Carrie Goes Off the Map

by Phillipa Ashley

  ‘Did you get your stuff?’ she asked so courageously that Carrie’s heart went out to her.

  ‘Yes thanks.’ She rattled her paper bag loudly.

  ‘I’d better be getting back,’ said Lola.

  ‘Do you want me to walk you home?’ said Matt.

  Lola shook her head and threw them both a brave smile. ‘No thanks. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘She’s not fine, is she?’ said Carrie after Lola had gone.

  ‘She will be,’ said Matt.

  ‘No thanks to you.’

  His face darkened. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘No, Carrie. I won’t forget it. Are you blaming me for Lola being upset?’

  Furious at his self-righteousness, she exploded. ‘Yes, I am. Can’t you see that you’ve hurt her? She worships the ground you walk on and you’ve just used her for sex and chucked her away like a… like an old chip wrapper! The minute Natasha came sniffing round, Lola may as well have not existed.’ She was trembling but she didn’t care.

  ‘Have you finished?’ he snapped.

  ‘No. As a matter of fact, I haven’t. I’m pretty pissed off actually, Matt.’

  ‘Again?’

  Her heart was thumping. ‘Yes. Again.’

  ‘And what is it this time?’

  ‘You told Lola all about the wedding. About me trashing the flowers. Why did you do that?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware your horticultural vandalism was classified material and I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, but Lola wanted to know about you so I told her. Yes, I mentioned Huw and I said you were here to try and get away from what had happened. To try and change your life.’

  ‘I never said I was here to change my life. I’ve never discussed how I feel about Huw, so how can you presume to know me?’

  ‘I’ve shared Dolly with you for nearly a month. I think I’ve gained some insight into your moods by now.’

  ‘Really? So you know me, do you? You like discussing me like I’m some… some kind of specimen?’

  He laughed out loud but she was like a rocket now, a rocket that was about to take off. ‘I expect you talk to Natasha about me too, don’t you? I expect you laugh your bloody heads off at me while you’re shagging each other.’

  For a moment, as she stood there simmering with indignation, she thought Matt was going to shout at her. God, she wanted him to shout at her. It wasn’t fair, arguing with someone who stayed so horribly calm. But he didn’t shout; instead, he picked his wallet up carefully from the table, turned to face her, and said softly, ‘Firstly, Carrie, I would never discuss you with Natasha. Secondly, when I’m making love to Natasha, the only person I’d ever discuss or think about is Natasha.’ He reached out and touched her cheek. ‘And thirdly, if you’re jealous about me having a relationship with Natasha or Lola, and the reason you’re so angry with me is that you want to have sex with me yourself, you only have to ask.’

  Chapter 31

  When Matt had left, she couldn’t cry, she was too shocked and angry. She was right. Matt was wrong. His words rang in her ears, stung and tormented her more than anything he’d ever said. Jealous? About Matt?

  Eventually she fell asleep. She was woken the next morning by Matt shaking her gently by the shoulder.

  ‘I know you’re not asleep.’

  ‘I am. Go away.’

  ‘Then wake up, because I want to talk to you.’

  She squinted. ‘Are you going to apologize?’

  His face was puzzled. ‘What for?’

  ‘For being a git.’

  He didn’t apologize, just said, ‘I want to talk to you about something else and I think it would be best if we got out of here. Why don’t we walk down by the beach and get some brunch there?’

  They wandered down the path towards the great sweep of sand, where the surfers were already out catching the morning waves. A few brave families were sitting inside tents or huddling in the dunes. The breeze blew hard, whipping Matt’s hair across his face.

  ‘You need to understand something about Lola.’

  ‘Like she’s crazy on you and you’ve broken her heart?’ asked Carrie.

  ‘She’s not crazy on me. Not in the way you think.’

  ‘Yesterday, when we walked back to the site, she couldn’t shut up about you. How wonderful you are. She’s mad on you, Matt, can’t you see that?’

  ‘She likes me as a friend, that’s all. Did she tell you what happened to her a few years back? Did you know she got a place at medical school? She was just about to start uni when her brother was killed in a motorbike accident.’

  Carrie swallowed hard. That only made it worse that Lola was hurt now, but she contented herself with, ‘That’s terrible. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘She didn’t feel she could leave her mum, so she decided not to take up her place. Then she had some kind of breakdown and university went out of the window. But she’s much better now and she wants to try again. I’ve promised to help her reapply for medical school.’

  ‘Are you sure that helping her is a good idea? Wouldn’t it be better to make a clean break and get someone else to support her? I saw you yesterday. You were holding her and she was upset.’

  ‘Yes. Unrequited love hurts,’ he said.

  Carrie gave a little snort. ‘It hurts more when you’ve loved and lost.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He paused. ‘But Lola isn’t suffering from an unrequited crush on me. We spent a lot of time talking while you were with Spike.’

  Ah. Now she saw. ‘Oh bugger.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It must be awful for her,’ she admitted. ‘It must have been terrible seeing Spike and me together all the time.’ Though ‘together’ was an understatement, she thought. They’d been practically hoovering each other up every night. No wonder Lola had spent so much time with Matt. ‘I wouldn’t wish being in love with Spike on any woman,’ she said. ‘Oof!’

  A football had bounced into the middle of them and the two young lads skittering to a halt after it had almost knocked Carrie off her feet. Matt steadied her with one arm as the boys grunted an apology and collected the ball.

  ‘Carrie, sometimes you can be so naive,’ he said as she straightened up.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It isn’t Spike she has a crush on. It’s you.’

  Chapter 32

  Matt had to buy her a hot rum chocolate and a plate of pastries to help her recover from the shock. Of course she was used to having gay friends of both sexes, but she had never had a girl with a crush on her before. It was her first time for that one and the last thing she expected from Lola, whom she had been convinced had something going on with Matt.

  ‘She was rather hoping you might feel the same way,’ said Matt, stirring sugar into his coffee. ‘She thought you might be over Huw, she knew you weren’t interested in Spike, and I’m completely out of the frame, of course.’

  Carrie picked up a croissant. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I hope I did the right thing. Lola asked me what I thought, if you would ever be interested in a relationship. I suppose I could have lied, I could have carried on fueling her false hopes, but I decided to be honest.’

  She dropped the croissant back on the plate, replaying her conversations with Lola to see if she’d said anything that might have given the wrong impression. ‘But I’m sure I never gave her any encouragement. I hope not. I wouldn’t want to hurt her.’

  ‘I know that. But apparently you said something about being a different person now.’

  ‘Not that different!’

  He smiled. ‘I know that, but when someone’s looking for a glimmer of hope, it doesn’t take much.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Unrequited love was fairly horrible from bot
h sides, Carrie decided. It didn’t really matter who was in love with you—man or woman—if you didn’t feel the same way and if you actually liked the person, as she did Lola, it was not a nice feeling. Their happiness depending on you? Or yours on them? It seemed like way too much responsibility. She wondered if Huw had felt like that about their relationship. Was that what he’d meant when he’d talked of being suffocated? The two of them still hadn’t discussed what had happened. With Fenella on the scene now, she didn’t think they ever would.

  ‘You might have told me all this last night,’ she said.

  ‘A, I promised Lola I wouldn’t, and B, I was bloody pissed off with you.’

  Mentally Carrie counted to ten. Matt could be so infuriating, so sure he was right. ‘Look, I’m sorry I spoke to you like I did, but I didn’t know what was going on.’ And, she might have added, what he’d said to her was off the scale.

  He shrugged. ‘Just promise me you won’t tell Lola that you know how she feels. If she talks to you about it, that’s different.’

  As they walked back home along the sand, Matt said, ‘By the way, I suppose I should also apologize for what I said to you last night.’

  ‘Well, don’t trouble yourself too much.’

  ‘No. I have to be fair. I should have explained about Lola straight away but I was too bloody minded.’

  Carrie held her breath, waiting for him to mention what he’d said about her wanting to have sex with him. But he didn’t. Instead, he just quickened his stride as if he couldn’t wait to get out of her company.

  ***

  With such an atmosphere hanging between them, it was a huge relief when Rowena phoned to say she was coming down for a few days. She wasn’t needed on set for a while because her character had been kidnapped by a deranged patient who was holding her hostage in the old hospital boiler room.

  ‘I’ve done all the scenes where he tries to give me a lethal overdose and I get rescued just in time by the Hunky Pediatrician, so I can come down and see you,’ she’d said.

  Carrie was over the moon that Rowena had been kidnapped. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed her friend until now and was dying to share all of Rowena’s news and parts of her own. When she told Matt, he immediately offered to move out.

  ‘I might be a new man but I don’t think I can cope with lying awake listening to you two gossiping all night.’

  She ignored his teasing. ‘You don’t have to move, but I can see your point.’

  ‘And of course there’s a spare berth for me on Prospero,’ he said.

  Of course. There was nowhere else he was going to stay unless he booked into a hotel, and she’d have felt too guilty to let him do that. Even though she didn’t believe for a moment that Matt would use the spare berth, she said, ‘Have a good time.’

  ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ he said, hoisting his rucksack on to his shoulder.

  ‘And don’t you get seasick.’

  ‘There’s no danger of that. We won’t be going anywhere for a few days. In fact, I’ve been asked to pass on a message by Natasha. She wants us to take the Prospero out for a day trip next week and I wondered if you’d like to come with us.’

  Carrie was so surprised she didn’t know what to say. Natasha had asked? That didn’t seem very likely. It was Matt that wanted her to go. Then it hit her, almost sucking the air from her lungs and the moisture from her throat. How could she ever have thought him unattractive or just not noticed him before? Even with his tangled hair and unshaven face—no, especially with both of those things—he was incredibly sexy. He had the kind of dark sensuality that crept up on you, slowly easing its way into your consciousness until it had gripped you and there was no wriggling out of it.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, wishing him gone instantly.

  When he’d left, Dolly seemed suddenly much larger and emptier. Carrie couldn’t brood for long, though. She had to meet Rowena at the station and they were going to spend the weekend making up for lost time. The clubs and bars of St. Ives wouldn’t know what had hit them.

  Chapter 33

  Rowena arrived at the station wearing huge shades and an even more enormous grin. Carrie hugged her enthusiastically and they headed straight for the beach, parking Dolly by the esplanade, and wasting no time wriggling into their bikinis. They were planning on relaxing in the sun before going on to one of the seafront clubs, where Rowena had scored VIP tickets on account of being about-to-be-on-the-telly-in-a-soap. As they spread their towels on the sand, Carrie told her about the yacht invitation.

  ‘Okay. Let me get this straight. You’ve been invited to spend the day on a luxury yacht with free drinks, free food, and two gorgeous doctors, and you don’t want to go?’ said Rowena.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to go on the yacht. It’s just complicated,’ said Carrie, rubbing sunscreen on her stomach.

  ‘Complicated in what way?’ said Rowena sarcastically.

  ‘Well. Natasha’s going to be there too.’

  Even though Carrie couldn’t see Rowena’s eyes because of the floppy hat and Jackie O shades, she knew her friend wasn’t impressed. ‘So?’

  ‘I don’t want to be a spare part.’

  ‘Spare part! I’m not buying that. Why should you be? The luscious Robert will be there so you won’t be stuck on your own.’

  ‘Maybe…’

  She really didn’t want to go into all that had happened between her, Matt, and Lola right now or Rowena would never let her hear the last of it. So she decided to change to a subject that Rowena couldn’t possibly resist.

  ‘How are you managing getting from Packley to the studio every day?’ she asked casually.

  Rowena took the bait immediately. ‘Well, actually, I’m not. The guy playing the Cocky But Gorgeous Hospital Porter has offered me a room.’

  ‘Sounds perfect. You being the Nympho Nurse With a Heart of Gold. Have you snogged him yet?’

  ‘Well, we do share a brief on-screen fumble in the storeroom, but there’s nothing going on in real life. The woman playing the Bitchy Hospital Administrator is going to be sharing with us too, and she watches us like a hawk. She used to be a prison warder on Bad Girls.’

  ‘Not the one who murdered the governess with a frozen chicken then ate the evidence?’ gasped Carrie.

  ‘The very one,’ said Rowena. ‘And she’s even scarier in the flesh, but we can’t afford the rent between the two of us so we had no choice but to say yes.’ Rowena took off her hat and shades, lay back on her towel, and carefully arranged a copy of Inside Soap over her face.

  ‘Is that in case you’re recognized?’ teased Carrie.

  ‘No. I daren’t let my face get tanned. I’m supposed to have been in a boiler room for two weeks. Continuity will kill me if I go home looking like Dale Winton.’

  Carrie turned on to her stomach, loosening her bikini strap. She planned on wearing a backless top tonight and didn’t want any white lines. She didn’t want anything, no matter how trivial, to spoil her night out with Rowena. It would be just like old times, though as she rested her cheek on her hands, she knew the old times were gone forever. Rowena might never come home to the cottage in Packley. Why should she want to with an exciting new job, London on her doorstep, and the CBGHP to share with? Carrie felt very sorry for Nelson, who had definitely lost Rowena now.

  When she got back home, she decided, she must start looking for a place of her own, or at least pay Rowena a proper rent on the cottage, though that wouldn’t be easy on a student teacher’s grant. Maybe she could get a part-time job in a theatre bar or a box office to earn some extra cash. She also needed to sort out her share in the farm business with Huw. For now, though, with the sun on her back and the sound of the surf in her ears, she definitely wasn’t ready for anything other than a good time.

  ***

/>   Later, when they’d taken Dolly back to the campsite, Matt surprised her by turning up.

  ‘I left some stuff in the van,’ he said, pulling out a small black overnight bag. ‘I’ll be gone in a minute.’

  ‘Don’t rush for us,’ said Rowena flirtatiously.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m done now. Are you having a good time down here?’ he asked.

  ‘Fabulous. We’re off to a club later. I’ve got VIP tickets,’ she said, then added casually, ‘Is your brother down here?’

  Rowena’s next move was as obvious to Carrie as an express train hurtling down the tracks.

  ‘I’ve got a few spare tickets I could let you have. I’m sure they won’t mind me asking guests,’ she said, her voice becoming husky, as if she was about to seduce a co-star.

  Matt gave her his best smoky-eyed smolder. ‘Rob said he’d back later, but I’m not sure he’s going to make it because he’s been in London at a conference and I expect he’ll stop off for a drink after. But thanks for the offer. Natasha loves clubbing,’ he said.

  ‘It’s only one of the town clubs. Nothing sophisticated. Probably a bit of a dump really,’ Carrie cut in hastily.

  ‘It is not a dump! I don’t get VIP passes for dumps,’ said Rowena.

  Matt gave Carrie a knowing look. ‘I’m sure it’s a great club. Thanks, Rowena. That’s really kind of you.’

  Rowena shot a triumphant glance at Carrie. ‘Here you are,’ she said, scooping a handful of VIP passes from her beach bag. ‘And if Rob does decide to come back early, make sure you give him one for me. If you know what I mean, that is.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean. I’m sure he’d be happy to return the favor,’ said Matt, ignoring Carrie’s open mouth. ‘I’ll see you later then.’

  Chapter 34

  The frosty atmosphere between Rowena and Carrie didn’t last long, and soon they were spilling out of a taxi in front of the Cabana, a garish club situated in a side street just off the seafront. There was no sign of Matt or Natasha, much to Carrie’s relief. After bopping away until their throats were raw, Carrie went to the bar. She felt like the invisible woman, trying to catch the barman’s attention among a load of blokes built like brick outhouses. Then she noticed the guy next to her was grinning.