Authors: Jane Lovering
being attacked by half a pound of raw liver, but Leo—well,
let's just say he was
hot
. He didn't attempt to explore the
contents of my T-shirt, but a definitely not-disinterested hand
roamed about between my shoulder blades and there was a
distinct pressure against my hip. Finally he let go and stood
away, shaking his hair off his face and holding his watch up in
front of his eyes. "Hmmm, better get off to the station."
"Oh." I found myself slightly embarrassed. "Yes. Yes, I
suppose so."
"You don't mind? That I kissed you?" Leo opened the
stable door and ushered me out as though we'd done nothing
more meaningful than examine some paintwork. "I felt that it
was something I wanted to do."
"No!" I said abruptly, then feeling this could be open to
misconstruction added, "I liked it, Leo. It was good. Lovely, in
fact. I'd like to do it again sometime."
"You're the first woman I've...since... It's come as a bit of
a shock to me. Finding you attractive. Must admit, I feel a bit
guilty about the whole thing."
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Now he was going to come out as married. Or, I supposed,
to top it all, a married Catholic.
"My wife—" He stopped again, went very quiet until he'd
unlocked the doors to the Land Rover and we were both
sitting inside.
In the heat, it smelled strongly of baked dog and I wound
the window down to avoid suffocating. Leo's knee hovered
very close to mine and I wondered what he'd do if I touched
his leg. Did I mind that he was married? Did
he?
Was it worth
the risk? Was he inwardly quivering, poised and waiting for
some sign that I wanted to take things further? Was this
respectable behaviour for a mother-of-one?
The big engine shuddered into life and I watched him drive
for a while. Capable hands, lean, long legs, a body like an
action-packed adventure and the face of a thriller. He looked
like a poster boy for Poetry Please. "Sorry, what was I
saying?" he seemed to come to, to remember I was there in
the car with him.
"You were telling me about your wife." I decided to be
brave and upfront about it. "How long have you been
married?" Maybe it was seven years. Maybe I was the loofah
to scratch the itch. Did I care?
"Sabine was killed. Drunk driver. Paris, two years ago.
We'd been married for eight years." Totally factual, totally
emotionless.
"Oh. God, I'm sorry, Leo."
Two years ago. And Isabelle had printed his poems. His
wife had just died and she thought it would make him feel
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better to have his love for her nailed down in words on paper?
The woman was barking.
"It... There were things... It wasn't like...oh
bugger
!" The
Land Rover twitched to one side, pulling towards the verge
with a dragging sound. Leo stood hard on the brake but
forward momentum carried us until, with a lurch and a bang,
we came to rest in the hedge. "Sod. Puncture. You all right,
Alys? You sure?"
"Fine."
I was glad that Leo was happy to do the macho thing with
jacks and wheelbraces while I sat on the verge. I'd
thought
he was too good to be true. He'd not shown any of the signs
that men who wanted to date me normally displayed, i.e.,
travelling everywhere by bus with a stolen pensioner's pass.
Now he was, whoa, taking his
shirt off
. There was a sudden,
almost reverential, lapse in my thinking ability while I
watched a Diet Coke ad come to life in front of me. He didn't
even have the decency to have a hairy back or a disgusting
tattoo emblazoned across his torso. When he turned around
to tell me the wheel was fixed, I could feel my eyes getting
sucked down from his face towards his navel, registering the
tidy whorl of hair which encircled it, fighting with myself not
to let my stare go any lower.
"Alys?" He was coming at me out of the sun again. "Are
you really sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine." I managed to roll my tongue back into my
mouth. "Got a bit of a headache, that's all."
So there I sat, next to Mr. Perfect-except-for-a-dead-and-
adored-wife, for the rest of the run into Exeter. I tried a few
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times to reinitiate the conversation we'd been having, but he
would change the subject immediately, almost as though
ashamed of having said as much as he had. Unfortunately the
only other topic available to him at short notice was the stud
and by the time we reached Exeter station, I had more
knowledge about stallion management than I suspect anyone
who works in a bookshop could have found a use for.
"Well. Goodbye, Alys." There was a brief, awkward hug
exchanged, as though the kisses of the morning had been an
aberration on his part. "Could I have your telephone
number?"
I wanted to have the mental strength to tell him that I
didn't think that was such a good idea, unless he could
manage not to be gorgeous when we next met. Oh, and if he
could have some kind of electric-shock treatment which
caused him to totally forget his deceased and no-doubt-also-
gorgeous wife. But I didn't. I had no mental strength at all as
I wrote my home number on a slip of paper provided by the
man in the booking office.
My train pulled slowly into the station, and Leo looked
down at his feet. "I will call you," he said as I pushed through
the crowd to get on board. "I will call you!" he raised his voice
to shout.
"Yes. Please."
As the train jerked out of Exeter, I could see Leo standing
and watching it go, one hand raised in a salute of goodbye as
I wibbled my way down the aisle to my reserved seat.
Reserved
was a good way of describing Leo, I thought. But
stonkingly beddable was better.
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I'd meant to spend the time reading, catching up on Mrs.
Munroe's brave book-group submission of
The
Lovely Bones
but the daydreams I fell into became dreaming for real. York
station caught me unawares so I felt greasily sticky and
disgruntled when I disembarked and entirely justified in using
some of Simon's cash to get a taxi back to the flat. The
streets were crowded with summer's night visitors taking
horse-drawn tours around the minster or just wandering
about. Bunches of foreign-language students formed little
clique-knots outside pubs, like the United Nations going
clubbing.
The windows of the flat shone yellow and welcoming as I
paid the taxi driver and added a generous tip. Florence must
be home.
"Hello, darling." I greeted the flat with blanket coverage
but there was no response, so I trailed through to the living
room and tried again. "Hello, dar..."
"Hiya, sweetie," Piers drawled back. "Good trip?" He was
sitting cross legged on the floor reading a newspaper.
"Very clever. Where's Florrie? And why are you here
again? You're becoming ubiquitous, aren't you?"
"Yeah. Totally. In fact, I'm going for omnipresence next."
Piers stretched out his legs to reveal that he was wearing
striped jeans and an equally stripy shirt. "Flo's run down to
the pizza place on the corner, we were both kinda hungry."
Grainger appeared out of my bedroom, treating me with
the disdain he reserved for anyone who'd been missing for
more than a couple of hours and cheap cat food. I stroked his
sticky fur and realised I could feel his backbone. "Grainger?
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Are you okay?" I watched him sway towards the kitchen. "Do
you think Grainger could have worms?"
"Nah. He's all right, aren't you?" To my horror, Piers swept
Grainger up off the floor and contained him against his chest.
"Piers, be careful. He..." But Grainger just let out a throaty
kind of grumble and submitted to the petting with the
embarrassed air of someone trying on a new suit that they
secretly think makes them look
really
good. "...he actually
likes you," I finished, slightly puzzled.
"Yeah. Seems to." Piers let Grainger jump to the floor.
"But you're right, he does look a bit..."
"Manky. He looks manky." I glanced up at the sound of the
front door opening and Florence entering, rustling plastic
bags. "Don't you think he looks a bit manky, Florrie?"
"Oh, hi, Mum. Yeah, completely. It's a shit outfit, Piers."
"Not Piers, Grainger. Although you're right, it is a horrible
combination. What happened, did you get dressed under the
influence?"
"Hey, no ganging up on me, girls." Piers backed away,
hands held in an attitude of surrender, but he looked furtively
rather pleased. Florence went to put the pizzas onto plates in
the kitchen and Piers followed me back through, helping me
to pull the table out so we could all sit round it. "It's not that
bad, is it, Alys?"
"I can't honestly tell, Piers. I can't focus on it for long
enough."
"Ah well. At least it gets me noticed."
"Lucky it doesn't get you arrested."
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Florence came back with slices of pizza arranged
haphazardly on too-small plates. I was hungry. Leo hadn't
provided any breakfast and anyway, he was so gorgeous that
my appetite knew when it was beaten. All three of us ate in a
companionable silence.
"Mum..." Florence eventually broke the chewing silence.
"I've got something to ask you."
"Yeeeeeessss?" I said, dubiously. She was being way too
nice for this to be good.
"Do you promise you're not going to be mad?"
I became motherish. "I think you mean angry not mad.
You're getting influenced by Piers and his dreadful mid-
Atlantic phraseology."
"I'm American! I can't help that," Piers joined in, less
indignant than he sounded; instead he looked sparky,
animated. "And I think you mean being influenced not getting
influenced. I might be American, but I can still do grammar."
"Shame you can't do dress-sense," I said waspishly but he
laughed.
"Oh, Alys, I am wounded." He held a hand to his chest,
rings gleaming. "To think I don't appeal to you because I
have no sense of style. You shallow, shallow woman."
Florence was watching this exchange with a baffled
expression, obviously desperate to say
yes, enough of this,
now let's talk about me
, but intrigued enough not to.
"I didn't say you didn't appeal to me," I said without
thinking, laughing despite myself at his ridiculousness. "I just
said—" But Piers had leaped up and was grabbing his leather
jacket from the back of his chair.
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"No more! I am deeply offended, and I'm going. Leave you
two females to your heavy talking. Oh, and Alys." He leaned
forward and almost breathed in my ear. "Next time I'll try and
wear something that
does
appeal to you, yeah?"
Both Florence and I were giggling helplessly as he walked
out, but I managed to control myself enough to shout, "That's
try
to
, not try
and
. Bloody Yank!" and heard an offended
huh
in reply as the front door closed. "Piers is growing into a
really nice lad." I picked up the last slice of pizza. "Funny
too."
"Yeah, yeah, a real stand-up, our Piers." Florence watched
me eat. "Look, Mum. I want to go to London. It's okay, not on
my own or anything. Oh, and not with boys either, if that's
what you're thinking. My friend Keisha, you know Keisha,
from school? Her sister lives in Highgate, and she's asked
Keish to visit and bring a friend and Keish asked me—and I'd
really,
really
like to go!"
"Oh." I was taken aback. "When would this be?"
Florence seemed encouraged by my not immediately
shooting her down in flames. "Not for nearly two weeks, after
the exams are over. But Lex, that's Keisha's sister, she's said
she'll take us to the Tower of London and on the London Eye
and stuff like that and I've never even
been
to London before,
have I, Mum? It would be fantastic. So, what do you think?"
"Welllll, as long as I can speak to Keisha's mum first, to
check things out. Not that I don't trust you, darling, it's just
to make sure that it's all right with Lex." I knew Keisha and
her sister, two improbably beautiful girls. Florence would have
a whale of a time with them. "Then yes. Of course you can
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go." Bonus, I'd have a couple of weeks to myself, maybe get
to see Leo. I mean, I liked spending time with Florence—
when Alasdair and I had parted, we'd become a tight little
unit she and I. But since she'd hit her teens, she'd become so