Reversing Over Liberace (7 page)

A sudden roar from the road outside indicated that life was about to get worse by a factor of ten, as Ash pulled his bike up onto the pavement and came stomping through the open front door. “Willow? Oh, fuck, did somebody die?”

“Shut up, Ash. So, to what do I owe the total nonpleasure? Don't tell me, you forgot to take the power cable for the laptop this morning.”

“Nah. Well, kind of. Cal wanted to have a word with you about the laptop, that's all. Reckons there's more to it than just a faulty connection.”

“Have either of you ever heard of the telephone?” I wanted to be left alone to hug my secrets to me, possibly to ring Katie and hold a hushed, wondrous conversation about designer knickers.

“I was on my way over there, thought I'd pick you up as I came past.”

“All right,” I sighed, and thrust some floppy stems into the sink. “Just a minute.” Then a thought struck me. “Ash, have you moved in with him?”

“Who, Cal?”

“Well, I hear the Archbishop of Canterbury's spoken for.”

Ash looked coy for a second. “Weeellll, early days yet. But, fuck me, he's gorgeous though, isn't he? And cute with it. I mean, don't you just love the way his hair is all kinda over his face and he's got those huge eyes? He's a bit thin though, needs feeding up. Some tender loving care.”

“And you're the man to give it to him?”

Ash smiled a secretive grin. “I hope. Look, I didn't come over here to tart about, are you coming?”

“I suppose.”

 

 

 

Cal's flat was not what I'd expected. He lived over two shops in a select, pedestrian area of York, in what at first appeared to be an open-plan room. The parts of the floor not occupied by computer things were piled high with books and magazines, all science fiction. It looked like Nerd Ground Zero.

I stood awkwardly behind Ash as we came in. There was something relentlessly male about this flat in a utilitarian, everything-has-a-function way. Although it looked untidy, I bet Cal could put his hand on a memory card or a modem without a second thought.

“Cal!” Ash bellowed. He'd let himself in with his own key, I noted. Cal might be good with computers, but he was obviously a sucker for a blond. “Callum!”

“Hey.” Cal emerged from another doorway. “I'm here. Do you want something to eat?” In his own environment, Cal's limp was less noticeable. Though maybe it was the reason for all the empty space. As he led us inside, I could see that he didn't use a stick here. “Hi, Willow. I was in the darkroom. Do you want to have a look?” Through another door we entered a tiny room, windowless and illuminated only by a dim red bulb overhead. It looked like the bedroom of a light-sensitive prostitute. “Right. I don't usually go into small, dark rooms with women I've not been formally introduced to, so you'll have to forgive me if I get a bit overexcited.” Cal rummaged around among some papers. “Now, what do you think of these?” He handed me a sheaf of glossy photographic paper. “I just developed them. What do you think they are?”

“You mean you took photos of something without knowing what it is?”

“Well, duh. Of course
I
know what it is—I want to know if you do.”

“If this is pornography, I warn you, my brother has a black belt in karate and will defend my honour with his dying breath.”

Cal chuckled. “Willow, your brother couldn't get a black belt in sushi, I don't think he gives a stuff about your honour, and why the
hell
do you think I'd bring you in here to show you porn?”

“Um, I don't know. Maybe you got a bit overexcited?”

Cal gave me a huge grin. It lit up his glorious eyes, made him look less tired. “Aha!
Now
you're getting the hang of humour. What do you make of it?” He indicated the paper in my hand.

The photographs seemed to be images of a cityscape. Tiny beads of light shone out in complicated patterns scattered randomly across an otherwise dark surface. Smudged streaks of glow could have been the lights of cars captured in motion. “Is it New York? From a helicopter?”

“It's a motherboard.” Cal took the pictures from me.

“A…?”

“Motherboard. The thing that makes a computer a computer. Lots of chips, all stuck together on a board. I take pictures of computer parts from unfamiliar angles, close-ups, that kind of thing. I've got a great one of a USB port, looks exactly like the Channel Tunnel.”

“Why?”

“Just a hobby. I don't…” He hesitated. “I spend a lot of time at home, what with…” He stopped again, dropped his eyes, then his head.

“Yes, I imagine the old war wound must make life a bit awkward,” I supplied.

A grateful smile crinkled his eyes and the corners of his mouth. “Precisely. I've had to resign myself to never dancing salsa again.”

“Bet mountaineering's a bit tricky, too.”

“Ah, dear Everest. How I miss her cloudy heights.”

I decided that I rather liked this odd man. “Please, tell me that none of these pictures feature intimate portraits of my laptop.”

“Not at all. I have special machines to pose for me. Yours is in the living room, the coy little thing. I think you might have a problem with your fan. It could be overheating that's making it cut out.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Do you want me to?” The red light made his face all angles, deep shadows under his eyes and cheekbones, like a Halloween mask, but a sad one.

“Please.”

“Then, my dear young lady, I shall be only too delighted. Now, let us leave here, before I become overexcited again and you call for your brother to sort me out using only his exquisite black belt.”

Cal held open the door of the dark room and we went back into the suddenly too-harshly-lit hallway. “I'll have it mended by the weekend. You can come over and collect it, if you like.”

“Great. Oh, I'm away this weekend. Monday?” Just the thought made me tingle.

Cal made a face. “Yeah. Sure. I'll chuck a blanket over it on Friday, use it as a picnic table.” Then he gave another of his sudden enormous grins. “Come Monday. It'll be fine.”

“I'll look forward to it.” I surprised myself by meaning it. Cal was strange to the nth degree with a weird kind of hyperactive melancholy, but he was fun, charming and seemed to like me. This was at least three points up on Ash's previous boyfriends, who'd either been illegally odd, suicidal or had hated me in the kind of bitchy, supercilious way that some gay men do so well.

Ash decided to sleep over on Cal's sofa. (Yeah, like I was going to fall for
that
one. What did they think, that I've never watched
Queer as Folk
?) So I made my own way home. The streets were dark, the road dull and bleak under the tyres of passing cars and I wondered what Ganda's invention actually looked like.

His voice echoed in my head. “Remember, Willow, you have to see the whole picture,” he'd always said, whilst inventing. “Don't just think in the here and now, try to think forwards. You don't have to think about what people
want
, you have to think about what people
need
. Sometimes, they don't even know themselves.”

All very well, Ganda, I thought as I headed down my own familiar road, but it's hard to think about what people
need, when you don't even know what
you
want
.

Chapter Eight

I was surprised at how much I missed Luke. In little over a week I'd somehow come to rely on his presence every evening, his phone calls every morning. The lack of these things made his absence more profound.

“Are you falling in love with him?” Katie asked. She and Jazz had joyfully reclaimed me for after-work drinking sessions and were gaining any amount of vicarious pleasure from asking deeply personal questions such as this. “I mean, you haven't really known him very long.”

“And you haven't shagged him yet,” pointed out Jazz. “No point in getting all droopy-eyed over the guy if he turns out to be hung like a vole.”

“Oy, size isn't everything. And, no, I'm not ‘falling in love'. I just miss him, that's all.”

“I read somewhere”—Jazz took a deep mouthful of his Guinness while we expressed shock and surprise at the fact that he could read—“that you can make someone fall in love with you, just by being in contact with them at the same time every day.”

“In that case,” Katie retorted, “the barman in here must absolutely adore
you
.”

“Maybe he does,” Jazz replied evenly. “I'm only saying, that's all.”

“You are
so
cynical. I think it's lovely that Will has got herself a gorgeous bloke, and if I didn't have Dan I know I'd be raving jealous. That Luke is a real ride.”

Jazz and I stared at her. “Is there something you want to tell us?” I said, eventually.

“About how you know he's a good ride?” Jazz put in.

“Oh, sorry. I was slipping into the Irish vernacular there, guys. I meant ride in the sense of being a shaggable bloke.”

We forgave her for not being British and ordered more drinks. Despite my newfound wealth, Jazz and Katie shared the round-buying, which showed that the status quo was still exactly as it had been.

“Have you told the others yet about the money?” Katie asked, over another bottle of white wine.

“Um. No. Not yet.”

“Don't you think you ought to?”

You see what I mean about the personal questions? “I'm still trying to think how to put it. OC should be fine. Paddy earns enough to buy Mexico. I don't think Bree will be bothered, as long as no books were harmed in the making. Clay's got bootloads of cash from doing whatever it is he does for foreign banks.”

“And what about Ash?”

“He'll probably scratch your eyes out.” Jazz snorted. “Or ignore you
very ostentatiously
.”

“I think Ash might have other things on his mind,” I said carefully. Ash had taken to coming round after I'd gone to bed, slamming doors and playing music far too loudly. I hoped he soon got over whatever bothered him because living with a thirty-two-year-old teenager was trying my patience.

And then Friday night arrived and Luke turned up at the door in the Morgan, wearing a scrumptious blue shirt which made his eyes look purple. I Audrey-Hepburned down the front path (skipping slightly, swinging my bag in a girlish fashion in kitten heels) and Luke opened the car door for me.

“Had a good week?”

“You cannot imagine.” I grinned. “How was yours? How was New York?”

“Big. Noisy. But I did some great deals, I hope. Fingers crossed everything will pan out all right, just as long as the cash flow holds up. Anyway, let's not talk shop. We're going to have a great weekend. Ever been to the Lakes?”

I had, just once, on a family holiday when I was ten, and my memories of crowded streets with brief glimpses of water, torrential rain and Bree coming down with chicken pox had rather prejudiced me against returning. However, returning in a convertible next to a stunning man was altogether a different matter.

It was dark, but I could sense a stupendous view and the hotel itself was worth the journey, crying out for the adornment of a couple of huge hairy dogs and a squire with a shotgun asserting his
droit de seigneur
with the housemaids.

“Is this all right?” Luke asked, as our bags were carried into our room. Yes,
our
room.

“It's beautiful.” I walked over to the huge open fire flaming away in a stone grate.

“No, I mean”—he waved an arm to take in the canopied double bed looming in the middle of the room like a small bungalow—“this.”

“Oh. Um. Yes. I think…yes. It's fine.”

“I didn't want you to think…if it's not all right, there's a couch, look, or I could book another room, I'm sure they're not full.”

“It's fine, Luke. Wonderful.”

“So, shall we go down to dinner? Or did you want to change?”

I put my head around the door to the ensuite bathroom, which had the largest shower I'd ever seen, a whirlpool bath, and towels the size of Manchester. “I think I'll change first, if that's all right.” Yeah, I'd bought enough clothes to spend the weekend with the Queen and I was bloody well going to wear all of them. God knows this was probably the only outing they'd get. Modestly I shut myself in the bathroom to strip off, leaving Luke changing in the bedroom. I couldn't believe it, I was nervous. Ten years, more, of wishing for a sight of Luke Fry in his underpants, and I'm locking myself in the bathroom like a virgin on her wedding night. What was wrong with me? Apart from the obvious, I thought ruefully, as I dry-retched over the shell-shaped sink.

Dinner was fabulous, although I drank rather more than I should have done, and we lingered happily over brandies in a sofa'd drawing room.

“Okay?” Luke smiled at me, draining his glass and putting it decisively on the table.

“Yes, thanks. Fantastic.”

“Then, shall we?” He held out a hand and helped me to my feet, curling a protective arm around my waist. “I'm looking forward to that huge bed.”

We rocked together, slightly drunk, up the stairs and into our room. The covers had been turned down on the bed, a handmade chocolate was carefully centred on each pillow and a small, atmospheric lamp glazed the room a light pink.

I was suddenly shy. Caught by the reflections in the window, I went over and pretended to gaze out into the night, arms along the windowsill. I felt the hairs prickle on the back of my neck as Luke stood close behind me, his breath swirling the air warmly at my nape.

“Willow,” he said, and I turned. Instantly he had me, lips on my mouth, hand entangled in my hair, fingers trembling over the buttons on my shirt. The air came chill against my body as first my shirt and then my skirt fell away, but I was almost unconscious of it. Luke's heat drove any other thought from my head. His fingers traced my shoulders, then his lips did the same. He kissed me again so hard that the air fled from my lungs. Whispering to me all the time, things he wanted to do, things he
had
to do or die, teasing me and taunting me. Then, when he had me pinned beneath him, the embroidered canopy of the bed swinging over our heads like the roof of heaven, he began to undress himself.