Anywhere's Better Than Here (24 page)

She realised that Gerry was staring at her and she turned to him. He was looking at her very intently, but not in a creepy way. She tried to pay attention to what he looked like rather than vaguing out completely.

She looked at his dark eyes and tried to not blink. He had really nice eyes and was, in fact, much more handsome that you might think on first seeing him. His eyebrows were very good – not too bushy and a nice arched, but not feminine, shape. His nose was manly but not
old
-manly. And although he would look far better with a proper shave, he was attractive. She was attracted to him. She hadn't really thought properly about that until now. Everything was so casual and almost accidental before that she hadn't really thought too hard about things. Well, she'd thought about other things. But now, here she was standing a few steps away from a bedroom that surely they were en route to and they'd run off together to help the boy downstairs and it was quite romantic really.

She wasn't one for romance normally. Not the kind of romance that she was supposed to be into anyway. It would have been nice to get flowers or something from Ed, but at the same time, she would have known he was just doing what characters on TV did for each other. It wouldn't have been a gesture that he'd thought up himself. For what must have been the hundredth time in the last week she thought, poor Ed. He was trying his best, but he just didn't have a clue. And there were lots of other girls who'd really appreciate him – or at least wouldn't feel like killing him daily, hourly. She thought of Marie at the hospital. She'd be perfect for Ed. She made a mental note to get them together after Christmas.

Gerry stroked her face and she realised that once again she'd been thinking of something else.

She shut her eyes as Gerry leaned forward and kissed her. She tried to imagine that her mind was a big blackboard and that she was giving it a nice clean wipe. She leaned into the kiss but her mind started getting all scribbly again so she wiped it and wiped it, but it wouldn't stay clean. She opened her eyes and Gerry was staring at her as he kissed her. She pulled back.

‘‘Right. So what's going on here?'' she asked.

‘‘Well …'' He flicked his head over his shoulder towards two shut doors. Presumably bedrooms. Then he dropped his hand from her shoulder and his face went smooth and unreadable.

She felt her breath get jerky and she clenched her fists. Tears threatened and she thought how unfair it all was. She just wanted to go through life unthinkingly. She just wanted to say to herself, yeah, good idea, just do it! But she never could. She could never just jump in. There were always thoughts that stopped her in her tracks and made her freeze.

Well. Not today – today she was going to get on with things. She forced herself to smile at Gerry.

‘‘I'm sorry,'' she said. She took a breath. ‘‘I just feel a bit weird.'' He didn't say anything, just looked at her steadily, kindly enough, but not too kindly. He wasn't going to do any of this for her.

‘‘It's probably lack of sleep.''

‘‘Probably.'' He half turned. ‘‘You take the room on the left. Jamie and I will sort something out later.''

‘‘No!'' She steadied her voice. ‘‘No. There's no need for that. I just need a nap, I'll be fine later.''

‘‘I'm not bothered, Laurie.''

But he was. He was bound to be. And she was bothered too, she realised.

‘‘No, really, Gerry.'' She grabbed at his arm. ‘‘I'll be fine later.''

‘‘We'll see.'' He smoothed her hair briefly. ‘‘Just have a rest. It's been a big day.''

He gave her a little nudge towards the bedroom and then went downstairs. She opened the door to the room. It was low ceilinged but large and held an elaborately carved double bed which was covered with pillows. She sighed and bent to unzip her boots. She would have liked to brush her teeth and have a wash before she slept, but there was no way she was going downstairs now; not with Jamie sitting there, watching her; no way with Gerry being nice and polite but thwarted all the same. She just couldn't face it.

She sank down into the bed and kept sinking. The bed was virtually springless, it was so soft. If there was one thing she hated, it was a soft bed. There was no way she'd be able to sleep in it. She got up again and went to try the other bedroom. Much smaller, this bedroom was instantly cosier. It had two single beds, but she didn't care. They could always push the beds together if need be. All she wanted now was to sleep and feel better. She crawled under the chenille bedspread and pulled the cover up around her face. She lay like that, trying to will herself to sleep, but it was too bright in the room. She should have closed the curtains, but she couldn't be bothered to get out of bed again. She pulled the cover over her face, but felt suffocated. After a bit of fidgeting she managed to contrive a sort of eye mask with the blanket that left her nose and mouth uncovered. It was still too bright though. She took off her jumper and then folded it over the top half of her face. Much better and it smelled better too. God knows what Gerry would think if he came in and saw her sleeping like this. But who cared? Just as she fell asleep she thought she heard the door open but she was too far gone.

He was lying next to her when she woke up. He slept silently, turned away from her towards the door. She no longer had the cover pulled around her face but was now nice and toasty with Gerry close. He'd taken off his jumper and just had his T shirt on. She lifted the blankets to see what else was happening and was glad to see he still had his boxers on. Her legs felt restricted and itchy in her jeans so she climbed out of bed to remove them. As she kicked her jeans off her ankles, Gerry stirred and she stopped still, frozen, keen to get back into bed and curl into him without him waking. After a second or two she carefully lifted the sheet again and slid into the bed.

She hesitated before wrapping herself around Gerry's back but, in the spirit of just doing things, she went ahead. With the two of them squeezed into the bed, she didn't have much choice anyway. Her face fitted nicely into his left shoulder and she breathed slowly trying to match his breaths. His T shirt smelled slightly of the wood fire and she could faintly make out Gerry's own smell which was warm and pleasant. She sighed, feeling properly relaxed for the first time in a week, weeks even. It was so much easier when you could just have what you needed and nobody was trying to make you say or do more than that.

They lay like that for some time until Laurie became gradually aware that Gerry was awake. He said nothing, but she could feel the change in the air. She felt electrified and caught; her finger tips tingled and itched.

She wasn't sure whether she should feel relieved or annoyed when she heard a gentle tap at the bedroom door. The boy said nothing, just tapped quietly again. She knew he'd probably give up if they stayed silent, but it didn't seem fair to pretend they were asleep. That was the sort of thing parents would do.

‘‘Is everything okay Jamie?'' asked Gerry without moving.

‘‘I was just thinking it might be a good idea to go for a walk.''

Laurie groaned. But before she could protest that it was too cold, Gerry was yanking the blankets off the two of them. He sat up and looked at Laurie.

‘‘We'll be down in a minute. Grab a warm coat from the boot room.''

He leaned down and kissed her. After a moment Laurie pulled him down on top of her, suddenly desperate. He pressed his weight against her and she felt the air go from her, making her charged and breathless.

Then he leapt up, grabbed his jumper and headed for the door.

‘‘You coming?''

‘‘What?'' She sat up in the bed, furious. ‘‘What are you playing at?''

He smiled at her. ‘‘There's time enough Laurie.''

She turned from him, blushing furiously. She'd be fucked if she was going to look at his stupid, smug face now.

‘‘You sure you don't want to come with us?''

She ignored him. He closed the door.

She lay in the bed thinking about how she was going to get home on her own from here. She cursed the day she'd met Gerry and wondered aloud how she could have been so stupid. Her anger ebbed away as she heard the heavy front door slam and she realised that she was in the house alone. The dark green walls of the bedroom pressed in on her as she started to think that a house as old as this in such an isolated spot had surely had many deaths within its walls. Maybe even in this bed. She sat up and looked at the bed. There was no headboard so it was hard to tell how old it was without raising the bed skirts and having a look underneath. She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. She knew rationally that being fearful of ghosts was ridiculous and childish, but she couldn't help it.

Once she'd started down the track of thinking about spirits it was hard to get away from it. When she was a little girl she'd had frequent nightmares and had developed routines surrounding bedtime and middle of the night toilet visits. Her parents had been thoroughly dismissive of any talk about ghosts and had told her repeatedly that there were plenty of real things to be scared about without making things up, but it made no difference. She was still afraid to look in the mirror late at night just in case somebody scary was looking over her shoulder.

For weeks after her mother's death, she'd been convinced that her mother was sitting in the chair by the window watching her in her bed. It didn't matter how much she reassured herself during daylight hours that there was no reason why her mother would wish her harm, when it was the middle of the night she was petrified. She couldn't move, her hands clamped themselves shut and she strained through the dark to try and make out her mother's face. She reasoned that if her face was happy or even calm, she could live with her mother showing up and sitting quietly on a nightly basis. But she couldn't make out anything other than a shadowy shape hunched in the chair. She couldn't even be remotely sure that it was her mother rather than some other dead person. But she read somewhere that it was quite common for the recently bereaved to think they saw the deceased. But who was to say that it wasn't relatively common because the dead really did come back to check on their loved ones? Why should rational scientist-types have first dibs on explanations? What was that saying about heaven and earth and not knowing everything?

Still, thinking about things sensibly would be good in the night or in strange old houses in the country. She dressed quickly and walked as fast as she could out of the room and down the stairs. She wasn't going to run – partly because she could just see herself falling down the stairs and breaking her neck and also, more importantly, she wasn't going to give any ghost the satisfaction of seeing her running scared.

Slowly and with a great show of calm she turned the handle of the front door and stepped outside. She saw Gerry and the boy making their way up a slope that led to the tallest hill that stood behind the cottage. No doubt it had some unpronounceable Gaelic name but even if she knew what it was called, she'd still be inclined to think of it as The Tallest Hill. It was much more straightforwardly descriptive than Fairy Dell or Place of Mist or whatever its Gaelic name translated to. Regardless of what it was called, it was pretty high. She knew it wasn't a mountain, but if she got to the top of it, it would be the closest she'd ever willingly get to a mountain.

The notion of climbing things because they were there was ridiculous to her. Ridiculous and manly. She doubted any woman would ever say that. Any
normal
woman anyway. A woman might say it if she was trying to impress some mountaineer, but she still thought it unlikely. It would sound silly coming from a woman anyway. You did things because they were there if those things were washing or making the dinner or picking up a found ten pound note. Not climb a dangerous, near vertical bit of rock that was likely snowy or shrouded in mist and required a significant amount of planning to tackle. Planning, equipment and money to tackle. Definitely not something a woman would waste her energy on.

Because it was there! Ridiculous. She was already out of breath and questioning her sanity and she was only about a fifth of the way up a tiddly little hill!

Jamie looked back at how far he and Gerry had come and when he saw her struggling up behind them she watched an expression that said
for-fuck's-sake
cross his face and then he turned his back on her and kept going, not bothering to alert Gerry to her attempt to catch up. She couldn't even muster the puff to yell; she just got her head down and pushed on. It didn't seem at all far and yet it was taking her an age to get anywhere near them. She decided to try distraction as a means of moving her on. She thought about what she could make to eat later, but that made her realise how hungry she was. Then she tried to enjoy the nature around her as she knew lots of other people would gladly do in this situation but there wasn't much to look at unless she stopped and looked back at where she'd come from and she wasn't at enough of an elevation for the view to be any different to what she'd seen out of the cottage window.

She looked down at her feet and tried to focus on the small things. But the small things consisted of grass, rocks – some small, some bigger- and occasionally, what appeared to be shit. Whether it was from sheep or cows, she couldn't tell. She was no naturalist, clearly. Although, if she thought about it, it probably was sheep shit, because it didn't look like your typical cow pats as it was too small and sort of knobbly. For fuck's sake, she thought to herself, this is what she was reduced to: a nice enough looking young woman in the prime of her life with a degree (admittedly an Ordinary arts degree wasn't going to light up the universe, but still, it was something), her health (she needed to do something about her lung capacity judging by how tricky this was for her) and her whole life ahead of her. And she was doing
what
a couple of days before Christmas? Hanging out with other Bright Young Things in a throbbing Metropolis somewhere planning exciting events? No. She was sweating up a hill (not even a fucking mountain!) in a sort-of chase for a man who was vague about himself and a teenager who was vaguer still if not actually a downright liar about his circumstances, in order not to be alone in a probably haunted, definitely damp and bloody freezing so-called cottage in the middle of nowhere! The last part of this thought rang very clearly in her mind, filling her with a hot, white light that stopped her dead in her tracks.