Flesh And Blood (25 page)

‘I’m not drunk, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘Nor rusted with age.’

‘No.’

He followed her inside.

The smell of tobacco he’d noticed before was almost lost beneath the scent of polish; Helen had run a duster over the surfaces, tidied round. The settee she’d pushed closer to the side wall so as to extend the dining table on which two places were set, a small vase of flowers between.

‘Let me have your coat.’

‘Thanks.’

She disappeared with it and when she returned it was with an opened bottle in her hand.

‘You’re going to join me, I hope?’

‘Why not?’

She poured wine into his glass and then refilled her own.

‘I hope it’s okay.’

‘I’m sure it will be fine.’

‘Cheers, then.’

‘Cheers.’

She was wearing a blue dress, blue and white, short sleeves and a squarish neckline, the skirt slightly flared; white shoes with a low heel. The dress was tight at the waist and Elder thought she might not have worn it for some little time. Above her eyes, her make-up was bluish grey; the lipstick round her mouth, dark red, had smudged against the glass.

‘Do you want to talk now or later?’ Helen asked.

‘Silence doesn’t seem such a great idea.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘I know.’

‘So which?’

‘Later. Later, I think.’

‘Okay, take a seat. Dinner won’t be long.’

Elder sat at one end of the settee. The wine was red and reasonably spicy; he had no idea what it was but to his palate it was more than okay. The framed photograph of Susan above the fireplace was still there, but the other, that had shown her with her parents, a touch awkwardly between them Elder had thought, was no longer on top of the television. Possibly Helen had moved it while dusting and not got around to putting it back. I think your sixteen-year-old daughter was most probably screwing her teacher, how did you slip that easily into the conversation? After the main course? With the dessert?

‘A top-up?’ Helen asked, popping her head round the door.

‘Not quite yet.’

‘Just be a couple of minutes now.’

‘All right.’

It was pasta: penne with a meat-and-tomato sauce, broccoli and a green salad. Ready-grated Parmesan cheese in a small tub. Garlic bread. Halfway through, Helen interrupted a conversation about holidays with a yelp.

‘Melon. I forgot the melon. I bought it for a starter and it’s still out there in the bag.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s a waste.’

‘Maybe we can have it for dessert.’

‘I bought something else for dessert.’

Elder smiled sympathetically and finished his wine and then nodded when Helen offered to replenish his glass. A drop more for herself and the bottle was empty.

‘I should have brought a bottle with me,’ Elder said. ‘It was thoughtless, I’m sorry.’

‘No, you’re my guest.’

‘Even so, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Wine or flowers or something?’

‘I don’t know,’ Helen said, and laughed. ‘I forget.’

‘Yes.’

‘You too?’

‘When Joanne and I were together we used to go out quite a bit. If we could find a babysitter. Friends of hers mostly. She preferred not to spend too much time in the company of police officers.’

‘Apart from you,’ Helen said.

Elder didn’t reply.

‘You went to see Trevor, didn’t you?’ she said.

‘He told you.’

Helen shook her head. ‘No, she did.’

‘His wife?’

‘The chipmunk. That’s what I always call her. To myself at least. Anyway, reading the riot act she was, over the telephone. What right had I to send people round to bother her Trevor, get him all agitated, worked up? He had to take a day off work, apparently, after talking to you.’

‘That’s just it, he didn’t. He wouldn’t talk to me, refused point-blank.’

‘He wants to pretend it didn’t happen,’ Helen said.

‘That Susan disappeared?’

‘That she ever existed.’

They ate the rest of the course without saying very much, after which Helen collected the plates and carried them into the kitchen, returning with raspberries and vanilla ice-cream in separate bowls and two pieces of cheese, Swaledale and Lancashire, on an oval plate with crackers and celery.

Elder thought she might have used the opportunity to shed a few tears.

‘It’s a little girl you had, wasn’t it? I remember you talking about her once, back you know… She’d have been what? Eighteen months when Susan disappeared?’

‘Two. Around two.’

‘Grown-up now, then.’

Elder nodded. ‘Sixteen.’

‘The same age as…’

‘Yes.’

‘Before, when you were talking before, something you said… you and your wife, you’re not together any more?’

‘Not for a while now.’

‘And your daughter…’

‘Katherine.’

‘You still see her?’

‘Not as much as I’d like. Though that’s my fault, I dare say, much of it.’

‘But you do see her?’

‘Yes.’

Elder finished off his ice-cream and berries, cut a slice of Lancashire and ate it with a cracker. Helen pushed raspberries around her plate, toyed with the ends of her hair.

‘It wasn’t very good, was it?’

‘What?’

‘The dinner.’

‘It was fine.’ The pasta, some of it, had stuck together, the broccoli had been overcooked. ‘Really, I enjoyed it.’

Helen didn’t look convinced.

‘I’ll just get this out of the way,’ she said some minutes later. ‘I can make coffee, if you’d like.’

‘Thanks, yes, that’d be nice. But let me give you a hand with these.’

‘You stay there. There’s no need.’

‘No, it’s all right.’

Helen slid the dishes into the sink and was turning away just as Elder advanced towards her, empty glasses in his hands.

‘I told you not to bother.’

‘No bother.’

He reached past her to set the glasses down and as he leaned back again, his face close to hers, close enough, she kissed him, or he kissed her, it scarcely mattered which, they were kissing; Elder with his eyes shut tight as her mouth moved over his, his tongue on hers and her breathing loud and ragged and when he touched her his fingers accidentally found a small place at the side of her dress where the seam had split and the tips of his fingers were touching skin.

‘Frank.’

She spoke his name which he hadn’t known she’d known and for an answer he kissed the side of her face and on down into her neck and she said his name again only louder this time and he moved his hand against her and felt a few more stitches give and now he had hold of her inside her dress, the flesh moving easily beneath fingers and thumb, and she was kissing the corner of his mouth and the bridge of his nose and his eyes and as he moved against her she went awkwardly backwards and then down, half-stumbling, on to her knees and he went with her, still holding her, and she pulled at the open collar of his shirt and when the button refused to give she bit the underside of his lip, not hard, but hard enough and he moved his hand from inside her dress and touched her breast and she jerked back and clipped her head against the wooden edge of the sink and said, ‘Frank, I’m too old to do this on the kitchen floor.’

He got to his feet, suddenly embarrassed, but she took his hand and led him to the stairs and there was a moment when, as the old nursery rhyme says, they were neither up nor down, and when he might have pulled away, pulled back, come to his senses, had second thoughts; but she turned, mid-stair, and bending her face towards him she kissed him full on the mouth and long and after that there were no questions nor doubts nor hesitations.

‘Don’t close the door, Frank,’ she said, once they were inside the room. ‘It will be too hot.’

Kicking off her shoes and crossing past the end of the bed – a double bed with a patterned quilt in shades of green and white pillows resting up against a plain headboard – she drew the curtains closed.

Elder stooped to take off his shoes.

‘Frank, help me with these.’ She stood with her back to him while he fidgeted three round pearl buttons through their holes and unsnagged a loop of material from a small hook at the top of the dress. And then, stepping out of the dress, she stood facing him in knickers and a peach-coloured bra. Her thighs were stocky and round and her belly swelled and hung down a little and her breasts were wide and full.

‘Don’t stare, Frank. It’s rude.’

He smiled and got to unbuttoning his shirt and when she asked him if he wanted help with the rest said he did not.

‘Wait,’ she said, when he was down to his boxer shorts. ‘Let me do that.’

Sitting on the edge of the bed she lowered them till the elastic was just below his balls and took him quickly in her mouth, licking away the first drops of come, before taking the head in her mouth again and washing her tongue across it so slowly Elder was frightened he would finish there and then. Relinquishing him with a grin, she licked him deftly from tip to stem and then lay back on the bed, legs parted and knees slightly raised.

He made a channel through the wet cotton of her knickers with his tongue, then eased the material aside and, as she raised herself from the surface of the bed, ran his tongue back along the salt, pink line between the curls of dark hair, relishing the taste as she opened herself up to him, the slick salt taste and musky smell.

When she thought he might stop she set her hand on the back of his head and held him there, rocking back and forth against his face until, with a barely muffled scream, holding him fast between her legs, she came. And shook. And came again.

Perspiration ran down into Elder’s eyes and made them sting.

Releasing him, Helen angled herself round until, with a little manoeuvring on Elder’s part, they were lying sideways and face to face across the bed.

‘Jesus, Frank.’ She kissed the sweat from his eyebrows and tasted herself on his mouth and on his chin. ‘Jesus, that was…’ She laughed and held him. ‘I forget what that was.’

She smiled and laughed some more and Elder reached around and unfastened her bra and kissed her breasts which were fleshy and loose with nipples that were dark and large and which he kissed and teased between his teeth and when he slid one leg between hers she said, ‘Wait, just wait,’ and when Elder rolled away disappointed she said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a condom?’ He shook his head and she pushed herself off the bed and half-walked, half-hopped to what he assumed was the bathroom, returning moments later with a silver foil-wrapped rectangle. ‘I daren’t guess what the sell-by date is on this.’

♦

Not so very much later they were sitting up in bed, leaning back against the pillows, Helen smoking a cigarette.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘did the earth move for you?’

‘What?’

‘Isn’t that what they say? If it’s really good. The earth moved.’

‘I don’t know.’

She smiled. ‘I must have read it in some magazine. A hundred and one ways to describe your orgasm.’

Elder half-turned towards her, his hand on her arm. ‘How would you describe it?’

Helen laughed. ‘I think half the street’s got bloody subsidence, that’s what I think.’

He laughed with her and kissed her and they fooled around a little but their hearts weren’t in it, what they really wanted to do, both of them, was cuddle and that’s what they did.

Elder didn’t know which of them fell asleep first except that when he woke it seemed to be full dark outside and Helen was lying across him, a faint line of dribble running from one corner of her mouth down along his chest. Without waking her, he pulled the covers around her and kissed the top of her head and already he was thinking about what had happened and what, if anything, he had got himself into. Helen stirred against him and settled and he closed his eyes and imagined the distant rise and fall of water and tried not to think at all.

He must have fallen asleep again because when he opened his eyes Helen was coming back into the room wearing a towelling dressing-gown and holding a tray. She had been down to the kitchen and made tea and toast and carried it back, pot, cups, small plates, milk, sugar, butter, the whole works. In one pocket of her dressing-gown she had two teaspoons and a knife; in the other a small pot of black cherry jam.

‘I just love this, don’t you? Toast and jam and tea in bed. In winter, when it’s really cold, I steel myself and run downstairs and make it, then fetch it back up here.’

‘It’s not just for after sex, then?’

‘If it was I’d’ve starved long since.’

The tray was balanced on the bed between their legs and Helen was leaning down now to pour the tea.

‘It was great, though,’ he said, bending forward to kiss her shoulder. ‘Thank you.’

She looked at him. ‘Don’t be grateful, Frank.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

‘I don’t want to be thought of as social services, that’s all. Now drink your tea before it gets cold. And try not to leave crumbs in the bed.’

When she was through pouring them both a second cup, she said, a smile in her eyes, ‘So was there something you wanted to tell me or was this what you really came round for?’

‘No, there was something. I mean, it’s not definite, I don’t have any absolute proof, but I thought you should know all the same.’

‘For heaven’s sake, know what?’

He told her his suspicions about her daughter and Paul Latham, the circumstantial evidence and Latham’s denials. For some little time, Helen said nothing and then when she did it was, ‘I hope he was good to her, that’s all.’

‘That’s all?’

‘It was nearly fifteen years ago, Frank. What’s the point in getting angry now?’

‘I would have thought if he was taking advantage…’