The Unbreakable Trilogy. Primula Bond

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СКАЧАТЬ moves slowly behind me and unwinds my blue scarf. So far, so harmless. So brotherly. But then he combs his fingers through my hair, starting at the base of my neck, and I shiver with uncontrollable, unexpected pleasure. He misreads my shivering for cold, or rejection, pauses as if waiting for me to stop him.

      ‘Please, don’t stop, Gustav,’ I moan quietly.

      He has no idea how this has calmed me, like a wild horse. I had no idea how someone stroking my hair would affect me. He stands very close. His tall body lines itself up behind mine, firm and unbending like the lamp post in the square. I push myself back against him. Oh, we fit so well. My bottom is just a little lower than his hips. His fingers go back to work. His hands are circling my throat loosely like a noose. I brush against the hardness in his trousers and it gives him away. My stomach curls over, my body tightening in dark agreement.

      Does he know I know? I tilt my head sideways. If I’m too shy to speak, how can I show him what I want, how I want the tips of his fingers to go on combing and stroking me, how I want him to stand nice and tight behind me, set my cold body on fire.

      He knows. He strokes my skin. He lifts my hair, unwinding it out of my collar as if it’s a magician’s endless rope or a charmer’s snake.

      ‘You have no idea,’ I breathe, my eyes fluttering closed as my hair lifts and curls round his fingers, strokes against my cheek and neck, sends its own minute promises of pleasure down my body, ‘how good that feels.’

      ‘My ragged Rapunzel,’ he breathes, so hot on the back of my neck. A squeal of excitement bunches in my throat. I bring my hands up to his, try to keep him there, get his warm mouth to press down onto me.

      But he steps away, leaving a cool space between us. My hair drops like a curtain.

      ‘Why have you stopped?’

      He comes round in front of me and puts his finger on my mouth. ‘It’s a crime to hide this amazing hair. And the colour, in this candlelight! Rossetti and those pre-Raphaelites would have had a name for it. A glorious Italian-sounding tint. Titian. Tintoretto. Not red. Auburn. Claret. Cinnamon.’

      ‘Five spice?’

      ‘And what about introducing this tangle to a pair of scissors, Calamity Jane?’

      I can’t help smiling. How has he managed to get under my skin so quickly? Is it because he’s taller and older, impossibly attractive with his own unruly hair and steady black eyes? He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met down there in my dreary old life by the sea. Is it the chameleon way he’s simultaneously courteous and mocking? Is it his deep voice or the way his face goes from cold to hot like running water, from dark to light like the changing hours?

      ‘Oh, I know all about scissors, believe me,’ I retort.

      A single hair he’s missed is caught in my eye and when he sees me blinking at it he hooks it away absently, familiarly, before he steps towards the reception desk.

      I’ve been growing it for years, but until I was big enough to fight them off my hair was an unkempt bird’s nest because they never understood how to treat it. They didn’t understand how to treat me. The night before each new school term they would shove me down on a hard chair as if I was Anne Boleyn being prepared for the block. He would hold me down while she would start chopping at it with a pair of kitchen scissors.

       No point wasting money on a hairdresser, it’s just ugly, dead material.

      I learned to control the impotent tears as she hacked and he shoved and I watched the russet curls, the emerging tendrils struggling to prove themselves, kinking up even when they were only a few inches long. Shorn, limp, kicked about on the dirty floor like withering autumn leaves. Where did I come from? Who in my biological past had, or has, this hair?

      ‘I’ve stepped over a line. Taken liberties.’ These aren’t questions. They’re statements. Gustav Levi is watching me again, trying to read me. He’s not succeeding.

      But even through the sudden wretchedness I can still see the way my blue pashmina dangles over his arm like a waiter’s napkin as comical.

      I shake my head. ‘I’m just reminded of things, people, I’d rather forget.’

      ‘You don’t like your hair being touched?’

      ‘Au contraire,’ I sigh. ‘I have just discovered that I love it being touched. No-one’s ever – it took me by surprise, that’s all.’

      ‘I’m continental. Too tactile. And you Anglo-Saxons?’ He flips his hands dismissively. ‘Ice in your veins.’

      ‘I always think of myself as Celtic. Fire, not ice. But no, Gustav. I’m trying to tell you it felt nice. Lovely. It was just more intimate than I’m used to.’

      He raises his eyebrows questioningly.

      ‘I would defy any man not to want to either stroke it or paint pictures of it all day long. Christ, even mammals groom each other, don’t they?’ He pushes the hair off his face and unbuttons his coat. ‘You telling me your mother never brushed it? All that sunset splendour?’

      ‘Brushed it?’ I repeat harshly. ‘God no. She pulled it when I was naughty, the little baby hairs just in front of my ears, oh, and she chopped it off, as soon as it grew more than a few inches, because she hated it. It wasn’t sunset splendour to her. It was ugly and ginger.’

      A shadow passes over Gustav’s face. A brief cloud, followed by watery sunlight. I wonder if he realises how easy he is to read. The black gleam in his eyes steadies to understanding, as if he’s listening to a piece of music he used to play.

      ‘I’ve never told anyone that before. No-one has ever stood still long enough to listen.’

      ‘My God, Serena,’ he says, very softly, his eyes softening. ‘You really are a lost soul under all that chutzpah, aren’t you?’

      ‘Not lost. Fighting to be heard. I’m fine. You learn to be the cat who walks alone when you’re kicked about often enough.’

      A small, dark man in an impeccable suit appears soundlessly from behind a huge vase of winter flowers. ‘Mr Levi. How very good to see you. Your usual tipple this evening?’

      Gustav nods. ‘Thank you, Jerome. If you have my favourite seat, too?’

      The tinkle of glasses and low murmur of voices start to trickle out of the bar as if we’ve disturbed birds sleeping on a wire.

      ‘And very sexy they are too.’ Gustav takes a step towards the bar.

      ‘What are?’

      ‘Cats. Cold, distant. And you have the eyes, too. Green, slightly slanted. Perfect for Halloween.’ Gustav crooks his arm again. ‘They sometimes pounce on mice for fun, when no-one’s looking, don’t they? Don’t make that face. I mean it in a good way.’

      I toss my jacket and gloves at him, as if he’s a servant. His hand shoots out overarm as if he’s catching a cricket ball.

      ‘Are we going to have that drink or what?’

      He laughs and slaps his leg. Those expressive hands. СКАЧАТЬ