It’s never nice to be woken up with the bed shaking and the covers being ripped off you, but it’s a million times worse to be woken like that when you’ve got a hangover.
‘Sorry,’ says Will as he practically sprints out of the bedroom.
I’m in too much pain to try and recover the duvet but the slight chill is almost comforting.
I feel so rough.
It takes a few minutes to allow the pounding to subside enough to replay the events of yesterday in my mind. The wedding – Vanessa and Ian’s beautiful wedding. It was the stuff of fairy tales. Perfection around every corner: the venue, the food, the absolute blast we had at the evening reception.
The only dampener being that text message. The hangover momentarily subsides as the anger starts to ripple through my body at the memory of Will’s lies.
The image of him in the photo – happy and smiling – is so vivid in my mind, it’s as if I was there with him. No matter how many of those champagne cocktails I drank, or the tequila shots that followed, nothing seemed to make me forget. The pain of being lied to is almost as bad as the hangover.
Maybe that’s why he’s bolted. Maybe he sensed that I know and he’s getting as far away from me as possible.
I wonder if I said something to him when I got in last night. I can barely remember leaving the wedding. I have a hazy memory of coming home in a taxi, but aside from that, nada. I must have come straight upstairs, slipped out of my dress and bra and crawled into bed, as I’m still wearing my big hold-everything-in knickers, my tongue is fuzzy, the smell of tequila lingering on my breath, and my eyes are matted together with the mascara I didn’t remove.
What I need is a shower and the greasiest fry-up, but I feel like I need to get things sorted with Will first.
My temporary reprieve from the hangover doesn’t last long, and the raging around my head commences once more.
‘Sorry about that,’ he says as he comes back in the room and gets into bed. ‘I’m still at the mercy of this belly.’
He pulls the covers back over me, and groans as he wriggles back down under the duvet. Despite the pain it causes me, I roll over to look at him. I stare at him for a moment in disbelief. Is he really going to pretend that he’s still ill?
It’s a pretty shrewd move, though: who argues with a stomach bug? It’s not like anyone would position themselves in the toilet demanding proof.
‘You must be really poorly for it still to be going on,’ I say arching my eyebrow as I play along.
‘I know, it’s rough and I couldn’t eat a thing yesterday.’
‘Poor you. In the house all day long. Weren’t you bored?’
‘It was so boring,’ he says, rolling a bit closer into me. ‘But I survived.’
He’s using his pathetic man-flu voice, and while yesterday that could have been considered endearing, today it’s just adding salt to the wound.
I smooth my hand over his head. ‘Poor baby.’
He pouts and I can’t believe he hasn’t picked up on the sarcastic lilt to my voice.
‘But at least I’ve got my nurse back today to look after me.’
If I hadn’t discovered the truth I’d probably be lapping this up by now, cooing over him, feeling guilty for having left him alone. I’m sure that despite the hangover, I’d have been running around after him. Instead, I’m having to lie on my hands to stop them from throttling him.
I should be screaming and shouting and throwing things round the room, but despite being so mad, I can’t. I’m too intrigued to see how far he’ll go. I need to try and trip him up – he’s my boyfriend, after all, not some double agent.
‘I heard that Southampton did pretty well yesterday.’
‘Yeah, apparently it was a really good game,’ he says. ‘Tom was there and he was texting me with updates.’
‘Ah, that’s nice of him. What a good friend.’
‘Yeah, he’s pretty good like that.’
‘It’s a shame that it wasn’t on TV or you could have watched it.’
I have photographic proof that the match was televised. With our big sports package – that practically requires its own mortgage – he couldn’t possibly say we don’t have the right channels to cover it.
‘It was,’ he says with barely a pause, ‘but my belly was so rough that I was camped out on the loo and barely saw any of it, which is why I needed the text updates.’
‘Ah,’ I say, nodding.
‘Hopefully this morning I can make it through the Malaysian Grand Prix that I recorded.’
He’s rolling out lie after lie, and so quickly. Has he always been this good at lying and I’ve never noticed? Should I be worried? He could be having affairs left, right and centre and I’d be none the wiser.
I almost laugh out loud. Really, what mistress would put up with his sporting obsession like I do?
Though it does make me wonder what he’s done in the past in the name of sport. I mean, how important could this football game have been for him to have gone to such lengths to go and see it? It’s still early in the season and as far as I know, it wasn’t a special match, which just makes it worse. I might have been able to forgive him if it had been the FA Cup final – maybe – but an average game? He has a season ticket and he goes to nearly all the matches, so you would have thought he’d be able to miss one.
I’m angry that he didn’t come to my friend’s wedding, but I’m more hurt that he wasn’t honest with me. I know I wouldn’t have given him my blessing if he’d asked, but I wouldn’t have been able to stop him. I’m sure I’d still have been mad as hell, but I wouldn’t be feeling as betrayed as I am now.
At least I know where I stand in the pecking order. I always thought that when push came to shove he’d put me first, but now I’m not so sure.
‘How was the wedding, anyway? You hung-over?’ he says, snapping me out of my thoughts.
‘A bit. But the wedding was lovely. It was such a shame you missed it. I felt a bit bad talking to Vanessa about you not being able to make it. She’d really struggled to keep the numbers on the guest list down and what with the empty seat . . . But she was very understanding. You can’t argue with a serious bout of food poisoning, can you?’
I start to change tack, hoping I can guilt him into confessing.
‘You certainly can’t,’ he says, nodding in agreement.
Where is this acting coming from? This is the guy that can barely think creatively enough to play charades, and yet this performance is almost worthy of a BAFTA.
He’s making me really mad. It’s almost like the more angry I become, the more determined I am to get him to confess.
‘You know what I really fancy? A KFC,’ I say.
I’m being mean now. I know he can’t resist a Bargain Bucket.
‘I reckon my hangover will just stretch for me to go get one. All that deep-fried chicken, corn on the cob and barbecue beans,’ I say, my stomach rumbling as it buys into my lies.
I’m not really going. I’d be over the legal driving limit, but I want to test if he’s got the power to resist the food. I can’t imagine that he’d want a KFC if he really did have stomach problems.
‘Do you want me to get us one?’ I ask.
I can see that for the first time he’s torn. He’s hesitating as if he’s contemplating it.
‘You get one for yourself, if you want. I don’t think my belly’s up to it.’
Damn it.
Who trained this guy? I almost feel like I should drag him down to the bathroom and do some water torture. Although who am I kidding, the only water torture I know is when I attempt to dye my own hair in the bathroom without staining all the tiles.
I’m going to have to pull out the big guns.
I roll over to him and snuggle up a little. If all else fails there are always my feminine charms. Now I know I didn’t get round to taking my make-up off last night, and my hair is probably reminiscent of that scene from There’s Something About Mary thanks to the ridiculous amounts of hairspray I used for the wedding, and let’s not talk about my breath, which tastes horribly like stale tequila, but aside from that I’ve got shaved legs, so that has to be a bonus, and I’ve still got my boobs. My boobs don’t usually let me down.
Playing to my strengths, I keep my head and booze breath away from him and rub my bare leg up against his.
‘What’s got into you?’ he says, a look of surprise creeping over his face.
‘I’ve got smooth legs.’
Although I do regularly shave my legs, I went the whole hog for the wedding, new blade, proper Gillette foam rather than my usual conditioner, and I exfoliated and moisturised.
‘I can feel that.’
‘And there’s my boobs,’ I say, thrusting them towards his bare chest, but still making sure that I keep my head away from him as much as possible. ‘You know, the best bit of us going to a wedding is usually what happens when we get home.’
I try and put a sexy purr into my voice, but thanks to some very heartfelt singing of ‘Summer Nights’ it sounds more gravelly, like I’ve got a fifty-a-day habit and am in need of a good hack to clear it.
Will runs a hand up my leg and as it creeps further and further up my thigh I feel like I’ve got him.
‘As smooth as they are,’ he says, removing his hand just before it gets to the good stuff, ‘I feel far too rough for anything like that. Rain check?’
Humph.
I shift my weight back over to my side of the bed. I can’t believe that not even the lure of sexy time worked. The last time my boyfriend turned down sex on a platter was when . . . in fact, he’s never turned it down before.
I guess it wasn’t a foolproof plan. What was I expecting him to do, confess in the middle of his climax?
‘I think I’m going to have to go to the toilet again,’ he says, getting out of bed.
I watch him go out of the room and shake my head. I roll on to my back and sigh loudly.
He’s never going to tell me, and it looks like he’s going to keep up the pretence.
As much as I want to see how long it will be until he confesses, I’m going to have to have it out with him. He can’t get away with this. If my head wasn’t pounding I’d be tempted to go and call his bluff and burst in on him in the bathroom right now. Catching him – or more accurately not catching him – in the act.
I only wish he wasn’t so bloody annoying in an argument. If I get cross and shout at him, do you know what he does? He listens to the rant, he nods his head, he apologises, and he comes over and gives me a cuddle. I used to think it was because he realised I was right, but I’ve since realised he’s managing me. It hit me as I was watching a friend placate her toddler by indulging his tantrum and repeating to him over and over that she knew he wanted to go on the big slide before his brother, while she smoothed his hair and hugged him until he calmed down. That is exactly what Will does to me. He knows that if he shouts back or gets cross then we’ll have a huge row that will see me in a strop for days. Whereas his softly-softly approach means that I’ve got the rant out, and after he’s made a strategic cup of tea and provided me with an emergency bourbon, we’re back to normal.
It might seem like a dream, but it’s so frustrating. Not to mention, in this situation, it would totally let him off the hook. But what choice do I have?
He gets back into bed and I take a deep breath, wondering how I’m going to tell him that I know. I stare at him for a moment. Am I just imagining it, or does he have beads of sweat on his brow? I wonder how he’s made it look as though he’s still sweating from his illness.
‘So, I was thinking yesterday. You know that week that we’ve got booked off in November for the DIY.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I say, dreading the thought of it. It will be the only week of annual leave where I’d rather be at work. We booked it off months ago, at Will’s insistence, as we keep putting off doing our decorating. We’ve had paint swatches on our kitchen wall since the week after we moved in, and we still have space-themed wallpaper hanging proudly on one wall of our bedroom.
I’ve only agreed to decorating those two rooms, though. If he’s been watching George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces again and wants to pimp out the shed as well, he’s very much mistaken.
‘I think we should say bugger the DIY and go on holiday. Somewhere a bit exotic.’
‘I’m listening,’ I say, suddenly thinking I’ll bring up the text later instead. To be honest, he could have said go on a holiday to Skegness and I would have been happy if it got me away from the decorating.
‘How about we go to Barbados?’
‘Barbados?’
‘Uh-huh. Next month. I’ve been looking at package holidays, and there are some good deals around.’
‘Um.’
I’m lost for words. This was not the conversation I thought we’d be having this morning.
‘It would be all romantic,’ he says quickly.
I’m not firing on all cylinders, thanks to the hangover, and it takes me a while for it to sink in. Boyfriend does monumental shitty thing to me one day, doesn’t think I know, then proposes mother of all romantic holidays the next. Hmm. I might be slower than usual this morning, but I’m thinking there might be a link. Is this his guilt manifesting? Is it morphing him into a romantic boyfriend?
Usually, it falls to me to submit lots of different dates and options for holidays, and Will checks his sports schedule and lets me know the best one. So for him to take the lead and suggest somewhere so different to our usual holidays is very out of character.
‘I’ve found us a deal in a resort that has little bungalows. The complex itself has a big pool and several restaurants. It’s not on the beach, but it’s across the road from one . . .’
I’m only vaguely aware of what he’s saying. He had me at Barbados – any other information is incidental. In my head I’m already there, sipping cocktails under a giant palm tree, watching the waves crash on the crystal-clear shoreline while in pursuit of the perfect sun-kissed tan.
I’ve always dreamt we’d have one of those holidays. I thought he’d never be persuaded unless it was our honeymoon. I’m so excited that it seems to have momentarily cured my hangover.
‘OK, then, let’s do it,’ I say, interrupting him waffling on about the transfer time from the airport.
‘Really?’
Why does he sound surprised? He’s talking about us going to the Caribbean, not Outer Mongolia. I’m sure there are very few girlfriends that would need their arms twisted to go on such a holiday.
I can’t help smiling, until I remember the text message. The anger in me had somewhat disappeared, but now it slowly rises to the surface again. I’m suddenly torn between wanting to confront him and wanting to go on my dream holiday. Perhaps today is not the day to tell him I know. Who knows what else he might do to ease his guilt?
Before I can ponder it any more, the radio from my alarm clock breaks the silence and scares the bejesus out of me. Why I set my alarm for a Sunday I don’t know.
‘And here’s Rowan with the sport,’ crackles out of the radio.
‘Oh, turn it off, Lex, in case they talk about the Forumla 1.’
I lean my hand over to find the Off switch when I’m hit with a sudden idea.
Barbados, or no Barbados, if I’m not going to confront him, then perhaps I’ll teach him a lesson.
‘. . .There was a shock result in the Malaysian Grand Prix.’
‘Argh, get it off!’ wails Will, nudging me in the direction of the bedside table.
I lean over and instead of turning the dial off, I turn up the volume to the max.
‘. . . Romain Grosjean won after Hamilton had to retire, closing the gap at the top of the table of the championship.’
‘Eep, sorry,’ I say, as I pretend to jab at the different buttons, none of which will make it stop.
After the results have well and truly been spelt out, I miraculously find the Off switch. I take a moment to compose myself and hide the smile on my face before I turn back to face Will.
‘I can’t fucking believe that,’ he says, groaning.
I’m trying to pull a sympathetic girlfriend face, but inside I’m smiling. I know it wasn’t big or clever, and it doesn’t go anyway to making up for his lying, but it made me a teeny tiny bit happy.
‘I’m sorry. I guess I’m not very co-ordinated this morning. But I’m sure it doesn’t matter that you know who won, it’s about how it happens, right?’
I know this isn’t true. It’s like when you find out who’s been eliminated from Bake Off before you’ve had a chance to watch it on iPlayer. It’s never the same when you’re expecting a particular person’s cakes to collapse or burn.
‘Of course it matters. I mean, what’s the point of watching now. Might as well not bother.’
‘Oh well, I’m sure there’ll be something else to watch.’
Will sighs loudly and I can tell he’s going to spend the whole day sulking. Which suits me down to the ground.
‘First I have my Saturday ruined by food poisoning, and now my Sunday’s ruined too. It’s like I’m cursed.’
I feel the hackles on the back of my neck stand on end. He’s really never going to let go of this lie. Any pleasure I got out of ruining the Grand Prix result fades away.
Will is going to have to crack eventually about what he did, and in the meantime, I’m going to have to think of a way to control this anger.