Chapter Forty-Seven
William is not accustomed to stealth, nor built for it.
“Willo?”
The proof that he’s a fool is calling to him from the bathroom.
“Mm?”
“Sorry, babe. Bit of a dodgy tapas.”
William feels like pointing out it could be any one of twelve. “Well, you just stay there, T-Thomasina, till you feel better.”
“Sorry? – I think it was probably the—”
“Probably.” He picks up the ice bucket sitting on top of the minibar. “Just going to get some ice.”
Before the poor young woman can reply, he is out of the door and summoning the next lift.
He leaves the ice bucket on the floor, reminding himself to fill it on his way back, from the machine he noticed way down at the other end of the corridor.
Knowing that this is one of those menial tasks he will undoubtedly forget.
As Luisa of the long-suffering sighs is never slow to point out.
Well, she was.
Inside the empty lift, which feels more like home than anything else on this batshit-crazy trip, he checks himself out in the mirror.
Whilst still vaguely appalled, he is not entirely unimpressed.
For the first time in his life he looks – aye, successful.
Even if this isn’t something he has ever hungered to be successful at.
Or maybe he has. Which is even more scary.
On its way down from tweaking his new hair, which William still does as tentatively as if he were stroking a barely tamed ferret, his unnaturally brown hand brushes over the inside-pocket of the gaudy blouson.
It discovers a bulge. Curious, he fishes out a compact portable dictaphone, which he doesn’t recall having ever owned.
Yet, to his surprise, he knows exactly how it works and what he is going to recite excitedly into its eager memory.
“Idea for game show! Warring couples go back to where they honeymooned.”
He immediately hurls the dictaphone into a bin in the corner of the lift. “Shut the FUCK up!” He can’t help thinking of Jekyll and Hyde then recalls that as a kid he yearned to write like Stevenson. He wonders what his fellow Scot would make of this nightmare.
A notion briefly enters his head. He can kill himself before the new, glossy, deeply superficial ‘Willo’ Sutherland can take him over completely.
It’s no more than he deserves and there’s a bloody great tower right over there from which he could probably jump.
Taking in both Christian and Moorish features on his descent.
Yet, as he waits in the lobby, he realises that he actually wants nothing more right now than to see her again, this new Luisa, if only for just a few minutes.
Even if this is so very different a Luisa to the spouse he has clearly loved and lost forever.
The new, alluring yet more than slightly intimidating Luisa Montero had, it appears, only briefly been his.
And, on the available evidence, most surely never will be again.
William is pacing the reception area, too buzzed to keep still, when he hears the slow click of high heels on the surprisingly untiled flooring.
The Luisa from Room 383 appears like a vision, casually cool in a cream, silk blouse and minty-blue denims, shoulders draped in a striking red pashmina shawl. He recalls that she always did have a passion for the most vivid red and it always looked so good on her. He smiles admiringly.
“How is the Wi-Fi in your room?” she asks.
William is thrown by this, although it is invariably the first thing that he himself checks out on arrival. “Huh? Well, I can’t say I… You look terrific, Luisa.”
“I know this.”
Well, get you, he thinks, although this unexpected degree of self-assuredness is both scary and exciting. But mostly scary.
Before he can continue, although he can’t actually think where to lead this conversation or indeed whether leading anything is remotely in his gift, he spies the New York ladies.
They can hardly free themselves from the revolving doors, so laden are they with store bags and souvenirs.
Instinctively he turns away, then realises there is absolutely no need, as they are not giving the slightest indication that they recognise him.
And why would they – he arrived only this afternoon.
“You can’t imagine them holding an Inquisition,” says the slightly larger one. “They’re so darling.”
“Okay. Where do we go?” says Luisa, checking her watch. “On our – ‘reunion’?”
“Wherever they don’t have castanets,” says William. “Or Taylor Swift.”
On their way out, they pass Pablo at the door. He looks at the two of them, then up at William, and simply shakes his head.
*
It is William’s idea to take a horse-drawn carriage ride through the city.
This feels suitably romantic, the sound of clopping hooves, buildings touched with the arrogance of history gliding slowly by in the intoxicating night air.
He finds himself wanting more than anything to impress the hell out of this mesmerising creature he knows so well, yet hardly knows at all.
She doesn’t exactly leap at the notion with the enthusiasm he recalls the last Luisa having for soppy stuff, but neither does she sniff too overtly when he signals to the first driver in the rank.
As his persona right now seems to be about as fluid as a person can get, William sees no harm in answering whatever questions she may throw at him with answers that will most advance his cause. Although he is hardly any more solid on what this cause may be.
“Oh yes, a few novels,” he tells her, “after you left. The critics have been very kind.”
She smiles and points to the gold Rolex, sitting brightly on his wrist like a landing pad for a tiny helicopter. “I can see you have done well.”
“Wanted their new platinum model but—” Stop it, William! “But what about you, Luisa? Tell me about yourself.”
“Well, of course, you would not remember this—”
“Don’t you start!” he chides, before recalling that it isn’t this Luisa who has always accused him of never recalling anything. This one wasn’t around long enough. He is finding this so tricky.
“O-kay. When I come to be au pair in Glasgow – when we first meet, sí – you tell me you will write books for the children.”
“And you’d do the pictures. Of course I remember.”
“Well, you remember also that you change this plan pretty quickly, yes? To the writing for the publicitad, the advertising? For much more money. You get nice job, we come to London – and I do not ever see you.”
He recalls that they moved down to London not so long after their marriage, of course he does, because he suddenly had to boost his income.
Their income. For obvious and rapidly growing reasons.
Which I did, he notes proudly, and with some success.
I supported us all and gave us stability.
But how curious that this same migration occurred in both of his “lives”, even though circumstances and – more specifically – dependants were clearly so very different.
He finds this more than a little unsettling.
“But now I am the ‘one-man-band’,” she continues, oblivious to his turmoil. Or perhaps simply unstirred. “The words and the pictures. I am quite famous person here in Spain, William. If you are five years old.”
Luisa is not looking at him as she tells him this, but she picks up his sudden, helpless intake of breath.
Her head turns swiftly back, so that she might understand why her harmless words should have shocked him so audibly. But, of course, she doesn’t understand and he clearly wishes to move on.
“And you live here in Spain?” he asks, pointing in no particular direction.
“Madrid. Sí. I am coming back home all these years ago. After we divorce. Why not?”
“Maestranza!” shouts their driver suddenly, believing that his passengers are far too interested in each other and wanting to secure his tip.
William stares at the imposing bullring, now illuminated so expertly in a golden light, although he feels blood-red might be more appropriate.
He shudders as he recalls what happened here only yesterday.
Well, one yesterday. Another yesterday. When of course this William, the one with all the hair, was still apparently in an as-yet-unspecified London suburb, making final preparations for his naughty Spanish weekend.
“Bet your parents threw a fiesta when you came back home,” he mutters. “Barbecued the dog – hopefully.” She has the grace to laugh at this, which cheers him. “So, Luisa, we both achieved our dreams. Bloody well done us!”
She checks her watch again. William now recognises it as an exquisite Cartier. For a moment they sink back quietly into their own thoughts.
“Do you remember Sandy?” asks William, as if this is a sore he cannot stop picking, regardless of whose life he is living or whose ex-wife he is challenging.
“Of course,” says Luisa, in some surprise. “I meet him when we are students here. You know this. He introduced me to you in Glasgow.”
“Stay in touch, do you?”
She looks strangely confused.
“William, I married him.”