Summer Fever, page 24
It moves quickly. It’s as though he knows she’s not going to stop him. The thought of Nick coming back to find her floats into her head so she takes Bastian’s hand and leads him upstairs. When she turns to smile at him, the ghost of her and Nick that first time shimmers in the air, but all it takes is remembering those messages between him and J on the iPad, the rain hammering on the skylight, London darkening around her, and it begins to recede. Then she thinks about how Nick has made them and Luna Rossa vulnerable to Angelo, and it’s gone.
The men’s destruction hasn’t yet reached the larger of the two bedrooms. It remains suspended in a time earlier than the rest of the house’s seventies additions, as though Giuseppe (because he’s still Giuseppe to her) had left his mother’s room untouched out of sentimentality and the kind of deep and holy respect men only pay to their mamas, as though they’ve never had sex at all.
They lie down on the bed and the pink bedspread exhales dust under their weight. The mattress sags dramatically in the middle, pinning them together. It makes her laugh but he remains serious, his face intent as he climbs on top of her and begins kissing her in the tender spot behind her ear and down her neck. Over his shoulder, a small plaster statue of the Virgin Mary watches them from a little shelf high up on the wall.
They don’t take off their clothes, or not many of them. She likes this: the urgency of it, the need to get to the point. She doesn’t actually want much foreplay and she’s already wet anyway. She knows that without checking, from the way she feels there, that heavy ache, the low-down pulse. And even if she hadn’t been sure, it would be confirmed by the way he groans when he puts his hand into her knickers and opens her up.
‘Take them off,’ she says, and she means her underwear but he stands to remove his shorts, the mattress protesting and shifting, tipping him side-to-side like they’re in a bed-sized boat. He doesn’t take his eyes off her and she looks right back at him, not breaking the contact that feels almost physical as she takes off her knickers herself, dropping them to the floor.
She thinks he’ll push inside her immediately but he doesn’t. She lifts her hips but he holds himself slightly above her as they kiss. She reaches down to guide him in, but he takes her wrist and pins it above her head.
‘Do you want me to fuck you?’
‘Yes,’ she breathes.
‘Say it then.’
‘I want you to fuck me.’
‘Again.’
‘I want you to fuck me.’
His full weight is on her now and she can feel him right up against her, almost inside her. But still he waits.
‘Please,’ she says, and it’s almost a sob. She can feel him smile into her neck but she’s too far gone to care whether she should mind.
Nick is in the kitchen, as he always seems to be these days. He’s gutting an enormous fish. She hovers behind him as he works, eating olives and shifting from foot to foot. She’s showered, scrubbing herself clean of Bastian until the hot water ran out. The ends of her hair drip on the tiles and coldly down her back as she tries to think of something to say.
When Nick turns, suddenly aware of her presence, she doesn’t meet his eye but catches the end of his quizzical expression before he returns to the fish. He can’t understand why she hasn’t sought him out yet, to grill him about the builders, and what he was discussing so intensely with Tommaso.
‘So they cleared off early today,’ he says, head bent to the chopping board. The fish’s scales have lost their rainbow iridescence. The skin looks more like dull metal than something organic. ‘It was weird, actually. They just went without a word.’
‘You put the tap back together,’ she says.
He pauses at the jump in conversation and then nods. ‘Yeah. Managed to get it working.’
‘Well done. Was it just limescale, then?’
‘No, that was weird too. I didn’t really do anything. I just had a fiddle with it, put it back together and it was fine. Maybe it’s haunted.’
They laugh carefully. Tears smart in her eyes. They are edging so carefully around each other. But she knows what Nick is worried about. He on the other hand doesn’t know why she’s being so cautious. He can’t possibly have an inkling about what she did this afternoon, or he wouldn’t be looking round at her as he is now, so hopeful that they might be OK tonight. He must have folded away his suspicions about Bastian for now, having decided the boundary issue takes precedence. Like so many men, he’s always been good at this, Nick: the compartmentalization of life. He’s always been genuinely able to stop thinking about one thing if something else needed his attention more.
‘Is that just for us?’ She gestures towards the fish. She doesn’t want it. She doesn’t feel like eating anything Italian. She wants beans on toast in front of the telly in London. A sob threatens, but she manages to swallow it. She hears Lou, whose voice has been unusually – though perhaps predictably – quiet since she left. This is what I was trying to warn you about.
Nick is considering the fish. His finger scratches at a mosquito bite and she remembers how, not that long ago, they had competed to see how many they could squash against the bedroom wall when they forgot to close the shutters after dusk: dozens gathered there, to lie in wait for their hot human skin. Some of those little black smears are still there. The bite, just under his ear, is a red, swollen lump. He invariably reacts badly and it’s always felt like a tiny rebuke because she made him come to Italy when he is so patently made for England.
‘Nick?’
‘Oh, sorry. No, the Americans aren’t going out now. So we’re eating together. Luckily I had this in the freezer. Only took about forty minutes to defrost outside in the shade. I don’t know why they changed their minds. Madison didn’t say.’
Her stomach pitches and tips. ‘Oh, right. That’s a pain. I was hoping for a quiet night.’
‘You not feeling well? You’ve been upstairs for ages.’
‘Yes, sorry. Bad period, you know.’
‘Did you take anything? There’s some soluble paracetamol in my bedside table. I got Mum to send me a load. It works quicker. I couldn’t find any in the chemist here.’
‘I’ll go and have a look. Thanks.’
She walks out before he notices that she’s crying, unable to hold back any longer. Lovely Nick, so kind even when he’s stressed, even when she’s … The financial stuff doesn’t rouse any anger in her right now. All she can see is what he tried to tell her: that everything he did was for her, that keeping it secret was just protectiveness. Because finally he’d been able to shield her from something after being so incapable of protecting her from all the fertility shit, from their own faulty bodies.
‘Dinner will be in about forty,’ he calls after her. ‘Do you mind doing the table?’
‘Sure,’ she manages to say.
She goes into the snug, opens her laptop. No emails. She hadn’t expected one, really. It’s become a reflex to check. There’s nothing from Lou either. She thinks about Skyping her but dismisses the thought almost immediately. What would she say?
Between her legs she still feels swollen and slightly raw. But even now, tears itching her cheeks as they dry, her body betrays her, sparking into life at the thought of what she did – what they did – only a few hours ago.
Does Madison know, and is this why she and Bastian aren’t going out? Laura tries to think objectively about this. She is certain about very little, but she feels pretty sure that Madison isn’t the type to hold back. There would be screaming and things thrown, surely. But there has been nothing. She hasn’t seen the other woman all day. In fact, she’s hardly seen her since before Lou left, after that awkward conversation about infidelity by the pool. Laura has done this on purpose; feeling guilty in a way she didn’t before she and Bastian did anything. It hasn’t been enough to stop her but, still, she’s missed Madison.
Would she undo it if she could, winding back time to when Bastian saw off the builders, thanking him and removing herself from temptation? Or, even better, not going down to the outbuildings at all?
She knows she wouldn’t. She knows, if she gets the opportunity, she’ll do it again.
The change in the weather is instant. One moment, she’s laying the table under the pergola, the garden around her as still and warm as a room with the windows closed. The next, the leaves of the vines that twist around the pergola’s struts are rustling in earnest. The corners of the tablecloth are lifted by invisible fingers, and the pressed linen begins to slap at the wood. Metal tinkles against china as the cloth ripples under the cutlery.
She strikes the match she’s just got out the box – one of the long cook’s matches she always uses to light her table candles, like a ritual in church – and it’s snuffed out immediately.
She abandons the table and goes to the balustrade by the pool to watch the sky darken. In the distance, thunder is beginning to rumble, like a low warning growl in the back of a big dog’s throat. Way off at the other end of the valley, towards the mountains, whose peaks are visible on a clear day, a silver-blue curtain has fallen. It’s already raining there.
‘I guess the gods are pissed about something.’
She spins round, hand flat to her chest in shock. Madison is just a few feet away. She’s wearing a plain white dress and her feet are bare. Her long hair whips and snaps in the wind.
‘Yes, I don’t think we’ll be eating outside, after all,’ she manages to say.
They clear the table together, restacking the tray Laura brought out only five minutes earlier, in an entirely different day. The wind has begun to whine around the pergola now. It rattles the vine leaves harder, exposing their pale undersides, the two greens strobing. Rose petals fall around them, like heavy pink tears. Laura would laugh at the Italian melodrama of it if she could, if her nerves weren’t stretched so tightly that it feels as though the wind could make her shatter.
‘You’re trembling,’ says Madison. She lays her left hand on Laura’s as if to still it. Hers is larger and bonier, the veins more prominent. The big diamond has twisted round so that it sits coldly between them, pressing hard into Laura’s finger, just above her own wedding band. She pulls away, pretending not to notice Madison watching her as she grabs the tablecloth and gathers it into a ball, though she’s only just ironed it.
‘Give it here,’ says Madison, taking it off her and folding it deftly.
‘Thanks.’ She lifts the laden tray and heads back towards the house with it. The thunder rolls, a little nearer now.
‘What’s going on?’
In the kitchen, Nick has put on his portable speaker, which is playing Oasis. They had intended to wire up the whole villa with Sonos but balked at the cost. Oasis always reminds her of the first year at university, when it felt like every single boy in halls was playing ‘Wonderwall’ on repeat.
‘We can’t eat outside,’ she says. ‘There’s going to be a storm. The wind’s already up and rain is heading this way. I’ll set up in the dining room.’
He pauses the music just as the thunder sounds again. It’s still a low roll but it’s definitely getting closer. They haven’t had a proper storm yet, not the kind they’ve been told about – the sort invariably described as biblical, which tears down trees, strips roofs and takes out power lines.
‘Have we ever even eaten in the dining room?’ says Nick, just as Madison comes in with the tablecloth. ‘I hope I haven’t left it in a mess.’ He’s switched to his jovial tone.
He has left it in a mess. She simply piles up the detritus from various small-scale projects in the corner of the room. Tiny screws and picture pins roll around. At least he’d put newspaper on the table, which is actually quite beautiful, with elegant carved legs and a smooth patina from years of careful polishing by an unknown hand.
She always thinks of the pergola as an outdoor room, particularly once the cobalt night sky has been turned black by candlelight. But once the table is recreated in the underused dining room, the main light turned off so only tea-lights blaze, there is an intensity of atmosphere that you would never get outside. Without the constant clicking of the cicadas, the fussing of birds in the trees, it’s unnervingly silent and ominous.
Nick comes in with a huge platter of sliced plum tomatoes, deeply red and unctuous. Torn-up mozzarella – the best kind – and basil leaves are scattered over them.
‘It’s like the flag,’ she says, and he looks confused, then gets it, laughs.
‘It’s a Caprese salad. But, yeah, I guess it’s like the flag. No olive oil, you’ll note.’ He drops his voice. ‘Madison said she wants oil on the side from now on. She thinks she’s gaining weight.’ He raises his eyebrows.
‘Can you bring your speaker in? It’s too quiet in here.’
‘It just died. I’ve put it on charge.’
At that moment, the Americans walk in. Without meaning to, she locks eyes with Bastian. The look he gives her is so intensely intimate that she can’t believe Nick and Madison don’t protest, outraged. He might as well just stand there and admit what they did together earlier.
Madison looks up from pulling the tablecloth straight, one eyebrow raised. A roll of thunder rattles the window. ‘Storm’s a-comin’,’ she says.
But the storm doesn’t come. Not during dinner, anyway. Instead it grumbled on in the distance, like a warning that it would be only a matter of time. And while it had been tense and stilted in the dining room, the explosion Laura had been expecting hadn’t quite gone off inside either. Madison had done most of the talking and Laura couldn’t read her mood. One minute she was brittle and too-bright, picking at her food. The next she’d lapsed into a woozy, Southern drawl that made her seem like she’d taken Valium. Maybe she was just drunk. They’d got through four bottles of wine and Madison had barely eaten a thing. Maybe the moments when her focus sharpened again to a point had required enormous effort.
After Nick’s hastily assembled pudding of figs, gelato and crushed amaretti biscuits, they drift outside, as if giving in to the weather’s petulant demands for attention. The odd shaft of golden light punctures the leaden sky, and the combination has the weird effect of turning up the colour elsewhere. The green baize of the valley floor is lurid. The turquoise pool hurts her eyes.
Madison has the idea of moving the modular garden furniture to the pool terrace so it looks out over the view. It’s made of that light woven plastic that looks like rattan and they transport it easily. It looks perfect there when it’s all set up. Laura doesn’t know why she and Nick didn’t think of it themselves.
‘Is it getting closer or what?’ says Bastian, as a low roll moves languidly around the valley, as if it can’t quite muster the requisite energy to tip into a proper storm. The rain has moved away but Laura thinks the thunder might be getting louder now, just a little. Nick has gone inside to make drinks. Madison has asked for a Pornstar Martini.
When he returns, he’s carrying all the cocktail-making kit on a tray.
‘You’re in luck, Madison. I found a pomegranate at the bottom of the bowl. I thought all the fruit had been used up in your smoothies.’
If she notices the mild dig, she doesn’t react.
‘I decided to bring the bar outside, so I could watch the weather come in,’ he continues, one hand clutching a bottle of Passoã, the other fiddling with his phone. ‘I didn’t want to miss anything being stuck inside.’
He picks up something from the tray. It’s the little wireless speaker.
‘Fully charged.’ He throws it to Laura without warning and slightly too hard. She almost misses it, scooping it up two inches from the ground. As she holds it aloft to make the point and Bastian claps, the first ghostly strains of Portishead wind into the air, the bass vibrating into her hand. That’s what Nick had been doing on his phone: finding the right music. He turns up the volume and the sound is surprisingly powerful, the bass solid, holding its own against the low-down reverberation of the thunder. She wants to see his face but he’s at the balustrade, elbows resting on the rail, staring across the valley. Dummy is their album. Lots of couples have a song but she and Nick had this whole album. During the summer they’d got together, they’d played it on repeat in his tiny bedroom at home. Aside from the pub, she can’t remember them being anywhere else, though surely they’d gone to her house sometimes.
Nick had smoked roll-ups then – it went along with the whole skater-boy vibe he was trying to cultivate – and his room always smelt of tobacco and toast. His parents liked Laura: they always smiled indulgently when they answered the door to let her in, and as she went sheepishly upstairs to find him. She was his first proper girlfriend and they were so relieved they didn’t even care about the smoking.
After Bastian, Nick’s room was a nest perched high out of harm’s way. When he had a shift at the pub, which was more often than her because he needed the money in a way she didn’t, she would curl up on his childhood bed and sleep. The music would insinuate itself into her dreams, languid and eerie but eventually, by association, comforting.
It’s not comforting now.
‘Who’s this?’ Bastian has refused a cocktail and is drinking Peroni from the bottle. Madison has drawn her long legs underneath her and twisted round to face him. She holds her cocktail in one hand, and strokes Bastian with the other. Every so often, he shoots her a quick glance. It’s a signal to stop, but she doesn’t.
‘It’s Portishead,’ says Nick.
‘Weird name.’
‘It’s a place. Near Bristol, where the band came from.’
Bastian nods. ‘Right.’ He lifts his free hand and Laura thinks he’s going to bat Madison’s away but he doesn’t. He lays it carefully back on his leg.
‘I discovered them quite late,’ says Nick. ‘At uni. This had come out a few years earlier. There was this whole trip-hop scene. Bleak as fuck, most of it, but in a good way. You must know Massive Attack?’
