Chapter Forty-Three
The shutters bang and midday light blasts in on the stranger, in all her unidentifiable glory.
“AAAHH!! Oh my God! I am SO sorry!” yells William, immediately swirling away towards the door.
“That’s okay,” says the young woman cheerily, “no biggie – we can ask for them downstairs, when we go out. Hope you found your cigars.”
Cigars?
She trots back into the centre of the room, casually flicking the towel over her glistening body. He can’t help but notice that she is very attractive. To his amazement, however, when he fully takes in her smiling face and long, lustrous dark hair, she also looks disturbingly like young Lu.
Yet this is so obviously not Lu, young or old – and she is clearly not in the least embarrassed by his presence. She is either a vaguely demented exhibitionist or something is quite catastrophically awry. William so hopes it is the former.
“Oh my God!” is all he can say right now.
“You’ve seen it before, Willo!” And there goes theory number one.
“Have I?”
“Can you be an angel and pass me my lippy?”
He has no idea where her lippy might be and can only just work out what it might be, but anything that gives him a legitimate reason to turn away from the alluring yet terrifying vision jiggling around before him has its own therapeutic appeal.
Until what he sees in the mirror turns this briefly held assumption to ashes.
“Oh – sweet – Jesus!” he says, as the full horror strikes him.
It is still recognisably William Sutherland, but not as he knows it.
The vision before him now has a perma-tan that would make Donald Trump look like a Noh theatrical, a full head of what has to have been horrendously expensive hair, from whomsoever or whatever it came, and no obvious sign of – or need for – spectacles.
He is clad in tight-fitting, designer clothing, in which he would never have been allowed to be seen dead, or wished to be seen at all.
And yet, as he stares in appalled wonder, it is all just starting to become terrifyingly familiar.
Which is the most alarming sensation of all.
“Honestly?” says his new companion, smiling at him. He remains transfixed by his – or at least someone’s – reflected image. “You guys are worse than we are. Hey, what time is it over here?”
He checks his watch and recoils yet again, like an over-the-hill boxer being punished for even trying.
There, on his expensively bronzed wrist, occupying a slice of bodily real estate that, for exactly thirty years, has been the family home of a stylishly understated, high-end Spanish watch, is a solid gold Rolex about the size of a small meteor.
William knows that, before he slips into stress-induced catatonia, he has rather a lot of questions.
Enquiries peculiar to this current stage of what might well be his life but is looking remarkably like somebody else’s.
Yet perhaps it is simply a life into which he has just stepped for some brief sojourn, like an Airbnb of the spirit.
“Who are you?”
She looks puzzled for a moment. He senses fairly swiftly that this may not have been the most prudent query with which to launch.
But then she laughs and puts on a truly appalling Scottish accent. “Well I’m braw, thank you, Wulliam – and hoo’s yersel’?” He just nods, bemused. “Actually, I’d be better with my clothes, babe. Unless you were contemplating—?”
“Er no. NO!” he says, in panic, as he realises exactly what she is offering. “But thank you. For asking. You just – get yourself dressed. Now. Please.”
She waves a patently gym-toned arm, her eyes still promising wondrous things to come, and trots back into the bathroom.
William slumps onto the newly-made bed, wishing that it would gently fold up and clamp itself around his exhausted – albeit reconfigured – body, sucking him swiftly down into oblivion.
The uninhibited young stranger is back in seconds, beside herself with excitement, gesturing frantically towards the TV set.
“Oh – ooh! I forgot,” she yelps. “Switch the telly on! Willo – quick!”
Willo?
“What on earth for?”
“You might just catch the end!”
“It’s nigh, is it?” he says.
He struggles up from the bed and switches on the TV, to reveal what looks like a Spanish game show in all its blaring garishness. He doesn’t understand the language but humiliation is somehow universal.
“Well?” demands the young woman, her eyes on the screen.
He steals a swift look at her, but he could be making her the sole subject of an intrusive, no-holds-barred documentary shot in IMAX 70mm and she most probably wouldn’t notice.
She is utterly transfixed, staring at the wall-mounted television as if it is a friendly, visiting alien and might just have a message pivotal for humanity.
“Well what?” dares William, although he has a dreadful feeling that he ought to know.
“I saw it in the lobby when we came in,” she explains, sort of. “No offence, but I think you slipped up with the talent.”
“Did I? The talent. Uh huh.”
Suddenly it no longer seems quite so important that he should know who she is. What would be more infinitely more valuable, at this precise moment, would be to have the vaguest notion who he is. If she could just stop jabbering for a second.
“Mind you, perhaps she’s perfecto for the Iberian market. ‘Culturally appropriate’. What are the ratings? I’m assuming it’s being recommissioned.”
“Can I – get back to you on that?”
He senses movement beside him and realises that the young woman is towelling vigorously as she watches, almost in time with the rhythm and mounting excitement of the show itself.
If I don’t move around, he thinks, I might explode.
No man should have to go through this. He wants desperately to cry but it’s not something he does and he feels it might not particularly enhance his situation. So pacing is the better option.
He finds, however, that he is not certain how to walk.
There is most definitely a confidence in his stride that wasn’t there before – perhaps it’s the tight clothing – but he also feels that his legs are shaking so much that they’re going to give way under such intense anxiety.
The combination makes him seem like a drunk trying desperately to appear sober, as he reels around the room.
Although, interestingly, the chronic back pain appears to have been sorted.
“Are you sleep-deprived or something?” she asks him in all seriousness. “You didn’t even recognise your own programme!” If he could stare at her even more cluelessly, he manages. “Sooner You Than Me! – The one we’ve—” she makes finger-quotes “—‘come to check out in Madrid.’”
William must have the appearance of someone whose brain has just ceased to function, because suddenly the young woman seems genuinely concerned.
“Is it your medication? Not going to peg out on me, are you?”
“I’m – hoping not to,” he laughs. “Not with the National Television Awards coming up!”
How the hell did I know that? he wonders, having just managed to terrify himself. Or am I simply making it up as I go along?
He can’t help staring at her and she’s staring back, but not in such a good way as she was.
“Sorry,” he says. “Must be jet lag. Ha! LOL.” What? He’ll be doing that finger-quote thing next or the ‘I’ll call you’ gesture with his hand. “You know, you do look so like—”
“I mean, how would I explain that to your wife!” she continues, then watches him add an open mouth to the picture he is currently presenting. “Willo? You look like you’ve never seen me before. Oh God, you haven’t got that Alz—?”
“I’m 53! I think. No, that’s probably stayed the same. Only bloody thing that has.”
William Sutherland gazes around the still familiar room, like it might provide some welcome answers, and tries to ignore the unfamiliar stranger’s less-than-welcome bafflement.
She knows Luisa!
Probably from these damned TV awards, whatever they are.
Somehow this makes it all so much worse.
An adulterer! A betrayer! A love-cheat! Something of which, for all his sins, he could never have been accused hitherto.
That was Luisa’s territory and they were moving on from this, weren’t they? ‘Forgivingness’.
But hang on, he thinks, as memories about his own past behaviour, brand new memories he most definitely doesn’t want, begin to trickle mercilessly in.
“I have to find – an emergency tobacconist’s. For – more cigars. Won’t be a minute. Okay?”
He looks back at the young woman. She’s totally locked-on to the TV. He nods, gives a feeble little wave and leaves the room.