Page 36 of Coming Home to Roseford Villas
Leo nodded. ‘Absolutely. Got to try it sometime, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather try it with.’ He shifted upwards, so that his lower back was supported by two firm pillows. Then, after a brief stop for a condom, Rory moved downwards, never breaking eye contact with him as they became enticingly and excitingly connected. She let out a long sigh of pleasure andbegan to move, both of them feeling the sensations as they touched and caressed one another to the summit. As Leo gave a deep thrust inside her, Rory felt the oddest combination of happiness and heartbreak: the thought crossed her mind, not for the first time since they’d rediscovered each other, that she really didn’t want to let him out of her life again.
The next morning, as they lay entwined, Rory breathed in Leo’s scent, and realised that she’d never felt so content. She knew it was probably the endorphins, but she couldn’t help wondering whether or not they could make a plan to keep seeing one another when the summer break was over. Surely there had to be a way? Especially if she was going to be moving to the West Country for a while. She knew Stella’s solution wasn’t a permanent one, but the more she thought about it, the more she found herself wanting to accept. Of course, Leo would still be in London, but they could see each other at weekends.
‘What are you thinking?’ Leo asked her, sounding sleepy.
‘Oh, you know,’ Rory replied, trying to sound as if she hadn’t just been contemplating their whole future, and looking up train timetables in her head. ‘Just stuff…’
‘Stuff? Sounds riveting!’ Leo propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her, his dark brown eyes alight with amusement. ‘And you, a writer. I’m sure you could do better than that.’
Rory grinned up at him. ‘Well,’ she said teasingly, ‘if you must know, I was deciding just how many marks I’d award you for that little performance. I was thinking, perhaps, a seven!’ She put on her best impression of the lateStrictly Come Dancinghead judge, Len Goodman.
‘Oh, really?’ Leo cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘From where I was sitting, it most definitely felt like at least a nine,dah-ling.’ His Craig Revel-Horwood was impeccable in response.
Rory giggled. ‘Well, we can always give it another go if you’d like. But I must just use the loo first and I’m desperate for a glass of water. Did you want one?’
‘That’d be great,’ Leo replied. ‘I’ll, er, use the loo after you, too. Try not to be long.’
Grabbing Leo’s T-shirt from the crumpled pile of clothing by the bed, Rory headed out to the bathroom. As she was sipping her water, she flashed up her laptop to see if she had any new emails, and to check that what she’d written the previous evening had saved to the cloud. She plugged in the laptop to recharge the battery and saw, with a glance, that the document had updated. Despite the dodgy prose, she was getting a much clearer idea of who the modern characters were now, and how the story was going to progress. Remembering that she owed Leo a glass of water, she brought it back to the bedroom and then headed off to the shower, with a teasing ‘You’re welcome to join me,’ as she walked back out of the bedroom. The shower room was in a separate little space to the loo, so as Rory stepped in and started running the water, she heard a muffled flush from the other end of the chalet and waited in anticipation for Leo come into the shower.
After about five minutes, she’d finished washing her hair and was wondering if Leo had just gone back to bed. It didn’t matter; she was probably just going to join him back there, anyway. Switching off the shower, she wrapped herself in a large, fluffy white towel and ran a brush through her wet hair, slicking it back from her forehead. She worried that she looked a bit pink and dishevelled, but then reasoned that Leo had seen her in a much more dishevelled state so tried to put it out of her mind. Taking a deep breath, she opened the shower room door and froze.
There, sitting in front of her laptop, was Leo, an expression of hurt and confusion written all over his face.
40
‘Hey,’ Rory said softly. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I could ask you the same thing,’ Leo replied bleakly.
Rory’s back stiffened. ‘Were you reading my novel?’
Leo’s eyes swivelled from her, back to the screen. ‘If that’s what you can call the thing on the screen, then yeah, I suppose I was.’ He shook his head. ‘And to be honest… it’s all a bit of a shock.’
Rory hurried across the chalet towards the table. ‘You shouldn’t be looking at this, Leo. The screensaver should have kicked in. I can’t think why it hasn’t. And it’s a first draft, too.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘No one’s supposed to see it yet.’
It was as if the last few hours hadn’t happened. Leo’s expression had gone from confusion to anger, and he didn’t seem to register what she’d just said. ‘Christ, Rory, I had no idea you were going to make this so personal,’ Leo said. ‘What you’ve written about us, about me… it’s too much.’
Rory’s hands started to shake, but she tried to keep calm. ‘As I said, it’s a first draft. Most of it’s probably going to get cut anyway. I was just emptying out my head onto the page. Trying to get my ideas, and my research, into some kind of order.’
‘Is that what all this has been, then?’ Leo shot back. ‘Am I just part of your “research”?’
‘No!’ Rory exclaimed. ‘Of course not! But you already knew I was going to be using some of what we used to have as inspiration. What you read was just the raw stuff coming out of my head and onto the screen.’ She felt irritated that Leo had taken it upon himself without permission to read what she’d written, but also seriously worried that he’d clearly got the wrong end of the stick. She reached out a hand to touch his upper arm, but he shrugged her off and stood up. He’d put on his boxer shorts, but little else.
‘I never really felt particularly happy you were going to be delving back into our history for this book, Rory, and now, reading this, it seems my gut feeling was the right one. You just can’t go writing this kind of stuff and expecting me to be OK with it.’ He paced away from her, and, looking around for his T-shirt, which Rory had discarded in the shower room, he slipped it back over his head.
‘But no one who reads it will know it’s based on what happened between us. And it was all so long ago, Leo. Surely you can see that?’ Rory clenched her fists in frustration. She felt exposed by what Leo had read, as if he’d reached somewhere personal and was now putting everything he’d found up for questioning, but she also felt angry. The laptop might have been on, but he’d had no right to delve into what she’d written. It was a Pandora’s box of ill-formed thoughts, half-narratives and stray ideas that she hadn’t yet had the chance to refine. In short, the worst possible thing for him to have read.
‘I don’t know, Rory,’ Leo replied. ‘It’s one thing to be nostalgic, but it’s another to spill your guts all over the page about a time in our lives when we’re just stupid kids. Anyone who knew us back then is going to make the connection.’
‘It’s fiction, Leo!’ Rory retorted. ‘And by the time it’s finished it’ll be a literary parallel with the tragedy that Edmund Treloar faced in his own life. He never got the second chance that we’ve got. Can’t you see how those two stories make sense together?’
‘So that’s all this has been, then? Fact finding? Christ, Rory, I gave myself to you and you know how hard that was for me to do. And now… it feels like a betrayal, both of what we had when we were kids and what we’ve had since you came here. Then you expect me just to smile and say it’s all fine?’
Rory tried to reach out a hand to him, but Leo took a step back, as if making contact with her would burn. ‘Leo, it’s not like that. Yes, I drew on some of what happened between us, but the rest is complete imagination. There’s nothing in there that you need to be afraid of or embarrassed about. If you could just let me explain how it works as a whole piece…’
‘Don’t bother,’ Leo snapped. ‘I’m glad I’ve provided some “inspiration” for you while you’ve been staying here but that’s as much as I’m prepared to give you. If you need anything else while you’re staying, I’d appreciate it if you could leave me a note. You’resogood at writing, after all.’ And without a backward glance, he stormed out of the chalet, slamming the door as he left.
Shit, shit, shit!Rory sank down onto the bench and put her head in her hands. This was absolutely the last thing she’d wanted to happen. Leo, clearly reading out of context, had happened upon part of the book that was raw, and intimate, and nowhere near as polished as it should be. Now he was convinced that this novel was going to be an embarrassing confessional about their relationship! Whoever had said you should write what you knew had clearly never had a doomed teenage romance, and a conversation about said romance two decades later.
