Page 18 of The Trouble With Love

Chapter Ten

Megan had to take to her bed with a world-class case of diarrhoea and vomiting for the next two days but the spell seemed to have the opposite effect on me. I felt ridiculously fizzy, like someone had lit an adrenaline fuse deep in my chest, and found it hard to concentrate. Was it really magic? Or had Vivienne slipped something into the brew to make us all believe that it was? I tended towards the latter explanation, even though I couldn’t see how or what, because the idea that a mouthful of papier mâché and incipient typhoid could make magic happen was too ridiculous for anyone less fluffy than Meg to believe. But. Still. Fizzy.

On the third day I went back to the Old Lodge. Guy had couriered over some paperwork and I wanted to pass it by Kai before we signed to anything, and to take a few more outside shots of the place.

‘He’s not here.’ Cerys leaned against the door. ‘Buggered off somewhere, God knows where, and here’s me feeling like I’d better avoid any sharp corners in case I go bang. Please come and talk to me, Holly. I can’t stand up for long, but that’s all right because I can’t lie down for long either, so it averages out.’

‘I brought some contracts for Kai to see, if he’s really going through with letting a film crew loose around here, and my camera.’

‘So this is a professional visit?’ Cerys gave me a ‘Princess Di’ coy look. ‘You two didn’t . . . um . . . get it together when I’d gone to bed the other night? When I woke up your car was still here.’

‘Went home by taxi. Kai brought the car back next morning.’ Not that I’d seen anything of him; he’d shoved the keys through the letter box and, by the time I’d got down from my office to the front door, he’d vanished. ‘And anyway, you’re his daughter. I wouldn’t tell you anything, it would be nasty.’

Cerys slumped on the edge of the kitchen table. ‘He and Mum split up when I was eighteen months old. She married Dad when I was three. So I’ve never known Kai as a father, he’s always been more like a distant family friend. Sometimes really distant.’

‘And he’s gone off and left you on your own? With, what, around three weeks before the babies arrive?’ I pulled a face.

‘Yeah, well, I can phone an ambulance like a bitch.’ She got up again. ‘Put the kettle on, Holl, will you? I’m gagging for a coffee but I’m busting for a wee first.’ She waddled off into the downstairs bathroom but carried on our conversation through the closed door. ‘So you can tell me anything about Kai. I won’t judge you. Well, I can’t, I’m the stupid bint who got pregnant with twins by a tosser.’

‘There’s nothing to say, Cerys, honestly.’

The flush sounded and she appeared again. ‘You’re not going to hurt him, are you?’

‘Hurt him? I’m more likely to damage myself.’

‘I’ve never really got what’s going on with Kai, y’know.’ Cerys weebled through the door towards me, hands pressed into the small of her back. ‘I know he and Mum had me very young, but I don’t reckon that’s what’s behind him being so totally weird.’

‘Is he? Totally weird?’ I spooned coffee into two mugs and tried not to think about what form this weirdness might take, whilst disturbing images of various sexual peculiarities tiptoed through my mind. This involved imagining Kai naked and more coffee sprinkled over the worktop than hit the mugs.

Cerys made a dismissive motion with one hand. ‘He’s always a bit . . . I dunno really . . . he doesn’t really relate like other people. It’s almost like he’s acting a part instead of living.’ She gave me a shrewd look. ‘Oh he thinks he’s so clever and so straight, but I can see through him like an ultrasound scan. Oh, God, listen to me, I’ve become completely baby-centric. Shoot me now, Holly, please, before I start talking about giving birth to the sounds of whale-song instead of the ninety-decibel screaming I’ve got planned.’

I rested a hand on the top of the kettle switch and fussed with the plug to occupy my hands and give me a reason to avoid her eye. Was that it? Was that why I felt so ambivalent about this yellow-eyed Welshman, because he wasn’t behaving in the ways I expected? ‘Aren’t we all, a bit? Acting a part, I mean, pretending to be normal and ordinary while we’ve all got stuff going on underneath — isn’t that the only way we can carry on without spending all our time in tears or therapy?’ I turned back around to find that Cerys had an eyebrow raised and her mouth twisted into a prematurely motherly expression.

‘Sounds like you and he are going to get along fantastically,’ she said, and the parental tone of irony was noticeable. ‘Just, you know, be careful. Of yourself, not just him. He’s a bit of a . . . not a bastard, not really, but a bit . . . careless, I suppose. He had this one girlfriend, Imogen, ’bout a year ago I suppose, and she was lovely, really sweet and she and I got on and everything, but that all fell apart accompanied by some fairly serious yelling.’ She shrugged. ‘She wanted him close, and he doesn’t really do close.’ A hand rubbed the bump in concentric circles. ‘He does screwing though, I’ve heard him.’

‘Shut up. Enough.’ I poured boiling water onto the coffee. The rising steam made me think about the spell and I had to smile at the ridiculousness of it. Yeah, I’d wished for excitement. What had I got? An enormously pregnant young woman telling me about her father’s sex life, and a best friend who could heave for Britain. Oh, how thrilling.

‘Have you seen the weather forecast?’ Cerys took her mug. ‘Storms and snow and all kinds of stuff on its way, apparently.’

‘Oh, that’ll be my excitement for the year then. Nothing like getting trapped in your house for four days and then flooded out when all the pipes burst. Wonderful.’ I hadn’t, after all, specified good excitement, had I?

‘Yep. These babies had better hang in there, otherwise they’ll have to airlift me out. With a jumbo jet. Does it often snow up here? In Peterborough we really like snow because we don’t get much of it, but everything grinds to a halt if we get so much as a sprinkling.’

‘It does snow, but we’re used to it. And it’s not usually feet of the stuff, just enough to make life bloody awkward. Talking of which, I’d better pop outside now and do the pictures Guy wants.’

‘I’ll stay here. I’m drip-filling my bladder.’

I went outside and did some close-up shots of the front porch and some of the general location, then wandered out along the track until I could fit the whole of the Old Lodge in a single frame. As I locked off the last picture, someone spoke close to my shoulder.

‘You’ve been hanging around Dodman’s Copse haven’t you?’

Instinct increased my grip on the camera, but I turned around. ‘What?’

‘Hill on the far side. We’ve seen you.’

It was the ginger-headed bloke, this time seconded by a thin man with what looked like a joke moustache. They were both carrying shotguns, and the thin man had a brace of pheasants, dripping blood, by the feet.

‘It’s a free country.’ I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the dead birds. Their eyes were bleeding, surely shot birds don’t drip blood from the eyes? ‘And we’re not doing any harm or anything.’

---