Anyway, I noticed all this in about a nanosecond, before we started saying the usual things about how long it had been, and what had brought us back to the old manor. I told Peter about Serena, and he made sympathetic noises, which reminded me that in spite of being the fittest boy in our year, he’d also been really, really sweet and kind, although of course such was his fitness that he would still have had all the girls after him even if he’d been an utter dick. He, it turned out, was home from London where he worked in IT, for his sister Jess’s wedding the next day, and she was indulging in a bridezilla strop of such epic proportions that Peter had elected to leave her, her five bridesmaids and their mum to it, and decamp to the Rose and Crown for a bit of peace and quiet.
By the time we’d caught up on all this we’d finished our drinks and my crisps, and Peter bought another round and a packet of peanuts, and we carried on chatting away as you do when you haven’t seen someone for ages, catching up on all the news about how Mandy Simms and Ewan Miller are married with triplets, and Charlie Armitage is in prison for embezzlement, and Alice Chambers was killed in a road traffic accident, and you’re so busy going, “Wow, really?” and “Always knew he was a wrong ’un,” and “Oh God, how awful,” that there’s no room at all for awkwardness. We were chatting so much and laughing so much I barely noticed that we’d had two more drinks and I was beginning to feel decidedly squiffy, and I realised that we were flirting with each other.
We’d moved to a sofa – the Rose and Crown has lovely worn leather Chesterfields – and the cushions sort of dipped a bit in the middle, so we kept being slid towards each other, and our thighs kept touching, and every time they did Peter looked at me and I looked at him, and our eyes locked on to each other for a second before we looked away and carried on chatting. After a while I stopped moving away and let my leg press closer and closer to his, and a few minutes after that I felt the warm pressure of his hand on my thigh, and a delicious little jolt of desire went through me, and I knew we were going to end up in bed, and that everything that happened between now and then would just be a kind of formality. Max called last orders at half eleven and we had a final drink and I went to the ladies’ and looked at myself in the mirror to check that my mascara wasn’t smudged and I didn’t have peanut skin on my teeth. I didn’t, thank God – in fact I looked all glowy and excited, and even quite pretty. I went back to Peter and he took my hand as we walked out of the door. It was one of those really cold but beautiful nights you sometimes get when the sky is crystal clear, and there was a new moon and a dusting of stars. We paused for a bit, looking at the night and each other, and then there was that amazing moment when you know you’re about to kiss someone but haven’t yet. I’ve sometimes thought it’s the best part of sex – when you don’t know if they’re going to be a rotten, slobbery kisser or suck on your nipples like a baby or have a fugly stunted cock like a button mushroom, or any of the other things that can lead to woeful disappointment. Anyway, there we were in the cold night, our breath clouding around us, Peter’s hands on my shoulders under my hair, and I felt this wonderful sense of freedom and anticipation, and of course I was already as turned on as hell. I smiled up at him and closed my eyes and waited for him to kiss me, and when he did it wasn’t disappointing in the slightest. His lips were warm and soft and dry, and his tongue gently questing, and I could feel that he was smiling while we kissed, and I was too. I could feel the roughness of his jumper under his coat and the hardness of his back, and I could tell from the erection pressing into my hip that his cock was going to be neither mushroom-like nor stunted.
We moved apart after a long, long time, and grinned at each other in the moonlight. “Your parents’ place or mine?” Peter said. “Yours is closer,” I said, and we ran down the road together, holding hands and giggling like teenagers, every now and then stopping to snog each other. We got to the driveway of Peter’s parents’ house, which was a great, red-brick pile of a place, and walked as silently as we could over the gravel. The house was in darkness, and Peter made a silent ‘shhh’ face at me as he fitted his key in the lock (after a couple of unsuccessful attempts; clearly he was also a bit pissed). He took my hand and led me up the dark staircase and into his bedroom, which hilariously looked exactly as it had when we’d lounged around in it as teenagers, smoking illicit fags and listening to Radiohead CDs, even down to the block-mounted Arsenal posters on the walls. It was really strange and actually incredibly erotic, because of course all those years ago I had longed and longed to be kissed by Peter, but it had never happened because he was the fittest boy in our year and I was the geeky girl who was good at English.
He closed the door but left the curtains open so the room was flooded with moonlight, and I could see the smile that never seemed to leave his face, and the amazing length of his eyelashes as he took me in his arms again and we carried on kissing, now sort of snatching at each other’s clothes as well. I unbuckled his belt and started to undo the buttons of his shirt under his jumper; he rather expertly undid the clasp on my bra with one hand and his warm fingers found my breasts. I heard myself give a little gasp and my hips bucked towards him; he gasped too, and we pulled apart again and both went, “Shhh,” and started giggling madly. I sat down on the bed and pulled off my boots and socks – there’s no elegant way to do this, is there? – and Peter sat next to me and did the same, then he pushed me back against the faded denim-coloured duvet and kissed me on and on and on while he unbuttoned my jeans and explored me with gentle, skilful fingers until I came. I looked at him and grinned again, and he rummaged around in his bedside drawer and found a condom, and we took off the rest of our clothes and he put it on – I remember hoping fleetingly that it wasn’t 2001 vintage like the rest of the room – and then we had the most amazing fuck. Every now and then we’d sort of pause and look at each other and laugh, because it was just too random and so nice, and our bodies worked together so well, with just enough skill and a total lack of self-consciousness. Then the pace increased and we moved more frenziedly together, and I could feel sweat on his back and I kept my eyes open so I could see his face when he came, and it looked and felt so fantastic I came again too. We lay in each other’s arms in the single bed, whispering and giggling, until we fell asleep.
I jolted awake the next morning from a horrible dream in which I turned up for a meeting with Barri with no clothes on, with a sense of having forgotten something important. It took me a few seconds to realise where I was. Peter had already got up, and I realised I’d better hurry and make myself scarce and get back to Dad’s. My phone had died so I had no way of knowing what time it was, but the sun was shining brightly outside and I knew it was late. I dragged my clothes on and picked up my bag and tiptoed out, hoping that I’d be able to sneak away unnoticed and find my way home, but there at the bottom of the stairs was Peter’s sister Jess in a huge white meringue of a dress and about a zillion pretty bridesmaids in teal satin shifts, and Mrs Barclay in coral with a massive hat. I thought about turning round and bolting back to Peter’s room but it was too late, they’d seen me. I had no alternative but to carry on my walk of shame down the stairs, going more and more slowly as more and more eyes turned towards me, and honestly, I have never been so mortified in all my life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When I got back to Dad’s, he wasn’t there, and once I’d charged my phone I got a text from him saying he’d spent the night in the hospital with Serena. I was hugely relieved – partly that she was still okay, obviously, but also that Dad hadn’t found out about my dirty stop-out behaviour. He would have been terribly worried and then probably had a complete wobbly and grounded me, like he used to do when I was fourteen. So I spent the rest of the weekend being a model daughter: I did actually make a couple of dishes of veggie lasagne and put them in the fridge, telling Dad he needed to keep his strength up, and I baked a huge batch of chocolate brownies (the one and only thing I can actually bake), and took them round to the hospital for Serena, along with a stack
of copies of Wired and Macworld and Computer Arts magazines. She was really pleased, and immediately ate about three in rapid succession – brownies, obviously, not glossy IT-related publications. For such a tiny woman, Serena can put away an incredible amount of cake. According to Dad, the doctors were feeling quite positive about the chances of the babies hanging in there for a few more weeks – the idea apparently was to fill them with steroids and get them to grow as quickly as possible, which sounded a bit freaky to me – I imagined two monster twins expanding and expanding inside Serena and eventually splitting her open like something out of a horror movie, but then I’ve always been a bit squeamish about childbirth. Evidently if they could get the babies to around thirty weeks’ gestation they were almost certain to be okay, so it was now just a question of keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that Serena wouldn’t go completely off her head with boredom lying flat on her back for another ten weeks.
Anyway, I stayed with Dad on Saturday and Sunday nights, and went straight in to the office on Monday morning, partly, I’ll admit, because I wasn’t in the mood to see Rose. She hadn’t even texted me to find out what was happening, and every time I thought about her I felt a cold twist of anger and worry. I was furious about her selfish and uncaring attitude towards Serena. Despite all my resolutions to the contrary, I’d ended up being the good, dutiful daughter, again. I knew that what I’d done was the right thing, but even the memory of my night with Peter, which brought a smile to my face and a flush of remembered pleasure to my body, was cold comfort.
Most of all, I was genuinely puzzled by Rose’s behaviour. Although she’s sometimes thoughtless, she is a genuinely kind person, and it seemed unlike her to sustain such a horrible attitude for such a long time, especially if she was all loved up and happy herself. It really made me sad that Rose wasn’t going to be the first person to hear the story of my night with Peter and my walk of shame the next day – she would have pissed herself laughing. But I didn’t want to talk to her about it, or indeed about anything else, really. I don’t believe in telepathy or any of that nonsense – obviously – but all our lives I’ve felt a sort of connection with Rose, almost as if she’s been a second presence in my brain, and every so often I’m able to see her face or hear her voice and know how she’d react to whatever I am doing or saying at the time. Now that wasn’t there. I had absolutely no idea where Rose was, what she was doing or thinking or feeling. I didn’t even know when I’d next be seeing her, although of course I assumed that she’d be among those present at Oliver’s birthday party. There was an empty, yawning space that had opened up between us, and thinking about it almost made me cry, on the crowded commuter train just as it was pulling into Paddington, which would have made me look like a right mentalist.
I pushed my worry about Rose to the back of my mind as I made my way to the office, which wasn’t actually too difficult as I had a busy week ahead and some stuff on the go that I was really quite excited about. I’d put together a story about how our new Spring/Summer collection, which was hitting the store that week, was a microcosm of worldwide trends outside of fashion – talking about environmental issues and technology being deployed for the greater good and people’s sense of themselves as global citizens and all that stuff. It was all touchy-feely, calculated to assuage any guilt Black & White’s customers might feel about the fact that essentially what they were doing was spunking enough cash to feed a family in Somalia for about five years on their new season’s wardrobe. Anyway I was really pleased about it, and I knew that a lot of the style journalists I’d made contact with would use it, and I might even have a shot at getting on to some of the hard news pages too. This would be a massive coup, and one I badly needed, because I was beginning to realise that Barri was not the easiest person in the world to work for. He was capricious, inconsistent, demanding, and appeared to make pets out of some of the members of his team, changing them on a whim and leaving whoever had been the last flavour of the month wondering what on earth she’d done wrong. Just the previous week, Odette had been in tears because Barri had given her a particularly humiliating public bollocking and then whisked Isla out to lunch. Deride and rule appeared to be Barri’s modus operandi, and I neither liked nor respected it.
Anyway, dodgy management style or no, it was Monday morning and the only way to begin the week as far as I’m concerned is to ease into it gently, so I switched on my computer, sipped my coffee and ate my rather grim but allegedly low-fat, low-sugar porridge while I checked my emails, and then I logged on to Facebook and straight away up pinged a message from Claire.
“Ellie! Where have you been?”
Avoiding you, I thought. And perhaps you’ve been avoiding me, too. “Hey,” I typed. “What’s up?”
“Loads!” she messaged back. “Big weekend! Huge!”
Shit, I thought. Ben. Are they getting married? Surely not. It had only been a few weeks. Moving in together? A knot of tension formed in my stomach, but I forced myself to type a cheery, “Tell all!”
There was a pause, and I imagined her typing frantically away. Then her message appeared on my screen.
“Your god-daughter has only started cruising!! Before her first birthday!! How super-advanced is she? She zooms around the place holding on to walls and furniture like a little monkey, it’s so cute and clever but I wasn’t expecting her to start for ages so I had to spend the entire weekend Pers-proofing the flat. She is nattering away like mad too – I’m sure on Saturday she tried to say ‘Camelduck’. How cool if that was her first word?”
“Bless her, the clever sausage!” I replied, my heart melting. “When can I see you both? It’s been ages.”
“We must make a plan,” Claire said, with maddening vagueness. Once again, I imagined her and Ben together, talking pityingly about me and my single status and wondering how they were going to reveal their new-found love to me. Well, I wasn’t going to ask, but I was going to let them know that they weren’t the only ones having wild, passionate sex. “So… you’ll never guess what?”
“What??” said Claire.
“I only shagged Peter Barclay,” I said. I’d regaled Claire in the past with the sorry tale of Peter and the school play, but just in case she’d forgotten I added, “Romeo? Fittest boy in the sixth form?”
“Waaaah!” went Claire, “Fabulous! What happened?”
I quickly updated her on the Serena situation, then told her the story of my night in the pub with Peter and sneaking into his bedroom, and how I’d woken up the next day and been confronted with the bridal party and had to stand there and be introduced to all of them, absolutely desperate to get out of there and dying for a wee and conscious that I simply reeked of sex.
“Can’t… breathe…” Claire typed. “OMG, Ellie, only you. That is so funny. You’ve made my day. So are you going to be seeing him again? Would be so romantic if the two of you got together, hey? Romeo and Juliet revisited.”
“Will have to wait and see,” I typed, then added a few random smilies for good measure.
I took a sip of my coffee and realised it was stone cold, and that I’d been typing away to Claire for the best part of half an hour, and I could see Daisy giving me a look from across the office that said, “You aren’t really typing press releases at ten o’clock on a Monday morning,” so I said to Claire, “Am being watched. Must go. Will update you on all news when I see you. Big love and cuddles to Pers from her proud godmother.”
“L8r xxxxx,” said Claire, and I shut down Facebook – after quickly checking to see if Oliver had updated his status over the weekend, but he’d only posted a link to some story in The Economist about quantitative easing. I actually found myself reading it all the way through, impenetrable and dull as it was, because doing so made me feel somehow a bit closer to Oliver, and I imagined the next time I saw him being able to say something intelligent about the UK economy and him being impressed. Which is proof if proof were needed that unrequited love makes idiots of us all.
Anyway, Monday
wore on and I fired off a few emails, put the finishing touches to my press release and had a meeting with Isla to select the images that would accompany it, and then I went out and bought a sandwich and a pair of shoes, the way you do, and when I got back to the office there was a massive bunch of yellow roses on my desk.
“Who put these here?” I demanded. “Who are they for?”
“Torquil put them there, obviously,” said Piper. “And, obviously, they’re for you. Isn’t there a note? How cool – do you have a secret admirer?”
I located the card in amongst all the flowers and opened the little envelope, and felt myself blushing absolutely scarlet as I read.
“Ellie – I just wanted to say sorry for leaving you in the lurch on Saturday. I was summoned to take our mad Nan to the church and stop her throwing Polo mints at the guests. I didn’t want to wake you – you were like Sleeping Beauty. But I suppose I should have done, because I heard you made quite an entrance. Anyway, it was an incredible night and I’d love to see you again. You know where to find me. Peter x.”
I was wearing skinny petrol-blue jeans, a grey mohair jumper, grey and plum outsize scarf tied in one of the intricate knots Vanessa had shown me, a silver aviator jacket and fringed, grey suede boots. It certainly wasn’t the sort of outfit I’d have chosen for Sunday lunch followed by a walk along the canal six months ago; it’s what Rose would have worn, and I would have teased her for wearing. It did, however, look pretty good, and I felt my first actual date with Peter warranted making a bit of an effort. I’d even been, for the first time in my life, to have my eyebrows properly shaped at a salon, and a highly shaming and painful experience it had been too, particularly the bit in the beginning when Anya the eyebrow girl limbered up her tweezer hand and said, “We start in the middle, yes?” I mean, it had been a long time and everything, but it’s not like I’m Frida Kahlo. Cheeky mare.
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