The Road to Her (28 page)

“No,” I lied. “Not better. Just normal.” I pulled my hands through my hair. “Probably because she wasn’t a star in the biggest soap on TV, who was terrified that her public image would be tarnished if anyone found out she was dating me.” I stopped myself when I saw the look on Elise’s face. “Sorry,” I said, “that just came out.”

Slowly, and without a word, Elise got to her feet and pulled her trousers back on. She held a hand out to me, getting me to my feet, and watched as I padded over to retrieve my sweatpants.

“Everything you’ve said is true, though, isn’t it?” she said.

I pulled my sweatpants back up over my hips and nodded slowly.

“So where does this leave us?” Elise held her hand out to me and I went obediently back to her, letting her draw me in to her again.

I melted into her arms, the familiar feeling of comfort and security enveloping me. “It leaves us still without pizza,” I said.

“I do want to be with you, you must believe me when I tell you that.” Elise wrapped her arms tighter around me. “Do you trust me?”

“I do,” I murmured into her hair. “Always.” I leant up and kissed her cheek. “Now ring for the pizza, will you? I’m ravenous.”

*

Elise left again early the next morning, saying something about how her staying over was becoming a habit, and about how she was worried that her neighbours in her apartment block would notice she wasn’t there as often as she used to be. I didn’t argue with her, but now she’d gone, I was alone and lonely. I wandered to my window, shrugging my arms tight around me. Elise’s hoodie was still hanging off the sofa where it had been flung earlier. I put it on, zipping it up and wrapping it around myself, loving how it held her scent, knowing that it was the closest thing I had to her right now, and that it would have to be my reminder of her until I saw her again.

Hugging her hoodie tight around me, I stared out over the river, looking across town, watching people scurrying to and fro on the streets below me, wishing one of those people was Elise coming back to see me. A fine rain was falling. Spots of water gathered silently on the windowpane, pausing for a moment before pooling together, then quickly slithering down the glass. I watched the soft rain for a while, feeling confused and lonely and scared and a thousand other wretched emotions, wishing there was someone with me in my apartment right at that moment that I could talk to about everything.

Instinctively I picked my phone up, punching in a number. “Bella?”

“Hey you!”

I immediately felt better at the sound of Bella’s familiar, warm voice at the other end.

“What you up to?” I hugged my arm across my chest and cradled my phone under my chin, reaching down to pick up two cups that were still on the coffee table. I stared at the one Elise had drunk from, just half an hour earlier, and wished again that she was still with me.

“Well, it’s Sunday, so that means I’m doing precisely nothing!” Bella laughed. “Tom’s taken the boys to the football, so I’m putting up my feet, home alone.” She paused. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.” I wandered into the kitchen, putting the cups into the sink and running some water over them. “Not really, Bella, if I’m honest.” I’m not sure what it was that made me say that, but it’s hard to tell someone you’re okay and sound convincing when inside you know you’re not okay, isn’t it?

“You want to come over and have a girly afternoon?” Bella asked. “Football doesn’t start until four, so we’ll be alone until at least eight tonight. If you want to talk, I mean. No chance of being disturbed.”

Bella knew I needed to talk, but then, I knew that she’d know that. After all, that’s why I’d rung her in the first place, wasn’t it? “Would you mind?” I asked, already walking to the door and fetching my keys.

“Of course not.” Bella spoke gently. “It’s what mothers are for, isn’t it?”

*

I arrived at Bella’s, a neat Edwardian terraced house a half-hour train ride from London, around forty minutes after our phone conversation. Although I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to say to her, I did know that I needed to speak to someone about how I was feeling about Elise and me. Bella was just the person I needed to see to both cheer me up and give me some much-needed motherly advice.

Her house was a scene of chaos—as it had been on the few other occasions I’d been there—but I would have expected nothing less. As I picked my way through an untidy hall, cluttered with muddy football boots, wellies, school bags and at least three cats (there could have been more, but to be honest, it was difficult to see anything through the mess), I suddenly wondered if I should have told Elise I was coming to see Bella, in case she went back to my apartment and couldn’t get hold of me.

The thought left my head as quickly as it had entered it as Bella ushered me into her large lounge, shooing yet another cat from the sofa and hastily sweeping some loose fur from the seat before gesturing to me to sit down. I plonked myself down on the sofa, feeling—as I always did—instantly relaxed in Bella’s company. While her disorganised and messy house wasn’t especially my kind of place, I had to admit there was something comforting about the untidiness and chaos and Bella’s wide, friendly smile that made any visitor feel instantly at home.

I sat as Bella made coffees in her kitchen, listening to her clattering cups around and occasionally speaking in a sing-song voice to what I presumed—hoped—was a cat, then pulled myself up straighter as she returned to the lounge with two cups clasped in one hand and a packet of biscuits in the other.

“You sounded down on the phone.” Bella handed me a coffee and sat on a chair to the side of me. “Not your usual chirpy self.”

I reached over for the offered packet of biscuits and took one, biting into it and wiping a crumb from my chin. “Just a bit low today, thassall,” I said. “Fancied some company.” I paused. “You didn’t mind me coming over, did you?”

Bella laughed loudly. “Good grief, no!” she said. “All I had planned for today was a pile of ironing the size of Mount Everest and, let’s face it, who wants to do housework on a Sunday?”

I flushed, remembering Elise’s quip about housework at weekends and how my chores had eventually ended up being abandoned…

“Actually, who the heck wants to do housework on any day, come to that?” she said, her voice jolting me from my thoughts of Elise. Bella turned and looked at me. “Enough about me,” she said. “What about you? What’s up?” She leaned forwards in her chair. “More to the point, why are you hanging out with an old fossil like me when you have a stunning girlfriend you could be hanging out with?”

“You’re forty-eight, Bella.” I took another bite of my biscuit. “Hardly an old fossil.”

“So why aren’t you with Elise today?” Bella asked, offering a biscuit crumb to a waiting cat, then tutting when it decided it didn’t want it and dropped it on the floor. She kicked the crumb away with her foot. “I’m assuming that’s why you’re here. To talk about her?”

“I’m having the dilemma of all dilemmas,” I began.

“Oh, I hate those.” Bella waved a hand in the air. “I usually just have a glass of wine and hope that it’ll disappear.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy with this one,” I said glumly.

“You know what you tell me will go no further than these four walls, don’t you?” Bella said. “If you want to offload—and I’m guessing you do—then you know you can talk to me, okay? A problem shared and all that.”

“I know,” I said, staring down into my cup.

“So it’s Elise?” Bella prompted.

“Who else?” I said.

“Still not the hearts and flowers you want it to be?” Bella reached for another biscuit.

“It’s good when we’re together,” I said. “I just want our relationship to be more open, but she doesn’t.”

“Because?” Bella asked.

“Because of the usual.” I sighed. “Her public image.” I thought for a minute. “I hate all the pretence! I just want us to be normal, do all the things other couples do, but she doesn’t.” I stared down moodily into my cup. “And I really hate that she doesn’t.”

“I guess Elise has to ask herself what’s the worst that could happen?” Bella said. “If people found out?”

I put my cup back on the table in front of me and leant back on the sofa. “The worst that could happen is that her precious career would be at risk,” I said. “Well, according to her, anyway.”

“You sound bitter,” Bella said gently.

“I feel it.”

“But your career’s important to you as well,” she offered.

“It is.” I nodded. “It’s very special to me.” I leant my head back. “But, equally, I know I haven’t spent my teenage years making a name for myself just to end up as someone’s secret,” I said, “or to be with somebody who’s too afraid to step outside the door with me in case we’re spotted.” I swallowed hard. “And I know I haven’t matured into the strong, intelligent woman that you and everyone else knows, to now follow Elise around, pandering to her every whim.”

“And you’d risk not being with her for that?” Bella asked.

“That’s what I need to decide,” I said slowly. “She’s made my life complete, okay—but at what cost, Bella?”

“Do you love her?” she asked.

I squeezed my eyes tight. “I love her implicitly, yes,” I said. “And I guess I’m happy for now to submit to her wishes, but for how much longer?”

“So can’t you just enjoy it for what it is right now?”

“But I feel like I’m better than that, you know? And stronger than that.” I sighed. “When I was with Grace, it was different. It was fun, exciting. We were young and carefree, and I suppose I enjoyed being Grace’s adorable little secret.” I looked at Bella. “But now? Now it feels sordid and wrong and I’m struggling to be Elise’s guilty secret.”

“I suppose there’s a small part of me that’s inclined to agree with Elise, though,” Bella said, choosing her words carefully. “You’re both the subject of furious Internet gossip already. Do you really want to be plastered all over the papers and the web?”

“More than we already are, you mean?” I said, smiling as another cat wandered into the room and hopped up onto the sofa next to me.

“But at the moment it’s all idle gossip. Speculation. It keeps the ratings up. Kevin and Susie love it and, let’s be fair, they’ve capitalised on it, haven’t they?” Bella replied.

“And I never minded any of that, to begin with,” I said, stroking the length of the cat’s back, making it arch up and purr loudly. “We both loved it. Now it feels, I don’t know, wrong. Weird. She’s already told me she feels like she’s lying to the public.” I looked at Bella. “What kind of relationship is it when one partner feels like they’re lying?” I frowned. “Actually, what kind of relationship is it when both partners are lying?”

“Both of you?”

“Well, I’m lying to myself, aren’t I?” I gently dug my fingers into the cat’s fur, loving the vibrations of its purr radiating along its body. “All the time I’m going along with the lie that Elise insists on, I’m not being true to myself, either.”

“So what are you going to do?” Bella lifted another cat from her lap and placed it on the floor by her feet.

“I wish I knew,” I said miserably. “Do I stay with Elise and carry on living this huge, black lie?”

“When the alternative is…?”

“Giving in to my morals and being true to myself.” I looked at Bella. “Which means being totally open about everything.”

“And alone,” Bella said softly, “but still wanting Elise and being miserable, just so you can pat yourself on the back and say you did the right thing.” She put her hand on my leg. “Is that what you really want?

“I wish I knew what I wanted.” I sighed. “You’re not making my version sound very appealing.”

“Just think about it carefully, Hol,” Bella said kindly. “That’s all I’m saying. Don’t be hasty.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

I returned home from Bella’s shortly before six p.m. to find Elise coming back through the hallway of my apartment block, evidently just leaving.

I’d spent the entire train journey home mulling over what Bella had said but still hadn’t come up with the perfect answer. It didn’t help the decision-making process, the way my heart did somersaults when I saw the adorable look she gave me as I came through the main door.

“Couldn’t stay away, huh?” I said. She’d only left my side four hours earlier, but it seemed like forever.

“I missed you.” Elise shrugged, briefly touching my arm. “What can I say?” She looked me up and down, one amused eyebrow arched. “You appear to be wearing my hoodie, missy!”

I looked down at myself, totally forgetting that I still had her hoodie on, and shrugged. “I need some reminder of you when you go and leave me alone, don’t I?”

“Keep it.” Elise lowered her voice. “Then you can imagine I’m with you even when I can’t be with you.”

“You want to come up?” I asked, heading for the lift. “I need to cook dinner for myself, so…”

“Dinner sounds good,” Elise said, stepping back slightly as the lift doors opened.

I glanced across at her in the short time we were in the lift, her smile matching the one I knew was on my face every time we made eye contact before each of us looked away again. I loved just being with her. I wanted to do normal everyday things with her; I wanted to make dinner with her, to spend evenings out with her, or just to spend lazy afternoons draped across one another on my sofa. But I needed her to want it as much as I did, and be as comfortable with it as I was.

“You look tired.” Elise’s voice broke the quietness inside the lift. She gave me a long, caring look, which let me know I was so wanted, it was unreal.

The lift arrived at my floor, so I didn’t answer her. Instead, we walked the short distance from the lift to my apartment in silence. Before I even had the chance to switch some lights on inside, Elise drew me to her and gave me the softest, sweetest kiss, leaning her forehead against mine.

“Sometimes I feel like I want to kiss you all day long, Holly Eight-Year,” she sighed, her breath warm against my face in the darkness.

“So you missed me, then?” I said, our foreheads still touching. “I missed you like crazy the minute you left this afternoon. Hated it, just wanted you back here with me.”