Chapter 3
It was many hours later, and Tilly was far from the opulence of the water-facing guest rooms she'd been servicing all day long.
Behind the double doors to the left of the swimming pool, facing inland where the mosquitoes lurked in the staff quarters, she held her key card over the pad, pushed the door open with her hip, and let it fall shut behind her.
Pulling her cleaner's tabard off over her head and dropping that and the rest of her brown uniform into a plastic washing bin by the door, she pulled the regulation oversized hibiscus clip from the back of her head and scooped her hair up with a scrunchie. Feeling good she was not.
Forty-eight hours or less were all she needed to implement her exit plan.
She could and would be gone in two days.
Some might consider her stupid in her cleaning tabard and regulation tropical smile, but she was far from it and at all times ready to do what she had to do.
Not only was she not stupid, but she came complete with a backup plan for if and when things went wrong.
A lesson learnt after a coercive, controlling ex-husband was always to have a strategy to get out.
She had one now. Ever since the terror of the marriage and all that had come with it, she’d kept an exit plan in her back pocket ready to be put swiftly into play at any time.
That time had come. It wouldn't take her long to be back on the other side of the world. Hello, my lovely English land. How are you? I’m on my way home.
Sitting down on the edge of the small, low-to-the-ground double bed, she stared at the wall for a long time as the ceiling fan turned slowly above her head, doing nothing much to push the not-quite-chilled-enough air around.
Outside, cicadas had started up, somewhere down the corridor a door slammed, a tinny radio was on, and she could hear the staff buggy scooting down the service aisle picking up workers for the evening service.
Funny, really, she wasn't crying, shaking, upset or sad.
At least, not yet. She'd thought, on the entire walk back from the executive suites, that she might start to blub once out of view.
Or that she'd get to the door of her room, the whole thing would land properly, and she'd sit on the floor and howl.
But rather, she felt nothing of the sort, just numb, really.
Numb and ready to go home. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but in a way, there was relief in there somewhere, too.
Or was she just kidding herself? Sugarcoating what had been done.
Booking a flight as soon as humanly possible was the most important thing and part of the exit plan front and centre.
Tapping on Google Flights, she scrolled past the cheaper options without even looking.
Getting out as swiftly as possible if and when it was needed had always been at the top of the list. This, my friends, was not a time for dicking around.
Tilly Bloomwood needed to be boarding a jet that would get her home as soon as.
None of the twelve-hour layover in New Zealand nonsense or going the long way around for the sake of a few quid.
This was not the time to fanny about quibbling over pennies.
Tilly Bloomwood had a mission to perform as soon as she could, and she was about to pull it off with military precision.
She'd be booked to leave, packed and ready to hotfoot it out of there as soon as she could.
In less than an hour, she'd found a flight out of Nadi, booked herself a window seat all the way to Heathrow, added extra baggage allowance just in case and zoomed to the checkout page.
In a few minutes, it was sorted: card details in, three-factor authentication done, confirmation pinged through, tickets in her inbox.
Looking at the confirmation email for a long moment, Tilly shook her head.
She'd always told herself that if anything went wrong, she was a couple of flights away from going home.
Now that moment had come, and she would soon be on her way.
A flight through Singapore was booked, confirmed and ready and waiting.
Walking the three steps to the tiny kitchenette corner of the room and filling the kettle, she made herself a cup of tea next to the two-plate ring and the mini microwave and sat down on the tiny compact sofa that was less sofa, more bench-with-cushions.
Looking around, she realised that in a way she'd miss the little room with its small double bed, the cover faded from the sun where the curtain didn't quite meet in the middle.
None of the bells and whistles of the rooms she cleaned, but clean, tidy and strangely full of the dreams she'd thought might come true.
Tapping on her photos, as she sipped her tea, she scrolled through the previous four years of her life.
The pictures portrayed a life that wasn’t really true: with a life jacket over swimmers on a kayak in Barbados, in a tiny bikini, holding up a coconut in the Maldives.
Standing on a beach at sunset in Tahiti, smiling from ear to ear.
Lennixx on stage in a venue in Hong Kong.
Lennixx on a cruise ship deck with sunglasses on.
Lennixx with his arm draped around her in a restaurant in Bali.
The two of them on a beach the morning after his birthday.
Lennixx in a laundry doorway in just a towel.
Scrolling through, she waited for the tears, but nothing came.
All of it felt very, very strange. Like looking at photographs of someone she'd known a long time before and didn't really keep in touch with anymore.
As if the person in the photos was no longer on the scene.
Sipping her tea and checking her emails, she wondered what Lennixx was doing on the cruise and mentally went through a list of things she had to do.
It wasn't going to take her long to pack her bag, and her casual employment contract meant that she could leave pretty much whenever she wanted.
She hated to let her colleagues down but knew that a queue of people would be lining up to jump in her place as soon as they could.
Family emergency would do it. Nobody questioned a family emergency.
She'd be on a plane in two days and back home before Lennixx had even completed the cruise.
The fact that he had little to no internet connection on the small cruise around the island was only going to work in her favour.
Scrolling further back through her photos, past the Lennixx years, Tilly found the ones she always paused on.
Pictures of her and her two best friends in a special little folder.
The three of them had met on day one of senior school and been thick as thieves ever since.
Pia and Jasmine, sisters, were eleven months apart in age, with Tilly in between.
After meeting them and getting on really well, Tilly had taken them home one day after school, and her dad had said that they’d been properly brought up.
The next day at school, The Properlies had been officially formed.
Pia and Jasmine had taken Tilly under their wings.
Like the two sisters she’d never had. Sister from another mother, they’d always said and had treated her accordingly.
Pia was in France now, living with her mum in a villa near Aix, teaching yoga to wealthy retirees and pretending she was going to write a novel.
Jasmine, the youngest, was in New York, doing makeup for a West End musical that had transferred to Broadway, sleeping in hotel rooms and eating catering at odd hours.
The two of them were the only people who knew about the exit plan.
The only people who'd seen Tilly through all that had gone on with Andy and the aftermath. They’d coached her through the decision to leave England and to travel with Lennixx.
Tilly had known The Properlies had privately thought Lennixx was a mistake, but they’d supported her anyway because that was what The Properlies did.
Opening WhatsApp on The Properlies group chat, Tilly added a message.
Tilly: Exit plan is happening. I'm coming home.
The replies came back almost at once, as if Jasmine and Pia had been waiting.
Pia: About blooming time. Yesssss! Where are you?
Jasmine: I'm on my break this end. Wtf? When will you be home?
Tilly: Fiji at the mo, but I've booked the flight.
Pia: You WHAT????
Jasmine: What did he do?
Tilly: Long story. I'll tell you everything when I get home. I just wanted you to know.
Pia: We're here. Always. It’s been a long time coming.
Jasmine: Safe travels. Check in with us all the way home. Where are you staying? At your mum’s?
Tilly: No, she’s away. I’m not sure yet. I’ll just book into a hotel for a bit and take stock. I might look for a job somewhere that comes with accommodation.
Pia: You can go to mine if you need to. Lucy’s there, but you can have the sofa. Let me know if you need help.
Tilly: Will do. Love you both. Properly.
Pia: Love you properly back.
Jasmine: Tils???????????????
Tilly: Yep.
Jasmine: Never liked him. Don't look back.
Pia: Twat.
Tilly stared at the screen and smiled. She’d really missed The Properlies whilst she’d been travelling all over the globe.
Sure, WhatsApp and video calls were around, but it wasn’t the same.
It was time to go home. Even though the two sisters weren’t currently in the same country, she would be closer and not on the other side of the world.
Just being in similar time zones would be a bonus.
Leaning her head back, she looked up at the ceiling fan turning in an endless circle above her head.
Behind her eyes, for a moment, she saw herself among the marble of suite 5272.
Kneeling, cloth in hand, talcum powder all over the show.
Cleaning up other people's mess was no longer going to be part of her narrative.
Nah, stuff that for a game of soldiers. Bye-bye, tropical hospitality.
Hello, new start. Time to call it quits.
She was having none of it, her supposed boyfriend playing at being an up-and-coming worldwide superstar entertainer or not. Tilly Bloomwood wanted to go home.
Continuing to scroll through her phone, she navigated away from her photos and onto her Facebook groups, scrolled down and then tapped.
Tilly: Hi. I hope a DM is OK. I'm enquiring about the boat shed/going concern on Darling Island. Is it still available? If so, perhaps we could chat?