Diamond (13 page)

She lay on top of him and held him around his neck, kissing him for dear life while he shifted and jolted beneath her, seeking the little slick niche in which to fit himself.

When he found it, he took hold of her hips and made sure she couldn’t swerve or shy away from his bold ingress. He slid up inside her, lightning swift, filling her until she cried out with satisfied surprise.

‘That’s it,’ he growled. ‘That’s what you need.’

She couldn’t argue. Already she was bearing down, as if she wanted more of that thick root, enough to stretch her to splitting point. She ground herself over his pelvis, feeling him touch every limit of her tight passage and
grant the promise of enough friction to drive her, and her g-spot, over the edge.

‘Hot for it, babe,’ he said, moving his hands around to cup her buttocks in a tight grip. ‘So hot for it.’

She leant down to kiss him again, enjoying the way her nipples brushed his chest hair and his own little nubs. The tickling was exquisite – he should never wax.

He nipped down on her lower lip and pushed her bum forwards, urging her into the ride. She began a slow back and forth, interspersing with side to side moves, relishing the sense of having every inch of his stalk deep inside her. How good and thick it was, a truly substantial tool. The thought that it had pleasured half the lasses of Bledburn flitted through her mind, giving her momentary pause, but then she drove it out of her consciousness. It was in her, now. She was its quarry and its destination. No other. And besides, there was a lot to be said for experience. A hell of a lot.

As she bore down on him, he spread her bottom cheeks apart, making her feel wide open and whorish. It bucked her up, spurred her on to greater equestrian heights, making her dizzy with the dirtiness of what he did to her.

What he had said about threesomes gatecrashed her imagination and she pictured him holding her open for another man, another lover from the dirty streets of the estate, low-voiced and foul-mouthed, knowing her for what she was, knowing what she wanted …

‘Get down on me,’ he whispered, but his eyes were glazing now, taking on a faraway look. ‘Work harder. Really work.’

She was sure she couldn’t work any harder; her abdominal muscles were starting to tighten and ache and
she knew she’d be sore inside afterwards. But Jason put the tip of one finger inside her bottom cheeks and she jolted so hard she thought she might crush him. Instead, she came, gripping his shoulders and gasping into his face, her thighs weak and trembling.

This made him triumphant and ready to release his own climax. He bucked and bucked inside her and she felt sorry that she wouldn’t have his semen to show for it. For a moment, she longed to feel it, wet and creamy on her lips, the proof of the taking.

‘Dirty girl,’ he crooned in her ear when she had collapsed on top of him. ‘You liked my finger there.’

She wanted to deny it but she couldn’t.

‘It was novel,’ she whispered.

‘You’ve never done anything of that kind, I take it?’

‘I suppose you have.’

‘You suppose right. I’m an arse man, always have been, always will be.’

‘You’re a manwhore.’

He laughed at that, stroking her damp coils of hair.

‘An arsemanwhore,’ he corrected. ‘Phone the Oxford dictionary. A new word for ’em.’

‘You’re pure filth,’ she said with happy sigh.

‘You’re not so squeaky clean yourself.’ He kissed the top of her head and rolled her gently off him and on to her side. Forehead to forehead, they locked eyes for a while, until his dark gaze seemed to laser through her. ‘I could fall for you,’ he said.

‘What about …?’ She couldn’t say the name.

‘Hush. That was over anyway. You’ve made me see it. I owe you one.’

‘You owe me more than one.’

‘Yeah, don’t worry, you’ll be paid in full. In orgasms. Does that sound like a deal?’

‘Mmm.’

She must be mad. This was madness. She couldn’t get embroiled with this no-hope low-life, brilliant, sexy … She yawned. He was asleep already.

‘You’re going to have to lay off me for a day or so. I can barely move.’

Jenna winced her way over to her suitcase to pull out a pair of clean knickers. She and Jason had ignored their sore bits and pieces to have each other again in the dead of night, and after that there had been copious lashings of oral sex until the sun came up and they drifted off again.

‘Shit,’ she said, peeking through the window. ‘They’re here already. I’ll have to keep the door shut and make sure they go straight into the kitchen. Do you think you can creep very quietly up the front stairs once they’re hammering away?’

‘Hammering away,’ repeated Jason in a slow, sticky voice. ‘I could do that job.’

‘You already do.’

‘Can’t you just throw a blanket over me and I can stay down here?’

‘It’s only for one more day. Besides, you’re so close to finishing that panel you’re working on. Once it’s done, we can make a start on gutting this place.’

He grunted and wrapped the duvet tighter around him.

Jenna left him to it and went to greet her kitchen fitters.

Once they were fully furnished with mugs of tea and Radio 2, she crept up to the attic, expecting to find Jason there. He wasn’t, and his cat was less than pleased with the
situation, miaowing loudly from his corner bed of old dust sheets and the abandoned tracksuit.

‘Why didn’t you come downstairs, silly?’ scolded Jenna. ‘The door was open.’

But Bowyer retained stubborn loyalty to his dwelling, it seemed, and Jenna had to go back downstairs for a tin of tuna before he would be pacified.

‘Where’s your dad, then, eh?’ muttered Jenna, watching him dive nose-first into the compacted fish. ‘Lazy so-and-so. Bet he sleeps all morning.’

She looked around her at the surrounding frieze, now depicting the town’s history right up to the middle of the last century. A happy era of 1960s full employment was the latest panel: the workers enjoying their leisure time in the music clubs and coffee bars that had opened in the town. The swinging, Bohemian element of that decade had passed Bledburn by, but Beatle moptops and huge beehives could be seen on the little figures darting up and down the prosperous high street.

On the hill, this very house, Harville Hall, stood, decked out with bunting, hosting the annual gala. She had forgotten about that but now childhood memories came back: listening to the colliery band in tears because her balloon had flown out of her hand. It had all ended when she was about five, after the strike, though. Jason was too young to have ever attended one. Perhaps he had learned about them from his mother.

Bowyer, the tuna can empty, sauntered away from his bed to the attic stairs, intent, it seemed, on stretching his legs outside. Jenna bent down to pick up the tin, noticing as she did so that the old tracksuit comprising Bowyer’s bed rested on top of a big threadbare canvas backpack.

All of Jason’s worldly goods.

She cast a swift, nervous glance at the trapdoor. There was no sound but the clanking and banging of the kitchen fitters. Jason was apparently still glued to the mattress.

She knelt and unclipped the front flap of the bag. In the smallest pocket was a provisional driving licence with a photograph of him looking very young and very cocky, staring the photobooth camera in the eye as if challenging it to a fight. A number of old birthday and Christmas cards were held together with an elastic band, but Jenna didn’t investigate those any further. She was more interested in the little square notebook full of sketches.

In the main body of the bag she found more pads, large ones, filled with watercolour paintings of different local landscapes and people.

She held her breath, her heart thumping. Was he really this good? She had the feeling she was looking at an urban Constable, his bucolic scenes replaced by blackened bricks and boarded-up shops. There was an urgent quality to the pictures that prevented her looking away, once seen. They demanded close examination, and they evoked emotion. Unexpectedly, she found herself on the verge of tears, looking at a picture of an overgrown front garden with an armless doll and a broken pushchair lying in it. On the page after this still life was a picture that could only have come from Jason’s imagination, with grotesque demonic figures grouping beneath a huge chimney for some kind of ritual. Some of it was teen experimentation, but a lot of it was far more than that.

It was inconceivable that this wealth of incredible work should remain invisible. Without thinking, Jenna took the pictures from the backpack and slipped back
down the ladder with them, hiding them in one of the upstairs bedroom cupboards. As soon as she could, she would take them to London to show Tabitha. This week, if possible.

She flitted back up to the attic, shoved the backpack under the old tracksuit again and took Jason’s water jar down for replenishment in the bathroom.

While she swilled it out under the tap he shambled in, half-naked and yawning.

‘Ta for that,’ he said, quirking an eyebrow at the jar.

‘Did they see you?’ she asked, trying not to be too winded by the sight of him in his masculine, unshaven glory, still warm and dishevelled from sleep.

‘The fuck do you take me for? Of course not.’ He reached for his toothbrush, now kept by the sink despite his misgivings. (‘What if someone sees it?’ ‘I’m not about to invite anyone into my private bathroom.’) ‘Where’s Bowyer?’

‘I’ve fed him. He’s outside.’

Jason brushed his teeth while Jenna watched his broad back bend and flex over the sink. The hollow in it, just above the belt of his jeans, cried out to be touched, but she kept off, mindful of her sore and overused condition.

‘What are you up to today then?’ he asked. ‘More detective work?’

‘No,’ she said, feeling a little guilty for in fact she was thinking of trying to smoke Mia out of hiding.

‘I hope not. The quicker people forget about me, the better. Don’t mention my name, whatever you do.’

‘I wouldn’t. Anyway, I’m only going shopping for technology. Need a decent computer. It’s killing me, only having my phone.’

‘Poor princess,’ he said, making a comedy sad face at the mirror.

‘Oh, come on. The information age has made it as far as Bledburn, surely.’

‘Yeah. But, you know, people have to choose between broadband and breakfast round here.’

‘Not this person,’ said Jenna briskly. She stepped forward and kissed his bristly cheek. ‘Shave and hide yourself. I’m off to Web World. See you later.’

But Web World was only reached after a diversion to the estate, specifically the low, flat-roofed, extravagantly graffitied building that hosted the local youth club. These days it was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and accessible only through a triple-padlocked gate. It looked as forlorn as Jenna felt, and she was about to turn away, when a youngish woman in a parka hurried across the car park of the neighbouring pub, waving to her.

‘Hullo. Did you want me?’

‘Sorry, I just dropped in on the off-chance … Kayley!’

‘Oh my God, Jenna! Oh my God. I heard you were back but … Oh my God!’

They laughed at each other for a few moments, then Kayley unlocked the gate and led Jenna to the bunker, unlocking several more padlocks on the way.

‘I’m gasping for a cuppa – do you want one? So, what brings you here?’ Kayley set about boiling a kettle in a little kitchen corner of a room full of pool tables, gaming machines, computers and bookshelves.

‘Just a thought that I might start giving something back to the place that made me,’ said Jenna. ‘I want to make a donation to the youth club, maybe you’d like me
to come in and give a talk, that kind of thing. Perhaps pay for recording equipment.’

Kayley turned around, beaming. ‘Seriously? Give us your hand, love. So I can bite it off.’

They laughed again.

‘This is like a dream,’ said Kayley. ‘We’ve been drained dry by successive local council budget cuts. We can only keep going because people volunteer their time and donate their old gear now and again. Seriously, hand to mouth stuff. A recording studio, wow! I can’t tell you how much that would mean to the kids we serve here.’

‘I want to help. I used to come here, when it first opened. It didn’t have all that amazing artwork on the walls then, though.’

Jenna looked around her, detecting the hand of Jason in at least some of it.

‘Yeah, we’ve got some talented artists.’

‘That one there – of the big foot coming down on the little antlike people …’

‘It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Lad who used to come here a few years back. Jason. He could’ve gone all the way, if he hadn’t got sucked into estate low life.’ She sighed and reached into a cupboard for a box of teabags.

‘Serious talent,’ said Jenna, almost to herself. ‘It can’t go to waste.’

‘Tell me about it. Crying shame. We’ve got a girl who comes here now, could be a professional dancer if she wanted, but she’s met some lad and she’s started going round to his place to smoke puff all night instead of coming here to rehearse like she used to. I don’t know. What can we do? We do our best. That’s about all we can.’

She brightened.

‘But hey, now you’re here, perhaps you’ll inspire her.’

‘I hope so. God, Kayley, I haven’t seen you in, what, seventeen years?’

‘Must be about that. Shit, shut up. I sound really old.’

‘If you’re old, what does that make me? I used to babysit you.’

‘You’d think working in a youth club would keep me young, wouldn’t you? The opposite. Look at this.’ She plucked at a silver hair growing amongst the brown.

‘Oh, I couldn’t even guess what colour my hair is now. It’s so long since I saw its natural colour. How’s your mum? And your crazy brothers? Thanks.’

She took the cup of tea and they sat down to discuss possible donations and projects for the club.

‘You know, those paintings are really brilliant,’ she said, looking around her at the evidence of Jason’s talent all over the walls. ‘It’s a real shame about that bloke you mentioned,’ she said, as casually as she could muster once the talk had lapsed a while. ‘Jason, was it? Isn’t there any way he could get back to his painting?’