Reversing Over Liberace (15 page)

“Yes. I mean, if it's a matter of security you don't have to tell me his room number, just get him to pick up the phone.… Tell him…tell him his fiancée needs to speak to him. Urgently.”

“Mr. Fry.” I could hear the girl accessing the computer, the sound of a mouse clicking and a keyboard being tapped. “I'm sorry, there doesn't seem to be anyone of that name staying with us at the moment.”

“Luke Fry. Tall bloke, longish blondish hair.”

“I'm sorry, Miss…?”

“Cayton. Willow Cayton. He must be there somewhere?”

“Then I'm sorry, Miss Cayton. There is no one of that name resident in the Moat House Hotel at this moment. Was there any other matter I could help you with?”

“I don't know. Can you drive or deliver a baby?”

“I am sorry.” Obviously labelling me a complete nutter, she hung up.

So,
where the hell was he?

I tried his mobile, but he'd still got it switched off. He often left it turned off, or sometimes even back at the hotel. Where
was
he? He'd been staying at the Moat House ever since he came back to York.
Why
didn't they recognise his name?

Now I was worrying on several fronts. Luke had disappeared, Cal was out of contact, my brothers were God knows where and, although I had a driving licence, I had no access to any vehicles. In desperation I called Katie, who doesn't drive, but has a husband who does. She told me that Dan was up in Newcastle, at some kind of literary do, but why not try Jazz?

“I didn't know Jazz could drive.”

“Yes, you did. He passed his test before you, remember? You said that if you failed you'd have to go and live on the Orkneys until he forgot about it.”

“Oh, yes. Has he got a car?”

“Yeah, Skoda. Pretend to think it's a BMW, he likes that. Oh, and tell OC good luck and remind her to put ice on her stitches when she pees.”

Please, remind me never to have children. In fact, strike me infertile now.

Upshot of said discussions—Jazz, gingerly driving his pristine white Skoda (“First time I've had her out this year.”) with me alongside, not full of confidence, heading for the old rectory. We didn't speak. Jazz was almost as bad a driver as Cal, hunching over the wheel like an elderly spinster, hands ten-to-two-ing like fury. I was too busy worrying about OC and Luke to say much more than “turn right here” and “mind that
bus
!”

When we pulled up at the end of the rectory drive, I was encouraged by the sight of my sister at the front door, not bent double and biting through her own knees. (I'd been an avid reader of Catherine Cookson's more lurid fiction as a teenager.) In fact she looked poised in a navy maternity top and jeans, and her makeup was immaculate.

“Willow, how nice to see you. Do come and have some tea. Jasper, you look amazing. Come through.”

But as she walked us through the house to the kitchen, I could tell things weren't right. For a start, the dogs weren't confined to the garden room but loose, running up to greet our ankles with whiskery sniffs and lurking by OC's side when she eventually lowered herself into a chair in the glass-roofed kitchen extension. For another thing, although her makeup was all in place, I could see traces of redness around her eyes, puffiness of the lids. OC had been crying. She had also been baking. Fresh scones were lined up on the granite worksurface, and buns and muffins cluttered the scrubbed refectory table. OC bakes when under stress.

Jazz looked intimidated by the conspicuous wealth around him and took the dogs into the garden. “So?” I poured boiling water into mugs. “What's up?”

“Mmmm?” She was pretending to read a
Mother and Baby
magazine, one hand on her rapidly emerging bump, but she hadn't turned a page since she'd sat down. “Oh, you know.” But she didn't meet my eye. “Jasper's looking very trendy these days, isn't he?”

“If you like that sort of thing. Personally I'd rather take fashion advice from a squirrel. OC…”

I could see the tears now, dripping onto the pages she held, falling with a sad little popping sound. Her hands were shaking. “Willow.” Her voice was tiny. “I don't know what to do. He's left me.”

“Fuck me.” I sat suddenly. My worries about Luke's unfindability folded into insignificance. “Paddy? He's gone?”

Still without looking up, she nodded. “He sent me an email. Says that he's found somebody else. Somebody who…” The words clotted in her throat and she dropped her head farther onto her chest, fingers caressing her bump. “Somebody who makes him feel ‘alive', apparently.”

“Shit.”

“Oh, I can keep the house. And he'll make an allowance to pay for the baby, but he doesn't want to see it.” Now she met my eye and the glint of misery made my own heart shrivel. “He called the baby ‘it', Willow. Last week we were thinking of names, now this”—she stroked her navel possessively—“is just ‘it'.”

“The bastard.” But words couldn't do justice to the way I felt. My dear, mellow, house-proud sister deserved way better than this. And her baby deserved a better father.

I sat with her in her spotless steel-and-chrome kitchen and watched her break her heart over the worthless spunk-machine that she had married. Jazz came in later. The spaniels ran to OC and put their doggy heads in her lap as if they, too, knew how miserable she was, and she played with their ears while Jazz and I made her something to eat and then forced her to eat it. Gone was the hostess face she showed to everyone else. Instead, for once, the real OC was on display. I'd forgotten what my sister was like. Underneath the Cath Kidson aprons and the Barbour jackets, she was far more like me than I'd remembered. Jazz, too, showed another side of himself, rather than the hard-drinking cynic. He was softer, kinder, more touchy-feely. He hugged OC frequently, told her that Paddy had never deserved her, until I began to think that there might be something in Katie's suspicions about where his true feelings lay.

When we came to leave, OC started to panic. “Take me home with you, Wills,” she pleaded. “Don't leave me here on my own.” Then, when I agreed, she had to rush around packing things, and I hadn't realised that the deal would involve Booter and Snag, because she had to pack things for them, too, and take her hospital bag and all her maternity records “in case”, until I was nearly screaming. But I could see that all this activity was distracting her, and maybe getting away from this place for a while wasn't such a bad idea. For a start, if Paddy came creeping back to say that it had all been a terrible mistake, she wouldn't be here, which Jazz and I, probably for wildly different reasons, both agreed would be a good thing.

So, variously tear-streaked, shell-shocked, exhausted and, in the case of the dogs, wildly overexcited, we arrived back in York where OC was greeted by her eldest and youngest brothers, who provided a new audience for her tale, while Jazz and I hid in the living room with the gin. I dug my mobile out of my bag and sent Luke a text saying, “where r u? I called hotel, they sd u rn't there?”

“I'm going home, Will.” Jazz got to his feet, rubbing his eyes. “Oceana needs to be with her family right now. But if she needs anything else, or if anything happens, you know, with the baby, for fuck's sake, call me.”

“I will. Thanks, Jazz.”

But he'd already gone into the kitchen to drop a kiss of farewell on my sister's tear-ridden cheek. There, you see? I told you I read too many Catherine Cookson novels. Deserted wives bring me out in clichés. He did no such thing. He just ruffled her hair, grunted “see you” and disappeared.

We all went to bed. I was shattered but couldn't sleep. From the sound of crying in the next room, OC felt the same. I kept checking my mobile in case Luke texted back, but his phone must still have been switched off because there was nothing. In between paranoically snatching at my Nokia and lying in the dark listening to my sister cry, I worried. Could he have checked out of the Moat House because of the cost, not wanting to say anything to me for fear that I might offer him more money? But surely if cost was that much of an issue, he'd have chosen to come and live here with me, rather than move on? And there was always the flat, if he was desperate. All right, so there was no furniture in it. But he could have borrowed some, at least a sleeping bag and a microwave. And if money was such an issue, where had he got the cash to take me to Cornwall? Places like that didn't come cheap.

But then I thought of Luke's obvious concern for my happiness and wellbeing. He'd encouraged me to go off riding while he was stuck in our room with his laptop, so that I could “enjoy the countryside instead of being cooped up”. I thought of his complete abandonment when we slept together, the wild (and even slightly exotic) sex. He wouldn't hide anything from me, I was sure of it. This whole Moat House thing was a simple misunderstanding, being blown out of proportion by my tiredness and my concern for my sister.

Tomorrow it would be resolved.

Chapter Seventeen

Funny, isn't it, how a simple question can make itself so hard to ask? I sat there in the dark, eyes front, while my mouth became drier and drier and my brain churned the words into meaningless syllables inside my head. The French film playing on the screen, the feel of Luke's arm behind me, even the taste of the reckless brandy cocktails that I'd drunk, none of it seemed real. It should have been easy—all I needed to do was to ask Luke outright. But the more time that elapsed between his picking me up and my framing the sentence, the more difficult it became to form those flittering, elusive words into the required order, and the more nervous I became.

“Are you all right?” Luke whispered as I shifted and fidgeted about in my seat. “Aren't you enjoying the film?”

“It's fine,” I hissed back, my stomach pure acid.

“What's the matter then?” He had his mouth almost against my ear, the feel of his breath on my neck made little goose pimples break out all down one side of my body. “You've been quiet all evening.”

“It's nothing.”

On screen, a dishevelled yet sexy Frenchman was berating his girlfriend for some imaginary misdemeanour while she yelled and slammed plates into the wall. I wished I had her guts.

“Are you sure?”

Luke's hand stroked down my bare arm and more goose pimples joined the ranks. My heartbeat was thundering and my brain was playing chicken with the phrases passing through it. “I”—swallow, swallow, wipe sweaty hands along seat—“I was just wondering.” Okay, still not too late to back out, pretend confusion at the plot of the film.

“Mmmmm?” His attention had wandered back to the screen, not surprisingly, because the girlfriend had now taken most of her clothes off and was being consoled by another woman, who was also wearing very little.

I felt sick. “Just wondering…where are you staying, at the moment?” There. Done it. The words were out, everything in the open, said. No longer my responsibility.

“Oh? Why do you ask?” Suddenly Luke's attention was on me, fully. His eyes, black in the gloom, searched my face.

“I tried to get in touch with you last night and I rang the Moat House. Your mobile was off, you see, and I couldn't think of any other way.” I spoke quickly, the words running into each other like panicked sheep. “The receptionist told me there was no Luke Fry staying there.”

He smiled. “Haven't switched my phone on all day. Yeah, I moved out a week or so ago.” His attention floated back towards the film, his voice offhand. “Work was a bit slow on the showroom because the builders weren't always turning up on time, so I thought I'd go and stay on site for a bit to chase them up.” A hesitant glance my way, and I felt stupid, as though I'd been caught out being the paranoid fiancée. “You're not upset, are you? I didn't say anything, but it was really important that I was on site, particularly first thing in the mornings when the bloody men sometimes don't get started until ten, eleven o'clock. Being there, I can chivvy them along as soon as they arrive.”

Oh, pure, pant-wetting relief. My whole body leaped with joy at this simple, straightforward explanation. “But the hotel? What was the problem there?”

“I bet it was a new receptionist. They change over every couple of weeks. The one you spoke to probably hadn't ever seen or heard of me.” A few more moments of Gallic passion elapsed before our eyes. There's something about a twenty-foot-high threesome that's a bit off-putting. “Were you worried? What did you do?”

“When the Moat House refused to acknowledge that you existed, yes. But it's fine. I got Jazz to give me a lift in the end, so that was fine.”

“Jazz? Isn't that your ex?”

“Um. Well.” I tried to remember how much detail I'd gone into about my imaginary bad breakup, whether I'd actually said that Jazz had been the other party.

“You haven't been… I mean, he's not back in your life, is he?” Luke watched me earnestly now, raking his hair away from his face, looking vulnerable and scared. A hand grasped my arm, almost pulling me from my seat. “Promise me, Willow, you're not seeing him again?”

“There's nothing going on between me and Jazz, I promise,” I said as sincerely as I could. After all, it was true. “I wouldn't do that to you, Luke.”

“Okay. I believe you. I know you wouldn't fool around behind my back.” Another glance, flicking between the screen and me. “Look, I dunno about you, but this is making me horny as hell. What about getting out of here, shooting across the river and christening those new wooden floors?”

I let him pull me to my feet giggling and we ran out of the cinema and all the way to the flat, where the laminate flooring received a baptism of fire. Relief made me passionate and his minor insecurity seemed to provoke Luke to ferocity. In the event, there wasn't a room in our home-to-be that didn't witness sex of flame-thrower intensity.