Gradually, he focused on the pins protruding from the ends of the fingers bound into plastic troughs and at the prison of white plaster immobilising his legs. The hospital bed. And then Stella, sitting on the edge of a visitor’s chair, her eyes huge, frightened, fixed upon him. ‘You were dreaming, Gareth.’ Her voice was an uneasy whisper. Moisture glistened in the minute lines that were beginning to hatch the soft flesh below her eyes.
He licked his lips, trying to calm the galloping in his chest. ‘Yes. Yes, I must’ve been.’ His ribs ached; he’d probably been trying to flail around. Come to that, most things ached. Where was that bloody Tramadol?
Stella neatened her blonde waves with nervous fingers. ‘I was scared you might hurt yourself. I nearly called the nurse.’
‘Glad you didn’t,’ he said, shortly. ‘I don’t want a load of nurses standing round while I squeak like a guinea pig, do I?’
Stella pulled her chair closer. Her lips trembled. ‘Gareth – oh, poor you!’ She stroked his face with the back of her hand and then with her fingertips. Stella had sexy little hands and took care of them with hand cream and rubber gloves. He had a thing about Stella’s hands. They were white and soft where Diane’s were red and scratchy with housework and pins and needles. Whenever Stella touched him his skin would shiver in response.
He closed his eyes and thought of her undressing him, stroking each part of his nakedness as it was revealed so that by the time she was ready to slide his boxers off he was primed to explode and would be quite unable to undress her slowly in return. Instead he’d haul her from her clothes, making her squeal and giggle. Marvellous skin she had, soft as rose petals and as fragrant, because she was a pampering sort of woman who moisturised her entire body every day. White and velvety as marshmallow, delicious little thing.
Her soothing fingers stroked his cheekbones and what had been the hollows of his cheeks, his swollen chin and jaw line, his temples.
‘Poor you,’ she repeated. She stroked every millimetre of skin: face, neck, hands – so gently over the damaged one. The hip and thigh between gown and plaster, and Gareth felt himself sink into the bed as if it were angel hair. With him, all trace of Stella’s usual bolshiness evaporated to leave only softness and compliance. She was his indulgence.
‘You know that Diane knows?’ Her voice was still a whisper, her tip-toeing fingers still working their magic.
‘Yes.’ His lips barely moved.
‘She was lying in wait for me, all scary and sarcastic, you know how she gets. I couldn’t think of a credible lie. But … perhaps better that she knows? She seemed to take it quite calmly.’
He thought back to Diane hurling threats and accusations at him like flaming arrows, lighting the room with her rage, searing him with disgust, her single plait rearing from high on her head and swinging like a grumpy cobra as she strode around the room. An in-built stressometer.
Despite himself, he smiled. ‘She wasn’t very calm when I saw her.’
The stroking fingertips returned to his forehead. ‘That must have been horrible for you. But the worst’s over.’
‘Where did you get the key?’
The cool fingers halted momentarily, then returned to his cheeks, careful, soft. ‘The key?’
‘To my house, in Whittlesey.’
The caresses moved to his ears. He had sensitive ears. If she wanted to get round him she always began there with her fingertips and perhaps her warm, quivering tongue. He let himself be temporarily distracted, even wondering whether the doctor had been right about the huge number of blood vessels around the pelvic area and a broken pelvis being likely to affect the ability to get an erection.
He couldn’t make love to her. But perhaps her mouth –
No, probably not.
‘It was the key you gave me, Gareth.’
‘Once. Once to let the carpet fitters in. You were supposed to put it back in the kitchen drawer.’ He kept his eyes shut.
‘I must’ve forgotten.’ She sounded defensive. ‘Then when I heard through Megan and Ivan about your accident I thought you’d want me to go and check that everything was all right –’
He opened his eyes. ‘Even though you might bump into my dad or my wife?’
She looked anxious. ‘Not your wife, Gary. Diane didn’t know about the cottage –’
‘So how come she was sitting there waiting for you? Didn’t you think that because I was in the accident with Valerie that secrets would come out? But she needn’t have found out about you. Until you strolled in and advertised the situation.’ Of all the things he hadn’t wanted to happen, it was for Diane to find out – about his family, his money or his lover. Especially the Diane who fairly crackled with fury.
That Diane, the angry, intransigent one, rarely appeared. Rage, for her, was like a comet: it came only every few years to sear across the cosmic landscape. But then it threatened everything in its path.
That Diane could alter orbits.
And while he hated her for defying him, at the same time he had a grudging admiration for what his mother would have called her piss and vinegar.
Stella’s eyes pinkened. ‘But at least she knows now and we can be together. We can be together!’
