Ellie's Return (4 page)

The urgency of the situation was created
more from the fact that she had a flight booked for the next morning. She had
booked it a couple of months before when she was going home to see her mother,
but her mother had told her shortly afterwards that she was being taken on a
cruise which was to begin the week before. She would be happy to cancel it if
Ellie wanted but Ellie said no of course not, it was a spur of the moment thing
that she had seen a cheap flight and taken it. She did not tell her that it was
non-refundable because it was just one of those things, she did not want her
mother to turn down a cruise for a visit she could make at any time. Her mother
had offered her the use of her flat in London but Ellie was sure she had no
other reason to go back and her mother had offered it to some friends, eager to
reassure herself of the safety and security of her tiny rat-like dogs.

Ellie had thought no more of the flight
until the evening that Alfonse had humiliated her, not so much because she
wanted to get away from him but because of the fact that whenever things went
wrong in her life since she had parted from Tom, he was the first thing she
always thought of. It was not so much that Ellie led a complicated life, she
was a freelance product manager and she had taken the job in Venice in as almost
an off-hand way as she had booked the flight back to England, which is to say
it was an opportunity that was just there at that moment and when she asked
herself why not, there was no reason why not. The relationship with Tom had recently
ended, and so was the contract she had been working on for the two years that
she was with him, so this came as a part of a natural need to move on and she
had seized it. She had considered waiting around indefinitely to see if Tom
wanted to explain his strange actions but she decided that if he wanted to find
her enough he could. He had not, in the event, and as unhappy as that made her,
at least changing everything else gave her some sense of balance.

The unfortunate thing was that she could
not help comparing every man she ever met, to Tom. If she could stop doing that
they might stand a chance, but all in all they would still compare unfavourably.
It wasn’t that all the men she met were of a type, they were not, but there was
nothing there that compared with what she had before.
 
In the great scheme of things, Alfonse
was the latest in a long line of failed first dates, very short-term
relationships and general disappointments that had simply managed her
expectations of the end of the line. When he had treated her so badly that
night she realised that it was because she had tolerated that kind of thing from
him for long. She had tolerated it because she did not care for him enough one
way or another rather than because she was a victim, but whether or not she
thought of herself as a victim, the one thing she did not doubt was that she
could do a lot better. She knew that because she had done better, and she had
not allowed Tom’s rejection of her to colour her view of him or of herself, she
had not tried to hate him because she could not, and she did not take his rejection
to heart because he had always loved that she valued herself, and to reject
that now would be to diminish herself. She would miss Alfonse as a foot
massager, but doubted she would remember anything else about him in three years
whereas Tom, after three years, was still ingrained in her soul.

Only the previous week when she was
pondering that fact, did she decide that if she were to move on with her life
she would need to discover what it was that had caused them to end so suddenly.
Tom had changed over a matter of weeks from someone who was absolutely devoted
to her to someone who could not bear to look at her, but he never told her why,
in fact they hardly saw each other again after he started to change so there
was little time ever to discover what his problem might be and eventually he
simply failed to answer the phone, or reply to her emails or communicate in any
way, to the point where she was hurt, but also angry enough to leave until he
came to his senses. She just did not think it would be this long.

If anybody knew what was wrong it would be
Lola. She had known Lola and Claudia since their early university days. She had
always felt like the link between the girls but she was sure they must still be
friends now without her so it would be good to go back and see them. Lola was
always so close with her and Tom; of all the girls she had always been the more
outgoing and adventurous one. Even Ellie would admit that she herself was
something of a late bloomer, which might be a nice way of saying slow developer,
since she did wonder sometimes at her own naiveté, but she was fortunate in
that Lola had always been there to put her right and set an example for her.
Lola seemed exotic to Ellie, she always had; just the name conjured up
something exotic and mysterious, and she was so beautiful, confident and
radiant. So sexual too: when Ellie first knew her she was somewhat intimidated
by how demanding she seemed to be of men in her life. Nobody ever seemed to
last very long with her, Lola certainly seemed to be hard work for men, but for
women she was an inspiration. Ellie felt less intimidated by her the longer she
knew her, and had quite forgotten those earlier feelings by the time she was in
her mid-twenties and had met Tom. Lola was still chewing men up and spitting
them out at this point but Tom had never seemed to notice her and Lola seemed
to like that, she liked that he didn’t fall all over himself to please her or
to want anything from her. In Lola’s existence that was a rarity, and Ellie was
glad to have a man in her life who could get on with the woman in her life
because with Lola as the woman, that was a rarity.

For all that she didn’t need to impress,
Lola was always perfectly turned out. Ellie had never seen her looking anything
but absolutely gorgeous. She did not always wear make up, which is not to say
you could not see it, her skin was so perfect she sometimes wore none at all
and her beautifully pigmented skin was as fresh as it had ever been. When she
did wear make up it was done with perfection as though she had studied the art,
and knowing Lola she probably had. She was an expert in all the things you need
to know but are not usually taught, and if make up was going to be a part of
her life at all she would make it into an art form, the way she did with
dressing, with home her car and with good taste in all things. Her black hair
had always been varying degrees of short, but defaulted to perfection, and she
could look sexier coming out of the shower with wet hair and a towel around her
than most women could look with a further two hours of effort after that. Her
body was powerfully sexy, overwhelming in its presence. She was not that she
was especially big but she was perfectly proportioned, far from it, her
shoulders were high and her back tapered, a perfect frame for her large firm
breasts, which were high and proud. Her torso tapered in to a narrow waist, but
toned, almost muscular. Her perfectly rounded hips and bottom had all the
womanly roundness you could ask and flowed effortlessly down to long and
powerful legs. She was proud of her body and often after a shower would dress
in front of Ellie, who in the early days had been intimidated by her body, but
was later fascinated with how it moved. There were tiny ripples of toned muscle
in her legs when she moved, and when she stood and stretched her body was taut
and her breasts so firm. Her nipples were dark and smooth; the left one was pierced
with a small bar, rounded at each end. Seeing Lola’s pierced nipple had given
Ellie the idea to do her own, and she liked the tautness and the thrill of how
it enhanced the sensations she felt when she was turned on. Over time, she had
realised that aside from Lola’s deep pigmentation her body was not so
dissimilar to Lola’s and that it was confidence that made Lola stand out quite
so much. She had reasoned that if Lola was confident because she had the goods,
she should be as confident with the same goods, and though it had taken some
years to realise it, she found she really picked up the pace when she was living
away from all the people and places she knew and was free of even her own
perceptions of how to behave. In any case she had left with not much but her
confidence, which it turned out is all you really need to get everything else
you really need.

Ellie had left several messages for Lola
but so far she had not heard back. That was fair enough, since Ellie herself
had been out of touch for so long that she was in no position to expect anybody
to drop everything for her. If Lola was away on a buying trip for the shops she
might not even be there, but if she was not there it was going to be a wasted
trip. Ellie knew plenty of people in Surrey but very few she would want to stay
with and there was little point in staying in London, never mind that she did not
know her mothers house-sitting friends. Staying in a hotel was not gong to be
an option for too long, and if Lola was not there, she doubted the point of
being there either but it would do her good to have a few days away, and she
may be ale to see Tom. Maybe once she was in front of him she would realise
that her feelings for him had finally changed after all, and then that would be
that.

The journey took longer than it should
have done; she could never understand what adds up to take so long in what should
be a hop, skip and a jump of a journey. When she had left Venice it had been a
beautiful sunny day with clear blue skies. She had thought that she would not
mind the weather in England however bad it was, even cold and wet weather can
be nice if you have the right clothes for it, but once she emerged to the damp
and drab concrete of Gatwick airport she revised her opinion and was already
hoping it was just a bad day in an otherwise good spell. She took a train,
grateful that she had decided on wheeled hand luggage only, and as she emerged
from the station towards the taxi rank she wondered afresh whether to go
directly to Lola’s house or to her shop. She had emailed and texted Lola again
on the journey but still to no avail and she decided to go straight to her shop,
but to think of a Plan B just in case.

As the taxi approached the high street of New
Crompton, Ellie told the driver to pull up near the arcade. Lola’s main shop
was here in the arcade, and it was where she used to spend most of her time. She
had three shops selling high price, high-end home accessories; all the kind of
things you never knew you needed until you saw one and had to have it, be it a
scented candle that cost more than a good bottle of bubbly or the exotic shaped
holder that would be its home, or the wall art, beautifully distressed wall
lights, wine racks and retro picture frames, repackaged as products of Lola’s eponymous
‘Emporia Colucci’. It was all excellent quality, and all completely
unnecessary, unless you needed to avoid being someone who might be caught
unawares by not having seen the new lines or being unfamiliar with the
excellent taste that had locally become a byword for the home ware must-have’s.
Lola was renowned for her excellent taste, in her personal presentation, in her
home and these days in her business too. Ellie admired her for starting her
shops from nothing, though she had no idea how she had done it; Lola was always
very cagey about such things, and Ellie was happy to consider it her perfect right
to be. Lola’s target market tended to be women in their fifties and sixties
with high disposable income who were happy to spend a great deal of their own
or their family income on chattels that they would use to adorn their homes
until they had been discussed and put away and a new round could begin. Ellie
was not a prime customer; she was successful in her job and well paid for it,
but spending hundreds or thousands of pounds a month on a succession of home
furnishings and adornments had never been her thing. There were always other
new things to do, whether it be shops, restaurants, theatres, festivals,
holidays or any of the other things for which the term disposable-income had
rightly been created. Ellie had struggled to be taken seriously and earn the
money she deserved to in her profession, and that was with coming from a
background where money was already scarce, so when she finally had some she
wanted to spend it to have some kind of lifestyle where she could get out and
do things, not where she had to save up to adorn a home that would tie her to
it forever. Going to Venice had been a revelation to her because she had never
realised how free she was until she had realised there was no reason not to go,
and how little she needed to take with her to start that spell of her life
anew. Had she not done that she would simply have become over familiar with
this high street, the sameness of which was a welcome familiarity after some
time away but which she now did not doubt would be a drudge to have to see too
often. She might not go back to Venice for long, but she would not be settling
here either, for a life of scented candles, linen tablecloths and pointless
trinkets, as happy as they undoubtedly made the good ladies of Little Crompton.

She pulled her suitcase out of the taxi
and paid the driver, keeping her head down to avoid getting too wet from the
drizzle before she pulled the luggage behind her into the arcade. She was
excited now about seeing Lola and getting to swap news with her, and she was
looking forward to getting to Lola’s place and having a shower and getting into
something more comfortable. Perhaps she could persuade Lola to leave the shop
early and come back with her, and then they talk all afternoon, since they had
so much to catch up on. She was sure Lola would not mind the short notice; she
must have changed her contact details, but Ellie had done that too since they
last spoke so it was still easily done. When she got to the arcade she stopped
to look in the front window for a moment; there were a couple of shoppers
inside anyway and she was in no rush so it would be good to see what Lola’s
shop window was made up of these days.