Rumours (32 page)

‘But if you're in heels, you have every excuse to teeter and to take his arm for balance.'

‘Mother!'

‘OK. All right. What do I know. Just enjoy yourself.'

‘Hope so.'

It was tingles of desire, a zip of anticipation and a heart running twenty to the dozen on hope, which propelled Stella down the garden path to Xander's front door.

‘Hey,' he said, thinking she looked lovely, wondering if he could say it out loud but feeling strangely unconfident to do so. She felt thrilled by the sight of him, bit down on a grin and made that peculiar snort thing of hers.

‘Hullo,' she said and they kissed quickly, clumsily, and said boring things about the weather. He was wearing a soft washed denim shirt and had either forgotten to tuck one side in or else had omitted to pull the other out. She wanted to do it for him, but she clasped her hands together and rocked on the spot.

‘I'll just get my keys,' he said, with a scratch of his head.

‘And your shoes,' said Stella.

‘Hungry?'

‘I think so,' she said. ‘You should always untie laces before you put on your shoes.'

‘Cheeky mare,' he muttered.

She put her hands on her hips and tutted and thought to herself, oh my God I'm so happy to be here.

With its beams and flagstones and mismatched thick wooden tables and chairs, two inglenook fireplaces and also a secluded but sizeable beer garden, the Black Ox suited every season. Xander and Stella were seated at a table for two, by a window overlooking the garden. The staff referred to him by name and Stella liked that; flattered not to have been taken anywhere else. Eyeing another diner's fish and chips, both she and Xander ordered the dish and happily tolerated the slow service as it gave them the chance to linger over their drinks and privately delight in how smoothly conversation flowed.

‘Are you going to get rip-roaringly drunk on me?' Xander asked.

Stella shook her head soberly. ‘That's my modus operandi for blind dates only,' she said. ‘Anyway, it's a school night.' She paused, looking around the pub, loving it all. ‘Do you come here often, then?' She said it in a cockney accent.

‘It's my lair,' he said. ‘I take
all
the girls here.' It was obviously far from the truth and she felt chuffed.

‘Well, I'm honoured.'

‘How's Will?'

‘He's fine – he got Gold Book at school so he's cock-a-hoop.'

Xander thought how much he liked her turn of phrase. It was quirky and old-fashioned and so much more descriptive than ‘fantastic' or, God forbid, ‘awesome'.

‘My mum's babysitting,' Stella told him.

‘Are you close?'

She nodded. He wanted to know about her family so she told him about her brothers and their families – even made mention of her errant father. And she told him about Jo who, she said, was as close as she came to having a sister. He responded with talk of his own small family and both Xander and Stella thought to themselves, so many names to learn – and, in time hopefully, faces to put to names. The dinner arrived; the fish butter-flake-fresh encased in balloons of crispy fragrant batter, chips the size of kindling piled high and a gloss of peas obscuring any remaining white china.

‘Mayo please,' Stella told the waiter, ‘and ketchup too. Please.' She looked at Xander. ‘It's Will's invention – you mix it together in precise proportions and you have mayonetchup.' She let him dip a chip into her concoction and it may as well have been the finest hollandaise for all his nodding. But he didn't mix it for himself, he stuck with tartare sauce. Chat was the most delicious accompaniment to the meal. Work. Hertford. Lydia. Friends. Family. They argued a little about Longbridge – Xander putting across his misgivings, Stella defending her position. It was an impasse but neither of them wanted it to be a barrier. They moved away from it.

In between the details asked for and the facts given, there was teasing and joshing and easy chatter interspersed every now and then with the heady contradiction of spontaneous yet lingering looks. Privately, they both hailed and cursed the setting – a public space, a table between them, food that really ought to be eaten hot. Undoubtedly, it prevented the privacy that his cottage might have afforded yet it also assisted in providing an ideal forum in which they could converse at length. He told her he half expected Caroline's face to press itself against the window. Stella admitted her phone was on silent because no doubt there'd be a barrage of texts from Jo.

‘Will I have to fill in a questionnaire?' he asked her.

‘No – but after the lie-detector test, she'll have you jump through a fair few hoops,' Stella told him. ‘Oh – and she'll probably threaten you, too.'

‘Protecting her pal?'

Stella nodded and, just for a moment, she stopped chewing and stared at something way beyond the melee of peas remaining on her plate.

Not yet, thought Xander. Not here. Not the time.

She glanced up at him and their eyes locked.

‘Jo will ask you outright if you have any addictions,' Stella said, quietly.

He nodded at her. ‘And I'll be able to tell her – no. Apart from running, I suppose.' Stella nodded and Xander tipped his head to one side and nodded back. He thought to himself, Christ – poor girl. And then he reminded himself, not here – not now.

It was practically dark outside now, the candle on the table casting caramel hues over his face – clean-shaven, the dip between cheekbones and jawline just perfect for her to run the backs of her fingers over. Her lips parted at the thought of how his skin would feel, a sudden recall of the taste of him, the sensation sending a bolt of desire so strong she looked away, as if lust was written all over her face.

‘Are you a pudding type of girl?' he asked her, half hoping she'd say no so he could just get her home to his.

‘I am,' she said, wondering for a moment whether it was a deal-breaker or a trick question.

‘That's refreshing,' he said. Even more so, he thought, when she scoffed the lot without offering him a mouthful and then helped herself to a spoonful of his baked Alaska.

When the bill came, Stella offered to go Dutch. ‘Don't be daft,' Xander said, ‘it's a date. It's my treat.'

‘Thank you,' said Stella, feeling full and flush and pampered and just plain happy. A date. Nice to hear it out loud.

Xander chatted briefly to the landlord and to one of the diners, exchanging pleasantries with a couple of others on their way out; introducing Stella to them all. Please don't let it be late, Stella said to herself as they left. She didn't wear a watch, she never had. She'd always been most adept at estimating the time – before the advent of mobile phones. Nowadays she was useless, but she really didn't want to check her phone, she didn't want to see all the larky missives from Jo, she didn't want to have to minimize her evening into abbreviated sentences. Fundamentally, though, she simply didn't want to see what the real time was. But it was dark. Cool, now. Very quiet, out in the village. She and Xander didn't speak, as if the air between them was loaded with messages so soft and scrambled that silence was essential to decipher them. When they turned into Tramfield Lane, it was as if a notch on the night sky had been turned and the lane was velvety black and appeared to have a soft soundproofing of its own. And then Xander took her hand. And a surge of adrenalin stormed through her as she knitted her fingers against his and that's how they walked back to his cottage.

Inside, door shut on the outside world, they stood for just a moment before grabbing at each other, ravenous. As soundless as their first kisses had been at the weekend, now the room reverberated with them. Little gasps from Stella, a throatiness from Xander, their breathing audible and hastened, furniture knocked against, items clattering to the floor.

‘Jesus Christ you taste good,' Xander whispered against Stella's lips before sucking them gently and slipping his tongue into her mouth. They stumbled, still locked in embrace, over his uneven flagstones to fall upon his sofa where their kisses came more slowly as they broke away now and then just to look at each other; smile, close eyes and open them again, stroke hair and arms and faces. Their legs were entwined and as they kissed, Stella instinctively rocked her hips against his thigh, sensing the bulge in his trousers, delighting in the charge it sent down to her groin. His hands, simultaneously gentle yet eager, burrowing up under her top, over her bra and at last to her bare skin.

When had anyone last felt her breasts? It would have been Charlie, of course, but his style was to maul them perfunctorily in a crude preamble to sex. Xander, it seemed, just wanted to touch and discover. And see her for his own eyes. He pulled her top over her head and slipped her bra straps down. And then he broke into a big open grin, smiling at her breasts as if they were the best sight in the world which far exceeded his imaginings.

‘Aren't you gorgeous,' he said and she wasn't sure whether it was to her, or to them. With her fingers enmeshed in his hair she guided his face to them. God she was on fire, she was floating, sinking. With his tongue at her nipple, the graze of his teeth; with his hand travelling along her legs and adeptly in between them, Stella felt herself melt into orgasm and her head emptied as her body filled with feeling.

Xander kissed and kissed her face. Loving it that her eyes were closed yet willing them to open. And when they did, he saw how she was woozy with it all.

‘Sorry – I –' she began.

‘Sorry?' He looked at her as if she was mad. Actually, he looked triumphant. ‘For what?' He was propped up on his arm, brushing her hair from her face. And then she winked and she said, what about you, boyo! And he said, you dirty cow and they laughed but they shifted around so that he was on his back, his erection visibly mapped out behind his trousers. She traced it coyly with her fingers, fiddled with his belt and his flies, suddenly desperate to see him. As his trousers were pushed down and his boxers were pulled away, Stella thought to herself, that's a really nice-looking cock. She floated her fingertips along the length, feathered her touch over his balls, judged by his shallow breathing, his eyes half closed but still boring into hers, that he liked what she was doing.

‘I'm fit to burst,' he whispered, his hand at her breast again. Eyes locked onto his, gently and deftly she pulled his orgasm in just a few minutes. Then, with her hand still around him, feeling the pulse and leap of his cock ebb away, she snuggled down next to him. Both of them sated, squished onto the sofa, tangled against each other, back in the present marvelling at what had just happened.

‘Fuck!' he said quietly. Then he laughed. ‘Fuck?' he said.

‘Yes, please,' said Stella, as if he'd just suggested a cup of tea. ‘Soon?'

She was in his arms. He kissed the top of her head. ‘When can you arrange it?'

And Stella thought, oh god.

In Xander's cottage, time had done something strange, enabling her to be purely on her own with Xander. Not mum to Will, not daughter to Sandie who was currently sitting in Stella's front room. Not best friend to Jo, who'd gone to bed happily reading much into the fact that Stella hadn't replied to a single text. Stella had just been herself, thinking only of her own needs, not worrying about anyone else – it was a strange and liberating new world to explore. But the bastard bloody clock on Xander's DVD player goaded her: it's after half eleven! It's after half eleven! You won't be home till gone midnight! It's a school night! Your mum's babysitting! Get up! Get a move on! You have to go – now!

‘Oh God, I have to go,' she moaned, burying her face in his neck. ‘It's late – my mum!' She was soothed by his laughter, because over and above the sound of it was once again the feel of it, emanating from his chest just as she had felt it through her drunken haziness that night not so long ago. His hand was in her hair, teasing out tangles, weaving locks between his fingers.

‘Go,' he said. ‘You need to go.' They unfurled from each other and stood. Xander pulled his shirt over his head to wipe at his stomach, Stella twanged her bra back into place and rushed into her top. Bare chested, Xander showed her to the door. She ran her fingers over his collar bone, sweeping her hands lightly over his chest.

‘When?' she said.

‘Soon as you can,' he said.

‘Perhaps at the weekend?'

‘Drive safe.'

‘Did you have a lovely time, darling?' asked her mum as if it were only half past nine, not gone midnight; as if Stella had popped over to Jo's and hadn't taken her ballerina cardigan anyway and had gone out with her mascara a little smudged in the first place.

‘It was brilliant,' Stella beamed. ‘Sorry I'm late. Sorry sorry sorry.'

Her mother brushed her apology away as if she was fussing over nothing. ‘Any time,' she said to her daughter. ‘I mean it – any time.'

Goody! Stella sang to herself as she waved her mum off, closed the front door and took the stairs three at a time.

Will! she whispered. It was brill!

‘Saturday?'

Stella stole a private moment behind the gazebo at Longbridge to phone Xander, which was slightly daft on account of it being open latticework with the clematis yet to break fully into bloom.

‘Saturday,' Xander mused.

‘Will's going for a sleepover at Jo's.'

‘I see.'

‘So I can come.'

‘Phnar phnar,' said Xander and at the other end of the line, Stella giggled.

‘Or you could come to me, perhaps?' said Stella.

‘For a sleepover?'

‘Yes,' she said, tingling. ‘Yes – you can.'

Stella didn't much like the people she was showing Longbridge to that afternoon. They were men in suits – a consortium – and they didn't really care for her guided tour. They'd dispensed with her quite quickly, having brought maps and aerial photographs with them. It seemed, for them, the devil wasn't in the details at all but in the potential for carving up the estate like a side of beef. They didn't care for secret bookcases or soft-water taps, they weren't bothered by fade-free wallpaper or a frayed piece of pipe that once carried messages from maid to chauffeur. They were, she decided, the type who'd stick two fingers up at the Prince Regent should he thrust his horse's arse at them – but they didn't take any notice of the painting anyway. It was when she heard them say the apple store could come down to extend the lawn for something they called Lot 3a, that she excused herself and took refuge behind the gazebo to phone Xander. Now she didn't know whether she should go after them or wait for them to reappear – and she couldn't work out if she was pleased Lydia wasn't here or whether it would have been better had she been. Perhaps she'd have shooed them off the land. Or she might have sniffed out the ready cash which seeped from the fibres of their business suits like insidious air conditioning. Stella had already left a message for the Tompkins yesterday afternoon – why hadn't they replied? The Hakshimis were sticking at eleven which had made Lydia and Douglas Hutton tetchy with Stella.