Slightly Foxed (19 page)

man who'd enquired, screaming to be heard over the wailing

which permeated the air.

"That's Alicey then, isn'it? So,
Alicey
, what're you doing

here? You're not"—the hand which had been hovering on my

leg retracted—"you're not Si's mum, are you?"

"No." I edged towards the kitchen, which had been my

destination when I'd been accosted by this pink-haired punk-

approximate. "Look, excuse me, I want to get another drink."

"Yeah, great idea! Let's go get another drink. C'mon guys,

fuck off out of it, Alicey wants another drink." A crude method

maybe, but the crowd blocking our way parted, and I reeled

through the doorway only to crash my hip against a table

which had been formed by standing a board between two

beer crates.

At least it was quieter in here. Very, very smoky, but

quieter. In fact—I coughed for a second until my lungs caught

up—it was so smoky you could probably get high simply by

standing in the same post-code. "So, what'ya drinking,

Alicey? Look, have some of this. Tastes like piss but—

wheeeeewww!"

Oh God, and for this I'd worn suede. "No, thank you. I'll

just have some wine."

"Nah." My pink-haired attendant grabbed a bottle of

something suspiciously cloudy and upended it over a glass.

"You want some of this. Loosen you up, know what I mean?"

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He peered into my eyes, which were still red from crying over

Grainger.

A hand extended over my shoulder and passed me a glass

of white wine. I recognised the scary pattern of the sleeve.

"Thanks," I said, with relief.

"Maaaaaaan!" My new friend slammed Piers on the back,

missing a couple of times. "Where you been? This"—he

gestured more or less in my direction—"is Alicey." He lowered

his voice to a subtle shout. "I'm gonna get her upstairs after

another couple."

"Oh, sorry, was that your foot? These heels are really quite

sharp, aren't they? Whoops, there goes my wine, clumsy me."

"I'd better get you out of here before you kill him," Piers

muttered, tugging me by the wrist through the kitchen and

out of the back door. I took deep breaths of the clean air,

spoilt only by the smoke from the joint which Piers was

carrying. "How're you doing?"

"What, apart from being chatted up by men with all the

romantic subtlety of Australopithecus? Fine, thanks."

Piers shrugged, tugged at the cuffs of his jacket and took a

mighty drag. "Yeah, sorry. I didn't think this place would be

quite so uncool. You want we go on somewhere else?

Somewhere quieter?"

I sat down on a low wall overlooking a lawn which sloped

down to a summerhouse. "No, it's fine. Just what I need

really, to stop me sitting at home moping, a spot of culture

shock. Another drink and I'll be dancing on the table with my

top off like the other girls."

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He grinned. "Now, that I'd pay to see." He held the joint

out. "You want?"

Motherhood, legality and upbringing came swarming to the

surface. "No thanks." I crossed my legs and folded my arms

in an attitude of total denial, until I realised that this revealed

my knickers and pushed my boobs beyond the help of my

strapless bra.

"Hey." Piers leaned down until his face was level with

mine. "Live a little, yeah?"

Oh, what the hell, I thought.

We sat on the wall and smoked in a pleasant kind of

silence. When we finished, Piers dodged into the house again

and emerged carrying two glasses, an untouched bottle of

wine and another joint.

"Piers, can I ask you something?"

"Absolutely anything, Alys." He handed me a glass. "So

long as it's not the square root of anything. Crap at math,

always was."

"Where do you get these
terrible
clothes?" I pulled at his

jacket lapel to draw attention to its awfulness. "I mean, how

many sofas had to die to make this thing?"

"That bad, eh?"

"Worse. You look"—I indicated the floppy bell-ended

sleeves—"like the bastard offspring of Lawrence Llewellyn-

Bowen and an Axminster carpet."

"A mating that I would also pay to see." Piers poured

himself another glass of wine. It occurred to me at this point

that he wasn't going to be fit to drive home, but I'd reached

the stage where this was simply a thought, not a practical

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eventuality. "I dunno. I kinda buy stuff that I like. I prefer to

be an individual, you know? I don't follow the crowd."

"I don't think they'd
let
you," I muttered.

"Okay. My turn."

"Turn for what?"

"To ask you something." He lit the second joint but passed

it directly to me. "Play fair, now." He wasn't looking at me, I

noticed, keeping his eyes on the ground, hair hiding most of

his expression. "Who's Florrie's real father?"

I felt the blood rise to my face. "What?" I took a huge pull

on the joint, followed by an enormous gulp of wine. Buying

time, covering my confusion.

"Does she know it's not Alasdair?" Piers was looking at me

now, properly, his features barely illuminated in the weak

light that reached us via the kitchen. His eyes, huge, dark,

lost in the shadow. Unreadable.

"That's two questions."

"Yeah."

What did he want? My heart was hammering in my throat,

my skin reacting with goose pimples on my arms and legs.

"What makes you think...?"

"Alys, I
know
. Ma and Alasdair have been trying for a baby

since they got hitched. Six, maybe eight months ago they

went for tests. Guess they both kinda thought it was her. I

mean, she's what, forty-two?"

Oh God.

"Turns out he's got, now what was it? Oh yeah, low-

motility sperm. Little bastards just don't wanna swim. And,

you know what? The ones that
do
go round and round in

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circles. About as much chance of getting to an egg as I have

of getting to the North Pole."

I only realised I was shivering when Piers draped his jacket

around me.

"Shit. I didn't want to do this, Alys, believe me. I just

thought you ought to be warned. I didn't do it to hurt you, or

Florrie, or even Chrissake fucking
Alasdair
. I—Alys?"

"Flick," I said, distantly. The wine, the fragrant smoke, his

eyes, they'd all reached me at last.

"Excuse me?"

"His name. Was Flick. Or, well, it wasn't, but I couldn't

pronounce his real name. He was Polish. Flick was the nearest

I could get."

"No shit." Piers took the joint off me. It was almost gone,

but he sucked at it until the end glowed fierce in the

darkness.

"I've never"—I drained my glass and shuddered as the

bitterness cascaded down my throat—"
never
told anyone

about this."

"You're drunk. And stoned. Maybe this isn't the time."

"Yes. Yes, I am. And I'm cold, I'm sad, I'm lonely, and my

love-life has gone tits-up yet
again
, and I'm really tired and

you're here. I can't think of any better time to tell someone."

Piers let out a breath. "Okay then. But look, you're fucking

freezing. Give me a second." He vanished indoors again.

I waited, my heartbeat still filling my ears. What was I

doing? This was
Piers
. But he was here and he listened and

he was so
nice
and
pretty
, and bloody hell I was drunk. I

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could do with some peanuts.
I hope he's gone for some food.

Oh shit, fairly sure the garden wasn't meant to tilt that way.

"Come on."

"What? Where?" This time he'd got two bottles of wine.

"You'll see."

I clutched at the lapels of the jacket again, this time to

hold it close around me as we set off down the garden. Piers

loped through the long grass with me bobbling and weaving

alongside.

"In here." Piers pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked

the door to the summerhouse. "I think there should be—yeah,

over here, there's some cushions." I sank down onto a pile of

damp canvas and leaned back against the wall. Piers pressed

a bottle into my hand and came to sit beside me. "I got

crisps. Figured the munchies'd be striking about now. Guess I

was right."

We sat and ate crisps for a while, listening to the sounds of

the river and the very distant noises of the party, which

occasionally crept closer in the form of vomiting in the

shrubbery and what sounded like some vigorous copulation

off to our left.

Piers eventually broke the crunch-filled silence. "I've been

trying to say something to you since I found out. Didn't know

how."

"That night in the wine bar?
This
was what you were trying

to tell me? The family matter?" I started to drink wine out of

the bottle; I was fairly certain that tomorrow wasn't going to

be pretty. I failed to see how a killer hangover was going to

make things any worse.

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"Uh huh."

"I suspected. We tried for a baby when Florence was about

three. Nothing happened and we both shrugged it off, decided

that she was more than enough to be dealing with." I lapsed

into silence for a bit, apart from the plopping sound my

tongue made in the neck of the bottle as I prevented the wine

from drowning me.

"You okay?" Piers asked eventually.

"I loved him," I said simply.

"Yeah, well I'm sure he loved you too. He often talks

about—"

"Flick."

"Oh. Yeah. Okay."

"He was an art student. Lived in this incredible van on a

patch of waste-ground outside the city. The coolest thing, all

great slabs of artwork and chrome. I was only nineteen and

he was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen."

"Did he know? About Florence?"

"I was young and stupid, thought he'd be
pleased
. There

was an argument. Flick—he wasn't—he decided he wasn't dad

material. And then I met Alasdair and he wanted to marry

me, and he had a car and his dad's a laird and everything

and..."

"He didn't know you were pregnant?"

"No," I said in a tiny voice. "I had to choose. Flick wanted

me to get rid of it. Alasdair was absolutely ecstatic when I

told him I was having a baby. He just assumed—"

"Oh shit. Alys. Jesus."

"Piers?"

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"Hey." His arm came round me in the darkness and I was

glad of his closeness. "I'm not judging you. I've not been

there, so I don't know how it goes, but shit, yeah, I can

imagine. Christ. No wonder you don't take money off him."

"I said that I didn't need his money, but Alasdair said that

if Florrie needed anything or wanted anything she only had to

ask, so she did. I couldn't stop her," I added sadly.

"So you live like you do, because..."

"Because that's what I deserve for what I did." I was

slurring my speech quite badly now. "I used Alasdair because

he was there. Because he said he loved me."

"And you didn't? Love him, I mean?"

"I was fond of him, yes. But. It was my fault. My fault he

met your mother and left me. I couldn't—the marriage

wasn't—it wasn't what he'd hoped for."

Piers's arm tightened around me. "Have you ever had it?

That moment when you think, 'Yeah, I'd do anything for you.

Die for you. Give you everything'? Ever had that, Ally?"

My head dropped briefly onto Piers's shoulder, my eyelids

drooped. I could feel his heartbeat through the thin cotton of

his shirt. Fast and deep. "No." The image of Leo swam into

my head. "I want to."

Piers cleared his throat. "Florrie not being Alasdair's. I

mean, I got there. I put things together. I'm clever, Alys, I'm

sharp, but I'm not the only one. How long have you got

before someone else does?"

"I don't know." I put the mouth of the bottle between my

teeth, braced myself and poured. What was left in the bottle

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slid down my throat and I gulped at it, eagerly courting

oblivion.

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I lay very, very still. With the return of consciousness

came a montage sequence of events which I had to suppose

represented the previous night—and then, nothing.

It was very quiet. This was bad. Meant I probably hadn't

made it home last night.

Oh shit. I scrabbled about in my memory, trying to

uncover some tiny glimpse into last night's events which

would reveal just how deeply in the crap I currently was.

Cautious fingers, still numbed with alcohol, let me know that I

was wearing knickers and a T-shirt. My feet were bare and I