I could imagine what would happen if Hugh came along to one of my appointments: he’d be flirting with her within five minutes while I sat there like a nauseated nonentity. Not the kind of antenatal care I wanted.
I tried the ginger biscuit. It was nice.
‘So who are the biscuits for?’ I asked. ‘A blonde or a redhead?’
Hugh raised his eyebrows and said nothing.
‘Oh, I forgot, you’ve branched out into brunettes.’ I ate the rest of it.
‘Do you like the biscuits?’
‘They’re not bad. I think I read something about ginger helping nausea, you know.’ I reached for another. ‘Speaking of brunettes, this afternoon I finally got through to the last number on the list Sheila gave me. It was a place June lived two years ago. They haven’t heard from her and they want to talk to her about a telephone bill. In fact, every single person I’ve rung has said June owes them money. I hope you didn’t lend her any.’
‘No.’
He settled back on the couch beside me, turned on the telly, and flicked through the channels. The activity didn’t make me feel ill this time. In fact, I felt a whole lot better - in my stomach, at least.
‘Why’s your phone off the hook?’ I asked. ‘Are you trying to avoid one of your women? Or several of them?’
He kept on flicking channels. ‘I thought you were spending tonight doing rewrites on
Throbbing Member.
’
‘Do you know how impossible it is to write sex scenes when all you want to do is throw up?’
‘I can imagine.’
‘There might be some people out there who find vomit sexy, but I just don’t.’
‘I wholeheartedly agree.’ He seemed to settle on a programme set in a hospital emergency room, then thought better of it and flicked onwards.
‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘what if I can never write sex again? What if my hormones have permanently changed and my writing career is gone?’
I didn’t know where that had come from; it had flowed out of my mouth of its own accord, as if my brain were spitting out its own sick thoughts.
But it was exactly what I’d been worried about. My nausea began to gnaw at me again.
Hugh turned the sound off the television.
‘I mean, I could always write something else, but I don’t know that I’d be any good at it. And what if I can’t write at all once the baby comes? Babies need lots of care and attention and time. How am I going to be able to concentrate?’
Hugh turned the television off.
‘And if I can’t write, what am I going to do for money? Am I going to end up with the baby sleeping in the back room in the Mouse and Duck while I pull pints and my life goes nowhere? And what if I don’t even
like
the baby?’
By now my throat was sore, too, as if I had been violently ill. I felt tears in my eyes and Hugh was looking at me, but I looked at the blank television screen instead.
‘My whole life is going to change,’ I said, and although I’d acknowledged this before, it was as if I’d never fully realised it till now. ‘And I wanted my life to change, but I’m not sure I wanted it to change like this.’
Hugh put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me gently towards him. I leaned sideways and let myself be surrounded by his firm chest, his warm arms, his heartbeat and his breath. He stroked my hair back from my face and I took in a deep, hitching breath and then let out the worry, the fear, the sick-making anxiety in an overflow of tears. They dripped on to his cotton shirt and he didn’t move, only held me and didn’t say a thing, gave me no answers.
I woke up to the scent of ginger, tears and Hugh. Tentatively I moved my head. I was still leaning against Hugh’s chest, but his shirt had dried under my cheek. We were stretched out on the couch; my head was tucked underneath his arm, using him as a pillow. He was half turned towards me and our bodies pressed close together all down their length. He was breathing slowly but his heartbeat under my ear was rapid.
I opened my eyes. It was daylight, which meant that I’d slept here with Hugh all night. The warmth of his body spread through me like a drug and I breathed him in again, so familiar and yet so strange.
When I looked up at his face he was looking down at me.
It was quiet; there was only the sound of our breathing and the soft rustle of our clothes. I’m not sure how it happened because I obviously was not thinking. But I stretched my face up towards his and he bent his face towards mine, or at least it seemed as if he did, and suddenly our lips were touching each other.
It felt as if warm honey were being poured all over me, all through me, sweet and sexy. Then four words forced themselves into my brain with all the comfort of a wailing alarm clock.
I am kissing Hugh.
I pushed myself upright, away from his lips, though my body was still entangled with his so I couldn’t get far. My thigh was between both of his and my dirty mind immediately thought about whether he had an erection, because that would mean that he was as turned on as I was - but then again, lots of men had erections automatically in the morning, didn’t they, and someone as oversexed as Hugh would probably have an erection after spending the night snuggled up with any female. It didn’t have to be because he was turned on by me.
And then what if he didn’t have an erection?
I moved my leg down so I wouldn’t be able to tell and closed my eyes so I wouldn’t be tempted to look. Then, as a wave of panic came over me, I managed to get myself off the couch and on to my two feet.
‘Eleanor,’ Hugh was saying, but I was at the door already.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘That was a mistake. Sorry. I have to go home now because I feel sick again, bye.’
I slammed his door and bolted. I didn’t stop walking till I reached the bridge over the canal that led to Reading town centre and I realised I wasn’t wearing shoes, only thick socks. My heart was beating like crazy and I felt dizzy.
I dug in my jeans pocket and found a two-pound coin and some small change. What I really needed was a shot of whisky, but more prudently I went into the nearest Starbucks and bought a tall hot chocolate with marsh-mallows. I sat at an outside table despite the chill and tried to look nonchalant to the early shoppers walking by, staring at the posters outside the cinema across from me as if all I cared about was which movie I should see after I finished my drink and maybe put on some shoes.
In reality I was going over those split seconds again and again in my head. I’d reached my head up - I’d wanted to kiss him - and he’d bent his head down. No, he hadn’t, I’d reached up all the way myself. And I thought he’d kissed me back, but that was . . . what? Illusion, reflex, surprise, kindness?
I tried to drink more hot chocolate, discovered it was gone, and crushed the paper cup in my hands. It started to rain. Of course. I pulled off my socks, stuffed them in my pocket, and headed back home, because I had nowhere else to go at nine in the morning on a Saturday with no shoes. Nobody I knew would even be up yet. Except for Hugh.
‘Damn,’ I said, and it was so appropriate for what I felt that I said it again, and again; a constant little stream of ‘damn damn’s all the way back to my terraced house.
It was a measure of how shaken I was that when I got in, it took a moment or two for me to notice that my house wasn’t how I’d left it.
The cushions on my couch were scattered and slit, the magazines and books had been pulled off the shelves.
During the night, as I slept in Hugh’s arms, destined to make a fool of myself when I woke up, someone had been in my house.
17
You know those heroines in books who are too stupid to live? The ones who go into dark cellars when it’s clear that a psycho killer is lurking there, or who think they’re too fat and ugly despite men dropping at their feet, or who try to solve a kidnapping case themselves without getting the police involved?
I proved without doubt that I was actually one of those, because instead of immediately picking up the phone and dialling 999, I ran upstairs to my office. My normally pristine, clean, ironically virginal office where I’d reinstated all my writing after June’s departure.
I’d had a break-in two years before, when Simon, the punk kid who lived four doors down, had robbed my house to get heroin money (God, I loved Reading), and he’d taken my computer, which had a manuscript on it. A manuscript I’d nearly finished, which was due in two weeks’ time, and which I hadn’t printed out or saved anywhere else. Fortunately, the police had caught Simon before he had a chance to sell my computer, and I’d got the manuscript back.
Since then I’d had recurring nightmares of it happening again, and although I did back up my work now on a flash drive, that flash drive was completely portable, brand new, and worth a good tenner for any junkie who wanted to steal it and flog it.
‘Simon?’ I yelled, hammering up the stairs with no concern for my personal safety. I flung myself into my office and stopped short.
There was someone in there, but it wasn’t weedy junkie neighbour Simon. This man was tall and broad with white-man’s dreadlocks and a dark well-cut suit. Seeing him reminded me of Christmas and brussels sprouts.
‘Jojo?’ I gasped.
‘Elizabeth,’ he said grimly. ‘Just the person I wanted to see.’
I noticed that his nose was bent at a different angle to how it had been the last time I’d seen him. The fact was both reassuring and profoundly disturbing. Reassuring in that I knew he’d been permanently injured by someone as sylph-like as June; disturbing in that it reminded me of his propensity for violence against even sylphs.
‘My name isn’t Elizabeth,’ I said, ‘it’s Eleanor.’
‘Whatever.’ He waved a well-manicured, paw-like hand in dismissal. ‘You’re June’s sister, right?’
‘Well, actually,’ I started, and then thought the better of telling a criminal about my convoluted family history. Rather foolishly, I took a more aggressive approach. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house?’
He took a step towards me. He was a very large man.
‘Where’s your sister?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
His big face made it clear he didn’t believe me. ‘She was here, wasn’t she?’
‘I’m not telling you that.’
‘You don’t need to.’ He held up the hand I hadn’t seen yet, and I saw he was holding a shiny black high-heeled boot. ‘I found this under your settee, and I’d know it anywhere.’
Huh. I guessed I hadn’t done such a good job cleaning in here. ‘What’s your point?’
‘My point is, you’re going to tell me where June has gone.’
‘I told you, I don’t know where she is. Now go away, because I’m calling the police.’
Jojo seemed not at all alarmed at the idea. He dropped the boot and made for my computer. My shiny, white, state-of-the-art computer bought with royalty money and containing every word I’d written for publication for the past six months. He picked it up.
‘What are you doing?’ I squealed.
‘I’m taking your computer so I can read the messages you’ve had from June.’
‘I haven’t had any messages from June!’
Jojo reached down for the plug, my computer under his beefy arm. I grabbed a white ceramic lamp from the shelf next to me and held it up like a club.
‘Don’t you dare take that computer,’ I said in my most threatening voice, brandishing the lamp.
Could I brain someone with a lamp? Would it make any difference to Jojo’s thick skull if I did? All I knew was that June had broken his nose, so it was doable. The idea of it made me feel sick.
Jojo paused. He looked at me and he looked at the lamp. He appeared unpleasantly amused by the situation. But he put my computer back down on my desk.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t take your computer.’
‘Good.’ It came out more of a squeak than a statement, but I held the lamp higher. ‘Now get the hell out of my house.’