by Will Smith
She fell back to thinking of locations for their mooted weekend assignation. It would be good to get out of this room. They met here as and when they could, maybe eight times since they’d first fallen on the bed back in July. Until then she’d genuinely thought she was over Rob. Their original split had thrown her off balance and she had struggled to regain it. Eventually she’d left the Island for a TEFL course, determined to travel the world and return solely for births, marriages and deaths, only to reappear with Colin at her side and triumph in her breast. He was different from Rob. He was just as handsome, but gentler and less raucous. He was idealistic and unworldly, self-deprecating and no hostage to cool, and above all he worshipped her. By going in the other direction, she had proved she wasn’t bothered by Rob moving on to Sally. She would have a purer love, based on intimacy and friendship, not showboating and overhosting. She had pronounced to the world through her marriage that she was finally happy, stable: she had boxed up the past and placed it in deep if not permanent storage. Rob and she had reached a palatable friendship, although she had never seen him without Sally, until that lunchtime when he’d passed her as she was looking in the window of Layzell’s, a local travel agency.
‘I recommend Barbados.’
‘Oh, hi, Rob. Yeah, I’ve been trying to persuade Colin we should go away for New Year. He doesn’t like the idea of winter sun, but I go a bit stir-crazy out of season here.’
‘Well, if you want sun and he wants cold you could come with us. We’re thinking of renting a ski lodge in Chamonix with Tony and Becs.’
‘Sounds great, but might be a little out of our range.’
‘Well, as a further compromise, you could do worse than stay at the Bretagne. I’d do it for mates’ rates, if not gratis.’
Emma laughed.
‘What?’
‘Rob, I want to get off the Island in my holidays. We’re already going to be here the rest of the summer, apart from a weekend at Colin’s mother’s and maybe a week in France.’
‘Trust me, you stay at the Bretagne and you won’t know you’re in the Island, apart from the view – which, by the way, is fantastic.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘What are you doing now?’
‘Grabbing a sandwich, then heading back to work.’
‘You’re not eating a sandwich. You’re eating at the Bretagne. Chef’s running in the new menu before next week’s reopening, for a few specially invited guests. Come on, free lunch.’
‘There’s not time to get there and back …’
‘You forget, I drive a Porsche.’
She had laughed, but allowed him to pull her along by the hand. After an above-par lunch of fruits de mer, with a couple of glasses of champagne, in a pristine deserted dining room, Rob had insisted on wowing her with the new decor of the rooms before he ran her back into town.
As she had looked out at the rocks of St Clement’s Bay from the room she was in now, he had stood behind her and put his hands on her hips. She’d turned to ask him what he was doing, but the fact she didn’t remove his hands meant they had kissed, then fallen on to the bed in a near-frenzy. Rob confessed that the memory of their time together loomed larger than its limited duration should have allowed, and that he felt neither regret for what they had just done nor the desire for it to be unrepeated. He had joked about keeping the room free at all times in case they needed it. She wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not, and found herself hoping that he wasn’t.
Rob came back in, his biceps flexing as he towel-dried the back of his hair, which was longer than the front. A larger towel was wrapped low round his hips, showing off the almost-six-pack for which he’d never had to work. Colin always wore a towel higher up, nearly under his armpits, like a woman.
‘Did you tip?’ he said, gesturing at the trolley from which he picked up the Financial Times.
Emma gestured to the spray of her clothes on the floor. ‘I don’t know where my bag is.’
‘Tip well and they’ll keep schtum.’
‘None of the staff would say anything anyway. They’d lose their jobs.’
‘True. Maybe I just like the intrigue.’
‘You like having a fuck-pad in your own hotel.’
‘“Fuck-pad” … I like it. Did you come up with that?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘We should have it as a plaque on the door. And another up at Grosnez Castle.’
‘Why Grosnez Castle?’
‘You’ve forgotten!’ yelped Rob, whipping the smaller towel from round his neck and twirling it triumphantly, like a banner. ‘It’s where we first went all the way. Usually I’m the insensitive lunk who forgets significant moments in a relationship.’
‘We didn’t do it in the actual ruins. It was further down, on a ledge.’
‘Does it matter? I got the general area right.’
‘It matters! It was my first time,’ she murmured, stunned that she was feeling the same elation now that she had felt then.
‘Mine too … outdoors.’
‘You said it was your first time!’
‘It was, it was! I’m kidding! Not sure it’s been bettered …’ He leant down and kissed her. She pulled off his towel and reached for his crotch.
‘Sorry, no time for seconds.’ He straightened and moved to the wardrobe.
‘Hey, next weekend, if the weather’s good we could maybe take the boat out, pop over to Carteret.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, as he pulled on the two-tone burgundy Pierre Cardin shirt that earlier he had deftly hung on a hanger with one hand while removing her bra with the other.
‘Sally’s not around.’
‘That would break rule numero uno – not outside this room.’
‘Why did you say, “Whatever you fancy”, when I asked you what you were up to the weekend after this?’
‘I didn’t. I said, “Whatever I fancy.”’
‘You said, “Whatever you fancy.”’
‘You must have misheard. Wishful thinking. I’m flattered. And mildly freaked.’
Emma sat up in bed and turned away from him.
‘Em, come on, we can’t risk being found out. You’re scaring me.’
‘We could go on the boat, go to France. Who’s going to see us there?’
‘Getting out of the harbour unseen is like trying to get out of a prisoner-of-war camp. And Carteret and Saint-Malo are full of Islanders doing the weekend baguette run. That’s why we have the rules.’
‘I don’t like rules. It makes me feel you do this all the time.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. This hotel is full of my mistresses. That’s the only reason I run it.’
‘Don’t make fun of me.’
‘But you’re being …’ He trailed off.
‘What? Ridiculous? Crazy? Say it.’
‘Paranoid. And demanding. We should just enjoy what we have.’
‘I’m a little confused as to what that is right now. It feels like no-strings sex.’
‘Well, I don’t know what you’re complaining about. It was me adding strings that split us up the first time.’
Emma stood and headed wordlessly to the bathroom. She felt a slam rising through her arm as she reached for the side of the door, but knew instinctively that the same cold pseudo-normality she had used against Colin last night and earlier that morning would be more cutting, and so closed the door gently.
She began her second shower of the day, annoyed again with the man in the other room. This shower was powerful, enveloping: she could lose herself in it, unlike the electrically heated unit at home that whirred and buzzed to produce a trickle akin to that of an emptying watering-can. She always took long showers after sex with Rob. She supposed he might read guilt into this, that she was undertaking the kind of instinctive baptism people do when struggling with shame, but she felt none of that. She just liked the shower.
What was bugging her, though, was that Rob had been right. Their affair co
uld only ever remain behind closed doors, and closed doors upon which no one was likely to come knocking other than room service. Everyone knew everyone else’s business in the Island. Wipe a tear from your eye on leaving a supermarket in a cold wind, and expect your partner to ask why you were seen sobbing in public when you made it home.
He was also right that she had ended their earlier coupling through fear of constriction. While they had seen themselves as being together for ever, in the endless love peculiar to teenagers, they envisaged it happening in different parts of the globe. Emma was a big and beautiful fish in a small pond: she had designs on larger waters. London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles, they would all fall to her charms, in what industry she wasn’t yet sure. She should be able to rise to the top of whichever pile she chose to climb: acting, music and fashion were all easy options for someone with her looks and instinctive knack for trailing broken hearts behind her, as evidenced by the legions of solitary doe-eyed boys pounding the beaches, pining for her, with ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’ on their Walkmans. Rob saw their future differently. It was to be Island-based. He would provide a large income and they would be the Island’s ‘It Couple’. They would live in a converted granite farmhouse with a pool, and a garage for as many cars as they wanted. Labradors, horses and, after a time, two children, one of each, named Hugo and Holly, who would go to the same schools as their parents had attended and follow the same paths laid out before them, leading to lives of stress-free luxury.
These opposing visions of the future were as distinct as high and low pressure, and the result was as inescapable as the storm that had broken a week before the end of the summer holidays. They were about to start the last year of their respective sixth forms, where they were each deemed the coolest and most attractive of their peers. Rob had shown Emma the broken-down St Lawrence farmhouse he wished to buy one day and restore for her. She suddenly felt restricted, as though her life was being mapped out for her without her consultation, so her response was less than exuberant. Rob was hurt, declaring her ungrateful.
‘Ungrateful? For you telling me how my life’s going to be? There’s a whole world out there, Rob! It’s nice to have options.’
‘Options on houses, or options on guys?’
‘Both. This is all too much.’
She convinced herself that the split was for the best, which was easier than admitting she might have overreacted. She knew it would sting to be dropped off by her mother on the first day of term, rather than by Rob in his open-top white VW Beetle. She would no longer feel like the unofficial Princess of the Island, and would need to control the agenda when news of their break-up rippled through the common rooms. The sting had the added barb that on the first day of term it was her best friend Sally getting out of his car at the school gates. Sally, whose gawkiness threw her own elegance into even greater relief, Sally, who only got her cast-offs, Sally, to whom boys talked so that they got to talk to herself. Sally had explained that she’d started dating Rob only after Emma had dumped him, in fact just days before term started. When Emma’s anger had increased, she had become defensive, citing Emma’s proclamation that she was unfazed at the demise of what had been a golden coupling, and her declaration that she could ‘do better than Rob’. After weeks of antipathy, Sally had admitted at a tearful café summit that she should have told Emma that Rob had asked her out, but she hadn’t known how to go about it: she’d felt awkward and guilty, paranoid that it wouldn’t last, and was scared of jinxing it. Emma and she had made up, unsure as to how the new power shift would affect their worlds but still best friends because, at their age, these things seemed cast in stone.
Over their final year at school Sally’s status and confidence grew until she had become the cool beauty everyone wished to associate with, while Emma seemed to lose her bloom and momentum. Her bitterness and confusion seeped out, and her face hardened. Her eyes seemed permanently narrowed, which gave her the intimidating look of someone predisposed to disapproval.
She became aware that the short-term boyfriends she acquired thereafter were facsimiles of Rob. She wasn’t sure whether she went for yachting alphas because she wanted Rob or simply to outdo Sally. They treated her badly, perhaps encouraged by her own lack of self-esteem. The only exception had been Dave Le Gresley, who had begged her to maintain a cross-Channel relationship when she had set off for the TEFL training college, even promising to follow her round the world if she went through with her travel plans. Dave had been too doting and would do anything for her. By then she had known only how to come second.
And here she was, still coming second.
Rob was on the phone when she came out of the bathroom.
‘Christophe, Louise on the front desk, she’s got to go … No, not because she’s Scouse, I don’t have a problem with that, but my wife will … Yeah, you know. Cheers.’
He raised his newspaper and immediately made another call. ‘Rick, it’s Rob. How’s tricks? … Great, I want five thousand worth of Acorn … Because they’re going to replace the BBC micros in schools … Yeah, not just in the Island, across the UK … And a company called Exotech … Mainly copper … I want fifteen thousand of that … I don’t care how much it is, it’s going to go up … Because it’s in electrical wiring. Trust me, the amount I’ve spunked away having that farmhouse rewired, not to mention the bloody kitchens here, means I know what I’m talking about … Good, speak soon.’
He hung up and began making notes in his Filofax, while she sat on the bed and combed her wet hair. Provoked by his silence and knowing time was short, she opened her mouth to resume their argument, then closed it. A lump in her throat had choked her off. There was only one sensible way their affair could end: lifelong silence between them. If she pushed him now that would be it. She hated herself for accepting the little he could give, but she needed it.
She hid behind her hair. ‘You should get some monogrammed towelling robes.’
‘That’s all phase-three stuff, icing on the cake. We’ll scare the working classes off first, then go upmarket. Robes cost more than towels and one in five gets nicked. More, if it’s Scousers staying.’
‘How’s the restaurant doing?’
‘Not great. Refurb overran so playing catch-up from opening mid-season. Bar’s doing well, and at least Sammy Dee hasn’t come back. Had a major fight with Dad over that, but times change. Who wants to see some fat dick with a perm and a velvet jacket singing out-of-tune Sinatra in front of some tinsel?’
‘The guests presumably. Some of them come back year after year to see him.’
‘They’ll be dead soon, and until then they can stay at the Victor Hugo or Golden Dunes or one of the other morgues. I’m looking at the next generation, and they want something different. The Royal Barge have that guy who does Eagles covers – at least that’s only ten years behind. Right, done.’
Rob put down his Filofax as Emma switched on the hairdryer.
‘You need better hairdryers too. This always takes ages.’
‘They’re all new.’
‘They’re no good.’
‘No more upgrades till I’ve paid off a chunk of the refit bill. Need people to tuck into those surf-and-turfs. Such a good mark-up on lobsters. I’d start pulling ahead a damn sight quicker if that’s all they ate.’
‘You were just buying and selling in tens of thousands! You can afford some decent bloody hairdryers.’
‘I need those tens of thousands to keep afloat.’
‘Women need a decent hairdryer.’
‘Are you complaining about the facilities in the free fuck-pad?’
‘I’d be complaining if I was paying.’
‘The old dears we get are happy to spend half the morning drying their blue rinses, and it gives their husbands time to lie on the bed and stare at the walls.’
‘You’ve got to invest in your business.’
‘I am investing in my business – too fucking much, as it happens. Can we not talk about this? It
’s stressing me out.’
Emma switched off the hairdryer. ‘I give up. I’ll let it dry on the way.’
Rob reached for her hand. ‘Em, what we’re doing, it’s okay, you know. We’re just working through a bit of unfinished business.’
‘You’re tagging this on to when we were together before.’
‘Yes. It’s part of what happened then.’
‘As opposed to now.’
‘Now is different. We’re in different places.’
‘Do you think I’m a slut?’
‘What?’
‘I’ve slept with more people in this Island than you have. I mean, you’ve been with me and Sally. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Are you trying to make me feel inadequate? What’s your point?’
‘I’m a girl you sleep with but don’t marry.’
‘I can’t marry you because I’m already married. So are you.’
She crawled across the bed and draped her arms round his neck. ‘I’m sorry … I don’t know what I’m saying today.’
‘If it’s too much, we can cool it …’
‘It’s not too much. It’s just enough. A little bit of fun in these four walls that no one knows about. Just as we agreed.’
‘Yup. Only Christophe.’
She withdrew her arms. ‘What?’
‘Christophe knows. About the room. And why I need it.’
‘Jesus, Rob.’
‘I can’t keep it from him – he’s my eyes and ears in this place. Trust me, he’s a locked safe. He’s French so he knows how these things work.’
‘I thought he was Corsican.’
‘Same thing.’
‘Oh, really? So a Jerseyman’s the same as an Englishman.’
‘Fine. He’s Corsican. You win. Point is, I trust the guy.’
Emma started picking her clothes off the floor. ‘Colin knows too.’
‘What?’
‘About us.’
‘Fucking hell! Why are you telling me this now?’
‘He only knows about the first time.’
Rob threw his head back. ‘Oh, Jesus, you nearly gave me a heart attack.’