Love (5 page)

On the way back to the pub they discussed their favorite Hardy novels. Hands went up for
Return of the Native
, the dour Irish pop star backed
Jude the Obscure
, and Lily spun round and opted for
Tess
. “Don't you think that Amy has lips like Tess? Come on, boys, you could pop strawberries into that mouth very happily.” Amy flushed with delight and the boys turned away, embarrassed and grunting while Lily smiled straight at her.

They commandeered a green velveteen corner of the pub for most of the afternoon, consuming Guinness in indecent quantities and staying on to beat the locals in the pub quiz that evening. Amy's head swam with a creamy deluge of Bailey's and whiskey. In an effort to get home they all linked arms for stability and trundled through puddles and ditches.

“It'll be OK,” Lily soothed. “I've fallen asleep behind the hedgerow before now and got a lift home on the milk truck the next morning, so all is most definitely not lost …” She trailed off with a little slur. They stumbled all the way back to the cottage and numerous bruises later tumbled into the irrelevant sleeping bags.

The morning was too painful for Amy to bear to move. She lay as still as possible knowing that if she
lifted so much as a fingernail, she'd be sick. And I just can't be, she told herself, I'm not fourteen anymore, I can't be running to the loo to throw up, it's way too embarrassing. But the room had a vague smell of turps and the more Amy thought of it the iller she felt. Eventually she leaned over and lifted the window sash. Ice-cold air blasted in and the flimsy cotton curtains were caught up in a frantic dance with the wind. Hastily closing it and flopping back onto the bed with the exertion, Amy gazed blankly at an array of canvases stacked up against the wardrobe until Lily peeped her head around the door.

“You look as rough as I feel,” she ventured.

“Hmmm, could be right there.” Amy winced, not daring to breathe.

“I'm so sorry, you're only a child, we shouldn't have been so rough on you.”

“Lily, I'm not a Mormon, I have been pissed before.”

Lily threw herself down onto the end of the very soft bed. Amy's stomach leaped and lurched. Don't bounce, she pleaded silently. Please.

Lily sat there looking so pretty that Amy couldn't quite bear it. Even her dark circles were poetic and a smattering of pale freckles made her look all daisylike, an advert for fresh, ice-cold milk next to Amy's wan, hungover look. She sank into her pillow feeling that life had dealt her an unfair blow. Lily clambered in next to her, and they huddled under the duvet together groaning gratuitously, born-again teetotalers.

Lucinda walked in bearing mineral water and vitamin C tablets, but seeing the writhing, grumbling duvet, almost spun on her Birkenstocks and left.

“Stop right there, Gunga Din!” yelled Lily, her head appearing over the parapet of the duvet. Lucinda sheepishly walked toward them with her mini pharmacy.

“You weren't worried that I'd seduced poor Amy, were you?” Lily grinned.

“No, of course not, Lil, I just thought you were sleeping.” Amy had never seen Lucinda, veteran of the social exchange, look so flummoxed before. She wondered at the cause, shot a puzzled glare at Lucinda, and gratefully quaffed her water and vitamin C. Then the fog and pain lifted a little and it began to dawn on her that the reason the men weren't swarming round Lily was that everyone perhaps knew something she didn't: i.e., Lily preferred women to men. Amy felt Lily's bare legs next to hers. Amy was naked (except for Chanel No. 5? No, except for Mum deodorant and last night's eau de pub), and Lily had a lacy vest and shorts on and indecently golden limbs. She reasoned soberly—what a joke—that (1) Lily probably didn't fancy her anyway; (2) Lucinda was there, and if she did fancy her, she'd be more discreet than to make a pass while her brother's girlfriend (and Amy's boss!) was in the room; and (3) Lily was much too pretty for Amy and she should be so lucky, basically. Having established these points, Amy felt no better at all. She remembered her legs were prickly and she hadn't cleaned her teeth. She sat brusquely upright and jabbered with an inanity which baffled even Lucinda.

Assorted bodies in various states of disarray sat around Lily's enormous kitchen table. All pretext of glamour had been abandoned. Faces were unshaven, contact lenses
were replaced by unappealing spectacles, and painterly pretensions were superseded by cheesy jogging pants. Needless to say, everyone felt much more at home and bonded over sizzling bacon and boiling kettles. Benjy had burned his fingers on some toast and, shaking his hand in annoyance, turned to Lucinda.

“You did tell Amy, didn't you, Lucinda?”

Lucinda looked sheepishly into her coffee. “Well, no, but what's there to tell? ‘Oh, by the way, Lily's gay and has a penchant for young innocents?' Don't be ridiculous, Benjy, anyway I actually think it'll be good for Amy to be flattered a bit, looked after. It'll also broaden her horizons and keep her away from accountants like Luke Harding. Sorry, Craig [he of cauliflower ear and calculator], but Amy needs some real life experience.”

Benjy looked at his intended with horror. “Luce, you're a monster. Amy's fine without a splash of lipstick lesbianism to enhance her life, and Lily's not gay, she just thinks it's glamorous and sapphic to kiss women.”

“Precisely. She and Amy can fuel each other's romantic imagination for a while and I won't have to pick up the few little pieces of self-respect Amy has left at the end of her liaisons.”

“You're weird, Luce,” he said, sitting on a sofa in the corner and gazing at his emerging blister.

The male guests looked baffled by the notion and hid their heads in the Sunday papers while tucking away the image of the two lithe temptresses entwined into the recesses of their minds for a little rewind later. The females sulked inwardly that they hadn't been singled out
by Lily. Though of course that wasn't their thing, it would have been nice to have been asked.

Upstairs ears were too sleepy to burn. The girls lay somnolent and languid on the bed, dozing and dreaming in a Bailey's-induced haze, Lily's hand resting softly on Amy's shoulder. Thus they lay until midday when Lily's deeply unreliable rooster-alarm took it upon himself to rally the hungover from their slumber. The household twitched and winced with pain at the shrill intrusion; Amy opened her eyes to find Lily's pert nose wrinkling awake. Her tummy did a little jitterbug of anxiety, and she tried hard not to shake her pins-and-needles-ridden limbs for fear of startling Lily, who let out a baby sigh and cautiously opened one eye.

“Ooooh, morning,” she cooed, smiling with her eyes screwed up against the light.

“Hi,” said Amy, a gnaw of nerves tightening inside her, trying to confront her newfound knowledge of Lily.

“How lovely to wake up next to such a pretty mouth,” Lily mused to no one in particular. Amy felt like she was watching a French art-house film with few words and an erotic edge lacing every look. The tightening in the pit of her stomach melted into warm tingles and spread down to her toes. Lily's smile coerced Amy to follow suit. Amy didn't manage the smile, but the darts of heat assaulting her body gave her the courage to lift her eyes and look at Lily. A nod is as good as a wink in some circles. Lily lifted a finger to Amy's lower lip and, tracing it gently, softly pushed it into her mouth. Amy was torn between fear and an overwhelming desire to taste Lily's plump peony-petal lips. Tilting her
face toward Lily's, their lips collided full and gently. The soft skin of the encounter surprised Amy, no coarse cheeks grazing her own; the downy symmetry of their curves caused their bodies to brush, Gemini-like, against one another. Amy's fear evaporated. How divine, she thought.

A
my let the water in the shower scald her; she lathered up an old cracked cake of Imperial Leather all over her and sneezed at the smell. She felt fully fledged, extremely sophisticated, and she grinned like the cat who'd eaten the canary. And a ruddy pretty canary at that, she smirked. Like Vita Sackville-West, Sappho, and a Georgia O'Keeffe flower all rolled into one. Yum. The brimming embodiment of femininity stepped out of the shower into the steaming condensation of the minuscule bathroom and dried every limb with histrionic tendresse.

In the kitchen everyone sat around peeling feathers from freshly laid eggs and shelling peas in a quaint but pointless way. They'd already decided to have fish and chips on the quayside for lunch.

“Guys, please don't do too many. Every Monday morning I'm left with a colander full of the bloody things and every Friday I throw them out,” begged Lily as she bent over to feed her cat.

“Why don't you make soup or something?” Lucinda advised helpfully.

“Because there's a Marks and Spencers in town and they do it for forty-seven pence a tin.” Everyone saw her point but carried on shelling peas anyway. Amy made
her entrance. Gone were the tweeds and in their place was a sort of lavish sarong garment, all the colors of the rain forest with a couple of parrots for good measure. She was barefoot and satisfied. Hmmm, pondered her audience. Hmmm, pondered Lucinda. Did her the world of good, obviously.

In town they browsed around all the haphazard china shops and whiled away an hour in a secondhand bookshop. Amy's mind was half on the day, half on her newfound glow. It wasn't really to do with Lily, not in the way that having a man made you all focused on that man. Amy was thinking of herself and what a sexy individual she was.

Lily and Amy broke away and made their way along the windswept quayside, down some fearsome steps and, sitting just clear of the water, munched their vinegar-sodden chips, chirping about boats and books and chickens and …

“It's been fun having you here, Amy,” said Lily. “Come again in the summer when we can have candlelit picnics in the wood at midnight.” She held her hand on Amy's thigh; Amy visualized wood nymphs and moonbathing.

“Love to.” She coaxed the last chip from the bottom of the soggy bag.

She was interrupted by a pair of navy blue trousers towering above Lily. The trousers slowly bent down and kissed Lily's cheek.

“Good God, woman, you'll be the size of a tank if you carry on eating those things.”

Lily's shriek scattered the seagulls padding around beside them.

“Orlando Rock, well, he-low!” Amy puzzled at the
name—she'd heard it before, a thousand times, but couldn't place it. School? Male model? My dentist? She was craning her neck around to see who Lily was hugging so furiously when she caught a glimpse of his profile. My God, it's Mr. Rochester. Her heart stopped beating and she stopped chewing her chip. The Actor. Here. On the beach. But how on earth does Lily know him? The pair stopped cavorting and Lily introduced him.

“Amy, Orlando. Orlando, Amy.” And? willed Amy.

Mr. Rochester, alias Orlando Rock, bent down and shook Amy's hand firmly.

“Always a pleasure to meet one of Lily's friends,” he breathed huskily, and stared her crash-bang in the eye. Amy gulped and smiled.

“Hi.” Feeble, Amy, you can do better than that.

They stood around awkwardly for a couple of seconds before Lily pulled Amy to her feet and, one arm around Orlando's waist, marched them off to an olde tea shoppe. They sat among women of a certain age whose little fingers cocked as they sipped Earl Grey. They ordered cream tea and iced buns with a cream horn for good measure.

“Lapsang souchong, please,” requested Lily.

“ 'Aven't got none, luv,” said an elderly waitress, her yellowing lace apron somehow not managing to convey much olde-worlde charm.

“OK, Tetley's then, please.”

The lady was clearly not impressed. “We 'ave Earl Grey, English breakfast, or rose 'ip.” This struck Amy as a curious array, but given the take-it-or-leave-it tone it was presented in, Lily conceded and opted for rose hip. She and Orlando chatted about an assortment of
glamorous topics, when they were last in Chile and my God we haven't seen each other since the Warhol party in New York. The more Amy thought of to say, the less she was capable of contributing to the conversation. She just smiled periodically and sought out the fragrance of bergamot in her Earl Grey, carrying out a little experiment to see if when you held your breath and stopped sniffing, you could still taste the Earl Greyness of the tea. You couldn't. Then she noticed the horrible peeling border of the wallpaper and the swirly patterned carpet. She'd prefer to have high tea in Claridges, she decided. Looking around at the clientele, she suddenly became aware that more than one middle-aged lady was glancing in their direction, in one case accompanied by a whisper to her companion. Amy heard the buzz in her head.

“Isn't that whatshisname, terribly handsome?”

“But not nearly so tall as he looks on the telly.”

“Yeees, you're right, Jessica, now what is his name?”

Orlando Rock. Amy filled in. His eyes were inordinately blue and his features so aquiline and delicate he looked like a Roman god. And he was sitting at her table tucking into a cream horn. They barely exchanged a glance, but when they did, his was warm and friendly.

A stout figure in pink bouclé loomed over the table, peering down at them from her horn-rimmed spectacles.

“Hello, Mr. Middlemarch.” She nodded, very pleased with her memory and casual wit.

The actor looked up and smiled kindly.

“Hello,” then turned back to Lily and Amy for conversation.

“You were ever so good, would you mind signing my lottery ticket?”

He obliged her and she puffed back to her table like a Trafalgar Square pigeon.

“I wasn't even in bloody
Middlemarch
,” confided Orlando. The trio burst into repressed olde-tea-shoppe laughter and devoured the rest of the scones. When the time came to leave, Amy had ad-libbed a few entrées into the chitchat and even raised a smile from her god.