Chapter 27
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
We did sex in my single bed. Until we ran out of condoms and both of us were sticky.
The afternoon unwound into evening in the easiness of skin on skin.
A puddle of light from the low, mellow sun on the wall behind my headboard highlighted the obnoxious magnolia with a stained-glass glow.
The shadows softened out like our breathing.
Simon was right – there could never be anything complicated about this.
Pillowed under my head, Simon’s wiry chest hair made my face itch. My thigh tacked itself to Simon’s. Neither of us was heading for the bathroom.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t have posters up. That my bookshelves were empty, because the room wasn’t. Not with Simon here.
His powder-dry hand spread along my arm, over the rise and fall of the muscles I worked so hard on at the gym to give him something good to notice. I tensed a bit, flexing for him, and his eyes flashed to mine, smile breaking containment.
The paler skin of his palms met mine with a taut wax-paper hush, rough-smooth, soft-firm. His long fingers skimmed along, playing join the dots with my freckles and moles. Navigating from point to point, mapping the constellations of me. Who knew where we were going anyway?
With a sigh, he leaned back against my pillow, lazy with satisfaction. When had it got so easy, being with him? He ducked his head, lips dusting against my shoulder like he didn’t even know he’d done it.
“I can’t believe you don’t have any photographs to put up.”
It didn’t sound like judgement. Confusion maybe, crossed with a shred of concern. What must this place look like to him, whose world was full of smiling faces and happy things to touch and pick up, and water and feed and watch grow?
“I do.” The words fell out of me like a bottle falling through the bottom of a too-thin plastic bag. Impossible to put back now.
Simon frowned, shooting my bare walls a double-take, and I gestured for him to wait.
Leaning off the edge of my bed, I abseiled out into space – stomach muscles all go – so I didn’t have to actually get up. I tugged out my trusty holdall stashed beneath the bed, rummaging right to bottom.
A single half-sized shoe box held every picture I’d ever wanted to keep.
With great care, Simon lifted the dusty lid with both hands, and I tensed, watching him pick each one up by its edges, looking them over like precious artefacts.
“This is your Mum?”
I savaged the skin tag off the edge of my thumbnail with my teeth. All I could manage was a stiff nod. Mam’s upside-down head was backed with green from our little garden.
“Why are you hiding these away?” Simon’s voice softened. “You look so happy together.”
My smile perished like an overused elastic band, crumbling in real time.
“I don’t—”My throat soldered itself shut with a searing bolt of something ugly rammed sharp up behind my eyes. “Haven’t really – shown anyone. Apart from you.”
I didn’t have to tell him they were dog-eared from me thumbing through them too many times, soft at the edges, one of them pock-marked with pin holes from where I’d had them on the board in the kitchen at Gran’s before they’d been layered over with leaflets about when to take the bins out and the new number for the GP.
I put all of them away then. They were safer in my little box, under my bed. Stowed so none of them would be lost under the weight of everything else. So my memories couldn’t flutter away, or get thrown out and leave me.
“Thank you. For showing me.” Simon meant it. Bone-deep gratitude was right on brand. And I couldn’t handle the kindness cloaking me like a weighted blanket too heavy to shove off. This was Simon all over. How he’d be with anyone.
We were supposed to be enjoying this for what it was.
But it wasn’t just sex anymore. Not for me. Not when afterwards he lay there rubbing patterns onto my forearm, grounding me, without a thought. I never knew I needed grounding, but one steady touch from him and my whole body eased.
The heat of his skin held the barest memory of a scent – clean and woodsy and rich beneath an unmistakable layer of him. I breathed him in, greedy for the hint of the perfect world of his flat he’d brought here.
Before he left, maybe he’d let me rub myself all over him to transfer the smell. Maybe, if I never washed my sheets again it would almost feel like dating him for real. Fucking hell, I was deranged. Simon should be running for his life.
Any minute he would sit up and thank me, or tell me we shouldn’t be doing this like he did back at Heybourne in the morning. Feelings were not part of the deal we’d made.
“Can you stay over?” Complications were not approved agenda items., but whatever this was, I didn’t want him gone yet.
“I was planning to.”
I sat up sharply, squinting at him. “You were?”
Simon tugged me down, setting the smallest kiss to the very corner of my mouth. “Yes.”
“Bullshit,” I whispered. He’d have brought a change of clothes along with his portable bar if his to-do list featured sleepovers. But I’d take it. This time, the lie of it was all for me.
From: l.cunningham@
To: s.azie@
Richard Whittaker Exposé
Simon
As discussed, draft document attached. I await your comments for inclusion.
Luke
This is Definitely a Horse
by L Cunningham
One night last week, I went home with a guy whose face is now very familiar on the internet, answering the question if #Dickydidn’tdoit, who did? He got an emergency call from work in the middle of our would-be hook up. The same night the first version of the much debated Horse Gate sex tapes hit.
He was the interpreter for the PR manager, who is the other man in the film #nakedPR, #eyesontheprize. And nothing in the way they interacted suggested they were anything other than employer and employee.
I didn’t get my night of fun, but although I didn’t realise it at the time, I got an insight into the depths people will go, to maintain and protect an outdated image of what an English Gentleman is supposed to look like, and how he is supposed to behave.
In my mind, there’s no doubt the first video was of Richard Whittaker.
As I write this, there will be technical experts analysing both lots of footage on a micro-level, which might give a definitive answer, but that answer might leave us even more questions.
Why were so many people so keen to rush in to cover this up? Why do so many people care?
Whittaker’s pregnant fiancée might have something to do with it.
To mainstream Britain, the notion of cheating is terrible enough, but it’s unthinkable that a quintessential rugby-playing, beer-swilling lad like Whittaker might be dallying not with another woman, but with another man.
Somehow, this transgression is viewed by the world’s media as worse than denying an individual’s right to privacy.
Today, Whittaker’s sex life and orientation are on open season.
And so are the two people who stepped forward to protect him with this patently transparent cover-up.
The world is demanding the truth, and I believe it’s owed it.
Not because the media has a right to demand anyone discloses their sexuality, but because in this age of fake news, if we don’t call out the lies, how can we trust anything we are told at all?
I don’t want to live in a society where the Richard Whittaker’s of the world carry on however they please behind closed doors, shifting reality around them so their outward face is never anything less than the traditionally acceptable norm.
That norm is outdated. But nothing changes for anyone if they continue to behave like their ancestors before them, and we collectively contrive to let them.
Mapp and Green, the PR Agency representing Whittaker, have declined to comment beyond confirming they are investigating the misuse of clients’ homes for personal purposes. When I caught up with my failed one night stand, he declined an interview.
And I’m left wondering, what could possibly have convinced the interpreter of Whittaker’s PR manager to enter into this kind of cover up? Is the bigger story here laced with bribes and sexual coercion? And why is nobody asking those questions?
From: s.azie@
To: l.cunningham@
Re: Richard Whittaker Exposé
Dear Luke
Ben and I are willing to offer you an exclusive interview for the purposes of bringing your opinion piece into line with the facts of the situation.
Although you are a novice journalist, I am sure you are highly attuned to the irreparable damage a libel case can cause a journalistic career.
We would love to support you in putting out the most accurate version of events surrounding the video erroneously purporting to include Richard Whittaker and myself.
We have a table booked at Possimus at 1pm tomorrow. Please arrive promptly.
Kind regards
Simon Azie