by Freya North
Juliana is so much more my type than that other one. Sassy and long-legged and beautifully turned out. She makes good money, she’s independent and sussed. She doesn’t just look her age, she acts it, too. She’s experienced – in bed, in business. I like that. I mean, look at her legs – lean and tanned. Not clad in stupid stripy tights. Her hair is scraped back into a neat fold – whatever it’s called – and her face is without blemish. Gorgeous haughty eyebrows, expensive but subtle make-up, teeth courtesy of three thousand pounds’ worth of re-enamelling. She’s so not Pip – thank God. She’s so much more what I like, what I’m after, what I’m used to.
‘Bon voyage,’ Zac raised his glass to Juliana who sipped sultrily at her wine. He downed his brandy and poured himself another measure; the bottle was to hand at the side of his chair. He couldn’t be bothered to fetch ice. He’d have it straight. Neat. It scorched. He could handle it. He stared over to Juliana. Her glass was nearly empty. He couldn’t be bothered to replenish it. She knew where the fridge was. He was in a dark mood. As beautiful as she was, this woman irritated him tonight. He’d fuck her, certainly, but not from direct desire; more from an oblique need to get something out of his system – and not merely an ejaculation of sperm. ‘Did you want to go out and eat?’ Zac asked out of politeness alone.
‘No, babe,’ Juliana said, ‘got to watch my weight.’ She’d made similar remarks for as long as Zac had known her, fishing for compliments, but today for the first time he couldn’t be bothered to flatter her.
‘A top-up?’ he offered, hoping she’d go to the fridge herself, if so. She gave a lascivious smirk. She walked over to him, her sinuous body slinking towards him like a Siamese cat on the prowl. She was silent. She sat on her heels at the foot of his Eames lounger and slowly travelled her fingers up his legs, massaging his musculature through Gap cotton twill. She took her eyes away from his only temporarily, to admire the twitching bulge behind his flies. She traced her fingers along the length of his shaft. The buttons were practically popping themselves open and his cock sprang to attention through the gap in his boxers. Zac caught his breath as Juliana slowly, lightly, drew her hands over the length of him. There was something incredibly titillating about seeing long manicured fingernails, varnished the colour of damson, trace the dimensions of his cock. She could just as well dig in and hurt him as be gentle and feather light in her fondle. Just like when she took him in her mouth (and she had this great way of taking all of him all the way down), she could so easily bite him. When he was in her mouth, he could gently stroke her head, or he could enmesh his fingers in her hair and thrust her head down deep. Spearing her throat. Making her gag. Making him gasp. God, her blow-jobs were good. She was either a natural or she’d watched a glut of porn movies and learned the moves brilliantly.
Usually he’d ask. Usually, Zac would wait to be invited. Not tonight. Tonight, he went ahead and came in Juliana’s mouth with no warning, no words, not even an anticipatory quickening of his breathing. Just one long exhalation. Usually she’d swallow. Follow it up with some seductive lip licking and a sated glaze to her eyes. Tonight, she spat out his spunk into her wineglass. He wasn’t offended. It wasn’t as if she’d wasted good wine – her glass was empty – and it wasn’t as if he’d offered to refill it for her.
Pip phoned Zac a couple of days later and left a message on his answering machine. ‘Hullo, Zac, it’s Pip here. Just to say it was great to see you and Tom last Thursday – sorry I couldn’t spend more time with you both but a clown doctor’s duties come first. Anyway, speak to you soon, hey? Ta-ra.’
He listened to it once more, decided there was nothing to pick up on between the lines, nothing to listen to again, nothing to reply to. So he didn’t. He deleted it. It seemed to him to be an appropriate reaction. Not least because it counteracted the ridiculous softening effect that her voice alone appeared to spin through him.
Pip hadn’t phoned Zac for any other reason than to say ‘hullo’. She didn’t expect him to reply – there was nothing to respond to. Simply, she had thought of him, Tom too, as she headed east to Caleb’s on a Saturday afternoon. And that was the only reason for her call.
God – life is really quite sussed at the moment! she mused, showering at Caleb’s an hour or so later; her cab already waiting outside his apartment block.
Molly phoned Zac. He picked up the call midway through her message. She wanted to arrange farewell drinks for Juliana – or did he have something special planned just for the two of them? No, nothing, he said, giving her the go-ahead to organize an evening.
Zac phoned his brother. Not that he needed to or even really wanted to. They’d had beers last week which had been good and lively. Actually, though he wouldn’t admit it, Zac was hoping that his sister-in-law Ruth would answer the phone. His wish was granted, yet he was stuck for words. What on earth was he going to say? Why had he phoned? What was it, exactly, that he wanted to say?
‘Hiya!’
That’ll do for starters, Zac.
‘Zac, how are you? Thank you for returning your brother in such a sorry state the other night. I slept in the spare room. He slept with a bucket. Which, I hasten to add, he forgot about the next morning – but which I found. Though of course he’d already left for work.’
‘Never could take his drink,’ Zac laughed.
‘Grounds for divorce,’ Ruth muttered, ‘or a trip to Emporio at the very least.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Zac said with heart.
‘Actually,’ said his sister-in-law, ‘any time – if it happens again, sod Emporio, it’s Prada here I come.’
‘My dear,’ Zac joshed in passable plummy tones, ‘if you want to do Prada, you’ll have to change postcodes.’
‘Perhaps changing husbands would be less hassle,’ Ruth mused.
‘There’s always that,’ Zac agreed, having often thought this woman was actually too good for his errant brother. ‘Listen, I was phoning because Tom’s been a bit down and I thought it’s been ages since he and Billy hung out.’
‘Great idea,’ Ruth enthused. ‘How about tomorrow – for once it’s a Sunday with no parties to go to. But Jim is playing in some golf tournament with the blokes.’
‘How about kite flying on Parliament Hill, weather permitting?’ suggested Zac who, though fond of his brother and ‘the blokes’, was useless at golf.
‘Only if I can have a 99 ice-cream,’ Ruth said, ‘weather permitting.’
‘Permission dependent on whether you behave yourself,’ Zac laughed.
Zac’s kite wasn’t the only thing he tied in knots the next day. Ruth rather enjoyed the spectacle of her brother-in-law tripping over his words as much as over the twine. She had never entertained the notion of Zac Holmes becoming tongue-tied. She was tempted to tease, but actually his vulnerability was really quite touching and she was flattered it was to her that he was turning.
‘It’s just – I don’t know – whatever,’ said Zac, forcing the words out whilst tugging at the line as Billy and Tom craned their gaze skywards. ‘You know?’
‘Of course,’ Ruth responded, ‘you’re making perfect sense, dearest.’ She spied the ice-cream van and wondered if it was unseemly to head for it less than fifteen minutes after arriving at the park, less than an hour since a hearty lunch at Giraffe in Hampstead. She’d wait, she decided, until Zac had got off his chest whatever was currently clogging it.
The kite was airborne and momentarily steady so Zac gave one section of string to Billy to hold, the other to Tom. The children stood as still as the kite would let them, tugging gently every now and then on their respective ends, grinning at each other and their parents. Zac came close to Ruth. ‘I think I’m interested in someone,’ he announced, ‘and it pisses me off.’
Ruth tried not to grin, or look surprised, or make it obvious that she was racking her brains wondering who. ‘Blimey, Zachary,’ she grinned, ‘I’d never have guessed!’ Her irony was lost on him. ‘Who who who?’ This seemed a more conducive approach. Zac grinne
d in a slightly embarrassed way, unable to maintain his pissed-off demeanour. The kite remained helpfully aloft and Zac was quite encouraged by Ruth’s enthusiasm. ‘Actually, you know her,’ he said rather portentously. Still Ruth racked and grinned and asked who, who, who. ‘It’s just,’ Zac almost whines, not answering, ‘I don’t know what to do. Truly I don’t. Me, of all people. I don’t bloody know what to bloody do.’
Because Ruth had such scant information, she couldn’t comment, so she nodded sagely and waited. Despite being desperate for details, she knew better than to press her brother-in-law for the woman’s identity. ‘I mean,’ Zac continued, bolstered by Ruth being all ears and much nodding, ‘what would you do? If you were me?’ They watched the boys concentrating on the kite. ‘The thing is,’ Zac pushed on, ‘it’s all a bit odd for a number of reasons.’
‘I’ll say,’ Ruth agreed vigorously, thinking that all of this really was a bit odd for a number of reasons. Zac Holmes! In a tangle over a woman! Uncharted territory! What on earth could she advise? Who on earth was the woman?
‘I don’t even think she’s my type,’ Zac confided forlornly, ‘and it all started off badly anyway – with it appearing I was stalking her or being rude to her,’ he continued. He paused. Then smiled. ‘But then we went out for tea and had fun. And ate loads. And chatted easily, about swans and stuff. And she looked pretty and I wanted her to share my cab. I’d really have liked that.’
‘And?’ Ruth prompted, when Zac broke off to apologize to a father and son whose rather plain kite had just been dive-bombed by Billy and Tom’s.
‘We speak on the phone a fair bit,’ Zac shrugged, ‘but I don’t know if I’m flogging a dead horse, barking up the wrong tree, putting my eggs into one basket, getting the wrong end of the stick – and any other cliché along those lines you care to come up with.’ He flopped down on the grass. Ruth didn’t know whether to laugh or pinch him or embrace him.
‘What you mean is,’ she said in tactfully hushed tones, ‘you’re interested in her but you don’t know if it’s reciprocated and you are therefore unsure – perhaps apprehensive – about attempting to pursue her?’
Zac shrugged.
‘Fear of rejection?’ Ruth suggested. Zac snorted in a somewhat derisory manner, though Ruth was spot on.
‘She already has a sodding boyfriend,’ he grumbled, offering the essential missing link.
‘Aha,’ said Ruth, who had to bite back the urge to comment on how many fish there were in the sea, ‘the desirability of unavailability.’
‘Anyway, to be frank, she’s so not my type!’ he declared to Ruth and looked at her imploringly, as if wanting her to agree and thus release him from even thinking about her ever again; or, better, disagree and come up with a plan.
‘If she didn’t have the boyfriend,’ Ruth pondered, ‘would you be more forthright?’
Zac thought for a while and then shrugged. ‘If I buy you an ice-cream, will you tell me what to do?’ he said.
‘Sounds like a fair trade to me,’ said Ruth.
Zac returned with 99 cones all round and the four of them sat on Parliament Hill, licking and cooing. Ruth and Billy wolfed down their Flakes before touching the ice-cream and then tried to steal Zac and Tom’s. They failed. Zac had no idea Tom knew such vocabulary and was far too shocked and much too amused to reprimand him. The kite was hoisted aloft once more, steadied and handed to the children. Zac returned Ruth to his conundrum.
‘At the end of the day,’ he sighed, ‘I don’t know what to do. She’s involved with someone so I don’t know why I’m wasting my time even thinking about her. As I’ve said, she’s not really my type anyway, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Your type?’ Ruth posed, not as a genuine question but with a tone of incredulity instead. It was lost on Zac who just nodded sulkily. ‘Your type,’ Ruth said astutely, ‘is women you don’t have much in common with. Women you don’t need to get involved with.’ Zac lifted his shoulders to insinuate that wasn’t that the best way? ‘Now you’ve gone and met someone different,’ she defined, ‘who happens to be spoken for,’ she continued, ‘and you’re pissed off.’
‘S’pose,’ Zac admitted, slightly petulantly.
‘I think you’ll just have to be disappointed,’ said Ruth. ‘Sounds like it’s no go. It’s probably due to the fact that she is fun and chatty and all the other stuff, that counts for you liking her and that she has a boyfriend already.’
‘I guess,’ said Zac.
‘Who is she, then?’ Ruth asked softly. ‘You say I know her?’
‘That clown,’ Zac replied.
Ruth didn’t realize he was talking of the girl’s actual vocation. She thought perhaps he was insulting her boyfriend. ‘Who, though?’ she persisted.
‘That clown,’ Zac stressed, ‘the one at Billy’s party.’
Ruth had been stunned into silence three times in her life: when she passed all her A levels with top grades after minimal revision and glandular fever; when Jim proposed midway through a curry; and when the pregnancy test went blue with Billy. Now she was silent for the fourth time – the day when Zac said he’d fallen for the clown she’d found in the Ham and High. ‘You know,’ said Zac, ‘she calls herself Merry Bloody Martha though her name is, in fact, Philippa McCabe – only ever known as Pip. She also clowns for sick children in hospitals. She’s pretty intelligent. She’s pretty, full stop. And lively. And funny. And eats like a horse. Fuck it all.’
‘Mum, why’s your mouth open like that?’ Billy interrupted, having come over to ask for a drink of juice.
‘I’m fine, darling,’ Ruth replied, sending him off with a carton and one for Tom, too. ‘Zac, I had no idea,’ she marvelled, turning to her brother-in-law who raised his eyebrows and plucked at snatches of grass. ‘Have you seen much of her? Have you slept together? Bloody hell – am I the matchmaker? Am I to blame? To credit? Do you pay me? Does she? How much?’
‘I told you, we went out for tea – and I haven’t kissed her, let alone shagged her,’ Zac informed his sister-in-law, feeling finally at ease. ‘It’s just we seem to get on well – laugh and tease and chat. Easily.’
‘But she has a boyf, you think?’
‘Yes. I saw him, some bloody doctor at the frigging hospital.’
‘She wasn’t just having an innocent flirt, like one tends to, with colleagues? Like one does, with dishy docs?’
‘That,’ Zac proclaimed, ‘was the give-away. She caught his gaze, looked away and didn’t say a word. That’s how I knew. She was chatty and tactile with everyone else.’
‘Maybe she hates his guts?’ Ruth suggested feebly. Zac raised his eyebrows, faintly annoyed. ‘You weren’t there,’ he said, almost resentfully. ‘When she said “hullo” to him, she did so in her own voice, not Dr Pippity’s.’
‘Oh,’ Ruth said quietly, not fully aware of the significance.
‘Her nose didn’t light up when he said something,’ Zac sighed, ‘nor did she mimic him in any way.’
‘Ah,’ said Ruth in what she hoped was the appropriate tone.
‘Instead, she simply took one of the little boys’ crisps,’ Zac said, ‘and then she turned away from the doctor as if she hadn’t even noticed he was there.’
‘Well,’ Ruth declared though she now had no idea what to advise. She wanted to encourage her brother-in-law because it was the first time she’d seen him interested, let alone smitten; but how could she when the facts of the situation seemed clear and the situation seemed futile indeed? ‘Maybe just nurture your friendship with her,’ she suggested feebly, ‘and perhaps it’ll finish with Dr Kildare?’
‘That’s what’s so strange,’ said Zac. ‘I adore having friends who are female – but with Pip, it won’t do.’
Ruth couldn’t add anything to that. All or nothing. Zac would just have to continue dating gorgeous women who meant nothing emotionally.
‘Shame really,’ Ruth said later that night. Her husband looked up briefly and supposed she was talking to herself again so
buried his nose in the dregs of the Sunday papers. ‘There’s a lot to Zac, and it would be quite nice, really, to have him settled.’ Jim just made affirmative noises in his throat, having not heard a word.
Later, Ruth couldn’t sleep. She crept out of her bedroom and phoned Zac. It was almost one in the morning.
‘It’s me,’ she whispered.
‘Hullo,’ he whispered back; Tom was staying over and had insisted on sharing his bed.
‘I think you should tell her how you feel,’ Ruth imparted. ‘You have nothing to lose in doing so. If she’s really into this guy, then you’re no further away from where you are right now. If she isn’t, then you’re paving the way.’
‘Yes?’ said Zac. ‘Maybe.’
Ruth’s plan of action sounded quite good at such an ungodly hour.
In the cold light of the next day, however, Zac rejected it as totally unfeasible.
SIXTEEN
It wasn’t long before Zac was wondering whether to loiter. He decided against it, but only because Kentish Town tube, which was Pip’s nearest station, really was not a particularly pleasant location to frequent unless he was to develop a taste for Special Brew in earnest. Furthermore, he couldn’t very well traipse Tom down to St Bea’s in the City without an appointment; that was unthinkable. He did momentarily consider shoving his arm into a sling or casually hobbling around the ambulance bay evincing a limp, before reminding himself that St Bea’s was a hospital for children. He then wondered about phone tag – phoning until it was Pip, not the voice mail, who answered the call. However, both these approaches – by foot or by phone – seemed to him to be those a stalker would make. No. Neither would do. And letter writing was far too Jane Austen, totally un-him, very un-twenty-first-century and anyway, it would hardly be taken seriously. E-mail? Did a clown have much use for e-mail? Text message? Too teenage. Telepathy? As if. Messenger? Who – like Cupid? Yeah, right.