by Cathy Kelly
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Maggie loved the silence of the library. Ever since she’d been a child, and her father had explained why libraries were special places where you had to whisper, she’d loved the fact that the only sounds to be heard were muted whispers and the gentle rustling of pages.
‘It’s quiet because all the books are sitting on the shelves, snoozing quietly as they wait to be picked,’ Dad had said, ‘because being picked by you is the start of an amazing adventure for them.’
She’d told that story to a small group of children only that morning, and they’d stared up at her, wide-eyed, just as enthralled as she’d been by the idea of silently waiting books.
‘Spot was waiting for me?’ asked one small girl with glasses and a mummy-cut hairdo, who sat holding one of the Spot books on her lap.
‘Yes, Spot was waiting for you!’ Maggie said, thrilled at being able to pass on the message to a new generation.
‘Wow,’ said the little girl in awe.
‘Wow,’ agreed the other children.
Maggie was sitting in the small staff room having her morning coffee and talking to Shona on the phone about the children when another call came through on her mobile.
‘Hold on a second, Shona,’ she said. ‘I’ll be right back to you, OK?’
It was Ivan.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked in his calm way.
‘Not bad,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m at work, you know.’
‘I know. You have your coffee break between half ten and a quarter to eleven, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ she said, fascinated that he’d remembered.
‘I wanted to ask if you’d come to the cinema with me tonight.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yes, tonight,’ Ivan repeated. ‘I know that’s probably bad form in the big book of women’s dating techniques, and I’m supposed to give you a week’s notice and you’re supposed to come up with four other possible dates because you’re washing your hair, having your legs waxed, going out with your girlfriends, seeing other men. But you know me, I’m simple. I thought it might be nice to go to the cinema tonight.’
Maggie had to laugh. ‘You’re unique, do you know that, Ivan?’ she said.
‘It has been said before,’ he replied, ‘although not always in a complimentary way. My grandmother says I speak as I find.’
‘I hate that expression,’ Maggie said. ‘It’s the sort of thing that horrible fathers in gothic novels say when they’re alienating people left, right and centre. But sure, I’d love to go to the cinema tonight. I have no hair-washing or waxing plans. What will we go to?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘How about I pick you up at about seven and we’ll decide then?’
‘Great,’ she said, pleased. ‘See you then.’
‘Sorry,’ she said to Shona when she clicked back on to the first call. ‘That was just Ivan asking me out to the cinema.’
‘Just Ivan asking you out to the cinema?’ said Shona. ‘Is this the same big lug of a mechanic person with dirt under his fingernails who took the mickey out of you with the petrol-sucking machine and who made you so angry that you were keen to hire a contract killer to bury him with the fishes?’
‘And who took me to the lovely wedding. That’s exactly the guy,’ Maggie said, laughing. ‘I’ve cancelled the contract killer, by the way. They refused to do a two-for-the-price-of-one deal with Grey included, so I said no. Seriously, though, Ivan’s nice when you get to know him. He’s got a great sense of humour. It just happened to be working overtime the day I met him.’
‘I’m teasing you,’ Shona added. ‘Go for it. Go out with this fabulous Ivan and bonk his brains out in the back of the cinema. Tell me, does he own the garage or does he work for someone else?’
‘Shona, you are appalling,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m not interested in him that way, he’s just a friend. And there’s more to life than money, you know.’
‘People who say that type of thing are generally not in full control of their senses,’ Shona pointed out. ‘Money may not be everything, but it sure helps, and if you’re miserable, you can be miserable in comfort.’
‘Besides,’ Maggie interrupted, ‘I’m not in the market for a man. And rebound relationships are always a mistake and never work out.’
‘Dr Phil, right?’
‘You’re incorrigible,’ laughed Maggie. ‘No, that’s Maggie Maguire advice.’
Maggie was on until half past six that evening, so she had to race home from work.
‘Hi, Mum, hi, Dad,’ she yelled, rushing in the door and sprinting to her room to change out of her work clothes into her most comfortable jeans.
‘Where are you going in such a tearing rush?’ Dad yelled after her.
‘Out to the cinema with Ivan, you don’t mind do you?’
‘Not at all,’ said her father. ‘Oh, the man arrived today with the posters about the park. Your mother has them, she’s very proud of them. She keeps saying “to think I designed these myself”. A very talented woman your mother.’
Maggie ran a comb through her hair and considered putting on some lip gloss, then thought better of it. There was no need, Ivan was only a friend. She spritzed on a bit of perfume and ran to the kitchen where her mother was indeed admiring the posters. Above a line drawing of the park gates, which Una had traced from a picture, were rousing words about saving Summer Street’s heritage from the developers.
‘It’s part of your community, help save it!’ ran the bottom line. They looked good. Nobody would be able to resist, Maggie thought.
Harrison Mitchell was actually being useful and had given her the contact numbers for a couple of journalists who were interested in campaigns like theirs. She was meeting one of them at lunchtime tomorrow in the park and they were bringing a photographer.
‘Don’t they look great?’ said Una happily.
‘Fantastic,’ agreed Maggie. ‘This will make the councillors sit up and take notice.’
‘What film are you going to see?’ asked Una.
‘I don’t know,’ said Maggie, ‘doesn’t matter. It’ll be nice to see a film. I haven’t been to the movies for ages.’
‘He’s a nice fella, isn’t he, Ivan?’ said her mother idly.
‘Now, Mother, don’t start that,’ warned Maggie. ‘He’s just a friend.’
‘I know, love,’ said her mother quickly. ‘It’s nice to see you happy.’
Ivan’s stylish car drew up outside.
Maggie grinned, kissed her mother on the cheek, snagged a banana from the fruit bowl and gave her dad a hug as she ran out the door. It was true, she was happy. Odd that, when just a few weeks ago she’d felt as if her heart was breaking. Something was healing her, although she didn’t know what.
‘We could go to the multiplex, if you like,’ said Ivan, as they stood in the foyer of the tiny local cinema where they had discovered that the three latest releases were fully booked. The only film with any seats available was a classic French film, with subtitles.
‘Well, maybe we’ll go to the French one, what do you think?’ Maggie said, thinking that if she’d been with Grey, the French film would have been their original destination. Grey had no interest in films with popular appeal. The more populist they were, the less he’d like to see them. An old French film with subtitles would top his list.
‘Whatever you like,’ said Ivan easily.
That was the nice thing about having Ivan as a friend, he never tried to push her into anything. And he was so comfortable in his own skin that he didn’t need to prove his intelligence by his movie choice.
‘I don’t have the energy to go into town. Let’s try the French film,’ suggested Maggie.
‘If that’s what Mademoiselle wants, then that’s what she shall have.’
He went up to the counter to pay.
‘No, let me,’ insisted Maggie.
Ivan glared at her.
‘Or at least let me pay half,’ she pleaded.
‘I
asked you out, so I’m paying.’
The cinema was only half full and they found two seats right in the back row.
‘I always love the back row,’ whispered Maggie. ‘You feel sort of naughty, as if you’re going to get into trouble for sitting here when you should be down the front under the head nun’s beady eye.’
‘I still think you must have been a holy terror in school,’ Ivan teased.
‘I wish. Butter wouldn’t have melted in my mouth,’ said Maggie.
They were old-fashioned comfortable seats and somehow Maggie found herself leaning on the arm rest that separated her and Ivan, so that her shoulder was squashed against his. And finally, Ivan put his arm around her and pulled her closer into him, which felt absolutely natural. And Maggie, the person who kept insisting that they were just friends, found that she liked it very much.
Don’t think about it, she told herself. Just enjoy it.
Then, somehow, when Ivan moved his other arm around to touch her face and turn it towards his, it seemed like kissing him was the most obvious thing to do and Maggie turned her face to his and their lips met. Suddenly they were kissing, passionately and hungrily, and who cared about the film? Who cared if anyone saw them in the darkened gloom of the cinema? They kissed wildly, Ivan’s hand in her hair, sliding down to caress her neck, stroking her collarbone, reaching down to the softness of her shoulders and further, until finally, he said, ‘I don’t want to see this film, do you?’
‘No,’ she muttered, pulling her mouth away from him. ‘Let’s go.’
They held hands and ran to the car park. As he drove, Ivan steered with one hand and left the other big hand on Maggie’s jean-clad leg, stroking gently, making her feel intensely excited. It was odd: until a few moments ago, she’d seen him as a friend, and now, in a flash, it was like a curtain being pulled down to reveal a totally different picture and he wasn’t a friend any more. He was a man, a sexual, charismatic man and she wanted him. The intensity of the want frightened her.
The car pulled into a lane a few streets away from home and Ivan parked outside a small mews house. He took her hand again as they went inside and she barely had time to register what the inside of the house was like, noticing a giant fireplace with open brickwork and bare floorboards, before he had pulled her upstairs to a huge bedroom that seemed to take up the whole of the upper floor, an enormous low bed dominating it.
Then they were half sitting, half lying on the bed and Ivan was tearing her clothes off as she tore his off with fervour. His mouth found hers, as if he couldn’t bear not to be kissing her.
And for the first time in her life, tall Maggie Maguire felt like a small fragile creature beside this giant of a man, who touched her lovingly, as if she might break. It was that, that and the tenderness and the love in everything he did to her, that made her melt.
Afterwards, they lay coiled together in bed and Ivan gently stroked the small scars at the top of her thigh.
‘We should go to French films more often,’ Maggie said lightly.
‘Don’t.’ Ivan held a finger up to the softness of her lips. ‘Don’t make a joke about it,’ he said. ‘You do that when you’re unsure?’
She nodded.
‘I love that you’re so funny,’ he added, still holding her close to him. ‘You make me laugh, but I don’t want you to need your defence mechanism around me, I want you to be yourself, not to joke about the things that matter.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, turning around and propping herself up on her elbow, so that she could look down on him. She ran her fingers through his close-cropped hair lovingly. She didn’t think she’d ever get enough of touching him. ‘I can’t help it. I always think that if you make people laugh they don’t see what you’re really thinking or they don’t see that you could really be in pain.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I saw that in you the first time I met you.’
‘You did?’
‘And I wanted you the first time I met you,’ he added and the growl in his voice made her feel faint with longing again.
‘But you teased me,’ she protested, and he laughed then and pulled her close to kiss her on the lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently, his lips against her cheek. ‘Seeing you gave me such a jolt, I wasn’t thinking straight. All I know is that I wanted you from the moment you came into the garage. I knew I’d have to wait though.’
‘What if I hadn’t wanted you?’ Maggie asked.
Ivan smoothed her hair back from her forehead. ‘I’d have waited,’ he said. ‘I’d have waited a very long time for you, for ever in fact.’
It felt odd waking up in a strange bed in the morning, but only for a moment. Beside her lay Ivan: large, muscular and warm, one arm flung over her body. Even in sleep, he was holding her close. Maggie knew you shouldn’t compare, but she couldn’t help it: Grey liked to sleep in his own space, on his side of the bed, and she did the same. Except last night, she and Ivan had slept curled together, drawing comfort from each other. She wriggled against him, loving the feel of his warm, hard body against hers. And it was hard, definitely: a certain part very hard. She wriggled closer still.
‘I wouldn’t do that, unless you like making love in the morning,’ came a low, sleepy voice.
Maggie moved a sliver closer, feeling herself grow warm inside, adoring the power she had over him. Just her touch seemed to inflame him.
‘I warned you,’ he murmured, and then, like a great bear rousing himself from sleep, he swiftly moved till he was pinning her down on the bed, grinning at her, his face covered in dark stubble, his eyes glinting.
Maggie reached up and pulled his face down to hers, eagerly. ‘I thought you had someplace to be this morning?’ she teased as he rested his weight on his elbows, the lower half of him holding her to the bed, hard evidence that they weren’t going to be getting up for a while.
‘It can wait,’ Ivan said huskily and lowered his mouth on to hers.
Ivan’s bathroom was typically male with cream tiles, a bath he clearly never used because he had the last word in power showers, and a mirrored cabinet that contained nothing but shampoo, shower gel, shaving foam, toothpaste and mouthwash.
‘You’ve got no stuff in your cabinet,’ teased Maggie, rooting through, trying to find something that might remove the remains of her mascara. There wasn’t even any male moisturiser. Grey had as much in the moisturising and sunblock line as she had and borrowed hers if he’d run out of Clinique for Men.
‘Would you prefer if I had a ton of women’s stuff in here?’ Ivan demanded.
‘No, but you must have had other women here,’ she added, trying to sound diffident, and failing utterly. ‘Go on, tell me,’ she said. ‘We’re modern adults, we need to know everything about each other. I’ve told you about Grey.’
‘I’d quite like to hear more about Grey, actually,’ Ivan said, a muscle tautening in his jaw.
‘Oh no, you don’t.’ Maggie shook her head. Grey was the past, a never to be revisited place.
‘Yes, I do,’ Ivan said. He’d had his shower and wore only a small towel tied round his waist as he began shaving. He looked great, tautly muscular and just as wantable as he’d been minutes before.
Maggie wished women could look as effortlessly good as men the morning after. She had panda eyes and blotchy skin from not taking off her make-up and needed a shower cap before she could shower as she didn’t have her hair paraphernalia there to stop the wild auburn frizz.
‘Grey was a part of your life for a long time and I want to know it’s over, properly over.’
‘Of course it’s over,’ Maggie said quickly. She didn’t want to talk about this, it was too soon for her two worlds to collide. The new improved Maggie and the old, stupid one.
‘But Ivan, your past is a mystery to me. When you took me to your cousin’s wedding in the first place, nobody mentioned any special person you were supposed to have taken,’ she said. ‘Did you train them all to keep their mouths shut, because I
can’t believe there’s really been a drought on the girlfriend front lately.’
Once she’d admitted Ivan’s fierce attractiveness to herself, it was obvious that he was the sort of man who’d appeal to women. However, Ivan was a hard man to get to know. He was quiet, intense and very private. Few women would get past his outward face, to see the man underneath. The kind, gentle man who was an incredible lover.
‘There have been a few women in my life,’ he said, ‘but very few of them got to leave their toothbrushes over.’
‘You don’t like sharing your bathroom?’ Maggie asked lightly.
‘Up till now, no,’ he said. ‘I think I’m changing my mind about that.’
She grinned, took his toothbrush from the holder and began to brush her teeth.
‘Nobody’s ever used my toothbrush before,’ he said, watching her.
‘So this is a first,’ she teased.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘this is a first.’
She’d wrapped a towel around herself and stripped it off to climb into the shower.
‘Show me your thigh,’ he commanded abruptly.
The night before, his fingers had touched one of the pale scars on the top of her left thigh and she’d muttered about the car crash—the same story she’d given Grey when he’d seen the marks. But this time, in the bright light of his bathroom, he looked at them more carefully.
‘Sit down.’
Gently, he made her sit on the edge of the bath and knelt in front of her. Maggie wished she had something to hide her thighs but she had nothing. Her wounds were laid bare. They were ragged scars, not deep, not ever having required stitches, but they’d left their mark. There were many of them, uneven marks that would never fade, like a barcode scratched into her soft skin.
‘It was a car accident,’ she repeated.
Ivan’s fingers traced the marks.
‘These scars don’t look like any accident,’ he said. He looked up at her, his fingers still touching the scars. ‘What really happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, anxiety blooming.