Читать книгу The Story of You - Katy Regan - Страница 12

‘Only plus of being a vicar’s son,’ Joe used to say, ‘is that you get a big house’; and it was big compared to the houses most kids who went to our school lived in, but not, I noticed, anywhere near as big as I remembered it from the last time I was in it, years ago. Still, I’d always loved Joe’s house, maybe because it was what ours might have been if Mum and Dad had spent less on socializing and throwing parties, and more on doing the house up (but then, ‘You can’t take it with you when you go,’ Mum used to say. Obviously, she didn’t expect to go quite so soon).

Our house was big too: ‘The big pink house in Kilterdale.’ But it was a wreck. Mum and Dad had bought it when I was six, for a pittance, with some big plans (Dad in particular was good at those) to do it up and turn it into a ‘palace fit for a King!’ It was always the party house – there was nothing to spoil, after all, since nothing had been done – and every summer, we’d hold the King Family Extravaganza, where Mum and Dad would dress up as some famous couple – Sonny and Cher, Marge and Homer, Torvill and Dean – and Dad would serve hot dogs and beer from his old ice-cream van. The big renovation plans began, finally, when I was eleven, but then Dad’s work dried up and they’d always spent so much on socializing, on living for the now instead of thinking about the future (good job, as it turns out) that they couldn’t finish. One year, we had to move into a caravan in the driveway, because we couldn’t afford to finish off the plumbing. Leah (who was fourteen at the time and very unamused by the whole situation) would shout at the top of her voice things like: ‘If I have to shove anyone else’s shit down this septic tank, I am going to throw it at them!’ I dread to think what people on that street thought of us.

It was a shock to the system then, dragged up amidst such chaos (and a lot of fun), to meet Joe, whose house was a vision of sombre, deep contemplation – at least, that was what I imagined. The first time I went there, his dad was wearing his dog collar. We all had tea and biscuits in the living room, making polite smalltalk to the background sound of the grandfather clock ticking away. I bit into a ginger nut and Joe looked at me like I’d just flashed my bra:

‘Oh, no’ he said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘You didn’t say Grace, and we always says Grace before we eat anything.’

I felt sick. They let me suffer for a good ten seconds before they all started killing themselves laughing. So that was the kind of ‘good’ church family they were. That was the kind of home the Sawyers had.

The vicarage was an Edwardian villa-type affair, with huge front windows and a big conservatory off the back. The front doors were open when I got there after the funeral, so you could see right through the sun-flooded hall of the house to the lawn, where people were milling in the sun, drinking cups of tea. The scene was very tame – mind you, I’m not sure what I expected: a free bar, like at Mum’s (recipe for disaster in retrospect)? Most people were over fifty and very sedate. I was a bit disappointed the probation lot hadn’t turned up; they’d have livened things up a bit.

I did a quick scan for alcohol and could see none, which panicked me. Then I spotted Mrs Murphy, our old deputy head, and panicked even more – this was exactly why I’d worried about coming: blasts-from-the-past absolutely everywhere. I looked around for Joe, but couldn’t see him, and so I took myself off to the buffet table, before finding a quiet corner, where I was immediately joined by a woman who’d just got back from a Christian Aid mission in Somalia. I’d just put an entire mini pork pie into my mouth when she started telling me about all the horrors there, so all I could do was nod. She left soon after and so I went for a wander, to find Joe, and hopefully some alcohol. I ventured into the cool, dark hall, where one woman – angular and the colour of digestive biscuits – was talking at the top of her voice to an audience, who looked as if they’d not so much gathered, as been passing through and seized against their will.

‘I’ll never forget when Marion came to my Zumba class,’ she was saying. ‘It was last summer. Or was it the summer before? Or was it the one before then?’

Why was it always the one who knew the deceased the least, who talked the loudest at funerals?

I went on to the kitchen, where people were poring over clip-frame pictures of Marion, which I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at. Old Potty was there with his Mexican-wave eyebrows. I was contemplating slipping out, texting Joe later, then I saw Mrs Murphy looking dangerously like she was making a beeline for me, and decided on a tactical toilet break. I sloped upstairs.

The house had hardly changed in eighteen years. It had the same smell: furniture, polish and books. The wide, dark staircase seemed modest enough now, whereas it used to seem so grand to me, so full of mystique, probably because it led to Joe’s bedroom, which was the only place we could be alone, doing whatever we did in there – learning Zeppelin lyrics off by heart, discussing Potty’s eyebrows … Joe’s mum occasionally walking past with the Hoover.

‘Joseph, leave your door open, please, otherwise Robyn will have to go home!’

Behind that door, we’d be sitting, holding our breath, often in various stages of undress. It seemed like an age ago, another life ago. Like it didn’t even happen.

There was the same mahogany side table at the top of the stairs, with the photos on top. I paused to look at the one of all four boys, an eight-year-old Joe on the end, pulling a stupid face, desperate to dash off as soon as the picture was taken.

I gave myself a quick once-over in the long mirror just before you get to Joe’s room.

I was wearing a black Monsoon shift dress. Last time I looked in this mirror, the girl staring back at me was terrified, with peroxide hair: white face, white hair. I just remember that.

The door to Joe’s bedroom was half open, just a slice of the view of the rolling sheep-dotted fields, then the flat grey line of the sea. I couldn’t resist it. I went inside. It smelt different, of a guest room, but it was still completely Joe’s room. There was still the poster of Led Zeppelin’s album Physical Graffiti (Joe and I were alone and, it has to be said, slightly ridiculed in our appreciation of Led Zeppelin, which as teenagers was enough to make us believe we were destined for one another) and, above his bed, Béatrice Dalle in Betty Blue pouted back at me. Clearly, Joe’s older brothers had introduced him to Betty Blue and the wondrous sexiness that was Béatrice Dalle, since we were only little when the film came out, but I’d often looked at her in that poster; the tough, gap-toothed poutiness and the cleavage, and I’d wanted to be Béatrice Dalle at sixteen. I wanted to be French and insouciant and wild and sexy. I was kind of annoyed with this gawky, traumatised teenager, who just desperately missed her mum. I wandered around for a bit, examining Joe’s odd collection of boy trinkets: rocks and fossils, and then – I couldn’t believe he’d kept it this long! – the ‘ironic’ pen in the shape of a lady; when you tipped her up, her knickers came off. I’d brought it back from Palma Menorca for a laugh, in 1997. That year – the summer we got together – Joe went to Amsterdam and bought me a wooden clog specially engraved with my name. The fact he’d queued up to get that done (because ‘Robyn’ was never on any merchandise in the land) thrilled me. ‘He must really like me,’ I’d thought, ‘If he’s willing to queue in front of his mum and dad, to get a wooden clog signed.’

‘He’s got tenacity, that one,’ I remember Dad saying. A few months later, Joe wasn’t allowed to set foot in our house. But I still have that clog, and sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I just like to turn it over in my hand; feel its wooden, smooth simplicity.

I stood in front of his bed – it was the same metal, tubular bed in 1980s grey that he’d had back then – and remembered how I’d had some of my most uncomfortable nights in it. It was like sleeping on a climbing frame, and yet, in the times we’d snatched together, it was also where I was happiest; where, for a while, I could forget about Mum, curling around Joe’s warm, strong body. We’d lie there in the dark, thrilled just to be naked together.

Joe was obviously sleeping in this room because there was a wash bag on the bed. I stood looking at it, feeling a wave of sadness. Imagine coming home, to sleep in your childhood bed, knowing your mother is to be buried the next day. Just then, the door flew open, making me jump. It was Joe. He slammed it shut, his back towards me, swearing, leaning his forehead against it for a moment, before fiddling in his inside jacket pocket and producing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He unscrewed the top, muttered something about Sorry Mum and have to do this, and then tipped his head back and took a swig. Then he saw me.

‘Bloody hell, you nearly gave me a heart attack!’ he said.

Then, when he’d realized what he’d said, ‘That’s going to keep on happening, isn’t it?’

I smiled. ‘Probably.’

‘Do you want some?’ he said, holding the bottle out. ‘Can I just say, it was a huge oversight by me not to have organised booze at this wake.’

‘Yup,’ I said, taking a gulp. ‘Still, I don’t need booze to relax.’

‘Really?’ he said. ‘’Coz I do.’

I handed him the bottle back. ‘Jack Daniel’s? Going for the hard liquor, then?’

‘I can’t take any risks,’ he said. ‘It needs to reach my bloodstream instantly. I just can’t talk to people any longer.’

There was a long silence, during which we just sort of looked at each other.

‘So, er … the bathroom’s two doors down,’ he said, thumbing in that general direction when I just stood there, still clutching Miss Knickerless. ‘Same place it’s always been.’

I felt my cheeks grow hot.

‘God, sorry. I couldn’t resist, I just had this mad desire to—’

‘Snoop around my bedroom?’

‘Oh, shit, I’m sorry.’

‘I’m joking, Robyn.’ His eyebrows gave a little flicker of amusement. ‘It’s actually really sweet.’

He looked pale as anything, washed out. I’d forgotten about that bit, the tiredness, and he pushed the stuff to the side, collapsing on the bed.

‘I should go,’ I said. He’d come up here to be alone, lose himself, and here I was, making that impossible, but he said, ‘Don’t go. Why do you keep on wanting to go?’

He looked genuinely annoyed – Joe and his transparency.

‘I don’t know, because you want to be on your own?’

He tutted, dramatically. ‘I don’t want to be on my own. I just can’t take much more of people, of Betty. We’re only on 1978. There’s thirty-odd years to get through yet.’

I laughed, despite myself.

‘I needed someone to save me. Where were you, Robbie?’ he said, turning on his side.

‘Snooping round your bedroom?’

I sat down on the bed next to him. Up close, it was like he’d changed even less, and I had this urge to give him a hug, but wondered whether that was appropriate, him lying on a bed and all, so I said, ‘It’ll be over soon. They’ll all bugger off home and then you can go to sleep or watch a film. That’s what I did.’

‘Really, what did you watch?’

‘The Evil Dead.’

‘You are joking?’

‘I’m not, as it happens. It’s my job, you see. You start off quite PC and normal and, before you know it, you can’t operate in normal society.’

Joe thought this was really funny. ‘So, basically, you’ve become like, the world’s most un-PC mental-health nurse? Telling schizophrenics to get real?’

‘Something like that, yes.’

We were both giggling now – funeral hysteria.

‘So, anyway, let’s get back to this Evil Dead thing,’ he said. ‘Talk me through that.’

‘Well, I found that the key is distraction, not stimulation,’ I tried to explain. ‘No tear-jerkers, which rules out a lot more than you may think, for obvious reasons. No documentaries or kids films ’cause they just remind you of too much. So, yeah, slasher-horror really is your best bet. The Evil Dead is the ultimate wake-movie.’

Joe tried to be serious for a second, then smiled. ‘You always did have all the best advice,’ he said.

He turned on his back, closed his eyes and let out this huge sigh. I was looking at the shape of his lips, the Cupid’s bow, the wideness of them, the way they always looked like he was about to say something amusing, trying to remember what it felt like to kiss him. Then remembering that I shouldn’t even be here.

‘You bought me that pen,’ he said suddenly. I’d forgotten I was still holding it.

‘Funny, wasn’t I?’ I said. ‘Such a sophisticated, witty sixteen-year-old.’

‘You were,’ he said, taking it and tipping it upside down.

‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘I thought you were – cute, complicated …’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Oh, weren’t we all?’

‘I’m not surprised that you work for the Mental Health Service – the sidelined in our society … You always liked the underdog.’

‘Me and you, too, then, hey?’

When I’d last seen Joe, three years ago, he’d been living with his girlfriend in Preston but seemed a bit lost, career-wise, working in a sports shop. In our brief email exchange during the last few days, he’d told me he was now teaching English to NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) – kids who’d spent most of their lives skiving off school or inside, basically, and wanted to turn their lives around. He absolutely loved it, he said. The perfect job, if you took away the mounds of paperwork, which was exactly how I felt about my work.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised, either, Joe. All that energy had to go somewhere.’

‘We were a pair of little revolutionaries.’ He grinned.

‘Were we? I can’t remember. I just remember you used to say to me –’ I assumed the younger voice of Joe’s radical years – ‘it’s evolution, Robbie, not revolution.’

‘Did I? God, what a dick. I was so intense!’

‘Oh, Joe, you’re still intense.’

‘How would you know?’ He said, tapping my thigh, as if chastising me for not getting in touch. I ignored it.

‘Actually, you saying that really helped when things were grim,’ I said, seriously. ‘I sometimes say it to my clients.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, just to remind them that recovery … it takes time. Step by step. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that.’

He smiled. He knew what I was getting at.

The room was growing dim, it was getting late, and I was here, having a heart-to-heart, the very thing I’d promised myself not to do. I stood up.

‘Look, I really should be going now,’ I said. ‘I’ll just go downstairs and say, “Hi” to your dad, okay?’

But Joe suddenly got up from the bed and went rooting in a drawer for something.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Trying to make you stay.’

‘Joseph Sawyer,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t supposed to come in the first place!’

He turned around. He looked hurt.

‘But why?’

Why did he not get it?

‘Because,’ I sighed, exasperated. ‘Because … oh, God, it doesn’t matter.’ I’m really glad I did come.

He had something in his hand. He put it behind him and, walking backwards, picked up the bottle of JD off the table with his free hand and handed it to me. He always did have this way of making you do things. ‘Come on, drink up,’ he said. ‘This is going to take you right back.’

That’s what I’m worried about.

But then, there was a sound like someone loading a gun, a click, the whirr of a tape being rewound and then, the bluesy, achey riffs of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ – we used to listen to this track, this album, all the time – and when I saw Joe’s face, the look in his eyes (well on his way to drunk, mainly), I understood that – even if I didn’t want to – Joe needed to. He needed to be anywhere but here.

We swayed – it’s one of those songs that make it impossible not to – but rather awkwardly, like the first self-conscious dancers on the floor at a wedding reception, and I suddenly felt old. It didn’t feel like it used to feel, and when we smiled at one another, it was because we both knew this. I took off my shoes and we danced, passing the bottle between us. It felt like undressing, like a layer of tension was being peeled back. Joe held both arms out, his eyes shimmering with tears.

‘Come here,’ he said. ‘Please? I need a hug.’

I wrapped both arms around his neck then; his suit jacket felt stiff and restrictive and so I took it off for him. We leaned our heads on each other’s shoulders and, as we danced, I could feel his whole body shudder. And I just held him like that, and let him cry as I stroked his hair. The song finished, I was still holding him. He looked up at me.

‘Do you want to go for a walk?’ He said. ‘I can’t stay here.’

We didn’t talk about where to go, we just went; it was like our feet remembered the old route and took us there: down the long, sloping lawn, through the front gate and out onto the path. I didn’t know what time it was, but everything was awash with a lilac hue and the tide was out, leaving sweeping, silver channels like liquid mercury. The air smelt like the inside of mussel shells. Were we drunk? I should hope so, the amount of Jack Daniel’s we’d put away. We were holding hands – it just felt like the right thing to do. We turned left at the gate and out of the cul-de-sac that wraps itself around the bottom of the vicarage. The houses get lower, the closer you get to the sea around here, so you have the big old houses like Joe’s and our old pink one, up on the hills, with a bottom tier of white bungalows petering out to the sea. And this is where we were now, walking – not entirely in a straight line – hand in hand, among the white underskirt of Kilterdale, with the lilac sky and the black shadows and the low houses with their big, glowing fly’s-eye windows; and I didn’t know whether it was because the houses were so low that the sky seemed so big, but it did; so big and empty, like everyone had deserted.

We passed Joe’s hip flask between us. We’d filled it with the remainder of the Jack Daniel’s and then sneaked into the kitchen and put some Coke in there, too, because we didn’t want complete amnesia, just a blurring of the edges, and I could tell the edges were already blurred because we were getting onto fundamentals.

‘So … relationships,’ said Joe. ‘You got some nice guy to look after you?’

‘We just ended, actually.’

‘Oh, shit. Sorry. Why?’ There was a pause, where I knew what Joe was going to say next. Such a mix of self-absorption and selflessness, I haven’t seen in anyone since. ‘Was he just not as good as me?’

‘No, he was just still married to another woman …’

‘Robyn King,’ he said, ‘a marriage-wrecker?’

‘Oh, no, he was separated. He had been for a long time. He was just eking out the longest, most painful divorce in the history of divorces, and I was his therapist. It was never going to work.’

‘There you go, you see – I said you always liked the underdog.’

‘I forgot how the only time you’re sarcastic is when you’re drunk.’

‘It is my mother’s funeral.’

‘Like that’s an excuse.’

We got to the stile that takes you over the fields to the other end of the village.

‘So, what about you?’ I asked. We were trapped in the stile, so were facing each other, our faces inches apart. ‘You were with a girl called Kate, last time I saw you. What happened? Not as good as me?’ I said grinning.

He’d been drinking from the flask again and he laughed, coughed.

Stop flirting, shut up.

‘Nice girl,’ he said, ‘but she had thick ankles and I just couldn’t get over it.

‘See, I told you she wasn’t as good as me,’ I said, flashing my dainty ankles (my body improves as it peters to the ends) and resolving, really, to stop the flirting. I was getting carried away.

We stayed sitting on the stile for a bit, passing the flask to and fro. Beyond the fields, were the cliffs, and beyond the cliffs, you could hear the sea.

‘You could be seventeen in this light,’ said Joe. He had his hand over mine, and all I could feel was that hand, as though that warm area of skin was all that existed.

‘Don’t say that,’ I said.

‘Kiss me,’ he said suddenly, and I laughed.

‘Joe, I can’t kiss you!’

‘Who cares? Why not?’

‘That’s why.’ Because you don’t care, I thought, because why would you? On a day like today? Whereas for me, I was thinking to myself as I looked at the lovely shape of his mouth, it’s not that simple, Robyn, and you know it.

He groaned. ‘Come on,’ he said, and we carried on walking over the fields. A pale disc moon was now intensifying in the sky. The poor old trees, after centuries of being blown mercilessly by North Sea gales, now leaned permanently over.

I leaned over, too.

‘What are you doing?’ said Joe.

‘Checking they’re really like that, or if I’m actually that drunk.’

‘You’re actually that drunk. Now give me some of that,’ and he took the flask from me. It was much colder now and we held onto one another, for warmth as much as anything else, dodging the turf-covered rocks and the sheep shit. Now and again, one of us would trip spectacularly, the other hoisting them up, and then we’d carry on, oblivious, conversation rolling like the fields themselves.

‘You heard me talking to my mum,’ said Joe. ‘That’s a bit embarrassing.’

‘Joe, I used to go into my mum’s wardrobe, put on her clothes, then prance around the house, pretending to be her. How’s that for embarrassing?’

‘And did it help?’

I loved that Joe didn’t bat an eyelid. Andy would have given me that look, the one that said, ‘Robyn, I really like you, but sometimes you scare me.’

‘At the time, yes, and if chucking things at the wall helps you, or getting paralytic, or dressing up in your mum’s clothes, then you should do that, too.’

‘Excellent. I’ll think of you when I’m wearing one of my mum’s skirts and maybe a nice blouse.’ He was holding out his hand for me to take it. ‘Shall we go through the farm, like old times?’

The cold air and the walk had made the booze go more to my head now, and I didn’t really care where we went or what we did. I just knew I didn’t want to go home yet.

We trudged up the lane. The farmhouse had most of its lights on and there were sheets hanging on the washing line, billowing against the sky, like a child’s idea of a ghost. Chickens were roaming around outside, doing their odd little jerking movements, like clockwork toys, and to our left, behind the milking shed, was the barn, the one that all the kids used to play in, much to the annoyance of Mr Fry, who’d come and shine his great big torch in your eyes and swear his head off.

‘Come on,’ said Joe, pulling me towards it. ‘It’s bloody freezing, let’s go inside.’

‘We’ll get done,’ I said.

Joe grabbed hold of my face; he was laughing. He put his forehead so it was touching mine.

‘Done? You’re so sweet,’ he said. Then he kissed me once, hard on the lips, and I startled – Joe’s face, that mouth, suddenly right there, like the last sixteen years hadn’t happened at all. I lifted my face instinctively for more, but he was pulling me by the hand. ‘We’re not sixteen any more, you know,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, what happened to the naughty Robyn King I know and love?’

‘She grew up,’ I said, not knowing if he heard me. He took me inside anyway. The bales were piled right up to the ceiling, then graduated like steps to a cluster on the floor. There was an old wardrobe, timber stacked up on one side of it; to the right, there was a tractor – or the skeleton of a tractor – about to be mended or tended to, with all its doors and metalwork removed. It was huge and looming and really quite sinister. It reminded me of a prehistoric creature, about to stir and let out a deafening roar.

We leaned back on the bottom rung of hay, and finished what was in the flask. I wasn’t wearing tights, and my legs were goose-pimpled. Joe took off his suit jacket and lay it over them. We lay back like that for a while, next to one another, just looking up at the stars that throbbed in the gaps of the corrugated-iron roof.

Then Joe said, ‘I found her, you know.’

I turned my head to him. ‘Your mum?’

‘Yes. She’d stayed up after Dad went to bed. I got up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and the light was still on in the front room. She was sitting in the chair, but sort of half sitting on it, half slumped over, and I thought, that’s a funny position for anyone to go to sleep in – with her body all twisted, half her bum on the seat. And then I moved her hair from her face. God, it was horrible, Robbie. Her skin was grey, it looked like putty, and it had, like, slid off her face. And she was just absent, gone. All that was left was this shell …’

I took Joe’s hand and stroked it with my thumb.

‘I’m so scared I’ll never be able to get that picture out of my mind,’ he said.

I leaned over and I hugged him then. ‘You will,’ I said. ‘It takes time, but you will.’

‘Promise?’

‘It’s evolution, not revolution, remember?’

He nudged me and gave a little laugh.

‘It is,’ I said.

We stayed like that, lying down, our arms wrapped around each other, my cheek against his. I inhaled his smell. I already knew.

What did it matter? Who did care, anyway? Wasn’t this what it was about, life? Seizing the day, just being; not thinking so much all the time? It was funny, I thought, how sometimes there was nothing like death to make you feel so alive.

He pulled away from me and we hesitated, then I lifted my hands to his face. He lifted his eyes to mine. I couldn’t stop staring at that face, seeing how his eyes, or rather the person inside those eyes – his gaze – was the same. Did he see the same thing in me? Does that ever change?

‘You’re strong,’ I said. ‘Stronger than you know.’

‘Not stronger than you, everything you’ve been through, all of that.’

‘We’ve been through,’ I said. ‘You are strong.’

Silence, except for somewhere in the distance I could hear a chicken squawking. It was incongruous, a rude interruption.

‘What did we do to each other?’ he said, the words toppling out, ‘that means nothing, nobody …’ I kissed him then and the curve of his lips, the way it moved with mine, the little dance we did, it was so familiar, it shocked me; and when I looked at his face, his lovely face, I recognized it so much, it was like looking at myself. We lay back on the straw: it scratched and prickled the backs of my thighs and my arms like anything, but I couldn’t have cared less, I didn’t care about anything, I wasn’t thinking anything – that was the beauty of it. And I looked into Joe’s eyes and told myself that he didn’t want to think either – not today. We kissed, but in a frenzy, as if we had no control over our movements because we were in shock, in shock that this was happening at all; at least, that’s what it felt like. Involuntary. A brilliant, beautiful shock. I turned on my back, Joe was next to me and I wriggled my bum, so I could lift my skirt up, and started to take off my knickers.

‘What are you doing?’ whispered Joe.

‘What?’ I said, pausing.

He ran a finger down my arm.

‘I want to savour you more than that yet,’ he said. ‘I’ve got lots more kissing to get through yet. Lift up your bum, come on.’

I shifted so I could do as I was told, and he gently pulled down my dress, then arranged it on my legs and lay down next to me. I looked at him, a bit unsure then, but he moved the hair from my face, gently slipping one hand under my head, so I didn’t have to crane my neck to reach him, and kissed me – sweet, sweet kisses, on my forehead, my eyelids, my mouth. My throat had gone dry and I was trembling. He reached down and, very softly, ran the tip of his finger up my leg, just getting to my knickers, before he sent it in little circle movements across and between my thighs and, then, just as I felt I might explode, back down again. I buried my face in his chest and dug my heels into the straw, so I could bear it, this feeling that was so familiar and yet so wonderful that I doubted I could ever have had it before – like déjà vu.

He looked beautiful in the half-light – his eyes shone. The tractor skeleton loomed over us, the height of two men. But I wasn’t scared one bit; I was safe. I leaned down to undo his flies, but he put his hand over mine, stopping me; he took my hand and kissed it, then lay it across my chest. I gave a low growl of frustration and he smiled. Then he continued stroking the other leg up to my knickers again, this time stroking underneath me, a feathery, gentle touch, barely detectable through the fabric, which was wet. He pushed the material to the side, slid one finger inside me, then another, and I gasped – I couldn’t help it – and when I looked at him, my eyes wide, disbelieving, Joe looked so happy as my whole body bucked, then shuddered. I could bear it no longer. I pulled at his trousers but my hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t do it, so he kicked off his shoes, sat up and wriggled out of them.

‘I haven’t got one,’ he said.

‘It’s okay,’ I said, pulling his shoulders back. ‘It’s okay. It’s fine, honestly.’ I sat up and kissed him on the neck. ‘Just come here, please … For God’s sake.’

‘Robyn …’

‘Come on!’

I took my knickers off and flung them to the side; we were both giggling now and shivering, half with cold, half with desire.

I lay back down and then Joe was inside me, the length of his whole, warm, strong body against mine. I wanted to cry, I was so happy, and I cried out again. When I flung my head to the side, I saw that a chicken had wandered into the barn. I could make out its fat, black body silhouetted; its shadow was long on the straw floor, and in the moonlight its lidless eye was blinking at me.