Chapter Twenty-Five

‘Call for you, Willow,’ Katie shouted through from the front office. ‘It’s Luke!’ Then, screwing up her face, she covered the mouthpiece of the phone and made stabbing motions at it.

‘Oh.’ My heart started pounding. ‘I suppose I’d better … Hell, Katie, what shall I say?’

‘Tell him to go rot his carcass in acid, the double-crossing liar.’

‘That might be a bit prejudicial. Anyway, we don’t want him to know we’re on to him.’

‘True.’ Katie did the Psycho stab a few more times. ‘Can I blow the dirty-caller whistle at him though? Oh, please, Will, just once.’

‘Go on then,’ I said, indulgent as a parent, and Katie fetched the ear-blaster of a whistle which we kept for deafening phone pests, dealing Luke a drum-splitting blast. ‘Sorry about that, Luke,’ I said, retrieving the phone from her. ‘We’ve got a fault on the line.’

I was afraid that the tremble in my voice would give everything away, but Luke really didn’t listen to me. ‘Hey, Willow, have you got over that flu bug yet? Only I thought we might go somewhere this weekend?’

‘Oh, that sounds lovely.’ I tried to ignore Katie doing hanging man faces and pretending to throw up. ‘But I’ve got an appointment at the council offices on Friday afternoon to go and see Ganda’s invention being tested, and I might not finish until late.’

‘Oh, right.’ As I’d thought, he didn’t want to come between me and a potential half a million pounds, or at least he did, but only in a purely open wallet way. ‘Never mind, only a thought. We don’t seem to have seen much of each other lately and I’m missing you.’

Yeah, and I’m missing you, too. But my aim is improving all the time. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been really busy at work, what with the flu, and now Bree’s home from hospital, it’s hell on earth. I don’t like to leave her alone with the boys. Flint’s too absent-minded and Ash tries to amuse Grace by sitting her in front of WWF. I’m sure she’s going to grow up with a fixation on men in leopard-skin trunks.’ I found that, if I kept talking, it didn’t feel so bad. When he turned on the treacle-charm, it was hard. He did it now.

‘Only, I’m really missing you, if you know what I mean. I keep thinking of you, naked on the floor in the flat, the way you stroke my—’

‘I’ll give you a ring and let you know how Friday goes.’ I hurriedly put the phone down and let out a long breath. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him to turn up in the office next. If he does, will you say I’ve gone out?’

‘I’ll do better than that, I’ll set Clive on him. He can tell Luke you’ve gone lesbian. He tells people that anyway, every time you’ve turned him down.’

‘Now that Luke’s got the smell of money, I think it would take more than that to put him off. Oh, has Cal rung back yet?’ Flint had promised to replace my phone for me, but was taking his time about doing so, and I was seriously feeling the lack of a mobile now.

Katie looked at me pityingly. ‘You’ve got it bad, haven’t you? No, Willow, he hasn’t rung. I would tell you if he did.’ Cal, since dropping me off at my front door, hadn’t been seen or heard from. I’d left him loads of messages, but he hadn’t replied. ‘Why are you so uptight about hearing from him?’

‘Because I had fantastic sex with him the other night.’

‘You what?’ Katie sank back into her chair. ‘You lucky, lucky cow. Can I have a turn with him next?’

‘You’ve got Dan.’

‘Your point is? No, I don’t mean that. Dan’s lovely. It’s just, jeezus, woman, if you were any more jammy, you’d be a pudding. Cal, eh?’ She got up and shouldered her filing pile, heading out of the office, but sprang back through the door a moment later. ‘No, it’s no good. I’ve tried, but I’ve got to know. What was it like?’

For the sake of sparing Cal’s blushes, should I ever get to see him again, I only gave her the edited highlights. But even those were enough to make her shake her head and mutter things about lucky, lucky bitches. She made me go over and over it. Spellbound, she insisted, by the romance of it all.

‘There’s nothing romantic about cold floorboards under your bum.’

‘Listen, Willow, with a man like that, it would be romantic shagging in the freezer section in Sainsbury’s. He was born romantic, you can tell. Why else would he grow his hair and wear all that black?’

‘Jazz wears black.’

‘That’s only so the dirt doesn’t show. Jazz has all the romance of a bin liner. Come on, Willow, admit it. Your man is the ride of the century.’

Katie was so determined to make Cal and I a couple in her head, she neglected to acknowledge that he hadn’t even returned my calls. Hadn’t been in touch at all. Not as much as an email, in fact. So, all in all, I was rather shocked, when I reached home, to turn the corner, enter my own kitchen and walk into the man in question holding forth to Ash, whilst wearing a tea towel round his middle and carrying a wooden spoon. There was a wonderful smell of cooking and something bumped and spluttered on the stove.

I stared and walked out. ‘I’m coming in again,’ I announced from the hallway. ‘So if either of you is a mirage, this is your chance to leave.’ When I looked again, they’d stopped talking. Ash was leaning against the wall supervising a saucepan and Cal was retrieving something which smelled of garlic from the oven.

‘Ah, you’re back. Just in time.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Cooking garlic chicken. In a minute I shall be serving garlic chicken, so would you like to give the others a shout?’

Feeling like a visitor in my own home, I rounded up the remaining brother and fetched Bree from the garden where she was reclining in a hammock whilst Grace slept in her car seat. ‘How long has he been here?’ I asked her as she clambered dozily out of the swinging canvas.

‘Since this morning, I think. Turned up on the step with a chicken and a laptop, not long after you’d gone.’

‘Sounds like Cal. He’d never turn up with a bottle of wine, would he?’

‘What?’

‘Sorry. Nothing. Thinking aloud.’

We sat around the kitchen table and ate Cal’s delectable roast garlic chicken, although I noticed Cal himself didn’t seem to have much appetite. Whenever our eyes met, he’d hold my gaze for a second or two and then look away. He was fiddling with his cutlery or turning his attention to Ash, until I began to feel awkward and concentrated on the food on my plate. I found myself grateful for the interludes when Grace cried and needed fetching from her chair, or when the water jug needed refilling.

Eventually we’d all finished. Ash leaned back in his chair and lit a joint, blowing the smoke carelessly, which made Bree huff and remove Grace to the living room. Flint made some excuse about ‘finishing a drawing’ and left for his attic, and I started clearing the table.

‘I got your messages.’ It was the first remark Cal had directed at me since we’d sat down. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t got back to you, I, well, I just didn’t know what to say. And, to be honest, I was a little bit scared.’

Ash, demonstrating the first ounce of tact in thirty-two years, stood up. ‘Right. I’m off. Enjoy yourselves, children.’ Pressing the remains of the joint into Cal’s hand, he swept off, trailing his wrists dramatically.

Being alone with Cal made me nervous. ‘Perhaps we should …’ I indicated the living room.

‘I think we should be alone for this talk, don’t you? If only to spare me from looking a complete moron in front of your entire family.’ He rearranged the chicken bones on his plate, as though playing a complicated game with himself.

‘Why were you scared to get back to me?’ I couldn’t take my eyes off him. There was a set to his features, a kind of stoic squaring off of the chin and an inability to meet my eye that made me scared in my own right. Is he going to tell me it was all a mistake? My hands were trembling slightly, so I hid them up the sleeves of my shirt.

He met my eye now, steadily, but with a guarded expression as though he was hiding behind himself. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Willow. I never meant to compromise anything. Our doing what we did, it wasn’t … it just happened. If you never want to mention it again, then say so, and as far as everyone else is concerned then nothing went on between us. Ever.’

‘Why the hell should I want to deny it?’ To cover the heart-pounding confusion, I got up and began stacking plates into the dishwasher.

‘Because, you and I, come on, Will, you know it would never work out.’

‘Why not?’ I kept my back to him. There was a feeling in my throat as though my adrenal glands were trying to climb over my larynx, fizzing and burning and filling me with light-headedness.

‘Because you’re … you can be with anyone you want. Why the fuck would you shackle yourself to a limping tech-head?’

Noises off. Grace had begun an extended wailing session in the next room, upstairs a thumping beat indicated that Ash was playing music, and the pipes were gurgling as Flint, in his nest under the eaves, began one of his four hour baths. After Cal’s remark, these sounds fell into the quiet like stones into a pond.

I turned around to face him, the handle of the dishwasher prodding me forward. ‘I don’t know how you felt about – what we did, but I don’t think there was any kind of “compromising” going on, and why the hell would I not want to mention it to anyone? In fact, I’ve already told Katie, so you might want to wear some kind of protective gear when you meet her next, she got a bit over-excited about the whole thing.’

Cal jerked. I heard his chair grind against the floor. ‘Why would you do that? Tell people?’

The noise level had increased, the pipes banging now. ‘Because’ – I raised my voice slightly – ‘I think I’m in love with you.’

Of course, the second I started to speak, all the sounds died away. The pipes clonked into silence, even Grace stuttered to a standstill and I yelled the end of the sentence into complete quiet. An embarrassed pause followed, then Grace started up again. I suspect Bree might have scared her on purpose.

‘Oh.’

‘Is that all you can say? “Oh”?’

‘I’m thinking. You haven’t, possibly, been beaten with a stupid stick today? Or, maybe, eaten some hallucinogenic sandwiches?’

‘No, Cal. I’m well aware of what I’m saying.’ My heart did a quick waltz around my chest at the way he was looking at me. That carefully managed expression he’d been wearing had been replaced with one that looked more like amazement.

‘To use Ash’s vernacular, no shit.’ He tried to get to his feet, but tangled his bad leg around the chair as he stood, sending himself lurching against the table. ‘Willow, are you sure you’re not just rebounding? I’m the last person to want to investigate your reasons for this really quite astounding statement, but I want you to be sure.’

‘Oh, I’m sure,’ I said, into the grave-deep eyes. ‘But do you know the really crazy thing?’

‘What, apart from the fact that this joint burned my fingers?’

‘This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. I mean, I did, but I knew that would all come in time, we’ve got years to sort out how we feel about each other, after all. No, the messages asking you to call me, I’ve thought of a way to get even with Luke.’

‘Again, with the no shit.’ Cal shook the smouldering roach from his hand. ‘Hell, I’m becoming dangerously predictable here.’

‘The day you become predictable is the day I hand over my badge as Sheriff Strange of Weirdsville, Arizona. Population: you and me.’

‘Look, shall we go over to my place and talk? I’ve brought his laptop back for you, but, like I said, all the files are copied onto my computer at the farm.’

‘I think we might need some of them.’ I led the way to the front door. ‘And maybe the help of your boys.’

‘You really have got plans, haven’t you?’

‘You’d better believe it.’

On the way over to Cal’s flat, I outlined Plan Revenge. Cal whistled once or twice, nodding slowly most of the time, apart from when he was pulling out to overtake woodlice and tree sloths, which were the only things in the known universe to be moving slower than us. When I’d finished, we’d arrived.

‘Whew, some plan. Can you carry it off?’

‘If everyone helps out. If it all comes together. I know it’s going to take some organising, but I think we owe it to everyone he’s ever shafted.’

‘Going to take guts, Willow. Can you pretend like that?’

I stood very still. Could I? Could I really do it? Then I thought about all the wedding magazines under my bed, about the plans I’d had, about the life I’d envisaged. ‘Oh, yes. I can do it.’

‘Good.’

In the flat I flopped down on the big sofa overlooking the window.

‘Coffee?’ Cal stood nervously in the kitchen. ‘Or something else? Or, shall I cook?’

‘We’ve just eaten garlic chicken,’ I reminded him. ‘Coffee is fine.’

‘Or tea? Or there’s some hot chocolate.’

‘Cal. Coffee is fine.’

But he didn’t move, simply stood, staring at me. ‘God, you must be mad.’ He ran fingers through his hair. ‘Wanting to be here, with me. I mean, look at the place, look at me. Not exactly Johnny Depp, am I?’

‘You really don’t have any ego at all, do you?’

‘I think there’s a jar in the cupboard somewhere.’

‘Cal, shut up.’

‘Or wine. I could open a bottle, would you like a glass of wine?’

‘Cal, shut up.’

‘I keep looking at you, waiting for you to disappear in a puff of smoke.’

‘Callum Moore, if you don’t shut up and come over here I bloody will disappear.’

‘Ooh, I like a woman who knows her own mind.’ He sank down onto the sofa beside me.

‘And if you don’t kiss me properly within the next ten seconds, I’m going.’

‘I like a woman who knows my mind even better.’

‘It’s like living in a fridge magnet factory, being with you.’ But his lips were cool on mine, his fingers gentle on my face, the slight scratch of stubble against my cheek and his hair in my eyes, and I could forgive him anything.

Apart from eating all the bread. I was still working on forgiving that.

Cal’s bedroom was pale green and terracotta, poster-sized blow-ups of computer innards framed and hung around the walls. Windows racked with blinds against the night. A fan, circling, blowing streamers of tape which made tricksy little shadows. A drenched oasis in a cracked-earth reality.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey yourself.’ Cal lay tangled in the sheets, a cunning fold of bedding covering his groin and leg but leaving his chest bare.

‘Did you arrange yourself like that before I woke up, just so you’d look debauched?’

‘Give me a break. My bauch is without question.’ Cal sat up, still trailing sheets artfully.

I gave a little shiver, remembering the shameless sex that had carried us through the night. Exciting, edgy, nothing like the sex that I had with Luke. ‘You were incredible, Cal.’

Instead of the self-deprecating remark I was expecting, Cal smiled, slowly. It was like watching a cat grin, enigmatic, poised and very slightly smug. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t I just.’

I’d even dared, last night, to look at Cal naked and uncovered. I’d averted my eyes before, stupidly ignorant about cerebral palsy and worried that he might be twisted or deformed, but the leg looked almost normal, slightly less muscle tone than his right as we’d worked up a sweat between us – but nothing scary.

A sudden thought struck me. ‘What’s it going to be like for you, if I have to keep pretending to Luke that he and I are still an item? I don’t want to sleep with him again, urgh, but I’m going to have to keep you in the background.’

Cal still had that lazy smile stuck to his face. You could have taken his picture and used him to illustrate the statement self-congratulatory. ‘I’ll live with it. It’ll be worth it in the end. And besides,’ he rearranged my hair as it fell on my shoulders, ‘why should I worry? I’m a much better fuck.’

‘Ah, the return of the ego.’

‘Can you blame me? You’ve made me feel like this doesn’t matter any more.’ He twitched the covers aside and slapped at his weak leg. ‘Like I could conquer mountains, swim the Atlantic. Anyway. Enough about you, now let’s talk about me. I’m thirty-four, Sagittarius, I like cooking, photography, reading …’

‘Shut up.’ I laughed. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘You don’t want to know all about me? Good God, woman, what kind of girlfriend are you? Next you’ll be saying that you don’t want to know how much I earn.’

‘Listen, I knew everything about Luke Fry. Back in the old days, I could probably have given you a chart showing how often he crapped! Didn’t help me, did it? So, yes, I do want to know about you, but let it come in its own good time, Cal.’ I climbed out of the bed and began searching for my erotically discarded clothes. ‘And I’m really not bothered about the size of your salary.’

‘That’s not what you said last night.’

‘That wasn’t your salary.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Cal, you are absolutely insufferable.’ I giggled, hauling my knickers off the trendy bent-poled lamp in the corner. He looked at me with suddenly hooded eyes.

‘I’ve done with suffering,’ he said quietly. For a breathless moment we stared at each other. I could see his chest twitch with his heartbeat. He was so thin that each pulse trembled his skin. He moved slightly in the bed and the covers slid lower, revealing the dark hairs ringing his navel and running down in a pencil line. His body was perfectly shaded, the hollows deep and his flesh pale, his face highlighted with stubble and the twitch of his untidy hair. ‘Willow.’ It was a whisper, a plea, gently, unbearably sexy.

‘Oh, bugger.’ I pulled off what clothes I’d managed to put on and fell back into him again.