by Cathy Bussey
Rik pulled away awkwardly. Lucinda didn’t release her hold on his neck. ‘Let’s go back over,’ she breathed, writhing catlike against him.
Faith could feel her stomach pulsating, forcing acid threateningly up into her mouth. Jesus, she thought. I actually might be sick. She gripped the table and GT whined softly.
Lucinda was still waiting. Don’t do it, Rik, Faith willed him, not when I need you more than I’ve ever needed you, and he certainly seemed to look puzzled, but he nodded and followed Lucinda as she practically danced out of the room.
Paul glanced over at Faith. ‘God, love, are you OK?’ Her lip was curled up at one side, baring her teeth like an Elvis impersonator, her nose was wrinkled and her brow was tightly knitted together. She must have physically recoiled, because her head was pressing back against her neck, no doubt giving her a fetching double chin. Paul looked momentarily amused at her expression. ‘Don’t know why she doesn’t just mark out her territory by pissing all over him,’ he rumbled disapprovingly.
Even Minel looked thoroughly sickened. ‘Nobody wants to watch that. Especially a blood relative.’
More bile flooded into Faith’s her mouth, and her stomach heaved. She got up and lurched.
Paul stood up too. ‘Not on me,’ he roared. ‘Get to the toilet, love, quick!’
Faith pelted through the kitchen and into the downstairs bathroom and collapsed in front of the toilet, grabbing it with both hands. She retched noisily a couple of times, but all that came up was brown liquid, the cup of tea and that drink her dad had bought her, she supposed. Good thing she hadn’t got round to actually eating anything or she’d probably have painted the walls.
GT, beside himself at his mistress’s plight, nosed his way into the door, which she hadn’t managed to shut properly in time. He sniffed at her and licked her face a couple of times. Only a dog, Faith thought, would want to lick me all over after I’ve just thrown up. If I had been sick all up the walls he would have probably cleaned it up for me. The thought made her heave again, but there was nothing for her to throw up and she sat back, weak and clammy, still clutching GT to her like a furry lifeline.
She stayed in there with him for a few moments, waiting for the heaving and retching to pass, then she got to her feet and stumbled out of the toilet. She hated being sick. She felt lonely and vulnerable and empty, isolated and adrift, the unsettling sense of something being wrong inside the very centre of her. Why the hell wasn’t Rik here stroking her hair and cooling her forehead and telling her she’d be OK?
Minel was looking worried when she came out. ‘What was that all about?’
‘Delayed shock, I guess,’ Faith said. ‘On the plus side, I’m probably fine to drive. Time I was heading off.’
‘Paul will take you,’ Minel said. ‘You are not driving in this condition.’
Paul, his face still concerned, nodded. ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’
‘If you want to stay here,’ Minel said, ‘tonight, tomorrow night, all week, all summer. Whenever. We’re here. I’ll make up a room for you, so you know it’s always there.’
‘Thanks.’ Faith’s voice was weak and wavery after the vomiting.
Paul put his arm around her shoulders, warming her reassuringly. ‘Where are your keys?’ he asked, and Faith looked around for her bag, only to find its contents strewn across the floor and the bag itself half chewed up by an ecstatic GT.
‘You naughty boy,’ Minel chided.
Paul complained good-humouredly about the Land Rover as they wheezed home. Faith, not used to being a passenger in her own car, was thrown all over the place as it bounced merrily over potholes and humps in the road. ‘It’s not the smoothest ride,’ she admitted, as her head banged against the roof for what felt like the hundredth time.
‘Sure you’re OK?’ he asked as they pulled up outside her house. ‘You do look like you had a nasty shock.’
‘My parents,’ she said.
‘Not Rik and whatserface, then?’ His eyes were very kindly.
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Somehow,’ Paul said, ‘I was the only one who made the connection between Rik’s Damien from The Omen impersonation and your sudden absence from our lives all those years ago.’
Faith stared at the gearstick.
‘It was pretty hard to miss the atmosphere between you two when you first got back,’ he pressed. ‘And now you’re suddenly joined at the hip again and you’re looking at him like he’s the best thing since sliced bread…’
Paul might be the strong, silent-ish type — when he’s not yelling at teenagers — Faith thought, but he doesn’t miss a thing. He’s going to be such a great dad.
‘I can’t believe you picked up on it and Minel didn’t,’ she said eventually. ‘Back then, I mean.’
He rumbled with satisfaction. ‘She was probably a bit too close to the both of you,’ he said. ‘But to me it was as plain as the nose on your currently tearstained face that you and Rik were at it like rabbits.’
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Not for long, anyway. We had a — misunderstanding, and that was the end of it. It was years ago.’
‘Hmm.’ Paul didn’t sound convinced.
‘And that really was about more than just an abominable PDA,’ she protested. ‘My parents seem to have hit on some difficulties. Again.’ She sighed. ‘Looks like I really am reliving my teenage years. The worst parts of them, anyway.’
‘I don’t think you’re the only one,’ Paul said meaningfully.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’ve known Rik a long time,’ he said. ‘Whatever went on with you two, it was obviously rough on him. He was a very angry young man for a while. He seemed to become a lot more negative and cynical.’
A broken heart will do that to you, she thought. I should know.
‘But he seems much more like that idiot kid we all knew and loved, coinciding nicely with your reappearance.’ Paul went on. ‘Lucinda’s certainly got her charms,’ he said diplomatically. ‘But I’m not sure she’s quite his cup of tea.’
Neither, Faith thought, am I. She felt a leap of hope, then the reality of the afternoon came crashing in again.
‘Now isn’t the time,’ she said to Paul firmly. She kissed him quickly on the cheek. ‘Thanks Paul. I really appreciate it.’
‘See you Monday,’ he said. ‘Don’t be late.’ She wouldn’t dare. Paul might be kind and supportive and thoughtful outside of work, but on site he was still a monster and she wouldn’t have him any other way. Yelling with, and at, him had helped bring her back to life as much as anybody and anything else, except maybe Rik, and she got out of the car and trudged reluctantly towards the house.
Chapter 20
Faith hadn’t agreed a time to meet Rik on Sunday. She was looking forward to slogging around the quarry all day, thinking the manual labour would help keep her grounded while her thoughts about her parents formed and grew and took flight, hot air balloons floating around her head, knocking into each another, moving and dislodging one another until she was left with something remotely approaching a coherent dialogue.
But she didn’t want to turn up too early and risk disturbing him and Lucinda doing god knows what, probably on the kitchen table. Instead she kicked around the house annoying her mother with her monosyllabic responses to any attempts to engage her in conversation, and drinking tea until she was sure her tongue was starting to change colour. This is awful, she thought, I literally have nothing to say her because there’s only one thing I can think about, only one thing I want to ask her, and I’m not ready to do that yet.
She would have to stay at Hollyhocks. She only came home to sleep anyway, or rather, jerk awake at 3am, and it might be nicer if she knew Minel and Paul were down the hall if she needed them. And GT. He could come and sleep on her bed and protect her from her demons.
She packed a rucksack, folding and tucking pants, socks, bras, shorts and t-shirts one on top of the other, and p
utting a thin hoody on top for the evenings, which were beginning to develop just the faintest nip, a tiny hint of autumn thinking about creeping its sleepy golden tendrils around Hollyhocks and turning it from a rainbow of colour and green and sand to a narrower spectrum of blazing orange, pale yellow, deep red and burnished bronze.
She looked at the clock. It was only ten o’clock, she should give it a bit longer. Wait until half past, she ordered herself, and then you can go. Take the dog for a walk once you get there if it looks like Rik and Lucinda are set in for the morning. She made yet another cup of tea, and took it out onto the patio.
Of all the déjà vu she’d had this summer, this was definitely the worst. She was reminded horribly of the freefalling aftermath of the first time her parents had stunned her into passive, reeling shock. Her dad mustn’t have told her mother about their conversation yet because she was going about her business quite oblivious to her daughter’s turmoil. Faith thought grimly that Judith must be completely blind to her if she didn’t realise something was wrong.
Why wouldn’t she tell me, Faith ruminated, staring at her mother’s pottering outline through the kitchen window. Why did she let me think she was the innocent victim, that my father’s failing was the fundamental failing of all men, an inability to keep their base urges in check even when they had a happy home life to which they could anchor themselves?
She heard tyres skidding behind the back gate, and then it opened and Rik walked in. Faith gaped at him, the contrast between his still-unkempt appearance and her mother’s immaculate back patio too much for her poor muddled brain to handle. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Rik had come to her house. He had even asked her once if she had something she was hiding from him, the skeleton of a long-lost sibling in her cupboard perhaps, but Faith always used to feel so strongly he didn’t belong in this tight, sterile little world and she hadn’t needed yet more grief from her mother.
‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped.
‘Come to get you. You’re late.’
‘We didn’t set a time.’ You were too busy sloping off with that randy cow, she thought jealously. She examined him for traces of a certain glow, remembering how blissful he always looked after she had finished with him and they had lain back together, staring up at the ceiling, or the sky, watching and listening to the world carrying on idly like it hadn’t just all but shaken along with them. But her radar must have been all off, because she couldn’t read his expression at all.
‘I didn’t realise you were struggling or I’d have hung around,’ he said apologetically. ‘Paul told me you’d had an upset with your parents and you could have done with a bit of company and hadn’t needed to bear witness to any stomach-churning PDAs.’ Faith smiled despite herself. ‘We don’t have to go to the quarry if you’re not feeling up to it,’ he said kindly. ‘We can just head back and hang by the pool all day.’
‘No.’ She needed to do something more than just lie around and those heavy stones would be the perfect outlet for her fluctuating but increasingly restless energy. She could chuck them around to her heart’s content. She was quite looking forward to the burning in her arms and the ache in her legs. At least she would know she was alive.
‘You are coming, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I’m coming,’ she said. ‘I’ve packed a bag.’ She waved it at him. ‘Minel said I could stay a while, and I thought it might be a bit nicer than coming back here. I could use some company, even if it’s only GT. I want to go to the quarry,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘and kick the living daylights out of any unfortunate stone that happens to be in my path.’
‘Not too hard,’ Rik said. ‘You’ll break a toe and I don’t think even whatever’s going on for you now would save you from Paul’s wrath if his gardener was nobbled three weeks before we finish up.’
Was it only three weeks? Where was the time going? Three weeks, and Rik would be off to Cornwall and there would be no more lunchtime bike rides or yelling at Paul or oddly tricky, but nonetheless incredibly enlivening, conversations about the past and the future and everything in between.
Her mother stuck her head out of the door. ‘I thought I heard voices. Oh hello, Rik.’ Her tone cooled and her lips tightened.
You couldn’t even call it stubble now, Faith thought, eyeing Rik’s jaw, it’s a full-on beard and he looks utterly ridiculous and mildly threatening and faint-makingly gorgeous and like my wildest fantasy and her worst nightmare, all rolled up into one.
‘Hi Judith,’ he said pleasantly.
‘I’m off,’ Faith said to Judith. ‘Staying at Hollyhocks for a while.’
Judith eyed Rik suspiciously.
‘With Minel,’ Faith said.
‘When will you be back?’
‘Don’t know.’ Faith hadn’t even thought about it. ‘At some point, to get some clothes, probably. Where’s Dad?’ She had asked automatically, then remembered too late.
‘Golf,’ Judith said tonelessly and Faith saw her lips purse together once more. For a moment she felt a flash of pity for her mother. It couldn’t be much fun, rattling around the house plumping cushions and settling, sighing, into them to read yet another bodice-ripper while her husband was off re-enacting the steamy contents with some other woman.
Feeling alive, if only for a moment, while her mother pushed it all down and swallowed it along with whatever else she was lugging about inside of her that prevented her from wanting intimacy with her husband in the first place. Maybe if I ask her, Faith thought, try and get her to talk about it, help her shake it up, bring it out of her, maybe that would help get the ball rolling and then she and dad might —
Then her eyes moved of their own accord to Rik, who was watching her very intently, as if he knew she was contemplating telling him to go without her. She studied his beautiful, wild face, the traces of crow’s feet just beginning around those endlessly expressive dark eyes, his thick lashes curling upwards, his mouth which seemed made for smiling — or for other, more exciting things — almost obscured by that infernal facial hair.
She got to her feet. Rik automatically fell into place next to her. She reached out and took his hand, gripping it, needing to draw on his strength and use it to fuel her own. ‘See you soon,’ she said to her mother. ‘You know where I am if you need me.’
Judith, her eyes on Faith and Rik’s intertwined hands, closed the door.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Faith told Rik firmly as they rode back to Hollyhocks.
‘Whatever you want,’ he said, and they turned off down the track to the quarry. It was a bit more accommodating this time, the briars had already remembered their previous passage and parted company where they had begun to overlap.
Faith flung her bike down and pelted down the stairs, desperate to begin tearing up the ivy.
The first few tendrils clung stubbornly to the earth, as if pleading with her to leave them be, but she hauled determinedly and as she had predicted, once the first few acquiesced the whole lot seemed to give up as one, and she heaved and pulled and yanked, enjoying the faint crackling noise as the plant reluctantly released its hold on the steps. These steps belong to me, not you, she thought irrationally as she systematically uprooted the climber. Get off my land.
Rik had started moving stones and seemed content to work in silence. The ivy didn’t take long to clear and she was soon binding the tendrils together and tying them into a tight knot and wishing it hadn’t uprooted so quickly.
She leaped back down the stairs and began to heave at stones, ignoring Rik’s protestations that he could do it. She wanted something solid and heavy in her hands, and she lifted even the largest boulders easily, tossing them disdainfully aside as if they were made of hollow plastic. She hurled one against the side of the pit, listening to the crash as it landed a little way up the side and rolled down, taking smaller stones and rain-like gravel with it in a glittering shower that flashed under the rays of the ever-present sun. She thr
ew another, higher this time, generating a second tiny avalanche and watching the second stone thud mercilessly into the first, shifting it a little further with the impact.
She picked up another, and another, flinging them mindlessly against the wall, listening to the thuds and clashes and sprinkling and watching as the pit shifted and moved, changed its form and structure with each adjustment she made. It will recover, she thought, it’ll bounce back, I could hurl every stone in here against that gravel slope and it would still regroup, begin to heal, nurture life once more in the form of the tiny green strands that poked out from the rubble here and there.
It can take it, she thought, and she threw rock after rock until they had gathered in a pile at the side of the pit. It wasn’t enough and she began to pelt pieces of gravel at the miniature mound, watching them bounce here and there, pinging off the wall and settling back down into the pit.
I need a stick, she decided and shot up the steps, scouring the woodland floor for a suitable implement and picking up a twisted bough with moss on one side.
She ran back down the steps with the stick over her shoulder and began raining blows down on the pile of rocks, again and again, watching with a kind of detached fascination as the moss flew into the ether. The rocks resisted, then shuddered, then finally capitulated and rolled away until she had beaten her heap down to a scattering of rocks that littered the quarry floor, quailing beneath her as if wondering what kind of punishment she was going to inflict upon them next.
She dropped the stick, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her appetite for destruction temporarily satiated. She felt hot and flushed and she could feel the blood rushing around her body, roaring faintly in her ears, and her skin was tingling on the surface, the hairs on her arms standing up despite the heat. Now what, she wondered. Now what can I do?
Rik, who had been watching her wordlessly, touched her shoulder and she swung around and buried her face in his chest. He put his arms around her and she clung to him, and she could feel her heart pounding against her ribs and the heat of his body and she pushed her head even more insistently into his chest, opening her mouth so she could make a muffled sort of roaring noise right into his heart.