Michelle nodded. ‘I got here a bit early,’ she said. ‘I came on the bus. It was either arrive ten minutes early or half an hour late.’
She didn’t drive. He remembered her telling him; she’d failed her test three times then given up trying.
‘I’ll be right back,’ he said.
As the barman poured the drinks he glanced at her. She was shorter than Kate, and had a rounder, chubbier face, but there was a definite similarity. Long, straight dark hair, dark eyes, a quiet, watchful expression.
Jesus. Hanging out with a Kate lookalike was hardly going to take his mind off his ex.
He paid and took the drinks to the table.
‘Here you go,’ he said, and raised his glass. ‘Cheers.’
Michelle clinked his glass. ‘You see the latest on the murder?’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it.’
Phil hadn’t. He was too wrapped up in his own misery to pay attention to other people’s.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘I’ve not been following it. It’s only more darkness in the world.’
She looked at him with a teasing smile. ‘You’re a bundle of fun,’ she said. ‘Anyway, the cops arrested the boyfriend.’ She leaned forward, her tone conspiratorial. ‘It’s always the boyfriend, or the husband. She was probably sleeping with someone else, or something like that.’ She shook her head. ‘That kind of violence – it can only come from a strong emotion, you know?’
‘I guess,’ Phil said. ‘I wouldn’t really know.’
‘I’d hope not!’ Michelle said. She leaned back. ‘Anyway, enough of that. How’ve you been?’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Fine.’
‘That’s it?’ Michelle said. ‘Just fine?’
He stared at her, a feeling of hopelessness washing over him. He could hardly tell her the truth, could hardly confess that he was unable to sleep, his nights filled with obsessive thoughts of his ex, an ex who looked like the woman he was currently out on a date with, a fact which only made matters worse. Could hardly tell her that he didn’t want to be here, that he was only here because he had to do something, had to find a way to take his mind off Kate, and he had hoped that this might do that, at least a little bit.
Could hardly tell her that it wasn’t working, and all he wanted to do was leave.
‘Been a tough day at work,’ he said.
‘What do you do?’ Michelle said.
Jesus, she didn’t even know what he did for a job. He wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready to make a new start with someone. He was suddenly overwhelmingly tired.
‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel well.’
She frowned. ‘I just got here! It took two buses!’
‘I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I’ve been fighting something all day – flu, I think, it’s been going round the office – and it just hit me. I should have cancelled.’ He took a twenty-pound note from his wallet and put it on the table. ‘Take a taxi home. On me. Sorry, Michelle.’
‘I don’t want money!’
Phil ignored her. He got to his feet, his head spinning. He felt faint, nauseous now.
‘Are you OK?’ Michelle said, her tone switching from anger to concern. ‘You do look a bit poorly.’
He waved a hand. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he muttered, and fled.
When Kate got back to the hotel room May and Gemma were still sleeping. There were two double beds in the room; Kate and May were sharing one, leaving the other to Gemma. It wasn’t a generous gesture; they knew from long experience that Gemma was a very active sleeper who would stealthily colonize your side of the bed, gradually creeping closer and closer to you until she was pushing you over the edge. If you got out and switched sides, she would start to move towards you again; you’d hear her coming and the stress of it would keep you from falling asleep. Allied to the fact that she was a very deep sleeper, who was near impossible to wake up, and she was not anybody’s preferred sleeping partner.
Her boyfriend – a maths teacher called Matt – claimed that he had to decamp to the couch five nights a week in order to get some sleep. He had, he said, been collecting data on his sleeping arrangements and was using it to teach statistics to his students. He showed it to Kate once: he’d plotted a bell curve, showing that five nights per week was the mean average, with a standard deviation of three sigma. Kate had no idea what that meant in statistical terms, but she was pretty sure that in the real world it meant that he was not getting enough sleep and was in danger of becoming obsessed with it.
Kate opened the bathroom door and turned on the shower. She stripped off and climbed under the hot water, letting it first soothe and then invigorate her. The shower shelf was crammed with bottles of shampoo and conditioner and she grabbed hers, a tea-tree oil shampoo from Australia. A large part of her was sceptical about the value of these toiletries; Phil always said that they were all just soap anyway so she may as well buy the Tesco value pack for a few pounds, rather than spend a small fortune on the designer stuff. She suspected he had a point, but it wasn’t about the chemistry of whatever was in the bottles. It was about the routine, the feeling that she was, in some way, pampering herself, treating herself to something special.
She stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel. It was a plush, white Egyptian cotton towel and it felt luxurious against her skin. It was these little things that made staying in a hotel so amazing: clean, soft towels every day, a freshly made bed, coffee and breakfast at the end of a phone line.
She went into the bedroom. May and Gemma were still sleeping. May’s side of the room was tidy, the carpet empty apart from a small pile of neatly folded clothes from the night before. Her other clothes were either hanging up in the wardrobe or carefully arranged in a drawer. Gemma’s side, on the other hand, was a total mess: inside-out jeans hanging off a chair, bras and underwear littering the floor, one of a pair of flats on the pillow next to her head.
It had always been this way: Gemma and May were total opposites. May: organized, precise, together, always on time, following the plan. Gemma: unaware there was a plan, haphazard, confused, totally oblivious that she was supposed to arrive at whatever place she was going to at any particular time.
But they, along with Kate, had been friends forever. Since the day they met as five-year-olds at St Stephen’s Primary they had been a unit. They’d been friends for over twenty years: they’d grown up together, seen each other’s characters develop and emerge. They knew each other as well as they knew themselves, understood how and why they had become the people they were, and they loved each other in a deep and profound way.
Kate opened the minibar and took out a small, over-priced, glass bottle of orange juice. Normally she wouldn’t have spent three pounds fifty – she did the maths to convert the currency in her head – on what was little more
