‘If you’re drinking down there …’ A faint voice percolated through the floorboards, ‘… just remember who did all the work, and bring up a glass for a new mother.’ One of the babies squawked and she instantly lowered her voice, ‘or you can all die horribly. Your choice.’
Chapter Eighteen
Humdrum cut back in. The wind dropped from gale force to merely breezy and it stopped snowing, Kai went out to chop up enough tree to get the Jeep out. A doctor and midwife arrived, covered in snow to the eyebrows after having had to walk from the road, and were disappointed to have missed the delivery, but they checked Cerys and Zac and Freya and they were all announced to be fit and well. I was congratulated on having done such a good job of midwifery, which I accepted modestly even though all I’d really done was to catch. More tea was drunk, Nick went back to children’s television, and I went up to sit with Cerys for a bit.
‘You were great, Holly.’ She was feeding Zac, Freya lying beside her still wrapped in her towel like a papoose. ‘So calm and organized.’
‘I was terrified,’ I admitted. ‘But you took it like a pro.’
Cerys did the ‘soft faced’ expression of a Madonna. ‘I wish you were my mum,’ she said, eyes on the babies.
‘But you’ve got a mum in Peterborough. And by all accounts she’s a lovely lady.’
Cerys looked at me now. ‘I know that. I didn’t mean that mum, I meant …’ and she jerked her head at the door, ‘with him.’
‘I can’t be a stepgrandma, I’m only thirty. Think of my image! I’d have to get a perm and learn to knit and keep a hanky in my cardigan pocket. And I’ve only just learned that oral sex trick with the ice cubes, it would be a waste.’ I ate some more glucose tablets. Strawberry flavoured, and nicer than Nicholas’s tea.
‘Don’t mention sex, please. I can’t even bear to think about going for a wee.’ Cerys kissed the baby’s head. ‘I thought you and he had a bit of a thing going the other day, in fact, when you came to the door – his bedroom door and don’t tell me you were doing a crossword – you both looked very flushed.’
I thought about my purely visceral reactions to Kai. The way my stomach jumped when he smiled at me, and the tingling of outlying regions when he kissed me. His implicit confession that he, possibly, more than liked me. ‘It’s all very innocent. We like each other’s company, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, right. Now who sounds like a granny? “Liking someone’s company” is what you say when you want a shag but he’s not playing ball. Do you want me to put in a word?’
‘And then I’ll have to kill you.’
She gathered the babies to her. ‘Oh, think of the poor motherless orphans.’ I fought the temptation to throw a pillow at her head because I didn’t want to upset the twins.
I went to go and look for Kai. The sounds of chopping had stopped, so I was presuming that he’d cleared the garage doors, although with the trackway blocked at the road end we were going to have to rally through the woods to get out. Not wanting him to feel that I was chivvying him along by watching over his shoulder, I crept quietly out of the kitchen door and down through the snow towards the garage. There was a huge pile of logs, Kai’s jacket and a large circle of trodden-down snow, but no sign of Kai himself. I peered through the garage window and the Jeep was still inside – well, dur, otherwise there would have been car tracks in the snow, not just footprints.
I looked closer at the footprints. I could see where one single line of prints came from the house to the fallen tree and around either side of the logs. But there was another line of prints. Smaller, deeper. Coming in from the woods which lay away to the east of the Old Lodge, meeting up with Kai’s prints, and then two sets making their way back under the trees, the way the first set had come.
I should have called out. Should have made my presence known, but I didn’t, and I didn’t know why. No, I did. There was something about Kai, something that told me he didn’t only swim with minnows, he hunted with sharks. A darkness, an intensity. Something, and I hated to admit it, that I didn’t quite trust. I followed the double line of footprints, treading carefully on the compressed snow they’d left and trusting to the noise of the wind to cover any telltale crunching sounds.
And there they were, Kai and the ginger man. Ginge was talking, voice low, checking over his shoulder regularly and I dropped to the snow on my stomach, relying on the heaps that were snow-covered bushes to keep me hidden. Kai was leaning against a tree, arms folded across his chest, looking at ease, relaxed. Every so often he would interject in a low-key way but Ginge was definitely doing most of the conversational work, his voice rising in a peevish whine. I couldn’t make out the words and I didn’t dare creep any closer because there was a pheasant in here with me and any movement I made would send it stumbling into heavy flight, and possible discovery. I eyeballed it and silently dared it to react. It stared back with empty-eyed avian insanity.
Finally the men reached whatever consensus they’d set out to. I saw Kai give a deep shrug and Ginge threw his arms wide as if to indicate the whole forest, then he turned on his heel, in a surprisingly military way, and strode off into the trees with his bright hair flaming onto my retina even as he vanished into the dark.
Kai stood a while longer, staring after him. Then he shook his head and pushed himself away from the tree, walking back out of the shelter of the woods and towards the garage again. I stayed crouched until I was sure he was gone. Then I took a big circuit through the woods, so as to approach the house from the other side and not be seen by Kai.
When I circled round he was lugging the final log onto the pile outside the back door. ‘There you are,’ he said.
‘Yes, here I am. Can you get the Jeep out now?’
He looked at me steadily. ‘Yeah, I could, but I was going to suggest you stay here tonight. You don’t want to risk running into your naked man until he’s had time to calm down, do you?’
‘It’s all right, I can handle Aiden.’
‘I don’t think you understand.’ Kai looked down at the packed snow by his feet. ‘I’d like you to stay. Here. With me.’
Despite it all, there was still a little jump inside me at the thought of staying, a momentary hotness that welled through me thinking of his rangy body stretched out next to mine, the touch of his fingers across my body. ‘Thanks for the offer, Kai, but I’d really like to go home now. And you’re going to have to get into town to pick up some supplies for the twins – Cerys only has enough newborn nappies for a couple of changes each.’
‘Holly?’ He closed the remaining snowy space between us. ‘Are you okay? You look very pale.’ He reached out gently and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. Or at least he tried, my hair was damp with melting snow and fell back out again.
‘Just a bit shaken. I’ve never delivered a baby before.’ I tried a smile which I think might have looked a bit scary from the outside. ‘And there’s Nicholas, I mean, he can’t move in here with you, he’d be swapping a dependence on me for one on you. And he’ll need to get to the doctor’s to get checked over after that episode the other day.’ I felt rather proud of that rationalisation.
‘Suppose.’ But he didn’t move. Just stood, staring down at me from his lean height, eyes assessing me with a cool, yellow gaze. ‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘if you’re sure.’
‘If you drop me in town I’ll pop to the garage and tell them about my car. They’ll have to tow it in, I guess, and I’ll have to sort out a rental in the meantime. I need that car for work.’
‘Hey, you can always call me if you need transport.’
‘Thanks.’
We stood a bit longer in the snow. Away in the woods a bird began to sing into the clear air and an overloaded branch snapped with a crack like a leg break. ‘Holly.’ Kai put a finger under my chin and tipped it, forcing my eyes up to meet his. ‘This isn’t the end, you know that don’t you?’
‘What?’ I couldn’t look away from that tawny stare, whether it was the pecul
iarity of colouring or something in the way he touched me, I was stuck, fixed in the amber of his intensity.
‘When Cerys goes back to Peterborough, I’m not going to stop wanting to see you.’ He’d come right in close now, face bent to mine, almost touching my lips with his. ‘Not going to stop wanting you.’ His breath was warm against my frozen cheek, I couldn’t tell if I was still breathing, couldn’t tell if my heart still beat – in that moment I didn’t care that he hadn’t told me about his association with Ginger man – I wanted him to kiss me. My whole body was pulling forward, straining against my bones to try to get closer to him.
‘Kai …’ I ached all over with the loss of the innocence I’d had earlier. Now I knew he wasn’t the superficially happy, deep-feeling guy I’d met, he was some dark stranger of the kind my mother would have warned me about if she hadn’t been so busy telling me dire tales of childbearing. He was made of secrets and lies and there was so much behind that strange stare that I couldn’t even guess at.
‘Yeah, you’re right. Better get the Jeep fired up. Don’t want to have to try to navigate our way out of the woods in the dark, not when there’s trees down all over the place.’ Kai let me go, a casual finger brushing down my cheek as he did so, touching my lips before he stuffed both hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders and yanked open the garage doors. ‘If you’re sure you won’t stay?’
Now was my chance to back down, to fall into his arms, his bed, his eyes. I could just sleep with him, couldn’t I? I mean, it wouldn’t mean anything. His body had that alluring hardness to it, he had a great face, good muscles and I could imagine lying underneath him in the dark, feeling his hair stroking me, his fingers teasing me …
Hold on. Shut up. Aside from the fact that he was fraternising with men that even he had warned me off, I didn’t know what I wanted from Kai. I mean, yes, the sex was almost certain to be an all-night sensation, but. He wanted something more. Wanted me, all of me, and …well, there was Nicholas to think of and …
No. This minnow was staying well clear of the sharks, thank you very much.
‘Yeah. I’m sure.’
‘I’ll go get the keys then.’ With a shrug he turned for the house. ‘Oh, I’ll tell Cerys you’ll be round tomorrow, will I?’
‘I …’ I wanted to say no, but then I had a rethink. ‘Yeah. I’ve got to come over anyway. I told Vivienne I’d get rid of the evidence up on the hill.’
There was the briefest change in his stride there. If I hadn’t been looking for it I wouldn’t have seen, but he’d almost stumbled. ‘Holly, I’ve told you, it’s dangerous up there.’
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll go as it’s getting light, really early so no one will see me. I have to collect the candles and stuff. The snow should have just buried them where we left them, so I’ll only have to dig for a bit. Won’t take me five minutes.’
He looked as though he was going to say something else, half turning towards me with a peculiarly intent look on his face, but he must have thought better of it because he swung away again without saying anything else. I watched his long stride head towards the Lodge and wondered to myself, where do you really stand, Mr Rhys, with the woman you say you want, or the man you pretend to hate?
In the Jeep, Nicholas bounced and chattered, filling the silence that had fallen between Kai and I, and it was the first time I’d ever been grateful for my brother’s condition. I sat, head turned, the view spooling past unregistered as I wondered about my reaction to Kai. About what the hell was going on with him that made me want to kiss him and at the same time be a very long way away. About why I could feel his body heat despite the chasm between us, and why nothing felt the same any more.
The Jeep jerked around a corner and I saw his reflection in the window glass glance my way and open his mouth as though to speak, think better of it and switch his gaze back to the road, as Nicholas’s monologue branched off and became random. I half listened to my brother spilling words to some story that had no beginning and no end, found myself judging his tone to see whether he was spiralling up or down, biting my tongue so that I didn’t say anything that he might take as criticism or anger – a reaction so permanent that I hardly even felt myself do it any more. What had once been a conscious, thoughtful consequence had become second nature … when had that happened?
The car had stopped and Kai was waiting, engine ticking. ‘Right, Malton garage. This is your stop,’ he said, as though he was repeating himself. ‘Holly?’
‘I …’ I shook my head. Nicholas had already bounced down onto the pavement, still talking and I bit down hard on my inner self for wanting to shout ‘shut up and let me say goodbye’. ‘Thank you for driving us back.’
‘You seemed to think it was important.’ He was looking over his shoulder, judging the oncoming traffic, not meeting my eye. ‘I’ll maybe see you.’
And as he dropped the clutch and manoeuvred the big car out into the road, I wanted to shout after it, something that would fetch him back, but any words that came to mind felt second-hand and meaningless.
Chapter Nineteen
Okay. Now I really don’t understand. If you aren’t a selfish bitch who thought a baby would just inconvenience her, hold her back, drag her down while she was so keen on climbing whatever corporate ladder she found herself on – then was it me? Something you saw in me, or saw in the man who fathered me, some kind of hovering vice, circling around and waiting to manifest? Were you ashamed? Did you think that I was going to turn out a bastard, a user; some carefree prick who thought of women as his own personal playground and fuck the consequences? Or was there something else …?
Because my daughter … your granddaughter … she made a mistake, got pregnant by some fly-by-night dickhead whose attitude to parenthood was pretty much as a hit and run. But she had something you didn’t. Courage. And now she’s lying there with her babies in her arms and the best fucking future that I can give her, to make up for what you did to me.
Y’know how I said I could see when she was born how much giving birth must have cost you? Well, I saw in her face today how much it would cost to give up those babies. Could hardly even get them off her for a cuddle, she was hanging in there as though I was going to commit murder … And I come back to it. Either you didn’t care, pushed me out and left me to whatever fate came along, or you cared and gave me away anyway … And what could make any mother do that? What happened to you?
I’ve done well, all these years, on my own. Never needing anyone. Because that’s my control. If they don’t know who I really am, they can’t hurt me, y’see. All they can do is drag their nails down the outside of that wooden statue that they think is the real me, that hollow man with no heart to touch, no soul to steal. And all the while the real me is … where? Hiding, untouched where they can’t see. And now I’ve met someone. Someone like me, who’s built herself a shell to keep the world from hurting her. Oh, she thinks it’s just words but … I know how it goes. I understand. And I wanted to be there for her, to help her to see that the way she chose to live her life has damaged her, made her into someone hard, someone who thinks they shouldn’t care. And I wanted to be there when she finds out who she really is, underneath it all, when she finds her heart and soul, when she stops hiding. I thought … I really thought it was something good, something to build on. A new base to create a new life on, something solid and real. But she pulled, bailed on me. Guess she saw through to the far side, to the man that I am deep, deep within, the monster that I’m afraid is the real me now. And maybe it’s better that way.
And now, what? What’s in it for me, digging it all up, all those things I’ve buried good and deep, all the thumpings and the dark cupboards, the taunting and the nights spent with the Bible weighing me down so I couldn’t sleep to try to force the Devil out of me … when what they should have asked was – if they forced the Devil out, what did they force in instead?
Chapter Twenty
Aiden was waiting when I eventually reached home. He was s
itting, perched with one buttock on the sofa arm, and he looked nervous. The washing machine was going and the handcuffs were lying on the table, as though he had dissociated himself from any bedroom goings-on.
‘Holly …’
‘Yes, I know, and I’m really sorry about having to send a total stranger to let you out but … I didn’t know when I’d get back.’
‘No, it’s okay. It’s me who’s sorry.’ He shifted about a bit. He was wearing ordinary clothes, I noticed, not his usual ‘strip me, whip me’ gear but a plain white shirt and slightly baggy jeans. ‘This is never gonna work, babe.’
Then I saw his holdall, packed at his feet. ‘What isn’t?’ And for the world I couldn’t tell you if my heart lifted or sank. ‘Aid?’
‘It’s weird, like something kinda shifted, almost like I was in some dream or something, y’know? When you went, and I was here, waiting, all stoked and ready for action and then …’ he shook his head, almost dazed. ‘I fell asleep for a couple of hours and when I woke up my head just cleared, and I thought, “what the fuck am I doing here?”’
Right at the time I was with Kai. Realising that maybe, just maybe he and I might be more to one another than either of us had expected …
‘I realise now that I can’t stay here with you, I need to be free to take whatever work interests me – being based with you would be restrictive, tie down my creativity.’ And he picked up the bag. ‘Sorry, babe. If you’re ever up my way, come and see me, but I’m afraid’—he stood up, swung the bag casually up onto his shoulder—‘a permanent relationship is not what I’m after.’ A quick kiss grazed my cheek and, with the air of a man newly released from prison, he sauntered out onto the chilly pavement.
I closed the door behind him and started to giggle, although a lot of the laughter was a bit shocked. Wow. It felt as though I’d gone through all the stages of a relationship and its breakdown in a kind of time-lapse photography way. And then I stopped laughing. Wasn’t that how it always went for me? And a tiny chill crept up my spine and whispered into my ear that all this had happened since we’d done the spell, Aiden being overcome with desire for me, a desire which had vanished as fast as it arose when I realised that Kai was … was …
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