Chances (9 page)

Quick! Be wacky! Be clever!

But she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

‘Vita?’

‘I’m—’ I’m what? ‘I’m trying to think of something really clever and wacky to say. Mister Rick the Dick.’

Laughter. She’d made him laugh. She felt very pleased with herself. And then all of a sudden she was saying, Yes, OK, yes – a drink tonight? Sure, why not! And that was when Tim came in. Vita turned away from him to have a moment to properly end the conversation, and Tim thought, Has she just turned her back on me? Then he thought, Who’s she on the phone to? She’s gone all furtive. And when Vita ended the call and turned to him, he saw her face was quite flushed.

‘Who was that?’

‘That?’

‘On the phone, Vita.’

‘Oh, no one. No one. Just someone, actually, from the show yesterday. I might pop back into London tonight. For another – another meeting. A meeting-type drinks thing.’

‘Who was it?’

‘Oh, a new supplier.’

‘Called?’

‘Mouse in a House.’

‘The person?’

‘Oh, er, Rick Edwards?’ She said it as if she wasn’t entirely sure she had the right surname. And then she thought, Why on earth am I doing that? Michelle would kill me and Candy would say, Be loud be proud, or something.

‘And what does Rick Edwards want tonight that he couldn’t get yesterday?’

And Vita heard every word and she absolutely knew the answer and she couldn’t possibly say, Well, he probably wants to kiss with tongues tonight and who knows where that might lead.

‘Vita?’

And then she thought, Why not just tell Tim the truth. It’s all I ever did when we were together and as Candy would say, it’s good for my funds in the Bank of Karma. ‘He asked me out on a date.’

Tim had to take a moment to absorb the words but he couldn’t do anything about the fleeting look of shock that swiped over his face like a slap. Eventually, he nodded and changed the subject to how the show had gone in terms of business. And when Vita found she could tell him quite assertively about what she’d ordered, she also found no need to justify her actions. It felt as though she’d acquired some kind of coating, an emotional Teflon. Because when Tim tried to berate her, when he tried to ridicule what she’d ordered, the way she’d ordered and the deals she’d struck, his words slipped off her and slithered down between the gaps in the floorboards.

All the while, when Tim was talking, he was shouting inside his head, Some fucker is taking Vita on a date! Some trumped-up sod wants to bang my girl! And then he thought, But she’s not my girl. And then he thought, Oh God. And then he thought, I should have gone to the show, I knew I should have gone to the show. And then he knew the angry tone he was using at Vita was not allied in the slightest to his criticism of how she’d handled the show. The tone he was using was directed purely at the bewilderment he felt about someone else approaching her. Vita Whitbury, he thought, thirty-three years old. Pretty and funny. And single.

‘You do
not
go to a hotel – it’s seedy,’ said Candy.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Vita said. ‘I’m going in to meet him for a drink. And that’s it.’

‘Well, good for you. You need to see yourself as a virgin all over again.’

‘Good God, woman, I’m just looking forward to a little harmless flirting.’

‘The
frisson
,’ Candy said, rolling the word around her tongue as if it were delicious, ‘works wonders on self-esteem.’

‘A stomach full of butterflies.’

‘Call it what you will – and, if you’re not in too much of a jitter, can you try and sneak a photo of him onto your phone? Or record his voice? There’s bugger all on TV tonight.’

‘Candy!’

‘Seriously though – you have to promise to keep me updated. I need to know you’re OK.’

‘OK. I promise.’

‘Just a yum or a yuk or an omg will do.’

*

Michelle, however, texted Vita in capitals with no exclamation marks.

DO NOT GO BACK TO HIS – AND NOT JUST COS IT’S MILTON KEYNES.

It made Vita laugh.

Don’t worry – just a drink, Mush. U know me!

Michelle then requested Vita simply a
or a
or even a
at some point during the evening.

‘How cute do you look!’

For Vita, Rick’s warm smile, the sparkle in his eyes, the compliment, the hand in the hollow of her back while he kissed her on the cheek close to her mouth, justified everything. Closing early – even though a customer was just about to come in. Not stopping to chat with elderly neighbours keen to do so. Ransacking her wardrobe and changing three times before settling on the shortish flippy skirt, a fitted white T-shirt, denim jacket for later on and cowboy boots. Candy called it her girly rock ’n’ roll look and Vita always felt upbeat in it.

The Flask pub in Highgate had been an easy Tube journey from King’s Cross. She felt relaxed, much more so than yesterday. Actually, she felt buoyant. It was a balmy early evening with just the minor irritation of a few arrogant wasps until dusk saw them vanish. Vita liked everything; she liked the chatting, she liked her drink, the snacks, and she liked the look of herself each time she checked her reflection in the loo. She also liked Rick. He was charming and flattering and easy to flirt along with. She pinched him smartly as he went over the details of his trick phone call that morning, repeating it all, laughing, mimicking her. There was an easy intimacy, eye contact she didn’t feel shy about, an air of anticipation that caused her no chill.

‘So tell me about your ex,’ he said with no preamble.

And suddenly Vita didn’t want Tim anywhere near any of this, she didn’t want talk of him to taint her feeling of lightness, to intrude on the time she was having, to flatten the vivaciousness she felt. ‘Oh, you know,’ she said, ‘it was just one of those things. We just grew apart, it just fizzled out. It’s cool.’ She shrugged.

‘God, Kathy turned into the ex-from-hell,’ Rick said, surprisingly darkly. ‘Mind you, she was a nightmare girlfriend as it was, so I had it coming.’

Vita’s vodka and cranberry suddenly tasted a little sour. ‘Breaking up isn’t easy,’ she said, wanting to sound genuinely magnanimous and not hackneyed.

‘Certainly isn’t,’ Rick said, ‘especially when she’s taking so long to get the message. Move on, woman! Get a life!’

Vita took a thoughtful sip. It wasn’t just the details which she didn’t want to hear, it was the disparaging tone of voice. Really, she should have listened hard to both. But tonight had a purpose: a preset objective she was determined to fulfil even at the expense of niggling common sense. She needed him to be nice Rick, attractive smiling teasing Rick, so she hauled the conversation back round to their industry and indulged him in talking about himself until their own pasts no longer featured. She was a little tipsy and he told her that her giggle was sexy and it was so cute the way her nose crinkled when she laughed. And she said to him, You’re just saying that to get me into bed. And before she could ask herself whether she’d really said that out loud, Rick was answering her.

‘You’re not wrong there,’ he was saying, running his hand along her thigh. ‘Actually, I’m hoping to shag you senseless – but I do genuinely like the way your nose crinkles up when you smile.’

What do you say to that?

Where do you go from there?

It was out, in the open, and for Vita words were as seductive as physical foreplay.

‘And you? Do you want to?’ he asked her, with a nudge, his hand on her inner thigh now, partly on her flesh, partly on her skirt. ‘Hey?’

She took a sip of her drink, sucking hard through the straw, the glass very cold against her hand. She swallowed. Looked at him. Nodded. Drank again. Can you be relaxed about all this and yet feel so very nervous at the same time? she wondered. Was that OK?

‘I like your nose too,’ she said.

‘Your place or mine then?’ he asked.

Now, neither Michelle nor Candy had mentioned Pear Tree Cottage, had they? They’d just forbidden her from going to Milton Keynes or a hotel. And, sitting there in Highgate, denim jacket on because it was just on the intrusive side of chilly now, Vita thought of her little house waiting for her to return; a small patient old building which really had looked after her these past few months, a resolutely benign place despite her ambivalence towards it, protective walls providing space, peace and refuge despite her reluctance to embrace it as home.

‘Mine,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back to mine.’

The journey back had been a little awkward in that sex was a foregone conclusion which meant that spontaneity was now precluded. The frisson and the feistiness were somewhat redundant. The butterfly wings were stilled by the slightly self-conscious hand-holding on the crowded carriage of the late-night train.

‘Night bus?’ she suggested, when they’d arrived.

‘Are you joking?’ Rick pinched her bottom. They headed for the neon-drenched mini-cab office, waiting in a queue until a slightly smelly car took them the few miles to Vita’s home.

‘Nice,’ said Rick, at nothing in particular as she showed him in and led the way through to the kitchen.

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘What do you have?’

And then Vita realized she only had tea, coffee, milk and half a carton of orange juice or two miniatures Michelle had swiped from some mini-bar or other. Michelle always brought the little bottles for Vita: booze, shampoo, bath foam.

‘Well, that’s some choice!’ Rick assessed Malibu or Tia Maria. ‘You choose.’

‘No – you,’ said Vita, ‘you’re my guest.’

‘No, honestly, I insist.’

This was all a little awkward.

‘OK,’ she said and she plumped for the Malibu.

Rick sniffed the Tia Maria and then took a bold swig as though it was medicine. ‘God, woman – that’s gross!’

‘Would you like tea then? Or coffee?’

‘No, honestly, I’m fine.’ He was looking around. It was only a small house but how the hell would he get her from here to up there, to bed. Meanwhile, Vita cursed herself for having no ability to play music, for having lights that didn’t dim, for not having candles strategically placed. She thought about offering to share her earphones with him but whereas such an offer might have been wacky and well received earlier in the evening when spirits were high and the chase was in full pursuit, she thought it might fall a little flat now. She put the radio on, but it was Radio 4 and sensible voices discussing world news were not conducive to imminent seduction. She fiddled with the tuner, rejecting all the music she found until Rick was behind her, his hand stilling her, his lips at the nape of her neck, kissing, kissing, kissing.

And Vita thought to herself, Oh my God, any minute now. And she let her hand drop away from the radio and she didn’t think about how ridiculously coconutty her mouth must taste and she didn’t stop to think back on the stiltedness of the last couple of hours. The fact that there was a man not just in her kitchen but close up against her body, desiring her, desperate to take her to bed, swept all her reservations out of the room, out of the house, like light dust. Pubs and palaces in Muswell Hill and Highgate were one thing – a kind of stage on which both she and Rick had been able to act, to play, to posture; but journeying home and now being here and on the verge of going to bed, was another thing altogether. But Vita put it all to one side because her body felt great, really great. It wasn’t about opening her mind, it was about closing down the racket of thoughts and opening up her body. She was tingling and throbbing and hot, not so much from her desire specifically for Rick, as from a very physical yearning for human touch, to be wanted and ravished by another person after such a long period without. His attention, his hunger, was the thrill; it was an ego massage which in itself felt even better than her breasts being fondled.

‘Where’s your bedroom?’

‘Upstairs.’

‘Lead on.’

So she did. Halfway up the stairs, his hand was suddenly up between her legs, making her stop. She let him fondle her for a moment without turning, his hand rubbing at the gusset of her underwear, his fingers probing at the elastic but snagging a little. No, let’s not do it on the stairs, it’s all a bit clumsy. This has to be just right.

She moved away and led on to her bedroom. The curtains were still open and he looked lovely in the moonlight. The shadows of his cheekbones, his eyes dark, his mouth a little open, searching for hers. He was grasping her against him, his tongue leaping inside her mouth, the first deep kiss she’d had in months, the first deep kiss she’d had in over a decade with someone other than Tim. She lapped him up, the excitement of the newness, the relief of the differentness from Tim’s taste or Tim’s technique. The smell of Rick. The feel of his back through his shirt. The unmistakable mound of a hard-on straining behind denim, the thrill of that.

‘Come on, baby.’

He eased her top off, put his hands on her waist and sunk his face into her modest cleavage while he unhooked her bra.

‘Oh, yes!’ he murmured approvingly and she wanted to giggle. It sounded a bit silly, but he said it again as he took first one nipple to his mouth, then the other. Alternating over and over again as if they were children who just must have absolutely equal attention.

‘Come on, baby.’

Come on what, Vita thought for a moment. She unbuckled his belt but then decided she ought to do his shirt first. She swept it away from his body, revealing a very smooth torso: slim, nice. She put her lips against his collarbone, just leaving them pressing lightly along its length as she continued with his trousers. Crisp boxers. Suddenly she felt surprisingly nervous about seeing the cock behind them. Before she could dither, he’d pulled them down and it sprang out, reassuringly normal and satisfyingly hard. Funny that she should be surprised that actually, it wasn’t much different from Tim’s, or those of the boyfriends she’d had before him. All much of a muchness, the penises of the world. The same to be said for the steps of this mating dance that people do. No big deal, really.

Being naked had taken Rick up a gear; his hands were all over her and Vita just let herself be felt, fondled and grasped. He pushed her down on to her bed, his hand gently at her throat, his fingers up inside her knickers working her wetness, easing between the lips and straight up inside her. She gasped. He pulled her knickers down hard, nudged her legs apart, knelt between them and she watched as he faffed with the condom before grabbing the base of his cock and brushing the tip up against her sex, over and over until she grabbed his arms and pulled him down on top of her, into her, deeper and deeper.

I. Am. Having. Sex. With. Someone. New.

And it felt really good.

I want to come. I want to come.

She was so close, twisting against him, screwing herself down on him screwing her.

And then she suddenly thought,
What was that?

What the heck was
that
?

The orgasm subsided.

What’s he
doing
?

She didn’t want to think, Tim never sounded like that.

And she didn’t want to think, I don’t like it.

And she really didn’t want think, Is this the real Rick? Not after spending all day, since his phone call that morning, imagining the real Rick to be an intense and skilled lover.

Right now she was aware that she shouldn’t be thinking anything at all. She should just be feeling. So she writhed and closed her eyes and concentrated on the sensation, ran her hands along his body, turned on by the weight of him on top of her, the saltiness on his skin when she sucked his neck, the sound and the feel of the slap of his balls against her buttocks. She sought out his mouth, slipped her tongue in and entwined it with his, bit at his lips, breathed against his ear, sipped his ear lobes. He was humping hard, bucking into her, her right nipple in a pinch that blurred the pain-pleasure boundary. He was hot, hard, sweaty. God, she could come. She really could.

And she was about to – but then there it was again!

What on earth?

Why is he
doing
that?

And as her orgasm wilted and ebbed away, his came and though she took some titillating satisfaction from feeling the intensity of his spurts she just couldn’t prevent herself from feeling deflated, from thinking, Oh stop it stop it please hurry up and shut up.

Please please hurry up.

Ultimately, it was like eating out – and having a seriously disappointing meal while your partner is happily licking their plate clean.

* * *

‘Jesus Christ, what the fuck is that?’

Rick sat bolt upright a few hours later.

‘It’ll be my parrots,’ Vita said sleepily. He’d turned out to be a snorer. Vita felt as if she’d finally drifted off only five minutes ago after hours trying to nudge him and poke him subtly before hissing out a sharp shh! Hours lying there wondering how on earth she was going to recount it all to the hopeful Michelle and Candy.

‘Your
what
?’

I’m going to have to wake up.

‘Some people have partridges in their pear tree, but it seems I have parrots in mine,’ she said.

Rick scrambled from the bed and looked out of the window. ‘Christ alive,’ he said. ‘They’re not parrots though, they’re parakeets, but what the fuck are they doing in your garden at this time? What are they doing here at all?’

‘I don’t know.’ Vita propped herself up, taking her other hand to her head, smoothing her hair and hoping it wasn’t in as much disarray as Rick’s, which was positively bouffant. ‘They only recently arrived. They seem to like the unripe pears.’

‘That’s the craziest thing,’ he said, coming back to bed.

And Vita thought, Not half so crazy as the concept that there’s a new man in my bed. Crazier still that, actually, I’d rather have it back to myself.

The new man was starting to kiss her, not remotely self-conscious about morning breath. She closed her eyes. His hands were lovely and soft and his skin so smooth, he was pleasingly muscled and his cock was hard again, and hopeful. And Vita thought, Let’s give him a chance. Let’s not fixate about the first time. Perhaps it was nerves. Perhaps the Tia Maria didn’t agree with him. And she welcomed him back inside her.

Good sex, she soon realized, was as much about good aural compatibility as it was good oral. However, the sound of him overruled everything else that was going on. He might be a sight for sore eyes but God he was an earache. She thought momentarily about moaning and gasping loudly to drown him out but then she had to bite his shoulder to stop herself from giggling. Ultimately, she decided just to give up, to go through the motions – and to put it all down to experience.

‘Did you come?’ he asked, panting as he flopped away from her and onto his back.

‘Did you feel me?’ Vita didn’t want to lie outright.

‘Yeah – yeah, I did. That was fantastic. You’re one horny bitch, you are.’ And then he laughed. ‘Joke.’ He started kissing her tenderly, all over her face. ‘You’re so lovely.’

Vita, though, cringed. You can’t experience a true level of tenderness after two days, she said silently. The kisses felt empty and annoying. Then she felt mean. And then she felt annoyed. And then she felt a bit depressed.

The parrots or parakeets, whatever they were, were still shrieking outside. Rick put a pillow over his head and did that boy-thing of falling promptly back to sleep. Vita lay there, sticky and unfulfilled. She was cross with herself, cross with him. For a moment she thought, I bet Tim has been having better sex than this. Then she thought, That really was crap sex. And then she thought, how could she be cross with Rick? Simply because he didn’t make love in the same way as the Rick of her imaginings? That wasn’t his fault. She was cross that sex with Tim had been much better. And that wasn’t Rick’s fault either.

But his bizarre, dodgy French accent?

She’d never heard anything like it.

She didn’t think it was an affectation but God how it had grated on her ears and turned her off. And she felt really deflated because she wanted to really like Rick and to fancy him rotten but, though the last two days had been so liberating, so intoxicating, such fun, she felt neither. She just felt teary and very, very tired. And then she told herself off, told herself to give the man a chance, for God’s sake. But disappointment dropped down through her heavily just like the falling pears outside. She hadn’t been in this situation before and she just wasn’t sure what to do next.