‘I thought you said he was going to be away for the whole weekend and part of next week,’ I whispered to Marvin, thanking God that I’d happened to be upstairs combing Frizz Ease through my hair and not sitting at his kitchen table stuffing my face when that front door opened. My stomach rumbled again, this time in protest – it wasn’t thanking anybody for getting between it and that delicious-smelling food downstairs. It was wishing Henry Halliday had caught a later flight or taken a route from the airport with a traffic jam on it.
And what would have happened if I’d already started using the hair dryer? He’d surely have heard that and wanted to know who was upstairs. My heart was banging so hard I could barely hear the panic in my own voice over it. I could feel it, though, and it felt like a pressure cooker that had been left to slowly build up for weeks and weeks and was about to explode. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Don’t worry, Beth.’ He said it so calmly that I almost did a double take. Did he not realise the seriousness of the situation? His brother wasn’t all laid back and ‘anything goes’ like he was. He would be furious when he found out.
‘What do you mean, don’t worry?’ My whisper went up an octave.
‘Look, just stay in here and …’
‘What? Hide?’ I whisper-squeaked. ‘Where? Behind the shower curtain? In the wardrobe? Under the bed? Those were the first places you thought of looking when you found me here.’
‘Yes, but he knows I’m here …’
‘Won’t he ask why you’ve been sleeping in his bedroom instead of the spare room while he’s been away?’
‘Look, I’ll just tell him I like the shower better in his en-suite – which I do, as a matter of fact. It’s a power shower …’
A squeak of frustration escaped my lips which I then immediately clamped shut before they did anything else to give me away. Power shower? I’d give Marvin power bloody shower! Did the man have no sense of urgency at all? ‘Thanks for the amateur dramatics, by the way. Those loud repetitions of his name didn’t sound at all suspicious. I bet you two speak to each other like that all the time.’
‘Sorry,’ he grinned, risking a beating around the head with the bottle of Toilet Duck. ‘I had to make sure you could hear it was him so you didn’t come back down. Look, you just stay here, don’t make any noise, and as soon as he leaves for his office in the morning you can make your escape.’
‘Don’t make any noise?’ My words were now coming out as the sort of sounds only dogs could hear. ‘Have you heard my stomach rumbling? If it gets any louder they’ll be able to hear me in Dorset. And where do you think you’re going to sleep tonight?’ I suddenly had a horrible premonition that he was expecting us both to share the spare bed, which was most definitely not going to happen.
‘Look, Beth, we’ll have to sort that out later,’ he mumbled. ‘I’d better get back downstairs or he’ll wonder what I’m doing when there’s a nice glass of beer waiting for me on the table …’
‘And my wine glass!’ I almost shrieked. I’d forgotten about that.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll say I invited a friend round for dinner but she had an emergency and had to go before it was ready. It’ll be fine. Just don’t make any noise.’ And with that he left, shutting the door behind him.
Right. Fine. I’d just stay there and not make any noise. Did he have any other stupid commands for me? I stood where he’d left me, staring at the door and wondering why we couldn’t have just said we’d bumped into each other and he’d asked me to stay for dinner. At least that way I’d have had some food. I was starting to suspect Marvin was enjoying this subterfuge a little too much. Henry Halliday would be coming up those stairs to unpack his travel bags – either before or after he’d enjoyed my lovely dinner – and then he’d go back down, and then later on, when he was tired, he’d come back up to go to bed. That would make three times at the very least, that he’d be on that landing, walking past this room, this door. A couple of inches of wood was the only thing stopping him from seeing me. What if he decided he wanted one of his laundry fresh, specially-packaged, hypoallergenic pillows now his brother, who wasn’t as borderline OCD as he was had been sleeping in his room? What if he decided to swap the bedding over? Where the hell was I supposed to disappear to while that was happening?
And what if he didn’t believe Marvin about the wine glass? What if he thought his brother had brought some girl here and he came in to check? I wondered what other incriminating evidence I’d left in the lounge. All this time, I’d been so careful about not leaving anything of mine lying around downstairs. I’d kept all my stuff as small and together and as tidy as possible. Then Marvin had turned up and suddenly I was treating the place like I was a guest. What an idiot I’d been! How could I have let myself become so blasé? So careless?
I tiptoed around the room, gathering my stuff together and carrying it as quietly as possible through to the en-suite, just in case the owner of the house should decide, for whatever reason, to come into his own spare room. Wiping out the bottom of the bath tub to make sure it was dry, I placed my bag in it, shielded by the shower curtain, and then, with a silent sigh, I took the book I’d been reading off the top of it, carefully put the lid of the toilet down, and sat on it to read – what else was I supposed to do up here?
‘Just going to check something on my laptop!’ I heard Marvin yell as his footsteps sounded out up the stairs. He really should join an am dram group – they’d love him. It was thoughtful of him to find of a way of letting me know that it would be him opening the spare room door and not his brother, but seriously, could he not hear how strange and hammy he sounded? It seemed a tad ungrateful to tell him that his heavy, clompy footsteps could definitely not be confused with Henry Halliday’s much quieter, cat-like tread. I heard the bedroom door open and waited for him to realise where I was.
‘Hello,’ I mouthed at him when he popped his head round the bathroom door.
‘You don’t have to hide in here,’ he chuckled.
‘Shush, he’ll wonder who you’re talking to,’ I whispered. ‘What does he think you’re checking?’
Marvin shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Something nautical? He’s about as interested in boats as you are, so I could tell him I’m bidding on eBay for a second hand spliced main brace or a double-ended buoy and it’d mean absolutely nothing to him. Which,’ he clocked the look on my face, ‘is about as much as I can see it means to you.’
‘Did he believe you about the wine glass?’
‘Why wouldn’t he? Why would I lie to him about having invited a girl over for dinner? It has happened before, you know. I’m not so ugly that I can’t get a member of the opposite sex to sit on the other side of a table and have dinner with me.’ Marvin winked at me. ‘After all, you were going to.’ He was far too nonchalant about this for my liking.
‘You’d better get back down there.’
‘OK. I’ll try and sneak you up something to eat as soon as I can. Enjoy your book.’ And he strolled out, shutting the bedroom door on his way before I could forget about not making any noise and throw it at him.
I was bored with my book and contemplating the ridiculousness of this latest situation I’d managed to place myself in when I heard Henry Halliday come up the stairs. My breath was held as he walked past the door again and on to his own room. A few minutes later, Marvin came up too.
Standing up, rather stiffly – bathrooms don’t make the most comfortable places to sit for a couple of hours – and carefully, so I didn’t rattle the wooden seat, I edged into the bedroom.
‘I brought you these.’ He handed me a small, open packet of McVitie’s Digestives , not a particular favourite – that would be the chocolate version, and a cup of tea and said,’ Sorry. It was all I could get my hands on. A cuppa and some biscuits in bed was the first thing I could think of that wouldn’t look too odd.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, forcing myself not to grab the biscuits. I was grateful right now for anything and kicking myself for not having had a bigger potato for lunch … I shoved the first biscuit in almost whole, to stem the rising of the next stomach rumble.
And now for the awkward part – well, the more awkward than what had already happened this evening part.
‘OK,’ I whispered, ‘Do you want to use the bathroom now? Then I’ll put any bedding you don’t want to use in the bathtub and …’
‘You’re kidding right?’ He looked at me as if I’d just told him I still believed in Father Christmas, the Easter bunny, and the tooth fairy. ‘That won’t be very comfortable.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I quietly and firmly protested. I didn’t want him getting any funny ideas about us sharing the bed.
‘Look, Beth, the bed’s perfectly big enough for us to share without touching. I promise you, I’d be on my best behaviour, but if you don’t trust me we can always put those spare pillows down the middle.’ Too late to worry about the getting any funny ideas thing. I wondered if there was any way at all I could sneak out in the night without making any noise. Although I couldn’t think where I’d go. Anyway, chances were I’d trip over Talisker at the top of the stairs, soundly hit each one on the way down and wake up the entire village.
‘The bath tub will be just fine,’ I repeated as firmly as I could without saying it any louder. ‘Now go and do your teeth and … whatever else you need to do. I don’t want you needing to use the loo in the middle of the night. That’s an image and a sound I really don’t need in my head.’
He shook his head as if in bewilderment at my half-baked madness but did as he was told, before coming out and saying, ‘Look if you’re that against us sharing the bed, you should have it and I’ll sleep in the tub. I’m a sailor, after all, I’m used to sleeping in awkward spaces.’
‘No, I’m much smaller than you,’ I argued. ‘And in any case, if there’s the tiniest chance of your brother coming in because … because he’s forgotten to tell you something, or whatever, it needs to be you in that bed rather than me, doesn’t it?’
Marvin’s last words to me before I shut the door and climbed into my makeshift bed were, ‘Should I be offended that you were perfectly happy to share this bed with a cat who, although perfectly clean for an animal, has never used toilet paper, soap, or toothpaste in his life, but you’d rather give yourself a stiff neck sleeping in the bath than share it with me?’
‘One, I am a married woman. Two, you are not cute and furry. And three, I am treating that as a rhetorical question,’ I told him, then shut the door. And locked it.