‘Nice to meet you both,’ she said, flashing us a smile, perfect teeth too, life really isn’t fair.
Worried they might feel they had to invite us to join them, I tugged at Rose’s arm. ‘We’d better get to our table before Luke thinks we’ve got lost.’
Hamish looked at me quizzically. ‘You’re trusting yourself to Luke’s driving so soon? That shows admirable faith.’
I could feel myself blushing stupidly. ‘Rose drove me,’ I said quickly. ‘She thought a night out would do me good.’
‘I hope it will,’ he said politely. Even Rose, who was being more than usually thick-skinned in her determination to discover what Hamish was doing with Merial, had to take the hint after that and allowed me to take her away quite meekly. The subject occupied her for some time afterwards, to the irritation of Luke, who not unreasonably didn’t have much interest in whether Hamish had found himself a new woman, no matter how good-looking. Rose shut up for long enough to order drinks from a supercilious waiter and then began to have one of those interminable arguments with Luke where neither party is prepared to concede a single point. This one was about the future of the countryside; Luke accusing Rose of wanting to keep rural areas like some gigantic theme park, Rose claiming he was the type who let big business do what it wanted in the interests of short-term profit and hang the long-term consequences. I d have found all of this a lot more interesting if I hadn’t heard Rose on this particular hobby-horse not long ago, on the way into Leicester in fact. I sat back in my corner and tuned out, idly watching Hamish and Merial over on the other side of the room, and sipping abstractedly at some fruit confection Rose had selected for me. I hadn’t realised Hamish had such an attractive smile once he dropped the guarded reserve he wore like a coat. In fact, looking at him dispassionately, he was all-round rather attractive. Merial certainly seemed to think so. She leant towards him and touched his knee to emphasise a point. I swung my eyes away abruptly and took a long swig from my tall glass. It was very nice. Too nice, actually.
‘What’s this got in it?’ I asked suspiciously, looking at Rose and breaking into an impassioned declaration about the effects of something or other. ‘It doesn’t taste teetotal to me.’
She looked at me under lowered lashes, ready to brazen it out, then something in my face must have made her change her mind. She shrugged guiltily. ‘I didn’t think one drink would do you any harm.’
‘But I told you that the doctor said-’ I began.
‘You know how overcautious those doctors are,’ she interrupted. ‘If they had their way you wouldn’t be allowed to have a drink for a month after you’d taken an aspirin because of possible side-effects. It’s not as if you’re going to be driving or operating heavy machinery, is it? You said your arm was hurting too and alcohol’s a great painkiller.’
‘She’s right,’ chimed in Luke. ‘My mother used to put brandy on a piece of cotton wool when we had toothache as children and it was brilliant. Worked every time.’
‘Things have moved on since then. I find that the pills I’ve just taken are rather more effective,’ I muttered through gritted teeth. Rose looked hurt, as if she was afraid I was about to accuse her of ruining my evening. Perhaps I was being too much of a goody-goody. A little alcohol wouldn’t harm me. It wasn’t as if I was downing half a bottle, merely a measure diluted with a goodly quantity of fruit juice, which meant lots of vitamin C and that had to be good for me. It was true that the ache in my arm was lessening and I was beginning to feel pleasantly relaxed too. I smiled. ‘No harm done, I suppose.’
She smiled in relief and turned back to Luke, apparently picking up in mid-sentence from where I’d interrupted her in the middle of a spirited denunciation of out-of-town superstores. I could have felt narked about how she was monopolising Luke, but since changing the subject, or even talking at all, would use up far more energy than I had, I couldn’t be bothered to get cross. Instead, I relaxed in my comfortable seat, deciding philosophically that even if I had precious little chance of holding Rose to her promise to leave after one drink, at least watching Hamish and his girlfriend was a damn sight more interesting than watching the walls at home. It was this mood of unusual resignation that led me to agree that maybe a second cocktail wouldn’t do me any harm. Perhaps that had been why Dr Bob warned me not to drink with the little pink pills. It had nothing to do with the possibility that I might be trying my hand at driving an HGV and everything to do with the combination of booze and pills putting your common sense through the shredder.
I paid for it, of course I did. I woke with a fuzzy mouth and that feeling that tells you it might be unwise to move your head too quickly. I lay with my eyes shut, wondering if I was going to be greeted with a blast of pain if I opened them or if it was merely troubled conscience operating. How could I have been so stupid? Wasn’t I already in enough pain from my bashed arm and shoulder to satisfy the average martyr without adding a hangover to it as well? How much had I drunk? I only had the vaguest memories of travelling home and I couldn’t remember coming in the front door either. I was still half dressed too. You’ve got to have been seriously plastered not to have had the coordination to take your bra off. At least I’d made it into bed. I shifted slightly to see how much it hurt, and was relieved to discover that apparently I didn’t have a headache after all. I thought about going back to sleep and wriggled to a cool spot on the pillow, my cheek brushing a trim around the edge of the pillowcase. All desire to sleep fled like the wind. My pillowcases have a frilled edge, not a trim.
Not daring to open my eyes, I patted the edge of the case to make sure. There was a thin line of braid under my fingertips. I wasn’t in my own bed. My heart seemed to miss several beats, then started up again. Rose’d been banging on about how I shouldn’t be on my own and must have taken me back to Moor End last night. That was it. I moved to get more comfortable, burying my nose in the pillow, and my heart lurched unpleasantly again. This didn’t smell like the bed I’d slept in at Moor End. That had a vague smell of lavender pot-pourri and linen sheets about it. This pillow had another scent, intangible, not unpleasant at all, rather nice actually, but definitely not feminine. Masculine, in fact. Oh God.
I opened my eyes very, very slowly. I closed them again rapidly, my heart plummeting down to my toes. It wasn’t my pillow. It wasn’t my bed. It wasn’t any room I’d ever seen.
Where was I?
CHAPTER 12
I was paralysed with horror. I’ve done various things in my life that by any standards rank as being staggeringly stupid and which I don’t like to think about too closely, but never, ever have I not known where I was when I woke up. Or not known exactly what I’d been doing to get there either. Well, that seemed pretty obvious, I must have gone home with Luke. It had to be him. Well, I hoped it was. Everything in me shuddered at the thought that I might have gone to bed with someone while that drunk, but at least I knew Luke.
At least, I was still in my underwear, I patted myself to make sure that I hadn’t imagined that both bra and pants were still safely in place. That was something, unless in some excess of modesty I’d put them back on again afterwards. Oh, bloody hell, why couldn’t I remember? I froze at a noise. Was he still here in the bed with me? I turned on my back and with my eyes tightly shut inched my hand over the sheet, anticipating with a thumping heart the moment the tips of my fingers were going to brush against bare, warm flesh.
My stomach churned with relief as my searching hand fell over the edge of the bed into space. I dared open my eyes. Enough light came in through a gap in the curtains at the window for me to see that I was in a large bed with a basketwork headboard in a square, sparsely furnished bedroom. But whose bed? Whose bedroom? I sat up slightly, looking around. A pair of formal black shoes had been kicked off in a corner, a pale-blue shirt with a button-down collar was draped casually over the back of a chair and, most telling of all, a shaver was being recharged from a power point by the door. Good deduction, Susie, I told myself, heart beating
with unpleasant anticipation, it’s a man’s bedroom, and one which he appears to sleep in, so you can’t fool yourself that you’re respectably encased in a spare room which you’ve dossed down in for some reason. But which man does it belong to? Unfortunately, he hadn’t been considerate enough to leave his chequebook or a handy letter by the bed so I could check his name.
I eased myself out of bed, feeling as stiff as if I were a hundred and ten, but I definitely wasn’t suffering from the mother and father of all hangovers. Surely I should be if I’d drunk so much last night I had virtually no memory of anything past the second cocktail arriving? I shook my head from side to side to test for ill effects, nada. Even my arm and shoulder felt infinitely better than they had last night. How very curious. My skirt and top from last night were lying on a chair. I eyed them askance, my heart doing that nasty little skip again as I wondered who had put them away so neatly. Certainly not me if I’d been that paralytic. I’d worry about how they came to get off me later and get dressed first, being only in my bra and pants was making me feel distinctly vulnerable, especially as I was hardly in the traditional position of most girls who overnight like this and can swipe their host’s dressing-gown. You ought to know who it is that you’ve slept with before you start borrowing his things and I was starting to think that, whoever he was, he wasn’t Luke. For a start I couldn’t see Luke wearing that shirt.
I nipped into my clothes at top speed in case Mr Mysterious heard me moving about and came upstairs, though, to be honest, it was a bit late to worry about him seeing me in my underwear and set about doing running repairs. There was no way I was going to meet my unknown lover with panda eyes, hair like the proverbial burning bush and a mouth full of night breath. The aftershave sitting on top of the bathroom cabinet in the little en-suite didn’t smell like the musky one Luke used, I noted uneasily. This one was nice and seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Mr Mysterious didn’t run to much in the way of male cosmetics and didn’t appear to have a girlfriend who left useful things like make-up remover and moisturiser in his cabinet either. I scrubbed away at mascara streaks with the aid of a wad of loo paper, helped myself liberally to his deodorant and cleaned my teeth with his toothpaste and my finger. The end results, despite the limited materials at my disposal, weren’t too bad.
Perhaps I ought to case the joint and discover who Mr Mysterious was before I went downstairs to face him, I decided. Forewarned is forearmed and all that. Nothing to do with not wanting to face the moment of disclosure. It didn’t take long to explore the bedroom as it didn’t have much furniture - a couple of chairs, an oak chest of drawers and the bed. It was a very big bed. I eyed it, wondering nervously what had gone on in there last night.
I padded over to the window and pulled back the curtains, looking on to a short drive and a quiet road fringed by tall clumps of cow parsley. In other circumstances I would have thought how pretty it was, now it just seemed worryingly isolated. I must have absorbed more of estate agency than I’d realised, for instead of riffling through the drawers I wasted time admiring the moulding around the ceiling and the panelling in the door. It might be a bit down at heel, but it was going to be lovely if Mr Mysterious ever got round to doing it up. The room was disappointingly bare of personal possessions and clues to his identity, no photographs, no bits and pieces, not even a bookcase, though there was an untidy heap of books stacked on the floor by the bed. As I balked at actually going through his sock drawer, I was about to examine the books to see what he read, when I noticed the picture hanging above the marble fireplace. It was of a hilly landscape, painted with a wonderful use of colour and a freedom of line that made it look slightly unreal, yet instantly recognisable, as if it came from a half-remembered but familiar dream. There was another picture by the same artist hanging on the opposite wall, this time of a lake in winter, with graceful trees around it bowing down under the weight of ice and snow. Whoever Mr M. was, he had good taste in his art. The noise of a door closing downstairs made me jump and realise sickeningly that even I couldn’t procrastinate any further.
I tiptoed over to the door and eased it open. Sunlight slanted in through a sash window on to a small landing which, judging from the experimental blocks of paint on the wall opposite was next in line for repainting; a broad staircase with nicely carved banisters curved away to the lower floor from where I could hear the distant sounds of a radio. And smell coffee. My stomach lurched with the need for a caffeine shot.
Heart thumping horribly, I shuffled down the stairs, one at a time, to a small hall with a black-and-white chequered floor and, following my nose and ears, went quietly down to the door at the end. I stood with my hand on the knob for a few seconds, almost too afraid of what I might find to push it open, then, taking a deep breath, turned it and stepped in.
I was in the kitchen, a long room the width of the house, which, at a guess, had last been modernised some forty years ago, with windows on one side looking out on a scruffy garden, and a wide pair of French windows opening on to a little paved terrace. There was a large battered table in the middle of the room with someone sitting on the other side of it, face hidden by a newspaper, legs with bare feet stretched out comfortably to one side. The door slipped from my fingers and crashed to. He jumped, swore, and dropped the paper on the table.
‘Morning, Susie. Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said, looking up and smiling. ‘I didn’t realise that you’d woken up. I expect you’d like a cup of coffee? Or you can have tea if you’d rather.’
It was so normal that for a moment I couldn’t take it all in. Scattered over the table was the paraphernalia of a leisurely weekend breakfast - mug, crumb-covered plate, marmalade, a couple of sections of the paper, already read and folded none too tidily, shoved to one side - the sort of sight familiar in my own kitchen. Except that I didn’t normally have Hamish, unshaven and wearing an elderly San Francisco 49ers tee shirt and faded black jeans, stretching his legs out beneath my table.
Feeling distinctly wobbly in the knee area, I pulled out a chair and almost fell into it. My first reaction had been a blazing sense of relief that it wasn’t Luke behind the newspaper, the second, following instantly on its heels - had I really spent the night with Hamish? Surely, judging from the way he’d been talking to Merial, if he’d been making any arrangements of that sort they wouldn’t have included me.
He looked at me questioningly. I realised that he expected an answer. ‘Coffee’d be lovely, thank you,’ I said faintly, mind buzzing with questions and not knowing how to frame a single one. I stared at his back as he got up to fetch a mug from the draining rack, noticing how tall he was. Surely, no matter how drunk I’d been, I would have remembered something about going to bed with someone that big? I swallowed hard. ‘Hamish.’
‘Yes?’ he asked, sitting down and pushing the full mug over to me.
Hell, didn’t he know what I wanted to ask him? I thought resentfully, my annoyance giving me the courage to frame the question. I cupped my hands around the mug, as if the warmth could give me a bit of extra much-needed bottle. ‘What went on last night? I mean, what was I doing in your bed?’ I asked in a rush. ‘It is yours, isn’t it?’ I added nervously.
His eyes flew open. ‘Of course.’ Then he stared at me. ‘Don’t you remember anything about last night?’
I eyed him suspiciously. I didn’t appreciate the note of sympathy in his voice. What had I done? ‘Well…’ I thought for a moment, ‘Rose and Luke were comparing ski resorts. I don’t ski, so I sort of tuned out.’
‘Don’t blame you for that,’ he said with a smile.
‘The next thing I knew for certain was waking up here,’ I said, trying to keep my voice even. I thought I did have one or two memories of last night, or they could be dreams. I hoped they were dreams.
He reached out and patted my hand. ‘Poor Susie. And you’ve been imagining rape, pillage and worse. Don’t worry, it didn’t happen,’ he said reassuringly. Except that drunken advances were neither ra
pe nor pillage, and, being a man, he probably wouldn’t count them as ‘worse’ either. ‘It’s quite simple, you went to sleep.’
‘You mean I passed out,’ I said. What must he think of me? One and a half cocktails and she’s anybody’s. Cheap or what?
‘I suppose you could call it that,’ he admitted. ‘Those painkillers of yours are knock out drops in conjunction with booze. That’s why the bottle has that large label saying, “Do not drink alcohol while taking this medication” in big red letters on it.’
‘I didn’t think one drink would do any harm,’ I said in a small voice, resolving to obey the doctor’s every last instruction in future. And the dentist’s too. I’d even go for a check-up every six months.
‘It does with those,’ he said. ‘I should know.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Though I was in my own flat. I woke up halfway through the next afternoon, so you haven’t done too badly. You’re up by,’ he looked at a severely plain watch on his wrist, ‘ten-thirty. Positively crack of dawn, considering.’
‘I should have had the sense not to drink on an empty stomach, let alone when I’d only just had a couple of those pills,’ I said gloomily, determined on self-flagellation. I stared miserably into my coffee, feeling an utter, total, bloody fool. ‘God, how stupid of me.’
‘You’re a loyal friend, aren’t you?’ he said after a moment. I lifted my head to look at him, puzzled. ‘Rose was so petrified when she couldn’t wake you up she admitted she didn’t tell you the drink was alcoholic when she ordered it for you. She thought she’d poisoned you or something. She’s the one who needs her head examined.’
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