by Cathy Bussey
His arguments had always seemed to hold more weight than hers. Money. Security. The sensible option.
But I have never thought money and security are more important than living life, she thought. When did I let his worldview become mine? And why?
She had intended to go straight home, but then she remembered the pond and forced herself to drive reluctantly past her parents’ house and along the winding lane to Hollyhocks. At least once she’d drained that pond full of nightmares she could have a cup of tea with Minel, who would hopefully insist upon feeding her because she was starving.
But what if Rik was around? She might have concluded explaining herself was the only possible option, but that didn’t mean she was ready to do it just yet and definitely not dressed in sweaty Lycra, doing a fairly passable impression of a human condom. Hopefully he’d forgotten the flicker of humanity he’d displayed in the kitchen on Friday and be so affronted by her mere presence he’d disappear straight back off to the cottage to stick pins in a voodoo doll of her, or whatever he did over there at night.
She set the siphon going, then began to scrape up all the mud and sludge and rocks scattered around and pack it all into bags to hulk across to the skip on Monday. Dank pond mud oozed out from invisible gaps, covering her with stains and streaks. She wrinkled her nose in disgust.
GT, sensing her presence, came yapping towards her delightedly and she crouched down to cuddle the puppy. He was so pleased he launched himself bodily at her and Faith, caught off guard, lurched backwards and collapsed into the almost-drained bottom of the pond. GT followed her, sending flecks of mud flying with his scrabbling paws. He lay down and rolled in the sticky substance and Faith watched the expression of transported ecstasy on his little face. ‘I thought dogs had sensitive noses,’ she said. ‘How can you stand this stuff?’
‘GT!’
Oh no, that was Rik.
She lay down on her back, ignoring the filth and hoping the puppy wouldn’t betray her whereabouts. But GT was far too small to get out by himself and was leaping up and down, his head popping out of the top of the pond like a very muddy jack-in-the-box. She heard Rik laughing and another sound, the tinkling, almost bell-like tones of an unfamiliar woman.
That must be the super-hot girlfriend Minel had mentioned.
Hollyhocks hates me, Faith decided. It’s the only possible explanation. Why else would it try to kill me with that godforsaken door and make my job so difficult and now somehow get me plastered in this rancid stuff before rudely and unexpectedly flinging me in front of Rik and the super-hot girlfriend? It hates me all right, she thought, and I have a feeling I know why. After all, Rik belonged to Hollyhocks before I did. It’s well and truly on his side and it’s not going to forgive me until I tell him the truth.
Either that or I’m a mud-coated idiot in skintight Lycra with a guilty conscience.
‘I’ll get him,’ Rik said. She could hear footsteps approaching and she seized the puppy and threw him out of the pond. ‘Oh, there you are,’ Rik said to GT. ‘How did you get up from there?’
Any second now, she thought, he’s going to look down and find me lying here. I’m going to have to style it out.
‘Oh, hi Rik,’ Faith, standing up, said airily, as if she always grubbed around in the bottom of cesspits.
The super-hot girlfriend clapped her hand over her mouth in horror. Of course she was stunning, Faith thought with resignation, why wouldn’t she be? She had a sheet of gleaming dark hair that fell to her slender shoulders and her long heavy eyelashes curled enticingly above china-blue eyes. She had porcelain skin, artfully flushed cheeks, seashell-pink lips and there was nothing modest about the mesmerising, flowing curves of her cleavage.
‘Hi Faith,’ Rik said blandly, as if he, too, saw nothing out of the ordinary about her rising from the pit of a pond liberally coated in its contents like a much, much less alluring version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ‘This is Lucinda.’
‘Hi,’ Faith said, plastering a big smile on her face and automatically reaching out her hand. Lucinda stepped back, appalled. Faith looked down and saw that it was also plastered, but in filth.
‘This is Faith,’ Rik said to Lucinda. ‘Our gardener.’ As if that explained everything.
‘Oh right,’ Lucinda said, clearly befuddled. ‘Do you roll around in it or something?’
‘Not voluntarily. I went in after GT.’
There was a long, heavily pregnant pause. Faith waited for Rik to say something else, possibly elaborating that Lucinda was his girlfriend and the hands-down love of his life and responsible for the most mind-blowing sex he’d ever had, but he stayed resolutely silent. Which was really all she needed in the way of confirmation.
Lucinda herself meanwhile was still daintily gagging over the close encounter with Faith’s mud-covered hand.
Awkward, Faith thought, doesn’t even come close.
‘I’ll take him down to the hose and wash us both off.’ Faith broke the silence eventually and clicked her fingers at GT, who obediently shot to her side.
‘At least somebody can get that puppy in hand,’ Lucinda said, and Faith saw telltale scratches on her delicate ankles. How do those things hold those things up, she wondered, looking once again at Lucinda’s magnificent chest.
‘We do have a shower, you know,’ Rik said. ‘You don’t have to use the hose.’
‘I’ll drip mud all up the stairs,’ Faith said awkwardly. ‘I can’t exactly strip naked in the kitchen.’
Lucinda blanched, as if the very prospect of whatever lurked beneath Faith’s mud-plastered human condom was both unthinkable and unspeakable. Once again Rik looked disinclined to come to her rescue.
‘I’ll head back,’ Faith mumbled. ‘Tell Min I’ll swing by tomorrow to check on the pond.’ She turned to Lucinda. ‘Nice to meet you, Louisa.’
‘It’s Lucinda.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Faith said. ‘I’m terrible with names.’
‘She’s weird,’ Faith heard Lucinda say to Rik as she took off across the lawn. ‘Where did you find her?’
‘We were friends when we were kids,’ he said.
‘Were you close?’
There was a pause.
Whatever Rik says to that, Faith thought, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear it. She dropped her head, and walked towards the waiting embrace of the Land Rover.
Chapter 8
The day after Minel’s birthday party Faith did not regret crashing headlong through the boundaries of friendship with Rik. In fact she thought of virtually nothing else. She replayed the evening over and over in her head, from the second he first kissed her and brought the reality of her feelings for him into blazing, glorious technicolour to the euphoric expression on his face as she’d finally kissed him goodbye.
‘I had no idea,’ she’d gasped to him, forcing him to pause in his ongoing wrestling with the fastening of her bra. ‘No idea you ever saw me as anything other than a friend.’
Rik had looked at her incredulously. ‘Are you joking?’
‘I mean you are a boy,’ she’d conceded, thinking of Judith’s endless lectures on the subject of boys all wanting only one thing. ‘So I suppose you must think about this with every girl who comes within a hundred miles of you.’
‘I don’t,’ he’d said. ‘Just you. Just you and always you, from the moment I first met you.’
‘Then why didn’t you ever say anything?’
He sighed. ‘I didn’t think you thought about me like that, and I was worried if I tried anything on with you you wouldn’t want to hang out with me any more. I’d rather stay friends with you and never take it any further than not see you at all.’
That was sweet, she thought, really sweet actually, but —
‘What about all that rubbish about me fancying you? You’ve been on about it for months.’
Rik looked sheepish. ‘I didn’t mean it. I didn’t really know what else to do so I just hoped some of it might magically go from my head to yours and be
come true.’
‘But earlier,’ she continued. ‘If you were really worried about losing me as a friend — why did you kiss me like that?’
‘I fancy you so much I had to take a shot,’ he said. ‘And you must like at least something about me to put up with me.’ As if to prove the point he kissed her again and Faith supposed that would probably do for now, because more jolts of that primal something were ripping through her and she didn’t really know what to do about it all.
But now Rik was on the hunt for some answers, and he pulled away again. ‘I didn’t think you saw me this way either.’
‘I don’t,’ she said automatically, then realised her hands, which were pushed up underneath his t-shirt and creeping over his hot, smooth skin might beg to differ, and so might the rest of her. ‘I mean, I didn’t.’
But now she was thinking about it, she had always liked watching him ride his bike and been struck by aggressive and graceful he was, and she did love making him laugh because he had such a radiant smile. In fact, she had consciously admired just about every part of Rik, but never with the awareness that she could now feel flooding through every part of her.
‘I don’t really know why I never thought about you like that,’ she said eventually. ‘Bit slow on the uptake, maybe, when it counts. I think it’s safe to say I will definitely be thinking about you like that now.’
‘Good,’ he said fervently.
After that the conversation had taken a very different turn, as Rik had confessed to her quite candidly exactly what had been on his mind every time they’d locked horns in the last few months. And she in turn had shyly admitted to the knot of tension and excitement and longing in her core.
‘All right,’ he’d said, sounding like he was congratulating her, or himself, or possibly both of them. ‘So we should do something about this.’
‘We can’t have sex,’ she’d squeaked, knowing she was in no way ready to cross that line just yet. ‘I hope you don’t think just because we’re here that I’m going to —’
‘I don’t think anything,’ he said hastily. ‘I don’t expect anything at all. It’s completely your call. I’ll do anything you want.’
‘I don’t really know,’ she swallowed awkwardly. ‘I don’t know what I, um…’ She didn’t want to tell him she’d never let anybody past the final frontier of her waisband before.
‘You don’t know what you like?’ Rik guessed.
She swallowed again and nodded.
‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fun to find out.’
He made it sound like an adventure and she thought yes, that’s how it should be. An adventure. That’s what he and I do.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It will be fun.’
But the next day was Monday, which meant school, which meant facing up to all the chatter and gossip about Minel’s birthday party.
‘So,’ Minel demanded immediately as soon as she’d cornered Faith in the corridor. Her eyes were glittering with mischief, rather like Rik’s did, Faith noted, and she swallowed nervously. ‘What was that all about then, at my party? You and my brother.’
‘What, you mean with the hose pipe?’ Faith hoped she could feign innocence.
‘Not the hose pipe,’ Minel said patiently. ‘That horror show that was you two practically bonking in front of all of us.’
Gah, Faith thought, did she follow us to the copse? ‘You were watching?’ She should have denied it, she had to deny it. ‘Nothing happened,’ she rambled untruthfully. ‘We were just talking…’
‘We all saw you,’ Minel interrupted, ‘We thought you were going to rip each other’s clothes off and start shagging there and then in the middle of the hay barn. Is that what you two have been getting up to, off on your bike rides?’ She snorted with mirth.
‘Oh that,’ Faith said dismissively, as if she had forgotten all about it. ‘Just thought we’d put it on for the crowd, like Sara and Paul did. And you and Gabe.’
As if on cue, a bunch of uniformed boys marched past, Rik among them. Faith flushed as his eyes caught hers, and he paused, a smile beginning to creep around the corners of his mouth. She felt suddenly hot and fidgety, and she hoped she wasn’t shuffling or squirming in a compromising manner.
‘Here he is,’ Minel said jubilantly, ‘your boyfriend.’
Rik had opened his mouth to say something and Faith cut him off quickly. ‘I was just explaining that the Spin the Bottle stuff was a wind-up,’ she said. She forced herself to look appalled at the memory. ‘Bloody awful wind-up,’ she said, hating herself when she saw a flash of hurt in Rik’s eyes. ‘I’m not going there again.’
Rik’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yeah, you’re not exactly my type either,’ he said disdainfully. His mates rumbled in protest and Rik shoved the closest one to him, sending them all cannoning into one another like a spotty pinball machine. ‘At least Sophie Barnes didn’t have to run home with Mummy at 11pm on the dot.’
Faith felt the blood draining from her face and she gaped a couple of times, but no sound came out.
Faith wanted Rik to ring her to say he’d only been joking about Sophie Barnes, but he was clearly annoyed, or it was true, because he didn’t phone. They ignored each other pointedly at school and she decided that he wasn’t interested in her any more, presumably because she couldn’t hold a candle to the magnificent Sophie Barnes. And now he would have decided they weren’t even friends any more. It had obviously all got too weird.
But on the first day of the holidays there he was, knocking at her front door, looking far too excited and already a bit sweaty and roughed up from the ride over which he must have completed in record time. Faith’s mother’s lips had tightened pointedly as she sat at the kitchen table drinking tea and eyeing this young man with windswept hair and sparkling eyes which were fixed almost hungrily on her flustered, uncharacteristically clumsy daughter.
Rik was wearing his usual summer attire of faded khaki shorts, and an old t-shirt, covered in oil, which seemed to repulse Judith even more. Faith, on the other hand, thought he looked almost indecent.
‘Shall we go to the quarry?’ he asked eagerly. She nodded.
Judith cleared her throat pointedly. ‘Don’t you have coursework?’
‘It can wait,’ Faith said vaguely.
‘When will you be back?’
‘I don’t know.’ Faith scowled. ‘When do you want me back?’
This was embarrassing, being given a curfew in front of Rik, but her mother would never let her out otherwise. ‘Six o’clock. And be careful,’ Judith said meaningfully. ‘You really should get a helmet.’
And mess up my hair and have Rik laugh at me, Faith thought. No way.
They rode off together and she felt horribly nervous. She didn’t open her mouth once and he seemed content with silence, although he was very chipper and upbeat, zooming and zig-zagging ahead of her along the tree-lined roads, pulling wheelies and flicking V-signs at irate motorists.
He’s going to act like it never happened, and that we’re just mates going for a bike ride, she thought, feeling disappointment and humiliation coursing through her in waves. So much for him worrying that she might regret it. He had obviously changed his mind about her, and now she was going to have to pretend it had all meant nothing.
The idea of Rik realising just how much she’d opened herself up to him was beyond excruciating. She’d been so convinced he was genuine, she could have sworn she had even tasted his raw vulnerability on her tongue.
She should go, but she wanted to lose herself on her bike until the shame and mortification had passed, although she didn’t want to talk to Rik so jumps were out of the question. Once they got to the quarry she turned her bike immediately and dropped in to the gravel pit.
‘Faith, wait!’ Rik sounded anxious and she ignored him, but she’d forgotten to check for the huge stones, which were constantly shifting and becoming dislodged, sometimes dangerously. One monster had fallen, and she only saw it when it was too late. She cannoned into it
full pelt and flew in a graceless arc over her handlebars, slamming face-first into the ground.
Rik sprinted over and she felt him pull her bike off her. She could taste blood in her mouth as she sat up.
‘That’s pretty bad,’ he said. ‘Rinse it.’ He handed her some water and she poured it over her face, wincing as it hit her raw, bloodied skin. He took her face in his hand. ‘You’ve cut your lip. You might have some gravel in there. Let’s get you back home.’
They rode back very slowly, and Rik stayed close to her. He took her bike from her and put it in the hay barn, then he put his arm around her and they walked up to the cottage. She felt weak and shaky, the adrenaline draining away as the shock set in. She had fallen off enough times by now to know it always took a while to kick in for her, much longer than it did for Rik.
‘Sit down,’ he instructed, and she curled her legs under her and waited while he got the first aid kit from the bathroom. ‘Are you cold yet?’
‘A bit.’
He located an old hoody from behind the sofa and gave it to her, and sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m here. You just have to ride it out until it’s done its thing.’
She gritted her teeth as nausea slammed in, beginning in the pit of her stomach and curling outwards, tendrils of chilling wrongness, disorientating and battering, leaving her feeling isolated and vulnerable and like nothing was as it should be. Her head began to spin and she leaned forwards slightly. Rik stroked her hair and murmured comforting nonsense in her ear. She closed her eyes and took his hand and breathed in his presence next to her.
After a few minutes she felt better, and sat back up. ‘All done.’ She squeezed his hand gratefully, her animosity forgotten. ‘Thanks Rikki.’
‘Let me sort this out for you. Hold still.’ She tried not to wince as he put TCP on some cotton wool and dabbed at her lip. ‘Oh your poor mouth,’ he said, ‘you’re all messed up, but no gravel.’