“Because Alasdair doesn’t approve. Look.” He draws away from me, slipping his fingers out of my hair, and the space he leaves between us is suddenly the size of the world – while in the seat beside my father, Alasdair is sitting with his arms folded and one eyebrow sardonically raised, looking right at Aidan.
“Oh, come on. It’s like having another dad.” The bad thing about conventions being a family: even when your actual parents are busy, there’s always another one just hanging out in the room, watching you…
Aidan laughs quietly, and although there’s still a gap between us, suddenly it feels like nothing at all. His hand finds mine under the table, squeezes it once…then lets go.
I wait for him to say something – anything. He doesn’t.
Right.
Okay.
Time for sensible-Lexi to take control again.
“I should go to bed. Some of us have got to pack up a convention tomorrow – especially seeing as someone else probably won’t be on top form.” When I stand, it feels as though someone has stolen my feet. It’s like I’m drifting just above the ground.
Aidan reaches under the tablecloth and emerges holding my shoes. He passes them to me; when I take them, both his hands close around mine. “Got them? I’ll walk you back to your room.”
I’m so tired that I’m shaking. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. “I think I can remember my way around a hotel.” It’s sensible-Lexi’s attempt to distract him from the shaking. I wouldn’t want him to think he was causing it, now would I?
“Great – then maybe you can help me find my room? I think I left it somewhere on the second floor…” He tails off when he sees I’ve gone scarlet. My cheeks are on fire, and not in a good way. “Oh boy. That came out horribly wrong, didn’t it?” he blurts out. “Not like that. I’m not that guy.”
“Not the guy who’d try to invite me to his room, or…?”
“No. And definitely not the guy who’d try quite such a sleazy line, either.” He jerks his head towards Dad and Bea and Alasdair (still watching, still eyebrowing) and everyone else. “And most definitely not in front of your father. And company.”
“Well, my room’s on the second floor too, so we might as well go together,” I say, more to my shoes than to him. I can’t quite bring myself to actually say it to his face. “Otherwise it’ll just look like we’re making a big deal out of leaving separately, and Dad’ll be all over that – Bea or not.”
Alasdair swivels in his seat to watch us walk out.
It probably doesn’t help matters that just before the door closes behind us, I turn and blow him a kiss…
The staircase winds around the lobby at the end of the hall, marble and wrought iron and deep, soft carpet that tickles my feet when I step on it. I can’t help checking the stairs behind me, just in case I’m leaving a trail of grubby footprints – but it looks like I’m in the clear. The stairs are lined with mirrors all the way up – small ones framed like pictures, each with its own little light above it – and as we walk up, I catch glimpses of us; Aidan and me. Our doubles walk up a staircase just like the one we’re on, with all the same twists and turns but in reverse. They’re dressed the same and their hair’s the same and their faces are the same and she’s even barefoot and he’s missing his tie – but they don’t feel like they are us. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe these aren’t mirrors but tiny windows into a world beyond the wall – somewhere else, where we are something else, someone else. Maybe he’s Haydn, and she’s that other Lexi – the one who’s started taking control of my brain when he’s around, the one who doesn’t care. Maybe.
Or maybe they’re just mirrors.
“We should have taken the lift,” groans Aidan – who’s dragging himself up the stairs like someone tied weights to his ankles.
“Feeble,” I laugh.
“It’s all right for you though, isn’t it? You’re used to this two-o’clock-in-the-morning running-around-hotels business.”
“And you aren’t?”
“Nope. Like I told you, I grew up in a respectable house. Cup of cocoa, hot water bottle, tucked up in bed by nine o’clock every night.”
Doubtful.
“Are you saying I’m not respectable?” I spin to face him, skirt whirling out around me – and for a second, a heartbeat, the time it takes to breathe in, I can picture how it goes through the looking glass; how he sweeps me off my feet, how he pulls me to him…
On the step below me and leaning on the bannister rail, he’s shorter than I am – just. I hold my shoes in one hand and put the other on my hip, standing on tiptoe to make myself as tall as I can – and repeat my question. “I said, are you saying I’m not respectable?”
“You, Lexi,” he says, putting his hand on top of mine so his fingers rest against my waist, “are…”
Somewhere further up the stairs there’s a clatter of metal and crockery; the sound of someone putting a room-service tray outside their bedroom door.
I’m what? What am I, Aidan? Finish your sentence!
Except he doesn’t. He leaves it; a butterfly in mid-air and me with no net to catch it. Instead, something in his expression shifts and he looks past me, up the stairs, to wherever the sound came from.
“You know the best thing about hotels at two o’clock in the morning?” he asks. His hand is still resting on mine and I can still feel his fingers against my waist through the fabric of the dress. He doesn’t wait for me to answer, but snatches my free hand in his and bounds up the stairs, towing me with him. One of my shoes slips from my grip and falls, bouncing down the stairs behind us, but I don’t care. I leave it there, like a glass slipper.
“Everything,” he says.
The second-floor corridor is deserted. Of course it is; it’s the dead hours of the night, when it’s too late to stay up any longer but too early for anyone to even consider getting up. People talk about midnight being the witching hour, but anyone who’s been up all night knows that the witching hour starts at one thirty and ends at dawn.
We are deep into magic time.
The corridor stretches ahead, like hotel corridors do. Long and narrow, softly lit and deeply carpeted; punctuated by closed doors. “See that?” Aidan points to a dinner tray outside one of them, about halfway down.
I’m not sure I follow. “Somebody’s washing-up?”
“Come on,” he whispers, and tiptoes up to it.
“What are you doing?”
“Shhh.” He presses a finger to his lips like a toddler, then crouches down in front of the tray and carefully and quietly starts unloading everything from it onto the floor. Two plates and their metal covers, two glasses, cutlery, napkins, an empty wine bottle, a bowl with some crumbs in and the cloth it was all standing on (complete with sauce stains), which he folds up and drops on top of the lot.
And then he picks up the tray.
“What are you doing?” I hiss again, seeing as he didn’t answer last time. “We’ll get in trouble! Are you even allowed to do that?”
“Technically, I’m not taking anything – am I?” He brandishes the tray – it’s large and round and made from stainless steel polished to look like silver. I can see why they put a cloth on it. “It’s not like I can fit it in my bag.”
“So?”
“Up a floor.”
“What now? One tray’s not enough for you, so you want to look for another one?”
He rolls his eyes. “So we can disappear if someone catches us, and they won’t know which rooms we’re in.”
“And you think this will make a difference?”
“Obviously. And would you shush? They’ll hear you!”
Magic time.
“You want me to stand on the tray.”
It’s not a question. Why would it be a question? It’s a statement of idiocy.
“Trust me, Lexi…”
“On. The. Tray. Where people had food. You want me to stand on it.” I look from Aidan to the tray on the floor in front of me.
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
“But…tray. I haven’t even got shoes on!”
“Doesn’t work with shoes. Well, maybe with trainers but not with…” He looks at the shoe I’m still clutching. “You lost one.”
“Rather lose a shoe than my mind,” I say pointedly – all at the volume of a loud whisper.
“This is not what I expected from someone who climbed out on a roof just to look at the stars.” He folds his arms across his chest and it somehow makes him look both younger and older at once. Or maybe it’s the combination of the suit and the hair, and the way his glasses have slipped halfway down his nose…
“That had nothing to do with the stars. I needed the air.”
“Bollocks. Now get on the tray, will you?”
“Fine.” I step onto the tray, not quite believing I’m actually doing it. “Happy?”
“Right.” He pulls off his jacket and throws it on the floor…then looks at it and scoops it back up again, folding it carefully over itself and placing it in a neat pile. “Put your feet flat.” He undoes his cuffs – I hadn’t even realized his sleeves don’t have buttons at the end but cufflinks. He’s wearing cufflinks. He palms them both, drops them into the pocket of his trousers and rolls up his shirtsleeves.
And I’m standing on a hotel room-service tray.
Right.
This is…odd.
“Feet flat, and try to keep your weight even between them, okay?”
“We’re seriously not going to talk about my weight.”
“I didn’t…I…you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know anything.”
He smirks. “You’re the one who said that, not me.” He steps behind me – and I turn around. “No,” he laughs, putting his hands on my shoulders and turning me back around. “That way. Ready?”
“But what…woah.”
Suddenly I’m flying down the corridor faster than I could run, the tray sliding along the carpet like a surfboard on water as Aidan pushes me along. His hands are spread across my back and the sound of my own laughter bounces off the walls and the closed bedroom doors.
My tray veers wildly left – and I only just manage to jump off before it crashes into a side table with a sculpture of a horse on top of it.
“That was amazing!”
Aidan leans over to sweep up the tray and is upright again in one easy motion. “Told you.”
“Smug.”
“Want to go again?”
“Yes!”
He drops the tray and I wince, expecting it to clang – but the carpet is too soft and too deep, and all it does is make a low fmmmfff noise. This time, I don’t need to be persuaded.
This time, I feel his hands drop away from my back halfway along the corridor – I’m on my own, surfing the corridor. The panic makes me wobble, makes me throw my hands out either side of me to try and keep my balance…and in the process, somehow I manage to spin the tray around so I’m going backwards, facing the way I’ve come.
And there he is, in the middle of the corridor – looking smaller and taller and younger and older; Aidan and Haydn all at once. Watching me as I glide to a stop.
Around the corner behind him there’s a muted ping from one of the lifts.
Someone’s coming.
Aidan races up the corridor, past me, snatching up his jacket as I hop off the tray – and we run for the stairs, back down to the second floor, trying not to laugh…and failing. We leave the tray in the middle of the third-floor corridor.
He stops beside the third door on the second floor; our floor, but his room, checking over his shoulder in case. “Quick, get in.”
“No one’s around, Aidan…”
“Sure about that?” He leans back to look at the stairs; a shadow flickers across the wall.
“Okay, whatever.”
The electronic lock buzzes as it registers his keycard and he throws the door open; the handle bangs against the wall as we half-fall into the darkness – and then the lights come on as he slots his key into the cardholder.
“Wow.”
“Errr, sorry. I wasn’t expecting…”
“Did someone break into your room and go through all your stuff, or…?”
Aidan has the sense to look ashamed – and quite right too, because his hotel room is awful. Not in the sense that it’s a bad room, but it’s a tip. There’s clothes piled on the bed, on the back of the chair, on the floor. A towering pile of paper is balanced by the kettle, topped off by a red pen and a load of what look like biscuit crumbs. An opened multipack of crisps is half in, half out of his bag on the floor and the bin is full of empty packets. The door to the bathroom is ajar, the light on…but I’m just too scared to look inside. If he’s done this to a bedroom in twenty-four(ish) hours, what could he have achieved in a bathroom in that time?
“You are a massive slob!”
“No, no. I was just, uh, in a rush.” He bundles up the clothes from the floor, the bed and the chair and hurls them into the bottom of the wardrobe – which, as it’s one of those completely open cupboards with a couple of hangers in it, does absolutely nothing. We both watch as his jeans roll straight back down the pile of discarded clothing and flop onto the floor in front of the door.
“Yes. Yes, that’s so much better.”
“You want something to drink?” he asks, looking around the room. He umms a bit, peers into a cupboard, looks under a discarded T-shirt and – eventually – points at the thimble-sized kettle.
“Tea? It’s the middle of the night.”
“All I’ve got. Sorry. English Breakfast?” He holds up the little paper-wrapped teabag with a flourish.
“I repeat – middle of the night.”
“You’re right. Something moodier. Which I, umm, don’t have. There’s instant coffee?” His voice drifts out from behind the bathroom door as he turns the tap on to fill the kettle.
“I don’t drink coffee. It gives me panic attacks.”
“You what?”
“Caffeine.” I shrug.
“I’d never have finished the book if I didn’t drink coffee. I drank a lot of coffee in the last third. You should have seen the state of the edits when I got them back. Apparently I went three whole pages without using any punctuation at one point.”
“Saving it for winky faces, were you?”
“Winky faces.” He shakes his head and rummages through the little bowl full of teabags next to the kettle again. “Seeing as you mocked my breakfast tea, there’s a herbal one. Want that?”
“What kind is it?”
He holds it up suspiciously and peers at it. “You don’t want it.”
“You’re making decisions for me now, are you?”
“Trust me,” he says, dropping the still-wrapped bag straight into the bin. “Nobody wants that one.”
“Fine.”
I watch him fiddle with the cups and rub a slightly grubby spoon with his fingers, like that’s going to help, then turn back towards me with one eyebrow raised. “Winky faces, though. What did you call it? The Winky Face of Idiocy?”
“Nicked it from Bede.” I plonk myself down on the end of his bed and flop back along it, staring straight up at the ceiling. Messy or not, his room is way better than mine. For a start, my kettle’s somehow been glued to the base so it’s impossible to take into the bathroom; I’ve been using the tiny little mugs to fill it, scuttling to the bathroom and back.
“Really?” Aidan finds another teabag and rips the little paper wrappers off both of them, dropping one into each of the two mugs. “Umm…I used this one earlier, but I did rinse it out after. You don’t mind reusing a mug?” he adds hopefully.
I prop myself up on my elbows. “As long as I’m not reusing a teabag. Because Haydn Swift or not, that’s pushing it. And that’s another thing – you never told me about your Detroit trip.”
“Detroit trip?”
“Your email, when you said you were in
Detroit for a film meeting or something?”
“Oh, yeah… Shit.” He’s spilled boiling water all over the place while pouring, and now he’s using the discarded T-shirt to clean it up.
There’s a towel on the bedside table – of course there is. I stretch across the bed for it and throw it at him. It wraps itself elegantly around his head. “Are you actually house-trained?”
“House-trained, yes. Hotel-trained…not so much. Oh, shit it.”
The little milk-carton thing for the tea has exploded all over him.
“How come when you try and pour it, there’s never enough? But get it on your shirt…” He dabs at it with the towel. He makes it worse and somehow manages to smear it all over his suit trousers too. “Excuse me a sec.”
And he dives into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him…
Except the latch doesn’t click, and the door ever so slowly creaks open again. Not much – maybe a couple of centimetres.
But from where I am on the bed, if I were to lean forward just a tiny bit, through the crack in the door I could see the reflection of his back as he moves around the bathroom.
I try not to.
I really, really do.
I lean forward.
He doesn’t bother unbuttoning most of his shirt; instead, he pulls it up and over his head and drops it out of sight. His muscles flex under his skin as he moves around, picking up a T-shirt from the side of the sink and shrugging it on – and even though it’s only a glimpse, only a second, I shut my eyes and try to get the picture to stick.
The hinges of the door squeak, and when I open my eyes he’s standing in front of me wearing a pair of black joggers and a T-shirt with a hole near the hem.
“And they say writing’s a glamorous job,” I laugh.
He shrugs, stretching an arm awkwardly round behind his neck to scratch his shoulder.
“So, Detroit?”
“Mmm. They want to move a scene of the book to Detroit for the film. There’s this house there that’s been taken over by artists and—”
“Which scene?”
“What?”
“Which scene do they want to move?”
“I keep forgetting that you probably know it as well as I do,” he says with a quiet smile. “The scene in the Flaxman Gallery. The one with the windows.”
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