Into the Darkest Corner (11 page)
I woke up and for a moment I had no idea where I was. I seemed to be buried under a pile of coats, as though I’d been to some crazy party and had ended up in a drunken heap on the bed upstairs.
The shock of it made me cry out, a strangled yell. I struggled to my feet, tangling myself in the coats and a blanket, falling onto my knees on the carpet with a crash and getting to my feet just as a figure came running into my peripheral vision. That made me scream, properly scream.
“Cathy?”
It was Stuart. With the briefest of glances I took in that he was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and he was holding on to his bad arm.
I was in Stuart’s living room, I’d been curled up on the sofa. I was still wearing my work clothes, my skirt and blouse both hideously crumpled by the look of it, my shoes on their sides on the floor. On the floor was a tangle of a fleece blanket, and on top of that was my black wool coat, and Stuart’s brown jacket, and some sort of heavy all-weather type jacket of the sort you might wear to go up a mountain.
My heart was thudding, my breathing fast. “What—what am I doing here?”
“It’s okay,” he said. “You fell asleep. I didn’t want to wake you up.”
The clock on the wall in the kitchen area said it was half-past six—just about starting to get light outside.
I couldn’t remember falling asleep. Just sitting here on the sofa with Stuart, watching a DVD of some comedian he’d seen when he was in Australia, laughing and then crying because I was laughing so hard.
My breathing was slowing down, my heart finally catching up. “I’d better go,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to give you a fright.”
I looked him up and down, standing there in his kitchen in his boxer shorts—I should be grateful he didn’t sleep naked.
I collected my shoes and struggled into them, my balance still impaired. I grabbed my coat from the tangle of blankets and piled the rest of it in a big heap back onto the sofa.
“I’m sorry for . . . you know . . . making such a racket,” I said at last. “Is your arm okay?”
“It bloody hurts, to be honest. I’ll have some more painkillers in a minute.”
“I’d better go,” I said again.
“All right.”
He let me out and I cast a glance back at him, thinking what a stupid fucking idea it had been of his not to wake me up last night, and at the same time thinking about him running out of his bedroom when he heard me scream.
“Catherine, darling!” Sylvia threw open the door to Maggie’s, since of course she was the hostess even if she didn’t actually live here anymore, and pulled me into a tight squeeze.
At the same time looking pointedly over my shoulder.
“He’s been held up,” I said, by way of explanation. “Sorry. Hopefully he’ll be here soon.”
“Held up?” she echoed. “Is he off stealing the crown jewels or something?”
I laughed. “Probably.”
I went into the living room and said hello to everyone. Claire and Lennon were on the sofa, Lennon looking vaguely uncomfortable about the fact that Claire was lying across his lap, her legs on the arm of the sofa; he sat there rigid while she laughed raucously about something Louise had said.
“Catherine! About time,” Louise said, getting up in one lithe, unfolding movement from the floor where she’d been sitting. She kissed my cheek. “Claire’s drunk already.”
“Claire, you’re such a lightweight.”
“I know, I know,” she said, tears still on her cheeks from laughing so hard. “Seriously, Lou, don’t do that to me, I nearly had a Depends moment.”
Still sitting stiffly under Claire’s posterior, Lennon’s eyes widened.
“Where is he, then?” Charlie said. Charlie was Lou’s temporary squeeze, a bit too cerebral for her, we all thought, all long hair and consciousness and hand-rolled cigarettes.
“He’s been held up,” I repeated. “He said not to wait.”
“Would we have waited?” Charlie said. “I doubt it, to be honest.”
You’re such a dick, I thought, but I said nothing.
Max, Maggie’s husband, was in the kitchen arguing with her in a not very subtle way about how much coriander had been added to whatever it was simmering away on the stovetop.
I gave them both a kiss hello and they happily continued bickering as though I wasn’t there.
Stevie appeared from the bathroom. “Where’s the new guy, then?” he asked, kissing me on both cheeks.
“Oh, God, you guys, honestly. You’re not going to grill him when he gets here, are you?”
“Depends how tasty he is,” Sylvia said, handing me a glass of wine the size of a fruit bowl. In deference to Maggie’s taste for monochrome, she was wearing a zebra-print skirt; below that, fuchsia fishnet stockings that only someone with Sylvia’s legs could possibly get away with. The black-and-white theme began and ended with the skirt, though, because her top was various shades of purple and pink. She looked, as always, stunning.
Stevie was one of Sylvia’s several fuckbuddies—my particular favorite, and I was pleased he was here. He was married, but he happily slept with anyone who caught his attention, as did his wife, Elaine. He and Sylvia had a good romp once every couple of months, and in between romps they sometimes had fun out in town with their clothes on, too. Elaine had been out with us on the odd occasion. She was a good laugh. Sylvia once told me she’d woken up after a particularly heavy night in town in the middle of Stevie and Elaine’s kingsize bed, cuddling up to both of them.
The doorbell went and everyone looked at me expectantly. I gave them all a look that said please behave, but when I opened the front door it was Sam and Sean.
“Oh, is he not here?” Sam said, when she made her way into the living room.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said, “seriously, will you lot all just calm down about it?”
I regretted it the moment I’d said it. Why was I being so uptight? These were my best friends, at least the girls were, people I’d spent practically my whole life with. We’d all been pissing about with relationships for years, far too long; if any of them had turned up at Maggie’s with anyone remotely serious I probably would have been just as curious as they all were.
“Sylvia,” Sam said, “is that thing made out of a real zebra?”
“Of course not, darling, I got it in Harrogate.”
“But it’s furry.”
Maggie did her best to delay dinner, but after half an hour Max started grumbling so we all sat down, everybody talking at once, passing bread and wine and spoons and bowls of vegetables. I sat in a miserable silence next to the one empty seat, scooping food onto my plate and wishing I were somewhere else.
I saw Stuart on High Street, struggling with some shopping bags weighing him down on one side, his jacket sleeve on the other side empty. He had his back to me, heading in the direction of Talbot Street, making slow progress.
I should have immediately caught up with him, offered to give him a hand with the bags, and enjoyed his company on the last few hundred yards back to the house.
Of course, I did none of these things. I skulked around in the doorway of the hairdresser’s for a few minutes, then pretended to study the window of the bookshop, keeping my head down until he’d turned the corner and was out of sight.
It wasn’t just the embarrassment about screaming my head off just because I’d woken up on his sofa. The more I’d thought about it since, the worse it got. He was a doctor, a mental health practitioner at that. He was everyone and everything I’d spent the last three years trying to avoid. He smelled of hospitals, he emanated authority like a scent: people telling you what to do, diagnosing you, feeding you drugs, making decisions for you, steering your life down a path they could control.
I stole a glance to the right, around the various bodies wrapped in warm coats and cars and buses, to see if he was still there.
“Thought it was you. How are you?”
I spun around to find him at my left shoulder, another bag added to those weighing him down.
“I’m okay, thanks. Gosh, those look heavy.”
“They are, a bit.”
He must have turned around when I wasn’t looking, gone back into the pharmacy on the corner. I hesitated for a moment, knowing that I couldn’t very well leave him to walk home with those bags and realizing that it would mean I couldn’t take my usual route home via the alleyway at the back.
“Are you walking my way?” he said with a smile.
I felt unreasonably bad-tempered, mainly at my pathetic attempt to avoid him and the fact that I hadn’t had the sense to go inside the shop and hide myself away properly. I contemplated saying no, I thought about making some excuse about meeting someone, but sometimes it was just easier to give in.
“Here, let me take those bags for you,” I said as we started walking.
“It’s okay, really,” he said.
“Some of them, then.”
“Thanks.” He handed over two of the lightest ones.
“How’s the shoulder?”
“Bit better today, I think. It’ll probably hurt more later. I only came out to get some milk.”
We walked along in silence for a while. I felt jumpy, as if I wanted to break into a run. He kept a respectable distance between us, so much that people walking in the opposite direction kept walking in between us. I wondered if he was having trouble keeping up with me.
“It’s your appointment tomorrow, isn’t it?” he asked at last.
I slowed down a little until he drew level. I didn’t want to be talking about medical shit on High Street. “Yes, it is.”
“You feeling okay about it?”
“I guess so.”
We crossed the street and turned into Talbot Street. There were fewer people down here, and the sidewalk was narrower.
“Sorry I gave you a fright the other day. I should have woken you up, I think.”
“I shouldn’t have fallen asleep in the first place. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”
I felt him give me a look, but I kept my eyes straight ahead.
“I know this must be hard for you,” he said.
That did it. I turned to face him, the bags swinging around abruptly and hitting my legs. “No, Stuart, you don’t know at all,” I said. “You have no idea. You think you know everything just because you peer into people’s minds every day. Well, you know nothing at all about what’s going on in mine.”
It might well be true that he was used to outbursts like this, used to people challenging him, but perhaps not on the sidewalk outside his house. He looked startled, and for a moment he was lost for words, so I seized the chance that gave me.
“I’ll see you soon,” I said, putting the bags down. He would have to carry them upstairs himself.
“Where are you going?”
“No idea,” I said, walking away. “I just don’t feel like going in yet.”
I heard the door open and slam shut behind him, and only then did I look over my shoulder. He’d gone inside. I was nearly level with the alleyway, and for a moment I thought about going straight down there and checking the house from the back, but I was too angry. I felt agitated, my nerves twanging like an elastic band that had been stretched too thin.
I didn’t even hear the doorbell go, but all of a sudden I noticed Maggie had left the table and then she was back and Lee was with her.
“Hi,” he said, “sorry I’m so late.”
There was a moment—just a moment—of shocked silence as everyone took him in, his dark gray suit, blond hair, bright blue eyes—his warm smile. And then all the girls started talking at the same time.
Sylvia jumped up from her position at the head of the table and threw her arms around his neck while everyone else stood and waited to either kiss him on the cheek or shake him by the hand. I was last, of course, but then I was kind of trapped around the other side of the table. When he got a chance to sit down, he gave me a kiss and a wink, and a whispered “Sorry.”
I felt as if I was on fire. I hadn’t seen him for nearly a week, during which time I’d imagined him dead in a ditch on more than one occasion. I’d felt lonely and alone. I’d felt as if I was being followed, being watched. But now, suddenly, everything was fine: my beautiful, sexy boyfriend was back and I’d almost forgotten just how fantastic he was.
Everyone had relaxed, Louise was happily telling everyone about the time Claire laughed so much she wet herself in the Queen’s Head and had to dry her underpants off under the hand dryer, Stevie was talking to Lee about the car he’d just bought and I was glowing. The way he looked—so beautiful and cool, serene; the way he’d smiled at them all and apologized for being late; the fact that he’d somehow found the time to buy Sylvia a bottle of Cristal and Maggie a bunch of long-stemmed white roses; but above all the way all the girls had looked at him dumbstruck, with a kind of awe—and here he was, sitting next to me, giving Stevie his undivided attention, his right hand under the table, on my thigh.
I heard my phone buzzing in my bag and I fished around in there for it, thinking it was probably a delayed text from Lee to say he was on his way.
Bizarrely, it was from Sylv.
Are his eyes really that color or are they lenses?
One-handed, I thumbed a reply:
Lol, they’re real
I looked at her at the other end of the table, chatting away happily to Max, who at last was starting to calm down and lose some of the purple in his face that always seemed to develop at any sort of stress.
Claire was starting to look very pink around the cheeks. “Are you going to pause for a bit, Claire?” Sam said, giving her a look. “We don’t want a repeat performance of the other night in the Cheshire, do we?”
“Don’t be mean.” Claire pouted. “Anyway, that reminds me, you haven’t told them all about what happened with Jack in the Cheshire, have you?”
“Oh, God, that was funny.”
“Tell them,” Claire insisted, and then, not pausing for breath, “Jack was in the Cheshire and he’d gotten to the point where he was completely blotto, and he knew he was going to throw up everywhere—”
“As you do,” said Lennon.
“—And he went running into the men’s room,” continued Sam, since Claire was having trouble controlling herself, “and he was in such a hurry he just rammed open one of the stall doors . . . and some poor guy was sitting in there having a crap and got the fright of his life when Jack slammed the door open on him. But the problem was Jack couldn’t hold it in any longer—”
“—Or maybe he was just too wasted to realize the stall wasn’t actually empty,” added Claire, tears running down her cheeks.
“So he ended up getting sick into this poor guy’s lap . . .”
“Oh, God, that’s not even the funniest bit . . .”
“And as soon as he could pause for breath he managed to think, hang on, I’ve just puked all over a stranger, if I were him I’d be a bit pissed off, and he started to consider that maybe attack was the best form of defense, so he punched him in the face and ran back out of the bathroom.”
Everyone was laughing now, except Charlie.
“Oh, God,” said Claire, “I’m going to pee. Back in a minute.”
“So you mean,” said Charlie seriously, “he puked all over some stranger’s legs and then punched him in the face? For no reason?”
“Something like that, yeah,” said Sam, wiping her eyes.
“Would someone pass me the gravy?” Charlie said.
“Charlie, you’re such an idiot,” Louise said.
“I’m sure I recognize your face, Lee,” Stevie was saying. “Have we met through work or something?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been working on the door at the River,” Lee said. “Maybe it was there.”
“Could’ve been. Have you been to see the new competition yet? It’s pretty impressive in there. The Red Divine, I mean—we went there on Friday.”
“No. I’m not much of a clubber, to be honest—too many nights spent seeing the aftermath of it all.”
“Good for you,” Max boomed from the opposite side of the table. “That’s what I keep trying to tell this lot: they’re better off growing up and spending their money on sensible things, or better still investing it somewhere.”
“Oh, shut up, you old grouch,” Maggie said playfully. “Just ignore granddad, girls. He’s forgotten how to have fun.”
“I have perfectly excellent fun, thank you very much.”
“. . . With the crossword and Radio Three, of course you do.”
We ate and we talked, and every so often Lee’s hand would drop under the table and find my thigh, and just rest there, warm and heavy, not requiring a response.
When I’d finished eating I took hold of his hand under the table and gave it a squeeze. He looked at me questioningly. His eyes really were so beautiful, so open. Everyone else was busy talking and not paying any attention to us.
I whispered in his ear, “Were you in the house today?”
He looked mystified. “I was working. Why?”
“Someone changed the knives and forks over.”
He gave me a look that said,
why on earth would anyone do that?
But at the same time he had a twinkle in his eye.
“Did you do it for a laugh?”
“I just wanted you to know I was looking out for you.”
I felt my cheeks flush. I don’t know why I suddenly felt so uncomfortable, but I did.
“You could have left me a note,” I said.
“Too obvious,” he said, with a wink and a smile.
I drank the last of my wine and thought about it for a moment, laughing at something Sylvia had said.
Lee’s thumb was stroking the back of my hand, gently, making me shiver.
“Lee,” I said, quietly.
“Hm?”
“Don’t do it again. Please.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t move my stuff around. Please. Okay?”
His face clouded a little, but he nodded. A few moments later he let go of my hand when Maggie collected our plates. He didn’t take hold of it again after that.
