One of a kind, p.14
One of a Kind, page 14
‘Only because they just slip past me,’ Ivo said to the now crowded beach, neatly stepping around two small girls splashing one another in the shallow fringe of breakers. ‘You do it actively.’
We found our shoes and socks, abandoned in the midst of a family group who were setting up windbreaks and rugs, and put them on. I carefully dusted the sand from my feet, pulled on my socks and began lacing up my boots, only to see Ivo shove his socks into his pocket and pull on his shoes without having once undone the laces. I opened my mouth to ask if he wouldn’t be horribly uncomfortable with sandy feet in the walking trainers he’d chosen to wear today, but then bit my lip. Ivo was an adult, and quite capable of making his own decisions, but if he once complained that his shoes were rubbing I’d be justified in giving him a what-did-you-expect look. Besides, I was busy crafting my response to his accusations of my superficiality. I could do it, there were a hundred-and-one reasons why I kept things light and I could bury the reality beneath them. Then we trudged up the beach and into town, to argue lightly over sandwich fillings.
My phone buzzed with the receipt of a text.
Hi, it’s Sally. Feel bad that I never got to show you our squirrel rescue facility. Come early tomorrow and I’ll take you down and maybe we can compare notes! I don’t get to meet other people who understand what it’s like. Around 8?
I read Ivo the text as we drove. The little cove he had in mind was a fair way from Cowes and I’d lost all sense of direction, so I was glad he knew where he was heading.
‘Do you want to?’ he asked, stopping at a junction and squinting at a road sign, which made my confidence in him waver somewhat. ‘I thought you wanted to head back straight away, soon as we’d said “bye” to Fred?’
I stared down at the text again. There was something in those few words that gave me a warm feeling. Friendship offered, a nice, simple friendship; it would be refreshing in comparison to the one I was currently wading through. ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I don’t meet many people generally in the rescue profession. Apart from my workmates, and when we’re sent on courses. There aren’t many people who know what it’s like being in the middle of a muddy field at three in the morning, trying to untangle a fox from an electric fence.’
Sally wanted to make contact again, wanted to talk. To show me what she did; the successes of animal rescue could be few and far between and it was nice to celebrate them with someone who understood that animals died far more often than they thrived, and that not crying over each failure didn’t make you hard, it made you practical.
And also someone who knew that you did cry over the failures.
‘Yes,’ I said, as the car moved off along yet another curving lane through birdsong and branches. ‘I think I’d like to see their facilities.’
‘Okay then. We can book an evening sailing, drive home overnight. Make the most of our last day down here.’ He pulled the car to the left down a very narrow turn that looked more like a gateway than a road. ‘But while I’m showing Tony the picture of our Mr Williams I might ask why Sally has seen them knocking about together.’
‘Just be careful. If he’s prone to outbursts…’ I trailed off.
‘I can handle myself.’ Ivo flexed a bicep at me. ‘I can swear in fifteen languages and I’m a black belt in miso.’
‘Bean paste?’
‘If anyone comes at me in anger, I swap recipes with them until they calm down.’ He flicked me a glance. ‘Seriously, Cress, I’m a journalist. D’you not think I’ve been in dodgy situations before?’
I opened my mouth to reply that negotiating with escaped bullocks and interviewing the victims of bike theft wasn’t really a preparation for being imprisoned in a Portakabin with an irrationally angry fifteen-stone bloke, but I didn’t. He knew. Of course he did. Having the personality of someone running in a speeded-up film didn’t mean Ivo was stupid.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘It could be useful.’
‘Of course it could!’ Fingers fidgeted on the wheel. ‘I’d still like to get to the bottom of the Fred mystery before we go. Poor impulse control could be my friend here. Look, this is the place.’
It was a tiny, chalky-floored car park at the side of the road, empty of any other vehicles, although a worn path in the grass showed where people walked out across the hilltop. Above us the sky spread navy blue, humped with clots of cloud that lay dark along the horizon, threateningly flat-topped as though shaved at the sides.
‘Looks like a storm coming in from the sea,’ I observed.
‘Slow moving. Won’t be here before tomorrow,’ Ivo said confidently. So confidently, in fact, that I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Weather forecast, before you ask, not my own assumption.’ Ivo unloaded the carrier bags of picnic that we’d bought, and a rug from the boot. ‘If we walk out along this path a bit, we can see down into the cove Ru and I used to swim in sometimes. It’s great, really private, only one little road in and visitors don’t know about it.’
‘Surely you and Ru were visitors?’
‘We didn’t drive in, we came on the boat. And don’t roll your eyes, it wasn’t our boat, it belonged to Ru’s sailing friends.’
We trudged along the little beaten-grass path. I’d got sand in my socks and a wary eye on the clouds massing on the horizon, so I wasn’t as filled with the joys of a country walk as I usually would have been, even with Ivo twinkling glamorously beside me, seizing grass stems and pulling seed heads to scatter across the turf. Cliffs arced around behind us, running sheer to the sea in patches of green and white, where plants were gaining a foothold in chalk. Far beneath, the sea threw itself against boulders, half-hearted in the heat.
‘Here,’ Ivo said suddenly. ‘This is nice.’
The grass sloped here, down to a fence that would prevent us from sliding off the edge of the cliff into the water, and below us a narrow cove was visible, just a crack of an inlet with a small sandy fringe and waves that beat against the encircling cliffside.
With anyone else, it would have been romantic.
‘Very pretty,’ I said.
‘And again, like you mean it.’
I glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at me, instead he was staring up across the grassy hillside, eyes focussed on the far away. ‘Sorry, Ivo,’ I said. ‘It really is lovely, thank you for bringing me.’
Now his gaze snapped back to me and his eyes were searching my face as though he thought I might have some ulterior motive. ‘We need to have a chat,’ he said. ‘Sit down. But let me do the blanket first.’
Meticulously he laid the tartan blanket he’d removed from the car boot across the grass, twitching it into place several times until he was satisfied with its smoothness. Then he carefully aligned the picnic-carrying bag on one side, and indicated, with a formal wave of the hand, that it was ready, so I felt like royalty when I finally collapsed onto it.
‘What do you want to talk about?’ I kept practicality to the fore. I could do this. I really could.
Ivo sat down beside me, legs folded in front of him, like a slim and attractive Buddha. ‘You’re having thoughts,’ he said, very matter-of-fact. ‘About me. I can tell, believe me. I’ve seen that look on so many faces over the years.’
I was startled. I’d been hoping for something more general, or even personal to me. This approach took the wind from my sails. ‘It’s this business with Fred,’ I said. ‘Not you, specifically.’ Lying through my teeth in case it wasn’t too late to save myself.
He turned away and began unpacking picnic comestibles. ‘Oh, there is such an enormous “but” coming along any minute,’ he said, without any notable self-pity. ‘I can practically hear its engine already.’
I looked around. This rural retreat, backed by the sea and with a soundtrack of gulls and wind-fondled grass, was practically made for blurting out confessions. Love and friendship and longing and fear. ‘I don’t understand any of it,’ I went on. That was honest, at least.
‘Chug chug chug chug, woooooo!’ Ivo supplied.
‘I’m just worried that – no, it’s not a worry, that’s wrong, it’s just this thing in the back of my mind, telling me that there’s no more to it all than Tony’s friend borrowing a squirrel. But you’re so certain…’ I tailed off. I had hoped I’d shovelled enough words in to distract him, but he was looking at me now with such an expression of kind understanding that I felt I was admitting to some awful infraction. As though I had been found out and dealt with and my admission was surplus to requirements. My heart was beating so hard that I felt sick, and this clifftop wasn’t the only thing that felt precariously poised over a long drop.
‘You feel as though you’re going along with me to keep me happy,’ he said.
Ok. Ok, yes. Practicality. Reality versus feelings. I could do this. ‘No. Well, yes, a bit.’
There was a small, sad silence. Into it came the soft sound of waves breaking and a far-off car engine, then an ominous roll of distant thunder.
‘I don’t want to bring you down,’ I said quietly. ‘I’d love to believe that this is going to be the case that makes you famous, but I can’t help thinking that it might all be part of your…’ I took a breath. ‘That it might be one of your obsessions and you’re not seeing clearly because of that getting in the way. I wish I could just roll along with you, but I keep remembering that your parents have someone to clean the house for you and you burned the sauce because you were looking at newspapers.’
I swallowed hard. Had I done it? I had the feeling that as long as I could keep the focus on him, on pragmatism and the realities of friendship, I might get out of this with my heart intact. Or, if not intact, at least not shredded into tiny tatters, I’d settle for that.
Ivo tipped his head. One hand combed the soft pile of today’s velveteen trousers, restless and looking for input. ‘I’m twenty-seven,’ he said.
‘I know. So am I.’
‘No, what I mean is, I haven’t killed myself yet. I haven’t burned to death in a culinary conflagration or poisoned myself with inadequately refrigerated pork products. I can cope, Cress. Just because my life looks random and unfocussed to you, it doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I’m doing. Okay, sometimes I’m late to a meeting or I turn up to a black tie do in a 1970s glam rock outfit, but I have workarounds. I have reminders on my phone, a calendar for appointments, Alexa for timings. My brain is’ – he did the finger-thing again – ‘and it can make me unsystematic, overloaded easily and an absolute bastard about anniversaries. But I’m still here. Still standing.’ He reached out a hand and laid it on my wrist where I was sprawled on the blanket. ‘Is that not enough for you?’
Enough. Enough for friendship? It always had been. Ivo had always been more than enough to be my friend, and it hurt that he thought that his ADHD made him not friendship material. His randomness and his occasional pinpoint focus made him him. But this conversation was beginning to feel dangerous. There was a look in Ivo’s eye that I wasn’t used to seeing, a look of trepidation, as though my answer to his question could hurt him more than he was capable of dealing with. I could take away that look by telling him that my reluctance around him wasn’t due to his behaviour it was because I wanted Ivo as so much more than a friend, but… I twisted my tongue in my mouth to stopper my lips. I couldn’t do it. Not even to take that look from his face, I couldn’t open myself up to him. I couldn’t take that leap.
Ivo drew his knees up. It was a childishly defensive gesture and I knew he was trying to shield himself from my words. ‘But isn’t that friendship, Cress?’ he asked softly. ‘Everyone has to make allowances for other people. Unless they are identical twins, of course,’ he went on, in a more normal tone. ‘But even then, they are two different people, so, yes. Nobody is perfect. Friendship should be people caring about each other. Looking after one another.’
‘I don’t need looking after.’ It sounded stiff and as though I’d pre-arranged the words. Oh Ivo. Friendship. Can’t you see me, protecting myself here?
‘No. No, of course you don’t.’ He’d lost the gentle tone and assumed a practicality. ‘What you do need is a few of these amazing sausage rolls, however, and some crisps. There isn’t a drama in the world that isn’t better with pastry products and Pringles.’
‘Ivo…’
He shook his head. ‘It’s all right, Cress. I’m not pushing anything. Well, anything other than these spectacular rolls. You know how you feel, and, believe me, I’m not a stranger to this situation. I’ve learned to accept with grace and poise the fact that not every woman wants to hang out with someone who’s got a brain like a TK Maxx on sales day.’ He grinned at me and passed me a packet. ‘Even if he is utterly gorgeous and fanatically devoted, when in the field.’ Another grin, and wiggled eyebrows. ‘I’ve got references. Available on request.’
I laughed now. That intense, scared look was gone from his face. I had clearly been more convincing than I had thought I was capable of. Friendship. We were back on an even keel, even though my insides felt as though we’d been through a hurricane. I’d held the line and not revealed my emotional fragility. He’d let his condition take the blame and I had let him.
I felt a quick moment of shame about that. ‘I’m not saying I don’t want to find out what’s going on here,’ I said, the words slipping out in my relief. ‘I’m really not.’
I meant the Fred affair. Of course I did.
‘Well, how could you, when I’m so downright adorable?’
‘That’s not…’ I stopped talking. There was a different look on his face now. An expression I didn’t think I’d ever seen before, a softening and – something else.
‘Cressida.’
I found myself caught by his eyes. He’d got the lid of a Pringles tube in one hand but his attention wasn’t on that, it was on me. Full beam, laser-intensity, as though his eyes were trying to concentrate the soul out of my body. ‘Cress,’ he said again, and it was a breath, a vibration in the air that hit me in the heart and tingled all the way down to my toes.
The lid went down and he raised his hand to tangle it in my hair, slowly, keeping eye contact as though using it to pull me closer, like a magnet. My neck prickled, all my skin rising in goosepimples where his fingers contacted, as though he were ice, while I felt his skin like fire against me. ‘Cress.’
He leaned in and his lips were soft, although there was pressure in the kiss that spoke of a longing on both sides. His other hand rose and held me steady. I closed my eyes and let myself get lost in kissing Ivo.
It was like everything I’d ever dreamed, combined with my worst nightmares. Ivo. Ivo. His touch, the firmness of his hands holding me in, the feel of his fingers caught in my hair, the familiar smell of him and the implicit promise in the contact made all the bad stuff and the doubts flare and catch light, burning away in the face of what I wanted. What I’d wanted for so long.
We broke apart after a few moments of the kiss. Gulls wheeled overhead, dipping their wings into the wind and staring at our picnic with wickedly sharp eyes, but we ignored them.
‘Ivo, I…’ I wasn’t even sure what I had been going to say. There was nothing to say. That kiss had taken all my words.
But he interrupted my ellipses. ‘That car down there, just coming into the cove. Isn’t that the car that passed us on the track this morning?’ His whole attention had moved from me; he was staring over my shoulder and down the cliff to where a white SUV had driven onto the narrow band of beach.
‘I don’t know. It was just a car, I wasn’t looking.’ I tried to stifle the annoyance I felt at the interruption. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted an in-depth investigation as to whether we could ever work as a couple, at any level, but this change of subject was too abrupt. I needed to breathe and think about this and now Ivo was off on something else. ‘React to the moment’ seemed to be Ivo’s default and I had no choice but to go along with that for now.
‘It was one just like it. Can you see if it’s got damage to the passenger-side wing?’ Ivo had got up onto his knees and was creeping closer to the fence in a kind of all-fours crouch.
‘Not from here, no. Why?’ I breathed deeply. Switched to ‘Ivo mode’.
‘The one that passed us did. Big dent down one side.’
‘Ivo, I’m sure there’s more than one white SUV on the island. And be careful, that fence doesn’t look all that safe.’
‘Mmm.’ He shaded his eyes from the low-level sun that was bouncing the last of its rays off the sea’s surface, clearly not listening to me. ‘It’s the kind of thing I notice, you see. Big dent, how did that happen? Why haven’t they had it fixed, clearly an expensive vehicle, so maybe they didn’t have time, or didn’t want the car to be noted by a garage…’
‘Maybe it only just happened, and they haven’t had chance yet,’ I said, my voice rising in a note of panic. ‘Ivo – the fence…’
‘The damage looked older than that.’ He was squinting into the diamond light. ‘Yes, I’m pretty certain that’s the same car.’ Then he turned and kneed himself back up the slope towards me. ‘You’re very risk averse, Cress, ever wondered why that might be? Because I have.’
The relief that he’d come back and not plunged over the clifftop accompanied by inadequate fencing made my voice shrill. ‘I am not risk averse! I just don’t want you dying on my watch! Your parents would kill me.’
‘Go on, admit it. You are. Just a little bit?’ As though he didn’t have a care in the world, Ivo reached past me for the little pile of food and began picking olives out of the packet, with oil dripping down the front of his shirt as he palmed them into his mouth. ‘And I’m not just talking about right now. You took a week off work to have a cold.’
‘I felt wretched!’ I could hear the self-justification in my voice as I wailed the words. ‘I wanted to sleep it off, not snot all over baby hedgehogs and badgers.’
‘How do you feel now?’ He ripped open another pack of Pringles, despite the fact that we hadn’t started the first one yet.
