After the Last Dance

by Sarra Manning

  Three years since those awful two days locked in a Moscow hotel room by a Russian oil trader who’d done terrible… there was never any point in dwelling on the past. She’d known then that the party was over; she needed to settle down by the time she was twenty-seven because twenty-seven was the thin but deadly line that separated a good-time girl from a good time had by all.

  Plus, being locked in that hotel room with that psychopath… no, still not going there. Suffice to say, Jane was tired. So very tired of hotel bars in foreign cities, scanning the room for a man who wouldn’t flinch when she asked for a glass of Louis Roederer Cristal Rosé 2000 so he had to buy the whole bottle. Holding him off, making him wait for another date, playing it out for as long as she could. Besides, the girls coming up behind her were much, much younger and hungrier and the Eastern European girls had no respect for the way the game should be played.

  Jane was done with Russian oligarchs. Done with Eurotrash. Done with the spoilt sons of oil and steel magnates. She needed someone who was up and coming but who hadn’t quite up and come and she really needed a change of scene. Then, at a dinner party in Aspen, she’d been seated next to a venture capitalist who specialised in tech start-ups. She’d picked his brains, done some research, drawn up a shortlist and packed her bags for San Francisco.

  She’d bumped into Andrew during one of the breakout sessions at a TED talk on artificial intelligence. He’d helped her with some iPad-related problem, blushing all the while and falling over his words. Then they’d just happened to keep bumping into each other all over town. No such thing as coincidence – not when Andrew kept tweeting his schedule.

  Andrew was green enough and new enough that though he had millions in seed capital, he didn’t have a huge team of people, of hangers-on yet. Just a room full of boys who looked a lot like him working on code and a girlfriend who’d been with him since sophomore year at Harvard who didn’t stand a chance. Her most pressing problem had been Jackie, Andrew’s WASP mother in Providence, Rhode Island but she’d come round soon enough when Jane had sought her advice on how to cook Andrew’s favourite meals, gifted her tea couriered over from Fortnum & Mason and finally won her heart with a very embellished story about sitting next to Pippa Middleton at a polo match. The only other cloud was Andrew’s sister, Stephanie, who styled herself as Andrew’s business manager, though getting Andrew a business manager who actually knew how to manage a business had always been high on Jane’s to-do list.

  It sounded so cold, but even the most starry-eyed girl approached matrimony with some degree of calculation. There was so much more to Andrew than being a soft touch. He was kind, handsome in a clean-cut preppy way, would never, ever raise his fists or his voice and he’d created the face and voice recognition software that Google and Apple and NASA and the Chinese were all over, which meant that Andrew was going to be very rich. Obscenely, obsequiously, oligarch-ishly rich. So, even if she and Andrew had been spectacularly ill-suited, Jane could have waited it out for three years.

  After three years of marriage, she’d have earned herself a big fat alimony cheque, and being a divorcee had a completely different vibe from being a superannuated party girl.

  But yesterday morning it turned out that bloody Stephanie, for all her talk of graduating top of her class at Wharton, had filed incomplete versions of his patent applications. They were missing a vital number of components and ironically number four on the list of tech suitors that Jane had drawn up three years ago was working on something similar and now Google and Apple and the Chinese were going to give him billions of dollars instead. In sixty short minutes, Andrew was old news. Just another nearly-made-it. Surplus to requirements.

  ‘You can still get married,’ Jackie had insisted as the entire Hunnicot clan had gathered in the bridal suite of THEHotel At Mandalay Bay. It was meant to be bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding but bad luck had already arrived, taken a seat and poured itself a large drink.

  Andrew had looked like hell. His face was as grey as his silk brocade waistcoat, but at his mother’s words he’d turned hopeful eyes to Jane, who’d been sitting on the bed wondering if anyone would notice if she put her head between her legs because she really thought she might pass out. ‘Do you still want to marry me, Janey?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she’d said because you couldn’t kick a man while he was down. Not in front of his nearest and dearest.

  Then Andrew had talked about the possibility of a job at Microsoft. Of moving to Seattle and maybe even stock options and Jane had nodded and smiled and squeezed his hand when he came and sat down next to her.

  Even once the engagement ring had been bought and paid for, every now and again Jane would get a feeling as if icy fingers were clutching hold of her heart. That she was close, but not close enough and it could still all go wrong. Now the icy fingers were back and not letting go. Also, the one time that she’d been to Seattle, it had rained the entire time.

  Finally, she’d persuaded Andrew that everything was going to be fine, just fine, and he’d left to wait for her on the terrace. Jackie and bloody Stephanie and Jane’s bridesmaids, though they weren’t friends so much as the girlfriends of Andrew’s friends, had lingered but Jane had begged them to go too.

  ‘I just need a minute.’ She’d swallowed delicately. ‘To think about my parents. I wish they could have been here today.’

  They’d melted away and Jane hadn’t wasted any time. She’d quickly packed her case, sneaked down the service stairs and out through the staff entrance, and got in a cab that was dropping someone off. She’d only had twenty dollars on her, enough to tip the girl in the powder room, and it was just enough to take her back to the city and drop her off in the not-so-nice part of town.

  Jane wasn’t cut out to be anything other than a trophy wife but a six-figure salary from Microsoft and even stock options weren’t much of a prize. That wasn’t what she’d signed up for, wasn’t why she’d agreed so readily, when Andrew had asked her to marry him. Yes, she was avaricious, mercenary and materialistic but that was the shape that life had moulded her into. She couldn’t be happy with what Andrew was offering her now and if Jane wasn’t happy, then she wouldn’t be able to make Andrew happy either.

  Best to do them both a favour and get out now. When Andrew discovered that she’d bolted he might hate her for a while, but really she was doing him a kindness.

  She didn’t feel kind, though. She felt terrible. And with emotion clouding her judgement, Jane had walked into the first bar she found and, forgetting all her rules about settling for nothing less than untold riches, she’d married the first man who’d looked at her.

  ‘Oh God, you stupid, stupid fool,’ she said out loud and she put her hands to her head.

  ‘Hangover’s kicking in, then, is it?’

  Leo was standing in the doorway. He’d put his T-shirt and jeans back on, thank God.

  ‘Something like that,’ she said and sat down in front of the vanity unit with her back to him, hoping that he’d get the message.

  ‘His and her baths, I didn’t know they existed.’ He stepped into the room so he could collapse into one of two deep, overstuffed red velvet armchairs. ‘I’ve lived in houses that had less square footage than this bathroom.’

  ‘Have you, darling?’ Jane began to slowly remove hairpin after hairpin, yet there were still more and the tiara was still firmly anchored to her head. ‘That sounds rather grim.’

  ‘Let me help.’ Leo heaved himself up with a grunt. He stood over her, took a moment to assess the complicated arrangement of plaits and hardware then began to methodically work on one piece of hair.

  It was quite disconcerting and before the silence got spiky, Jane caught his eye in the mirror. ‘You do realise we can’t stay married?’

  There was no easy grin this morning, no twinkle in those bleary blue eyes. ‘You sick of me already, then? It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. I think that’s a personal best.’

  ‘You have to u
nderstand that last night… well, I was at a very low ebb and you made everything better for a while and I thank you for that, I really do, but I don’t need a husband. Well, I do, but…’ She trailed off. She didn’t need to spell it out and hurt his feelings, not when she wanted another favour from him.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’d be a lousy husband anyway.’ Leo handed her the two falls of hair he’d unpinned. ‘We could get an annulment on the grounds of non-consummation. I won’t tell if you won’t. How would they ever know otherwise?’

  ‘It would be rather medieval if they wanted a medical examination.’ Jane shuddered and Leo grinned for the first time that morning.

  ‘So, you are going to get married to him, your Mr Ex? Has he called?’

  ‘I haven’t checked,’ Jane said. Those icy fingers had a chokehold on her heart again. She’d turned her phone off before she’d walked out of the bridal suite. But it was past two in the afternoon; Andrew must have called by now. ‘I will. Later.’

  ‘You’re not in any hurry, then?’ Leo asked. His face gave nothing away as he began to unwind the last section of hair. ‘Want to savour the last moments of freedom?’

  ‘We should swap lawyers’ details before we say goodbye,’ Jane said. There was no freedom to savour until she unravelled the mess she’d made last night in much the same way that Leo had unravelled the coils of hair that had been killing her slowly.

  ‘I don’t have a lawyer,’ Leo said and Jane wondered if it might be easier and quicker to find a courthouse and a sympathetic judge who would listen to their sorry tale in his chambers and grant them an annulment there and then. ‘Do you want me to get you out of your dress now?’

  Jane narrowed her eyes, which made her head hurt all over again. ‘I thought we’d just agreed that last night was a terrible mistake.’

  ‘Sweetheart, even if I wanted to, I doubt I could. I feel like I’ve been put through a mincer. Can’t imagine you’re feeling much better.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Jane admitted. ‘There’s not one single bit of me that feels anything less than awful. I knew there was a reason why I’d never been drunk before.’

  ‘It won’t last. You’ll feel better by lunchtime…’

  ‘It’s past lunchtime!’

  Leo shrugged. ‘The best cure is to just get drunk again. Shall I see if there’s any more champagne in the minibar?’

  Jane considered it for one moment. She’d never got drunk before because she was afraid she might be genetically programmed to not be able to stop drinking once she really started. But the thought of pouring more alcohol down her sandpaper throat made her clutch the side of the dressing table and her stomach clenched violently. ‘God, no! I don’t even want to think about it.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I do, though?’ Leo didn’t even sound a little bit ashamed that he’d only just woken up and he already needed a drink.

  ‘Don’t let me stop you, just as long as I don’t have to watch.’

  ‘You’re sounding very judgemental. Like a proper wife.’ He’d been so much more amenable last night. ‘So, did you want help unhooking your dress?’

  ‘Please.’ She straightened up again, presented him with her back and all those tiny, silk-covered buttons. Jane kept her elbows clamped to her side as Leo slowly unbuttoned her, swearing under his breath when the task proved too onerous for his fumbling fingers and fogged brain.

  She held her breath when he finished and ran a finger down her spine, because she was in a hotel room with a man that she knew precisely nothing about. Sometimes that didn’t work out so well for her. ‘Why don’t you run a bath and have a soak while I have a drink?’

  After he left, Jane locked the door, sank into silky soft water and assessed the damage. Seventeen missed calls and voicemails from Andrew. Fifty-two texts. Three emails.

  Andrew had a tendency to get quite blinkered. Stephanie, blighted and bitter because Andrew was always going to be the golden child, had once confessed to Jane that Jackie had had Andrew tested when he was younger and that he was ‘definitely on the autistic spectrum. At the lower end, but he’s still on it, Janey’.

  Talking of which, she had numerous missed calls from Jackie and Stephanie. Calls from the tech wives that she’d cultivated and called her friends. Even from Andrew’s father, Richard, though he tended to leave most of the heavy lifting to his wife.

  A tiny bit of Jane wished that she were still drunk as she called her voicemail to listen to Andrew’s first message.

  ‘Janey! Where are you? We’ve been waiting and waiting, then one of the busboys said they’d seen you get into a cab. I’m sorry, baby. So sorry I screwed up but I still love you and I know you love me too. Please come back so we can talk about this.’

  All Andrew’s voicemails were variations on the same theme. He wasn’t even a little bit angry with her but by the tenth message he was crying and it was a relief that the next voicemail was from Jackie, who wasn’t crying. Why cry, when you could scream?

  ‘You little bitch! How dare you do this to Andrew? You come back right now, young lady. We have a goddamn ballroom full of family, guests, Richard’s business associates… you’ve humiliated this family…’

  There wasn’t much point in listening to any more.

  Jane sighed as one tear, then another one, trickled slowly down each cheek.

  Andrew had been the man that she was going to share her life with. Not only for the billions of dollars that he was sure to be worth – Jane had had other criteria, had had other offers before Andrew came along. But Andrew never sulked, never shouted, never got violent when he was drunk. In fact, he never got drunk. He loved his mum and dad and even his annoying sister. He used to text her an ‘I love you,’ at least once a day. Buy her flowers. Buy her ice cream, though he always ended up eating it himself.

  Already she missed him and he didn’t even know for sure that she wasn’t coming back.

  Jane raised her head to look in the mirror and inspect the damage to her face. It wasn’t much. She’d only been able to squeeze out those two tears.

  ‘You are not a bad person,’ she said out loud. ‘Bad things have happened to you; they’ve turned you into what you are. It’s not your fault.’

  Andrew would be absolutely fine. He’d take the job at Microsoft so he could go to Seattle for a new beginning. He’d tell himself that his heart was broken but he’d soon meet another girl who’d fall in love with him because he was very easy to fall in love with. This new girl might not even care about his Microsoft stock options. Within a year, Andrew would be happy again. There really wasn’t much for Jane to feel guilty about. A year was no time at all.

  Jane had once been with a man who’d planted a GPS tracker in her phone and though Andrew trusted her implicitly, it was best not to take any chances. After a couple of false starts and the help of a hairpin, she managed to get the SIM card out of her phone. Jane rested it in her palm and stared at it for one moment.

  But her mind was already made up. It wasn’t a decision that she had to wrestle with any longer. The SIM card disappeared after two flushes. Then she deleted the email account that Andrew thought was her only email account.

  Jane couldn’t imagine how people disappeared fifty years ago but today it was as simple as destroying a SIM card and a few swipes of a touchscreen. You built a life with someone, made up of feelings and experiences, all the things you shared, all those days and nights together. But in the end, none of that was real. You were two separate beings. Now it took five minutes to kill Janey Monroe.

  As soon as he heard Jane sink into the tub with an unhappy little sigh, Leo sprang into action.

  It was more of a stagger than a spring, straight to the minibar for a bottle of fancy imported beer to wash the dark brown taste out of his mouth. The second bottle tasted better than the first and there were still a couple of toots left in his little baggie, which he sniffed up, like a gentleman partaking of snuff. It pierced the fug in his head.

  Jane’s handbag lay open on the bed.
Last night’s winnings were still there in seven neat little bundles. Five thousand dollars in each bundle. He wasn’t a complete monster; he’d leave her one bundle. That was fair. Besides, she was carrying around at least a hundred thousand dollars in jewellery. Jane would be fine.

  When Leo had woken this morning, he’d lain there thinking that Jane couldn’t have been that beautiful. Wondered if there was such a thing as coke goggles. Then came the moment of sheer mortification when he remembered that he hadn’t been able to come last night after Jane had begged him to fuck her into the mattress and he’d had to fake it.

  He’d almost walked out then, but he hadn’t. Thought he’d better confront his demons and he’d gone into the bathroom and even with her face pinched, her complexion muddy, body tensed against the pain of the morning after, she was still beautiful.

  It didn’t change anything. He had as much use for a wife, even a beautiful one, as he had for herpes. Leo did feel a tiny bit bad about skipping out on her without leaving a forwarding address or a phone number but it was the only way to leave with thirty thousand dollars and without an argument.