Authors: EMME CROSS
Sunny scolded her husband. “I told you to warm up first. It’s not a matter of age; it’s flexibility.”
Sven’s sister Charlotte, heard the exchange as she grabbed a piece of toast on her way out to work.
“I can’t believe you are flaunting yourselves this way. Some of us aren’t having regular sex. Some of us don’t even have a reason to stay flexible. Some of us are . . .” She burst into sobs.
Sven put his arm around Charlotte and led her out of the room, talking softly.
Sunny was upset. “What did we say? Judith, we never meant to hurt her or be insensitive.”
“I know. And she does too. It’s always hard on her when little Jenna goes to stay with her father. And it doesn’t help to see you two so happy all the time.”
“We can try not to be happy, or at least not look happy,” Sunny suggested.
“Don’t be silly. I only meant she can see what she’s missing when she looks at you and her brother.”
“We haven’t always been this happy.”
“Sunny! Stop feeling guilty. Charlotte made a bad decision in marrying that man, made it worse by cheating on him and now she’s paying for it. She should feel guilty, not you.”
Judith dried her hands and changed the subject. “What are we doing today? Maybe a little shopping and scouting for the house? I can call an architect to sketch out how we can use the upstairs space. Plus you are going to need at least three bathrooms.”
“Are you sure you’re up to overseeing the work when we’re back in California?”
“I can’t wait. Maybe it will give me the confidence to revamp this old place, although every creaking floorboard contains a memory.”
“Charlotte’s a mess.” Sven returned to the kitchen and topped up his coffee. “I don’t know how she’ll focus at work today.”
Judith gave him a sour look. “She won’t have to because she’s having an affair with her boss. She’ll cry on his shoulder and they’ll get away for lunch in a hotel and he’ll comfort her. When she comes home tonight she’ll be all happy again. And then the cycle will start afresh tomorrow.”
“Her boss? That tall skinny guy with no chin and a wispy moustache?”
“Anders. His name is Anders. Charlotte has the worst taste in men, even worse than . . .”
“Even worse than my taste in women — present company excluded. She needs a male Sunny to save her,” Sven said, planting a kiss on the top of his wife’s curls.
Judith snorted. “As if there were such a thing. Enough about Charlotte. She’s made her bed, several of them in fact, and now she has to lie in them. About today—.”
Sven’s cellphone sounded.
His face turned sombre as he listened. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Henry.” The word was laden with sorrow.
Sunny looked up from wiping her daughter’s cheek. “It’s time?”
“Henry was fine — okay not fine, but he was alright when I saw him in London last month. He’s taken a turn for the worse. A heart attack, and Colin says the doctors aren’t optimistic. Sunny, his body can’t handle any more. I don’t know if I can handle it either.”
She held him in her arms, pulling his head down to hers and stroking his cheek. “We’ll go to London. We’ll be with him, all of us, including his goddaughter. Poor Charlie, he’s only just gotten to know his granddad.” To Sunny, Sir Henry Clover, giant of stage and screen, meant nothing. Her thoughts went out to a loving, teasing man whom she had come to adore. They also turned to Charlie, the twelve year old child who would now have to deal with this devastating loss.
Judith took charge. “I’ll call the travel agent and book you the first flight out. Don’t worry about the house. We can arrange things long distance and I’ll see you in St. Barts in a couple of weeks.”
Sven had to get out of that room. The figure lying there was no longer Henry. Nothing that had made it ‘Henry’ was left. Henry was dead. His best friend. They had made an odd couple, this young Hollywood actor and the Shakespearean giant. They had grown close when they were acting together in the film
The Barbarian King.
Sven willingly acknowledged that he would never have won the Oscar if Henry had not been his co-star. He owed him so much.
Back in his pitch dark bedroom he opened the bottle of whisky that he’d taken from Henry’s bedside. Henry’s death was hitting him hard and he couldn’t figure out why. After all, they’d known it was coming for a long time. Henry had been diagnosed with prostate cancer while they were making the film. Their entire friendship had been marked by increasingly dire diagnoses.
But Sven had never believed that Henry would actually die.
He took another gulp straight from the bottle. He needed his wife. He needed Sunny desperately, but she was off, somewhere, looking after other people. Like she always did, he thought bitterly, taking another swallow.
His eyes welled up with self-pity and he fought back a sob. Why wasn’t she here when he needed her? Why couldn’t she put him first? Especially now, when he was dealing with the death of his father—
Wait a minute! Where had that come from? It was true that Henry had been a kind of surrogate father, sharing his wisdom and helping Sven avoid the mistakes he had made. They were kindred spirits too — creative, stubborn, self-centered, selfish, yet both had a deep need for family.
Sven stripped off clothes that suddenly felt too tight and took another drink. His own father had died when he was ten, a little younger than Henry’s grandson, Charlie. Poor kid. Henry had been more father than grandfather to the young boy.
Sven thought about himself at aged ten. That was when his father’s snowmobile had fallen through the ice of a Norwegian fjord. Because it was winter, they hadn’t recovered the body for months but Sven had held out hope. He had been certain his giant, super-hero dad would have somehow survived the freezing water. His dad could defeat anything, even hypothermia. He would come home and they’d go to soccer games together again.
He’d hugged that hope to his heart until the bitter day when he came home from school to find his mother weeping. The sight of her suffering shocked him almost more than his father’s death, for Judith never surrendered to emotion, not in front of her three children. He hadn’t known what to do, or how to comfort her. He’d hung back, waiting and watching as their house filled up with grown-ups who were willing and able to share her grief. He remembered feeling useless.
He remembered!
He was standing by the graveside in the cold Norwegian summer rain watching them lower his father’s coffin into the ground. . .
For years he’d been unable to remember. Once, on Gouverneur Beach on St. Barts, Sunny had asked him about his father’s death and he’d told her he couldn’t remember it. She’d said that memories were like ghosts, flashes you saw out of the corner of your eye.
Sven shivered, and the spirits of his father and Henry moved around him. The two men he admired most were both gone.
He needed his wife.
He had another drink.
* * *
Sunny watched Sven slip out of the room. She wanted nothing more than to hold him in her arms and share his grief but the look on Charlie’s face held her back. She remembered how devastated she had been when her father died and she had been much older than Charlie, who was still just a little boy.
Colin was also grieving, largely for all the wasted years they’d been estranged after his parents’ bitter divorce. Sunny couldn’t walk away yet.
They left the ambulance attendants to do their job. Sunny knew from her father’s death what needed to be done. As she watched Colin pour himself a stiff drink in the library, she remembered closing her father’s eyes and kissing his cooling cheek. Then, once the body had been removed, she had changed the linens and opened the bedroom windows wide, letting the cold Alberta winds erase the lingering, pervasive smell of death.
She was very tired, more tired than she’d been in years. It must be the fatigue, she thought, that was causing her to slip between past and present. Ever since his passing, her father had been there as a calming presence, a gentle shade over her shoulder, helping her cope with her problems. Now his presence suddenly felt oppressive. Ghosts, she was surrounded by ghosts. Sunny felt small and frightened, wanting only to curl up in Sven’s arms and cry over the loss of Henry. Instead, she settled Colin and Charlie in for the night and forced herself to check on Mrs. Carlyle. Henry’s long-time housekeeper was overcome with grief. She had been with the family for decades, and was now part of them. Sunny helped her to bed, gave her a sleeping pill and promised she would see to breakfast for the household, just a few hours away.
Sunny knew that with the dawn would come phone calls, texts and the need to make arrangements for the funeral.
A quick check in the nursery confirmed that Bliss was fast asleep. The night nurse they’d hired told her that her daughter was unperturbed by all the drama. Sunny kissed the flushed cheek of her sleeping angel, glad she could turn off — or at least turn down — the baby monitor until the morning. Now to try and sleep for a couple of hours. Sunny hoped that she was too tired to dream. Baba Yaga, a horrifying figure from her childhood nightmares, seemed to be lurking around every corner.
The bedroom was in almost total darkness, apart from a dim light spilling out through the open bathroom door. Sven must have passed out. She’d seen him make off with the bottle from Henry’s room. Sunny stifled a sad smile, remembering how Henry used to sneak a snort or two when his nurses weren’t looking.
She took off her sweater and tossed it onto a chair, bone weary.
“Oh! You startled me. I hoped you’d gone to bed.”
She barely got the words out when Sven’s mouth descended on hers, crushing her lips and forcing them apart, his tongue questing and hot. She tasted whisky.
She gasped. “My love. Let me hold you.” She reached up to stroke his hair and face but he wasn’t looking for gentleness. His tongue was probing, his breath hot.
“Just give me a minute, Sven, just a minute. I’ll hold you. I’ll help you. It will be okay. Just a minute.”
He wasn’t listening.
Sven’s hands were everywhere at once, seeking skin. He tried to undo her blouse but lost patience and ripped it open, sending the buttons flying. Sunny tried to speak, to offer reassurance, but Sven’s mouth and tongue were unrelenting. Despite her marrow deep fatigue, she felt her body start to respond, softening against her husband, moaning as he twisted off her bra and stroked her breasts. Sunny could feel his need, even smell it. She countered his almost desperate movements with gentle strokes of his hair and shoulders. Sven clasped her closer to his body, as if he couldn’t bear to leave even a centimeter of space between them.
Sunny wriggled back, so that she could catch her breath and bring Sven back from whatever distant place that his mind had travelled. His mouth cut off her attempts to speak. He wanted her, badly. He hadn’t been so desperate for her in years, not since they were reunited after the tsunami. No, not even then, Sunny thought as his hands cupped her ass and he ground into her torso. Sven hadn’t been this desperate for her since after Clyde’s attack. She shook her head, trying to dispel the disturbing memory, but her brain was foggy, her body sluggish as if she was sleepwalking — or drowning.
Sven lifted his mouth, and she drew in a deep breath, searching for some words to ease his pain and panic. She was preparing to speak, tell him how much she loved him, and repeat the words until he calmed enough to listen when Sven grabbed her upper arms. Suddenly she could not move or speak.
No!
She was standing at the end of the pool at Ivan’s, her hair dripping after her swim. Clyde grabbed her arms through the rough towelling and Sunny whimpered as he draped it over her head. She tried to scream but the sound was muffled. No one would hear. No one would help. Her heels dug into the concrete looking for purchase but found none. He was dragging her out of Ivan’s compound. She could feel the sand beneath her feet and hear the surf crashing against the shore. Her heart was beating so fast and hard, she thought it would burst out of her chest. Her mind was reeling and then Clyde’s fist hit her head through the fabric and she staggered. Her leg smashed against a rock, the pain bringing her back to the terrifying nightmare. The fabric over her face; Clyde’s arms crushing her against his torso; the smell of animal lust and hate mixed with seaweed and tropical vegetation. She fought down bile, bit her lip and tasted copper.
He was dragging her across the sand to the end of the beach. When she tripped, Clyde kicked her in the side and she landed with a ‘whoof’ on the sand, all her breath expelled.
Rough hands clawed at her breasts and between her thighs. She wanted to scream but couldn’t catch her breath not with the sand in her mouth and those arms pinning her to the ground. Panic rising, she moaned. “No! Not again! No! You won’t hurt me again!” She pounded her fists on the back of Clyde’s shoulders. He was as oblivious to the blows as he was to her moans. He was too strong. She hadn’t been able to stop him then, nor could she now.
“No!” she said with half a breath as Clyde’s mouth descended to her breasts. Her nipples were still sensitive from Bliss’s suckling earlier in the day.
Bliss! Her daughter.
She had a daughter?
Was she in St. Barts? For an instant Sunny felt sheets beneath her back and the stars overhead faded, revealing a corniced ceiling. Then the hands were again clutching her upper arms and she was back in the nightmare. She was lying on the beach, bracing herself against Clyde’s kick to the stomach, the blow to the head, waiting for the scent of excrement and Clyde’s foul epithets.
“You were his whore and now you’ll be my whore.” The hateful words echoed in her mind. She tried to twist away from him, to scream for help but Clyde was undeterred, licking and sucking his way down her body and inserting a finger inside her. She was so dry it hurt.
Clyde held her down on the sand and his mouth descended between her thighs. She could feel his whiskers abrading the soft skin. She kept her eyes shut, refusing to see that bearded face, the eyes burning with hate, kissing her there, performing this obscene intimacy. The sensation of lips and mouth and tongue probing between her thighs confused her and she paused, overcome by a sense that something was wrong. She struggled to surface, like a swimmer caught beneath the surface.
Her eyes flickered open and instead of stars overhead and sand beneath her, there was a dimly lit ceiling and soft sheets. Instead of Clyde’s black curls, a shaft of golden hair spilled onto her assailant’s forehead.
Was this . . . London? Not there. Not then — not St. Barts. This wasn’t Clyde.
This wasn’t Clyde?
Sven. This was her husband. She wanted to weep in thanks. This wasn’t Clyde! She wasn’t back on the beach! Sunny could see the track of dried tears on Sven’s face and sense the desperate need as he moved inside her, speaking in a rambling whisper about his father, Henry, about needing her, his wife, so very much. She tried to reassure him but his tongue was now thrusting so deep she thought she’d choke. She tried not to give into panic again but she couldn’t breathe. It was like being pushed face down in the sand by Clyde—
Sunny forced herself to calm down. Focus on Sven, she thought. Focus on his face. But washed over by the dim light, overlaid with disturbing memories, it was the face of a stranger.
Sven wasn’t seeing her and it was churning up all her memories of that long ago attack on St. Barts. Tears welled up. She kept mentally reciting,
this isn’t Clyde. This is Sven. This isn’t Clyde. This is Sven.
This calmed her. If only her husband would open his eyes and look at her, see her. But he didn’t.
After a while the familiar rhythm saved her. Her body began to react automatically. Her body knew her husband. Though her mind was confused by unresolved memories her body recognized Sven’s touch. It recognized his scent.
Her hips started to move in concert with his.
There was no sharing in it. It was nothing but taking and being taken. And Sunny finally surrendered. She let her body melt and her thoughts ebb away. It felt as though they continued like this for hours. His hands, his tongue, his cock moving in a frenzied rhythm. Finally, his body rose and grew rigid. He moaned and then crashed like a marble statue on top of her.
It was over. She was released.
Sunny took a deep breath.
“Sven?” she croaked.
There was no answer. He’d passed out. She caught a flash of movement by the bedroom door but put it down to her distressed state. She reached up and touched Sven’s face. He must have been crying, grieving alone as she saw to everyone else first. Now she wanted to cry because she hadn’t been here when her husband needed her so desperately.
Well she would cry later. For now she was still disoriented by the memories his forceful lovemaking had dredged up. The memories of Clyde’s attack had evidently been simmering beneath the surface, lying in wait for her until she was too tired or too vulnerable to resist.
What had triggered it all? Her arms! He’d grabbed her upper arms, just as Clyde had.