A smoulder of a look from her and then she was undoing the fastenings on the material between her legs.
What did his face look like at this minute? Yearning?
He thought of that first time he’d met her, when he had
really
been interviewing her – a woman whose bank was bringing jobs to the region. Had he looked like he looked now? Is that what had made her, when all the questions
were over, reach under the table and put her hand high up on his thigh? He remembered the shock of realising that he’d stumbled on a woman who could provide him with something that, up until that minute, he hadn’t been aware he needed. Someone who didn’t want to get to know his family or the intricacies of his job or what had happened to his marriage, but who would love to have sex with him, vigorously, imaginatively, often.
He revelled in the fact that she was a secret and what he was doing seemed daring. That Grietje could never be fully his or even fully known.
‘What would you like, Grietje?’ he asked, trying to hurry her along to the moment when she’d let him touch her.
She thought about that. Licked her lips, he guessed, on purpose. ‘This,’ she said and gave him a little demonstration of what she meant, although you couldn’t call it a dry run. ‘And then again with your mouth.’ She arched her back. ‘Then however you want it, Tom. Rough. Gentle. Play a bit first.’ He followed her gaze to the bedside table.
‘So many choices.’
A soft, low laugh. ‘So, what are you waiting for? A written invitation?’
Standing up, he felt lightheaded because every drop of blood in his body seemed to be in his groin, burning and
bubbling and driving him to stand between her legs and kiss her deeply and roughly on the mouth.
He pushed her back on the desk and she flexed her hips, trying to rub herself against him and then he was moving away a little so he could lower his head.
‘So many choices,’ he repeated, ‘a real smörgåsbord,’ and then he was taking a nipple into his mouth and sucking and tonguing it. Smooth, then tightly budded. He brought up a hand to help him and felt her breathing quicken as he scraped his teeth gently back and forth. Everything about him felt hard and taut now – thigh muscles, stomach, cock, resolve.
‘Not smörgåsbord …
Wrong country, wrong country,’ she said in little gasps. ‘Smörgåsbords are for the Swedish, you stupid Englishman.’ He could hear her need to come in the irritation running under her words, as if by making them harsher she could goad him into getting her there quicker.
‘Wrong country?’ he said. ‘Really?’ and moved his other hand between her legs. He slipped his fingers into the heat and the wet of her and those two sensations together made him close his eyes in an effort to pace himself. Slowly he slid his thumb to the place he wanted.
He stroked, slowly.
‘The wrong country?’ he asked again. ‘And am I in the wrong country now, too?’ A push that sent his fingers deeper into her and caused a sharp pull in of her breath. ‘Strange … feels like the right country to me, Grietje.’
Him in control now, her under him and responding. Wonderful to be able to do this with a woman again.
‘
Niet stoppen
,’ she said, urgently, and she was grabbing hold of his shoulders and pulling herself up so she could grind against his hand … ‘
Niet stoppen, niet stoppen
…’
‘I’m never stopping,’ he assured her, feeling wildly alive.
He didn’t catch her reply, too busy concentrating on his thumb, on her and on that moment when he got to fall apart as well.
CHAPTER 15
Thursday 15 May
1) Four days in a row looking at microfiche leaves you with a pain behind one eye. Perhaps I could borrow Hattie’s eye-patch. But it was the uninterrupted time I needed to reach the finish line. What a lot I learned along the way.
2) 1962 was an interesting year – although studying other people’s wedding photos is not always an uplifting experience.
3) 1963 was another interesting year – and at least now I know how old Mrs Mawson is. And that she is an Aries. This does not surprise me.
4) Charlie Coburg and his wife, Penelope, did not seem like a matching pair. She was carved out of granite while he looked as if someone had squidged him together with their hands.
5) Jamie resembles his maternal grandfather. He definitely
has his mouth and, like him, appears to be the only one in the family who can move the muscles around it to make a smile.
6) Jamie’s brother, Edward, likes to kill things. Things smaller than he is.
7) Tom’s father died when he was very young – Tom and the father.
8) Tom does not look that different now from how he looked at seventeen in his rugby kit. Except he is about twenty years older, twenty pounds heavier and goodness knows how much more pre-occupied.
9) Charlie Coburg went missing from the newspapers during 1989/1990. Perhaps he was hibernating. (This is a joke, although not the funny kind. And a riddle to which I already know the answer.)
10) The library was very quiet. I suspect that the graveyard, when I can face it, will be even quieter.
CHAPTER 16
‘What about a newt, then?’
‘No. They’re wild, they belong outside.’
‘A parrot? All pirates have parrots.’
‘Definitely not a parrot.’ Tom accompanied the reply with a stern look into the rear-view mirror. It was completely wasted on Hattie who was staring out of the window, no doubt imagining striding over a quarter-deck off the coast of Jamaica with a parrot on her shoulder.
‘Python?’ she said.
‘No. I’d find you missing and the python with a Hattie-shaped lump in it.’
‘Terrapins?’
‘Too snappy.’
‘Rats? Baz keeps rats in his shed.’
‘No. Baz
has
rats in his shed – as in, it’s overrun. Come on, Hattie, guinea pigs are my best offer. And not till your birthday. And you have to clean them out and feed them.’
Hattie looked unimpressed. Guinea pigs were nowhere near exotic enough.
‘Tarantula?’ she tried, ending with a melting smile.
‘Not in a million years.’ He slowed the car. ‘I did put your PE kit in the boot, didn’t I?’
She nodded vigorously. Good, no need to execute a U-turn and hare back to the house.
Hattie was now practising her karate moves as much as she could while being strapped in, which seemed to signal the end of this particular episode of
Pets I Want and You Won’t Let Me Have
.
As he parked the car outside school, he was a bit heavy on the brake and a large brown envelope fell from the dashboard into the footwell. It was addressed to his in-laws and contained two sets of photographs – one for Caroline and Geoffrey and one for Steph. There were some of Hattie holding the de-dinosaured bag and wearing the dress (cut down the back and pinned to a vest to make it look as if it fitted and to keep it in place). And some of Hattie in shorts and T-shirt. Tom liked the ones where Hattie was being herself, but he knew Steph would prefer the ones where she was trying to be someone else.
Also winging its way to Steph, via her parents, was a letter asking her, once more, to get divorce proceedings restarted and a briefer note setting out his plans to bring
Hattie to Italy in December. He wasn’t looking forward to the phone call he was going to get when she read either.
When he arrived in the office, Liz had taken to heart his plea not to leap on him as soon as he got in. It gave him the opportunity to turn on his computer and trawl for information on the play he was meant to have seen in Newcastle the evening before. He made some notes from the theatre’s website and scanned their Twitter stream to make sure Benedict Cumberbatch hadn’t made a surprise appearance. With some judicious knitting, no one would be any the wiser that he’d had a really, really obscured view of the performance.
He didn’t allow his mind to roam back over that room or Grietje – he wasn’t that man here, although his muscles kept reminding him something spectacular had happened to them.
Liz, having obviously decided that it was safe to disturb him now, was standing in the doorway holding what he thought of as her little paper hand grenades.
‘You look perky,’ she said, coming in and sitting down. ‘Obviously enjoyed the play.’
He kept his eyes on the computer screen. ‘Yes. Very interesting. Very … challenging.’
Liz made a noise that could have meant anything and he stopped looking at the screen.
There seemed to be something sluggish about her this morning. Even her curls looked less bouncy.
‘Rough night?’ he asked, and she screwed up her face.
‘Waited up for No. 1 to come in.’
Tom wondered how someone with as keen a sense of humour as Liz could refer to her daughters as No. 1 and No. 2. Still, that was less wince-making than how she referred to her ex-husband.
She might have said more if Victoria had not appeared. She leaned against the door frame, all bright-eyed and wide-smiled.
‘Got some lovely pieces from that new jeweller who’s going to move in next to the post office.’ She must have seen his expression, because she added, quickly, ‘It’s OK, she does a range of prices.’
‘Great. Good work.’
Victoria pushed herself off from the door frame, did an elegant turn and was gone.
Liz was able to convey the words ‘brown-noser’ in a variety of facial expressions. Today she chose to let her mouth drop open and cross her eyes.
Tom looked past her out into the office where he could see Monty. He actually appeared to be typing.
‘See Monty’s out-of-body experience is continuing,’ he said.
Liz turned to look. ‘He’s finished one of his pages. It’s on my desk now.’
‘That’s very worrying.’
Liz faced him again. ‘Yup, and you know what else is worrying …?’ One of the pieces of paper was handed to him. It was headed up
Thailand for all budgets
and he guessed it was something Jamie had written.
‘Hard to believe English is his first language, isn’t it?’ Liz said as Tom scanned through it. He could only agree.
‘You got time to help him?’
Liz’s look suggested she didn’t. ‘I’ve given him some old copies of the mag and told him to read, learn and rewrite.’
Tom put that problem to the back of the queue and turned to the more pressing one. ‘Any breakthrough on the illustrator?’
‘Felix is interviewing the last one now. Said could you pop up and discuss options. Half an hour or so?’ She stood up and put her hand over a yawn. ‘Other than that, things are peachy.’
‘Peachy and perky, what a great team we make,’ he said brightly, knowing it would get Liz out of the office like a shot. He followed her, noticing how Kelvin was, as usual, in orbit around Victoria’s desk like some priapic moon.
Upstairs, he could tell by the expression on his Creative Director’s face that the interview had not gone well. The
polar opposite to Liz, Felix was unerringly upbeat – from his cheery T-shirt and jeans, to his face like a big-eyed open book with spiky cartoon hair on top. Felix’s section was like a playpen; a couple of young designers, noses to Apple Macs, bright posters on the walls and silly gadgets on the desks.
‘No go then?’ Tom said, perching on the edge of Felix’s desk.
Felix’s earring danced with the ferocity of his head shaking. ‘His work was great.’ Tom was shown a photocopy of a drawing of a red squirrel.
‘But?’
‘But you would not believe what he wanted to be paid.’ He named the figure and Felix was right, Tom didn’t believe it.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘To stick his drawing of a squirrel where it’ll always be near some nuts.’
‘Good man. So … our options are …?’
Felix held up his index finger and thumb in a big ‘O’ shape and Tom went to the window and looked out into the square as he tried to think of a way through this problem. He watched the woman from the art shop cross to the post office and he was still standing at the window when she came back out. Something prodded at his sub-conscious.
He turned back to Felix. ‘Borrow your computer a minute?’
He typed a name into the search engine. A quick double-click and he was looking at a website.
‘Now that,’ Felix said, peering over Tom’s shoulder, ‘that’s more like it.’
CHAPTER 17
As Tom turned down the track, he saw the white four-wheel drive squatting there like a puffed-up Imperial Stormtrooper. It had Greg Vasey written all over it, literally.
Greg Vasey Estate Agent
.
Greg Vasey was nowhere near his favourite person and Tom hadn’t yet managed a conversation with Fran that ended well. Put the two together and he saw only irritation ahead.
And what if they were
together
together? Going for a drink with Vasey was one thing, inviting him back to where you lived was something else. Maybe Fran was the kind of woman who could grit her teeth and shag someone she thought was a creep, just to get a bit off her rent.
And even if she agreed to do a piece for them, could they afford her? She’d worked for some pretty heavyweight magazines and book publishers.
Come on, Tom, where’s your fighting spirit?
He got out of the car and thought about his fighting
spirit. That was actually the problem where Greg Vasey was concerned. He rarely bumped into the guy these days, but if he did, the years since school melted away. Shaggy’s ‘Boombastic’ was in the charts, his mother was being embarrassing about Colin Firth’s white shirt and Tom was dragging Vasey across the Tarmac behind the Science Building by his school tie.
Pathetic. Nearly twenty years had passed. Rob had let it all go; so should Tom.
He could hear the sound of a lawnmower, but there was no one in the front garden and no reply when he knocked, so he went around to the back of the bungalow. Which was where he saw a sweating Greg Vasey pushing an ancient petrol mower, wet patches under his arms and his shirt open to show a damp-looking chest. His hair, which was normally strand perfect, looked as if something large and spitty had licked it to his head. Tom was pleased to see all these things. If Greg could actually run over his own toes with the mower, he’d have been even more pleased.