Ellie's Return (6 page)

This morning he had heard the front door
bang shut but there must have been a delivery because when he emerged from the
living room into the kitchen Lola was standing there looking contemptuously at
a catalogue she had been sent, flicking through the pages too quickly to be
taking anything in and looking bent out of shape as it was her default setting
to be, these days. She was perfectly turned out as always, all in white linen,
a loose jacket over a clinging low cut top that showed her cleavage to its best
advantage. She was probably going to a meeting with a man, most men were
suckers for her charms, she only had to smile and all her beautiful teeth would
line up to sparkle against her glowing lips, her tinkly little laugh so much
more charming than the coarser, more natural one for family and closer friends.
Tom used to marvel at how quickly she turned that sour expression into a warm
and beauteous glow, but more rarely than ever was he able to see any warmth in
the transition. She could turn on the charm for anybody but him, he was no
longer fooled by it and now that he saw how easily she could affect a
transition he wondered whether it had ever been real with anyone.

As he saw her he turned to walk away,
deciding he would have a shower before a coffee, giving Lola time to get out so
that they did not need to communicate.
 
She called him back and he stopped but did not turn around, waiting for whatever
barbed comment she could not resist making. She waited though, using the
silence to taunt him as he tried to resist wanting to know what she had to say,
when he felt he had only been awake for moments and it was too early in the day
for this.

She reminded him that he needed to come
home at a reasonable time, as they had an event that evening that they were
obliged to attend as a couple. Tom had not forgotten about that, nor did he
especially mind. It was a dressed up networking event, nothing more, at least
to him, and he could happily spend the evening chatting with friends and local
business people while pretending to be supporting Lola’s organisation of the
evening. They would be expected to circulate and would not need to spend too
much of the evening together, so the only downside would be having to turn up
together or go home together, but perhaps those things would be avoidable too
and whatever was coming up now would be the longest conversation of the day,
which would be an early victory. He asked if that was all and she said they
would need to put their heads together about some dinner party invitations that
had to be accepted, and some that had to be offered. Tom waved that suggestion
away; there was no way he was ever going to be hosting dinner parties with this
woman, and his first flush of victory turned to despair while for the first of
a dozen times that day, as every day, he thought of all the things they would
not do together, all the things that made up the day to day things that
accumulated to form the habits that created the way of life that people could
enjoy together. There was no enjoyment here, there never could be, there had
been only the merest hint of it for such a brief time, and so long ago that it
was almost indecent that it should have led to this treadmill or misery and
despair. Tom and Lola knew nothing about each other except what they did not
like; they did not like each other, and that dislike was on an upward
trajectory that neither of them sought to counter.

As he went to turn away again she snapped
her fingers to call him back. He turned angrily. She knew exactly how to push
his buttons, he knew he should not let her but some things were just
unacceptable, and Tom knew it was only a matter of time before even the public
charade ended and the way she addressed him in public was the same way she
addressed him at home. That would be not too long after the wedding, and he knew
he too was being as bloody minded as possible most of the time to avoid that
being discussed, except that when she decided it was going to happen it would
not really even need to be discussed, he just had to turn up and face the
firing squad. Everything up to that was just putting off the inevitable.

 
“Your girlfriend has turned up again, so
we need to be on the same page about everything.”

“What girlfriend?” he asked.

“You’ve only ever had one proper
girlfriend Tom, and I know you haven’t forgotten her whatever she may have done
to damage you.”

“I don’t need to know where she is,” he
said.

“Just don’t act up, Tom. If she’s back for
good we can’t avoid her forever. Just behave. Go now, go, go!”

She shooed him away, and Tom stood looking
malevolently for a moment, angry at her attitude but desperate to get away. For
a short conversation there had been some real highs and lows. On the plus side
he would not have to speak to Lola again today, but on the downside she was a
bitch, he was going to be tied to her for the rest of his life, and the woman
he had loved and who had betrayed him so completely might be dropping in for
tea to witness his humiliation when he had despaired of ever seeing her again. Tom
had not really thought about how his say to day existence could be more
miserable.

The idea that Ellie could swan back into
their lives after what she had done would have seemed unthinkable a couple of
years ago, but now that he was able to see how quickly Lola could change her
demeanour from evil to good and back again and he was less surprised at how
people can change so suddenly. Once he could not have believed that anything
could come between him and Ellie but he had been wrong about her, and for all
that he seemed right now to be in a rut, and for all that the only way he could
see out of it could fail or fly, he was currently lacking any reason to move on
at all, the sense of life being better elsewhere having all but diminished from
his imagination.

Lola called him back and he felt his neck
tighten at the arrogance of her demand. He returned to the kitchen door. She
did not look up to speak, continuing instead her stabbing looks at the
catalogue.

“I’ve told you before, Tom, not to turn up
at the shop and put things in front of me when I’m on the phone or in a
meeting. I’ve told you I’m not going to sign anything without knowing what it
is.”

“I’m sorry, it was urgent, you know the…”

“I don’t have time now, Tom, just don’t ambush
me with things if there isn’t time to explain them.”

“Well it was urgent and…” Tom had become
accustomed to starting sentences that had no particular ending because he knew
that Lola never allowed him finish. It made the parts he was able to say more convincing
than if the sentence really had to get to the end.

“…I don’t care, Tom, make it the last
time, you’ve done it half a dozen times in a month and I’ve told you every time
not to. In fact, we need to schedule a catch up for you to explain what you have
been doing recently. How has that ask of dividing up the portfolio been going?”

‘That’s what I’m trying to say”, said
Tom,” it’s almost completed. Let me know when is good next week, should all be
good by then”.

Lola looked almost pleased for a moment as
Tom sloped off. He had hoped to avoid that conversation altogether for a few
more days, but one way or another everything was going to come to a head soon,
for better or for worse. He could just do without any distractions for a few
days while he faced the possibility of a life sentence or, long shot, a
possible reprieve.
    

Eight

Ellie had woken up on the sofa to some
gentle tinkering in the kitchen. Claudia’s kitchen was integrated into her
living and dining room in an attempt to make the tiny cottage less tiny. It
worked in principle but she was trying to find her way around without making
any noise, and as she didn’t want to open the curtains for fear of waking
Ellie, she was waking her with noise instead, trying to make space amongst the
things she would normally have cleared away the night before as part of her
evening routine.
 
She asked Ellie if
she had slept well, which she had, and opened the curtains a chink, saying
coffee would be ready soon. Neither said much, since Ellie had just woken and
neither was used to having conversations so early in the day. Claudia said that
she had slept well too, omitting that she had been awake and wanting to come
down for two hours, though she hoped that now it was light outside it would not
seem too early.

They had not talked at any great length
the night before. Ellie could not understand why she was so tired until she
realised that she had hardly slept after the restaurant two nights ago.
 
She had to be at the airport early yesterday,
so with her last minute plans and her travelling it was natural that she should
be tired, especially with chasing around to find Lola. That reminded her.

“Do you have Lola’s current phone number,
or her email address? The ones I have must be old ones, the phone is just ringing
out and the emails and texts are getting no response, you’d think there would
some kind of message-fail-alert- thingy.”

Claudia did not respond at first, she
seemed to be concentrating on something, then she said she would see, but in a
manner that suggested she would not. She bought the coffee over and cleared a
space on the coffee table.

“So, when did you last speak to Lola?”

“Actually speak? I don’t know, I guess
when I left here three years ago. We emailed for a while quite a lot and she
was supposed to come and see me when I’d settled in Venice but she had to
cancel. I supposed we just got busy with other things. You still see her
though, right? You can tell me the headlines, what’s new with her? No, tell me
what’s new with you first!”

Ellie suddenly realised how inconsiderate
she was, putting Lola before Claudia again when Claudia was right here and was
putting her up. Claudia was always the one in the back seat, and Ellie felt bad
that she let that happen because she knew how her friend used to feel about her
and she should not take advantage of her now. Claudia, who never talked about
herself if she could help it, tried desperately now to think of something to
say that would keep them off the subject until something could make Ellie
forget what she had asked. The only trouble was where to begin. She was writing
stories, doing articles, trying to be the kind of freelance journalist who
could pass for a writer instead of a journalist with all the implications that
she hated of that. She had been getting busier, sufficiently so and not too
much. She had a circle of friends at arms length but not the same friend’s that
she and Ellie and Lola used to have in common, and now that she was called upon
to say something about herself she had to admit that she deliberately spent a
lot of time on her own, that her life was very full but full mostly of insular
and isolated pleasures, and that she had never been happier with her little
life. Scratch that, she had been happier, much happier, but it was a great
happiness surrounded by a sea of despair, and this little island she had
managed to get to after that, this was what she was going to cling to. She did
not say that of course, or anything like it. She could not be angry at Ellie
for what she did not feel, however much she wanted her to feel it, and that
tiny part of her vulnerable heart that hoped one day things could be otherwise
was already alert and popping its head up like a fairground frog looking for a
mallet. The alternative was to feel nothing, and that was worse. A cold and icy
heart would help no-one, and while she wondered how to shield Ellie from Lola’s,
she wittered something about staying busy and never having enough time to do
anything, which even as she said it made no sense to her but was what other
people seemed to say all the time.

 
Ellie pulled herself up higher so that
she could reach for her coffee. She had bed hair and bits of mascara that she
had not managed to clean off her eyes the night before. As she pulled up on her
hands, Claudia watched as her erect nipples pushed through her clingy top. As
she looked up Ellie was smiling as she watched her.

“You haven’t seen my nipple ring have
you?” she smiled, pulling down the left side of her strappy top to reveal a
proud, pink, adorned nipple. “Do you like it?”
 
Claudia liked it. She wanted to run her
lips and her tongue over the silky breast and pull gently at it with her teeth,
but she didn’t think that was quite the level of approval that Ellie was going
for, and she reminded her that she had seen it last night in the bath, whilst
she again leant forward again to put the rattling cup and saucer back down on
the coffee table. She sat up, hugging herself so that her own arousal would be
less conspicuous.

Ellie asked if she was free for lunch, and
maybe the three of them could meet in town, have an afternoon together. Claudia
could not see anyway to avoid telling her the little she knew. She started to
say that she did not see Lola very much these days and mumbling about different
circles and not having much in common but she could not batter her way through
Ellie's enthusiasm about them all being old friends and picking up where they
had left off like it was yesterday, so she would have to tell her something.

“Lola has been seeing someone for a while.
She’s very busy these days, with him, with the business, I don’t see her any
more, there are a few people she doesn’t really see.”

Ellie looked disappointed, as though she
was relying on some things to never change and this was a hint that they could
and did. She wondered if it was just Claudia, being a bit cerebral, a bit of a
snob and not coping with Lola’s more pragmatic nature. Maybe she needed to be a
bit more accepting.

“Well if she has a business to run she’s
bound to be busy, I saw the shop yesterday it looks great, and if she has a man
who is taking up a lot of her time, well that’s a first, we should check him
out.”