Debbie Johnson - Pippa’s Cornish Dream

“Thank you,” he murmured, pulling her gently towards him, needing to feel her against him. To share the way he felt, even for a second. She came, taking tiny steps, and laid her head against his chest. He could feel her breath, hot and fast against him; could smell the lavender of her shampoo, the slight tremble in her arms as they slid around his waist, briefly stroking his lower back before she slipped back out of reach.

“Now I’d better get to bed,” she murmured. “Before I start letting out war cries and jumping on your head.”

He watched her go – face flushed, breasts rising and falling, eyes blinking too rapidly – and knew that she’d felt it too. That moment. That magical moment between a man and a woman, where you feel the thrill of potential, the primal joy of heat calling out to heat.

Scarier than a war cry any day, he thought, as the door slammed shut behind her and she disappeared back out into the darkness.

By the time the roosters started calling, Pippa had already been awake for an hour. Her days always started early, but this, she thought, glugging coffee, was ridiculous. Up and about by 5am, ready to get the feeds done and crack on with some paperwork.

She grimaced as she drank the last cooling dregs, tried to convince herself it was a good head start to the day. Except it didn’t feel like that. She normally valued these quiet hours before the rest of the family got up, the time on her own to think, to plan. To eat chocolate digestives and occasionally have a little cry.

But today was different. Today, she didn’t feel alone – because her head was full of Ben Retallick. Full of his story, his sadness, the pain in his chocolate-brown eyes. Full of the feel of him as they’d embraced, the way it felt to run her fingers over the packed muscle of his back, the way her heart sped up the minute he touched her. It was all…weird.

She wasn’t a blushing virgin by any means, but her sexual experience was limited to one boyfriend several years ago. And when he’d touched her, it certainly hadn’t felt anything like the fireworks that had popped in psychedelic glory when Ben held her the night before.

Growing up on a farm, you got your sex education the natural way – but at no time in her life had she experienced anything like the flood of sensation she’d felt in Ben’s arms.

All he’d done was hold her, wrap her in his arms as she leaned into him. It was comfort, it was innocent. It was one human being in need recognising another. And yet…she’d left Honeysuckle a mess. Knowing that it would have been so easy to raise her head to his, to invite his lips. To invite his touch. To invite absolute chaos into a life that was already pretty ragged around the edges. If he’d wanted more – if he’d wanted to throw her on the floor and ravish her – she wouldn’t have been able to stop him. Wouldn’t have even wanted to. Luckily, she thought, he’d been a gentleman. Even though part of her was wishing he hadn’t been.

She needed to get a grip. She didn’t have the time for a relationship, no matter how much her body told her it wanted one. She didn’t even have time for a mindless quickie on the shag pile of Honeysuckle, for goodness sake. That could all come later, when the kids were older. When life was more settled. She’d switched off those thoughts years ago, set it all aside. It hadn’t been easy – but there was so much else to do.

She wasn’t a saint, she had her moments of desperation. Of self-pity. Of wishing she had someone else’s life. For one small period she’d hoarded travel brochures in her bedroom, giving in to fantasies about jacking it all in – letting Social Services take the kids and backpacking around Asia to find herself. Or lose herself, whichever came first. But that’s all they were: fantasies. Even they left her with the guilt hangover from hell, when Lily and Daisy had found the glossy magazines and asked if they were going away on holiday.

So she compartmentalised, as the books say. Learned to set aside her own needs and focus on everyone else’s so hard she almost forgot she had any. It had seemed the only way to cope.

Until now, until last night, it had been working. Last night she seemed to have regressed to being a love-struck teenager, wondering how it would feel to slip her hands beneath that t-shirt; to have him bury his hands in her hair. How it would feel to put her skin next to his and let all that heat take its course.

She’d be doodling his name on a pencil case inside a loveheart next, she thought, shaking her head in an effort to clear it. This was real life, not a romance novel: and real life was busy. Hard. Challenging in every single way. She didn’t have time for mooning around, or for imagining Ben naked, or even for drinking coffee and staring out of the window down to the bay.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing and she felt a swoosh of panic flow through her. Phone calls late at night or this early in the morning never meant anything good. It’s not as if it was going to be the man from the Premium Bonds telling her she was a millionaire, or even a utility company trying to persuade her to change supplier. Not at this time of day.

She lifted the receiver, muttered a cautious hello.

“Sis? Is that you?” said Patrick, his voice low and whispering.

Patrick. Of course. She’d glimpsed into his room when she’d woken up and seen that he wasn’t there. At least she thought he wasn’t. It was hard to tell for sure under all the mess. She’d expected him to roll up in a few hours, hung over and smelly, as usual. Except he was calling her – and sounding scared.

“Yes, of course it’s me. Who else would it be?” she replied, trying to hold down her temper. After all, for once her agitated mental state wasn’t Patrick’s fault – it wasn’t down to him that she’d been tossing and turning all night. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what to do, sis,” he replied, voice urgent and sounding way younger than usual. “Me and Robbie got into a bit of trouble last night. We didn’t mean anything by it, honest, but we went a bit too far. It was after the pub. Old man Jensen had been in there, winding us up, telling us all those stupid stories about what he was doing at our age – all that crap about the war. So later, after we’d had a skinful, we went round to his house. We only meant to scare him, maybe throw a few bricks at the window, whatever. But…well, we got carried away. Made a real mess of the garden. Broke the windscreen of that ancient Volvo he drives round in. And, well, the thing is, I think he saw us.”

She couldn’t tell which he was most upset about – that he’d done this awful thing, or that he’d been spotted. If it was the latter, she didn’t know what she could do for him. Please God, she thought, closing her eyes and clenching back the tears that were stinging at her tired eyes, let him actually regret it. She so didn’t need this right now – not with the review coming up. Not with her mind full of Ben. Not ever.

She felt like hanging up. Giving up. Entirely possibly shooting up.

“Okay,” she said, keeping her voice calm despite her inner turmoil. If she screamed at him, he’d bolt. He’d do one of his disappearing acts and leave her fretting for days on end. “Where are you now?”

“In that phone box by the Surf Shack. Mine’s out of charge. Robbie’s still crashed in the back of his car. What should I do, sis?”

She wanted to yell at him, “Grow up!” but she didn’t. Instead she took a deep breath and told him to stay where he was. That she’d come and get him.

Then she put the phone down and wondered how exactly she was going to manage that. How she could leave the kids alone, feed the animals and rescue her brother all at the same time. Yet another impossible day stretched ahead of her.