Page 31 of The Rest is History

Elodie

‘ H onestly.’ My finger hovers on my parents’ doorbell. ‘If you want to get the hell back in that car and speed off to your beautiful, silent house, you’ll get no judgement from me.’

Behind me, Charlie’s mouth presses to my bare shoulder. ‘I’m game. If it means I get to spend the afternoon with you, I’ll do anything.’

‘You clearly haven’t met my mother. Just—hang on tight, okay? She won’t let you go without wringing every last drop of information out of you.’

‘I can take it,’ he tells me between kisses. ‘I assure you, I’m very parent-friendly.’

I roll my eyes. ‘So parents are the only social demographic you’re not openly hostile to, then?’

‘Parents,’ he whispers, his breath hot against my ear, ‘and beautiful women who let me loose on their incredible bodies with explosive results for everyone involved.’

Okay. That was pretty charming. For me, anyway. Obviously, way too charming for my parents. Hopefully, he can find a happy medium.

‘Your funeral,’ I say, and press.

Mum flings open the front door immediately, almost as if she’s been standing there, waiting for the bell to ring.

‘Charlie,’ she breathes, ignoring me completely. ‘It’s a pleasure. Do come in.’

He steps forward, extending an extremely nice bottle of champagne and dutifully letting Mum grab him robustly by the shoulders and kiss him on both cheeks. ‘Mrs Peach. The pleasure is entirely mine. Thank you for welcoming me into your lovely home.’

Oh, Jesus. I think I prefer Churlish Charlie.

‘Hello, Elodie.’ Mum steps forward to kiss me, her eyebrows practically through her hairline with appreciation for my date. ‘Why didn’t you brush your lovely hair? And you look tired.’ She pinches my cheeks.

I’m tired because the guy you’re fawning over has spent the entire weekend fucking me into next week.

‘I’m absolutely fine, thanks,’ I say brightly. Railing against Mum like a petulant teenager doesn’t work at all. The only way through is to match her peppiness.

It’s exhausting, thirsty work.

‘So this is the famous Charlie,’ she says theatrically. ‘We’ve heard so much about you from Elodie.’

‘You’re famous in our family for being a grumpy arsehole, and I complain about you a lot,’ I tell him to keep his ego in check.

‘Course you do,’ he murmurs, shooting me a grin that threatens to melt my panties off.

‘Liddie! That’s not how we treat our guests,’ Mum says chidingly. ‘Now, do come through to the garden, Charlie. Are you a tennis man? You look very athletic. I must persuade you to try out at Esher Tennis Club.’ She takes his arm and leads him on out through the back.

I sigh and follow. I did warn him.

Out back, Dad rises stiffly and reluctantly from his seat. He conducts all socialising with reluctance. He removes his glasses and wipes his eyes. His chronic under-eye shadows give him a permanent panda-like appearance.

‘Charlie. Doug.’ There’s resignation in his voice, like he can’t stop this guy from leading himself like a lamb to the slaughter into the bosom of our family.

They shake manfully before Charlie turns to kiss Grace, who’s sidled up to him.

She may find the inner strength to behave around Charlie, but she’ll most definitely corner me and ask me many questions of extreme candour about the sex.

To be fair, she’s barely seen me since I went off for my ‘date’ on Friday night, except for a moment earlier where I popped in to find a parent-friendly outfit.

‘How are you doing, Olive?’ Charlie asks, shaking her hand gravely before she slinks up to Dad and tucks herself against him, his hands going to her shoulders. She’s in her safe place now.

‘We’re doing the Reformation at school,’ she tells him in her low voice. I catch him leaning in to hear her. ‘Liddie says you know loads about it.’

He has the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Ah. Well, I would say your aunt knows as much as I do, if not more. I’m sure you must learn a lot from her at home.’

She shrugs under Grandpa’s hands. ‘Not really. We mostly talk about nail polish colours and whether to make smoothies or acai bowls for breakfast.’

Way to throw me under the bus, Olive. Charlie’s mouth twitches.

‘Do you, now? Well, that sounds… fun. So what’s your view on the Reformation, then?’

My ovaries are doing a little dance at this new and delightful experience of Charlie being sweet to a child (I haven’t seen much evidence of it at school) when my sister tugs me by the arm.

‘Gazebo,’ she hisses. ‘Now.’

I do a quick recon. Mum’s busy opening the champagne, taking longer than she should because her eyes keep flitting to Charlie. Dad’s gazing down at Olive as she speaks like she’s the second coming of Christ.

‘Fine.’

We slink off to the far corner of the garden, where a twee but useful gazebo stands flanked by ancient apple trees. We used to smoke in here when we were teenagers. Its peeling interior may or may not feature lovesick etchings that provide an unwelcome reminder of past low-points in our love lives.

EP 4 DB was a particular nadir, I would say.

Daniel Brody was a scrawny, football-playing youth at school upon whom I fixated long, hard and fruitlessly.

He was entirely undeserving of my teenage self’s adoration, obviously.

The only explanation I can muster is that Grace and I spent most of our teenage years bored out of our brains and desperate for something to happen.

I suppose crushing on and endlessly discussing irrelevant boys alleviated the boredom. Though I’m extremely glad Daniel Brody didn’t ‘happen’ to me.

Ugh.

Grim.

Now, though, I’m in the enviable position of having actual smoking-hot sex with an actual smoking-hot man up for discussion. Sadly, my sense of propriety has grown with the years and I’m no longer willing to give my sister a blow-by-blow account of the past forty-eight hours.

‘Spill,’ she says. ‘Sex.’

‘You’re particularly articulate today,’ I say.

‘Fuck off. Give me details.’

‘By details, you mean…’

‘Deeds, positions, oral, locations, what he said to you, how good he is, and orgasm count, obviously.’

I cock my head. ‘Um. Nope.’

She shimmies with impatience. ‘Come on, Lid. I’ve got to live vicariously here.’

I hesitate, mentally composing a Venn diagram where feeding my sister’s frenzied interest in my sex life and honouring Charlie’s privacy don’t meet in the middle.

At all.

Oh, well. She’s my twin, and he’s told me to my face that we have no future, so while I’m hoping to persuade him otherwise, my loyalty is to Grace.

Besides, she already knows all about the Hampton Court angry-hookup-orgasms and the school stationery cupboard, so she’s well aware I’ve ensnared myself with a man possessing a repertoire of seriously hot moves.

I mean, she may find sex on a sofa and in a bed positively anticlimactic (although clearly, in practice, there were many, many climaxes).

‘Fine.’ I give her some side-eye to communicate my reluctance to spill. ‘He was a bit tense when I arrived. I think he was nervous about having me over.’

This is as much as I’m willing to divulge. I’m open to dishing the dirt on Charlie’s cunning linguistics but not his anxiety, or whatever that was.

Not even to my twin.

‘He was nervous?’ she repeats. ‘Seriously? I wouldn’t have expected that. Hmm, maybe he’s not a total sociopath after all, then?’

‘Exactly. I think it’s encouraging. And let’s say it motivated me to find a way to relax him.’ I grin at the memory. ‘And that set off a whole series of, um, events.’

She squints. ‘Is ‘events’ code for ‘orgasms’?’

‘Basically.’

‘Got it. Please proceed.’

‘So there were a lot of events, right there on his outdoor sofa, and by the time he fired up the barbecue, we were both totally sexed out and relaxed and I was just in his shirt, and it made the evening a lot more fun.’

Grace nods sagely. ‘Sex always makes evenings more fun.’

I shove her. ‘That’s not what I meant. I meant it broke the ice. You know. He let his guard down, and we had a thoroughly delightful evening. It felt very intimate.’

‘And he hasn’t let you out of his sight since then, basically.’

‘Not really. And he kissed me in front of the other queens yesterday. They’re all very excited. I heard Lauren—that’s Anne of Cleves—saying something to Shelby about owing her a tenner, so I think they even had money on us getting together.’

‘This is good, right?’ Grace pulls one knee up onto the bench and hugs her leg. ‘I mean, however much you’ve complained about him in the past, it seems like he’s completely smitten. Is it serious, do you think?’

I peel a strip of paint off the bench and flick it away. ‘He said some things.’

‘Okay. What things, exactly?’

‘Ugh, I don’t know. He told me he was crazy about me, had been since I joined. That he can’t stay away from me.’

I look up to find Grace staring at me.

‘Bloody hell, Lid.’

‘Yeah. I know. But he also said—and bear in mind this is minutes after he pulled out of me—that we had no future, and he didn’t deserve me, and he couldn’t make me happy or give me what I want.’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ she says. ‘That’s seriously bad post-coital etiquette.’

‘Tell me about it. I called him out on it, and he said he didn’t mean it like that.

More like he’s always told himself we had no future, but now he can’t walk away…

I don’t know. He’s definitely in some kind of turmoil, so I’ve just asked him to keep an open mind.

I mean, if he hadn’t said that stuff, I’d be feeling pretty good about us, because apart from that, he hasn’t put a foot wrong this week.

He came here, after all. Into the lion’s den. ’

She’s silent for a moment. ‘Sounds like insecurity. Has he had a bad breakup, maybe?’

‘Try a bad divorce.’

‘Ah. Kids?’

‘God, no. I assume he would have mentioned if they’d had kids.’

‘So what went down?’

‘Don’t know, exactly. But I’m going to find out.’