They sat. He was gazing at her leg. She wondered if he was thinking what she was thinking.
‘Do you know something, Jess?’
‘What?’
‘You’ve stopped fidgeting.’
They looked up at each other and a question passed silently between them. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t. Mr Nicholls had just been a means of moving forward out of an impossible mess. Now all Jess could see were his big dark eyes, the way his hair left his forehead in an impossibly thick, lush line. The hypnotic way his top lip sculpted itself into a tiny cradle.
You need to get back on the horse.
He looked away first.
‘Whoa! Look at the time. It’s late. We should really get some sleep. You said we had to get up early.’ His voice was just a bit too loud. ‘Yup. Nearly eleven already. I think I calculated that we need to leave here by seven to make it there for midday. Does that sound right to you?’
‘Uh … sure.’
She swayed a little when she stood up, and reached for his arm, but he’d already moved away.
They arranged an early breakfast, bade Mrs Deakins a slightly-too-hearty goodnight and made their way slowly up the stairs at the back of the pub. Jess was barely aware of what was said. For she was acutely conscious of him behind her. Of the unsteady way her h*ps moved when she walked. Of her bare shoulders. Is he watching me? Her mind swirled and dipped in unexpected directions. She wondered, briefly, what it would feel like if he were to lean forward and kiss her bare shoulder. She thought she might have made a small, involuntary sound at the thought of it.
They stopped on the landing, and she turned to face him. It felt as if, three days in, she’d only just seen him.
‘Goodnight, then, Jessica Rae Thomas. With an a and an e.’
Her hand came to rest on the door handle. She gazed up at him then – at his broad shoulders and his clean identikit T-shirt and his soft, sad eyes – and her breath caught in her throat. It had been so long. Would it really be such a bad idea? She pushed down on the handle and leant in. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘I’d offer to make you coffee. But you’re always up first anyway.’
She didn’t know what to say. It was possible she was just gazing at him.
‘Um … Jess?’
‘What?’
‘Thanks. For everything. The sickness stuff, the birthday surprise … In case I don’t get a chance to say this tomorrow …’ he gave her a lopsided smile ‘… as ex-wives go, you were definitely my favourite.’
Jess tried to smile back, but her answer dried in her throat. She pushed at the door. She was going to say something else, but she was distracted by the fact that the door didn’t move.
She turned and pushed down on the handle again. It gave, opened an inch, and no more.
‘What?’
‘I can’t open the door,’ she said, putting both her hands on it. Nothing.
Mr Nicholls walked over and pushed. It gave the tiniest amount. ‘It’s not locked,’ he said, working the handle. ‘There’s something blocking it.’
She squatted down, trying to see, and Mr Nicholls turned on the landing light. Through the two inches of door space, she could just make out Norman’s bulk on the other side of the door. He was lying on the mattress, his huge back to her.
‘Norman,’ she hissed. ‘Move.’
Nothing.
‘Norman.’
‘If I push, he’ll have to wake up, right?’ Mr Nicholls began leaning on the door. He rested his full weight on it. Then he pushed. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.
Jess shook her head. ‘You don’t know my dog.’
He let go of the handle and the door shut with a gentle click. They stared at each other.
‘Well …’ he said finally. ‘There are two beds in here. It’ll be fine.’
She grimaced. ‘Um. Norman is sleeping on the other single. I moved the mattress in there earlier.’
He looked at her wearily then. ‘Knock on the door?’
‘Tanzie is stressed. I can’t run the risk of waking her. It’s fine. I’ll … I’ll … just sleep on the chair.’
Jess headed down to the bathroom before he could contradict her. She washed and brushed her teeth, gazing at her alcohol-flushed skin in the plastic-framed mirror and trying to stop her thoughts chasing themselves in circles.
When she arrived back at the room, Mr Nicholls was holding up one of his dark grey T-shirts. ‘Here,’ he said, and threw it at her as he walked past to the bathroom. Jess changed into it, trying to ignore the vague eroticism of its clean male smell, pulled the spare blanket and a pillow out of the wardrobe and curled up in the chair, struggling to bring her knees up to a position that made it comfortable. It was going to be a long night.
Some minutes later, Mr Nicholls opened the door and turned off the overhead light. He was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of dark blue boxers. She saw that his legs bore the long, visible muscles of someone who does no-excuses exercise. She knew immediately how they would feel against her own. The thought made her mouth go dry.
The little bed sagged audibly as he climbed in.
‘Are you comfortable like that?’ He looked at her over the lavender-coloured bedspread.
‘Totally fine!’ she said brightly. ‘You?’
‘If one of these springs impales me while I sleep, you have my permission to take the car the rest of the way.’
He gazed at her across the room for a moment longer, then turned out the bedside light.
The darkness was total. Outside, a faint breeze moaned through unseen gaps in the stone, trees rustled and a car door slammed, its engine roaring a protest. In the next room, Norman whined in his sleep, the sound only partially muffled by the thin plasterboard wall. Jess could hear Mr Nicholls breathing, and although she had spent the previous night only inches from him, she was acutely conscious of his presence in a way she hadn’t been twenty-four hours earlier. She thought of the way he had made Nicky smile, of the way his fingers rested on a steering-wheel. She thought of him slumped on the dry stone wall, his head in his hands, as he talked about what he had lost, the hurt and anger etched deep on his face.
She thought about some expression she had heard Nicky use a few weeks ago – YOLO – You only live once – and remembered how she had told him she thought it was just an excuse idiots used for doing pretty much anything they felt like doing, no matter what the consequences.
She thought about Liam, and how she knew in her gut that he was probably ha**ng s*x with someone right this minute – that ginger barmaid from the Blue Parrot, maybe, or the Dutch girl who drove the flower van. She thought about a conversation she’d had with Chelsea when Chelsea had told her she should lie about her kids because no man would ever fall in love with a single mother of two, and how Jess had got angry with her because deep down she knew she was probably right.
She thought about the fact that even if Mr Nicholls didn’t go to prison, she would probably never see him again after this trip.
And then, before she could think too hard about anything else, Jess eased herself silently out of the chair, letting the blanket fall to the floor. It took only four steps to reach the bed, and she hesitated, her bare toes curled in the acrylic carpet, even then not quite sure what she was doing. You only live once. And then in the near-total dark there was a faint movement and she saw Mr Nicholls turn to face her as she lifted the duvet and climbed in.
Jess was chest to chest against him, her cool legs against his warm ones. There was nowhere else to go in this tiny bed, with the sag of the mattress pushing them closer together and its edge like a cliff-drop just inches behind her. They were so close that she could breathe in the remnants of his aftershave, his toothpaste. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, as her heart thumped erratically against his. She tilted her head a little, trying to read him. He put his right arm across the duvet, a surprisingly heavy weight, gathering her in closer to him. With his other, he took her hand and enclosed it slowly in his. It was dry and soft, and inches from her mouth. She wanted to lower her face to his knuckles and trace her lips along them. She wanted to reach her mouth up to his, and run her teeth gently along the soft curve of his upper lip.
You only live once.
She lay there in the dark, paralysed by her own longing, by the fact that just this once she did not know the answer, or even the question.
‘Do you want to have sex with me?’ she said, into the darkness.
There was a long silence.
‘Did you hear what –’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And … no.’ He spoke again before she could turn completely to stone. ‘I just think it would make things too complicated.’
‘It’s not complicated. We’re both young, lonely, a bit pissed. And after tonight we’re never going to see each other again.’
‘How so?’
‘You’ll go back to London and lead your big city life, and I’ll be down on the coast leading mine. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.’
He was silent for a minute. ‘Jess … I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t fancy me.’ She prickled with embarrassment, remembering suddenly what he’d said about his ex. Lara was a model, for Chrissakes. But even as she shifted away from him, his hand tightened around hers. His voice was a murmur in her ear. ‘You’re beautiful.’
She waited. His thumb brushed over her palm. ‘So … why won’t you sleep with me?’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Look. Here’s the thing. I haven’t had sex in three years. I sort of need to get back on the horse, and I think it – you – would be great.’
‘You want me to be a horse.’
‘Not like that. I need a metaphorical horse.’
‘And now we’re back to confusing metaphors.’
‘Look, a woman you say you find beautiful is offering you no-strings sex. I don’t understand the problem.’
‘There’s no such thing as no-strings sex.’
‘What?’
‘Someone always wants something.’
‘I don’t want anything from you.’
She felt him shrug. ‘Not now, maybe.’
‘Wow.’ She turned onto her side. ‘She really got to you, didn’t she?’
‘I just …’
Jess slid her foot along his leg. ‘You think I’m trying to lure you in? You think this is me trying to entrap you with my womanly wiles? My womanly wiles, a nylon bedspread, pie and chips?’ She interlinked her fingers with his. She let her voice drop to a whisper. She felt unleashed, reckless. She thought she might actually faint with how much she wanted him then. ‘I don’t want a relationship, Ed. With you or anyone. There’s no room in my life for the whole one plus one thing.’ She tilted her face so that her mouth was inches from his. She could almost taste the toothpaste sweetness of his breath. ‘I’d’ve thought that would be obvious.’
He moved his h*ps an awkward fraction away from hers. ‘You are … incredibly persuasive.’
‘And you are …’ She hooked her leg around him, pulling him closer. The hardness of him made her briefly giddy.
He swallowed.
Her lips were millimetres from his. All the nerves of her body had somehow concentrated themselves in her skin. Or maybe his skin: she could no longer tell.
‘It’s the last night. You know … you can drop us off tomorrow and we’ll never see each other again. At worst we can exchange a glance over the vacuum cleaner and I’ll just remember this as a nice night with a nice guy who actually was a nice guy.’ She let her lips graze his chin. It carried the faint echo of stubble. She wanted to bite it. ‘You, of course, will remember it as the greatest sex you ever had.’