Love Is a Four Letter Word (4 page)

‘Nick!' Viv warned.

‘What? What? What have I done now?'

‘Nothing. It's fine.' Bella reached across him for a Matchmaker. ‘It's Patrick's.'

‘Oh. Sorry.'

‘'s no biggie. Carry on.'

‘Plus you could try smiling from time to time. Men like that. It makes us feel wanted.'

‘Like this?' Bella adopted an enormous toothy grin and skipped energetically around the room. ‘Isn't life fab! Pollyanna was a chronic depressive compared to me!'

‘So, I suppose it wouldn't be a waste to cover
my
face with hair then?' said Viv.

‘I knew this would happen. I hate both of you.' Nick heaved himself up from the sofa. ‘If anyone wants me, I'll be pretending to be a proper man, reading my car magazine in the bog.'

There were two messages on her answerphone when she got home: one from the damp man, saying he couldn't do the damp until the weather was better – perhaps he was hoping that every extra day of rain would make it worse and he'd be able to hack off another foot of plaster and whack up the bill; and one from her father, Gerald: ‘Just calling to say hello. See how it's all going. Well, I dare say you're managing fine. Give us a ring sometime. Lots of love, Dads.' He
always finished like that on the answerphone, as if he were writing a letter.

She wasn't in the mood to speak to anyone, there was nothing on TV, and – having lugged her folio with her notes and sketches in back home – she didn't feel inspired by the prospect of trying to make yoghurt sexy, so she ran herself a deep bath with lavender oil instead. Her candles were reduced to sad stubs, having dripped down their twiddly fake verdigris holders into a Gothic encrustation, and there were spatters of wax on the tiles at one end of the bath. She sat on the edge of the bath while the water was running in, idly picking off bits of wax and flicking them into the loo, then spent fifteen minutes looking in boxes for more candles. She ran her fingers through her hair as if she were posing for a shampoo ad until her fingers got tangled, then she wafted slowly around the room hunting for a hair clip.

‘I'm too sensitive to expose myself to the glare of artificial light,' she said out loud. ‘Where are the rose petals for my bathwater? My trained eunuchs to paint my toenails and squeeze my spots?'

The candlelit bathing had started with Patrick, but then it was the sort of thing you fell into quite legitimately when you were a couple – along with soaping each other's backs, mounding soapsuds into exaggerated body parts, and volunteering to have the end with the taps. Right on cue, the image of Patrick as she had last seen him appeared in her mind.

She grabbed her loofah mitt and started scrubbing over-vigorously at her skin. Was this really supposed to have an effect on cellulite? Or did it just make you red and sore so that the cellulite was less noticeable? She peered at her thighs in the flickering light. As well as making it hard to see her cellulite, reason enough
surely, the candles were in fact highly functional. Once activated by turning on the light, the extractor fan would continue its deranged mosquito whine for almost an hour even after the light had been turned off. Bella planned to get it fixed at some point, any day now almost certainly, once the damp had been done, but The List had reached such epic proportions that she felt unequal to the task of tackling even a single item on it, so for now she left the door open and the landing light on when she went to the loo – and she had baths by candlelight.

She lay in the bath, lapped by the clean scent of lavender and the flicker of the candles. The events of the day whizzed around her mind, prosaic yet insistent. Was Seline annoyed with her? She should have asked Anthony about next week's presentation. How long would the damp treatment take? And how messy would it be? She might even have to move out for a few days. If only someone else would come along and solve everything. Bella sank lower in the bath, soaked her flannel and draped it over her face. She closed her eyes and imagined she could see herself from above, wondering what it would be like to float up from her body, feel her mind, her thoughts detaching themselves, pulling at her flesh as they dragged away like a sticking plaster. Rain pattered hard against the window, fingers tapping a tattoo against the glass.

She willed herself to hear
his
tread, the twisting of the doorknob.

Behind her closed eyelids, she could see the candles in her mind, their flames sending skittering shadows on the walls, dancing patterns of light over her glistening thighs, her breasts. The door swings open and
he
looks at her questioningly. She smiles her assent and he
comes towards her and kneels down next to the bath. His flop of hair falls forward and he runs his hand through it to push it back. Silence. He does not need to speak, but his eyes gleam with longing. At first, he just looks at her, his gaze tracing her shape, then he pushes back his sleeves and reaches down to her—

Downstairs, the phone rang and her answerphone clicked in.

‘Hello. Dad again. Do you fancy coming for a visit at the weekend? Be lovely to see you. Mum says you're welcome to bring anyone, you know. If you want to. If there's someone. Well. Or just your good self of course. More than enough. Lots of love. Oh, and we've still got your house-warming present.'

Bella rolled her eyes at an invisible audience. Still, she hadn't visited the House of Fun for quite a while. She couldn't fend it off for ever. The water was getting too cold, hovering at the same temperature as her skin so that she was hardly aware of it as water around her. Another minute or two and it would start to feel cool; she'd have to top up or get out. Out, Bella decided, or she'd look as alluring as a pickled walnut. It wasn't too late to ring Dad back. Perhaps she would go; it might be fine. She could do with a change of scene anyway, have a walk with Dad and the dog, a break from staring at the still-packed boxes. She shivered and shook herself, automatically tapping each foot against the side to shed excess water, a relic from childhood baths and protecting the carpet.
Do try not to drip absolutely everywhere, Bella-darling. If it gets wet, it'll start to shrink.

‘Ev'ry time we say goodbye, I die a little …' Bella sang along with Ella Fitzgerald while sucking on a sherbert lemon, cursed at a driver surging onto the roundabout in front of her. ‘… why a little, why the gods above me …' She should have left at lunchtime to miss the Friday exodus. Since Bella had moved, it was barely more than a fifty-mile journey to her parents' place, a wisteria-covered house in a pretty-pretty village in Sussex, but it was turning out to be a slow drive, much of it cross-country on minor roads. If only she hadn't got stuck on the receiving end of one of Seline's interminable monologues about the various ailments of her cats. In the end, she had backed out of the door, shaking her head in sympathy: ‘How awful. Falling out in handfuls? Crusty scabs? Poor thing.' They were always suffering from some disgusting condition, which would be related to everyone in the office, one at a time, so that all through the day she could overhear the same fragments – ‘Ooh, suppositories? Really?' – as if played on a continuous tape loop. Why on earth didn't Seline just shoot them and get some new, unscabby ones? She peered at the signs. Second, third exit; that's the one. ‘… think so little of me, they allow you to go …'

*   *   *

It was properly dark now and the red tail lights of the cars in front bored hypnotically into her eyes against the deepening blue-black of the road and sky. Night driving seemed so full of promise, the road stretching out before her as if it could take her anywhere she wanted to go, her path plotted by a trail of lights like an unnamed constellation crossing the sky. Suddenly, the sign she had just passed filtered through to her consciousness. Her turn-off was coming up: A259 Rye, Hastings. She abandoned her attempt to overtake a Fiat that was even older than her red Peugeot, and nudged back into place to be ready for the turning. A reproving flash from the car behind. Concentrate, woman! If only she didn't feel so tired all the time.

There was an old truck stop a couple of miles along this road, she seemed to recall, a relic of an era of bikers in black leather who roared their engines to impress girls in zip-up boots and miniskirts. By some miracle it had not yet been closed down or transformed into an Unhappy Eater or Loathsome Chef with smooth plastic seats, smooth plastic fried eggs and unsmooth, authentic bad service, heralded by badges proclaiming ‘Hi, I'm NIKKI. It's my pleasure to serve you,' their enthusiasm as convincing as a squeezed-lemon-faced aunt in a purple party hat. Why didn't they just tell it like it is – ‘Yeah? I'm Charmain. I'll bring it when I can be bothered.'

Bright lights, the sound of eggs spluttering into hot oil, the smell of all-day breakfasts. The few men at the tables looked up from their papers or their mugs of tea when Bella entered. She wished she'd stopped long enough to change out of her work clothes. The clacking of her heels seemed grotesquely amplified by the lino floor as she crossed to the counter to order, drumming out a message in Morse:
Look at me, look at me.
She buttoned up her tailored jacket, to compensate for her new skirt. The crisp horizontal of its hem framed
her exposed knees. She fought the urge to tug it down.

‘Pay when you're done, love,' the waitress behind the counter said. ‘Here, hang on a tick for your tea. I'm just making fresh. I'll bring your sandwich over in a minute.' She emptied the teapot, spooned in some fresh tea. Steam billowed around her hands, clouding the shine of the metal teapot, the gold of her wedding band, as water rushed from the urn.

‘All right, Jim?' she turned to a chunkily attractive man who had come up to pay. ‘Where you off to this time, gorgeous?'

‘Only Southampton. Better give me a roll for the road though, eh?'

‘Give you a roll anytime, Jim.'

‘Now, now, lady present. Take no notice,' he said, turning to Bella. He had on a white T-shirt underneath his soft cotton checked shirt, the way American men often wear them. She could see the tendons flex in his tanned neck. He pushed back his sleeve to the elbow, absently rubbing at the dark hairs on his forearm.

‘All right?' He nodded, smiling.

Bella looked down, suddenly aware that her gaze had lingered on him too long. Her eyes dropped to his hands. The nails were cut close, the fingers full of easy strength.

‘Fine, thanks.'

‘You sure now? Need a ride or anything? You look a bit lost.'

‘No. Really.' Bella snapped him a poised but distant smile. ‘I have my car.' She folded her arms in front of her, then felt silly to be so pointedly defensive. ‘Thank you.'

‘No bother.' He stepped back a pace, then smiled and raised his hand –
Sorry. I'll keep my distance –
before turning again to the waitress at the till.

The bacon was thick and salty, between chunky slices of hot buttered toast. Bella tore into her sandwich and slurped her tea in an I'm-all-right-Jack, independent sort of way. Lady, indeed.

Standing at the counter waiting to pay, she saw that they had those solid slabs of bread pudding, the indigestible sort that her dad liked so much, a world away from the vanilla- and cinnamon-spiced faultless desserts her mother made. She ordered two slabs.

‘I'll just take for those then, love. Jim paid for your tea and sandwich.' Bella looked at the woman blankly.

‘Said he hated to see a damsel in distress. I think he took a fancy to you,' she sighed. ‘Lucky you. I wouldn't mind a ride with him myself.' She laughed and Bella smiled, bawdy conspirators.

For the rest of the journey, she found thoughts of her knight-in-checked-shirt returning insistently. She imagined saying yes, she did need a ride, then climbing high up into the lorry cab.

He would stand below, watching as her skirt rode up, revealing the backs of her thighs as she clambered in. Sitting next to him in the lorry, high, high above the road, with the night close in around them, she'd turn to absorb his profile silhouetted against the star-pricked sky, breathe in the smell of male skin, fresh sweat, cotton.

Here, in the warm bubble of the cab, the vibration of the engine thrumming through the soles of her feet, she feels safe. No need to talk, to spoil the heavy hum with the thin clatter of words. There is just him and her and the road ahead. The thickness of his body next to her seems like some rock or standing stone, solid and unyielding. She wants to feel his hands, his fingers warm on the back of her neck, the shock of his rough chin against her cheek. To be held in silence.

Then, she reaches out and her fingers trace a path over the faded denim of his jeans, feeling the cloth stretched taut across his leg. He turns to face her, to see her eyes, her assent. Puts on his hazard lights, pulls over onto the hard shoulder.

Now he leads her round to the back, stretching for her hand in the orange flick-flick of the lights. He lifts her up effortlessly into the back of the lorry, his hands firm and confident around her waist. She steps back and leans against a stack of boxes, waiting. His shape in the darkness moving towards her. A hand on her hair. His mouth. Hands. Hitching up her skirt. The smell of anticipation. A sharp intake of breath at his touch, warm against the cool skin of her thigh. His voice, murmuring low in her hair, her neck. His hands. His—

A car flashed her, coming the other way. She was frozen in the glare for a moment, then realized and dipped her headlights. You sad spinster, you, she told herself, fantasizing about lorry drivers. What next? Dreams about builders saying, ‘I hear you've got some excess moisture that wants seeing to'? Electricians offering their services: ‘I'll just turn you on now'? Delivery men asking, ‘Where shall I put it, love?' Good grief.
For God's sake, go and have a proper fling, woman.
It was all very well having a gap after Patrick, but this was getting beyond a joke. She was probably technically a virgin again by now, all sealed over the way pierced ears went if you didn't wear earrings in them.