The Bad Boy Wants Me(74)

‘Look, the white cliffs of Dover,’ Leah cries, her voice full of excitement.

I turn my eyes towards the majestic sight. ‘Goodbye, Cash. Goodbye.’





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny4izkgnX_k

(To Be By Your Side)





Chapter Forty-one


Cash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwIZdh6MqIo

It’s been a long but good day. I think I did my best work today, but it is good to leave the studio for a bit and spend some time at my father’s house. Cora has made chicken pie for dinner. It’s delicious and both my father and I polish our plates. Afterwards my father asks if I want to join him for a drink in his study.

‘I’ll just sit here for a bit on my own and …’ I lift my beer bottle, ‘finish this.’ I smile and take a swig.

‘Right,’ my father mumbles, and disappears into his study to wait for Britney to come back. She is out on a date with a guy called Liam Foxgrove. He’s probably a good kid, but my father and I treated him to the Hunter interrogation welcome routine anyway. His hands were shaking by the time Britney floated down the stairs.

After a while, strains of music float out of the study. I recognize it. Nick Cave is singing Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne. It suits my mood and I sit back and gaze through the window at the garden. I watch the neighbor’s ginger cat climb over the wall and crouch by a hole in the ground. I see her get bored of stalking an empty hole and walk away, her tail swishing. I stay staring out until the solar lights come on.

Cora pops her head around the door. ‘I’m off. Can I get you anything else before I leave?’

‘Nah, you go on. I know you can’t wait to get home and jump your husband’s bones.’

‘Oh you,’ she scolds, but her eyes twinkle.

I finish my beer and go into the kitchen for another. I go to open the fridge and I suddenly see it and freeze. It’s a postcard from Italy. It has a picture of David wearing a fig leaf. It could have come from anyone, but I knew even without turning it over that it was from her. There was a time I couldn’t stop thinking of her. Now I don’t allow myself to think of her.

Like a man in a trance I reach for the card and slip it out from under the magnet. I turn it over and the sight of her writing is like a knife in my heart. There is only one sentence written in purple ink, but I start bleeding again.

He has a small dick. :)

Love,

Tori

She has sent a card to Cora. I stroke the ink and just like that I am by her side. I try to think of her in Italy. Her hair bleached by the sun, her skin golden brown. Her perfect body encased in something summery. She was like a glass of bright yellow sunshine. I didn’t drink enough.

I slip the postcard back under the magnet and walk out of the house …



But I come back often. To look for her cards. I tell myself that I’m just curious, but any fool can tell that’s a fucking lie. Every two days once I make the journey to my father’s house. Full of anticipation.

They are always funny or cute. I travel with her through Europe staring up at cathedrals and palaces and great monuments, down to Turkey, then Egypt where she sends more postcards than any of the other countries before. Pyramids, obelisks, statues of Pharaohs.

She leads me to India where I watch her break her heart when she is swarmed by a gaggle of baying child beggars. They grab her clothing and clutch her body, and she has no choice but to beat them with a stick to dislodge their clinging hands. She takes me by the hand into the Golden Temple of Amritsar and feeds me round sweets called Ladhu.

I follow her down the Ganges River to see the Aghori, the mysterious cannibal monks of Varanasi. They paint their unclothed bodies in ash, drink from human skulls, and live their entire lives in cemeteries. Their eyes are red and wild. I’ll send pictures when I get back, she writes.

I am filled with longing to be on the same journey.

From India they take the South East Asia route. In Thailand they visit a Buddhist temple where the girls shake a container of sticks until one of the sticks falls out and a monk reads their fortune according to the number on the stick.

‘Your Prince Charming is coming,’ the monk tells her.

I feel it like a punch in the gut.

But she is mine.

Next stop, Malaysia. She sets out to enjoy the fantastic variety of food, that is, until they get dysentery. It puts both girls out of action for four days. They lie in their cheap hostel room groaning and rushing to the toilet. Weakened, lighter, and wiser, they reluctantly cancel their trip to Indonesia and catch a flight out of Singapore to the last destination of their journey. Australia.

There are three more cards while she tours Australia. From the postcards I know they spent a few days on a friend’s farm helping to pick cherries. Then comes the final card. It has the picture of a mother kangaroo with its baby peeking out of its belly.