Undone Read online

  Married, I thought. He’s fucking married. On the phone to her now, making excuses as to why he didn’t call last night.

  He snapped his phone shut as I neared. ‘Come on.’ He walked ahead, nodding at a great froth of pastels and foliage edging the lawn.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Cops are here. We need to make ourselves scarce.’

  ‘Why? Where are we going?’

  ‘We need to get our story straight. Just keep walking.’

  We hurried into the dappled shade of a gravel path flanked with rhododendrons and azaleas. The blooms were on the turn but the candy pinks and whites still looked sugary enough to sweeten the air. Among the cloud of floral femininity, Sol was incongruously masculine and solemn. Dark clothes; dark hair; dark, perplexing Sol. He kept checking back to ensure I was following him. Each time, his gaze swept our surroundings as if he were expecting an ambush. He didn’t once offer a glimpse of the wisecracking, cocksure man I’d met only the day before.

  ‘You think he was on something?’ he asked in a low voice.

  ‘We were all pretty wasted.’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s drink and dope,’ he replied, ‘and there’s dying. You sure you didn’t hear him leave the room?’

  ‘No, I was dead to the world.’

  Ouch. Clumsy phrasing. Gravel crunched underfoot in our silence and the pump of my breath grew quicker. After a while, Sol deviated off the main drag and down a soil-stamped track set with flat stones. A tumbling rockery bordered the narrow path, patterned with alpines, ornamental grasses and lush, deep green ferns. Fronds wafted around Sol’s ankles as he strode forwards, the feathery leaves springing off him to tickle my bare shins. Despite the early-morning warmth, the touch made me shiver.

  ‘Do you know where you’re going?’

  ‘No. Guesswork,’ he replied. ‘Just want to get us away from the grounds. Man, this is such a ball-ache.’

  The track led to a wooden stile in the gap of a dry stone wall furred with mustard-yellow lichen. On the far side stood a dark, tangled woodland, the canopy of overhanging trees casting mottled shade on the rockery’s contrived chaos. Birdsong trilled in the leaves. The air was becoming cool, a touch clammy.

  My mind returned to the damp, coral-pink towel in my room. How had it got from the swimming pool to my bathroom floor? Was it safe to go into the woods with this man? Did he want to get us away from the grounds? Or me? Was I a danger to him?

  In one swift, easy movement Sol lunged upwards and over the stile, arms flexing as he grabbed the side posts. The muscles in his broad back shifted beneath his tee, the wings of his shoulder blades jutting. Fabric gaped above his jeans, flashing the crevice of his arse and a strip of two-tone skin, toffee dark and creamy white. No underwear. I’d seen him get dressed, battling urgency and composure in his eagerness to take control. The memory made me horny. I tried to push the feeling aside. A man was dead. Lust had no place here.

  Sol thumped down onto hard soil and stood, gazing into the woods with a grim, preoccupied expression. Gold-green sunlight filtered in through the trees, patterning him in shifting, citrus colours. He checked his front jeans pocket and absently withdrew his cigarettes. I stepped onto the stile’s narrow plank in backless sandals, clutching both posts. I hadn’t banked on a country walk when I’d selected my footwear.

  Sol turned, looking beyond me, face still pensive as he thumbed open his cigarette packet. Then he switched gear, instantly alert, as if seeing me for the first time in all my city-girl awkwardness.

  ‘Hey, here.’ He stuffed his cigarettes into his pocket and stepped close, offering a hand, his smile strained.

  My fears melted into relief. He was pleasant and kind, not evil at all. I had nothing to be afraid of. I grasped his fingertips, reassured by their strength as I tottered over the wooden structure. I plunged down to the grassy path, shifting my weight onto his hand. His grip tightened in response, fingers curling into mine.

  His fingers, oh God. That small moment of intimacy and support. Something broke inside me. Such a cliché, I know, but that’s how it felt, as if a bar of steel which had taken up residence behind my sternum was shattering into a soaring fragility. A sob rose, too high and hard to contain, a tsunami of emotion. I made a sound, a strangled wail, my shoulders crunching, my eyes flooding.

  Sol was motionless, still clasping my hand like a chivalric prince. To think that he held me so politely as I ruptured. To think it, oh God. So close. I heaved for breath and straightened my back, pinching my lips together. I made my eyes wide, fighting back tears as I shook my head. ‘Don’t be kind to me,’ I wanted to say. ‘Don’t be kind.’ But I couldn’t speak. My constricted throat wouldn’t let me form words.

  Sol stared in bewilderment, the light of pale leaf-ghosts flickering over his face. For a second, we were worlds apart. I might have been on the other side of the stile, where order reigned. Then his face softened and he clutched me in a hard embrace, hiding me in his shadows. He nestled me in the crook of his neck, tilting his chin as he cradled my head, his other arm wrapped tight across my back. His chest was a solid wall of security, and the scent of his skin made me weak.

  ‘Hey, it’s OK,’ he soothed. ‘If you need to cry, go for it. I’m here, I’ll hold you.’

  I gazed into the blur of his T-shirt, tears falling fast as I fought to put the brakes on. If I started crying properly I might never stop.

  ‘This sucks,’ he murmured. ‘Such a shock. He can’t have been more than mid-thirties. And only hours ago we were all …

  I gulped for calmer breath, digging my fingernails into my palms again as I quelled the tears. I could hear Sol’s heart pumping steadily in his ribcage. Dark splashes marked his tee. I remembered his tennis-match sweat dripping from his torso onto the stone floor of the utility room, and the blood which surfaced on his lip when he laughed. All these liquids; all this life. Bodies which can’t contain themselves.

  How long ago that utility-room meeting seemed. How uncomplicated and innocent. If only we could rewind and do the day differently. I could barely comprehend how rigid the dividing line was, how this sudden death had fallen like a guillotine. There was a before and an after for us. For Misha, there was nothing, neither before nor after, unless you believed in heaven.

  And right at that moment, across the world, were Misha’s friends and family, oblivious to his death, unaware that a bomb was about to explode in the timeline of their lives. How could this man, who’d recently been so vital, now be cold and breathless? The heart behind his ribcage didn’t beat, and yet Sol’s was a dull, regular thud in my ear. How arbitrary life seemed. How prosaically fragile, when it was contingent on the functioning of this organ, on meat.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Sol, stroking my hair.

  I tried to remember when a man had last held me so closely. Probably Jonathan as our marriage nosedived and we didn’t dare face it. Sol’s embrace seemed to me the essence of humanity, the living comforting each other in the face of death, two bodies with heartbeats finding solace together. For an instant, I saw the chambers of the heart as four glorious, magical cathedrals, keepers of life in all its shimmering, painful beauty.

  Maybe Misha was out there somewhere. Maybe he wasn’t meat that had ended too soon. Instead, something of him was scattered across the cosmos in a manner we couldn’t even begin to imagine. His strewn consciousness could be glittering among the stars, inexplicable fragments, transcendentally bright and far beyond knowledge.

  I sniffed and nodded, easing back as Sol released his grip. I dusted the tear splashes on his T-shirt. ‘Sorry,’ I croaked.

  ‘No need.’ He smoothed my hair from my face and gazed down. Under his jutting brow, his once-twinkly eyes were now smudged with concern. The split on his lip sagged, a taut polished bead of bruises and blood. The injury seemed so decadent, a flagrant display of sensuality and excess bordering on the sordid. I wanted to kiss him there but doing so was forbidden. I might hurt him or open up the wound. And foolish to
kiss where blood could spill into my mouth.

  That his lips were off-limits made me desire to touch him there all the more. I raised my face higher, seeking and offering, my breath quivering with suppressed sobs. But I bottled out. Instead, I grated my lips over the rough, harsh stubble of his jaw, trying to inhale him. That was safer. I tasted my tears on my lips and I brushed harder, nibbling, kissing, smearing my saltiness against him, murmuring half-words of sadness. I couldn’t stop. The scouring on my lips was addictive.

  I liked to think I was shredding tender skin on the burn of his bristles; that he was ripping me at the molecular level so the kissing, murmuring wreckage of me would lodge with him unseen.

  I edged closer to his lips. Wasn’t it even more foolish not to kiss him there? A man was stone-cold dead. In the scheme of things, what did minor transgressions matter? Who cared about taking a chance on civility and health? So what if I tried and he was repulsed? Because wasn’t this, right now, what mattered most; this seizing of messy moments undaunted by a wagging finger?

  I gazed up at him, and I wanted to vanish into his eyes. The hand cupping my head coiled my hair into a gentle fist and, oh, sweet, dirty joy, his cock nudged against my hip. A thick, slow beat throbbed between my thighs, three distinct pulses that wetted and widened me. I opened my mouth as if I were about to eat thin air. With great care, I reached up to take his injury in a soft, moist hold. As tenderly as I could, I ran my tongue tip over the taut, cracked plumpness.

  A noise snagged in his throat.

  I pulled back, concerned. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Everywhere.’ His voice was a throaty whisper. ‘But I can’t feel it.’

  His hand tightened in my hair and I whimpered. Mild pain prickled across my scalp. I felt so protected and safe, that hint of force affecting me more profoundly than any affection could. He understood me; understood that I didn’t find comfort in the usual places. Slowly, he tilted my head back, his grip intensifying to prevent me moving my lips towards his.

  ‘What is it you want, eh, Lana?’ His voice was a low, sexy drawl. Evidently, he didn’t find comfort in the usual places either. My arousal pulsed. I ached for his wound, his vulnerability. I tried to edge close again but his clasp locked me in place, pain nipping when I tried defying him.

  ‘To forget,’ I breathed. ‘Just for a while. I want to forget.’

  He nuzzled against my cheek. ‘I can make you forget,’ he whispered.

  His voice carried a faint warning note and, oh God, that was it. Game over. I was demolished. I was a rag doll in his arms. A flood rushed to my groin. In my mind, those five little words whirled, dizzying me with their intoxicating promise. I can make you forget.

  I eased forwards.

  ‘I can make you forget who you even are,’ he murmured.

  My knees were boneless. I could barely stand upright.

  We were in a twisted fairy tale, and his bust lip was the forbidden fruit waiting to punish us for our greed. But I didn’t care. Today already felt like punishment of the worst sort. Sol didn’t seem to care either. If he’d wanted, he could have stopped me from tasting him but he didn’t. He just let me feel the stabbing burn in the roots of my hair, his fist following my movements with a tension that stung.

  ‘You want to see if I’ll trust you?’ he asked. ‘Is that it?’

  I pecked and nibbled near his injury again. ‘Do you?’ I whispered.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  Leaves stirred around us as if the forest were drawing breath. I nudged at the bruised bud with gentler lips. He didn’t protest, so again I enveloped the lump as lightly as I could. For a moment, Sol was stock still, allowing me to explore the texture of his hurt, tracing the hard smoothness here, the ragged cut there. Then he groaned and began tentatively kissing back. His body rocked into mine as his grip slackened on my hair.

  The suggestion of abandonment made me melt even further. I grew loose between my thighs and my limbs were watery. I hooked a thumb into the belt loop of his jeans, needing the support. We kissed in fluttering, fleeting touches, the bump moving with his lips, a strange, solid intrusion in the flow of slippery sensuality. He pulled me closer, cupping my buttocks with his big hands. Overhead, a breeze rippled through the canopy and a couple of blackbirds sang merrily. From far away, the cry of sirens reminded me this was not what we should be doing.

  Sol was the first to withdraw. His eyes searched mine, a frown deepening between his brows. ‘We need to stick together on this, OK?’ He ran a thumb over my lower lip. I nodded. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep walking.’

  Disappointment thudded. I was so horny that walking seemed an insurmountable challenge. Sol turned, reaching back for my hand as he began striding over compacted ground. My knees seemed not to exist and my senses were veiled, as if I weren’t fully present. I hurried to keep pace.

  ‘What should we do?’ I asked.

  We released hands. His legs were longer than mine and walking single-file was proving awkward.

  ‘We just need to work out what to say and stick to it.’ He threw me a backward glance. The track narrowed, sloping gradually into denser woodland of beech trees, their smooth, grey trunks rising to a high mesh of green brilliance. Sol tramped up shallow steps edged by thick twigs. The forest floor was scattered with prickly husks of mast and dry, dun-brown leaf litter, friable and soft to walk on.

  ‘I’m in stupid sandals,’ I said irritably. ‘Will you please slow down?’

  He stopped and turned. I read impatience in his silence but I may have been projecting.

  ‘I’m not dressed for this. Where are we going?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Somewhere quiet.’

  ‘If you ask me, this is pretty fucking quiet.’

  ‘A little further on, that’s all.’

  He turned and continued marching along the low incline of the earthy, staggered path. I lagged behind, my breath quickening. Underfoot, the carpet of dead leaves muffled our tread and dulled the occasional crack of twigs. These makeshift steps hadn’t been used in some time.

  ‘You know that bit in 1984?’ I called. ‘Where Winston and Julia go to the countryside? Is this like that?’

  ‘Never read it.’ He spoke loudly, turning to shoot me a fleeting look. ‘I’m a Yank. We do Steinbeck. Why, what happens?’

  I laughed, and the relief of doing so brought a wave of pleasure that made me laugh again. I felt feeble and giddy. My calf muscles ached.

  ‘They go on a sort of date,’ I yelled. ‘And they have to keep walking through woodland, not speaking until they’re … till they’re past all the hidden microphones and bugs and whatnot.’

  ‘Then what happens?’

  I paused, panting for breath. The gathering hush blanketed our voices, our words seeming to linger in a realm unused to speech. I drew a deep breath and said, ‘Then they sit down on the grass and have a lovely picnic.’

  Ahead of me, Sol laughed. ‘Get outta here!’

  ‘OK, I lied.’ I grinned as I strolled on. ‘They fuck each other’s brains out.’

  Sol laughed again. ‘Then yeah,’ he hollered. ‘It is like that. Because I totally forgot the picnic.’

  The steps ended as the forest floor levelled out, the ground a deep bed of old leaves reminiscent of crumbled cigar skins. Sol stopped walking and surveyed our surroundings.

  ‘Seriously, I can’t go much further.’ I stood downslope from him, gasping for breath. ‘These sandals are useless. I’ll break my ankle. Then you’ll be sorry because you’ll be the one carrying me.’

  He smiled and began sauntering off the track towards a toppled beech. His trainers created small flurries of leaf litter when he picked up speed in a boyish scramble of pleasure. At the tree’s base, a lattice of roots matted with earth formed a ragged wall, and the vast spread of dead, bare branches lay tangled on higher ground. Narrow sunbeams pierced the thinned canopy and saplings rose towards the patches of blue sky. Sol slapped the fallen trunk in a gesture of sati
sfaction; then he turned and leaned his backside against it. A bird rattled overhead before flapping away with a desolate cry.

  Sol patted for his cigarettes, smirking as he watched me struggle over the lumpy terrain. I stopped a few feet from him, hands on hips, trying to catch my breath as I assessed our location. Ivy crawled over the horizontal trunk, the ground dipping in a small valley beneath the tree, thick with forest debris. Pale, filtered sunlight, dusty with forest air, gave the small clearing an atmosphere of reverence and myth.

  Sol put a cigarette to his lips and tilted his chin. ‘Take your top off, Lana.’ The cigarette waggled as he spoke.

  Lust slammed into my cunt. He cupped a hand to the cigarette tip, shielding his lighter. I laughed nervously, adoring his show of arrogance. A lock of his dark hair spilled forwards as he gazed at the flame. Smoke drifted up from his cigarette, swirling across shafts of light.

  ‘Here?’ I said. ‘Do you think we’re safe?’

  He inhaled with long, luxurious pleasure, hard enough for me to hear the suck through his teeth.

  ‘I figure so.’ He released a slow trail of smoke, watching me steadily. ‘Haven’t seen any of those hidden microphones for a good while now.’

  I laughed and caught a whiff of his cigarette. In the clean, fresh forest, it smelled illicitly industrial and modern. I could well believe we were the first to walk this way for years, that our voices were breaking an ancient silence. Secrets were secure here, the trees our only witness.

  ‘Well? I’m waiting,’ said Sol.

  I faltered. Ordinarily, I’d have participated without a second thought. Sol and I had the hots for each other and seemed to be on the same wavelength. This was just a bit of fun, some casual sex at a weekend party. But we were fleeing a scene of death, so sex couldn’t be easy and meaningless anymore. Indulging in pleasure seemed disrespectful to Misha. I knew too that, although we concealed it well, emotions were running high.