Slightly Foxed

by Jane Lovering

  I thought about it for a moment, but my own feelings of inadequacy came pouring in. I stiffened and he pulled away from me.

  “Is that it?” he asked quietly. The green of his eyes was deep. I found I couldn’t break his stare, couldn’t look away. “I’m not very experienced. There were only ever a few girls before Sabine. But I thought—you seemed to enjoy it.”

  “No. Oh, Leo, it’s not you, it’s me.”

  A rueful look dawned behind those beautiful eyes. “Ah. I see. Yes, well, er, in that case I—”

  “No, it’s not just a cliché, I really mean it. It is me.” How did I explain it, the feeling that I was unworthy of love? “I’ve got issues,” I finished, limply.

  There was a moment’s silence so deep that I could hear the rumble of lorries passing along the inner ring road. Leo spoke, hesitantly, as though he was afraid his words might panic me. “Look, Alys. Neither of us is a teenager. We’ve both had—relationships that have gone wrong. But I’m sure, if we take things slowly. I mean, we like each other, don’t we?” His lips were close to my ear, when I turned my head our noses collided but then our mouths met and we indulged in a slow kiss. I tried not to think about how I must taste.

  “I’ve done nothing but think about you since you left,” Leo whispered, breaking contact. “I wrote sheaves of poetry last night, didn’t know what else to do. Couldn’t concentrate, wanted to get my thoughts down, get my head around what was happening.”

  “Poetry? About me?”

  “Of course, you.” Leo caressed my cheek. His eyes were raking my face more thoroughly than if it had been a Zen garden. “Some of it came out the best I’ve ever written, and I’m sure that’s because of the way I feel about you.”

  “Can I read it?” No one had ever written anything about me before, if you don’t count that time at school. And that was only in the boys’ toilets. And a complete lie.

  “Ummmm. Don’t be offended, Alys, but I don’t let anybody read my poetry. It’s not written to be read, if that doesn’t sound too mad.”

  I looked down at our hands, fingers entwined, liking the way his tanned, capable hand made mine look ethereally pale and my fingers long and elegant. “So, why do you write it?”

  Leo gave a sigh. “It’s my form of expression. I use poetry to kind of capture emotions, moments. Do you see?”

  “But not for anyone else’s consumption?” Right at that second I would have killed for him to put into words one tenth of the emotion I’d read he was capable of. Just so that I could know how it felt.

  “They wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else.” He smiled at me, his face relaxed now. “I like your flat. It’s very colourful. Very exciting.” His gaze flickered over my rescued-from-a-skip sofa with its homemade cushions and the boot-sale rug. I hastily stood over the most conspicuous of the stains, which made me look like I was playing an advanced game of Twister.

  “Are you hungry? I could cook.”

  “Oh. Umm.” To my horror Leo looked at his watch. “Sorry, Alys, but I really have to go.”

  “Oh.” I heard myself sound disappointed. “That’s a quick turnaround.”

  “I know. But I came on the spur of the moment—had to deliver the two youngsters to Builth Wells, and when I’d driven that far I thought, well, it was only another few hours to get here. But I have to pick the trailer up on the way back. I’d better get going so I’m there before nine. It’s hell coupling-up in a yard in the back of Welsh beyond, in the dark.”

  I gave a rather tight smile. He was just so bloody practical. But, like he’d said, neither of us were teenagers any more. There was a large matter of Life to be getting on with. And he had brought me roses. Thinking of him sitting, writing, pouring it all out in poetry gave me a little frisson, a sexy kick.

  A couple more entwined kisses and he was gone, leaving the flat feeling twice as empty but smelling twice as fragrant. I was putting the roses in the sink with some water, when the phone rang.

  “Alys?”

  Good Lord. Alasdair. This must be the first time he’d rung me directly since Florence became old enough to arrange her own visits. I was still wrestling with my guilt-hangover and therefore trepidatious about what he might have to say. “Hello, yes.”

  “Tamar said she’d seen you this morning. Said you’d been mugged?”

  I hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those spontaneous little lies which come back to bite you on the bum. “Well, sort of, but it was nothing really.”

  “And you’d rung Piers? Spent the night in his flat?”

  I was instantly defensive. In my mind’s eye I could see Alasdair now, probably sitting in his study. He’d be wearing loose jeans and an M&S jumper. His greying auburn hair would be tidily trimmed. He would be, as ever, looking like Tamar’s ideal partner—Upper Class Ken. And now, in his usual persona as the only person with any sense around here, he was going to give me some good old Scottish Methodist moralisation.

  “So? I can see who I want to, you know, not that I am. Seeing Piers that is. He happens to be—look, why am I justifying myself to you? He’s an adult, I’m an adult, if we wanted to—which we don’t, obviously, but if we did, then it wouldn’t be anyone’s business but ours.”

  “I have no idea what you’re babbling on about.” Alasdair’s calm, measured tones seemed designed specifically to enrage me. “I was only ringing up to make sure that you hadn’t been burgled.”

  “Burgled?” I’d been so full of ethical righteousness that this sudden change of direction left me morally winded. “Why on earth should I have been burgled?”

  “I know what you’re like for leaving keys and things in your bag. I was concerned that, if you spent the night at Piers’s, anyone could have got into your flat.”

  As usual, whenever I talked to Alasdair I started off feeling that I held the moral high ground, and by the end of our conversation, I was left with the sensation I was wallowing around several fathoms under moral sea level. In some ways it would have been better to admit I’d been totalled rather than pretend to have been mugged.

  “Well, I haven’t.”

  “Are you sure? You can be a bit woolly minded sometimes, Alys. You might just not have noticed.”

  “Not have noticed? What, that someone had broken in and stolen things? Now, let me see. Oh yes, the Van Gogh is still here, and the Ming. No, I’m pretty sure I’ve not been burgled, Alasdair.”

  “There’s no need for sarcasm, you know. I was ringing up to say that if you had been robbed, my insurance might cover some of Florence’s things. That was all. I might have known you’d take it the wrong way. Do you always have to be so spiky these days?”

  “Sorry.” I had my fingers crossed when I said it though.

  There was a short pause. I wondered if Alasdair was trying to get round to saying something about Florence. Something dating back seventeen years. So I leaped into the silence. “Piers was telling me that he’s bringing his girlfriend home on Wednesday to meet you both.”

  “Girlfriend? What, Dominique? I thought he’d stopped seeing her.”

  “Girl called Sarah.” I took positive pleasure in knowing something Alasdair didn’t. “From Manchester, apparently. Very pretty girl.” This was pure assumption, but it was a fair bet.

  “Oh. Tamar hasn’t mentioned—neither has he, come to that. Well, I’ll look forward to meeting her then. Now, if there’s nothing else?”

  How come he made me feel as though I’d been the one making the call? I hung up, mildly pleased that I’d managed to score back a few I-know-something-you-don’t-know points in the Divorced Parents’ Sunday League tables.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When I met Florrie from the London train she seemed to have grown a couple of inches and she smelled different. Exotic. My familiar-as-my-own-face daughter was suddenly angular and foreign. “Good trip?” I eyed her outfit, not one item of which I’d ever seen before.

  “Pretty good, yeah.” This was new too, the cool offhandedness. “Londo
n is a wild place, there’s so much to do. So, what did I miss? Piers got a new flat yet?”

  “No, but he’s got a new girlfriend, apparently.”

  Florence stopped walking. I thought for a moment she’d snapped the heel off her Red or Dead sandals. “Piers?” She couldn’t have sounded more surprised if I’d said the Pope. “He told me he was sick to death of those brain-dead bimbos always hanging round him, he was giving himself six months celibacy to decide what he wanted. She must be really something?”

  I didn’t know Florence knew words like celibacy. London must have done her vocabulary good, if nothing else. “I don’t know. No one’s met her yet.”

  Florence wheeled on her spike heel, her gypsy dress flowing against her minimal curves with maximum effect. A platform sweeper nearly drove his cart into the newspaper stand. “Then I guess I’ll have to find out all about it, won’t I? Are we taxiing home, only I’m really shattered and these shoes are bloody killing me.”

  Given their pointed toes, pointed heels and very little superstructure in between, I wasn’t at all surprised but refrained manfully from pointing this out. They certainly looked spectacular with the frilled layers of her dress which made her waist impossibly tiny and her B-cup bosom incredibly bountiful. The taxi drivers were falling over themselves to take us home. Luckily Florence didn’t ask what I’d been up to whilst she’d been away, but began a commentary about how much better life was in London compared to York. How much there was to do, how fantastic the shops were. It even appeared that she’d visited a museum or two.

  Back at the flat, Florrie reverted to her normal at-home persona, grabbing the phone and talking to her entire collection of friends. I slumped down on the sofa. Although I’d missed her, the flat seemed to shrink as soon as she came in, the sound of another voice in another room pulling the walls and ceiling towards me until the place became uncomfortably oppressive.

  I cupped my hands over my eyes and pressed, trying to relieve the tiredness. My eyes felt like a couple of ripe boils wrapped in sandpaper. Jace hadn’t been in the shop so I’d suffered a day of Simon’s vigorous attention to detail without the usual relief of being able to snigger about him behind his back. Oddly though, when I’d asked Simon if I should phone Jace to find out how she was and whether she’d be in tomorrow, he’d come over all awkward.

  “I should leave her for today,” he’d said, eventually. “She’ll be in tomorrow, I’m sure.” Which made me wonder. Did he know what was up with Jace? Or did he not know, but care even less, in which case, was her job safe? She’d certainly been taking quite a lot of time off lately, usually with some fairly feeble excuses. If she wasn’t in tomorrow, I was ringing her for sure and warning her.

  A high-pitched shriek from Florrie made me jerk to my feet and hurtle through her door. “What is it?”

  She’d seen the letter from the vet, stuck to the side of the fridge. It detailed treatment so far, and the cost. I was keeping it so I could track how much I owed Piers. All the sophisticated trappings of Florrie’s London fortnight fell away, and she was just a scared child crying in my arms, as I explained my predicament over the world’s scabbiest cat. “Don’t have Grainger put to sleep, Mum. Don’t.”

  “We can’t let him suffer, Florrie.” I stroked her back. Under the filmy dress I could feel the bones of her spine, vulnerable. My daughter fragile for all her worldliness. She looked up at me, her highlighted hair stuck to her cheeks, her eyes washed free of the make-up and cosmopolitanism. She was seven years old again, wanting me to make everything all right.

  “But he’s always been a healthy cat, he can get over it. The vet must think there’s a chance or they’d have put him to sleep. Straight off, no messing.”

  I didn’t tell her that this had been the vet’s first suggestion. “I’ll ring the vet’s tomorrow, early. See when they’ll let us bring him home.” I thought this was unlikely to be any time soon, but my need to appear confident and in charge stopped me from breaking down alongside her. It’s lesson one in the Mother’s Handbook. Never let them see how panicked you really are.

  Florence sat up and wiped her eyes with her hand. “I couldn’t imagine life without Grainger, could you? Remember that time he brought that rabbit in alive and left it in the living room, and you had to catch it under the rubbish bin?”

  I smiled back at her, but the thought of a catless house made me remember the tabby body curled in Piers’s arms, which had triggered the guilt again. Now, with Florrie here, that house in York seemed an interplanetary distance away. That night in the summerhouse with Piers. A space seen through alcohol, filtered through a dream.

  We sat companionably for a while longer, chatting about nothing very much. It was wonderful, amazing, my daughter seemed to have matured into the kind of person I’d actually want to spend time with. I was congratulating myself on the terrific job of motherhood which I’d clearly done, when her mobile rang, and she turned instantly back into the sulky child she’d been before.

  “Yeah?” she demanded, snatching up the handset. “What?” I rolled my eyes and got off the bed. “Yeah.” Florence looked at me over the phone, her tone a little softer now. “It was great. Hey, what’s this new girlfriend like? Mum told me you’d—”

  There was a moment’s pause, and Florrie lifted the phone away from her ear, stared at it, then pressed a button.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Dunno. Bad signal maybe?”

  “Piers?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call him later.” She shook her head briefly. “Now, Mother dear.” I paused in my attempts to leave the room. “What about this man you’ve been hinting about the last couple of weeks?”

  “Man?”

  “Tell you what, I’ll make us some tea and you can tell me all about him.” That was it. Proof positive that my real daughter had been stolen away by the pixies and replaced by a Stepford teenager. She went out of the bedroom, but popped her head back around the door a second later. “Only not the sex stuff. Cos that would just be gross.”

  Probably still the real Florence then.

  I updated her on the Leo situation as best I could over tea. I wanted to give her as true a picture of the man as possible whilst all the time aware this could be a person she might be forced into proximity with in the near future. Didn’t mention the poetry. I had the feeling that it would make him sound too nerdy. I needn’t really have worried. As soon as I mentioned the ponies, she was all for moving down to Devon on the next train south.

  “Look, Florrie, Leo and I haven’t even discussed moving in. I think he likes his own space. After all, we hardly know each other yet.”

  “But you would if he asked you, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even really know how I feel about him. He’s a bit shy. Quiet.”

  “Yeah, but, Mum, you have to realise, your chances are going to get less as you get older. I mean, you’ve still mostly got your looks, and your body’s okay, I guess. Maybe you should go for it while you still can.”

  A little blunter than I’d been with myself, but echoing quite a lot of my own feelings.

  “And if he’s got cash, you can always have plastic surgery,” Florence continued, practical to the end. “Right. I’m going to call Piers,” and she skipped off, leaving me with the washing up and no doubt that this was definitely my real daughter back.

  I was settling down on the sofa with Iain Banks and half a bar of fruit-and-nut, when Florence came wandering back through, phone pressed tight against her ear. She began to make herself a sandwich. “Yeah, I guess,” she was saying, “but he was so cool I couldn’t turn him down.”

  I tried really hard not to listen and she was clearly trying to change the subject.

  “Why won’t you tell me about her? What’ve you got to hide? She’s not a big ug, is she?”

  My head whipped round. “You’re not still talking to Piers, are you?”

  Florence flicked a dismissive finger at me and carried on buttering brea
d. “Yeah, just the Old One giving me grief, you know how they get. Look, you want to come over? You can bring whatever-her-name-is if you like, we can go get pizza…”

  “Florrie! It’ll be costing a fortune.”

  Wearily Florence lowered the phone from her ear. “That’s why I asked him over,” she said, as though I was an idiot child, then back into the phone, “Yeah, I’m going over to Dad’s tomorrow, probably see you then. Okay. Cheers.”

  “He didn’t want to come?” I felt a bit downcast about that. I’d been wanting to apologise to Piers for our falling out.

  “Nah.” Florence looked slightly puzzled. “Dunno why. He got a bit weird when I asked him—you haven’t said something to him, have you?”

  “Like what?” My eyes wouldn’t focus. Oh God, was Piers avoiding me? Was it something to do with Sunday night? No, surely I’d offended him in the taxi, that was all. But what if it wasn’t all? What if he’d let something slip, and now he couldn’t face me because he knew—shit. Paranoia.

  “It’s just that usually he’s dead keen to come over here, always on about how cool you are, how much he likes hanging out with us.”

  “Maybe he’s out with his new girlfriend and they want to be—you know. Alone together.”

  “Well she’ll be pretty pissed already. He’s spent three-quarters of an hour talking to me.”

  I felt itchy, edgy. Was Piers avoiding me? Seemed a rather extreme reaction, considering. I had to know. “Have you finished with the phone, Florrie? I’ve got a couple of calls to make.”

  “I wanted to phone Jude.”