LOVE'S GHOST (a romance) (2 page)

We both walked out of the restaurant and onto the moonlit street.
 

Emily started laughing again. She playfully shoved me in the back. “Woo,” she said. She put on a croaky voice, sounding like a witch. “Beware, my lovely. You must be strong. Strong in love.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I’d started the evening in high spirits. I didn’t believe in these psychics, but I’d thought it would be a bit of a giggle. And it was. But then the psychic had annoyed me with her “advice”.

“You all right?” Emily asked me.

“Yeah, fine.”

“What a ham that woman was,” she said. “Talk about overdoing it. All those pearls. She rattled more than my grandmother’s false teeth.”

I smiled. “When she picked on me, I felt like ducking under the table.”

“Yeah, poor you. And where did she get that long kaftan?”

“I didn’t want to laugh at her,” I said. “But when she said she could hear a ‘P’, that was it, I just exploded.”

“It was hilarious.”

“Thanks for suggesting it,” I said. “It was fun. Took me out of myself.”

We walked towards the side street where my car was parked. The shops turned into houses, elm trees overhung the street, partially obscuring the street lamps.

“But she had a point,” said Emily.

“About what?”

“You know.”

“No.” We reached the spot where my Mini was parked. I stopped and turned to Emily. “About what?”

“About being strong in love.”

I waited for Emily to add some details. But she didn’t. So I took my car keys out of my Radley bag, pointed the zapper at the car, and unlocked it with a single click. We got into the car.

I started the engine but didn’t pull away immediately. “She had a point?” I asked. “You mean generally? Like everybody needs to be strong in love? That’s what you meant?”

“Yes. Generally. Everybody. That’s what I meant.”

I felt my eyebrows lower into a frown. “You meant me, didn’t you?”

“I meant you, Fay, yes. Absolutely I meant you.”

“I can’t believe you meant me.”

“Would you start driving? I’ll feel better if we talk while you’re driving. I’ll have the advantage because you’ll have to concentrate on the road.”

I smirked at my friend. It’s hard to stay annoyed with Emily. I held the steering wheel, looked into her mirror, and pulled out into the road. Then I took a left towards Wimbledon, where Emily lived.

I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. There were a thousand things we could talk about. I adored Emily’s new nail varnish. It gleamed, but in a classy way. I noticed it when the psychic was telling one of the customers that she was talking to a Richard, and that the diner knew this Richard. When the diner said she didn’t know anybody called Richard who had passed over to the other side, the psychic wouldn’t have any of it. She insisted that the woman was wrong. “Maybe you knew him as Dick,” she had said.

But yes, I should ask Emily about the nail varnish
, I thought. I won’t buy it in the same deep bight red shade. I’d go for a deeper red, maybe a crimson. What make was it?

But somehow I didn’t ask her that.

“So you think I need to be stronger in love?” I asked. The nail varnish would have to wait.

AFTER DROPPING EMILY off in Wimbledon, I drove home to Surbiton. It was difficult to find a space to park in St Andrew’s Square, even though I had a resident’s parking permit. But at night it was a free for all.

St Andrew’s Square was a set of houses built around a central garden area, very much a “square” in the traditional sense. But parking was a nightmare. I rarely used my car in the evenings precisely because of this.

But I refused to give up. I drove round the square once and there were no spaces. So I drove around again. I don’t know why I drove around for the third time, instead of searching down a side street, but I did. Miraculously a space appeared.
 

I say “miraculously” but I’m not sure I was paying as much attention as I should on the first two circuits. I was still thinking about the psychic’s pronouncement, and Emily’s agreement with it. It wasn’t fair. But it didn’t stop me questioning myself. Was I too weak in matters of the heart? Should I just toughen up? It isn’t easy to analyse yourself, although I think I’ve always been honest about my own failings. But tougher in love? I don’t know.

I got out of my Mini, walked up the steps to the old house that had been converted into two flats, and foraged in my bag for the house keys. Inside, I shut the door behind me and walked up the stairs.

Light was creeping under our front door. I opened it. There was a light on in the kitchen, at the end of the corridor, and another one spilled into the hallway from the lounge.
 

“Russell, are you home?”
 

Everybody else called him “Russ” but I couldn’t quite do it. I liked “Russell” and didn’t like “Russ”. It was just the sound. Maybe “Russell” reminded me of Russell Crowe, the actor who could make me go weak at the knees. But “Russ” sounded like the kind of name you gave to a cat. Come here, Russy, so I can tickle you under the chin.

The psychic’s words ran through my head again —
tougher in love.
They echoed. The words didn’t want to go away.
 

It had been a few weeks since Russell and I had had sex, so I would seduce him. It wasn’t exactly what the psychic meant by being tougher in love, I suppose, but I would be taking the lead. Did that count?

Russell walked out of the kitchen. He’d obviously just arrived from work — he was still wearing one of his immaculate suits, the cuff-linked shirt sleeves sticking out from the sleeves of his jacket.

Russell walked up to me. I grabbed his tie and pulled him into me, planting my lips on his. At first, he was startled. So was I. It had been a while since I had taken the lead. It’s not that I don’t think women should, it’s just that I fear getting rejected, even from a man I’ve been with for seven years. Crazy, really, but I don’t take rejection well, so if there’s the slightest chance of it, no matter how slight, I take the detour.

Russell wasn’t looking his best. His face looked drawn. He’d been working long hours and the strain was beginning to show. But
 
he still looked gorgeous, with his blond hair and blue eyes. And he still had an amazing body.

I unbuttoned his shirt and slid my hand across his pecs. They were firm and the skin smooth.

“Somebody’s feeling hot this evening,” he said.

“Yes, I am.”

“You can tell me to stop at any time.”

“Why would I do that?”

I ran my hands through his hair, from the nape of his neck to the top of his head. Then I carried on, sliding my fingers down his face. He smiled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this spontaneous. My heartbeat raced as he leaned forward and kissed my neck. Maybe I should have been like this before. He seemed to like it.

He undid a couple of buttons on my blouse and kissed the top of my breasts, venturing down to the point where the material
 
of my bra started. He slid his tongue under the lacy fringe, flicking my nipple.

I playfully pushed him away, but then grabbed him. I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t want this to carry on.

“Let’s go to the bedroom,” I said. Then I worried that the bedroom wasn’t adventurous enough. Perhaps I should have continued my journey with his body in the hallway, let him take me there and then against the wall. But I wanted to go to the bedroom.

He took my hand and led me to our bedroom. We fell on the bed. I continued taking off his shirt. The cufflinks snapped off and fell to the floor. My heart beat faster as I undid the belt. I wanted this to be like no other time we’d had sex. I pulled the belt away from his trousers and tossed it to the floor. But I didn’t take off his trousers. I wanted to keep some of his clothes on. It felt a little more spontaneous that way.

I straddled him and leaned forward, planting my hands on his well-developed chest. I stared at his eyes and wondered what he was thinking. How was he taking this? His partner of all these years was using him as a sex toy. There was a smile on his lips. There was no doubt that he was enjoying it.

I rocked gently, my buttocks massaging his crotch, feeling him getting bigger, straining beneath his trousers that were still zipped up. He leant forwards to touch me. But I shook my head and swayed backwards. Then I grabbed his wrists and pinned him to the bed.

“I’m in charge,” I said. I didn’t know where the words came from. I hadn’t decided I was going to behave like this while driving home. It was very much a spur of the moment thing.

I hadn’t done it before, taken charge like this. But there was a feeling of desperation that night, that I had to have him like this. I just needed to feel the power — the power that Russell had always had in our relationship. Tonight, I wanted the control. It didn’t come naturally. As turned on as I was, I still had to tell myself to continue to dominate my man.

“You’re amazing,” he said. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it.”

I was so full of passion that it was almost like being angry with him. My blood was pumping at such a rate with the excitement that I couldn’t stop. I didn’t even want him to touch me. I just wanted to take him.

I got off him and took off his trousers. He wasn’t lying when he said he loved it. The evidence was plain to see. My breathing was heavier than it had ever been. I wanted this man. I wanted him inside me like I had never wanted it before. It was complete abandon. I wanted to remain on top, to control the rhythm, to control his pleasure, to be the one in charge.

When I did free him from the constraints of his trunks, that’s just what I did. I dominated him. Faster or slower, I decided which it was. I moved up and down on him, increasing my pace, then slowing and watching the frustration spread across his features. This variation confused his body. He stiffened, then relaxed a little. Eventually, I didn’t slow down, and he felt a release. He groaned, and in that sound I felt he enjoyed more pleasure than he’d ever felt in his life. It might have been my imagination but I detected a note of pain, pain in the pleasure, pain in the teasing his body had received.

I rolled off him and lay on my side, looking at him. He was drained. It had been brief but intense.

“Now it’s your turn,” he said.

“No. Tonight was about you. Let’s keep it that way.”

I hadn’t orgasmed. But I didn’t want to, this evening. Not at all. The spell had been broken, the stars had stopped shooting. The excitement had depended on that control, and anything he did now would have just felt like an anti-climax. I smiled at the joke in my head. How could a climax feel like an anti-climax? It was a conflict I couldn’t resolve. But I didn’t want to. Bizarrely, I just didn’t want to.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said. I looked at him. He was a gorgeous-looking man, in his prime. His blue eyes and blond hair looked like they came from the same corner of the palette, looked like a perfect match. His cheekbones were even more sculpted than my own. He lay there and I watched him, took in his handsome features.

It was a perfect evening. I’d shown my man that I could be different from the woman he thought he knew. And this would only be the start. I wanted many more evenings like this. I wanted my imagination to run riot. I wanted to make the most of him, to savour every night. Not to let weeks go by without us having sex.

He turned on his side, too. “Are you okay?”

I smiled gently. “Why do you ask that?”

“Just because of this.” He gestured to indicate that he was referring to the sex. “You were like a different woman.”

“Well, maybe I wanted to be a different woman.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“Good.”

He stretched out his arm into a shape that looked like a cradle. I inched over to him and let that arm wrap me up.

But the psychic’s words still ran around in my head —
be tougher in love.

THE NIGHT BEFORE was great, but I still had to start the next day with the rest of the commuters at the railway station.
 

I like railway stations and I like trains. But during the rush-hour I hate railway stations and I hate trains. And who came up with the name “rush-hour” anyway? It doesn’t last for an hour. Believe me, in a bid to avoid the cram-fest of rush-hour I’ve tried travelling to work at 6.30 a.m. and I’ve tried going in at 9.00 a.m. Rush-hour lasts at least two and a half hours.

Walking down the stairs of Surbiton station is only the beginning of it. It has quite a long platform, stretching at least a hundred yards, maybe more. And naturally, during rush-hour (rush two-hour), people are lined up the entire length of it. Now your seasoned commuter is not stupid. He’s worked out where each train stops, the rough location of each and every door. And he will not stand more than a couple of yards away from that spot.
 

You can spot the inexperienced commuter. He’s the one standing in-between the door spots. He thinks he’s clever, that he’s closer to the edge and, therefore, better placed to get a seat. He knows the others are probably closer to the doors, but he’s confident that he can sidle his way past them and jump on before they can elbow him out of the way.

He’s wrong.

No prisoners are taken during the rush-hour. Everybody knows there aren’t enough seats on the train for all the people queuing. So normal niceties are left behind, as is anybody old and frail. Pregnant women and children are ignored. Rush-hour behaviour disproves all theories of evolution. We return to being animals.

Myself, I’ve given up trying to get a seat. I usually linger behind the competition, the people jostling be one of the ten lucky winners of a seat. And it
is
only ten people who get a seat because the train is half full when it arrives.

But for once, I felt good about myself this morning. I’d really enjoyed the previous evening. It was so nice to meet up with Emily. We’ve had some fun times together and Psychic Night had proved to be no exception. I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s been so supportive, especially recently when I’ve needed it the most.