Pillow Talk

by Freya North

  ‘Two wheels good, four wheels better,’ he said and he led the way along the path towards the main buildings of the school. ‘Stay here a mo'.’ He went in, came out swinging a set of keys. ‘Your carriage awaits.’

  ‘La di da,’ Petra said.

  Then she burst out laughing.

  ‘It's a mini-bus!’ Petra exclaimed.

  ‘It's a spanking new Mercedes-Benz Sprinter,’ Arlo objected after a surreptitious glance to see what it actually was.

  ‘It's still a mini-bus.’

  ‘Get in, woman,’ Arlo said in a tone of voice that implied if she didn't behave, he'd send her to sit at the back on her own.

  Nustled between two soaring cliffs, at the foot of a demanding hill with a broad sweeping horseshoe bay looking out easterly across the North Sea, the old and tiny fishing village of Runswick Bay was postcard perfect whatever the weather but on a sunny day it was truly idyllic. Petra loved it in an instant. The vertiginous approach, the meandering narrow streets, the magnificent setting, the poetic divergence in scale between nature and man. Like barnacles clasped to the side of a whale, Runswick's brave little fisherman cottages with their rosy red roofs appeared to cling on determined, while the land dropped in a fast twist down to the sea. The thatched coastguard's building, the lifeboat station with its causeway, the tiny chapel, all standing proud and brave – like little beacons of faith for the men of yore who had taken their chances with the ominous grey swell of the North Sea.

  She turned to Arlo, her eyes sparkling.

  ‘I want to live here!’

  ‘You'd need to see it with a bit of winter first,’ he laughed and he took her hand and led her to the beach.

  ‘But I'd love to see it all stormy and bleak – thundering waves roaring up at the cliffs! Spume smarting the buildings! Lightning spearing the sea! Cliffs crowned with snow! Me – a tiny speck in the midst of it all!’

  ‘You're a shameless romantic, aren't you?’ Arlo said, picking up a small clay rock and bashing it down to split it. Trying another. And another. ‘Look – fossils,’ he said finally. ‘Only don't ask me what of.’

  ‘I know I am,’ Petra said quietly.

  ‘Sorry?’ Arlo was busy with his palaeontology.

  ‘A romantic.’ Petra shrugged and smiled, feeling strangely emboldened by her surroundings. ‘Absolutely.’ In the face of such natural beauty, what in the world was there not to be honest about? Arlo looked at her quizzically; a rock in each hand as if he was balancing some great metaphysical equation. ‘I am a romantic,’ Petra reiterated. She turned to the sea. ‘It's got me into trouble in the past,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘but I wouldn't be any other way.’

  Arlo came to stand alongside her, put down his fossils so he could slip his arm around her waist. ‘And did you want to be a princess when you grew up?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Petra said, happy to be teased, ‘though hoping for a handsome prince has certainly thrown a slimy toad or two my way, but that's not to say it's damaged my belief in happy-ever-after. It would be plain silly not to believe in happy-ever-after.’

  Arlo looked out to sea as he considered what she'd said. Kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘It's one of the qualities I love most about you.’ He stopped; she was all eyes, all ears, even the curls of her hair which had spun loose from her pony-tail seemed to bounce with expectation. His smile was broad. ‘And yes, Petra, I did just say that I love you.’

  She was grinning and then frowned and fidgeted. ‘But now you'll think I'm just being polite if I say that I love you too.’

  Arlo shrugged.

  ‘Fuck shit bollock wank,’ she laughed and stuck two fingers at him. ‘I love you, Arlo Savidge.’

  ‘She's certainly not being polite – so she really must love me,’ Arlo proclaimed to a dog who had bounded up to sniff around his legs before belting off again. Arlo took her hand and they walked to the seashore. ‘Blimey – aren't we getting deep and meaningful,’ he said rather brightly.

  ‘Deep and meaningful is good,’ she said at length.

  Arlo nudged her, then slipped his arm through hers. ‘I know it is.’

  ‘And actually, I'm quite proud of myself,’ she told him, ‘because you know, I grew up amidst all that crap and unpleasantness where love had been lost – but it never made me cynical and I emerged relatively unscathed.’

  ‘Odd, isn't it – my folks set an example I've aspired to follow. Yours set one which has made you crave the polar opposite but we're both on the same track,’ he said carefully. ‘It's strange, Petra. But we're peas in a pod, really, you and I. From two very different sources.’

  ‘Non-identical twins.’

  Arlo laughed. ‘Not quite sure about the incestuous connotations there.’

  Petra laughed. ‘Me neither.’ Then she paused. ‘Are you like me in feeling that cruel blows from past love don't dent your belief in future love?’ Helen Helen Helen won't you please tell me a little more about Helen?

  ‘Mostly,’ he said and then he kissed her so tenderly that the ambiguity of his answer, the tinge of hesitancy in his voice, were swiftly swept out to sea.

  ‘Rivers flow into the sea

  yet even the sea's not so full of me,’

  Arlo sang.

  Petra looked at him. ‘I love your voice.’

  ‘There's a hole in my heart

  that can only be filled by you.’

  ‘I love you,’ she said, walking on, winking gratefully at the sea as if it had empowered her to reveal her feelings.

  Arlo stood for a moment, looking far out to the horizon.

  ‘And this hole in my heart

  Can't be filled with the things I do.’

  For a moment, he couldn't see a thing.

  *

  Bed-time loomed. And the closer it came, the more of an issue it became for Petra. She knew from humiliating experience how her sleepwalking was often at its worst when she stayed in a new place. While Arlo washed up coffee cups, she slipped away to the bedroom and assessed it carefully. She lay on the bed, flung out her arm to see where it reached. Nothing. It would be better if there was something. Something to clonk against or tumble over or to trip her up and wake her. Next, she counted the steps from the bed to the window, to the wall, to the door; she gauged what furniture jutted out, whether there were any rucks in the carpet. As quietly as she could, she closed the door. She wanted to see how easily it opened and, as she closed her fingers around the handle, she prayed it would be tricky – surely the door of a folly would be a little warped, stick in the frame, need a lot of pulling at some idiosyncratic angle. It opened soundlessly, however, and with ease. She closed it again, turning the handle slowly and fully until she heard an encouraging click, then she pushed her weight against the door to ensure it was shut tight. She went back to the bed and walked over again, put her hand around the knob. She didn't even know how much force she exerted when sleepwalking, or whether twisting a handle this way and that came instinctively. She'd had no trouble pushing aside a sturdy old armchair she'd wedged up against the door at Eric's parents' house even though she'd loaded it with the Encyclopaedia Britannica. She'd then gone into his brother's room and got into bed. With him in it.

  But there was no armchair in Arlo's bedroom. Nor were there any sturdy books. Just LPs, thousands of LPs stacked together like a long, rectangular caterpillar. Petra tried the door. Again, it opened easily. She closed it again. Took off her shoes, placed them in the path she thought she might walk. This time she closed her eyes, hoping to best emulate the way she walked when asleep. Shoe. Ouch, corner of bed. Shoe. Where is the door? Where is the sodding door? She opened her eyes. The door was open and Arlo was standing there, staring at her.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Petra was mortified. ‘Oh! Nothing. Nothing. I'm just – tired. I kicked off my shoes and practically fell asleep on your bed in an instant! So I was coming to say I'm going to bed. I can hardly keep my eyes open! Actually, maybe I have something in my eyes – perhaps th
at's why they feel so tired.’

  From the way Arlo was looking at her, it was obvious that either he didn't believe her, or else he thought she was nuts. But she just didn't want to tell him about it. Her sleepwalking had irritated Rob supremely, frustrated her parents, amused her friends. No one really took it seriously, that was for sure. Petra just didn't want Arlo to know. At least not yet. Not when love had so recently taken wing, as fragile in its newness as a butterfly just unfurled from its chrysalis. On a deeper level, Petra felt embarrassed: she didn't know why she sleepwalked and she had no idea how to stop it. Nobody did. All she wanted was a good night's sleep in Arlo's arms; night after night safe in bed with him. Surely the more of those she had, then the bad spell would be broken at last? Just then she thought she was going about it the best way she could.

  ‘I'm just tired. Just about to put my shoes away.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, still looking puzzled. ‘OK, well, I'll join you in a minute or two.’

  ‘OK!’ she said with an oversized grin, giving him a quick, unnecessary thumbs-up which she regretted instantly. Stop it! Act normal. It's Arlo. It's Arlo. It's love. Don't worry.

  * * *

  But of course she walked. Arlo was still awake – as was so often his wont in the small hours – when Petra sat up quickly and left the bed. She banged into the corner of it, made her odd, stilted passage to the door regardless, opened it easily, went through to the sitting room. Arlo followed her. She was standing very still. He walked right in front of her.

  ‘Earth to Planet Petra,’ he said, with a little wave in front of her eyes. She pushed his arm down with surprising force and shuffled a few steps forward. He stayed in front of her. ‘Arlo to Petra,’ he said gently, ‘come back to bed, sweetheart.’ As gently as he could, he turned her shoulders, letting her do the walking while he did the guiding. Back to bed. Snuggled up close. Holding her against him. Don't go. Don't leave. Stay.

  ‘Where is it that you go, Petra?’

  She said something. In a flat monotone mumble.

  ‘I go looking,’ he thought she said.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  ‘How did you sleep?’ Arlo asked casually from a muffle of pillow, waking at the scent of breakfast in bed which Petra had just brought in. Hot buttered toast. Sod the crumbs.

  ‘Oh fine, fine,’ Petra said. ‘You?’

  ‘Terrible.’ He noted that she looked momentarily panicked.

  ‘Why? Oh God, do I snore?’

  ‘No,’ he laughed. ‘It's just I don't sleep very well. Haven't done so for a few years. A sort of insomnia, I suppose. No matter how tired I am, I lie awake and stare at the ceiling. Sometimes for hours.’

  ‘Perhaps you should paint sheep on your ceiling to count?’

  ‘Believe me, I've thought of that.’

  ‘Things on your mind?’

  ‘Not really – that's the problem. If there were things on my mind I could try and work through them. But I just lie there, not sleeping, with adrenalin caught at the base of my throat – sometimes my heart races. Do you remember that feeling when you had an exam the next morning? That mixture of doom and excitement? Anticipation and dread? It's like that.’

  ‘Arlo, that's terrible. You know, I read somewhere that if you're lying in bed and you can't sleep, then you should leave the room.’ Petra leant over and took a sizeable bite of Arlo's toast, having finished two slices of her own. ‘You should only associate the bedroom with being a sanctuary of sleep. If you're not getting any – then go to another room for a while. If it's really bad, perhaps consider a course of cognitive behavioural therapy – it's meant to be brilliant for insomniacs.’

  ‘I'll take your advice,’ Arlo said, though he was tempted to say, You're a fine one to talk, just to see how she'd react. However, he'd sensed that, wherever it was she went while she slept, it was private territory and if he barged in just now, he'd be trespassing.

  They went to Whitby that morning, by mini-bus again. Petra was transfixed by the ruined Abbey. Then as they meandered through the town, Arlo had her in stitches with lurid tales of Dracula, pulling her into doorways here and there to kiss her dramatically along her neck. As they browsed the jet and marvelled at the goths, she told him all about Kitty and how much she'd love Whitby. Why don't you invite her up for a weekend, Arlo suggested. I might just do that, Petra mused. On their journey home, they interviewed each other for their Desert Island Discs. Arlo just about allowed her to take Robbie Williams. And Petra let Arlo take Marcy Playground, wherever that was or whoever they were. Petra chose Jane Eyre as her book (‘I'd never have guessed – I had you down as a sci-fi girl,’ Arlo said drily, laughing when she bashed him) and her tools as her luxury, having first ascertained that her island would be replete with natural reserves of precious metals and gemstones. Arlo chose a razor as his luxury, not that he minded growing a beard (he'd had some success with a goatee in his twenties) but because he confided to Petra that he was relatively obsessed with keeping his hair closely cropped. ‘You vain poof,’ Petra laughed but she affectionately stroked his head all the same.

  * * *

  The first Arlo knew about it was the scream. A desperate scream of glass-shattering purity. It jerked him out of his sleep with the force of an electric shock and he sat bolt upright, noticed in a glance that Petra was missing, and knew instinctively it was she who had screamed. But now there was only silence. It was eerily quiet as if the scream had come out of the night and had been instantly swallowed up by it. It was now so quiet that momentarily Arlo wondered if he'd imagined the sound. Sometimes, he dreamed musically – the images and emotions described to his subconscious in bizarre terms of notes and rhythm that always made sense at the time and that sometimes he jotted down on awaking. But Petra was gone from his bed and it was she who had screamed and as Arlo scrambled into his clothes, he called her name. She was not in the bathroom. Nor was she in the sitting area. She wasn't in the kitchen. No sign of her at all, no evidence of her having even been there, apart from the ominously open door. 3.02 a.m. He cursed himself for having actually been asleep.

  ‘Petra?’

  Arlo shuddered. In the thin air of the small hours, the trees loomed a little menacingly, ominous silhouettes clawing at the night sky. The silence was thick and oppressive but Arlo didn't dare break it with audible footfalls, for fear of damping out any further sound from Petra. He tiptoed across the path to the safer surface of the grass. Called her name, over and again.

  Nothing. Arlo shivered. It was surprisingly brisk. Though the paths were lit well enough for errant schoolboys to be caught sneaking out for a crafty fag after lights-out, they were not lit well enough for somnambulant females to be found.

  ‘Is anyone there?’

  There was a rustling. During numerous insomniac sorties of his own, Arlo had become well acquainted with the wealth of wildlife which claimed the school grounds as their own at night. But right now he didn't care for badgers and owls, he just wanted to see Petra.

  ‘Petra. Petra Flint?’

  ‘Arlo?’

  It was her. Somewhere. Her voice, thin and desperate and fogged by tears.

  ‘She's here.’

  Who the fuck is that? A male voice. That direction.

  ‘Where's here?’ Arlo called out.

  ‘Here.’

  No, this direction.

  He ran, calling her name, calling hullo, calling that he was coming. Petra, I'm coming.

  There she is. Sweet Jesus. Buck naked. Arms closed defensively around her body. Head downcast with shame. Knees buckling a little with fear. Or with cold. She is flanked by two men. There's a Walley Brother on each side. Christ, thinks Arlo, foxes would be better than them.

  ‘She yours, then?’ asks one Walley with a leer at Petra, a sneer at Arlo.

  ‘Yes,’ Arlo says, striding up close while pulling his top over his head, drawing Petra close against him, wrapping his sweatshirt around as much as he can. ‘She's mine.’ He kisses her head gently, holds her body very t
ightly, whispers, ‘You're fine, Petra, you're fine.’

  ‘We found her,’ Walley Two is saying, ‘asleep in the grass. We didn't know what she was at first, did we? Walk around like that often, does she? In her birthday suit? All hours?’

  Petra buries her face deeper in Arlo's chest.

  ‘Had to prod her to wake her.’

  ‘Couldn't wake her. Had to turn her over to see if she was dead.’

  ‘Wasn't. Could see her breathing.’

  ‘Could see a bit too much. You never heard of a nightgown, miss?’

  ‘Pyjamas, miss?’

  ‘Lucky it was us, really. You ought to count your lucky stars. Don't want the boys coming across this. A sight for their sore little eyes.’

  ‘Their sordid little eyes and filthy little minds.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Walley, thank you, Mr Walley,’ Arlo says. ‘I'm grateful you were around. We both are. She's fine. You're fine, Petra. Everything is OK. You can leave her with me. You can leave – now.’ Arlo knows you have to spell things out for the Walley Brothers. They may claim to be simple folk but they're sly enough to twist what they find and scatter seeds of malevolence across the school grounds. Like when Head of Maths Mrs Goode's son turned up from Cambridge University halfway through term. Kicked out, came the word from the Walleys. Glandular fever was the truth. And when Mr Henderson crashed his car. Drunk as a skunk, said the Walleys. Minor stroke, said the hospital. And when Simeon de Vries failed every GCSE the Walleys rolled it out that it was down to the kid smoking too much wacky baccy. Not so, said the doctor, diagnosing ME soon after.

  ‘She was asleep,’ Arlo tells them clearly. ‘She doesn't know she does it. She sleepwalks. She cannot help it.’ He feels Petra pull back a little, he can sense her staring at him, then he feels her think better of it as she sinks back into the safety of his arms. ‘It's an affliction,’ he says. ‘It's a serious condition and it is not, I repeat not, gossip.’