The Lemon Grove (13 page)

She moves away from the patio doors; hovers at the bottom of the stairs. Hears the suck of steam as the kettle is upended into the cafetière. A little wince of pain as the plunger is shoved down in haste, squirts hot coffee
onto his hands. Strong, masculine hands; soft, slender fingers. Her stomach lurches.

He comes into the room, sips at a mug of coffee.

‘There’s plenty in the pot if you change your mind.’

As though he were talking to his flatmate. His dad. He slumps down on the sofa, puts his legs up on the table, picks up his iPad and starts typing with both hands. What is he writing? What is he saying?

‘Going for a shower,’ she says. ‘Can you try Emma again?’

He doesn’t even dignify the request with a nod. She peers down as she goes; he’s almost filled up the page.

Upstairs, she locks the bedroom door, then the bathroom door. Turns on the shower – as hot as she can bear it. She soaps and soaks the loofah and sets about sloughing off the salt, the sea, everything from her skin. His skin touching hers. A stabbing within. She removes the shower head from its hook, directs the water spray between her legs. Gasps at the shock of the touch, the alien sensation radiating out from deep within. A hot, scratchy sound in her throat as she drags the shower head up and down, once, twice, its length, its hardness too much to bear. She stops. Latches the shower head back onto the wall.
Gets out. Wipes the steam from the mirror to observe herself; to chide herself. She traces a finger along the soft, dimpled flesh of her thighs and buttocks; touches the tired appendix scar; cups her breasts – squeezes them together then lets them drop. Still that urgency; the pulsing throbs between her thighs.

She is surprised to hear music coming from his room – ‘Unravel’ by Bjork; an all-time favourite track. Could he possibly know that? Of course not. Why is he playing it so loudly? What message is he sending her? None. Nothing. Drive this folly out. She dries, dresses, creeps past the door, wanting to get downstairs; get as far away as possible. The door is half open. An invitation. The thought intoxicates her. She crushes it, steps quickly past and strides downstairs.

She goes into the kitchen. Busies herself. The rain has stopped. A wind shaking the lemon grove, sun-scorched leaves dropping from the trees. She hears the drone of a moped as it takes the hill. She ventures outside to hang the wet clothes. Benni is loading up his van. She comes back in. Just the two of them. Is this what she wanted? No. No. He is in the lounge now. She goes upstairs and puts away the washing. She lies flat out on the bed. She can’t settle; can’t find peace to do anything.

Downstairs. She is in the kitchen, reading
Walden
, the same sentence over and over, taking none of it in. He walks in and pours a glass of water, lingering long enough for her to take in his hard young body. Impossible. Unfair. Fuck you, she thinks. Fuck Emma. She turns away, goes back to her book.

He comes over. Places the glass of water on the table in front of her, forcing her to look up at him.

‘What?’ she snaps. She slaps shut her book, gets up, the chair scraping the floor, an unceremonious screeching, a rebuttal. He follows her through the archway, into the lounge. His hands are at her waist, pushing her up against the wall, the prow of his dick digging into her buttocks. He sucks her shoulder. Lifts the hair from her neck. She keeps her eyes trained to the whitewashed wall in front; will not look at him. Maddened by his audacity; devastated when he pulls away.

‘Jenn,’ he says.

She will not look; and as long as she doesn’t look, as long as she keeps staring at the wall, this is not happening.

The flat of his palm between her legs. She parts them slightly – but she does not spread them, she does not give in. He works her with three fingers; he is holding the entire weight of her body in his hand as he grips and lifts. Her pulse beats in his hand. The sound of the car coming up the dirt track. She rolls back and forth on his
hand, clenching, trying to goad him with her buttocks, pleading with him to finish her off. His hand stays dead still.

‘Kiss me,’ he breathes into her clavicle. The car turns into the driveway. He increases the pressure of his hand but it remains fixed, like a clasp, keeping her stitched up, held together. Still in control; but how badly she wants to let go. A yelp seems to rear up from her guts. It is not release or ecstasy, but mercy, soaking through her pants to meet the sweat-hot cradle of his palm. The slap of a car door. Only one. Where is Emma? Footsteps on the terrace. His hand drops away, leaving her wide open, bereft. The cool sweep of the air conditioning breezes across the damp of her face; her soaking briefs. He hastens to the couch; picks up her book. She is still standing in the archway, dazed, when Gregory comes in. He is carrying Emma and her leg is in plaster.

13

Jenn watches day break from the kitchen window; streaks of green and pink slowly scratch the sky to life. The sea begins to glint, from grey to rippling silver. Not wanting to wake the house with the rumble of the electric kettle, she boils a pan of water on the stove. The cafetière is clogged with yesterday’s coffee and she just cannot be bothered. She digs out a jar of instant from the back of the cupboard. She has to stab the hardened coffee granules with a knife, then scrape them out. She lifts the pan from the stove; it keeps up its faint, melancholy bubbling and she pours into the cup. She drinks the coffee black, no sugar, recoiling at the first tentative sip, bitter like the residue of last night’s dreams. She swigs more, gulps hard. It scours her throat and somehow it feels right; it feels like sacrament.

She has no concept of time, no idea how long she has stood at the window, but the coffee is cold and outside a mound of split and withered lemons is now visible in the pale morning light, raked into a compost pile at the furthest corner of the grove. Her mind loops: every train and twist of thought goes back to him. She places a hand on her chest; her heart skulks low in its cage. She would like to take it out and run it under the cold tap; she would like to wash away the grease and rawness until the juices run clear. She would like to march right up to his room and ask him to leave. She’s rehearsed the moment enough, these past few hours. But whenever she steels herself to the possibility, she is floored by the outcome. She pictures him gone, and she starts to come undone.

She goes out to the terrace, the fresh morning light picking out the shabbiness of the recliners. The decking is dirty, its weather-proofing beginning to peel underfoot. Gingerly, she lowers herself down onto one of the chairs. Its cushioned padding is damp. Her eyeballs throb. She can feel her dull pulse through her eye sockets. It’s been a long time since she’s felt this sleep-starved. She sits a while, drifting, thinking back to the night shifts at the care home, all those years ago. Twelve-hour shifts, sometimes ten days in a row. If she could make the 7.30 a.m. bus back to Rochdale, she might be able to get four hours’
kip in, before her afternoon stint at the bookie’s. Greg put a stop to all that. He put a stop to a lot of things – for the better. Within six months of meeting him, she’d handed in her notice, gone back to college and inherited a daughter. Five years later she was managing a care home. She listened to him, back then; she trusted him. Greg always seemed to know what was right for her, and how to make it happen. She’d never had that before – not from any of her teachers, and certainly not from any boyfriend. Her dad had always shown faith in her, but that was different. His was more of a blind belief in her ability to make a go of things – to make the best of a bad hand. And she did; she was a grafter, Jenn. She was a worker, and she got herself out there, earning a living, and living the life, after a fashion.
You’re a grafter, aye, love. Just like your mam
. He’s there for a moment; she could reach out and touch him, until she blinks. Dad. What would he make of her now? He was very fond of
Grigree
. It didn’t matter that he was older, or that he was father to a baby girl. He was good; a good, solid man with a good job and a good, solid name. Grigree. He had a good, solid look too. Everything about him was big and commanding; reassuring. The sort of man a father wants for his daughter.

There’s a crunch like the crushing of salt in a grinder as she tips her neck forward. Her shoulders hurt from sleeping in the spare bed last night, little more than a flimsy mattress on its hewn-rock base. Once upon a time it had been a treat for Emma to be allowed to sleep down there. She’d never dream of it, now.

At one point she thought she heard footsteps. Whoever it was seemed to linger outside her door before shuffling back up the stairs. Greg? Had he come to apologise? He’d been cool with her since he got back from the hospital, and even though he didn’t say it, because he knew how unfair – how absurd – it might sound, deep down he blamed her for the accident on the cliff. She’d felt him stewing away in bed, simmering in the darkness. His eyes were closed but she could feel his mind ticking over, laying down his resentment – his vindication – between them like an unwelcome guest. When finally he did drift off, she was unable to. She took her featherless pillow and went downstairs. The footsteps outside the door were faltering, nervous; too light for Greg’s. But she couldn’t know. And once the thought had invaded – the possibility that Nathan had come to her, in the night, eager to slip between her sheets – there was no getting back to sleep. That wasn’t much more than a couple of hours ago. Now, the sun is on the rise, already starting to disperse the low bank of cloud that mottles the tips
of the mountains. She can hear a van chugging down the hillside. And somewhere, on the other side of the hill, goat bells announce the new day. She is not ready for it; not yet. She picks up her chair and takes herself round to the side of the house. It’s shady here, cooler; the grass is still damp. She closes her eyes and tries to forget.

She’s foggily aware of the creak of the gate, but she cannot drag herself awake. Then come the sighs and the panting for breath, macho sounds of exhaustion; recuperation. He hasn’t seen her up there, in the shadow. He’s bent double, his palms on his knees, catching his breath. He straightens up and comes limping up the path, stiff-legged, his T-shirt pulled over his head like a keffiyeh. The rutted ridges of muscle on his ribcage are speckled with beads of sweat. He slurps water from the standpipe, splashes his face and slumps back against the wall; and she feels it like a kick in the guts. Greg had a dozen more eloquent ways of describing the depravity of that sensation. He’d written most of them in the mist of the bathroom mirror when they first started screwing – one each morning for weeks, and she’d thought they were his. But whoever he was quoting – Shelley or Coleridge – none of them got as close
as the clichés did to the naked savagery of that primal passion. Seeing Nathan was like being hit by a truck; she is seeing stars; it is gut-wrenching.