He looked across the roof at me. ‘Are you sure you’re feeling okay?’
‘I’m faa-bulous,’ my lips caught on my teeth. ‘How ’bout you?’
‘Okay. Fabulous, so where are we going?’ He turned to look at me. I couldn’t see his eyes.
‘Just drive and I’ll tell you.’ I waved at the road.
He didn’t argue, just started the engine and glanced in the mirror. I didn’t look at him. The streets skimmed by. I was minutely aware of every movement he made, the length of his thigh, the turn of his cheek, the back of his hand on the steering wheel. I began to feel a little more sober. What the hell was I doing?
‘Just follow the main road out of York and then the signs for Bilbrough.’ My voice sounded almost normal. A small tickle of trepidation slid quickly into excitement. I was doing this. I really was.
He didn’t ask me any more questions. The windscreen wipers squealed a little in protest on the half-dry glass, smearing the road-view, laying it out there in front of us, long and empty. We drove, silently. The sky overhead was dark, black almost, the roads lined with trees that were silvered into sentinels. He peered at the lit road signs. ‘How far are we actually going?’
‘Don’t,’ I said, already knowing this was completely barmy.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Ask questions. Turn off here.’ I remembered something.
‘Here? You’re sure about this?’ He glanced at me.
We’d come here as kids. I knew this place almost as though I’d dreamt it.
The road straightened out with bleak fields on either side. His phone rang and he ignored it.
‘I have no idea where we are.’ He looked around, anxiously. ‘What if you’re one of those female serial killers?’
‘Then you won’t have to worry about finding your way home, will you?’
He roared with laughter. I could see he liked the fact I was off-beat and outrageous; this was really me, I told myself, but where had this me come from?
We passed signs for the town centre. The fields became scattered houses and barns and then a school and a pub and then the streets narrowed, with collapsing red-brick Georgian houses and shop fronts. The pale square tower of a Norman church rose up from behind the trees.
‘Pull up over there.’
He squeezed in under a low overhang of branches just as his phone rang and he dragged it from his pocket and switched it off.
‘Someone wants you.’
He didn’t answer. ‘Where now?’
I inched out of the passenger side and walked away up the path next to the church, knowing instinctively he would follow.
He looked round. ‘Okay?’
‘Keep going.’
We walked along the gravel path down through the churchyard, past the ragged black tombstones, picking our way over slides of mud and puddles. The wind picked up as we rounded the walls of the church.
‘I can’t do this.’ He suddenly wheeled round, pushing me back abruptly into the stone, catching me completely off-guard. He pressed himself against me, his hands cupping the sides of my face. I stared back at him, chin raised and unflinching. He didn’t kiss me, he just held his face so close that his eyes lost all focus.
‘You’re going to have to.’ I breathed his breath, our lips tingling but not touching, his hips jammed against mine. I was in control of this and I knew it. The equal amounts of excitement and terror set my whole body trembling. I pushed him off and walked quickly up the path that ran alongside the river towards a copse of trees. The sounds of the water churning and splashing almost cancelled out the shouts up ahead. Teenagers by the sound of them, their voices whisking away into the rushing water as it tumbled over the weir.
‘Here.’ I led him further into the shadows as we turned, me tugging my skirt up and pulling at my tights and then grabbing his flies to unbutton them while he stood there, seemingly incapable, his hands hanging limply at his sides, his breath rasping a little as he leaned into me. His erection slapped into my stomach before he entered me in one shocked gasp, my leg hooked ungainly, my knickers awry. Our kiss was animal, clumsy, open-mouthed, our jaws and teeth and chins grinding into each other, our tongues not caring about the wet and the spit as he pushed himself into me over and over. Neither of us made a sound. I clung to him, feeling his shoulders powerful and sinewy under my hands as, through half-closed eyes, I watched the red jacket of a jogger flash past and heard the languid chatter of a dog-walker on a mobile phone.
They were so close – one sideways glance and they would have seen us – their proximity making things dangerous, urgent, and I came, shuddering and gasping, his breath was wet on my neck. I opened my eyes. His forehead was tucked under my jaw; he nuzzled in, burrowing like a small animal.
Somewhere, far off, a dog barked and the ghostly outline of the trees whispered and shifted overhead. Everything was different; I was different. The remaining fuzz of the alcohol lifted, leaving behind some strange, hollow clarity I’d never felt before: not like this. It was as though I knew him; like I really knew him.
My hands were still on his shoulders; his every movement was mine too. My whole body thrummed and responded with his. This was the bit of me I’d been missing and he’d just found it again.
‘Christ,’ he said thickly, half laughing, half in amazement. ‘Where the hell did you come from?’
‘I was sent,’ I whispered smiling. ‘I was sent to do terrible things to drive you insane.’
He lifted his face and laced his fingers into my hair, pulling my head back and kissed me again, his eyes wide open. I saw something there, right that moment: a split second of desire and want and attraction, and yet something else: something that looked like fear. He leaned in again and we kissed, very gently. I smiled at him softly. ‘Come on.’
He helped me scramble out of the bushes and onto the path, but he didn’t let go my fingers, only wound and linked them into his own.
‘Why all the way out here?’ he tugged playfully.
I grinned. ‘I just wanted to see if you would.’
We walked for another minute or so without him saying anything. ‘You’re a funny mixture, you know that, don’t you?’
‘Am I? Is that your professional opinion?’ I gave him a playful sideways look.
‘No, that’s an “I’m intrigued by you” statement of fact.’
He said it so seriously and calmly I couldn’t think of how to reply.
‘I’m not… Like… this… Usually.’ I felt almost bashful. ‘I feel a bit embarrassed now.’ I concentrated on the movement of my feet.
‘God, don’t be!’ He barked a laugh. His hand swung with mine. ‘I think you’re probably quite a complex person. I like that.’
A tiny thrill rippled: he thought I was different. He liked that. Then a sudden dampening thought that I was a bit of a fraud, that I really wasn’t like this and that deep down there was just the same old me, waiting tediously in the wings.
‘Would you come back to my hotel?’ he said quietly.
I was scared, excited, slightly sick, happy and wary all at the same time. Good things don’t happen to me. Good things don’t happen to me, particularly in bloody Yorkshire. Was it possible that the bad spell could be broken – or did I have to live like this forever? Could I give myself a chance? Could I?