Despite the delicious, trembling warmth that was tiptoeing through her bit by bit, Megan was aware of a tiny nagging voice coming from a very remote part of her mind, asking her what the hell she was doing. She ignored it, instead removing her hands from Ollie’s pockets and sliding them over either side of his face. As he bent his head to kiss her again, Megan was sure she saw a flash of something like sadness pass across his eyes.
32
‘I don’t think anyone’s coming.’
Hope and Charlie were sitting in the bar of the hotel, two full cocktail glasses on the table in front of them. They’d spent the rest of the afternoon after Hope’s massage wandering around Mala Strana, picking up trinkets and giggling at the faces on the wooden puppets that were leering out at them through the glass-fronted windows of gift shops. As the hours had slipped away, so had the uneasy atmosphere that had snuck its way between them.
Ignoring the throb of their chilly fingers and toes, Hope and Charlie strolled hand in hand up the steep, winding hill to Prague Castle, where they marvelled at the dedication – and apparent immunity to the icy temperatures – of the guards outside the entrance. Looking utterly cool, calm and unflinching in their furry grey hats and matching lapels, they glared steadfastly ahead through their sunglasses, a rifle clutched tightly in one white-gloved hand. Charlie stood next to one of their blue and white striped sentry boxes, laughing as he saluted into Hope’s camera.
To escape the determinedly freezing weather, which seemed to be growing colder with every rotation of the long hand around each of the city’s clocks, they explored the inside of St George’s Basilica. Hope gasped with awe as she squinted up at the paintings covering the vaulted ceiling, the reds and golds so regal in the dim light of the chapel. The open space was peppered with shifting dust, and she could smell age and history in the air. Crossing the threshold into these places felt to Hope as if she was stepping into the past, and the magnitude of that feeling blissfully eradicated the mess of other emotions that were coursing through her. For those few precious hours, Hope had let herself off the hook and allowed herself to simply absorb what she was seeing. The longer she spent in Prague, the more she believed that the magic in the city was real – she could feel it.
‘Perhaps Ollie finally wore Megan down?’ suggested Charlie, a mischievous look on his face.
Hope tutted. ‘I doubt it. Not after what she was saying last night.’
‘Oh?’ Charlie leaned across the table.
‘I can’t tell you,’ Hope said. ‘Girls’ honour and all that.’
‘I see.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘In that case, I’d better not tell you what he was saying about her, either.’
That got her attention.
‘What? You have to tell me!’
Charlie shook his head. ‘Can’t. Boys’ code and all that.’
‘Oh, all right.’ Hope gave in, throwing up her hands in defeat. ‘I’ll tell you, but only if you tell me and swear not to say anything the next time we see them.’
Charlie brought two fingers up to his forehead in a mock salute. ‘Scout’s promise.’
So Hope told him, watching him frown as she explained what Megan had said about not having enough room in her life for a boyfriend, and how she wanted to put her career first.
‘Sounds barmy to me,’ he said, sucking on his straw.
‘But she also said that she doesn’t feel as if it’s right, you know, in her gut. And you should never ignore a gut feeling.’ As she said it, Hope was reminded of the gut feeling she’d experienced earlier that day, in the massage parlour, and felt her cheeks begin to redden with discomfort.
‘But what if that gut feeling is just fear?’ Charlie said. ‘Sometimes your instincts can be right, I agree – but there’s an awful lot of fear involved a lot of the time. Ollie didn’t say all that much to me, to be honest. I think he’s too much of a decent bloke to talk about Megan behind her back, but he did say that he’d like them to be more than just friends. If you ask me, those two seem made for each other, and my gut feeling is that they belong together.’
She wondered what Charlie would say to her when she voiced her concerns about their relationship, that they may have cut off a bigger slice of the pie than they could manage. Would he understand, or would he just accuse her, too, of being crippled by a fear that would turn out to be unfounded?
Just then they were interrupted by the sound of laughter coming from the hotel lobby. The door into the bar was propped open just enough for the two of them to catch a glimpse of Ollie and Megan scurrying past towards the stairs, their arms wrapped around each other.
Hope let out a small squeak of delight, and Charlie grinned, smug in the knowledge that his prediction had been correct. There was no doubt where Megan and Ollie were heading, and it definitely wasn’t out to dinner with them.
‘I wonder where Sophie has got to?’ she said after they’d gone, downing the last of her drink and putting the empty glass on the table. ‘I haven’t seen her all day.’
‘Perhaps her boyfriend turned up at last?’ Charlie suggested, glancing at his watch.
‘I wish I knew her surname, so I could check on her at reception,’ she told him. ‘I worry about her wandering the streets all by herself.’
‘That’s because you’re lovely.’ Charlie smiled at her. ‘But don’t forget, this is a girl who’s been all over the world – she probably knows this place better than we know Manchester.’
He was right, of course, but Hope couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was going on with their new friend. When they’d all agreed to meet in the hotel bar the previous evening, Sophie had nodded along with enthusiasm, but it hadn’t quite reached her eyes. Perhaps Robin had turned up early, or maybe Sophie just wanted to spend some time on her own, rather than with two middle-aged bores like herself and Charlie. She wasn’t the girl’s mother, after all.
The clock on the wall behind the bar was nearing seven-thirty. ‘Come on, then,’ she said to Charlie, unable to stop herself giggling at the speed with which he ejected from his chair. ‘Let’s go and get some food in you before you pass out.’
Outside, the cold bit into them like a rabid dog, senseless and unyielding in its grip. Hope felt the skin on her cheeks tighten, and stuffed her gloved hands as deep as they would go into her pockets. The clouds that had hung over the sky like a wet blanket all day had finally shifted, and looking up she could see a multitude of stars scattered across the blackness.
It was cold enough to silence their conversation, so Hope listened instead to the crunching of the frost beneath her boots and the various strains of music leaking out from the windows and doorways of the bars they passed. It was never silent in Prague, but it wasn’t a noisy city either. Where Manchester would assault her ears with a cacophony of rumbling traffic, passing planes and grinding roadworks, Prague filled them pleasantly with song.
It was Saturday night, and the beautiful cobbled streets of Wenceslas Square were packed with a shouting array of stag and hen dos, all doing their home country no favours at all with their atrocious behaviour. Hope grimaced as a passing hen, decked from head to toe in the traditional getup of feather boa, bright pink tutu, fishnet tights and giant inflatable penis, staggered sideways into an overflowing bin and promptly kicked a pile of rubbish into the air.
‘Disgusting,’ she muttered to Charlie, but he was distracted by a queue of lads waiting to order giant klobasa sausages from a stall. The groom, who was being held up by two guffawing friends, was wearing a bright green dress and a blonde wig.
‘What would you like?’ the Czech woman on the stall asked, polite even in the face of such a ridiculous drunken display.
‘Ham, egg and tits, please, love,’ he bellowed, earning himself a rapturous round of applause from his mates.
The woman rolled her eyes but didn’t retort, and Hope was appalled to feel Charlie’s body shaking with silent mirth.
They arrived at the restaurant without getting lost once, wh
ich was a good thing, Hope remarked to Charlie, because any longer outside in the cold and Prague would have two new statues to add to its already huge collection. It was wonderfully cosy in the basement dining hall, with a fire crackling merrily at one end and candlelight dancing up the walls towards the domed ceiling. The wooden bench seats were decorated with cushions, and old framed photographs of Prague were dotted around on the brick walls.
They ordered a bottle of red wine, which arrived in its very own wicker basket, and dawdled deliberately over the menu, waiting for their fingers and toes to return to normal temperature. The ambience in here was so different to the chaos of tourists up in Wenceslas Square, and Hope could feel herself relaxing more with every delicious sip.
Charlie took out his phone and placed it on the table, frowning slightly.
‘Something wrong?’ she asked.
‘There’s no signal down here,’ he grunted.
‘Are you expecting a call?’ She tried to keep the suspicious edge out of her voice.
He sighed. ‘No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.’
‘Is everything okay?’ she asked. He suddenly looked so tired, and so much older than his forty-eight years, that Hope was genuinely concerned.
‘Of course.’ He feigned indifference. ‘It’s totally fine, love. Don’t worry.’
‘I do worry,’ she said gently. ‘I worry because I care.’
‘I care, too.’ He gazed at her until her eyes began to burn, and she dropped them down to her menu. She watched from beneath her lashes as he fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth, his wine glass, the plastic sheaths of the menu, his phone – he was agitated, and she had no idea what to do or say to help him.
It was a relief when the bread appeared, still warm from the oven, and Charlie’s hands at last had a use. They hadn’t discussed what they would order, and Hope was surprised to discover they’d both picked the same dish – Czech fried cheese with a baked potato and tartar sauce. Charlie almost always had meat, and there was an abundance of it on offer. When she questioned him, he shrugged.
‘I fancied a change.’
Something about the way he said it, so flippant and throwaway, made the foreboding she’d experienced that afternoon creep back through Hope. The persistent doubt that had been rising like hot milk in a pan over the past few days had reached such a height now that she could no longer ignore it. At this moment, sitting here in this beautiful restaurant, Hope could put her hand across her heart and say that she wanted to be with Charlie. But when she looked further forward into the future, towards their shared life in Manchester, her confidence in what they had together began to unravel. If she didn’t know with her whole heart that she and Charlie were going to make it, then was it fair of her to stay with him at all? She had already broken one set of vows and it had nearly destroyed her – she wasn’t about to do that again.
She thought of Sophie, so resolute about her feelings, so secure in the love she and Robin felt for one another. How lucky she was, thought Hope, to have found something so strong and so real. Even in her very best moments with Dave, Hope had never known in her gut that he was the right man for her. That was why she understood where Megan was coming from – if neither of them could have what Sophie and Robin had, was it really worth the effort? Perhaps not. Perhaps it was better to be alone. While she hated the idea of losing Charlie, she had to admit that the idea of being completely independent appealed to her, too. Something had changed inside Hope since she’d come to Prague, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep a lid on it.
Charlie excused himself, but instead of heading towards the toilets, he jogged up the stairs towards the exit. Hope turned her eyes back to the table and took a deep breath – his phone was gone, too.
33
Sophie was dreaming. She knew it was a dream, because her hair was long and she could feel the warmth of the sun on her shoulders. Robin was running down the beach ahead of her, his bare feet leaving prints in the wet sand.
She often had these dreams, the kind where she was consciously aware that what she was seeing wasn’t real, but unconscious enough to enjoy it. She was at the helm of her own imagination, steering her way through her favourite memories, and it felt fantastic.
Sophie watched as Dream Robin launched himself into an untidy cartwheel, laughing as his hands and feet sprayed goblets of soggy sand into the air.
‘Monkey!’ she yelled, running after him and leaping up on to his back. Robin’s legs buckled in surprise, but he managed not to drop her, instead grasping her feet in both hands and tickling her until she shrieked and squirmed against him.
‘Who are you calling Monkey?’ he laughed, as she wrapped her legs tighter around him, knotting her ankles together and burying her face in his neck.
‘You!’ she cried, wriggling against his back. She was only wearing a bikini, tatty denim shorts and her locket, and her hair was wet from a recent swim. As she looked to the left, away from the ocean, Sophie could see palm trees, and above them a sky as tropically blue as a peacock’s feather. Where were they? she wondered vaguely. Sri Lanka? Bali? Mexico? Malaysia? Thailand? Did it even matter?
Robin came to a halt and sat down, twisting Sophie around so she was facing him, her legs still on either side of his body. She was missing the view of the horizon, that mesmerising line where ocean and sky merged to a shimmering point, the promise of adventure whispering out from beyond where the eye could ever take you, but Sophie didn’t care. The view of Robin was far superior – his eyes, so full of joy, the pupils widening to take her in; his mouth, so generous and welcoming, the bottom lip full and darkened by the sun; and his tangle of golden hair, stuck to the sides of his face and beginning to crisp as the salt water dried. She gazed at him as she always did, with wonder and with love, and he moved his head forward to rub his nose against her cheek.
‘Let’s never go home,’ he said, his lips sending a whisper of pleasure down her spine. ‘Let’s stay here forever.’
She smiled. ‘What about our families? What would we tell them?’
‘They would understand,’ he said, a seriousness in his eyes. ‘I don’t need anyone but you, anyway.’
Sophie opened her mouth to agree with him, but the dream had rendered her suddenly mute. Her jaw gaped ajar, but her words weren’t even whispers. She screamed the thoughts at him over and over, but he couldn’t hear her. He simply stared past her towards the ocean, a serene smile lifting the corners of his mouth.
‘Me too!’ she thought, trying to fight the limitations of her dream. She could feel the edges of her picture beginning to crumble, as the image and feeling of him slipped away like sand through a sieve, and she wrapped her arms around Robin, clinging on to him with alarm. When she braved a look at his face once again, the beach around them had grown darker. A sudden wind blew in and stirred the palm trees into a shuffling, cracking frenzy. Sophie’s contentment began to break off into jigsaw pieces of fear and uncertainty, all hard edges and jagged holes. Now Robin was starting to darken, too, his smile lost in the fog. Sophie was no longer on the beach, but on the very edge of a precipice, the wind pushing at her and threatening to topple her right over. She blinked with desperation, trying with all her might to claw back the sunny part of her dream, but it was gone. In place of her beach was the gloomy, unfamiliar shape of her hotel room, the only light coming from a pinch between the heavy drawn curtains.
The bed beside her was empty, and a howl of frustration rose up from her chest. She closed her eyes again and forced herself to breathe deeply, willing her dream to come back and steal her away. She wanted to be back on that beach with Robin, the smell of salt in the air and the warm breeze caressing them as they caressed one another. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks.
Alas, sleep was not forthcoming, and after a time Sophie gave up and peeled her eyes back open, staring into the shadowy corners of the room as she tried to decide what to do. She had a vague inkling that she was supposed to meet Hope, Charlie and the others down
stairs in the bar, but she couldn’t remember what time they’d agreed. And anyway, she reminded herself as her bleariness cleared, Ollie and Megan wouldn’t be expecting her to make an appearance after her earlier collapse on the Charles Bridge. She blushed as she recalled the way she’d clung to Ollie’s back like a limpet. Maybe that was why she’d been piggybacking with Robin in her dream? How would she ever face him and Megan again? God knows what they thought of her after all the puking and the fainting. Sophie felt her heart begin to speed up and forced herself to take a deep breath.
She reached for her phone to find six missed calls, all from the same number, and quickly shuffled herself up into a sitting position. There were text messages, too, and she skim-read them in turn, her fingers nimble on the screen as she tapped out a reply.
This time tomorrow, Robin should be with her. The thought was enough to propel her out from beneath the covers into the bathroom, where she ran the hot tap until it was scorching and splashed water across her cheeks. Her earlier sickness had left her with a greyish pallor, and her eyes were bloodshot, but at least the nausea seemed to have gone. She noticed that her hands were trembling slightly as she dried them, and tried to remember the last time she’d eaten anything. There had been that pretzel, but most of that had come back up. And then Ollie had told her to try and nibble at the hotel room’s complimentary biscuits when he dropped her off at her door. Had she done as instructed? Sophie couldn’t remember.
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