‘Jesus, Anika,’ he says, his sternness gone, wonder replacing his tone. Continuing to grip her waist with one hand, his hips begin to undulate in a motion that drives Anika to a carnality she’s not sure she’s ever experienced. Her fingertips claw against the mirror’s surface. Suddenly, Cam hits exactly the right spot.
‘Oh, fuck!’
Her head tips forward with the exertion of her orgasm and then Cam’s body bows over her seconds later. His arms encircle her, holding her against him, his breath warm against her neck, and Anika feels amazed and satisfied. Andsafe.
Eventually she pushes away from the wall as Cam withdraws from her. She turns around to see him looking dazed. Her eyes drift downwards appreciatively.
‘Holy shit,’ he murmurs as he pulls the condom off, his trousers and boxers still around one ankle. He knots the condom quickly, reinstating his underwear. ‘One sec.’
Cam ducks into the hall, and Anika hears the sound of a pedal bin open and shut in what she assumes is a downstairs loo. She’s still standing in the middle of the living room trying to recover when he returns and moves quickly to gather her into a tight embrace. Her face crowds into his chest and she hears the pounding speed of his heart. After a while he kisses Anika’s forehead then pulls her backwards and onto the sofa. She sags onto it beside him gratefully. Curling her legs underneath her, Anika leans into Cam’s side and he puts an arm around her shoulder. They remain like that until her eyes start to droop.
‘Don’t fall asleep here, baby girl,’ Cam tells her after a while. ‘If … if you’re good to stay, the bed is way more comfortable.’ He looks down at her and she sees hope in his eyes – it’s not an eagerness to get into her pants again, although she’s sure he’d be happy to do that, too. She also realises that her knickers are still by the fireplace. Unfolding her legs so her bare feet touch the floor, she stands up, stretching, then laughs as she strides over to pick them up.
‘Yeah. Bed sounds good.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
They stand shoulder to shoulder at the entrance to Cam’s bedroom and Anika’s eyes sweep over the room in the dim light from the hallway. Big, wide windows and minimal furniture. Cam steps inside and flips on the lamp on the bedside. It reveals a neatly made bed with a dark, jersey bedspread and invitingly fluffed pillows. She has to admit, she’s impressed.
He walks over to a chest of drawers and opens it to reveal neatly folded T-shirts.
‘Rah, is it OCD, or … ?’ she says teasingly.
Cam purses his lips, though she can see amusement in his eyes. ‘It’s called keeping my shit together, actually.’ He pulls out a navy tee and throws it towards the bed. ‘That good for you?’
‘I’d be OK sleeping in this …’ she says, plucking her oversized T-shirt dress, but her eyes drift down to the T-shirt Cam has picked out. She sees a logo on there from the tiny, short-lived indie record label he used to run. For a while it released Zaya’s music. The top must be special to him, and Anika feels another surge of warmth towards him. ‘Actually, this is good. Thanks.’ Realising she still has her underwear balled up in her hands, she pulls it on, whips off her dress and her bra, and then puts on Cam’s T-shirt unselfconsciously while he busies himself folding down the bedclothes, clearly trying to avert his eyes. Anika smiles at the irony of his politeness kicking back in.
‘I’m gonna go and get us some water,’ he says. He seems at pains to come off as relaxed but the more she thinks about it, the more Anika detects a faint sense of unease in him. He looksat her for a second, then gives her that half-grin. ‘At the risk of – what’s the word –besmirchingmy mental health again,’ he adds. ‘There’s some unopened toothbrushes in the basket in the bathroom, too. It’s just down the hallway.’
Anika smiles at him. ‘Thanks.’ She grabbed her phone from her bag on the way upstairs and, realising it’s out of charge, she almost asks Cam for a charger too. But then she remembers not only the missed call from the hospital, but the fact that she dipped out dramatically on her friends.
A few minutes later, she’s under the cool covers of Cam’s bed, waiting while he brushes his teeth. She can smell the spicy scent of his aftershave lightly clinging to the sheets and breathes deeply, settling back on the pillows. When he returns to the room, Cam pauses for a moment just looking at her, his expression surprisingly serious, almost emotional. Then he reaches back, pulling his T-shirt off from the neck and dropping it onto the floor, his face emerging with a typically disarming smile. Anika admires the confidence he exudes with his thick middle, the dark, smooth skin punctuated with a light spray of peppercorn curls that extends up over his chest.
Cam climbs into bed beside her and Anika seizes the moment to curl her body into his, her palm resting on his stomach. He lifts her hand and pats it against him, grinning down at her. ‘Hope you like dad bods,’ he says, still smiling.
‘I do, as it happens.’ She kisses his chest, then rests her head against his warm skin as his arm settles around her. It feels like heaven. After a while she emits a wry laugh. ‘Teenage Anika is freaking out right now, you know.Homagosh, actual Cam Asiedu.’
His amusement rumbles against her ear. ‘That so?’ He pauses, then says, ‘And thirty-year-old Anika?’
She bites her lip, not quite sure how to answer. ‘Thirty-year-old Anika has to process a few things,’ she says softly, her smileslackening. ‘I really didn’t think I’d be here.’ She hears the words sounding different as they come out. ‘Maybe in more ways than one,’ she adds, though she’s a bit fearful of uttering the words.
Cam draws a hesitant breath, picking up on it. ‘It’s fucking mad that last month you were, what? In hospital?’ She feels him adjust to look down at her, but she keeps her gaze fixed on a plant sitting on a stool near the bedroom door. How long has he been waiting to bring it up? she wonders. Her mind flashes again to the call earlier, and to the email from the doctor’s clinic a couple of days ago suggesting that now it’s been several weeks since the surgery, they really do need to do a full check-up. Blood tests. Scans.Ugh.It feels like a step backwards over a line she’s already drawn.
But Cam is right. ‘Itismad,’ she replies quietly. She doesn’t temper the statement with her usual defences. She has the sense that Cam will listen – to her words and to the spaces in between.
‘Do you …’ Cam seems uncharacteristically unsure of how to phrase his question. Anika feels tension in his body. ‘Do you think you’re on the other side of it now?’ he asks tentatively.
She presses her eyebrows together. The other side?Hasshe cheated death? Or even passed beyond it? Is she like a ghost? She feels too solid for that. Cam’s body feels too real beneath hers.
And yet her mind goes to her father. To the days leading up to him being gone for good. On that last visit, the proximity to death put Nelson Lapo on the other side of an invisible wall that she couldn’t reach over, no matter how hard she tried.
Late April 2009
It had been quite the elaborate operation for Anika and her mother to visit her father, and the atmosphere of Nelson Lapo’s house resonated with Eloise’s resentment. The temporaryabsence of his ‘real’ family was palpable in the chic décor, and in the photographs dotted around the large living room showing their happy evolution. The majority of the pictures were arranged on the mantelpiece opposite where her father sat in his armchair. It was obvious how much their lives were estranged from Anika’s. The visit had been arranged because Nelson could no longer leave the house easily; he was too weak. Medications had ravaged him to the point where his tall frame, which had once felt intimidatingly large to Anika, now seemed like a long coil of dark, ropey limbs drowning in his trousers and fleece, with that familiar cap now needed indoors, keeping his bald, bony head warm.
‘My only daughter,’ he said, his voice raspily familiar, his accent still tinged with that Ghanaian lilt despite having lived in London for forty of his sixty-five years by then. He smiled and held out his hands towards her, and Anika fought not to recoil from the strangeness of their dry grasp as she moved closer to him, squinting at the sunlight coming in through the bay window behind him.
‘And Nella, my dear, you are still looking good,’ he added teasingly.
