One Night (23 page)

Joel stared at the two men coming towards him, both of them looking dog tired and sore from the injuries he’d managed to inflict on them. He expected he looked worse, he'd just taken half a dozen body blows that had left him panting and weak. Plus he carried the knowledge that even if he got through these two there were another pair waiting for him.

He saw Eve go sprawling back onto the ground and that gave him a little strength. Well maybe not strength, he thought, call it determination. The look of fury on the tall guy’s face told him Eve was in for a bad time if they didn't get out of this. The satisfaction of wiping that look of hatred away felt like the kind of reward that might help motivate him to win this uneven fight.

He looked back at the two guys coming towards him. Both were limping, walking slowly because of the broken foot and the skewered leg. They were coming at him but they weren’t coming fast.  He looked back at Eve and the tall kid who was now leaning down to grab her. His features were still smeared with rage. He looked like he was going to pull her up and slap her some more and that wasn’t something Joel was going to let happen. Behind him the guy Eve had
head-butted was shaking his head and looking like he was thinking about getting up but wasn’t quite ready to commit to the idea yet.

Joel took it in, saw it all in a split second and made his decision. He ignored the two he had been fighting and ran at the lanky kid instead.

What he'd realised looking at the scene was that  if he acted quickly enough it wasn't four against two, it was two against one and the odds were in his and Eve’s favour. There were four men for sure but only one of them, the lanky one, was an immediate threat. He looked tough but inexperienced, liked he’d just got out of school and wanted to prove himself. The others weren’t a danger yet. They might only be seconds away from reaching the tipping point that made them a problem but they weren’t quite there.

His legs pumped beneath him as he charged towards Eve and the kid. Her eyes met his as he ran and he saw that she understood what he was going to do. She ducked her head down and wrapped her arms over it.

His shoulder collided with the kid's back and sent him flying over Eve. Arms and legs flailing Matty crashed to the ground and skidded across it on his face.

Joel didn't pay much attention to him
, just reached down and took Eve’s hand and pulled her up.

"Sago," he said to her and they ran together. He was holding her hand as they left their attackers behind them and it felt good. There was some angry shouting but no actual sounds of pursuit, which was pretty much what Joel had hoped for.
             

"This wasn't the way I was hoping to burn calories tonight," Eve said.

He laughed. “Me neither. I was quite enjoying the whole kissing things before your uncle’s pals decided to break things up.”

She looked at him with mock offense. “What do you take me for? I only screw strange men
once
on the first date.”

Two minutes later they were at the service door. Joel pushed it open slowly. He half expected the night shift of the Southend constabulary to be gathered around the van but the
y weren't. Miraculously, it was still there, parked in the middle of the street with the door hanging open and the engine running.

They ran to it and climbed in. Joel shifted the long gearstick and drove off, not knowing where he was going yet, just waiting to get away from the park and the men still inside it. When they were a hundred feet down the seafront road he thought he saw the distinctive shape of the kid in his rear view
mirror. The figure was running out into the street but Joel couldn't be sure if it was him or just a shadow.

"Where are we going then?" he said, his eyes back on the road.

"Harry has an office on an industrial estate just out of town. That's where he'll take the cash. Keep going for now, I'll tell you when to turn."

The inside of the van was almost as cold as the night outside. Freezing air leaked in through gaps in the rotten rubber that should have sealed the doors tightly into their frames.

Eve remembered riding in a van with this one with her dad when she was a kid. One that he’d borrowed from his work so that he could deliver furniture he’d made. She’d loved it because she’d been able to sit in the front with him, perched on the bench seat staring down at the cars on the road in front of them. The van was often the largest thing on the road and that fact made her feel good too. Everyone could see them towering over the cars, cutting their path confidently through the traffic. Was this what it felt like to be a grown up? Bigger than everyone else, confident in your size, owning the space around you. 

She used to hope that kids from school would see her when she was out in the van but it only happened a couple of times. When it did she deliberately resisted the terrible urge to wave at them and get their attention. It was better, she decided, to let them see her riding
coolly, nonchalantly, along. She wanted it to look like it was no big deal to her.

When they were on straight stretches of road Dad would let her change gear, nodding at her as he pushed the clutch in, telling her “Up and left,” or “Down and right”. It felt like such an important responsibility that it frightened her a little but she still relished those moments.

Thinking about it now she realised she hadn’t ridden in a van since he’d died.

She looked over at Joel and found herself wondering what kind of father he’d be.

“What’s going to happen?” she said. “When you get the money.”

“If I get the money. Harry won’t let it go easily.”

“Okay, if...”

He looked back at her and she saw a sadness in his eyes. “I’ll disappear. It’s all I can do.”

“And me? Us? Is there an us?”

He lifted his hand off the wheel and took hold of hers. The warmth of his hand spread up her arm to her heart.

“There’s definitely an us, Eve. I can feel it inside. When I thought I’d lost you...” his words trailed off. “Well it wasn’t good. It felt like my future had been ripped away from me.”

"I felt that too,” she said. “That terrible hollowness inside when you weren’t there. Joel, I have to ask you. Did you think I'd done it? I mean, I did. I did tell him where the money was, but did you think of it as a betrayal? It wasn’t, it was..." she couldn’t find the word for a moment. “It was an act of mercy. It was the only way I could think of to save you. Only you didn’t need saving.”

He paused and she was worried what he was going to say.

“He’s very good at getting people to believe what he wants them to, your uncle. Everything he said made sense, more sense than the idea that you’d want me for me. But in my heart I knew the truth. All the way through I knew it, because I remembered how your eyes were when you looked at me and how it felt when we kissed. I don’t think I’ll ever forget either of those things, whatever happens after tonight. I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime with you. Loved you for a lifetime.”

He looked at her and it broke his heart because he knew what he had to say next. He opened his mouth and the words came out, 

“What you need to understand Eve is that the men who want the money back make your uncle look like a playground bully. When I go they will keep looking for me forever. They will not stop until they find me. And when they find me they’ll punish me and whoever is with me.”

He could see the tears forming in her eyes but he couldn’t do anything to stop them.

“When I disappear I have to disappear alone,” he said. “There’s no other way.”

Eve felt like she’d been slapped in the face. The tears were flowing freely from her eyes and her throat seemed to be closing up. She didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything. She knew she could fight his logic, knew she could argue against him but right at that moment she couldn’t put any of it into words. If she tried all that would come out of her mouth would be inarticulate sounds of sorrow.

“Turn here,” she said at last, necessity making her open her mouth and giving her easy words to fill it.

Joel turned off from the sea front road, heading up a shallow hill into the town.

“Fuck it, Joel, there must be a way,” she said.

“If there is I don’t see it.”

“There must be. It’s not possible that the world could be that unfair.”

“It is though, it is that unfair.  That's what life has taught me. The world isn’t built around you and what you want because there are billions of other people who want different things. Never expect happiness. Never get comfortable. That’s the lesson life gives me every day. Today more than most."

"Left here," she said and he turned onto a residential street that ran parallel to the coast for a stretch and then turned inland. Joel could see signs for the A13 that told him they were heading out of town.

"Tonight has been the most incredible night of my life, Eve. What we have shared has been amazing and I have felt things I’ve never felt before. You’ve got so deep into my heart it frightens me. I've told you things I've never told anyone. You know I've never believed in love at first sight, thought it was another lie the movies told us. What I’ve always thought, what I still think, is that there are degrees of connection between people. And I think most people aren't ever lucky enough to find someone who totally fits with them. Who connects with them perfectly."

"Straight on at the lights," she said. It felt good to be saying something even if it was just that.

"You ever play Blackjack?" he said.

"Like Pontoon? Twenty One? Sure."

"The aim is to get to Twenty One but not go over so most players stop as soon as they get to sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. They think their hand is good enough and that the risk of trying to go higher isn’t worth it. I think that's what most people do in love too. As soon as they meet someone who is good enough, a seventeen or whatever, they stick, they don't risk that next turn of the card. Now some get dealt a twenty one straight off and they're laughing. The ones who get dealt a seventeen they stick there.  The ones who get a twelve turn another card and see where it takes them. Then maybe they get another card after that. Basically though pretty much everyone sticks too early. They meet someone and they like them, they go out for a while, they move in together, they get married. Bang. That's it, end of the game. And the real problem is, if you are brave enough to say, ‘No, this isn’t good enough. Give me another card’ then you’ll probably bust because everyone else is sticking at seventeen. So that perfect person is already with someone else, the card you need to get your twenty one is in someone else's hand."

"So what's this got to do with me?" Eve said.

"Well you're my twenty one, Eve, but the casino's just shut. Or I've run out of money or some such shit. Whatever the reason is I can't play the hand. I’m stuck knowing I could have won the game but not being able to actually do it."

Eve could feel the anger and sadness mixing inside her in a way that made her feel
sick. “You know what?” she said and didn’t wait for him to respond, just carried on, unable to stop the words even if she’d wanted to. “That’s all great. It’s a lovely metaphor for how badly I’m being fucked by God right now but you forgot something. I’m playing the game too and I’m not walking away. I’m not going to let the house win.”

He looked back at her but didn’t say anything. She thought she could see a smile forming around his eyes though, tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Turn right,” she said.

He turned the wheel, those strong hands of his guiding the van round the corner. “Stop in about fifty yards, we’re nearly there.”

He did as he was told, pulling the van up by the curb. They were on a run-down shopping street that had probably had its heyday twenty years ago. It was lined with local independent stores, half of them boarded up. Hairdressers and cobblers and funeral directors. The kind of places that the big supermarkets and the internet hadn’t found a way to drive out of business yet. It was coming up to five in the morning by Joel’s watch and there was no-one around.

“Okay...” he started saying, and then she had grabbed him and was kissing him, her mouth stopping the words that were trying to come out of his. Her hand was in his lap, stroking him through his jeans and he felt himself grow at her touch.

“I need you,” she whispered in his ear. “I need you inside me again.” She wasn’t sure what had made her do it, the fear of losing him again, the relief at not having lost him when she thought she had. The mix of the two maybe, that and her anger at his insistence that life wouldn’t let them be together. She tugged at his flies, pulling them down, working her fingers inside his trousers and pulling his stiffening cock out.

“I’m not going to lose you,” she said. “But if I was then I’d want to leave you with something to remember me by.”

He was about to say something clever back then she took him in her mouth and the words flew out of his head.

Minutes later she was riding him again, his hardness filling her deliciously, touching every part of her that needed to be touched. His head was pressed against her chest as she came, nuzzled between her breasts. He heard her heartbeat increase as she approached her climax and then it seemed to pause for a second as her whole body tensed and she let out a long gasp of pleasure. He came too, just as explosively as he had the first time, his thighs clenching and his erection swelling in her at the last moment. In that moment of sweet oblivion he forgot it all: the money, Harry, the killers in London who were no doubt setting off now to come and wipe him off the face of the Earth.

They held each other for a while and then Eve lifted herself back onto the seat beside him and rearranged her clothes.

“Next time we really do have to do this in a bed, you know.” she said and then kissed him again.