Julian lowered his gaze, his brow jagged with lines of indecision. Eleanor was right, he knew. What with Mia, and the dreams, and his mum, and trying to save the business, he was almost ready to collapse, both physically and emotionally. If she could take just a little of the pressure off him, maybe it would be enough to keep him going — keep him sane. He felt himself weakening, felt his eyes drawn back to her eyes, her hair. “You’ve got to promise, no questions about Mia Bradshaw.”
Eleanor smiled again, this time with relief, and nodded. Then she was putting her arms around Julian, leaning in to press her mouth against his. She tasted of lip gloss, a familiar sweet, waxy taste. And she tasted of yearning. He sighed into her mouth, feeling her warmth and strength, taking it for his own. It ran through his veins, hotter than whisky. For a moment, he was lost to everything but her. Then, realising the danger, he drew away, shaking his head. “No, I can’t do this now, Eleanor. No matter how much I want to. I’m sorry.”
“Well, then, we don’t have to do this…anything…now…” Eleanor’s voice wavered, tears coming into her eyes. “We can just be friends, until you’re ready for more.”
“I don’t know if I can just be friends with you. Besides, it wouldn’t be right. I’d be using you, and I…well, I care for you too much to do that.”
“Then use me. I’ve got enough strength for both of us.”
Julian stared at Eleanor almost in disbelief. She’d bared her heart, laid herself open to him. Now she was offering everything she had, asking nothing in return. How could he not give in to that? He gave her cheek a slight caress with one finger. “Leaving you was stupidest thing I ever did.”
Eleanor nodded as if that was self-evident. “But you’re back now, right?”
“You always were stubborn.”
“We’re both stubborn, that’s why we’re good for each other.” Eleanor’s eyes searched Julian’s. “So what happens now?”
“Now I need to work. The business is going through a bad patch.”
“How bad?”
“Well put it this way, if we don’t start to turn things around in the next few months, we might never turn them around.”
“Seriously? That’s awful. Is there anything I can do to help out?”
Julian considered Eleanor’s offer a moment, then said, “Actually there is. We’re thinking about having a new website designed. You can help with that if you like.” When she eagerly agreed, he showed her the old website and they made a list of things he wanted from a new one.
“It’s a bit different to setting up an archive but, yeah, I think I can do that. I’ll start work on it today.”
“That’d be great. It’d save us an absolute fortune and free me up to get on with other things.” Feeling a slight lightening sensation in his chest, Julian smiled and added, “We’d pay you, of course.”
Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t want your money, Julian, I just want to see you happy.” She picked up the list. “I’d better get to work on this.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“You promise.”
“I promise.”
Eleanor looked at Julian as if she was thinking about kissing him again, but made no move to. “You’ve changed, you know.”
“Have I?”
“Yeah, you seem…older.”
“I suppose living away from home does that to you.”
Eleanor shook her head. “It’s not that. I didn’t notice it when you first got back, but now, well, it’s like years not weeks have passed since then.”
It felt like that to Julian too. He held in a sigh. “Nobody stays the same.”
“I guess not.” Eleanor hesitated, then added, “You know, if there’s something bothering you other than Mia Bradshaw, you can talk to me about it. You can talk to me about anything.”
Not for the first time, Julian wondered how Eleanor would look at him if he told her about his dreams. She’d look at him with the same revulsion he looked at himself in the mirror each morning, he knew that much. But would she ever again be able to look at him with the same pureness of love as now? Or would her eyes always be tainted by the knowledge that there was something so monstrous trying to get in, or trying to get out of him? “Thanks,” he said, blinking away from Eleanor’s eyes. He made a show of typing on the computer, but as soon as she was gone he reached for the whisky and took a long pull at it.
Chapter 19
For a while Julian dwelled on Eleanor, trying to make sense of his feelings. He needed her. He supposed he’d always known that, but he hadn’t really admitted it to himself until now. She symbolised the best of his world and anchored him to it. Without her, he was an emotional wreck, drifting towards a nervous breakdown. But if he wanted to have a future with her, he knew, sooner or later he was going to have to let her see into the darkest corners of his mind. The thought made him want to shrink away from that future, but it was preferable to living a lie. Wasn’t it? Or was it better to keep that part of himself hidden from her? In his head, he heard his dad saying, sometimes you have to lie to protect people. Then his mum’s voice rose up in opposition. The worst thing in the world, it chanted, the worst thing in the world, the worst thing in the world…
He silenced the competing voices with another mouthful of whisky. His thoughts returned to the only person he’d felt comfortable opening his mind to, the only person he’d met with the power to stop the dreams. Mia. “Where are you?” he murmured, closing his eyes. In desperation, he tried to reach out to her with his mind, thinking, maybe she was right, maybe I do have my grandma’s power. But if he did, he couldn’t tap into it. He found himself struggling even to picture Mia’s face. The memory of it was fading like an old photograph. A kind of panic rising up in him, he logged into Facebook and navigated to her homepage. He stared at her face, fixing the smallest details of it in his mind — the intense blue eyes, the pale skin scattered with a faint spray of freckles, the painted pouting lips, the hard curve of her jaw. He stiffened at every sound outside his door, expecting it to be Tom Benson come to haul him down the station. But the policeman didn’t come. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. By the end of the day, the whisky bottle was almost empty, and he felt almost empty too. His dad came into the office and asked, “So, how’s your day been?”
“I found someone to design the website,” said Julian, and he told his dad about Eleanor.
Robert smiled. “That’s fantastic. Come on, time for home.”
Muzzy-headed from drink, Julian sluggishly followed his dad to the car. He sat slumped in the passenger seat, unmoving, unspeaking, until his dad drove past the turn for their house. “Where are we going?” he asked, sitting up, little puckers forming around his eyes as he looked at the approaching forest.
“You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”
As they drove further into the forest, getting closer to the turn off for Mr X’s house, Julian began to feel increasingly agitated. It crossed his mind that maybe Tom Benson had contacted his dad and arranged to meet them at Mr X’s place, so that they could prove to him once and for all that Mia wasn’t there. He hoped with everything he had in him that that wasn’t the case. The policeman was right, it was easier for him to believe in Mr X, than face up to the possibility that Mia was dead. He released a silent breath of relief, when his dad turned into the driveway of a house just off The Old Forest Road. Robert pointed to a car parked in the drive — a shiny Audi, the kind of thing middle-ranking executives drive. “Well, what do you think?” he asked. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah sure, it’s nice.”
“I’m glad you think so, because it’s yours.” Robert smiled at Julian as if expecting a smile in return. He just about managed to muster one up. His dad went on to tell him that a business acquaintance had happened to mention he was looking to sell his car and he thought it’d be perfect for him.