Dream a Little Dream (14 page)

He stooped to put his mouth close to her ear, and his breath stirred her hair. ‘OK?’

‘Yes. Thanks. You arrived at a good time.’

‘I guessed that by your expression. Ken can get a bit enthusiastic.’

She grinned, reluctantly. ‘Just a bit.’ Dominic’s naked chest was inches from her face so she fidgeted at the shrink-wrapped dress to avoid looking at his musculature, checking that her – not especially substantial – underwear was covered, thinking dark thoughts in Rochelle’s direction. She’d never worn anything less comfortable in her life, especially with that stupid bustle making her feel as if she had an inflatable bum.

‘I got “the call” from Nicolas this afternoon. With what he wants for the lease.’

She nodded glumly, her gratitude at his rescue disappearing,
phht
.

He stepped aside to let a skeleton into the bathroom. ‘Shall we compare notes? I think he’s come in way too high.’

‘Me, too.’

He sighed, pulling the end of his tail out of the path of a vampire making for the kitchen. ‘Now you’ve shown interest, he thinks he has leverage and I don’t know if I can get him down.’

She glared indignantly, which might at least disguise how much Nicolas’s figure had shocked and scared her. ‘And if you hadn’t shown interest he would never have come up with such a stupid number.’

Slowly, he closed his eyes, and leaned back against the wall.

Oh crap. Liza felt sudden compunction. She laid reassuring fingers on his arm. Warm. ‘Do you need to sleep? I can drive you home straight away. Or Rochelle will probably let you rest in her room.’

His eyes flipped opened. ‘I’m not sleepy, I’m counting to ten, you bloody annoying woman.’

She snatched her fingers away. ‘You turn up out of the blue and expect me to disappear my business out of your way, and
I’m
annoying?’

He took a long, slow breath. ‘OK,’ he said, neutrally. ‘Let’s just accept that we both want the other to back off.’

‘And neither of us is going to. But,’ she couldn’t resist adding, ‘morally, you should, because I’m the one already
in situ
, who’ll lose money during the process of relocation. Whereas all you have to do is find somewhere else to set up. You’ve invested no dosh.’ She folded her arms. Then quickly unfolded them, because pulling the elastic sheath tight threatened to catapult her boobs into the middle of the argument.

‘All I have to do? Like spaces suitable for action-and-challenge centres are ten a penny and an investment of time is of no consequence? That costume is totally distracting, by the way.’ His gaze, more pewter than silver in the dim light, flickered south for a moment.

‘How do you think I feel?’ Then she blushed because she didn’t really want to admit that she found his costume distracting, too. ‘About investing time, I mean.’ She tried to take a deep, calming breath, but couldn’t because of the dress. It was making her feel smothered, her skin moistening under its rubbery embrace, her heart pulsing as if it were trying to find room to beat. Unless that was Dominic—

A line of people began to filter past into the kitchen, and one was Rochelle, swaying on her spike heels, ducking the noose that hung from the ceiling. ‘Dominic!’ She settled her silver-taloned hand on his bicep. ‘Weren’t we talking about dinner?’

And then Kenny was there, too, clutching an empty glass. ‘We could make it a foursome, Liza.’

Liza’s eyes flicked to Dominic. He was frowning. And, this time, he didn’t rescue her from Kenny. Instead, he shrugged. ‘Sounds OK.’

So she shrugged, too. ‘Could be fun.’ Deliberately, she turned away, drifting into the main room to talk to an insane clown.

Midnight. Rochelle and Angie were trying to organise some witching-hour game involving blindfolds, wet rubber gloves and peeled grapes; Kenny had stumbled off somewhere. Dominic had been watching Liza mingling with vampires and mummies until she’d disappeared into the kitchen and re-emerged with a steaming mug of something. He watched her body move on an enormous sigh and obeyed the pull he’d been trying to resist since she’d proved so unreasonable about the lease.

‘We can leave any time you want,’ he said, joining her in the doorway.

Her eyebrows rose. ‘Lightweight.’ Then, ‘Oh … yes, we can leave if—’

‘I’m fine,’ he stressed. ‘It’s you who’s making with the huge sighs.’

‘I’m fine, too.’

‘Good.’

‘Yes.’

He hesitated. ‘I need to tell you something about Kenny.’

Her grin flashed. ‘I would have thought Kenny’s told me pretty much everything there is to tell.’

He gave her a rueful look. ‘Annoyingly enough, he doesn’t tell lies. He really does the white-water rafting, potholing, skydiving, running and everything else. It’s impressive. I just feel I need to warn you – he’s probably after no-strings sex.’

She pulled a stricken face. ‘Now I feel I have to warn you – so’s Rochelle!’

The ludicrousness of the conversation suddenly struck him. He laughed. ‘Oh, OK. I didn’t mean to—’

But Liza’s attention had flicked away from him like a whip. Her eyes had become round and apprehensive and were fixed on a point behind him.

And then she removed herself from the room. Stepping backwards as if over landmines, silently feeling behind her for the handle to Rochelle’s bedroom door. Turning it. Back, back, through. Door closed. Gone.

Dominic blinked. Then turned to identify what had sent her to ground.

A lanky figure stood some yards behind him, dark eyes staring from the hood of an artistically ragged black cloak. Rochelle and Angie were gazing across the room in horror, exchanging urgent whispers. Rochelle switched her gaze to Dominic. ‘Where’s Liza?’ she mouthed.

Minutely, Dominic indicated the bedroom. Rochelle mimed heart-clutching relief, then pointed at the newcomer, mouthing, ‘That’s Adam.’

Nodding his understanding, Dominic shifted so that he was leaning against the door that Liza had shut behind her, watching as the hooded figure drifted around the room like a Ringwraith, body loose but eyes sharp and searching, peering into corners. Long hands emerged from the cloak and pushed back the hood, revealing a sensitive, intelligent face and a mop of fair, collar-length hair. A few people greeted him but he just smiled and prowled on. Closer, closer.

Then he was hovering only a couple of feet away, glancing into the kitchen and the bathroom. His eyes settled on Dominic. Then shifted to the closed bedroom door.

Dominic waved his devil’s trident. ‘Sorry, mate. Someone’s getting changed.’

Adam nodded and turned to push the kitchen door more fully open, then a laughing group clutching full glasses barrelled out, sweeping him briefly back into the main room.

Dominic opened the bedroom door and slid through. ‘It’s Dominic.’

The whole room seemed to relax on an exhale. He moved in the direction it had come from, picking out Liza’s shape in front of the window. ‘Was Adam invited?’ He kept his voice low.

‘No! He knows that Rochelle has a Halloween party every year, though. I suppose he invited himself.’

Now he could see the gleam of her eyes in the city light that filtered through the curtains. ‘Are you … scared of him?’

‘Not scared of him. Of course not. I just don’t want—’ Her voice broke.

‘—your nose rubbing in his problems?’

‘—his pain. I’m scared of his pain and what it might make him do. It’s already made him do … what he did. To his wrist.’

‘Pain’s a part of life,’ he said, sombrely. ‘We all suffer it, learn to live with it. You can’t let his pain control you.’

Silence. Then, bleakly, ‘Some people learn to live with things. But others obsess. Destructively. Unpredictably. He’s in a bad place and I’m struggling with the knowledge that I could change that, if I just let things slide back to how they were before.’

‘That’s no answer! He needs real help.’ For the first time, he realised how petal-soft a heart was encased in that fiery little body. She hid it well. He put a comforting hand on her arm, gently, barely touching. ‘And so do you. You need support in refusing to take responsibility for him. Do you want me to help?’

‘How?’ It was a ridiculous idea that he could. But they were in a ridiculous situation, huddling together in the dark in Rochelle’s strictly out-of-bounds bedroom whilst Adam haunted the party.

He shrugged, and his warm naked chest brushed her arm. ‘We go out there and act like a couple. Let him see that you’ve moved on.’

She inched back in case the naked flesh touched her again. But she couldn’t bring herself to step completely out of the warm cell of air that seemed to surround him, the scents of alcohol and shower gel mingling. ‘How?’

He sighed with exaggerated patience. ‘I put my arms around you, kiss you, whisper in your ear—’

‘Don’t be an idiot!’ She did step away. Right away. Into a cool space where Dominic wasn’t overheating everything, sucking her in.

‘It’s pragmatic. A clear signal, an opportunity for him to back off with no loss of face. Or you could cower in here indefinitely.’ A pause. His voice softened. ‘Or just greet him like an old friend then move on to chat with others. Won’t he get the message?’

‘It sounds reasonable when you say it.’

‘Because it is. Give the guy a chance to get over you, Liza. Hiding away from him might be feeding his fantasies that you have a future. He’s probably reasoning that if only he could talk to you, he could undo all the bad that happened.’

She stood in the darkness, heart thudding uneasily. Trying to ‘visualise what success would look like’, as Cleo would say. Adam, maybe looking sad, but accepting they had no future. Perhaps being bitter or angry but
going away.
Leaving her to a life not controlled by guilt. She took in a long, slow breath. ‘You’re right.’ She began to cross the room, aware that he was moving through the darkness beside her. ‘It’ll be OK. Adam is an intelligent guy and—’ Dominic reached around her to open the door and Liza let out a yip of surprise.

Adam lurked in the hallway like a servant of the Dark Lord, flickering candlelight illuminating the folds of his cloak. Behind him, Rochelle and Angie were in the centre of a huddle of people passing around objects from a black bin liner amidst shrieks and laughter. ‘Hello,’ Adam said, smiling painfully. His eyes rested for several long seconds on Dominic, then returned to Liza. ‘I’ve been looking for you, Lize. To talk.’

She swallowed. Misery and guilt swooshed over her as she met his brown eyes and saw hurt a mile deep. Hurt she’d caused. When he lifted his hand to push back his hair, his left sleeve fell back. Two pink scars lay on his arm like accusations: the self-inflicted one across the wrist, the other, the repair, bisecting it. Ugly shiny pink worms. Tears ached in her throat.

Adam glanced at Dominic. ‘Me and Lize are going to talk.’

Dominic ignored the hint that he should leave. ‘Really?’

Liza licked her lips. ‘There’s nothing we need to say that we can’t say in front of other people, Adam.’

Adam didn’t get angry. He didn’t really do angry. He just got sadder. ‘There’s loads. We need to get our relationship back on track.’

Dismay fluttered into her throat. ‘We can’t.’

His lines in his face grew deeper, longer; his mouth set itself to
stubborn
. ‘We can. I’m not involved with anyone else and neither are you.’

Liza’s vision of reason and rationale bringing success dissolved and she grasped instantly at Dominic’s stupid, half-baked, crappy, simplistic, but possibly effective, idea. ‘I am involved. With Dominic.’ She slid her arm around Dominic’s waist.

Adam’s eyes turned down in panic. ‘You’re not!’

Lazily, Dominic scooped Liza up against his side, snuggling her there as if he knew how their bodies fitted together. Which was pretty well, actually, her shoulder under his arm, her breast pressed against the rack of his ribs. His hand hot on her hip. ‘I’m afraid we are, mate. When a couple rendezvous in a bedroom, it’s not usually about meaningful conversation.’

A still, silent moment.

Liza watched emotions war in Adam’s face, willing the longed-for acceptance to appear. Or even bitterness and anger. Instead, what she saw was grief. Black, swamping grief, deadening his eyes. Then he whirled and blundered through the rubber gloves and grapes game, and out of the door.

Horror-movie possibilities blazed into Liza’s mind. Her feet twitched, as if they wanted to run after him. She felt Dominic’s arm tighten. ‘You’re not responsible,’ he reminded her, softly.

She turned and flattened her palms against his chest, ready to thrust him away. ‘But he needs help.’

His grey eyes were steady. ‘You’re the wrong one to give it to him.’

She swallowed. ‘But what if he tries to commit suicide again?’

Slowly, he covered one of her hands with his, thumb moving absently on the underside of her wrist. He breathed a sigh. ‘That would be terrible. But running after him still isn’t the right thing to do. The only thing you can do to make him happy is carry through a phoney change of heart, live with a man you don’t want, give up your whole life to a lie. Take the expected place within his family. Are you that good at faking? It would make you miserable and, in the end, him, too.’

Liza almost staggered under a wave of clammy dismay. Endless relatives calling, Ursula interfering, Adam being gently manipulative until he got his own way in everything. ‘I can’t do that,’ she agreed, hopelessly. ‘But there must be something I can do. It’s my—’

‘If you say it’s your fault,’ he snapped, hand tightening uncomfortably, ‘I’m going to tell your sister you need help and she’ll check up on you eight times a day.’

‘She would, too,’ she agreed, gloomily. Somehow, instead of pushing him away she’d sunk against him. Again. Taking strength from him. Again. Listening to the regular thud of his heart, feeling secure. Maybe it was habit-forming and she’d need a stronger and stronger fix – last time she’d been wearing two coats, this time he was half-naked and she had on the stupidest tiny dress. So next time …

He shifted, and she realised that he was easing his hips away. Oh …! Hastily, she straightened, so that the embrace slackened, gave him the distance he evidently needed for comfort. ‘There must be something I can do,’ she repeated, to get her mind off the likely reason for Dominic not wanting her to be aware of what was going on in his pelvic area. Fighting the – at this moment inappropriate – instinct to check it out.

‘What about his brother, the one who took you to hospital?’

‘Ben.’ She ran through Ben’s probable reaction without much pleasure. He’d been a condemnatory supercilious snot when Adam had hurt himself. But, ‘Better than ringing his mother,’ she acknowledged. ‘I’ve left my bag in your car and my phone’s in it.’

‘I’ve got my phone.’

‘Really?’ Once again, she fought the urge to let her gaze skim over him. There didn’t seem many places to put a phone in his costume. She forced herself to deal with the crisis of the moment. ‘But I need Ben’s number. It’s in my contacts.’

‘Let’s call him from the Jag, then.’ He fished around behind himself and produced the key fob for his car.

‘Where was
that
?’

He laughed. ‘There’s a pocket inside the waistband, like you get in cycling shorts. Come on, let’s get this over with.’ In a minute he’d bundled up her clothes from Rochelle’s room, draped her coat over her as best he could for her wings, checked out the Kenny situation and discovered he’d already left, probably with Undead Barbie, although Angie wasn’t sure, reassured her and Rochelle that the Adam situation was under control, then towed Liza to the door.

Outside, the wind pounced on them like an ice demon, making them gasp as its icy fingers fastened gleefully on their exposed flesh. Liza grabbed fruitlessly at the two sides of her coat. ‘I can’t believe I came downstairs dressed like this
.
It’s f-freezing!’

Dominic huddled himself into his thin and inadequate cloak, bleeping the car open as they scurried across the pavement. The driver’s door was closest so Liza had it open before Dominic had run around to the passenger side, but then discovered the challenges in entering a car in wings and a stinger. She finally managed to perch uncomfortably on the padded hornet’s abdomen with the stinger sticking out coquettishly beside the gear stick. Which wasn’t a proper gear stick, because Dominic’s great tanky car was an automatic. The wire frame of her wings dug viciously into her shoulder blades so that she had to lean forward whilst she fished her phone out of the side pocket of her bag, wincing.

The screen lit up, and in moments she had selected
Ben
from her contacts list and could hear the ringtone in her ear.

‘Yes?’ Ben’s voice.

‘It’s Liza.’

‘Yes.’

She hesitated. He didn’t sound surprised and he didn’t sound encouraging. A terror of saying the wrong thing, of doing something to invoke disaster, engulfed her. She swallowed hard, twice, trying to force sound past the stiffness of her throat.

Ben sounded bored. ‘Are you still there?’

On a gasp, she managed, ‘I’m worried about Adam.’

His voice hardened. ‘Bit late for that.’

Liza flinched. ‘I saw him tonight and he—he got upset.’

‘Shit! What did you do this time?’

She gripped the phone harder, reliving the grief in Adam’s eyes. She blurted, wretchedly, ‘He was at this party and wanted to talk, but I couldn’t see any point because nothing’s changed. He ran out—’

‘—and now you want me to talk him down from the ledge,’ he finished for her, voice vibrating with anger.

Then Dominic twitched the phone away from her fingers and began speaking in unemotional, clear sentences. ‘Look, mate, your brother obviously needs help. Liza’s not responsible for him but is worried he might self-harm. She’s been good enough to notify you of the unusual situation. Whether you act on the information is up to you.’ And ended the call.

Liza sat, numbly. ‘His family all hate me.’

He turned in his seat, the scarlet of his cloak washing out to a strange orange under the streetlights, the horns still poking roguishly through his hair, his eyes glittering. ‘They’re projecting their fears for Adam onto you. It’s not fair, but it is understandable. When people are scared, they lash out. They blame. And if they can’t find someone to blame with just cause, they find a scapegoat.’

‘Oh.’ She sniffed, wondering if he was right.

He still held the car remote and he flicked the key part out and, reaching across her as if perfectly familiar with her personal space, located the ignition by feel, turned the key one click, watched the dash readout, then turned it again and the engine burbled into life. Huddling into his cloak, he stabbed the red buttons of the climate control unit. ‘This outfit isn’t designed for an English October night.’

‘Neither’s mine.’ Her bare legs glowed ghostily in the dashboard light and she briefly considered whether she could get back into the jeans and coat she’d arrived in, but an excursion into the biting wind back to Rochelle’s bedroom didn’t appeal. Sighing, she dragged on the seatbelt, wincing as the wings dug deeper into her shoulders. ‘So, how do you drive an automatic, then?’

‘You seriously never have? And here was me trying to console myself with the thought that if I have to be driven around, at least I get a slutty hornet chauffeur, tonight.’

‘The slutty hornet only passed her test a couple of years ago. And has never driven an auto, nor anything bigger than a Corsa, so she needs to be told how.’ Cautiously, she blipped the accelerator, listening as the car went from a whispered,
rrrrummmm,
to a throaty,
RRRUMMMMMMMMM.
Actually … quite nice.
RRRRAAAOWWWWMMMM.

His breath caught, as if in pain, but his voice remained even and reassuring. ‘It’s straightforward. There’s no clutch and you don’t have the bother of changing gears, once you’ve put the car in drive. Put your foot on the brake, and move the shift to where it says
D
.’

She did that. The stick shifted, as if through greased ball bearings, sinuous and satisfying.

‘And when you’re ready, let the brake off and do everything but change gear.’

Checking behind her and indicating, she moved cautiously out from the kerb, took the first left and left again, checking her mirrors, creeping through the near-empty streets. She felt somehow lost inside such a big vehicle, as if it had swallowed her. But once she’d glided onto the dual carriageway and found the car responsive to her foot on the accelerator, began to enjoy flying through the night. ‘This is easy,’ she marvelled. ‘Like steering a giant leather armchair.’

He laughed. ‘My poor Jag. Emasculation in one sentence.’

‘But I thought it would be difficult.’

‘A big car isn’t any harder to drive than a little car. It might be trickier to park, though. We’ll leave it outside your house. I’ll run back to Miranda’s and Kenny can pick it up tomorrow. Or whenever he reappears.’ He raised his hands against her argument that she could drop him at Miranda’s or change to the Smart and drive him back there. ‘Liza, I used to move hundreds of aircraft in and out of a busy London airport every week. Trust me to supervise the parking of my car.’

They took to the dark country roads towards Middledip. The car’s interior had warmed nicely and a half moon was edging the breaks in the ragged clouds with silver in a satisfyingly spooky way. ‘I love your car. Even driving in possibly the least comfortable Halloween costume in the world.’

Dominic stared through the windscreen. ‘I hate being chauffeured.’

She bristled. ‘By me?’

‘By anyone. You. Kenny. Jenson Button. Angelina Jolie. I just want my licence back.’

‘Oh.’ That was OK, then. ‘When will that be?’

‘When my consultant and the DVLA agree that I’m fit for it. Then I’ll probably never let anybody else in the driving seat ever again, so enjoy it while you can.’ In her peripheral vision, she saw his horns illuminated for a moment by passing headlights.

She changed the subject. ‘Tell me about you and Kenny. You seem an unlikely pairing.’

‘We are.’ He stretched and yawned. ‘At school, I was good at academic stuff and Ken thought it was torture. He was unpredictable and anti-authority, probably because he learns differently, being severely dyslexic. If he wants to know something he treats you like a live reference book – questions, questions, questions, committing your answers to memory, in the same way you or I might learn a poem. In a huge comprehensive school, that need couldn’t always be met.