Slightly Foxed (9 page)

being attacked by half a pound of raw liver, but Leo—well,

let's just say he was
hot
. He didn't attempt to explore the

contents of my T-shirt, but a definitely not-disinterested hand

roamed about between my shoulder blades and there was a

distinct pressure against my hip. Finally he let go and stood

away, shaking his hair off his face and holding his watch up in

front of his eyes. "Hmmm, better get off to the station."

"Oh." I found myself slightly embarrassed. "Yes. Yes, I

suppose so."

"You don't mind? That I kissed you?" Leo opened the

stable door and ushered me out as though we'd done nothing

more meaningful than examine some paintwork. "I felt that it

was something I wanted to do."

"No!" I said abruptly, then feeling this could be open to

misconstruction added, "I liked it, Leo. It was good. Lovely, in

fact. I'd like to do it again sometime."

"You're the first woman I've...since... It's come as a bit of

a shock to me. Finding you attractive. Must admit, I feel a bit

guilty about the whole thing."

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Now he was going to come out as married. Or, I supposed,

to top it all, a married Catholic.

"My wife—" He stopped again, went very quiet until he'd

unlocked the doors to the Land Rover and we were both

sitting inside.

In the heat, it smelled strongly of baked dog and I wound

the window down to avoid suffocating. Leo's knee hovered

very close to mine and I wondered what he'd do if I touched

his leg. Did I mind that he was married? Did
he?
Was it worth

the risk? Was he inwardly quivering, poised and waiting for

some sign that I wanted to take things further? Was this

respectable behaviour for a mother-of-one?

The big engine shuddered into life and I watched him drive

for a while. Capable hands, lean, long legs, a body like an

action-packed adventure and the face of a thriller. He looked

like a poster boy for Poetry Please. "Sorry, what was I

saying?" he seemed to come to, to remember I was there in

the car with him.

"You were telling me about your wife." I decided to be

brave and upfront about it. "How long have you been

married?" Maybe it was seven years. Maybe I was the loofah

to scratch the itch. Did I care?

"Sabine was killed. Drunk driver. Paris, two years ago.

We'd been married for eight years." Totally factual, totally

emotionless.

"Oh. God, I'm sorry, Leo."

Two years ago. And Isabelle had printed his poems. His

wife had just died and she thought it would make him feel

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better to have his love for her nailed down in words on paper?

The woman was barking.

"It... There were things... It wasn't like...oh
bugger
!" The

Land Rover twitched to one side, pulling towards the verge

with a dragging sound. Leo stood hard on the brake but

forward momentum carried us until, with a lurch and a bang,

we came to rest in the hedge. "Sod. Puncture. You all right,

Alys? You sure?"

"Fine."

I was glad that Leo was happy to do the macho thing with

jacks and wheelbraces while I sat on the verge. I'd
thought

he was too good to be true. He'd not shown any of the signs

that men who wanted to date me normally displayed, i.e.,

travelling everywhere by bus with a stolen pensioner's pass.

Now he was, whoa, taking his
shirt off
. There was a sudden,

almost reverential, lapse in my thinking ability while I

watched a Diet Coke ad come to life in front of me. He didn't

even have the decency to have a hairy back or a disgusting

tattoo emblazoned across his torso. When he turned around

to tell me the wheel was fixed, I could feel my eyes getting

sucked down from his face towards his navel, registering the

tidy whorl of hair which encircled it, fighting with myself not

to let my stare go any lower.

"Alys?" He was coming at me out of the sun again. "Are

you really sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine." I managed to roll my tongue back into my

mouth. "Got a bit of a headache, that's all."

So there I sat, next to Mr. Perfect-except-for-a-dead-and-

adored-wife, for the rest of the run into Exeter. I tried a few

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times to reinitiate the conversation we'd been having, but he

would change the subject immediately, almost as though

ashamed of having said as much as he had. Unfortunately the

only other topic available to him at short notice was the stud

and by the time we reached Exeter station, I had more

knowledge about stallion management than I suspect anyone

who works in a bookshop could have found a use for.

"Well. Goodbye, Alys." There was a brief, awkward hug

exchanged, as though the kisses of the morning had been an

aberration on his part. "Could I have your telephone

number?"

I wanted to have the mental strength to tell him that I

didn't think that was such a good idea, unless he could

manage not to be gorgeous when we next met. Oh, and if he

could have some kind of electric-shock treatment which

caused him to totally forget his deceased and no-doubt-also-

gorgeous wife. But I didn't. I had no mental strength at all as

I wrote my home number on a slip of paper provided by the

man in the booking office.

My train pulled slowly into the station, and Leo looked

down at his feet. "I will call you," he said as I pushed through

the crowd to get on board. "I will call you!" he raised his voice

to shout.

"Yes. Please."

As the train jerked out of Exeter, I could see Leo standing

and watching it go, one hand raised in a salute of goodbye as

I wibbled my way down the aisle to my reserved seat.

Reserved
was a good way of describing Leo, I thought. But

stonkingly beddable was better.

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I'd meant to spend the time reading, catching up on Mrs.

Munroe's brave book-group submission of
The
Lovely Bones

but the daydreams I fell into became dreaming for real. York

station caught me unawares so I felt greasily sticky and

disgruntled when I disembarked and entirely justified in using

some of Simon's cash to get a taxi back to the flat. The

streets were crowded with summer's night visitors taking

horse-drawn tours around the minster or just wandering

about. Bunches of foreign-language students formed little

clique-knots outside pubs, like the United Nations going

clubbing.

The windows of the flat shone yellow and welcoming as I

paid the taxi driver and added a generous tip. Florence must

be home.

"Hello, darling." I greeted the flat with blanket coverage

but there was no response, so I trailed through to the living

room and tried again. "Hello, dar..."

"Hiya, sweetie," Piers drawled back. "Good trip?" He was

sitting cross legged on the floor reading a newspaper.

"Very clever. Where's Florrie? And why are you here

again? You're becoming ubiquitous, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Totally. In fact, I'm going for omnipresence next."

Piers stretched out his legs to reveal that he was wearing

striped jeans and an equally stripy shirt. "Flo's run down to

the pizza place on the corner, we were both kinda hungry."

Grainger appeared out of my bedroom, treating me with

the disdain he reserved for anyone who'd been missing for

more than a couple of hours and cheap cat food. I stroked his

sticky fur and realised I could feel his backbone. "Grainger?

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Are you okay?" I watched him sway towards the kitchen. "Do

you think Grainger could have worms?"

"Nah. He's all right, aren't you?" To my horror, Piers swept

Grainger up off the floor and contained him against his chest.

"Piers, be careful. He..." But Grainger just let out a throaty

kind of grumble and submitted to the petting with the

embarrassed air of someone trying on a new suit that they

secretly think makes them look
really
good. "...he actually

likes you," I finished, slightly puzzled.

"Yeah. Seems to." Piers let Grainger jump to the floor.

"But you're right, he does look a bit..."

"Manky. He looks manky." I glanced up at the sound of the

front door opening and Florence entering, rustling plastic

bags. "Don't you think he looks a bit manky, Florrie?"

"Oh, hi, Mum. Yeah, completely. It's a shit outfit, Piers."

"Not Piers, Grainger. Although you're right, it is a horrible

combination. What happened, did you get dressed under the

influence?"

"Hey, no ganging up on me, girls." Piers backed away,

hands held in an attitude of surrender, but he looked furtively

rather pleased. Florence went to put the pizzas onto plates in

the kitchen and Piers followed me back through, helping me

to pull the table out so we could all sit round it. "It's not that

bad, is it, Alys?"

"I can't honestly tell, Piers. I can't focus on it for long

enough."

"Ah well. At least it gets me noticed."

"Lucky it doesn't get you arrested."

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Florence came back with slices of pizza arranged

haphazardly on too-small plates. I was hungry. Leo hadn't

provided any breakfast and anyway, he was so gorgeous that

my appetite knew when it was beaten. All three of us ate in a

companionable silence.

"Mum..." Florence eventually broke the chewing silence.

"I've got something to ask you."

"Yeeeeeessss?" I said, dubiously. She was being way too

nice for this to be good.

"Do you promise you're not going to be mad?"

I became motherish. "I think you mean angry not mad.

You're getting influenced by Piers and his dreadful mid-

Atlantic phraseology."

"I'm American! I can't help that," Piers joined in, less

indignant than he sounded; instead he looked sparky,

animated. "And I think you mean being influenced not getting

influenced. I might be American, but I can still do grammar."

"Shame you can't do dress-sense," I said waspishly but he

laughed.

"Oh, Alys, I am wounded." He held a hand to his chest,

rings gleaming. "To think I don't appeal to you because I

have no sense of style. You shallow, shallow woman."

Florence was watching this exchange with a baffled

expression, obviously desperate to say
yes, enough of this,

now let's talk about me
, but intrigued enough not to.

"I didn't say you didn't appeal to me," I said without

thinking, laughing despite myself at his ridiculousness. "I just

said—" But Piers had leaped up and was grabbing his leather

jacket from the back of his chair.

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"No more! I am deeply offended, and I'm going. Leave you

two females to your heavy talking. Oh, and Alys." He leaned

forward and almost breathed in my ear. "Next time I'll try and

wear something that
does
appeal to you, yeah?"

Both Florence and I were giggling helplessly as he walked

out, but I managed to control myself enough to shout, "That's

try
to
, not try
and
. Bloody Yank!" and heard an offended
huh

in reply as the front door closed. "Piers is growing into a

really nice lad." I picked up the last slice of pizza. "Funny

too."

"Yeah, yeah, a real stand-up, our Piers." Florence watched

me eat. "Look, Mum. I want to go to London. It's okay, not on

my own or anything. Oh, and not with boys either, if that's

what you're thinking. My friend Keisha, you know Keisha,

from school? Her sister lives in Highgate, and she's asked

Keish to visit and bring a friend and Keish asked me—and I'd

really,
really
like to go!"

"Oh." I was taken aback. "When would this be?"

Florence seemed encouraged by my not immediately

shooting her down in flames. "Not for nearly two weeks, after

the exams are over. But Lex, that's Keisha's sister, she's said

she'll take us to the Tower of London and on the London Eye

and stuff like that and I've never even
been
to London before,

have I, Mum? It would be fantastic. So, what do you think?"

"Welllll, as long as I can speak to Keisha's mum first, to

check things out. Not that I don't trust you, darling, it's just

to make sure that it's all right with Lex." I knew Keisha and

her sister, two improbably beautiful girls. Florence would have

a whale of a time with them. "Then yes. Of course you can

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go." Bonus, I'd have a couple of weeks to myself, maybe get

to see Leo. I mean, I liked spending time with Florence—

when Alasdair and I had parted, we'd become a tight little

unit she and I. But since she'd hit her teens, she'd become so