These Days of Ours (34 page)

‘Is that how you think of me?’ A-tingle, as if tiny scorpions high-stepped up and down her body, Kate knew what she was doing and she knew it could go very wrong. This was sky
diving. Bungee jumping. All without leaving the comfort of her own sofa and under the influence of alcohol. ‘The one who got away?’

After a pause, Charlie said, ‘You know it is.’

They lay still, like a Lord and his Lady on a medieval tomb. Kate didn’t dare look down. The dedication to Anna on the front page of his manuscript reared up at her, only to be rinsed
clean away by wine, adrenaline and lust.

Kate spoke without drawing breath. ‘Sometimes I think we might still have something so I avoid touching you, like tonight when you came in and I should have hugged you, I would have hugged
any other visitor but I didn’t hug you because it felt like something explosive might happen if I put my arms around you.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Did you notice?’

As if responding via satellite link-up, there was a hiatus before Charlie said, ‘Yeah, I noticed.’

Is that a green light?
Kate felt the atmosphere thicken, as if they were both staying as still as possible.
Are we on a threshold?

When Charlie spoke it was as if a cannon crashed. ‘I knew you cancelled the party. I had to come here. I . . .’ He hesitated. ‘I just had to.’

There were so many questions. They crowded, demanding to be asked first.
What’s going on with you and Anna? How long have you felt like this? Is it the drink talking? Or the jet lag? Am
I so desperate you have no choice? Could we have a future? Is it happening for us at last?
She weighed them all up, feeling the clock ticking on this new and strange honesty, as if they were
both enchanted by a fairy godmother and would turn back into pumpkins at midnight.

In the end, none of the questions won. They would only lead to more talk, and Kate didn’t want to talk. She rolled over and dropped off the sofa, landing to kneel neatly astride Charlie.
If she kissed him now and there was nothing, no fireworks, just a standard kiss, then she would, finally, know. They could shake hands, walk away.

‘Kate, yes.’ Charlie’s whole body seemed to reach upwards for her and Kate bent, angling her head slightly, and her hair made a curtain around both their faces as she placed
her mouth gently on Charlie’s.

His lips were cushioned, soft, then busy as they responded to the feel of Kate’s mouth. Charlie let out a soft groan and lifted his arms to embrace her, but Kate swiftly pinned them down.
This was just a kiss.

Their lips ground together until Kate parted his with her tongue.

The experiment was an abject failure; the kiss was far more than the sum of its parts.

Intimate, familiar, Charlie’s mouth was a drug. Kate collapsed onto him. They rolled and he was above her, his hands in her hair, his lips greedy.

Kate pulled away, just long enough to say, ‘Not here.’

Glued together, a many limbed creature, Kate and Charlie grappled their way up the staircase, stumbling, staggering, devouring.

They crashed through her bedroom door. Charlie pulled down the zip of Kate’s top with a gratifying
zzzp!

‘Cheeky!’ Kate held the top together and darted into her en-suite. ‘Hold that thought.’

‘Hurry up, woman!’

Kate leaned against the back of the door, breathing hard. Her mind was popping candy. Her skin was thinking for her and it cried out for Charlie.

It was dicey to apply the handbrake to passion but the last time Charlie had seen Kate without clothes, she’d been nineteen years old and in the full glory of her youth. She needed to
prepare herself.

Charlie would be confronted with the flesh of middle age. Kate’s bra straps had dug into her shoulders. The mysterious rash by her belly button had spread. Since she’d realised her
left breast was slightly larger than her right one she couldn’t stop noticing the difference.

‘Kate . . .’ called Charlie in a low voice, through the crack of the door.

Ripping off her clothes as if they were soaked in acid, Kate threw them from her and confronted herself in the full length mirror.

There was her recognisable, mundane body, with its baffling colour scheme of palest lilywhite to purple. Kate took in her lopsided bosom, her footballers’ knees and the hips where nineteen
years of dessert congregated.

And she liked it. She knew that Charlie would like it too.

Tearing open the door, Kate launched herself at Charlie. He didn’t miss a beat, his arms closing around her as if powered by a mechanism.

‘Kate!’ Charlie looked down at her nakedness. ‘You’re way ahead of me.’

Kate yanked so hard at his jeans that a button flew off. Soon they were equals, both pale and nude and warm and moving against each other, deliriously happy.

Or as happy as two people about to make love can be; desire has a knack of leaving no room for other sensations.

With Charlie hard against her in the chaos they’d made of the bed, Kate whispered, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Shut
up
,’ growled Charlie.

‘Language!’ As punishment, Kate flipped him, hanging over him like a lovestruck bird of prey.

‘If only you’d done this sooner,’ said Charlie, his hands on her hips.

On the edge of Kate’s vision, a tiny rectangle lit up – the screen of Charlie’s mobile, a casualty of lust, fallen to the floorboards.

Charlie’s mouth was on her neck as her breasts crowded him, and his erection waved a hectic
hello!
but Kate still managed to read the text.

Kate pulled away from Charlie, from all of him, whether soft or hard. ‘Anna’s moved in with you?’

Disoriented at the sudden disappearance of so many lovely bits of Kate, Charlie managed to say, ‘What?’

Kate scrabbled for the duvet to cover herself up. Her nudity felt wrong. ‘Anna, Charlie!’ She tried not to shout. ‘She’s moved into your flat.’

‘No.’ Charlie looked insulted. He exhaled, passed a hand over his features. ‘Well, yes. Kind of.’

Her mouth numb from kissing, Kate demanded, ‘Which is it? Yes or no? Does she have a key? Are her possessions there?’

‘She moved in today but—’ Charlie sat up and covered his groin with a pillow as Kate let out an infuriated grunt and began to pace the room with the duvet trailing behind like
an ill fitting bridal gown. ‘But, but, listen, it’s not like it’s, you know,
official
. Most of her gear is still at her mum’s. She’s kind of staying,
yes.’ Charlie evidently preferred that term: his face, flustered and sweaty, lit up. ‘That’s all it is. Anna’s staying with me for a bit.’

‘Is that what Anna would call it?’

Silence was an eloquent answer.

As if floodlights had blazed into life, Kate saw the evening for what it was.

Her loins had billed it as a glorious, at-last moment just to get her head on board. The delirium wasn’t suppressed love, it was good old horniness. Kate was desperate and as for Charlie .
. . ‘You’re a sexual opportunist, Charlie Garland.’

‘What? No I’m not.’ As stung as if she’d accused him of murder, Charlie shook his head. ‘This was as much you as it was me.’ He was shouting now. ‘It
was
more
you!’

‘Very gallant. What a gent.’

‘I’m not an opportunist and I’m not a gentleman. I’m just me and you’re just you and this just happened.’ Charlie spoke more quietly now. Kate could hardly
hear him when he held out his hand and said, ‘It could still happen.’

‘You’re right.’ Kate spun round, her hair on end and her eyes crazy. ‘It could happen because this is exactly what I need. A drunken romp behind your girlfriend’s
back. What lady could refuse? It’s my dream, Charlie, my dream, I tell you. Will you let me give you a blow job before you toddle off home? Pretty please?’

Face grim, Charlie stared. Kate was no longer interested in what was behind the pillow he clutched but she suspected there was nothing much to see. ‘If you’re just going to be a
bitch . . .’

‘I’m a bitch and you’re a cheat. What a lovely couple we make.’

It had been perfect. Exciting and
right
. Now it was ruined, like a birthday cake upended on the floor.

Breathing hard, Charlie said, eyes cast down, ‘Let’s give each other a few minutes and then talk.’

‘About what?’

‘About
this
.’ Charlie slapped the bed.

‘Text Anna back.’ Kate snatched up his phone and brandished it like a weapon. ‘Go on. Tell her where you are. Tell her what’s happening.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not? Because it would be shitty?’ Kate let the phone slip from her fingers, all her fight dried out. ‘And you’re not a shitty man. But this, Charlie . . .’ She
gestured around the room. ‘This is shitty.’

Charlie didn’t look as if he disagreed. They regarded each other with the same intensity of moments before, but this time it was laced with unhappiness and fear, not the prospect of wild
lovemaking.

A small sound, nasal and snuffling, broke the spell.

Song
. Kate wanted to fold down into herself, cringe until she was nothing. She’d forgotten Song.

Since Kate had brought her baby home they’d barely been out of each other’s sight. Kate had only managed to cope with putting Song to bed in the new cot – the one whose
delivery had piqued Becca’s interest – by creeping up every twenty minutes to check her and admire her and find something new to adore in Song’s hair or hands or knees.

Keeping her tread light, Kate sprinted to the spare room – or, rather, the nursery – as a high, thin wail started up.

Song was a quiet soul. She never grizzled or cried. When Jia Tang had helped Kate prepare Song for her cleft palate operation at Beijing Stomatological Hospital, she’d stroked the
child’s face, cooing, ‘Express yourself, little one. Let it out.’ Song’s silence made her an ‘easy’ baby but Jia Tang had hated it; ‘quiet babies have
learned that nobody comes when they cry.’

‘Let it out, Song!’ Kate scooped up her little girl and gathered her to her chest.

Pristine in a white Babygro, Song roared.

‘Me too, darling,’ muttered Kate, rocking. ‘Me too.’

Charlie, trousers on, shirt buttoned halfway up, was in the doorway. ‘I should . . .’

‘Yeah, you should.’

Song, calmed by Kate’s heartbeat, lowered the volume of her protest.

‘I want you to know, this isn’t . . .’ Tongue tied, Charlie stood, irresolute, the picture of confusion. ‘This wasn’t sordid, OK? I could never see you that
way.’

‘We had too much to drink.’

Clutching at this straw, Charlie nodded gratefully. ‘Exactly. And Anna . . .’

Be careful.
Kate fired a look his way from the pastel haven of the nursery.

‘Anna moving in really was an ad hoc thing. It wasn’t planned. She’s been having problems with her landlord. She caught me off guard. I said
why not?
’ Charlie was
frowning, as if reprimanding himself. ‘Maybe it was a mistake. I don’t know.’ He scratched his head violently, as if his scalp had offended him. ‘Damn. This is such a
mess.’

For Anna, this bloke’s bird.

‘There you go. Rationalising again.’ Kate kissed Song’s head, revelling in the heavy warmth of the baby against her. Charlie seemed unable to concede the truth whenever he was
in love. ‘Isn’t it time you got behind your romantic decisions? It can’t always be the woman’s fault. Becca. Anna.’ She hesitated, before plunging on.
‘
This
.’

Charlie sucked his lips. ‘This wasn’t anybody’s
fault
.’ He didn’t seem to have anything more to say.

‘This is the part where you go home to your girlfriend,’ said Kate.

Shaking his head sadly – a gesture Kate couldn’t decipher – Charlie looked at the floor as he said, ‘Goodnight, Kate.’ He put his hands over his face, muffling his
words as he said, ‘And goodnight little Song. Sorry about upsetting your mummy.’

By the time the front door was pulled to, Song was asleep.

Even the birds were still in bed when Kate woke up. She envied Song asleep in her crib next door, a plush toy cat alongside her. Puss Cat had been in the package Jia Tang told
her to open in London; some of his whiskers had been lost – loved off, by Song – but he never left the baby’s side.

Sleep eluded Kate, leaving her to relive the previous night’s feverish highs and guilty lows. A quotation bobbed to the surface of her teeming mind. When she’d been wakeful in her
childhood bed, Dad used to tell her about Macbeth.

‘He had trouble sleeping too, and he longed for
Sleep, that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care.
’

Alight with purpose, Kate jumped out of bed, glad to leave the clammy sheets behind. Crossing to the suitcase standing open on the floor, Kate began to search. Methodical at first, she grew
extra thumbs as panic set in.
It’s really not here
. The teapot photo, as she thought of the snap of herself and her father, was gone.

‘You’d have liked your granddad,’ whispered Kate as she gave Song her first bottle of the day. Dawn woke the colours of the house around them. ‘And he
would have adored you.’

The arrival of Song would change the family’s roles, forcing them all to budge up and make room. Mum didn’t know it yet but she was a grandma. Becca was now an aunt, of sorts. Poor
old Marjorie wouldn’t like the title ‘Great Aunt’; more excellent fodder for Great Uncle Hugh’s teasing. Flo had a longed-for cousin; the girls would get along just fine.
Not caring to contemplate Charlie’s uncle-hood, Kate confronted her own title.

‘I’m your mummy.’ She said that dozens of times a day to Song, who stared back levelly with her deep set eyes. Kate imagined the baby thinking
That’s old news
,
but, in truth, she had no idea what Song was thinking and that was turning out to be part of the fun.

Song burped. ‘Who’s a windy little lass?’ asked Kate, manipulating the small solid body until Song looked over Kate’s shoulder, resting against her, a cosy bolster.