Page 10 of The Trouble With Love

We marched in single file, up the trackway to the brow of the hill, where the trees fell away and left the crown a bare, grassy mound. ‘The only wood to suffer from male pattern baldness,’ I whispered to Megan, but she shushed me, biting her lip with earnest concentration, eyes firmly fixed on Vivienne’s skinny back broaching the darkness ahead of us. At the very top we all stopped and laid the blankets down over the grass-skinned mud and, following Vivienne’s lead, sat cross-legged on them beneath the overcast skies. I looked out into the leaden night and wondered if I’d be able to see the lights of the Old Lodge from up here and how I’d recognise them if I could. Maybe, given all that occult carving, they’d strobe.

Vivienne’s voice droned out, talking us through relaxation exercises and visualisation skills. It was all similar stuff to some of the things I’d sat through with Nicholas in the early days, when the doctors had tried to manage his problems with behavioural training. Only the November wind, making nippy little sorties through my damp clothes, stopped me from dropping into a light doze, as Vivienne had us all expanding our consciousnesses to encompass the trees, the earth and even the invisible moon. My consciousness remained determinedly human-sized, but I was feeling surprisingly peaceful, concentrating on my breathing, in out in out, my shoulders dropping from what I now realised was an almost permanent tense hunch. My neck relaxed and even my fingers uncurled and I was about as close as I would ever come to feeling one with nature, when Isobel let out a shriek.

‘There’s someone watching us!’

Instantly all of us were scrambling to our feet. ‘Where? Did you see them?’ First up, I walked out beyond the circle of blankets, scanning the treeline for movement.

‘I felt it! You know, eyes boring into the back of my neck.’ Isobel gave a half-sob. ‘They must have been over there, behind us. Maybe they’re hiding in the trees . . .’ She was clutching her knitted coat closely around her body, as though some kind of assault had been attempted. ‘It was a presence,’ she whispered. ‘You know, evil.’ Her eyes were huge with panic.

‘I think we ought to go back to the cottage.’

‘That’s not necessary, Holly. Isobel was probably visualising some past event. She’s clearly more sensitive than . . .’ She’d been going to say ‘you’, but the expression on my face made her change to ‘. . . most people.’

I didn’t want to scare the group by telling them that I’d already seen one armed bloke loose in the woods tonight, and I wouldn’t have put it past Kai to be wandering around in the dark trying to find out what I was doing, meeting people in the middle of nowhere. ‘She’s probably just spooked herself. There’s no sign of anyone around now. Even if there had been, screaming out like that, she’d have scared them off.’ I began to roll up my blanket; the others followed suit. ‘But anyway, better safe than sorry, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so. But, what a shame, we were so close to opening a gateway.’

I rolled my eyes and led the way off Comb-over Hill.

Megan dropped me back at my car and I drove home, Kai’s flashlight bouncing around on the back seat. I knew I’d have to return it, no one was ever going to call me a flashlight thief, but I was in absolutely no hurry to go anywhere near him again. Rather gorgeous-looking though he might be, I thought, but only to myself. I would die rather than admit to finding a man attractive, after all that Girl Power I’d been talking. Wouldn’t have kicked him out of bed, mind you, but fancy him? Nah. And anyway, he might be attached. Besides, I could always FedEx the flashlight over, when I sent all the paperwork for him to sign to exempt Guy from any responsibility from the premature labour Cerys was going to go into when she saw the lorries arrive.

Chapter Six

I never told you this, did I? Or maybe I did, one of my earlier ‘letters’ might have it in but, to be honest, I can’t be arsed to go back through and look. Anyway. Yeah. Point is — women like me. And I like them back, but that’s as far as it goes, liking. Intellectually I know there’s this one step further that I’d need to take to make it anything real, one more level of engagement, one last barrier dropped, and that’s where it all gets complicated. Messy. And I can’t quite do it, can’t quite let them in that last inch. And, you know what? None of them even fucking notice. They think they’ve got me because there I am, in their beds night after night, drinking their wine and sitting on their couches discussing the state of the economy, and they think that’s me. They really don’t understand that it might as well be a robot lounging around their carefully interior-designed rooms, some kind of gigolo in their beds, because it’s not who I am. Not inside. Because really I’m . . .

Stupid. Yeah, just stupid, whistling in the dark . . . Did I say whistling? More like pissing, pouring it all out into nothingness to help me feel better for a while. Anyway, fact is, I keep mobile where the girls are concerned. Give them a look, give them a taste of the ‘me’ they all think I am. The me they think they’re getting to know. And then, when they’re in deep and falling hard — that’s it, I’m out, not what I signed up for. And I don’t go clean, you know that. No ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ for this guy, oh no. When I go I leave a bad taste that will keep them from trusting for a long time.

There’s not been anyone since Imogen. Think I wrote to you about her too, didn’t I? When it all went shit-shaped and hit the fan like a hurricane in a slurry tank, when she found out what lies underneath the jacket and jewellery image. Yes, the real me turned up to the party eventually . . . Yeah. Not proud of it. Another one of those things about myself that I’m not proud of, along with my upbringing and my mistakes.

And yeah, so. Reason I’m writing this? I’ve seen the look on another girl. Sizing me up, checking it out, the leather, the earring. Measuring me up with her eyes to see if I come up to whatever expectations it is that she has for a man, raising one eyebrow at me like she’s asking some question I’m supposed to have heard in some hormone-to-hormone communication that’s gone on underneath all the polite chat. She’s hot. That dark red hair that looks like the sun shining through a copper beech at evening, fine, pale skin. And single too, I’ve checked her out with her brother — in a purely conversational way, I mean, hey, I’ve got finesse, I’ve got class. Although . . . their relationship, it’s not right. She’s more like . . . I was going to say ‘like his mother’ but I’m no expert on that one now, am I? But Nicholas — nice guy, all kinds of shit kicking off in his head and some kind of issue with his sister — he reckons she prefers being single. Doesn’t fall in love, doesn’t get attached.

My kind of woman.

Chapter Seven

Next day I had to go to Scotland. There was a shoot underway on the North East coast, a location I’d booked sometime earlier in the year, but a problem had arisen with the owners of the site, and Aiden the director wanted me to ‘interface’.

Nicholas came along to keep me company, and after I’d interfaced — which was mostly a diplomatic exercise — I dropped him and his carrier-bag of belongings off at Ma and Dad’s. Sometimes a change was good for Nicky, and I’d been a bit worried about his new-found desire for a girlfriend. If I wasn’t careful and quick, and if things didn’t go the way he’d got planned in his head, he might spiral into full-blown psychosis. Again. Still, the new medication — which I had triple-checked was in his bag, maybe paranoia does run in the family — was doing great things at present, and I left him waving cheerfully from their driveway, looking relaxed and happy to be there.

Then I detoured back to the shoot. Something about the intensity of Nicholas, hot on the heels of Vivienne and her home-made religion, made me want to tear all my clothes off and enter into some screaming, uncomplicated orgiastic activity. Aiden and I had met when I’d been working in London, we’d dated a few times but we’d both agreed that ‘a relationship’ wasn’t what we wanted, not what we were about. Fuck-buddies, however, was a different matter, and his pleasurable version of the full-body workout was exactly what I needed right now. We spent two days ‘interfacing’, and I got back to Malton mid-afternoon, to an empty fridge. Because I’d known I was going to Scotland I hadn’t been shopping, but now, when the post-sex hunger had only been sated by a Service Station bacon butty and a packet of Wotsits, it had become an urgent requirement.

I drove into town, shopped, and was on my way back to the car with a full trolley when I met Cerys. She was sitting perched on a bollard in the supermarket car park, looking rotund and very fed up, but her eyes brightened when she saw me.

‘Holly, isn’t it? Hey.’

I stopped, even though this meant that the trolley swung a complete arc around me and nearly mowed me down. ‘Hello.’ I didn’t mean to but I couldn’t help myself, and looked around. ‘Kai not with you?’

‘He’s somewhere. I had to get some fresh air, hence . . .’

‘Well, tell him Guy loves the look of the Old Lodge. He wants some more external shots, so I’ll come over some time soon. No hurry, and Kai doesn’t need to be there, I can just walk around and fire off some pics by myself. As long as he knows I’m going to do it and doesn’t think I’m sneaking around trying to catch sight of him getting out of the bath or something!’

‘Well, it’s a thought.’

The voice came over my shoulder. I widened my eyes at Cerys. ‘He’s behind me, isn’t he?’

‘Yep.’

‘And he heard me say that bit about catching him getting out of the bath?’

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