Dinner at Rose's (39 page)

‘Lucky you’ve got a couple of thousand litres just up the hill,’ I said. I shut the fridge door and turned him round to face me, undoing the top button of his jeans. ‘No thank you.’

‘No thank you?’ he repeated blankly.

‘I don’t want a cup of tea,’ I explained.

‘Fair enough,’ said Matt weakly. And then, as what sounded like a medium-sized tank turned off the road to storm the hill towards the house, ‘You have
got
to be kidding.’ He vanished hurriedly around the corner into his tiny lounge.

‘It’s not Cilla, is it?’ I hissed, appalled.

‘No! It’s bloody Scott.’

Scotty wasn’t on the bike this evening but driving an enormous jeep-like thing. He is always buying cars off mates, tinkering with their innards and selling them to other mates – you never know from week to week what he’ll be driving. He parked, turned off the headlights and clambered out to cross the lawn, a box of bourbon and cola pre-mixes under one arm.

‘I suppose he’ll stay and drink that entire box of Woodstock he’s carrying?’ I said.

‘Usually. And then he’s over the limit, so he sleeps on the couch. Don’t worry. We’ll tell him to bugger off.’

‘We can’t,’ I said glumly. When it comes down to it you can’t actually ask your friends to please go away so you can have sex. Seeing me through the window Scotty waved, and I waved back.

‘Watch me.’ He came back into the kitchen with his jeans restored to seemly heights as his friend climbed the back steps.

‘No, we really can’t. He asked me out a few weeks ago.’

‘Did he? Sneaky sod.’ He sounded amused.

‘Evening, people,’ said Scotty cheerfully, opening the door and letting himself in. ‘Hey, Jo, fancy meeting you here.’

‘Hey, Scotty,’ I replied. Matt said nothing – being male he was under no obligation to actually be nice to his best mate. ‘How’s the rat’s tail?’

‘Mint,’ Scott said, stroking the back of his neck. ‘Thanks for asking. Shit, it’s cold in here. Jo, you wouldn’t be able to have a look at my back, would you? I did something funny to it at motocross last weekend.’ And without further ado he began to shrug off his denim jacket.

‘What d’you think this is?’ Matt protested. ‘Some sort of free physio clinic for the mentally impaired?’

His friend ignored him. ‘Do you want me to take off my shirt too?’ he asked.

I laughed helplessly. ‘Go on then.’

‘You can touch the rat’s tail if you want,’ Scotty offered, pulling a particularly nasty purple T-shirt over his head.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘What an offer.’

Matt sighed and went into the laundry, picking his overalls up off the floor and beginning to put them on. I’m going round the calving mob,’ he said. ‘If you could

Scotty twisted round to look at me. ‘Is this true?’ he demanded. I nodded, and he shook his head in sorrow. ‘And you could have had all this,’ he said, gesturing towards himself. His chest was very pale and quite hairy, and he had the beginnings of a little potbelly from excessive Woodstock consumption.

‘You
are
gorgeous,’ I said gravely. ‘There’s no denying it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Lucky she didn’t see you without your shirt earlier,’ Matt remarked, doing up the zip on his overalls. ‘I’d have had no show. Right, chaps, see you in ten minutes.’

‘Hang on!’ I said. ‘Milk.’

‘There’s a plastic jug somewhere under the sink – that’s the one.’ He took it, smiled at me and let himself out into the dark.

‘Right,’ I said briskly. ‘So where’s it sore?’

‘All down the left side.’

‘Just when you’re up and moving, or does it hurt in bed too?’

‘Only when I roll over,’ said Scott. ‘Then it catches.’

Outside Matt started the quad bike and headed up towards the shed.

‘So,’ Scott continued, ‘you’ve gone for the King, eh? There’s just no helping some people.’

‘Scotty,’ I said impulsively, ‘you’re a star.’

‘Yep. Hey, you haven’t got any hot single friends, have you?’

AN HOUR LATER
Scotty put down his second empty bottle of Woodstock, rearranged his pleasant features into a frightening leer and said, ‘I’m guessing you two would quite like me to piss off so you can have some alone time?’ He put air quotes around ‘alone time’ with his fingers.

Matt, who was lying full-length on his shabby sofa with his legs across my lap, grinned. ‘You guess right,’ he said. ‘Go on, bugger off.’

‘I just hope you’ll spare a moment to think of me, going home alone to an empty house . . .’

‘With only your rat’s tail for company,’ I said sadly.

‘I’ll probably cry myself to sleep.’

‘Either that,’ Matt agreed, ‘or you’ll put in a couple of solid hours downloading porn off the internet.’

‘I don’t know how you could suggest anything so disgusting,’ said Scotty piously. ‘It hurts, Matthew.’ He got up and stretched, revealing an inch of pallid stomach below the edge of his T-shirt. ‘Oh, well, goodnight.’

‘’Night, Scotty,’ I said. ‘Don’t lift anything heavy for a week or two, will you?’

Matt rolled off the couch and followed him out into the kitchen. As the roar of Scott’s jeep split the night he came back and held out a hand to help me to my feet.

‘Who do you think will pop in next?’ I mused.

He smiled. ‘They’ll be right out of luck. I’ve locked the door.’ And he pulled me down the hall to his room.

MATT ROLLED ONTO
his side and reached out to pull me more snugly up against him, finding my mouth with his and kissing me with sleepy contentment. ‘What’s wrong, love?’

‘Nothing.’ I ran a hand lightly down his spine and back up again.

‘Your face is wet.’

‘Just happy.’

‘So happy you’re crying?’

‘Yep,’ I said.

‘Girls are weird,’ he observed.

It was ten forty-seven according to the fluorescent face of the alarm clock beside his bed, and he had to get up at four-thirty. A really nice person would have let him go to sleep, but I couldn’t bear to just yet.

‘Why did you kiss me on Monday?’ I asked.

I felt him smile against my skin. ‘Rose told me to.’

‘Huh?’

‘She told me to stop devouring you with my eyes across the room and jolly well do something a bit more productive,’ said Matt.

‘Devouring me with your eyes,’ I murmured. ‘Crikey.’

‘I think we’d better cut back her Mills and Boon quota.’

‘You might be right.’

‘Then,’ he continued, ‘she said that after your lousy ex-boyfriend’s shenanigans you had the self-confidence of a flatworm, and that if I thought I could just say it with hideous nightwear I’d better think again.’

I considered that for a while, wondering whether to be offended. And then I decided that, seeing as I was currently the happiest girl in the observable universe, Aunty Rose could liken me to any invertebrate she liked.

‘Thank you for doing what you were told,’ I said.

‘Never been so scared in my life,’ he said. ‘And then you looked at me like I was some slimy prat who’d tried to pick you up in a bar.’

‘I did not!’

‘You did too. It’s a bit depressing to find that the girl you love thinks you’re a cheating scumbag.’

‘Only for about ten seconds,’ I said feebly. ‘It had been a particularly bad day.’

‘Hmph,’ said Matt.

I pinched the tender skin under his arm, which was nice and handy. ‘Don’t you
hmph
me, Matthew King. I’ve spent the last six months watching you go home with Farmer Barbie, remember.’

‘Farmer Barbie?’ he repeated.

‘Yeah, it’s childish, but I was bitter.’

‘Jose, I’m really sorry.’

I felt a sudden fierce pang of guilt. Aunty Rose was dying. His mother was of minimal use, so it was Matt who taught Kim to drive and shouted at her and worried about her and generally did all the things parents are supposed to do. He was the adored son and heir, and all his life he had known he’d have to take over the family farm or break his father’s heart. I don’t think it ever even crossed anyone’s mind to ask him if it was what he wanted. He worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and he never complained – he just quietly got on with it. It’s inexcusable to give someone like that a hard time for failing to guess the state of your emotions.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’ I rolled us both over so that I was lying on top of him, and hugged him fiercely. ‘You know that Rudyard Kipling poem “If ”?’

‘What about it, you strange and random woman?’

‘It’s you. It describes you.’

Matt laughed. ‘Sometimes, Josephine,’ he said, ‘I wonder about you.’

IT FELT LIKE
about two minutes later when his radio alarm clock clicked on, and we were woken by some pillock assuring us that nothing beats a car from McGuire’s super-cheap imports. I fell out of my side of the bed and groped blindly for clothes.

‘Don’t get up,’ he said thickly. ‘It’s Saturday. Stay in bed.’

I banged my head on the corner of his dresser and sat down hard. ‘Shit.’

Matt turned on the light and we blinked at each other painfully. ‘You don’t have to come,’ he said, reaching for a shirt.

‘I want to. Have you got a spare pair of overalls?’

‘Yeah.’ He dug through the heap of clothes in the corner of the room and tossed me a pair, along with a polar fleece. ‘Socks?’

‘Yes, please.’

It was very dark outside, still and crisp and starless. Matt stopped the quad bike at the cowshed to turn on the lights, and then taking a big torch from the box on the front played the beam slowly across the neighbouring paddock. Cows’ eyes glowed green in the torchlight, and one very new calf was just staggering to its feet.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Nobody lying upside down in the hedge. Shut the gate across the track, Jo?’

SEVERAL HOURS LATER
I kicked off my gumboots and went into Aunty Rose’s kitchen, newspaper in hand.

‘Good morning, love,’ said Mum, pouring tea into her cup. ‘Did you have fun?’

‘Good grief, Edith, what a question!’ Aunty Rose said. She was reclining on the chaise longue with a pen in one hand and pad in the other, wrapped in a fluffy green blanket. ‘Is that the paper, sweet pea?’

‘It’s a bit damp,’ I said, peeling off the wrapping and handing it over. ‘He got it right into the drain this morning. Where’s Dad?’