One Night Stand (18 page)
Authors: Julie Cohen
‘I don’t really imagine he’s the type to read personal ads, either. How about hiring a private detective?’
‘Are there private detectives in Reading? That would imply there were shady and exciting things going on here, wouldn’t it?’
‘I’m sure even Reading has its dark side.’
I considered it. ‘No. It’s too weird. It involves telling my life history to a total stranger, and paying him for it. I’d rather try everything else first. How about getting Jerry to have an eighties pop-star lookalike competition to see if he turns up?’
‘And you think hiring a private detective is weird.’
‘It would be easier if someone knew him,’ I said. ‘I mean, people can’t just appear and then disappear, can they?’
‘June seems to do quite a good job at it.’ He finished his brownie and took another. ‘With your luck the two of them are shacked up together somewhere hot and sunny.’
The image of June and George getting cosy in a deck chair by a pool swam before my eyes. The picture niggled something in the back of my brain that didn’t quite feel like jealousy.
‘Wait a second,’ I said slowly. ‘June . . . June said something one day, that she knew one person in Reading and he looked like George Michael.’ I widened my eyes and looked at Hugh. ‘She does know George. I can’t believe I forgot.’
The fact had probably been shoved aside by her revelation that she was my mother, closely followed by my discovering my own impending motherhood.
‘Okay, so that means all we have to do is to find June.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘Well, at least we know her name.’
‘We also know that June is a professional at disappearing. She used to do it for months at a time when I was growing up. It drove Mu—Sheila wild.’
I sighed. When she’d disappeared she hadn’t only been abandoning the family home. She’d been abandoning her child, as well. Me.
‘I’ll ring Sheila and ask if she knows anything,’ I said, ‘though I doubt she will. Did June say anything to you about where she was going?’
‘No, she didn’t say anything about that.’
Of course, June and Hugh had been too busy getting busy to talk.
I stood up. ‘I’ll go call and take another look around my house to see if she left anything that might give me a clue.’
‘Okay,’ Hugh said and he rose to walk me to the door. He always did that, even though the location of the front door was obvious, doubly so because I lived in an identical house to his. It was one of his little politenesses, probably one of the many ways he charmed people.
Because it was charming.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, and I stood next to him in the doorway and noticed he had a small crumb of brownie on his upper lip. Just on the curve of it, on the left side, the side that wasn’t split.
I lifted my hand and then put it down. Writer’s imagination, hormones, whatever: my fingers tingled with wanting to touch him.
Hugh won’t notice if I brush it off
, I thought.
It’s the sort of thing I’ve done a hundred times before and he never noticed it because I never noticed it. And he won’t know that this time, it’s different.
, I thought.
It’s the sort of thing I’ve done a hundred times before and he never noticed it because I never noticed it. And he won’t know that this time, it’s different.
I lifted my hand again. With the tip of my finger I stroked the crumb off his lip. His skin was warm and soft. I could feel his breath on my finger.
The crumb stuck to my finger and without thinking I did what I wanted to, which was put it in my own mouth. The whole action, the whole idea, was so erotic that I didn’t taste the brownie crumb. I tasted Hugh.
For a moment his brown eyes met mine, and of course it was accidental, but for that split second I didn’t only taste Hugh with my mouth, I tasted him with my entire body.
I dropped my gaze.
‘Okay well, see you later, take care of that eye.’ I hurried out of his house and down the street and didn’t look back to see if he was watching me.
I needed air. Lots and lots and lots of air, and preferably also a brain transplant. If I kept on this way Hugh was going to notice that something was up and things were going to become awkward.
My mobile rang and I answered it, grateful for the distraction from my lust, till I saw Sheila’s number.
‘Hi.’
‘Eleanor? How are you?’
I’m pregnant
, I didn’t say. Again.
, I didn’t say. Again.
‘I’m fine. How are you?’
‘Oh, the usual, the whole cake-sale issue has blown up again, this time it’s Mrs Coady on some sort of gluten-free high horse, but Richard says—’
‘Who’s Richard?’
There was a moment of silence, during which I could picture Sheila’s expression perfectly. ‘Don’t you remember, the new vicar? I told you—’
‘Oh yeah,’ I said, as if I had no more pressing things on my mind than Upper Pepperton’s new vicar. ‘Sorry. I thought he was called Roger.’
‘Oh goodness no. Imagine. Roger the vicar.’
It was a crack Stanley would have made, and Sheila and I both laughed. For a split second I wondered why I was surprised about laughing and then I remembered I was angry with Sheila and keeping secrets from her.
‘I was just going to call you,’ I said. ‘I was wondering if you’d heard from June.’
‘I was going to ask you that!’ She laughed again, but this time there was a stiffness to it. I thought of asking her what was wrong, but it occurred to me that she might be uncomfortable because I was being uncomfortable, and if I asked her questions she’d start asking me them, too.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but I’m trying to get in touch with her. Do you know where she’s gone? She, uh, left something of hers behind.’
As I said it the guilt dropped on me. Not only had I gone out and got pregnant like June, now I was flat-out lying to Sheila. Like June.
I was more like June than I’d ever thought. Pity it was only in the bad ways.
‘I don’t,’ Sheila said. ‘In fact, there have been several young men who’ve come round asking where she is. Not that I would ever tell them. And Winnie next door told me she saw someone lurking around the house on Friday when I was at my book club.’
‘Did any of them have a beard?’
‘Well, yes. Some of them are quite scruffy.’
‘Scruffy’ didn’t describe George. My hopes sank. ‘Do you have any of her old phone numbers? Maybe someone there knows where she’s gone.’ I ducked into a stationer’s shop and picked up a pad and pen.
Sheila obligingly went through her address book and gave me several phone numbers and addresses, which I scribbled down in the queue for the till. June had moved around a lot in the past few years, especially considering that she probably hadn’t given her mother most of her details.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ I said, without thinking, after she’d given me the numbers, and then I stopped. ‘I mean, Sheila.’
There was a silence on the other end, and then Sheila said, ‘I’m still your mum, Eleanor.’
I remembered it all: the cuddles at night, the scrapes kissed better, the meals on the table. The arguments behind closed doors meant to protect me. The teenage fantasies about being adopted, about coming from another, better, more exciting family, a family that understood me. The security blanket she had washed and stitched and washed till I was twelve years old.
She was the only model of motherhood I had; the only model I could follow.
There were no doubts about it: she was going to be disappointed in me.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I’ll ring you if I find June.’
I hung up.
16
The Chancellor’s brown eyes gleamed at Lucy with a heat greater than the candles that lit the room, greater than the flames that roared in the fireplace.
All her dreams, all her desires were coming to fruition at last.
‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘I want you.’
His beautiful, scarred mouth smiled, and even in the flickering candlelight she could see the shadow of the bruise that blackened his eye. Wounds gained in her defence, for her pleasure.
She lay on her bed, transfixed by the sight of his tall, lanky body.
Slowly, he removed his shirt, his chest appearing inch by inch as he undid his buttons. His skin was golden in the firelight. A sensation grew inside her inexorably, rising from her stomach up into her throat as he divested himself of his trousers and his pants and approached her, gloriously naked, every bone and muscle and inch of skin perfect. His erection, huge, thick and hot, swayed towards her.
Lucy’s hands flew to her throat.
‘Jesus Christ, will you get the hell away from me with that thing before I throw up,’ she gagged, and only just had time to reach the bin before she puked all over her satin lingerie.
I groaned and pushed the keyboard away from me. I tried to take a sip of the ice-cold water that was the only thing I could stand the thought of right now, but the glass suddenly seemed to have a sickening, evil, hitherto-unknown smell of its own.
The mere idea of sex made me shudder. All that touching, and sweating, and panting, and heaving. All that hair and liquid. And why?
So it could get you pregnant and make you feel worse than you’d ever felt in your life.
I stood up and wandered downstairs. It was nine o’clock on a Friday night, a rare weekend night off from my pub job, and although over the past few days I’d been so tired that I could practically sleep standing up, right now I felt too queasy to sleep. I flicked on the television and surfed through the channels, but the movement and the light on the screen made me feel even sicker.
I pushed on my shoes and went next door, on the off chance.
‘Hugh,’ I said when he opened the door, ‘I don’t know why they call it morning sickness because it’s with me all the bloody time.’
He stepped aside and I came in. The scent of baking filled my nostrils and therefore my being: sweet and gingery. My stomach did a tentative roll, decided it actually quite liked the smell of ginger, and settled back down for now.
‘I thought you’d be out,’ I said.
‘I decided to stay in and make biscuits.’ He watched as I dropped heavily on to his couch. Two weeks had healed his face from his encounter with not-George, though the framed clipping from the
Post
on his coffee table commemorated the event.
Post
on his coffee table commemorated the event.
I spotted something else on his coffee table. ‘Your phone’s off the hook.’
‘Oh is it?’ He went into the kitchen, feigning nonchalance, and came back with a plate of ginger biscuits. ‘Want one of these?’
I took one and toyed with it till my stomach could decide whether it wanted one or not. ‘You’re in on a Friday night alone with the phone off the hook?’
‘I’m not alone any more.’ He joined me on the couch and ate a biscuit. ‘Not bad. So how long is the morning sickness going to last?’
‘They say it ends after the first trimester, so I’ve got three weeks to go.’ The word ‘trimester’ felt weird in my mouth. I’d never said it before. I’d only just learned it from a pregnancy-for-idiots guidebook I’d smuggled into my house. I’d been reading it in small spurts, when I felt brave. Mostly it sat under my bed, three hundred pages of mystery and barely formed dread in a yellow cover.
‘What does the midwife say?’
‘I can’t remember. I was too freaked out when I saw her. The whole visit is a blur.’
Hugh frowned. ‘Listen, I said I’d be happy to come along with you. I’d be another pair of ears, at least.’
I shook my head. Like ‘trimester’, ‘midwife’ was a new word for me, and when I’d made the appointment I’d expected it to be with a large, bosomy woman in her fifties, with iron-grey hair and apple cheeks. That’s what the title implied: something like a fishwife crossed with the Wife of Bath. Imagine my surprise when Maggie the midwife turned out to be Scottish, slender, strawberry blonde, and freckled in an intensely cute way. Her ring-less left hand told me that whatever her profession, she wasn’t a wife at all.
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