The New Neighbours (56 page)

“Sorry, it's not usually this untidy,” Mad apologised.

Like hell it isn't, thought Charlie who was sitting in the living room and had overheard the comment, and she groaned inwardly as she heard Hattie reply, “Don't worry about it, Mad. I don't mind. Feels like home.”

Hattie was introduced to everyone and then asked, “Can I leave my stuff here for the Christmas holidays? I don't really want to have to pack it all up and take it home and then cart it all back again.”

“Well, I suppose so,” said Mad doubtfully. “I was going to give your room a spring clean over the holiday before you moved in next term.”

“Hey that'd be great,” Hattie agreed. “Like, I can just leave my stuff in the cupboard, OK?”

“She's a bit noisy,” Dean complained, speaking loudly to make himself heard over the thudding of UB 40, “Still I suppose we'll get used to her, and it's only for two terms.”

Charlie laughed. “Well if she gets too much to take, I'll just go and work upstairs anyway. I've a dissertation to finish.”

“You won't mind being the only bloke, will you, Dino?” Mad asked Dean a little anxiously. She didn't want him to move out of the Madhouse. He'd been such a good mate, while she'd been coming to terms with Dan, and she hated the thought of him not being around.

“No, course not… with a load of women to wait on me hand and foot?”

Mad aimed a fist at him and they both laughed.

“When are you coming back after Christmas?” Mad asked him on the evening before they both went home to their families.

Dean shrugged, “Don't know. Why?”

“Just wondered,” Mad said. “Do you want to do something for New Year?”

“Sure,” Dean replied easily. “Like what?”

Mad gathered Spike up onto her lap, “I don't know, something. Like, there must be a party somewhere we can crash!”

Dean laughed. “Oh, a party's no problem, I've already been asked to one. Flintlock's family have got a holiday house in Cornwall, he's invited a crowd down there for a party, you know. We can go to that if you like.” He kept his voice casual. “What do you think?”

“Brilliant,” said Mad, and then as an afterthought, “What about Pepper?”

“Pepper's going skiing for New Year, with her family,” said Dean.

Dean's mum lent them her car and they drove down to Cornwall on

New Year's Eve, the car loaded with warm clothes and sleeping bags.

When they got there they found that the house, Sea Breeze, was not at all the twee cottage that it sounded, but a large, square, stone house which seemed to grow out of the cliff top. It was reached by a winding stony track across the cliff and had a magnificent view out over the sea.

It was early evening as they drove up and the house looked like a beacon lit up in the gathering darkness. It was already bursting with people, most of whom they knew but a few that they didn't, and theywere greeted with cries of delight as they carried in the food and drink that they'd brought as their contribution to the party.

“Sea Breeze isn't the name for this place,” Mad laughed when she looked out of the window across the cliff to the sea. “There's nothing between here and America!”

“Flintlock says his dad wanted to change the name to Howling Gale,” Dean told her, “but his mum wouldn't let him. It's been in her family for years and it's always been called Sea Breeze.”

Howling Gale would certainly have been more appropriate that night, as a stiff south-westerly, increasing to storm force, swept across the open cliff top and wailed round the house. But nobody cared, nobody heard it as the party far outdid the wind, with the noise of thudding music and shrieks of laughter.

It was a great party, and when midnight came everybody shouted “Happy New Year!” and rushed about kissing everybody else. Dean and Mad went into the kitchen to get some more drink, then armed with full pints looked into the huge, now darkened living room, where the music still blared and people still danced. Dean took Mad's hand and led her past that door, past the dining room, where the remains of the food everyone had brought was strewn across the table and much of the floor and through another door into a sort of family room. A lamp was on and there were cushions on the floor, tipped from the sofa, but there was no one in there now. The music still blared in the background, but the room seemed very quiet and welcoming.

Dean took Mad's glass from her hand and put it on a table beside his own and then saying softly, “Happy New Year, Mad,” he pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her. For a moment Mad was shocked and stiff, her brain whirled, she didn't want this, not with Dino, not with anyone, and then all of a sudden she found she did want it. His arms felt so warm and safe round her, his lips, soft and gentle at first, became increasingly demanding, and the length of his body, pressed hard against hers was strong and firm. Seemingly of their own volition, her arms slipped up round his neck, and her lips, at first closed and cool, opened with warmth to his kiss, as she responded to him in a way she would never have dreamed possible. When at last they broke apart, breathless, she looked into his face wonderingly and said softly, “Dino?”

He still held her in his arms, and he looked down at her with a huge grin. “Yeah?”

“Happy New Year,” she murmured, and they slid down on the cushions so thoughtfully left by someone else, and began to kiss again.

As they lay on the cushions, holding each other close, Mad said, “Dino, what about Pepper?”

“What about Pepper? We had fun, Mad, but she always knew she didn't stand a chance against you.”

“Against me?” Mad was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Dean laughed a low throaty laugh. “You really don't know, do you? Anyone else could have told you.”

“Told me what?”

“Oh Mad,” he said, “I do love you.”

Mad looked up into his face, and all of a sudden realised that it was true, and the colour flooded her cheeks. Dean put his forehead to hers and said quietly, “Mad, my little Maddy, I love you and I want to make love to you, but not here. Not where anyone can walk in. In a private place, a place of our own, somewhere special. OK?” And at a loss for words, she had nodded and kissed him and found herself wanting to cry.

The rest of the New Year party passed in a haze of drinking, and talking and laughing. As the dawn crept into the sky, they fetched their sleeping bags from the car and zipping them together for closeness and warmth, snuggled together in a corner of the family room, surrounded by other collapsed couples and went blissfully to sleep in each other's arms.

The next morning most of the other partygoers drifted off, leaving the house looking as if a bomb had hit it. Flintlock stood looking at it ruefully, thinking what his parents would say if they could see it and wondering if he'd ever get it back into anything like the condition he'd found it.

“The parents will schiz if they see it like this,” he groaned.

“Aaah, no problem,” Dean said, “we'll help you get it sorted. Come on Mad.” So the four of them, Flintlock and his girlfriend Sally, and Dean and Madeleine, set to work to restore Sea Breeze to some sort of order. There was much laughter and it took them all day. All the while the howling gale raged outside, bending the cliff top grass horizontal and moaning round the house like a demented ghost.

When at last they'd finished Flintlock said, “Let's go to the pub for supper, then you guys can spend the night here with us. We're staying on for a couple of days, you can too if you like.”

So that night, in a room of their own, with the thick curtains drawn against the wind and the rain, Dean and Madeleine, slowly and lingeringly, made love together for the first time. Later as they lay contentedly in each other's arms, Dean quietly asked the question which had been tormenting him since their first real kiss, “You weren't thinking of Dan, were you?”

Mad hoisted herself up on to her elbow and looked down into his face. “Is that what you think?”

“It's what I'm afraid of,” he admitted.

She put her arms round him and pulled him tightly against her so that her breasts were crushed against him and their cheeks were close. “I don't think I've given him a thought since we left home, and certainly not since you slipped from being my best mate into being my lover.”

“Your lover,” repeated Dean enjoying the words. “That's what I am. Your lover.” He pulled away from her a little and squinted at her, “I suppose you couldn't prove that to me again, could you?”

Since their return from Cornwall, they had been inseparable, and Mad wondered how she had ever got through her days without him. Oh, he'd always been about, but the sense of him being with her was an entirely new one.

“The problem is,” she said to him soon after they got back to the Madhouse, “that Dad said no boy and girlfriends could move into the house. So I shan't tell the parents about us just yet.”

“Well, we didn't break the rule,” Dean pointed out cheerfully. “We weren't boy and girl friend when we moved in.”

“No, and there's nothing they can do about it anyway, but I don't want to upset them, that's all.”

“OK,” Dean agreed. “We'll each have our own room to work in, and we can decide where we sleep… though I must admit that the beds provided by this landlord are not exactly built for two.”

“Oh really?” grinned Mad. “Tried them out, have you?”

“On the odd occasion in the past, maybe more often in the future, who knows?”

“Well, we're luckier than you know,” Mad told him. “There's a folding bed underneath mine that springs up to the same height to make a double if required.”

“Oh, I think it'll be required,” Dean said sliding his hand under her hair and stroking the back of her neck. “Let's test it out now.”

Mad had had to go home for a few days before the beginning of the term, to spend some time with her parents and to collect Spike, but all the time she was away, she longed to be back at the Madhouse, living with Dean When she thought of him, she wondered how she could have known him for so long without loving him. He was so different from Dan, and now that Dan had finally slid into the realms of non-importance, she realised that that was exactly why she loved Dean so much.

When her father offered to come and help her with Hattie's room, Mad knew that she would have to be very careful not to let him see how she and Dean felt about each other. However, they seemed to have managed it, and he drove away to his meeting with no suspicion that the minute he was gone, his daughter and her lover were upstairs on the resurrected double bed, making up for the few days she'd been at home.

Charlie arrived the next day, driven by Mike Callow. They carried her luggage into the house, and then Mike disappeared home.

“Hey, what's this?” Mad demanded laughing. “Mike Callow fetching you from the airport? What are you up to, Charlie Murphy?”

Charlie smiled. “Not a lot,” she said enigmatically.

“Oh, come on!” cried Mad, “He goes with you to Ireland when your sister is ill, he meets your plane today, and I bet he took you to the airport when you went home too! Am I right or am I right?”

Charlie wrinkled her nose as if considering and then laughed. “You're right,” she admitted. “Mike and I have started going out together… and he's a lovely feller!” Her eyes were shining and Mad knew just how she felt.

“Wow,” she said, “that's great.” Then another thought hit her. “You aren't going to move out, are you, like, I mean and go and live with him?”

“No, I'm not,” said Charlie. “I'm taking things real slow. Look, I'd better tell you, it wasn't my sister that was ill before Christmas, it was my daughter, Kirsty.”

“Your daughter!” exclaimed Mad.

“Yeah. I got involved with a married man in my second year. He was older than me, and so, well, when I found I was pregnant he didn't want to know.”

“And that's why you had to come back and repeat your second year?”

“Yes. So, I like Mike very much, but he's much older than me as well. I'm not going to be caught again, that's all.”

“And he doesn't mind?” Mad asked curiously.

“He says to take all the time I need. He says he'll wait. Like, he's talking about getting married.”

“Wow,” Mad said again. “And are you?” Despite her new-found and increasing love for Dean, marriage certainly wasn't on her agenda yet.

“Not at the moment,” Charlie said. “I've a degree to take.”

Mad thought about her and Dean, and wondered briefly it they would ever get as far as marriage, but knew they had another year of sharing the house before they finished their degrees, and then, well, then would be the time for decisions. However, she did admit to Charlie that she and Dean now had a different sort of relationship.

“And about time too,” Charlie laughed, “poor Dino's been very patient!”

“Well, he had Pepper,” Mad pointed out.

“Only because he couldn't have you, dumb-dumb!”

“Are you sure?” Mad still had moments of uncertainty.

“Yeah, of course I am, it was only you who couldn't see it.” Charlie grinned across at her. “And does this mean that the dreaded Dan is truly a thing of the past?”

“Definitely,” Mad asserted. “I can't believe I put up with him messing me about for so long.”

“Well, thank God for that,” Charlie said in heartfelt tones, and gave Mad a hug. “Aren't you the great girl? I'm delighted! What do your parents say about you and Dean living together?”

“They don't know,” warned Mad, “and that's the way it's going to stay… for now anyway!”

Cirelle and Hattie arrived at the same time the next day and all of a sudden the Madhouse was living up to its name.

“Hey, what's with all the for sale boards?” Cirelle asked when she'd carried everything upstairs.