Page 5 of Vine (Island Love #3)

CHAPTER 4

CASPIAN

If I was a good boy, Emma promised she’d let me loose with the pruning knife, a lethal-looking thing, to be honest, but damned manly. Until then, I had to make do with the blunted pruning shears accompanied by a lecture on how to identify a vine’s principle branch. Surely it was the biggest, wasn’t it?

Leigh and Jonas graced us with their presence, and a sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach like something bad might happen returned. I had that feeling constantly whenever they were around, without ever finding out what the bad thing was. Leigh’s skin was a couple of shades darker than the last time I saw him. There was a fine line between a healthy spray tan and rolling in a bowl of Dorito’s, and he skated perilously close to it. In contrast, my own skin had taken on the pale grey tinge of a rock washed clean. The temporary bags under my eyes, attributed to my messy divorce, had been with me two years now; I guessed they were here to stay.

Anyhow, our first afternoon of filming was fun. Not. We didn’t follow an exact script—we knew the drill and each other well enough to improvise on a rough outline. But bloody hell, our on-set truce very soon descended into one well-timed snip with the shears away from on-set bloodshed.

Leigh started it. “I’ll do the introductory spiel about the history of this place,” he announced. “As it’s a bit dull, it needs a perky delivery.”

Fucker. From his unnaturally orange face, his teeth flashed unnaturally white. To be fair, he always presented those segments better than me, not that I would ever admit to it. And my throat was scratchy, as if I had a cold coming on. “Thanks,” I replied sourly. “In that case, I’ll just sit over here and carry on being unperky, shall I?”

He chuckled. “If the cap fits, babe.”

I gritted my teeth. Only eight months and three-and-a-half weeks to go. Not that I was counting. “Shall I interject with something amusing about the shite weather?”

He hummed and hawed. “Mmm, maybe. Or perhaps we could save that segment for a day or so. Until you’ve been here forty-eight hours and have a stinking cold sore for me to tease you about. You usually develop one when we travel.”

Now the wanker mentioned it, my lip had started to tingle. And my nose was stuffy. “About the same time your bowels usually turn to concrete—do we mention that, too?”

Leigh lobbed me another too-sweet gleaming smile. “We could. But then we’d also have to bring up that time you got the shits from those dodgy mussels in Paris, and I had to…”

“Jeez, why are you being so unpleasant? And for fuck's sake, Jonas, why are the camera crew recording this?”

“Um… because it’s funny?”

“No it isn’t!”

Removing his new spectacles, Jonas waved them around. I knew they were an affectation. “Caspian, shush. Everyone enjoys the outtakes; they’re the best bit. Don’t be so cranky,” he goaded. “We’re only filming to get the lighting right.”

“Loosen up, Caspy,” piled on Leigh, still with that annoying smirk. “Let Jonas worry about what’s funny, shall we? God knows it’s not your speciality.”

So that’s how it was going to be, was it? Patronising git.

Not all of the most memorable reality TV fights involved physical violence. Some were simply so brilliantly passive-aggressive you had to watch through your fingers. Preferably while wearing really thick woollen gloves. I desperately needed a pair working in this freezing hellscape.

“It had better not appear in the final edits. And stop being such a bitch, Leigh. Get on with the history segment and I’ll whinge about the cold.”

“Fine.” Leigh folded his arms. “But for the record, I agree with Jonas. We should include stuff like this—despite our very happy marriage, we’re tense and stressed due to the size of the task ahead of us, blah blah blah.”

“Well, I don’t want to,” I said stubbornly. “And my current stress levels have nothing to do with the bloody vineyard, as you damn well know.”

Of course, after that, I stood next to him as he recorded the history segment looking like I’d been slapped round the face with a wet fish, and said my piece about the weather through a blocked nose. Ensuring it was totally destined for the cutting room floor. Jonas, however, was unexpectedly relaxed. “It’s early days, Caspy. I’m sure we’ll get plenty of decent footage by the time we’re through.”

“Well done for not backing down,” said Emma kindly as we resumed hacking away at a fresh row of unruly vines. “Hopefully, things might settle.”

“Thanks.” Gotta love an optimist.

After that little contretemps, yanking out the dead wood was rather therapeutic. The camera crew had followed our progress along the previous row, but had now disappeared inside to warm up, letting us finish this one by ourselves.

I sniffed, searching for a tissue. Yes, a head cold was brewing. “I’m cross I let him rile me.”

“We’ll all relax into it in a week or so,” she promised. Yeah, right. We snipped some more.

“Who owns this place?” I’d not cut my arms for over a week. My last wound was now hardened to a leathery crust. But if I wasn’t going to pick that old scab to crumbs in the next five minutes, my brain desperately needed a diversion. She’d mentioned an elderly tenant whose bed and room I now occupied, after first clarifying he hadn’t died in it.

“Oh, one of the local families.” She snipped with alacrity and at twice my speed. “When I came to check it out back in November, I dealt with the estate agent, not the owner. But it’s been passed down through generations of the same family, like all the agricultural land here. The landlord probably doesn’t even live on the island anymore. Just spends the rent.”

Nice work if you could get it.

If I ignored the biting cold, the harsh wind, and the lashing rain, especially the icy waterfall cascading down the back of my neck—and that Leigh had talked over my line about the importance of pruning away from the mainstem, which Jonas would edit out altogether—then the vineyard project itself wasn’t too bad. The monotony of snipping, then collecting bundles of waste for composting had a soothing nothingness to it, dialling my agitated brain down a fraction. As I moved methodically along the rows, I reflected that Emma was right: I’d stood up to them. Despite being outnumbered, full of snot, and unarmed (unless blunt pruning shears counted). And only one of Leigh’s sneers away from an anxiety-related meltdown.

Nonetheless, the effort had exhausted me. My anxiety had a jittery, unpredictable frailty, under control one minute then running rings around my brain the next. I slept badly, always worrying about what lay ahead, behind, to the side, underneath. Already, my arms ached from holding them up at an awkward angle, my nose dribbled with my incipient cold, and chilblains had kept me awake last night. As hosts of My Big Gay Adventures, we threw ourselves body and soul into projects with pride, not simply pitching up for a spot of filming. Awesome when I got to drive a fast car around a racetrack five days a week. Less awesome up to my ankles in January mud and with stalactites for fingers.

“Who is she, then?” I asked Emma, determined to focus on something other than the urge for razor-induced release. We’d reached the end of a row. Leigh was at the other end, making a fist of gathering piles of cut twigs into kindling bundles and wrapping them with twine. I couldn’t decide if he was hamming up his knot-tying incompetence for the camera crew tagging behind him or genuinely sausage-fingered.

“Who?” Emma tested the stability of the wooden post holding the whole thing up. She gave a satisfied nod.

“The woman who’s got you staring into space every five minutes.”

“What makes you think it’s a woman?”

I sniffed again. “Now I’m truly offended! Just because I’m in the middle of my own doesn’t mean I can’t detect someone else having a full-on gay crisis. And I’ve googled lesbian angst, so I’m good to go.”

“I’m staggered Leigh put up with you as long as he did.”

“Something to do with my eight-inch cock,” I deadpanned. If only. “Girthy too. Come on. I’m all ears.”

“Except for your massive cock, obviously.”

With a sigh, she viciously attacked a knotty stem. “I met someone on holiday in Italy. Last October. We found ourselves sharing a gondola ride in Venice. There was a sudden downpour; she let me huddle under her umbrella and lent me half of her blanket.”

“Oh my God, that is super romantic!”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, if you ignore that I was on one of those hideously depressing singles holidays.”

“Oh goody. You’re selling my future to me really well.”

Her sharp knife slashed awfully close to my fingertips. “Don’t worry, Caspian. You’ll have men falling over themselves in no time. Your endless cheer is irresistible.”

“Wait until they see my gondola-sized cock.”

She giggled. Another slash. Any closer and I’d be getting a free manicure. “Anyhow, her name is Stella. She’s older than me—she’s forty—and Australian. She’s divorced, from a man, actually, and she runs a successful horticultural business in Sydney.”

I glanced across to see her blushing and determinedly focusing on her task. I gave her a nudge. “Even more romantic! Sexy Stella the Sydney Seed Seller. Wow! Saying that a few times will get your tongue well limbered up, you know, for...”

“You see, Caspian, this is exactly why I wasn’t going to tell you.” Another slash and I jerked my finger away. Anyone would think she was doing it on purpose. I enjoyed cutting myself; I wanted no one else to share the pleasure.

“What was Sexy Stella doing in Italy aside from fondling you under a blanket?”

“She had combined a business trip with a holiday touring Europe, and we, well, we found ourselves spending a lot of time together. I rarely feel a… a romantic attraction to anyone, but, you know, something just clicked.”

“Aaahh. Love at first sight.”

She scrunched up her nose, trying to be cross with me, which only made her cuter. I might have abandoned this vineyard project already if Emma hadn’t been around. This Stella woman was a lucky lady. “No. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Just amazing sex, then.”

“Christ, Caspian. No! And for your information, it wasn’t an instantly physical thing. More of a feeling that I’d…” That nose wrinkle again as she searched for the word. “I’d caught a glimpse of something that might turn out to be special, and she had too. And we didn’t want to let it go without exploring it further.”

I snorted. “And did you? Explore further?”

There was no mistaking the next slash as an accident. “You are so predictable.”

“You did, though, didn’t you?”

“Bloody hell, yes. Kind of. On our last night together, we went out for dinner, and she admitted she felt the same way, that she’d never had strong feelings for a woman before, and we…" Another magnificent blush. If nothing else, this sweet story was restoring my faith in human nature; I was vicariously falling in love with Stella myself. “And since then, we talk and send each other pics and stuff online all the time. And the feelings are still there.”

We had reached the end of work for the day. I looked back along our row. Much tidier. I mean, still depressingly dead-looking, but tidy and dead. Emma wiped her shears dry on a rag. “It’s quite a long-distance relationship,” I pointed out.

“Last time I checked, it was about 16,000 kilometres,” she agreed. “And it’s not getting any shorter. She’s invited me to visit in the summer so we can work out whether it was just a holiday romance or whether there’s more. Not for a fortnight trip, but to stay a while, like three months. She says I could get a work visa; there are loads of winery jobs north of Sydney, in the Hunter valley. Which feels like a massive step.”

“Huge.”

Old me would have said it was worth it, take a chance, follow your heart. Divorced, unhappy me was a tad more sceptical. “What have you told her? Are you going?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Is that because you’d miss me too much?”

My manicure inched closer to a full-on amputation. “No.”

“I’d miss you.” Dreadfully . I’d found a friend, ally, and a person prepared to tolerate my twitchy fretfulness all rolled into one sweet, bossy bundle. And from the way her voice softened every time she said the name Stella, I was going to have to let her go.

Misophonic sounds widely acknowledged to stimulate negative visceral reactions include the following: the inexpert scrape of a bow over a violin string. An unanticipated burst of microphone feedback. A cacophony of vuvuzelas. Violent retching. A cluster of indignant cats fighting their way out of a sack, a.k.a. a chorus of Scottish bagpipes.

Okay, maybe the last one was just me.

Anyhow, a few minutes after midnight, a noise trumping them all jolted me awake: the unmistakable rhythmic thump of a wooden headboard against a thin wall, in synch with my ex-husband’s familiar copulatory vocalisations. And each bang chased by the clap of Jonas’s balls against Leigh’s arse, like a fucking round of applause. Granted, it was the closest I’d got to sex in over a year, but give me a ceilidh rammed with kilted Scottish pipers any day. Jonas’s accompanying high-pitched moans of pleasure were the fucking ice on the cake.

I slept poorly at the best of times—thanks, venlafaxine. With my throat on fire and a blocked nose, I hunched lower under the duvet, screwing my eyes shut, seeing as I couldn’t seal up my ears. No use. What the hell did French people construct their houses out of? And their duvets, come to that? Tissue paper?

Loathe to credit Jonas with a single positive attribute, nonetheless, after twenty-two minutes of listening to the pair of them fucking like greased hogs, I had to hand it to the guy; he had buckets of stamina. As my replacement pounded my ex into a happy pulp, I masochistically pictured Leigh’s slack, flushed face, and my traitorous dick hardened against the lumpy mattress. Then softened again, as I recalled my one and only experience of Jonas’s sex face, like he was drinking vinegar through his eyeballs. A little bit of sick regurgitated into my mouth.

Pointlessly, I stuffed a pillow over my head. Instead, I imagined the slapping sound was Jonas jogging in sandals, his wide unattractive feet flopping against the pavement. Total waste of time; Leigh’s vocal gymnastics pierced through like Mariah Carey warming up for a Vegas gig. Thump, scream, slap. Thump, scream, slap . Jeez, had Leigh always been so loud? Or had I never wrung that much pleasure out of him? Fuck, had he gone to Jonas because he was a better lover ? Talk about kicking a guy when he was down.

I cowered in the dark, convinced I was the most miserable wretch alive.

Thump, scream, slap. Thump, scream, slap. Twenty-four minutes in. My blood pressure skyrocketed. Surely, they must be on the home straight. At twenty-five minutes, their poorly sprung bed joined the party too, mewling like a kitten left out in the rain. All that was missing was a fucking drum solo and they’d be signed up with a record label.

Two elongated minutes later, after a belter of a key change and an eardrum-shattering crescendo, it was all over. At last. Blessed silence, punctuated by panting. Which wasn’t surprising; I was knackered myself.

Bunching a pillow under my head, I spreadeagled extravagantly across the entire bed and kidded myself that sleeping alone was much preferred to sleeping with someone who slept with someone else when you weren’t around. No one rolling over and accidentally thumping you in the middle of the night. Or quietly getting up for a piss, then knocking their phone off the bedside table. No snoring. As the panting receded, my pulse calmed, my anger seeped away, and my thoughts drifted. Sleep beckoned.

Except then, of course, after they’d got their collective breath back, an even worse sound started up. Hushed giggles and the private murmurs of post-coital petting, the human equivalent of a pair of chimps picking out each other’s fleas. The flip side of being accidentally thumped in the night was someone hauling themselves from sleep to fetch you a glass of water when your throat was sore. Or a tissue when your nose ran. Cuddled up and laughing together at the fearful crack of a midnight thunderstorm, not shivering alone. You were wanted, needed, and loved, and the only use you had for a razor blade was to serenely glide it across your chin every morning.

Two minutes later, to a background hum of tender murmuring, I perched on the edge of the bed with a sterile pad pressed against my bleeding arm. An unhealthy coping mechanism, but the only one I’d got. Adept with either hand, I’d selected my right forearm tonight. Experts like me always had tissues and dressings ready; otherwise, we’d get through a heck of a lot of towels and bedding.

Cutting wasn’t for the faint-hearted; taking a keen-edged razor to your skin, pushing on through the tingle and burn, required bundles of courage wrapped up in self-hatred. But the brief headrush of pain, of pleasure, of fucking gloriou s, manic aliveness as the blood beaded up and pristine skin split in two was well worth the tsunami of guilt and shame. Some folk swore it gave them a sense of control. For me, it was more of a release of the evil humours, a good old-fashioned medieval bloodletting.

After the bleeding stopped, I tucked myself back into bed, feeling much calmer.

Just in time for the rimming session at 2.03 am. Obviously, the act of rimming itself wasn’t the noisy part. For the uninitiated, rimming isn’t the same as running a finger around the lip of a wet glass until it sings. But my ex-husband’s accompanying gasps of pleasure were as familiar to me as his arsehole.

At 2.06, I stomped out of my room, taking the useless pillow and a balled-up duvet. I stomped across the landing, stomped down the stairs and stomped through the kitchen into the living room. By 2.09, I concluded that not only did French architects favour wafer-thin bedroom walls, but uninsulated ceilings too. Every. Fucking. Squeal. Of. Delight.

At 2.10, after shoving my feet into a pair of trainers, I stomped to the front door.

Night greeted me, an impenetrable wall of solid black. And wet. So very, very wet. Did I mention cold, too? A black, wet, cold wall of nothingness. Hiding ghosties and goblins and things that went bump. Yet a million times preferable to being indoors. An insane urge to scream into the void enveloped me, and, like a madman, I stood on the doorstep and did just that, yelling into the wind at the top of my voice. Which did my raw throat no good whatsoever.

I felt better afterwards, if not a little chilly. Thus, I indulged in more satisfying stomping to warm up, marching across the crunchy gravel in the vague direction of one of the gatehouses, the unoccupied one to the right of the driveway. Emma and I had nosed inside earlier today during the endless downpour. Discovering the door unlocked, one of the tech guys stored some kit in there to keep it dry. A single room with a dusty kitchenette at one end, and a desk and a lumpy-looking bed behind a partition wall at the other. The sort of place where a grape picker might lodge for a few weeks. Not especially smart but not too dirty either. But, best of all, no happy couple banging away within whispering distance.

Stomping around was thirsty work. I could live with the electrics being switched off; I was only planning on watching the insides of my eyelids for the next few hours anyhow. But a swig of water would be nice. My meds left me with a perpetually dry mouth, not helped by my fit of screaming and strep throat. So it was a shame someone had turned the water off.

I was not so easily defeated. Unless the French did stuff differently, my crash course in plumbing told me the ‘on’ tap was generally located in the vicinity of a sink. Dropping to my knees on the cold stone floor, I thrust my head and an arm into the cupboard underneath the big old enamel one, in an endeavour to find out.

Things that ought not be awakened from sleep, in no particular order: miserably divorced husbands, imperious kings, angry hornets, colicky babies, other people’s dogs, and, um… snakes . One might argue especially snakes. And especially big ones, neatly coiled like leathery rope and as thick as a man’s leg. Fleetingly, I told myself my fingers had brushed against a dry old log, or a pile of worn bicycle tyres, but last time I checked, neither of those hissed like a fucking steam kettle.

Whoever invented the phrase paralysed by fear had never accidentally petted a brumating snake in the middle of the goddamn night. With a squeal that no man who’s gone through puberty should ever be able to generate, I leaped four foot in the air. And then collapsed in a stunned heap as the back of my skull smacked against the underside of the sink, felling me like a tree.

In any other situation, I’d have stayed there, huddled on the kitchen floor, poleaxed and whimpering. But for all I knew, a fucking grumpy man-eating python was psyching itself up to attack. I scrabbled backwards, dizzily trying to keep the contents of my bladder from spilling into my pyjamas. The gatehouse took on the dimensions of a ballroom, the stone tiles under my feet as slippery as an ice rink. Obviously needing a bump on the front of my head to distract from the one on the back, I careened into a wall, pinballing off another to smack my hip into a shadowy sofa.

With more luck than judgement, my hand landed on the front door handle. A nanosecond later, I launched myself through it, tripping down the first step, diving across the second, doing the splits over the third, and finishing up face-planted into unforgiving wet gravel.

From thereon, things went a little hazy.