The First Time I Saw Your Face (47 page)

‘I know this is going to sound weird, and we look even stranger, but –’ he carefully extracted a mess of notes from his wallet and watched them flop and drip as he held them out – ‘I don’t suppose you’d be willing to rent us your beach hut for a night?’

Jennifer watched Mack as he peeled her jeans and knickers down her legs and flung them on the pile of wet clothes in the corner of the little bedroom, and then they were wrapped in the duvet, his hand smoothing over her shoulders, her breasts, her belly; his lips on hers.

She listened to the thrum of her heart mixing with the sound of the waves outside and let go of those last remnants of doubt holding her back and wound her legs around him.

When she’d been stripping him of his clothes, she had sensed he was holding back as well, perhaps feeling he should be sensitive and not push his luck too far, but that had all changed as his skin had met hers, and she realised she needed that hungry desire of his; needed to know that whatever had gone on over the last few months he couldn’t stop himself from wanting to make love to her.

She ran her hands down his body to his backside and fondled and stroked it, before moving one of her hands to his groin.

‘Oh God, don’t do that, it’s too much,’ he whispered,
taking his mouth from hers, ‘slow down, slow down, I haven’t tasted you enough yet.’

He kissed her mouth again and all the way down to a breast, taking such delight in kissing and fondling her there that soon her hips were rising and falling and she was light-headed and breathless with the need to feel him moving over her and inside her. Was it only minutes ago she had felt cold?

‘Please,’ she said, ‘let’s get back to where we were, how we fitted together. Before everything.’ She heard him make a low noise at that, and his eyes seemed darker and then darker again.

‘I need to get my wallet,’ he said, sounding breathless, ‘there’s a drowned condom in there. Don’t move.’ He struggled out of the duvet, moved a few steps away, came back and kissed her, moved away again and bent to retrieve his wallet. She saw him struggling with the wet packet. ‘Fiddly thing,’ he said, grimacing at his own impatience, ‘I can’t get—’

They both jumped as somebody hammered on the front door and Jennifer clawed at the duvet to cover herself.

No, no, this is what happened last time.

‘It’s all right, Jen,’ Mack said, but there was fear in his eyes. ‘I swear to God, there are no more lies I’m hiding.’

‘Who is it?’ she shouted.

No reply. He scooted over to the bedroom window and pulled back the curtain and she saw him squinting towards the door.

No, not that again.

‘Can’t see,’ he said, ‘it looks out on the dunes.’ He gave another start as the hammering began again and this time did not stop. With worry still evident on his face, he came back to the bed, picked up a pillow and held it to his groin.

‘I’ll just go and investigate.’ He looked so spooked and so sexy that she got out of bed too, wrapping the duvet around herself.

‘We’ll go together,’ she insisted, and they hobbled out of the bedroom, through the tiny front room with its stripy sofa and sand on the floor, and Jennifer positioned herself behind the door as Mack opened it just enough to see who was standing outside.

‘I’m sorry,’ a male voice said, ‘know we’re interrupting, but these were just about to float away.’

She saw Mack, with one hand still holding the pillow, reach through the door.

‘That’s really kind of you,’ he said and now, in his other hand, he had his shoes and socks. The man outside said something else and then the woman, but Jennifer didn’t catch it, and then Mack was saying, ‘Goodbye and thank you again’, and reversing back into the room. He did not have enough hands to hold the pillow, hold the shoes and shut the door, and so she did it for him.

‘The people from this beach hut,’ he said, letting the shoes and socks fall to the floor. He looked a little bewildered. ‘That was incredibly nice of them.’

‘Well, that’s what we’re like up here,’ she said and saw him give her a warm, brown-eyed look that, as she watched it, sifted into something ruder.

‘True,’ he said, slowly, ‘nice all over. Speaking of which … how are you keeping that duvet up?’

‘How are you keeping that pillow up?’

With a grin, he showed her before throwing the pillow in a perfect arc across the room.

‘Methinks, my lady, you are overdressed now,’ he said, lowering his head and looking intently at her and she felt herself reignite from her mouth all the way down to between her legs. She let the duvet drop and they ended up on top of it, him tearing at the condom packet now with his teeth, and finally, finally she had him where she wanted him and he was telling her that he would never hurt her again, didn’t ever want to move from where he was right now; laughing at the way they still fitted together.

The light on the beach had changed from yellow to golden by the time they opened the door and sat just inside it, both wrapped in the duvet. Jennifer was resting her hand on the inside of Mack’s thigh and thinking about how he had changed under her hands into someone different before. She had to believe he wouldn’t change again.

‘So, Mack Stone,’ she said, ‘very like Matt Harper in bed, but better fashion sense.’

He winced. ‘Don’t, Jen; can we just pretend Matt Harper walked out to sea?’

She laughed. ‘Let’s hope he was wearing his brogues.’

He pulled her in closer and she settled her head on his shoulder and realised that for the first time since coming home from Manchester her brain wasn’t picking away at
what she’d lost in the accident. She felt sleepy, but most of all she felt contented that this shoulder was exactly where she should be.

She lifted her head to look at him some more.

‘Can you really live with this face?’ she asked.

‘I can’t live without it,’ he replied and kissed her on the nose.

A little more kissing and then he pulled her back into his shoulder, carefully, lovingly rearranging the duvet to make sure they were both decent. ‘I wouldn’t have dared hope today could end like this,’ he said, his voice catching. ‘I drove here thinking it was all over, that I had to go back to Bath and leave you up here …’

‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘shush now. You’ve done your penance.’

They watched the waves coming in, a couple jogging and then Mack was whispering in her ear, ‘Whatever you decide you want to do, Jen, acting, maybe directing, teaching, whatever it is, we’ll work out a way of dealing with any morons you’ll encounter along the way. I’ll make you feel so beautiful anything bad will just bounce off you.’ He gave her a squeeze. ‘But no more fighting, you’ve had enough of it and so have I …’ He trailed off and she picked up on the underlying tension in his voice. He was obviously struggling.

‘Jen …’ he said, ‘… as I’m trying to start with a clean slate, those men in the pub? I confess I went back after you’d gone and, long story, but I wound another guy up so badly he started a fight with them.’

She pinched him hard and was gratified to hear him squawk. ‘That’s really bad: I gave you brownie points for just turning your back and walking away.’

‘I know. Old me, promise it won’t happen again. And, while I’m coming completely clean … the money I got paid for doing the job? I’ve spent a bit here and there – Phyllida’s treatment, some stuff for Doug, the mirror. But I’ve set the rest aside. I think you should have it.’

Her first reaction was to say it was dirty money and she did not want it, but when she dug down deeper, she found that the thought of spending it did not really disturb her.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I think I should. And I know what I want to spend it on: I want to go and see Cress, travel around the States a bit, perhaps get Anna Maria to show me some of South America.’

She saw he was looking out to sea again, and he didn’t turn back to her when he said, ‘I’ve got the bank statements in the car, I’ll show you how much there is. Enough for what you have planned and then some.’

‘Would it cover going to Australia?’ she said, suddenly excited by the thought of such new experiences waiting for her. ‘We could swim at the Great Barrier Reef, Mack, I’ve always wanted to do that.’

‘We?’ he said turning back to her.

‘Yes, of course. What? Were you thinking I meant to go on my own?’ His face confirmed he had and for some reason that made her want to cry. She kissed the nearest bit of him to her mouth, the soft dip of flesh by his collarbone,
and one of his hands came under the duvet to seek out and lace his fingers through hers.

‘We
both
need to get away for a while,’ she said, ‘find out who we are. Recover from a brutal few months.’

She felt him tense up and his fingers hold hers more tightly. ‘You’re right, it was brutal, what I tried to do to you, Jen.’

‘What you were
made
to do to me, Mack. And it was brutal for you too. That’s what I meant, we both have to recover.’ He was looking as if he might interrupt. ‘No, listen. I’d say you’re pretty scarred yourself. Dealing with Phyllida all these years; losing your dad so young; all the worry of the Montgomery thing; finding out that … that man, was your father …’

He brought their hands, still interlaced, out from under the duvet and kissed her fingers and she watched his head bowed over her hand and remembered how Alex had done that in the car coming back from the Henshaws’ and how wonderful this felt when that had not.

‘You’re being way too fair to me, Jen,’ he said and then gave a mirthless laugh. ‘But I do have one Hell of a set of parents. If it wasn’t for Tess …’

‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ she said softly. ‘I’m so glad you didn’t make her up, or Joe, or Fran and Gabi.’

There was such tenderness in his eyes as she finished speaking that she leaned over and kissed him; a soft, warm, loving kiss. The duvet got a bit rearranged in the process.

‘After the travelling,’ he said, tucking the duvet back
round them both, ‘you’ll think about getting back into drama somehow?’

The idea made her feel slightly jittery, but she believed now that this jitteriness might be more related to anticipation and excitement than terror. ‘I will,’ she said, ‘and I’ll let you help me.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Only if you do the same for me, I’ve no idea what I’m meant to do with my life. I’ve still got a serious amount of debt, no stomach for journalism and a worrying new tendency to find tramping about the countryside really, really rewarding.’

She started to laugh. ‘You know what I’m going to suggest, don’t you?’

‘Don’t … don’t say I should write a walking book.’

‘You should write a walking book.’ He was shaking his head, grinning ruefully. ‘No, listen … you could look at walks from a different angle … interview people, find out their favourite ones, what they mean to them, maybe even what they’ve helped them do?’

‘I’m not sure—’

‘Sonia, there’s an example, I remember her telling me after her first husband died she walked her feet off, you wouldn’t think it of her, would you? She just needed to be out and breathing fresh air, seeing rivers, the sea, knowing life was going on … and Dad, he’s got a walk he does every Sunday with one of his pals, they’ve done it since they were boys – five miles. Says as long as they can do it and still have enough puff to talk he knows all’s right with the world.’

As she’d been talking she had seen him start to really listen, and when she stopped he said earnestly, ‘You might just be a genius.’

She leaned back into him and felt his chest do some wonderful jiggling again.

‘What now?’

‘Thinking about a job offer I got before I left Bath,’ he said, ‘something at quite a high level.’

‘Oh?’

‘On a plinth, in fact.’ He bent and kissed her shoulder. ‘Guy I went to school with suggested I should stand on it dressed as a—’

‘Pirate.’

‘How the Hell did you know that?’ he asked, pulling a little away to look at her properly.

‘It’s what I thought the first time I saw you, that there was a touch of the pirate there. Something … a bit … bad.’

Her stomach, or something very near her stomach, did a strange little shimmy and she reached up and tweaked his ear. ‘If I asked you to have this pierced, would you?’

‘I would,’ he said and before she knew it, he had pushed her on to her back and was looking down at her. The duvet was still there somewhere, but whether both of them were covered she did not know.

‘I’ll have anything pierced if it pleases you,’ he said, lowering his mouth to her neck this time. ‘But,’ kiss, ‘I will not,’ another kiss, ‘paint myself silver to look like a statue. And, while we’re on the subject of staying absolutely
still, will you stop wriggling about? It’s too far for Gregor to make a delivery, so you and I are going to have to be very good and put aside all thoughts of making mad, passionate librarian love.’

‘Stop besmirching the library service,’ she said in mock indignation, ‘we’re being chipped away and eroded.’

‘Hmm, that sounds nice, I might try some of that on you in a minute, and, about this pirate thing, are you going to insist I wear an eye patch?’

She looked at his brown eyes and the promise they held that if she fell into them all kinds of things would happen to her. ‘No, I couldn’t bear anything to get in the way of these.’ She tried to brush the hair back out of them for him.

‘Perhaps I should go for a hook instead then?’

‘That’ll make writing tricky.’

He laughed and so was unable to make a proper kiss shape with his mouth and when he stopped laughing, he lay down by her side and gathered her into him with one hand on the small of her back and the other gently stroking her neck.

‘Jennifer Roseby,’ he whispered, ‘I really, really love you.’

‘Yes,’ she said, the waves behind them beating a comforting soundtrack, ‘I genuinely believe, Mack Stone, that you do.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to friends Lesley and Martyn Archer for answering my endless questions about libraries and farming; to Changing Faces, the UK based charity for information regarding the issues affecting those with disfigurements to the face, hands or body (please visit their website
www.changingfaces.org.uk
); to Paul Sanderson, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, for expanding my medical understanding of this subject and to William Pym for his insights into working with hot metal.