Damage (4 page)

“You like him?”

Not only more experience of the world, but surprisingly perceptive.

“I don’t know,” said Holly. But she did know that all day long she’d been willing the hours to pass, for Thursday to be over so that it would be Friday and she would be back at the Hall.

“You be careful, sis’. You hear me? You’ve already said what a bastard he is, particularly to women. You watch out, okay?”

§

Karen called while Holly was on the bus back from university the next day.

“Sorry, babe, but you’ve been canceled,” she said.

“What do you mean ‘canceled’?”

“Mr Blunt, at the Hall. Says he wants someone else.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“He doesn’t give reasons. He didn’t give any reason when he fired Ella, either. You okay, Holly? If that bastard’s laid a finger on you, I swear I’ll–”

“I’m fine. Just... Well, I could do with the money, you know? I had to cancel shifts at The Bull to do this and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get them back that easily.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that, babe. What can I say? I’ll see what else I can find you.”

§

Maybe she would have let it rest if the bus hadn’t swung round past the church at that moment and there, across the rolling meadow everyone called the Deer Park, she saw him. Nicholas Blunt. The man who hated everything and everyone.

He was walking. Black jeans and boots and that thigh-length tweed coat. Alfie was with him, running ahead. The contrast between the energetic dog and his miserable master was stark.

She was angry, she realized.

Angry that this man’s stupid moods and his impulsiveness had cost her a job.

It was the kiss. It had to be the kiss. One kiss and he no longer wanted her around and now
she
was the one who would suffer.

She should go to The Bull and grovel with Robert, try to get those shifts back. It was mostly just cleaning the guest rooms and dining room, and a bit of bar work and food prep, but it paid the bills.

Instead, she got off the bus at the next stop, and rather than crossing the road and heading towards The Bull she turned back.  The Deer Park was a wide expanse of green, scattered with trees, with the Hall on the far side. All part of the estate that Nicholas Blunt owned.

‘Blunt Instruments’... he’d said that some people thought it was an appropriate name.

He was still there, standing over by a big oak tree, its leaves the deepest autumn bronze.

Just the sight of him brought that anger back to the surface again. Did he even know what impact his decision would have on her life? Did he know what it was like to live from day to day, what you eat dependent on whether you’ve found a few hours’ work that week?

And she was angry with herself, too, for standing here like this. Like a schoolgirl fighting a crush on a boy she doesn’t even like.

Like a stalker.

He shouldn’t make her feel like this. He just...
shouldn’t
.

§

He saw her approaching when she was only halfway across the park. For a moment he stood there, hands on hips, as if squaring up for confrontation, then he turned and limped away.

This was stupid!

Here she was, striding out across the park, and him trying to out-pace her, like some kind of slow-motion chase sequence.

She should have just stopped, left him to flee.

What kind of man runs away like that? What was he trying to avoid, for goodness sake?

“It’s not right,” she said, when she was close enough that she wouldn’t have to shout for him to hear. “I gave up shifts so I could work for you. I’m out of pocket.” Not what she’d meant to say, or at least not how she’d meant to say it, but the words were out now.

He stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her.

“So it’s money, is it?” he said. “I’ve got money if that’s what you want.”

It wasn’t. But then, what
did
she want?

“That’s no way to treat people,” she said.

He shrugged. When was the last time he’d given a thought to how he treated people?

“We’re all just trying to get by, you know. Even you.”

He shook his head now. “I’m not trying to get by,” he said. “I don’t need to try. I don’t need to do anything any more, and still I carry on getting by.” There was a bitterness to his words, as if he hated that the world was so kind to him.

Holly took a few more steps so she could stand before him. His expression was hard to read... Angry, defensive, maybe a little vulnerable.

“That kiss,” she said. “What was that all about? Did you think I’d just be another of your tarts? A quick shag with a girl from the village. Was that it?”

He looked away, across to where Alfie was chasing imaginary rabbits along the edge of a copse.

“That was never going to happen,” she went on. “I’m not like that. It has to mean something to me.”

“An old-fashioned kind of girl, eh?”

“No,” she said. “Just the kind of girl who doesn’t like to be taken for granted. The kind of girl who’s scared that if anything like that happened that would be it, and afterwards... well, afterwards, she’d just be discarded like all the others because you’re too damned scared to let anyone in past those defenses.”

“Is that it?” he said. “You were scared I’d just use you and then toss you away?”

She thought he was going to say something more, but that slight twitch of the mouth didn’t go any further. No words, just a clenching of the jaw.

“What is it? What were you going to say?”

“You’re scared I’d just toss you away,” he said again. “Me? I’m afraid of the opposite. I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be
able
to.”

It took a few seconds for his words to sink in, and by then he had turned away, started walking again.

Holly took a step after him, then stopped.

She couldn’t work out what was the right thing to do. She had no idea how to respond when a man like Nicholas Blunt said a thing like that.

So she turned, and walked back towards the village, heading for The Bull and reality.

That evening, she was back helping in the kitchen and pulling pints at The Bull.

She hated to think of it as calling in favors, but that’s how it felt. After her encounter with Nicholas Blunt at the Hall, she’d called in at the village pub to see if Robert would give her any more shifts. “Cleaning or bar work¸ I don’t mind.”

Robert hadn’t questioned her reasons, just smiled that easy smile of his and said, “Sure, Holly. I’ll sort out the rota. Are you free tonight? We could do with the extra hands.”

If he’d left it at that everything would have been fine, but then he had smiled again and said, “I still owe your father big time, Holly,” and she knew exactly what had just happened. Years ago, her father had loaned Robert the seed money so he could take on the license at The Bull. Now, giving Holly a few extra shifts when she’d been left high and dry by that arrogant bastard at the Hall was just another way of repaying that favor.

She shouldn’t mind, she knew. She was hardly in a place to pick and choose and she knew her father had helped out all kinds of people over the years. So what was wrong with calling in the occasional family debt?

But Holly was stubborn. She might not have chosen this life – twenty years old and working all hours to get through university and look after her dad at the same time – but she was doing it, none the less, and she didn’t want to be doing it on hand-outs.

Still, a shift was a shift.

The evening started off quietly. With Holly, Robert and Sally on the bar and Magda in the kitchen, staff outnumbered customers for the longest time. Robert’s claim that they needed extra hands tonight was clearly untrue, and it only served to reinforce Holly’s feeling that she was being granted favors.

Just after eight things started to wake up a little, and then there was a sudden babble of voices and laughter from the doorway to the main bar and a group of young people burst in.

“Hey, Holly!” It was Ruby, and some of her friends from town, and then Holly spotted Tommy Lefevre with his younger brother Joe and someone whose face Holly vaguely recognized but couldn’t place.

She had time for a  “What can I get you?” and then there was a rush of orders and drinks to be poured, and she began to think that maybe Robert had been right about them needing an extra pair of hands, after all.

§

Later, when things were quieter, Holly stood leaning across the bar to chat with Ruby. The two of them got on so much better these days. There had been a time when Ruby had blanked everyone from her old life and Holly had feared they’d lost her forever.

“Get you another drink, baby?” Holly asked her sister, nodding towards the empty wine glass.

“I shouldn’t,” Ruby said. “I’ve got the car outside.”

“You can always stay in your old room.”

Ruby shrugged. “Maybe. Oh, go on then. You having one?” Then she turned her head and said, “Hey, Tommy, come over here and have another drink.”

Tommy hadn’t changed much. A bit leaner, perhaps, his features harder. Even though Holly saw him regularly around the village, she hadn’t looked this closely at him for the longest time, hadn’t quite realized that he was a proper real man now.

“Hey,” she said softly, as he came to join them. “Another Pedigree?”

Then, as she drew the pint she glanced up at him. He was studying her, just as she’d studied him as he came over. Maybe he was even having similar thoughts: that once they’d been so close and yet now they had changed. Grown up.

She smiled. “So what’re you up to these days?”

He shrugged. “Same old, same old,” he said. “Working over at Rigby’s now. Spend most of my days in a tractor right now.”

Tommy’s trouble was he’d always suffered from a lack of self-belief. Constantly put down by a father he looked up to, he’d never given himself the chance. One day he’d just lost his temper and walked out of college, never to go back. Since then he’d taken on a succession of laboring jobs – farming, landscaping, construction. He claimed he liked the simple outdoors life, but Holly had never quite believed that.

“We had some times, didn’t we?” he said now.

They had. First boyfriend, first kiss, the first experience of that skin on skin thing – not just the sex, the
intimacy
, the sharing, the incredibly deep level of trust you have to have when you expose yourself to someone like that for the very first time. Lots of firsts.

It was easy to look back and only remember those firsts. Easy to forget the awful ache of adolescent love, the hurt of being apart, of not knowing what was in his head, never really trusting that another person could feel about you the way you did about
him
. The even worse ache when you finally made yourself accept that you’d both out-grown a relationship that had meant so much.

“We did,” Holly said. “Good times.”

She broke off to pour Donald Dwyer another pint, and all the time Tommy was watching her. Remembering good times, perhaps; remembering the feel of her, the taste and scent of her.

It was funny to think what she’d shared with him – all those intimacies – but now it was equally strange to think that even though she and Tommy had split up so long ago, he still carried those memories, could still conjure up the past inside his head. That here in the bar there was a man who knew her so well.

“You’re miles away.” Ruby. She’d been saying something, and now she rolled her eyes and said, “I was saying to Tommy here how you’d managed to lose a job in record time up at the Hall.”

“That right?” said Tommy. “So what did you do to piss him off so quickly?”

“Nothing,” said Holly, probably a little too defensively.

“And that was probably the problem,” said Ruby with a big wink.

“Yeah?” said Tommy, and there was a flash of something in his eyes. Not jealousy, surely?

“Stop teasing,” Holly said to her sister. “That man treats cleaners as if they’re disposable. I was his second this week. He’s just a bad-tempered pig who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. If I’d known what he was like I’d never have taken on the job.”

“Seriously,” said Tommy, cradling his pint between both hands, “if the guy’s done anything–”

“He didn’t. It’s fine.” She’d put a hand on Tommy’s wrist when she interrupted him. Now, she looked at that hand, wanting to snatch it away, but at the same time... that touch took her back.

A hand on the small of her back, and the other on the curve above her hip where everything narrows, moving up to cup a breast. Clumsy touches becoming confident and assured. Skin against skin.

She pulled her hand away.

What had got into her lately? Ever since that encounter in Blunt’s kitchen, that brief, intense kiss... it was as if everything had been heightened, every touch, every look intensified like a magnifying lens capturing the sun’s rays.

She wasn’t normally like this.

Ruby was watching, looking amused, and then the moment had gone and Tommy was turning away in response to something his brother had said. Holly stepped back, then turned and headed along the bar to serve a middle-aged couple who had just come in, and for a time, at least, she was able to lose herself in her work.

§

“Hey, Ruby. You coming back to sleep over in your old room, then? Dad’ll be thrilled.”

It was closing time, and Holly had left Robert to lock the place down.

Now, she stood outside with Ruby and Tommy. There was a real chill in the air tonight, and the sky was dotted with stars. Holly gave a shudder and hugged herself, rubbing at the goosebumps on her arms.

“No, I’m good, Holls. Work in the morning and all that. I haven’t had too much.”

“You sure you should be driving?”

Ruby laughed and reached for the door of her Mini. “It’s fine,” she said. Then, from her driving seat she added, “Tommy can walk you home. Hey, Tommy. Remember the way? Head down Memory Lane and you can’t go wrong.” And with that, she revved the engine into life, slammed the door and tore away into the night.

“You think she’ll be okay?” asked Tommy.

“Ruby’s always okay,” said Holly. “And I don’t think she’s quite over the limit. I was keeping an eye on her: I knew she wouldn’t stay.”