Love Falls (32 page)

Now was her chance, she thought, finally to see a man naked, even if he was her brother, but before she could look he had hurled himself into the pool.

‘Ahhhhh!' He came up shrieking and Lara glanced anxiously at the house. But no light flicked on, anywhere, and nothing changed.

She moved into the shadow and began as slowly as she could to undress. What should she do? The more she thought about it the less sure she became.

‘Coward!' Kip taunted and she turned towards him and pulled her T-shirt over her head.

There was no escaping his watching eyes, just hovering above the water as she approached the pool. Her skin, for all her sunbathing, shone white, the stripes of her bikini line fluorescent. She put a foot in, then another, and unable to bear being watched she threw herself in. She swam fast for a few moments, ducking her head down, and then when she came up she was warm.

‘The difference between you and Lulu' – Kip was close beside her – ‘is that she knows she's beautiful, and you haven't realised it yet.'

‘You're mad.' Her smile was wide as the moon, but all the time she was thinking, He doesn't know why he likes me. I'm familiar; he can't help himself, that's all. She concentrated on treading water. ‘What I don't understand . . .' she said breathlessly to distract herself, ‘about you and Lulu, I mean, is . . . why aren't you more . . .' She wanted to say grateful, or amazed, but instead she said, ‘More interested?'

‘I don't know.' Kip's breath was close against her face and she could feel him treading water too. ‘I suppose she's not my type, that's all.'

Lara laughed, but fear shot through her, draining her face so that it ached. To hide herself she put her arms around Kip's neck and kissed him.

‘It's not as if' – he kissed her back – ‘your eyes are especially beautiful, or your mouth, or your nose.'

‘No?' Lara swallowed a mouthful of water as she began to sink.

‘But altogether . . .' He was sinking too. ‘It all looks perfect. To me.'

‘You're mad.' She kissed him again, but inside her kiss, she promised: This is the last time. This is the last time I'll ever do this. I swear.

Kip didn't notice. His hands were on her naked body. Tracing the curves and bone, the plains and edges of her, waterlogged, but somehow light as air. His body felt different too. Cool and contracted. His stomach flat and hard, his back a board. He twined his legs around hers, and she gave in as they rolled and kissed, splashing and kicking to stay up, not wanting to spoil the difficulty of it by moving down to the shallow end. Eventually they paddled further in and leant against the side where they kissed until their mouths were scorched.

‘It's very underrated, kissing.' Kip pressed himself against her, but she knew he meant there must be more.

‘OK,' she agreed, holding hard on to her promise, and then, impossible as it seemed, they rolled and pressed and almost sank until finally he was inside her, escaping the hardness of the water to a place where everything was soft. They clung together, the chilled edges of their toes and ears forgotten while they began to move. It was like a dance, with the ballet bar behind them, the moon above, and Lara closed her eyes. Ripples of pleasure pulsed through her, filling her up, and then just as easily receding, so that she was left with the cold hard thrust of him, insistent as he pushed her back against the bar. She closed her eyes tighter. Told herself that it was him. It was Kip. Whoever he was, he wasn't Roland.

And then in desperation she remembered the pipe-cleaner dolls that she and Sorrel had pressed together one summer holiday in Scotland. They'd taken the man doll and pressed him up against the doll woman's body, entwining their legs and arms so that their bodies crunched. Lara had felt a flash of something hot inside her. It was the first time she'd felt it – a fizzing of desire, and she'd blushed as Sorrel sent the dolls into the doll's house to bed. It kept her smiling, this memory, kept other thoughts at bay, but when it was over she was so exhausted she thought she might sink. She closed her eyes and let herself drift under, just for a minute, just to see how it would feel, but her body forced itself back up, and when she looked, Kip was scrambling out.

‘It's bloody freezing,' he said, and there it was, his penis. It was still hard, why was that? And curving out in front of him, bouncing as he walked. Lara covered her mouth. But she couldn't hide her laughter.

‘What?' Kip looked at her. But she kept on laughing.

‘It's just so funny,' she said, her shoulders shaking, and she felt overwhelmed with relief.

 

 

Lara and Kip ran up to the house, naked, clutching their clothes, watching out for tiny lizards skittering away from them on the stones. The terrace door was open and they ran through the sitting room, over the white rug, and up the stairs. They ran into Lara's room and too cold for anything else they threw themselves under the covers of her single bed.

‘Where is everybody anyway?' Kip asked, his teeth chattering, and just at that moment Lara thought she heard the phone.

‘Shhhh.' She put up her hand. But either it had stopped, or it was nothing. ‘They're at the hospital.'

‘Oh yes.'

They lay there in silence, slowly warming up. A hundred thoughts and questions flitted through her mind. Have you ever . . .? What . . .? Would . . .? But when she glanced behind her at Kip, his eyelids closed, his mouth a little open, it seemed nothing at all needed to be said. It's not true anyway, she told herself, tears oozing up into her eyes, but all the same she twisted round again and stared at him to check for signs.

‘What?' Kip frowned. He could feel her watching him, and so she slipped back into the curve of his body and tried not to think of anything at all.

 

 

Lara had been in Bangalore for a month when the girls she was training with were asked to perform at a hotel. There was great excitement, extra practice and much time spent standing patiently while swathes of material were fitted and folded and pinned on to their bodies. But none of this included Lara. Lara wasn't ready to perform, would need to practise for at least another thousand hours before she could be dressed in peacock colours and stand on a stage. Instead she and Cathy sat cross-legged on the floor of the hotel dining room, while small groups of girls took their turn to dance.

The teacher sat with the musicians, wielding a cymbal, watching. She watched their eyes, their hands, their shoulders and their feet, her body so alert it was as if she were dancing herself. The children danced the dance of Krishna as a baby. Krishna was a naughty and delightful baby – stealing yoghurt and honey whenever he got a chance. And then later, the older girls danced the story of him grown-up, being tempted by the Gopis who were some sort of milkmaid or cowgirl, but lovely all the same. They fled, they flirted, they called him with their eyes. Come hither, they seemed to be saying.

The teacher dictated the rhythm, clacking with her cymbals, high as a pin. Below the cymbal the violin wailed, and below that the drums scattered and thumped. The girls' hard feet stamped, their bells tinkling, and Lara, determined to practise harder, to put in her thousand hours, and soon, turned to beam at Cathy. It was everything she had promised her. And more. But to her surprise Cathy looked unhappy. She was watching the dancers, true, but she was half turned towards the audience. Fat and white and perspiring. Lara saw them through her mother's eyes, and when she looked back at the young dancers she noticed how their eyes were painted – made enormous with lids of blue, that there were jewels hovering at the tips of their partings, and exposed across their ribs was a stretch of smooth bare skin.

‘It should be more than entertainment,' Cathy muttered later. ‘The messages are for the gods not the ex-pats.' But she didn't put Lara off when she rose at dawn the next morning to practise before school, holding out her arms, folding back her third finger, circling her wrists until they stung.

 

 

When Lara woke she couldn't think where she was, couldn't imagine whose arms were draped around her, whose hot head was squashed against hers on the pillow. And then she remembered. She lay still, hardly daring to move in case Kip woke too, jumped up and rushed away. She closed her eyes again, tried to sink back into the heat of his body, but she could tell it was already late – there was strong sun in slices at the edges of the curtains, and the crickets were shrieking in the grass.

Very carefully Lara extricated herself from the cage of Kip's arms, sliding out from under him, seeing his cheek, which had been resting against her head, fall into the hollow of the pillow.

She pulled on a shirt and crossed the landing to peer into her father's room. Lambert's bed was still empty, his clothes folded out of sight. Books and papers were piled on top of a low cupboard and beside his lamp was a tower of hardback books. Could he still be at the hospital? Had something gone wrong? And anxiety spread out from a knot, already there, at the centre of her chest.

Lara ran downstairs. She glanced into the deserted kitchen, the sitting room with its sofa cushions still perfectly plumped. She stared at the telephone and then, checking, she put it to her ear. The line was purring, optimistic, as if someone might be waiting to tell her what was going on.

‘Hello?' she tried hopefully. ‘
Pronto
?' But of course there was no one there.

Back in the kitchen she opened the fridge. There was milk, fruit, glass bottles of peach and apricot juice. There was mozzarella and pancetta in folded paper packets and black olives in a tin. Lara stood indecisive. Where was the cereal? And the bowls? It made her flush to think how entirely she'd come to rely on Ginny's bustling self.

Instead of looking, she pulled out the loaf of home-baked bread and tearing off a corner dipped it into a jar of blueberry jam. She was starving. She dipped the bread again, but this time the crust broke off, leaving the jam thick with crumbs, ruined possibly in Caroline's fastidious eyes. Quickly she began to spoon it out, and then, with no alternative but to eat it, she cut two slices of bread and heaped them high. She poured two glasses of juice, opened every cupboard till she found a tray, and delighted with herself for inadvertently providing breakfast she carried it upstairs.

‘Kip,' she whispered, ‘Kip . . .'

One corner of his mouth lifted, but he didn't stir. Lara set the tray on the floor, and squeezing into the narrow space beside him she wriggled until Kip shifted over on to his side. She leant down for a slice of bread, and cupping her hand to protect the sheet from falling berries, she took an enormous bite. Happiness flooded through her. Pure, unadulterated joy. She took another bite, and another, all the time looking down on Kip's sleeping face, half turned away from her, the line of his jaw, the hair over his forehead, his ear so neat against his head, the lobe hardly a lobe at all . . .

She stopped chewing. She'd remembered her promise. What had she told herself the night before? That everything between them would be finished. She took a gulp of juice and lay against Kip's back. But he doesn't know, she allowed herself to argue, and if he never knows, I can forget too. And she
could
forget. She could forget anything. Hadn't she forgotten Roland? The weight of his leg, the tear in her wrist as she tried to pull away. And anyway, what was she supposed to do: throw Kip out? She slipped an arm around him, and fearful, she pressed her hand over his sleeping heart.

When she woke again Kip was leaning over her, lifting the second slice of bread, scattering berries across the sheet.

‘Careful,' she warned as a splash of jam fell on to the pillow, but Kip crammed as much as he could into his mouth.

‘Any more?' he asked when he could speak, but she was too busy picking berries off the linen, licking her finger and attempting to blot the stains with spit. ‘Leave it' – he stretched – ‘it doesn't matter. Someone will wash it.'

‘But what if it's ruined?' The more she rubbed, the worse the marks became.

‘So what?' Kip was looking at her.

‘It seems disrespectful, that's all.'

Kip whipped the sheet away and hurled it into a corner. ‘It's gone,' he said, ‘but if you want me to I'll bury it. We'll hold a service. Is that respectful enough for you?'

Naked, and now sheetless, he rolled on top of her and begun to nuzzle her with his nose, making small snuffling noises, her hands in his, his erection smooth and tickling her belly, until she gave in and began to laugh.

They made love, Kip, slow and tender, his eyes on her, Lara, so busy forgetting she could hardly look up. Forgetting Roland, forgetting Andrew Willoughby with his slurring words, forgetting Lulu: ‘I thought you'd be gone by now.' Forgetting May. She remembered and then forgot Caroline on her stretcher, and her father hobbling towards the door, climbing up into the ambulance with only a book and a silk scarf. But Kip was kissing her, turning her and stroking her with such insistence that eventually she lost the battle to forget. Her thoughts turned to waves – thick waves of colour – and the marrow in her bones to streams of syrup, so that she hardly knew where she ended and he began, and she felt so full of sweetness that she thought she might forget everything, for ever, as long as he promised not to stop. And then she did remember.