Some Girls Do

Chapter Thirty-two




Claire felt lost in the days following the funeral. She was beginning to regret taking the week off work, but changing her mind would require a decision that she couldn’t summon the energy to make. She didn’t know what to do with herself, and couldn’t seem to rouse herself to do anything more energetic than lie in the garden, soaking up the sun or slump on the sofa watching boxsets of Friends. She had seen them a million times before, but she found the familiarity comforting. She missed her mother dreadfully, longing to be able to talk to her again, or even watch TV together in companionable silence.

She felt adrift, the focus of her life snatched away. For so long, everything had revolved around looking after her mother – worrying about her, organising her, spending time with her. Now she constantly felt as if she had forgotten to do something important, and her stomach would lurch with sickening dread of the consequences. Then she would realise once again that there was nothing to be done and no one to worry about – but there was no comfort in that. It left her on edge, unable to concentrate or settle to anything.

On top of that she was exhausted, feeling the crash that often follows a long period of tension. It wasn’t just the stress of her mother’s death and its aftermath. It was the accumulation of years spent in a perpetual state of suspense. Her mother’s health had been so volatile that Claire had been constantly on tenterhooks for the next crisis – the breathless race to hospital, the hours spent in corridors and waiting rooms, anxiously awaiting test results or the outcome of an operation. She was physically and emotionally drained.


Everyone was telling her she should take a holiday, now that she had the chance. She hadn’t had a proper one in ages, since her mother had become too incapacitated to travel. Mark would be back from New York on Friday, and he had invited her to stay with him for the weekend, but she couldn’t face the upheaval of flights or the idea of having to be social and, besides, she wasn’t in the mood for somewhere as busy as London. But the idea of getting away was appealing, and as the week wore on, she increasingly felt the need for a change of scene. The good weather was making her long for the seaside. The heatwave was forecast to continue for the rest of July, and she knew the perfect place where she could go to relax, and spend a restorative couple of days just eating, sleeping and lazing in the sun.

‘How’d you like to come to the beach with me for the weekend?’ she asked Luca, on Thursday evening. ‘Unless you have other plans, of course,’ she added, suddenly remembering that he might rather stay in Dublin.

‘No, I don’t have any plans. I’m a bit broke, though …’

‘It won’t cost anything. I have a place we can stay. Just don’t expect anything fancy.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Brittas Bay. Mum has a mobile home there – had,’ she amended. ‘It’s mine now, I guess.’

‘Cool. I’ll dig out my bucket and spade.’


A weekend away with Claire – Luca wasn’t sure what he’d let himself in for. He hadn’t even had time to assimilate his feelings yet. He’d only discovered he was in love with her when her mother had died, and then he had wanted to step up and be a friend to her. Now he felt completely at sea, clueless about how to be with her, terrified of screwing up and losing her, and just as scared of keeping her in his life but only as a friend.

He thought how arrogant he’d been when she’d first come to him, warning her not to get attached. Jesus, he should be so lucky! He’d been so sure of himself, so certain that she was the only one in danger of getting emotionally involved. What he hadn’t considered was that he would also be experiencing a kind of intimacy he wasn’t used to.

Claire had got under his skin – like painting, he thought, as he picked up his brush and got back to work. That had crept up on him, too, when he wasn’t looking. It had started in rehab.

Art therapy had been part of the programme, and he had resisted it at first, as he had resisted all help. He had refused to be moved, shoring up his defences against anything or, indeed, anyone that might touch him, determined to be cold, aloof and, above all, not to care. But he’d gone through the motions, as he had with the rest of the programme, and art had got in somehow, breaking through his defences, seducing him until he found himself pouring all the emotions he had kept buried for years into his paintings.

It had scared him at first when he’d seen all that stuff spilling out of him. He’d felt raw and exposed, as if he had no skin. Every shitty thing inside him was there for all to see, in thick, vivid colour – all his cringing fear, his anger, every rotten thing at the core of him made real, given substance; and beyond that, his vulnerability, loneliness and sadness. And yet he didn’t want to stop. It felt cathartic and healing, as if all the poison was being leached out of him and what was left was fresh, clean and healthy.

He could never regret rehab because it had given him one of the best things in his life. He would never regret knowing Claire either, even if they could only be friends. Maybe it was for the best that they couldn’t have sex any more. He wasn’t very good at forming lasting relationships with the women he slept with. They tended to end up pissed off with him.

Besides, who was to say this thing with Mark would last? Maybe if he stuck around long enough …


That night, Claire went online for the first time since her mother had died, catching up with NiceGirl’s Twitter and Facebook friends. When she logged on to Twitter, she found herself mentioned in a tweet from Mark’s friend Emma, aka @Locksie:


@Locksie @PublisherMark So disappointed in you. I thought you were being true to @NiceGirl.


It was from the previous Friday, the day Mark had called saying they needed to talk, and she had been too busy arranging the funeral. She knew Emma was just joking – as far as she was concerned, NiceGirl and Mark had nothing more than a light-hearted online flirtation. But what did it mean? Thursday had been Patrick’s birthday party. Had something happened with Sophie? She tried to follow the conversation back, but drew a blank. Some previous tweets appeared to have been deleted. Perplexed, she went into Mark’s feed and scrolled back to Friday, trying to piece together conversations. There had been lots of activity with his friends, and his responses mainly consisted of him telling them nothing had happened. There was a reply to an @Soph, who had to be Sophie, simply saying ‘cease and desist’. Frustratingly, @Soph’s account was locked, so Claire sent her a follow request.

She thought she would have to wait a day or two for her request to be accepted, if Sophie accepted it at all. So she got ready for bed and tried to forget about it for now. But just as she was about to go to bed, she got a notification that she was now following @Soph. She went straight back onto Twitter, into @Soph’s account and scrolled down to Friday’s tweets. She had been very active that morning, throwing out lots of veiled hints that something had happened the night before:


@Soph The sweetest hangover. :)


@Soph Don’t worry re that last tweet, rehab fans. Was high on life last night. Strong stuff, but not on the prohibited list.


And finally:


@Soph Hey la, hey la, my boyfriend’s back.


Claire waited for the appropriate feelings of hurt and betrayal to kick in, but she felt only mild dismay. Of course, Mark was clearly denying that anything had happened, and she had more reason to trust him than Sophie. Maybe that was why all she felt was a strange sort of detached curiosity because, deep down she suspected Sophie was just trying to stir things. Or maybe the general numbness she had been experiencing since her mother’s death was deadening the impact, and it would hit her later when she was more herself.

But right now all she felt was intrigued, and she wanted to get to the bottom of what had really happened. So she sent a DM to @Locksie:


@Locksie Soz, have been away from Twitter – family crisis. What’s @PublisherMark been up to? Email me gossip, please!


Then she turned off her laptop and went to bed.


The next day was sunny and warm, as promised. Claire was up early, feeling brighter now that she had something positive to focus on. She loaded the car with supplies and went to pick up Luca.

‘So, Brittas Bay,’ he said, as he swung in beside her, throwing his bag onto the back seat. ‘I haven’t been there in years. We used to go sometimes when we were kids.’

How funny, Claire thought, that they could have been there at the same time all those years ago.

‘But mostly we went to beaches closer to home,’ he continued.

‘We pretty much lived at Brittas Bay during the school break,’ Claire told him.

They had spent long summer holidays there as children, living a beach-based life no matter what the weather. They had been able to roam freely, making friends with other kids staying in the caravan park, playing in the dunes and swimming in the sea. Every meal seemed to have been eaten outdoors. It had been an idyllic existence for a child.


In latter years, she had spent the odd weekend there with her mother, but they hadn’t been for some time, first because the weather was never good enough to entice them down, and then because her mother wasn’t well enough for caravan living. Claire had missed it, and she was glad to have the opportunity to use it again, possibly for the last time. She knew her mother had left the mobile home to her, but she wasn’t sure she would be able to keep it on. The site was expensive, and there were service charges on top of that. If she didn’t use it, she didn’t think she could justify the upkeep on purely sentimental grounds. She would have loved her nephews and niece to enjoy it, but her brothers weren’t keen on caravan holidays, and her sisters-in-law even less so.

She felt herself start to relax and unwind as they breezed along with the windows down, summery music blaring from the speakers. When she caught her first glimpse of the sea, the water sparkling and shimmering in the sunshine, her heart gave an instinctive leap, just like it always had when she was a child. She turned into a little side road and opened the electronic gates to the caravan park, driving down the soft grass track to their site.

‘Home, sweet home,’ she said, pulling up in front of a large caravan, set on a grassy area, with a picnic table beside it. The garden was neat, a pile of inflatable toys and body boards – remnants of Claire’s childhood – piled up in the corner beside a threadbare set of goalposts and a covered barbecue.

‘Really?’ Luca looked delighted.

‘I told you not to expect anything fancy.’

‘It’s perfect!’

Claire felt better already as they got out of the car and she took a deep lungful of the sea air. She opened the door of the caravan and Luca followed her inside. He stood in the middle of the little living room, then gave a long, luxurious stretch, his T-shirt riding up to reveal the fine black hair of his happy trail against the white skin of his taut stomach. The living area was roomy enough as mobile homes went, but it suddenly felt very small with Luca in it, and Claire felt a moment of apprehension. She hoped it wouldn’t be awkward spending the weekend in such close proximity while keeping their distance physically.

Luca was studying a corkboard over the little seating area, pinned with photographs and flyers for local businesses and takeaways. ‘Is this you?’ He was pointing to a photo.

‘Yes.’ Claire blushed. It featured her in a swimsuit on the beach as a gawky eight-year-old, her hair in pigtails, her legs buried in sand. ‘Aw, you were cute.’ He studied the other photographs. ‘And then you were seriously cute,’ he said, pointing to a photo of her as a teenager, all budding breasts and stick-thin thighs in a halter top and frayed jean shorts. ‘I wish I’d bumped into you then.’

‘Come on, let’s get the car unpacked. And then we can hit the beach.’

They unloaded the stuff from the car, and stocked up the fridge and cupboards, finally grabbing their bags. ‘You can sleep in here,’ Claire told Luca, opening the door of the biggest bedroom.

‘Where will you sleep?’ he asked.

‘Here.’ She showed him the other room. There was just about space for the narrow single bed.

‘Looks cosy,’ he said regretfully. ‘I wish I was sleeping here with you.’

She shot him a warning look.

‘I know, I know.’ He held up his hands defensively. ‘I promised to behave myself, and I will.’

‘So, lunch first?’ she said. ‘We can eat up here at the picnic table. For the full nostalgic experience, we should really eat on the beach, so everything gets nice and sandy, but I’m not that dedicated to nostalgia.’

‘Great.’

‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ She dumped her bag on the bed, slipped past him, and busied herself getting lunch ready.

They sat outside with big mugs of tea and picnicked on crusty rolls, cheese, ham, apples and grapes.

‘This is so good,’ Luca said, wolfing down the food hungrily.

Claire was enjoying it too. All the flavours tasted bright and alive, and she had more of an appetite than she’d had all week. ‘Everything tastes so much better outdoors,’ she said. ‘Especially at the sea.’ She breathed deeply, suffused by an enormous feeling of wellbeing.

‘It’s beautiful here.’ Luca sighed, turning his face to the sun. ‘So peaceful.’

She was pleased that he appreciated it as much as she did. ‘Mum would be glad we’re doing this,’ she said. ‘She loved it here.’


Later they trailed down the wooden walkway that led to the beach, cresting over the grass-covered dunes. Claire pulled off her sandals, her feet plunging into the warm, powdery sand as they stepped onto the beach. She turned and looked back at the dunes. It was hard to believe that they had seemed so huge once, and it had felt daring for her and her brothers to jump from the top into the soft sand beneath, like launching yourself off a cliff.

They spread their towels on the sand, stripped down to their togs and made for the sea.

It took Claire a while to ease herself fully into the water, gradually acclimatising to the cold, but when she did, it was wonderfully invigorating, awakening all her nerve endings and bringing her senses to life. She looked at Luca beside her, his hair tangled and curly from the salt water. He was so beautiful she wanted to cry. Why had their lessons had to end? she wondered sadly. If only she could have had a few more weeks when he was hers to kiss and touch. Why couldn’t Mark have waited just a little bit longer?

Later, as they lay on the sand, she pushed on her sunglasses, and took her book out of her bag.

‘Did you bring Pride and Prejudice?’ Luca asked, propping himself up on an elbow and holding out his hand for it.

‘You don’t have to read to me,’ Claire said.

‘Hey, I don’t want you to go on without me.’

‘Okay,’ she said, handing him the book. She had to admit, she loved being read to – it was all the pleasure with none of the effort, like receiving oral sex. She lay down and closed her eyes, relaxing to the deep tone of Luca’s voice. She found herself drifting in and out of consciousness as the words washed over her …

‘“… for the young man wanted only regimentals to make him completely charming. His appearance was greatly in his favour; he had all the best part of beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing penis.”’

‘What?’ Claire reared up with a jolt and turned to Luca.

‘Just checking you were still listening,’ he said, with a cheeky grin.

She laughed and lay down, closing her eyes once more. ‘I’m listening. And Jane Austen is spinning in her grave.’

‘“… a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address,”’ Luca continued. When he got to the end of the next chapter, he closed the book.

‘Do you think Mr Darcy is really well hung?’ he asked.

‘You should so be in a book club,’ Claire said drily, turning to face him. ‘I have no idea! What makes you think about that?’

‘Well, all the girls go nuts for him, but he seems like a bit of a git to me. He must have something going for him.’

‘Well, he’s loaded.’

‘Yeah, I got that.’

‘And he’s handsome.’

‘And tall.’

‘Very tall. Anyway, he’s not a git. He turns out to be really nice – you’ll see.’


‘When are we going to get to the bit where he goes skinny-dipping?’

‘I thought you didn’t know anything about Pride and Prejudice?’

‘I don’t. But I remember all the girls going on and on about that scene,’ he said, rolling his eyes.

‘That didn’t happen in the book. It was just in the TV series.’

‘I’m not surprised. He doesn’t seem the type.’ He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘We could go skinny-dipping.’ His smile faded. ‘Maybe not such a good idea,’ he said. ‘Sorry. This friends thing takes a bit of practice.’

‘No harm done,’ she said. He wasn’t the only one who was having trouble drawing the boundaries between friends and lovers.


Later they barbecued steaks and ate at the picnic table as the sun sank in the sky.

‘I’m going to have an early night,’ Claire said, yawning as she cleared the table. It was only nine, but she was exhausted. ‘I can hardly keep my eyes open. It must be all this fresh air.’ She took an armful of plates into the caravan, and as she was dumping them in the sink, she heard voices outside. She went to the window and saw Luca talking to a girl as he gathered up the rest of the stuff. Tall and slender, her blonde hair was pulled into a high ponytail. She looked around the same age as Claire, but she wasn’t one of the regulars she had got to know over the years they had been coming here. Luca had put down the glasses he’d been holding to talk to her. Even though she couldn’t hear a word that was being said, Claire could tell the girl was flirting with him – her posture, her smile, the coy way she twirled her hair around her fingers as she talked to him. She was suddenly filled with an overwhelming urge to run out and kick sand in the girl’s face. So much for feeling numb, she thought. And she’d forgotten all about being tired because she was fantasising about wrestling that girl to the ground, and she knew she’d have the strength to do it.

She was about to go outside, at least to make her presence known, when the girl nodded to Luca, turned and wandered off. He gathered the glasses up again and came back inside.

‘Who was that?’ Claire asked.

‘Her name’s Aideen,’ he said, as he dumped the glasses in the sink. ‘She’s staying in one of the caravans with a friend. She asked if we wanted to go to the pub with them.’

‘We?’

‘Yeah. I told her I was here with a friend too.’

Claire felt knocked back. But, of course, that was all she was to him now.

‘She probably thinks I’m another guy,’ she said, with a hollow laugh. ‘Her friend would get quite the surprise when you turned up with me.’

‘Oh, I never thought of that.’ Luca laughed. ‘But maybe her friend’s a lesbian. She might think it was her lucky night!’ He turned on the tap. ‘Anyway, I presumed you wouldn’t want to go. I said we were going to bed early.’

‘Just because I’m having an early night it doesn’t mean you have to,’ she said. ‘If you want to go to the pub …’

‘Not particularly.’

She knew she was being unfair, acting so possessively. There was nothing to stop him going to the pub with Aideen, letting her take him back to her caravan …

‘Or,’ she said, sliding a hand up under his T-shirt to the warm skin of his back, ‘you could stay here with me. We could go skinny-dipping.’

‘Claire …’

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him softly, coaxingly, and he almost responded, but then he was pushing her away gently. ‘I thought you were tired,’ he said.

‘I’m having an adrenalin rush.’ She tried to kiss him again, but he held her off.

‘Claire, stop.’

‘Why? I thought you wanted to go skinny-dipping.’ As soon as he released her, she reached for him again. ‘Or we could just stay here,’ she said, toying with the drawstring of his shorts.

‘Stop,’ he said firmly, stilling her hand with his. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘I came here to be with you, okay? You don’t have to take your clothes off to make me stay. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Sorry.’ Tears stung her eyes. She let out a long, heaving breath. ‘I’m going to bed. We can leave that till morning.’ She nodded to the plates piled in the sink.

‘I’ll do it,’ Luca said. ‘See you in the morning.’ He kissed her on the forehead – a brief, chaste kiss that made Claire want to scream in frustration – and turned back to the sink.


Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a great idea, Luca thought, as he washed up. And to a f*cking caravan, of all things! He’d find it hard to keep his distance from Claire on the Serengeti Plain, but squashed together in a caravan …

He really wanted to kiss her. He was aching to take her to bed. Turning her down just now had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, especially when he could see in her face how hurt and rejected she’d felt. But she was vulnerable right now. She was sad and maybe a bit lonely, and he couldn’t take advantage. Besides, she would probably regret it later. Then things would be awkward and they wouldn’t be friends any more. It wasn’t worth risking losing her. Sex was easy – he could get his rocks off with anyone. But he didn’t have another friend like Claire.

He heard voices and laughter outside, and turned to see a group of teenagers walking past, dressed up for a night out in jeans and sparkly tops. Maybe he needed to get laid. He should go to the pub, hook up with that girl and get Claire out of his system once and for all.


In her bedroom Claire lay awake, listening to Luca moving around outside, anxiously waiting for the click of the door or the noise of the shower, any sound that would tell her he was going out. She couldn’t relax until she knew if he would go to the pub or not. She turned on her laptop to check her emails. There was one from Emma in her NiceGirl account:


Hi

Sorry to hear about your family crisis. Hope it wasn’t too serious, and that everything’s okay now.

Anyway – gossip. We were all at a friend’s birthday last week, including Mark’s ex, Sophie. (I don’t know if you follow her on Twitter – @Soph?) Anyway, she’s still carrying the most ginormous torch for Mark, but he’s with someone else now, and she came out all guns blazing, making it really obvious she wanted him back. And when Sophie wants something … well, let’s just say she’d give the Terminator a run for his money.

Anyway, long story short, things got a bit messy and she was all over Twitter the next day hinting that something had happened between them. Mark swears it didn’t. So it’s all very he said/ she said. Sophie can play dirty, and I’m more inclined to believe Mark.

Luckily I don’t think Mark’s new girlfriend is on Twitter, so she may have missed the whole thing. Mark asked us to delete all the tweets relating to it – I obviously missed one. Oops!

So, that’s all the gossip. It’s probably nothing, and I shouldn’t even be telling you. But I guess it’s okay since you don’t know any of the people involved – except Mark, of course.

He tells me you’re going to stop writing the blog …


The rest of the email was publishing talk.

When she had finished reading it, Claire shut down her laptop and sank back against the pillow. So something had happened between Mark and Sophie at Patrick’s party – or maybe not. And Claire found she didn’t care either way. The numbness was back. She heard Luca going into the other bedroom, the door closing behind him with a soft click. She turned off the light and settled down.