Invincible Summer (5 page)

S
EVEN HOURS LATER
, a hazy sun was rising above Primrose Hill and a blade of long grass was tickling the side of Eva's face. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked out across the city towards St Paul's Cathedral. Eva had meant to go home with Benedict after the club closed but somehow she and Lucien had ended up in the back of a crowded van headed for an after-party in North London, and they'd been halfway across town by the time she'd realised that Sylvie and Benedict weren't with them. Eva hoped Benedict wasn't annoyed; he knew where the spare key was and really, it wasn't her fault they'd got split up. He was bound to be okay. She could make it up to him, take him out for breakfast before he caught his train. Eva was actually feeling quite straight now, not in a paranoid, scratchy way, just warm and mellow. She had been surprised and pleased when Lucien had tugged her out of the party, insisting that since they were in this part of town it would be a crime not to watch the sun rise from the top of Primrose Hill.

‘I wish we had something to drink,' Eva thought as they lay side by side in the grass, and she must have said it out loud without realising because Lucien peeled himself up off the ground beside her and reached inside his jacket to produce a bottle of brandy.

‘Ask, and ye shall receive.'

‘Oh, you didn't,' she exclaimed, knowing it could only have come from the party they'd just left.

‘No I bloody didn't nick it, if that's what you mean.' Lucien sounded aggrieved. ‘He gave it to me, alright. Said I had limpid eyes and that I should help myself to his drinks cabinet.'

‘I think he meant to a drink, not a bottle.'

‘Whatever. He left it open to interpretation. Anyway, a flat around here costs squillions so he's hardly going to miss a bottle of booze. And he wouldn't have invited a bunch of randoms back to his place if he was that worried about it.'

‘You're incorrigible,' Eva laughed. ‘Limpid eyes?'

Lucien leant across and held his face very close to hers. ‘Yes, limpid. Like a rock pool. Can't you feel yourself being pulled in by their limpidity?'

‘I don't actually think that's a word,' she said, wriggling out from under him. She'd seen him employ weapons-grade flirtation on at least five other people tonight regardless of age or gender, including the guy whose brandy he'd stolen, so she wasn't kidding herself that this behaviour meant anything.

‘Did you have a good time tonight?' Lucien said, casually shifting back onto his side but still facing her. She looked up at the lightening sky where the sun was rapidly burning away the early morning cloud. It was going to be one of those perfect summer days.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘I really did. I haven't had such a good time in ages. It's great the way your club night's taking off, seems like it's really working out for you.'

He stretched, causing his T-shirt to ride up so that a couple of inches of flat white stomach were exposed. ‘I've got big plans for it, actually. I'm talking to a couple of other club owners about putting on similar nights for them. They love what I'm doing, bringing back proper old-school house and techno, none of that grungy Britpop shite. I'm hoping to put on a really epic night for the millennium.'

‘If the millennium bug doesn't bring the world to an end, you mean?'

‘Then it really would be the party to end all parties. Maybe I'll call it Chaos or something. That's a good angle, maximise the marketing potential.'

‘Listen to you, Richard Branson. Marketing potential?'

Lucien turned a suddenly serious gaze upon her. ‘I'm not messing about here, Eva, it might look like I'm just having fun but it's hard work and I'm planning on going places. You're not the only one making something of yourself. I've grown up a lot these last couple of years. I'm not just the same old Lucien you used to know.'

He was staring penetratingly into her eyes as he spoke, and was it her imagination or was he leaning in towards her again? Was he trying to tell her that things had changed, that he wanted her and wouldn't treat her the same way again? Or was that just the residual effects of the pills making her utterly stupid? Oh God, his face was really close now.

‘We're not like other people, are we, Eva? What you're doing with your career, it's really impressive. And I'm going places too. We're really on the brink of something. Can you feel it?'

And she
could
feel it. The world was changing. She was standing on the edge of a cliff. But that sounded like a bad thing, so maybe she was at the foot of a mountain, but no, that made it sound like she had a mountain to climb whereas things were actually going to get easier. So a clifftop it was, but the sort of cliff where falling off was a good thing. She felt Lucien take her hand and slide his fingers between hers and suddenly he was standing next to her at the cliff's edge and they stepped off together and they were floating in the air as his mouth came down on hers and as he kissed her he shifted his weight so that his body was almost on top of hers and it felt…

‘Get a room, why don't you!'

Eva jerked her eyes open and found herself looking straight into the contemptuous eyes of an early-morning dog walker. She buried her own burning face into Lucien's shoulder, which was shaking with laughter, until the man had passed.

‘We could you know,' he whispered into her ear.

‘Could what?'

‘Get a room. We wouldn't have any problems with Sylvie or Benedict that way. Just you, me and an enormous bed…'

Could she really do this after spending years swearing to herself she wouldn't fall for it again? It did feel like she was learning new things about him. He was in some ways much more complex than she'd ever realised. Or was that just the pills?

She sighed. ‘Oh, Lucien. I'm not even sure if this is…real. You know?'

He shifted further on top of her and nudged one of his legs between her thighs. ‘Reality's overrated. It's for people who can't handle their drugs. Go on, there's a Travelodge just by Regent's Park. We could check in there.'

 Her hands were inside his jacket, separated from his skin only by a T-shirt's width of cotton. She could feel the contours of his body against her palms. How many times had she imagined this? Not half as many times as she'd had to force herself not to, because what was the point in wanting something you couldn't have? And now here she was in situation where she
could
have it. Have him, Lucien. Was she really going to throw it away? Oh, but then there was Benedict, waiting at home for her, and she'd been so looking forward to seeing him. He wouldn't easily forgive her if she went off with Lucien instead of spending the morning with him, and she didn't even know if he'd made it back there okay, now she thought about it. He could have been mugged or anything. And he'd done his first pill tonight too. There really ought to be someone with him. She could just about be excused for the mix up over who was in the van, but it would be unforgiveable if she didn't get home soon.

She reached up and kissed Lucien slowly on the mouth, then pulled away. ‘I can't. I want to, but I've ditched Benedict and I don't even know whether he's okay. She kissed him again. ‘You could call me. Next week.'

Even as she said the words she sensed a barely perceptible shift in his features, the strained quality of lust dissipating and being replaced by his usual easy confidence, the affect of a man who knows that what he wants is there for the taking. The world jolted into focus and in that moment, she knew that he wouldn't call her next week, or the one after. They weren't Eva and Lucien, kindred spirits floating on a bed of clouds through a celestial skyscape. They were two drugged-up idiots lying on the cold ground in a public park at six o'clock in the morning. She was the biggest idiot, of course. Lucien was a complete bastard, but there was almost no point in even thinking about that because Lucien was just doing what Lucien did, taking his chances and hoping to get laid. It would be like criticising a scorpion for stinging you. Yes, it wasn't pleasant, but its sting was on display, so if you picked it up and got stung then you were the idiot. She looked at him.
Do I look like that
, she wondered, staring at his bloodshot eyes with their wildly dilated pupils. There was a crust of greyish scum gathering at the corners of his mouth and his teeth and gums were stained dark from the red wine they'd drunk at the party, or maybe from the lollipops he'd been handing out at the club all evening.

Lucien sat up and brushed the grass from his clothes and Eva followed suit, grimly picking a piece of chewing gum off her sleeve. The new distance between them, in reality only a few inches, might as well have been a mile for the gulf that had opened up in the wake of the evaporated intimacy. What was she doing here when she could have gone home with Benedict and sat on the sofa with a duvet and a bottle of wine and finally caught up? They'd barely had a chance to chat this weekend and he was leaving in a few hours. It wasn't that there was anything specific they needed to talk about; it was just that there were so many things she'd made mental notes to tell him, nothing of consequence, just anecdotes she'd been saving up because she knew they'd make him laugh. She didn't really have that in her life anymore, and she missed it, really missed it. Eva looked at Lucien and tried to imagine talking to him about her job, or the book she'd just read, or her hopes and dreams. He looked back at her, grinning and dead-eyed.

‘Right then,' he said. ‘Time for the walk of shame.'

O
KAY, HERE'S ONE
,' said Sylvie. ‘If you were offered the gift of immortality, would you take it and why?'

The four friends were trudging through a forest seventeen miles west of Baladas in Galicia, where they'd spent the previous night in a hostel dormitory. It was the penultimate day of a week spent hiking the last ninety miles of the Camino Frances, a pilgrimage route over a thousand years old, to reach the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. They made an unlikely band of pilgrims, with Sylvie's fluorescent orange hair and Lucien's aviator sunglasses and velvet trousers setting them apart from the other walkers in their sensible hiking gear, but having spent months arguing over where to go on a joint holiday they'd all finally agreed when Benedict had suggested this trip. It suited Sylvie because somebody had at last put forward something she could actually afford, walking and staying in hostels, and Eva had figured it would be useful for losing a bit of the extra weight she'd put on over a few too many boozy broker dinners and takeaway lunches. Lucien had agreed because he was up for anything that promised an adventure, and had reached the point where he would have said yes to caving holiday in Timbuktu if it meant they didn't have to have any more tedious debates about it.

‘Wow. I think this might be the hardest question yet,' said Benedict, taking a swig of his rapidly dwindling water supply. He'd started the trip the best prepared of the group, with a tiny rucksack weighing less than the recommended ten percent of his body weight, but had ended up carrying most of Eva and Sylvie's possessions. Both of them had overpacked, Eva with sensible things like suncream and raincoats and perhaps one or two more books than strictly necessary, and Sylvie with an extensive supply of paper and pencils, paints and pastels. ‘What a choice. You'd get to see every bit of incredible technology we develop and learn about every scientific discovery, find out whether we discover aliens and whether we ever manage to colonise other planets, eventually watch the sun go supernova.'

‘Yeah, but picture this,' said Lucien, going into doomy voiceover mode. ‘The sun is dead, the human race has drawn its last breath, the aliens never arrived…it's just you…alone…in a vast, cold tract of dark, empty space.'

‘Well, yes, there is that,' said Benedict. ‘Plus you'd get to watch everyone you love die. But you'd also get to see to the end of the universe and beyond. I can't decide. What about you, Sylvie?'

In truth, Sylvie hadn't been particularly enjoying adult life so far and the prospect of an eternity of it wasn't remotely attractive. Job opportunities had been thin on the ground since she and Lucien had returned from travelling, and accommodation expensive. She'd been reduced to signing up for office temping and even debasing herself in this way hadn't exactly resulted in a flood of offers. What's your typing speed? Do you have any experience with spreadsheets? Those were the sorts of things they wanted to know, not whether the candidate was passionate and creative and fun to work with.

For the first time in her life, she was starting to feel like she was at the bottom of the pile. At school and university she'd always been in demand; she was good-looking and confident and naturally subversive, and that had always been enough to keep her high in the social hierarchy. The academic side of things wasn't her forte, but Mr Nolan the art teacher at one of her secondary schools had said she had a rare talent, confirming her sense that her destiny lay in being an artist. But lot had changed since the days when her star had been so firmly in the ascendant, even within her immediate group of friends. These days Eva was glowing with a new confidence, and more, an overarching sense of purpose, which only compounded Sylvie's growing sense of being adrift. Lucien, too, was raking it in on his club nights and Benedict at least had a direction in life, even if it wasn't one that she much envied. But she wasn't about to admit any of this out loud.

‘Never mind immortality, I'm going to top myself if I have to listen to Lucien moaning about his feet for much longer,' she said.

Her brother glared back at her. ‘Have I mentioned in the last five minutes that they're agony? And that this whole trip was a shit idea? I was promised sunshine and naughty Catholic girls, not blisters and hostels full of stinking Germans. And that's if we're lucky. I'm telling you, if we don't find somewhere with vacancies soon we're going to have to sleep under a tree.' He waved a hand at the darkening air around them; the last three hostels they'd passed had no free beds, forcing them to keep walking. ‘Look at these shoes, they're completely ruined. And what about these trousers, eh? Three hundred quid, they cost me, and now they're covered in mud.'

‘I did tell you that you wouldn't be able to walk 100 miles in suede shoes,' snapped Sylvie. ‘Why on earth didn't you bring proper hiking boots?'

‘Because I'm not fucking forty?'

Eva, who was walking a little way in front of the rest of the group, suddenly drew to an abrupt halt in the road ahead. ‘Halle-bloody-lujah!' she called back to them. ‘A hostel with a sign saying they've got beds.'

Sylvie, the only one who spoke any Spanish, went in to check while the others sat on a wall to relieve their aching feet. She came out smiling a few minutes later.

‘Good news?'

‘Good news and bad news. Which do you want first?'

‘The good news,' yelled Eva, Benedict and Lucien in unison.

‘The good news is that we are not going to be sleeping in a ditch tonight. We have beds.'

‘As long as we've got beds, I don't even care what the bad news is,' said Eva.

‘That's lucky,' said Sylvie. ‘Because the kitchen's closed and there are only two rooms left. I'm in the single and you three are sharing the double.'

Even before she had finished the end of the sentence she had flung a room key at them and started to run towards the nearby converted stable block. By the time the others had picked up their rucksacks and chased after her she had already slammed and locked the door to her room, leaving them banging on the door and protesting feebly which only seemed to increase the volume of her laughter emanating from within. Eventually they gave up and trudged off to find the other room.

‘Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse,' groaned Eva as the three of them stood looking down at their bed for the night, a standard-size double. ‘I barely slept in that dorm last night. My bunk was above that Franz guy we keep running into. He snored like a tractor and smelled like something had crawled up his bum to die.'

Exhausted and out of options, they silently munched their way through the sandwiches left over from lunchtime before stripping down to T-shirts and pants and collapsing onto the bed, with Eva in the middle and Benedict and Lucien either side of her. Benedict rolled over to face the door and started snoring almost immediately. Eva turned face down and stuck a pillow over her head, but after a few minutes she became aware of Lucien wriggling closer.

‘Well, hello-o there,' he whispered, sticking his head under her pillow and flinging an arm across her body. ‘Fancy a quickie?'

‘Stop grossing me out, Marchant,' she hissed. ‘I'm wise to your slutty hit-and-run ways, remember. Now go to sleep, we've got an early start tomorrow.'

Undeterred, he poked a lively erection into her thigh.

Eva shoved him away. ‘Really, Lucien? In the same bed as Benedict?'

‘Oh, don't be such a prude, I've done this sort of thing loads of times. He's fast asleep, won't even notice, and anyway, it'll be a treat for him if he wakes up.'

‘No it bloody won't,' said Benedict grouchily, rousing himself from sleep and clambering over the top of Eva to the middle of the bed so that he was between them. ‘Keep your pervy paws off her.' Then a few moments later: ‘And no wanking, you fucking reprobate. I can feel the bed moving, you know.'

Eva was woken by her alarm at six am. She switched it off quickly and lay back against Benedict's warm bulk beside her. He smelled good. Really good, actually. She'd been seeing a management consultant called Jeremy in London for the last few months, but all he talked about was spreadsheets and he definitely didn't smell as good as this. She closed her eyes and found her mind drifting towards a scenario in which it was just her and Benedict in the bed together. As if sensing it, he shifted closer to her in his sleep, exhaling softly onto her neck. For a moment in the darkness none of the multitude of reasons not to—Jeremy, their friendship, living in different cities, Eva not wanting to being tied down—seemed to matter. If Lucien hadn't been in the bed with them…

What the hell was wrong with her? She shut down her wandering mind and slid out of the bottom of the bed between the two men to retrieve her wash-bag from her rucksack and head for the shower, which for once, she wouldn't mind being cold.

After predictably bracing ablutions, Eva returned to the room to kick the others out of bed and make a start on the day.  She opened the door to their room and burst into laughter as she took in the scene illuminated by the light from the hallway. This woke Benedict, who opened his eyes and, seeing Eva, broke into a sleepy smile which rapidly gave way to an expression of dawning horror.

‘Hang on. If you're over there... who's spooning me?'

Lucien groggily raised himself up onto the elbow of the arm that was trapped under Benedict, looked down at him and grinned. ‘I've woken up with some uggers in my time, mate, but this really takes the biscuit.'

Grimacing, Benedict rolled out of the bed leaving Lucien to slump back onto the pillows. ‘God, I'm tired. Do we really have to get up at sparrowfart today? Let's just get a bit more sleep, eh? It's unnatural, getting up at this hour.'

‘No chance.' Benedict tugged the sheet off him. ‘The pilgrim mass at the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela is at twelve thirty, so we need to set off early to make it. That's the whole point of the walk.'

‘Not for me it's not, what with my not being a religious nutjob,' grumbled Lucien. ‘And it's Catholic, right? Are they going to want me to confess my sins? Because that may take some time.' He winked at Eva, who turned away in mock-disgust.

‘It doesn't matter,' insisted Benedict. ‘Half the people walking the Camino aren't religious. But to have a journey you've got to have a destination and this is ours. Now come on.' He lifted the edge of the mattress and rolled Lucien off onto the floor. ‘We've come this far, just twelve more miles to go.'

It was an unseasonably chilly morning and even as the day grew lighter, the air remained clouded with mist. The group trudged quietly along a pathway through a eucalyptus forest, each of them subdued by the knowledge that they'd be back in England and back to real life tomorrow. Benedict was trying to untangle a problem with energy ranges for his thesis but found his mind kept straying to thoughts of how good it had felt to spend the night with Eva in bed beside him, and then reminding himself tetchily that she had a boyfriend. Eva found herself resolving to end things with Jeremy when she got back; he just didn't smell right, and no amount of working at things could fix that. Sylvie was deciding to visit every art gallery within a twenty-mile radius and beg for a job when she got back—it was time to carve out a proper life for herself. Even Lucien seemed lost in thought, limping along without the usual complaints.

Eventually the scent-filled woodland thinned and gave way to fields and then roads, until finally they reached the bridge to Santiago de Compostela. They joined the steady trickle of walkers following the brass shells inlaid into paving stones into the narrow streets of the old town, and eventually right up to the looming Baroque façade of the cathedral itself.

Lucien made a few token protests about preferring to go to a bar but Benedict rounded everyone up and in they all went, inching into a pew at the back just as the service started. A hush descended on the cathedral packed with tourists and pilgrims with dirty clothes and disheveled hair, people from every corner of the globe and yet nevertheless all giving themselves up to a service in Spanish and Latin which somehow communicated everything it needed to through its sonorous rhythm. Once it was over, Lucien got chatting to a man sitting next to him who had made the journey on crutches and Sylvie wandered off to sketch some of the icons and altarpieces. Eva wandered through the side chapels and surprised herself by slipping a couple of euros into a bank of electric candles on impulse and thinking of her mother. Benedict strolled away casually, then, after checking that none of the others were in sight, furtively slipped into a pew on the other side of the building and bowed his head in prayer.

As the four reassembled in the square at the front of the cathedral, they were each so wrapped up in their own thoughts that it took a while for anyone to notice Lucien dabbing at his face with his sleeve.

‘Lucien,' said Benedict after a while. ‘Are you... blubbing? Are we witnessing a miracle? The most cynical man on earth having some sort of religious experience?'

‘Oh, fuck off. I'm not blubbing, mate.' He rubbed his eyes. ‘It's just…that Spanish guy I was chatting to, the one next to me in church with the withered leg and crutches. He came all the way from Sarria like that, just to be blessed here. Can you imagine doing the walk we've done, but on crutches?'

‘Wow. That must have been tough,' said Eva, whose legs were so sore she wasn't certain she'd ever want to walk anywhere again.

‘It's taken him over a month and he said it was the hardest thing he's ever done. His leg's been like that all his life. Seemed really happy to have made it. Look, he gave me this.' Lucien pulled a shell out of his pocket with a loop of string hanging from a hole drilled through it. ‘Said he'd worn it round his neck for the journey, that it had brought him good luck and now he wanted to share it. Don't you hate it when people do stuff like that? I can put up with any amount of arseholes but that shit just pushes my buttons.' Lucien's voice grew husky again.