? Okay, maybe you’re right, maybe Rufus is my wish come true.’ He looked up at the mention of his name and his dark eyes were ablaze with love. ‘But nothing seems to be happening for the others. They might want a rerun.’
‘Count me out.’
‘Isn’t that a bit selfish?’
I turned to her. Her brown eyes were wide and childlike, she was cute and innocent and guileless. ‘Pissfuckingwank,’ I said, and strode off towards my car, not caring whether she joined me or not.
After a further brief tussle with Rufus to get him to go into the flat alone, she came and sat in the passenger seat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it. I know you’re the least selfish person there is.’
‘Huh. We’d better hope that there’s some breaking news on the wishing front then, because selfish or not, I am never again going anywhere near anything more magical than the Harry Potter films. And even then I’m going to watch from inside some kind of protective circle.’
Vivienne opened the front door to us, and as usual we were the last of the group to arrive. ‘Holly and Megan!’ She sounded as though she were announcing the Queen and Prince Philip. ‘How wonderful that you’re here.’
‘Well, you did ask us to come.’ Megan draped her coat over the sofa next to Eve. Eve herself looked a little smarter today. She’d had her hair cut and coloured so that it curled softly around her face. I thought her clothes looked new too, but didn’t like to mention it.
‘Oh yes, things are definitely starting to happen.’ Vivienne clasped her hands to her lack of bosom, twisting them around one another like someone trying to squeeze the last toothpaste out of the tube. She looked perkier too. She’d lost the grey roots under a new scarlet tint, her skin was less pallid and her make-up seemed to have been done with a surer hand.
I wondered if the local hairdresser had a two-for-one offer on.
‘He’s lost everything!’ Vivienne announced proudly. ‘The business, the company car, all those little perks associated with the job. Isn’t it wonderful? We’ll see how Miss Busty from Accounts likes him now, when there’s no sporty little Audi for her to show her breasts off in!’
Eve made a face. ‘But what about your lovely cottage?’ She waved a hand around. ‘All your beautiful things?’
‘Maybe the cats will get repossessed,’ Isobel whispered in my ear. She hadn’t sneezed once since we’d come in, so perhaps they already had been.
‘Oh, they can’t touch anything here, it’s all in my name,’ Vivienne airily shook her head. ‘But Richard is losing everything, which was the point of the spell. Soon he’ll be forced . . . I mean, he’ll see no other way out. Once the tax people start looking into his affairs, asking all those wretched questions . . .’ She tailed off, a rather sinister little smile shuffling its way across her mouth. ‘I think we’ll have biscuits today. I have a packet of Belgian Chocolate cookies put away for just such an occasion.’
‘She keeps biscuits for the day her husband is driven into penury?’ I sat next to Eve. Isobel and Megan went to help in the kitchen. At least, Isobel went to help, Megan would go anywhere if there was a Belgian Chocolate cookie at the end of it.
‘Ah well. She’s taking it as a sign that the spell is starting to work for her.’ Eve moved her well-upholstered bottom further along to make more room for me. ‘And I have a little news in that direction myself.’
‘Eve, you dark horse!’ I stared at her in amazement. ‘The man of your dreams?’
She nodded, then looked down shyly at her swollen feet. ‘Oh, but it’s such early days yet, I hardly want to say anything in case it all goes wrong.’
‘I thought you had a bit of sparkle to you,’ I said admiringly. ‘Well, good on you, Eve. What’s he like? What does he do? Or is he a retired millionaire who can keep you in luxury?’ I surprised myself by hoping that this was the case.
‘My lips are sealed.’ Eve did the statutory mime.
‘Well, I hope we get to meet him.’
‘Oh, I hope so too. Maybe, in a while.’
‘What’s his name?’
But Eve shook her head and did the ‘lip-zip’ mime again. But her eyes shone with humour and anticipation, so whoever he was, he was doing her good.
That only left Isobel. ‘I hope Aiden wasn’t horrible to you the other day,’ I said as she came in laden with a tea tray. ‘Thanks for letting him out.’
‘No, he was a perfect gentleman.’ Isobel poured tea and Megan put a rather depleted looking plate of biscuits on the table. ‘Quite sweet, really. Very cute too, Holly. You certainly have a good taste in men.’
‘So, any news from you? Any men hell bent on making you the centre of their world?’
She did comedy-disappointment-face. ‘Sadly, no. But it’s all right, like I said. I’m coming to think that I’m better off without one. Mum and Dad are talking about making the house over to me and going off to live in Australia when Dad retires next year, and between work and redecorating, I don’t think there’ll be time for a man.’
‘They’re not like horses, you know. They can manage to do most things for themselves, men.’
‘Oh, you know what I mean. I want to be able to remodel the house without having anyone distracting me. I’m taking an evening class,’ she added proudly.
‘In not being distracted? Gosh. That’s a bit specialised isn’t it?’ Megan dunked a biscuit in the hot tea and dribbled consequent chocolate down her chin.
‘In interior design. It’s an old cottage we’ve got, sixteenth century, and I want to do it up as close to the original plans as possible. If it works I’m thinking of starting up my own business, sort of fifteen-hundreds’ bed and breakfast.’ Now I came to look at her, Isobel was looking better too. Her acne seemed to be clearing up finally and her hair had extra shine. It might not have been her wish coming true but she clearly had a new lease of life.
‘Pallet and pottage?’
‘So, Holly. I take it that you didn’t collect my candles and go straight to the police?’ Vivienne sat opposite Eve, a poised cup and saucer on her lap and a cat staring down from her shoulder.
‘Ah. Yes. Been meaning to talk to you all about that . . .’
On the way home in the car Megan finally lost her boggle-eyed expression. ‘He held you at gunpoint? And locked you in a shed ,’ she said wonderingly. ‘And Kai rescued you?’
‘Only technically. I was well on the way to rescuing myself, but the bomb went out. Good grief, that’s a weird sentence.’
‘God, Holl.’
We were silent again for a bit, watching the hypnotic windscreen wipers fighting the downpour. It had begun to rain with a vengeance and going anywhere at the moment was a bit like sailing the Atlantic. ‘It was frightening,’ I admitted at last. ‘I got taken in by the whole “looking sexy” thing, and by the time I realised that he was as mad as the Planet of Spoons, it was too late.’
‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ Megan nodded wisely. ‘And I was thinking about what you said before. About Rufus. He does treat me like a goddess, and it’s my own stupid fault for not being more specific with my wish that I’ve got a big hairy dog instead of . . . well.’
‘A big hairy man?’
‘Yes, that. But then, I have met more men since I’ve been walking Rufus than I ever did at work. It’s not noted for its straight male demographic, British Home Stores but it’s amazing how many people will come and talk to you when you’re out with a dog.’
‘There you go then. You’ve got your wish, but just obliquely.’
‘Obliquely? Those are pillars, aren’t they?’
‘Obelisks, Meg. But maybe that’s the price we’re paying for doing the spell with all those weird photographs and bits cut out of books and things. I mean, my excitement is very odd, and then there’s Nicky’s wish . . .’ I had to explain the whole ‘girlfriend with big tits’ thing then and Megan didn’t stop sniggering all the way back to her flat.
‘It does serve him right a bit,’ she said. ‘But it makes you wonder. If it’s all gone, um, oblique , then what about Vivienne? And Eve? And why hasn’t anything happened to Isobel?’
I shook my head. Things were moving in such mysterious ways that they were positively heading the Ministry of Silly Walks, but was it just my imagination? Would everything have happened this way anyway? Were we all guilty of falling for the, very human, desire to be able to put the universe into order? Or . . . I felt the fairy-fingered tickle of wonder rise up my spine . . . was there really more to this ‘magic’ than I realised?
‘I’ve got an address.’
‘That’s nice. So much better than the old no-fixed-abode thing which, I have to say, wasn’t really working out for you.’
‘Ha.’ Kai swept a load of crumbs off the table and then gazed around in search of something. ‘Have you seen the vacuum cleaner? Cerys must have left it — I’d have noticed if she’d tried to smuggle that back to Peterborough, surely?’
‘With the amount of stuff she had? I doubt it.’
‘What did she do, stuff it in a giant condom and make Nicholas carry it up his backside?’ Kai opened a cupboard and peered inside. ‘And there’s pickled beetroot in here. That has to be Cerys, I hate the stuff. God, I miss her.’
Not as much as I miss Nicholas. My hand still wandered to the telephone receiver every morning, my heart thumped whenever I saw a text from him ping onto my phone. It felt like a death in the family. Knew I had to let him go, to let him make a life for himself, ashamed of how it felt . . . Ashamed of the blank hours, hours I had used to spend running up to his flat to make sure he’d eaten, washed his clothes, taken his meds; it was only now that I was realising how many of those hours there had been.
‘What’s this address then?’ I tried to distract him, well, both of us. We were still skirting around our relationship like a couple of deserters from a battlefield trying to avoid capture.
‘From the PI in Leeds. Strange, really.’ He sat down on the newly uncrumbed table, putting his feet up on one of the stools and picking at a thread on the knee of his jeans. ‘She only lives a handful of miles from here. Think, I could have walked past her in the street without knowing.’
‘So, what’s the next step? Do you write to her, or what?’
He stopped picking and stared down at the floor. ‘No. She wants to see me, well, I’m not giving her any time to prepare, I want to see her as she really is , not as she’d have me see her. Does that make sense?’
‘Isn’t it a bit unfair on her?’
‘I don’t think I have to be fair. I think I’m entitled to be as fucking un fair as I feel like.’ He kicked his feet off the stool and stood up, opening cupboards at random and slamming doors.
I watched him for a moment as he turned his fear and longing into anger and activity. ‘When do we do it?’
‘Soon,’ his voice was muffled in the boiler cupboard. ‘Yeah. Soon. Before Christmas anyway.’
‘That’s only a couple of weeks away.’
‘Yeah. Maybe New Year. Or . . . Oh, here’s the vacuum. Jesus, more beetroot, what did she do, bath in the stuff?’
‘It makes you go orange.’ I didn’t want to think about Christmas. With Ma and Dad so far away in Scotland, the last few years it had been Nicholas and me, with the occasional addition of Megan if her dad and step mum had taken off on another cruise. I’d shopped and cooked and we’d gone to midnight Mass and it had all been a bit . . . thin, somehow. Nick couldn’t drink on his medication and I hated drinking alone, so we’d sat stone cold sober and eaten fruit cake neither of us liked. Now Nick was going to have his first true family Christmas with Cerys and the twins and her mum and dad who, apparently, adored him and I was here, looking down the barrel of the festive season alone. Kai had only mentioned Christmas once, in the context of how much he was looking forward to escaping it by working on a piece about Afghan rebel fighters in their native habitat.
‘Before Christmas might be best. She’ll spend Christmas knowing that she’s got a granddaughter and two great-grandchildren.’
‘Come on, Holl, you’re behaving as if she’s been in stasis since she gave me away. She’s probably had a bunch of children and loads of grandkids and I’ll just be one more, tacked onto the family like some kind of prosthetic.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No. I don’t.’ He stopped slamming around and stood in the corner, resting his head against the wall with his back to me. ‘I am so, so bad at this.’
‘I don’t think it’s something you can practise.’ A little bit tentatively I went over and touched his shoulder. I had to stand on tiptoe to do it.
‘I meant, forgiveness. I know, deep down, that it probably wasn’t her fault, that she didn’t want to . . . to leave me, but then I think about Cerys. You know she got pregnant by accident? She and her boyfriend’ — he spat the word as though it was the same as steaming pile of shit — ‘had only known each other for a matter of weeks. And then she’s having twins and he’s having second thoughts. But she never, never considered giving them up.’
‘Kai.’ I ran my hand up and down his arm. ‘Thirty-six years ago the world was a different place.’
‘You don’t know.’
‘No, but I did history at school,’ I said sharply. ‘You can’t make any judgements until you know, that’s all I’m saying. Yes, Cerys kept the twins, but she’s got a rich, successful journalist for a supportive father, and a nice mum and an extra dad who were both behind her all the way, and her own flat . . .’
‘Bought by her rich, successful journalist father,’ Kai put in, but he was sounding a bit more cheerful now.
‘You see? Not exactly life on the breadline for our Cerys.’
‘Cerys would toast and eat the breadline.’ He turned round now, biting his lip. ‘I am such a jerk, Holly. A screwed-up, cowardly jerk.’
‘You forgot self-pitying.’
‘Oh yeah, that too.’ He traced my cheek with a finger. ‘Why do you hang around with me?’
‘I’m after your money.’
‘Ah. Thought that might be it.’ He smiled and I tried to keep my knees from wobbling. ‘How about tomorrow?’
‘How about what tomorrow?’
‘We go and find my mother.’ Now his look was challenging, as though he was expecting me to bottle out.
‘Okay, yeah. Right. Fine.’
‘Holly.’ Kai grabbed my wrist. ‘Don’t go home tonight. Stay. Please.’
‘Kai, she’s your mother, not a man-eating hyena, this isn’t your last night on the planet.’ I felt that I had to be sensible for both of us.
‘Are you regretting the sex the other day?’ He let go of me suddenly. ‘Is that it?’
‘God, no . And, if you remember, it was me who told you to sort your head out before you started any kind of relationship.’ I watched him flip his hair nervously, tap his ring against the table edge, twitchy and edgy.
‘I know. I . . . We don’t seem to have talked. I mean, properly talked, about anything. About us. I admit, I freaked a bit with all these feelings crashing down around me, all stuff I’ve never felt before and don’t know how to handle. But, there you are, still. Like this kind of constant. And that’s something I’ve never managed to keep, Holly, constancy. I had ten years of it, and I took it for granted then, but . . . I couldn’t hold it, and now I don’t know how to . . . I’ve never looked for it in any of my relationships, I thought transience was all there was.’ He put his hands either side of the sink and leaned forward, seeming to be looking out of the window, but really looking inside himself. Those strange, yellow eyes lost focus and he went very still.
‘Are you afraid you’re going to blow it?’ I asked softly. ‘Because I am.’
A flick of the head and he was looking into me again. That intense stare that twisted my stomach and made my heart slide sideways in my chest. ‘Yes.’ It was a whisper, barely even that. ‘Yes, I’m afraid I’m going to blow it.’
‘One day at a time, Kai.’ It took all my concentration not to tear his shirt off. There was something purely sexual about his look, and yet something deeper than sex, something that spoke to my soul. ‘Let’s take it slowly. You do what you have to, to keep your head straight, and I’ll do what I have to.’
His eyes were suddenly alive, moving like flame, darting across my face to my lips, down my neck and back up again. ‘I want you to stay, be with me tonight, keep me from backing down, backing out, running away, because that’s what I want to do too.’
‘Don’t run from me, Kai.’
He touched my face, ran a finger down where his eyes had already licked my skin. ‘At the moment I’d be lucky if I could walk.’ Mouth followed fingers following eyes, and then we just let the hormones do the communicating for us. He pushed me up onto the table, rucked up my skirt and, with a suddenness that made me inhale like hiccups, he was inside me.
I tried to speak but he kissed the words away, kissed me till the kitchen spun, moved until the air went black and sparks rose, fanned to fire and then burned to embers. And then did it all again. Finally he lay above me, boneless and wordless, damp hair in both our eyes. ‘Good, yes?’
‘Oh, yes.’ I stared at the ceiling cornices, chuckling demons and something that looked half-man half-pig. ‘ Yes .’
He pulled me up into a sitting position next to him. ‘Let’s not leave it so long next time, yeah? In fact, let’s do this a lot more.’
‘Hey now, don’t get reckless.’ We let our legs dangle off the side of the table. ‘One of us is going to have some work with the Dettol before we have dinner.’
‘So you’ll stay then?’
I looked at him, dark hair counterpointing those eyes and stubble-scattered cheeks. ‘What, turn down a man who makes love to me on the kitchen table? Do I look mad?’
‘At the moment you look flushed and very, very sexy.’ He kissed me again, long and slow. ‘And now Cerys is gone, I’ll make love to you all over the house if you want.’
‘Only if you want.’
He gave me the most evil grin and pushed my hand down. ‘Oh yes, I want,’ he said. ‘See?’
‘Where do you get your energy from?’ I closed my fist and he closed his eyes.
‘Same place as you.’ It was a groan, not real words. ‘I sold my soul to the Devil . . .’