Lots of Love (63 page)

Feeling rather splendid after a pleasant, if not mind-blowing, origami the night before, she had decided to buy a breakfast feast at the shop and share it in the Goose Cottage garden with her daughter and her new best friend over talk of first love and second chances.

The Oddlode Pensioners’ Collective were in full force at the post-office counter, with Glad Tidings at their helm, dressed in her flowered tabard and still wearing rubber gloves, having hotfooted it from the manor on her Dr Scholls with the juiciest bit of gossip that the village had heard in years. She gave Pheely such a knowing look when she first pinged in that she was convinced her lover must have been espied leaving the Lodge in the early hours. But this news was far more shocking than the revelation that Touchy Pheely was enjoying relations with a village legend.

Muffins and fresh juice forgotten, Pheely hurried through the village, her flip-flops slapping as she rounded the Lodes Inn and headed up Manor Lane to the farm.

Ely himself answered the door, and looked appalled to find her panting on his rush mat.

‘I thought I told you never to come here,’ he hissed gravely, glancing over his shoulder and taking a step outside so that he could pull the door closed.

‘This is urgent.’ Pheely was so out of puff, she had to clutch her knees.

‘You could have telephoned.’

She ignored him, staring at her painted toes. ‘Glad Tidings is telling everybody the news.’

‘What news?’

She had to admire his cool. One sandy eyebrow lifted and his beard bristled only slightly.

‘About your future arson-in-law,’ she snapped.

The blue eyes flashed, and she knew she had him.

‘I think you must have misunderstood some village tittle-tattle,’ he rallied.

‘And I think not,’ she snarled. ‘I’ve always said your daughter could benefit from better manors, but what you’re doing to her is unspeakable.’

‘In which case, I suggest you stop speaking, turn round and go home,’ he said darkly. ‘I am certainly not willing to discuss it with you.’

Pheely flinched, too frightened of him to stand and fight. A great lump welled in her throat. ‘To think that face once gave me such pleasure.’ She reached up and touched his beard then turned away hastily.

The flip-flops now slapped all the way to the lichen green front door of Goose Cottage, on which she hammered urgently. When no answer came, she called, peering in through the windows. A white clown’s face met hers and Snorkel barked thankfully, desperate to be let out.

‘Oh, you poor little poppet! Are those girls still lazing in bed?’ Pheely said soothingly, then dashed round to check the back door.

Which was when she noticed that the jeep was missing from the barn.

Rushing home, she rang her daughter’s mobile number. ‘Where are you?’

‘In Upper Springlode,’ Dilly announced cheerfully. ‘At Rory’s yard.’

‘Where’s Ellen?’

‘I don’t know. She sort of forgot to fetch me last night.’

‘Christ! Hell! Dilly!’ Ellen sat bolt upright, slices of kiwi fruit flying from her nipples. ‘We left her stranded!’

Spurs looked up at her, nonplussed, a raspberry seed on his nose.

‘Dilly?’ Ellen reminded him. ‘Had a hot date with your cousin last night? We were supposed to pick her up.’

‘Oh, she’ll be fine.’ He plunged back down again.

‘Snorkel!’ Ellen yelped, as the realisation hit that her poor dog was still home alone.

‘No, I’m fine – I can hold my breath under water for hours.’ Spurs carried on licking. ‘I can put on the pink flippers if it adds something?’

‘I . . . meant . . . the . . . do – oooooh, my life!’ She sank back on the berry-strewn counterpane.

‘You taste so beautiful.’ He pulled her thighs on to his shoulders.

‘We mustn’t do this . . .’

‘Stop trying to wake up.’ He spoke with his mouth full. ‘We’re still dreaming.’

‘We have to stop. The maid’s knocked on the door three times now.’

He reached up and put a huge slice of orange into her mouth to shut her up.

‘We
can’t,’
his fingers, sticky with juice, slipped between her buttocks, ‘we so can’t. We haven’t got much longer, and you’re all mine.’

‘Oh, don’t stop,’ she moaned. ‘Please don’t stop.’

He made her so bad, she realised. So utterly irresponsible and downright wicked. But she didn’t care. Right now, with hardly a pinch of shame, she couldn’t care less about man or beast or life or death. Right now, all that mattered was being here with him.

The telephone shrilled.

They ignored it, guilt losing the battle to pleasure.

It carried on ringing and eventually Ellen dragged it from the bedside table, spilling starfruit and bilberries in her wake as she reeled it in by the cord.

Spurs rolled her over, laying the last of the fruit on her buttocks as she listened vaguely to the caller.

‘It was Reception.’ She dropped the phone from the side of the bed, moaning deliciously as a physalis was succulently removed from its resting place. ‘They’re demanding the room back.’

‘They can go to hell.’

‘The people who’ve booked it are due here any minute – it’s almost lunchtime.’ She barred the peach slice that was about to slide up her spine. ‘They were pretty insistent that we vacate.’

‘Spoilsports.’ Spurs sulkily threw the peach out of the window and sucked his fingers. Seconds later, without warning, he’d slid one of those slippery fingers into her. ‘We can’t possibly vacate before I’ve filled this delicious place.’

Fighting lust with all her pious willpower, Ellen wriggled away. ‘We have to wake up.’

‘I don’t want to.’ He held on to her thigh and pulled her back hard against him, angry hand pinching her skin while the other – infinitely gentler – reached beneath her buttocks once again and delved into the wet, bubbling welcome lying there.

‘We mustn’t,’ she gasped.

‘You want to.’ He bent over and bit her arse. ‘There’s nowhere we can’t go, and we can’t stop ourselves. We belong to each other.’

‘Tell me your secret,’ she whispered, shuddering as his fingers drew long, slippery lines from her clitoris to her anus.

‘Later.’ He gripped her by both hips and sank smoothly inside her, forcing both their heads beneath the water again as they drowned in scruple-free pleasure. ‘When we’ve left the palace and the fairy tale is over, I’ll tell you everything.’

Ellen carefully reread the hotel invoice at the cashier’s desk, trying hard not to give away her sheer terror. It was far worse than she had imagined. Her credit-card limit would barely cover it, and she had already bought two airline tickets with her savings. She cast her eyes down the list, boggling at its itemised contents.

The stylish gold shirt and Bermuda shorts, exclusively designed for the hotel by La Coast, cost as much as a package holiday. Buying them had seemed a better option than stealing the bathrobe or trying to patch together the chiffon dress, but Ellen resented paying several hundred pounds to look like a staff member at an exclusive Essex gym.

‘Is there a problem, Miss Jamie- I mean Mrs Gardner?’ the cashier asked kindly, examining Ellen’s charity credit card and smiling at the picture of a puppy whose life would be enhanced thanks to exorbitant hotel bills put on plastic.

‘No – no, it’s fine!’ Ellen glanced over her shoulder to see Spurs smoking a cigarette by the doors and squinting out at the hot sun on the raked gravel sweep. The arrival at their room of the porter, politely but firmly insisting that this time they
must
leave, had plunged him into a strange, edgy mood. He had insisted that Ellen was ‘dissolving’. She longed to mention the ticket, but knew she had to wait until he explained what was going on. Her stomach churned with fear.

And yet, as he caught her watching him now, his face relaxed into a smile of such mesmerising trust and elation that she felt invincible. She smiled back, her throat so cram-full of emotion that she expected it to puff out like a bullfrog’s. I love him more than anything else in my life, she realised in amazement. I can forgive him anything. He can’t let me go, and I can’t even begin to think about losing him. I can forgive him anything.

‘I do hope that you’ll both find your plane ready for you now.’

‘Sorry?’ She turned back to the cashier.

‘I gather it wasn’t possible to leave for your honeymoon last night.’

‘Oh, yes. I think it’s fine now.’ Ellen’s pen hovered worriedly over the empty space in which she could add a staff gratuity. Even ten per cent of this bill would be a month in China. But she couldn’t leave it blank. Then she smiled. What the hell? She had just been to heaven and back several times in one night. ‘We really enjoyed our stay here.’ She added an extravagant tip.

‘So I gather.’ He watched her hand as she signed the receipt and then – clocking the gratuity – forgave Spurs and Ellen for hogging the room all morning. ‘What an unusual ring.’

The Constantine crest was showing on her finger. Hastily Ellen whipped away her hand and glanced back at Spurs. He was talking to somebody at the door now, a short and very round figure in a summer dress carrying a trug, hair covered with a silk scarf. From Spurs’ anxious, quilted cheeks and the lowered brow, it was obvious that the encounter was a regrettable one.

‘Anthony is bringing your car round to the front of the hotel,’ the cashier was saying. ‘May I wish you a wonderful honeymoon?’

‘Thanks,’ Ellen said distractedly, the churning returning to her belly as she remembered that the honeymoon was already over. She no longer cared what it had cost her financially. That was a fraction of the price she and Spurs would pay when the fairy tale ended – and she had an uncomfortable feeling that ‘Anthony’ was driving a big pumpkin on to Eastlode Park’s carriage sweep. Meanwhile, Prince Charming had found himself collared by one of the Ugly Sisters.

She took her credit card and printed receipt and crammed them into the bag with her tattered dress and the pink fins, then turned back to Spurs. But his silver gaze was waiting for her over the trug-carrier’s plump, sunburned shoulder.

Ellen stopped in her tracks and raised her eyebrows inquiringly. His eyes said it all. They were pleading with her to stay clear. He looked ashen.

She hovered uncertainly on the marble-tiled floor, clutching her bag and making a bad attempt to look casual while shuffling sideways to see who the hell he was talking to.

The small, headscarfed figure was practically bouncing up and down on the spot, and indicating the door. Then, as she got a look at the woman’s profile, Ellen recognised Ely’s puddingy wife Felicity, with her piggy little face and very pink cheeks.

‘. . . always let me have their leftover flowers for the church,’ she was saying in her soft lisp, ‘which is terribly kind. They always have lots of life left in them.’

Spurs was snacking on a thumbnail, his neck crisscrossed with anxious veins as he glanced at Ellen again, tortured with unknown demons.

Why is he bothered about Felicity Gates seeing us together? she wondered. Then again, from the excitable, adoring look on Felicity’s plump face, she might almost be as much in love with him as Ellen was. The thought made her snort with laughter.

Spurs almost shot through the roof, so finely tuned into Ellen’s every move that he could probably hear her heart beating. But Felicity even didn’t look round. ‘. . . better get a move on,’ she was saying. ‘The lilies are wilting in the back of the car. I’ll drop you on the way. I can’t believe you forgot the lunch. You are a one! Your mother has been telling me all week that you’ll be there. Come on, then.’ She trotted off, trug swinging, nodding gratefully as the liveried valet who was emerging through the doors held them open for her with a touch of his cap.

As soon as the doors closed, Spurs dashed to Ellen, eyes wild, sending the valet flying as he tried to present her with her car keys. He grabbed both her hands. ‘I’m sorry – I’m so sorry. I have to go. I’ll explain later.’

‘Go where?’

‘I’ll explain later.’ He pressed her knuckles into his teeth, staring at her over them, the silver gaze tarnished with guilt. ‘I’ll come to the cottage. I’ll explain everything, I promise.’

‘You can’t just—’

‘I love you.’ He kissed the signet ring on her finger. ‘You’re my life, and you’re the one secret I just can’t keep.’ With that he sprinted away, sending a Japanese family flying.

By the time Ellen had grabbed her keys from the dishevelled valet and picked her way over ten matching Louis Vuitton suitcases, Felicity’s Volvo was half-way along the Eastlode driveway, passing the lake where two swans were stretching their wings together.

Swans mated for life, Ellen recalled, as her mind jerked uncertainly between extremes of confusion, happiness and fear. Last night, I was the signet that became a swan. Just my luck to pick a black one.

She looked at the ring on her finger, wondering what possible reason Spurs could have for abandoning her in favour of the church stalwart and local do-gooder, plump, boring Felicity.

Did that mean he wanted to tell everyone that they were in love, or did that mean he couldn’t keep her?

‘I love him, I love him, I love him.’ She stared at the swans, who were now gliding serenely on the lake, waltzing in their own watery ballroom. And Ellen laughed as it hit her what love really meant. What had Spurs said? Like fear, only nice.

When Ellen drove up the potholed drive to the yard, Dilly was leaning over the gate to the sand school, yawning widely as she watched Rory riding a youngster. Dressed in Ellen’s hot pants and one of Rory’s shirts, her hair piled under a baseball cap, she turned to wave at the jeep and mimed cutting her throat.

‘Oh heck.’ Ellen chewed her lip as she parked beside a huge pile of plastic-wrapped haylage bales. She glanced anxiously out of the window, watching Dilly brush noses with the ginger stable cat that had teetered along the gate to join her.