Chapter Twenty-Three

I’d seen the ‘For Sale’ sign up outside Howe End as I drove into the village, a local estate agency that specialised in selling large houses to the London set, who’d buy them as weekend places, come down in summer and for Christmas and complain that the local shop didn’t sell Kohlrabi. Still, it would be nice to see Howe End done up a bit rather than allowed to crumble. I supposed Phinn would be living in London now, part of the social whirl of agents and Radio Times photo shoots. I wonder if he hates the place as much as I do? He’s not really the social whirl kind, he’s more one for the big skies and huge, open spaces.

‘Molly? That had better be you because, if it’s not, I’m warning you that Stan eats people. Well, bits of them.’ Caro’s voice drifted in to me where I stood in Stan’s loose-box, resting my head against his neck.

For a horse with such a high background level of misogyny he was being very accepting of me leaning against him. Occasionally he’d nuzzle me with a nose that felt like straw-stuffed velvet, if I’d had any kind of anthropomorphic tendencies I’d have said he was concerned about me.

‘All the bits he can reach, actually, and he’s not above crouching … Oh good, it is you.’ Caro loomed into view, jacket obviously draped hastily across her shoulders, and her boots on the wrong feet.

‘It’s me. I got back from London and I wanted … thought I might take Stan out. Why are you dressed like you just got out of bed?’

She didn’t answer, just unbolted the door and came in, bending to run her hand down Stan’s leg. ‘Better do it later. I had him out yesterday and I’m giving him the morning off. You know, because he didn’t kill me or anything.’ She straightened and pulled the jacket closer around herself. ‘So, how did it go?’

She’s wearing a camisole, my brain told me, but I couldn’t process that right now. ‘We talked.’

‘Right. And?’

‘I think I understand a bit better now. I mean, it wasn’t easy for either of us, but she was only doing what she could, like most mothers. Doing her best. It wasn’t her fault that I was a bitch queen from hell.’

Caro stared at me. ‘Who?’

‘My mother. Why, who did you think I’d gone to see?’

‘Well, Doctor sexy-pants, of course! I thought you’d gone to talk to him about why he took off on you. I mean, for God’s sake Molly, I’ve known racehorses that were less highly-strung than that. What does he think he’s playing at?’

‘Since I didn’t go to see him, I have absolutely no idea.’

‘But he really likes you! God, I don’t know what’s the matter with the pair of you.’ Caro gave me one of her patented ‘hard stares’. ‘All “I like you but I’m not worthy …” Hell’s teeth, makes me want to bang your heads together! Sometimes you just have to take it when it’s offered and forget everything else.’

I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders, trying to ignore the fact that Stan was slowly chewing his way into my pocket. ‘I couldn’t make him stay,’ I said, sadly. ‘If I tried, I’d only be doing what his wife did and manipulating him.’

Caro shivered. She really wasn’t wearing a lot under that hacking jacket, my brain told me.

‘Look,’ she said carefully. ‘I … have a feeling that this is the kind of thing he might do a lot, feeling bad about himself. I mean, look at his background, parents who are such high achievers they are practically giving God a run for his money! He was pretty much programmed to feel worthless from conception onwards, and if you want to talk about rubbish parenting, well, his he only got to see once a year! At least your mum was there for birthdays and Christmas and prize-givings, wasn’t she?’

‘How do …?’ Then the penny dropped with an almost audible clang. ‘Caroline Edwards! You’ve got Link in there, haven’t you? What, in your bedroom?’

Caro cast her eyes down, but they were sparkling. ‘Might have,’ she muttered.

‘But he—’

Now she looked up sharply. ‘Yes, I know, he’s a sexist idiot who writes greetings card verse and he’d probably sleep with steak if it was rare enough, but his parents have horses, so he understands and,’ now her gaze was diamond-hard, ‘he’s pretty damaged too. Your Doctor Delicious doesn’t have the monopoly on having had a rough time growing up. Plus,’ and the grin was back, ‘he’s got a huge willy and a trust fund, and that makes up for quite a lot.’

I was dumbstruck and couldn’t do much more than open and close my mouth, hoping something suitable to say would present itself, but all that came out was, ‘Huge?’

‘Oh, yes. Really quite enormous.’ Caro gathered the jacket back over her bust. ‘So I’m going to go back to bed before it evaporates or something. I haven’t had anything quite that glorious in my bedroom since I put up that print of William Fox-Pitt riding Idalgo over the dressing table.’

‘Or quite as well hung, apparently.’ I went to follow her out of the box. ‘I’ll just go back to the cottage then.’

Caro gave me an insouciant wave as she crossed the yard. ‘I’ll see you … in the morning. Yes, probably in the morning. But I don’t think I’m going to be riding out …’ were her parting words, before she slammed the side door quite emphatically and left me to walk across the track to my house, still in a stunned state.

Caro? And Link? Well, no, it didn’t surprise me that he would … well, that he would do anything really, but Caro? All right, she was probably lonely, and everyone’s entitled to some R&R but … seriously, Link? The man who put the ass in harassment?

Still shaking my head, I pushed open the cottage door, and picked up Folktales of Riverdale.

Welcome back to real life. You’ve still got an article to write, money to earn and a life to live, lights or no lights. I flopped down in the chair and opened the book to the last point I’d read. Phinn or no Phinn.

There was a huge emptiness in that thought and I tried not to remember that night, that one, crazy night when he’d been all fire and ice like a deep-space explosion. His fingers, so gentle and knowing, his joy in my pleasure. The sweet taste of him, the wildness that didn’t seem faked or drug-induced but more like an extension of who he really was, who he could be if he’d only stop being so afraid. I miss him. Ridiculous really, but I miss his sudden, frenetic pronouncements, his self-containment and his smile, I even miss his random anxieties. He’s a cross between Brian Cox and Woody Allen and I’ll never get to tell him that.

The book wobbled in my hands. If only he could see that he doesn’t have to live up to some macho ideal; that maybe gentleness and understanding are worth more than a sports car and ambition. That what we had felt like something real. The lights …

I shook my head. Why the hell was I worrying about the lights? He’d gone. Made his decision and left, and here was I, thinking about …

The lights.

I read the words that were leaping up from the page to meet my eyes. Then I read them again and my mouth fell open. Folktales. Only folktales. Just a story to make sense of an environment so harsh that people wear hats for ten months of the year … But I was swallowing hard as I went over each word again. Is there … could there be anything in it? I mean, really? No, of course not.

Of course not.

* * *

Phinn jerked awake to the pounding of his pulse, sat suddenly upright in the bed and tried to snatch away the sense that he was suffocating. ‘Molly!’

‘What about her? Thought you’d be dreaming about all those London sci-fi fans.’ The laconic voice of Link drawled into his panic, accompanied by the reassuring sound of a mug being put down beside him. ‘And your daily time check – it’s twelve fifteen, p.m. Saw you were back last night, and, believe me, I have had to sacrifice quite a lot to come over; warm bed, hot food, basic hygiene.’

Footsteps creaked across the boards. ‘Still, horses are horses and it’s all early mornings and healthy exercise when they come into the picture.’ Link’s face suddenly lurched into approximate focus. ‘You came back then. What’s this, a flying visit? One last look over the old roots before you leg it for the joys of fame and fortune?’

The face backed away and blurred. Phinn screwed up his eyes but without his glasses Link’s expression was just a pale smudge.

‘Are we okay?’

The sudden change in conversational tone, coupled with his abrupt awakening, made Phinn feel dislocated, a bit Alice Through the Looking Glass, and then he had to berate himself for waking up in a camp metaphor. What’s wrong with a Matrix comparison? He ran hands through his hair and searched almost subconsciously for his glasses. ‘Okay? What?’

Link kept his face turned away. Phinn could see the dark smear that was the back of his head outlined against the window. ‘I hoped I’d never have to say any of this, that none of it would come out.’ His voice was low and the words were barely audible. ‘But I guess, if you’re off hitting the dizzy heights, this might be our last chance to have this shit out and settle stuff. I should have realised – I wasn’t keeping quiet to protect you, I was doing it to keep myself in the clear.’

‘I know.’ Although his heart felt as though it had turned sideways, Phinn managed to keep his voice low.

‘You know? What do you know, man? That I was screwing around with your wife? Yeah, thought you’d have figured that one by now. Or you know that I spent so long lying to you that I can’t even remember what the truth is? I can’t remember who started it, or even much about how it ended, only that it did, that she went back to you. Even then, even in the end I lost out to you, man.’

Phinn dragged himself up out of the bed, feeling the strain and pull on muscles that had been stiff with misery for so long. He unfolded himself and tried to judge how far away Link was standing. Without his glasses his depth perception was gone and his friend was a smudged shadow in front of the bright daylight.

He raised a hand and tried for a shoulder-slap. ‘Suze … I think we both got taken in. She didn’t want me, not really, with, you know, the terrible eyesight and the obsession with the skies; she wanted the illusion of me that she had in her head. And when I couldn’t be that man, she moved on to the next illusory male she could find, one with the money and the family connections to really be someone.’ His hand dropped through empty air. ‘She never really wanted either of us. She wanted what she thought we were.’

‘But she knew I was never going to follow my father into all that landowning crap. Soon as he goes I’m selling all that rubbish. All those acres and acres of mud and sheep and toffee-nosed gimps with guns, all “haw haw” and spaniels. That’s not me, Bax, that never was.’

‘But it might have been, and that’s what Suze saw. She had problems, I know we don’t want to admit it, we want to keep her memory all pure and make her the victim in all of this, but she used both of us, plain and simple. She was a player.’ He shuffled another step closer and this time his raised hand made contact. ‘We got played. Let it go.’

Link’s head dropped forward. ‘She was going to have my baby.’

Phinn felt the air sting his throat. Pain settled like a rock in his belly. ‘It could have been anyone’s baby. Mine, yours, some other random guy that she thought was offering more than he could ever fulfil. Suze was lost, looking for something none of us could ever give her. I thought I could make her happy, but …’ A deep indraught of breath. ‘The only thing that can make someone happy is themselves. Suze was doing what I did, trying to find happiness through other people, and it’s only now …’ Phinn felt the steel thing that lay deep within him, coiled and ragged, ‘… I’m realising what she never got the chance to. We have to make ourselves happy. We have to find out who we really are, not pretend, not try to lay all that on another person. She never found that, never could. She never knew how.’

‘I wish you’d told me this before.’

‘I didn’t know you and she were involved until … recently. Didn’t think it would matter to you.’

‘Oh, man.’ Phinn heard the effort in Link’s breathing, the unshed longing and pain pulling at his words. ‘Bax.’

‘She made me think I was worthless, y’know? Over and over, all I heard was how crap I was in bed, how I should beef up, work some weights, get out there and lay myself on the line to get noticed. Be somebody. She left me feeling that the only way I’d get a woman again would be to drug her and lock her up, that every other woman would look straight into me and see what she saw, this pathetic, transparent jelly of a guy.’

Link made a noise somewhere between a snort and a sob. ‘She told me I was a sexist pig with all the sexual technique of Cro-Magnon man and being in bed with me was like sleeping with a rutting boar. Of course, she could have meant B.O.R.E but, you know, I never asked her to spell it, so jury’s out on that one.’

A silence fell. Phinn stayed where he was, arm halfway across Link’s shoulders, wishing he could see the expression on his face. The shoulders under his arm were trembling, either unshed tears or ones being shed very carefully, designed not to be seen. Phinn decided to pretend he hadn’t noticed.

‘So, you’ve been using your charms on Molly’s friend, eh? That where all the “horsey” stuff is coming from? Could be well in there. She owns a bloody farm, so not exactly after you for your money, is she?’

The inward breath was so deep it made his arm brush Link’s ear. ‘Can see you weren’t brought up with horses, man. They’re like Lamborghinis. Expensive, uncomfortable and unreliable.’

‘Yep.’ Phinn kept his voice light. ‘Anyone who thinks differently never met Stan.’

‘But now you’ve got the telly deal you can get out there and Armani yourself up the wazoo, and, let’s face it, if you’re a “Personality”, no bugger cares if you’ve got the upper body strength of a flatworm, you’ll have the chicks rolling over and begging for you, and it won’t just be the science-groupies any more, you’ll get your pick!’

For the first time since they were about fourteen Link gave him what they’d called at school a ‘noogie’, rubbing his knuckles over the top of Phinn’s head. Phinn had never liked to tell him that it hurt like hell, and now was certainly not the time.

‘I don’t want groupies.’

The noogieing stopped and was replaced with another slap. ‘So, why did you come back then? Caro says … I mean, you and Molly?’

‘I want it to be. I thought I’d got it straight in my head, but now I’m here I’m having second thoughts … I’m worried maybe she might expect me to be something I’m not, after that night when I … I took those pills, Link.’

Link’s face was, as they say, a picture. But it was the Laughing Cavalier. ‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah. And they made me – they made me someone else. The kind of person that I think she deserves. She said she loved every second of it, but, false pretences, you know?’

‘Man. Oh, man, you are such an idiot.’ Link was laughing out loud now and the laughter had an undertone of relief. ‘How long? How long have you known me? Come on!’ Another, harder slap, this time around the back of the head. ‘Seriously?’ The laughter threatened to block out the words. ‘You think I’d waste good gear on a four-eyed twat like you?’

Phinn stared at him. ‘You are making even less sense than usual, and for you, that’s really going some.’

‘The stuff I gave you.’ Link wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, tears of laughter seemed to have wiped out the previous ones. ‘Aw, come on, man! They were just headache tablets I got from the chemist! You looked so down, so head-up-your-own-arse, I just thought I’d make the gesture, y’know? You mean you …? And you seriously thought …?’

It was me. The sudden realisation rocked Phinn back on his heels. I thought it was the drugs making me all macho and take-charge, and all the time … it was me. All me. Everything before, sabotaging relationships, the wimpishness, it’s all been me trying to hide. Trying to be all things to all men. Women. But one stupid trick and I let myself be the me I knew I could.

Oh my God.

‘I think, maybe, I do need to see Molly.’ His hand hurt and things began to slide into place.

‘Reckon?’

Phinn slowly opened his hand to reveal the small plastic square that had been embossing itself on his palm for the last twenty-four hours. ‘This. This is what it’s all about.’

‘Lego?’ Link spun away, laughing. ‘This is it, you’re officially a nutjob. You’re going to build yourself a woman?’

Phinn shook his head. He could feel the smile spreading across his face, unstoppable now, driven by the kind of certainty he couldn’t remember ever having felt before. ‘Not Lego. Molly.’

‘Okay then. You get Molly and I get the groupies, deal?’

Phinn half turned. Link’s face was so close that, even with his trial-and-error eyesight, he could see the expression in his friend’s eyes. A wariness that said he still wasn’t sure that things were okay between them, a tight withdrawal behind those pale lids. He’s as screwed up by his childhood as I am. Looking for something in all the wrong places.

‘Groupies are all yours, Link,’ he said, and saw the guardedness drop away into relief.

‘Always have been, my man, always have been.’ And Link patted his groin. ‘Now, put some of your TV clothes on, because we are going visiting Moll and her mate and, as my wingman, you owe it to me to reel ’em in so that I can pounce.’

Phinn sighed. ‘Sexual revolution really passed you by, didn’t it?’ But he felt lighter, as though that clockwork coil that had kept him running for the last year had finally reached a limit and unwound. As though he was managing himself now.

‘Vive la revolution!’ Link shouted, and Phinn shook his head. Life might change, his whole outlook on the future might change, but Link … Link would remain Link until the day he died.