Spin Cycle

by Sue Margolis

  “Come on, you’re knackered,” Matt said. “Why don’t you get some sleep now?”

  This time she didn’t argue.

  * * * * *

  Matt’s bedroom was strewn with clothes, newspapers and even more bits of metal and mechanical junk.

  “Sheets are clean though,” he said as she took a pile of circuit boards off the bed and put them on the floor.

  He pulled her to him. “We will sort this out, you know,” he said softly. “Somehow. I promise . . .”

  “We?” she said. “How d’you mean ‘we’?”

  He paused and took a deep breath. “I mean,” he said, holding her eyes in his. “I love you.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “You sound surprised,” he said.

  “Well, I thought maybe you might, but I wasn’t sure.” She sat down on the bed. He came and sat next to her. Then with his hand on her chin, he turned her face toward him.

  “So do you feel the same way?”

  She gazed back at him. “Definitely,” she said.

  Their deep, tender kiss seemed to go on forever. Afterward he hugged her so tight she could barely breathe.

  She knew full well she should tell him about Adam and that she was planning to end it the moment he got back from South Africa, but she couldn’t. She was afraid he might be angry with her for not being straight with him and after the night she’d had, she felt utterly incapable of dealing with it.

  After he’d let her go, he opened the chest of drawers and gave her a neatly folded shirt to put on. Then he insisted on making her hot milk.

  When he came back, she was already in bed. He handed her the milk in a South Park mug. When she’d finished, he lay down beside her, stripped to his boxers, holding her and stroking her head.

  “Night,” he said, kissing her forehead.

  Despite the whisky, the hot milk, and him holding her, she couldn’t drop off.

  “Matt, you awake?” she said after ten minutes or so.

  “Just about,” he mumbled.

  “I can’t sleep,” she said. “I just keep going over and over what happened tonight. You haven’t got any sleeping pills, have you?”

  He propped himself up onto his elbow and switched on the bedside light. “No, I’ve got something far better,” he grinned.

  “Oh, Matt, I’m knackered. I really don’t feel like . . .”

  The next thing she knew he had thrown off the duvet. Slowly he began unbuttoning the shirt she had on, nipping and kissing her breasts as he went.

  “Right, take it off,” he said, “and roll over onto your stomach.”

  A few moments later he was straddling her and she could feel oil being drizzled over her back. There was a powerful smell of lavender.

  Slowly and expertly he began massaging her neck and shoulders, pressing his fingers into the hard, knotted muscles. A couple of times she flinched with pain. Then, very gradually, the discomfort began to ease and she could feel herself starting to relax.

  “Oh, you are good at this,” she whispered. “Very good.”

  He carried on like this for a while. Then suddenly he began kissing her neck and shoulders. Lying beside her now, he trailed his fingers along her spine. Soon he was stroking her bottom through the cotton of her pants. As he ran his finger between her buttocks, she quivered with delight.

  She turned over and let him pull off her pants. By now she could feel liquid seeping out of her and trickling down her thighs. His fingers found it. Moments later, they were gliding over her clitoris.

  “Just let go,” he urged her softly.

  She felt herself drifting away, floating on a sea of pure pleasure. Soon she felt the first spasm and then another.

  Afterward he planted tiny kisses all over her face, stomach and breasts.

  “Now sleep,” he commanded kindly, pushing her fringe out of her eyes.

  “Thanks again for being there tonight,” she said, starting to feel drowsy now.

  “I’ll always be there,” he whispered.

  * * * * *

  The moment she woke up, the memory of what had happened at the comedy contest hit Rachel like a wrecker’s ball. But at the same time, she felt oddly, irrationally buoyant. Then she remembered Matt had told her he loved her. She let out a couple of contented little sighs and turned over to put an arm round him, but he wasn’t there. Almost at once she heard his voice coming from the living room. There was a second voice too. Also male. Bound to be his flatmate, she thought. She listened, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  As she examined her feelings about last night more closely, she realized that her fury had by no means disappeared. What had disappeared, however, was the feeling of hopelessness, the fear that her career was over. It had been replaced (probably as a result of Matt’s positive thinking rubbing off on her, she decided) with an overpowering determination to expose Pitsy and get even with her.

  She stared up at the ceiling. Maybe she should start with the obvious—find Pitsy, appeal to her better nature and beg her to admit publicly what she’d done. She laughed out loud. The idea was absurd. First, Pitsy was mad and didn’t have a better nature. Second, she would have gone to ground by now and be impossible to find.

  The only alternative was to speak to Xantia. Deeply buried as it was, Rachel was certain the woman did have a more human side. She’d seen glimmerings of it when she and Shelley discovered the secret room. For a few moments Xantia’s haughty eloquence had given way to bumbling, beet-faced embarrassment. But whether her human side extended to her possessing feelings for anybody other than herself, it was hard to say.

  But there was a chance—albeit slim to the point of being waiflike—that she might be able to convince Xantia of what Pitsy had done and that Xantia might respond by being so outraged that she would agree to put Rachel’s case to the people at Channel 6. She was bound to have contacts there. She probably even knew Robin Metcalf, the program controller who’d introduced himself to Rachel at the Flicker and Firkin in Chiswick.

  Rachel knew it would be impossible for her to be declared the winner of the contest in Pitsy’s place. It would be far too complicated, not to say embarrassing for Channel 6. All she wanted was for her reputation with them to remain intact. That way they might at least consider offering her some television work in the future.

  The only problem with her plan—apart from Xantia refusing to see her or refusing to believe her story—was that since the Marxes always spent Christmas in Venice, she wouldn’t be able to get to her until the new year. Monumentally frustrating as it was going to be to sit out Christmas worrying and speculating about what her reaction might be, she had no choice.

  Eager to hear what Matt thought of her plan, she got out of bed, put on the dressing gown he’d left out for her and headed into the hall.

  As she stood there doing up the dressing gown belt, she could hear Matt’s voice quite clearly now. He was having a go at his flatmate about the mess in the living room and in particular some empty curry cartons that hadn’t been thrown away. After a moment or two she heard the second voice. Her hand flew to her mouth.

  “Look, I’m sorry, mate,” the voice with the unmistakable Liverpool accent was saying. “I was going to clear it up last night when I’d finished, but it was after two by then and I was feeling dead miserable. I’d had to ditch me blind date. She turned out to have eyes like two limpid pools—which was brilliant—except she had a nose like a diving board.”

  “Tractor?” Rachel murmured to herself in utter disbelief. “Matt’s flatmate is Tractor?”

  She opened the door a crack and peered in, to check her ears weren’t deceiving her. They weren’t. There he was, lying outstretched on the sofa. He was reading the paper and drawing on a cigarette, wearing nothing but his leather trousers. Matt was standing by the dining table, gathering up curry containers.

  “And what about all this crap on the floor?”

  She could see that the floor immediately surrounding the table was a
sea of small objects that looked like they were made of paper.

  “It’s me origami.”

  “I’ll pick it up then, shall I?” Matt said sarcastically.

  “Look, I’ve said I’m sorry. Just leave it. I’ll do it later.”

  Matt bent down and began sweeping the bits of origami together with his hand. Then he picked one up and began staring at it. She could just about see it was petal-shaped with lots of folds.

  “So what are they?” Matt said, shoving his finger inside one of the folds.

  “Cunts,” Tractor said.

  “Who are?”

  “Me bits of origami. The thing is, I can’t get ’em quite right. I worked on them for hours after I got back last night, but me inner labia keep prolapsing.”

  Outside the door, Rachel was choking as she tried to avoid bursting out laughing.

  “For Chrissake, Tractor,” Matt groaned. “I’ve brought Rachel back. She had a terrible shock last night. Somebody stole her material and she’s feeling pretty wretched. The last thing she wants to walk into is a pile of origami, er . . .”

  Matt hesitated.

  “Cunts,” Tractor obliged.

  Shaking his head, Matt began picking up the bits of paper.

  “So where is she then, your bird?” Tractor asked.

  “Rachel,” he said, emphasizing her name, “is still in bed.”

  “Right . . . Oh, by the way, I didn’t tell you. I got a letter from the Kellogg’s people this morning.”

  “Oh yeah—saying what exactly?”

  “Well, it was only a compliments slip really, but it thanked me for my Imperial Cereal proposal and said they would be writing to me in due course.”

  “Fantastic,” Matt said disdainfully, ramming several failed origami genitalia into the remains of a chicken tikka masala.

  Tractor took another drag on his cigarette. “Here,” he said, holding up the paper that Rachel could now see was the Radio Times. “You see these pictures of all the Joke for Europe contestants. Well, I know one of them.”

  “Who?” Matt said, coming over to look at the picture.

  “Her. I’ve met her.”

  “Tractor, that’s Rachel. How do you know her?”

  “Oh, I tried to pick her up a few weeks ago in the Red House. Don’t get all aerated, it was ages ago.”

  He began gently scratching his chest.

  At this point Rachel made her silent entrance.

  “She made out she wasn’t interested,” Tractor continued, “but just between you and me, I reckon she really had the hots for me.”

  “Hi, Tractor,” Rachel said, beaming.

  Tractor leaped off the sofa and stood in front of her, red in the face. Then he bent down toward the coffee table and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. It came as a complete surprise to her that he was even remotely capable of embarrassment. Despite herself, she couldn’t help finding it ever so slightly endearing.

  “Hi,” he said awkwardly, crossing his arms in front of him to cover up his nipples. “Sorry about what happened last night. Matt told me somebody stole your material. You must feel like shit.”

  “Yeah, something like that,” she said breezily, noticing Matt whisking the curry cartons off the table and hiding them behind his back.

  “Well,” Tractor began sheepishly, “I was just about to get in the shower. Anyway, nice to see you again, Rachel.”

  “And you, Tractor.”

  “Here,” Matt said, “I think these are yours.” He took the curry cartons from behind his back and handed them to his friend.

  Tractor turned to go, but Matt called him back and placed the ashtray full of cigarette butts on top of one of the cartons.

  They watched him walk to the door, where he stopped, lowered his head and sniffed his armpits. When he finally left the room he was muttering something about always ending up smelling like a packet of Vesta curry whenever he had an Indian.

  Matt closed his eyes and pressed his eyeballs with his fingers. “Rachel, I’m sorry. I had no idea Tractor tried to pick you up. Oh God . . . Don’t tell me he pulled that Clitorati stunt of his.”

  “OK, then, I won’t,” Rachel teased.

  Matt gave a brief grin. “I know you think Tractor’s an absolute tosser, but he’s not a bad bloke—”

  He broke off. Coming from the bathroom were the loud, atonal sounds of Tractor singing “Furry, cross the mercy . . . dah . . . da da da dah.”

  Matt rolled his eyes. “It’s just that he hasn’t got the first idea how to handle women.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Matt leaned over the back of the sofa and picked up a pair of men’s briefs. “And OK, he’s a bit of a layabout.” He rammed the underpants into his jeans pocket. “But I make allowances for him because he’s been through a really rough time lately. The reason he disappeared to New York was to get over a broken heart. He’d finally managed to meet a woman and then, when he was really starting to fall for her, it turns out she only wanted him for his sperm. If he hadn’t got up in the middle of the night and gone hunting through the deep freeze for a couple of fish fingers to put in a sandwich, he’d never have found out.”

  “What? You mean she was a sperm napper?”

  Matt nodded. “Deep freeze was chocka with his used—”

  “All right, enough,” she giggled. “I get the picture.”

  He came over to her and ran his fingers across her smiling lips. “You know, I think your sense of humor might be returning,” he said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “It’s just that I am determined not to let Pitsy sodding Carter get the better of me, that’s all.”

  She explained about her plan to see Xantia. He said it was probably a long shot, but definitely worth a try.

  “You just wait,” Rachel said with a positively evil grin. “When I’ve finished with Pitsy, she’ll be begging for mercy.”

  She reached out, took an apple from the fruit bowl and bit into it. Hard.

  “You know,” he said, “that’s one of the things I adore about you.”

  “What? My grit and steely determination in the face of adversity?”

  “No,” he said. “The way you chew. Like a rabbit, with your front teeth. It’s really sweet.”

  “I do not,” she squealed indignantly, reaching for a cushion and bashing him playfully over the head with it.

  CHAPTER 21

  “So how are you bearing up, darling?” Faye asked, in that painfully concerned tone she always used at times of great personal suffering like funerals or the time Coral’s new kitchen units finally turned up—after a four-month wait—with Sandringham rosewood doors when she’d ordered the Balmoral teak.

  “Mum, I’m fine—just like I was when you rang an hour ago and an hour before that.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, how can you be fine after the trauma you’ve been through? Coral says you could be in denial. She thinks maybe you should get some counseling, you know, to help you unleash your anger and start grieving for your lost jokes. She saw somebody a few years back, when she got that obsessive-compulsive thing. Mind you, it didn’t do her any good. Every time she went, she spent the hour tidying the therapist’s room.”

  “Mum, I don’t need therapy. I’m OK, honestly. . . . No, there’s nothing you or Dad can do. . . . No, please don’t go to the police. They won’t be the remotest bit interested. I mean can you imagine Nick Ross on Crimewatch saying: ‘If you’ve seen the woman who stole these jokes, police are waiting to hear from you’?”

  “All right, but your father’s still going to speak to Henry, our solicitor. I’ll phone you tonight and let you know what he says.”

  “OK, Mum. Whatever. Speak to you later.”

  Rolling her eyes, Rachel pressed the off button on her mobile and put it down on the dashboard.

  Shelley, who was sitting in the passenger seat, started laughing. “They do say,” she said, “that all women eventually turn into their mothers.”

  �
�God, I just hope that’s not true,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah, me too. Mine’s always fancied Willard Scott.”

  * * * * *

  It was just after two and Rachel and Shelley were in Rachel’s car on their way to Matt’s washing machine unveiling.

  The drive from Crouch End to Muswell Hill shouldn’t have taken more than five minutes, but since it was Christmas Eve, the roads were jammed with traffic heading out of London and they’d hardly moved for a quarter of an hour.

  Shelley turned up the radio, which was playing Christmas carols, and started singing along to “Silent Night.” Rachel joined in with the descant even though she knew she could sit on a Chubb lock and still not be in key. By the time they reached the final “Sleeeep in heavenly peace,” not even Shelley could reach the high note and they burst into a fit of giggles.

  It was a while before Rachel realized that Shelley had stopped laughing and instead was inhaling sharply through her teeth.

  Rachel turned to look at her. She was grimacing and both hands were clamped to her belly.

  “You OK?” Rachel asked.

  Shelley let out a long slow breath and smiled. “Yeah. I’m fine. It’s these Braxton Hicks practice contractions. I’ve been getting them all night.”

  Rachel looked at her with concern. “You sure they’re just practice contractions? I got them with Sam, but I don’t remember them hurting that much. You’re only a month off your due date, you know. After what happened a few weeks ago—shouldn’t we go to the hospital and get you checked out?”

  “Nah, stop fussing. I’m fine. It’s gone now.”

  “You sure?” Rachel said uneasily.

  “Positive. These pains feel exactly the same as they did when I went to hospital the first time. It was a false alarm back then. It’ll be the same now. I’m not making a fool of myself again. Let’s just change the subject. . . . So now that you and Matt have finally got round to telling each other how you feel, when are you going to give Adam his marching orders?”

  “As soon as he gets home—whenever that is. Could be weeks before—”

  She broke off a second time. Now Shelley was making tiny blowing sounds.