‘I don’t think she’s very happy with me,’ he says dolefully. ‘I’m getting that distinct impression.’
‘She might come around.’
‘The last text she sent instructed me to trap my knob in the caravan door. I haven’t responded. What did she say to you?’
‘Um . . . it was a similar theme.’
‘I’m hoping she’ll come around. I think she needs a good holiday, if I’m entirely honest. I suspect we all do, eh?’ He laughs.
I end the call before I say something I might regret.
I start to get ready as soon as Meredith and Nicola leave for dinner, an hour before I’m due to meet Harry. I’m confident that that’ll be plenty of time. But,
shortly after stepping into the shower, there’s a call from my gas supplier asking me if I’ve considered having my loft insulated; as I’m curling my hair, someone else phones
asking if I’ve been mis-sold PPI; as I slip on my dress, the dry cleaner phones, threatening to incinerate a skirt I dropped off in 2011 and forgot to pick up. This, of course, is apart from
Charles and David, both of whom seem incapable of allowing an hour to pass without hearing the sound of my voice.
It’d be sweet if I wasn’t teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
In short, as the time slips by and I make strenuous efforts to glam up without the aid of Meredith and her beauty emporium, my phone seems determined to scupper every tiny step, from applying
foundation to spraying on perfume and applying my now well-worn concealer stick to my eye.
Some of the calls are quick (Wi-Fi provider call-centre worker: ‘Is that Imogen Copeland?’ Me: ‘No.’); others, such as that from Charles, are not. And as I’m pacing
around, performing a veritable circus act of multitasking – inserting earrings and applying mascara with my phone wedged in my shoulder – I’m aware that the clock is ticking
without needing to actually look at it.
Finally, when I am 85 per cent ready and therefore as ready as I’ll ever be, and I’m about to throw my bloody phone into the bin, it rings again.
My hand hesitates over it, willing myself to leave it. Except it’s Mum and, therefore, while I’m 99.9 per cent certain it won’t be a genuine emergency involving Florence, the
0.1 per cent possibility wins the day.
‘You won’t be aware of this because you’re away,’ she begins, ‘but your company has been all over the news.’
‘Really?’ I drawl, frantically surveying the room for my key card.
‘Well, you told me to only phone you when it was an emergency. I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do about it from there, but I thought you’d want to know. That
boss of yours is an absolute pervert.’
‘He’s not a . . . yes, I suppose he is.’
‘You’ve not done something like that on one of your business trips, have you?’ she adds.
‘Mum, it’s not company policy.’
‘Because, old-fashioned as it sounds, Imogen, a girl has to keep her reputation. It doesn’t matter what you’re up to behind the scenes, but you can’t do that sort of
thing
publicly
.’
‘I’m not doing that sort of thing privately or publicly!’
‘You know I’m no prude, but you’ve got to have some class about these things. If there was one thing my time in the Moulin Rouge taught me, it was that.’
I sigh. ‘Is this what you’ve phoned to tell me, Mum?’
‘I thought you’d want to know about the papers, that’s all.’
‘Thank you. Seriously.’ I always add that word when I’m in danger of sounding disingenuous. Mum gets it a lot. ‘If that’s all, I’ve got to go.’
‘Oh, did you—’
I put down the phone, grab my key card and am about to leave the room, when for the first time since I entered it, I get a proper look at the clock.
My breath feels as though it’s being sucked out of my lungs. I’d realised I was under pressure for time, but I’d been oblivious to the extent.
It’s 9.15 p.m.
I’ve stood him up. I’ve actually gone and stood him up.
Running in 31-degree heat is difficult. So is running in Meredith’s shoes, the ones that never actually fitted me in the first place. This cocktail of challenges becomes
even trickier when you’re dodging a group of lackadaisical pensioners, a rollerblader with a death wish and three blokes carrying canoes that are each the length of an Orient-Express
carriage.
‘Excuse me!’ I pipe up, to no avail.
I pull up from my frantic dash right behind them. ‘Excuse me!
Con permiso!
’ I try, and they turn round simultaneously, at which point I realise my error.
I attempt to dart as if dodging a bullet, but fail to move with sufficient speed to avoid being thumped on the temple with the hard edge of the vessel. I am propelled off the boardwalk and land
face-down on the beach, marinating my tonsils in sand.
‘Sorry! Sorry!’ The owner of the canoe, who looks to be in his fifties, drops his boat and rushes to my aid.
‘It’s fine!’ I spit dirt out of my mouth as I spot my opportunity and leap up, pull off my shoes and attempt to sprint across the sand, a surface that proves about as suitable
for the task as a tray of freshly made toffee.
With sweat snaking down my face and the wind howling into my meticulously tousled hair, I turn the corner to the beach bar with a racing heart and scan the tables.
There are couples, families, groups of friends. But not Harry.
I crumple with disappointment as several facts become apparent. I actually liked this man. I fancied him. I enjoyed his company.
I wanted something to happen between us.
For most women this would be no a big deal, these commonplace bubbles of attraction that, with no opportunity to grow, will simply float away and be forgotten. But for me there’s nothing
commonplace about meeting someone I like. Until this week, I believed 100 per cent that when Roberto died, a light bulb shattered inside me that could never be pieced together.
Only, it appears that it has been. And I appear to have stood up the man who made that happen.
I gaze out to sea, wondering what Harry must make of this. I am unable to decide whether he’ll be in his hotel room weeping into his sangria, or sticking pins in a voodoo doll. Both
scenarios make me feel horrible.
But not quite as horrible, it turns out, as the reality.
As I’m turning to leave I spot them, on the beach together, looking like something from a late 1990s Davidoff advert.
It’s Harry and Clipboard Barbie. They’re in each other’s arms.
A small part of me tries to look on the bright side. My hair is matted with sand and sweat and, I discover, when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window of a Seat
Ibiza, I’ve managed to rub mascara down my cheek, enhancing the jaundice-yellow effect of my black eye.
I slump back to the hotel, desperate to talk this through with the girls, only to discover texts saying that Nicola has gone to bed with a migraine and Meredith, having had another exchange with
Nathan about coming away in her third trimester, is sampling some local hotspot with the waiter she met on the first night.
The thought of being in the hotel room with a ringing phone all night is too much to bear, so I do what seems to work for all dejected women in the movies and order a Scotch on the rocks while I
perch at the bar, wondering if a friendly-and-wise bar-tender will invite me to share my troubles.
In fact, it’s a woman who serves me, and she doesn’t seem inclined to stretch her job description beyond slapping my glass down on a coaster in front of me.
‘It is you! The very beautiful Eenglish lady! May I join you?’
It’s the guy from Florence – he who is fond of wanking.
I muster up a smile. ‘Why not?’
‘Are you having a stimulating time so far?’ he asks, climbing onto the stool next to me.
He’s sweet, if a little lacking in the English department. Not that my Italian’s great (and as someone who lived with an Italian, I’ve got absolutely no excuse).
‘Very stimulating, thank you,’ I say, suddenly horribly aware of my appearance. I rake through my hair with my fingers, but it’s like trying to groom an Old English Sheepdog
with a dessert fork. ‘Are you?’
‘Yes, although I am looking forward to going to Firenze again. I miss the pussy,’ he explains mournfully.
I blink. ‘Oh.’
‘Yes, everywhere I look here, there is beautiful pussy, wanking in the street, or the beach. It reminds me of my baby at home. You want to see?’
He holds out his mobile phone and shows me a picture of a ginger cat.
‘That
is
a beautiful pussy,’ I agree.
‘I know,’ he replies. Then his eyes soften. He leans towards me and whispers something in my ear. I can’t quite hear it.
‘What did you say?’ I say with a smile, pulling back.
‘I say, you are beautiful, too.’
I suddenly feel quite hot.
My increase in body temperature isn’t because I’m attracted to this person. I’m fairly certain I’m not. He’s far too young for me, the language barrier is
disastrous and, although he’s got all his bits in the right places, I find him oddly unsexy. Yet, as he leans forward to kiss me, I consider not moving away.
I can’t pinpoint why, beyond an unsettling neediness after I’d finally got my head around the idea of fancying a man, only to have him snatched away into the arms of Clipboard
Barbie. And so, some deep, dark part of my brain thinks about closing my eyes, just to see what happens. I contemplate each of these thoughts as I sit, otherwise immobile, fixated on the
Italian’s nose as it inches so close I am almost cross-eyed.
Then something – Fate, providence, a jolt of uncertainty about whether I brushed my teeth – makes me glance up.
Harry is standing at the door, looking right at me.
Our eyes meet briefly.
As he turns on his heel and marches away, all these feelings fall away. I spill my untouched Scotch as I pull away from the Italian and run after him.
Harry steps into the lift before I reach him and the doors close quickly. I stand and watch in dismay as it ascends to the eighteenth floor before the adjacent lift arrives and
I press the ‘Up’ button.
When it arrives at my destination, I step out tentatively into an empty corridor. Vertigo hits me in a wave as I creep along the carpet past a window so high up I feel suffocated by the clouds.
Nor is this the only problem. There are ten doors stretching in front of me, and therefore ten possible places into which Harry has disappeared.
I knock on the first door and wait with my heart pounding in my throat, until it becomes evident that nobody’s going to answer. I edge towards the one next to it and do the same.
It swings open and I am confronted by Yellow Bikini Lady, wearing an unfeasibly short neon-pink kimono and a lavish strip of bleach on her upper lip.
I back away apologetically before I knock on the third door, which is opened by a man who’d make such a perfect James Bond villain I half expect to peer around him and see sharks swimming
under a see-through floor.
I mumble apologies before crossing the corridor to the fourth door. I knock. And . . . it’s him.
I take in the indecipherable look his eyes and experience a surge of attraction that nearly knocks me off my feet, followed by the realisation of how hurt I am. How bewildered. Feelings I
honestly don’t know how to react to, not when I’m catastrophically out of practice.
I cross my arms. ‘You went off with Clipboard Barbie!’
He crosses
his
arms. ‘You stood me up!’
‘I – I didn’t,’ I stammer. ‘I was running late!’
‘By forty-five minutes? How long did you expect me to wait?’
‘So if I’d been there twenty minutes sooner, you wouldn’t have had your tongue down Clipboard Barbie’s throat?’ I realise I am shaking so hard I tighten my knotted
arms in a bid to disguise it.
‘
Who
is Clipboard Barbie? And I didn’t have my tongue down
anyone
’s throat.’
I’m about to answer when Yellow Bikini Lady’s man emerges from their room and pelts us with a stream of machine-gun Russian that would appear to indicate he’s not overly happy
about being a party to this conversation.
I freeze and apologise, imagining that I’m now on some list that his gang of mafia chums use to regularly replenish their fish-food collection.
‘Look, why don’t you come in,’ Harry says to me grudgingly.
I don’t need to be asked twice. I dive in, shut the door behind me and thrust my back against it.
I look around and am lost for words.
The similarities to my room start and finish with the contemporary furniture, plush carpets and massive mirrors. Other than that, I could be on a different planet. It is four times the size of
mine. There is a Jacuzzi, 180-degree views of Barcelona and the Mediterranean and a
champagne bar
. A great big thing, bang in the middle of the wall, stocked with enough fizz to supply a
royal wedding.
‘Is this what I think it is?’ I pick up a bottle and peer at the label.
‘Can you answer my question?’
‘You’ve got a champagne bar and you didn’t even pay for this yourself? And there we were, getting all of a quiver about a loo-roll light . . .’
He frowns at me, then his face softens.
And I suddenly wish I wasn’t here in this room in these circumstances. I wish I was here at the end of our date, if it ever was one.
I realise that what I’d been hoping for was to flirt all night, dance a bit, then smooch on the beach before rolling up here a bit tipsy and touchy-feely and . . . oh God.
Do I want to have sex with this man?
I remind myself what I’ve just witnessed. ‘I’m referring to the woman organising your tour,’ I say.
‘Delfina?’
‘I went to meet you where we arranged and saw you on the beach. In each other’s arms.’
‘It wasn’t what you think,’ he says calmly.
‘Oh?’ I purse my lips to underline my indignation.
‘She’s lost her job.’
My lips unpurse. ‘Oh.’
‘Despite appearances, the recession has hit this place hard and they’re cutting back on their marketing spend next year. So this is her last assignment. You know how fragile
Spain’s economy is at the moment – and she’s the only one in her family with a job.’