Live a Little

by Madeleine Reiss

  ‘I’m afraid I did,’ Lottie replied. ‘I’m going to have to cancel the wedding.’

  Tina hesitated. She had another question to ask, and though she didn’t really want to hear the answer, part of her had to know. She had seen Spike touch Lottie’s leg in the car earlier, an intimate gesture, something a lover would do – and had been astonished to feel a wave of something perilously close to jealousy.

  ‘Are you in love with him?’ she asked quietly, but Lottie had already fallen asleep.

  Chapter 25

  ‘IF DEAN’S TURNING UP, I really think it’s time I took off,’ Spike said. They were sitting in the café next to the motel waiting for Tina to finish packing up the car and join them for breakfast before they got on the road again. The plan today was to go to the police station and make a statement about what had happened the day before and then drive to the Grand Canyon National Park, which was not far away.

  ‘I don’t think Dean is really going to come. It would be unlike him to drop everything in term time and fly out here. He doesn’t do spontaneous trips.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he does when his fiancée is missing. I certainly would.’

  ‘I’m not missing,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Listen, what happened between you and me, it doesn’t . . . it doesn’t actually have to be something,’ Spike said.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me it didn’t mean anything to you?’

  ‘Of course it did.’ Spike sighed. ‘It’s just that it doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker. If you want to, you can still go home, marry Dean and pick up exactly where you left off.’

  ‘So, if the person you were about to marry slept with someone else just before your wedding, you would be perfectly happy to carry on as if nothing had happened?’

  ‘If I didn’t know anything about it, I would,’ he replied.

  ‘I’m going to have to tell him.’

  ‘The fact that you feel you have to tell him is one of the reasons I like you so much,’ he said.

  ‘So you like me, do you?’ Lottie said.

  ‘Yes I do,’ Spike said earnestly. ‘I think you are a beautiful, kind, marvellous, not to mention very sexy, person.’

  ‘I can hear a “but” coming,’ Lottie said.

  ‘There’s no “but”,’ Spike said. ‘It’s just that I don’t want you to make a decision about Dean based on one night.’

  Spike was aware of having to choose his words carefully. He liked her too much to hurt her. He thought that if she ever found out that the whole thing had started because Tina had instructed him to seduce her, she would never forgive either of them. He might only have known her for a short time, but he understood enough about her to recognise that she would feel it as the deepest of betrayals.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn into a bunny boiler and make you stay with me until the end of time.’

  *

  They’re gazing into each other’s eyes; I’m not sure I can bear it, Tina thought as she walked across the café towards them. She had spent an almost sleepless night thinking about how shocked and hurt she had felt when she had discovered they had slept together. Tina hated both sleepless nights and examining her feelings. In her opinion people spent far too much time analysing their motives when what they really should be doing was living their lives. If you kept going over and over old ground all you were doing, in effect, was walking on the spot. It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about Spike over the years – there had been times when she had allowed herself to wonder what he was doing and who he was with and whether he had children – but she hadn’t thought of him with any sense of loss or longing. She had been there, done that, and there was no point dwelling on what might have been. Lottie had once accused her of compartmentalising things, as if this was a flaw in her personality, when Tina herself considered it to be a positive asset. Keeping everything apart seemed to her to be the only effective way to survive. She was certain she hadn’t been hanging onto the hope of seeing Spike again. Even starting the trip from San Francisco had not been a consciously calculated move on her part, since the last time she had heard news of him from Rachel, she understood he had moved away from the city.

  *

  ‘You’ve managed to get up!’ Lottie exclaimed, when Tina arrived at the table. She was looking at her strangely, and Tina supposed she did look less bright this morning. She was wearing an uncharacteristically muted outfit – a loose grey dress, with her hair bundled up carelessly, so that it fell in uncombed clumps against her neck.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m absolutely fine,’ Tina answered and ordered pancakes with prickly pear syrup as if to prove the truth of her words.

  ‘Spike has decided to come with us at least as far as the canyon,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Has he, indeed?’ Tina said, giving Spike a sharp look. ‘Do you think that’s such a good idea? Dean texted me this morning to say that he’s meeting us at the Best Western Hotel near the canyon.’

  ‘He’s actually coming!’ Lottie said, looking shocked. ‘I never thought he would. Didn’t you tell him that you found me and that I’m OK?’

  ‘I did but he’d already set off by then. He flew into Phoenix and is now en route in a rented car.’

  ‘Tina’s right, Lottie. I shouldn’t really be with you when he turns up,’ Spike said, placing one of his hands on hers. Tina averted her eyes. He had always been touchy-feely; it was just that she didn’t want him to be touching and feeling her sister. Tina wondered if that was the source of her agitation. It wasn’t perhaps that she wanted him; it was more that she was finding it strange that he was being like this with Lottie. He only did what you told him to do, she reminded herself.

  Tina wondered what Spike was thinking about it all. Was he as smitten with Lottie as she seemed to be with him? She stole a look at him and was annoyed that he seemed so relaxed. He was now sitting with his arms crossed, tilting back on his chair, his bloody ear sticking out of the thatch of his hair, which had been bleached a little lighter by the days he had spent in an open-top car. The man looked as if he was on some sort of a holiday.

  She hoped his leg was still hurting.

  ‘I’ll come with you today,’ Spike said, ‘but as soon as he arrives I’ll go off somewhere else and give you some space.’

  Tina thought he had the maddeningly complacent air of someone who thought he would come out of this mess as the victor. Perhaps Lottie’s godawful wedding dress wouldn’t go to waste after all.

  *

  ‘If you were a garden implement, what would you be?’ Lottie asked as she drove past the endless strip malls outside Flagstaff.

  The business at the police station had taken longer than they thought it would and so they had left much later than they had expected. Up ahead was the snowy cap of Humphreys Peak, only a few miles distant and yet seeming a world away from the tangle of roads and signs and traffic. America was surprising like that, Lottie reflected – there was always something wonderful to see in even the most unprepossessing of landscapes. She felt a clench in her stomach at the thought that they were driving towards their meeting place with Dean. She tried not to think about what it would be like to see him again. I’ll tell him I’ve changed, she thought. I’m not sure exactly how I have changed, but I know I’m not the same as I was before. I’m not the person he fell in love with anymore.

  ‘I hate this game,’ Tina said.

  ‘I’d be a spade,’ Spike interjected. He was sitting in the back of the car eating a Mountain Man sandwich of beef and grated cheese and onion.

  ‘In your case a spade is not a spade,’ Tina said sourly.

  ‘I’d be a small trowel,’ Lottie said, and Tina snorted.

  ‘More like a hoe,’ she said and Lottie glanced at her. She was definitely looking out of sorts. She hadn’t slept well the night before, which was very unusual. Her sister normally went out like a light as if nothing that had happened to her during the day held any sway over her. What had taken
place between her and Spike had clearly affected her deeply.

  ‘If I have to be something, I’d be one of those big, sit-on lawnmowers,’ she said finally, and Lottie smiled. Tina might not be quite herself but at least she couldn’t suppress her naturally competitive nature.

  They turned onto Route 180 and within a few miles they were driving on a gently undulating road that ran through a forested landscape. Blink and everything changes, Lottie thought. I’ll tell Dean he deserves someone better than me.

  *

  ‘Just walk straight ahead,’ Spike instructed them. Both Lottie and Tina (who had unwillingly capitulated) had scarves over their eyes as he led them to a lookout spot on the North Rim of the canyon. ‘OK. One. Two. Three. Take off your blindfolds!’

  Lottie let her scarf fall. She had been expecting a distant vista, but the canyon was right there, spread out at her feet. Four steps further and she would be tumbling down its seamed sides, down its castles and turrets and wide slopes to the narrow crevice at the very bottom. Lottie found it hard to even take in the stretch and depth of it. She had the strangest sensation that the world had been inverted and that she was looking down an enormous mountain range rather than up at it. Even Tina seemed to have left her bad mood behind and was staring around her in wonder.

  ‘It’s so much more beautiful than I ever imagined,’ she said, her eyes full of tears. Lottie was surprised. Her sister was being much more emotional than she usually was. She had sat dry-eyed through Toy Story 3, which was conclusive proof she had a heart of stone. Lottie put her arm around her and was aware of an initial flinch away – almost imperceptible, but definitely there – before she relaxed into the embrace. I’ve hurt her, Lottie thought.

  When they checked in to the reception at the Best Western, there was a note written in Dean’s meticulous hand waiting at the desk for Lottie. Just seeing the words on paper gave her a jolt. There was something so unmistakably particular about his handwriting that conjured up the writer more vividly than anything else could have done.

  I’m here my darling. Room 23.

  The curve of the ‘g’ and the loop of the ‘3’ were as familiar as the smell of his skin or the sound of his voice. Spike and Tina went off to their rooms saying they would go out once they had unpacked and leave her in peace to spend as much time with Dean as she wanted. Tina gave Lottie a consoling kiss on the cheek and Spike squeezed her arm and whispered, ‘Don’t be too hasty.’

  In the narrow, peach-coloured corridor she looked at herself in the mirror before she knocked on his door. She smoothed down her hair, which had tangled itself in the breezy car, and ran her tongue over her dry lips. For a moment she contemplated delaying their meeting, but after a panicked moment she reasoned there was little point in hiding away from him. This would have to be faced and the quicker it was done, the better.

  At her knock, the door opened, as if he had been waiting on the other side for her. He didn’t give her a big gushy embrace as some men might have done; instead, he stepped back into the room as she came in. It was just like him to be restrained, to wait and take his lead from her. His reticence gave her a sudden pain in her throat as if she had swallowed something too bulky. He beamed at her. He was wearing his cobalt-blue shirt, the one they had bought together for a holiday to Turkey. She remembered he had agonised about the concept of short shirtsleeves.

  She could see his smile begin to fade when she didn’t go immediately to him, but he wouldn’t take this in itself as a particular sign of anything. They had always been a little awkward with each other after they had spent time apart. It was as if they had to get the measure of each other all over again. Sometimes she suspected that he was unsure of her at such moments, even a little resentful that she had been somewhere he hadn’t with people he had never met and changed as a result in a way that might exclude him. She had always found this tendency of his endearing in the past, but now it terrified her. This time they wouldn’t ease back into each other with a touch or some long-running joke or a shared bottle of wine.

  ‘I was so worried about you,’ he said. ‘What happened? Tina sent me a brief text, but I didn’t really understand.’

  Lottie was a little relieved that they would at least have this to talk about before she had to tell him the rest.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ she said. ‘I was kidnapped by a raging Princess Diana fan who thought I looked like her, so she locked me in her house and fed me butterfly cakes and Earl Grey tea.’

  ‘It must have been terrifying, even though you’re making light of it. Tina said you were imprisoned in there for hours.’

  ‘I was scared for a while,’ she admitted. She sat down and patted the space on the bed next to her. It would be easier to explain what she had to if she didn’t have to look directly into his face.

  ‘What on earth possessed you to set off walking alone at that time of night?’ Dean asked.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Lottie answered.

  ‘Why couldn’t you sleep? Were you thinking about Mia? That’s usually what gives you insomnia.’

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she said. She turned with an effort so that she was looking squarely at him. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘What have you gone and done now?’ he asked. He was trying to keep his voice light, but she heard the tightness in it. ‘Let me guess . . . you’ve developed a taste for doughnuts.’

  ‘I slept with someone else,’ she said. Her heart pounded.

  ‘Who? When?’

  ‘We took someone else on the trip with us. I mean . . . it wasn’t planned or anything. He’s Tina’s ex-boyfriend. He’s going to Mexico.’ She was aware that she wasn’t explaining it very well. His frozen face was harder to bear than she thought it would be.

  ‘Are you in love with him?’ he asked.

  She had known beforehand that this would be his first question. She knew he thought her a serious person, not given to impulsiveness, and she wondered whether this perception of her had been created by him or presented by her. It wasn’t true. She hadn’t taken any major risks until now, not because she hadn’t felt that she was capable of such behaviour but rather because her steadiness and reliability had come to be what was expected of her. It was what she expected of herself.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I am.’

  ‘But you’re not sure?’ he said, and she hated herself for the look of hope in his eyes. She would have given almost anything to spare him this pain.

  ‘I hardly know him,’ she said.

  ‘So you were just so attracted to him, you couldn’t help yourself.’ He sounded angry.

  ‘I am attracted to him,’ she said, seeing him recoil at her words, ‘but that wasn’t really what made me do it.’

  ‘What did make you do it?’

  ‘It felt as if I needed to find something out. It’s hard to explain.’

  ‘And did you? Find anything out?’

  ‘It was partly that he made me feel beautiful. I know it’s shallow. I know it’s not the sort of thing you would expect me to want or need . . .’ She trailed off, overcome by his look of hurt.

  ‘And I don’t make you feel beautiful?’ he asked, his voice so quiet she could barely hear him. He sounded almost as if he blamed himself.

  ‘I expect your sister was standing in the sidelines cheering you on,’ he said.

  ‘It wasn’t anything to do with Tina,’ she said, although she felt she wasn’t being entirely truthful. She knew that Tina had wanted to cast doubt on her decision to marry Dean, that that was why she’d had a change of heart about taking Spike along with them on the trip – but she hadn’t actively encouraged them to get together.

  ‘Did he know you were engaged to be married?’ Dean asked.

  She nodded her head.

  ‘The fucking bastard.’ Dean got up and walked over to the window. Lottie could see his shoulders shaking as he stood with his back to her. She thought perhaps he was fighting tears. Still doing what he had been b
rought up to do.

  ‘Well, you can tell him the wedding’s off,’ he said. ‘That should make both of you happy.’

  ‘It doesn’t make me happy.’ Lottie was perilously close to tears herself, but didn’t want to give vent to them in front of Dean. This had been her doing and she hadn’t earned the right to grieve. She thought if she saw any softening in him she would go to him, but it seemed he had made up his mind.

  ‘I was so certain marrying you was what I wanted,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well you found out in the nick of time.’ He turned back to her, his face suffused with anger. ‘And me too.’

  It was perhaps at this moment, seeing him so changed by what he had discovered, that she really understood what she had risked.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, and her whole heart was in her words. He was the same as he had always been.

  ‘Not quite enough, it seems,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s gone out for a walk with Tina. He wanted to give me some space.’

  ‘How considerate of him.’ Dean’s face was blazing with anger. ‘Where have they gone?’

  She had never seen him look like this. He was usually so controlled.

  ‘They won’t come back while you’re still here,’ Lottie said.

  ‘So the plan is you see me off, then phone them to give them the all-clear?’

  ‘There isn’t a plan, Dean,’ Lottie said. ‘There really isn’t.’ She was worried about what he was going to do. This version of Dean was not one she knew how to deal with.

  ‘Tell me where they’ve gone.’

  ‘They’ve gone on one of the trails into the canyon. The Bright Angel, I think it’s called. It’s a fairly long walk. They could be anywhere.’

  ‘Call them and tell them to come back,’ said Dean. He was shaking. ‘I want to meet the bastard who has wrecked my life.’