The Last Resort
Chapter One
Abbey
I was a reluctant holiday-maker. Bedraggled, weary and extremely conscious of being single.
But I was in the Maldives and the resort, well, it was lovely.
Postcard-perfect. It was all palm trees, nicely swept paths and warm, welcoming lights.
The staff were helpful in that ‘hotel’ kind of way, where they make you feel significantly more important than you are when checking in, but you strongly suspect they will talk about you meanly the minute you step away from the counter.
But despite their charm, I could barely muster a polite smile.
It didn’t help that the past several hours had revealed that I was a nervous flyer.
I never used to be. I was so nervous that the lady beside me suspected I was having a panic attack, and a flight attendant, who looked like Hannah Waddingham, gave me a Valium out of her handbag and a vodka to wash it down.
By the time I arrived at the resort, the overwhelming feeling I remember was, well, relief.
Followed closely by exhaustion, plus the solid conviction that my life was rubbish, and that going on a holiday by yourself was a one-way trip to Loserville.
The porter (Hot. Model hot. Twenty-five max.) opened the door to the beachfront room, and then we both just stood there while I took a deep, miserable, shuddering sigh.
It was the perfect room, literally perfect.
I walked into it slowly, taking in the lustrous white linen covering the enormous bed.
It was so spacious I could stand there with my black tote held at arm’s length, spin around and not hit a goddamn thing.
It had better cupboard space than my house, and a gorgeous bathroom with subway tiles, fancy shampoo and conditioner in those exclusive smaller bottles, and a window to let you look out at the ocean from the tub.
A bottle of champagne sat cooling in a silver bucket, three-quarters filled with ice cubes and two glasses laid out with their stems crossed in front of the bottle, suggesting there should be a couple staying here.
There were double doors with light-diffusing curtains draped from the ceiling.
The doors were open, and a gentle warm breeze flittered into the room, making the soft curtains dance.
From the door to where the ocean gently lapped was perfectly pale sand, the kind that squeaks under your feet and gets extremely hot in the sun.
To add insult to injury, a full moon hung perfectly low, like a neon welcome sign in the night sky.
It was the moon that pushed me over the edge, and I burst into tears and fell on the bed.
I don’t know what happened to the hot porter. Perhaps it wasn’t every day he showed someone the perfect room, only to have them collapse into a ball of grief and sadness. He had evidently made himself scarce, leaving the emotional wreck alone.
I cried a marriage-worth of tears on that perfect bed, bits of my tubular mascara balling up and marring the perfect white surface.
Once I had noticed, I began trying to brush it off, but that just made the smudges much worse, so I simply gave up.
Walking over to the champagne bucket, I reached into the slushy ice and wiped a little of the freezing liquid over my eyes.
Then I popped the cork and poured out a glass, downing it, failing to care about the not-quite-ladylike burp that came out.
Unsatisfied with the glass’s capacity, I placed it neatly beside the cooler and drank the next mouthful directly from the bottle.
Internally, I was prepared to acknowledge that it appeared I was bottoming out and having some sort of crisis.
Maybe I was entitled to one. Six months and seven hours ago, I had been dumped by my husband of thirteen years.
He came home, ate the mediocre dinner I had prepared for him and told me he was in love, just not with me.
He laughed in a ‘I cannot believe this has happened’ kind of way, which reminded me of Elizabeth Bennet telling her father how much she loved Darcy at the end of the love-it-or-hate-it 2005 Pride the open doors and the fluttering of the white light-diffusing curtains seeming to indicate that I had a neighbour.
The horrifying thought came to mind that it might be a honeymooning couple, filled with dreams of happily ever after, who I would have to make small talk with.
That made me worry I might not actually survive this holiday, but at least that was a problem for the next day.
I wandered slowly down to the water’s edge past several sun loungers, tables and chairs with folded-down, off-duty umbrellas.
I leaned over and planted my champagne bottle into the sand, twisting it back and forth until it found enough purchase to stand upright.
Two more steps and my feet touched the water, which felt warm – not bath warm, but not steal-your-breath cold either.
I had another nervous look around the empty beach until I was confident I was alone.
Peter had bought the holiday in a sale and booked it for the very beginning of the off-season, so it seemed fair to assume that not many people would be here full stop.
I stood in what my sister would call my thinking pose, with one hand on my hip and the other on my grandmother’s pendant around my throat.
The rectangle filigree pattern stamped into my finger, and I felt along the three small diamonds, centring myself.
Grandma Iris was a bloody powerhouse. If she were here now, she would have told me, ‘Abbey, stop being feeble.’
Non-feeble Abbey took a deep breath, channelling Iris. I slid the strap of my dress off my left shoulder, then repeated the motion on the other side. I lowered the dress over my chest, wiggled it down my hips and stepped out of it, throwing it back for the champagne bottle to look after.