Out Late with Friends and Regrets (15 page)

Cecilia brought the coffee in, and sat beside Fin on the sofa.
 
As she leaned forward to set the mugs down on the table, her bent knees moved sideways against Fin’s thigh.
 
She sat up again, but her knees stayed put.
 
Her body was thus half-turned towards her guest.
 
Her eyes widened, looked alert, for the first time of the evening.

“You know what?” she said.

Fin picked up her mug, and held it defensively in front of her.

“No, what?”

“I really like you.
 
I mean,
really
like you.
 
You understand people, I can always tell.”

Just don’t go there, Cecilia.

“Mm-hmm,” she replied, taking a sip of the coffee.
 
It was over-sweet, with all the robustness of the proverbial gnat’s pee.

“Have you got a girl-friend?” Cecilia leaned in slightly with the enquiry.

Fin answered slowly, carefully.

“Not, er, strictly speaking, at the moment.”

It would be difficult to justify her presence here, if she had.
 
Although, she thought, the very question seemed to cast doubt on a one-at-a-time ethic.
 
She added swiftly, “I’m not actually looking for a serious relationship at the moment... “

Cecilia smiled, almost warmly.

“Stay tonight.
 
With me.”

Damn.

Fin decided to be bold.
 
She put down the coffee, and took both Cecilia’s hands in her own.

“Don’t think I’m not tempted,” she said, “but...”

Stuck. The pause was uncomfortable. Then inspiration came, and was welcomed with open arms.

“...I’m still getting over somebody, and I need a bit more time to sort out my feelings before – you know, before –”

“Yes, I see.”
 
Cecilia nodded, her face inscrutable.

“Besides,” Fin added rashly, with what she hoped was a charming smile, “I think I might be just a bit old for you, don’t you think?”

Bloody hell, I sound a right pompous prat
.

Another silence fell, and Fin was wondering if this was the point at which to make her exit, or whether to take another sip of the rotten coffee, when Cecilia asked, almost casually, “Where are you going to sleep tonight? Ellen said you lived in Cantlesham, and came in specially.”

Damn Ellie to hell.

The charming smile leaked away, while Cecilia’s face remained unreadable.
 
What a poker player she’d make.

“You can stay here, if you like,” said Cecilia, “we don’t have to shag.”

This annoying girl had, it seemed, endless capacity to keep Fin on the back foot.
 
If only it were possible to rewind to the party, still enjoying the wine and the banter, and the novel sensation of holding her own in a company of strangers. As it was, she felt beaten, and suddenly very tired.

“Well... actually, that’s nice of you, Cecilia.
 
I could get my head down on the sofa, and be away really early.”

“You don’t have to do that.
 
There’s a bed you can sleep in.
 
Everything’s nice and clean.”

“I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind.
 
It’s been quite an evening.”

Cecilia rose, and went to the kitchen, returning with two brimming shot glasses.

“Nightcap.”

“Oh, I don’t think I – Oh.
 
Cheers.”
 
Fin was careful not to spill any of the drink on the plain carpet as she raised it to her lips.
 
She breathed in, so she could identify it in advance.
 
It was brandy, not really her cup of tea, but at least not some evil, sugary liqueur with an unpredictable kick.
 
She sipped. Apparently not Very Special, Old or Pale, smoothness not being its outstanding characteristic. She just managed to avoid making a face.
 
The second taste wasn’t as bad, though, and the third almost pleasant.
 
The tension began to slip away from her, and she felt her eyelids relax slightly.

She covered the rim with her hand after the second glass; she’d had a fair bit to drink earlier, courtesy of Dave’s little hobby, after all.
 
However, the evening hadn’t turned out too badly, on the whole.
 
Despite Ellie’s machinations, she’d coped with all its difficulties, and acquitted herself well, she felt.
 
Now she had a bed for the night, and tomorrow might even bring a buyer for the house.

“Would you mind if I turned in now?” she asked Cecilia.

“OK.
 
Through here.
 
That’s the bathroom, that door there.”

Fin used the lavatory and sloshed her face, thinking with regret of the sponge bag, the baggy T-shirt and the spare knickers packed efficiently in the boot of the car.
 
Never mind; small mercies and all that.

The bedroom was dimly lit by the single bedside lamp.
 
Fin could see that the turnover of the sheet was reassuringly crisp and clean.

“Good night!” she called, closing the bedroom door quietly behind her.
 
There was an alarm clock by the lamp, and she set it for seven. Next to it stood a framed photograph, of a thickset woman wearing a grim smile.
 
Cecilia’s mother, maybe, or a sister.
 
She could have chosen a more flattering picture, surely.
 
But bed and sleep were all that mattered now.

She stripped down to bra and knickers, leaving her outer clothes folded on a chair.
 
Then she slid under the duvet, starfishing her limbs luxuriously to the edges of the bed.
 
She reached out to turn the lamp off, noticing how the beautiful cornicing ran straight into the wall on two sides.
 
“They’ve got a whole two-bedroom flat out of just one of the original rooms,” she thought, impressed, as she slipped into sleep.

Since the day she finally accepted she was gay, Fin’s dreams had tended to fall into two categories: there were the ones in which Paul either appeared or lurked unseen, vengeful and once more in control of her life; and there were those which were full of vague erotic fantasies, seldom explicit but often causing her to wake in a state of pleasant arousal.

It was one of the latter that troubled her as she slept, and instinctively she curled her pelvis forward, pressing her palms to her belly, sliding them slowly down towards the urge. The dream felt particularly tactile, a cool smoothness seeming to move over her skin. She sighed, realising she was close to waking, and not wanting the dream to end.

“Go on. Do it.”

Cecilia’s voice. The shock jolted her into consciousness, and she gasped aloud.
 
The darkness was too profound for her to see, but Cecilia was all too evidently in the bed beside her, and Cecilia’s hands moving over her body. In a detached, observational part of her brain, Fin noted that the girl was capable of unexpected finesse; the hands were still stroking gently, though their stimulating effect had been cut abruptly short. She drew breath to tell her to stop and groped for the hands to push them away, but at that moment Cecilia’s mouth pressed down on hers and she felt her darting tongue flirting with her own. Long brown hair lay over her face, and she breathed in again hurriedly, almost snorting in her need for air. She knew she must sound as if in the grip of passion, but could not move her head back, deep as it was in the pillow. Cecilia’s tongue began to move lightly over her palate, tickling it. Appalled, Fin realised she was in some danger of enjoying the sensation.
 
Get a fucking grip, she told herself, and arched her body up and sideways, finally dislodging both the invading hands and mouth.

“Well, what the hell was that all about?” Even as she blurted it out, it sounded lame and ineffectual.

“I thought you’d like it. You
did
like it.”

Fin took a deep breath.

“No,” she said firmly, “I didn’t. And though it was kind of you to offer me a bed for the night, I really do need to sleep, so if you’ll just go back to your own bed,
please…”

“You’re in it. There’s only one bedroom.”

Oh, shit. Fin was dog-tired, and could feel the beginnings of a nagging pain in her head, probably due to the cheap brandy warring with Dave’s eagerly-proffered selection of fine wines at the party. She let out an involuntary groan.

“It’s all right.”
 
Cecilia’s words were expressionless. “Just stay there. I’ll leave you alone.”

Too shattered to argue, Fin collapsed back on the pillow, and slept.

Strange, violent, frightening. What was it? What was happening? Heavy, a threatening heaviness shaking and pushing her downwards, and her subconscious preparing her for the black softness of the pillow over her face, and her arms pinned to the bed.

But no, it wasn’t Paul. Paul was dead. There was a peculiar roaring, shouting sound, louder with every downward push, and her head roared inside, too.
 
As she surfaced from the depths, she opened her eyes, first seeing dapples of sunlight on the white ceiling, and then was confronted at close quarters by a familiar face, not Cecilia’s. The face was big, ruddy, the mouth wide and blasting her with hot breath; “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!” it shouted, with every rough shake. Yes, that was it, the woman in the photo! But what the hell was going on? The noise was confusing, but she could now make out a thin, high wail, definitely Cecilia, begging, “Stop it, Ba! Stop it!” at intervals. Goodness me, emotion, noted the bystander in Fin’s brain.

But this couldn’t go on. Tightening her abdominal muscles, and concentrating all her core strength, she yelled with all the force of breath her diaphragm could expel.

“OI!”

It had the desired effect. The shaking ceased, and Ba jerked back from her labours. Fin swiftly whipped the covers aside, and rose to a standing position by the bed. She was about to enquire with indignation exactly what the hell Ba thought she was doing, but to her surprise, the woman rushed forward with a wordless shout, and pinned her to the wall. More alarmingly, she raised a fist beside her head, with the obvious intention of crashing it into Fin’s face.

It had been a long time since the combat classes.
 
But
Block! Block! Block!
repeated again and again, now came out of nowhere, and Fin tensed, sweeping the fist aside with her forearm as it came at her. She surprised herself quite as much as her assailant, but still automatically followed up for effect with a theatrical “Heurgh!”, combat-style.

She quickly realised that this would not be enough to halt the attack. Ba’s face had scrunched into an aggressive scowl, and she was pulling her arm back to have another go; this time she wouldn’t be caught unawares. Fin gripped Ba’s upper arms, bare below the pale blue short sleeves. She realised that she could not feel the hard curve of biceps. The arms looked solid, but in fact felt doughy, yielding. A bit out of condition, love, she thought, taking heart, and bending one knee so that she could brace the sole of her foot against the wall behind her. She pushed with all her strength, and Ba tottered back a few paces to keep her balance. Fin moved forward, and was seized in a smothering bear-hug, in which Ba resumed the shaking technique, but side to side this time, and shouting, “You – you – you –
bastard
!”

In desperation, Fin kicked at her legs. Despite her predicament, she didn’t actually want to injure the woman; but somehow she had to stop her, before she inflicted damage. The kicking had no apparent effect: Fin had nothing on her feet. So she tried a downward blow with her heel on Ba’s left foot, repeated it, and put all her weight on the site of the blow. That did it; Ba howled, and let go immediately. This was followed by a circuit of the bedroom by her assailant, hopping, limping and groaning.