Lots of Love (46 page)

‘You mean it’s not true?’

‘It is, if she wants it to be.’ Pheely raised her glass as Dilly turned to wave at them, blowing kisses, two butterflies dancing above her blonde head. ‘She absolutely doesn’t want to know her real father, so she likes to make up imaginary ones.’

‘You mean he’s still alive?’

‘Oh, yes. Unlike this topic of conversation.’ The green eyes hardened.

Ellen knocked back her glass of wine in one and suddenly wondered if it could be Spurs. She tried to do the sums, but she was too drunk. Whatever was going on, something definitely didn’t add up.

Dilly sang happily as they painted the sitting room walls the following day. ‘Godspell winked at me this morning when she turned up for her sitting. I think that means she’s cool about tonight.’

She could talk about nothing but the double date and the agonising decision that faced her.

‘I had this huge crush on Rory last year, but he never showed any interest,’ she lamented. ‘And I know Spurs is much older, but the way he looks at me just makes my hairs stand on end, you know?’

Oh, I know, Ellen thought uneasily. No amount of Frizz Ease and hairspray could stop her skin prickling like a hedgehog whenever he was near.

‘I think he’d be thrilling to lose my virginity to – he’s so experienced, he’s bound to be a really thoughtful lover.’

‘Don’t bet on it,’ Ellen said, goosebumps popping. ‘Loving and leaving a lot of women isn’t a great indication of thoughtfulness.’

‘Rory’s always shagging Sharon.’ Dilly’s pretty face tightened. ‘She’s his head girl – in every sense. She’s so madly in love with him, she doesn’t mind that he can never remember her name or afford to pay her just so long as she gets to share the horrible bed in her mobile home with him once or twice a month. He walks all over her.’

‘A plimsoll mate,’ Ellen muttered.

‘He would
never
treat me like that, of course.’ Dilly stretched to paint a high corner. ‘But that reminds me, I need to ask you about sex just so I don’t end up looking stupid.’ She made it sound as if she was about to sit another exam.

‘What about it?’

‘Well, I know the basics, but could you show me how to give a blow-job? We could use a bottle or a banana or something.’

Ellen painted a light switch without noticing. ‘Take my advice and don’t even think about sleeping with Rory yet. Just go and have a fun night out, and make friends with Godspell again.’

‘Godspell didn’t lose her virginity until she was
twenty
,’ Dilly told her indiscreetly, not at all interested in Ellen’s advice. ‘That was last year. We were close then – we used to hack out together at weekends. She got fed up waiting, so she drank half a bottle of her mother’s Amaretto before the village barn dance and propositioned Archie Worthington. They did it in one of Ely’s holiday cottages. She said it was quite nice – a bit uncomfortable to start with, but very grown-up and sexy, like getting your first bra.’

Ellen remembered her first bra – a Lycra and scaffolding creation that had pinched her small but burgeoning double-A bust into submission while she continued competing in her school’s sports teams. It had not been remotely sexy.

‘And are Godspell and Archie soul-mates?’ She tried to keep the conversation on love-song.

‘I don’t think they ever actually talked.’ Dilly snorted in amusement. ‘She only did it with him to get experienced enough to chase The Candle.’

‘What is the Candle?’

‘That’s what she calls a guy she’s always been mad keen on – she wouldn’t even tell me his name.’

Ellen’s thoughts turned briefly to the Shaggers. She now strongly suspected Godspell of being one, in which case perhaps this mysterious Candle was the other? They had certainly burned enough of his namesakes while lighting their romantic encounters in the Jamiesons’ four-poster.

‘I doubt it worked.’ Dilly clearly didn’t want to distract herself with an ex friend’s love-life for long. ‘Archie told Dickon Hewitt that she wasn’t up to much.

‘What was your first time like?’

‘Awkward, painful – it took a few tries before I started to enjoy it.’

‘Do you know lots of different positions now?’

‘A few.’

‘Which is the best? For a beginner, I mean.’

‘Sitting down with your legs crossed all night.’

‘You sound like Mum.’

‘Have you told her about tonight, then?’

‘God, no! But she’s always lecturing me about sex. I think she was a bit pissed last night because she kept insisting that she had once been the most beautiful creature in Oddlode.’ She sniggered. ‘She put on her favourite Carpenters LP when we got home and told me that Spurs had been “in awe” of her.’

‘He probably was.’ Ellen hadn’t forgotten Pheely confessing the failed teenage seduction.

Dilly mulled this over as they took a toast-and-coffee lunch break and Ellen drew a rather lopsided badger chasing a butterfly on her smooth-skinned shoulder, which ended up looking as though it was playing host to a duck-billed platypus waving its webbed claws at a pterodactyl. Dilly’s increasingly single-track line of conversation distracted her reluctant tattooist. ‘Do you have a condom I could borrow? I don’t want to get pregnant straight away like Mum, but Lily Lubowski would tell the entire village if I bought a packet of three from the shop.’

‘Aren’t you planning to wait until you marry?’ Ellen asked, bearing in mind the romantic whimsy behind Dilly’s plans. Twisting her soulmate into a sexual back-flip and slipping a condom on with her teeth on a first date hardly seemed to fit in with flower-fairy families in the Lodge.

‘God, no! The sooner I know what it’s all about, the better. I was thinking about it in bed last night, and I decided that I really should start out by getting rid of the big V ASAP.’ She giggled at the accidental rhyme. ‘I’m sure Spurs would be up for it – he’s so sexual. Mum says he’d slept with hundreds of people by the time he was my age. And if Rory really is my soulmate, being broken in by an expert like Spurs would make him jealous enough to ’fess up to his feelings.’

Her attitude appalled Ellen, as did the information about Spurs’ early sexual voracity. ‘It doesn’t work like that, Dilly.’

‘I don’t see why not. I fancy Spurs and he is a
very
naughty man, as everybody keeps telling me. He might well be my true soulmate, in which case Rory’s missed the boat. I have a very special feeling about tonight – I did the tarot and got the Lovers three times.’

‘That doesn’t mean you should set out with the intention of having a shag, Dilly. Sex should be a lot more special than that.’

‘That’s
such
an uptight attitude. And you can talk – Mum told me about your one-night stand with the estate agent.’

Bloody Pheely, Ellen thought darkly, wishing she hadn’t given her so much wine the previous night. ‘I’m at least ten years older than you – and it wasn’t a one-night stand, it was just dinner,’ she insisted, frantically casting around for a change of subject. ‘Where are you all going tonight?’

‘Just the Plough in Upper Springlode – nice and handy for Rory’s cottage. Actually, most pubs have condom machines in the loos, don’t they?’ Dilly was still thinking about sex – albeit safe sex.

‘Often only the men’s loos,’ Ellen muttered.

‘I always use the gents – after all, I am a Gently.’

When they gathered up their rollers again, Ellen painted as quickly as possible so that Dilly would go home and leave her alone.

I want to be going out with Spurs, she thought unhappily. I want to go out to a country pub on a sunny evening and sit in the garden, flirting and joking and thinking about what he’d be like to go to bed with. I want to go on a double date with him, Rory and Dilly – if only to ensure Dilly keeps her knickers on. The thought of Spurs and the ravishing teenager entwined in a haystack was crucifying, both because it made her wildly jealous and because she was frightened for Dilly. She was tempted to run straight round to Pheely and scream, ‘We have to stop her getting hurt!’

At last the sitting room was as angelically bright, white and pure as the dining room, the paintings, flowers and furnishings providing bright splashes of buyer-friendly colour.

With a heart as heavy as a songbird full of lead shot, Ellen dispatched Dilly with her favourite little floral slip-dress, a short blue leather jacket and her strappy clubbing sandals.

‘You’re such a good friend, Ellen – I wish you were my big sister.’ Dilly hugged her at the door. ‘And you’re really okay if I tell Mum you’re taking me out to the cinema to thank me?’

Ellen was sorely tempted to warn Dilly that if she didn’t tell her mother exactly what was happening, Ellen would. Caught in a strange mid-generational gap between the two, she was uncertain with whom she identified most or to whom she owed her loyalty. But Dilly’s increasing obsession with Spurs cast her in the role of secret, guilty, voyeuristic empathiser. It was horribly addictive.

‘Call round any time, if you want to talk,’ she found herself saying, and instantly felt like a creepy old hag.

‘Thanks – I might.’ Dilly grinned, unfazed by her ambitious plans to lose the big V ASAP. ‘I’ll check what film’s showing at Maddington Corn Exchange tonight so that we can synchronise stories if she asks,’ Dilly promised. ‘I’m meeting Spurs under the lime tree at seven, so don’t forget to hide your jeep and make it look like you’re out – Mum is bound to go out for a walk with Hamlet before it gets dark.’

‘The battery’s flat . . .’ Ellen remembered. Too late: Dilly had already danced away beneath the lime tree and through the magical gate.

Pheely, in fact, set out for her evening perv around the village at a quarter to seven, popping in on Ellen on the way, big green eyes blinking warmly because she knew she’d been testy – and a little drunk – the evening before, plus wildly indiscreet afterwards.

‘Gosh, this looks
so
much better. Heavenly – apart from the smell.’ Her nose wrinkled against the paint fumes as she wandered from the dining room to the sitting room. ‘You and Dilly
have
worked hard – the evening light looks just amazing on here now. I might loan you a sculpture to put in that corner . . . It would really set it off.’

‘How is the bust going?’ Ellen trod water, trying not to look at her watch and wondering what the hell to do.

‘Ghastly. That girl hasn’t spoken one word since we started, although she winked at me twice today, which was frankly creepy – it works rather well in clay, mind you, lends her face a teensy bit of animation.’ She smiled impishly. ‘Dilly is
so
jealous and attention-seeking, poor duck – it must be rotten after all her hard work to come home and find Mum so distracted. Thank you, darling one, for keeping her out of my hair. You are my fairy godsister and her fairy god-aunt.’

‘She was a great help and great company,’ Ellen said honestly, glancing out of the window at the lime tree. She didn’t feel very godly – more guilty, duplicitous and anxious.

‘Shouldn’t you be getting ready?’ Pheely had finally taken in Ellen’s paint-stained shorts and old denim shirt. ‘Dilly’s really going to town. She’s been locked in the bathroom for hours – says you’re treating her to a meal at the Turnpike afterwards, the lucky thing. You might have invited me.’

‘I – er – was going to, but— Oh, phone!’ Ellen leaped on it in relief.

‘Help!’ It was Dilly. ‘Mum’s out on the prowl.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Is she there?’

Mmm.’

‘Oh, no! What are we going to do?’

‘Not much I can do about it, I’m afraid.’

‘You’ve got to get rid of her.’

‘That might not be very easy.’ Ellen looked round to see Pheely floating through to the kitchen and rooting a bottle of red wine out of the larder, mouthing, ‘Quick drinky?’

‘I’m going to call Spurs. Please, Ellen, think of something!’ Dilly begged.

Ellen cut the call, took a deep breath and turned to Pheely, who had found two clean glasses now and was eager to impart a bright idea. ‘I might stay here to look after Snorkel this evening and watch the box,’ she suggested, searching the drawers for a corkscrew. ‘I haven’t watched television in years, and if I’m here you can leave the windows open to get rid of the smell of paint. Dilly says you have three viewings tomorrow.’

‘I’m not taking Dilly out tonight. Spurs is.’

‘What?’ A drawer clattered shut.

‘He wants to thank her for letting him ride Otto,’ Ellen improvised, trying to make it sound better and hating herself. ‘Rory and Godspell are going too – just for a drink in Upper Springlode. It’s all perfectly innocent, but Dilly was afraid that you would get the wrong idea, which is why she lied to you.’

‘How dare she?’ The bottle crashed on to the surface, making Hamlet quail and Snorkel dive for cover behind her mistress’s legs. ‘And how
dare
you collude? I thought you were my friend.’

‘Which is why I’m telling you the truth.’ Ellen bit her lip awkwardly.

‘Only because I mucked up your plans by deciding to stay here.’ Pheely was a wizard lie-detector.

‘No!’ she yelped, feeling torn. ‘I wanted to tell you from the start, but Dilly begged me not to.’

‘I’m not surprised. She knows how I feel about Spurs. I absolutely
won’t
allow it. He’ll eat her alive.’ She rushed towards the door.

Following, Ellen was just in time to see the Bellings’ vast Land Rover pull up at the lime tree, and Dilly – looking ravishing in Ellen’s dress – leap inside before it accelerated away. Through the driver’s window and the spitting dust haze, Spurs’ silver eyes glared at Ellen.

It was all rather
Dukes of Hazzard
, she thought, spellbound by the getaway needed around here to go for a drink in a local pub. It was a far cry from wandering lethargically to the Treglin Arms, and she felt a great, ill-timed pang of homesickness. She longed to scoop up Spurs, Rory, Dilly, Pheely and even silent Godspell straight to Cornwall to share a table, six scrumpies and sea-flanked mellowness.