Chapter 35
7 October
A bee buzzing around the room woke Laurie up with a start, then she realised that it was the alarm on her phone with its insistent drone. She had to shift Pete’s arm to roll towards it and the action woke him up too. His eyes told her that he’d been in as deep a sleep as she had.
Laurie pulled up the sheet to cover her nakedness.
‘Morning,’ she said meekly.
‘I don’t want it to be,’ he said and pulled her back against his chest, savouring the tickle of her hair, the scent of her faded perfume, sleep and sex.
‘I have never done that with anyone on the first date,’ she said.
‘I don’t care if you have or not, it’s not my business,’ he said and placed a kiss on her neck that seemed to ripple through her whole body.
‘I wish I had now, what have I been missing?’ she said in a New York accent and it made him laugh.
She didn’t want to move. She wanted to stay in this warm circle of his arms and replay the last twelve hours over and over. She’d recognised a desire in him to touch and be touched, to give and be given to in their lovemaking. It was gentle, intense, generous all at the same time.
Then the alarm on Pete’s phone, which was somewhere on the carpet, went off as well.
‘Nooo,’ he protested. ‘Go away.’
‘Day shift?’
‘Yep, first of four.’
‘I’ll get a quick shower. Time for a coffee?’ she asked him.
‘Last time I said yes, look what happened. Yes yes yes yes.’
She laughed again, reluctantly prised herself from him and darted out of the room, naked and self-conscious now.
By the time she had showered and dressed and gone downstairs, he had a mug of coffee waiting for her.
‘I didn’t know if you wanted me to make some toast for you or fry you some eggs but I didn’t want to go poking around in your cupboards,’ he said.
‘This is fine,’ she said, wondering if her smile would ever close. The muscles were starting to ache in her face.
Laurie was preened and perfumed and Pete was creased and smelled of bed and she thought he was perfect.
‘I didn’t plan to do that,’ he pointed upstairs.
‘I could tell.’
His eyes rounded. ‘Was my technique that bad?’
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘It was great.’
In reality Laurie had always thought sex a little overrated. It was nice, exciting sometimes but what they’d had last night felt like nothing she’d ever experienced before, not even in the early days with Alex – or in the post-his-affair days when sex had been something she craved on a primal, heightened, desperate level to prove that he was all hers. But last night there had been more hungers satisfied than mere bodily need.
‘I’ve written down my number for you, something which I should have done long before now,’ said Pete. ‘If you ring me, I’ll store yours.’ He handed her a page from the pad that sat by the telephone with his mobile written on it.
‘I’ll do that now.’
He heard the phone in his back pocket register her call. Even that refreshed his smile. ‘So I will see you again?’ He needed to ask once more, this time in the cold light of day.
‘I’d like that.’
They walked to their cars together. He kissed her goodbye. Held the back of her neck, his lips falling softly onto hers.
‘I’ll ring you and arrange something, after . . .’ he said.
‘. . . After your dad’s party.’ Laurie finished off his sentence. Pete’s brain was already starting to suggest places that he would take her.
But he wouldn’t. Because his dad’s party would be the end of them. Before they had even begun.
Chapter 36
When Pete got home, Pong greeted him indignantly as if he knew his shift patterns and he wasn’t at work last night, so where the hell was he? He butted his head insistently against Pete’s hand as he ripped open a pouch of cat meat as if to hurry him along and then turned up his nose at it when it was in the bowl.
‘You’re sulking aren’t you, Pong?’
Pong let loose a short, sharp meow which seemed to answer that he was.
Pete sat at the table, pulled out his phone, searched.
He hadn’t ever read any of the press pieces about the accident before because he didn’t want to be piqued by any skewed details. He typed in crash, February, Tara Ollerton and entries appeared: ‘Horror Crash, Multi Vehicle Pile Up’, ‘Texting Driver Causes Deaths’, ‘Six Killed in Horror Smash’. He scrolled through the lead article in the Yorkshire Post, tried to avoid the accompanying photo of the half-crushed black car, but his eyes were too quick and registered it, transferred the image to his brain. The name in the main part of the article: Alexander Wilder, 30. Laurie’s partner. His name appeared on the list of the dead next to Tara Ollerton, 30. ‘She wasn’t thirty until the next day,’ he growled at the screen. The details always mattered, the small things in life, the tiny considerations and kindnesses, short words such as please or thanks had a power much greater than their size. Tara died in her twenties, not her thirties; that one day’s difference made it seem all the more poignant.
Alex, Tara, Laurie, Pete. The four of them joined by fate and bound together by a force he didn’t understand but still, he felt the weight of its significance.
*
Griff rang when he was parking up at the fire station.
‘Morning, bro,’ said Pete. ‘How’s your bits for crabs?’ A common greeting when they were in a playful mood.
‘Quick one. Just ringing to firm up the plans for Wednesday,’ said Griff. He sounded flat, not engaging in the joke.
‘Everything all right?’ Pete asked.
‘Yep. Dad’s invited a load of people. He and Cora had a bit of a bust-up about inviting Auntie Sue but she’s on holiday anyway. All we have to do is turn up. He’s ordered champagne, glasses, you name it and he’s thought of it. Lucy’s doing the cake so at least he’s left it open for us to sort out one surprise for him.’
‘Two if you count the table.’
‘Oh yeah, forgot about that.’ Griff sounded distracted. He sounded not like Griff.
‘Candles and matches?’ It was set in stone that Nigel had a cake. Julie-Anne had always made him one. Lucy had taken over that duty now. Cora wasn’t the baking type unless it was for her ladies’ group; then suddenly she remembered how to grease a tin and produce the best Victoria sponge in the county.
‘Got them on the list,’ said Griff. ‘What time will you finish work?’
‘Krish is jumping in for me so I’ll be ready from about quarter to six.’
‘Okay, we’ll swing round for you then.’
‘Let’s just get a taxi then we can all have a drink.’
‘I’ll drive, I don’t want to drink,’ said Griff, his tone clipped.
‘Griff. You okay? You sound . . . not okay.’
‘Stop asking me, I’ve told you that I am fine. See you Wednesday,’ said Griff. The line went dead.
*
Laurie came home just after lunch that day. There were builders in the offices above and she couldn’t concentrate with all the drilling so brought some work back with her. As she turned into the small estate, she noticed Brendan and Meredith’s Lexus parked on the road, unmanned. She sped up the drive in time to see Meredith about to put something through her letter box, no sign of Brendan. This, Laurie decided, was her chance to ask what she needed to.