Never Too Late (9 page)

action and closed her eyes beseechingly. Just let him go, get

him out of the flat, and she promised … no, she vowed …

never to look crossways at another man again. Please God,

Shiva, Allah, whoever.

She opened her eyes. He was still there, grinning lasciviously

and running thick fingers through his oil-slick hair.

She tried another tack.

‘Eric, I’ve got a lot of work to finish by tonight, I really

need to get into the office as soon as possible. I don’t want

to be rude, but I’d prefer it if you left so I could get ready.’

‘What’s the rush?’ he said, settling back in the bed to

watch her. ‘I can get you into the office on the bike in ten

minutes.’

‘You brought the bike home last night?’ she asked

faintly, wondering what state he’d been in to drive it.

‘Yeah.’ He grinned. ‘You insisted on it, said you loved

motorbikes. Come on,’ he patted the bed again. ‘We’ve got

time …’

For a brief moment, Cara thought about going back to

bed. Eric clearly wasn’t going to go without either an

argument or another session of rumpy-pumpy. She felt far

too tired and fragile for a shouting match. She could

always close her eyes and think of the empire.

Then she thought of being stone cold sober and having

Eric’s unshaven face slobbering all over her. And shuddered.

It

was time for desperate measures.

‘Eric, leave this instant or I’m going to go into the office

and tell everyone you’ve asked me to marry you. I’ve even

got the ring.’ Cara pounced on her jewellery box, found an

ornate gold and garnet dress ring of her mother’s and

waggled it in his face. ‘I’ve wanted to get married for so

long, I’m the last unmarried girl in my family and I know

we’d suit each other perfectly …’

She’d never seen him move so fast, even when he was on his Kawasaki 750 driving out of the car park flamboyantly to show off to any nearby female pedestrians.

‘Jeez,’ he muttered, dragging on his underpants, ‘you’re

twisted.’

‘No,’ said Cara, batting her eyelashes insincerely, ‘just

desperately in love with you. I’m twenty-six, you know,

nearly twenty-seven. I don’t want to be left on the shelf

and you’re just the type of man I go for. We could have a

June wedding. I’ve always wanted to be a June bride,’ she

added dreamily.

Eric struggled so hard with his trouser zip that he nearly

broke it.

‘I’m never getting married,’ he hissed, stumbling out of

the room with his boots half-undone and his helmet, keys

and jacket in his arms.

‘Neither am I,’ muttered Cara under her breath in a

voice that wasn’t meant to be overheard.

He stopped dragging his clothes on and wheeled around

to face her.

‘You bitch!’ he howled. ‘You were just taking the piss,

you just wanted me out of here!’

There was no point in saying anything, not even that

nobody else would be dumb enough to believe her in the

first place. Cara opened the front door and stood by it

patiently.

“I know your type, Cara Fraser,’ Eric said angrily, jabbing

a finger towards her. ‘I’m fine when you’re drunk but I’m

not good enough for you otherwise, am I?’

‘It’s not like that …’ started Cara, but he didn’t wait for her to finish.

‘You stuck-up bitches are all the same. You think I’m

thick. Well, I’m not.’ He looked terribly hurt, his face

white. Cara felt suddenly sorry for him.

“I don’t think you’re thick,’ she said, laying a hand on his

arm. “I think you’re lovely. But I don’t want to get

involved, Eric. Please understand that.’

He shrugged off her arm.

‘Eric, have you known me date anyone since I’ve worked

in Yoshi?’ she asked desperately. ‘No, you haven’t. Because

I’m not into long-term relationships, I can’t handle them.’

It wasn’t a great explanation or even a truthful one, but it

seemed to be helping. His expression wasn’t as desolate.

‘Please understand that. I need my own space, Eric,

that’s all. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

‘Well, why’d you talk to me last night?’ he demanded.

Cara hesitated. Saying ‘because I was blind drunk and I

made a huge mistake I now deeply, deeply regret’ didn’t

seem like a very good idea.

‘It’s easy to feel close to your colleagues and to mistake that closeness for romance,’ she said delicately, quoting

verbatim the recent magazine article she’d seen warning

against drunken office flings at Christmas parties.

He seemed to accept this. ‘Yeah, I understand.’

‘Anyway,’ she said, attempting to drag the conversation

on to a lighter level, ‘why did you talk to me? I’m not

exactly your type.’

He grinned for the first time.

‘You’re sexy for a big babe. I know you wear all that

tough gear and give off “keep away from me” vibes, but

you’re not as macho as you pretend. See ya around.’

He pulled on his boots and left without turning back.

Feeling utterly drained, Cara slammed the door shut and

leant against it in relief.

Eric wasn’t her type, that was for sure. The irony was

that after six virtually man-free years, Cara didn’t know

what her type was.

In the kitchen, she shuffled over to the fridge and

dragged the door open listlessly. Nothing leapt out at her

demanding ‘eat me’. Which was surprising, as the fridge

had so many developing lifeforms inside it, there was a

large possibility that one day something would jump out. It

probably wouldn’t say ‘eat me’, though, Cara thought,

rather ‘I’m going to eat you’. A mutant tube of pate,

perhaps, which had gobbled up all the mouldy low-fat

cheese and was on the look out for human flesh.

Cara ignored a lump of Brie that looked as if it was

wearing a white angora jumper and, vowing to clean out

the fridge that evening, took out the orange juice carton,

the butter and Phoebe’s Marmite. There was nothing else

edible in there.

Then she wrenched a couple of slices of bread off the

loaf in the freezer and jammed them in the toaster. She

boiled the kettle for tea, buttered and Marmited her toast

and drank three glasses of juice to slake her hangover

thirst.

Breakfast sorted out, she sat down in front of the telly

and switched it on. It was nearly a quarter to nine and she

should have been on the bus by now, heading for Mount

Street. But she wouldn’t have the energy to face the office

for another hour at least. Getting rid of Eric had turned

out to be exhausting and upsetting. Breakfast telly and

maybe a few minutes of a nice black and white film would

cheer her up.

It was eleven before Cara finally left the flat, having

bundled all the Eric-contaminated bedclothes into the

washing machine. While changing the sheets, she’d found a

condom wrapper on his side of the bed which was a

mixture of good and bad news: they’d had sex (bad news)

but at least Eric had used contraception (good). She

pushed the ‘I can’t believe you got so pissed you slept with

him!’ thoughts (very, very bad) out of her mind.

Pulling her ratty ankle-length purple velvet coat on

over her favourite black combats and the cotton cricket

sweater Phoebe had inadvertently dyed a mottled shade

of mandarin, Cara braved the wet morning.

She’d obviously lost her hat in the pub the night before

because it wasn’t jammed in the pocket of her velvet coat

as usual, while her gloves, a necessity in the icy late

December weather, were also missing.

Shivering as she trudged along Leinster Road in the

pouring rain, Cara prepared her spiel on how she and Eric

had ended up leaving the pub together but had parted

company immediately afterwards and had definitely not

spent the night together.

Absolutely not.

No matter which way she tried it, the story still sounded

lame. By the time she arrived at the office, sodden and even more hungover than ever, she’d almost given up on the ‘Eric and I didn’t touch each other’ saga. It was better

not to say anything, she decided. Everyone else was probably

paralytic with drink as well, so who’d have noticed

what she was up to?

‘I knew you were desperate but I didn’t know you were that desperate,’ remarked Zoe, head bent over her desk as Cara pushed open the door to their little office at the top

of the building and dumped her bag on the floor.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Cara innocently as she

wriggled out of her coat, now stained blackberry with rain.

Zoe looked up, one red eyebrow raised sardonically.

‘I mean,’ she drawled, ‘to sleep with Eric once sounds

like misfortune; to sleep with him twice sounds like carelessness!

‘

‘Thank you, Lady Bracknell,’ Cara said crossly. ‘Does

that mean everyone noticed?’ she added, wincing.

‘Luckily for you, no.’ Zoe slid off her seat and began

fumbling for something in a giant rucksack. After Pete’s

tequila competition - which you won, incidentally everyone

else went home, apart from you, me, Eric the

Greasy and Pete. Pete was almost out cold so I don’t think

he’d have noticed if you’d stripped there and then and sang

a few bars of “Hey Big Spender” on top of the table. Eric

was glued to you and my lips are sealed about the whole

sordid matter. You are a glutton for punishment, Fraser, I’ll

give you that.’

‘I know,’ moaned Cara, sitting down at her drawing

board and holding her aching head in her hands. ‘I couldn’t

believe it when I woke up this morning and found him in

bed beside me. I nearly cried. I can’t believe I did it, I hate myself …’

‘Stop berating yourself!’ commanded Zoe, triumphantly

extracting a clingfilmed sandwich from her rucksack. ‘It’s

Christmas and you were pissed. You haven’t murdered

anyone so forget it,’

‘But Eric …’ wailed Cara. Again!’

‘You only go to bed with him because you can manipulate

him,’ pointed out Zoe, biting into her lunchtime

tunafish sandwich, even though it was only half-eleven.

They always ate their sandwiches early. ‘It may cost Ł2 to

buy them in the shop but it’s a saving because at least we

wait until lunchtime to eat them,’ Cara pointed out, when

they were on their frequent economy drives and contemplated

bringing in their own lunches. ‘When we bring our

own in, we still have to buy lunch because we’ve nothing

left to eat by one o’clock.’

Cara sat miserably at her drawing board where the

unfinished campaign for a brand of laxatives awaited her

attention.

‘Ewan from copywriting fancies you but you wouldn’t

dream of touching him,’ Zoe was pointing out, ‘even if you

were plastered, because he might want a relationship or

something longer than a fling, so you steer clear of him.’

‘I’m not good with relationships,’ Cara said. ‘There’s no

law says I have to be.’

Zoe fixed her with a stern look. ‘So you’d prefer the odd

one-night stunned with dopey Eric, huh?’

Cara gave up. There was no point explaining things to

Zoe. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know what had put Cara off

men. They’d been at college together, so of course she

knew damn well. But Zoe insisted that her friend should

be over it by now. It had been six years after all.

‘You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had getting him to

leave,’ Cara confessed. ‘I thought he was going to move in. I tried that “I want to marry you” trick you told me about but even Eric didn’t fall for that one.’

‘Nobody would fall for that,’ Zoe interrupted. “I read about it in a magazine in the “things I wished I’d done at the time” section. It never really happened …’

‘Cara, Zoe,’ said a booming voice and both women

jerked upright on their high stools. Bernard Redmond,

Yoshi Advertising boss and bully boy supreme stood at the

door, blocking the light from the hallway.

In a dark suit that made him look more like an undertaker

than usual, Bernard was a rather frightening figure.

Tall, thin to the point of emaciation and with straight dark

hair tied back in a weedy little ponytail, he always

reminded Cara of the childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang

Bang. Today, his gimlet eyes took in the fact that Cara had

obviously done no work on the laxative campaign. But for

some reason, he didn’t pounce on her in a temper, screeching

about deadlines.

When he walked into the room, Cara discerned the

reason: Millicent Ferguson, a matronly fifty year old and

his wealthy business partner, was close on his heels

bearing two metallic red gift bags. Keen to impress the

benevolent Millicent, who’d been left a fortune by her

much older besotted husband and was now the firm’s

sleeping partner, Bernard was a different man when she

was around. Cara was convinced he hoped to inveigle his

way into Millicent’s affections and then marry her. She

and Zoe had discussed sending Millicent an anonymous

note telling her not to touch him with a barge pole.

‘Hello, girls,’ carolled Millicent, beaming at them. Her

broad heavily made-up face was wreathed in smiles,