StillWaters:Book4oftheSophieGreenMysteries (28 page)

“Noise box.”

He was holding me tightly, and that was part of the reason for the lack of thought. The rest of it was that I think he’d blown away some brain cells. Not to be crude, but I think I now know the origin of the phrase "coming your brains out".

Luke let go of me and got up and left the bath, all slippery wet and naked. I reached out, but he danced back, grinning.

“Going to get the tape,” he said, drying his hands. “Is it still in your bag?”

I nodded and off he went.

I sat there for a while in the warm bubbles, smiling and blushing as I thought about what we’d been doing. Then I thought, what if he goes to Saudi Arabia? Part of my rosy glow faded.

Then I thought, Bad Sophie, and slapped my own wrist. I didn’t need to think about that. That was a bad thought.

Where was Luke?

He appeared in the doorway with another bottle of champagne and the MP3 player.

“Why, Mr. Sharpe,” I said, “if I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to get me drunk.”

“Would I?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t laced it with vodka.”

He grinned. “Shows what you know.”

He got back into the bath, pulled me up against him and kissed me, and started the recording while he poured more champagne. Who says men can’t multi-task, eh?

Most of the tape was just Rachel talking to the other kids, sounding bored, her tone acerbic. Some of the things she said were downright funny. We listened for hours, the cooling water being periodically topped up, eventually halting the recording to get out before we went wrinkly, and lounging on the bed instead, Luke feeling me up in the boring bits, until we heard a phone ring on the tape and Gav’s voice answer it.

“That’s very unprofessional,” Luke said.

“What he’s doing, or you?”

Luke grinned and put a finger to my lips. I licked it.

“I can’t talk for long,” Gav was telling his caller, “I’ve got—
shit
. You’re kidding.”

“Any money it’s the boyfriend,” Luke murmured.

“No bet here.”

“What the hell is going on here?” Gav asked agitatedly. “You think they’re cops?”

“How American,” Luke drawled in his best I-was-an-Eton-Prefect voice, and I shushed him.

“Well, don’t they usually have like a badge or something? ID? The ones in Cornwall did. No, no contact.” Gav sighed. “Did you tell him anything?”

I looked up at Luke. “Did he?”

“No, not really,” he sighed. “Deflected everything.”

“No,” Gav was saying, “well, no one’s asked me. ’Cept for the kid. No, Mike, I really don’t think—”

“Mike,” Luke and I mouthed to each other.

“What’s she look like? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

“You deserve two ‘uh-huh’s,” Luke observed.

“Is that all?”

“Sounds like a Barbie doll,” Gav said.

“I do not!” I said, outraged.

“Yes, you do.”

“Well, I don’t look like one.”

“Thankfully. I do not want a freak-of-nature girlfriend.”

He said the G-word. Oh God.

“Look,” Gavin said, “I’ll talk to you later, okay? I’m free from five—oh, bollocks. I’d forgotten. Okay. How about I meet you when you close up? I’ll see you there. Bye.”

I looked at Luke. “What time do you reckon The Host closes?”

He made a face. “Do we really have to stake it out?”

“Hey, they could be behind sending those bloody bees to me,” I said, and Luke picked up my hands and kissed them. I’d explained the story of the bee box to him earlier and he’d been very pissed off.

“I am sick and tired of people attacking you,” he’d stormed.

“Well, that makes two of us.”

“It’s all the bloody time!”

“I don’t ask for it, you know. It’s not my fault people are always trying to kill me,” I pouted, and Luke softened and kissed me better.

I got out of bed, my back suddenly feeling stiff and sore (hardly surprising, really), and picked up Luke’s T-shirt to slip on and pad downstairs. Call me weird, but I feel odd walking around naked. Even in front of someone who has seen me in such a state for hours on end.

Downstairs, I said hello to Norma and told her she was being a good girl for staying put while Luke and I did the naughty upstairs. I found the information leaflets that had come with the arrival pack, and took them upstairs, reading as I went.

“The Host, open from eight ’til two,” I said, and scooped up my phone from the sofa to look at the time. “God, it’s one already! How long were we listening to that tape?”

There was a message on my phone, and I read it as I passed Luke the leaflets and flopped back down on the messy bed. He pushed up the T-shirt and started kissing my stomach as I read out loud the text from Angel: “Did I say thank you, I adore you, got my fiancé back & he’s v attentive! Mm I love makeup sex.”

“Me too,” Luke licked my hipbone.

“Shall I tell her?” I said.

“What?”

“That we’ve been having more sex than her?”

“Yes. Whatever she’s done, we did it twice.”

I laughed as I considered my reply. “Bet I love it more than you. Took love life into own hands. Well… Not just love life ;-)”

Angel called me seconds later.

“You did
what
?”

I laughed in delight. “I had sex,” I told her happily. “Lots of sex.”

“Oh my God! I’m so proud of you. Tell me everything!”

“Erm, I’m not into dirty phone calls, Ange.”

She laughed. “Who seduced who? When? Is it back on? Tell me tell me tell me!”

Like stepmother, like stepdaughter, I thought. “I seduced him. Not long after you left—”

“Long enough,” Luke sulked, and I kissed his pouty lip.

“And yes. I think it’s back on.”

“Damn right it is,” Luke said.

“Is he there?”

“Well, where did you expect him to be?”

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Do you think I’d have texted you if I was in the middle of something? How come you’re still up, anyway?”

“I seem to be getting morning sickness at night, too.”

I made a face she couldn’t see. “Blegh. Is Harvey there holding back your hair?”

“He’s off warming up Coke in the microwave.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it again. I didn’t really want to know.

“Okay,” I said. “Well, I have to go.”

“I’ll bet you do,” Angel said with a dirty chuckle. She might look like she’s just hiding her halo for modesty, but Angel has the filthiest laugh I’ve ever heard.

“I’ll speak to you tomorrow?”

“It is tomorrow.”

“Oh!” I blinked at Luke. “Happy Christmas.”

Angel returned the greeting and signed off to be sick again. Luke peeled his T-shirt off me and gave me a fabulous Christmas present there and then.

Later, as I lay there trying to remember the breathing sequence (in then out? Or out then in? When did it get so complicated?), Luke padded downstairs and started throwing clothes at up me.

“What?” I said.

“Don’t you want to go and eavesdrop on the love birds?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Not really into gay porn in a big way.” Luke raised his eyebrows. “Or a small way either.” I sat up and rolled my shoulders, looking through the clothes Luke had chucked me. “Where’s my bra?”

“Who says you need one?”

“Whoever gave me double Ds.”

Luke made a face, but he found it and aimed it at me. It landed on my head.

“Cute,” he said.

Hmm.

I got dressed in the things I’d been wearing earlier and braved a pair of gloves. God, that hurt. We pacified Norma Jean with a chew stick and left the villa, into the astonishingly cold Christmas air.

“When I was a little girl,” I whispered, “I always used to think Father Christmas came at exactly midnight, so I always went to bed by midnight, because otherwise he wouldn’t come.”

“I always got told he’d never come if I was awake past nine,” Luke grimaced. “Or before eight the next morning.”

“Your parents were mean.”

“Hell, no, my parents let me stay up well past midnight. Sometimes we didn’t even go to sleep.”

Of course. The horrible aunts, uncles and grandparents who’d been landed with Luke when his parents died in that accident. A different relative each holiday. No one wanted him in their rich, ordered lives.

I hugged his arm. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“Your family is rotten.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s why I don’t see them any more.”

We walked on a while longer, breath clouding in the air, the forest very quiet around us. I knew that less than twenty feet away in any direction were a lot of people, all fast asleep, waiting for the morning and their Christmas presents, but in the darkness of the softly-lit path, it seemed like we were the only people for miles.

The Village Centre was all but deserted, a yawning security guard at each door to stop people going in. Occasionally a couple or a group would stagger out, crying goodbyes and salutations, meandering off into silence, the cold air muffling everything.

“My God.” I clung to Luke. “I’m so
cold
.”

“I’ll warm you up later. Remember this was your idea?”

I made a face. “What time is it?”

He looked at his phone, the blue glow eerie in the darkness. “Five past two.”

We found a quiet spot in sight of the Host exit and sat down to wait.

Ten minutes had gone by, and I was starting to think this was one of the most stupid ideas I’d ever had, when sudden flash of pale light lit up the inside of the venue. I pointed, and Luke nodded.

“Phone?” I mouthed, looking at the fading blue light.

“Could be.”

Seconds later the door was opened by one of the waiters from the medieval banquet.

“That’s him,” Luke mouthed, and I was surprised. Michael Varley could have overheard everything we’d been saying that night at the banquet. I hadn’t been looking for anyone in a costume.

A dark shape detached from the shadowy racks of canoes by the lake and came towards the building. Luke and I leaned back into our hiding place as he passed. I didn’t need to tell Luke it was Gav Beasley.

He kissed Varley on the mouth, a proper lingering lovers’ kiss, and they went inside.

“I’m not sure I want to see this,” I said, as Luke led me over to the window.

“Me neither,” he said, and we peered into the dark room.

Then we both ducked down so fast we nearly hit heads.

“Jesus,” Luke said.

“That is not pretty,” I agreed.

Even though the windows were double glazed, I could still hear them. Don’t you sometimes wish you could close your ears like you close your eyes? What kind of a design fault is that?

“Why are we here?” Luke asked me.

“Thought they might be talking.”

“Well, there are certainly words…”

Not words I wanted to hear. God, I felt violated, and I was only listening.

“Well, they have stamina,” I said after a while.

“Yep.”

I debated whether to suggest passing the time in a more enjoyable way, but got interrupted by a loud, satisfied yell from within.

“Remind me not to eat off those tables again,” I said to Luke.

“You think the coast might be clear now?”

I cranked my cold, stiff legs up and peered through the window, not really wanting to see anything. But the room was dark, and all I could make out was the gleam of moonlight on flesh, thankfully nothing specific.

Eventually, as my eyes got used to the gloom, I saw the two men lying on the floor, naked, arms around each other.

“Kinda sweet, really,” I said.

“Really?” Luke looked mildly nauseous.

“Hey, Luke, you’re a public school boy. Didn’t you ever—”

“No.”

“You didn’t even try it?”

He looked up at me. “Do I ask you about your old sex life?”

“Yes! All the time!”

He made a face. “No, I didn’t. No need to get all AIDS-testy with me.”

“I already got tested,” I said. “Remember? The rusty needle in my arm?”

Luke closed his eyes, and I remembered how scared he’d been when I told him. How completely terrified I’d been when I realised what it meant. That I could have anything. That I could die. Septicemia was a picnic compared to what I could have had.

“Just a thought,” I said as Luke got to his knees and looked through the window next to me. “You were going to seduce me when you still thought I was a carrier.”

“Yep.”

“But—I mean, weren’t you worried—?”

Luke turned to me and kissed my cold cheek. “You would not believe the size of the box of condoms in the bottom of my bag.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered by that or not.

Eventually, the lovers stirred, kissed and sat up. Gavin rubbed his arms, shivering, and Michael handed him a shirt. They dressed each other slowly, and I thought to myself, if one of them was a girl it’d be very romantic. Why is it so odd to me that they’re both men? This is the twenty-first century.

Oh yeah. I remember.
It’s because they’re both supposed to be straight.

“Wonder what Eleanor Duvalle would think if she was here?” I said.

“Maybe she knows.”

“You think? Nah. He’s cheating on her.”

“When you asked her about Molly, she went quiet, right?”

“Right.”

“She knows something.”

“She could just be scared.”

Luke looked at me.

“Or she could know something and be scared,” I conceded.

“You think so too?”

“No need to be sarcastic.”

Luke slipped an arm around me and kissed my ear, which was really the only bit of me not covered by muffling clothing. His hand roamed under my coat, where it stayed a while, surveying the territory.

Then Luke said, “Sophie Green, where are your knickers?”

Oh yes. I was wondering when he was going to bring that up.

“They didn’t go with my outfit,” I said.

“The same outfit you were wearing with them earlier?”

I gave him my best doe-eyed look, and he smiled slowly and started murmuring things in my ear that made my eyes glaze over so much that I hardly noticed when Gav Beasley stood up, stretched, and lit two cigarettes.

“In fact,” Luke’s hand was inching up my skirt, “less talk, more action—”

“Luke—”