Send Me A Lover (38 page)

‘I bet you’re quite the PE teacher. I bet you have legions of lovesick teenagers after you.’ It feels nice to flirt, to make silly, light conversation. He’s so handsome that I almost feel intimidated lying naked beside him.

‘Legions,’ he jokes. ‘No. Not really.’ Then he smiles immodestly. ‘Well, maybe one or two.’ He likes himself. Sure he does. How could he not?

‘I hated PE in school,’ I tell him.

‘Oh, don’t tell me you were one of those girls who whines and gets prissy when they have to play soccer.’ He shakes his head. ‘I hate chicks that wimp out. I get really pissed off when they won’t even make an effort, when they come whining with all their lame-ass excuses.’

‘You’re twenty-six,’ I tell him, after a while of studying the healthy face, blond hair, blond eyebrows and lashes. Not really that much younger than me, really, yet it feels like lots.

He strokes the inside of my thigh. ‘Is there a reason you have to keep repeating my age?’

His fingers feel fantastic. What am I doing in bed with a twenty-six-year-old? I don’t tell him he’s the first person since my husband. I don’t even mention Jonathan, and he doesn’t either.

‘So do you have a girlfriend?’ I ask him, instead.

He looks the tiniest bit coy, and I don’t know whether it’s spontaneous or he’s putting it on. ‘Oh, not sure I want to answer that. Might incriminate me.’

‘Go on.’ I prod his chest. ‘You must have one.’

‘Off and on.’

‘What’s that mean?’ I prod him a few more times. ‘You mean off and on, as in sometimes, you have a girlfriend?’

‘I mean there is somebody. We’re off and on.’

‘What are you at this moment?’

He studies me, pretends to give my body the once-over. ‘At this moment..? Off. Definitely.’ Before I can say any more he quickly says, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of taking a year off and going to live in Sweden.’

‘When?’

‘Maybe after Christmas, depending if they’ll let me at work.’

‘That’ll be good for you.’

How nice. He gets to go and bonk lots of Swedish girls… He draws circles around my breast now with his middle finger. I tingle again. This is definitely not going to be permanent, so I might as well make the most of it.

‘Sooooo,’ he says. ‘Are we going to do this again?’ He runs the finger down the centre of my stomach, to my navel then back up. I notice he doesn’t ask much about me. In fact, very little, even over dinner. When we’re not talking about him, or things he wants to talk about, we tend to just eat in silence.

I push whatever negatives there might be far away. ‘Yeah, right now mightn’t be a bad plan.’

~ * * * ~

Sherrie splutters wine all down the front of herself. ‘You didn’t!’

‘I did!’ I grin at her across my couch, and point to my bedroom door. ‘In there!’

‘It makes perfect sense.’ Her eyes go from my bedroom, back to me. ‘I mean, if you’re still nursing that idea that Jonathan’s going to send you a lover… then yeah, of course, it all fits that he’d send you a handsome young Phys-Ed teacher who donates his free time to a worthy cause. I mean…’ She looks up at the ceiling. ‘Great job Jonny baby. I never did like that idea of you sending her that weird Greek, or the married Brit with the wife who felt up a stripper. That sucked. But this one… I do believe you got it right this time.’

I stretch my legs out so my feet are on her lap, and dive into my wine glass again. We started off renting a DVD but it was lousy so we packed it in after about twenty minutes and just sat talking instead, and cracked open another bottle of wine.

‘What’s he like, this Kye who Jonathan’s sent you?’

Jonathan wouldn’t send me Kye. ‘In the sack?’

‘No! In the staff room. Does he clear away his coffee mug? Does he always read the notice boards? Is he one of these great intellectuals who talk about the brain as an extension of the bicep? Of course in the sack you turkey!’

‘Oh…. young. And fit. And enthusiastic… And quite, quite big,’ I tell her and she just about spills her wine again. ‘It’s his age though. That’s the real problem.’

‘He sounds quite mature… volunteering his free time.’

‘He is. Well, sort of. But he’s into himself, not in an arrogant way, but he knows the girls like him. And he definitely thinks like a single lad. Besides, he’s moving to Sweden for a year at Christmas. He wants a break from his job and wants to take off and live his life. He’s got no commitments. He has an on-off thing with his girlfriend… I don’t think he’s the type to let that stand in his way.’ I’m as certain of it as I was that Sean isn’t moving to Seattle. ‘He’ll get there and screw legions of really beautiful
natural
blondes.’

‘I bet he didn’t have any complaints about you not being a natural blonde!’

I grin again, feeling myself blush thinking how eager I was for him. ‘He didn’t actually.’

She chortles. ‘I can’t believe you were going to sit and watch a movie before you told me this!’

‘It’s not really that revolutionary though is it? I mean, sex. We all do it. Okay some of us haven’t done it in a while. But the bigger, better news that you’re forgetting is that I have my first client! That’s what we really should be talking about—not men. Why do we always talk about men? Isn’t the job the best thing that came out of last night? It should be, but with the thought of Kye on top of me, I’m not so sure.

‘To your first client.’ She holds up her glass. ‘You go girl!’

We toast.

‘Who needs men, Ange? Look at all the good things that are starting to happen. You have a job of sorts. You have a home that you don’t have to pay for! You have a proper place to live!’

‘I do! And I think I’m going to live in it. There’s still going to be bills to pay, so I still have to get some income coming in, but I actually think I can live there. I think it’s the right thing to do.’

‘You have a home, you have a client, and you’re getting laid,’ she shakes her head and looks at me in a moment of truth. ‘How the heck did all that happen Ange? How did it all just fall into place?’

‘I don’t know, Sherrie. I really don’t know.’

But in a very weird way, I think I do.

On Saturday morning, I ring my mother to see if she’s heard anything from the doctor. Also, I wanted to tell her I’ve downloaded the immigration papers off the Internet and am slowly wading through the forms, to start the process of sponsoring her to come live with me.

The phone rings and rings. Strange: she’s usually home at this time. I’ll have to remember to try her again in a couple of hours.

~ * * * ~

The Salvation Army van comes and gets the furniture belonging to Ms Elmtree that I decide I don’t want to keep—her bed, the seat she always sat in by the window that looks grotty now, and a few other things. Then Richard helps me strip the kitchen and living room of the ancient floral wallpaper. We work together comfortably, without talking, with the radio on the classic rock channel: the Rolling Stones’
Paint it Black
back-to-back with David Bowie’s
Ashes to Ashes
, as we pull long and satisfying strips of paper off to reveal a knobbly surface.

‘I’m going to do the kitchen in an off-white, and the front room and the stairs in a very pale yellow,’ I tell him. ‘I thought a richer yellow for the entrance and small corridor might be nice, as well as yellow for my mam’s room, and maybe a pale blue for my bedroom, to make my room an extension of the sky… Sunny, happy colours.’ I’ve already given my month’s notice at the apartment.

Richard looks across at me from atop the stepladder, just smiles.

Yesterday, as I was showing out the man who came to hook up my phone, I met my neighbours who bought mine and Jonathan’s house—I couldn’t face meeting them when I sold; I just let the agent handle everything. They’re a nice young couple who’ve just had a baby girl—Chloe. I didn’t bother explaining that I used to live in their house. I didn’t want to tell them that Jonathan had died, and somehow bring bad karma to a place where a newborn has just arrived. But I like her, Yvonne, the mother. I could see us being friends.

After we’re done stripping, Richard perches on the wine-coloured couch. I decided against giving that to charity; it has a certain vintage decrepit look that somehow says
keep me, I come with the house
. I make us a cup of tea. The other day he was telling me that he thinks Jessica knows he was contemplating leaving her. He said she’s been acting ‘silently admonishing’.

‘You have dust on your nose,’ he tells me, affectionately, as I hand him his cup. He points to the end of his own nose. I rub it away then plonk down on one of the boxes Richard helped me move over from the apartment.

‘Phew! It’s going to be a hell of a job Richard. What have I taken on?’

‘You’ve got all the time in the world,’ he tells me, after a slurp. ‘And I’ll help you all I can.’

I wonder if Jessica ever resents his involvement with me, if she’s sensed his feelings. Did Jonathan know? ‘You already have,’ I tell him.

He puts his mug down carefully on the floor. ‘The thing is… I owe you, Angela, more than you realise.’ He looks out of the window then draws a sharp breath and wipes a hand over his mouth.

‘What does that mean?’ For some weird moment I wonder if he’s actually going to admit he loves me.

‘Things that weigh on the mind, you know.’ He taps his temple then meets me in the eyes. ‘They sit there and you know you’re not going to be able to forget them, and that one day it all has to be out in the open. There’s no other way.’

‘I’m not with you.’ He’s starting to alarm me.

‘I should have told you sooner, Ange. I don’t know, I think I was nervous about owning up to it…’ He looks at me quite intensely now.

He’s definitely going to tell me he loves me.

‘Have you ever wondered why Jonathan ended up losing all that money in the mining venture?’

‘Erm…’ Okay. This is not what I’m expecting. ‘No. Well, he made a bad investment, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but why did he?’ He doesn’t wait for my answer. ‘Because it was me. I was the one who got him involved in it.’

For moments I can’t react. Then, of course, it all makes sense. Why didn’t I sense this before? That there had to be something greater than friendship and affection. This is why Richard is always trying to throw money at me—not because he likes to play the protector, as I briefly thought—but to try to help me keep my house because he felt responsible for my losing it.

‘Oh! Richard! Don’t be guilty about that. You’ve nothing to feel bad about.’

‘It was a reliable tip. I wouldn’t have gone into it if it hadn’t been. I had a vision that we were all going to become instant millionaires.’ He rubs a hand over his mouth again. ‘The odd thing is, I’ve never played with my money. I’m always… I don’t know. Careful. With just about everything.’ He looks me right in the eyes. ‘Being careful and doing the right thing has always been my downfall. But I had a very strong feeling about this. The odds seemed that we were going to do very well.’

How could I ever blame Richard who I know would only ever act in Jonathan’s and my best interests? ‘It wasn’t your fault, Richard. How could you ever think I would hold that against you? Jonathan made up his own mind to get into it. You know what he was like.’

‘Yes, but I let him put far too much money into it. Far more than I was prepared to put.’

‘Yes but that was Jonathan, always taking risks. You know how it used to drive me mad. Because I’m the complete opposite.’ It’s back again: anger at him being the way he was.

‘That’s what I mean. Don’t you see? I knew that about him, yet I didn’t protect him from himself. And when we lost, well, I lost what I could afford to lose and he—you guys—you lost everything.’

‘I can’t feel pain for money, Richard. Do you understand that? I’ve moved on. We all have.’

‘Even Jonathan,’ he says.

He drinks his tea off, stands up, looks across the street to our old house, for a long while, then walks to the kitchen with the cup. When he comes back, he stands behind me, so I can’t see him unless I turn.