Under The Moss

I knew I’d lost my girlfriend to moss the night she secretly crept round our moonlit garden.

Waking to footsteps crossing the kitchen and the creak of the back door, I noticed Sophie wasn’t lying beside me, and rubbing my tired eyes, I rose from bed.

Through a narrow gap between our bedroom curtains, I watched Sophie take a rusted spade from the shed and stab it into the lush carpet of moss growing beneath the oak tree. She drove the spade in hard with her foot, rocked it back & forth, and pulled it out. Side-stepping to the right, she stabbed again, repeating the action until, after perhaps five minutes, she’d marked a large rectangle in the moss. With the back of her hand, Sophie wiped sweat from her brow, then slid the spade beneath the moss rectangle, jerking it up and down, loosening the moss from its fragile hold on the soil. When finished, she dropped the spade, and hands on hips, surveyed her work.

Sophie shook off her trainers, hoisted her t-shirt over her head, and peeled off her jeans, heaping them in a pile behind her. Then, wearing just her bra and knickers, her eyes darted towards the house, and I jumped back from the window.

After a moment, convinced I was hidden by the curtains, I dared to look again.

Sophie unhooked her bra and threw it on top of her jeans and t-shirt. Then pulled down her knickers and stepped out of them, leaving them where they lay. Her naked skin shone luminous, like marble.

Kneeling down, she lifted a corner of the moss and slipped beneath it as if it were a blanket. Turning flat on her back, head poking out at the far end, she gathered the moss blanket close to her body and caressed the moss lying on her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, as she pulsed with delight beneath.

I watched, mesmerised for an hour, until an orange glow rose with the sun, and she slipped back out, gathering her clothes, and returning to the house.

As Sophie crept back to bed smelling of musty earth, I stayed still and silent. She snuggled inside the duvet, and I listened as her breathing became the steady rhythm of sleep.

When I woke in full daylight, Sophie was already out of bed, her space on the sheets smeared with mud, and dusted with fine crumbs of soil. I went to shower, and when I returned, she’d stripped the bedcovers to wash them.

Sophie launched herself into my life six months ago on a bright Saturday afternoon in May.

Returning home from the library through the park, a book tucked beneath my arm, and sunshine bathing my face, Sophie skipped towards me like a little girl. She was smiley, tanned and glowing, wearing a short summer dress revealing slim legs. Blocking my path, she grabbed my arms, pinning them firmly to my side. Alarmed, I dropped my book and shook her loose.

‘I just need to check my make-up,’ she pleaded with doe-eyes, pointing to the sunglasses I wore. ‘Please?’ Her voice was as soft and sweet as candyfloss. She smiled innocently, and I relaxed.

Again, she held my arms, gently this time, and standing on tiptoes, moved close, so her breasts pressed warmly against my chest. She smelt of sun-cream and perfume.

As she inspected her reflection in my sunglasses, I stared into her wide eyes, lost in her iris’s whirls of brown—dark through to cream, like milk diffusing through coffee.

‘You make a good mirror,’ she said.

Sophie tilted and turned her head, examining each possible viewpoint of her face, before releasing one of my arms to smooth away a strand of chestnut hair from her forehead. My arm hung loose, heavy and awkward by my side.

‘I’m looking good,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ She let go of my other arm, bent down to pick up my book and handed it to me.

‘Is it good?’ she asked, studying the cover.

My mouth dried up. So many possibilities flitted through my brain, I couldn’t choose what to say.

Sophie leaned forward and kissed my cheek—my mouth falling open in shock. Stepping back, she looked as surprised as me. Then, as quickly as she’d appeared, she dashed away without a word.

I stood stunned, stroking my cheek where her lips had touched, marvelling at the electric feel of the kiss. A tingle ran through my limbs, making me warm and light and powerful, able to hover and turn somersaults. Pretty strangers had never suddenly kissed me. But had I been the victim of some cruel joke or a bet? Was she was returning to a friend, hidden in the bushes, to giggle at her antics?

‘Hey,’ she shouted behind me.

I turned, and she sauntered back towards me, hips swaying, eyes down, coy.

‘You’re a good-looking boy. Would you like to meet tomorrow? Coffee?’

My smile was so wide, I thought my face would split. A few slurred and jumbled words spilled from my mouth, and Sophie nodded and smiled until I’d suggested we meet at the park café nearby at 10am. She agreed.

We parted in opposite directions, looking back over our shoulders until out of view, and I went home, smitten. I hadn’t even asked her name.

Every minute of the evening became an infinite strand of spaghetti, every hour an ever-inflating balloon. It was disorientating, nauseating. Was this stomach-churning joy love at first sight?

I was so excited, I couldn’t eat. Ignoring my grumbling stomach, I emptied my wardrobe and drawers on to my bed—throwing clothes to the floor as too scruffy, too smart, too faded, too bright, too baggy, too tight. I viewed every option in the mirror, never more conscious of my looks: the length of my arms, the girth of my neck, the width of my shoulders, and the sheen on my forehead, the gape of my nostrils, the dryness of my hair.

I ironed a shirt and wiped my trainers with a damp cloth, before trimming my eyebrows, and cutting my chipped and bitten nails so close to the skin my fingertips were sore. My hair, in need of a trim, stuck out at funny angles behind my ears, but it was too late for a haircut now.

In bed, wide awake and trembling with excitement, I rehearsed how I’d greet her, what I’d tell her about myself, what questions I’d ask, how I’d smile and laugh.

As soon as my eyes opened that morning, excitement turned to fear. My hands fumbled with my shirt buttons, and foamy toothpaste dribbled down my front as I brushed my teeth. Hurriedly, I chose another shirt and burned my hand as I ironed it, spending ten minutes running my scolded fingers beneath the cold tap. Cornflakes dropped from my spoon to the floor as I tried to eat, and my sore and shaking hands struggled to lock the door as I left the house.

I’d never had a first date, not a proper one. There’d been a girl once, almost ten years ago at University, but it was a strange relationship and didn’t last. I’d not had any luck since. Not that I’d tried. So, when Sophie entered the café, unmistakable even beneath the wide straw hat hiding much of her face, my already nervous body leapt in temperature, cheeks flushing, the back of my neck prickling with perspiration.

I raised my hand and waved. But when she spotted me, she looked at me oddly as you would a stranger, turning her eyes away. Was she changing her mind? Would she bolt for the door?

‘Sorry,’ she said, eventually coming over, screeching a chair back on the wooden floor and sitting opposite. ‘I didn’t recognise you without your big sunglasses.’

In relief, I laughed so loudly Sophie jumped.

I apologised, and she reached across to rest her hand on mine.

‘I’m nervous too,’ she said.

I stared at our hands. It’d been so long since someone touched me, my heart slowed and my breathing stopped, the bustle of the café disappearing, until someone knocked my elbow as they headed to another table and I snapped out of my trance.

Beneath her hat, Sophie looked more beautiful than I’d remembered from the day before. Her nose was a little red where she’d caught the sun, and her straight, ivory teeth gleamed between moist lips.

Suddenly, I jerked my hand from under Sophie’s—I’d forgotten to offer her a drink.

‘Coffee?’ I asked.

Startled at my abruptness, she didn’t reply, and instead looked at her limp and lonely hand on the table.

‘Would you like a drink?’ I tried again awkwardly, sorry I’d ruined the moment.

‘A latté,’ she said, and I went to order at the counter.

As I queued, she looked at me from beneath her hat with the same odd expression, seeming to question if it was really me she’d agreed to meet—like she’d expected me to look different. I smiled back at her. Other than an absence of sunglasses, my appearance was much the same as the day before. Perhaps in a different light, she’d realised how ordinary I looked? Not the tall, broad shouldered, and square-jawed man attractive women like Sophie usually dated.

When I returned with her coffee, milky foam running down the side of the cup, she said, ‘You look so different without the glasses. Your eyes aren’t how I imagined them.’

Once I’d sat down, she stared into my eyes as if looking for something down a deep well. I tried to hold her gaze but blinked uncomfortably.

‘They’re so big and blue,’ she said, breaking her stare. ‘Like, enormous.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, unsure whether enormous eyes were considered good. No one had commented on my eyes before.

Sophie reached across the table, and I didn’t resist as her slim fingers slipped into my hair and ruffled it, each follicle excited by her touch.

‘Sorry,’ she said, sitting back, sipping her coffee, and admiring her styling. ‘You remind me of someone. But he had messier hair.’

‘Who was he?’ I asked, running my palm across my hair, flattening it down slightly.

Sophie looked out the window.

‘Just someone I used to know.’ There was a wistfulness in her voice. ‘So, tell me about yourself,’ she said, turning back to me. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

Sophie’s pink tongue appeared and slowly licked milk from her top lip. It was so sensual and erotic, a tiny thread of saliva dropped from my mouth.

‘I’m B, B—,’ I stuttered, flushed with embarrassment. ‘I’m Ben Hayward.’

‘Hi Ben,’ she giggled, tucking some loose hair under her hat. ‘I’m Sophie Marshall.’

By the time we’d finished our coffees, I’d relaxed a little. Sophie laughed at my jokes, and I lost my stutter. And with the sun shining through gaps in the heavy clouds, we left the café to walk around the park. We linked arms and Sophie nestled tightly against my side, as if she didn’t want to lose me to the wind.

As we chatted, we discovered we shared the same taste in music, the same books. We loved visiting the zoo. Our favourite animals were bears—cute and scary at the same time. Eighties’ films were the best. We refused to swim in the sea because we’d seen Jaws too young and too many times. We loved drinking tea, but ordered coffee in cafés, because £2.50 for a tea bag, hot water, and a splash of milk was a sign of everything wrong in the world. We hated pickles, and marmalade, and the jelly in pork pies. We liked people-watching on weekends, and lingering outside laundrettes, breathing in the fragrant scent of clean washing. We didn’t like board games.

I hadn’t realised someone so beautiful could be so normal.

I was thirty, Sophie was twenty-eight. We didn’t have brothers or sisters. I was an accountant for a construction firm, and Sophie worked in a stationery shop in town. Sophie was from Plymouth, and I was from Cambridge.

‘What’s Plymouth like?’ I asked.

She paused, then shrugged. ‘Boring,’ she said.

We’d both moved away from friends and family. I’d moved here for work, and Sophie once knew a friend here and liked it so much she stayed. It was a beautiful little market town, not too far from London, and Sophie loved the feel of it—the uneven cobbled roads, crooked buildings topped with ornate chimneys and rusting weathervanes, mature trees lining broad avenues.

‘But it’s hard to find friends in a new place, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I don’t really know anyone here anymore. Just people at the shop.’

I’d also found it hard to meet friends. This conversation was the longest I’d experienced with someone not related to me since moving here.

We walked laps of the park. In silent moments, Sophie looked up at me, eyes sparkling, and I wanted to kiss her, to hold her and tell her how amazing she was. I didn’t want the date to end, but unlike the beautiful day before, the wind billowed in our coats, threatening to steal Sophie’s hat, and her tightening grip on me told me she was cold.

‘Do you want another coffee?’ I asked.

‘Are you inviting me back to your place?’

‘No,’ I said, surprised she thought me so forward. ‘I meant we could go back to the café.’

‘That’s a shame,’ she said. ‘Because if you invited me back to your place, I’d say yes.’

While I grew nervous on the way home, Sophie almost danced, pulling me along as if she knew the way. It was hard to read the signals—did she expect sex? It’d been so long—I’d only disappoint.

I lived alone in a Victorian terraced house on a quiet, leafy street. After renting a spare room for years from a man who played computer games non-stop in his living room, only moving to collect takeaway deliveries from the front door, my parents helped me to buy this house. It had small rooms with high ceilings and a garden enclosed by tall, ivy-smothered walls.

When I’d moved in a year ago, I cleansed the house: vacuuming, washing, scrubbing, brushing, and giving the ceilings and walls a coat of bright, white paint. But I couldn’t afford to replace the orange kitchen and avocado bathroom suite, or the beige threadbare carpets, and ugly textured wallpaper. They remained as haunting traces of the previous occupants, an elderly couple who’d not decorated, or maybe even cleaned, since the 1970s.

‘You’ll only read about it in the papers,’ said the estate agent, as I’d looked round for the first time. ‘So, I might as well tell you. They both had cancer and euthanised one another. It’s sweet, really.’ He didn’t know what room they’d died in.

Dust hung thick in the air, lit by sunbeams through large windows, and a musty aroma, like something dead and desiccating inside the walls, permeated the house, no matter how long I kept a draft blowing through the rooms.

Before we entered through the front door, I asked Sophie to excuse the look of the house—it was a work in progress.

‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘You should see my place.’

As I closed the front door behind us, Sophie threw her hat to the floor, pulled my face down to hers, and we kissed. Her lips were full and warm and soft. She tasted like cherry lip-salve. My lips were dry, my post-coffee breath strong and sour. I’d not kissed anyone for years, and this moist, soft, delicate kiss was the best I’d experienced.

Suddenly, she stopped kissing.

‘Give me the tour of the house,’ she said. ‘Starting upstairs.’

I led her up by her hand.

‘This is my bedroom,’ I said, opening the door to my unmade bed covered in clothes, a toothpaste splattered shirt on the floor, a half-drunk mug of tea on my bedside table.

Ignoring the mess, Sophie pulled me to the bed and sat me down. Straddling my lap, she kissed me fiercely, and pushed my chest, so I fell backwards to the springy mattress. She wiggled where she could feel my erection.

‘Have you got condoms?’ she whispered.