Instill

Lizzie slept late the following day and when she woke her memories of the latter parts of the previous evening were fragmented and incomplete. She pieced together what she could though and found she wasn't too mortified by any of it. Checking her phone she found a little flurry of lighthearted and impressively creative mockery from her companions of the night before, stretching into the small hours. Anna had obviously passed around word of her early exit and the general theme was her pitiful lack of stamina. She shrugged to herself and decided she could be fine with all that as well.

Looking around the room evidence suggested that even in her drunken state she'd managed not only to get her clothes off on automatic but also to hang them back up. Good skills Lizzie, she thought and then immediately felt a little sheepish that she had caught herself taking pride in essentially having managed to get undressed.

Through a quirk of luck or metabolism she had somehow dodged the hangover she had so richly deserved, so she threw on some comfort clothes and went to see whether she could raid the fridge for anything to eat. Sarah and Ray were in the living room, and seeing Lizzie pass in the hallway Sarah got up and followed her through to the kitchen.

"Hello there sleepy, we got you some yogurt and fresh fruit. We thought your stomach might be a bit delicate today."

"Morning Sarah, if it is still morning? Thank you so much. I hope I wasn't too much of a pain last night. Did Ray really carry me to bed."

Sarah laughed, "You remember that do you, we weren't sure you would. You were definitely on the way out by then. And you were no trouble at all. It's probably a good job you weren't a couple of minutes later though or you'd have got an eyeful."

Lizzie reviewed that, joining dots. Sarah hadn't exactly gone out of her way to make it complicated for her but she wasn't firing on all cylinders yet. "Oh god Sarah, I'm so sorry."

Sarah waved her dismissal of the apology with one hand. She leant against the kitchen counter by the door, a little fidgety, testing out a few positions as if finding it difficult to come comfortably to rest.

Lizzie," she said at last. "Ray and I have realised we can't just keep you boxed up in your little room like a lodger forever. We don't think that's really fair on any of us, and it definitely isn't what either of us want, nor you probably."

Lizzie looked over from where she had been hulling strawberries and slicing them into a bowl. Her little production line ground to a halt as she realised that what Sarah was talking about was almost certainly going to turn out to be more important than breakfast.

Oh crap, she thought, guess I really did fuck something up last night after all. This is going to be the big talk isn't it. Time to stop fannying around and start looking for a new place then I suppose.

Sarah saw the dejected look on Lizzie's face. "Hey, hey, it's nothing bad, at least I don't think it is. We'd just like you to feel like this could be your actual home is all, somewhere you can live as long as you want to, not just a place where you're staying until you can find somewhere better. Would that be something you'd be interested in? If you'd rather not it's OK. I mean we aren't trying to kidnap you or anything."

Lizzie gaped, caught completely by surprise. "Wow, no, no that's great, I just wasn't expecting it. Are you sure you're happy with that, are you sure Ray is? I don't want to be in the way if you don't want me."

She paused, glancing out into the hallway, then said in a small anxious voice, barely above a whisper, "Especially Ray. Are you really sure Ray is ok with it?"

"Ray and I are both completely happy with the idea, we talked about it together." Sarah frowned, puzzled and disturbed by Lizzie's line of enquiry.

She kicked the door so that it swung smoothly to a close.

"Lizzie I had no idea there was an issue here," she said quietly. "What's the problem."

So Lizzie, having backed herself tidily into her corner, gulped and started by telling her about the conversation she'd had with Ray, about how she wanted more space. She told Sarah about how much she'd been worrying about this ever since, and how she'd been meaning to look for somewhere else and get out of their way but that all the work involved had just seemed like too much of a hill to climb recently.

"And Ray's lovely I'm sure," she said, as diplomatically as she could manage. "And she's been very kind, but she doesn't talk to me a lot, and I don't think she wants me around."

She lowered her voice even further, "I'm not sure she really likes me very much."

"Look I know it's probably my fault," she was babbling now. "But I can't get my head around her at all. And she's got this whole chiseled athletic implacable demigoddess thing going on which to be honest just scares the hell out of me."

Lizzie felt like a bystander in her own head as she watched with horror the words coming out of her mouth. Every sentence just seemed to be making things worse and worse. Only a minute or so ago Sarah had been offering her a home and now somehow Lizzie was standing here openly insulting the poor woman's wife.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," she found herself repeating at the end of it, over and over again, not even sure by this point what she was apologising for. Maybe the words she had spoken, maybe more fundamentally her failure to appreciate the most important person in Sarah's life.

When she'd finished digging her hole, and mercifully managed to stop herself saying anything more awful, or anything more at all, she glanced around the room nervously. Her eyes hunted fruitlessly for somewhere convenient to rest her gaze. She picked up her bowl and the tub of yogurt, then put them back on the counter again. Whatever would help her avoid having to look Sarah in the face. She felt certain that she'd let her down and couldn't bear the thought of the hurt and disappointment which would surely be there when she eventually had no other option but to see.

As a matter of fact though Lizzie's fears on this point were unfounded and Sarah wasn't offended in the slightest. She was disappointed yes, but even then only with her own carelessness, and she was vigorously kicking herself for having let this misunderstanding develop right under her nose. Still, she thought, it could have been worse - there could have been a genuine problem at the heart of it all rather than just a bit of a communication breakdown supercharged by a whole load of paranoia.

"Lizzie, it's OK sweetie, it's all going to be OK. There's nothing to worry about here, this is going to be really easy to sort out. Look you've got completely the wrong end of the stick - Ray doesn't give a damn about whether we've got a spare room to store her kit in or not. The way we see it all we're doing is trading a room which we usually just clutter up with odds and ends, and in return we get to have you here with us instead, simple as that. And trust me, that is what both of us have decided we want."

Sarah could see that this wasn't helping as much as she'd hoped, and was still determined to find a way of wiping away the awkwardness, so she moved on to a slightly different approach.

"She does like you, you know," she said gently. "She likes you a lot actually. Maybe she doesn't show it in quite the same way as you are used to, but it's there if you look. Do you think you can take my word on that for now and spend some time seeing how it works out."

Lizzie nodded, and did look hesitantly up at Sarah now. She'd lost track of her own thoughts in the turmoil of the last few minutes and ended up in a liminal emotional state, balanced like a spinning coin which might come down on either side. She genuinely had no idea whether she was supposed to be feeling elated or upset because aspects of both emotions were still mixed up inside her.

In the end her mind, failing to reach a conclusion on its own, instead took its cue from Sarah. And looking at the open hopeful expression on Sarah's face all that Lizzie could see there was a trusted friend who sincerely wanted her to be happy. So the balance was nudged over that way, the coin came down sunny side up, and her worry faded. She smiled cautiously and found it was good. Even now though her internal saboteur had one last card left to play.

"Thanks Sarah, I can do that I think. But I have to warn you - I'm not sure I'm that much fun to have around at the moment."

Sarah looked sympathetically at her. "We can see you've been having a tough time sweetie, you've not been doing a great job of hiding it, and that's not going to be a problem for us either OK. There's no obligation to be fun around here if you don't feel like it. You're not under a spotlight, and we're not expecting a cabaret. You'll fit in fine so you can stop worrying about that. And now that we're sealing the deal I think a hug is better than a handshake don't you."

Sarah went over to her and that was the end of Lizzie's resistance. Their bodies met and they stood with arms around each other for a long time in comfortable silence.

"Good, we'll say that's settled then shall we," said Sarah finally. "Now finish making your food and come and watch Ray getting all annoyed about the cricket. Because it's far more entertaining than the cricket itself, and she won't let me switch that off. Plus it sounds as if you two still have some ice to break so I think she'd better get a cuddle too - I've found physical contact is a very good way of getting to understand Ray properly."

*****

It was half past ten in the morning a few Wednesdays later. Lizzie was sitting at her workstation dealing with one of her least favourite of her job's responsibilities. She was collating, and signing off on, the various expenses the sales team had accrued over the previous month.

The first pass through was always the easy (if slightly tedious) bit, whereby the stacks of receipts were reconciled with the entries on the spreadsheets and the printouts of the credit card statements. Then there came the second stage during which the company (represented by Lizzie in this case) had to agree it would waive the missing proofs of purchase for clearly allowable items. Things like the lunch in the pub around the corner with the new client, or the early morning taxi to the airport.

All these were fine as well really, and just part of the usual ticking of boxes, but invariably at the end of the process there came the stage threes. These were the last few genuinely contentious expenditures still to be accounted for, and this was the nasty part.

Some specific examples of these might be the lunch for six (with drinks of course) at the Dorchester, or perhaps the five hundred quid spent in cash at two in the morning and listed only as 'entertainment' with a blunt refusal to explain any further, or along the same (suspected) lines the evening out with the visiting Saudi clients at Kittens Gentlemen's Club. Often the items on this list occupied the shadowy ground between justifiable expense, diplomatic incident, and court case.

Fairly plausible company legend told that on two occasions in the past stage threes had escalated into dismissals for gross misconduct and realistically none of them were ever going to be resolved at her pay grade. They invariably got passed up the chain of command so that department heads could strap on their gloves and fight them out.

But nonetheless, to satisfy some obscure point of company policy, each month she'd have to argue the first rounds with the culprits herself and she dreaded it every single time. All this seemed to accomplish was to give her a few hours of unpleasantness while brash angry people took their turns to troop down from the dizzying heights of the sales department. On their arrival they would demand her audience so they could berate her for trying to follow the rules they couldn't be bothered to observe themselves. And she, the lowly beancounter, had to sit there and take it until the farce was over for another month.

She'd just got to the point where she could no longer justify, even to herself, putting off sending out the emails any longer. So she was sitting mournfully, psyching herself up to weather the coming storm of verbal abuse. Then unexpectedly, as her mouse was poised ready to hit send on the first of them, she was saved from that particular fate and consigned instead to another. Her phone vibrated on the desk in front of her and it's screen lit up - she had a call coming in from Ray.

Technically the company handbook stated that private calls were not to be taken on work time. These rules had been written back in the nineties though, and everyone had upped sticks and emigrated to the twenty first century since then, hence there was a certain amount of leeway given as long as you didn't take the piss.

Keeping your phone muted was part of the deal, as was being considerate of your colleagues by not taking your calls at your desk. So, as custom dictated, she stood up and walked over to the break-out area in the corner of the room before answering.

*****

The barrier which Lizzie had built up in her mind between herself and Ray had first broken down and then entirely evaporated in the weeks since she'd had her little meltdown in front of Sarah. Lizzie had done her bit as she had promised and worked hard to put her worries aside. On closer examination she had quickly seen how mistaken she'd been and that her concerns had been grounded in her own invention rather than objective fact.

To put it more precisely she'd not been feeling very likeable recently and so she'd managed to externalise that into a conviction that she wasn't liked. It had struck her that she hadn't really understood until now how much of a blow her self esteem had taken when she'd left Amy. She also found herself considering, with this in mind, what else in her life might have been similarly tarnished by damaging events in her past.

She thought Sarah must have had a word with Ray about putting in some extra effort too, although she couldn't be entirely sure because they hadn't spoken about it directly. There had been one particular change in Ray's behaviour which Lizzie was putting down to Sarah's intervention though. Ray had started being quite uncharacteristically touchy-feely, and this wasn't something Lizzie could mistake for a coincidence. Ray was definitely making sure she got regular doses of extremely personal time with her.

That first time (when Sarah had dragged Lizzie through to the living room and demanded that she and Ray should hug in recognition of the change in the housing arrangements) it had really been only a part of the ritual of the occasion. A sealing of the deal and little if anything more to it than that.

Since then though Ray had apparently decided a precedent had been set. She had gone on to start inviting Lizzie in for regular hugs whenever she felt the opportunity presented itself. This was generally at least once or twice a day, and it was often just before bed.

These events had been almost comically uncomfortable to begin with. Neither of them had been quite sure what the rules were, so both of them would stand there motionless. Their arms would be clasped stiffly around one another, until by some kind of tense unspoken agreement they had accepted they had put themselves through this for long enough and had stepped apart again. After the initial strangeness had dispersed though, and the intimacy of their closeness had started to become more familiar, they'd kind of got used to being around each other's bodies.

Then stiff arms had gradually loosened and the awkwardness had slowly eased. Before long both of them had started to look forward to bumping into each other at one of those convenient moments, and there would be a spark of conspiratorial anticipation in each of their eyes as they moved eagerly toward one another. Lizzie had to admit that, especially for someone she had previously taken to be emotionally quite detached, Ray did turn out to give exceedingly good cuddles.

In part this was due to the sheer size and strength of her. Ray towered over Lizzie, her chin resting neatly on the top of her head when she held her, and her years of martial arts training had left her lean and muscular as well. In Ray's arms, and pressed tightly up into her embrace, Lizzie felt very secure and enveloped. Not childlike exactly - she was far too aware that they were both adult women for that. In fact she was growing to admit to herself that one of the reasons she found Ray so intimidating was because she was simultaneously extremely attractive and utterly unavailable. Beyond the purely physical aspect though there was also a much more profound element.

The best way Lizzie had found to describe it to herself was that when Ray had hold of you something made it obvious she wasn't doing anything else at all. She wasn't planning her weekend or tallying up a shopping list or filling her mind with any of a thousand other possibilities. She was quite simply holding you, and while Ray was doing that her entire being was going to be focused on this specific point in time, to the exclusion of any distraction, until she decided she was going to stop.

Whipped up into a melange of physical and emotional sustenance the combination was kind of glorious - even though it did tend to have the inconvenient side effect of reminding Lizzie quite how deeply single she seemed to be right now. During these encounters she'd shiver ever so slightly with secret desire, letting herself feel cherished and appreciated as she never had before. Wanting beyond reason to keep on basking in the sensation forever but knowing it could never work out that way. One thing was for sure though, a hug with Ray at bedtime invariably led to a frenzied bout of very rewarding masturbation before sleep.

Returning to the point for the time being though, Lizzie had also gone on to notice that the same phenomenon of selectively targeted attention governed other aspects of Ray's behaviour.

She found that, though Ray was never going to be what she could call talkative, when she did find the need to speak it was invariably worth Lizzie's while making sure she paid close attention. Ray always gave the full benefit of her considered thoughts when she spoke, and coupling this with her laconic nature, the signal to noise ratio could be almost disconcertingly high. Similarly when she was listening to you, once again you had that same undivided focus. Lizzie literally never had to repeat herself for Ray. Ray treated everything Lizzie told her as if it was vitally important and remembered it without fail.

After she'd taken all this onboard Lizzie realised, once she taught herself to look for it, that Ray was actually entirely happy to spend time with her. In fact that she was going out of her way to do so and, looking back, that she had been all along.

It became apparent that had stood in the way of Lizzie seeing this in the past was Ray didn't seem to recognise that she had any particular obligation to keep up a conversation. She just enjoyed the fact of having company without feeling the need to make it the centre of what she was doing. But if Ray had work to do while Lizzie was cooking she'd always quietly set up at the kitchen table, and if Lizzie was watching tellie in the living room Ray would invariably choose instead to work on the sofa with her laptop perched on the arm beside her.

This was all rather at odds with how Lizzie had been used to dealing with her friendships in the past. In her world if you were spending time with someone it had always been by definition the central event. You talked together, or did something together, or you went out to do something else.

As she adjusted to Ray's style though Lizzie had discovered that she had a taste of her own for this same luxury. This sharing of companionship without the constant need to dedicate your attention to supporting it. She found it was remarkably comforting and relaxing just to be in Ray's presence. Recently she was beginning to find herself drawn toward the room where Ray was whenever they were both hanging around in the flat. They'd exchange a brief greeting, maybe a few little token words of social grooming here and there, possibly if she was lucky one of today's hugs. Then they'd get back on with whatever they each wanted to do, but alone with each other instead of just alone.