The reception is small and cramped, with a chest-height, dark, wooden desk on one side and a tired-looking red-velvet sofa on the other. The floors are polished marble, and a quick glance around suggests that the place is clean, if not luxurious. I squeeze Carrie’s hand and she gives me a small smile. We’re here. We’re still together. But we do have lots to talk about. I’ll let us get settled before broaching it though.
‘Room seventeen, on fourth floor. Lift is at end of corridor. Restaurant is at end of corridor also. No food now. Breakfast eight until ten. Dinner five until nine. No lunch.’ The bored-looking receptionist rattles off the bare minimum of information needed without even the hint of a smile. She hasn’t asked for any money yet, so maybe Carrie has pre-paid, but I don’t bother to ask her.
The lift is tiny and instantly claustrophobic, without even a mirror to make it look bigger. We squeeze in with our bags, and I try not to breathe in Carrie’s direction as I’m sure my breath is stale from the journey, despite brushing my teeth every day. Now that we are in here, the smell of us both is overpowering. The taxi had its own sweaty aroma, and it was hard to know if it was us or Ivan who smelled the worst. Now I’m starting to think it was us. But we have been on a train for nearly four days, and no amount of cat washes can deal with that kind of sweat. There was a lot of drinking. A lot of other stuff too. I get a thrill as well as huge waves of embarrassment when I think about it.
After what seems like an age, we arrive on the fourth floor and almost tumble out into the corridor to escape the confines of the lift.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Carrie mutters, heaving her bag onto one shoulder. ‘We fucking stink, V.’
I burst out laughing, glad that the tension has snapped at last. Although she’d held my hand in the taxi and apologised outside, there was still something unspoken between us, and there still is – but at least we’re laughing again. I have a flashback to Carrie, last night – her sharp vodka breath in my face:
‘You need to fuck off, Violet. You’re a leech. A parasite. Fucking worming your way into my life. Into my pants…’ She’d actually grimaced when she said that. ‘I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I fancied experimenting, but why the hell I chose you, I do not know.’
Then she’d disappeared from the cabin and I hadn’t seen her until she’d come back this morning, half an hour before we were due to arrive. Smelling of sex. She’d tossed things into her backpack in silence, and I’d gone through so many options in my head of what I could say to her, wound myself up so much, that I couldn’t say a word.
Today she is subdued, and judging by the tremor in her hands, which she’s trying to hide, I think she’s coming down from something more than just the vodka.
I find my voice as she’s turning the key in the door. A huge brass thing on a red leather fob. ‘Where did you go last night, Carrie? I missed you.’
She sighs hard, and the door swings open, as if she has blown it in.
‘Not now, V. I need a long soak in the bath. I need to sleep in a proper bed. I need some food. Jeez, when did we last have some food?’
‘We had those cheese blinis…’
It’s her turn to laugh now. ‘I think that was around twenty-four hours ago.’ She tosses her bag into the corner of the room. ‘Please, please can there be a bath? What time is it? Do you think Cruella de Vil downstairs will take pity and send us some room service?’
‘I doubt it. But I can go and get us something as soon as the kitchen opens.’
‘Fuck’s sake, V. You don’t have to keep…’ She lets the sentence trail off. ‘Forget it. I was being a bitch. Again. That would be great, obviously. I feel like I haven’t slept in days.’ She looks at herself in the narrow mirror on the wardrobe door. Turns to the side, sucking in her stomach, pushing it out. Standing up straight, letting her shoulders sag. Then she turns back to the front and pulls her vest off over her head. There’s a huge waft of B.O. with the movement, and I have to force myself not to gag. ‘I think I’ve lost weight.’ She sucks in her stomach again, then pushes out her breasts. ‘Oh fuck.’ She pulls at one of the cups of her bra, peers down, then unfolds it and stares at herself in the mirror, pulling a face. ‘That is rank.’ It’s a large purple bruise, with teeth marks around the sides. ‘That fucking prick I shagged on the train has probably given me rabies.’ She yanks off her shorts then disappears through to the bathroom. ‘A bath,’ she shouts back. ‘Thank fuck.’ She slams the door.
I peel off my own dirty clothes and lie down on top of the covers of one of the single beds. The cover is shiny and floral. Polyester. Absolutely not safe in a fire. I listen to the sound of running water. Then I sit up, anxious. I can’t relax right now.
The room is decent enough. Two beds, wardrobe, desk and chair. Sliding glass doors out to a small balcony. I unlock the doors and step outside, taking in the view: another building across the alleyway – the side of it though, just concrete, no windows. No one to see me here in my underwear. I look down and see nothing of interest. The alleyway doesn’t seem to be used for much, with cracks running down it filled with proliferating weeds and random pieces of rubbish – cans, packets and who knows what else that people have thrown out of their windows. I close the doors and go back inside.
On the desk, there’s a small leather stationery holder, with paper and envelopes with the name of the hotel and a logo stamped on them. Maybe this place isn’t so bad. Maybe it was grand, once. I pull out the deep drawer beneath the desk and a small plink of excitement runs over my arms like goose bumps. A kettle, lots of tea and coffee – hot chocolate … I rummage further in the basket next to the cups and saucers … and find some biscuits. I never thought I’d be so excited for some home comforts, as basic as they might be. I give the kettle a little shake, to make sure there is some water in it – and thankfully there is, as I don’t want to disturb Carrie right now – then I flick it on, and sit down in the chair to wait for it to boil.
There’s a large lamp on the desk, one of those heavy-based ones with an elaborate shade. It’s a bit out of place in the stark room, but I assume it harks back to a time when there might’ve been a few fancier things in here. Curtains, maybe. And less hazardous bedspreads. I pull the little gold chain and the room is basked in an amber glow. Relaxing, at last, I tip a hot chocolate sachet into a cup, and fill it with water. Just the smell of it makes me want to cry. I can’t say that my mum ever brought me hot chocolate in bed as a child. I’m pretty sure I had to make it myself – but there is something comforting about it all the same. I associate it with reading with my glow-worm lamp and imagining myself in another place. I might’ve lived in a fancy old mansion, but it was a lonely place with just me, the neglected only child, and my parents, and I longed to go to a boarding school, like Mallory Towers in the books I loved to read. I wanted to be around other girls. I wanted to be part of something.
I pull the chain on the lamp again, flicking it off. Then on again. Off. I listen for the splashing sounds from the bathroom that tell me Carrie is still alive in there – you hear about these things, you know, when someone full of vodka, and who knows what else, gets into a hot bath. Because she definitely had something last night. She was wild, her eyes rolling around in her head. It was worse than the night at the shamanic festival, and that’s saying something – although I was off my head then too, so it’s not the same. I hope that whatever it was she took, we can get past that now – I don’t want this to turn into one of those drug-fuelled trips that no one even remembers. There is such a lot that I want to remember. I flick the lamp back on again, then I go over to my bag and take out my phone.
Sam is on a beach. There’s a selfie of him and one of his stupid mates drinking out of coconut shells. I enlarge the photo, looking for girls, and don’t see any in close proximity. I click on the comments. ‘Top night, bro.’ ‘Sundowners at the Kiki Club, girls are HOT.’ There are a series of blazing-sun emojis on that one. I toss my phone onto my bed, and ball my hands into fists. Screw you, Sam. You predictable tosser.
I’m poking around in Carrie’s bag, getting ready to have a look at her laptop, when I hear the click of the bathroom door unlocking and have to quickly rethink my plans. She comes out wrapped in a towel and smelling of something sickly and floral.
‘Not sure what the shower gel is meant to be but I think I smell better than I did before I went in. My clothes are absolutely reeking. I’m soaking them in the bath. Want to chuck yours in?’ Finally she spots what I’ve been doing. ‘Oh … what’re you—’
‘Thought you looked tired,’ I say, sliding a silky top onto one of the few hangers in the wardrobe. ‘I was just unpacking for you. I know you packed in a bit of a hurry this morning…’
Her eyes flash with something that might be annoyance, but then her shoulders sag and I know I’ve got away with it. ‘Thanks, V. I am bloody tired. I felt myself drifting off in the bath, but I didn’t want to be in there all night. You must be desperate for a wash too. Listen, thanks again for this. I think I’ll just lie down for a bit, while you’re in there. I think I’ve even gone past hunger.’
‘Let’s see how you feel later,’ I say. I hope she has a nap, then changes her mind. I want to go out tonight, just the two of us. I feel like it hasn’t been just the two of us for so long. I want to go somewhere nice. Have good food. Drink some wine, and talk … and talk … and get it all out there in the open. I want her to put her hand on mine, like she did that first night in the Irish Bar in UB. I want her to kiss me like that. Softly, full of promise. I want to forget about what happened at the camp. I want to forget about what happened on the train. I want us to start again. I know I pushed it too far, and I’m close to blowing it – but I can’t let that happen. I can’t give her a reason to not want to be with me anymore. We’re only just beginning.
I look across at her as she lies on the bed, towel still wrapped around herself, and her face relaxed at last. I want to stroke her hair. I want to lie beside her. I want to touch that horrible love bite on her breast, and wish it away.
I want to curl in to her naked body.
I want to whisper in her ear, ‘I love you, Carrie.’
But instead, I take the extra blanket from the wardrobe and lay it gently over her. Then I wait until I hear her soft snores, before I take her laptop out of her bag and lay it on the desk. And without making a sound, I carefully open the lid.
I’m not doing anything wrong. I just want to know more about her. Sometimes people don’t tell you the whole story, they like to present the version of themselves that they want you to see.
But it’s amazing what you can find out about a person from their deleted items folder.