A Summer Fling (48 page)

‘How . . . how did you get here so fast?’ was her first breathless question to him when she had got out of the taxi and waved goodbye to the driver, followed by the second: ‘Why are you holding a blue stiletto?’

He held the shoe out to her.

‘You dropped this, running away from my ball, Cinderella. Didn’t you?’

Anna lifted her dress up so Vladimir could see her feet, both with a shoe on them.

‘No, I didn’t,’ she said.

‘Oh goodness,’ he said, rubbing his forehead. ‘I found it outside by the cars. I presumed . . . Someone is going to be rather angry with me then.’

‘Hopping mad,’ said Anna with a smile. ‘Plus it’s massive!’

It wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Norfolk Broads.

‘Why did you go, Anna?’ He pronounced her name as always, more Ah-na, than Anna. Like a sigh.

‘Oh Vladimir, why do you think?’ said Anna, with a loaded sigh of her own. ‘Look at me. Look at where I live!’ She pointed backwards at the small house. ‘It’s a terrace in the middle of Barnsley. I work in an office. I don’t jet off to Milan. I don’t have friends who are pop stars. You’ve made me feel wonderful. Now I have to be wonderful in my own world.’
If I can, after the way you’ve rocked my world so much that I don’t know where the hell I belong any more, you vampire swine.

‘You could go to Milan and mix with pop stars.’

‘Yeah, course I cou— Mw!’

She had no chance to finish her sentence because Vladimir Darq cleared the distance between them in a nano-second, seized her roughly in his arms and stifled her words with his lips.

Good God
, her brain said on behalf of her mouth, which was otherwise engaged. His arm was around her waist, his other pulling her hair back and stretching out her throat to him. They looked like a Mills and Boon cover. One entitled:
Yours to Devour.

Chuff, he’s going to kill me!
she thought. Quickly followed by,
And I don’t care!
His lips smudged along her jugular, setting off dormant fireworks on her nerve endings. Those big ones with multi-heads that kept firing into the sky and made whole towns go, ‘Wow!’

She could see his black hair, taste him on her lips, smell the wonderful alpha-male cologne he wore, hear him breathe, feel his strong body pressing against hers . . . She only wished she had a load more senses that could experience him because five didn’t seem enough. She had wondered, more often than she cared to admit, what kissing him would be like, but never in her wildest dreams did she imagine it would be as good as this. It was an experience bettered only by his voice vibrating against her neck and saying, ‘Anna, you drove me crazy when I first met you and you drive me crazy now for very different reasons. I want you so much. You do belong to my world. You belong to me.’

This couldn’t be happening, of course. She’d had too much champagne and was hallucinating. Could you hallucinate on two glasses though? Maybe someone had spiked her drink with ‘sniffy-sniffy’? In reality, Vladimir was back at Darq House, chatting up that long, skinny, bitchy bird and she was here alone in the moonlight, having the best daydream of her life. But she wasn’t hallucinating, this
was
happening, Vladimir
was
saying those things and she
was
making gaspy noises because his mouth was moving up and down her throat as if he was playing slow blues on a harmonica.

Then he straightened her up and held her in front of him and looked deep into her eyes.

‘I have guests. I have to go back. Tomorrow, at eleven in the morning, I will come for you. I will show you the true world of Vladimir Darq.’ He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it, then once again he planted a long, sensuous kiss on her lips. He drew apart from her slowly, torturously, leaving Anna bathing in the aftershock, afraid to open her eyes and see him go.

When she opened them, he was no longer there. She felt as if she had just done ten rounds with an amorous Rocky Marciano. She was so light-headed she was sure she would have risen up to that big full moon like a helium balloon, if she had let go of her weighty clutch bag.

She leaned against the door for support, stretching out her neck and presenting it to an imaginary Vladimir for more of the same. What did he mean by ‘his true world’? she mused. Was he going to show off the his-and-hers coffins in the basement? The bottles of maidens’ blood in his cellars? The moon beamed down on her with its soft, silver light. Stars studded the sky. They were like tiny beads stitched on velvet cloth.

She stood there sighing like something out of a Hollywood musical, thinking she would never sleep tonight, not in a million years, when she heard the low rumble of an approaching car which, within the minute, swung into the lane.
Tony.
She’d forgotten about him. She’d actually forgotten about him. Half an hour ago, she’d been ready to listen to his excuses, but after that kiss there was no way on this planet that was going to happen. He was grinning assuredly at her as he pulled up, then his brow furrowed in confusion, then that smile came back wider than ever.

‘Anna! Wow! I didn’t recognize you for a minute there. I thought you must be someone else. You look amazing – like a model. Is it really you? Wow!’

He jumped out of the car and she immediately noticed the suitcases on the back seat.

‘I’m early, babe,’ he said. ‘And so are you. Couldn’t wait, huh? Me neither. That dress is fantastic on you. I can’t wait to see it on the bedroom floor. Come here, I have missed you so much.’ He came forward, arms open wide to enclose her, but she held up an arresting palm and said his name firmly.

‘Tony.’ She couldn’t think of anything else to say then but, ‘No.’

He froze, arms still open. ‘No?’ he said eventually. ‘What do you mean –
no
?’

‘I’ve been thinking. I don’t want you back.’

‘Oh, come on,’ he said, still hanging on to that smile. ‘You know you do. That’s why you told me to come back at midnight.’

‘I didn’t tell you. You volunteered,’ Anna corrected him.

‘Same difference.’

‘Tony, about earlier . . . you caught me on the hop. I was mixed up. But I’m not now.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ he said. Still smiling and now, apparently, enlightened. ‘Ah – I see. You’re playing hard to ge-et!’

‘No, I’m not. You’ll have to go back to Lynette.’

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I mean, I don’t want to. I want you, not her.’

‘Tony, I don’t want you.’

‘You do. How many times have you passed my shop to look at me?’

The cheeky chuff
, thought Anna. He’d seen her. No doubt it had thrilled him, made him believe that her door was open to him whenever he deigned to return.

‘Let’s go in and talk about it,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Anna, holding up that palm again. ‘I don’t want you to come inside. I don’t want you, Tony. It’s over.’

He was still smiling as if he didn’t believe her. That was until a moment later when the sound of a second car’s screeching tyres cut through the night air and a rusted pink Fiat Punto ground to a halt about a gnat’s leg’s length away from Tony’s bumper. His smile dropped like a brick then.

‘I knew you’d be here, you two-timing twat,’ said a very angry, scarlet-faced Lynette Bottom, leaping out onto the pavement. A curtain twitched in the upstairs bedroom of the cat-stealer’s window. Then Lynette looked at the glamorous woman in blue velvet and her face creased up with confusion and embarrassment. Then she did a double-take and realized it
was
Tony’s ex-girlfriend after all. Blimey! She pulled her cardigan around her, feeling very dull and scruffy by comparison.

‘Well, you can have him,’ said Lynette through hot, angry tears. ‘He’s bloody useless at anything that doesn’t involve a pair of scissors and a comb. Like – in bed!’

‘Oy,’ said Tony.

‘He’s got the words “quality” and “quantity” mixed up just a bit!’ Lynette went on waspishly. ‘He thinks if he does it three times, you’ll not notice he’s crap!’

‘Lynette—’

‘Did he tell you I thought I was pregnant last month?’

Tony was covering his eyes with his hand. Maybe he was doing that thing kids did where they thought if they closed their eyes, no one could see them either.

Anna’s breath caught in her throat. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘You’re not pregnant,’ said Tony, peeping out from behind his fingers.

‘No, but I thought I was and I told you I might be,’ said Lynette, twisting round to him. ‘And where were you while I was sat in the doctor’s? Sniffing back round here, weren’t you, you . . . you . . . arsehole.’ She stabbed a finger at Anna, then dropped it because this woman in the long dress was making her feel a bit common. ‘Well, you’re welcome to him. The bastard left me a note saying, “I need a break” and “there’s no one else” and then he crept out, thinking I wouldn’t notice. But I saw him loading his suitcases into the car because his leaving technique is as shite as his foreplay. And I just knew he’d slither back here! Have him, he’s yours!’

‘Thank you for your generous offer, Lynette, but sadly, I must decline,’ said Anna, in more control than she could have thought possible. ‘Goodnight to you both. Tony, we’ll be in touch about splitting the assets.’ Although from the scream she heard after unlocking the door and shutting it behind her, she thought Lynette might have started splitting Tony’s assets already.

Shortly afterwards, Anna heard one car drive off with tyres squealing and then the other, much more slowly, as if it had its tail between its legs. She didn’t know if they were going in the same direction. Nor, she realized with some delight, did she care.

There was a disgruntled screech at her feet when she walked into the darkened kitchen to put the kettle on and stood on something soft. It appeared that Butterfly had picked this night to come home too. In typical male fashion, with his tail between his legs.

Elizabeth held in her hand the letter that her sister had written to Raychel saying that she was thrilled she had agreed to come and giving her directions to the hostel where she was staying. Elizabeth was trying to remain calm but it was so very difficult. Thank goodness John was driving. He was, clichéd as it was, her rock. He always had been. She was so glad her niece had a rock in Ben too.

Young Ellis was at his ‘Auntie’ Janey’s house. Her husband George was as daft as a brush and, no doubt, the little boy would be having a ball playing with Janey’s son Robert and their new hulking great St Bernard puppy, Jimbo. This journey was no place for a child.

The drive to Newcastle was two hours long. Elizabeth’s nerves started to rev up even more when they passed the Angel of the North on the right. She closed her eyes and asked it to instil some strength in her because she wasn’t sure what she would feel when she saw Bev. The monster who had both beaten her own child and stood aside whilst her boyfriend did the same was also the little girl she had heard crying in her bedroom when they were kids because their dad was an abuser. She didn’t know which Bev she would see when Bev opened her door.

The Satnav announced that when they turned around this corner they would have reached their destination. John drove slowly on, trying to find a sign for the hostel where Bev lived and where she was presently expecting a grand reconciliation with her daughter.

‘I’ll come in with you,’ said John.

‘No, wait here,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It’s not exactly the sort of area you’d want to leave a nice car anyway.’

‘It’s not exactly the sort of building I want my wife walking in by herself,’ said John adamantly. ‘I’ll at least see you to Bev’s door.’

Elizabeth didn’t protest. John would want to see she was safely in. And her nerve was slipping by the second.

The entrance area was reminiscent of a Chinese takeaway in a rough district. All cheap wood panelling and a quarter-hearted stab at cheering up the walls with some tacky pictures hanging up in plastic frames. There was a serving hatch in the wall, presumably ‘Reception’. Through it, Elizabeth could see a woman sitting with her back to the hole, listening to an iPod and watching a portable TV at the same time.

‘Hello,’ John called through it, getting her attention when his voice didn’t work by hammering on the hatch frame. ‘We’ve come to see Marilyn Hunt.’

‘Top floor, room eight,’ said the woman, giving him her briefest attention before turning back to the TV again.

‘Obviously a very secure hostel,’ said John in a whisper.

‘You go back to the car,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Like I said, I’ll see you up first.’ John was insistent.

They walked up a very bare, narrow, twirly staircase three floors up till they got to the top. A cobwebby, scruffy skylight let in a bit of grey light to make the place look even more depressing. The landing carpet was crusty, and hanging Magic Tree air fresheners didn’t quite mask the fustiness.

Elizabeth’s heart was racing as her hand rose to knock, but she snatched it back at the last second and took a moment to collect her thoughts. She had no idea what she would find when that door opened and no way of preparing for it.
Come on, Elizabeth,
she geed herself up, lifted her knuckles and rapped hard. There was the sound of some activity behind the door, then it opened and there stood the sister she hadn’t seen since she was a child, the sister she had cried buckets’ worth of tears for, searched for, prayed for. It took her breath away to see the woman version of the girl she had last seen all those years ago. She would not have recognized the bloated bleach-blonde who looked so much older than her years. Only in her grey eyes was a hint of the Bev she once knew.

The two women stood staring at each other, unable to move. It was Bev who eventually broke the silence with one breathless word.

‘Elizabeth?’

‘Yes, it’s me.’

‘God. I didn’t expect this. Where’s Lorraine?’

‘Let’s go inside,’ replied Elizabeth. ‘John, you can go now, I’m OK. John!’ She had to waken him out of a reverie. Some unpleasant one from the look on his face. He nodded at her and went slowly back down the stairs.

Bev moved aside to let Elizabeth into her room.

‘It’s a dump, I know, but it’s only a temporary place,’ Bev said, gesturing towards the room with some embarrassment.