The Home for Broken Hearts

by Rowan Coleman

  “Mum? You okay?”

  Ellen regarded him from over the edge of her quilt and nodded. “Yes, Charlie, I’m fine. I think I just overheated a bit, that’s all.”

  “Your headache—it’s not because of me, is it? Because of what I said and made you look at the leaflets?”

  Ellen held one bare arm out to him, careful not to let him see any of the ensemble that she still wore beneath the covers, complete with the silver sandals; most of her lipstick had worn off now anyway and she suspected she’d have to reapply the mascara, too, which had flaked all over the pillow while she’d been waiting, dozing, thinking. “No, no—not at all. And you know what, Charlie? You were right. You were utterly and totally right. I have got a problem and I do need some help, I finally realized that today. I don’t know if I ever would have if you hadn’t been brave enough to tell me. I’ve a few other things to sort out, but I promise you, I will get better. I will be a good mum again.”

  “You are a good mum,” Charlie insisted, taking her hand. “Anyway, guess what? I had scampi and chips in the pub. It was nice.”

  “Charlie, that’s great!” Ellen said, sitting up to hug him, forgetting her secret ensemble for a moment. Fortunately, to an eleven-year-old boy, a green dress and an old shirt were virtually the same.

  “Calm down, Mum. It’s no big deal. It’s just today I fancied a change, that’s all.”

  “I know,” Ellen said, “I know what you mean. Good night, love.”

  She kissed Charlie on the forehead and waited for what would be Sabine’s inevitable follow-up visit. It came less than two minutes later.

  “You borrowed my wine, I see,” Sabine said, sitting down in the place Charlie had just vacated.

  “Yes, do you mind?” Ellen asked.

  “Of course not. I think under these circumstances alcohol is really the best remedy. Also it will help you sleep.”

  “And Charlie, he doesn’t know about anything that’s happened?”

  “No; he was in good form actually. A little worried about you but not unduly. He seems… lighter.”

  “I think he is,” Ellen said. “I think he’s been carrying around this worry for months all on his own, and now he’s found the courage to talk to me about it, he feels better. Which is exactly why he mustn’t know about anything that has happened with Hannah.”

  Sabine nodded in agreement. “Allegra has retired. I think Charlie and I wore her out. Would you like me to make you some food before I go to my room? I’m having another Skype conference with Eric, but not for twenty minutes.”

  “No.” Ellen mustered a smile. “I couldn’t eat anyway. … It all seems so surreal. So artificial. Like I’ve just read it in a chapter of a book.”

  “I know,” Sabine said. “Well, tomorrow when the sun is up and you have rested, we will think what to do next. For now, drink the wine and sleep and let it all seem unreal.”

  “Thank you, Sabine,” Ellen said. “When I took in lodgers I never expected that I’d be taking in friends, too, but you and Allegra and Matt, that’s exactly what you are.”

  “Well,” Sabine said, “most people are good. Most people apart from my stinking, evil, good-for-nothing husband, that is.”

  When Sabine had gone, Ellen looked at the clock; it was almost eleven. Not much longer to wait and the house would be quiet and asleep. She would be able to go downstairs, find another bottle of wine, and implement her plan.

  Because tonight, giddy with a kind of reckless abandon that she had never thought herself capable of, Ellen had decided not to let another minute of her life slip by unlived. Tonight she was going to take charge of what happened to her next. Tonight she was planning her second-ever seduction attempt.

  Tonight, Ellen was going to have sex with Matt Bolton.

  CHAPTER

  Eighteen

  It took Matt several seconds to locate the keyhole with his key. He hadn’t considered himself very drunk at all, at least not by Bang It! standards. When he’d left the pub, the others had gone off to find a legendary and possibly mythical drinking club that was supposed to be open all night under an adult-entertainment shop called Venus Videos in Soho. Matt had questioned the point of an illegal drinking den when there were plenty of legitimate places that stayed open all hours these days, but he had been shouted down and pelted with a good many offensive insults regarding his sexuality and gender assignment. His sleepless night catching up with him at last, he’d bowed out and saved his reputation by telling them that he was off home to sort out his landlady.

  Despite the weariness that crowded his head with ill-advised thoughts of Ellen’s hair spread out across her pillow, Matt had elected to take the half-hour walk home, preferring the enduring heat of the evening to the crowded and noisy night buses that careened along the streets with the kind of reckless capriciousness that seemed to say “get out of my way, I’m out on the town.”

  Living a little dangerously, he’d tipped his head back as he walked, hoping to find some stars in the sky, but the city lights obliterated any chance he had of communing with the cosmos. Matt didn’t know why he had the urge to chat to the heavens anyway, it wasn’t as if he’d spent his childhood in some rural idyll, at one with nature. He’d spent it growing up on a Manchester council estate where nature was comprised of grass verges and the occasional privet hedge. But something had happened to him, something that made him remember snippets of love poetry from some sixteenth-century poet, that made him dream about curling a tress of glossy dark hair around his fingers, that made him want to look at the stars and try to find some meaning to his life in the random patterns of the universe.

  “Fuck,” Matt mumbled to himself as he tried to find the keyhole again. “I’ll be reading my star signs next.”

  He took great care to close the door behind him and stood for a second in the quiet, cool hallway, appraising the situation. There was no light in the living room or under Allegra’s bedroom door. But there was a low, greenish light coming from the kitchen, which meant that Ellen was in there having a cup of tea, because she always switched on the under-the-counter lights when she was in there alone, thinking. Matt considered his weary and confused mind, his exhausted body numbed by alcohol, and thought he probably had better not go into the kitchen to talk to Ellen now, not in his current state. Before he knew it, he’d be quoting her poetry and telling her that he loved her or something equally insane, taking risks, putting himself out there or whatever it was Lucy had said. Yet, even as the last tiny rational part of his brain was making these decisions, the rest of his body was propelled to exactly the last place he knew he ought to be.

  He pushed open the kitchen door, but Ellen was not there.

  Well, not there in any sense that Matt understood, at least not at first. She was not sitting at the table in some oversized shirt, with her hair tied up, embracing a mug of tea. She was leaning against the countertop directly opposite the door—more like lounging, actually—and she was wearing a dress. And not just a dress, but a dress, dark green and so figure-hugging that in one single second all the mysteries that had been Ellen’s body were laid almost bare to him, and he was unable to tear his eyes from the curve of her breasts, the deep cleavage that ran between them, or the delicious flare of her hips, undulating from her waist with what seemed like a glorious decadence. Matt had heard the phrase all woman many times but had never really had cause to use it before, at least not so accurately.

  Ellen smiled at him and tilted her head so that her long, glossy hair strayed over one shoulder. She had lipstick on, Matt noticed, confused. Why was she wearing lipstick and a dress?

  “Glass of wine?” Ellen asked, pouring from a bottle that was on the counter into an empty glass that had been standing by.

  She’d been expecting someone, Matt realized, wondering who it might be. And then with a sudden cold thrill he realized that she’d been expecting him. Fuck. Fuck! What was he going to do? He felt like he was fifteen again and Charlotte Mackenzie had told him that they coul
d have sex if he liked as long as he was careful. Except he’d fancied Charlotte Mackenzie from the age of eleven, and just the thought of doing anything so intimate with her had meant that it was all over for him before he’d even laid a finger on her. Charlotte Mackenzie hadn’t spoken to him again and he had hoped never to be so humiliated again in his life. But now, suddenly, it seemed like a very real possibility. This couldn’t be happening, not here, not now. Not like this. He wasn’t ready, he didn’t know how he felt about her, and besides, he was really, really drunk. He was never any good at sex when he was really, really drunk, and…

  “I wanted to thank you, for staying up all night with me last night,” Ellen said. Slowly she walked across the kitchen toward Matt, which was when he noticed her silver high heels, an observation that was inevitably followed by an image of Ellen wearing nothing but a pair of silver high heels. Matt swallowed and backed away, praying that she wouldn’t touch him. What had happened in the fifteen or so hours that he had been out of the house? Had some kinky alien life force with a thing for push-up bras come and taken over Ellen’s body? Where was the offer of tea and biscuits? Where was the debriefing of the day, when he’d tell her what he’d done at work and she’d tell him about something Charlie had said or done?

  It was going to be much harder to admire her from afar if she actually started throwing herself at him.

  Please don’t touch me, please don’t touch me, please don’t touch me, Matt pleaded silently as Ellen approached him. She handed him the glass of wine, which he took as a defensive tactic, assuming that a receptacle full of liquid would act as some barrier between them. He was wrong.

  Ellen took one more step on her silver high heels into his personal body space and rested her palm on his shoulder. She looked into his eyes.

  “I wondered if there was anything I could do to thank you?” she asked, batting her smoky lashes.

  “Um… well, a coffee would be great,” Matt squeaked as Ellen’s hand traced its way down his torso, over his waistband, and… Matt grabbed her wrist before it got any farther.

  “Ellen,” he said, studying her face at close quarters, noticing the slightly swollen lids and the reddened eyes that hid behind the newly applied and flaking mascara. “Ellen, what’s all this about?”

  “Oh, God, you don’t fancy me, do you,” Ellen said, stepping away and stumbling a little. Matt realized that she was probably as drunk as he was, if not a little more so. “I knew it, I knew there was no way I could carry this off. Here I am being reckless and spontaneous, and it never occurred to me that you just didn’t fancy me. I’m delusional, that’s what I am.”

  “What, are you joking? Of course I fancy you, I don’t think I’ve ever fancied anyone more,” Matt told her. “You look stunning; that dress… your body looks slamming, Ellen. It’s kind of hard for a man to ignore, which is why I’m wondering what all this is about.”

  “Really?” Ellen perked up, smiling a bit like the old Ellen—the one who wasn’t a sex-crazed, alien-possessed siren. Matt was more than a little bit pleased to see her. “Because you know, you spend so long not noticing yourself, or looking at yourself, that you sort of have no idea what you look like anymore. I used to be beautiful once, and I mean once. It was a Thursday evening in 1998. I was wearing this dress. That was the last time I was beautiful.”

  “That’s not true, Ellen,” Matt said. “You… you are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. And I know that sounds like a line but it’s true. I’ve never, not since Charlotte Mackenzie, ever wanted so badly just to… touch your hair.” Matt winced. “Which makes me sound a bit weird, doesn’t it?”

  “You can touch my hair,” Ellen said in a low, husky voice, taking a step toward him again. “You can touch me anywhere.”

  She pressed herself against him so that they stood breast to breast, hip to hip.

  “The thing is,” Matt said, finding it quite difficult to keep his hands anywhere other than Ellen’s beautifully rounded bottom, “is that I can’t. I can’t just come in from work and find you—you, Ellen Woods—dressed up and a bit drunk and up for it and take advantage of that. I can’t.”

  “You mean you don’t want to?” Ellen asked him, her hot breath tickling his neck.

  “Oh, God,” Matt groaned, knowing by the tone of her voice that she realized exactly how much he wanted to. “I want to, Ellen, I want to—but not like this. Not with you. I mean, when I left the house this morning you were in a full-blown crisis. How is Hannah, and what about Charlie, how’s he coping?”

  “I don’t want to talk about any of that,” Ellen said, her hand traveling along his inner thigh. “I’m a bit out of practice—in fact, totally out of practice when it comes to taking charge—so you must tell me if I get it wrong.” She cupped her hand over Matt’s erection and pressed it gently. “How’s that working for you?”

  “Oh, God.” Unable to resist anymore, Matt put down his glass of wine and pulled Ellen to him, one hand cupping her bottom, the other finding its way immediately to one breast, which he squeezed hard as he kissed her deeply. He moaned low in his throat as he turned her around, thrusting her back against the kitchen counter that she had pinned him against only seconds earlier, tearing one hand away from her backside and entangling it in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her neck, which he covered with kisses and bites, pulling at the neckline of her dress, tucking it under the rise of her breasts, which he exposed to his lips with a tear of nearly new lace. Suddenly resolute and focused, Matt lifted Ellen by the hips onto the counter, pushing up her skirt to expose her panties, and with one fluid movement ripped them off and dropped them on the floor.

  It was when her hand was on his belt buckle that he noticed the expression on her face. There was desire there, yes, a flush of heat traveling across the bridge of her nose and down her throat. But there was something else, too. Fear? Uncertainty? Even sadness? Matt let his hand drift to his side as he looked at her there, the woman who made him think about poetry and look at the stars, with her clothes asunder, her underwear ripped. At that moment she looked sexier and more desirable than any woman Matt had ever known. But this sordid centerfold affair wasn’t how it was meant to be, not between him and Ellen.

  They looked at each other for one breathless, silent moment and then Matt scooped Ellen up in his arms and held her. She wound herself around his body and buried her face in his neck. Matt increased the pressure of his embrace as he felt her frame begin to shake with sobs.

  “Ellen,” he whispered, retreating onto one of the kitchen chairs and pulling her onto his lap, cradling her in his arms. “Ellen, tell me. Please, tell me what’s happened.”

  Ellen pushed her hair back from her face, which was streaked with tears, and looked into his eyes.

  “You must think I’m such a fool,” she said. “What would someone like you want with a past-it old woman like me?”

  “I think you can see that someone like me would want someone exactly like you very, very much,” Matt said, smoothing her tangle of hair off her face. “But when you’re ready and when you’re sure that it’s what you want. And you’re not sure, are you?”

  Ellen looked into his eyes for a second and then shook her head, a response that surprised Matt by how much it stung and disappointed him. For the first time in his life, he wanted a woman who didn’t want him back.

  Ellen climbed off his lap and half turned her back on him while she rearranged her clothes to restore her modesty. Sheepishly, she quickly scooped her knickers off the kitchen floor and, uncertain as to what to do with them, hastily put them in the plastic-bag drawer.

  “I mean I do, I do want you, but I’m not sure if it’s for very sensible reasons.” She sniffed, glancing nervously at Matt, who look uncomfortable as he sat, the heat of his desire taking some time to subside.

  “What should we do now?” Matt asked. “I’m not sure what to do after some amazing making out and then a break to reassess the situation. Apart from explode, maybe, or bash my
head against the tabletop until I’ve got enough brain damage to stop me from coming over there and getting you.”

  They looked at each other for a moment longer, Ellen wondering exactly what was happening between them.

  “I’ll make us a cup of tea?” she offered.

  “I’ll make it,” he said. “You sit down. And talk—start talking and explain to me what happened today to make you decide to give me the most difficult night of my life.”

  “I’m not really that difficult to resist, am I?” Ellen smiled shyly.

  “Woman,” Matt said, turning his back on her and closing his eyes. “You have no idea.”

  When Ellen stopped talking and looked up at Matt, she wondered just exactly how much he must pity her. He had not looked at her at all while she had told him about Hannah, and her claimed love affair with Nick, and how even venturing just to the bottom of her garden path had made her feel like she was going to slip off the face of the planet and die. While she had been wondering how to explain to Charlie why he was never going to see his aunt again, or if she should feel guilty that she’d thrown Hannah out when she was so badly hurt, he had not redirected his gaze from the tabletop. For a few seconds back there, Matt had looked at her and he hadn’t seen Ellen Woods. He had seen a woman whom he wanted to rip the clothes off of and have unbridled sex with, whether she wanted it or not, just like Captain Parker, just like whoever it was who had hurt Hannah. But Matt wasn’t like either of those men, imagined or real. He’d seen the expression on her face, he had spotted the uncertainty, and he had stopped. It was something that Ellen was deeply grateful for, and yet she mourned the passing of only her second beautiful moment. She wasn’t sure that another one would ever come again, at least not with Matt. Not now that he knew everything about her.

  Matt said nothing for a while, the muscles in his jaw tightening reflexively, as if he were actively trying not to say something. And then he shrugged.