Hush Hush (22 page)

Slowly
and irrevocably, she inched towards him.

Angela was up and dressed when he opened his eyes.

Conor stumbled out of bed, hair
rumpled, skin goosepimpling.

‘Did you mind me getting up
first?’ Angela asked. ‘Bathroom’s free for you.’

‘Thanks.’ He threw
her a quick grin that diffused her nerves, and shut the bathroom
door. She willed herself to relax. It was OK. He wasn’t
embarrassed, regretful or cautiously aware of being her first and
only since Robert. Twenty minutes later, they descended to breakfast.

Angela had never known what it
was like to make an entrance with a man who drew second looks. She
herself was accustomed to going unnoticed. Anyway, she would’ve
hated to stand out. Beauty was freakish, the way it set women apart
from humdrum pleasantness of aspect and made them a slave to
preserving it. But she’d always fancied basking in the
reflected glory of a handsome escort. Robert had been like her ‒
ordinary and patently relieved about it.

Now, as they sat down to covered
dishes and napkins so starched that they crackled, Conor said, ‘You
look stunning in that blue dress, Angela. It matches the view behind
you.’

She whirled round to hide her
blushes. Through the window, sea, sky and surrounding hills were
swatches of overlaid blues. Closer to home, golfers were already
wheeling their little shopping trolley things between giant urns on
the front lawn.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
remarked Angela non-committally about the view. She’d worn the
same dress to lunch at his place. Surely he remembered?

Conor smiled, said nothing,
lowered his eyes to a plate of soda bread. Her heart resumed its
normal rate. She was grateful that he hadn’t held her eyes and
uttered that slick line, ‘It’s certainly a beautiful view
from my perspective.’

He probably wouldn’t know
how to ‒ thank God.

After breakfast, they went to the
beach ‒ pale, empty; claimed only by the wind. Angela ran
straight onto it, slipping off her shoes, then flying across the
hard, blond pleats of sand to run full pelt into hissing wetness at
the edge. ‘Jee-sus, it’s cold!’ she yelled over her
shoulder.

Conor followed more cautiously.
His loafers bit deeply into the sand. Angela cavorted like a kid, the
wind flattening her dress against her thighs. He glimpsed the thin
grace of her body, the V of white knickers under her dress, the dark
aureoles of her cold-hardened nipples pushed out against her bra. She
was alive with innocent enjoyment of a small pleasure, wholesome and
sexy. His scrotum tightened and he bent down quickly to unlace his
shoes.

‘The wind hurts your ears!’
called Angela, scampering on ahead, kicking wavelets. He paddled in
her wake, leaving a careful gap. But she was oblivious, leaning down
to pluck half-buried shells out of the sand, tickle slimy heaps of
seaweed with a wary toe. Finally, she ran up to him with her cache of
fractured, still-beautiful shells, darker inside than out, whorled
edges fringed with navy and cobalt rings.

‘You can pick out your
favourite!’ she laughed. ‘Choose one for Shane.’

He chose the one he thought she
liked the least.

When they’d had enough,
they retreated to the beach steps. Angela flapped at her sandy feet
with her hand.

‘Let me,’ ordered
Conor, and grabbed her nearest foot in a gentle vice, wiping it
carefully with a clean breakfast napkin he produced from his trouser
pocket.

‘You needn’t.’
She squirmed, embarrassed.

‘Sit down and hold still,
or I’ll end up taking off a toe by accident.’ He laughed.
‘That’s what I used to say to Shane when he wriggled
about while I was cutting his toenails.’

He dropped one foot, grasped the
other. Angela lapsed into silence. The simple act of kindness had its
own sensuality; the rhythmic pressure of his big, warm hands on her
slightly ticklish feet; the intimate care he took to prise every
grain of sand from between her toes. At long last, she was able to
stuff her none-too-attractive feet back into her shoes. ‘Is it
time for elevenses?’ she asked hopefully, made hungry by the
tearing wind.

Conor looked at his watch.
‘Quarter to ten sounds right for elevenses to me.’

It rained, on and off, for the
rest of the day. They took the hire car up blackberry-hedged lanes
and down sandy paths that led to deserted strands. They poked about
in tumble-down cottages and rescued windblown garlands of dried
flowers in a famine graveyard, fastening them against the memorial
tablet with a large stone. It was a million miles from home, work ‒
and her queasy honeymoon in Kinsale, thought Angela.

Back in the hotel room, Conor
announced he was taking her out for dinner. ‘I’ll have to
get changed,’ fussed Angela, hoping her green linen dress had
withstood the rigours of the holdall.

‘Er ‒ I bought you
something.’ Clumsily, Conor fished about in his own luggage and
drew out a lop-sided parcel of tissue paper, held together with
string, presenting it like a side of fresh beef.

Angela tore at the string. Out
tumbled folds of cerise raw silk, sobered with a hint of black
velvet. ‘Is it too dressy?’ asked Conor anxiously. ‘I
asked Rachel’s advice. I bought it on her stall. She said it
was your size and colouring.’

Yes, she recognised it now.
Rachel had worn it to a Christmas drinks party at the hospital, to
which Angela had been invited. A scallop-edged black velvet bodice
tapered into a puffball of pink silk. It was beautiful, costly,
technically a cast-off ‒ which Conor wasn’t to know.
Angela met his anxious gaze in the mirror.

‘It’s gorgeous!’
she exulted. ‘Thank you so much.’

There was a second of mutual
embarrassment before she moved towards him and kissed him lightly on
the mouth. The dress rustled protestingly between them. ‘I’ll
go and change,’ she said, realising that it had been meant for
tonight, and that it would look a bit odd with her raincoat thrown
over the top. If she remembered rightly, Rachel had teamed it with a
fake-fur black stole.

When she emerged, shyly, from the
bathroom in her butterfly transformation, Conor was perched on the
side of the bed, talking into his mobile. He turned, still talking.
His eyes glittered with a cool appraisal that sent shivers up her
spine. ‘Yes,’ he said into the phone. ‘I’m
looking at the costing specs now. What? No ‒ not tonight.
You’ll have to wait till I’m back in the office on
Monday. I mean it, Joe!’

He tossed his phone on the bed,
opened his arms. Angela went into them.

‘Work rang me, the
buggers,’ he apologised into her hair.

‘I didn’t hear the
phone ring. I was running a bath.’

‘Uh-huh.’ His chin
nudged down a velvet strap. ‘I know it’s only been on you
five minutes, but mind if I take this dress off again?’

‘No,’ she trembled.

She had to help him with the
side-zip. It got stuck in fine threads of silk and a tussle
developed. They fell in a heap on the bed, Conor’s big,
dark-red head buried in pink layers as stiff and springy as a
dancer’s tutu. His head disappeared under the layers
altogether. Angela heard him panting as he unrolled the top of her
black Dior tights. She was panting herself by now. She remembered his
hands stroking her feet, firing her blood in other places. Conor
suddenly paused. ‘What’s this?’ he asked in a tone
of wonder.

From between her legs came a
great bark of unflattering laughter. His head reappeared. ‘I
didn’t know you’d come straight from an audition at the
Folies Berg
è
re!’

Angela shoved him away, sat
upright, pink-faced and annoyed. He’d uncovered the shocking
pink thong. ‘Not the classic line to come out with when you
discover a sexy undergarment on the woman you’re undressing.’

‘Trying to undress.’
He sat up, the moment of passion past. ‘How did blokes manage
in days gone by, with all those hooks and eyes on corsets, and
twenty-six petticoats to get through? There must’ve been a
handbook, a gentleman’s guide to frustration-free stripping.
Begs another key question.’

‘Which is?’ Angela’s
tone was dangerous.

‘How did they cope with
what a woman actually looked like? The reality was probably a far cry
from the illusion created by tightly-laced bodices. It must’ve
been a shock for the bloke to discover love handles, orange-peel
thighs, wobbly great unleashed bosoms.’

‘No such hidden mysteries
on me,’ snapped Angela crisply.

‘I’m sorry,’
muttered a stricken Conor, then looked at her face and burst out
laughing. ‘I’m sorry, but that ‒ thing you’re
wearing!’

‘Thong.’

‘It was unexpected. And you
must’ve blitzed your bikini line with a Flymo to leave enough
bare skin either side of the pink bit. Your poor pubes look like a
freshly-plucked chicken! Sorry!’ he gasped again, clamping a
hand to his traitorous mouth. His eyes were deeply apologetic, but
hilarity lurked behind them.

Angela turned away, so he
wouldn’t see her own eyes soften with tears. He touched her
elbow entreatingly. ‘I’ve blown it, haven’t I?
Honest to God, I deserve to lose you, Angela. Did I say pubes? Did I,
really? May God forgive me ‒ though I’d rather hear it
from you.’

Angela turned to him with a sigh.
His head scurried towards her lap and lay there, beseechingly. Her
hand, reluctantly, scraped hair back from his forehead. His eyes
closed under her touch. ‘I think I love you, Angela. That’s
why I felt free to be myself, say the first thing that came into my
head. I never meant to offend you, I swear.’

Angela’s hand paused and
her heart quickened. Conor peered up at her. ‘Is this working?’
he asked mischievously.

‘You mean the ‘l’
word as the ultimate get-out clause?’ Angela pushed his head
off her lap and stormed over to the window. ‘Don’t play
with my feelings, Conor McGinlay. Don’t say things you don’t
mean.’

‘I meant what I said!’
He stared at her but didn’t come after her. ‘Isn’t
plain speaking my trouble? I think I love you isn’t the same as
I love you, but it’s the truth right now. And I’ve no
idea how you feel about me.’

‘You’ve every idea!’
She turned to him hotly. ‘I’m here on a dirty weekend
with you! I was about to let you undress me. Unless you think I’m
a sex-starved widow who’s gagging for it with anybody!’

‘Ach, don’t be
talking like that, my angelic Angela. Come over here to me and let’s
have a talk.’

She scowled. He was humouring
her, babying her with wheedling Irishisms.

‘Don’t treat me like
a fool!’

‘Please, Angela, please. My
beautiful pink-thonged Christmas fairy.’

She could resist him, but what
was the point? She’d learnt a painfully hard lesson with Robert
when it came to sulking. And deep down, part of her was amused at
Conor’s frankness, his total lack of diplomacy. If she was a
what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of woman, he was a similar type of
man. So now she’d pin him down, make him tell her, once and for
all, what had caused his wife to up sticks and start a new life in
America.

So she went and sat next to him
obediently and demanded, ‘I want to know what went wrong
between you and Kate. I know you gave me the basics that time in
McDonald’s, but I want the gory, truthful details.’ She
folded her arms.

Conor, vanquished by his bad
behaviour, sank back on the headboard with a deep sigh. ‘It’s
quite straightforward, really. My ex-wife was, and is, an alcoholic.
She was already a dipso when I met her at college, but I didn’t
know the signs. Anyway, she was a past master at hiding them. She had
bottles stashed away in unlikely places, she chain-sucked
extra-strong mints, claiming they were for nicotine breath, and she
never lurched around, singing
“
Rosin
the Bow
”
after
chuck-out time down the local. In short, she never behaved like your
stereotypical drunk. Alcoholics rarely do.’

Angela’s mind reeled. ‘So
‒ let me think. Her drinking was a consequence of growing up in
a dysfunctional family? With that horrible father, to be precise?’

‘Well, the old git did
peddle the line that you’d only get to heaven on a temperance
ticket, while all the time swigging away in his
“
study
”
where his poor eejit of a wife thought he was reinventing the wheel.
Kate told me she discovered his hootch stash when she was ten, having
entered the study illegally. After that, it became a game of risk for
her, sampling his booze without him noticing. And then there was the
buzz. Doing the exact opposite of what dear old hypocritical Daddy
preached. Which is where I come in.’

His voice was emotionless, but
Angela glanced at him. ‘You don’t think she married you
just to get at her dad?’

‘She did love me, but it
was all mixed up with getting back at him. I sort of twigged from the
beginning that he was her real passion in life, but I shied away from
the implications. Once we were married, and her defiance
accomplished, she got a bit bored. Drinking was still a distraction ‒
one I was finally beginning to notice as beyond the norms of social
tippling ‒ but having a baby became her laudable attempt to
find a vocation in life beyond me, work and booze. Don’t
forget, she was holding down a good job when Shane arrived.’ He
stopped. ‘I don’t exactly cover myself in glory in this
next bit. What about that table I’ve booked?’

Angela bit her lip. ‘I
don’t know if I’m in the mood.’

‘Even failed husbands have
to eat.’

She cast him a shrewd look. ‘So
you’re the ultimate villain of the piece? Drove a post-natally
depressed new mother back into the off-licence with a piece of
swinish behaviour?’ Her eyes widened as his looked away. ‘Like
an affair?’ she croaked.

‘In
a manner of speaking,’ he grunted, the bluff Conor of old. ‘The
condemned man still has the right to a hearty meal. I’ll tell
you the rest over dinner. Can you actually walk in that thong?’