“So you live like you do, because…”
“Because that’s what I deserve for what I did.” I was slurring my speech quite badly now. “I used Alasdair because he was there. Because he said he loved me.”
“And you didn’t? Love him, I mean?”
“I was fond of him, yes. But. It was my fault. My fault he met your mother and left me. I couldn’t—the marriage wasn’t—it wasn’t what he’d hoped for.”
Piers’s arm tightened around me. “Have you ever had it? That moment when you think, ‘Yeah, I’d do anything for you. Die for you. Give you everything’? Ever had that, Ally?”
My head dropped briefly onto Piers’s shoulder, my eyelids drooped. I could feel his heartbeat through the thin cotton of his shirt. Fast and deep. “No.” The image of Leo swam into my head. “I want to.”
Piers cleared his throat. “Florrie not being Alasdair’s. I mean, I got there. I put things together. I’m clever, Alys, I’m sharp, but I’m not the only one. How long have you got before someone else does?”
“I don’t know.” I put the mouth of the bottle between my teeth, braced myself and poured. What was left in the bottle slid down my throat and I gulped at it, eagerly courting oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-One
I lay very, very still. With the return of consciousness came a montage sequence of events which I had to suppose represented the previous night—and then, nothing.
It was very quiet. This was bad. Meant I probably hadn’t made it home last night.
Oh shit. I scrabbled about in my memory, trying to uncover some tiny glimpse into last night’s events which would reveal just how deeply in the crap I currently was. Cautious fingers, still numbed with alcohol, let me know that I was wearing knickers and a T-shirt. My feet were bare and I had a bruised feeling at the top of my hip. Aha! I remembered that. I’d crashed into a table, Piers had given me some wine and I’d—
Oh God, please, no. The summerhouse. Dope, wine, Piers’s arm around me. I’d told him about Florrie. About—him. Flick. The elven-faced, blond-haired artist who’d drawn me into his life and misled me, and ultimately who’d betrayed me in favour of his art.
Agonies flooded me, scrying and scribbling through my intestines like haruspices trying to divine the future. So now someone knew. Seventeen years of containment, of a memory dam which had resisted all other forces, gone in one night. Now, it wasn’t so much a question of facing the music, more of facing a full symphonic orchestra with a nuclear string section.
I staggered out of bed, wincing as my feet touched the floor and my legs straightened. There was a cracking sound from my spine as I reached full height and dragged myself over to the small low window by judicious use of pieces of furniture. I had to lean quite heavily on the sill and close my eyes until the outside world stopped spinning, and I could get a proper look at it.
Oh shit. I mean, really, really shitty shit. With a big side order of fuuuuuuuckkkk.
The view wasn’t familiar. Not exactly. But I did know where I was. Oh God, someone was going to die for this. It might be me.
“Oh, you’re up and about. I brought you some orange juice. Reckoned it might be the best thing right now. Thirsty?”
“Piers, you absolute, total and complete bastard.” I spun away from the window, hissing like a boiling snake. “What the fuck possessed you to bring me here?”
Piers put down the pitcher and tray slowly and carefully, then, with great deliberation, began pouring a glass of juice. “What else could I do? You’d passed out, you were throwing up, like, every two minutes. I couldn’t leave you. You might have choked.”
“I don’t remember.” It was a half-lie. “I don’t remember anything.”
Piers drank the orange juice, looking at me over the glass. He had no right to look so bloody good. “Okay.” He replaced the glass on the tray and sat down on the window ledge. “You were out of it, completely gone. I thought about getting you to hospital, but I figured you’d thrown up most of the alcohol anyway. I was going to take you to your place, but—” He looked down at his hands. “Don’t forget, I was outta things too last night. Not thinking straight, know what I mean? And then.” He looked at me and there was a whole book written in his eyes. “I didn’t like to leave you,” he repeated. “So I got a taxi, brought you back here. You’d stopped throwing up, but I couldn’t be sure.”
“This is your flat, yes? And you have been subtle about it? I mean, I’m not going to walk out through that door and find Alasdair and Tamar waiting to hear how I came to be brought home by her son, blind drunk and only half-dressed?”
“This is my place, yeah. Want to look round?”
I took a deep breath. “Piers, I’m only nominally sober, I’m still only half-dressed, and I feel like—you don’t want to know. If I smile I’m convinced my face is going to fall off, put it that way.”
“You look okay to me.”
“I might look okay but I feel like a chemical toilet. Why didn’t you book me into a hotel? And what about Grainger? I should have rung the vet!”
“The way you were last night? I had to pay the taxi driver double, he thought you were going to die on him. The only hotels that would have taken you were not places you’d want to be waking up in this morning. And, like I said, I didn’t want to leave you. Don’t worry about getting back home. I’ll need to get to York, pick up my car. I’ll drop you off on the way. Grainger will still be at the surgery whatever’s happened.”
There was a silence. I took the glass of juice he poured me, proper stuff, freshly squeezed. “Piers, what I said last night—”
“You said nothing last night. You want toast? I got a real class act, kick-ass toaster, does bagels too.” He got up and headed out of the room, but I followed. This was too important to leave.
“No, I mean—”
He stopped, so suddenly that I collided with his back. “Alys. Listen up. You said nothing last night, right?” He turned around to face me, put his hands on my shoulders. “Nothing.” His face bent towards me until I felt the soft drift of his hair on my cheek, close enough to tell that his breath smelled of coffee. “It’s okay.” And he was gone, whirling away across bare-boarded floors to an island unit which stood in the middle of the best fitted kitchen I’d seen outside a Homes and Garden’s magazine. “You should really be worrying about what you did! Jeez, you were crazy, woman. Thought you were going to jump in the river one time, up on the bridge dancing. What was it? Rio, something.”
“Duran Duran? I was dancing to Duran Duran? On a bridge?” Trying to follow his mood, copy it, kid both him and me that I believed he’d really never mention last night again.
“Not just dancing. You were singing it! Fucking crazy. And that’s when you threw your boots in the river too, case you were wondering. Can’t dance in boots, apparently. You want eggs? No? And then you locked yourself in the john, did three lines of coke and insisted we went on to a club.”
“I didn’t!” This was truly horrific.
“Nah. Just kidding, you passed out. Had to carry you to the taxi.” Piers juggled three eggs in the air, cracking each one against the side of a bowl as it came down. “Sure you don’t want? I’m scrambling?”
“You’re posing.”
“Yeah.” He struck a muscle-man attitude, then one-handed slooshed the eggs into a pan of foaming butter. “And I cook. Twenty-first-century man, right in front of your very eyes.”
I shook my head and went and sat down in a cuboid chair until he’d finished. The smell of the eggs cooking made me nauseous, and the relentless resilience of youth made me feel crippled and weak.
I had to admit though that his flat was beautiful. Pale boarded floors from end to end, the kitchen with its lean-over worktop leading to the dining area, possibly the biggest TV I’d ever seen, and the clean-sheeted bedroom. I presumed there was also a bathroom to match. Anyone with a set-up like this was highly unlikely to be pissing in a bucket. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. This much consp
icuous consumerism in one place was narcotic and I must have drifted off again, because the next thing I knew was Piers gently shaking my shoulder.
“Alys. The taxi’s here.”
“Wha’? Oh. Need to get dressed.” I shuffled into the bedroom and emerged wearing the pink skirt, but still in the T-shirt and with bare feet. I’d found the halterback top, but at some point during the night I’d obviously been sick on it. “I’ll get the T back to you later.”
“Keep it.” Piers handed me a pair of flip-flop sandals. “Wear these for now. They’ll stop you looking quite so—” He stopped and his cheeks flushed under his dark stubble.
“Quite so what?” He shook his head, but I insisted. “Quite so what, Piers?”
“Quite so slept over,” he muttered.
“But I did sleep over, where’s the problem?”
“I am so not going to spell it out for you, Alys. Let’s go, taxi’s waiting.”
I frowned, and then his meaning rammed into my skull. “Oh!” and a second later, “Oh, God. You don’t think anyone would think—would they?”
“My reputation’s been shit for years, how’s yours?” Piers flashed me a mischievous grin.
“Going downhill, I suspect,” I said, as disapprovingly as I could.
“Yeah.” Piers led the way to his front door. A short way farther down a gravelled drive lay the five-bedroomed, five-bathroomed home of Alasdair and Tamar. I felt a brief stab of pity for the two of them; this would have been the perfect setting for a clutch of kids. What the hell, they could always adopt. Tamar would no doubt insist on a matching pair of Romanian orphans and Piers would be kicked out to make way for a Norlands nanny.
“Darling.” The voice cut the tranquillity I’d been feeling with the finesse of a chainsaw. “Did you want to come over for lunch?” Tamar’s accent was still, after seven years in Yorkshire, entirely New England. I’d never put my finger on exactly how it was that she managed to make me feel superior and yet patronised all at once, but I suspected the accent played a large part.
“Uh, no thanks, Ma. Gotta get back into town.” Under his breath he added, “Please go now.” But instead Tamar advanced from around the side of the house until I couldn’t help but come into view.
“Alys?” Tamar was clearly torn excruciatingly between the politeness she normally extended towards me whenever we met, and the thousand-and-one questions which had obviously sprung up, seeing me in the company of her son, wearing his T-shirt, a micro-mini skirt and suspect sandals. Particularly when she was as ever immaculate, with her feathery blonde hair, her oversized shirt emphasising her narrow shoulders and her sugar-pink pedal pushers with matching ballet pumps. She looked like Sunday Morning Barbie.
“Alys got mugged last night in York. She knew I was up in town at a party so she called me.” Piers’s eyes gleamed at me.
“And I didn’t want to be alone, with Florrie away. I was a bit shaken to tell the truth so—”
“So I brought her back to mine for the night. We’re off now to…er…”
“Report it to the police. I was too shaken last night, and they’ll never catch him anyway. Them,” I upgraded, knowing Tamar thought I was more butch than Russell Crowe simply on the evidence that I lived without a man and could wire a plug.
“Oh, Alys, that’s terrible.” Tamar looked me up and down. “They stole your clothes?”
“No, I—”
“Ma, we have to go, I don’t want the car towed.” Piers flung the taxi door open and waved me inside, rather wildly I thought.
“Sure. Okay. Have you heard from Florence lately, Alys?” Tamar continued, obviously trying to make conversation. You had to admire her really. After all, when it came to awkward social situations this must rank pretty highly.
“A couple of postcards, some rather brief phone calls. Have you?” I wanted the answer to be “no”.
“Oh yeah. She sounds real happy, doesn’t she? City life suits her.”
The taxi started moving before I could reveal that Florrie had left herself limited time during her snatched phone calls in which to sound happy or otherwise, she mainly rang to shriek things like “I’m in the Tower of London!” Anyway, Tamar seemed to have satisfied herself that sufficient pleasantries had been exchanged. She was already heading back to her Aga-lined kitchen with resident cook. She probably had a little woman to do her sit-ups and pelvic-floor exercises too. I gave her a smile as we passed. She waved, but there was a thoughtful look in her eyes. Was it the sight of her son in my company or was she starting to make connections?
I was getting paranoid. I silently cursed Piers for telling me about Alasdair’s fertility problems. But there was no reason for anyone to put things together. Alasdair’s early influence on Florrie had made sure that she had a lot of his mannerisms, even his own parents had remarked on how like him she was. People seeing what they wanted to, I supposed.
“You okay?” Piers’s voice shook me out of my delusions of discovery. “That was one wild party last night. Not surprised you’re still hungover.”
“I’m just tired.”
“Yeah right. I know hungover when I see it.” Piers smiled lazily and hauled his hair back off his face. “Can’t take the pace.”
He was trying to distract me, to stop me thinking about last night’s revelations, to make everything all right again. A sudden wave of affection for him welled up inside me. “Know something, Piers? You are a very lovely guy.”
The blush I’d seen earlier crept up his cheeks again. “Yeah, well.” He cleared his throat and took a sudden interest in twisting his rings.
“I can’t understand why you don’t have a girlfriend. Surely they’re queueing up for a gorgeous boy like you?”
He whipped around and faced me, the blush gone and his skin pale. “Fuck, Alys.” Then he clenched his fists and breathed hard, obviously controlling himself. “I didn’t say I didn’t have a girlfriend, did I?”
“You told me that there was someone, but it was difficult. I assumed—I thought it was all over.”
“It’s not over.” Piers was tensed up, I could see the muscles in his jaw locking his anger into place. “It’s only just starting.”
“Who is she?” There was the tiniest burn of envy in my chest. “Anyone I know?”
Piers turned away and looked out of the window. “Her name’s Sarah. You wouldn’t know her, she’s at college in York.”
“Oh.” All the closeness and empathy we seemed to have been sharing was gone. It had drained away as soon as he’d mentioned her name. “Where’s she from?”
“From? Manchester.”
“Has your mother met her yet?” I couldn’t stop myself. It was a curious feeling. Whilst I had never kidded myself to the extent of believing Piers found me attractive, or that I could see him as anything other than Florrie’s stepbrother, some sub-atomic-level bit of me had been seduced by our intimacy. Hearing that all the time he’d been hugging me in a deserted summerhouse, he’d had this Sarah on the backburner made me feel profoundly guilty about opening up to him.
“I’m taking her down there Wednesday. Look, we’re nearly at my car. I’ll catch you. Sometime, yeah?” He pressed what looked like a lot of money into the cab driver’s hand and leaped out of the door almost before we’d pulled to a stop. I frowned. Even with my well-known geographical dyslexia, I could tell that we were still a couple of miles from where Piers had parked last night. I must have upset him more than I’d realised. It had been a casual enquiry. Why had he suddenly got so touchy?
Chapter Twenty-Two
I remembered Grainger the second I opened the front door and went to call him, tell him I was home. I choked off halfway through his name. Somehow the flat felt wrong without his dear scowling tabby face frowning up at me from a cushion. I rang the vet, only to be told that Grainger was resting comfortably and doing as well as could be expected, which didn’t help.
For a second I wished that Piers had come back with me to jolly me out of my despondency, but
then I remembered his strange mood in the taxi and decided I’d rather be on my own. I’d had enough tantrums with Florrie. Anyway I really needed a shower.
The knock at the door made me jump, and the sight of Leo, carrying a bunch of red roses caused a near breakdown in all my faculties.
“Leo! You! It’s—and all this way. Why are you—? And what about—?”
“Can I come in?” Leo looked me up and down.
I looked down too, at my unrestrained chest, the tiny skirt and the deeply unflattering sandals. “Err, I was about to do some decorating,” I improvised. “Come through. How did you find me?”
“I have my methods.” Leo smiled, and I was once again devastated by how good-looking he was. “These are for you. I came because I was worried.”
“Worried?” Last night’s memories had washed me clean of the painful conclusions I’d drawn after spending the night with him. A question of perspective and impact, I supposed.
“You left so quickly.” Leo glanced around the hallway. “How’s the clearing up going?” His eyes rested on the corner where the carpet was rolled away from the wall and several boxes of books and papers were stacked halfway to the ceiling.
I hustled him through to the living room, glad that, with the absence of Florence, it had stayed more-or-less tidy. “Err. Yes. I’ve got it under control.”
We stood and looked at each other for a moment. Leo seemed obsessed with the position of his glasses. In my turn I fiddled with the roses he’d pressed into my arms, alternately sniffing them, and running my fingers over the baby-soft petals as we both thought of what to say next.
“I…”
“You seemed…”
We spoke simultaneously, him looking at the ceiling whilst I looked at the floor. The coincidence made our eyes meet, and we smiled properly at each other for the first time. “You first,” I said.
“Alys.” Leo pulled the roses from my embrace and dropped them on the table, stepping in to replace them. “I was worried. I thought it was me—something I’d done. You were—you are—the first woman I’ve cared about, the first woman I’ve slept with since Sabine. That night was amazing. Totally, totally unlike anything that’s ever happened to me before. Then you got up and went away.” He sounded so broken, so forlorn that I automatically closed my arms around him and he melted against me, seemingly with relief. “Oh, Alys,” he spoke into my hair. “If you knew how I felt that morning.”
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