‘Stayed in, lay on the sofa. Watched Real Housewives with Joe. You?’
‘Had a drink with a few girls from work then went home. Hamish was out.’
‘Mmmm. Oh, look, I think this is the street.’ I looked at Google Maps on my phone. ‘Should be along here.’ Thank God it was a short walk. I was a) hungover, b) still had no idea whether to say anything to Lex about Hamish or not. And c) I was a terrible liar. So I didn’t want to spend any more time discussing the previous night than was absolutely necessary.
We wandered along until we reached a pink door. Number seventeen. I knocked on the door and a blonde woman in white uniform answered it.
‘Hello, I’m Polly,’ I said, ‘from Posh! magazine. We’ve got an appointment.’
‘Yes, hello,’ said the blonde. ‘Please come in.’
We went in.
‘If you could both just read these forms and sign them, then we can get started,’ she said, handing us both a pen and a clipboard. ‘You’re both having the banya, is that correct?’
I nodded. And then looked down at the form in front of me. It was the usual thing. Alarming small print about sudden death being your own responsibility and so on. I signed it and handed it back.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Do you know much about the treatment?’
‘No,’ we chorused.
‘So the Russian banya treatment it is a detox process,’ she said reverently. ‘A treatment that incorporates extremes of heat and cold to remove toxins from your body.’
‘How extreme?’ said Lex.
‘It will be hot,’ she said, seriously. ‘And then you will be brushed with some birch leaves to improve your circulation, before going into our bochka…’
‘What’s that?’ I interrupted.
She smiled again. ‘It is a plunge pool. Quite cold. Freezing. And then you will get out and go in the flotation tank for a few minutes. And then you will be wrapped and have some ginger tea.’
‘Fuck,’ said Lex.
‘Lovely,’ I said quickly.
‘So if you would like to follow me.’ She led us down a twisting staircase to a changing room. ‘There are towels and dressing gowns. If you don’t mind getting changed then I will be waiting outside.’
We stripped off and put our bikinis on. ‘I’d quite like it if this got rid of my cellulite,’ I said, looking over my shoulder at the backs of my thighs in a full-length mirror.
‘I want to come out of this looking like I’ve survived an African famine, but only just,’ said Lex, poking her stomach with a finger.
‘Worth a shot, right?’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s go and be beaten.’
We followed the spa lady back upstairs, along a corridor and into a darkened room with a hot tub in the middle of it.
‘Please, if you will go in the steam first,’ she said, opening a wooden door. ‘There are hooks just here for the towels. And then your therapist, he will come and get you.’
We lay back on hot wooden benches, breathing in the eucalyptus steam.
I exhaled. ‘This is just what I need with a hangover.’
‘I thought you had a quiet night?’ said Lex.
‘All right, Miss Marple, I had a few glasses on the sofa,’ I said, thinking as fast as I could.
‘How’s Jasper?’ she said.
‘Good. Fine. In Yorkshire this weekend.’
‘I can’t tell you how excited Mum is about him being at the wedding,’ she went on. ‘She asked if she’d have to curtsey to him the other day.’
The door opened and a bald man stuck his head into the steam room. ‘Lex?’
‘That’s me,’ said Lex, swinging her legs down on to the floor. ‘See you in a bit, Pols. I’ll be so thin you won’t even recognize me.’
She went out, which allowed a welcome gust of cold air into the steam room. Sweat started trickling down my cheeks and neck. I felt like I was letting out the excesses of the night before. Releasing the champagne and the stench of bodies and latex. I stretched. My bikini was drenched already, and sweat had soaked my hairline. Water tonight, I told myself, no wine. Bath. Early bed.
Ten minutes later, just when I thought I might explode with heat, the Russian man stuck his head through the door again. ‘Polly? You now.’
I stood up and almost immediately fell down again with dizziness but stumbled through the door into cold air. There was no sign of Lex. ‘This way please,’ said the bald chap, in Speedos and flip-flops. He had a thick accent and the hard, menacing look of a man who had killed people.
‘Lie down here,’ he said, in another hot room with a single wooden bench. ‘Put your face on this.’ He pointed at what looked like the small branch of a tree.
‘On it?’ I double-checked.
‘Yes, your face, you put it on these oak leaves.’
I lay one cheek on the leaves and closed my eyes. They were damp, cold and smelt herby.
‘And now I will brush you for good bloods.’
I opened one eye and looked behind me as the assassin started beating the backs of my calves with a handful of twigs. They were hot. Up and down he went with them, quickly, so just when you thought the pain was unbearable he would lift it off again, working his way up my calves, the backs of my thighs, my bottom, my back and my shoulders.
‘Turn over, please,’ he said after a few moments. ‘And take off your bikini top.’ My heart was racing as if I’d just run a marathon. In the desert. At midday. More sweat was running down my face. Given the choice between this and being flogged by Hamish, I might even have plumped for the latter.
‘Now, I will do your front,’ he said, brushing the front of my legs with the twigs and working up my body again. I almost laughed when he got to my chest at the thought of a bald Russian man standing solemnly over me, flicking my nipples with bits of tree.
‘Up, please,’ he said, handing me back my bikini top, which I slid on and tied at the back again before he ushered me out. ‘Now get in here.’
He pointed up some stone steps to a large wooden barrel filled with water. ‘Get in.’
I jumped in and squealed. It was freezing. Colder than any sea I could remember.
‘And your head,’ said the man, putting his hand on the top of my head and pushing it down. I came up again gasping for air. That was it. It had to be over now, right?
‘Out, please,’ he said, so I climbed out and he pointed at the hot tub in the middle of the room.
‘Get in and lie down.’
I went up more stone steps and clambered in. I felt like a toddler, willingly being ordered around.
‘Lie,’ the Russian instructed again, ‘put your hands in my head and totally relax.’
I tried to ‘totally relax’, him cradling my head while the bubbles held the rest of my body up. It was like floating. I lay like this for several moments, then it was out again and he draped two towels around me and rubbed my shoulders and back.
‘Now, tea,’ he said, ‘this way.’
I followed him, shuffling like a penguin because I was encased in towelling, to a dimly lit room with white daybeds.
He pointed at one next to Lex, who was lying almost flat, wrapped in towels like an Egyptian mummy, her eyes closed.
‘Pols, I don’t know what just happened but I feel amazing,’ she said. ‘Do I look thinner?’
‘I don’t know, Lex, I need to lie down immediately.’
The man tucked me in with towels, went out and came back in several minutes later with a small metal teapot, slices of lemon and a small saucer of honey. ‘You drink this, and then you drink water. And in twenty minutes you will be totally recovered,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ I said, smiling up at him from my towel sarcophagus. He nodded and went out again.
‘Honestly,’ she mumbled, ‘I’ve never felt better. My whole body is vibrating. I think that was better than sex. I quite want to marry that man instead of Hamish.’
‘Mmm,’ I said. I was going to lie here, feigning bliss, for as long as I could. Whi
ch was about three minutes before Lex said she wanted some tea – ‘Don’t you want some tea?’– and sat up to make it. ‘Do we put the lemon and the honey in, do you think? Just a slice of lemon? And how much honey?’
It would have been more relaxing to have come to the spa with Bertie.
Obviously, I wimped out of saying anything about Hamish. I wasn’t sure if it was my place. I tried to imagine if the situation was reversed, if she’d caught Jasper there, would I rather know? The answer was yes, of course. But it was different with Lex. She was engaged to him. All the more reason to tell her, on the one hand, but on the other, did I want to be responsible for ruining everything? Not today, I decided. Not after being beaten with twigs by a Russian hitman. I didn’t feel up to it.
Sidney called on Sunday evening. Mum had become so feverish that he’d taken her into hospital. Her white blood count was very low, he explained slowly on the phone from St Thomas’.
‘The chemo’s really taken it out of her a bit,’ he said. ‘So they might have to delay the last bout of it.’
‘What does that mean?’ I said, panicked, sitting on the sofa in my flat, fumbling for the remote control to turn Antiques Roadshow down.
‘It seems they might have to delay the next chemo until she’s fit enough. Until her body is strong enough for it. Her immune system is basically very low, not strong enough to handle chemo again at the moment,’ he said.
‘Can I speak to her?’
‘She’s just having a little sleep in a chair on the ward,’ he said, ‘but as soon as she wakes up I’ll let you know.’
‘OK, thanks, Sidney.’ I hung up and burst into tears, giving in and letting myself fear the worst. Can you physically process the idea of someone you love not being there? Of someone you love simply disappearing? I wasn’t sure I could. That was what grief was, surely? The process you had to go through to understand and make sense of someone being there one day and not the next. I literally couldn’t imagine life without Mum. I’d refused to even think about it throughout this whole process. But if this treatment didn’t work and she couldn’t get better, then… what?
I sat on my sofa, tears falling into my lap, and decided to call Jasper at home in Yorkshire.
‘Hello you, what’s up?’ he said. I cried down the phone about blood cells and chemo.
‘Right,’ he said, after a few minutes. ‘Are you at home?’
‘Yes,’ I sniffed.
‘On your own?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK. I’m getting in the car now. I should be there in…’ He paused. ‘Three hours if I put my foot down.’
‘From Yorkshire? No, Jasper, it’s too far, you’re mad, it’s…’
‘I’m not mad, I want to see you. So, stay put. I’m literally walking out the door now. Listen.’ He jangled something against the phone. ‘Keys, see? On my way.’
I laughed and snot bubbled out of my nose. And then I felt a wave of relief. All right so Jasper might not have asked much about Mum’s treatment, but he was coming now.
Ten minutes later, I went down to Barbara’s to buy a bottle of red wine. She frowned when I put it on the counter and then squinted at my puffy face.
‘Are you drinking on your own?’
‘No, Jasper is on his way.’ I fumbled in my hoody for my card.
‘Good.’ She nodded. ‘I am glad. You should cook him something to go with it. Men like a woman who can cook. Something strong. Something proper. Not something like pizza. That is not real man food.’
I wasn’t in the mood for domestic tips from Barbara, so I said thank you in a weak way and went back upstairs. It was one of those moments when I felt like this flat should come with reduced rent, given the emotional trauma I had to undergo every time I needed more loo paper.
Jasper arrived about three hours later.
‘Hi,’ I mumbled, into his shoulder, standing in my open doorway. ‘You’ll be done for speeding.’
‘I don’t care,’ he said, ‘I want to look after you.’
It was the kindest thing I could remember any man saying to me. We stood there silently, hugging for a few moments. Then he mumbled something I didn’t hear.
‘Huh?’ I said.
He lifted his head up and looked at me. ‘I said, I love you.’
I burst out laughing. ‘Really?’ I said. It was the only reply I could come up with.
Jasper sighed. ‘Yes, really, even though you’re completely impossible and you laugh when someone’s trying to be serious.’
‘Sorry.’
I’d only ever told my university boyfriend Harry that I loved him. Oh, and I’d also told an Australian I’d been seeing for about two seconds that I loved him when I was drunk and all he’d replied was ‘That’s a real honour.’ He went back to Darwin shortly after that.
Did I love him? Jasper, I mean, not the Australian. You sort of have to say it back, don’t you? Rude not to. And I think I do, anyway. I thought about him approximately every other second. He was never not in my head and I missed him when I wasn’t with him.
I suddenly felt nervous.
‘Do you know what?’ I said.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured back.
‘I think I love you too.’
‘You think you love me?’
‘No, no. I know I do.’
‘You know what?’
‘Are you going to make me say it again?’
‘Yes.’
I paused. And then I said it, quietly. ‘I love you too.’
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘And I’m sorry about your mother.’
‘It’s OK. It’ll be OK, it has to be.’ I said it as firmly as I could.
‘’Course it will,’ he said. ‘I told you, I’m going to look after you.’
I woke up just after three in the morning that night and listened to Jasper breathing beside me. The Marquess of Milton, playboy of Britain, seducer of princesses, had told me he loved me. And I had said it back. Because I did. Even though it felt too obvious. Too much of a cliché: woman falls for handsome rich man. But I had fallen for Jasper – despite the stories, despite the reputation. Had he told all those women before that he loved them too? A splinter of insecurity pierced me. Maybe it would all still end in tears? But then I thought back to the first time we met at Castle Montgomery, when I’d realized he was more complex than his reputation suggested. When he told me he didn’t know what he wanted either. When he said he was trying to work out life, just like the rest of us.
I turned my head to look at him sleeping, his face towards mine, as if I was trying to look into his brain and read his dreams. I mouthed the words again at him silently – ‘I love you.’ They felt unfamiliar on my lips. As if I was playing at being a grown-up. He’d said he wanted to look after me so maybe we really would end up together? Maybe he was The One?
I yawned and swivelled my head to the ceiling again, worried that Jasper would wake and find me staring at him, a whisper from his face, like something from a horror film. Go to sleep, Polly, you maddo. No good ever came of obsessing about things in deepest night.
14
IT WAS THE DAY before Lex’s hen weekend and I was in the flat, drinking a cup of tea and squinting at Google Maps on my laptop. Fuck’s sake. It was going to take me four hours to drive to Norfolk to start setting everything up. I’d taken the day off, much to Peregrine’s chagrin, who’d said charmingly that he wasn’t running a holiday camp. But I had to get there early to unload the 472 Ocado bags I’d ordered before everyone arrived.
I looked at the time – 11 a.m. I needed to call Mum. Her white blood cell count had finally gone up enough for the doctors to approve her last session of chemo. Sidney was taking her. I felt guilty but she’d told me not to be so daft.
‘Morning, Mum,’ I said, when she picked up.
‘Hi, darling, you off yet?’
‘In a tick. How you feeling?’
‘Oh, all right. I’ll be glad when it’s done.’ She sounded weary. Tired. I was worried about leavin
g her for the weekend.
‘Mum, are you sure you don’t want me to stay? I can. Lex would totally understand.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me, you daft girl. Go and have fun. Go and have a big glass of wine for me.’
‘I will. Several glasses I would think this weekend.’
‘All right, darling. Well, Sidney and I are about to leave for hospital so speak later.’
‘Yep, I’ll ring once I’m there.’
‘Drive safely, darling.’
Five hours later I finally reached the Norfolk barn where we would all be staying for the weekend. The Ocado bags had been left stacked on top of one another in the porch. If I never have to go on another hen party, I thought, looking at them, I wouldn’t be sad.
I was hungry, inevitably, so I rifled through the bags until I found a pack of chocolate digestives. There were nine of us on this hen for two nights. Two nights. Just two. Friday night. Saturday night. But I’d provisioned as if catering for the apocalypse. Fish pies, lasagne, which I’d bought because, really, who has the time to make lasagne and dick about with white sauce? Sliced ham, half a dozen baguettes, several loaves of sliced bread, enough salad to keep the fussy ones happy, crisps, dips, biscuits, Diet Coke, giant bags of Minstrels, chocolate cake, several cartons of eggs, muesli and soya milk because there was bound to be someone who claimed to be lactose intolerant. Then the bottles: ten bottles of Prosecco, fifteen bottles of white, fifteen bottles of rosé, two bottles of vodka, one bottle of gin, five bottles of tonic.
I’d also rather have multiple smear tests than have to round up the cash for another hen party. There was always at least one person who wasn’t drinking – pregnancy or just sheer tiresomeness – and so they sent the inevitable email going, ‘Oh, I’m not drinking so can I pay twenty pounds less?’ And I would have to reply and say ‘Of course, not a problem,’ when I actually wanted to say ‘Please don’t come if you’re going to be such a drip.’
I flicked the kettle on and wandered around the house. The vibe was yuppy cool: whitewashed farmhouse outside, New York loft inside. Lots of exposed brick walls, wooden floors and minimalist beige sofas. There goes my deposit, I thought, imagining the red wine that would be dribbled all over the sofas by Sunday. Ah well. So long as the life drawing model didn’t wipe his balls on them.
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