Numbered Page 23

  He shrugged. ‘Where do you think I’ve been all morning?’

  ‘Oh.’

  Ten didn’t wait for a prompt from Scarlett as he plucked up the thinner band and raised Poppy’s left hand, finding her ring finger and pushing it all the way on. ‘Poppy, wedding rings traditionally represent eternity and I couldn’t think of anything more fitting for today. On the inside of our rings I’ve had come as you are engraved so that we’ll always remember that we never had to be anyone else around each other. That, despite everything, we were us and we fell in love anyway.’

  Without saying a word, Poppy picked up the other ring, a wider band and inspected the inside. She looked adoringly at Ten. ‘They’re perfect,’ she said and slid his on.

  Julia agreed. Ten had found the sweetest, most perfect way to bring a sense of tradition to Poppy’s wedding day. Sure, the words had stayed fairly true to a conventional church wedding, but standing in a mountain village in remote India dressed traditionally and covered in henna, while breathtakingly beautiful, was about as untraditional as a terminally ill white, atheist chick from Australia could get.

  But the exchanging of rings? He’d nailed it. More tears welled in Julia’s eyes. She was pretty sure snot was also starting to drip out of her nose.

  There were a few beats of silence before Scarlett realised Poppy and Ten were looking at her expectantly, and a few more for her to get her emotions in check so that she could finish the ceremony.

  ‘Oh yes …’ she said, dabbing some more at her face. ‘By the power vested in me, I pronounce you husband and wife.’ Scarlett looked at her daughter. ‘You may kiss your husband.’

  Poppy beamed at her mother then glanced over her shoulder at Julia, then grinned up her husband before she launched herself into his arms and kissed him like she was dying.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Is this what you had in mind? For number twenty?’

  Quentin could not remember ever having felt so unsure. And it was crazy. He knew women. He knew what they liked; he knew how to please them. But somehow this was different; this mattered. And Poppy was not the kind of woman you pointed at in the audience and murmured into your microphone, ‘This one’s for the girl with the brown eyes and killer smile.’

  Poppy was no pushover. Poppy required a certain attention to detail. Especially for this, number twenty on her bucket list.

  Sleep out under the stars.

  It was surprisingly low on detail for his meticulous wife. Wife. He grinned as warm satisfaction spread through him. Whatever came next, and they all knew what it was going to be, one way or another, no-one could take this away. She was his wife, and he knew that for the rest of his life he would carry that knowledge like a candle inside him. Maybe a candle that burned your insides a little at the edges.

  But regardless, nothing could take it away.

  Anyway, this was their honeymoon, after a fashion. And more than anything on God’s miserable, unfair earth, he did not want to fuck this up.

  Poppy looked out over the scene he had so carefully choreographed, and he followed her gaze, trying to see it through her eyes. He had chosen a spot on top of a reasonable-sized hill. The night was cooling off, but he continued to fret about the possibility of a deepening chill as the sun went down. He had tried to situate their twin swags behind a small stand of trees, but in a spot that still afforded them a view down the valley and out into the sky beyond, where the last slashes of rosy pink were starting to settle into indigo, and a few tiny stars were manfully heralding the onset of night.

  The valley sure was pretty. With the last of the light, it was still possible to see the small forest that separated them from the village in the valley below, looking green-black and magical, and the river that oozed like a lazy serpent through the basin. It was only a half-hour walk from the village, but it felt like they were the only people left on earth. The gathering night smelled like cardamon and mango, and the air felt silky against his skin.

  It was beautiful, but was it enough? Was it how she had imagined it?

  She turned back to him, a warm smile lighting up her heart-shaped face. ‘It’s perfect,’ she said, stepping forward to press herself against him. She felt tiny and insubstantial in his arms, like she was already gone, and he blinked quickly as he breathed in the fruity smell of her skin so she wouldn’t see how the thought had affected him.

  ‘And so is this.’ She pulled back and indicated the set-up he had prepared – the two swags, made from the thickest, cosiest quilts he had been able to find. He had sprinkled them with rose petals the children had helped him gather, and laid them out close to a healthy fire.

  ‘Great fire,’ she said, shivering and stepping closer to it.

  He bit his lip to stop himself from asking if she was cold, if she needed another jacket, if they should get into the swags, whether they should go back.

  He shrugged. ‘What can I say? Boy scout for eight years.’ He laughed as he said it, but he was glad she noticed. What the hell was it about being a man that you still drew a certain prehistoric pleasure from knowing you could build a great big hot fire to warm your hearth and protect your family? Screw evolution, screw civilisation. Little in life was more satisfying than stoking a raging bunch of flames from an assembly of sticks and leaves. And this one certainly looked impressive. Spewing from a sturdy tepee of branches and sticks, it leapt wildly but with a certain satisfying symmetry that told him there was no danger of it breaching its confines and swallowing them whole during the night. Or causing a bushfire. But it would last, with some feeding, until morning came, and do its job of warming their skin.

  ‘My hero,’ she said, and she looked so perfect caught in the firelight that he could almost forget her frailty, the rings under her eyes, the pallor of her skin. He could just let it all melt away into the orange glow and focus instead on those big brown eyes that saw through him and into him and somehow beyond him, and on the way the curve of her face tugged at his heart, and how the slope of her neck reminded him of some graceful creature you might find out in a forest like this. Out here, away from the harsh light of day and the unforgiving glare of electric lights, he might imagine that Poppy was okay; just a slight, graceful girl. She might just be his new wife; not his terribly sick wife. He might forget.

  It took him a second to realise that she was looking at him equally intently. ‘Don’t think about it,’ she said, and her voice was full of command. ‘I forbid it.’

  He dragged a smirk onto his face, even though it felt prickly and unnatural. ‘Think about what?’ He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her against him, swooping her up into his arms. ‘Stop yapping, you,’ he murmured into her neck. ‘Time to be carried over the threshold.’

  He stepped around the fire carefully, to the side of their camping spot that faced away from the valley. She hadn’t seen this part of his preparations yet. At the back of the fire, he had laid a neat line of long sticks, and erected a sign that, again, the children had helped him with. It stood atop a neat picket and read, in careful rainbow colours, ‘The Threshold’.

  He almost lost his focus as he remembered Jonti, Julia’s little friend, studying the sign carefully and asking him what it meant. As Quentin had tried to explain both the word and the tradition, Jonti had replied in that precise, serious way of his: ‘I know what threshold means; a portal to another state.’

  It had seemed weird but cute at the time. Now, suddenly, the words came back to him and the innocent gimmick seemed somehow sinister. Quentin didn’t want any portals to any other states, not yet. Since Poppy had become sick he had found himself uncharacteristically, desperately superstitious, and in that moment he wanted to tear up the sign the children had made so lovingly, and stomp it into the ground. He remembered how they had all looked at him so expectantly, eager that he approved of their handiwork.

  He swallowed convulsively and remembered what Julia had said about tradition, beating back the black superstition that had taken hold in his heart; th
e horrible thought from the same prehistoric part of his brain that had revelled in building the fire. But the thought didn’t want to go; it wanted to take root and spread, cancer-like, until it was all he could think about. What if there was no turning back, if they crossed this threshold on this night? What if, by crossing it, they were going from being near the end to ushering the next phase, the very end, somehow closer?

  Poppy squealed as she saw the clumsy sign. ‘Oh my god, oh my god,’ she squeaked from the warm safety of his arms. ‘Let me down so I can see properly.’

  ‘No,’ Quentin snapped, pulling her closer and standing still, unsure if it was because tradition dictated that he carry her across or if it was because he wasn’t sure he wanted to go through with it now.

  Maybe he could just accidentally on purpose knock the sign over?

  Maybe they could skirt it and he could make a joke of it?

  The sign suddenly didn’t look cute and clever. It looked ominous; a trap into a yawning chasm that might swallow Poppy whole. Cold shivers swept through him and he couldn’t move, only cling desperately to the woman in his arms.

  Poppy took a deep breath, as if she could somehow divine his fears. ‘Getting cold feet?’ He could hear the smile in her voice, even though she was pressed against his chest and he was looking at the damn sign. She lifted up her left hand out of the nest of his arms and waggled her ring finger at him. ‘Too late, buddy. You bought the wife, you sealed the deal, now you gotta cross the damn threshold.’

  She was right, this was ridiculous. There was nothing about stepping over that makeshift line of sticks that could set them on some path they weren’t already on. He dragged his body across the line, crunching the sticks mercilessly underfoot as he did so, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his actions had set something in motion. The shivers that skittered up and down his spine took a stronger hold and that prehistoric part of his brain that had somehow been engaged by the building of the fire screamed at him that there was no going back; that something terrible was going to happen here tonight.

  He placed Poppy gingerly down on her swag, but as he made to release her she clung on, her hands locked tightly around his neck. ‘Don’t go,’ she whispered, her eyes wide and frightened like she could sense his own bone-deep terror, and it was contagious. ‘Lie with me here.’

  He smiled, and forced himself out of the funk he was sinking into. This was not the time; this was not the moment to indulge his own maudlin fears, and, worse, infect her with them. This was a moment for celebration; a moment to make memories.

  ‘I’m gonna be right back.’ He winked at her before putting her down gently, then vaulting up and going to the pack. He would push through this feeling; it would not take them in this moment. It would not steal their wedding night and Poppy’s number twenty. He breathed deeply through his diaphragm like he had learned to do before his very first gigs, when he had still been new and uncertain, and reminded himself that superstition was just that. It belonged in the same place as bottles of dirty holy water. It was a sham, a product of the dark and the fire and Jonti’s serious prophesy.

  He rifled quickly through the packs and found his prize before hurrying back to Poppy, who had snuggled down into her swag. ‘Open up, wife,’ he bellowed in what he thought was pretty good caveman. She giggled and flicked the covers open so he could climb in next to her with the goods. Then he sat up slightly.

  ‘Champagne, of course.’ He gestured theatrically as he produced two crystal glasses he had tucked into the waistband of his pants.

  Poppy gasped. ‘Mum’s crystal?’ Her eyes were wide.

  ‘She never travels without it, apparently,’ he said, enjoying the pleasure on her face as he popped the cork and carefully poured two glasses. ‘To my beautiful, perfect, singular wife,’ he said, handing her one.

  She sat up and took it, swallowing visibly. She raised her glass to him and tilted her head. ‘To my outrageous, sexy, resourceful husband.’

  They clinked and, finally, the demons of superstition that had yowled at him since he had stood poised at that threshold slunk away into the shadows. The tension lifted from his shoulders and he rolled them gratefully.

  For now, there was only this: this woman, this moment, this dream of hers, and his, coming true.

  Life could be a cruel motherfucker, but it could also give you gifts in ways you never dreamt of, Quentin was learning. And as he looked across at the woman sipping champagne and calling him her husband, he knew that on the balance of all that had happened, he was the luckiest bastard on earth.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, downing the bubbly in one long gulp and hoping its silky potency might send the demons well and truly packing.

  ‘Cheers,’ she agreed, doing a similar job on hers. Oh man, he really did like a woman who could drink.

  He reached for the bottle where he had propped it beside them, so he could fill their glasses again, but Poppy carefully settled hers on the other side of the swag and then reached back to put a hand on his arm. ‘No,’ she said, and her pretty face was full of determination.

  And something else, something dark and wanton.

  ‘No?’ He hesitated. He hadn’t thought that this would happen tonight. He hadn’t thought about what might happen at all, really. He’d just been glad that they would have some alone time. He knew that Spike would never believe him if he said it, but he hadn’t thought for a minute that he might make love to his wife on his wedding night. Poppy had been so unwell the last few days, and sleeping with her had been the last thing on his mind tonight.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly, and he left the bottle in its place and slid down into the swag, pulling her close. He buried his face in her neck and breathed in the sweet chocolate and watermelon smells of her. All this time, and he still hadn’t managed to work out how her skin smelled that way. She was a mystery to him, and one he never seemed to tire of trying to unravel.

  She pulled his head up with her slender hands and kissed him, full and passionately on the mouth. This was no gentle stars-and-moonlight scenario. It wasn’t romantic; it wasn’t tentative. He could feel it, in the pressure of her lips and the pull of her body. She wanted him, and she wanted him the way they had always taken each other – with joy and pleasure. Abandon. But could he do it? What if he hurt her? She had never been this frail.

  She must have felt the hesitation coiled into his muscles as he kissed her back, enjoying the sweetness of her but trying with all his might not to let muscle memory take over and his desire have its head. She pulled away and sat up, commanding him with a swift tug to do the same. Then she gestured over the valley before them, the fire in the foreground, the stars seeming to crowd them as the hill gave way to the valley; the lights of the village far below twinkling like fireflies. ‘This is perfect,’ she murmured, looking intensely into his eyes. ‘You are perfect. And I want nothing more right now than to make love to you, my husband.’

  He hesitated, and she eyeballed him harshly and pulled her trump card from the deck. ‘What if it’s the last time I can?’

  Like a bucket of cold water, her words sobered Quentin in an instant. Of course he wanted to make love to her. It was all he had ever wanted, from the first time he had seen her in that damn line at the cafeteria. This girl and her quirky smile, her young Anjelica Huston vibe; that sexy challenge in her eyes. But could he even do it now, with that dark prediction ringing in his ears? Damn it, did she not know that such pressure could seriously throw a man off his game? And if anything was going to do so, it was going to be the thought that whatever happened now, it might be the last time it ever happened with the woman you loved more than you loved anything – more than you loved your band; more than you loved your favourite Stratocaster; more than you loved your own life.

  Oh dear Lord, what if he tried and he couldn’t?

  He knew it was the worst of all things to think, because down that doubtful path lay an insidious catch-22 trap, but he didn’t seem able to contain his thinking tonight.
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  He wrapped her in his arms and begged his body, which had been his good friend during his whole twenty-two years, not to let him down. He reminded it that it had managed to perform drunk, and high, and shattered to the bone. It had done its thing with groupies and cheerleaders and all manner of questionable women. And he reminded it that it had never met a woman who had been able to turn him on with a single look the way this one did. Less than a look. The sight of this woman’s slender back, walking away from him, could set his pulse racing. And now she was his and this was their night and he could not, would not, fuck this up because he was getting cold feet about whether he might be able to perform.

  He had to let go and trust in the force, as Obi-Wan would say.

  And so he kissed her. He kissed her long and deep and with all the yearning he had felt for this woman from that first moment. He kissed her sweet and wild and hoped that his body would remember, and catch up, and not let him down.

  He didn’t have to hope for long. As soon as he wrapped her in his arms and let himself go, his body remembered.

  And so did hers. As fragile as she was, she responded to him like she always had. She kissed him with a ferocity he had never felt in her, or anyone else, before. Her face was incandescent in the firelight as she rolled on top of him, somehow managing to have divested herself of her clothes.

  Naked, and sitting astride him, she was so perfect it hurt his eyes.

  The intricate patterns hennaed onto her scalp and forehead lent her an other-worldly gypsy look that exactly suited the way he had always felt about her. She had bewitched him from the start, and now, sitting on top of him, flames playing across the exposed skin of her chest, light playing over the scar she hated so much, her eyes ablaze with love and longing, he knew it. She was a witch, and she had cast a spell on him, and no matter what happened after this, he would never be the same again.

  He leaned forward and grabbed her, pulling her down onto him for more kisses, wondering how long he could stand the press of her body against his groin before he slid into her, knowing it was the only thing he wanted to do right now.