Three’s a Crowd (22 page)

‘What presents did you ever buy me?' she scoffed.

‘Caramello Koalas,' he said, meeting her eyes directly. They had sunk down further in the lounge now, shoulder to shoulder, their feet side by side on the coffee table. ‘Remember?'

She used to love Caramello Koalas, and Tom did bring her home one pretty much every time he went to the shops. Once he even got her a Caramello Koala showbag from the Easter Show.

Tom was watching her intently, their faces were close.

‘Why do you think I never got serious about any of those girls?'

He was baiting her, the second she said ‘Really?' he would burst out laughing and cry ‘Gotcha!'

‘You broke my heart when you went away,' he said in a low voice.

No, don't be tempted, don't take the bait. Change the subject.

‘Hey,' her eyes lit up. ‘I just remembered something. You are going to love this!' She jumped up and ran into the hall.

‘What is it?' he called after her.

‘You'll see.' She walked back into the room carrying a squat black speaker and a microphone.

‘Is that what I think it is, B1?' said Tom, getting up off the couch.

‘If you're thinking karaoke,' she grinned. ‘I almost forgot I had it, I haven't used it in years.'

‘This is brilliant.'

‘And you don't know the best part,' she said. ‘Here.'

She dumped it into his arms and he set it down on the coffee table, while she crouched in front of her CD stack. ‘Here it is.' She twisted around, holding up a CD. ‘
The Best of Queen – Karaoke Edition
.'

‘You're kidding me,' he said, taking it from her to read the back. ‘This is too good.'

The playlist read like a soundtrack to the evening so far. ‘Under Pressure', ‘Somebody to Love', ‘Another One Bites the Dust', ‘We Are the Champions', ‘You're My Best Friend'. Rachel couldn't remember exactly how to set the machine up, but between the two of them they worked it out eventually.

They sang and danced and mugged their way shamelessly through the entire repertoire, chugging straight from a bottle of wine that they swapped for turns on the microphone. By the time they got to the finale – ‘Bohemian Rhapsody', what else? – they were leaping around the room, standing on the couch, jumping over the coffee table, and doing a very good job of behaving totally inappropriately. After the classic head-banging segment, and the final crescendo, they collapsed onto the floor, singing the last couple of lines into the microphone together, the poignant denouement, lying on their backs, gazing into each other's eyes. The music came to an end, the only noise in the room was the sound of their breathing. Tom was still staring at her. Rachel smiled, her heart pounding in her chest. And then he was drawing closer, and he lifted his head, and he brought his lips down onto hers, and his tongue was in her mouth, and they were kissing! Rachel was in shock for a moment, but then something happened, she started to kiss him back, eagerly in fact. And that was the pattern from then on: brief moments of awareness, of thinking, What the hell? This is
Tom
! were obliterated as they kissed and caressed and frantically tugged at one another's clothes, their bodies grinding up against each other, till Rachel heard herself cry out.

She woke with a start. What a
dream
. Where the hell did that come from? As she caught her breath she gradually became aware of a sharp blade of pain slicing through the centre of her forehead – the result of too much alcohol and not enough sleep. She closed her eyes. If she could just get back to sleep she'd be okay. She wouldn't have to live through the next few hours, and she'd wake up feeling a whole lot better. Not great perhaps, but vastly improved. But something wasn't quite right. She was naked under this sheet. Rachel didn't normally sleep naked, even if she only wore a singlet and undies. She couldn't remember getting into bed last night; in fact, the last thing she could remember was karaoke; after that it was a blur, further muddied by that disconcerting dream which had woken her just moments ago, and which she certainly did not intend to revisit. Did Tom actually leave? She couldn't remember seeing him out. Maybe he'd crashed out on the couch? It was all very foggy, but it didn't matter right now. All that mattered was getting a few more hours' sleep. Breathe deep and steady . . . lose yourself to it. Her head was feeling heavy, this just might work. But not lying on her back. She had to assume the position. She rolled onto her side, stretching her top leg over . . .

And then she screamed, leaping from the bed and dragging the sheet with her in one frantic move.

‘Tom! What are you doing here?'

‘Rach, inside voice,' he rasped. ‘Please.'

‘What are you doing in my bed?' She held up her hand to block his naked body from her line of sight. ‘With nothing on!'

He squinted, glancing around. ‘You've got the sheet.'

‘Well do something! Cover yourself!'

‘You've got the sheet, Rachel,' he repeated.

And she was certainly not giving it up. She glanced around the floor and stooped to grab her bathrobe, tossing it at him. He gathered it around himself.

‘What's going on, what are you doing here . . . still?' she asked weakly, knowing what the answer had to be but dreading him saying it out loud nonetheless.

He didn't need to say it, the expression on his face was enough.

‘Oh God.'

‘It's okay, Rach,' he said, propping himself up on one elbow.

‘No, it's not, this is not okay . . . this is . . .'

‘What?' he said gently. ‘This is me, Rach, and it really is okay. Come over here,' he patted the bed, ‘let's talk about it.'

‘No!' she exclaimed.

‘Why not?'

‘Because . . . because you, you're . . . and I'm . . . and this is not supposed to happen . . .' And then it struck her. She swallowed. ‘Tom, did you use something?'

‘What?'

‘Did you use some protection?'

‘Ah, no,' he frowned. ‘But don't worry, you won't catch anything from me, I haven't been with anyone . . . since . . . you know.'

‘That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not on the pill.'

That woke him up. ‘You're not?'

She shook her head.

‘Why not?'

‘I'm not in a relationship,' she shrilled. ‘I didn't think I needed it.'

He lay back flat on the bed. ‘Shit.'

Rachel insisted she had to deal with this immediately. She had never been much good at keeping track of her cycle, but her period had finished a week or so ago, or thereabouts, so she was somewhere in the middle, and she couldn't take the risk of ignoring this and hoping for the best – there was no crossing this bridge when she came to it. She remembered vaguely that the morning-after pill had to be taken within . . . was it twenty-four or forty-eight hours? Damn, she couldn't think straight. And she couldn't put it off. She just wanted to get the whole thing over with, with as little fuss as possible.

But that was not going to be so easy. Tom insisted on coming to the clinic with her; in fact, he would not take no for an answer. Rachel knew that if she tried to argue the toss with him they would end up talking about what happened, and she certainly didn't want to go there. So it was easier just to let him come
along. He was dressed and looking a little brighter when she emerged from the shower – he must have washed his face in the kitchen sink. And he'd made coffee.

‘Rach, we have to talk about this,' he said, handing her a cup.

‘No, we don't, we really don't.'

‘Rachel . . .'

‘Just drop it, Tom.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it's embarrassing.'

‘You don't have to be embarrassed with me.'

‘Well, I am. So deal with it.' Rachel closed her hands around the coffee mug, holding it to her lips and taking small sips as her eyes blurred. This was going to ruin everything. She turned away to gaze out the window at the brick wall of the neighbouring building. Now whenever they saw each other it was going to be awkward, they wouldn't be able to look each other in the eye, they wouldn't be able to be friends . . .

‘We'll grab a taxi to my place so we can pick up my car, okay?'

‘No,' she said firmly, turning her head but not looking at him. ‘What if Lexie's around, what if she sees us?' Her voice caught in her throat. ‘This is a fucking nightmare.'

She felt his hands on her shoulders and she jerked away from him, spilling her coffee. ‘Oh fuck,' she sobbed.

He took the cup from her and put it in the sink and grabbed a tea towel to wipe her hands.

‘Don't,' she whimpered.

‘Stop it,' he said gently. ‘Your hands are trembling.' He pressed the tea towel into them and held them firmly between his. ‘Rach, you're my friend. Let me be yours.'

She lifted her eyes then to meet his, and they filled with tears. Tom folded his arms around her and held her close, and Rachel cried into his chest, letting herself pretend for a moment that he was still her friend, that nothing would change.

‘It's going to be okay,' he said after a while. ‘Trust me.'

She took a deep breath and stepped back from him, wiping her eyes.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘we'll get my car, it'll make things easier.'

‘I don't want to risk going near your place, Tom.'

‘Don't worry, you won't have to.'

He instructed the taxi driver to pull up around the corner from his house. ‘Can you wait here for a few minutes, please? My friend will stay in the car.'

‘Sure.'

‘I'll be right back,' he said to Rachel, getting out of the taxi.

He returned not more than five minutes later. She saw his car pull in across the road, and he got out and walked back over to the taxi. He bent to speak to the driver, handing him some cash through the window. ‘Does that cover it?'

‘Yeah, with change.'

‘Keep it.'

He opened the passenger door for Rachel and she stepped out. He went to put his arm around her as they crossed the road but she reared away from him. ‘What are you doing?'

‘Sorry.'

They drove in silence to the clinic, but it wasn't awkward so much as surreal. Rachel felt like she was still dreaming, but now she was only too aware that the images flashing through her mind had never been a dream. She had blocked them at first, startled, thinking they were some sort of latent fantasy, and she really did not want to explore what that was about. But now she wanted to understand what had happened, how it had happened, and so she opened her mind up to remembering. It had started out on the living-room floor, but who had started it? Did she come on to him, or did he come on to her? No, he kissed her first, she remembered now, the shock of it, but it didn't last long. Soon enough she was responding with voracious abandon like some sex-starved adolescent. God, it was excruciating. Rachel knew they were consenting adults and all that, but it felt wrong on so many levels. Annie had died only a few months ago, and Rachel was already hopping into bed with her husband. She wasn't going to judge Tom, he probably needed some sexual release, he was a bloke, after all. But he could get that with someone else, anyone else, not a mutual friend of the family. Rachel should have
shown some restraint. Some respect. She should have been the responsible one. And if only she had been a bit responsible, he wouldn't be escorting her to the sexual-health clinic right now to get a dose of the morning-after pill. The whole thing was just tacky.

‘Are you okay?'

Rachel stirred, looking across at Tom. They were parked in the carpark of the clinic, and he'd turned off the engine.

‘Yeah, sure.' She fumbled for the door and stepped out into the glaring sunshine. She had forgotten her sunglasses.

They had to wait for a long time, forty minutes at least. Rachel felt tired, so tired. She could have curled up to sleep right there on the hard vinyl bench. But surely it couldn't be much longer. She would sit through the indignity of the interrogation by the doctor, get the pills and go home and draw all the curtains and blinds, and then she would sleep until it was over.

Her name was finally called and Tom stood up as she got to her feet.

‘Forget it, Tom, you're not coming in there with me.'

‘But –'

‘No,' Rachel said firmly.

He sighed. ‘Okay. I'll wait here.'

The doctor was kind and sympathetic; Rachel didn't know why she had assumed it would be awful. She told Rachel that next time she didn't need to come to the clinic, the morning-after pill was now available at chemists' over the counter.

‘There's not going to be a next time,' Rachel said flatly.

‘Why do you say that?'

‘It just feels a little . . . sordid or something.'

‘That's an interesting term to choose.'