No Smoke Without Fire

by Claire S. Lewis

  ‘I’m your fall guy tonight. I’ve fallen for you – hard.’

  That’s the most romantic thing he’s ever said to her. She nuzzles into his chest and wipes the saliva he left all round her lips into his cotton shirt. And that’s where the romance begins and ends…

  The earth is cold and the blanket scratchy against her hips and bare legs as he pulls at her dress. The grit digs into her spine and scalp as he rolls on top and hunkers down, pinning her body to the ground. There’s nothing erotic about this. The clumsy groping of a teenage boy in a man’s body. Instinctively, her body tightens and stiffens and the more she resists him the rougher he gets. Her fingernails claw at the ground while his clumsy fingers explore between her legs.

  Is this it? she thinks. Is this what I’ve been waiting for? You could say his rucking and mauling is more suited to the rugby scrum than a night of passion. Where is the rapture, that she used to read about in those romance novels sneaked from her mother’s bedside pile when she was a little girl?

  The worst part is the kissing. She can detach her mind more easily from the rest. But he’s not interested in kissing her anymore. His ardour has cooled, giving way to something more selfish and prosaic. He’s not even looking at her. His eyes are fixed on something in the corner of the boathouse, about a ruler’s length above her head. Disconcertingly the look in his eyes calls to mind her own father when he’s in a rage.

  His breathing is shallow and raspy like he’s sprinting in a race. She knows he’s lost all interest in her as his ‘girlfriend’. All he cares about now is his own pleasure. He doesn’t flinch when her face suddenly contorts as she feels a stab of pain. Lovemaking. What a joke! This is sordid. She tries to concentrate on the dull beat of the bass from the disco in the barn. When the pain subsides, she stifles a laugh as she imagines him doing press-ups in the gym. Get on with it. Get on with it. The mantra runs through her head as he grinds and moans on top of her.

  She too feels disconnected from him – strangely disembodied. Maybe it’s the alcohol and God knows what else was in that roll-up. It’s nothing like what she imagined from the rom-com movies that she loves to watch with her girlfriends. His expression makes her want to run away or laugh out loud – she’s not sure which. She turns her head to one side and keeps her eyes on the stars and the moon visible through the gap in the roof.

  Did she consent to this? She wants to tell him to stop but she’s scared that will make him angry. He’s so used to getting his own way. Now she just wants it to be over with. The jolly face of the teacher who taught them the sex education lessons she sniggered over at school, pops into her head. Would the teacher say this counts as rape? If she lies back, docile but hating him, is that consent? If she struggles and fights, does that make it rape? She’s so confused.

  All she knows is that the thrusting continues… like a near-death experience the seconds expand to forever… on and on… Will it never end?

  And for her, the ground hasn’t moved.

  PRESENT

  26

  You weren’t in college yesterday. Our tutor had a strop about people missing classes and sending in lame apology notes, and how everyone needed to commit, or we wouldn’t get through our exams. But I know You have been busy at the florist’s. That woman with the long blonde hair came in to see You three times this week. She won’t leave You in peace. If she weren’t getting married, I would think she had a crush on You.

  There’s one advantage in it for me. She comes in the evenings, after dark, when the other florists are gone. I have found a new vantage point where I can watch You undisturbed for hours. From the backyard of Seventh Heaven, if I stand on some discarded packing crates, I can see into the Bridal Room through a small high window. Here I’m hidden from the street behind the shed. And the sofa where You sit knee to knee is positioned away from the window and You and she are both so absorbed in your intense conversations and in poring over the albums and the laptop, that You scarcely look up.

  Mostly, I get to see the top of your heads. Hers is sleek and blonde and static – of no interest. Yours is the one that fascinates me. You never stay still. You tilt and You twist, and You bob, and without seeing your face, I can imagine your eyes sparking, and your smile uncovering your teeth, and your lips moving as You speak and your mouth opening and closing – and the pictures in my mind move me more than the most erotic silent movie ever made.

  But it’s been over a week since I smelt your perfume or felt your breath on my arm. So even though my mother died almost six years ago, I think this would be a good day to buy her a bunch of flowers. Visiting cemeteries is becoming something of a habit. Why not? Tomorrow, I shall visit her grave.

  *

  Seventh Heaven was buzzing – Saturdays were always busy but today even more so since it was the day before Mothering Sunday. Celeste had arrived at 5am to help Meghan prepare the flower arrangements for the special orders of the day. The new Saturday girl arrived at the usual opening time to help with prepping the flowers and serving in the shop while Meghan went out in the van to deal with the deliveries. Celeste remained in the cold room, making up bouquets and leaving Emily who was always bright and friendly to deal with the customers face to face. She herself felt dishevelled and already exhausted as she had been up most of the night and hadn’t had time to wash her hair or do her make-up. She wasn’t in the mood to be gracious or make small talk.

  Friday had been a big night out. Jessi, who seemed to know all the right people, had got the three of them onto a free VIP guest list for a new private club in Mayfair called Chimerical. Being on the VIP guest list meant they could get free entry and free drinks and they had spent a wild night dancing, drinking and having a cracking time across the five glitzy bars of Chimerical, without having to take out a credit card once. Admittedly it was a meat market in there, and they’d all had to fight off the unwanted attentions of self-important young men from the City with more money than sex appeal who seemed to think the VIP guest list (which, of course, they’d subsidised) was their ticket to ride. Even so, the girls had stuck together and had fun.

  Celeste was paying for it now though, with a cracking headache and the shakes. She wasn’t in the best frame of mind to cope with Mother’s Day, a family celebration she would dearly have loved to ignore. It was unfortunate for her that in the floristry business this was such a huge day in the marketing calendar. She’d been dreading the commercial jamboree for weeks because her own relationship with her mother was so difficult and toxic and the deluge of sentimental gifts and cards that filled the shops simply served as a heart-rending reminder of all they had lost.

  So, on this sad and poignant day, Celeste was in the cold room trying to lose herself in mindfulness techniques. She focused all her attention on the cool touch of the stems and leaves, the sweet, woody, damp smells of woodland and spring mornings, and the glow of sunlight reflecting off translucent petals. She was working on one of her own designs, a fresh springtime mix of lisianthus, freesias, snapdragons and miniature rainbow lilies, that featured on the Seventh Heaven website as their signature Mother’s Day bouquet. She was so much in the zone and so absorbed in the moment that it was only after the Saturday girl had put her head round the door and called her name for the second time that she looked up.

  ‘Someone is asking for you,’ she said. Celeste’s first thought was that it would be one of the losers from the club. ‘Enrico’ had been particularly difficult to shake off at the end of the night (he’d more or less tried to clamber into their taxi home) and she remembered that over their first drink she’d made the rookie error of telling him she worked for a florist in Pimlico. ‘He says he’s an old friend of yours.’

  Phew! Not him.

  Celeste’s next thought was Steve. Not him again surely!

  Emily grinned manically. ‘He’s really fit!’

  Celeste immediately got a bad feeling. Her fist closed tightly round the stems of her arrangement. If Meghan had been serving in the shop, she would have had
the sense to be discreet, but the clueless girl had probably already confirmed to her caller that she worked at the florist’s. Celeste threw down the flowers and grabbed her coat.

  ‘Tell him I’m not here,’ she said. ‘Tell him I must have gone out to get some lunch. Get rid of him.’

  ‘I can’t.’ She pulled a face. ‘He came in to buy some flowers for his mum.’

  Celeste hovered in the doorway to the backyard, hidden from view, listening intently, as Emily returned to the shop front. She could just make out the conversation. Yes, it was him. She could hear the girl’s nervous laughter. So, he still knew how to turn on the charm. She remembered that voice – confident and entitled. There was something different about it though. For a minute or so she couldn’t work it out. Then, she caught on – of course, the accent. He’d been living in the United States for the past seven years – first as a student at Yale University, then working at a financial ‘hedge fund’ in the city of New York. (Stacey insisted on giving her updates from the Shearham mums’ network that she engaged with sporadically when she surfaced from her addictions.) Understandably, his voice had taken on a slight mid-Atlantic twang.

  Ben’s parents had dealt with the ‘situation’ all those years ago in the way that so many rich and privileged families deal with such things – by sending their beloved, delinquent son away – far away from the heartache, devastation and broken lives that he had left in his wake. But it had not been a hardship posting. On the contrary. He had been rewarded with a place to study Business and Economics at a top Ivy League university, the perfect launch pad for a successful and prestigious career in international finance. In contrast, Celeste had been engulfed in profound depression, dropped out of her A levels, and abandoned all hope of qualifying for her offer of a highly sought-after place on an Art and Design Foundation course at the University of Leeds.

  His life had expanded. Hers had shrunk.

  ‘I’m happy to wait,’ she heard him say. ‘I’d really like to speak to her.’ She couldn’t make out Emily’s words but guessed she was making Celeste’s excuses. Then she heard him again. ‘Can I write down my phone number on this?’ There was a pause. ‘And please can you pass on this message. I need to speak to her urgently. She knows why. Ask her to meet me at the Cricketers Arms this evening at seven. It’s her local. She’ll know where I mean.’ She heard the doorbell as the door opened. ‘Cricketers Arms, tonight at seven,’ he called out to the girl one last time. Then thankfully the door closed behind him.

  Celeste waited outside the back door for ten minutes then crept back into the cold room. The coast was clear. He was well on his way. The Saturday girl put her head around the door again.

  ‘He wasn’t really bothered about the flowers for his mum. He told me just to wrap up the most expensive bouquet. But he was very keen to see you – 7pm Cricketers Arms tonight. Made me promise to give you the message. Lucky you! He seems such a nice guy.’

  Celeste ignored her suggestive grin. What could be so urgent? Could it be something to do with the comments she’d been posting anonymously about him online since that night at Heavana when he reappeared back on the London scene?

  ‘Oh, and he wrote down his number.’ The girl nodded towards the little card she’d left on the worktop beside the half-finished arrangement abandoned by Celeste. ‘Sounds very mysterious!’ said the girl, wheedling for details. Celeste picked up the card and looked at the mobile number pensively. It was one of those cards for writing names and short messages that florists attach to bouquets. She turned it over. The words ‘In Sympathy’ were printed on the back.

  ‘He always was a tactless moron,’ she said to herself bitterly.

  Then she put the card into the back pocket of her jeans.

  PAST

  27

  She stares up at the jagged expanse of night sky visible through the broken rafters of the shed. There’s a change in the atmosphere of the night. Even before she sees it, she senses it – an electric menace in the air. It feels as if a storm is about to break. The sky flashes and glows. She imagines the bursts of light must be coming from lightning in the distance. Then she becomes aware of a change in the soundscape. That dull beat of the bass, which was the accompaniment to his grinding, has stopped. The drunken laughter is gone too. Now all she can hear is panic-stricken shouts and screams.

  He seems oblivious, all his attention channelled in one direction. She tries to sit up, but his hands are pushing down firmly on her shoulders fixing her to the ground. She struggles to push him off. His weight is immovable.

  She can’t bear it any longer. At last she finds her voice. ‘Get off me,’ she shouts. ‘Let me go. Stop. Get off me.’ As she shouts, his grip stiffens, and his fingers dig into the base of her neck. She wants to stand up and listen to the noises of the night. And she’s scared. The more she fights, the more he bears down on her. Fear rises in her throat.

  She hears more screams and now she’s screaming too. His thrusting becomes more urgent and he puts his hand across her mouth to silence her. His fingers smell of some other girl – but she’s past caring. All she wants is to break free. He presses harder against her face, crushing her lips against her teeth. She can’t breathe and she thinks he’s accidentally going to kill her. She kicks and writhes like a stray cat caught in a bag but he’s too strong for her – crushing her whole body now. It’s not for nothing that he just got selected to play county rugby for the under twenties league.

  Despite the pounding in her ears, she becomes aware of a new sound – sirens, more than one, getting louder as the vehicles approach. In desperation she sinks her teeth into his hand – as hard as she can – until she tastes blood.

  He howls like an animal and his chest springs up. He’s about to strike her full in the face but his hand stops in mid-air.

  ‘Fucking bitch,’ he yells. He rolls off her and onto his knees, cradling his gashed, throbbing hand against his bare stomach and crotch. ‘Fucking cock tease.’

  She leaps to her feet and flings open the shed door. The smell of burning sears her nostrils. There are sparks flying in the air. The barn is hidden behind crest of the hill. Above the line of the treetops a red mountain of fire lights up the night sky.

  Adrenaline pumps through her limbs as she races up the path through the trees, each footfall pounding out his name:

  Tom, Tom, Tom.

  PRESENT

  28

  It takes me more than two hours to get ready before I go to buy the bunch of flowers. First, I have to wash and dry my only pair of smart black jeans and my best dark green cotton shirt in the communal student laundry down in the basement. Then I shave and shower and wash my hair and iron my outfit – the first time I’ve ironed anything this term – and then I’m off. I decide to go by bus because I usually enjoy listening in to other people’s conversations. It’s a mistake. Today there is no one with anything interesting to say on the bus. The journey is painfully slow in the Saturday afternoon traffic.

  When I finally get to Seventh Heaven, I’m in for a disappointment. Through the shop window I see not You, but another girl serving at the counter, and another man who got here first – the man from the club. That throws me. Is he an old boyfriend? Are You hooking up again?

  I wait out of view on the other side of the road, expecting You to appear but ten minutes later You are still not there, and he is walking out the door holding a bunch of flowers. Perhaps You are out of town for the weekend or left work early to go and visit your mother? It is Mothering Sunday tomorrow after all. Unlike me, most other people have a family life.

  I decide I have nothing to lose by tracing his steps. He might lead me to You and even if You are not around, I’ve got nothing better to do. I follow him down the street, pausing to look in shop windows and check my phone when he goes into a shop or stops to grab a coffee. Twenty minutes later he turns into a smart garden square on the borders of Chelsea. The light is beginning to fade and I’m able to position myself on the edge of the square where
I am shielded by a tree and camouflaged by the greenery.

  A light goes on in the hallway as he goes up the steps and the door opens. In a theatrical gesture, he holds out the flowers, lifts the woman off her feet and carries her effortlessly into the house. It isn’t You but even from a distance I recognise her. Her hair is like a beacon. And I know her name because I helped You to redesign the Wedding Portfolio Client File linked to the Seventh Heaven website. It’s Mia Madison, your American bride. And if I’m not mistaken, the man she is marrying is the man you ran away from that night at Heavana Republica when I fell in love with You.

  Witnessing this scene leaves me feeling deliciously empowered and weirdly aroused as if by discovering the identity of the mystery bridegroom, I have ‘got one over on You’. The curtains are drawn but my mind fills with images of what will happen next as he throws her on to the sofa or the bed. It’s only when the front door slams shut in a gust of wind leaving me out here alone in the cold that I remember – I never bought that bunch of flowers for my mother’s grave. I walk home briskly. I have work to do.

  *

  Things were going well with CelestialHeadstones.com. The business was really taking off. Now that her website was functioning again (thanks to Theo’s latest intervention in neutralising the virus with which, unbeknown to Celeste, he had previously infected it!), Celeste had redoubled her marketing efforts and was getting an average of ten to fifteen hits, and three to five orders a week. She had fulfilled three orders for headstone flowers for Mothering Sunday, and in addition to a steady stream of enquiries relating to anniversaries of birth and death dates, she already had five orders in her schedule for Easter Sunday.

  Although the business model worked on a very low profit margin, Meghan was happy to let Celeste indulge this ‘hobby’ as long as she continued to pull her weight in the shop with all the traditional floristry work – the weddings and christenings and office contracts that were the bread and butter of the business. Celeste was fine with this. She was desperate to be busy. Losing herself in her work was the best way she knew to keep the demons at bay.