She climbed under the hot gush of the shower and tipped her head back. Veronica’s expensive shampoo stood next to the taps and Bella picked up the bottle hesitantly. The alternative was Jake’s bottle of supermarket home-brand stuff. Like washing up liquid… but then, she had more right to use it than Veronica’s lotions and potions. Reluctantly, she put the expensive brand back down.
Carefully she shaved her legs and under her arms, rinsed all over, climbed out, rubbed herself down and anointed herself with body lotion. When was it safe to let yourself go? She wondered. She was still at the stage of waiting until everyone was out of the house before she used the loo.
Back in the bedroom, she stood for a moment in front of the mirror, regarding herself critically. Her body felt different, more complete, somehow. She weighed her breasts with her hands, and ran her palms over the curve of her hips. She remembered the conversation with Jake this morning and grinned; it was funny but even in the space of a week, she’d lost so many inhibitions. Bella thought back to when they’d first slept together and how shy she’d been the morning after, and how she was now, quite shameless, walking around naked, sitting brazenly topless in bed. They controlled themselves in front of Carl and Veronica but the second they were out of sight, they would touch and kiss and grapple with one another, pressed up against the kitchen cupboards, entwined under the streaming water of the shower. God, I love him, said Bella to herself, staring at her expanding pupils in the bedroom mirror.
She got dressed, brushed her hair and tied it back from her face. Since she moved to Fever Street, she seemed to be in a constant state of low-level arousal. Luckily Jake was there to assuage it – or perhaps he was causing it? They made love every night and most mornings before Jake went to work, sometimes three or four times at the weekend, but even that didn’t seem to be enough. This was probably the honeymoon period she’d read about in one of Veronica’s magazines. So make the most of it, she told herself.
In the corridor, she paused. Bella hesitated on the landing. The urge to have a look around, to have a bit of a snoop, was irresistible. After all, it's your house too now, she told herself, trying to justify her curiosity. The door to Carl's room was firmly shut. Bella put her hand out, drew it back, shifting from foot to foot. No, she couldn't do it. Briefly and crazily, she wondered whether he’d set a trap for her, so he’d know she’d been in his room. A mark on the carpet… a hair pasted across the door… Feeling slightly foolish, she turned and looked down the corridor.
Veronica's door stood half open, the just-glimpsed space inside illuminated by bright sunshine coming through the windows. Bella walked softly down the corridor, almost tiptoeing. Even the movement felt illicit. I’m not doing anything wrong, she told herself defensively. I’m just getting a feel for the place, that’s all.
It was the first time she'd seen the room in full daylight. Before it had only been glimpsed in the dim light of the hallway at night, or by the flickering light of a candle. Veronica liked candles – when she sat downstairs in the lounge, there would be no light other than the archaic golden glow of a row of tea-lights on the mantelpiece. Bella paused in the doorway. The sunbeams were so bright the room appeared lit by a spotlight. Her gaze fell first on the battered but still sound floorboards, partly covered by an intricately woven, faded carpet. A large double bed dominated the room; neatly made, the iron headboard heaped and softened with cushions, a coverlet of faded pink silk pulled taut across the duvet beneath. Bella hesitated a moment longer and then, giving in, moved towards the bed. The coverlet had tiny green and yellow flowers embroidered on its edges. She ran her fingers gently over the thin faded silk, feeling the delicate bumps of the stitches beneath her fingertips. The room smelled faintly of perfume, of cocoa butter, a delicious waft of scent from three white roses in a vase on the windowsill. Bella put her nose to the damp creamy petals. Jars of skin cream, ointments, cut-glass perfume bottles and a silver powder compact were neatly arrayed on the top of the dressing table. Bella opened the compact and saw her own face reflected in the powder-dusted mirror in the lid. She looked guilty. She snapped it shut and replaced the compact on the dressing table, careful to put it back in the same spot. She thought of her own bedroom, of the chaos of her bedside table; slipping piles of paperbacks, empty mugs gone sour and greened with mould and felt ashamed. Veronica's bedroom - this whole silent, sweet-smelling, beautiful abode - was the room of an adult. You knew in one glance that the person who lived here had a good job, was sophisticated, educated, worldly. Compared to this, she and Jake were still living like students.
She paused by Veronica's wardrobe, a giant piece of polished oak with curving embellishments on the door and four sturdy legs carved to look like animal paws, complete with claws. The sort of wardrobe you could use to journey to Narnia. A tarnished silver key was turned in the lock. Bella stood for a moment, biting her lip. Being inside the room was one thing - surely if she was concerned for privacy, Veronica would have shut the door? - but looking inside her wardrobe seemed a step too far. But Veronica had such lovely clothes... Bella wrestled with herself for a moment and lost. She carefully turned the key and opened the wardrobe door.
A carefully organised row of clothes met her eyes, graded for colour, type of clothing, even - could it be true? Bella reached out to check - yes, even graded for fabric. She felt a moment's awe. Again, the comparison with her own messy pile of clothes leapt to her mind. How did people manage to be this organised? She ran a fingertip over the serried rows of garments;, jackets, shirts, blouses, vests, skirts, dresses. She lifted one from the rail - a simple dress of turquoise blue, silk underneath topped with a floating layer of aquamarine chiffon. It looked expensive, very expensive. How could she afford all of this? What did her job pay? Jake had been fairly vague about what she did – something in, what was it, PR? Was it Carl? Did Carl pay for all these wonderful clothes? And her shoes... Bella looked at the pairs and pairs and pairs, neatly stacked on shelves at the bottom of the wardrobe, side by side, soldiers in a parade. Boots, jewelled sandals, satin heels. The kind of shoes that demanded weekly pedicures and taxi rides everywhere. Bella found herself curling her toes downwards, as if to hide her ragged toenails from prying eyes.
Her stomach rumbled, loud enough to startle her, and in the same moment she realised she was extremely hungry. And she had a job to find. I’ve done enough snooping for today, she told herself, and walked from the room, taking one last glance back at the sunlit, peaceful, sweet-scented solitude of Veronica’s bedroom.
Chapter Six
It was a beautiful evening, the sun gradually descending in a cloudless sky, flooding the busy streets with molten gold light. A sunbeam crept across Bella’s hands as she sat at her keyboard and she watched its slow progress across her fingers, mesmerised. Much more interesting that what she was supposed to be doing, some immeasurably boring bit of data inputting. She put her head back, feeling the stretch of the muscles in her throat and the half-pleasurable ache of her neck. God, this was boring. She felt a momentary qualm that this was all her job was going to amount to; that she’d spent the rest of her working life sat in front of a computer, pecking away at a keyboard. Oh well – she checked the clock up on the wall once more. Five more minutes – hardly worth continuing. She opened up a new email and typed the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog, just to prove to the rest of the office she was doing something. She deleted it and then typed it again. Once more. There, it was half five and time to go. Joyfully she began to shut down the various programs on her computer.