Lots of Love (53 page)

‘God, yes. And I do envy you having such a positive body image,’ she went on, in a booming voice. ‘I have to get into training six months before I go to bed with a man these days – dieting, getting rid of the fluff, paring off the bunions, applying verruca plasters and slapping vanishing cream on the stretchmarks. You’re
so
lucky. I long to be as carefree about screwing as you are.’

Ellen cleared her throat, hoping she could start being carefree after all these years.

‘You’re both free agents,’ Pheely gurgled, then practically shouted, ‘and, as you say, you are consenting adults. As long as you know the only thing he’s ever going to be committed to is a criminal hearing or a mental institution, and you make sure he wears a condom, I think you’ll have
huge
fun. Good luck to you, darling. Or should that be good fuck?’ She raised her glass. ‘To good luck, and a jolly good fuck.’

At this moment the shocked Crabtrees reappeared from the cellar and gaped at Pheely. ‘You’ll love this village,’ she told them cheerfully. ‘Everyone is
so
friendly.’

‘So I can see.’ Mrs Crabtree sniffed archly. ‘I think I might take a turn round the garden.’

‘Have a funny turn in it, more like,’ Pheely said, after Poppy had ushered them outside. ‘Stiff-knickered old bat. I think I might take your lead and find that new lover I keep promising myself. Mine is getting rather wearying.’

‘You have a lover?’

‘Absolutely. I simply can’t survive without at least one origami a week. It’s a staple, isn’t it? In fact, do let me know if Spurs is as good as I suspect. I may even toy-boy with him myself once you’re gone. Now that
would
put bloody Dilly in her place.’

‘It’s a staple,’ Ellen reminded herself, as she took yet another shower between Poppy’s viewings, this time scrubbing every inch of her body with walnut exfoliant, removing the little islands of hair that she had left after her first hasty shave, rubbing scented gel into her skin and adding half a bottle of conditioner to her wind and sea-ravaged hair.

Right now the only staple she could feel was the nervous one piercing her stomach, like a centrefold, as she made her body as smooth and glossy as its naked content.

The final family coming to see the cottage that day were called the Brakespears and had travelled specially from Essex, according to Poppy. They didn’t want to view any other properties in the area, and she said that she had a ‘good feeling’ about them.

Ellen had very bad feelings towards them because they were late.

She’d put her hair in Velcro rollers and covered them with a bright scarf as she bounded around the house, deciding on the best spot for the massage. There was nothing as good as a proper massage table, but the kitchen table was long, narrow and a good height, she decided. If she put a duvet on it, it shouldn’t be too uncomfortable, and she could close the roman blinds to avoid being gawped at by Hunter on one side and anyone walking along the lane on the other.

She put some more wine to chill, knowing that she would be shot down in flames for offering an alcoholic drink to any of the sportsmen she normally treated. But she for one would definitely need it to stop her hands shaking. She also sought out the few candles that the Shaggers hadn’t burned, along with pretuning the kitchen radio to a mellow station and lining up her massage oils.

‘Hellooo! Sorry I’m late. Are they here?’ Poppy breezed in with some biscuits and a fresh packet of coffee. Ellen sometimes wondered if she secretly craved a job in Starbucks.

‘I thought you were bringing them with you?’ She glanced worriedly at the clock. It was already past five.

‘They wanted to meet me here. Know the village quite well, apparently.’ Poppy headed for the filter and started spooning in coffee, glancing rather worriedly at Ellen’s Hilda Ogden hair accessories.

Ellen dashed upstairs to remove the rollers and check her appearance, guessing that the dreaded Brakespears might still be hanging around when Spurs arrived. Her hair tumbled in glossy ash waves around her tanned face, her eyes sparkled between rare licks of mascara and her cheeks glowed from a hasty dusting with blusher. She rubbed salve shakily on to her lips and squirted on some Eau Dynamisante, the closest thing she had to perfume. She didn’t want to make it look as though she’d gone to too much of an effort – and she wanted to give Spurs a decent treatment without being hobbled by a stupid outfit – so she’d stuck to her faithful frayed denims matched with a little gypsy shirt and flip-flops that showed off her freshly painted toes, but she had shamelessly dug out her best underwear combo of a lace G-string and matching bra covered with dancing butterflies.

She stood in front of the mirror and drew an anxious breath, telling herself that she looked okay, not too tarty, not too scruffy – just the Ellen that Spurs had already got to know, only a bit sharper. She touched the burning-man tattoo for courage, then reached inside her shorts to touch the silver surfer on her butt, finally making it three for luck with the stud in her navel.

‘It’s a staple,’ she told her reflection, with a wink.

Then, feeling mischievous as confidence and anticipation started coursing through her, she undid two top fly buttons, knowing that when she bent over, the top of her G-string would show.

They would have sex all night, she decided. First, she’d make him wait until the very end of his massage, when he was lying on his back. She knew he’d have a huge wood – they always did. She would climb on top of him and take him on the table. Then they could have a shower together and do it again standing up. Then perhaps outside as it was getting dark – up on the bunkhouse balcony overlooking the village, or under the apple trees. They could come inside and have a food fight – they were bound to have worked up an appetite. She must check what was in the fridge that could be eaten off a naked body. That would probably be the cue for another wash – a bath this time. She could show him how long she could hold her breath under water and challenge him to do the same. Finally, they’d fall into bed and stay up all night, talking and kissing, touching and caressing.

Tomorrow morning they would have one last, long, delicious session before getting up, getting dressed and wishing one another farewell. If he chose to keep his secrets and lies to himself, then that was his prerogative. He could go back to being a prodigal son. She would leave him far behind as soon as the cottage sale was secured. Her two remaining wishes were simple: she wished that one night of scruple-free sex and sin with Spurs would help her put a decade of hammer-drill action with Richard behind her; and she wished that she could forget about both of them afterwards.

Positively radiating wantonness, Ellen paced around impatiently as she and Poppy waited for the Brakespears, watching the clock get closer and closer to six. Poppy’s attempts at polite conversation were greeted with a series of increasingly distracted and dislocated replies.

‘Are you excited about your trip?’

‘Mmm – yes.’

‘Where do you plan to go first?’

‘Nirvana.’

‘Oh, lovely. Are you going to Las Vegas, then?’

‘That’s Nevada.’

‘Oh. Silly me.’

‘More whorehouses, more marriages, more gambling,’ she explained idly. ‘Nirvana is less rock and roll – you don’t get a three carat rock or to roll the dice. You just go to heaven.’

Poppy’s bulging eyes almost fell out of their sockets.

At last a big luxury people-carrier pulled up outside and a family of five spilled out – a huge, middle-aged rugby prop forward and his tall, thin wife along with children of different heights and sexes who separated faster than an SAS unit casing an enemy outpost the moment they were through the gate.

‘Mr and Mrs Brakespear!’ Poppy rushed out to greet them. ‘You found it okay then?’

‘Please – he’s Graham and I’m Anke,’ the woman said, in a northern-European accent, looking up at the cottage with shining blue eyes. ‘I am sorry we were delayed, but my father, he did not want to go out to play bridge as he usually does – it took time to change his mind. He must not know about this. He thinks we are on our way back to Essex.’ She let out a little sigh loaded with meaning.

‘Mrs Brakespear’s father owns the little antiquarian bookshop in Cider Lane,’ Poppy explained to a distracted Ellen, who had come out to scour the lane for signs of Spurs.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘We want to move closer to him – to a house that has somewhere he can join us when he grows too frail to care for himself.’ Anke smiled. ‘We stayed here many times when visiting him, with your lovely parents. They are well?’

‘Fine,’ Ellen muttered, hoping that, as they knew the house already, their visit would be fleeting.

‘This weekend, we stayed in Lower Oddford, which makes it hard to come and look here without him noticing.’ Anke seemed happy to stand and chat on the gravel while her children raced around and her husband leafed through the particulars Poppy had handed him. A tall thin daughter was already in the paddock, sizing it up; an even taller son was smoking a cigarette and eyeing up the dovecote. ‘Would this make a recording studio, d’you reckon?’

‘If Morfar doesn’t come to live with us, can I have the garage?’ asked a younger son, who was built more like his huge father and bounded up the steps to peer into the bunkhouse.

‘The children have already decided we will move here,’ laughed Anke, lighting a cigarette of her own and looking up at the thatched princess. ‘We always loved it here, and now that Graham has sold the company and found an interesting project in the Cotswolds, we really might be able to do it.’

‘So, what line of business are you in?’ Poppy asked gushily, while Ellen glanced at her watch and wished they’d bloody well go inside.

‘Haulage.’ He looked up from the brochure with a big, bearlike smile. ‘At least I was until two months ago – sold the business on to an old mate. It was time to get out. I’ve found a little agricultural distributor’s up on the ridge here that’s going broke so I thought I’d buy it as a hobby. Farming sure as hell needs a kick up the arse, and I like to fly by the seat of my pants. It keeps me young.’ He winked at Ellen.

Graham Brakespear – a swarthy Lancashire lad who clearly wore his heart on his Ralph Lauren sleeve while flying by the seat of his designer pants – took a long look at Ellen and closed the brochure. ‘I see a lot I like here. A lot.’

‘Would you like a cup of coffee while you look round?’ asked Poppy. ‘Or a glass of wine?’ She’d seen the classy sauvignon in the fridge.

Ellen gritted her teeth.

‘Wine would be lovely.’ Anke smiled tiredly. ‘We have had a difficult day.’

‘Got any beer?’ asked Graham, admiring Ellen’s legs. ‘And the kids’ll have Coke.’

‘I’ll check.’ Poppy danced inside, evidently smelling buying signals galore.

Why not watch some television and try out the beds? Ellen thought murderously. Poppy’s make-yourself-at-home sales spiel was getting out of hand.

‘So you’re on your way back to Essex tonight?’ She looked at the lane again. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to leave it too late.’

‘Oh, it doesn’t take long if you drive like Schumacher.’ Anke gave her husband an amused little smile and watched the tall daughter loping back from the paddock. ‘What do you think? Will Heigi and Bert like it here?’

‘It’s smaller than I remember, Mum,’ she fretted. ‘And there aren’t any stables.’

‘We can build those.’ Graham patted his daughter’s back and smiled at Ellen. ‘This is Faith – Laurel and Hardy over there are Magnus and Chad.’

Ellen nodded in acknowledgement, then felt her heart slam her several paces back as she saw Spurs idling along the lane in scruffy shorts, dark glasses, bare feet and a pork-pie hat. He looked like an Italian rent-boy.

‘I’m from Denmark,’ Anke was saying. ‘My father moved here to live with us when my mother died, but he did not like the village near Burnley where we were living then so he bought a little shop in Oddlode and started selling books. Now he is very old and he needs help, so we want him to live with us. But he is also very stubborn, so we must not tell him our plans. This is your friend?’ she asked, colour leaping into her pale cheeks as Spurs ambled through the gates.

‘Hi.’ A dark eyebrow curled above the very dark glasses, and Ellen sensed that his mood had blackened. It made him sexier than ever, but also potentially highly explosive.

‘These are the Brakespears – they’re looking around the house,’ she explained uneasily. ‘This is Jasper Belling.’

When Poppy came back outside with a tray of drinks, Spurs dragged Ellen to one side. ‘I had no idea you’d arranged a cocktail party,’ he hissed, as the little group sorted out whose glass was whose. ‘I’d have dressed up.’

‘They arrived late,’ Ellen explained in a whisper. ‘They’ll be gone soon.’

But the Brakespears, who knew that they had a safe two hours to look around while Ingmar played bridge in Hillcote, were in no hurry.

‘I was under the impression that you were travelling down from Essex today?’ Poppy tittered merrily, getting chatty.

‘Change of plan – I wanted to look through Dulston’s paperwork and he could only see me on Friday so we came down for the weekend.’

‘Dulston’s of Springlode?’ Spurs asked Graham. ‘James Dulston?’

‘Yep – you know him?’

‘He was married to my aunt for a couple of years. Used to screw his secretaries and diddle the VAT man. Wears women’s underwear.’

It was an awkward moment but, to Ellen’s relief, it prompted the Brakespears to head inside and start looking round.

She turned to Spurs, goosebumps raging. ‘Drink?’

‘I can’t stay long.’ He turned his face towards the sun.

‘Got a hot date?’ Her banging heart was firing great shots into her ribs.

‘Yes.’ He looked up over the rims of his glasses, silver eyes dancing. ‘Christ, you look divine.’

She took a step towards him, breathing in his untamed smell, looking at the lean, muscular chest, the tatty shorts slung on his narrow hips, the long legs and dusty bare feet. Later she would get to explore every corner of his beautiful body. She couldn’t wait. This was her gig. She was going to call the shots. ‘I warn you, sports massages can hurt.’