Damage (9 page)

“He did. Just like that. Maybe not word for word, but as good as.”

He’d said that no matter how hard he resisted he just couldn’t stop being captivated by her, that she was the most utterly enchanting, beautiful complication he could imagine.

“Too smooth by half,” Ruby said now. “I told you before. He’s got a reputation. Treats women like crap. Picks them up and dumps them again, sooner than blink. Don’t you let him talk his way into your knickers, sis’, okay?”

“Of course not,” said Holly, hurriedly. “What d’you think I’m
like
?”

All she had to do was close her eyes and everything rushed back. The weight of him on top of her. The hard, lean-ness of his body. The wet heat erupting between them.

“It’s not what you’re like that bothers me,” said Ruby. “It’s what
he’s
like.”

Holly laughed. “We talked,” she said. “Most of the evening, he sat at the bar while I worked and we had one of those conversations where you get interrupted and then you just pick it up again where you’d left off. He actually seemed genuinely interested in me. In what I thought, what I do, what I want.”

“I bet that’s what he tells all the girls.”

§

Later, when she lay there still wide awake, that thought kept sneaking back in.

She wasn’t like all the others, he’d said. She’d got into his head. He couldn’t resist her no matter how much he tried, he’d said.

Yes, he would call her, he’d said.

I bet that’s what he tells all the girls.

She couldn’t stop thinking about him, and about what had happened that night.

She couldn’t work out what it was that he had, what it was that drew her so relentlessly.

The magnetism, the looks, the complex layers of vulnerability and sensitivity hidden beneath a brusque exterior. The more she thought, the harder it was to pin down.

This seemed so much more than just a casual, spontaneous thing.

I bet that’s what all the girls think.

§

Up early the next morning, the village green was heavy with a silvery coating of dew as Holly headed over to the Dwyers’ for her weekly ironing and cleaning session there, before a quick change and in to lectures for the afternoon.

She’d finally managed to sleep last night, but now she was exhausted, her limbs heavy, her body aching. Partway across the green, she paused, trying to get her bearings. The big oak trees, over to one side, deep banks of fallen leaves spread beneath them.

She remembered the bite of bark against her back, the dry crunch of the leaves beneath her body. And then, later, the crushed leaves sticking to her sweat-slick skin. Brushing herself down as she dressed.

So long ago.

How long does a guy leave it before calling, or at least sending a text message?

Ruby would know. Her worldly little sister.

But this was still so new to Holly.

She couldn’t resist the urge to pluck her phone from her bag. Nothing. There had been no overnight text, and clearly 6.30 in the morning was too early.

She tucked her phone away again and hurried across the green, leaving a trail of footprints in the dew-soaked grass. She wouldn’t keep checking. She was determined not to be that girl, the one who hung on every exchange, her life in suspension while she waited for some kind of contact.

§

“I’m just one of his tarts, aren’t I? That’s what he calls them. Treats them like something disposable. Throwaway.”

She was sitting in a window seat at The Bull with Karen, fiddling with a tattered beer mat, her bottle of summer berry cider untouched on the table between them.

“Are you wanting the sensitive, diplomatic answer, or the truth?”

“Since when have you ever done sensitivity?” The two of them laughed, and finally Holly took a mouthful of her drink. She’d told Karen everything. It would be easy to think of her cousin as a kind of mother-figure, but that wasn’t quite it: she’d never have confessed to a bout of
al fresco
animal passion on the village green to her mother, after all.

“Okay, then.” Karen took a long drink before going on. “My only dealings with him, he’s been professional and polite. Even when he’s sacking his cleaners.”

“So he’s efficient about being a bastard?”

“You could say that. A gentleman bastard. He has a reputation as a bit of an easy touch. Lots of hangers on, lots of flashy parties. Like he’s looking for something.”

“He’s hiding,” said Holly. Karen looked at her oddly. “He’s hiding in the middle of a crowd. His life went off the rails when his wife died.” Sarah, he’d called her. “Ever since then he’s lost interest in things. In the world, in his business, in looking after himself. And no: I’m not looking for someone else who needs looking after!” She’d seen Karen’s accusing look.

It wasn’t his weakness she was drawn to, although she was curious and sympathetic to his difficulties. It was those flashes, those moments when she was in his arms and her body just melted into his. The flashes of animal intensity that sometimes stole over his look. Those transitions, where tender became wild, or where intense passion became something so much softer and more intimate. It was the man buried beneath all those damaged layers that drew her so powerfully.

Karen was watching her, studying her features, and so Holly shrugged, and said, “I don’t know. I’m not claiming to
understand
any of this.”

“Don’t over-analyze, Holly, okay? Jesus, if anyone deserves to live a little it’s you. But remember one thing, okay?”

Holly raised an eyebrow and waited.

“Use a fucking condom, all right?”

§

She should have known Tommy would go all psycho on her again. Sometimes he would do that, get just
too
intense.

Back when they’d been together his intensity had been a striking thing at first: the realization that she could make someone feel so passionately about her was a startling and incredibly flattering thing. It had been a heady experience. But when she’d realized it was more a petty insecurity thing on Tommy’s part, it had started to grate. Wanting to know where she was when she wasn’t with him. Hating it when she had friends from outside their old friendship group. Hating that she stayed on at college when he dropped out, and that she had wanted to go to university and broaden her horizons.

Back then, one of their final arguments had taken place as Holly waited at the village bus stop to head into town for the evening. The look in his eyes, like a scared animal. “Why, Holly? Why am I not enough?”

That had been such a pivotal moment, when she’d stood there and realized he’d hit the nail on the head. He wasn’t enough. He just
wasn’t
.

The bitter irony was that until he’d put his fears into words she hadn’t even realized.

She’d leaned forward on her toes, hands on his shoulders, and kissed him on the cheek. Poor Tommy. He didn’t really understand why he was so angry and frustrated. He didn’t understand that it cut both ways: he wasn’t enough for her any more, and she wasn’t enough for him.

For a moment, he’d misread her action, and his hands had leapt to her waist, enclosing her in their firm grip, but then she’d stepped back, turned as the bus approached, and skipped in through the door as soon as it opened.

And now... Friday night and he had that look again. That mixture of assertiveness that he probably felt was manly but was in truth such an adolescent thing, and the spark in his eyes that said he didn’t really understand what was happening, why he was feeling like this.

Maybe it was unfair of her to think of it as ‘going all psycho’, but it was a phrase Ruby had used way back and it had stuck in Holly’s mind. Defiant puppy was probably a better, if unkind, description for Tommy as he stood there in the Bull, blocking her way through to the kitchen.

“It’s not fair,” he said.

Was that the best he could do?

“What isn’t?” Holly kept her tone brusque, to the point.

“This. You.”

“Look, Tommy. I don’t know what’s suddenly bugging you, but now’s not the time. I have to get through there and pick up a lasagne and a sirloin, medium-rare, for table ten before they get cold.”

She gave him her ‘Don’t mess with me now’ look – eyebrows scrunched, eyes narrowed, lips pursed – and he buckled instantly. He stepped aside and then she was in the kitchen, the doors swinging shut behind her, and she could wonder what on Earth had got into Tommy tonight, apart from a pint too many of Brains SA.

§

Later, when the place was more quiet and Holly was on a break, she went over and sat with him at the end of the bar.

“Hey there, Tee,” she said. “So what’s eating you?”

He wouldn’t make eye contact. He looked away, then down into his beer, and shrugged. He’d clearly had long enough to calm down and realize what a fool he’d been, and now he had the decency to feel at least a little shamefaced. It was so sweet that he still had some kind of feelings for her, but really, she thought they’d both moved on a long time ago. She’d been through so much in the last three years; she was a completely different person now.

“You’ve got to move on, Tommy,” she said gently, and she would have left it that, but he looked up now, so she went on, “You can’t keep looking out for me.”

“I have,” he said. “I
have
moved on. But that doesn’t mean I have to stop caring about you. It’s not easy to just stand back and watch you getting hurt.”

“Nobody’s hurting me, Tommy.”

“Him. Blunt. I’ve seen how you are around him, or even just when someone mentions his name. You’re doing it now. Your first reaction... I recognize that reaction, Holly, even when you realize what you’re doing and try to smother it.”

It took a lot to make Holly angry, but right now Tommy had just hit all the right buttons.

“Look, Tommy. I’ve had enough of this, okay? I like having you as a friend, but the time for anything more than that is long past. I don’t need you to be looking out for me, or jealously protecting my interests, or whatever the Hell it is that you’re doing. I’m a big girl now. I can make my own choices, and if that means making my own mistakes then I’m going to do that and I hope I’m going to learn from them.”

Instead of cutting him off, her words seemed to provoke that outraged defiance in him even further. “You don’t want to be making your mistakes with someone like Blunt,” he said. “You’ve seen what he’s like. He just uses people and throws them away. Or worse–”

“‘Worse’?”

“Come on, are you telling me you haven’t Googled him? All the stories about that car crash? The rumors that it was him driving and he just rearranged everything so his dead wife got the blame and he wouldn’t get charged?”

“You said it, Tommy. Rumors. You don’t think that was all investigated by the coroner at the time?”

And that was when she was reminded again of that last row at the bus stop. That pivotal moment, where Tommy had pushed too far and in his own clumsy way had made things so much clearer for her.

Back then, he had made her suddenly understand that their relationship was over.

Now...

She’d spent all day trying to put Blunt from her mind, trying not to go over and over what had happened that night. Trying not to be that girl who’s just waiting for the call.

She looked at Tommy, his tangled, confused face. He was still in that adolescent place, his head full of angst and his own self-importance. But Holly didn’t need any of that, and he’d helped her understand. She needed something more grown up, something so different to anything Tommy could offer.

“Go home,” she said to him now. “Go home and stop obsessing. Okay? I’m none of your business any more. Nicholas Blunt’s none of your business. Go home and drink plenty of water so you don’t have a hangover in the morning, and then just–” she’d fought hard not to say it but suddenly the words just blurted out “–grow the Hell up, Tommy, okay?”

It was still only mid-evening, but The Bull was quiet for a Friday and Robert was fine about Holly slipping away. “You’ve got my number,” she said. “Just give me a shout if things pick up. I’m only across the green, after all.”

She felt a little guilty at the lie. Yes, she lived just across the green from the village pub, but that’s not where she was heading now.

Tommy was still in the bar, attacking another pint of SA, entirely oblivious to the fact that he had prompted her to action.

Much as she’d tried to put it out of her mind, she had spent all day being
that girl
. The one who waits for the call or the text message, or that so soul-less alternative, the Facebook message or even the tweet. Anything. Any kind of contact at all just to show that it hadn’t been a one-off, that she wasn’t just another of his little tarts.

That’s the girl who obsesses and gets paranoid and reads too much into every small thing, or every small absence. That’s the girl who never gets a grip on her life, never gets out of the village where she grew up. The girl who spends three years thinking only of others, who puts all her dreams aside and never gives herself a chance.

That’s the kind of girl Holly had let herself become.

Outside, it was cold again and a dampness hung in the air as if a fog was about to descend but hadn’t quite made up its mind yet. She took her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and checked it, but there was nothing.

The road through the village forked here and wrapped around two sides of the green, like the top two strokes of an upper case ‘Y’; on the far side a low silver car drove far too fast past the row of cottages where she lived.

Friday night in the village.

It wasn’t that she disliked the place. She just hadn’t realized how stifling it was. The village was Tommy on a bigger scale. It’d be nice to stay friends, but...

She turned right, and soon she could see the shape of the Hall, a dark block against the star-lit sky.

As she came closer, following the track across the Deer Park, she saw that there were ground-floor lights on, and cars and vans pulled up in the wide graveled area at the side of the main building. For a moment she thought Blunt was having another of his parties and she almost turned and left, but no: there was no music, and why the vans?