The Woman Who Upped and Left Read online

‘I know it’s not in theory,’ Lottie says. ‘It’s just, all this rich food: it’s lovely of course, but who could eat like this all the time?’

  ‘Actually, I think I could,’ I enthuse. ‘In fact, I’m going to do a proper French lunch for my friends when I get back …’

  ‘What about Morgan?’ Hugo asks with a grin, joining us at the table.

  ‘Oh, he’d take exception to the leeks, being plants …’ I break off as Jasper, the ridiculously buff porter, appears in the garden and strides towards me.

  ‘Ah, here you are, madam. Sorry to interrupt your lunch, but there’s someone at reception to see you.’

  I frown. ‘Really? I’m not expecting anyone. Are you sure they want me?’

  He smiles briskly. ‘Yes, definitely.’ Giving the others a baffled look, I trot along beside him into the foyer.

  My heart lurches as I spot him. This is wrong, so wrong. Dressed down in a crumpled grey T-shirt and faded jeans – he doesn’t feel obliged to dress up for a place like this – Stevie is leaning on the reception desk with his pert bottom stuck out. He has the tousled air of a rakish young dude paying a visit to his older woman in her swanky hotel suite. Hang on, I realise with a sinking heart, that’s exactly what he’s doing.

  ‘Hey, babe!’ Stevie’s face breaks into a wide, teeth-showing smile.

  ‘Stevie … what are you doing here?’

  ‘Charming! I thought you’d be pleased.’ He feigns a put-out look.

  ‘I am, I really am, but … couldn’t you have called to warn me?’

  ‘Warn you.’ He laughs dryly. ‘Well, that’s nice, Aud. I’d expected a slightly more enthusiastic reception.’ He kisses me noisily on the lips and emits another cackly laugh. ‘Woah, garlic! It’s pretty pungent, babe. Still, I s’pose there’s a whole heap of that in French cooking …’

  ‘Not as much as you’d expect but, yes, we did make garlic soup this morning …’

  ‘Hmmm, remind me not to try any, darling.’ He slides an arm around my waist. Aware of the receptionist observing our exchange, I lead him by the hand to the soft leather armchairs by the fireplace.

  ‘Look,’ I mutter, ‘it is lovely to see you. I’m just a bit … surprised, that’s all.’

  With difficulty, he pulls his chair closer to mine. ‘That was the whole point. To surprise you, I mean. I was in the area and—’

  ‘Were you really?’

  ‘Yeah, honestly,’ he insists, ‘and I thought, well, I’d be crazy to miss this opportunity to see you …’

  I study his greeny-blue eyes, wishing this didn’t feel quite so wrong. ‘But I’m on a course, Stevie. You know that. I’m just on my lunch break. Class starts again at two …’

  The beginnings of a sulk settles over his face. ‘Yeah, okay, I know you’re busy. It’s just, I felt a bit crap about missing your birthday …’ He reaches down and unzips his brown leather bag – the one I’ve seen in many a Travelodge – to extract a tiny parcel wrapped in pale blue tissue. ‘So I thought I’d surprise you with this.’

  ‘Oh! That’s very sweet of you. Thank you, darling.’

  Amazed that he’s brought me something – the first gift he’s ever given me – I carefully peel away the paper. It’s a delicate silver necklace, its interlocked spirals embellished with tiny, glittering pink stones. ‘It’s lovely,’ I murmur, studying it in the palm of my hand.

  He grins. ‘I thought it’d be nicer to deliver it personally.’

  I look up at him, ashamed now for greeting him so curtly. ‘That’s so thoughtful of you, honey.’

  ‘Go on, try it on.’ I smile and fix it around my neck. ‘Looks gorgeous,’ he says approvingly. ‘I knew it’d suit you. You have a beautiful neck, babe.’ I lean over and kiss his cheek. ‘So how about you show me your room?’ he adds.

  I laugh. ‘I can’t, not now. I told you, afternoon class starts at—’

  ‘Aw, c’mon, sweetheart, I’ll wait for you there until it’s finished. I’m sure I’ll be able to amuse myself. Won’t be long, will you?’

  ‘Well, yes, I’ll be three hours or so …’

  ‘Three hours?’ he repeats, aghast. ‘What’re you planning to do with all that time?’

  ‘Cook,’ I say, jumping up from my seat. ‘That’s what I’m here for, remember? But I’ll take you up and you can hang out there until I’m done.’

  We kiss in the lift. While it’s usually thrilling in a motorway hotel, I sense myself tensing in case it should stop and we’re caught locked in an embrace. Maybe, I decide, relieved when we reach the top floor, I’m more of a cheap hotel sort of woman. It never occurs to me to worry what people might think when we’re at a Day’s Inn or a Travelodge. ‘Wow, you lucky girl,’ Stevie exclaims as I let us into my room.

  ‘I know! Isn’t it lovely?’

  He dumps his bag and grabs me for another kiss, then marches around, checking the lounging area, the bathroom, the sweeping views from the windows. He opens drawers and the wardrobe and fondles the tassel on the thick golden rope that holds back a brocade curtain. He discovers the minibar, flinging it open with a gasp of delight. ‘Wow, tons of booze. There’s even lemon for drinks! They think of everything here. Okay if I have these crisps?’ He snatches a packet and rips it open.

  ‘Yes, of course …’

  ‘Ugh, they pong a bit, don’t they have any salt and vinegar?’ He dives back towards the minibar, pulls out a packet of ginger cookies and crams one into his mouth. ‘Bit too gingery,’ he announces, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘Stevie, my class starts in fifteen minutes,’ I say, sensing a twist of annoyance as he whips a Kirsch Kiss from the box.

  ‘Mmm, yum, this is more like it …’ He grabs another and consumes it in one bite.

  ‘This is important to me,’ I say, my voice rising a little. ‘We’re doing brûlées, it’s the only chance I’ll have to learn—’

  ‘Your only chance to make a brûlée,’ he teases, flinging himself backwards onto the bed with such force that a cushion flies off. ‘No, it’s not. I’ll buy you a cookbook, darling. We’ll make one together. We’ll work through the recipe step by step, you can show me all your special skills with your apron on and nothing underneath …’

  Despite my irritation, I laugh. ‘Behave yourself. You’ll dirty my bed with your shoes on.’

  ‘Oh, c’mere, give me another kiss. Just a quick one, promise.’ I smile and lie beside him, and we kiss again – he tastes of chocolate and kirsch – and it happens, even though I know it shouldn’t: my top and jeans fall away and I’m down to my non-matchy underwear, the lace on my bra gone bobbly from too many washes, the knickers a tad baggy around the bottom. Now he’s kissing the swell of my stomach, sending little sparks shooting through me and breaking off only to murmur, ‘Hang on a sec. I’ve got another surprise for you, babe.’

  ‘What is it? Another present?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Just lie there and close your eyes …’

  I shift position on the bed. ‘Stevie, I really don’t have the time. Brûlée’s pretty technical and I don’t want to miss—’

  ‘It’ll only take a minute,’ he cuts in. With a trace of exasperation I close my eyes, torn between curiosity and a burning desire to get off to class and prove to Brad that desserts are my thing, actually.

  ‘Hurry up,’ I murmur.

  ‘I will if you absolutely promise not to open your eyes.’

  ‘Okay, okay …’ There’s the soft pad of his footsteps, then he slithers next to me on the bed. ‘Keep your eyes shut,’ he whispers into my ear, recommencing the kissing, around my neck and décolletage now which, under normal circumstances – i.e., somewhere on the M6, with a juggernaut revving outside the un-open-able UPVC window – I’d find extremely pleasing. ‘You’re so gorgeous,’ he murmurs, trailing his fingers along my inner thigh.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Shhh, stop worrying, there’s plenty of time.’

  ‘Seriously, Stevie, I need to—’ My eyes ping open to the sight of Stevie i
n his pants, grabbing at my wrists and lashing something firmly around them. ‘What are you doing?’ I shriek.

  ‘Oh, c’mon, Aud, it’s just a bit of fun …’

  ‘You’re not tying me up. Let me go!’

  He laughs, and for a moment I’m too stunned to react as, having firmly tied my wrists together, he lashes the ends of the rope to opposite posters of the bed. ‘See, I knew you’d like this.’

  ‘You’re mad. Christ, how did you do that so fast?’

  ‘I was in the Scouts,’ he sniggers. ‘Got my knotwork badge, babe.’

  I am laughing now, at his sheer nerve and, I have to admit, his ingenuity as I peer at the rope and spot a dangling tassel. ‘It’s the rope off my curtains!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Stevie chuckles. ‘Like I said, they think of everything here.’

  ‘Very funny. How resourceful of you. Now stop all this and let me go …’

  He pulls a mock forlorn face. ‘Aw, c’mon, darling, when do we ever end up together in a bed like this?’

  ‘Never,’ I reply. ‘Never ever …’

  ‘So let’s use it then … hey, I’ve got an idea!’ He bounds off the bed and lurches for the minibar.

  ‘You’re not having more chocolates. I want to take them all home for—’

  ‘Nah, babe, this …’ He pulls out a mini bottle of champagne and pops it open.

  ‘I can’t drink that, I already had a glass of red at lunchtime. I need to be fully compos for brûlée …’

  ‘No, but I can,’ he chuckles, crawling back onto the bed and sloshing some onto my stomach.

  ‘Christ, that’s freezing!’ I glare down, seeing it pooling in my bellybutton and dribbling over my sides onto my velvety covers.

  ‘Lie still,’ he commands, positioning his head at my stomach and lapping at the champagne like a dog.

  ‘Stevie, stop it,’ I snap. ‘Okay, you can have the champagne – have anything you want – but please drink it out of a glass …’

  ‘This is much more fun,’ he murmurs.

  ‘Untie me right now!’

  He rears up his head, in that way that a tortoise might do, and wipes a dribble of champagne from his chin. ‘Woah, I didn’t mean to upset you, babe, you’re not normally this uptight …’

  ‘No, because I’m not in a posh hotel in the daytime with a custard to make. Just do it, Stevie. I mean it. Untie me now.’

  He tuts loudly and shuffles towards one of the posters where he starts to fiddle ineffectually at the knot. ‘Jesus, it’s bloody tight. It’s ’cause you’ve been tugging on it …’

  ‘Untie me!’

  ‘I’m trying, I’m trying, Christ’s sake …’ He rakes back his hair. ‘What a waste of a room, that’s all I can say …’

  I glare at him, fury bubbling inside me. ‘A room isn’t wasted just because I don’t want to have sex in it, Stevie.’

  ‘You don’t usually need much persuading,’ he huffs, still picking feebly at the knot.

  ‘Oh, that’s charming that is. That makes me feel really good about myself, that I’m usually desperate …’

  ‘Well,’ he says, with an infuriating snort, ‘you are!’

  I glare at him, about to retort how-bloody-dare-you, but of course he’s absolutely right. Who else but a desperate woman would dash off down the motorway to have sex in miserable hotel rooms and finish off with a meat feast slice? ‘Just get this thing off me,’ I yell, at which the door flies open and Hugo stands there, gawping as if caught in headlights, then backs away into the corridor and disappears.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Curdled Custard

  ‘Who the fuck was that?’ Stevie exclaims. I close my eyes momentarily. I am actually dying here, from acute mortification. The staff will have to smuggle out my body without the other guests seeing. They’ll probably shove me out of some back entrance where deliveries come in.

  ‘No one,’ I murmur. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just get these ropes off me right now …’ Grumbling under his breath, Stevie frees one wrist, then the other. Turns out they were easy to untie after all. What a star scout he must have been. I must ask him to demonstrate other skills sometime, like lighting a fire by rubbing two sticks together or constructing a shelter from branches and ferns.

  I clamber off the bed and pull on my top and jeans. ‘C’mon,’ Stevie mutters, tugging on his T-shirt, ‘he probably didn’t see much.’

  I glare up from putting on my shoes. ‘No, of course not. Only me in my underwear, tied up. And you soaked my bed, just look at it, the turndown lady’ll wonder what the hell’s been going on …’ I point at the mottled patches on the throw where the champagne’s sunk in.

  ‘Turndown lady?’

  ‘Yes, the woman who brings chocolate … oh, never mind.’

  Stevie sniffs. ‘Who was that guy anyway? And don’t say no one. He obviously knows you well enough to march straight into your room …’

  ‘That was Hugo,’ I reply, in the bathroom now, pulling out my improvised scrunchie and brushing out my dishevelled hair.

  ‘And this Hugo’ – he affects a ridiculously posh voice – ‘thinks it’s okay to barge into your room like that?’

  I emerge from the bathroom and glare at him. ‘He probably heard me shouting. He was only trying to help …’

  ‘Help,’ Stevie repeats with a sneer. ‘Is that what you call it?’

  I stare at him. ‘What are you inferring?’

  He shrugs. ‘Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. So you’re, um, what … friends? Lovers?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  ‘Well, what am I supposed to think? Is that what’s been going on here? Oh, I can imagine. Getting pissed in the evenings, everyone hopping from room to room …’

  ‘For God’s sake, of course we haven’t. There’s been no hopping …’

  ‘Look, I know what these posh types are like,’ he goes on in a sneering tone I’ve never heard before. ‘Shagging each other at gymkhanas, groping each other’s arses in jodhpurs …’ I gawp at him, watching his now decidedly unappealing mouth as he rants on.

  ‘I think you’re confusing a French cookery course with Riders by Jilly Cooper, Stevie.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever …’

  I inhale deeply, my gaze settling upon his leather bag. Presumably his little champagne seduction kit is stashed in there as usual. He needn’t have bothered when there’s plenty of posh booze in my minibar. As he’s discovered, they think of everything here.

  ‘Well,’ I say firmly, ‘you can think what you like, but Hugo’s just a man on the course, just a friend …’

  ‘So you’ve made a new friend,’ he says bitterly.

  ‘Yes, is that a problem?’

  He blinks at me, and his face softens. He steps towards me and slides his arms round my waist. ‘Sorry, babe. I’m just a bit … hurt, that’s all. You don’t seem too happy to see me …’

  ‘It’s just not a good time,’ I mutter.

  He kisses the top of my head. ‘Don’t rush off. Let’s chill out, have a drink …’

  ‘I don’t want a drink,’ I snap. ‘You can stay here, do whatever you like. I’m going out.’

  ‘Off to brûlée class?’ he calls after me as I make for the door.

  ‘Just out, if that’s okay with you?’

  ‘It’s just custard with a burnt crust on top,’ he shouts after me. ‘How difficult can it be?’

  I’ll never know, I decide as I travel down in the lift, because, clearly, I can’t face Hugo today, or ever again for that matter. I’ll have to feign illness until the end of the course, surviving on room service meals and self-medicating with minibar booze – but then, what would be the point of that? I’d be lonely and bored up here all by myself, and the turndown lady would tell the other turndown ladies about the pitiful drunk woman lying on a damp bed in the honeymoon suite. No, I’m better sneaking back to my room and sending Stevie packing, then grabbing my stuff and leaving too.

  I step out through the revolving doors. It’s a cool,
breezy day with a bright blue cloudless sky. I inhale deeply, in the hope that the fresh country air will somehow lend me an air of purity after being lashed to the bed and splattered with drink. I stop and watch a pair of ducks gliding serenely across the shimmering water. Another option would be to throw myself into the lake, but how would Morgan feel, being informed that his mother had come to a watery end having left him only a few measly tubs of chilli and bolognaise and forty quid? He won’t get far on that.

  I slip a hand up my T-shirt and touch my stomach experimentally. It’s sticky from the champagne, further adding to my sense of tawdriness as I replay recent events: being wetly snogged by a celebrity chef (unwanted) and tied up with a curtain rope (doubly unwanted). Life was a whole lot happier when I was just going about my business, tending to the kids at school and Mrs B – and Morgan, of course. Maybe I’m really not cut out for this kind of life.

  A figure emerges from the hotel and looks around the grounds, as if searching for someone. I glance back at the lake and focus hard on the ducks. ‘Audrey?’ the man calls out.

  Christ, it’s Hugo. My heart quickens as he strides towards me. Please go away. I can’t discuss the curtain rope thing now. I will myself to split into billions of particles and disappear. ‘Hey,’ he says, crossing the perfect lawn and sitting on the bench beside me.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in class?’ I ask weakly.

  ‘Yeah, in a minute.’ He touches my arm. ‘You okay?’

  ‘No, not really,’ I mutter.

  He clears his throat. ‘Look, I’m so sorry for barging in on you like that. I shouldn’t have—’

  ‘No, I’m sorry …’ I dig the toe of my shoe into the gravel.

  ‘It’s just, I heard you yelling. I was worried. You screamed, “Get it off me!” and I thought – I don’t know – that you were being stung or something …’

  ‘Stung?’ I repeat, turning to him.

  ‘Well, yeah.’ We lapse into silence. ‘And your door wasn’t shut properly,’ he adds. ‘Class was just about to start and I knew you wouldn’t want to miss—’

  ‘I can’t go to class today,’ I cut in. ‘I just can’t face it. Could you tell Brad I’ve, um … had a bit of a turn?’