Virtually Perfect (21 page)

'So that's where you got those eyes from.' 

They flicked up at him.  He brushed a mahogany curl out of the way, staring into them. 

'You've got the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen.'

It was the first compliment Eve had ever really heard from him.  She felt a little embarrassed, a little ecstatic.  She smiled, feeling the blood flood to her cheeks.  Ben smiled back.  He kissed her again.

They lay back, watching the TV.  Michael Palin was driving an old white Datsun, wittering about how difficult it was to get permission to enter Saudi Arabia.

'And they're letting you in?' teased Eve.

'Actually, I'm there by royal invitation,' Ben said smugly.  'They're paying me a mint to shoot that wedding.' 

'I thought you said you didn't do w...' 

Eve's face dropped. 

'Oh...'

'What's up?' said Ben.

'Nothing,' she said, forcing a smile, shaking her head.  'It doesn't matter.'

Ben raked back the mass of curls that had fallen across her face.

'I'll be back for Saturday.  I haven't forgotten.'

Eve smiled back at him. 

He knew it was a big deal.  It had been in his diary since she told him.

'Who's getting married anyway?'

'Curtis and Alice, from work.'

'Oh him...' 

Ben's lips inclined in a smile.  He felt relieved.

Eve eyed him suspiciously.

'You don't know Curtis,' she told him.  '...Do you?'

'Only from the website,' said Ben.

Eve's eyes narrowed.

'Stalker,' she whispered, through a smile.

Ben's hand ran through his hair.  He realised it was all over the place and tried to flatten it down.  Eve grabbed his hand and pulled it away, holding onto it, wrapping her fingers through his.

'...Just doing my homework,' he said shyly. 

'...So what's the story then?  I mean about us.  I take it you don't want them to know we hooked up on a dating website?'

'...
Hooked up
?' repeated Eve, eyebrows reaching for the ceiling.

'You know what I mean.'

'I think it's too late for that,' she told him.  'Curtis found your profile when he was poking around on my PC.'

Ben fixed Eve in a sharp stare.

'He can't do that!' he blustered.  'I'm pretty sure there are laws against that sort of thing—'

'Calm down,' Eve said passively.  'I'm hardly going to take him to Court, I've known him since I was five.'

Even more reason to rejoice at the heir apparent's impending matrimony.

'Did you used to play croquet on the lawn?' Ben mocked her, squeezing her fingers.  He sounded like Noel Coward. 'I bet you had a pony!' he said excitedly.  'You did, didn't you?'

Eve shot him a sideways glance.  She smirked at him. 

'Actually, I had three.'

'Esher, wasn't it?  Park Avenue.  Big Georgian manor, red brick place...  White window frames, gravel drive a mile long?'

Eve's head span around.  She stared at him.  Ben just shrugged and smiled.

'Funny, how things turn out.'

He could remember distinctly sitting in Roger's office on Russell Square, looking at the framed black and white photo on his desk.  Two little girls with big dark eyes.  One had a sleek bob, a happy kid, grinning wildly, her chubby arms wrapped around the little one's neck.  The other looked out at the camera suspiciously, through a mass of ringlets.  She had a stare decades beyond that angelic little face. 

'...Your dad is going to kill me.'

Eve peered up at him.

'Trust me,' she said.  'He'd think you were the bee's knees.'

'Hardly,' scoffed Ben.  'I didn't grow up with pony parties and elocution lessons.  At my school, you were lucky not to get your head stoved-in in the playground.'

The credits started rolling.  Eve snatched the remote, flicking off the TV, lying back on her pillows.

'Tell me about it,' she said.

'Oh yes,' grinned Ben.  'I bet they were just
brutal
on the hockey pitch.'

'No, I don't mean that,' said Eve, putting on a mock German accent.  'Tell me about your childhood.'

Ben grinned at her.

'You sound Bengalese.'

He bounced back on the pillows, flipping onto his side.  They lay on their elbows, facing each other, eyes locked together. 

'I grew up in a tower block in Deptford.'  He smiled.  'You wouldn't go wandering around in your pearls down there at night...  Or the day, come to that. 

'Dad left when I was five.  It was just Mum, Monique and me...  We lived on baked beans most of the time - fish fingers when Mum was feeling flush...  There was a lot of scratching around for 50ps for the meter.  We had a lot of candles in our house.  Turned the telly off every time the licence van came round.  Mum and me used to nearly break our backs hiding it in the wardrobe.' 

He rolled onto his back gazing at the ceiling. 

'It was freezing in the winter, you used to get ice on the inside of the windows.   If you caught a cold, it lasted for months...  But we were happy, you know?   We didn't have much, but what we did have, we appreciated.  Not like kids now, with three games consoles and
Sky TV
.  We were proper poor...' 

He smiled to himself, folding his hands across his chest. 

'I remember when gramps bought me a bike.  It was the best thing in the world...  Till it got nicked, obviously.'

'...Do you see your Dad now?' Eve asked him.

'Not as often as I should,' said Ben, turning back to her.  'I try and get over there a couple of times a year.'

'And your sister lives in France with him?'

Ben shook his head.

'Dad's in the US.  He's a violinist with the New York Philharmonic.' 

Eve raised her eyebrows.  She would have been impressed, were it not for the fact that he'd apparently abandoned his family to get there. 

'Monique's just outside Nice at the moment...  She married a frog.' 

His eyes suddenly hardened.  Eve stared at him. 

'...I rue the day I ever fucking met him.'

It caught her offguard.  He said it with such venom.  Eve could see the vein standing up in his neck.  His brow was gathered tightly. 

He turned to her, the piercing eyes softening a little. 

'They just got divorced,'  Ben explained.  'I was there for the final hearing on Friday... tried to make sure he didn't screw her over.'

But he did, regardless.  Ben just got to stand there and watch.

He ruffled his hair anxiously, forcing a smile.  It wasn't fair to dump all of this on her.  He didn't want to spoil their weekend.

Eve tried to think back to Friday.  It seemed a lifetime ago now, almost like a dream.  She remembered him turning up on her doorstep in his suit.  Messing around, singing, putting on a front.  She remembered his eyes, the tiredness; the look she couldn't quite put her finger on.   She'd been right.  There really was something wrong.

'Anyway,' said Ben, anxious to change the subject.  'you never did tell me.  What's with all this surfing business?' 

He must have seen her old bikini in the dressing room, Eve supposed, then she remembered him quizzing her at the pub. 

It seemed ridiculous that it was still on her work profile - that she'd listed it as a hobby at all.  Her surfing days were over the day she touched down at Heathrow, almost two years ago.  She just hadn't been able to accept it. 

'...Have you got a beach hut?'

'No,' said Eve, shaking her head. 

'Where do you keep your board then?' asked Ben. 

He hadn't seen it at the flat.

'...Good question,' said Eve mysteriously. 

She wondered what had happened to it. 

'I left it in Honolulu.' 

Dan had probably flogged it.

When she glanced at Ben, she found him grinning.

'No, seriously. I did!'

He remembered
The Groucho
, Eve marking Felicity Doodah's card about where she'd been on her travels.  His grin slackened.  She wasn't taking the piss.

'Were you any good?' Ben asked her. 

'No, not really,' she said. 

'We could go down to Newquay, when it gets a bit warmer,' Ben suggested.  'That's where they all hang out, isn't it?  You could teach me.'

He watched Eve shake her head.

'It wasn't really my thing,' she said quietly.  'Dan was the surfer, not me.'

Ben's shoulders tightened.

'...Was he American then?'

He puffed out his chest.  Ben felt threatened.

She peered up at him.

'No,' she said.  'He was a Kiwi.'

Eve was right.  It doesn't do to talk about exes.  Ben felt jealous - he had no idea why.

'What...  Green and sour?' he said.  'Brown and fuzzy on the outside?'

Eve gave Ben a look.

'Yup,' she nodded.  'That's pretty much him.

'...You know, the last time I was in the water, I hit a box.' 

Ben's brow crumpled. 

'Jellyfish,' she explained.

Dan didn't see it - he was miles out, chasing a tube.  Eve was on her own.  She felt something smash into her left hand.  For a little brainless blob, they pack one hell of a punch.  It felt like an explosion; electricity, burning.  Eve tried to work out what she'd hit.  She couldn't see anything in the water.  The pain was excruciating.  When you stub your toe, it takes a second for the pain to filter through the neurotransmitters - make its way up to your brain.  You think
'This is going to hurt.'
.  The pain peaks then it ebbs.  This wasn't like that at all.  Eve expected it to stop.  It didn't peak.  I didn't ebb.  It just got worse and worse. 

All Eve could think about was getting back onto the land.  She was panicking, kicking frantically but getting nowhere.  She could feel all of her energy draining away.  She couldn't get her breath, couldn't swim back.  She could see the shore as she gasped at the surface.  White sand, palm trees, blue skies.  She kept going under, taking on gulp after gulp of saltwater.  Another glimpse of paradise before she went under again.  She was sure she was going to die.

Bain and Kimo from the crab shack pulled her out, grabbed the board, poured vinegar on her hand.  She was cold by then, desperately cold, struggling for breath, her heart palpitating.  When Dan finally emerged, Eve told him not to worry.  She told him she was fine.  Her hand had already swollen to twice the size.  She was struggling for breath. 

Eve could feel the toxin working its way up her arm.  Her breaths were laboured and shallow.  The ambulance men made her lie on a stretcher.  They strapped an oxygen mask over her face.  They lifted her into the back of the ambulance. 

She saw Dan, paddling back to his waves.

'...Aren't they really dangerous?' said Ben.

'They can be,' she said.  'It would have been a lot worse if I hadn't had my rashvest on.' 

Eve held out her hand.  Ben held her fingers gently as he squinted down at her palm.  There were the faintest pink squiggles - barely visible, half a centimetre thick.  He turned her hand over, realising that the marks wrapped all the way around, on up to her fingers, wrapping around those too.

'Jesus...  That must have hurt.'

'Not half as much as the medical bill,' said Eve, with a sardonic smile. 

The insurance company had screwed her over.  'Watersports not included'.  That little episode had guzzled up the little Eve had left from the proceeds of sale of her flat.   

She gazed into nothing. 

'You know he didn't even come to the hospital with me.'

She turned to Ben, found him staring at her.

'Sorry, I—'

'No, that's OK,' he said.

It was, with him.  Not to say he liked the idea of another man treating her badly.  He didn't.  It pissed him off immensely.  But it pissed him off infinitely less than hearing about 'Dan' wading in to save her. 

Eve was right.  You should never big-up the ex.

Ben pressed his lips into the palm of her hand, her fingers cradling his rough jaw.  He squeezed her against him, her face buried in his warm, fuzzy chest.  She listened to his heartbeat, breathed in the smell of him.  Here was a guy who seemed big enough to take care of her.  Eve wasn't going to try and stop him any time soon.

The rain thrashed down as they drove back to Brighton.  Ben drove steadily, wipers whirring, listening to the radio.  The roads were clear, it was already dark.  They were both a bit snoozy after their long hot bath.  Neither of them wanted to go home.