He continues laughing. I can’t quite tell where Ben is in the room but the sound of him close and making him laugh is a tonic in my fragile state.
‘I really am sorry,’ I say.
‘No apology needed, Chloe.’
I hate it when he bookends sentences with my name, the way he says it softly. I may be withering away but even that touches me in parts it shouldn’t. ‘Thank you, Ben,’ I say out loud, burying my head in my pillow and rubbing at my temples.
‘Headache?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’
He comes over and sits on the edge of the bed. ‘Here, have a cracker and then some tablets.’
I sit up, propping myself up against some pillows and I feel his fingers graze my lips as he tries to feed me the cracker. Ichew it weakly and hear him pop tablets out of their foil wrapper before putting them in my hand and handing me the bottle of water with the straw.
‘Good girl,’ he whispers.
I pause for a moment. My headache almost clears as I hear him say those words under his breath. I wonder if he can see the effect that has on my nipples. I’m literally sitting here without any knickers on. This should be playing out very differently. I smile to myself instead, opening my eyes to see him looking at me, a hand to the side of my head to prop me up. I put my hand to his and hold it there for a moment. And strangely, I feel a tear run down from the corner of my eye, down the curve of my cheek.
‘Chloe, are you OK?’
I can’t remember the last time I received this level of care. And because my edges are all frayed, it is a deeply intense experience to have someone tie them up for me.
‘Can you lie with me?’ I ask. I curl up on the bed and pull Ben’s arm around me, getting him to spoon me, feeling the warmth of his breath. He reaches over and I feel him kiss the back of my head, softly, slowly. Our legs meet and intertwine; we fit together almost perfectly. And there are no words, nothing more. I just close my eyes and feel myself fall into a deep and safe slumber.
18
DAY THREE
BEN
Chloe snores. It could be because she was drunk and super tired but there was a deep resonating rattle that came off her as she drifted off. Her whole body shook under me as she fell asleep, so much so that after Miguel had fished Jess and Zara out of the pool, he came to ask if there were any problems with the boiler.
I stayed with her for as long as I could survive the snoring, knowing that nothing could happen. Even though she had put her legs in the air, whipped off her knickers and well, her flange was on show. She was too poorly and vulnerable for anything to happen, so I did what she asked. I pulled the bottom of her slip dress down to cover her up, I held her and even though the seismic snoring was hard to ignore, there was a moment as she drifted off where I felt her body under mine – the curve of her, not knowing whose legs were whose – and the touch of her sandy skin that felt right. And when she finally fell asleep, I got up, tucked her in, then went over to the lamp where her knickers had landed and folded them neatly on a chair. It didn’t feel appropriate to stay.
‘Ben! Ben!’ I hear a loud whisper now and my eyes spring open to see Chloe crouched down next to my bed, her hair dripping wet. Sunshine is streaming through the windows of the cottage. I awake with a jolt to see her here. She shakes my arm. ‘You have to get up, please.’
The urgency in her hushed tone makes me leap out of bed. ‘You’re up,’ I say, surprised to see her so conscious and well after last night.
‘So are you,’ she replies, scanning down my body. I mean, I was sleeping twenty seconds ago, in my pants, and so there was always going to be a situation down there. I grab a pillow and hold it to my crotch.
‘Why the whispering, the panic?’ I ask.
‘There’s a lady by the gate and she’s got a gun and some rope. You have to come because Zara and Jess are mums and we can’t leave their children as orphans,’ she says dramatically.
I start to wonder if theHierbashas had some sort of post-hallucinatory effect. I see her twitch the blinds, looking through them, and I bite my lip, trying to hold in my laughter. ‘Was the lady old? Maybe wearing a large smock dress?’
‘With an old, withered face like a shoe and wearing big boots?’ she replies, making the woman sound like some angry cowboy.
‘Yeah,’ I say, rolling a T-shirt over my head and reaching for some shorts. ‘Come with me.’
We exit the cottage and I see the figure of the lady by the gate. As soon as the woman sees me, she waves excitedly. I hope that gun isn’t loaded because it’s not wise to be so animated like that. ‘BENJI! BENJI!’ she calls.
‘Renata!Buenos dias!¿Cómo está?’ I say to see her, watching as Chloe side-eyes me cautiously as we walk up the drive. ‘This is Renata, she owns the neighbouring farm,’ I explain. I met Renata in my first week here, she grows almonds and I alsosuspect she knew Uncle Lorenzo quite intimately from the way she talks about parties she attended here.
‘Benji –tienes novia?’ she says, noticing me beaming, obviously excited to see a woman on the premises and assuming her to be a love interest.
‘Renata,tienes un arma,’ I retort, referring to the rather large shotgun in her hands.
