by Judy Waite
She screws up her eyes for a moment, and then shakes her head.
'You don't like it? My bedsit. I knew it would put you off.' He sags as if he has been punched and she wants to reach out and hug him but she's scared of the contact.
'No – no – it's not that. It's just – you know. It's weird – being on our own together like this.'
He takes her hand and she lets him, feeling him squeeze her fingers.
'Do you want to sit down?' he says. 'Sorry about the lack of chairs – I usually just lounge on the bed. I'll make us some coffee.'
She glances across at the bed with its cheerful lime-green duvet, and her gut tightens. 'I'll sit on the floor.'
He goes to the sink and fills the kettle, then stands looking across at her while he waits for it to boil. She can't look back at him, and her eyes search the room, trying to hunt down more objects that she might use as prattled conversation.
He carries across two mugs, handing her the one without the crack. 'Is it OK if I sit next to you?'
'Don't be stupid.' Her giggle is high and brittle. 'You can sit anywhere you like.'
But as he settles beside her, she is thinking that it isn't all right. What if he makes a grab for her? She wants to be with him so much that it hurts, but the wanting is in her heart. Her body is like a locked cage and she can't let him in. The floor is hard and the metal frame of the bed presses into her back. This isn't how she wanted it to be, but she doesn't know what to do or say to put it right.
'Courtney?' he turns to her and his eyes are both gentle and sad. 'What's up?'
'I just – I'm sorry. It's stupid – but I'm nervous.'
'What d'you think I'm going to do?'
She stares down at her knees, plucking at a stray thread on her jeans, and shrugs.
'I won't hurt you. I'd never hurt you. And I'd never do anything you didn't want.'
'I know.' She twists the stray thread, pulling at it so that the denim wrinkles and bunches together.
'I need to ask you something – I hope it won't upset you. But are you a virgin?'
She almost laughs then; the awful ugly irony of the question. 'No.'
'It's something bad then? Something that happened to you?'
She snaps the denim thread, realising she is hunched forward and rocking slightly. There is a roaring in her ears, and she has the sense of being dragged somewhere she doesn't want to go. 'Yes. Sort of.'
She feels a fraud saying this – it's only part of it – it doesn't excuse her time with Alix. And why can't she treat him like a client? Just fake it for him? And then she thinks that she'd rather walk away and never see him again, than abuse him like that.
He stands suddenly and the movement jolts her out of her rocking. She looks up, expecting him to tell her she might as well go if she's going to be such a drip, but his expression is preoccupied. Taking his sketch pad from where it is propped against the wall, he gets the wooden box he keeps his pastels in and walks back to her. 'Stay still for me,' he says gently. 'Just look over to the left slightly – out towards the window.'
He sits in front of her, his legs crossed and the sketch pad propped up on his lap.
She stares out to where the window lets in the heated afternoon light, feeling his eyes move over her. She panics for a moment, wondering what he's looking at. Stealing a sideways glance she sees him focused on her right ear, probably trying to work out the distance from her lobe to her jaw.
Outside, a motorbike backfires. Someone walks past the gate, whistling. She feels his gaze move to her eyes, her hair, her shoulders, and she realises she doesn't mind.
'It's not that good.' His voice breaks the quiet trance she seems to have slipped into. 'It's like that sometimes, with people I care about. I can do a brilliant job with strangers in the street.'
She stares at him and she thinks that it is exactly the same for her. A different type of work. A different setting. But exactly the same.
And then she registers the words 'people I care about' and she smiles – the first proper smile since she arrived. 'Let's see,' she says.
He turns the portrait round for her and his eyes are apologetic as he passes it across.
She tilts her head, and then looks up at him. 'Is this how you see me?'
'You hate it, don't you? I knew you would. I'm. . . '
'You've made me beautiful.'
He kneels beside her then, his arms round her, pulling her closer.
She slides the portrait up onto the lime-green quilt so that it doesn't crush.
'Courtney, you are beautiful. People must have told you that before.'
'Yes,' she answers carefully. 'I suppose they have.' But she has never felt it. Never cared.
And as he holds her she thinks that if he wants more from her then maybe she will pretend for him – just as her way to say thank you. But he doesn't seem to want it.
He just strokes her hair, folding her in his arms as if he will never let her go.
She presses against him and they shift position, lying together on the hard floor. Still, all he does is hold her. All he does is care about her.
He has made her beautiful.
* * *
ALIX SITS ON HER OWN in the canteen, thinking how grubby it all is. How grubby students are. And how young.
She's supposed to go to business studies next but she can't be bothered. She's ahead of the work anyway. If she wanted to she could probably take her exam today, right this second, here in the canteen – and pass.
She pushes her half-eaten pizza away.
Sipping her cappuccino, she decides that she loathes drinking from a paper cup. She wants caramel coffee and fine china mugs. She wants everything made by Hugh.
She went out for a meal with him last night, and he drove her home in the Ferrari. People almost broke their necks looking round at them – other drivers, walkers, passengers on buses. It felt good.
She didn't invite him in, and he didn't try to persuade her, and that felt good too.
Everything's going to plan.
She wonders where the other two are. She knows Courtney hasn't turned up at college at all, and neither has Fern, as far as Alix can tell. Fern usually sniffs her out at lunch time, if she doesn't see her before. She ought to text them to check that they're all right – particularly Fern, after Saturday night.
But checking up on them isn't the only thing she wants to do.
She's made a decision. She wants to finish it – the whole working together thing. In fact, she wants to do more than finish it – she wants to bury it somewhere – to make it impossible for anyone to ever find out.
She gets a strange unconnected memory of Fern dropping a nugget of glass down onto the bit of muddy beach next to River's View. Sinking and sinking and sinking, she'd said. All the way to the middle of the earth. Alix would like to do that with all of the last six months – get it sucked down into some murky quagmire in a place where no one will ever dig it up. Whatever happens, she needs to reinvent herself. To be vulnerable. Unsullied. The way Hugh wants her to be.
They've already got bookings this week. Most are 'regs', and one is new, so they'll see them just because it's impossible to cancel – she never stores numbers – and after that she'll announce that it's over. She won't be doing any more sessions. She doesn't think they'll be too bothered anyway – Courtney's drawing further and further away, and Fern will go with whatever she says.
There won't be any trouble from the clients either. She's thought it all through. She won't destroy the phone – not quite yet – because some idiot might show up on the doorstep. But whenever they ring to book a session, she'll explain that there's a problem and they can't risk working for awhile. The word 'risk' should do it. No one's going to want to be around if there's a paparazzo-style reporter lurking in the bushes.
And pretty soon, if things work out for her the way she wants them to, she won't be available anyway. She might not even bother to do the exams. Who needs A grades in business studies when you're dri
nking up the sun, turning golden on the deck of a luxury yacht called Zara?
* * *
Fern wheels Dad's chair out round to the front of the house, and sits on the wall next to him. The weather has turned muggy, the air churning with the threat of storms. The tide is unusually fast, pushing in towards the shore.
She watches two swans waddle down the slipway onto the stringy slice of beach, and thinks how awkward they are out of water. So lumpy and clumsy.
Turning to Dad, she takes her sketch book from him. 'I'm going to do plants and creatures as well as people. I'll glaze everything in shades of brown – make it all look really earthy and muddy.'
'It's such an excellent idea.' Dad smiles at her. 'Just the sort of project the tourism committee is looking for.'
'Other artists much older than me will be sending things in too, Dad.' Fern doesn't want him to be disappointed if she doesn't get chosen, but he's buzzing with enthusiasm for her. She hasn't seen him like this for ages.
It was magical, how it suddenly all came together in her head. It happened yesterday evening, while she was still in bed. Fragments from the party had somehow joined with fragments of ways to put her life the right way round again – and then she'd noticed the rolled-up Long Cove Echo, still tucked behind Lily, the elephant, and the soft green crocodile. Dad's Art and the Environment project. The council award thing that she had forgotten to let him show her. She fumbled her way out of bed and got it down, staring groggily at the entry form. The details kept swimming in and out of vision like something hypnotic. After a while she put it aside because her head was throbbing, leant back on the pillow, and closed her eyes. And it was then that the idea came. She'd work on something like the glass sculptures in the millionaire's garden, only she'd do it with clay, and with her whole underworld fantasy.
Once the idea started it rushed and tumbled, as if all her life it had somehow been gathering secretly, and now it was ready to come pouring out. Forcing herself to get up, she staggered downstairs and babbled her thoughts out to Dad, while Mum brought more hot sweet tea and they all sat together and talked and talked, and it was just the way it always used to be.
In front of her, the swans waddle on along the beach. Fern runs swift lines down the page, trying to capture the sense of their awkward lumbering.
'I shouldn't worry about older artists. Or any other artists. I can't see they'd be offering anything as imaginative as the solution you're putting forward. The whole underworld of the river hidden amongst the reeds and on the wreck, and caught up on the banks. I just can't stop thinking about all the possibilities that could run alongside it. It could work like a treasure hunt for tourists – I could even draw up a map to go with it all. Kids could circle the spots where your sculptures are, and the council could run a prize draw for correct entries.' Dad coughs and draws breath for a few moments before racing on. 'Your idea isn't just about art, sweetheart. It's a whole concept. Interactive. And it'll get everyone really thinking and talking about the river, and the tides, and the way everything affects everything else. It's exactly what they're looking for.'
Fern sharpens her pencil and begins sketching a cluster of reeds. She needs to send in rough plans showing exactly where along the river walk each sculpture will go, and she needs to send in photographs of the sculptures – at least six. This is fine, because she's got half of them done already.
'It's going to be something special, sweetheart. Different. Surreal.'
Fern squints round at him. Surreal. That's a word Aaron used at the party. It still hurts a bit, thinking about him, but at least she didn't do anything too stupid. He won't have any idea of what was in her head. She didn't make herself look too keen.
'I'm going to sort the boathouse out for you too,' Dad goes on. 'Get the electricity working for a start. I'll do it as soon as Mum and I get back from our break. You sure you'll be all right for a few days? You're welcome to invite friends round to stay, if you want.'
'I'll be fine Dad. I don't need friends round. All I want is for you and Mum to have a really happy few days – for some other guesthouse to look after you two for a change.' Fern has helped set this up – another idea they all agreed to yesterday – a chance they have to take while Dad's in remission.
She moves her attention from the reeds and on round to the jetty. She could sculpt some sort of mud-oozed birdlike creature to sit on the post. Or maybe a fish would work better? She likes the idea of a fish out of water. She can make it a strange flying fish. She could do lots of them, all shapes and sizes. Fish and eels – and why not flying crabs? It will be all the things from beneath the surface, learning to evolve and survive above it.
'There's no reason why I can't do things like basic wiring.' Dad coughs again, but his voice is sparky and determined. 'My body might be caving in, but there's nothing wrong with my brain. It's about time I got myself a new attitude and started getting on with things.'
Fern watches the swans swagger closer to the edge, and then wade into the river. They push off, gliding towards the centre, a trail of ripples streaming out behind them. Fern thinks it's like an enchantment. Beauty and the Beast. The Frog Prince. Once they are in the water they are transformed, all grace and elegance. And watching them she feels moved with the magic of the moment. She's been trying so hard to be someone else, but Alix's world is all wrong for her.
She's been a swan on the shore. A fish out of water.
Thank God she's woken up, before Mum and Dad found out.
She's going to tell Alix. She might even pluck up the courage not to go over on Wednesday. She doesn't have to get in the taxi, just because it's there.
She sketches on. Seagulls. A cormorant. The gliding swans. She has to focus on movement. Get a grasp on the way flying things work. The tide is slushing up against the bottom of the wall now, and the sky is darkening. The storm can't be far away. She'll have to move soon – but not yet. Not just yet. She wants to sit here with Dad, pinning her imagination down onto paper, and knowing that this, all of this, is where she is meant to be.
* * *
Courtney has filled the sink with hot, sudsy water. 'It was a brilliant meal – but I don't know how you can use so much stuff just cooking for the two of us,' she laughs, taking the first saucepan from the mountain of pots and plates and dishes. The mountain wobbles. A stray spoon clatters down and slips into the soapy froth.
Elroy comes up behind her, sliding his hands round her waist. 'I'm just being fair to the pots. Making sure none of them are left out,' he says.
'You're nuts,' she giggles, twisting round slightly and flicking suds at him.
'A crazed, tortured artist,' he agrees, reaching past her and getting his own handful of suds. 'So – beware the Bubble Maniac . . . '
'You . . . ' she splutters, scooping out more bubbles as he tosses the sparkling froth towards her hair. 'This is war.'
He ducks as she hurls her next onslaught, stepping backwards and away from her.
She advances, her hand raised, a fresh mound of suds all fizzing and blinking on her palm.
'Mind my eyes – mind my eyes,' he shouts. 'A struggling artist is nothing if blinded by the scorched sting of suds. Mercy, oh mercy.'
She keeps coming for him and he reaches the bed as she does the flick.
'You really do mean business, don't you?' he roars, grabbing her waist and tumbling her down with him.
She rolls under him on the lime-green quilt and he stays on top, holding her arms and looking down at her. 'You are a dangerous Fairy Liquid fiend.'
She giggles again, twisting to try and escape, but his grip is strong and she is trapped.
She stares up at him, deciding to be strategic. She will pretend not to struggle and then suddenly wrench away as he loosens his grip.
He is staring back down at her.
His eyes are so lovely. So warm. So kind. He has a soft froth of suds caught on his left eyebrow. She becomes aware of the sweet familiar smell of him. The shape of his mouth.
She w
ants to be perfect for him. She wants to be honest. She has to cut loose from Alix.
'Let me go,' she says softly. 'Please.'
He releases his grip immediately, his so warm so-kind eyes suddenly anxious. 'I'm sorry – I wasn't trying . . . '
'I know.' She reaches up, clasping her hands behind his head, and pulls his face down to hers. The kiss soaks through her, long and rich and full. She feels as if she is somewhere inside it, spinning in a magic sparkling bubble. There is a soft sighing, and she knows it is coming from her. Her hands slide down the length of his body, exploring him.
He squeezes her shoulders; runs his hands across her breasts. 'Is this OK?' he whispers. 'Are you sure?'
She kisses him again, more softly now and it is as if she is flowing through him and he is flowing through her and she thinks this is it. This is it. This is how it should be.
'I'm sure,' she whispers back. 'Honestly. I'm sure.'
* * *
OUTSIDE, the thunder grumbles. Lying on the bed in the candlelit Love Nest, Fern folds her hands across her chest and rubs her arms. 'A storm is spot on for our last working night together,' Alix had laughed, rummaging in her kitchen drawer for extra candles. 'You could say we're going out with a bang. And the power cut will just add a bit of atmosphere.'
Fern wishes she didn't have to do this one last 'newie'. She wishes she wasn't here, but Alix picked her up from college – had been there instead of a taxi in the car park – and persuaded her to do this one last time. Although she's been fine about Fern wanting to finish – she's said it's time they wound everything up anyway.
'Time to move on,' she'd said. 'I'd already decided that myself.'
Fern thinks that Alix already deciding is a good thing – she hasn't had to make her cross. The door knocks and she gets up off the bed, walking over to open it. 'Hi.'
'Hello.' He has a posh voice although she can't see his face very well. Faceless Fred. She's glad he is faceless. She won't have to gaze into his eyes.