Chapter 29
We are drinking cocktails in the hotel bar. Or rather, I’m glugging mine (lilac, slightly fizzy) and Shane is sipping his gamely (violent green). His is only a third down by the time I’m slurping my sugary dregs, and I’m unembarrassed by this.
Obviously, further alcohol was needed after that message. The thought of Lloyd not only doing it but doing it in my flat! Are they swinging from my multicoloured plastic chandelier? Banging against my fridge? Doing it in my bed, even? I hope he warns her about the dodgy slat!
I have tried repeatedly to call him but it’s just rung out and of course he’s busy right now. Busy drinking my cheap white wine with her and laughing at my fridge magnets! ‘Who’s this mouse?’ Lloyd asked once, jabbing at one of them.
‘It’s not a mouse,’ I retorted, ‘it’s Madame Cholet.’
‘Madame who?’ The lady Womble! What a dope! I should have known.
A minor positive is that the hotel bar is still open at this late hour. We found the clamped-headband receptionist manning it, and she uttered the magical words, ‘Yes, no problem. What would you like?’ I could have torn that Love Heart off the wall of our room for her. The one that says I LOVE YOU.
The cocktails are fierce, and this is a good thing.
No pissing around with weak alcohol when your so-called boyfriend has been receiving photos of an intimate nature from an unknown woman and is likely to be shagging her at this very minute.
I wonder if he’s Missionary Man with her too, and if she can orgasm that way?
If she can name all the members of the Brat Pack, with extra points for Ally Sheedy? Bet she can’t.
‘What a time to come off antidepressants,’ I remark, and Shane smiles grimly. We are on our second round now, and he is sticking to the lurid cocktails, in solidarity. ‘You’re absolutely sure that message wasn’t meant for you?’ he ventures.
‘Definitely not. I haven’t sent him any photos, although he’s been asking for them…’ I catch Shane’s surprised look. ‘Of my feet,’ I add weakly.
‘Er… right!’ He sips his caramel negroni.
‘It’s a thing he wants us to do,’ I start, any lingering scraps of embarrassment having long been dissolved by my Dolly Mixture martini.
So I spill it all out: Lloyd’s insistence that we’d ‘make a packet’, that he’d take care of the visuals and all I’d need to put into it was my time and a wide array of nail polish options.
‘Wow,’ Shane murmurs. ‘How did you feel about that?’
I shrug. ‘I’m not a prude, but it kind of weirded me out.’
‘I can imagine.’ We let this settle, and then he looks at me and asks, hesitantly, ‘So… that wooden box thing in your photo? The thing for growing peas in, was it really—’
‘I’m sorry,’ I cut in. ‘That was a foot thing, for getting them muddied up. Apparently, the punters like that.’ I laugh dryly.
Shane reaches across the candy-striped table and touches my arm. ‘Christ, Joze.’ That’s what he used to call me: Joze. ‘I’m sorry this has happened to you,’ he adds.
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ I say dismissively. ‘It’s good to know, at least.’
‘I s’pose so. Still very hurtful though.’
I nod, conscious of the prickle of tears gathering at the back of my eyeballs, and flinch as my phone rings on the table.
It’s Lloyd. I tip the remaining pink martini down my throat and jump up from my seat. ‘Better take this,’ I announce, already marching away from our table.
‘Hey, hon!’ Lloyd says.
‘Hi, Lloyd.’
‘So, how’s life on the road? Got the band back together yet?’ He sniggers.
‘Not exactly,’ I reply as I step outside into the cool, damp night. ‘It’d be tricky, seeing as Ravi died.’
A brief pause. ‘Oh, babe, I’m sorry. Just a joke.’
I breathe out slowly, trying to steady myself. ‘I… got a message from you,’ I blurt out.
‘Did you?’ The silence hangs between us. A ginger cat, eyes glinting in the silvery glow of the street lights, peeps out from under a car.
‘Yes, I did. Obviously, it wasn’t meant for me.’
‘Shit,’ he murmurs.
‘It was a bit much, to get that,’ I continue. ‘Who did you mean to send it to?’
Lloyd exhales, as if my pesky trivial questions are irritating to him. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me!’ I cry as I stomp down the street, away from the hotel.
A sliver of moon shines hazily through the fine drizzle.
I think of Shane, sitting alone at our table, with his caramel cocktail – ‘liquidised Caramac!’ he joked, being of the same vintage as me.
And I realise just how much I want to be back there with him, in the bar’s cosy warmth.
‘So, what’s her name?’ I ask, as Lloyd is still not being forthcoming.
‘It’s not really relevant,’ he replies.
‘Actually, it is!’ Fury rears up in me. ‘I’d like to know, especially as you invited her to my flat.’
‘No I didn’t, I just—’
‘Have you fucked her in my bed, Shane?’
‘Hey!’
‘If you have, would you strip the bedding and put a wash on? A hot wash, please. Ninety degrees with softener—’
‘Stop it,’ he snaps. ‘No, I haven’t. What d’you think I am?’ Hmm, where to start? ‘It wasn’t meant like that,’ he goes on. ‘She’s just… a friend. It’s just a place to meet, with you being so close to the Tube—’
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘It’s not that late—’
‘It’s nearly midnight!’ I yell. ‘Hang on – is she there now?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Josie, please,’ he says in a calmer voice. ‘Look… it’s nothing. Really. Just someone I see now and again. Just occasionally.’
‘What, like, all the time we’ve been together?’
‘No! Not really. I don’t know,’ he says hotly. ‘I’m sorry, I guess we should have talked about this…’
Something dawns on me now as an attractive, entwined young couple approach, their voices tumbling together.
That even though there’s ‘only’ a decade between us, Lloyd and I view dating very differently.
I mean, call me stupid, but I thought he was my boyfriend!
I even took the fucker to Lanzarote last summer for a birthday treat!
However, I realise now that, like Cora’s bewildering clean beauty routine compared to my ‘cakey’ powder, Lloyd and I are from different eras.
For him, it’s all about talking to people on the apps and calling them horny minxes and apparently having sex with them.
That’s how it is now. Why didn’t I know this?
‘Anyway, what about you?’ he counters.
I stop abruptly, realising I’ve arrived at The Black Bull pub where Shane and I were earlier. Now it’s firmly shut up for the night. ‘What about me?’ I ask.
Lloyd snorts. ‘Going on a little tour around the country with your old flame. Reigniting the spark.’
‘He’s not my old flame!’ I splutter. ‘There isn’t any spark…’
All right, your honour. All right. I won’t deny that I’ve experienced stirrings at certain points on this trip.
When I had that panic attack, and Shane put his arm around me.
I was still sweating like a horse and felt like I might vomit.
But even then, a single thought – Don’t take your arm away!
Keep it there forever! – ricocheted around my brain.
When his hand brushed against mine, as we examined a scale model of a liquorice factory at the museum, I wanted to hold it.
People must think we’re a couple, I thought ridiculously (of course ‘people’ didn’t think anything).
As he sat opposite me in that campsite café, sipping his hot chocolate with a fleck of cream on his lip, I wanted to kiss it right off him.
I’ve tried to dampen it down and get a grip on myself.
But the truth is, I’ve been a pan of milk on the verge of frothing over from the minute we pulled away from Back Alley Music.
‘Oh, come on,’ Lloyd scoffs, factory settings fully restored. ‘The two of you cosied up in a campervan together?’
‘I’m telling you, it’s not like that!’
‘Really.’
‘Yes, really.’
Lloyd sighs, as if trying to figure out where to go from here. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you, babe.’
I turn back towards the hotel. ‘I guess we didn’t have that conversation, did we?’ I say dryly.
‘What conversation?’ he asks.
‘The one I think you’re meant to have, where you decide that you’re going to be exclusive?’
I hear him clear his throat. ‘Um, no. We’ve never had that conversation.’
I stop outside The Sweet Jar Hotel, feeling stranded and utterly stupid, and also decidedly tipsy, in this unfamiliar town.
Silly Josie, assuming that seeing each other regularly, and going on holiday together and, latterly, him embarking on home improvements for me meant that we were actually a couple.
I feel sometimes that the world is speeding ahead of me and I’m blundering along in its wake.
‘So we’re not exclusive,’ I remark.
Lloyd has the decency to wait a moment, possibly to choose his words with care. ‘Josie, look… I like you a lot. I really do. I think you’re lovely and sweet and—’
‘Sweet?’ I bark at him.
‘But I think we’re at quite different stages.’
‘Fine,’ I snap. ‘It’s fine.’
‘I’m still doing your kitchen shelves,’ he adds quickly. ‘They’re looking great so far! I’ll get them finished in the morning, you’ll be so pleased when you come home—’
‘No, just leave them,’ I cut in.
‘What?’
‘Get out of my flat right now, Lloyd.’
‘But—’ I sense him frowning, perplexed by my unreasonableness. ‘Don’t want me to finish them properly?’
‘No, I don’t!’
‘Okay, okay, no need to shout—’
‘Just lock up and put your keys through my letter box.’ With a gulp, I finish the call and scrunch up my eyes as if, when I reopen them, I’ll have turned into a sensible woman fully in control of her life.