Ellie's Return (7 page)

“You have checked him out.”

“I don’t know him, I told you I haven’t
spoken...”

“It’s Tom.”

There was a pause now. Ellie was contorted
into a kind of panic, an unmoving, unspeaking panic, and Claudia immediately
berated herself for not finding a better way to break the news. She started to
fill in.

“It was after you left, but not long
after. Lola was telling everyone how awful you had treated Tom, and that he was
so hurt. She said you had gone off to Venice with this man and you had not even
told Tom you were going, you refused to see him and it was probably out of
guilt. When they got together after a few weeks everyone was happy for them at
first because they wanted Tom to be alright, and Lola was with someone properly
for the first time ever. “

Ellie was mystified.

“What man?” she asked.

“I don’t know, it didn’t make sense to me
because I thought you had gone because you split up with him, and for that
reason. But then it just seemed to be that you had gone because of this man,
and I didn’t want to judge.”

“But why didn’t you tell me, if that’s was
what people thought? If that was what he thought?”

“I emailed you lots of times. Are you sure
you read all my emails? This is nothing new.”

Ellie had been rumbled for not reading all
those emails. She had found Claudia a bit much at the time. She liked her but
she tended to send long rambling emails about people and things she did not
know and sometimes Ellie found her attention wandering halfway through and not
wandering back.
 
So she had told her
something of this before, she had already been told so she couldn’t exactly
ask, she would have to pretend that she did not want to entertain any rumours.
That wasn’t fair either though, she had just berated Claudia for not doing what
she had in fact done, and there was no criticising her for that, if she had
tried to keep Ellie in the loop.

“Are they happy? Do you think they will
stay together?”

Claudia decided that her previous approach
of shouting out what she knew was not quite fitting to the sobriety of the
occasion. She did not want to lie, but now that Ellie knew enough that she
would not be making a fool of herself by jumping out of a cake in Lola’s shop,
she did not need to know everything at once. She had heard that they were
engaged but Ellie had asked two questions, so she answered the first.

“I don’t know if they’re happy, I don’t
see them anymore.“

Nine

Tom was making plans to be away for the
weekend again. Bad enough that he would have to spend a weekend at home without
knowing for sure that Lola had other plans, but the possibility that Ellie might
now be knocking around made staying at home completely untenable, so he would
need to make himself as scarce as he could. It was Friday, so he would leave tomorrow
morning and not come back until Sunday night or even Monday if possible. Lola
did not ask where he went at weekends. If she wanted to know she could find out
through her usual devious means. Most of the chaps that he would have spent the
weekends with were married to women that Lola knew and they felt compelled to
tell Lola that they had something in common with her even if was just the fact
of their husbands being friends, as though in doing so they could bask in the
stardust of the most glamorous resident their little town had to offer. In this
way, Lola was able to keep track of Tom, and for that matter of pretty much anybody
she needed to know about in her circle. She was the magnet for all and any
gossip, which gave her influence in the town by always knowing other people’s
business whether it was interesting or not.

Lola like to be at the centre of things,
her better class of what was essentially business networking for people who
already knew each other was an excuse to get people together in her name,
behind the veneer of a local charity who were welcome to whatever slim pickings
they could scrape from the events. The charity connection was more about making
it harder for people to refuse to attend, and giving Lola the sheen of local
respectability that enabled her to add the word ‘philanthropist’ to her list of
self-aggrandising titles.

Tom did not know what Lola got up to at
the weekends, but nor did he especially care, as long as he could be away from
home. Lola had been quite open about the fact that there were other men, she
taunted him with the fact, she may even boast to some of her closest friends
about it. Lola had always used sex. She enjoyed sex of course, but she enjoyed
using it too, knowing what power it was giving her over her unsuspecting prey,
and there did not need to be any more intimate connection to it for her. Maybe
that was often the way. Tom and Lola had not had sex for most of their
relationship, which seemed shocking until he realised it was his only comfort
on their relationship, the sense that there at least there was no pretence. She
may have been angry that he was immune to her charms, and he certainly was, but
she had not let that stand in the way of an active sex life, and earlier in
their relationship she sometimes went through the ritual of getting ready to go
out to meet a lover when it was clear that being discreet about it in front of
Tom was the last thing on her mind. They would have to be married some day, but
the marriage would be cold and unconsummated. Tom had, since being with Lola,
once got involved in a one-night stand. He had seen the woman again a couple of
times but the experience did not make him feel any better about himself or his
situation, and the woman had sensed that, and that there was nothing very
special between them, and she had known that whatever he was missing in his life
was buried very deep inside, just from the things he refused to talk about. She
liked him but he was damaged. They could have sex and it might help him
momentarily to escape the knowledge of the life he had but he had been in love
and known the closeness of that bond, that knowledge of the other person, that
warmth and unspoken mingling, and nothing between him and anyone else, but
especially not Lola, could ever pretend to come close to it. He did not talk to
his friends about his relationship with Lola since he did not know or care what
anybody thought about that, only he having any semblance of what was really
going on there. If everybody thought he was as happy as Larry then that would
save the inevitable awkwardness of people knowing the truth for now, so it was
best not discussed. This was easy enough to do, since men rarely turn to each
other for spiritual guidance, and even less so when rock climbing. There would
be no rock climbing this weekend. Tom had known for some weeks that his usual
weekend compadres were going to be busy but he had already decided to go away
by himself if need be. He was on a mailing list, one of those few from which he
had never bothered to unsubscribe, and whereas he still tended to ignore their
weekly entreaties to him, today’s circumstances bid him to look more closely
and he decided he would go to a place he had not visited for a while, where the
only people who might remember him at all would know him as he used to be, and
he could be that person again.
 

Ten

Ellie did not know where to turn. Though
she had tried to make her visit look casual, she knew very well that the only
thing she had in mind was to speak to Tom and find out if there was any future
for them. Now that she was back, she realised that her comfort zone was
somewhere else completely and that she had abandoned it to come here and make a
fool of herself. She had not admitted to Claudia that it was the only reason
she was here, but clearly she was misguided in her return, because there was
only disappointment awaiting her. She wanted to curl up and wait for it all to
go away, but she couldn’t do that here. She was feeling flustered and
ridiculous, and she wanted to start looking for flights that she could get today
instead of having to sit amidst this humiliation a moment longer.

Claudia could not be unaware of her
discomfort, and said she was going to get dressed so that she could give her
some time to adapt to the news. Maybe they could go out for the day and do
something nice to take her mind off this. Claudia felt bad for the revelation
she had to make, but was relieved for both of their sakes that there need not
be a charade enacted between any of them where she had to lie to Ellie to
protect her. It was obvious that she had not read all of Claudia’s emails, she
did not mind that so much because she knew that there was an undeniable
difference in the strength of feeling between them, but there had been news in
those emails that might have avoided this situation or made it easier to cope
with. She would have to hope that she stayed long enough to deal with some of
those things rather than sticking her head in the sand and going home today.

Ellie had not been able to get a flight
home today. She could pay the earth to get back a day sooner but that would not
help much, she was still going to be stuck here for a couple of days. She could
not sit here on this sofa and hope it would all go away, but there was no doubt
that the news had hit her hard. Lola had been her best friend since her first
week at university. She had known her for nearly fifteen years. She had been so
excited about seeing her and now she found that for at least three of those
years Lola had been misleading her. Why Tom, of all the people she had to
betray Ellie with? Come to that, why Lola, of all the people Tom had to betray
her with? Could they really be happy together? There never seemed to have been
any kind of chemistry between them, but Ellie was struggling now not to think
of them together. She knew both of their bodies so well, and she was tormented
by the thought of them being together. When she thought of Tom, she did not
just picture him, she felt him, she touched him, and she felt him touching her.
Now he was touching someone else and she felt that she was there and could not
escape the closeness that she had previously feared would be ripped away. She
wanted to be touched too. She heard Claudia move about upstairs, and she knew
it wrong but she went to her.

Claudia had been pottering upstairs,
trying to give Ellie time. She had wanted to hug her when she was on the sofa
because she could see how upset she was so she had moved away to resist the
temptation. Now she heard Ellie as she came upstairs and knocked on her door.
The door was ajar anyway and Ellie had pushed it open. Her eyes were wet with
the tears she was trying to push back. Claudia reached up to put her arms
around her neck and they hugged. Claudia know that the moment could not last
and was waiting for Ellie to pull away but she did not, instead she kissed Claudia’s
neck, reaching down with her mouth to kiss her neck lower still. Claudia
thought that she should stop her but she couldn’t think why. Ellie wanted this,
and Claudia was quite sure that she did too, so stopping it for any reason
seemed insane, even as she was losing the power to resist it anyway. Ellie
stepped back. In her head Claudia was begging her not to think better of it.
Ellie reached down to the cord that was holding Claudia’s robe on and she undid
it gently so the robe fell open. Claudia closed her eyes and could feel the
gentle stroke of Ellie’s fingers on her torso, gently stroking upwards to her
breasts and so softly, tenderly teasing her. She raised her fingers to the neck
of the gown and pushed it off Claudia’s body, and Claudia stood poised, ready
for Ellie to act on her. Ellie pushed her weight against Claudia’s smaller and
paler body, and kissed her, gently at first but then she pushed passionately
against her, forcing her lips on her. Claudia lifted her arms back up around
Ellie’s neck and drew her in, afraid that any moment this would end, knowing
that when it did it may never happen again, and that she had to absorb every
moment that she could of the woman she had never been able to get out of her
mind.
 
She pulled Ellie down on top
of her, as each one caressed the other. Ellie looked up, tried to speak, but
Claudia tried to kiss the words away. Ellie tried again and put her fingers to
Claudia’s lips, insistent on speaking. Claudia was afraid of what she would say
if she could but Ellie just told her it was ok, they had all the time they
needed. Claudia wished it was true, but she knew that it was not.

Eleven

Lola was back in the shop in the arcade,
and more distracted than she expected to have been by Ellie’s return. She had
been had been aware of Ellie’s impending visit since she started to receive her
excitable texts the week before. Over the time since she decided to cut off
contact with Ellie she had heard from her less and less, partly through her own
lack of encouragement, and had hoped that Ellie had got wind of her relationship
with Tom and just decided to stay away. She was disappointed that she may have to
go through any little unpleasantness now just because Ellie had decided to crawl
out of the woodwork, but as she had long since outlived her usefulness to Lola
a little unpleasantness would do no harm if it meant sending her back to Venice
or wherever she had come from, leaving Lola to grow her little empire
uninterrupted by irrelevant people from her past. When Ellie had popped into
the shop on her arrival yesterday Lola had seen her through the front window
and had told the manager to say she was not there. Ellie’s texts had told her
the flight arrival data and time so she was already aware of needing to look
out. Ordinarily, she told herself, she would have confronted Ellie there and
then and told her about Tom, but the logical conclusion to that would have been
that she came out and told Ellie three years ago that she was in love with Tom
and things had not worked out between him and Ellie so it was fair enough that
they should have their chance at happiness. That’s what she would have said if
any of that had been true, but there were flaws to the tale that Ellie would
have seen through and Tom would have seen through too and it was all she could
do to ensure they did not get to speak to each other, else the game would have
been up a lot sooner. As it was three years had elapsed, Tom and Ellie would be
over each other or still too angry to speak to each other much less talk about
anything as embarrassing as their feelings, and the passage of time would
continue to put a veil over the events that she had engineered.