Unbind (15 page)

A lot of nights out began with the notion of a swift one after work, but escalated into much longer stints cradling glasses of beer and bitching about whatever crept up in conversation. The next day it was all forgotten and I’d move onto my next drinking partner(s). People seemed shocked to discover I was so humble, but little did they know the things about my life I was loathe to admit. You know when you’ve gone through truly taxing times, you never brag about it. It’s not a thing to brag about—having survived death—at the hands of a lethal object.

I thought I was living the life but while I was out every night, not all of my colleagues were and some began to remark on my stamina. They just didn’t know it was better than me ordering a bunch of flat-pack boxes to start arranging post-it notes inside.

Then one afternoon, just as I was feeling confident I had it all together—I was immensely fulfilled and didn’t need any men, not even one man—Cai swept back into the office with a swagger so drool-worthy I hated him for it a little. Did it mean he had already found someone else? I didn’t know. All I knew was that he was roaming the office talking to all and sundry and he wasn’t coming up to me first, like he had those first few days of my time there.

Eventually he did saunter up to my desk in stonewash and a white Henley t-shirt that revealed his true musculature. He wasn’t massive, but he was fit. So, fit.
Flipping heck, what is he trying to do to me?
His eyes smoked with desire as he got closer and I squeezed my thighs together so hard to reprimand my sex drive. Internally I fumed, externally I sighed. I flirted outrageously, pushed my breasts out, flicked my hair and flashed my teeth. Everyone around my desk recoiled—it didn’t escape my notice.

“Got a minute?” he asked with a shy smile.

No mug or coffee in hand. I wondered what he could want?

He led me to the kitchen and when we got there, he tried to kiss me as soon as we were alone. In the workplace! Without conversation, without explanation! For all he knew, I was already involved with someone else! I pulled back and looked away from him.

“What are you doing?” I scrubbed at my cheek which was boiling from having his lips briefly touch me there.

“I thought—”

I looked away from him, avoiding his eyes. “We’re at work. This isn’t appropriate.”

“Since when?” he argued petulantly.

I knew I was a little older than the guy but still, didn’t he know courting etiquette? You don’t bugger off and return without explanation? Without a bit of sucking up? An apology?

“I’m… just… you could’ve called. Or emailed.” I felt tired from waiting for his call, every day.

I was angry. Agitated. Aggravated. I was also embarrassed about making a total fool of myself the last time we saw one another. He looked shocked and stood still, a blush slowly rising in his cheeks.

Come on
.
Show some gumption
, I willed him.

“I work all over the world. This is my job,” he began, throwing his hands up, “anyway you got hammered the last time we went out. I felt like you needed some space to, I dunno, regroup. I was giving you your goddamned space… like you said. To get used to this place.”

I looked at him briefly and he smiled, just a smidgen. I remarked under my breath, “You thought it was all moving too fast?”

“Way too fast,” he nodded. “Listen, they just put me on a plane to cover a Royal visit abroad and I went. I was so busy I forgot to call… but I thought it’d be good for you.”

“Oh.” There I was, forgetting people had lives.

“Just… let me kiss you.” He beckoned with his finger.

I couldn’t help but smile. I walked to him slowly and when I got there, he reached out and stroked my hair down to tidy it behind my ears. How had he gotten so sure of himself all of a sudden?

“You tug at your hair when you’re stressed.”

“Do I?”

He reached down and kissed my forehead, murmuring, “Dinner, tonight?”

“Maybe, depends on this kiss.”

“Okay,” he said, his face beaming with happiness. “I like a challenge.”

“Kiss me,” I asked again.

He pulled me close and closed his mouth firmly over mine. I felt the solidity of his stomach as he reminded me why I was still so damn hung up. His deep kiss revealed such yearning, not just for me, but for someone. For an outlet, for a chance. His soft lips, more familiar now, sent aches through my nervous system. Our tongues brushed gently and I knew I needed to go to bed with him already.

We pulled back, eager not to get caught like this, and he told me, “I love the way you dress.”

“What, this?” I tugged at my flowing, oriental-inspired tea dress. The mandarin collar hugged my throat and his eyes kept darting there, to what was hiding beneath, beckoning his lips.

“Umm, it’s very sexy.”

“I have bad news about the socks…” I began as we headed for the door, “…had to escort them to Sock Heaven.”

We laughed as we left the kitchen and he walked me back to my desk. He was just explaining, “I ran out of instant coffee but we can—”

That’s when he saw the rose.

Another had been placed across my keyboard, in exactly the same manner and position as all the others. I was gobsmacked. Did Cai have some magic trick up his sleeve? The roses had ceased while he was gone, so I assumed they could only be from him. Surely?

“What the hell is that?” he growled, his voice deeper than I had ever heard it before.

I picked it up and it was just as beautiful as all the others, more so, if it were possible. I fought the urge to smell it.

“I got them a few times, exactly like this.” I waved it in his direction, but he stepped back as if its very existence were an insult. I continued to explain, “I thought maybe they were from you but I stopped getting them when you were away and I don’t know how they arrive here… I just find them on my desk. I rang reception, rang round a few guys who flirted with me, but none of them knew anything. Least of all me. I’ve asked people sat nearby and none of them know either!”

I looked around at my neighbours and all of them were desperately trying to hide their interest, failing miserably. None of them dared look at me and I knew I’d get no explanation about the way in which this rose reached my desk.

I dropped the flower, absently letting it fall to my desk so hard that some petals came loose. He flinched when he saw the layers start to peel apart and I decided this was weird. Cai’s face scrunched in anger, his fists bunching and clenching, like he might sucker punch a silly, bloomin’ rose!

“I would never send you roses,” he told me curtly.

I shook my head, exclaiming, “Then, who?”

Cai chased away without another word and I wondered if he had a suspect in mind and was hauling them up so he could ask them outright.

Me? Well, I’d had enough of the whole thing. I picked up the rose and stuffed it in my desk drawer. I sent a mass email to my colleagues asking if they knew who the mysterious rose gift was from, but not a single one of them replied, as if they’d never even received the email. Someone must have seen something because that rose had been hand-delivered—you’d assume at least one of them must have spotted the culprit hovering around my desk, surely?

How frustrating!

That evening as I left work, I searched for Cai on the news floor but he was nowhere to be found. I even thought, maybe if I got downstairs, he would be waiting for me.

So when he wasn’t, I stood outside the building and dialled his number. It rang and rang and rang. I called again. It rang.

I took the hint and caught the tube to Wandsworth. When I got off and got a signal on my phone again, all I got was a text with the words:
That rose. Wasn’t from me.
 

I tried to call him again, but this time he’d diverted me. I got the message. He couldn’t get over his jealousy. Fine. Well, that was it then.

SEVERAL DAYS PASSED and as each day rolled round, I hoped and hoped. In my heart, I willed him to show up again. Prayed for it. Whenever a tall, manly figure walked by, my heart fluttered and I prepared for it to be him. I prepared to paint on a smile and had all my best lines ready to win him round again. However, no such opportunity was presented to me. He never checked out, he just didn’t show up again.

I made a pact with myself not to do any extensive internet research. My thinking was that if he got over his hatred of whoever sent that rose, he might come back and we might begin an affair, finally. If we did ever (miraculously) manage to get together, I wanted to know everything about him from the horse’s mouth.

However, time stretched relentlessly on and I needed to know something, anything, so when I searched for the latest on Kincaid Matthews, I saw he had been recently papped walking the streets of New York with his famous aunt, Jennifer Matthews. So, he’d gone back. The nature of his work was unpredictable but he’d no doubt stored up a lot of air miles recently.

In the image, he and his aunt looked blank and unimpressed, both of them hidden behind sunglasses. On the screen that was not all that caught my eye, however. In the right-hand corner there was the usual ‘related searches’
column.

I saw vague words that shocked and enticed me. I had to read on. Again, I found so many articles detailing claims he was gay. There were lists of guys he was friends with who were known to be gay. Nothing was ever confirmed or denied, just alleged. As ever. How annoying. The way he kissed me certainly didn’t allege he was gay. If he was bi, I could handle that. Just as long as he wasn’t into sharing. I couldn’t handle that.

I couldn’t help myself and before long I was looking back at Cai over the years, pictured with numerous models, actresses, socialites and fellow artists on the scene. It made me feel sick, seeing him in various states of drunkenness, exiting clubs or bars with one, two, sometimes three women on his arm. However, that wasn’t my only shock. I also found a really long newspaper story about his failed marriage!

I had to take a moment when I read that. Wow. He was 24 and already had a
failed
marriage. Either they married ’em off young in New York society or he was just desperate to get his cash and run. Speed-reading the article, the words
travesty, fake, annulment, mistake, teenagers
and
Jennifer Matthews
screamed at me. They might as well have been in bold.

On Google images, I found a very old newspaper clipping someone had scanned and posted years ago. It mentioned how tragic his mother’s death was—a talented artist who never fulfilled her promise. The details of how she died had been omitted for legal reasons.
Strange
. Nowhere did it mention any kind of father figure. So if the case was sealed shut, then by whom? Or rather, who was paid off? And who paid them off? I had a feeling Jennifer had some involvement there.

Did Cai’s parents have a suicide pact or were their deaths totally separate? Then, my heart stopped. There was more in the article about his mother, Claudia. It read:

Ms. Matthews attended the Royal College of Art on a scholarship in the late 1970s, on the premise of her skills in op art and 3D sculpture. Professors were astounded by her natural-born techniques across various disciplines but the late artist never graduated, her lifestyle of drink and drugs losing her vital credits. The college held Ms. Matthews in high regard nevertheless and articles detailing some of her better undergraduate creations made it into numerous textbooks studied by contemporaries and later followers of her work. Most experts in op art still regard Matthews as the greatest lost talent of her time.

Matthews reportedly spent the days preceding her death working on her last work of art. One can only wonder at how much it might be worth—the talented artist spent years in seclusion, some say because of illness and ongoing addiction.

If I knew anything, it was that people in
their
world had many ways of getting what they wanted, how they wanted. The name of Cai’s father seemed to have been buried. Claudia inherited money and probably had enough to keep herself and any love child, if that’s what Cai was.

A bit more investigating told me that Jennifer and Claudia’s parents divorced when they were young. Years later, their mother Karen remarried… her former brother-in-law, Chester.
Good lord.
So, there were definitely some skeletons in the closet. The newlyweds were barely married a couple of weeks before a car accident killed them both. Chester was a high-flying surgeon who travelled the world, his brother Baldwin Matthews—Jennifer and Claudia’s father—a Harley Street GP.

Jennifer, the younger sister, didn’t get the Connecticut estate or the investments in Silicon Valley that went with their late uncle’s inheritance. It might not have bothered her—she was rich already, a brand expert climbing her way to the top.

Now
Frame
,
creative director, no less.

I thought I had all the main points of interest locked away and stored in my memory so I shut my browser and left it at that. I didn’t want to know anymore. Honestly though, if I thought about it, Cai’s loss made me feel more for him.