‘One day, you’ll look back at this and laugh!’
At 5.30 a.m., weak with the desperate exhaustion of the unslept, Bella murmured this familiar homily to her overlit reflection in the hotel’s bathroom mirror. She was trying the words on for size, reminding herself firmly, seven floors up in New York, that this was the traditional ha-ha British way of coping with all manner of things going wrong, from granny tumbling into the wedding cake right through to full-scale bath-crashing-through-ceiling disaster. Were the annoyingly bouncy optimists who said this always right?
Bella reckoned that in this particular case, absolutely not. Surely it added up to something permanently not amusing when the highlight of a romantic weekend, a whole continent and a great big ocean away, was the bit when you raced out of the sleek boutique hotel and into a taxi, desperate to be on the plane home? Alone, that is. Alone because the one essential ingredient to that kind of weekend, the so-called lover, was in another room way down the corridor, cosied up in bed with the wife he’d somehow forgotten to mention. Terrific. Dis-bloody-aster. Bella wished on Rick the kind of nightmares that would make him wake up screaming, quaking and committing himself to a lifetime of desperately miserable celibacy.
Bella was counting slow seconds to the end of the long lonely night, when she could get the hell out of this city that was wrongly supposed never to sleep. Looking at her face in the mirror (skin a disturbing shade of lemon: she had to trust that was a trick of the peculiar eco-light), she had the impression that the opposite was true – that she was the only one awake. Furiously, she scrubbed at a blob of toothpaste that had found its inevitable Sod’s Law way on to the front of her black Joseph jacket. Ha! Black! According to Rick’s wife Carole, she shouldn’t even be wearing black at all. She would now forever have doubts about at least half the contents of her wardrobe. Thanks, Carole, for that.
‘Black just piles on the years, honey,’ this pin-thin spike-nailed woman had sneered, leaning angular and elegant against the door frame of room 703, then adding, with one perfectly groomed eyebrow raised, and slight Botox-cracking smirk of the mouth, ‘or perhaps you really are that old?’
Wow and ouch! How to respond to a comment like that? What to say when you were all glammed up in your slinkiest black silk strappy number, about to go out for a lush dinner with a man who had insisted, back in the UK, that he was safely long, long divorced from his wife? A wife who he’d also claimed (and goodness, how he’d lied here too, with bells on) was far more a moose than a minx. If so, there must be a whole lot of very cute mooses (meese?) out there in the good ol’ US of A. The essential stinger retort-quip that had eluded Bella at the time would surely come to her three days too late, when she was lying in the bath back at home still seething about the insult and concocting the perfect phrase she hadn’t had the instant wit to fling back. Wasn’t it always the way? Even for Bella-the-writer (novelist, journalist), never usually short on words, the perfect phrase just had to go missing when it was most needed. And in truth it was Rick, the lying, cheating, two-timing slimeball, who deserved the whiplash words the most, not his stunning, immaculate wife. Oh how very, very swiftly after he’d been hunted down had he scurried around repacking his belongings and trailing Carole down the corridor like a naughty puppy. And he hadn’t even had the grace – or possibly nerve – to look back at Bella once. Three months, she now reflected bitterly, three months of him in determined pursuit, all that passion in London, obliterated in three swift I-win minutes in New York by this stray’s keeper, the moment he was on her home patch.
On the street way below Bella’s window the city was at last waking up. Early office workers power-walked like cheetahs on a hunger mission, utterly un-selfconscious in their sharp suits teamed unattractively with clumpy trainers and clutching skinny lattes and carb-lite pastries from the diner opposite the hotel. Bella, on the other hand, hadn’t actually slept at all and, aching with jet lag, tiredness and crushing disappointment, she longed and longed to be on the plane, snuggling into seat 16K, a professionally smiling steward asking if she’d like tea, a Daily Telegraph and a nice cosy blanket. Oh, the comfort of small rituals. And yet she almost hoped no-one would be too kind to her, for surely one word of concern, one casual, well-meant ‘And how are we today?’ could set the floods off and she’d be weeping blotchily all the way to the Heathrow baggage carousel.
Five thirty. The phone rang and a morning-eager voice told Bella her cab was outside and that she was to Have A Safe Trip, Now. Thank goodness – time to get out of here. Bella took one last look round the small but perfectly formed hotel room to check for left-behind items. She hoped the room maid would find a happier home for the scarlet lace underwear that she’d left lying on the bed – tissue-wrapped, unworn, labels still on – which Rick had planned to see on Bella. She should have seen the warning light with that particular little gift … should have listened to her doubts about Rick being the kind of man who considered red underwear sexy. Red just … isn’t, was Bella’s opinion, or at least not on anyone who is no longer a girl of twenty. On anyone who came firmly under the heading of ‘woman’, it either looked plain trashy or as if it was being worn with a joky Santa seduction in mind. Even worse, the knickers were thong-style. Bella didn’t do thongs as – regrettably – Rick already knew well. She’d be willing to bet serious money that Rick’s wife didn’t wear them either. Nice to think the two of them had something in common.
Bella wrestled with the handle of her blue leather Bric case (bought specially for this weekend – could she send Rick the bill?) and towed it after her into the corridor. Now, which room was Rick and Carole’s? She tried to remember, as she walked towards the lift … oh yes, 712. Definitely. Almost definitely. Worth a guess anyway. She stopped outside it, kicked the room door viciously and repeatedly, thumping the trusty Bric against it for good measure, and yelled, ‘Have a crap life, you lousy rotten bastard!’ Then walked on as calmly as she could and pressed the elevator call button. As she stepped into the lift, she caught sight of the door of 712 opening. A small, bald old man in purple satin pyjamas peered, blinking, into the corridor, staring at her with a puzzled and decidedly half-asleep expression. As well he might. He certainly wasn’t Rick. And he definitely wasn’t Carole. Damn, Bella thought, giving the poor man a feeble, apologetic wave. Can’t even get the parting gesture right.
‘I dunno, it just feels a bit like … wrong?’ Giles shrugged. Molly gazed at him, trying to guess where ‘wrong’ came into this. OK, it was Sunday. And maybe this was more of a Saturday-night sort of event – but Giles wasn’t a churchgoer, so the idea of being scrutinized by God wasn’t likely to be the problem. She couldn’t help thinking Giles looked a bit like a lopsided shop dummy in oversized clothes. He was quite skinny but had lovely straight wide shoulders and they looked weird scrunched up like that, as if someone had snapped them and tried to fold them away, untidily. His hands were so firmly wedged in the pockets of his jeans that Molly was convinced he was keeping them safe from her, perhaps fearing that if she took hold of him, pulled him on to the bed, he would surely just die or dissolve into gloop or something. And there she’d been, thinking that the bed-thing was exactly what he wanted. He’d said he did. Hardly ever stopped saying it. What was not to believe? They’d planned this together, hours of whispering down the phone, texting, emailing, getting all geed up – it wasn’t just some instant crazy plan she’d suddenly come up with.
Molly sighed lightly and prettily but felt like punching a big jagged hole through the huge mottled old mirror that had leaned against her mother’s bedroom wall for so long that the carpet behind it was now a darker shade of blue and fluffier than in the rest of the room. What was the point of a boyfriend with a conscience? Conscience hadn’t exactly been part of the scene all those times Giles had been trying – and failing – to persuade her to have sex with him under heaps of coats at parties, or in the ferns on the common, or that night at his place in the garage, in the back of the Range Rover when his mum had suddenly climbed in with the car keys and driven off to get petrol, without a clue that Giles and Molly were on the back seats, trying not to sneeze or giggle under the hairy, smelly blanket the dogs usually lay on.
She’d had this evening so perfectly organized; everything was working so far. She was one of the last in her school year group to offload her virginity and she wanted it to be a night to cherish, not a night to shudder about years later over bottles of wine in one of those ‘how bad was it for you?’ competitive conversations that she’d overheard shrieky women having in the pub. Mum was off in New York with that creepy, smiley American having whatever passed for a good time among Old People (details best not thought about). Alex was in Scotland visiting Dad. Her alibi plea – ‘I can’t miss Carly’s party! It’s the last one of the holidays!’ – had, after a bit of a struggle (‘A party on a Sunday? Strange day …’ her mum had reasonably quibbled) and some convincing wailing, been accepted all round. Right now Bella would probably be picturing her innocently giggling on Carly’s bed with lots of their classmates, in a scene like the sleepover from High School Musical, all trying on make-up and dancing around to popcorn music, drinking innocent Coke, getting ready for their so-fun evening. Yeah, right – like they were twelve or something.
Instead, Molly had slid back home from Carly’s with Giles, creeping in over the back fence and keeping only the security lights on so as not to alert Jules from across the road who’d been coming in to feed the cat. She was now wondering why this boy she’d been seeing for four months and who claimed she’d been doing him serious damage by making him stay on the safe side of her underwear, had suddenly gone all reluctant on her. Perhaps a bit more vodka would help. Or not. She didn’t know how much had the wrong kind of effect on boys. So far tonight they hadn’t drunk much of it – neither of them liked it much with Tropicana orange and there wasn’t anything else in the fridge apart from some milk that could have been there ages. You wouldn’t want to risk sniffing at it. Why was her mum such a useless shopper?
Molly came up close to Giles and whispered into his long soft hair. It smelled of Bedhead serum, sweet, delicious. ‘Don’t you love me any more?’
She didn’t touch him, just kept her body close to his and waited to see if those hands would stay crammed in the pockets. They didn’t for long. She felt them slide round her back and he pressed her close against him, breathing hard in her ear. The bed was just falling-distance away. She wanted to lie on it and roll with him on the soft duvet. She wanted to be under the duvet, giggling with him, excited, a bit scared, skin against skin.
‘Course I do! It’s just … here … your mum’s bedroom. There’s all her stuff around. That dress hanging on the wardrobe door, it’s like she’s inside it. I can smell her perfume and it’s like freakin’ me?’
Molly, relieved that this was something simple she could fix, opened the wardrobe door and hurled the dress inside, then came back close to him.
‘There. She’s gone, vanished, and besides, the real her is on the far side of the Atlantic. Thing is, this is the only available proper grown-up big bed in the house. The guest-room one’s covered in stuff for Oxfam, Mum’s got her office in the littlest one with papers all over the sofa bed, Alex’s is disgusting and boy-gnarly and my bed’s just child-size.’
And it had her old soft polar bear on it, and an embroidered cushion that spelled out ‘Princess Molly’ and her cosy flowery PJs stuffed into a cloth poodle. These were things he didn’t need to know about. He might smile and say, ‘Ah, cute,’ but it would also turn her back into some kind of infant. Also, on the big pinboard on the wall there were silly photos of all her mates and she’d think they were all watching her and Giles, especially Aimee who, even in the happiest pic, looked as if she knew it all and everyone else knew nothing. In Molly’s case she was too close to right about that. She could just imagine Aimee, sneery and jeering, ‘You’re like soooo crap at that, Molly Duncan.’ Also on the board was her brother Alex, who also really thought she was at Carly’s and would mind that she hadn’t trusted him enough to let him in on the truth; and then there was her grandmother Shirley who would definitely tell her – very loudly and preferably in embarrassing company – that ‘you’re only young twice!’ and that free love wasn’t anything new, darling, just enjoy.
Giles still looked unsure. His eyes had gone big and worried.
‘OK, look it’s no problem.’ She stepped back from him and looked at him, giving him one last chance. He smiled, hesitant and still, waiting to see what she wanted to do.
‘Let’s just go back downstairs and watch a DVD. It’s all right. I just feel a bit sad …’ She felt like a complete fool, actually, and close to tears. Like she’d made all the running and in the end had turned out not to be good enough for him. What did he want? A slapper like Aimee who’d done it with half of St Mart’s sixth form? Yes, he probably did. Didn’t they all? She made a move towards the door, but he caught her hand suddenly and pulled her back.
‘No – it’s fine. I’m over it,’ Giles said. ‘Come here, you.’
Home! Oh, how much more reliable were bricks and mortar than flesh and bones and the unfathomable so-called brains of stupid, stupid men! Now this, this really was like being reunited with a favourite lover, Bella thought as she trundled the Bric up the path. Never had she been so happy to see her mad turrets-and-gables Edwardian villa as she was tonight. The minicab squealed off down the road as Bella plonked her case on the step. Like a pope on airport tarmac, she kissed the front door’s flaking Farrow & Ball Hague Blue paintwork before she put the key in the lock and whispered fondly, ‘Oh house I love-love-love you!’
Thank goodness Molly and Alex weren’t around to witness this ignominious swift return. She wished Molly a fun time at Carly’s, and hoped that Alex was putting up with James’s finicky kitchen tidiness in the Edinburgh flat without completely exploding when he was reminded to clean the sink for the fifth time that day. James had taken to providing rubber gloves (new pack each time) for all house guests, laying them out on the beds along with towels. ‘Dad’s getting more loony by the bloody minute,’ Molly had grumbled, the last time she and Alex had gone up to stay with him. You couldn’t argue with that.
Bella was a bit surprised to see Molly’s favourite black jacket hanging over the post at the bottom of the stairs, but assumed she’d simply forgotten to take it to Carly’s with her. The jacket was still quite new and could barely be prised off the girl. She wore it with everything, but then that was, she remembered, the way with teenagers: they wore something to death for a couple of weeks, then it was abandoned for ever, or at least till you put it in the jumble bag, at which point they suddenly had a hissy fit about how dare you think it was OK to chuck it out, merely because it had been lying forgotten on a dusty floor for two years.
But it wasn’t just the jacket. Bella switched on the kitchen light and had a confused moment when she wondered how it could be possible that she’d had a last-minute drink of vodka and orange – two things that she considered should never be mixed – before leaving for the airport at seven a.m. only thirty-six hours previously. Of course she hadn’t. She wasn’t even that nervy a flyer – why would she not have had her usual English Breakfast tea? Maybe Jules, in to feed the cat, had had a crafty nip? After all, it was now only Sunday night. She wasn’t expecting Bella back till Tuesday morning. She’d just put it back in the fridge and forget … Music. Music? From upstairs. Oh-oh, just who was here? Jules was keen on Gilbert and Sullivan, not the Kings of Leon – Molly’s current favourite – which was the sound echoing round the stairwell …
So. It had to be Molly. Telling herself she was lucky not to come home and find three hundred Internet-summoned teenagers rampaging through the house, uprooting roses in the garden and throwing up on the sofas, she tiptoed as silently as she could up the stairs. Then, having had a gruesome second-thought premonition about what she really didn’t want to see, she retraced her near-silent steps and bounced back up the stairs noisily, shouting, ‘Molly, is that you up there?’
There was a scuffling sound. Bella waited a moment before warily pushing open the door to Molly’s room, but no one was there. Only the grubby white polar bear stared back at her. With a sigh that carried in it all the despair of the last couple of days, and with a dreadful foreboding about the inevitable, Bella went into her own bedroom and almost tripped over the scattered tangle of clothes and shoes on the floor.
‘Mum! Hi! You’re, like, not supposed to be here?’ Molly’s voice was high and scared and falsely bright.
‘’Lo Mrs Duncan.’ Giles, in bed beside Molly, gave her his best lop-sided smile and waved a limp hand. Horribly, Bella couldn’t help wondering about the rest of him … the part that was sure not to have been that limp. Alongside her seventeen-year-old daughter. Oh, terrific.
Molly pulled the duvet up further towards her chin. A bit of a pointless gesture at this stage, Bella thought.
‘I’m not supposed to be here? Shouldn’t I be saying that to you? What happened to “I have to be at Carly’s”?’ Bella snapped back.
‘Um …’ Molly’s face went into a contorted-puzzled expression, as if she didn’t really understand the question. Admittedly it was quite a daft one. Why on earth would she be at Carly’s when she could be in a conveniently empty house, in bed with her completely delicious boyfriend? Lucky bloody her, Bella thought bitterly, her mind going back to what, if all had gone to plan, she herself could be doing right now. The Kings of Leon rocked on in the background, something about Sex on Fire. Shut up, Bella thought.
‘Oh … aaaagh! Get dressed, Molly. And you …’ She could hardly look at Giles. Those naked, skinny yet broad shoulders. Bare, male skin. It was all too much to face right now. ‘Just … go home, Giles. Please.’
Bella left them to get sorted, went back to the kitchen, shakily poured the last of the vodka into a tumbler and added the orange. As she glugged down the oversweet repulsive drink she caught sight of the best-before date on the carton. It was way past its prime. ‘It’s not the bloody only one,’ she said, swigging down the rest of it.