by Unknown
‘Isn’t he?’ He matched her tone. ‘I do like to keep an eye on things. Rather like you.’
‘But I’m sure you’d never dream of stepping in and taking over.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He ran his tongue over his top teeth. ‘Needs must when the devil’s designated driver.’
‘And let me guess, Godspell sucks on your familiars when you want to change gear?’ She knew she was getting bitchier, but she couldn’t stop herself.
‘Leave her out of it,’ he said lightly, swinging round to look at her. He seemed to be focusing on her bindi spot. ‘You need a wash.’
‘At least I’ve got a clean conscience.’
Without warning, he dropped his face to her unwashed neck and breathed deeply. ‘I want to wash you.’
Goosebumps flared in the most unexpected of places – even in her ears. Ellen battled to pretend he hadn’t just said that. Twisting away and feeling his teeth graze her skin, she spluttered, ‘You’ll have to clean up your act first.’
‘I suppose you want me to beg Pheely to forgive me so that my soul is cleansed?’ he sniped angrily, backing off.
‘It might make up for lusting after her daughter.’
‘Does that bother you?’ He marked her eyes with his.
‘It bothers Pheely.’
‘Admit you love me and maybe I’ll do it.’
‘Cut the love crap. You’re the one who told me I wasn’t hot enough for you.’
He bit away an emerging smile and whispered, ‘Surely you know I’m a compulsive liar? Enough people must have told you that by now.’
Ellen snorted sarcastically. ‘So you really do desire me with all your soul?’
‘I’ve wanted you from the moment we met.’
She laughed. ‘Which is why you’re out with Dilly and Godspell, I suppose.’
‘I have to do something to keep my mind off you.’
‘Ever thought of trying Morris dancing?’
His smile sprang back. ‘No – nor incest, as it happens.’
‘Hard to tell around here, I should imagine.’
‘I’m told the bells usually give it away.’
They had edged towards each other again, voices lowered to an intimate, teasing whisper.
As they looked at one another, eyes tracing eyes tracing lips tracing eyes again, Ellen felt a blade of longing run its way up her spine, then slide beneath her chin and against her throat. She couldn’t resist her attraction to him, however much she tried. Spurs watched her face, his cheeks quilted with tension. ‘I told you this can’t happen,’ he muttered.
‘Nothing’s happening,’ she said, goosebumps popping out on her goosebumps until she was convinced she must look like a figure in a Seurat painting.
He dragged his eyes from hers. ‘I want you to keep your distance.’
‘And I haven’t come looking for you,’ she said hoarsely.
‘So why are you here?’
‘We’re just watching out for Dilly. Pheely insisted. I didn’t ask to be here.’
‘T’yeah.’ He let out a sharp breath through an uncertain smile. ‘Then go home.’ He walked away.
Ellen rose on tiptoes of frustration as she battled not to chase him down and demand to know what the hell he was playing at. Instead, she threw up her chin and threw the best missile she had to hand: ‘I do love you. Now ask Pheely to forgive you.’
He didn’t even look round.
Pheely clutched Ellen’s arm like a vice when she said she wanted to go home. ‘We can’t leave her here. Besides, he has Pompeii hostage.’
‘Ask for it back – you can freewheel it home. It’s all downhill from here.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ Pheely sighed in despair, looking at Dilly who was shrieking with laughter and stealing one of Rory’s cigarettes, irresistible body spilling out of Ellen’s dress in all the right places.
Ellen sat in a cloud of Pheely’s cigarette smoke, watching the equally unwelcome rainclouds gather overhead. She refused to look at Spurs and tried to blot his soft, drawling voice from her consciousness. She reminded herself again and again that he wanted her gone. Whatever his reasons, it wasn’t going to happen, chemistry or no chemistry.
He doesn’t want me here, she told herself, wondering why the back of her neck was burning up, as though the sun were shining brightly through the overcast sky.
‘Don’t look now,’ Pheely lit another cigarette, ‘but Spurs can’t keep his eyes off you.’
Loitering under the trees in a beer garden without a drink was one thing, but when the heavens opened and they were forced to cram inside the small, heavily beamed pub, it was obvious that something was missing. Spare tables, chairs and any cash to buy a drink being key among them.
Spurs’ posse had gathered at a bowed table in a window recess by the time Ellen and Pheely reluctantly squelched and dripped inside. Dilly was talking non-stop – already very tight on Archer’s.
‘. . . totally cool.’ She was giggling, determinedly ignoring her mother and Ellen as they passed.
‘Still here?’ Spurs looked up at Ellen, rubbing the shoulder he had hurt earlier. His face seemed guilty somehow, anxious to convey a message that she couldn’t read.
‘Erin! Hi!’ Rory raised his glass, spilling most of the contents, his sleepy grey eyes crossed as he grinned up at her. ‘Joinush!’
Ellen looked at Spurs again and suddenly saw a green light. She opened her mouth to accept, but Pheely pinched her arm hard. ‘We’ll be fine at the bar!’ she insisted, dragging Ellen along. ‘You’ll just have to bat your eyelashes to get us free drinks.’
‘What?’
‘Hi.’ Pheely smiled at the landlord as she plonked herself down on a bar stool.
‘What can I get you, ladies?’ he offered affably, as he filled a pint glass for another customer.
‘Ellen?’ Pheely turned to her mischievously.
Thrown, Ellen looked at the friendly, bearded face behind the bar and smiled awkwardly. ‘What do you have?’
‘We’re a public house, madam. We have the usual selection.’
‘Could you just talk me through it?’ Ellen asked, trying not to hear Pheely’s groan beside her.
Suddenly she felt a warm, hard body pressing against her back. ‘I’ll get these, Keith.’
Ellen’s skin performed a Mexican wave as Spurs leaned across her. She half expected her popping goosebumps to spring him back against the far wall like lead shot.
Beside her, Pheely was glaring at the towels lined up on the bar. ‘Really, there’s no need.’
‘I’d like to buy you a drink, Pheely,’ Spurs said softly, trying to catch her eye, his chest still pressing hard against Ellen’s back.
Acutely aware that he’d said she needed a wash and that she probably smelt foul after a day’s painting and an impromptu run, Ellen tried to lean away but, short of clambering right over the bar, she was trapped. She could feel his heart beating against her shoulder-blade and was surprised by its speed – it was racing as fast as her own.
‘In that case,’ Pheely was saying, in an arch, childish taunt, ‘I’d like a glass of champagne.’
‘We don’t sell it by the glass,’ Keith said apologetically.
‘Then we’ll have a bottle,’ Spurs said easily, although his heart still hammered Ellen’s back. ‘Ellen?’
‘I’ll just have a mineral water.’
‘Oh, c’mon – help Pheely out.’
She glanced over her shoulder, met his eyes and immediately felt as though she had drunk Dom Perignon dry. Champagne fizzed and popped in her veins as she read the message in his face. I’m sorry, his eyes pleaded. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. And I’m scared of Pheely. ‘Have a glass of champagne, Ellen,’ he persisted.
‘Sure.’ She smiled: she had a small victory to celebrate. She had read his mind. Only the opening line, admittedly, but it was a start.
‘Come and join us.’ Spurs turned to Pheely as Keith fetched a bottle of dubious-looking cha
mpagne from a fridge in a back room.
‘We’d just cramp Dilly’s style,’ she said sharply, glaring at her clay-embedded nails.
‘I’d really appreciate some adult conversation,’ he joked uneasily.
‘I’m sure if you practise enough you’ll start to get the hang of it,’ she muttered.
He carried on smiling, eyes boring into hers. ‘Give me a chance, Pheely.’
That smile was still as devastating as it had been twelve years earlier, the silver gaze as hypnotising, and try as she might, Pheely’s resolve started to melt.
‘I suppose if we joined your table, I could study Godspell’s funny little face in animation.’ She thought about it. ‘She’s so deep that her personality rarely surfaces, don’t you find?’
‘Quite.’ Spurs cleared his throat, and they all looked back at Godspell, who was looking as deep and animated as a puddle in a hard frost while she studied her dark fingernails in minutiae.
Pheely shot Spurs another look of mistrust, then cocked her head as Keith popped the cork with tell-tale lack of practice, firing it into the tankards above the bar. ‘Well, maybe for a moment,’ she conceded, hopping off her bar stool just in time to avoid several pieces of pewter falling on her. ‘I guess it can’t be any more dangerous than it is here.’
Ellen found herself sitting as far away from Spurs as possible, tucked tightly at the far end of the window-seat between Godspell and Rory, whom she soon discovered were not great conversationalists. Rory managed ‘Hello, again,’ and Godspell stared blankly when Ellen asked after her insects. Any subsequent attempts at striking up banter fell flat.
Evidently livid that her double date had been hijacked by the motorcycling double act, Dilly ignored her mother and played up to the men. She hadn’t been wrong when she’d told Ellen she was a hopeless flirt. Now reeling from an alcopop sugar high, she was about as tactful as a red-top photo-strip and didn’t so much flirt as spurt.
‘Where’s Sharrie tonight?’ she asked Rory.
‘Out, I think,’ he told her sleepily.
‘I bet she has loads of boyfriends. She doesn’t strike me as too fussy.’ She sniggered. ‘And she’d be quite pretty if she lost some weight. Then again, she probably has fantastic breasts. Big girls always do.’
Rory looked instinctively at Dilly’s huge gravity-defying tits jutting from her slender chest as she launched into giggly tales of how awful it was having a bra so much larger-cupped than the other girls at boarding-school. ‘I just don’t understand why they all tease me, then stuff their baggy Wonderbras with socks and loo roll, do you? I mean, it’s not as though I’m fat. God forbid. I just got given these darlings as a part of the great handout, and I do find them a bit of a handful. I used to want to be flat, like you, Spelly,’ she sighed with mock-envy at Godspell’s plumb-line chest, ‘but now I’ve grown rather used to my puppies.’ She cupped her cleavage and batted her eyelids as she aimed it innocently at Rory.
Watching it all impassively, Godspell didn’t say a word. Neither did Rory, whose eyes were crossing even further as he stared at Dilly’s assets.
He was, Ellen realised, very drunk indeed, the beautiful pewter Constantine eyes glazed, the dreamy smile soporific and the long, lounging body close to sliding off its chair.
Spurs, by contrast, was sharp-witted and sober, totally focused on gaining Pheely’s trust, his knuckles white as they clutched a pint of Coke.
Ellen had never seen him nervous, and it made him look more like a beautiful fallen angel than ever. The sinews in his neck leaped, muscles slammed in both his cheeks and he pulled back his hair from his forehead again and again to reveal wide, anxious eyes as he spoke in a near-whisper, oblivious of Dilly’s big-breast debate. ‘I know I’ve done the shittiest things alive, but I can’t bear the thought of you hating me . . .’
He’s going for it, she thought in disbelief, looking away as guiltily as a tourist stumbling into a cathedral confessional, her throat choked with emotion.
Swiping angry tears from her eyes before they spilled, Pheely wasn’t making it easy for him, and neither was Dilly who, irritated by the amount of time Spurs was spending talking to her mother, brought up her favourite topic of the day. ‘I think people are really far too uptight about sex,’ she told Rory loudly, stilling the entire pub with her joyful, sing-song ‘Who’s queen?’ voice.
‘Too right.’ He raised his glass.
‘I mean, I can’t wait to have a go.’ She looked coquettishly towards Spurs, but he carried on talking to Pheely in a low, earnest tone.
Straining to hear what he was saying, Ellen almost jumped off her seat when Dilly slapped the table with her palm and demanded, ‘Why am I still a virgin at seventeen? Ellen was much younger when she lost it, and she’s only ever slept with one man. I’m not going to bonk the county or anything. I just want to know what it’s like.’
Spurs didn’t react, still talking to Pheely, his head bowed in concentration.
Rubbing her forehead with her fingers, Ellen glanced worriedly back across the table. To her surprise, Godspell caught her eye and winked heavy black lashes.
‘Is that a fact?’ Rory was slurring.
‘Yeah – I bet it’s really good fun.’
‘Oh, it is.’
‘You know that from personal experience?’ Dilly tilted her head coquettishly.
‘Yeah.’
‘Have you slept with lots of girls?’
‘A few.’
‘I wish I was one of them.’ Dilly reached coolly for her glass, missed it several times then tipped most of its contents down her front as she aimed randomly for her mouth. Unperturbed, she smiled at Rory. ‘I bet you’re really good in bed.’
Ellen winced. When Rory stood up, she half expected him to suggest that Dilly and he pop back to his hay barn for a quickie, but instead he burped loudly and lurched off to the loo. Ellen slid across into his chair and tried to calm Dilly down a bit. ‘You look lovely. That dress really suits you.’
‘Sssh,’ Dilly hissed. ‘I don’t want anyone knowing it’s yours. But thanks.’ She wrinkled her nose in appreciation, young and drunk enough to know that she looked a hell of a lot better in it than Ellen ever had. Then her eyes crossed and uncrossed as she gave Ellen a beady look and whispered, ‘What on earth were you thinking bringing Mum here? It’s the last thing I need.’
‘It was a misunderstanding,’ Ellen hedged.
‘You followed us. And look at the old cow now – all over Spurs. I thought she hated him.’
Spurs and Pheely were nose-to-nose at the opposite end of the table, but the conversation hardly looked flirtatious or friendly. They looked closer to having a punch-up. Ellen turned back to Dilly. ‘Maybe,’ she told Dilly gently, ‘they’ve decided that it’s time to forgive and forget.’
‘Hmmph.’ Dilly glared at Godspell. ‘Forgiving people is totally wet.’
But her erstwhile friend didn’t react. Godspell was too busy taking in the action at the end of the table, her dark-painted eyes hooded as she watched Pheely and Spurs exchange bitter whispers, her narrow purple lips pursed.
‘I never forgive,’ Dilly told Ellen, still glowering at Godspell. ‘I just forget. I find forgetting people really easy. What’s your name again? Helen? Eleanor?’
Ellen looked away in despair, caught Godspell’s eye again and was graced with another wink. The little Goth was drinking pints of bitter – which secretly Ellen found quite impressive – and didn’t seem at all bothered by her own silence, despite her exclusion from everything going on around her. Her passive, watchful presence was disquieting.
‘So, you two used to go riding together?’ Ellen asked her brightly, hoping to recapture the fleeting affinity they had shared in her lair, but blowing it by sounding false.
Godspell nodded silently.
Beneath the table, Dilly gave Ellen’s ankle a sharp kick. ‘Godspell gave up,’ she sneered. ‘She lost her nerve.’
Godspell didn’t react. Close to, she looked older and less
malevolent, with giveaway laughter lines around the coffee-bean eyes, but she had yet to try out a facial expression. Her only animated feature was one selective winking eyelid, which stayed determinedly unbatted when Ellen tried for a conversation. ‘I heard your band playing the first night I was here – Roadkill, isn’t it?’
Another nod.
‘Sounded great. Have you been together long?’
‘’Bout a year.’
Victory! She was talking at last.
‘And do you write your own material?’ She remembered the note pad, in Godspell’s playpen.
‘Some.’
‘I’d love to be able to write lyrics.’ Ellen lied shammily, then tried eagerly to drag Dilly in. ‘Wouldn’t you, Dilly? I bet you’d be wonderful at it.’
But, apparently furious that she was no longer the centre of attention, Dilly had already started looking around for a distraction. Rory was still in the loo and her mother and Spurs were hissing away like two snakes in a basket. When she overheard Pheely say, ‘You have some nerve thinking you can breeze back in and charm my daughter into thinking—’ she had her cue.
‘Stop dredging up ancient history, Mum. I don’t care what Spurs did. He’s been really cool.’ She widened her eyes at him and let a few curls drop over her face. The lurching sway of her shoulders gave away how sloshed she was.
‘Shut up, Dilly,’ Pheely snapped.
‘Don’t talk to me like that! You weren’t invited here. Spurs asked me out.’
Spurs reached for a cigarette, glancing anxiously at Ellen as though to remind himself that she was there, before he addressed himself to Dilly. ‘I asked your mother to join us,’ he reminded her.
‘Only because she followed us,’ Dilly huffed, waving her arms around and knocking her glass over. ‘And because you want to get into Ellen’s knickers.’
‘Dilly!’ Pheely’s green eyes bulged in warning.
‘You were the one who told me he and Ellen had the hots for each other!’ Dilly taunted. ‘Anyway, Ellen says it’s rubbish. She told me that Spurs wasn’t her soulmate, didn’t you?’ She turned to Ellen, who was close to mortified combustion. ‘So you’re wasting your time.’ She smiled naughtily at Spurs. ‘Ellen says we’d be perfect for one another. You and I.’