All That Mullarkey

by Sue Moorcroft

He smiled, a huge, frank, sexy smile. ‘Don’t look so freaked, there’s a spare room. OK?’

  ‘Even so, I don’t think that –’ She was interrupted by the dee-di-dee-dee of her phone announcing a text message and scrabbled thankfully in her bag. ‘Maybe this is my sister.’

  But the name on the screen wasn’t Liza. It was Gav. Cleo’s shoulders sagged with relief. He’d be worried about her, apologising, offering to drive into Peterborough and pick her up –

  The writings on the wall, the text said. She froze. He was reminding her! THIS MARRIAGE IS OVER. Fresh rage bubbled up inside her.

  She snapped the phone shut and turned back to Justin. ‘It does sound better than sleeping in the car.’

  In the back of the taxi, Cleo closed her eyes and let Justin kiss her again, his hand on her waist. She ought to stop him. This wasn’t fair to anybody. Ought to …

  His flat was just like him, laid back and unfussy. Sexy dark greys, drab blues, one huge black sofa, a wiiiiide-screen TV, a big computer monitor beside an impressive stereo. He made her coffee and poured clear liquid from a chilled bottle into two shot glasses.

  She watched him. ‘What’s that? Vodka?’

  He took a sip, rolled it round his mouth. ‘Aquavit. It’s like medicine. Couple of nightcaps and no hangover tomorrow.’

  She alternated the odd, stinging liquid with sips of coffee, a mixture that totally failed to sober her up.

  Justin flung his down his throat in one, then watched her over the rim of his coffee mug. ‘You’re lovely,’ he said.

  She grinned. ‘You’re on the make.’

  He shifted on the squashy sofa until his breath was gentle on the side of her face. She turned and regarded his lips, a finely chiselled bow. The night, at first so hideous, had become a kind of dream. And in dreams all kinds of weirdness went on. Giddily, she let the lips touch hers. He gave a long mmm of pleasure as his hand trickled behind her knees and hooked her legs over his.

  His touch almost burned. As her breathing rate increased he planted hot kisses across her face, her neck, along her collarbone until it disappeared under the fabric of her top. And all she let herself think about was how good it felt.

  His voice was husky. ‘There is a spare bed. I promised you could have the spare bed if you wanted it … You don’t, do you?’

  Justin’s bedroom held a king-sized bed and a row of wardrobes. He fished out his mobile phone. ‘Let’s turn these off.’

  ‘Good idea.’ No more horrible texts from Gav. She located the off button and placed her phone neatly next to his on a chest of drawers. Her heart hammered. She was about to do something incredibly bad. Last chance to select Option A. Last chance to retreat to the spare room. Last chance to behave well, or at least no worse than she had already. She tried to summon up Gav and their marriage.

  But, somehow, the image broke up because the desire in Justin’s eyes went straight to her knees. And his hands sliding delicately up her back made her body jelly. And his tongue tip flicking across her earlobe shot spangles down her back.

  Last chance, last chance … She slid her hand inside his shirt, skimmed the hot flesh across his ribs and felt him shiver. Desire welled and she knew she was going to do it.

  His hands shook as he tackled the five big buttons at the front of her top. She arched her back to help him slide it off, tipping back her head to offer him her throat as he slid her bra straps from her shoulders and struggled to extricate her from her jeans.

  And she gave herself up to his tingling hands, trailing fingertips, scalding kisses.

  When he entered her in one aching movement, she bit his arm, making him gasp, swear, and leap deeper inside her. ‘Cleo!’

  Cleo drifted towards sleep.

  Justin was already dozing. She shifted, peeling her back from his chest, the back of her legs from the front of his and he roused, pulling the quilt over them. His voice was already gravelly with sleep. ‘I didn’t ask you. Was it all right without?’

  Her head was beginning to spin, making her feel queasy. She tried to concentrate. ‘Without?’

  ‘Without a condom.’ He pulled her back against him.

  Cleo’s heart fell out of her chest. Shit. Shit! Appalled, her hand flew to her mouth. She shook her head.

  ‘Not on the pill?’

  ‘I’ve just changed to the diaphragm. But it’s at home.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s not all right.’

  Chapter Two

  He didn’t feel that bad.

  Not considering the excesses of the night before. Justin opened his eyes cautiously and let them ache gently in the light filtering into his bedroom.

  He turned to look at the woman he’d pulled last night. Cleo, sleep tossing her dark hair across her face.

  Funny, half-sad, half-angry Cleo, who’d looked frankly astounded when he’d turned away from her more obvious companions to her and her dark eyes. Cleo, who’d seemed grittily determined to act as if she were having a good time.

  He eased onto his side to study her. Interesting face. High cheekbones, eyes that turned down at the corners, a wide, sexy mouth. A great body. He felt himself twitch.

  She’d been lovely in bed; grave and thoughtful, seeming to enjoy him undressing her and exploring her body. Had made love with concentration, with sighs and gasps, arching towards him, enveloping him. He’d felt ready to explode.

  He lifted his right arm and examined the purple mark where she’d bitten him. Really bitten! It had sent him crashing white-hot into the final fast and furious act when she’d yanked his head down to hers and they’d bruised each other’s mouths. Lovely.

  Cleo. She was … catchy. Like a tune. Growing on him. He’d only anticipated a one-nighter, but she really could be fun.

  Cleo woke to the smell of coffee and toast, pushing her hair from her eyes and focusing with difficulty on a man wearing only a pair of South Park boxers and sliding a tray onto the chest at the foot of the bed.

  He looked up and smiled. ‘Feeling human enough for coffee?’

  Her thoughts circled, seeking sense, familiarity. The night before rushed back at her. She’d slept with this guy, Justin. She was in his bedroom. Bed. Because – unreal, this bit – Gav had left her. Left! Had bellowed and roared and left that raw, hateful message on the bedroom wall.

  So she’d gone out, got drunk and got laid. Oh shit.

  Automatically, she responded, ‘Thanks. No sugar.’

  Why was she so calm?

  Where was the debilitating guilt, why wasn’t she clutching her sides and weeping that she’d been unfaithful to Gav?

  Because the powerful anger simmering on her back burner reminded her that he didn’t deserve it. THIS MARRIAGE IS OVER …

  ‘Oops!’ She almost spilt her coffee as Justin climbed back into bed.

  Under the quilt his leg rested hairily on hers. ‘Sleep OK? You looked as if you did.’

  She found herself responding to his laugh. He was really nice. She smothered a yawn. ‘I need a shower.’

  His eyes slid down to her breasts. ‘That’d be nice.’

  ‘If you can spare the hot water.’

  His eyes twinkled. ‘There’s really only enough for one good shower in the morning. But there’s room for two people …’

  The steaming water stung her skin. She used his herby shampoo to cleanse the smell of booze from her hair.

  She jumped as he helped her wash and her flesh gathered into a million goosebumps, her head resting against him whilst he soaped her in silence. His chin was level with the top of her head. Tipping her head back he kissed her, nipping her bottom lip. Her nipples bunched tightly as he caressed them, making her shiver. ‘Are you busy for the rest of the day?’

  She turned her face and shook her head as the water flew off her hair. What would she be doing, otherwise?

  Leaving him shaving, Cleo located her phone in his bedroom and turned it on. Waited. No messages. No texts. She snapped shut the smart black handset, switched it off and tossed it back
on the plain wooden surface.

  She drifted through Justin’s comfortable and functional sitting room, a grown-up room with no space wasted on anything that did nothing, no ornaments, no pictures. Justin obviously liked expensive but functional things: TV, DVD, computer, stereo. The big, squashy, leather sofa. In the kitchen, honey pine and shiny white tile, she filled the kettle, found bread and dropped it in the toaster. She made tea, buttered toast and perched on a red-topped stool to breakfast thoughtfully, staring through the window.

  In the heat of the action when she’d been in Justin’s hands, astride Justin’s body, clutching, gasping when he nibbled at where her shoulder met her neck, only pleasure and satisfaction had been important. But now reality was rendering the tea tasteless – and the toast was in danger of reappearing.

  Unprotected sex. Idiot. Moron. Irresponsible, careless slut. Unprotected sex. At her age! Talk about should have known better. She did know better. Knew every bird and bee there was, and what caused little birds and baby bees. And had avoided them like the plague!

  How could she have been so stupid?

  Hadn’t she always sneered at women who didn’t take care of contraception? For Cleo it had all been so straightforward till now. Married to the same man for five years, and on the pill until erratic blood pressure had made it inadvisable.

  The doctor had recommended some new intrauterine device, but the idea of a piece of plastic lodged permanently in her body had made Cleo feel odd. The notion of an implant was just as creepy. So, for the last five weeks, she and Gav had been struggling to use the diaphragm.

  And, as she only slept with one man, she was hardly going to troll it around in her handbag on an evening out, was she? Because she wasn’t going to need it, was she?

  Except … she had.

  And until Justin had asked – too late – she hadn’t given contraception a single thought. At Muggie’s there had been condoms in the machine in the ladies’ toilets and she’d walked right by, as if they were just for other people.

  She jumped when Justin sauntered into the kitchen, the fair tips of his hair glowing like a dandelion clock in the morning light that streamed through the window. ‘The service in this hotel’s rubbish,’ he joked, kissing the top of her head.

  His eyes were so bright that Cleo found herself smiling in reply. ‘Sorry. I began without you.’

  He slid more bread into the toaster slots, switched the kettle back on, staggering in mock exhaustion. ‘I need to keep my strength up. You are such a horny lady.’ And something in his languid movements and little jokes quietened the squirming worries in Cleo’s tummy.

  Over his fourth slice of toast, Justin suggested, ‘By the way, there’s a barbecue later, if you’re up for it?’

  She stared out of the window at more flats across a paved area punctuated by young copper beech trees shaking in the breeze, the sunshine filtering through their purple-gold leaves. Was she up for it? Or should she be going home, sorting out her marriage? Texting Gav and asking if he wanted to talk? That’s what any sane woman would do when her husband began behaving like an alien – try and sort it out. But she remembered the hateful message on the wall and a hard splintery part of her refused to end this step out of time. ‘Sure, where do we go?’

  He was already reading the paper, pouring more tea and drifting towards the sofa. ‘Out to the lakes,’ he said, glancing at the clock on the DVD player. ‘You’ve got about an hour. By the way, will your sister or anybody be wondering where you are?’

  She thought of her phone with no texts and no voicemail. ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  Gav pulled up outside the house in Port Road. Cleo’s sleek blue Audi TT wasn’t there. Bollocks. Indoors, the sitting room looked as if nothing unusual had happened. No cataclysmic row, no hurting words, no stupid ultimatum. A newspaper was folded on the floor where Cleo must’ve discarded it half-read, a couple of apples in the willow-pattern bowl were wrinkling gently amongst the usual clutter of pens, bills and rubber bands.

  He trailed upstairs to their bedroom, hoping it wouldn’t be there, that it would all have been a horrible dream. Oh hell. He stared miserably at his horrible, disgusting, childish message, THIS MARRIAGE IS OVER. Love Gav. Groaned. ‘Gav, Gav, what were you doing?’

  Gently, precisely, he closed the wardrobe doors and pushed shut the drawers. He’d slept last night in his car and his clothes were still lying in the boot.

  The bed was tidily made, undisturbed. The bed where they made love, cuddled up on cold nights or lounged with coffee and the Sunday morning papers.

  So Cleo hadn’t slept here.

  Her mobile, uselessly, was switched off, and having a let’s-make-up conversation with her voicemail didn’t appeal.

  He picked up the phone to call Liza, Cleo’s number one refuge. But all he got was Liza’s annoying answering machine message, ‘I’m just never in, am I?’ He could drive over to Liza’s flat … but he didn’t relish making his grovelling apologies under the beady eye of his sister-in-law. The pair of them were probably drowning Cleo’s sorrows, which meant Liza would be an utter pissy bitch. Cleo’s eyes would be red from crying, face white from not eating, agonising over why he, Gav, the love of her life, soulmate, darling (if he still had any claim to these titles) had acted like a prick.

  And what could he tell her?

  He made an inept and abortive attempt to wash the marker pen from the wall then trudged up the road to The Three Fishes, where they generally did a good lunch. Settling himself on a stool, he smiled at Janice behind the bar. ‘Cheer me up – did Peterborough United win their friendly yesterday?’

  A track curved from the main road between nettle banks to a clearing beside the water. According to a peeling sign, it was a lake unsuitable for water sport, but when Justin’s car drew up behind the other vehicles, three jet-skis waited on trailers.

  The barbecue sulked in a haze of blue, three men were unpacking beer and two women chatted over the bread rolls, sausages and chicken drumsticks.

  The men waved beer cans. The women paused, drumsticks in hands, to stare at Cleo. She stared back. Justin’s friends, after all, not hers. They could look all they liked; she wouldn’t break.

  Justin’s introductions were brief. ‘Gez and his girlfriend Jaz. Vicky.’ Gez and Jaz grinned; Vicky didn’t. Jaz was tall and had that no-nonsense look of being a girl who’s one of the boys. Vicky was the pretty one – when she wasn’t slinging sausages sourly onto the barbecue. Cleo guessed that Justin had been expected alone. Better check her food was cooked through before she ate it.

  ‘Drew and Martin you might’ve seen at Muggie’s.’

  Drew and Martin were the platinum twins. They swiped off their shades and greeted Cleo with a friendly ‘Hiya!’, their wetsuits of peacock colours clashing with their blazing bleach-blond hair.

  Flopping down onto a crusty Regatta jacket from Justin’s boot, Cleo watched with interest as Drew and Martin manhandled two of the jet-skis into the water. Drew’s was silver with red lightning flashes and Martin’s navy, graffiti’d with neon orange and yellow. Standing beside the skis in the shallows, they fired the engines, holding tightly to the rear as the power growled through the machine.

  Moving their grip to the handlebars, each executed a practised scoot and hop aboard and in an instant they were roaring across the khaki lake, on their feet like charioteers.

  ‘Whoo!’ Cleo watched as the jet-skis skimmed across the water with their rooster tails of spray behind them, impressed by the power and manoeuvrability. Out in the middle of the lake, Drew’s jet-ski howled as he squirted on power and jumped Martin’s frothy wake.

  Gez began to untie the remaining jet-ski and Justin helped lift it into the water. If Drew’s and Martin’s jet-skis were chariots Gez’s was a motorbike, with a big seat, one that would take rider and pillion passenger. Cleo had always liked motorbikes.

  Gez zipped up his wetsuit. With his fluffy brown hair and the wetsuit clinging lovingly to his paunch, he reminded Cleo of
a teddy bear.

  ‘Are you going out there today?’ he asked Justin.

  Justin glanced at Drew and Martin carving up the lake and wriggled himself into a position where he could watch over Cleo’s shoulder. Two people lying on one jacket meant close proximity. ‘Probably later.’

  Gez skimmed out to join the others. Cleo propped herself on her elbows and admired the patterns of spray hanging on the air in the sunlight. ‘You haven’t got one?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve got a share in Gez’s. I’m not as into it as the others. Drew and Martin jet ski year round.’

  Cleo’s gaze moved on to Vicky, sulking over the sausages. Jaz was talking earnestly, her hand on Vicky’s shoulder. Cleo felt sudden compunction. She coughed. ‘I don’t think Vicky’s very pleased to see me.’

  Justin glanced up, vaguely. ‘No?’ He turned back to the jet-skis, howling back towards the shore, three abreast.

  ‘I think she expected you to be … available.’

  Justin looked at Vicky again. ‘Oh. I wondered what she was doing here. She’s a friend of Jaz’s. Jaz has this peculiarity that, although nice herself, she seems to attract high-maintenance friends.’

  ‘Have you known the others long?’ The skiers banked violently, several yards out, spewing spray rainbows to patter around Cleo and Justin and shiver on their hot skin.

  Justin wiped a drop from Cleo’s arm. ‘Ages, since school.’

  ‘So you were brought up locally?’ It was odd, not knowing anything about his life previous to Friday evening.

  ‘Yeah. I’m Mr Ordinary: ordinary parents who have cleared off to live in America, a sister to squabble with, a family dog. School, art and graphics course, job in graphics. Ordinary.’

  She hadn’t thought of him as ‘ordinary’, not with that face and its smile always ready to develop into a laugh, not the way people followed him with their eyes.

  ‘You’ll love it.’ Justin patted the jet-ski invitingly and closed the neck of his wetsuit, black with lime piping. ‘One of the girls will lend you a suit.’

  Cleo looked at the jet-ski longingly.