of disappointment coursing through him?
He moved back out of the bathroom and glanced across the room at her, shoving the disappointment aside. This was a fling. It couldn’t be more. She didn’t want it to be more, he couldn’t give more. They’d made the situation clear the previous day. They barely knew each other beyond the physical, hardly enough to base even the most short-term future on.
He could cross the room right now, slide his hands under the sheet, pull her against him and pick up right where they’d left off. That would be all she expected, those were the parameters they’d agreed to.
Instead, he found himself picking his way quietly around the room, collecting up his clothes and trying not to trip over her insane mass of belongings. She didn’t stir in the semi-darkness, and he didn’t expect her to since it was still too early for winter light to brighten the room, but he let the door snick shut quietly just in case.
****
The cold silver of winter morning gave the room a muted light that woke her up slowly. The usual second of disorientation that always happens when you stay somewhere new for the first time kicked in. It wasn’t something that had ever bothered Ella. Moving around so much for craft fairs and just her itchy-footed desire to keep moving before things went tits-up meant she was used to adapting quickly to new places. Travelling heavy helped of course. She sometimes wondered what it said about someone that everything in their life with sentimental attachment could be squashed into a couple of suitcases.
Tom slipped back into her mind on the back of that second when she found her bearings, just the way he had done every morning at first after she’d left five years ago. How long had thoughts of him persisted? Not long. She was good at bricking things up in her mind, was a past master at it in fact. Crushing of memories combined with telling herself it hadn’t been all that. A tried and tested self-preservation exercise.
He wasn’t here.
The bedroom was a pigsty, clothes and half-unpacked belonging all over the place, where she’d never got around to putting them away since he’d come back to her room, after that interim goodbye that neither of them had been able to stick to. Not a single item belonging to him fell into her sightline.
She threw the sheet back and crossed to few paces to the small en suite. The shower unit was bone dry. It was as if he’d never been here at all, as if he’d disappeared.
Which, her fully-awake mind now insisted, was clearly the point.
Now she knew what yesterday had been about for him, why he’d pursued her so insistently until she agreed to first coffee, then dinner, then bed. After the delicious night they’d spent together it turned out that it had all been about closure. She’d walked out on him five years ago, leaving him hanging. For Pete’s sake he’d even told her openly last night that she was the only person ever to do that to him. It had been all about taking back control, reclaiming the upper hand. And what a fool she’d been for thinking it could possibly have been about anything else. This was her life after all, he was only doing the inevitable. It seemed everyone she ever came across had an exit strategy from her life. There was something about her, something intangible that she’d never been able to identify, that put people off, that put their teeth on edge, like running fingernails down a blackboard. Unable to work out what it was, her only option had been to stop people mattering so it wouldn’t hurt when they made the inevitable exit.
She’d got in first last time and the no-second-time rule would have meant she left it at that. But no, she had to meddle with it, didn’t she?
The sick feeling of disappointment in the pit of her stomach was only matched by the anger she felt at herself for making the same mistake she’d made so many times before.
****
Back to Plan A, from which she should never have deviated.
Half an hour later and she was showered and dressed, ready to head out. The whole point of the weekend had been to Christmas shop, not that she had a shedload of people to buy for, but there were lots of Christmas markets to check out, full of crafts and gift stalls, and even if she didn’t have a big shopping list, she could look for some inspiration for her own jewellery designs. Perhaps next year she might be able to take a stall here instead of doing the usual waitressing. In a few years time she might even be able to drop the backup waitressing work altogether. The only area of her life with any long-term plan was her work and she refocused her mind on it, hard.
The brief double-tap at the door came just as she was ready to leave and she opened it, assuming it would be housekeeping wanting to service the room. Not one tiny speck of her thought it could possibly be Tom. That’s how resigned to this kind of thing she’d become. She’d learned not to hope because there never was hope.
The gorgeous lopsided smile on his face as he leaned casually against the jamb melted away when he took in the expression on her face and the fact she was wearing an outdoor coat.
‘What are you doing?’
He stood up straight. She floundered for a grasp on the situation and went with her original plan. OK so he might not have disappeared under cover of darkness, but reality had still bitten. She should never have let things get this far. She’d been swept up in the magic of Christmas and fun excitement and she’d taken her eye off the ball. And that led to nothing but trouble, and down the line, hurt.
‘What I came for,’ she said, winding her scarf around her neck to make a point, although the temperature inside the room was tropical. ‘I’m going shopping. Christmas lights on Oxford Street. What’s the point of coming here if I don’t go and look at them?’
He stared at her with a bemused expression on his face.
‘Did I miss something?’ he said.
‘Your flight, maybe?’ she said, picking up her enormous tote bag from the luggage rack beside the door and hefting it over one shoulder.
There was a sudden movement behind him and she looked up to see him step aside to let a skinny hotel porter through the door, pushing an enormous silver trolley in front of him that was groaning under the weight of silver platters, plates and cutlery. He glanced between them, Tom still waiting to be invited in and herself in her coat and scarf.
‘Room Service?’ he said doubtfully.
She locked confused, questioning eyes with Tom’s mellow gaze.
‘Full English breakfast, selection of pastries, toast and preserves, coffee, tea, muesli and selection of fruit…’ the porter’s voice trailed off as neither of them acknowledged him ‘…for two?’
A pause, and then Tom said, ‘I ordered a selection. I wasn’t sure what you’d like.’
Her mind reeled and heat began to work its way slowly up her neck to burn in her cheeks.
‘You ordered breakfast,’ she said, as if saying it out loud might make it seem more believable. She could hear the surprise in her own voice. Far from hightailing it out of her life without so much as a word, he’d ordered half the dining room to be carted up to her bedroom.
‘Showered, changed, ordered breakfast. I would have used your ensuite but there was…’ he coughed ‘…a lot of your stuff in there. And I didn’t want to wake you. I’m an early riser,’ he added to the porter, who was staring at them as if they were both insane. He jumped a little and shifted from one foot
