Pillow Talk Part 23

'Aren't you going to open it?'

'It can't be for me.'

'Yes, it can. In black and white, or at least black velvet, care of Messrs William & Brandt. Come on!' and Miss Lorimar's eyes sparkled like a child at Christmas a bizarre sight indeed for one of her underlings to behold.

Petra took the pouch to her lap, untied the cord, tipped the contents quickly into the palm of one hand and cupped her other hand over the top. She thought she saw Miss Lorimar actually bounce on her chair in antic.i.p.ation. Slowly she opened her hands, like a clam revealing its treasure.

'Good G.o.d!'

Headmistresses oughtn't to blaspheme, surely.

But Petra knew that Miss Lorimar had been helpless not to. It was a natural reaction on first seeing a 39.43 carat tanzanite.

It had been Arlo's reaction too.

'And this is it?' Arlo asked, taking the gem between his fingers.

'Yes,' said Petra.

'Shouldn't it be in a bank vault not under a mattress?'

'That,' said Petra, 'would be a tragedy. You can't lock something this beautiful away.'

'You can't plonk something this valuable under your mattress, though.'

'I almost didn't have it at all. My mother said I could keep the pictures but that I wasn't allowed the gemstone. She said it wasn't right. I had to knock on Miss Lorimar's door the following day and say, I'm sorry but my mother says I can't have this because she says it isn't right.'

'But you do have it.'

'She was a dark horse, Miss Lorimar,' Petra laughed. 'Just after I took my A levels, just before I left school, I was summoned to my headmistress one final time. She took down a reproduction Ming vase from on top of a shelf and tipped out the black velvet purse. She handed it to me and said that now I was eighteen I didn't need to ask my mother's permission.'

'She'd kept it for you?'

'Yes. In a fake Ming vase high up on a shelf. It was so strange it was all so covert and yet so charmingly conspiratorial. She said to me, "When your mother said it wasn't right I have a feeling she meant it wasn't right for you to have been the adored focus of someone else's world. I think your mother felt guilty, Petra. I don't think she wanted you to have a token of a friends.h.i.+p that eased a very dark time for you." And really, that was the last conversation I had with my headmistress.'

'From a Ming to a mattress,' Arlo said. 'It's a bit ignominious.'

'But I don't know what to do with it,' Petra said. 'It's my writer's block. It goads me and yet it sustains me too. It's what motivated me to apply to Central St Martins. I know, I just know, that an essential part of my creativity is locked within this gem. But I can't access it. It's frustrating beyond belief. How can I do this beautiful stone justice? And what can I possibly create that would be testimony enough to the wonderful Lillian McNeil?'

'Is that why you're here, Petra?'

She looked at him.

'It is now.'

She'd left herself bare, yet she'd done so on purpose. Arlo's tipped head said, Tell me more. Petra raised her eyebrows at herself and looked a little sheepish. 'Initially when I first came up here before Easter it was because I'd split up with a bloke.'

'Nursing a broken heart by brooding all over the moors?' Arlo said. 'Very Bronte.'

'It was not a broken heart,' Petra said, quiet but decisive. 'More of a bruised ego.'

'"Fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with",' Arlo said but he wasn't looking at Petra.

'The Buzzc.o.c.ks,' Petra said. The fact that she'd recognized the lyrics pulled Arlo back to her.

'I'm impressed.'

'But look,' said Petra and she pulled back the sheet, stretched herself out, pointing her toes, arms stretched above her head, 'no bruises. None on the outside, none on the inside.' She thought it the best way to show him she had history but no baggage; that she had history and a sense of humour.

Arlo's eyes swept along her curves. He ran the tanzanite gently over her body, plopped it down on her stomach. 'Good enough to eat.'

'I have licked it, you know,' Petra said and she giggled.

'Putting your mouth where the money is,' Arlo mused. 'How much is this thing worth?'

'Loose like this? A lot. Thousands. Because of its size, its clarity and colour, it's internally flawless. Made up into something a lot more.'

'And yet you struggle to make ends meet, living in a rented flat in North Frigging Finchley? By the way, I wasn't talking about the tanzanite being good enough to eat.' And Arlo lay a cloth of light kisses over her body to emphasize the point. 'Who was this bloke?' he said casually, between mouthfuls.

'Rob,' said Petra. 'Not my type.' And she stroked Arlo's head, the velvety sensation of his closely cropped hair feeling lovely on her palm.

'Did you show him Rob the secrets of your mattress?'

'He wasn't particularly interested.'

Arlo brought his face up from Petra's stomach. He grinned. 'Of course, I'd love you if there was dust under your mattress rather than thousands of pounds' worth of jewels.'

He just said he loves me.

'The thing is Arlo, when I do finally make something for this tanzanite, who on earth will I allow to buy it?'

Compared to chips from the paper, supper was a grand affair, with the table set, side-plates with folded napkins, candles lit, a bottle of wine. The food Petra had bought from the deli was perfect. They were ravenous.

'I'll bet people back in London think you are eking a frugal existence out in the sticks,' Arlo said. 'My mum took some persuading that one could even get a cappuccino, never mind a b.l.o.o.d.y good one, up here. She couldn't quite believe it when she saw rocket pesto on one menu in Stokesley and saffron couscous on another in Helmsley, and Jerusalem artichoke on a menu in Yarm.'

'I must admit, I thought it'd be mostly ham and eggs, or pies pies pies.'

'Shame on you, Miss Flint. It's a wonderful area it really is. I don't think I'd live anywhere else now. The villages are great, the landscape is stunning and there's the bonus of being so near the coast.'

'I haven't been. Yet.'

'Well, that's a date, then,' said Arlo and they laughed. 'Another one. There's loads of places I must take you. Down to Runswick Bay. Up to Roseberry Topping. Bilsdale and Raisdale. We'll take the North York Moors Railway from Grosmont to Pickering. We'll walk the Cleveland Way, we'll go a way along the Lyke Wake Walk. The pier at Saltburn. The Wainstones, the Hanging Stone, a stick of rock from Scarborough. We'll fine dine at the Tontine. Have Sunday lunch at the Star in Harome. Fresh dressed crab from Whitby. We'll cross over the Transporter Bridge one way and the Newport Bridge the other. We'll go and see the Angel of the North, the goths at Whitby, the bikers at Helmsley.'

'I'd like to see the ruined abbeys.'

'Rievaulx. Fountains. Byland. Guisborough. St Hilda's. I'll take you there.'

'All these dates, Arlo they'll eat up all your weekends.'

He shrugged. 'I don't mind. It'll be half-term soon enough. Summer holidays six weeks after that.'

'Do you not go home?'

'This is home, Petra for me.'

Petra nodded and knitted the frisee with her fork. She'd never considered that home could be anywhere other than where you'd been brought up. Even if you didn't particularly like it. She never thought that home is where the heart is could be more than a saying, more than a song.

'Why are you here, Arlo?' she asks, as they snuggle into bed past midnight, having chatted the evening away.

'Oh,' he says blithely, 'I'm just here for the p.u.s.s.y.'

Petra punches him lightly and then bashes him with her pillow. 'Pillock,' she says. 'Not here, here. I meant-'

'I know,' Arlo says, 'I know. A bit like you really something went awry for me back in London, a few years ago, and an opportunity arose here which I took without a backward glance.'

'What happened, what went awry, Arlo?'

He turns and lies on his back. 'I knew you'd ask me that.' And then he says 'idiot' at himself, under his breath, which Petra wasn't meant to hear, but they both know she has.

Petra tells herself to stop prying, it's late, don't push not now. Don't spoil what's been so perfect by digging too deep just yet. 'Tell me.' Shut up!

'Oh it's long and complicated and boring, Petra. My career was at a crossroads. I broke up with someone I'd been with for a while. You know one of those life-defining intersections that tend to epitomize one's late twenties.'

'What happened with your career?' Petra gives herself full marks for manipulating the divulgence into less contentious territory.

'I changed my tune,' Arlo says.

'Stop being so enigmatic!'

'Seriously I'd always been in bands, from school through university and beyond. I worked in the music industry, but I knew that while my music had a market, I didn't. I wasn't cool enough, or young enough certainly not good-looking enough.'

'The Magic Numbers are no oil painting.'

'Perhaps not but they're marketable enough for that very reason. The industry needs the whole package. But anyway, if I'm truthful, over and above losing my nerve performing I dreaded it, I hated it I also lost my love of songwriting.'

'I loved it when you sang to me.'

'But I wasn't performing, Petra I was just singing.'

'Your songs were great.'

'Other people seem to think so. I was fairly successful as a songwriter as the continuing royalties show. Bizarre.'

'Doesn't it rankle? Hearing some other voice work your music? Isn't it like seeing another man with your ex-girlfriend or something?'

'Not really,' says Arlo. 'While I write a song, I'm inextricably bound to it. The moment it's finished, it becomes separate, autonomous.'

And Petra thinks to herself, Quick! Lead nicely on pick up on the ex-girlfriend strand now. 'Oh,' she says. 'Yes, I can see that. And. Then. So you broke up with someone around that time too?'

'Yes. It was all miserably synchronized.'

'Oh. Poor you. What was she-'

'Helen. We'd been together a few years. You know how it is you either go for it, big time, or you let it go.'

'Do you keep in touch?'

'No.'

The tone of his voice surprises Petra. It's unequivocal. It bars further access to the subject. She had wanted to ask to double-check was there anyone at the moment, had there been anyone up here. But she can't. She thinks to herself, Perhaps he's just really really tired. We've spent the best part of twelve hours getting to know each other intimately making love and talking, sharing.

'Night, Arlo,' she says and she kisses his shoulder because he has turned away from her. She tells herself to let him sleep. She has a feeling he's very much awake.

Petra wakes up very cold. It is dawn. She is slumped against a kitchen unit, she is sitting in a puddle of wee. She is mortified. What on earth has she to sleepwalk about? More to the point, had Arlo seen? She wipes the floor clean. As quietly as the creaky taps let her, she soaks a tea towel and washes herself down. She tiptoes back to the bedroom, sneaks back into bed. Arlo turns towards her, spoons against her, enclosing her in his arms. Why on earth would she have tried to walk away from Arlo?

Just a bad dream.

Everything's OK. See you're in his arms.

Go back to sleep.

Chapter Thirty-five.

She did go back to sleep. She woke at gone ten, by which time Arlo had been awake for an hour. He had been watching her for the best part of half an hour. The worst part of half an hour had been on waking, when a sense of dread had swept over him in a dark wave. He had lain beside Petra, not daring to turn or look. He'd kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling which, in the Old Stables, provided ample d.i.n.ks and cracks conducive to ruminating. As much as his heart surged, his stomach plummeted. For every thundering beat of his heart proclaiming love and lots of it, his conscience hammered back that Love could only mean one thing. And just in case Arlo feigned not to know the meaning of love, his memory charged in to remind him.

But all it had taken was a tiny sleep-sigh from Petra. Despite the noise of the conflict raging inside him, one perfectly timed little whisper of her breath had lured him around. He turned to her, gazed at her, and for the best part of half an hour he fed upon the peace and loveliness from her repose until the emptiness and negativity had been washed away and a full tank of hope and happiness replaced it. When Arlo had seen Petra for that first time, just before Easter, it had been like revisiting the feelings she'd instilled in him seventeen years ago. Remember me? Yes, of course I remember you how could I ever forget? And for a while it had been those memories of a halcyon time when life was simple and so much felt good, which had seduced him. But as Arlo looked at her in the here and now, on a quiet Sunday morning in late May, it was unequivocally the Petra of the present, not the past, who soothed his soul and charged his heart even while she was asleep.

'Good morning, Miss Flint.'

'What time is it?'

'Gone ten.'

'Have you been awake long?'

'The best part of half an hour.'

'Did you sleep?'