Damage (6 page)

Holly shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t even think right now.” All the work, the long hours, all the horrible jobs that no-one else wanted to do so you just put on a brave face and took the money. Scraping to get by and keep her studies going and now
this
. It felt like her whole world was being torn apart, just because of one stupid letter. One stupid man.

“You’re not going to do anything foolish, are you, hun? No stomping up there and confronting him. Are you listening? You’ve got to do things properly: talk to people who know the law, get them to put a stop to it. That’s what you’ve got to do.”

“Oh yes,” said Holly. “I’ll do it properly. I don’t ever want to see that man again.”

§

He called her, of course.

She should have known that a man like him – Blunt by name and clearly blunt by nature – would not give up easily.

Tuesday evening, one of her rare free evenings, and Holly’s phone buzzed in her bag. As soon as she pressed ‘Answer’ to the unknown number, he launched straight in.

“Nicholas Blunt, from the Hall. Look, I’m not happy with how we left things the other day. I’m not used to apologizing and I bet you could tell. Can we talk? Can I try and do it properly this time? I’m outside. Let me take you for a drink, or maybe a bit to eat, and start all over again?”

She didn’t say anything for long seconds. She couldn’t find the words, couldn’t work out his game, couldn’t work out her own rush of responses... an odd mix of bitter anger and feeling flattered at the attention, and hating herself for feeling anything but that anger.

“Even if it’s just for a minute, would you please give me the chance?”

She went outside and there was a Jaguar pulled up in the lane, its interior lights on in the darkness and a uniformed driver at the wheel. Blunt was standing by an open passenger door on the far side, leaning on the car roof, watching Holly as she emerged from the cottage.

She approached slowly, as if he were some deadly kind of snake.

She crossed the lane, and went round the front of the car. The driver stared impassively ahead, as if she wasn’t there.

She came to stand with the open door between her and Blunt, and he turned, resting his forearms on the top of the door.

He’d had his chestnut hair trimmed, but there was still enough for the natural wave to show. He’d shaved, too, and the clean line of his jaw made his face look squarer. He watched her with those pale gray eyes, and she wondered if he was ever going to speak.

“I’m sorry,” he said, finally.

For kissing her, presumably. For kissing her and then turning away. For playing with her like a bored predator might toy with its prey – that snake analogy was apt, for many reasons. For...

“You’re sorry,” she said softly, keeping her tone measured, fearful that she might just explode. “Would that be for kicking us out of our home?”

Confusion flashed across his face. “What?” he said. “What are you talking about?”

“The eviction letter you sent on Monday. Thirty days’ notice. Was that your revenge? Could you not accept that I might just not be interested?”

“I... Slow down. What are you saying?”

“Don’t play the innocent,” she continued, unable to stop now that she had started. “Don’t pretend you don’t know about it. That was your signature on the bottom of the letter. Well you can’t just do that, you know? We have rights.”

She’d spent much of the day talking to lawyers, learning that, actually, Nicholas Blunt
could
just do that, with most of their tenants’ rights waived on account of failing to pay rent over several months. But she wasn’t about to tell
him
that, not now.

“Slow down. Slow down. Listen, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. You should see my desk, all the paperwork. I just sign whatever they give me. It’s a long time since... since I cared enough to check.” He looked down now, away, and for a moment he looked like a different man, his default anger turned to something else.

“You really think I’d do that?” he said, finally. “To you? To your dad?”

With that, he took a step back, then turned and dropped into the car, and within seconds the Jaguar was lost to sight around a bend in the lane.

There was a definite pattern emerging. She’d believe she’d seen the last of him, then he’d show up out of the blue, mess with her head and then... vanish.

She didn’t even think about what she did next, her feet just took over and before she knew it she was heading across the green to The Bull.

The place was crowded for a Tuesday evening, and it took a moment for Holly to adjust to the lights and the noise after the darkness outside. Then she remembered it was pub quiz night, which explained the little huddles of four or five gathered around tables with their answer sheets before them.

“And that’s the final question on geography. I repeat: name the capital of Nepal.”

From across the bar, Tommy Lefevre caught Holly’s eye, his eyebrows raised questioningly. He was with his brother Joe and a couple of other lads, and it was clear that none of them knew the answer.

Then it was Robert’s turn to catch her eye, and then quickly nod towards the bar. Holly ducked behind the counter and was instantly pulling pints. She didn’t have a shift tonight, but she knew how much Robert loved lording it over his quizmaster duties, which always left Sally and Sean rushed off their feet.

And it took her mind off what had just happened with Blunt. His apparent confusion when she confronted him over the eviction notice. The tension in the way he held himself. The hesitancy of his manner.

The wounded look that had flashed across his face before he was able to bury it, and the way she actually felt briefly guilty for challenging him.

“You’re miles away, Holly. I said ‘a pint of SA, please’.”

Tommy.

She poured his beer. “Sorry, Tee,” she said. “Get you anything else?”

“How about a drink with me later, when it’s a bit quieter?”

§

She’d forgotten how easy it was to talk with Tommy. How there had been times when they’d be chatting over a coffee in town and suddenly their drinks would be cold and it would be growing dark outside and they’d have lost two or three hours, just following where the conversation went, by turns intense and light and serious and fun.

“Thanks, Tommy,” she said now. It was late. Robert had already taken last orders and now there were just a few drinkers left. She and Tommy had a small table in the window. Just when exactly had they
grown up
like this?

“Thanks? What for?”

“Oh, just you know. Thanks.”

“So, you going to tell me why you came in all flustered earlier? Was it him again?”

They’d talked and talked since the pub had grown quieter but until now Holly had steered clear of her encounter with Nicholas Blunt.

“Oh, just problems at home,” she said now. “Problems
with
home.”

He had a way about him, a way that invited her to open up, to keep on. “Turns out Dad hasn’t been keeping up with the rent, so we’re having problems with the Estate.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Eviction kind.”

“Jeez, Holly. Why didn’t you say something sooner? I could have–”

“Could have what?”

“I don’t know. Where will you live?”

“We’ll work something out,” said Holly. “Because we’ve not been paying rent the council don’t have any obligation to re-house us if we’re turfed out. Karen’s said we can stay in one of the holiday lets for the off-season, though. Give us time to get sorted out. I’m thinking I might have to drop uni. Get a full-time job.”

“Jeez, Holly,” he said again. “So why wasn’t the old man paying rent? Are things really that bad?”

Holly shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t think so. He doesn’t talk about that kind of thing. Since Mum died he’s not been the same. A bit...
detached
, if you know what I mean.”

His hand on hers felt good. Reassuring.
Normal
. She let it rest there for a time, before slipping her hand out to reach for her glass.

§

They left together, a short, awkward distance between them.

Had something changed between them? Something that had snuck up and hijacked them?

Halfway across the green, Tommy slipped an arm around her waist, his hand resting lightly on her hip.

She put her hand down, covering his, squeezed briefly, and then lifted his hand clear.

“Thanks for listening, Tee,” she said. “But...” She didn’t know what to say without hurting him.
I don’t want to
step back into a relationship that’s like a comfortable old pair of slippers
.

Old Tommy would have let it go. He’d have realized he’d pushed things too far and stepped back, bided his time like... like the relentless dripping of a tap.

But new Tommy: his hand flipped out of hers and locked tightly around her wrist.

“Holly.”

His voice was strained, more of a gasp than an utterance.

“Tommy?”

He really had changed.

His grip was hard, unyielding. He drew her against him, his other arm snaking around her back.

“Holly. We were good, Holly. We can still be good. Will you just give me a chance, Holly?”

Repeating her name like a magical spell designed to enchant her, possess her.

They had always fitted together so well. So easy for her body to melt into his, onto his hard lines, her breasts squashed up against the rough corrugations of his ribs.

That familiar scent: Lynx.

The beat of his heart. His breath on the top of her head. A sudden hardness growing against her. All the old sensations, the old responses.

He hesitated. She felt it in the way he held her, a sudden fluctuation in the tension, a tremor.

“No, Tommy.” She pushed sharply against his chest, breaking his grip, freeing herself from his embrace.

Why did he have to spoil everything?

Why did he have to take things too far? All this... it was too damned
much
.

“No, Tommy,” she said again, backing away into the darkness, turning, walking fast. Not running. Taking all the control she had to stay walking, not running.

“Not now, Tommy. Okay? Just... no, Tommy.”

At home, she went straight to bed but couldn’t sleep.

She lay there long into the early hours. Her heart kept growing calm for a few minutes and then racing again. Her head was one big mad rush of thoughts, like a waterfall, like white water rapids.

Tommy. The feel of him. The urgency. That point when he had overpowered her, when it was just a caveman thing and he
had
her but he didn’t know it because he was still a boy with a boy’s inexperience and inability to spot that critical moment.

That moment when, briefly, he had been too strong and she had
liked
it, and then that point had tipped over and she had come to her senses and pushed him away.

Was she really the kind of girl – the kind of woman – who wanted only to be overpowered, to give herself up to a man’s strength? She had never thought of herself as that woman, but the response had been undeniable. The physical reaction to that kind of strength, to those kinds of demands.

She turned over, and focused on the rain lashing down against her window, drumming on the glass and running down it in streams. She didn’t know how to handle all this. She’d never known anything like it. Nicholas Blunt with his inarticulate, bludgeoning interest; Tommy’s Jekyll and Hyde flips between friend and pursuer, just when she thought they’d moved well beyond all that. She had enough shit to deal with right now, without all this.

She had to find a way to put it out of her head. Get on with her real life.

Focus, and move forwards.

That’s what she’d been doing for the last three years.

Since Mum fell ill and Dad had struggled to deal with how she relentlessly fell apart before his eyes, layers of the woman she had been being stripped away as the tumors took hold.

And then afterwards, when he had carried on struggling to deal with anything, and Ruby had been so young and lashing out angrily at the world, and everything had been down to Holly.

Focus. Move forwards. Deal with the shit.

That was all she knew how to do.

§

A full morning at university helped her distance herself from things. Tommy, Nicholas Blunt... those encounters had happened, and were in the past now. Behind her.

Lunch at the club with Ruby brought it all back, though.

The health club was a modern building on the edge of town, nestled into the foot of a hill, with woodland climbing up the slope behind it. It was a beautiful setting, and the club made the most of it with floor-to-roof windows so you could sit in the restaurant and look out over the lush green Cotswold landscape.

“I’m worried about him,” said Holly, as she picked at the remains of a Thai crabcake. “Dad. He just seems so flat about everything. Just accepts whatever’s thrown at him. When he got that eviction notice he didn’t seem to care. And now this morning when I left for the bus he was just packing his books into a wooden crate, ready to move out. Dad never used to be like that. He was a fighter.”

Ruby opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. They both knew when that had changed. He’d put all his fight into helping their mother in the early stages of her cancer, while she had still had a chance. When those chances had fizzled out, so too had all of their father’s fight.

“You think there’s anything you can do about that?”

Holly shrugged. “Legally, not really. The eviction letter doesn’t have any legal standing, but if there’s any problem the Estate can apply to court for a formal eviction notice and because we’ve missed rent we don’t have a leg to stand on. And then there’s the back-rent we owe, too. We really are stuffed.”

“So maybe Dad’s just being practical?”

Maybe. But Ruby hadn’t seen him this morning. She hadn’t seen that deadness behind his eyes, the emptiness of a man who has given up.

“
She’d
have fought it,” Holly said now. “She’d have gone to Nicholas Blunt’s front door and smooth-talked him around, and he’d never even have a clue how she’d done it.”