The Blue Guide (23 page)

She doesn't lose a beat before saying, ‘Where your mother live? I join you there in the morning. That will be fun, no?'

It seems I say ‘No' a little forcefully, because there's both a stunned silence at the end of the line from Carlotta and, I see at the edge of my vision, a surprised glance from my mum.

‘I'm sorry,' I say more softly. ‘There's are just things I need to attend to. Personal matters.'

I'm shocked to hear Carlotta's voice take on an aggressive undertone. ‘You forget,' she says, in a way that suggests she's containing some kind of rage, ‘that my husband paying you to spend the day with me? You cannot just go away –'

‘I wouldn't if I couldn't avoid it,' I say placatingly, trying to keep a lid on the anger I can feel bubbling away inside her. ‘I'll refund Paco via Fenella. You don't have to worry about that.'

‘Fine,' she snaps. ‘So, I see you after tomorrow.'

With that she hangs up, and for the first time I wonder about her real feelings for me – she didn't even ask if I was OK, if the family matters I alluded to are anything serious. Not that I would have liked her prying even if there was something wrong. But it would have been nice if she'd shown some kind of concern, rather than just try to muscle in on my absence as a way of getting out of the city, having some fun in a new place. As just another adventure. I stare out at the sea, my mood sombre once more.

‘That sounded a bit fraught, love,' says my mum, and I feel her hand on the back of mine. ‘Anything you want to talk about?'

For one mad moment, I consider laying my head on my mum's lap and letting it all spill out – Paco, Carlotta, the whole damn mess. I'm sure she'd have some wise words to impart. But I'm frightened of hurting her. In some part of her I'm sure I'm still the baby girl she nurtured inside herself for nine months, she held in her arms for untold hours, vowing to herself that she'd protect her against everything the world would throw at her, even as she knew that that was impossible. I don't want her to know how I have sabotaged my own happiness, perhaps even my sanity, for fleeting sexual delight in the arms of strangers.

‘No,' I say, turning my palm upwards and winding my fingers through hers. ‘Just a bit of a stroppy client. Nothing I can't handle.'

The look Mum gives me shows me she's not convinced, but she turns the key in the ignition and the Mini cranks into life again. Reversing out of the spot, she does an illegal U-turn and we start heading towards Preston Park, where she lives. After a few minutes she leans forward to switch on the radio, fiddles with the dial and then starts singing along to some chart hit that's being played.

Before long we're stepping into her hallway and shrugging off our coats.

‘Cup of tea?' says Mum over her shoulder as she heads for the kitchen.

‘No thanks,' I say. ‘Mind if I fix myself a drink?'

‘Course not, love. You go ahead. Make yourself right at home.'

I open the 1970s drinks cabinet that's occupied the same corner of her living room for the last thirty-odd years, pour myself a gin and tonic. In among the supermarket bottles of booze are the chunky cut-glass decanters in which Dad stored his various whiskies. Mum never got round to chucking them out. I wonder if she still thinks about him, in bed at night. There have been a handful of boyfriends over the last fifteen years, but no one has ever lasted the distance. I'd love it if she could find someone who made her happy, with whom she could share her old age. She deserves it. I hate to think that she's lonely.

‘Got any lemon?' I say, strolling into the kitchen behind her, and she opens the fridge door, takes one out and carves me a slice.

‘Want some company,' she says, ‘or do you need to be alone?'

She knows me so well, understands that I don't want to talk about it, or not yet. I love the way she can read me like this, the way she leaves me be and never pushes when she senses I need time to myself. I empty my glass, stand up to make another drink. I really should go to bed, I tell myself; get the rest I promised myself. But another voice tells me that there's no chance of sleep.

I shake my head, smile sadly.

‘Night then, love,' she says, and she's gone.

In the dim light of the living room, with a single lamp burning in the corner, I sit watching the minute hand travel around the face of the clock on the mantlepiece over and over. After a long time, I stand up and go back into the kitchen. As I'm popping ice cubes out of the tray into my glass, I scan Mum's cork pinboard with my eyes. In amidst the money-off supermarket vouchers are snapshots of me and my brother Jake taken on holidays in Scotland when we were little, of Gran in younger, happier days, sometimes with Grandad. Memories of life before it got so bloody complicated. Heading back into the living room, I pour myself another drink, wondering why things have to change, why the carefree joy and spontaneity of childhood have to go. Why sex has to come along and mess everything up.

Even the first time, things had been complex, confusing, riven with misunderstanding, betrayals and ambiguities. Every summer since I was fourteen, I spent two weeks at my French penfriend Aude's house just outside Paris, and I'd always had a thing about Eric, the boyfriend of Aude's best friend Natalie. He wasn't the best-looking of guys by any stretch of the imagination, but he did have an undeniable Gallic charm. And although
he was spoken for, I'd frequently caught him looking at me from behind a cloud of Gauloise smoke as we hung out in the village square, or opened my eyes to find him admiring my tits as we sunbathed at a nearby lake. Even after I'd left for home, I'd often found myself thinking about him as I lay in bed, discovering myself.

One night, the last year I went there – the year of my A levels – Aude and I had heard Eric and Natalie banging away one night as we'd walked down her lane. The window to her bedroom on the ground floor had been flung open to the summer night, and from behind the fluttering voile we could hear her whimpering.

‘Encore, encore,' she had started to beg him, and the bedsprings had gone crazy, the iron bedstead had clanked against the wall behind it, and we'd stood in wonder, listening to their wild, hooting climaxes. Then we'd fallen prey to a giggling fit and had to leg it down the track before either of them heard us. I don't know about Aude, but that night I came for the first time, alone in my room, thinking about Eric and Natalie pleasuring each other.

After a late breakfast of madeleines and hot chocolate the next morning, Aude suggested we bike out to the lake and spend the morning swimming. Within an hour we were spread out on our towels on the soft greyish sand, talking about what had happened in our lives since we'd seen each other the previous year. Aude, I soon discovered, had lost it to one of her brother's friends after going to visit him at university in Poitiers.

‘What was it like?' I whispered.

She wrinkled up her nose. ‘It hurt a little bit,' she said, ‘the first time. I think I needed to relax, but, well, you know . . . anyway, when it was over, we went to
sleep and then I woke up in the morning and he was licking my pussy and it was heaven, and he put it inside me again and it felt wonderful.'

‘Did you have an orgasm?'

‘I don't think so. I suppose if I don't think so, then I couldn't have done. But it felt lovely and tingly inside, more and more so, and maybe I was on the way.' She turned her head to look at me, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. ‘Eric is aching for you, always has,' she said.

I looked at her. ‘But he's with Natalie.'

She smiled, a secretive, knowing smile. ‘No matter,' she said. ‘He's yours, if you want him. She doesn't need to know.'

‘But she's your friend.'

‘So are you. And I want you to have a good time. Why don't you take advantage?'

I leaned back against the sand, head spinning. I wanted Eric; he had always done it for me. Would I regret it more if I didn't give into my desire, even though I knew I'd probably never see him again? Afterwards, I'd go home, and he'd go off to college, or to a new life in a big city, and our paths would probably never cross again. He probably wouldn't stay with Natalie either, so it was foolish to resist on that count. It's the way it was. We were all birds about to fly the nest.

In the growing heat, my brain started to feel like melting brie, and after a while I stopped thinking and just lay there baking, letting the gentle lap of the water on the shoreline carry me away to a place where there was nothing beyond the slow pulse of my veins, the red wash of blood behind my eyelids. I drifted, just a body now, and nothing mattered any more.

I was wakened by the angry buzz of moped engines and opened my eyes to see Eric and two of his friends raising dust as they braked sharply on the little path leading down to the lake, looking over at us. They thought they were too cool to wear helmets, and in the sunshine reflecting off the water I could see Eric's eyes sparkling like clusters of gems. Like I said, he was no oil painting, but sometimes even a downright ugly man can make a girl cross her legs and squeeze hard. Eric's floppy brown hair could have done with a wash, and his crumpled face suggested he'd gone a few rounds with a local thug, but in his own dishevelled, slightly grubby way, he was sex on a stick.

Aude stood up, walked over to them, hips sashaying in a little pink and white sarong she'd brought along, and spoke with them for a while. Then she came back over and looked down at me, the sunlight a halo around her head

‘We've been invited for lunch,' she said. ‘Eric's house-sitting for his brother while he's on holiday. Wanna go?'

Yes and no, I felt like saying. All at once I was afraid. But short of pretending I suddenly felt unwell, there was no way of getting out of it. I stood up, picked up my towel. I glanced over towards the boys and my tummy cartwheeled. Eric was staring right at me, a weird smile in his eyes. I looked at my feet.

Dressing quickly, Aude and I walked over to the mopeds, where she hopped onto the back of Eric's friend Stefan's. Eric, now smiling with his mouth as well as his eyes, slung his leg over his own, looked at me and patted the rear seat. I climbed aboard, put my hands around his waist. Immediately I felt my pussy start to throb as my clit pressed up against his backside through
my jeans. I tightened my grip as we span in the dust and sped away, afraid that in my dizziness I might lose hold.

It wasn't far to the house, set apart from the rest of its village on the edge of a small wood. Outside, a wooden table and chairs took up a little patio area, and Eric invited us all to make ourselves comfortable there while he fetched us some beers. He disappeared into the house and after a moment loud music began to pump away. I recognised it as The Prodigy, ‘Firestarter'.

We sat on the sun-drenched terrace, smoking and chatting and enjoying our cold beers, as Eric flitted in and out of the kitchen before finally materialising with plates of
steak frites
.

‘
Voilà
!' he said with a flourish, and I blanched as I looked down at the plate he set before me. Blood oozed from the barely cooked meat. It could barely have touched the pan. I might as well be taking a bite directly from a cow's arse.

However, at that impressionable age I was highly conscious of drawing attention to myself. Not only that, but I was still of the opinion that anything French was sophisticated and chic. So without a word, I took up my steak knife and fork, cut myself a piece of flesh and sunk my teeth in.

It was, for all I say above, delicious, as were the thin
frites
and cheap red plonk we washed it down with. As we all ate, and The Prodigy continued to belt out from the living room, I listened to them chatter but spoke little. I was pretty proficient in French by now, but when lots of people were speaking it together, and using lots of slang, I sometimes found it hard to keep up. Mixed with that was my natural shyness, and my nervous anticipation of how things were going to turn out with Eric.

As I finished my meal, I became aware that Eric had also fallen quiet, and when I finally dared glance over at him, I found he was looking at me too. He smiled when our eyes met, a slow, soft smile, not at all predatory. The moment had come, I realised. It was now or never.

‘Where's the toilet?' I asked him, and he waved back towards the house. I stood up, walked around the end of the table, and as I passed him he stood up.

‘It's upstairs,' he said. ‘I'll show you.'

As we moved away from the others, his hand was in the small of my back. At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped and turned to face him, and he put his arms around my buttocks and pulled me up towards him. I folded my legs around his back, and as he lowered me down to the staircase, our teeth were clashing in the savagery of our first kiss.

I was losing it already, gasping and uttering little sobs as our bodies adjusted themselves against each other, tried each other out for size. My T-shirt had ridden up as Eric reached inside to clasp one breast in his sweat-moistened palm, and as he moved up and down against me, I felt the weight of his cock as it strained at the heavy fabric of his jeans, as it pressed against my belly.

‘
Baise-moi
,' I commanded.

He responded to my order by lifting me up in his arms and carrying me upstairs. At the top, he pushed a door with his foot and it swung open to reveal an unmade bed surrounded by balled-up clothes, which I gathered to be his. His guitar, with which he had sometimes serenaded us in the village square after nightfall, rested next to the bed.

Marching over, he threw me down on it. ‘I've wanted you for so long,' he muttered as he tore his clothes off.
‘If only you knew how many times I've dreamt of this moment.'

‘I know,' I said, slithering out of my jeans and knickers, then spreading my legs for him, emboldened by sheer lust. ‘Look how much I want you,' I said, awestruck. I dipped my fingers into my sweet sap, held them out to him. He took them in his mouth, closed his eyes. Beneath him I reached for his prick, and marvelled at the hot handful that accepted my caress so willingly. As I start to pump him, I groped beneath him again with my other hand, cupped his lightly furred balls, squeezed and then relented several times over until his breath was coming jagged on my neck as he gnawed at me with his teeth.