Lots of Love (61 page)

‘We’re saving ourselves for the sausage casserole. Big wedding breakfast, you know.’ Patting his belly, Spurs stood up and took Ellen’s hand. ‘Come on, darling, must eat up. We can’t miss our flight, can we?’

As they walked through the double doors to the famous ivory-panelled dining room, he held her hand so tightly that she thought her fingers would snap off.

The wine, which had been decanted and was poured for them with religious reverence, was so incredible that Ellen couldn’t talk for a moment after sipping it, letting the complex, delicious tastes steal any words from her mouth.

‘I bet you taste just as good.’ Spurs was watching her obvious pleasure.

‘So bitter and so sweet,’ she muttered.

‘I’d like to drink all your cases so that you have no baggage.’

‘I’m only taking a backpack away with me.’

That smile twisted on his lips again and he stared into the blood red wine. ‘Would you stay if I asked you to?’

‘Are you asking me to?’

He dipped his finger into the glass and watched a drip form on it. ‘No.’ Then, breaking the whispered stillness, he sucked his finger and looked up at her sharply, ‘What will you do with the rest of your things?’

‘There isn’t much.’ She matched his steady gaze. ‘I can give most of it away. I don’t get attached to things.’

‘Can’t fit a dog into a backpack.’

Ellen felt her heart thud unhappily. ‘Would you like her?’

His eyes glowed molten. But then he shook his head. ‘She’d remind me of you.’

‘See? We can’t be friends. Even man’s best friendship is too much.’

He nodded slowly. ‘I know. It was worth a try, though, eh?’

She twitched a corner of her mouth in silent accord.

‘What people don’t realise about fairy tales,’ he said suddenly, ‘is that they were far more macabre in their original form. There were no happy endings. Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, for example, was murdered by the wolf and he stored her blood in a bottle before killing the little hooded one in her bed.’

‘Is that why you like the Little Mermaid?’ she asked. ‘Because it doesn’t have a happy ending?’

‘I was in Denmark with Cirque de Phénomène – the first and last time the troupe will be asked to perform in Tivoli Gardens. I followed the tourist trail and read the little plinth on the statue – she looked funnily like you, with her graffiti tattoos and her bubblegum studs. I just fell in love with her because she blew it so damned sweetly. An innocent scarred by modern life, swimming up to the surface after all those years trapped in a childhood idyll, only to fall in love with a bastard like me.’

Two spectacularly over-elaborate high-rise sausage confections were lowered simultaneously over Ellen and Spurs’ left shoulders and the waiters stepped back in unison, waiting for awed comments, but Ellen and Spurs just gazed at one another.

‘I love you,’ he said urgently. ‘I love you more than anyone else I’ve ever met in my entire life. I love you more than my bloody life. Christ knows, it’s been one long, fuck-up journey from cage to cage so far – totally, mindlessly pointless until I met you. Then I spent two days with you. Two days of freedom with you, and I finally knew what prison really was because I’d already agreed to go back in for life this time and there’s no getting out.’

Ellen stared at him, not understanding, her heart burning its way out of her chest.

‘I just want one more day,’ he went on. ‘I just want one night. Tonight, tomorrow, this moment, today – fucking now. I can’t watch you go without telling you how I feel. I don’t care if one night in heaven makes hell even hotter. I can’t wait any longer and I can’t just walk away.’

She took his hands over the table, wine tipping over, nipples spilling from her dress, chair scraping against the polished floor, not caring about or even noticing the chaos in her wake.

‘I
love
you.’ He gripped her hands, eyes bubbling with mirth and relief. ‘This cynic’s got quixotic and the devil’s been born again. I believe in soulmates, I believe in love at first sight and in sweet Jesus Christ right now because whatever it was that put you and me together should be worshipped by millions of people around the world and hated and loathed by just as many.
I believe,’
he shouted,
‘in Jesus!’

More waiters rushed over, forming a human wall around them like desperate German defenders given a Beckham free kick from the edge of the box.

Ellen was laughing. Laughing and crying and not noticing the frantic activity around her. A pair of sausage casseroles were swept from the table as Spurs made his way across it towards her and took her face in his hands. ‘I married the most beautiful, good, kind, sexy, fucking amazing woman in the world today. I married the love of my life. It will be a short marriage, but they don’t get any finer.’

Fellow diners turned in amazement. Two discreet Japanese women sidled up to take photographs, certain that this had to be two very famous people to look so good and behave so badly. An ageing American beauty demanded to know the name of Ellen’s plastic surgeon because ‘I
must
have those breasts.’

‘Perhaps,’ the mâitre d’ hustled up urgently, ‘you would like to finish your meal in your room, Mr and Mrs Gardner?’

Ellen reached out to touch Spurs’ face. Her hand traced his high cheekbones, his dimpled chin, his creased, worried forehead and his noble nose down to his beautiful mouth. She slipped her fingers between his lips and touched the smooth teeth beneath. ‘Where are we?’ she asked dreamily.

‘Fuck knows. Together.’

‘Somebody here says we’ve got a room.’

‘Let’s go there.’

The hand-painted Chinese wallpaper in the bridal suite went unnoticed, as did the matching raw-silk-upholstered
chaises
on either side of the vast floor-to-ceiling bay window overlooking the park, as did the complimentary fruit and champagne chilling in frosted silverware above the antique veneer cabinets housing minibars and a multichannel entertainment centre. The vast fireplace spilling with fresh damask roses was overlooked, the seductive original Klimt sketches went unspotted and the bed – a riotously ornate carved French oak four-poster, acres wide, layered with silk counterpanes and topped with a love heart picked out in orchids – might have been a footstool in the corner of the room.

‘Thanks. Fuck off.’ Spurs thrust a fifty-pound note at the porter.

Kicking the door shut, he and Ellen set about ripping. White silk chiffon frayed, suit buttons popped, knickers tore, a ruptured zip gave way to a splitting seam, cotton shredded and shoes spun in the air. A tatty clog took out several crystals from an antique chandelier.

‘I love you,’ Spurs breathed into her mouth, body slamming against hers as they backed up against the door. ‘I thought I’d die if I let you go without doing this,’ they spun round again, ‘without tasting you, without—’

‘I love you too.’ She shut him up with a kiss and jumped, knowing he would catch her. She could jump from the highest cliff and he would catch her.

Dilly and Rory shared another cigarette and another long kiss, and scratched their mosquito bites distractedly as Keith shambled up to refill their glasses with ‘charity’ rum. Lips not leaving Dilly’s, Rory dropped another fiver into the good-causes bucket and gave him the thumbs-up.

‘No sign of your lift, I’m afraid,’ Keith told them cheerfully, looking at his watch. ‘Ten past midnight. Stay as long as you like. Mary and I will lock up at half past, but the key’s under the lupin tub.’

Dilly and Rory kissed on, legs tangling under the picnic table as candles guttered and midges gathered around them.

Fat on untouched chops and chips, Twitch the Jack Russell let out a contented burp and curled up between their feet, snapping at moths.

‘When does Dilly get home?’

‘Oh, she’ll be tucked up in bed soon.’ Pheely pressed her cheek indulgently to the pile of clothes she was lying on as her right nipple was sucked into a frothy peak. ‘She’s not coming back here tonight.’

‘Good.’

She gurgled approvingly as Oddlode’s greatest law-suitor pressed her breasts together and took both nipples into his mouth at once, chewing playfully with his very white, very expensive veneers. The bristling hair on his lip made the soft, puckered skin around them burn sensationally. ‘Can I take a cast of your cock tonight?’

‘No.’ He kissed on.

‘But you are so magnificent.’

‘I keep telling you,’ he let her breasts slide back under her armpits and reached for his glass of Cheap White Wine, ‘I am allergic to plaster-of-paris. I got a terrible rash when I had to have my ankle set after I tore a ligament playing cricket at school.’

‘In that case I’ll have to sculpt it from memory.’

‘What are you doing?’ he asked in alarm, as she started to wriggle beneath him.

‘Memorising it.’

‘Where are we?’ Ellen asked, as she stretched across a silk-soft woven rug to a magical luminous doorway that housed all manner of treats including the small cold bottle of water she grabbed now.

‘Home.’ Spurs ran his cheek up her thigh and sank his face between her legs.

The water bottle rolled on the woven rug.

‘No, no, no, no!’ she howled, as the circles rippled inwards from her fingers and toes to his beautiful, ever-kissing, ever-tasting mouth, plunging down between his lips and tongue to a never-ending, bubbling stream of pleasure.

Later, he walked a sat in trail of kisses to her throat and she rolled over to grip him beneath her.

‘Why do you say that when you come?’ He looked up at her, reaching back for the water and handing it up to her.

‘Say what?’ She opened it with her teeth.

‘No. You say no.’

Ellen took a long draught and handed the bottle to him to drain. ‘Because I know this is make-believe,’ she said. ‘It’s not real. That’s why it’s so lovely. So easy.’

He crumpled the empty water bottle in his hand and threw it angrily at the wall. ‘It
is
real. Tonight it’s real. Feel.’

She howled with indignation as he pinched her hard on the thigh. ‘Okay,’ she grabbed his wrist, ‘I believe you. Cut that out.’

‘Not unless you say yes when you come.’ He teased, using the other hand to slap her arse. ‘Say yes, Spurs! Yes, I love you!’ He smacked her again, ‘Yes, I want to spend my life with you!’ Slap. ‘Say, yes, yes, yes!’

Shrieking with laughter, she slapped him back and they wrestled over and over on the rug until he had her pinned beneath the heavy curtains at the window – impromptu covers for another delicious coupling.

‘Yes,’ Ellen gasped. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yesssssirrreeeeeeeee!’

Spurs cupped her breasts in his hands and arched up to kiss one, then the other as he finally exploded inside her. ‘We have to stop coming together like this.’

‘You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.’ She shifted as she felt him stiffen again almost immediately.

‘It’s you who’s making me hard on you.’

The huge windows had been thrown open, the heavy tapestry curtains dancing awkwardly to either side like a pair of foot-shuffling wallflowers at a disco, watching the best-looking couple kissing on the dance-floor. Despite the night air, the room was only just cool enough to be bearable.

Ellen watched his fingers move around her body as he familiarised himself with every curve and crease and crevice, like Pheely working with her beloved clay. He tilted his head this way and that as he traced her contours, his hair brushing softly against her skin as he examined her in minute detail, telling her how beautiful she was, that he’d never forget her.

Then, suddenly, that skin started to change, making him smile. ‘You’ve got goosepimples. Are you cold?’

‘No. Just frightened.’

‘Frightened?’

Ellen couldn’t explain. She stood up and headed into the cool, marbled bathroom, not bothering with the lights because its huge window already let in so much of the luminous moon that it already felt too bright. Her skin was jumping with fear now, crawling anxiously closer to her muscles, tweaking at her belly stud and twitching between her legs where Spurs had fitted so perfectly minutes earlier and propelled her to such crazy, uncharted heights.

It was the biggest bathroom she had ever seen. A double-sized claw-footed bath sat beneath a mullioned window looking out to Oddlode, the church spire gleaming in its lottery-funded floodlights. At the end of the room there was a blue- and white-tiled walk-in shower that could have taken a football team, with vast nozzles at either end, and even a tiled bench against one wall.

Ellen set the hot tap running in the bath, feeling the steam hit her face as she tipped in the contents of every glass bottle lined up on the window-sill and fought to breathe.

‘I’m having a piss, okay.’

Jolted, she looked round to see Spurs standing beside the lavatory; Michelangelo’s
David
in an upmarket water-closet.

In thirteen years with Richard, she had never seen him urinate. The very idea would have creeped her out. Yet suddenly she wanted to stick around while Spurs took a pee.

‘Sure.’

As the hard flow hit the porcelain, she turned back to the bath, blushing despite herself, dipping her hand into the scalding water.

‘Why are you frightened?’ he asked, over his shoulder.

Ellen watched the foam rise up in the bath, enchanted cloud castles full of dreams that fizzled away. ‘Because this isn’t real.’

‘It feels real to me.’

‘It does while you’re pissing in the same room, yes.’ She scooped up a frothy beard and popped it onto her chin. ‘But it can’t last.’

‘Because it’s make-believe?’ He flushed the lavatory and walked across to her, stepping straight into the bath.

‘I haven’t put any cold in yet!’ she yelped.

But Spurs sat in the scalding water, taking her face in his hands. ‘This isn’t make-believe, Ellen. We haven’t been making believe at all.’