Читать книгу The Love Solution - Ashley Croft - Страница 12

After dropping off Molly at her flat, Sarah drove out of the city towards Fenham. It was bitterly cold, a typical Fenland night. Frost glittered like a trillion rhinestones on the pavements and as her headlights swept over the roadside, the fields glowed blue-white under the moon.

As she negotiated the icy roads, Sarah thought the fens had never looked more beautiful but she also felt guilty for feeling so happy when Molly was so miserable. They’d been like two balloons on the way home: Sarah about to go pop with excitement and Molly shrivelled up with misery and the start of a killer hangover.

Despite how long it had lasted, Sarah hadn’t really taken Molly’s crush on Ewan Baxter too seriously until that evening. Molly had had a lot of crushes over the years, usually short-lived and never very heavy. She’d ignored all the boys at school but had a few flings while she was at university, including one with an English Literature student and another with the captain of the university cricket team. Then there’d been the Australian who’d lasted a year on and off while Molly was studying for her PhD.

Sarah had thought he’d be The One for Molly and they’d shared a house together for a while but he’d gone back to Sydney. Molly had cried for a week but then thrown herself back into her research, landing a post-doc place in the prestigious Baxter lab.

Since then, there had been nothing very serious, although Molly had plenty of offers, Ewan Baxter seemed to have totally captured her imagination and heart. Sarah blew out a breath of frustration as she turned into the road that led through Fenham. She wanted to shake Ewan Baxter and tell him what a total prat he was for upsetting her sister.

She just hoped that Molly would get over her disappointment quickly and realise what an idiot he was and refocus her attention on someone deserving. There was nothing she could do about the situation and besides, Sarah couldn’t be too unhappy for long, not tonight.

She remembered Niall’s final words as he’d called up the stairs. ‘Drive carefully, there’s bound to be all kinds of drunks and dickheads on the roads.’ She didn’t need him to remind her of that, after what had happened to her parents and, besides, she was far more worried about him than herself. She also remembered the sharp tang of his aftershave and the fresh clean smell of his uniform. He always showered before he went out and the moment he got back. No wonder – after New Year’s Eve, he’d probably seen, touched, heard and smelled more bodily fluids than she cared to imagine.

Poor bloke; what a shitty job, literally, he had.

She was glad – and slightly guilty – that her own job couldn’t have been more different. She ran her jewellery-making business from a small cabin at the end of the garden. She and Niall had built it together and while it was modest, it was exactly right for her. When she wasn’t making up commissions for weddings, she ran workshops there where brides and teenagers going to proms could make tiaras and headdresses, and jewellery.

It had been a big risk to give up her safe but boring job at the bank and finally realise her cherished dream to start her own business, but Molly had been spot on. After so many years of acting as surrogate mother as well as big sister to Molly, Sarah had been ready to take a risk. So what if they hadn’t planned things this way, working for herself would fit in better with starting a family.

She parked on the pavement outside and pushed open the little wicket gate in the hedge. The path was icy and she almost slipped on one of the flagstones, which brought a smile to her face. ‘Don’t go arse over tit tonight; I don’t want to be called out to save my gorgeous girlfriend – I may be a bit busy,’ Niall had joked as he’d kissed her goodbye.

The lamp was on in the sitting room, exactly as she’d left it, knowing she’d be back before Niall. She wondered whether to watch a late-night film on TV and curl up on the sofa to wait for him. She certainly didn’t feel sleepy, not after a night on Coke and mineral water, and Niall would be home in a few hours.

She felt a twinge of guilt as she pushed her key in the front door, picturing Molly in bed alone, then told herself that with any luck Mol would be out cold after all the wine. Sarah would call her in the morning and maybe pop round later for a New Year’s Day coffee, with Niall. They could celebrate their news together properly. Molly was going to be an auntie. Comforted by this thought, Sarah pushed open the door and stepped into the hall.

Light spilled down the stairs from the landing. Sarah stopped and the hairs on her arms stood on end. She was sure she hadn’t left the light on. Or had she? She’d gone out in a rush and her mind had hardly been on such things.

She put her bag down on the hall table.

‘Arghhh …’

Sarah froze. Her stomach clenched sharply. The floorboards creaked above her and there was a soft thud and another groan.

‘Oooo … ahhhh …’

There was someone upstairs.

She held her breath. Only in TV thrillers did women walk upstairs to confront a burglar. Sarah was not in a TV thriller; she was much more scared than that. Her hands were clammy as she twisted the Yale knob and backed out of the door.

It was as she ran down the step to the garden that two things happened at once. She realised she’d left her handbag, and therefore her phone inside the hall, and she heard a man say, ‘Oh fuck, it’s Sarah.’

Sarah stood on the flagstones, staring at the open door of the cottage. Surely, she hadn’t heard Niall? He couldn’t be home yet.

And yet, she knew the sound of her own partner’s voice.

She walked slowly back into the hall. From upstairs she heard the sound of thuds and whispers; a giggle then a plea: ‘For God’s sake, Vanessa, she’ll hear you.’

Hardly daring to breathe, she slowly climbed the narrow staircase. There were no more voices but she could hear telltale creaks from the floorboards, the soft click of a door closing, perhaps a desperate “shh”. She reached the turn of the stairs and stepped over a pair of dark blue work trousers, a thick-soled boot and a white shirt. Another shirt and three more safety boots were scattered along the landing like a trail of crumbs leading to the Gingerbread Cottage – or in this case, her and Niall’s bedroom.

Light sneaked out from the foot of the door.

‘Christ, she’s coming upstairs!’

It was unmistakable this time: Niall’s soft Irish brogue, the one she’d fallen for at the club two years before.

Sarah didn’t feel afraid anymore; she felt as if she was sleepwalking around the cottage, in the midst of a bizarre dream. She stood outside the door to her bedroom and lifted the latch on the braced door. It swung inwards with a familiar creak but what she saw in front of her was so unfamiliar, so bloody plain unbelievable that her legs almost gave way.

‘Niall?’

Niall was lying in bed, his wrists tied to the bedposts with two of Sarah’s silk scarves. He was naked except for a tiara.

‘Um, hello, babe.’

She stared at him, trying to compute the scene before her. ‘What are you doing home, Ni?’

‘I thought you were staying at Molly’s tonight,’ he said.

‘No. I’m not.’

‘You said you were.’ He said it accusingly as if Sarah was the one who was naked in bed wearing a tiara.

‘I said I probably wouldn’t.’

‘When?’

‘While you were getting ready to go out. Maybe you didn’t hear me?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

She gawped at his naked body, at his waxed chest and his scar from a run-in with a drunken motorcyclist and his willy, now deflating like a party balloon that had been left behind the sofa.

‘Right. Well, forgive me for asking, but why are you tied to the bed, Niall?’

He peered down at his tackle as if he was surprised to see it at all. ‘I … um … this is not what it looks like, Sarah. I promise you.’

‘What is it, then, Ni?’

‘It’s um … ah, just a game, Sarah. I came home early and I’m … um … so embarrassed.’

‘Tied yourself up, did you, after putting on the tiara?’

‘Well, er …’ His wrists strained against the scarves. She realised that one of them, the silk one with the camellia print, had been her mum’s.

The door to the en suite opened and a tall, spiky woman with inky, poker-straight hair stood in the doorway. She was wearing Sarah’s purple bathrobe and stared at her pityingly. ‘Give it a rest, Niall. I think we’ve been rumbled.’

Niall cut across her. ‘Oh, fuck … Look, Sarah. I can explain. I mean it looks bad. It is bad but I never meant to hurt you.’

The woman swore and folded her arms.

‘That’s my bathrobe,’ Sarah murmured, still half in a trance.

The woman shrugged. ‘It swamps me, anyway,’ she said untying the belt and slipping it off her bony shoulders. She was stark naked underneath apart from two sparkly nipple clamps that tinkled when she moved. Sarah had the bizarre thought that they were actually really pretty and that she should add a new line to her business.

Niall groaned. ‘Jesus, Vanessa!’

‘She may as well know everything – you can’t talk your way out of this one,’ said Vanessa, casually plucking a leopard-print thong from the bedside table. ‘It can’t get any worse for you.’

Niall met Sarah’s eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Oh, it can, believe me.’

Sarah stepped out of her trance. ‘Get out,’ she said, quietly.

‘Don’t you think I’d better get dressed first?’ Vanessa stepped into the leg of her thong, a smirk on her face.

‘No, actually, I don’t. Get out of my house.’

A great wave of rage hung over her head, on the brink of breaking. She took a step towards the other side of the bed, shaking with anger and shock.

Vanessa’s cocky expression changed to dismay. She held up her hands. ‘All right, love. I can see you and Ni need some time to talk. I’ll just get me uniform first.’

Sarah flashed her teeth at Vanessa. ‘Why don’t you let me help you get dressed?’

Vanessa shook her head and struggled to pull up her thong. ‘No, it’s OK …’

Sarah grabbed the nearest thing to hand: a purple glass tea light holder.

‘Christ, no, Sarah!’ Niall screamed a fraction before the tea light sailed through the air. Vanessa shrieked as the tea light hit the wall, bounced off and knocked the bedside lamp onto the floorboards. The lamp flickered and went off.

‘Jesus, Sarah!’

Ignoring his shout, Sarah dashed around the bottom of the bed. Vanessa leapt onto the duvet.

‘Arghhh!’ Niall screamed as she kneeled on his genitals in her haste to get away from Sarah. She scrambled off the bed with the nipple clamps tinkling madly.

‘Go on, get out of my house!’ Sarah shouted as Vanessa fled out of the door.

‘You’re mad!’ she screeched, scuttling onto the landing like a giant hairless spider.

Sarah followed her onto the landing, picking up the uniform shirt and trousers. She threw them down the stairs on top of Vanessa.

Vanessa clutched her clothes to her body. ‘I can’t go out like this. I need me boots!’

‘Oh, I am soooo sorry, how rude of me. Here you are.’ One after the other, Sarah hurled the boots down the stairs. They thumped against the wall and Vanessa swore as one whizzed past her head and knocked a picture of Niall on his Triumph clean off the wall. Clouds of plaster dust flew into the air.

‘Your girlfriend is fucking mental!’ Vanessa attempted to step into the boots but toppled against the wall.

‘Yeah, I am. Hasn’t Niall told you? I must be to have trusted him!’ Sarah stood at the top of the stairs, not trusting herself to run down them in her condition.

Vanessa’s hair and face were coated in dust. ‘Keep away from me!’ she screeched, hobbling through the front door.

As Vanessa fled, Sarah made her way downstairs, still trembling with shock.

Wearing one boot, with her clothes clutched to her boobs, Vanessa tinkled off down the icy path.

Sarah’s shout echoed into the night after her. ‘And don’t come back!’

Wailing like a banshee, Vanessa scuttled up the pavement, still trying to put her clothes on. A light flicked on in the bedroom of their elderly neighbour who occupied the cottage next door. Sarah didn’t care who heard the row. She slammed the door shut behind her and leaned against it, tears running down her face. She sank down with her back to the door when a bellow cut through her sobs.

‘Sarah! Sarah? What’s happened? Will someone untie me and take this feckin’ tiara off?’