Country Lovers Read online

  ‘Salut!’ The cheap fizz tasted as blissful as Krug to her impatient tongue.

  ‘Another!’ The glasses were replaced with full ones.

  Gasping and hiccupping, Pax matched her companion glass for glass, any tears soon sweetened from sad to mirthful. One glass. Two. Three. Four. Five. More were lined up as fast as they emptied them.

  They counted up as the rest of the room counted down.

  The approving brown eyes watched her, laughter at their edges. A hairy hand went back on her jeans’ leg and she didn’t immediately move it away this time. The anaesthetic was starting to kick in. Six. Seven. That was over a bottle, even with tiny bar measures. Only the hardcore could go this fast. They were conspirators. She needed more to get there. She needed to get to ten. Ten would make her forget the mess she was leaving behind at midnight.

  Eight.

  ‘Ten… nine… eight…’ Voices started counting down around them.

  Pax and her French stranger stared at one another, picking up two more glasses. In an instant, her mouth was awash with bubbles. Nine.

  ‘… seven… six… five… four…’

  They grabbed two more, pitching against each other, competitive and clumsy, sensual too, the drunken conspiracy private, their own bubble. Glass ten.

  ‘… three… two… one! Happy New Year!’ the shout went up.

  Had midnight come that quickly? The room spun around Pax, satisfyingly fast.

  Everyone was kissing everyone else, tens of strangers cast unexpectedly together to wish one another twelve months of joy. And they were kissing too. Only it was the wrong sort of kiss. Tongues, fingers, dizziness, drunkenness, cool champagne still in their mouths. That flutter inside intensifying, a leaping beat now, her naughty secret. She was kissing a stranger in a bar. This was what Mack thought she was doing, so what the hell? The sensation of a new mouth opening to hers, tasting hers. Oh Christ, what was she doing?

  ‘Stop!’ She pulled away, almost falling over, cannoning into someone behind her.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Hairy Wrists caught her arm to pull her back, smiling knowingly. His laugh had lost its uh-hu uh-hu, his eyes hard and lusty. ‘Come here, beautiful.’ He sounded different.

  ‘No! I’m sorry. I can’t do this.’ She shook her head dizzily, fighting to focus.

  His body landed back against hers, groin pressed to her thigh, handsome nose level with her mouth. How had she not noticed how short he was?

  ‘Pleasegoaway!’ Her voice was slurring already, her blood pumping crazy amounts of high-pressure alcohol to trip up her words and pull her off balance, axis upturned as she struggled to shake off his grip.

  ‘Don’t be a tease, Teesh.’ His voice had thickened, strangely unfamiliar in her drumming ears. His lips slid against hers, stubble grazing her, wiry arms around her, locking her down.

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘Is this man bothering you?’ asked a voice behind her.

  ‘Fuck off, chum,’ Hairy Wrists snapped, not sounding himself at all. But he dropped his hold and stepped back to look up at someone taller, lurching as he did so, big eyes troubled and half-focused.

  Pax almost fell over, barely able to stand up without a support.

  ‘I’m fine!’ she insisted, as much to herself as the concerned stranger behind her, who she tried to reassure by turning to smile at him, but instead executed a bombed pirouette, fleetingly seeing a pair of worried green eyes amid Chewbacca facial hair. Still spinning, on her second circuit now, she realised they belonged to a bearded Viking in a Puffa jacket. ‘Fine!’ she repeated, rotating on towards Hairy Wrists and managing to stop still, although the room carried on whizzing round.

  There was someone standing with the little Frenchman now. Or was she seeing double? No, they were sharing a bear hug.

  ‘There you bloody are!’ the second man bellowed, his drunken voice full of plums and silver spoons. ‘Happy New Year, Binkers. All bets are off. Mine’s scarpered.’ He was slapping Hairy Wrists on the back. Then he spotted Pax. ‘Fuck me, you got lucky!’

  ‘That’s my line,’ said Hairy Wrists, honking with laughter.

  He didn’t sound at all French now.

  ‘Binkers?’ Pax managed to say it on the third attempt, her vision tunnelling.

  ‘Seb Bink.’

  She gaped at him. He was a Gallic romantic. He couldn’t be a Binkers.

  He was also disappearing down a black tunnel. She swayed, nausea rising. He grabbed her shoulders to steady her. ‘Are you okay, Tish?’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’

  His friend started to laugh, backing away, holding his hands up. ‘I’ll leave you two lovers together, shall I?’

  Pax squinted at ‘Binkers’ through ten glasses of rapidly circulating wine, vision slewed, swallowing down the rising bile, her brain ever more sluggish. ‘You’re not French at all, are you?’

  ‘I’m from Worcester.’

  She should have seen through it. He wasn’t even a good actor. Why hadn’t she seen through it? Not that she could see much at all now. If she opened just one eye she could focus on his face. ‘Wasthisall some sortof bloody act? Chatting meupforabet?’

  ‘Most of it’s true. I’ve got two kids, I was going to a party in Paris; I worked there for years. I have a French dog.’

  ‘What about being fiveyearssober and one lastdance?’

  ‘I’m going to do dry January.’

  She glared at him, trying to pinpoint his eyes in his spinning face. ‘You lousy liar!’

  ‘C’mon, it’s not that bad. We get on, don’t we?’ He was swaying with her now, eyes glazing, starting to giggle.

  ‘You bastard!’ It was herself Pax wanted to shout at. Pax who never lost control, never lost a sense of fairness, who saw through fools and yet suffered them too, perpetually keeping the peace. She was drenched in shame and self-loathing, rapidly losing cognisance as well as balance, her start to the year a self-destructive disaster. She had to get back to her room.

  ‘I do honestly think you’re fucking gorgeous,’ he was saying in a lazy drawl, eyes crossing. ‘Let’s start again. Come and sit down with me. We’ll order one for le rue, shall we?’

  ‘Go to hell, shortarse,’ she growled, angry enough to hit him, but far too drunk to try.

  ‘Steady on. I’m not the one wearing a wedding ring, darling.’

  She drunkenly made to slap him, but a hand grabbed her wrist to stop her – strong fingered, engraved silver rings, a plethora of knotted leather surfer bracelets around a broad wrist. Not hairy.

  The blond, bearded Viking loomed in front of her. Two blond Vikings. Then one. Black Puffa jacket spinning. Eyes the vivid green of sliced kiwi fruit.

  ‘I think you two need some time apart, don’t you?’ He had an accent she was too drunk to work out.

  ‘Listen, mate, keep your nose out of this.’ Binkers looked like he was squaring up for a fight.

  ‘I’ve got to get back to my room.’ Pax started backing away, aware that she was going to throw up any minute. She felt in her pocket for her key card, dog treats, her Visa card and cash spilling out.

  The Viking stooped to collect it all, flipping the cardboard key-card wallet over to read the room number. ‘I’ll make sure you get there okay.’

  ‘I’ll take her!’ Binkers protested, reeling forwards, cannoning into a bar stool and lurching sideways to fall over the back of a leather banquette into a surprised group of revellers.

  The Viking was already marching Pax away.

  ‘We can’t leave him there!’ she protested.

  ‘His friend can sort him out, so he can.’

  That didn’t sound very Scandinavian. What was it with men and dodgy accents tonight, she thought groggily as he summonsed the lift.

  Waiting for it to arrive, she squinted at his profile, which kept doubling, all beard and wild blond curls, part Beowulf, part Lord Flashheart.

  ‘Thisissokind butyoucan leavemehere,’ she insisted at the lift’s arrival ping, pitching g
ratefully inside before realising the doors had yet to open and she was head-butting them.

  She made it inside on the second attempt.

  Pax had no idea which floor her room was on. It was only when she was sliding down beside the buttons, momentarily content to sleep in the lift floor that she realised the Viking had stepped in with her.

  *

  ‘Happy New Year, sweetlips!’

  Carly dodged a second Red Bull-flavoured wet kiss from Flynn after ‘Auld Lang Syne’, her searchlight eyes raking the kaleidoscoping room for her husband.

  Ash hadn’t come across to the village hall with the others earlier; nobody could remember seeing him for an hour or more. Nor was Skully in evidence. Something didn’t feel right – he’d never missed being with her at midnight before, however caned.

  The disco kicked in again, glitter ball spinning through ultraviolet darkness, long-haired Flynn dotted with neon tribal marks, teeth and eyes luminous. His leather jeans were so tight he could only dance from the waist up, torso gyrating, shirt open so his neck chains harrowed his hairy chest, the skull and crossbones flag now worn like a scarf.

  ‘The girl next door’s hot tonight,’ he whistled, watching Bridge having a riot on the dance floor, already mosh-pitting to ‘I Predict a Riot’ with Ink and Hardcase, beer can in hand. ‘I wouldn’t mind a ride on that Mazur-ati.’

  ‘In your dreams,’ Carly scoffed, regretting talking Bridge into the clingy catsuit and hastily applied false eyelashes, Essex facelift ponytail replicating her own – but far sexier with those vintage Raquel Welch cheeks. She looked like a movie femme fatale, the sort who crushed hot henchmen between their thighs.

  ‘Put in a good word for me, yeah?’ Flynn shouted in her ear. ‘I’m up for a threesome.’

  ‘Shouldn’t think you’re Aleš’s type, Flynn.’

  ‘You know I’ve always fancied you, sweetlips,’ he laughed, eyes still on Bridge, whose pink-tipped silver extensions were swinging like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. ‘Bet she does, too.’

  ‘Tell that to Ash.’ She gave him a withering look, accustomed to the chat-up wind-ups he’d never dream of trying on when six feet of hard-muscled Turner was around. ‘Where did all the teenage girls in Sellotape go?’

  ‘Party in Rous Compton.’ He pulled a roll-up from behind his ear, trying hard not to look bothered. ‘Friends of Amelia’s. Skinny dipping, recreational drugs, kedgeree. Not my scene.’

  ‘She dumped you, then?’

  ‘Other way round.’ Cigarette in mouth, he closed one eye and squinted at Bridge’s gyrating backside. ‘I wasn’t the one who came dressed in the rubbish bag, yeah?’

  Carly knew Flynn’s rickety love life well enough to see through the bluff, but she was kind enough to let it go. Ash’s mates were big kids in denial that they’d turned thirty, all the bad-lad talk, tattoos and Tinder shags only a blink away from the ruler-flicking, ball-kicking, cider-swigging fronts they’d perfected at thirteen to try to look cool hanging out by the Orchard Estate garages. Underneath it, they were loyal friends and hard workers, happy to settle down and make their home a stone’s throw from the place they grew up. Most had never lived outside the county, let alone travelled to war zones like Ash. He was their hard man, the lone wolf who roamed away from the pack, disappearing without warning for hours at a time, as often as not into his own head.

  She wondered if he was back at home, lost in one of his shoot-’em-up console games, music blotting out the gunfire, mad at her for stopping out with Bridge so long. His black moods ambushed them too unpredictably and often for her to ever relax. She checked her phone, the New Year texts and Facebook messages from her old gang of army wives coming thick and fast. Nothing from Ash.

  Tucking his roll-up back behind his ear, Flynn swaggered off to dance as the music changed, trying to get Bridge to slut-drop to ‘Sexy Chick’, both ending up on the floor, roaring with laughter.

  The memorial hall had filled up with an after-party crowd, its hardcore of Turners diluted by other village teens – she recognised Petra Gunn’s eldest son dancing with one of the vet’s toothy daughters – and a few of the old-faithful, like the bearded chair of the Parish Council who always felt obliged to show their faces to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’, all nervously still wearing their coats in anticipation of a quick getaway. For now, the Turner teen tribe had turned its attention from fighting to necking, but Carly didn’t doubt fists would fly soon, the dance floor seething with grudge matches. At its centre, she could see sister-in-law Janine, a body-stockinged, size 20 missile with three-inch panto-themed nails and a swinging micro bag, giving several arch enemies the evils.

  Bridge panted up, one false eyelash missing, the recently applied mascara already sliding off. ‘This is the best craic I’ve had in ages! Flynn’s a laugh, isn’t he? Will you look at that? Classic!’

  Carly observed the farrier head-banging and air-guitaring, back-to-back with Hardcase, to ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’. ‘Hilarious,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Need some fresh air.’ Bridge wiped her sweaty face and tightened her ponytail, heading outside, waving at her to follow.

  Another hard frost was crystallising, their breath dragon puffs.

  ‘The magic’s already working, Carly.’ Bridge pulled a familiar-looking roll-up from beneath a bra strap, her sardonic Irish voice laced with mirth. ‘You’re my lucky charm, I can feel it.’

  ‘You don’t say?’ Carly wondered again where Ash was. She quashed a fleeting worry that he was helping Skully strip the newly laid lead off the pub’s skittle alley. There’d been a lot of bother over Christmas when the church ceiling collapsed at Midnight Mass, its roof lead taken, the finger of blame pointing towards the Orchard Estate. But Ash was no petty thief.

  ‘I’m rethinking my whole outlook.’ Bridge was jogging from foot to foot to stay warm. ‘You see, I’m usually an all-or-nothing woman. That’s been my weakness. But, this time, I figure the orgasmic rainbow owes me. I don’t want to overcommit; it’s got to be local, low-key and no strings.’

  ‘We’re talking about a job here, yeah?’

  ‘Flexible hours!’ She felt in her pockets for a light. ‘That’s what I need. Something I can fit around the kids, like you do, build up speed, plan my empire, earn myself some fun.’

  Carly wasn’t sure juggling three insecure jobs could be called fun, but if being a lucky charm worked, that was cool by her.

  ‘I heard there’s a job going at the village school,’ Bridge was saying. ‘Office admin. Term-time mornings.’

  ‘Ellis loves that little school.’ All the Range Rover mummies she’d heard gossiping about closure rumours at the Nativity play must be wrong if they were recruiting, she realised with relief. ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘You think so?’ Not waiting for an answer, Bridge went to cadge a light off a nearby clutch of smokers.

  Carly hugged herself for warmth. Then she felt another set of arms reach around her from behind, familiar hard-muscle guns.

  ‘Happy New Year, angel,’ Ash breathed in her ear.

  ‘And you, bae.’ Heart lifting, she tilted her face up to kiss him, loving the demanding warmth of his mouth, the smile waiting there. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Gave Flynn’s friends a lift to their party.’

  ‘You did what?’ She spun round. ‘You’ve had a skinful.’

  ‘Only a few beers. Anyway, we went across the fields, didn’t we? Skully was there, so he had my back.’

  ‘I might have guessed.’

  ‘We charged them a tenner each to hang on tight in the back of the pickup. Minted.’ His guarded smile broke cover.

  ‘Christ.’ She raked her hair back. ‘That’s Austen land, Ash. You’re lucky you weren’t arrested.’

  There was a sardonic chuckle close by as Bridge leant in through a swirl of cigarette smoke to murmur, ‘Give Bay a truck full of fecking schoolgirls on his land and he’d be the one in danger of arrest. Hello!’ She waved at Ash. ‘We’ve not met. Happy New Year.’
>
  ‘Ash, this is Bridge Mazur,’ Carly introduced them, still livid with him taking a risk like that.

  She heard him laugh. ‘You’re Mazur-ati?’

  ‘I love it!’ Bridge whooped. ‘Can I use that?’

  ‘You work out at my gym.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Does she?’ Carly looked up at him over her shoulder, accustomed to her husband noticing nothing and nobody around him, especially when he was on the machines.

  ‘Silver and pink hair, it’s like neon,’ Bridge told her cheerfully, ‘and stops anyone noticing how lazy you are.’ She cocked an eyebrow at Ash.

  ‘I’ve seen you round the village too.’

  ‘That’s me. How’re youse doing?’

  ‘Bridge, you say?’

  ‘You can burn me or cross me, it’s all water under me.’

  He laughed again. ‘That’s good.’

  For Ash, usually about as chatty as a rock, this was impressively engaged. Carly’s anger allayed somewhat, grateful to her extrovert new friend. ‘Bridge was just saying she might be going to work Ellis’s school.’

  ‘If they give me the job.’

  ‘They’d be mad not to.’ His wolf eyes glinted, pale and amused. ‘Place needs livening up. Get old Mrs Bullock shipshape.’

  ‘Too right I fecking will.’ She waved her cigarette and tossed her pink-tipped ponytail, looking far from school secretary material. ‘Like your wife will at the stud, eh, Ash?’

  ‘What’s this?’ Ash looked bemused.

  ‘Sure, Carly needs to get her arse over there and take up Ronnie Percy’s offer.’

  Hearing him sucking his lips, Carly shot Bridge a warning look, but she was looking at Ash, false lashes flapping. ‘Don’t imagine the Percys offer many the chance to train there. Fecking golden opportunity, I say. That’s one classy outfit going on there. Be a total travesty for Carly here not to take them up on it, don’t you agree, Ash?’ She stepped back, arms outstretched as she struck an assertive pose. With her high ponytail and catsuit, she looked more like a sweetly slewed circus acrobat than a motivational speaker.