Chapter 22
HEATHER
‘Honestly, I felt like I was in some kind of Monty Python farce back there,’ Scott says as he unlocks the hotel room door.
He steps back and allows Heather to enter before him.
A gentleman, she thinks. But also, a kind of horny gentleman.
Because he hadn’t been shy about giving her a quick grope or a tender touch whenever they were out of sight of the girls or the ghastly Mick Lafferty.
The girls finally accepted the decision to reject the house, thank goodness, because Heather couldn’t bear the thought of them living in that dreadful place under the control of that awful man.
An hour and a half with the University Accommodation Manager provided them with three other options, one of which could accommodate their party that morning for a viewing.
It was a newly listed, modern apartment with sea views.
The price was almost double that of Lafferty’s, but the girls snapped it up, regardless.
‘At least we know they’ve got somewhere clean and safe now,’ she says, as she walks over to Scott, places her hand on his chest, then kisses him gently on the lips. The sensation sends shockwaves through her body, and the soles of her feet tingle.
‘I’ll never stop worrying about her, you know,’ she says as Scott gently guides her to sit on the edge of the bed.
He kisses the top of her head, then kneels on the floor between her legs. ‘I know that,’ he says. His kisses travel onto her eyelids, down her left cheek, onto her ear lobe.
‘Do you think they bought our lie?’ she asks, although talking is becoming a real challenge now.
His tongue meanders down the ligament of her neck and explores the notch in her throat. She gasps.
‘What, that you left your charger in town and needed to walk back with me to get it?’
It sounds so risqué when he says it.
‘I guess it wasn’t an actual lie,’ she says.
His fingers are on the buttons of her blouse now. Every millimetre of contact they make with her skin sets her alight. He pulls her legs wider apart and settles himself closer to her body. She can feel him through the fabric of their clothes.
He pulls her blouse open, and his lips trail down her sternum and explore the flesh around the cups of her bra. The desperation to feel him everywhere engulfs her.
‘Scott.’ Her strangled whisper is interspersed with the ping of a message.
His or hers? It’s definitely his. Ignoring it, he reaches behind her back and unclasps her bra so that her freed breasts swing towards his lips.
He’s taking her nipple in his mouth and she’s gasping with ecstasy when the next ping pierces the air.
‘Do you…?’
‘No.’
His tongue circles the most sensitive area, and Heather’s almost completely under his spell. Almost. Another text.
‘Scott. Do you think you need to…?’
It’s almost an affront to speak, an even greater insult to suggest he moves away from her, even for a millisecond, to check. But it could be one of the …
‘We need to let them go. We can’t jump whenever they shout,’ he says as his thumbs rotate over the surface of her now-hardened nipples.
It’s ringing now. A loud, insistent peal which shatters their sanctuary of two.
‘For fu—‘
Scott stands. His erection is visible through the fabric of his trousers, and Heather’s mouth gapes as she tries to reconcile herself with the broken connection between them.
He grabs his phone and cancels the call.
He’s back between her legs within seconds, his hands stroking her inner thighs, and she’s back, back, back when another insistent, unignorable bellow comes from his phone. This time, he takes the call.
‘No, Lorraine, I wasn’t aware and no, Lorraine, I don’t want to,’ he says angrily into the microphone.
He’s back by the bed in a moment. And he leans in to kiss her, but there’s a new rigidity to his lips.
‘Lorraine?’ she finds herself saying.
Scott pulls back, scrutinises her face. Suddenly, his body goes taut.
‘No. No. No. Not like that,’ he says, shaking his head in a panicked manner.
‘But it’s someone, right? It’s something?
’ The silence pools between them, heavy and thick.
She reaches around her back, re-attaches the hooks in her bra and begins to re-button her blouse.
A low, familiar ache replaces the burn in her body.
‘What’s going on, Scott? You’ve got to admit this is strange, even for you. ’
He stands abruptly and paces the room, his hands clenched and tapping against his hips.
‘I’m sorry, Heather. Truly, I am. That call. It just reminds me.’
‘Reminds you of what?’
She’s standing beside him, her hands out, touching his biceps.
‘I tried to tell you this morning.’
She remembers Brianna’s call interrupting them earlier.
‘Okay.’ She frowns, her heart pounding. ‘So tell me now.’
She squeezes his arms.
‘There’s something I should have told you a while ago … and definitely before this.’ He indicates the messed-up sheets of the hotel bed, which Heather will most definitely feel compelled to smooth out later. She reaches up and holds his shoulders to pin him in one position for a moment.
‘Scott. Neither of us are brand new to this. We’re two middle-aged, single parents of freshman children. Just tell me.’
She moves her hands and places them on the dimple in his chest. A perfect fit.
‘I don’t do relationships,’ he says, ‘not after …’
His dead wife’s name isn’t vocalised, but seems to float in the air between them, nonetheless.
Heather’s heart stalls.
‘I just don’t think I can go there again. Ever. No matter how much I like the person.’
Heather swallows. ‘Do you want to tell me about your wife?’ she says gently, withdrawing her hands.
They sit down together on the edge of the bed.
He stays quiet for a moment and stares at the window. ‘She was picking Brianna up from ballet practice, in the car, when it happened.’
‘That’s why she doesn’t dance anymore?’
‘Right. I told you it was a young lad from the village, just passed his test. Well, we knew the family. And that’s the thing.
He was just a kid, but he’d been so mollycoddled growing up, he had no ability to assess risk.
The parents as good as trained him to be incompetent.
So that’s why I keep pushing this taking risks, learning from mistakes attitude.
It’s also why I won’t let Brianna drive. ’
‘I knew there had to be a reason,’ she says carefully. ‘I just wonder if telling a spirited girl like Brianna that something is completely off the table, if it might … I don’t know … cause some resentment … or something.’
Scott shakes his head.
‘I know it makes no sense. It’s just my thing. Brianna accepts it. She understands.’
Heather inhales. What goes on in another family is no business of hers.
She pulls him into a hug. This strong, adventurous, tortured man has broken down her barriers, causing her to ignore all her own strategies to self-protect.
And the need for these strategies is glaring at her now, no longer the elephant in the room.
‘Scott. It’s okay,’ she says, caressing his face, whilst inside her belly hardens.
‘Last night was fun. So much fun. And this afternoon, too. But in all, honesty … relationships. Neither do I.’ There are tears in both their eyes when they pull apart.
‘So maybe we just don’t do this again?’ she says, hesitantly, despite the tiny voice inside her head which screams injustice.
This is a man she really, really likes. What is she saying? ‘It was a wonderful evening. Amazing. But rash. We’re not teenagers, and our daughters certainly don’t need this right now. So, what say we just …’
She shrugs, her shoulders heavy with the burden of doing the right thing.
‘Forget it ever happened?’ he says.
Heather stands and begins to flatten the sheets.
‘Exactly,’ she says, ‘because right now my priority should be checking my finances to make sure I can help Georgia with that higher rent.’
It's only as she's leaving, and her mind begins to settle, that she realises – he still hasn’t told her who Lorraine is.
SCOTT
Her face. It’s etched on his retinas. The way her eyes shifted from sparkling with desire to blank, withdrawn, a kind of flat, depressed grey when he told her. He can still feel the release of pressure when she moved her hand from his chest.
No longer a perfect fit.
The sense of wrongness that accompanied it. She'd said the right things, of course. That she’d also been burnt in the past; that she shared his fear of reliance on another person and that a relationship wasn't an option for her either.
But still … Her face …
Now she’s gone, he can’t help but torture himself with what ifs.
What if he’d just been straight with her and explained that Lorraine is his sister-in-law and she is encouraging – no, pressurising him, relentlessly – to sign up to mediation sessions with his wife’s killer?
What if he explained that there’s no way he could do that, because attending any form of mediation will force him to admit the idea he’s worked like crazy to suppress for seven years – the accident had been his fault.
But no.
Letting the thoughts in, telling Heather, it’s something he just can’t contemplate.
Already his underarms are drenched in sweat and his heart rate has doubled as though he’s just done a round of weights at the gym.
How can he possibly say those words aloud – even to Heather, someone he has grown to trust and … .
No … he’s not going there.
He’s not letting the ‘L’ word back into his vocabulary.
His St Albans house feels empty now. The walls echo when the doors close against the architrave. Has it always been like this?
Perhaps he should get a dog?
Goodness only knows where that thought comes from. He’s not even a dog person. So, what inspired the thought? Oh, yes. He remembers. Heather. Of course.
“Wondering if a canine friend is the best way to reduce my 79% chance of depression this year?” she’d messaged him chattily a few weeks ago. She’d accompanied it with a GIF of a yippy yappy, bouncing dog, which even he had to agree was alluring.