Love-40 (27 page)

Did it need courage? Suzi felt Michael's hands, gentle on her back. The two of them were naked, lying like spoons in the double bed, Suzi facing away from him, towards the window, as she usually did. What, she wondered, would Freud have made of that?

Michael began with a sweep of his fingers over her shoulders, thumbs soft in the crevice beneath her shoulder blades, and moved down to her waist, his hands a little too unsure, the pressure too light on her skin. Suzi closed her eyes. How she longed for a firm caress. Though maybe – who knew? – a firm caress could become a dangerous one; one that you couldn't ignore.

His hand reached for her breast. Suzi tried to relax into him, to go with the moment. This attempt at togetherness had become a rarity; each night he left her alone with her thoughts had become a relief. Not, she reflected, how it was meant to be.

And yet … His fingers were on her nipples now, stroking, urging her into compliance, into desire. Something stirred within her. Suzi sighed and reached a hand back towards his thigh. A signal. Please, she thought. Please let it work out between them, let her and Michael be content with whatever they had. She didn't want danger, didn't want it as part of her life. She was scared.

She had never, after all, allowed a man so far into her world, into her home, the way she had allowed Michael. Though as a matter of fact – her fingers caressed the length of his thigh, aware of the roughness of the male skin, the coarseness of the hair – it had been Michael who had made it happen, Michael who had given in his notice, arrived on the doorstep of the cottage, needy, like one of the animals she had rescued. Michael, then, who had forced the relationship to change. But Michael would not, she reminded herself, have reckoned on it changing into this.

Suzi nestled her body closer into his, her buttocks cupped deep into his groin. Her hand rested on the sharpness of his hip. Michael would never have reckoned on Suzi's reluctance, her resistance, she was sure. She might welcome the needy into the riverbank cottage, but she could no more admit her own need, than fly.

Michael kissed her shoulder, his lips moving in a predictable pathway down her spine. Suzi groaned. This was enough. Forget Josh Willis – how could she ever be sure of a man like him? She was not, she decided, cut out for love – not at any rate the kind of love that made sane men and women give up everything up to and including their independence, not the Romeo and Juliet kind of love that she had seen in Liam and Estelle. After all, once you'd had it – look at how hard it obviously was to manage without it.

No, she didn't think she was capable of that sort of love, and she certainly didn't want it. And she wasn't in love with Josh Willis – like she kept telling herself, she hardly knew the man.

So Suzi turned to Michael and looked into his eyes. ‘Now,' she said.

*   *   *

The river was dark beneath them, a fat snake weaving and rippling through the reeds and under the bridge.

‘Do you still think about it?' asked Liam.

Such was their understanding –
had
been their understanding – Estelle corrected herself, that she didn't need to ask him what he meant.

‘I still think about her,' she said.

‘And?'

Estelle sighed, leaned more heavily on the blue bridge that was evening-damp under her palms. ‘I still think about the way she did it,' she admitted. ‘The moment she did it.' Because Liam was Liam and knew it all – everything, at least, there was to know about Estelle. And because she imagined if she said it starkly and out loud, here, where it had happened, then it might – one day – have the grace to go away.

‘And still blaming yourself?' he persevered, his body dark and stranger-like in the night-time.

What was it to him, Estelle wondered. He had said and done everything he could over the years, to rationalise why a five-year-old girl could not be held responsible for the death of her own mother. Especially when that mother was a drinker – OK, a lush, Estelle corrected herself again, for what was the point of pretending? Whatever demons had haunted her mother, made her what she was, made her so unhappy that a bottle was the only escape, she, Estelle, would never know about them now. She had not been old enough to offer any comfort, let alone be confided in.

Until one evening when that mother had leaned too far over the bridge. Or launched herself into the water, Estelle wasn't even sure. But she did know that even at five years old, she had felt the misgivings of a certain understanding.

And Liam was right, what could she have done? Too late to pull her back. Her mother's skull smashed on impact on the rocks that lay just below the surface of the fast moving river, rocks that were just visible when the water was low – smooth and slimy with lichen.

‘There's always something that could have been different,' Estelle told him, as she had told herself many times. She tried to look into the depths of the river that had taken her mother's blood, but the water remained untouched and innocent – dark and chocolate-smooth.

‘Like
what if?
' he almost jeered.

Estelle turned. She could just make out the twist of his mouth in the darkness.

He went on. ‘What if you'd said you wanted to go home five minutes earlier, what if you'd insisted on holding her hand?'

‘Yes.' Estelle moved a step away. Why should he understand? He had not had that close contact with death, had no idea of how it felt to watch your own mother die, how it was to stand there, helpless, screaming, how you could torment yourself in the years that followed.

Liam grabbed her by the shoulders, twisted her round to face him. Taken aback, Estelle stared into the shadows of his face, but it was too dark to make out the expression in his eyes. ‘What if I'd been the one with her?' he demanded.

‘Huh?' Had Liam finally lost his sanity, she wondered.

‘What if I had gone out with your mother for a walk. What if I was five years old and I'd been with her and the same thing had happened?'

Estelle tried to pull away. ‘Don't be stupid. You didn't even know her.'

But he held fast. ‘It's not me that's stupid, it's your bloody what if game that's stupid. So come on, what if I'd been the one?'

Estelle gave up, slumped against him. It was simpler not to fight him, too easy to rest against the warm body that still, damn it, felt like home. ‘You'd have done the same as me,' she muttered into his jacket.

‘Yeah.' He forced her away from him again, denying her need. ‘Because there was no other choice for a five-year-old. Got it?'

‘Maybe.' She didn't want him to make her face it, even think about it. She didn't want to be here. She wanted to lay her head on his shoulder and pretend nothing had changed.

‘And what would you think of me?' he persevered. ‘If I'd been the one? If I'd been with her when she died?'

Why wouldn't he be quiet, just be quiet and let her rest? It had been such a strange evening, seeing him there at the Arts Centre, realising that this was a ploy of Suzi's. Why? To get them together? Estelle had always imagined Suzi half-jealous of what they had. Herself she had seen as an interloper, pushed out of a brother and sister bond that had often seemed too close to admit another. She had even imagined Suzi to be one of the problems that held herself and Liam apart. If only Suzi could have found a special someone … she had often thought.

And yet now it appeared that Suzi wanted them to be back together, Suzi had gone to great lengths to try and sort it, Suzi – as Liam had said earlier – simply loved them both and wanted them to be happy.

And now this. Enough surely to cope with the close proximity of Liam, without Liam suggesting a late-night stroll after the concert, without Liam bringing her to the blue bridge, laying all the mother guilt trip on her again. She rubbed her eyes. Damn Liam for bringing it all back.

‘Estelle?' He spoke quietly, his voice soft and low in the night air. Around them were the usual night-time noises, the occasional hoot of an owl, the ripple of some life form in the river below, the rush and drag of the tide, just audible in the distance. Noises that Suzi, in her riverbank cottage just down the tow path, would be all too familiar with.

‘I wouldn't think anything bad of you,' Estelle admitted.

‘You wouldn't think it was my fault?'

‘No.'

‘That I should have stopped your mother from falling?'

‘No.'

‘You wouldn't think that I could have pulled her back at the last moment?'

‘No.'

‘Shoved myself in her way as she fell?'

‘No.'

‘Thrown myself into the water so that I got there before her?'

‘No.' This was getting silly now. How on earth could anyone possibly have –

‘Somehow got my body between her and the rocks?'

‘No!'

‘Stopped her from killing herself?'

‘No!'

She began to shake then, not a trembling but a jerking movement that racked her whole body. And she cried. Huge tears that seemed unlike any she had shed for her mother before. And Liam held her. Not like he had held her in the past, but as if he were holding her very soul, every part of her touching him, every inch of him moulded to her, to her needs, to the fear that had never been expressed before. The tears seemed to rip their way out of her, clung to her cheeks, finally were absorbed by him in some sort of absolution.

‘Let it go, love,' Liam said. ‘Let it go.'

*   *   *

It was half an hour later before they made their way back down the pathway, through the gate and past the church, the graves pale and eerie in the moonlight. Half an hour, in which time Estelle knew she had moved on. Just a step, but an important one. She'd still grieve for her mother, grieve for what might have been; she'd still hold her memories, for they were hers alone. But the guilt had been somehow swept away in the current that led down to the sea. The guilt had gone – perhaps for good.

‘Are you going to invite me up to see your new flat?' Liam teased, as they approached Secrets In The Attic.

‘Maybe.' There was a kind of shyness between them now, as if they'd reached a point of no return. Estelle knew they'd have to sit and thrash it all out – why they had split up, what it would take for them to get back together. But she also knew it would be done, that she and Liam would not – not yet at least – be prised apart.

They got to the shop and at last, at last, he pulled her towards him into a kiss. She tasted the warmth of his lips, the sweetness of his tongue, began to close her eyes. And snapped them open again.

‘Christ Almighty!' She pulled away.

‘What?' He half-turned to follow her gaze.

There was broken glass on the pavement. The shop window had been smashed – a half-brick sat amongst the debris of Clarice Cliff and Estelle's semi-precious jewellery. It didn't look as if anything had been taken. But nevertheless, it was destruction. Destruction, vandalism, invasion of the worst kind.

‘Kids,' Liam said, guiding her towards the door. ‘We'll phone the police.'

‘Not kids,' Estelle shouted. Suddenly it was all too much. Tonight, the tears, the purging, and now this. She felt stripped naked. She no longer had a sense of direction, a way to go.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. And then she screamed.

Chapter 21

‘Where is he?' Liam growled, pulling the heavy brocade curtain aside and scanning the rows of wooden chairs that had been laid out on the dark wooden flooring of the hall. People were already arriving for the performance, being handed day-glo yellow programmes from selected prefects in school uniform, who had been practising saying, ‘Good evening, Sir, Good evening, Madam,' all week.

And Marcus was nowhere to be seen. Liam tore a hand through his hair, paced up and down the small area of stage unoccupied by either kids or props. Tybalt was the most important player next to Romeo and Juliet. What would they do without Tybalt? Who would fight Romeo? (Though Liam wouldn't mind, after what Bradley had put him through at that dress rehearsal the other night, having a go himself.)

He frowned as he caught sight of his two star performers on the other side of the stage. What were Jade and Bradley doing whispering in the wings? Thankfully they no longer seemed to be at loggerheads with one another. But shouldn't they be in make-up? And there was such a thing as being too friendly. ‘Psst!' He made angry gestures towards them, mouthed, ‘Make-up.'

‘Marcus and Bradley had a fight last night.' This was from Crystal, who had materialised beside him. She was wearing black leggings and a baggy grey T-shirt that did her matchstick figure no favours whatever and her hair was tied up in a pony tail that jumped to attention when she moved. She smirked. ‘About Jade.'

Liam groaned. Just what he needed. ‘Was he all right? Did he say anything?' Was he still on for tonight, he meant.

Crystal shrugged. ‘Only that he wouldn't be seen dead in the play.'

‘Oh, great.' For a moment Liam forgot his role of nurturer of young minds. ‘Bloody great.'

‘But he probably didn't mean it, Sir.' Crystal skipped off happily.

When did little girls stop being little girls and become so bitchy, Liam found himself wondering for the millionth time since he'd begun teaching. What happened to them between the ages of eleven and fourteen that made the most innocent, the most manipulative and the sweetest, the most spiteful?

But more important at this moment, who the hell could he get to play the part of Tybalt – and at such short notice? Liam realised dismally that there was no one. The only person who might know the lines was Crystal since as prompter she probably knew everyone's lines by now, but that would be stretching it. Still, what choice did he have? Girls played principal boys in pantomime, men had played women back in Shakespeare's day.