Slightly Foxed (20 page)

had a bruised feeling at the top of my hip. Aha! I

remembered that. I'd crashed into a table, Piers had given me

some wine and I'd—

Oh God
,
please, no
. The summerhouse. Dope, wine, Piers's

arm around me. I'd told him about Florrie. About—
him
. Flick.

The elven-faced, blond-haired artist who'd drawn me into his

life and misled me, and ultimately who'd betrayed me in

favour of his art.

Agonies flooded me, scrying and scribbling through my

intestines like haruspices trying to divine the future. So now

someone knew. Seventeen years of containment, of a

memory dam which had resisted all other forces, gone in one

night. Now, it wasn't so much a question of facing the music,

more of facing a full symphonic orchestra with a nuclear

string section.

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Slightly Foxed

by Jane Lovering

I staggered out of bed, wincing as my feet touched the

floor and my legs straightened. There was a cracking sound

from my spine as I reached full height and dragged myself

over to the small low window by judicious use of pieces of

furniture. I had to lean quite heavily on the sill and close my

eyes until the outside world stopped spinning, and I could get

a proper look at it.

Oh
shit
. I mean, really, really
shitty
shit. With a big side

order of
fuuuuuuuckkkk
.

The view wasn't familiar. Not exactly. But I did know

where I was. Oh God, someone was going to
die
for this. It

might be me.

"Oh, you're up and about. I brought you some orange

juice. Reckoned it might be the best thing right now. Thirsty?"

"Piers, you absolute, total and complete
bastard
." I spun

away from the window, hissing like a boiling snake. "What the

fuck possessed you to bring me
here
?"

Piers put down the pitcher and tray slowly and carefully,

then, with great deliberation, began pouring a glass of juice.

"What else could I do? You'd passed out, you were throwing

up, like, every two minutes. I couldn't
leave
you. You might

have choked."

"I don't remember." It was a half-lie. "I don't remember

anything."

Piers drank the orange juice, looking at me over the glass.

He had no
right
to look so bloody good. "Okay." He replaced

the glass on the tray and sat down on the window ledge. "You

were out of it, completely gone. I thought about getting you

to hospital, but I figured you'd thrown up most of the alcohol

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anyway. I was going to take you to your place, but—" He

looked down at his hands. "Don't forget, I was outta things

too last night. Not thinking straight, know what I mean? And

then." He looked at me and there was a whole book written in

his eyes. "I didn't like to leave you," he repeated. "So I got a

taxi, brought you back here. You'd stopped throwing up, but I

couldn't be sure."

"This is your flat, yes? And you have been subtle about it?

I mean, I'm not going to walk out through that door and find

Alasdair and Tamar waiting to hear how I came to be brought

home by her son, blind drunk and only half-dressed?"

"This is my place, yeah. Want to look round?"

I took a deep breath. "Piers, I'm only nominally sober, I'm

still only half-dressed, and I feel like—you don't want to

know. If I smile I'm convinced my face is going to fall off, put

it that way."

"You look okay to me."

"I might
look
okay but I
feel
like a chemical toilet. Why

didn't you book me into a hotel? And what about Grainger? I

should have rung the vet!"

"The way you were last night? I had to pay the taxi driver

double, he thought you were going to die on him. The only

hotels that would have taken you were
not
places you'd want

to be waking up in this morning. And, like I said, I didn't want

to leave you. Don't worry about getting back home. I'll need

to get to York, pick up my car. I'll drop you off on the way.

Grainger will still be at the surgery whatever's happened."

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by Jane Lovering

There was a silence. I took the glass of juice he poured

me, proper stuff, freshly squeezed. "Piers, what I said last

night—"

"You said nothing last night. You want toast? I got a real

class act, kick-ass toaster, does bagels too." He got up and

headed out of the room, but I followed. This was too

important to leave.

"No, I mean—"

He stopped, so suddenly that I collided with his back.

"Alys. Listen up. You said
nothing
last night, right?" He turned

around to face me, put his hands on my shoulders. "Nothing."

His face bent towards me until I felt the soft drift of his hair

on my cheek, close enough to tell that his breath smelled of

coffee. "It's okay." And he was gone, whirling away across

bare-boarded floors to an island unit which stood in the

middle of the best fitted kitchen I'd seen outside a
Homes and

Garden
's magazine. "You should really be worrying about

what you
did
! Jeez, you were crazy, woman. Thought you

were going to jump in the river one time, up on the bridge

dancing. What was it?
Rio
, something."

"Duran Duran? I was dancing to Duran Duran? On a

bridge?" Trying to follow his mood, copy it, kid both him and

me that I believed he'd really never mention last night again.

"Not just dancing. You were
singing
it! Fucking crazy. And

that's when you threw your boots in the river too, case you

were wondering. Can't dance in boots, apparently. You want

eggs? No? And then you locked yourself in the john, did three

lines of coke and insisted we went on to a club."

"I didn't!" This was truly horrific.

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"Nah. Just kidding, you passed out. Had to carry you to the

taxi." Piers juggled three eggs in the air, cracking each one

against the side of a bowl as it came down. "Sure you don't

want? I'm scrambling?"

"You're posing."

"Yeah." He struck a muscle-man attitude, then one-handed

slooshed the eggs into a pan of foaming butter. "And I cook.

Twenty-first-century man, right in front of your very eyes."

I shook my head and went and sat down in a cuboid chair

until he'd finished. The smell of the eggs cooking made me

nauseous, and the relentless resilience of youth made me feel

crippled and weak.

I had to admit though that his flat was beautiful. Pale

boarded floors from end to end, the kitchen with its lean-over

worktop leading to the dining area, possibly the biggest TV I'd

ever seen, and the clean-sheeted bedroom. I presumed there

was also a bathroom to match. Anyone with a set-up like this

was highly unlikely to be pissing in a bucket. I leaned my

head back and closed my eyes. This much conspicuous

consumerism in one place was narcotic and I must have

drifted off again, because the next thing I knew was Piers

gently shaking my shoulder.

"Alys. The taxi's here."

"Wha'? Oh. Need to get dressed." I shuffled into the

bedroom and emerged wearing the pink skirt, but still in the

T-shirt and with bare feet. I'd found the halterback top, but at

some point during the night I'd obviously been sick on it. "I'll

get the T back to you later."

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"Keep it." Piers handed me a pair of flip-flop sandals.

"Wear these for now. They'll stop you looking quite so—" He

stopped and his cheeks flushed under his dark stubble.

"Quite so what?" He shook his head, but I insisted. "Quite

so
what
, Piers?"

"Quite so slept over," he muttered.

"But I did sleep over, where's the problem?"

"I am so
not
going to spell it out for you, Alys. Let's go,

taxi's waiting."

I frowned, and then his meaning rammed into my skull.

"Oh!" and a second later, "Oh, God. You don't think anyone

would think—would they?"

"My reputation's been shit for years, how's yours?" Piers

flashed me a mischievous grin.

"Going downhill, I suspect," I said, as disapprovingly as I

could.

"Yeah." Piers led the way to his front door. A short way

farther down a gravelled drive lay the five-bedroomed, five-

bathroomed home of Alasdair and Tamar. I felt a brief stab of

pity for the two of them; this would have been the perfect

setting for a clutch of kids. What the hell, they could always

adopt. Tamar would no doubt insist on a matching pair of

Romanian orphans and Piers would be kicked out to make

way for a Norlands nanny.

"Darling." The voice cut the tranquillity I'd been feeling

with the finesse of a chainsaw. "Did you want to come over

for lunch?" Tamar's accent was still, after seven years in

Yorkshire, entirely New England. I'd never put my finger on

exactly how it was that she managed to make me feel

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superior and yet patronised all at once, but I suspected the

accent played a large part.

"Uh, no thanks, Ma. Gotta get back into town." Under his

breath he added, "Please go now." But instead Tamar

advanced from around the side of the house until I couldn't

help but come into view.

"Alys?" Tamar was clearly torn excruciatingly between the

politeness she normally extended towards me whenever we

met, and the thousand-and-one questions which had

obviously sprung up, seeing me in the company of her son,

wearing his T-shirt, a micro-mini skirt and suspect sandals.

Particularly when she was as ever immaculate, with her

feathery blonde hair, her oversized shirt emphasising her

narrow shoulders and her sugar-pink pedal pushers with

matching ballet pumps. She looked like Sunday Morning

Barbie.

"Alys got mugged last night in York. She knew I was up in

town at a party so she called me." Piers's eyes gleamed at

me.

"And I didn't want to be alone, with Florrie away. I was a

bit shaken to tell the truth so—"

"So I brought her back to mine for the night. We're off now

to...er..."

"Report it to the police. I was too shaken last night, and

they'll never catch him anyway. Them," I upgraded, knowing

Tamar thought I was more butch than Russell Crowe simply

on the evidence that I lived without a man and could wire a

plug.

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"Oh, Alys, that's terrible." Tamar looked me up and down.

"They stole your clothes?"

"No, I—"

"Ma, we have to go, I don't want the car towed." Piers

flung the taxi door open and waved me inside, rather wildly I

thought.

"Sure. Okay. Have you heard from Florence lately, Alys?"

Tamar continued, obviously trying to make conversation. You

had to admire her really. After all, when it came to awkward

social situations this must rank pretty highly.

"A couple of postcards, some rather brief phone calls. Have

you?" I wanted the answer to be "no".

"Oh yeah. She sounds real happy, doesn't she? City life

suits her."

The taxi started moving before I could reveal that Florrie

had left herself limited time during her snatched phone calls

in which to sound happy or otherwise, she mainly rang to

shriek things like "I'm in the Tower of London!" Anyway,

Tamar seemed to have satisfied herself that sufficient

pleasantries had been exchanged. She was already heading

back to her Aga-lined kitchen with resident cook. She

probably had a little woman to do her sit-ups and pelvic-floor

exercises too. I gave her a smile as we passed. She waved,

but there was a thoughtful look in her eyes. Was it the sight

of her son in my company or was she starting to make

connections?

I was getting paranoid. I silently cursed Piers for telling me

about Alasdair's fertility problems. But there was no reason

for anyone to put things together. Alasdair's early influence

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on Florrie had made sure that she had a lot of his

mannerisms, even his own parents had remarked on how like

him she was. People seeing what they wanted to, I supposed.

"You okay?" Piers's voice shook me out of my delusions of

discovery. "That was one wild party last night. Not surprised

you're still hungover."

"I'm just tired."

"Yeah right. I know hungover when I see it." Piers smiled

lazily and hauled his hair back off his face. "Can't take the

pace."

He was trying to distract me, to stop me thinking about

last night's revelations, to make everything all right again. A

sudden wave of affection for him welled up inside me. "Know

something, Piers? You are a very lovely guy."