Wasn’t that for kids? ‘Depends what you’re seeking, doesn’t it?’ she’d replied with a coy smile. So he’d stood there, counting …
Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred! Ready or not, here I come!
He whirls round, scanning the garden. Beginning to search. Over by the rose bushes? No! Standing straight behind the big old oak? No!! Hiding beneath the tarpaulin which covers the wood pile? No!!! Where on earth is she? He shakes his head and turns round once more. He spies the shed. Of course! He creeps over the lawn and clicks open the door. There she is!
Found you!
She doesn’t move. Just lies there, her eyes closed but a smile gracing her lips, her pretty summer dress rucked up round her waist, her knickers round her ankles. He steps inside the shed and pulls the door shut. Darkness. A slant of golden light from the crack in the door running up her thigh. He breathes in. The air tastes dry and dusty, but there’s a hint of something else too, something sweet and intoxicating. He slips one foot across the wooden floor, then another. Now he’s standing over her. Marvelling at her stillness. He lowers himself to the floor of the shed and lies beside her. She doesn’t move. He reaches out with his finger and traces a line on her thigh, following the shaft of light. His heart is beating ten to the dozen, his breathing coming in tiny little gulps. She, on the other hand, only betrays the fact she is alive with an almost imperceptible heave of her chest, her breasts swelling with each intake of air. She is passive but so very powerful. So utterly bewitching.
He pushes himself up and lies on top of her, trying to support himself with one hand while the other fumbles with his trousers. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, only knows that this was meant to be.
The girl’s eyelids flutter for a second as he enters her and then she sighs, a long exhalation of air, the breath warm on his face. Then she is still again and he’s the only one moving, his gasps now matching his rhythm, her face frozen but serene.
‘Oh God!’ he cries, as mere seconds later his body convulses. Now he falls on her in utter bliss and amazement, moaning in her ear, telling her that he loves her more than anything and will do so forever and ever and ever.
She says nothing and her eyes stay shut as he continues to whisper to her, to promise her his heart and soul. And then she blinks at a sound from outside.
Voices.
She pushes him off and stands, hurriedly pulling up her knickers and tidying her dress.
‘Stay,’ he pleads. ‘Stay with me!’
She shakes her head, nothing in her eyes but contempt. She moves across the shed, flings the door open, and vanishes into the garden.
He turns to the door, pulls it shut and then slumps back down to the floor. The moment has gone and he wonders if anything can recapture the feeling he had as she lay there beneath him.
The next day he goes to the girl’s house. Knocks on the door. Her mother answers. No, he can’t come in. Her daughter doesn’t want to see him. The mother raises her hand as if to shoo him away like a bothersome fly. He stares past her into the hallway where huge cardboard boxes sit in stacks. He can see a roll of carpet sticking from the door of the front room. The windows in the bay are bare, the curtains lying in neat folded piles. He gets it then. The family are moving. The girl is leaving. She tricked him.
Kendwick shook his head, pulling himself into the present and his current predicament. He reached for his glass and took a sip of his drink. The girl in the shed had engendered a terrible feeling of rejection, a feeling he’d known since he was a baby and she had reinforced.
‘Bitch,’ Kendwick said, not entirely sure if he was referring to the girl in the shed, the woman who’d smiled over the garden fence a few minutes ago or DI Savage. It didn’t really matter. They were all the same. Sweetness and light and flashing a smile or a bare patch of skin so they could take control of his emotions. And then, when they’d got what they wanted, they simply walked away, leaving him lusting after something he couldn’t have.
He’d learned to get the better of them by turning on the charm himself, but deep inside he couldn’t kid himself. He always felt weak when he saw a woman he desired, weak because of the power she held over him, weak at the thought of what he might be able to do to her. If, of course, she’d let him.
And if she wouldn’t let him?
Well, Malcolm Kendwick had ways of dealing with that.
Combestone Tor, Dartmoor. Saturday 22nd April. 4.43 p.m.
The Smith family liked to get out in the wilds on a weekend. It was part of the reason why Nathan and Jane Smith had decided to move to Devon. Weekend life before Devon, or BD, as Nathan put it, had involved a trip to the local park or, if they were lucky, an outing on the South Downs. Then, years ago now, Nathan had won a prize in a magazine competition. A Valentine’s weekend at the Gidleigh Park Hotel, on Dartmoor. The hotel was well out of their price range and the novelty of sleeping in a huge four-poster bed in a suite of rooms was wonderful. The place had a Michelin star and the food was, not surprisingly, out of this world. The break was only for two days, but the idea of a dirty weekend was fun and Nathan had imagined they would spend most of the time between the sheets. Jane had insisted on leaving the hotel, though. A stroll on the moor would burn off some of the calories and leave them re-energised and refreshed for the next bout of lovemaking.
Whatever, Nathan had thought. They’d been to Canada the previous year, South America the one before that. A walk on Dartmoor was hardly going to compare with Niagara Falls or Machu Picchu. And yet, when they’d ventured out into the cold February morning, the light had sparkled in an odd way. They’d driven up onto the moor where mist hung in the valleys as the sun brushed the tops of the tors. This wasn’t like the South Downs at all. There was nothing manicured about the countryside here. As they parked the car and got out and clambered up the heaving granite mass of Haytor, Nathan felt something stir deep inside. And when they stood on top of the rocks holding hands, he turned to his wife, and without really thinking, he said he’d like to live here. Me too, Jane had replied.
Neither of them had thought much more about the conversation until they’d driven to a nearby town and looked in an estate agent’s window. While for locals the prices might have seemed steep, for Nathan and Jane, who at the time lived in a nice Victorian semi-detached house in Guildford, nearly every property looked like an absolute steal.
After browsing the particulars for one idyllic place set in its own valley, Nathan’s hand strayed down to Jane’s stomach. He patted her.
‘Be better for him, wouldn’t it?’ Only the week before they’d come on the trip, Jane had announced she was pregnant. Nathan had been thrilled.
‘Or her,’ Jane said.
That had been over ten years ago. They made the move within six months of that February, shortly before their daughter Abigail had been born. Luka, their son, followed a year and a half later and now they were well settled, the South-East all but forgotten.
Today,
