Chapter 2
TWO
LAUREL
As I turned off the motorway, Taylor Swift’s ‘Everything Has Changed’ began playing on the car radio.
I turned the volume up and my speed down, but I felt like I was flying.
I felt like I’d felt on holiday as a child, the moment I stopped whining, ‘Are we there yet?’ and caught my first glimpse of the sea through the car window.
I felt impossibly happy, yet at the same time almost sick with excitement.
Taylor’s voice was muted by the satnav telling me to turn left in five hundred metres, and I forced myself to focus, think about where I was going, keep my eyes on the road.
Half an hour later, I turned on to a long gravel drive, and saw my destination up ahead, illuminated by the headlights of my beaten-up Toyota and shrouded by the misty drizzle that had been falling ever since I left London.
I followed the signs to the car park and slotted in next to a silver Mercedes coupé, parked at a contemptuous angle across two parking spaces.
‘You don’t need to be embarrassed,’ I told my car. ‘You’ve got as much right to be here as anyone else.’
Pulling my bag out of the boot, I wished it was easier to follow my own advice.
I crunched back around to the front of the building, where stone steps led up to a pillared portico.
My foot turned over on the gravel and I tripped and almost fell, bursting in through the door into the warm, rose-scented lobby.
I could feel my face flushing and I was sure my hair was frizzing from the rain.
If she noticed my discomfiture, the polished blonde behind the reception desk gave no sign of it.
‘Good evening, madam. Did you have a good journey?’
‘Yes. Yes, thank you. I’m meeting… We’ve got a room booked for the night.’
She glanced down at her computer screen. ‘Mrs Graham?’
‘I… My…’ Fuck it. There was no way I could explain or correct her without looking like even more of a twat than I already felt. ‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Mr Graham arrived a few minutes ago.’ Her smile was as carefully neutral as if she applied it in front of a mirror each morning like lipstick. ‘If you’d like to leave your luggage here, my colleague will bring it up for you. Come this way.’
Again, it seemed futile to point out that I could manage my four-kilogram overnight bag perfectly well myself and save her colleague the journey.
‘The bar and dining room are just there to your left,’ she went on. ‘Breakfast is served between seven and ten tomorrow morning. If you’d like tea or coffee in your room, or anything from the bar, you can order using our app.’
‘Thank you.’ I followed her up a wide staircase, carpeted in royal blue, a heavy velvet rope serving as a handrail, then into a corridor lit by wall sconces.
The scent of roses was everywhere – it must be some sort of room fragrance or cleaning product, I thought, rather than actual flowers.
The corridor was completely silent, but from somewhere below I could hear the clink of glasses and a woman’s laughter.
‘Room twelve.’ She stopped outside a panelled door and tapped gently, then stood aside.
A moment later, he opened it and I stepped in, muttering more words of thanks which felt a lot more heartfelt now. Then the door closed and I was in his arms.
‘Hello, beautiful.’ He kissed me and held me close, his hands brushing the hair back from my face. ‘You made it. Was the drive okay? Are you very tired?’
‘I was,’ I admitted. ‘I had an early shift, so I’ve been up since five. But I’m not any more. Look at this – my God. It’s fabulous. Is it the honeymoon suite or something?’
‘All the rooms here are like this.’ He grinned, as proud and delighted as a little boy bringing home a straight-A report card. He looked tired himself, I noticed. There were hollows under his eyes I remembered seeing the last time we’d met, two weeks before. ‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s gorgeous.’ I kicked off my shoes, dropped my coat on an armchair and threw myself on the bed, bouncing a few times on my back. ‘Can we move in?’
Seconds later, he’d joined me on the bed, his knees sinking into the mattress on either side of my waist.
‘I could totally get behind that idea.’ His voice was muffled by the duvet and my hair. ‘Or better still, get behind you.’
I giggled, pushing him away. ‘Not until I’ve showered. I stink of sweat and hospital.’
‘No you don’t.’ He pushed the neck of my jumper down, kissing my collarbone. ‘You smell delicious. You smell of Laurel.’
I felt my heartbeat quicken and a thread of desire work its way down from where his lips were to between my legs. But I wriggled out from underneath him, just in time to answer another discreet tap on the door.
‘My stuff,’ I reported. ‘Just as well we didn’t start anything.’
‘We should’ve put the Do Not Disturb sign up.’ He grinned unrepentantly, propped on his elbows on the bed. ‘Except it’s probably a setting on the app.’
‘I hope the shower works like a normal one.’ I unzipped my case and pulled out my washbag. ‘Not some fancy remote-controlled thing.’
‘Looked pretty analogue to me.’ He followed me into the bathroom, waiting expectantly while I looked around, taking in the huge claw-footed tub under the window, the Oriental rug spread over the wooden floor, the glass-screened rainfall shower.
‘Wow,’ I breathed. ‘Fancy.’
‘And plenty of room for two,’ he said. ‘Bath or shower? You pick.’
‘Shower, then. Give me a minute to wee then you can join me.’
Half an hour later, we lay on the bed, gasping and smiling. My head was on his shoulder, and I was running my fingers down the taut plane of his stomach, almost automatically tracing the scar that curved from the top of his left hip bone down towards his groin like a smile.
Was it my imagination or was that bone more pronounced than it had been the last time I touched it?
I felt his skin move beneath my hand as he took a deep breath in. ‘Laurel?’
‘Mmm-hmm?’
‘I’ve got something for you. A present.’
I propped myself up on my elbow, looking down at him. ‘You didn’t have to do that. You got us – all this.’
‘I wanted to, though. So I did.’
He stood up and went to rummage through his leather holdall.
I felt embarrassed – I hadn’t got him anything, not even a card.
I couldn’t have got him one if I’d wanted to – it would have caused too many complications.
But the glow of pleasure on his face when he handed me the small square box made me feel better – he wanted to give me a gift more than he would have wanted anything I could have given him.
I eased open the box and squeaked with delight. The earrings were stunning – simple, sparkly crystals, twinkling with rainbow brightness in the glow of the bedside lamp.
‘They’re gorgeous.’ I smiled and kissed him. ‘Thank you.’
‘You can wear them to dinner. I booked us a table at eight – assuming you’re hungry?’
‘Starving.’ I thought of the dining room downstairs. There’d be starched white tablecloths, battalions of knives and forks and probably a sommelier. There’d be abundant opportunities for me to make a fool of myself. There would also, I was sure, be an extensive room-service menu.
But he’d brought me here because it was special – because he thought I was special. He wanted to go down for dinner with me in the black dress I’d borrowed off Mel and feel proud of me. He didn’t feel the need to hide away, and nor should I.
‘Let’s get dressed and get some food,’ I said.
So we did. He showed me how to eat oysters in such a way that I was sure the waiter hadn’t noticed that I didn’t already know.
He told me what coquilles Saint Jacques were.
He passed a forkful of his duck across the table for me to try without embarrassment.
He ordered a bottle of delicious red wine even though we knew he’d hardly drink any of it.
He didn’t eat very much himself, but insisted that I have pudding.
Afterwards, we went back up to our room and had sex again, slowly and gently because we were both so full and sleepy. I cleaned my teeth and took off my make-up in the posh bathroom and then returned to bed, curling up next to him.
But he didn’t curl back. He sat up against the pillows, shifting uncomfortably like they had spikes inside instead of goose down or whatever they were.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘Not feeling great,’ he admitted. ‘Indigestion. Shouldn’t have made such a pig of myself.’
‘You didn’t eat that much.’ In the glow of the bedside lamp, I could see that his face was pale as putty and sheened with sweat. ‘Are you sure you’re…?’
But before I could finish, he flung himself out of bed and ran to the bathroom. Through the open door, I heard him throwing up and up, as if he’d never stop. When I went to help – although really, how can you help, until someone who’s being sick has finished being? – he told me to go away.
So I returned to bed and sat there, my knees up under the duvet, trying hard not to bite my nails, trying hard not to think of all the possible scenarios that could be causing this, which weren’t just rich food or a winter vomiting bug, until at last he came back.
‘Has this been happening a lot?’ I asked him.
‘A few times in the past couple of weeks. Guess I can’t stuff my face like I used to be able to. I’m all out of practice.’
I looked at him – his familiar, handsome face, his deep brown eyes. A new hollowness below his cheekbones; a new sallowness to his skin.
‘Gray,’ I said. ‘I think maybe you need to see a doctor.’