Jack

 

Carrie Wells is in my fucking living room. Large as fucking life.

Her piercing eyes are as wide as fucking saucers, her pretty mouth flapping harder than the bird flapping around the ceiling.

My eyes don’t know where to look first, at her, at the crow in my fucking house, or at the state of the place around her. My white carpet is filthy with muddy boot prints. The cushions on my perfect white sofa have been trampled, and they’re covered in mud too. There’s bird shit splattered over the front of my TV, my mantelpiece is in fucking disarray with several of my picture frames smashed on the top.

And her, covered in shit, mud and feathers, a picture of horror as she stares right back at me.

“The door!” she yells, but I’m too fucking dumbstruck to move. The crow flaps straight over my head and out. She races after it, and I hear her angry wail before I find her in the open front doorway. Her eyes are wild as she glares at me. “You let him out! He needed his foot taking care of and you let him out!”

When my voice comes back it comes back hard.

“What the holy living fuck is going on here?! What the fuck are you doing in my fucking house?!”

I know as soon as I’ve said it. Of course I fucking know.

I dig my mobile from my pocket and thumb straight through to Mike’s number.

The girl takes one last look at the sky and groans as she accepts defeat. She closes the door behind her and heads back in like she owns the fucking place.

“If he dies, it’s your fault,” she snaps.

I’ve got the call connecting tone in my ear even as she says it. “My fucking fault?!”

“He was tangled in your crappy fucking fence!”

I hold up a hand to signal her to shut the fuck up, and she folds her arms as she waits. Her muddy boot taps on the floor, and it really shouldn’t be a pleasure to watch her red mist fade away, but it is. There’s a beautiful trepidation in her eyes as she soaks in the mess. I watch her gaze travel over the trail of boot prints to end with a long hard look at her boots. She lifts up the soles as if the mud needs explanation, and when her eyes meet mine again they are full of nerves at odds with her cocky stance.

Mike’s phone rings to voicemail. I take a breath before I unleash my fury down the line.

“You’d better get here. Now. I’m in my fucking living room with your missing fucking person. Get here, Mike, before I call the fucking police.”

Carrie Wells is a sight to behold as the colour drains from her cheeks. “You gonna call the cops?” she asks, and her whole body tenses, as though she’s about to make a dash for it.

I hang up the call. “I should. It looks like the place has been fucking ransacked.”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t taken anything.”

I gesture around me. “My house is fucking destroyed. Why the fuck are you even in here?”

She takes a step forward. “Michael tried to help me. I had nowhere to go.” She pauses. “It’s not his fault. He doesn’t know about the crow, I was just trying to save it.”

I’m rarely lost for words, but she has me stumped. I don’t know whether to march her off my property or laugh insanely at this whole fucking spectacle.

“I’ll clean up,” she says, and I cover my face with my hands in disbelief.

“You’ll clean up?!”

“Yeah,” she tells me. “I will.”

I point to the smashed frames on the mantelpiece. “And what about the damage? What about the fact I’ve got a total fucking stranger on my property? In my house?”

She’s quiet while she thinks, chewing on her bottom lip like she wants to draw blood. “I’ll pay for it.”

“Do you have any money?” I look her up and down. It’s a marvel that her beauty shines through the state of her tattered, filthy clothes. Her boots are grubby and old, and I can see a flash of pink sock through a hole in the toe.

She shakes her head. “Not yet, but I can earn it. When I get a job I’ll pay you back.”

I can’t stand to look at the living room anymore so I step out and close the door behind me. The hall is also covered in boot prints and so is the kitchen. I dare to peek into the dining room and groan in disbelief to see the rainbow shards of what used to be my prized glass sculpture.

I hear her footsteps behind me. “I’ll pay for that, too.”

I swear under my breath. That sculpture was almost ten grand, a stupidly extravagant purchase at an auction house down in London.

I should order her to fuck off out of my house and never fucking come back. I can’t believe she’s even still here, following me around while I uncover more and more of her fucking catastrophe.

But Michael.

Even now, knowing that the stupid sonofabitch invited a whirlwind of trouble into my empty house without my knowledge, I can’t bring myself to send her running. He’d only fucking follow.

“How long have you been here?” I ask her.

“Two nights.”

My shoes crunch on broken glass. “Two nights?” The shock is numbing me to the anger. “Just as well I didn’t stay away another fucking week.”

“He was trying to help,” she says again. “Michael, I mean. He found me on the road.” She holds up her foot. “I sprained my ankle, couldn’t walk.”

“So he brought you here?”

She shrugs. “Someone called Pam lives in his block. He said he couldn’t take me there.”

“Pam Clowes,” I say absentmindedly. “Yes. She’d have his job for it.”

“It was only for a few days, he said. Just until we sort something else.”

I can’t help but register her word choice. We sort something else. I wonder what the fuck’s really been going on here. Are they physical? Has this midlife crisis become more than a crazy pissing pipe dream?

I want to ask her but I don’t. I’ll ask him instead, just as soon as he fucking gets here.

“I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as he can,” she says, as though she’s a mind reader. I wonder if the gypsy rumours are true. Maybe she’s got some weird psychic gift in that pretty head of hers. I feel uncharacteristically self-conscious, because despite all this – despite the shit-storm of chaos around me, and the cold, hard horror of finding an intruder in my house – I’m thinking how much prettier she is sober and in the daylight. I’m thinking how glossy her hair is and how it ripples as she moves. I’m thinking that her eyes are more fey than human, and her freckles look surprisingly cute when she’s angry.

I’m thinking that I can see why a girl like Carrie Wells has sent a man like Michael Warren fucking crazy.

“Can I wait for him?” she asks, as though she suddenly needs my permission for shit.

“You better had,” I say. “You both owe me one fuck of an explanation.”

She shrugs. “I told you what happened. I didn’t have anywhere to go, Michael brought me here. I went out for a walk and found a crow in your busted fence, tried to help it and you let it go.”

I sigh. “And you trashed my whole fucking house in the process, yes?”

She shrugs again. “Not the upstairs. It didn’t go up there.”

But she did.

I wonder if she’s been sleeping in my fucking bed, too. Like bastard Goldilocks.

I wonder if they’ve both been in there.

The thought of her splayed out in my bed makes my mouth water, and I don’t get it. I really don’t fucking get it.

“I didn’t mean to trash anything,” she tells me. “You should take better care of your fences.”

“And who I leave a fucking key with it seems.”

She drops to one knee to unlace her boot, kicks it off and does the other. Too little, too fucking late.

I watch as she places them neatly on the mat by the kitchen door, then rummages under my sink for some cleaning products. She’s a vision on all fours, her jeans riding low on her ass, loose enough at the waist that they show the top of her pale blue knickers. Her hair hangs free from her shoulders and gathers on the floor tiles, and her feet are tiny in silly pink spotty socks at odds with the rest of her grubby attire.

She glances up at me over her shoulder, and the involuntary image of me pounding her from behind jars my senses.

“Can I use this on the table?” she asks and holds up a random bottle of polish.

I nod.

She gets back to her feet, cloth in hand, and I wonder how much cleaning the girl has done in her life considering she thinks she’ll get started with a bit of table polish. It’ll take a damn sight fucking more than table polish to clean this place up.

I’m gawping like a fucking idiot when she strides past me into the dining room, and it’s only instinct that possesses me to grab her by the waist before she treads on broken glass. She gasps at the contact, stiffening in my grip as her bright blue eyes stare up at me. I imagine how well the colour of her knickers go with her eyes when they’re the only thing she’s wearing.

“The glass,” I say, “you’ll cut your feet.”

“Surprised you care.”

“Blood’s harder to get out than mud,” I say and she thinks I’m serious. Her eyebrows pit until I smile.

I can’t believe I’m fucking smiling.

“He really didn’t mean it,” she tells me. “Michael, I mean. He’s been nice to me.”

I wonder how nice Michael’s been.

I wonder whether he’s had his hands inside the cami top I’m staring down into. I wonder if his mouth has been on her. I wonder what she tastes like.

I’m usually unmoved by attractive women. I’ll fuck them and enjoy it, but they make little lasting impression. Blonde, brunette, redhead; they’re usually much of a muchness. As long as their body is tight and their pussy is wet, that’s good enough for me.

Carrie Wells isn’t like any of the attractive women I’ve ever seen. Her eyes are much older than her years, glinting with the promise of both a potty mouth and a massive chip on her shoulder. She dresses like a tomboy, a loose bomber jacket obscures her surprisingly tight cami. I get the impression that stripping the layers will show more and more woman the deeper you go.

She’s all woman. There’s no doubt about that.

Her scruffiness only adds to her femininity, as odd as that sounds.

“Let me clean up,” she says, and I let out a breath as I release her.

She tiptoes around the broken glass, being careful with her feet as she sprays polish over the table. I watch her scrub the bird crap from the top. Her fingernails are grubby. They’re also bitten to shit.

I can’t believe I’m doing it, but I grab the brush and pan from the utility room and work to clear the glass from the dining room carpet. I tell myself it really is to save it from bloodstains, but I’m saving her feet and I think she’s well aware of that, too.

She doesn’t say a word as she goes about her cleaning and neither do I.

I’m almost relieved as I hear Michael’s car pull onto my driveway.

Almost.

The other part of me wishes I’d never called him.

Worryingly it seems the Carrie Wells delusion might be fucking contagious.