Secrets (28 page)

Ethereal, like a ghost, Tess is passing along the landing after the first flight, the white of her vest and pants almost luminous. He's now reached the top of the stairs; his door is a little way down the corridor, in the opposite direction.

‘Night then,’ he says, holding onto the newel post.

She's about to climb the stairs to her floor.

She turns. ‘Night, Joe.’

And motion fails them at first because they find themselves rooted to where they stand, facing each other at either end of the landing, yards apart, both of them in the direction opposite to the one they'd intended to go. And then suddenly, motion liberates them, releasing their bodies without them having to think about putting one foot in front of the other. They have no awareness of bridging the distance of the landing. All they know is that they're gliding, they've floated in close and their lips are going to touch any second now. Joe's fingertips have found her jaw, her neck, and Tess's hands have alighted on his forearm, the centre of his chest. There's less light up here than downstairs, it's diffused but it's sufficient for them to see eye to eye, for Joe to dip his face as Tess raises hers, for their noses to gently nudge against each other until their lips whisper the overture of a kiss.

Then they have no further need of moonlight or sight because touch takes over. As the kiss deepens, as lips part to welcome in tongues, so featherlight fingertips change to probing, clasping, all-feeling. His hands hold her close in the small of her back, then flow up to her neck, along her collarbone, her cheek, her head, his fingers snagging on her scrunched-up hair. Her hands are sweeping up his arms, over the dip below his biceps, the rise and run of his shoulders, the strong curve of his back and up and over the band of muscle either side of his spine. She can sense his erection and drops her hand to touch it fleetingly through the cotton of his boxers. They pull apart and stare at each other; in this light their eyes are uniformly dark and glinting, in this light there's a sheen on their lips from each other's kiss.

Tess in a vest. Tess in a vest. Tess's nipples springing behind that vest. Joe is transfixed by them, he puts his hands over them and just keeps them there. In the cup of his hands, he can sense how her breathing quickens and it makes her breasts swell and fit themselves perfectly into his palms. He breaks off to kiss her again, holding the back of her neck and pulling her in close and sinking his mouth, his tongue down deep. Tess in a vest. He's as enthralled by the sight as by what the white cotton keeps out of sight. He tugs the vest down, not at the shoulder straps, but from the neckline. He pulls the cotton down until it's looped underneath her breasts and they are exposed. They are round and perky and, as he caresses one he sips the nipple of the other between his lips. And while he does so, Tess takes his head in her hands and pulls his hair through her fingers and she closes her eyes and thinks, I could stop right here for ever.

He takes his mouth away from her breast and kisses her again. Then he speaks, without breaking the bond between their lips, and it means she can actually feel his words as she hears them.

‘Will you sleep with me, Tess? Can I take you to bed?’

He takes her hand and leads her to his room.

She thinks, he sleeps with his curtains open.

He pulls his top over his head to reveal a torso that is manly but not intimidating. He sits on the edge of his bed and pulls her between his legs. He lifts her vest off and takes a moment to just look at her before he starts to kiss her stomach. His hands travel up and down the backs of her thighs, his tongue-tip dips into her belly button. He's feeling around to the fronts of her legs, up to the undulation of her waist, higher to her breasts; down again. As they lie down, they don't take their eyes off each other and they fold themselves into each other and wrap the covers around them. Tenderness and lust intermingle. The soft stroking soon enough leads to the ripping down of knickers and boxers and condom pack. Their breathing is audibly short, the instinct is primal and Tess suddenly wants to roll on top of Joe, open her legs and welcome him in deep. She cries out. It's insanely exquisite. Joe is abandoned to the pleasure, moving into her, tasting her, feeling her sex closing around him, sucking him deep as she comes, pulling his own orgasm out to mingle with the receding throbs of hers.

They stay there, fused, exhausted and exhilarated. They are spent and speechless but they continue to kiss. Joe and Tess have discovered they kiss each other with the same ease with which they talk and they find there's so much to say.

Chapter Twenty-three

Tess was woken by the dawn streaming in through the uncurtained windows of Joe's bedroom the next morning, pestering her face and diluting her sleep. She lay still, listening to a bicker of birds outside, to Joe breathing rhythmically next to her. She was lying in the crook of his arm, her face fitting the jigsaw dip just inside his shoulder. Her field of vision was filled with flesh and it was a novel sight indeed, one that she wanted to pore over. A little chest hair, a dark brown nipple, a couple of paler-hued moles. The steady rise and fall of his ribcage, a prominent collarbone. Without moving her head, she raised her eyes. Bristles on his jaw. She smiled – his morning kisses would be less smooth than those last night. His other arm was above his head and along the pillow and she gently took her hand and whispered it over the hair in his armpit before gently laying her arm along his chest. She didn't want to wake him, she just wanted to steal a little private time to look at him and to snuggle herself into the clarity and joy of the precise moment.

But then she heard Em. At first, just the happy little noises which made Tess feel wonderfully replete, as if there were no further gifts that could better her life just then. She was lying in a grand old
bateau-lit
bed, in a room with a view, in a magnificent old house, in the arms of a man for whom her feelings were intense, while listening to the jolly ramblings of her beloved young daughter. However, Em soon tired of being unanswered and so she made sure she wasn't unheard and her chatter turned to complaint and soon enough to hollering indignation. And for the first time in Em's life, Tess thought, shut up. Tess thought, I don't want to come to you, you'll have to wait, I want to be
here
. I want to lie here for longer; I don't want to share myself. I'm not coming.

Em was
not
having
that
.

Tess was not sure when the transition came but she found the impetus for leaving the bed had little to do with the fact that Em wanted her, more that she didn't want Joe to be irritated. Tess's needs and Em's need were colliding. She was going to her child not so much to comfort her but to keep her quiet.

‘Em,’ she protested as she scooped up the child, ‘couldn't you give Mummy a little peace and quiet? Some Mummy time?’ She changed the nappy. ‘Some grown-up time?’ She didn't look at the baby directly. ‘Some time for Mummy and Joe?’

From lover to mother, Tess could feel the shift. What was the way back? Plonk Em somewhere safe with a glut of rice cakes and sneak back into Joe's room? Impossible.

Tess went to her room and dressed while Em pulled out the contents of the bottom drawer. What am I meant to do now? Tess wondered. Do I go back to his bedroom with Em in tow? Take him up a cup of tea? Do I wait for him to surface? If he wakes and I'm not there, is the connection gone?

‘Was it the heat of the moment in the dead of night?’

Tess asked forlornly. ‘Em – not that. No, naughty Em. Give it to Mummy. Good girl.’

‘Woof.’

‘Yes, let's go and see how Wolf is feeling this morning.’

As they made their way down one flight of stairs, Tess cast a longing look down the corridor to Joe's room, before they descended the next flight. Dear God, let him wake up and want more.

Em didn't appear to notice the surgical lampshade contraption encasing the dog's face, nor the fact that his tail was now a fraction of its original length and the stump was sheathed in a wedge of bright green bandage. She didn't pay much attention that his foreleg was bandaged in blue to the elbow and that he was currently standing a little splayed and drunken like a newborn foal. Em just knew that the dog was back and that made her happy so she toddled over and grabbed her usual handful of coat that rose in a coarse roan tuft at the base of his neck.

‘Careful!’ Tess said, because Wolf looked as though he could be toppled but she saw that the dog was unconcerned. In fact, she thought he probably appreciated this gesture of normality more than the solemn visits from the midnight nursing staff who used to be his master and his master's house-sitter.

‘Breakfast?’ she asked.

They looked at her beseechingly.

She made them all eggs. Two for Wolf, hard boiled, which she fed him by hand because the walk to the kitchen had obviously been a bit much for him as he was now standing like a wind-hammered scarecrow and staring at the tiles. Em, meanwhile, stabbed buttered Hovis soldiers into a soft-boiled egg. Tess's egg remained unbashed on her plate, with triangles of toast and a mug of tea.

And then Joe came in and said, morning all, and he sat down, pulling Tess's plate over, tucking into her breakfast, mashing the egg onto the toast and taking hearty swigs of her tea.

‘Morning,’ she said, trying not to let a grin spoil her mock indignation. She made more toast, boiled another egg and guided Wolf to the back door. As she stood in the porch, watching Wolf dodder off for his ablutions, she put her hand on her chest and felt how her heart pounded. This was one of the best mornings in her life so far – and she hadn't a clue what to do next. Ultimately, Wolf solved the dilemma for her.

‘He did a wee!’ was what she announced even though she thought it was probably the stupidest thing to say.

But Joe just laughed. He'd finished his breakfast, or her breakfast. He rose from the table and took his plate to the sink. On the way back, he touched Em's curls. And then, as he passed by Tess, he put his hand on the back of her neck as he went, his touch gentle but emphatic, and he said, I'm going to have a shower. And there she stood, transfixed by the significance of his touch for long after she heard the tank belching out the hot water.

She turned to Em. ‘When you're a teenager,’ she told her, ‘and someone touches you like that, you'll be saying to me, Mum, I'm never going to wash again.’

But then she thought to herself how Joe's touch hadn't make her feel like a teenager, actually it had made her feel like a woman.

She turned to Em again. ‘When you were a baby, you'd go down for an after-breakfast nap, you know. For a good hour.’ She tapped Em on the nose. ‘And that's when Mummy could have a really long shower.’ She listened to the sound of Joe taking his. ‘More's the pity,’ she said to Em.

After dressing Em, Tess checked Wolf's dressings and as she did so, she wondered about the day ahead in view of the night just gone. Was she meant to loiter for Joe – might they spend time together today? Or was she meant to proceed with the day alone, and was last night just an anomaly? Her heart hurt at the thought of that. She scrambled around her memory for evidence to say otherwise.

But he wouldn't have touched my neck in the kitchen! He could have just said he was going to take a shower! In fact, he needn't have said anything!

But what was she meant to do? And why did it demand so much thinking and fretting? That can't be a good sign. She felt anxious.

In whose hands was it, to carry today what was formed last night?

Or was nothing formed – was it just a shag?

It hadn't felt that way to Tess. In her opinion, they'd made love.

‘But who am I to judge? It's been a long, long time for me.’

‘What has?’

Tess started and turned from squatting by Wolf in the hallway. Behind her, Joe was leafing through the post.

‘What's been a long, long time for you?’

She was stuck how to answer him. She couldn't think of anything clever, or even plausible, to say and the truth wasn't an option because it felt too risky to lay herself bare at this time in the morning.

It's been a long, long time since I nursed a dog.

It's been a long, long time since I saw that much post.

It's been a long, long time since I last saw my father.

It's been a long, long time since Em and I had an ice cream.

It's been a long, long time since I felt this way, Joe – happy and frantic and alive.

It's been a long, long time since I last had sex and, come to think of it, I don't think I've actually been made love to before.

As if. She wasn't going to be saying any of these things.

She felt suddenly shy and stupid. And because she felt shy and stupid, she sensed she'd gone red. So there she was, actually aware that only two minutes previously she'd been deeming herself a woman to whom Joe had made love, but now she was just standing there like a gormless, blushing teenager. She really didn't dare glance at him, but her body conspired against her and her eyes met his and he raised his eyebrow quizzically. All she could do was shrug at him. But he answered that with a wink; an easy, affectionate wink. And she thought, oh God, what shade of red have I gone now? So she said to him, I'm just going to take Em out for some fresh air, do you want anything? And he answered with another wink, this one unmistakably lascivious. And she thought, if I don't go right now, my face will look like beetroot and there'll be no more winking from Joe.

She meandered around town, absent-mindedly pushing the buggy here and there while focusing on her recollections of the night with Joe and trying not to taunt herself with what if it was a one-off. The girlfriend in France sprang into Saltburn out of nowhere. Not a girlfriend – a casual, sex-only set-up totally off Tess's moral radar. The thought of it made her shudder and she felt intimidated by it. Too shy to ask about it. She'd strolled right to the other side of town and suddenly she felt too far away, out of range, out of sorts. She began to walk home at some pace, feeling that she'd ventured too far and been gone too long. It was as if the further away she was from Joe, then the less vivid she felt herself to be. Like a cordless phone, she mused, taken too far from its base station.

‘I can't believe I'm comparing myself to a cordless phone.’

It didn't cross her mind that she might come across Seb, or that she could pop in on Lisa, or phone Tamsin reverse charges from that phone box over there and say, Tamz, you'll never guess what I did last night. Just then, to Tess, her
genius loci
centred around herself and Em and Joe and the house. Saltburn was irrelevant. She didn't notice what colour the sea was today, or what was going on along the beach, or how many people were on the pier, or how crowded the café was. She wasn't even aware, really, that she was in Saltburn with its Lisas and Sebs and shops that were now her locals. Her focus was fixed on a place she hadn't known existed until last night. It was a new location, one she was desperate to explore, one she felt compelled to return to and quickly. So she arrived back breathless from both the fast stomp uphill and the anticipation of regrouping with Joe.

He was in the kitchen making doorstop sandwiches. Wolf was in his toppled-scarecrow stance nearby, globs of liver in a semicircle around him. Tess assessed the scene and she felt a calm joy seep through her.

‘Oh, you cruel, cruel man, Mr Saunders,’ she said and she delighted in the return of her larkiness. ‘How can the poor dog reach the liver with that thing around his neck – it's as long as his face, you divvy.’

Joe looked at her. And then he looked at the dog and the liver. He looked at her again.

‘Did you just call me a
divvy
?’

But he didn't give her time to answer, he walked over and slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her in very close and pressed his lips against hers. His eyes were shut tight. She could see that. Hers closed when he licked along her lips and eased his tongue into her mouth. Then Em walked by and gave Joe a bit of a shove, and he and Tess pulled apart though Joe kept his arm around her. And at exactly the same time, Joe and Tess said, no! Don't eat that, Em! That's for Wolf.

As the evening progressed, the pleasure of sharing their space transformed into an almost agonizing thrill about the potential to make love again. How do we go from here, nattering over supper, to the bedroom? they both wondered. How do we move the conversation from who's washing up and who's drying to let's go to bed and whose room? Should I ask her – or should I wait for her to say she's calling it a night? Is he going to say something – he's been reading that book for bloody ages.