A Home for Broken Hearts, page 29
‘Dinner’s in the oven, Charlie’s fast asleep, I thought perhaps …’
Nick had sat on the bed and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Bless you,’ he said. ‘But, Ellen, you don’t need to do all this for me. To be honest I’m exhausted and I want a shower before I eat. Why don’t you get dressed and talk to me while I clean up, OK?’
He hadn’t been cruel or unkind. He hadn’t mocked or insulted her, but as Ellen dragged on her clothes she had been awash with the humiliation and rejection.
She felt the humiliation again as she relived the memory. This was not going to be it, she decided. The last ten years, the way she had folded in on herself, losing herself to her house and her husband, were not going to be the sum total of her life. She was adamant about this. True, she didn’t really know what had happened between Hannah and Nick, but she knew that something had, because whatever Hannah was she was not a liar. But even if Ellen hadn’t found that out, she had been changing, these last few weeks. She had been evolving and now she was determined that a wife, a mother, a flawed sister, a lost widow . .. an agoraphobic … would not be all she was. She would not let one more minute of her life slip away unlived to its fullest potential.
Spontaneously she slipped off her clothes and stepped into the underwear that she had bought all those years ago. After hooking up the bra she returned to look at herself in the mirror, avoiding full eye contact with her reflection for some moments. The bra was now a little too small, and her breasts gently swelled over the lace trim, but, Ellen was surprised to see, the effect wasn’t too disgusting. In fact, as she ran her fingers down towards her waist and the curve of her hips, although her gently rounded stomach still bore the silvered stretch marks of her pregnancy, and her bottom was dimpled and a little more generously proportioned than it used to be, as she turned first to one side and then the other she found that her body wasn’t nearly as old or as repulsive as she had imagined. After a moment she slipped the green dress on. It didn’t fit her in the same way as it had all those years ago, it strained across her breasts and clung more to her bottom, but unless Ellen was very much mistaken it didn’t look that bad.
Impulsively she sat down at her dressing table and rummaged through her drawer. At the back of her mind thoughts and feelings about Hannah, Nick and everything else clamoured for attention, but she ignored them. She was certain that somewhere in here was some mascara and lipstick.
After several minutes Ellen finally found a long-neglected stick of lipstick. Very slowly and carefully, her hands trembling, she applied the dark red gloss to her mouth. Nick had never liked her in lipstick, he always said it made her mouth look too big. But when she checked her reflection in the mirror she felt that her already generous mouth was improved by more definition and colour.
‘Fuck you, Nick,’ she said out loud, unaware that she had spoken at all. Then she unscrewed the mostly dry and caked tube of mascara and batted her lashes at the wand. The result here was less pleasing: there were black clumps that she had to tease out of her lashes with her fingernails and a fine powdery dust on her cheeks, leaving a smudge when she tried to wipe it away. But after several minutes with a damp cotton-wool pad Ellen decided she’d done the best job possible, and what remained of the black mascara did seem to intensify the green of her eyes.
After dragging a brush through her hair, she knelt down and slipped a shoe box out from underneath her bed. Unwrapping the tissue paper they were nestling in, she took out her one pair of smart shoes, black, plain with a low heel. They were her funeral shoes.
Ellen looked at them for a long time, so sedate and sensible, the dull smooth leather emitting a faint shine. She realised for the first time that she hated them, they were ugly, frumpy shoes – the kind that Nick would have picked for her, that she had picked for herself, choosing only that which he would have approved of, unaware that she despised them. Without a second thought she took them to the window and promptly threw them out, hearing them clatter on the path below. Then just as purposefully she marched to Sabine’s room, knocking on the door even though she knew that Sabine was still out with Charlie.
Sabine had very many pairs of shoes and Ellen selected the highest, shiniest pair she could find, silver sling-back sandals with stiletto heels. Sitting on the edge of Sabine’s bed she fiddled with the minute jewelled buckles for several minutes before she finally managed to secure the shoes to her feet. They were rather tight and the straps pinched her toes, but she didn’t care. They were the finishing touch, the final element of a plan that she had barely been aware of formulating until she took her first teetering steps in those shoes. Just as she was about to leave, she spotted a bottle of wine on the dressing table, a Rioja with a screwtop. Next to it was an unwashed glass, and from what she could tell about one glassful worth of wine was missing from the bottle. Pursing her lips and shrugging, Ellen picked up both the bottle and glass and took them with her.
Returning to her room, she heard Charlie and Sabine coming in from the pub. Hastily she climbed into bed, pulling the covers over her as her son’s feet thundered up the stairs, hoping that if he did appear he wouldn’t notice her make-up.
‘Charlie,’ she heard Sabine whisper. ‘Let Mum sleep, OK? It takes a long time to get over a migraine. We could hook up our DSs if you like and play Mario Cart.’
‘You’ve got a DS?’ Ellen heard Charlie outside the door, clearly impressed.
‘Of course, and I’m pretty good too. Come on. Let’s go downstairs and see if we can’t teach Allegra how to race too.’
‘OK,’ Charlie said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Yeah all right then, probably best to let her sleep it off.’
And then it was just a matter of waiting, taking one more sip of the warming numbing wine and waiting. For Charlie, who came in to see her around ten o’clock.
‘Mum? You OK?’ Ellen, regarding him from over the edge of her quilt, nodded.
‘Yes, Charlie, I’m fine. I think I just overheated a bit, that’s all.’
‘Your headache, it’s not because of me, is it? Because of what I said and making you look at the leaflets?’
Ellen held one bare arm out to him, careful not to let him see any of the ensemble that she still wore beneath the covers, complete with the silver sandals. Most of her lipstick had worn off now anyway, and she suspected she’d have to reapply the mascara too, which had flaked all over the pillow while she’d been waiting. ‘No, no – not at all. And you know what, Charlie? You were right. You were utterly and totally right. I have got a problem and I do need some help. I finally realised that today, but I don’t know if I ever would have, if you hadn’t been brave enough to tell me. I’ve a few other things to sort out but I promise you, I will get better. I will be a good mum again.’
‘You are a good mum,’ Charlie insisted, taking her hand. ‘Anyway, guess what? I had scampi and chips in the pub. It was nice.’
‘Charlie, that’s great!’ Ellen said, sitting up to hug him, forgetting her secret ensemble for a moment. Fortunately a green dress and an old shirt were all the same to an eleven-year-old boy.
‘Calm down, Mum,’ Charlie mumbled. ‘It’s no big deal. It’s just today I fancied a change, that was all.’
‘I know,’ Ellen said, ‘I know what you mean. Goodnight, love.’
She kissed him on the forehead and waited for what would be Sabine’s inevitable follow-up visit. It came less than two minutes later.
‘You borrowed my wine, I see?’ Sabine said, sitting down in the place that Charlie had just vacated.
‘Yes, do you mind?’ Ellen asked her.
‘Of course not, I think under these circumstances alcohol is really the best remedy. Also it will help you sleep.’
‘And Charlie, he doesn’t know about anything that’s happened?’
‘No, he was on good form actually. A little worried about you but not unduly. He seems … lighter.’
‘I think he is,’ Ellen said. ‘I think he’s been carrying around this worry for months all on his own, and now he’s found the courage to talk to me about it he feels better. Which is why he mustn’t know about anything that has happened with Hannah.’
Sabine nodded in agreement. ‘Allegra has retired. I think Charlie and I wore her out. Would you like me to make you some food before I go to my room? I’m having another Skype conference with Eric, but not for twenty minutes.’
‘No,’ Ellen mustered a smile. ‘I couldn’t eat anyway. It all seems so surreal. So artificial. Like I’ve just read it in the chapter of a book.’
‘I know,’ Sabine said. ‘Well, for tonight at least that is good. Tomorrow when the sun is up and you have rested we will think what to do next. For now drink the wine and sleep and let it all seem unreal.’
‘Thank you, Sabine,’ Ellen said. ‘When I took in lodgers I never expected that I’d be taking in friends too, but you and Allegra and Matt, that’s exactly what you are.’
‘Well,’ Sabine said. ‘Most people are good. Most people apart from my stinking, evil, good-for-nothing husband, that is.’
When she had gone Ellen looked at the clock. It was almost eleven. Not much longer to wait before the house would be quiet and asleep. She would be able to go downstairs, find another bottle of wine and implement her plan.
Because tonight, giddy with the kind of reckless abandon that she had never thought herself capable of, Ellen had decided she would not let another minute of her life slip by unlived. Tonight Ellen was going to take charge of what happened to her next. Tonight Ellen was planning her second-ever seduction attempt.
Tonight Ellen had decided that she was going to have sex with Matt Bolton.
Chapter Eighteen
It took Matt several seconds to locate the keyhole with his key. He hadn’t considered himself very drunk at all, at least not by Bang It! standards. When he left the pub, the others were off to find a legendary and possibly mythical drinking club that was supposed to be open all night under an adult entertainment shop called Venus Videos in Soho. Matt had questioned the point of an illegal drinking den when there were plenty of legitimate places that stayed open all hours these days, but he had been shouted down and pelted with a good many very offensive insults regarding his sexuality and gender assignment. His sleep-less night catching up with him at last, he’d bowed out and saved his reputation by telling them that he was off home to sort out his landlady.
Despite the weariness that crowded his head with ill-advised thoughts of Ellen’s hair spread out across her pillow, Matt had elected to take half an hour or so to walk home, preferring the enduring heat of the evening to the crowded and noisy night buses.
Living a little dangerously, he’d tipped his head back as he walked, hoping to be able to see some stars, despite the city lights obliterating any chance of communing with the cosmos. Matt didn’t know why he had the urge to do this anyway, it wasn’t like he’d spent his childhood in some rural idyll at one with nature. He’d spent it growing up on a Manchester council estate where nature consisted of grass verges and the occasional privet hedge. But something had happened to him, something that made him remember a line of passion from some seventeenth-century poet, that made him dream about curling a tress of glossy dark hair around his fingers, that made him want to search the heavens for some meaning to his life in the random patterns of the universe.
‘Fuck,’ Matt had mumbled to himself as he tried to find the keyhole again. ‘I’ll be reading my star sign next.’
He took great care to close the door behind him, and stood for a second in the quiet cool hallway appraising the situation. There was no light in the living room, or under Allegra’s bedroom door. But there was a low greenish light coming from the kitchen, which meant that Ellen was in there having a cup of tea because she always switched on the under-unit lights whenever she was in there alone, thinking. Weary and confused, his body numbed by alcohol, Matt felt he probably shouldn’t go into the kitchen to talk to Ellen tonight, not tonight and not in this state. Before he knew it he’d be quoting her poetry and telling her he loved her or something equally insane, taking risks, putting himself out there or whatever it was Lucy had said. Yet even as the last tiny rational part of his brain was making these decisions, his body had already propelled him to the last place he knew he ought to be.
He pushed open the kitchen door, but Ellen was not there.
Well, she was not there in any sense that Matt understood, at least not at first. She was not sitting at the table in some oversized shirt, her hair tied up, embracing a mug of tea. She was leaning against the countertop directly opposite the door, more like lounging actually, and she was wearing a dress. And not just a dress, but a dress, dark green and so figure-hugging that in one single second all the mysteries that had been Ellen’s body were laid almost bare to him, and he was unable to tear his eyes from the curve of her breasts, the deep cleavage that ran between them, nor the delicious rise of her hips undulating from her waist with what seemed like a glorious decadence. Matt had heard the phrase ‘all woman’ many times before, but he had never really had cause to use it, at least not so accurately.
Ellen tilted her head so that her long glossy hair strayed over one shoulder, and she smiled at him. She had lipstick on, Matt noticed, confused. Why was she wearing lipstick and a dress?
‘Glass of wine?’ she asked him. A bottle and two glasses stood ready. She poured him a drink.
She’d been expecting someone, Matt realised, wondering who it might be. And then with a sudden cold thrill he realised that she’d been expecting him. Fuck. Fuck, what was he going to do? He felt fifteen again for the first time since he was fifteen and Charlotte Mackenzie had told him they could have sex if he liked as long as he was careful. Except he’d fancied Charlotte Mackenzie from the age of eleven, and just the thought of doing anything so intimate with her had meant that it was all over for him before he’d even laid a finger on her. Charlotte Mackenzie hadn’t spoken to him after that, and he had hoped not to be so humiliated ever again. Suddenly, exhilarated and terrified all at once, Matt felt just like that fifteen-year-old boy again. This couldn’t be happening, not here, not now. Not like this. He wasn’t ready, he didn’t know how he felt about her and besides he was really, really drunk. He was never any good at sex when he was really, really drunk and …
‘I wanted to thank you for staying up all night with me last night,’ Ellen said. Slowly she walked across the kitchen towards Matt, which was when he noticed her silver high heels, an observation that was inevitably followed by an image of her wearing nothing but these very shoes. He swallowed and backed away, praying that she wouldn’t touch him. What had happened in the fifteen or so hours that he had been out of the house? Had some kinky alien life force with a thing for plunge bras come and taken over Ellen’s body? Where was the offer of tea and biscuits? Where was the debrief of the day, when he’d tell her what had happened at work and she’d tell him about something Charlie had said or done?
It was going to be much harder to admire her from afar if she actually started throwing herself at him.
Please don’t touch me, please don’t touch me, please don’t touch me, Matt implored silently as Ellen approached him. She handed him the glass of wine, which he took as a defensive tactic, assuming that a receptacle full of liquid would act as some barrier between them. He was wrong.
Ellen took one more step on her silver high heels into his personal space and rested her hand on his shoulder. She looked into his eyes.
‘I wondered if there was anything I could do to thank you?’ she asked him, batting her smoky lashes.
‘Um … well, a coffee would be great?’ Matt squeaked as Ellen’s hand traced its way down his torso over his waistband and … He grabbed her wrist before it got any further.
‘Ellen,’ he said, studying her face at close quarters, noticing the slightly swollen lids and reddened eyes that hid behind the newly applied and dusty mascara. ‘Ellen, what’s all this about?’
‘Oh God, you don’t fancy me, do you?’ Ellen asked him, stepping away and stumbling. Matt realised she was probably as drunk as him, if not a little more so. ‘I knew it, I knew there was no way I could carry this off. Here I am being reckless and spontaneous and it never occurred to me that you just didn’t fancy me. I’m delusional, that’s what I am.’
Matt took a second to assimilate everything that she had just said.
‘What, are you joking? Of course I fancy you, I don’t think I’ve ever fancied anyone more,’ he told her, feeling compelled to haemorrhage compliments. ‘You look stunning, that dress … Your body looks slamming, Ellen. It’s impossible to ignore.’ Matt swallowed. ‘But it’s just not like you. Which is why I’m wondering what all this is about?’
‘Really?’ Ellen perked up, smiling a bit like the old Ellen. The one who wasn’t a sex-crazed, alien-possessed siren. Matt was considerably relieved to see her. ‘Because, you know, you spend so long not noticing yourself or looking at yourself that you sort of have no idea what you look like any more. I used to be beautiful once, and I mean once. It was a Thursday evening in 1998. I was wearing this dress. That was the last time I was beautiful.’
‘That’s not true, Ellen,’ Matt said. ‘You … you are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. And I know that sounds like a line but it’s true. I’ve never, not since Charlotte Mackenzie, wanted anything as much as to … touch your hair.’ He winced. ‘Which makes me sound a bit weird, doesn’t it?’
‘You can touch my hair,’ Ellen purred at him softly, taking a step back towards him. ‘You can touch me anywhere.’
She pressed herself against him so that they stood breast to breast, hip to hip.
‘The thing is,’ Matt said, finding it difficult to keep his hands away from her beautifully rounded bottom, ‘is that I can’t. I can’t just come in from work and find you, you Ellen Woods, dressed up and a bit drunk and up for it, and take advantage of that. I can’t.’
