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Fever

Coreen’s Confessions

No. 10—You might not believe it, but sometimes I take things too far.

THE next twenty minutes were mayhem. Everyone talked over each other, unravelling the remaining tangles in the mystery we’d all been trying to solve. More than once I was clapped on the back and congratulated for working it out, but I hardly registered it.

I’d finally worked it out. But I wasn’t clever. I was very, very stupid. The clues had been laid out for me, and all I’d had to do was take the focus off myself long enough to see them winking at me along the way. I never had. What did that say about me as a person?

I could see with such clarity now why I’d been so territorial about Adam with my friends, why I put up with his endless teasing. Why he felt like a part of me. And it had only taken me the best part of twenty years to work it all out.

Very, very stupid.

Stupid not to have seen it. Stupid to have allowed it to happen in the first place. By not opening my eyes to it, thinking that was the safer option, I’d actually left myself even more vulnerable.

Jos and Louisa were making a fuss of Adam, asking him how he’d managed to fool them all weekend. Even Nicholas gave him a handshake. Then they wanted to know what his motive had been. It turned out my supposed brother—brother? Hah!—had discovered his beloved younger sister was the product of his uncle’s affair with their mother. The late Lord Southerby had been getting sentimental in recent months, had regretted denying paternity and had talked about changing his will. Harry had been scared for Constance, had sought to protect a young woman who selflessly wanted to spend her life helping others from a scandal that would prevent her from doing just that. What missionary society would have sent the illegitimate daughter of a well-known cad overseas as an example of good Christian morals? Harry had acted out of love and rage and retribution.

I woke from my daze briefly. ‘When did you know it was you?’ I asked Adam.

‘I knew right from the start…almost.’ He gave a careless shrug, but his gaze was probing. ‘It was right there in my second envelope—the one we got straight after the murder.’

Marcus gave the pair of us a disdainful look. ‘I don’t know…’ he said, in a slightly petulant tone. ‘I think this young lady might have had a slight advantage over us when it came to solving the case.’

I knew he was thinking about the larder incident, and just letting my consciousness touch the edge of that memory was enough to make me tremble deep down in my core.

But Marcus was wrong. In the situation I found myself in now, I had no kind of advantage. No kind of advantage at all.

I slipped away while the others were still debriefing themselves, using the excuse that I had to go and pack up the clothes that were no longer needed.

Izzi had been generous enough to offer the clothes she’d bought to their owners, and most of the guests had elected to keep their outfits. I collected the evening wear that wasn’t in use and made sure it was hung up or packed properly for their journey home. Once that was done I still had the ‘spares’ to deal with. The extra clothes would return with me to Coreen’s Closet, where they’d go back on the rails.

I was hanging up the wonderful red velvet dress when I heard a soft knock at my bedroom door.

People in love are supposed to thrill at the thought of their sweethearts, aren’t they? So why did the adrenaline surge that hit me incite the fight-or-flight reflex? I looked across to the window. Unless I wanted to shimmy down a two-hundred-year-old drainpipe I only had one choice.

Rather than shouting an invitation to come in, I walked across the room and opened the door a crack, keeping most of myself behind its protective bulk. My eyes widened. It wasn’t Adam standing there, but Nicholas.

‘Can I come in?’ he asked, looking very serious indeed.

I stepped back, way back, and opened the door wide. He walked through and, after a second of hesitation, closed it behind him.

‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.

Nicholas stopped looking grim and his face broke into possibly the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen on a man. The sort of smile that undoubtedly turned the knees of countless society darlings to custard. All the more devastating because it was one hundred percent genuine. My knees, however, remained decidedly un-custard-like.

‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said, and when he spotted my raised eyebrows added, ‘for all you’ve done this weekend.’

I frowned. ‘I didn’t do much, and besides Izzi’s paying me. It’s work, really.’

‘No, not just that,’ he said earnestly. ‘For being so great to Izzi.’ He paused and glanced towards the closed door, and lowered his voice. ‘I know she gives the impression she’s indestructible…’

One side of my mouth lifted. It was obvious, despite her loopiness, that he clearly loved his sister.

‘Izzi has a lot of “friends”—I think parasites might be a more appropriate word—who hang around for what they can get out of her.’ He looked down at his shoes. ‘I’m ashamed to say that when I first met you I thought you were one of those people who’d take advantage of my sister’s gregariousness and generosity. I was wrong.’

Now it was my turn to look at my shoes. I had been guilty of that, or at least it had been that way in the beginning. I looked up again, to find him regarding me carefully.

‘You proved me wrong, went the extra mile.’

I’m not usually in the habit of stopping someone layering on the compliments, but this girl he was talking about? I’m ashamed to say she was nothing like me. I shook my head. I was the girl who thought of herself first and others second.

‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘I don’t think you understand.’

Nicholas was smiling again now. ‘I think I understand well enough.’

I turned back to the bed, where I’d flung the red dress, and picked it up. It was something to do to hide the heat creeping up my cheeks.

‘That’s a beautiful dress,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

I fetched a garment bag and began putting it inside.

‘Perhaps you’d consider wearing it out one evening…if you’d like to have dinner with me, that is?’

I literally had no words. Nicholas Chatterton-Jones was asking me out? Really?

‘Why me?’ I blurted out. ‘I’ve seen the world you live in, the people you mix with. I wouldn’t fit in.’

He considered that for a moment. ‘I know…but perhaps that’s the key. I always seem to go for the same type of girl…’

Didn’t I know it? I listed it out for him. ‘Beautiful, rich, thin—’

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said plainly.

Before, I would have lapped that comment up, demanded more, but I took his compliment with the same simplicity it had been given. ‘Thank you.’

He walked over to the bed, so we were standing either side of it. ‘You shouldn’t put yourself down.’

I laughed out loud as I walked over to the hanging rail and deposited the red dress in its protective cover there. He really didn’t know me at all, did he?

‘Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that!’ I said, still giggling as I walked back to the bed. ‘But if it makes you feel any better I will add one more thing to the list. One thing I’m definitely not.’

He pressed his lips together in an amused grin and raised an eyebrow.

‘Duck-faced,’ I said, and then wondered if I’d taken things too far again.

Nicholas chewed this over. ‘You know,’ he said finally, a look of surprise lifting his features, ‘I hadn’t realised it, but I think you’re right!’

We both laughed then. He really was even more good-looking when he laughed. What a pity that his cheeks were missing a pair of roguish dimples, that his eyes weren’t chestnut brown, and that the sparkle that should’ve been there in them just wasn’t.

‘I’ve decided everything on that list is decidedly dull, anyway,’ he added. ‘I’ve certainly seen the attraction of a woman who has a little more to her.’

If he was talking pounds and inches he’d better duck, because a right hook was coming his way.

Thankfully, he saved himself with his next words. ‘A woman with pizzazz and sparkle.’

Ah, despite the show of loyalty to his sister he was still talking about the minx, and she certainly had all of that. Problem was…I wasn’t sure that girl existed in her pure, undiluted state any more. She seemed to have been watered down with some truly awful qualities—like compassion and bravery and honesty. Really, what was I going to do with her?

‘So how about it?’ Right now Nicholas looked the least stuffy and laced-up I’d ever seen him. He nodded towards the clothing rail. ‘You, me, the red dress and a table for two next Saturday?’

There was an awkward silence, and he must have read the confusion on my face—I’m really going to have to do something about that—because he gave a resigned smile.

‘I’m too late, aren’t I?’

I bit my lip and picked up the next item of clothing, but I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t quite ready to face what I felt for Adam yet, let alone admit it to anyone else. It didn’t matter, however. I think my traitorous face had said it for me. Nicholas cocked his head, the way an old-fashioned gent would have done when he doffed his hat to a lady, and then retraced his steps to the door.

‘Ring me if you ever change your mind…’

I just smiled weakly at him, clutching what I now realised was Adam’s dinner jacket to my chest. He gave me one last smile and closed the door, leaving me marvelling that, despite the horrendous timing, my minx-like attempt at less was the more Nicholas Chatterton-Jones wanted.

Pity the minx had left the building.

You know that elephant that everyone always says is standing in the middle of the room? Well, it hitched a ride home with us on Sunday evening. Adam was all calmness and civility on the outside, but his dimples had ironed out and his driving was even more atrocious than usual. I didn’t say anything. Because of the elephant, of course.

He stopped at Coreen’s Closet and helped me unload everything into the back room, then he drove me to my flat and helped me carry my suitcase up the stairs to my front door.

As he was leaving he said, ‘I’m going to Malaysia on Thursday, to do the finishing touches on the hotel project.’

I blinked and smiled. ‘How long will you be away?’

‘Two weeks.’

I nodded. Not because I was agreeing to anything but because I needed to do something. ‘How nice,’ I added, after I’d bobbed my head far too many times to look sane.

Nellie must have decided to stay in the car, because he gave me a long, searching look and then said, ‘Come with me.’

‘What happened to no pressure? To giving me time to think?’ I snapped.

The sparkle in his eyes was dim now. He looked tired. ‘Maybe some time alone together is just what we both need?’

It all seemed so reasonable. So reasonable, in fact, that it made my skin itch. I gripped the edge of the door. ‘That’s not quite right, though, is it? You don’t need any more time to figure it out.’

He was silent for a few seconds, and then he confirmed all my worst fears. ‘I want you in my future, Coreen.’

A future. Long, endless days stretching into the greyness ahead of us. An infinity in which we would grow old, tire of each other. I didn’t ever want to get tired of Adam, and while we’d been friends I never had.

I arranged my features into a neutral, serene expression. ‘I’ll always be in your future, Adam. No matter what happens between us.’

His jaw jutted forward just a millimetre and he licked his lips. I knew he could read the words ‘brush-off’ in my tone and body language. I was counting on it, in fact. I didn’t want to spell it out in words.

The horrible thing was, I knew he would take it slowly if I asked him to. He would put my wishes—my needs—above his own. Unfortunately, I was scared, and it turned out I just wasn’t that big a person.

‘What are you saying?’ he asked slowly. ‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t see anything changing between us?’

I threw my hands in the air. ‘Yesterday we were just good friends. Now everything’s been turned on its head. I don’t want to be rushed. I have to be free to make my own decisions.’

‘What you mean is that you have to be in control.’

‘No! That’s not true.’

‘Yes, it is.’ He stepped forward into the flat and I spun around and marched into the living room ahead of him. If we were going to have a good old ding-dong we might as well do it in private. My downstairs neighbour thought I was strange enough as it was.

Adam followed me. ‘Yes, control. That’s why you make all those poor saps who follow you around dance on their hind legs. As long as you’re in control, you’re safe. But love isn’t like that, Coreen. Love means giving a piece of yourself away, trusting someone else with it.’

I folded my arms across my chest and hugged my elbows. ‘You’re talking about love, but I think you’re forgetting I haven’t worked out how I feel about you yet.’

‘Haven’t you?’

So we were back to this game, were we? We both knew how we felt about each other, and we both knew that we knew… It wasn’t just tiring any more. It was dangerous.

I had already worked out that Adam wasn’t above playing dirty, and now he blew my carefully constructed denial to smithereens. He was suddenly across the room, his arms around me, his mouth only a whisper away from mine.

‘Tell me to stop if you don’t want this,’ he said softly.

I closed my eyes, trying to think of the words to do just that, but anything as simple as no or stop had exited my vocabulary by the back door, and the only things left were unintelligible sounds and lengthy explanations I sadly didn’t have time for.

I didn’t do anything as his lips began to move on mine. Okay, well maybe I did something. But how is a girl supposed to stop herself from wrapping her arms around a man when he’s kissing her like that? I’d defy any one of you to do better. I had to kiss him back. To do otherwise would have been rude. Maybe I took it too far by running my tongue along the edge of his lip, but I’ve always had a problem with that.

The problem with a kiss like that one was that I wasn’t stage-managing it. Usually I set the pace. I controlled how much and how hot. I played the part of vintage minx to the max, in other words. But with Adam I wasn’t playing anything. I didn’t even have my usual costume of red heels and even redder lips. Adam wasn’t kissing the minx; he was kissing me. I felt the shockwaves right down in my soul. They lapped at the shore of my identity, eroding it, rearranging it, as the surf does the pebbles. And I could sense a tidal wave on the horizon—one that would overwhelm and devastate.

I untangled myself and stumbled back. Adam reached out a hand to steady me, but he didn’t override my decision to stop. Neither of us said anything, but as the seconds dragged on his expression grew both softer and darker. I was transparent again, I could tell.

‘You can trust me,’ he said quietly, emphatically.

Oh, I knew I could trust Adam. Adam was practically manufactured from the stuff. Despite the fact I’d been dazzled by a sexier, more dangerous side to him in the last few days, I knew that if you sliced him open, like sugary seaside rock, he would say ‘loyal and true’ right to the core. It was me I couldn’t trust.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘What you’re afraid of. But love isn’t total surrender. It isn’t one person sacrificing themselves totally for another.’ He glanced at the black-and-white picture of my mum on the mantelpiece. ‘Real love isn’t like that. It’s a two-way street.’

I looked at the photo of Mum. She’d been about twenty when it had been taken and she looked so jaunty and happy, strolling down the road with her cute little mini-dress and her big sunglasses pushed up on her head. Before she’d met my dad. Before he’d sucked the life out of her. I’d bet she thought love was a safe pastime too.

When I turned my attention back to Adam I had a shock. He looked so like the boy who’d used to promise me he’d always look out for me with that grim sense of earnestness that only youth can provide. My lips trembled and my insides churned. I wanted so much to believe him, but there were things he hadn’t thought of…

When you gave that little piece of yourself to someone else for safekeeping, how did you know when to stop? How did you know if you’d given too much of yourself away? Once it was gone, there was no getting it back. And I knew just how destructive that kind of imbalance in a relationship could be. Had seen it first-hand.

I took a step back—mentally, at least—and let out a dry laugh, causing Adam to frown.

This was me we were talking about, wasn’t it? The girl who manipulated people, situations, just about anything, to get what she wanted. The girl who knew everything about taking and nothing about giving. I was just Scrooge in a circle skirt and eyeliner. Surely if anyone was safe from my mother’s fate it was me?

But that left me with another problem.

I walked over to my retro, cherry-red fake leather sofa and sat down with a bump. ‘Why on earth do you want me, anyway, Adam?’ I kicked off my shoes and dug my toes into the shaggy rug. ‘I play games, I’m demanding and selfish…’ For the first time that evening I looked him straight in the eye. ‘The truth is, I don’t know if I’m even capable of the kind of love you’re talking about.’

He came and sat beside me, took my hands in his and made me look at him. ‘It’s the girl who disguises herself in the vintage clothes who does all of those things. The girl who practises her walk. The girl who is never seen without her trademark crimson…’ He dragged the pad of his thumb across my bare lips. ‘But I’m not in love with that girl. You don’t need to be that girl with me.’

A tear slid down my face. And then another, and another. He really meant it. He loved me that much, and I didn’t deserve it. A space inside myself that I hadn’t even realised was achingly empty started to fill up. And with the fullness came more tears.

I don’t know how long I cried, but Adam just held me, whispered soft words into my ear: he believed in me, he knew what I was capable of, and it was much more than I gave myself credit for. Eventually, worn out, I hiccupped to a halt. Still Adam didn’t move. I was so exhausted I started to drift in and out of a leaden sleep. I was only vaguely aware of him moving away and fetching the duvet from my bed, of him draping it over me and kissing me tenderly on the head. I fumbled for his hand and found his trouser leg instead. I didn’t care; I held on with all the strength I had left.

‘Don’t go,’ I mumbled. ‘Stay. I need you.’

There. The first time I’d ever said those words to another human being. I’d never admitted to needing anyone before. Ever. Not even my mother. Especially not my mother.

Adam didn’t hesitate. He just squidged down next to me on the sofa, pulled a corner of the duvet over himself and wrapped me up inside him. I wanted to touch as much of him as possible, to imprint his warmth on as much of my surface area as I could, and as sleep began to fog my mind once again I reached for his fingers and tangled mine with his.

And then I drifted off to sleep. Holding Adam’s hand.

Warmth. Touch. Those were the first blissful sensations I was aware of early the following morning. Adam’s fingers still loosely entwined in mine. His breath, warm and even, at the back of my neck as he lay spooned behind me. I tightened my fingers round his, lifted both our hands towards my face and softly kissed his knuckle.

He must have stayed awake long after I’d succumbed to dreams, because he was sleeping heavily now and I slid out of his hold fairly easily. There was a slight snuffle and a twitch as I stood up, but I tucked the duvet back around his neck and he drifted off again.

I didn’t leave the room straight away, but stayed there, watching him. Why that prickling at the top of my nose was back, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I felt as if I wanted to empty myself of everything I was, everything I ever would be, and pour it into him. The urge was so strong it was a physical sensation, welling up inside me, threatening to burst through the very pores of my skin.

I’d been wrong about not being able to love Adam the way he wanted me to. As I stood, unable to tear my eyes from him in the lemony dawn light, I knew I was my mother’s daughter.

Just before I tiptoed out of the living room, feeling raw and vulnerable, I grabbed Mum’s photo off the mantelpiece and hugged it to my chest. I took it with me and laid it on my bed before heading for the bathroom. After all that luxury I was desperate for the comfort of my own surroundings, my own temperamental shower that I knew just how to get the best out of, my haphazard and kitsch decorating style, with scarves over lampshades and classic movie posters on the wall.

When I came out of the shower, wrapped in a fluffy red towel, I paused and picked up the photo I’d left on the bed. The image of my mother, smiling and carefree, blurred. I hadn’t known her like that. Of course I’d seen her smile and heard her laugh, but I’d been too young to remember much of the time my parents had been together. After my dad had left, even if her face had been making all the right adjustments to portray happiness, it hadn’t rung true. There had always been that moment when she finished laughing, a pause when the sadness would seep back in, a moment when she returned to her default state.

I wish you were here, Mum. I wish you could tell me what to do.

But she wasn’t here. And the desire to have her with me was just yet another fantasy. While she’d been alive she’d only been half present in my life, both physically and emotionally. I kissed the tip of my finger and pressed it onto her smile.

I love you, Mum, but I can’t be like you. Sorry.

I placed the frame on my bedside table and got dressed, choosing my favourite black pencil skirt and a hot-pink wing-collared blouse, finished off with raspberry suede heels with roses on the toes. I twisted my hair into a French pleat, but left my blunt fringe loose, so it hung above my eyebrows like a curtain. The jet-black liner went on with little flicks of my wrists to create wings, and with each sweep of rich and luxurious lipstick across my lips I felt my power returning.

When I’d finished I walked into the hall to check my reflection in the full-length mirror. I looked like me again. But not the frivolous, carefree version of myself I had expected to see. The glimmer of fun in this Coreen’s eyes had hardened into iron.

I picked up my patent black handbag and took one last look around the living room before I left. It was far too early to open up the shop, but I needed a walk, some time to clear my head. Adam was still unconscious, but this time as I looked at him the welling sensation didn’t return.

I blew the sleeping Adam a kiss, ending with a little finger wave, and then walked out of the room and left my flat, my shiny black handbag swinging from my finger in synchronisation with my hips.

I turned the sign on the door of Coreen’s Closet to ‘Closed’ and sighed. I was very tempted to rest my head against the cool glass and let it soothe my aching brow, but Alice was watching me. She’d been watching me all day.

She was standing behind the counter, checking the till. I turned back to face her and gave her a wide Crimson Minx smile.

‘Out with it,’ was all she said.

I rolled my eyes.

Despite the swirling pregnancy hormones, my business partner was still able to pin me down with a look. ‘I mean it. How did the weekend go?’

I blinked innocently. ‘I’ve already told you all about it.’

Alice made a dismissive noise. ‘You told me about the fashion. Now I want you to tell me about the weekend.’

‘Oh,’ I said airily as I walked jauntily back to the cash desk. ‘Nicholas Chatterton-Jones only asked me to dinner, that’s all.’

Instead of squealing and dancing round the shop with me, Alice folded her arms. ‘And…?’

I shrugged. ‘And I’m thinking about it.’

‘Now I know there really is something wrong.’

I sagged against the counter, resting my well-padded behind on its edge, and blew out a long breath. It made me look like a horse, but I was past caring. Alice started packing things into her handbag, but I knew appearances were deceptive. She wasn’t going anywhere until I spilled my guts. Sometimes my willowy red-headed business partner was decidedly unbendable.

I crossed my ankles and fixed my gaze on a sequinned silver jacket that Gladys, our one-eyed shop dummy, was wearing. ‘I think I might be in love.’

‘With Nicholas?’

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

How could I make my feelings concrete with words when I knew I was about to behave despicably? Alice waited in silence, and I was just on the verge of screaming when someone gave the locked shop door a hefty shove.

Adam.

He was peering over the top of the ‘Closed’ sign, the afternoon sun tinting the tips of his messy-but-sexy hair gold. I held my breath to stop myself from running over to the door, yanking it open, flinging my arms around him and burying my fingers in that shaggy mop. I didn’t. My butt was frozen to the counter and I let Alice waddle over to the door and unlock it instead. She had steel in her eyes when she turned back. Steel and knowledge.

Oh, heck. I was rumbled.

‘Well, I’m off, then,’ she said breezily, grabbing her bag and swinging it over her shoulder. She kissed Adam on the cheek as he entered the shop, and then waddled out of the door, pausing briefly to turn back, smile meaningfully at me and let me have her parting shot.

‘Be good.’

I smiled weakly back, not promising anything, because I knew I wasn’t about to be anything but very, very bad.