The Honeymoon Hotel Read online

  As she spoke, Joe pushed me helpfully in the direction of the snug, and before I knew it, I was in the middle of a fierce discussion about who the greatest Bond of all time was with two of Wynn’s school friends. It was quite heated, but on the positive side, it drowned out the sound of the singing in the main bar.

  *

  Soon Helen and Wynn shyly announced that they might just have a go on the karaoke now they’d worked up some Dutch courage.

  ‘I really hope this is a short song,’ I muttered to Joe. ‘Karaoke’s bad enough, but couples karaoke should be illegal outside the home.’

  ‘Don’t be such a buzzkill.’ Joe started edging his way out from the table. ‘Come on, stir yourself, she’s your best mate. And they might need backing singers.’

  Wynn and Helen were already clutching microphones on the stage in the corner, and gazing at each other with mischievous expressions.

  I’d never seen Helen look mischievous before.

  I found myself rammed up against the broad shoulders of Wynn’s mate Geraint. He was also very Welsh. I already knew he’d known Wynn since school, he was an IT consultant living in Shoreditch, he’d once had a dog called Hammond, and he thought Maltesers were the ultimate individual chocolate treat. None of Wynn’s friends had any trouble starting conversations, and they didn’t give a toss about ethical bread production.

  ‘Ah, it’s you! Now, this should be good, look,’ he said into my ear.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, at the same time that the introduction to ‘You’re the One That I Want’ boomed out of the speakers.

  No. Surely not Grease? Helen was too cool for—

  Then Wynn started singing. Out of the mild-mannered dentist in the zip-up cardigan flowed the most amazing voice. And he was singing the goofy lyrics with a big smile on his face, right into Helen’s eyes, and making them sound fresh and genuine; and when she pouted and finger-pointed back, somehow she sounded pretty tuneful too. It obviously wasn’t their first time on the karaoke – a thought that shocked me even more than the idea of Helen hill-walking in the rain.

  Most people in the pub had stopped drinking to watch, and some were even joining in with the ‘ooh-ooh-ooooh’ bits and clapping. Joe was whooping and clapping, slightly off the beat.

  Geraint leaned over and yelled, ‘He’s in the choir!’

  ‘Helen isn’t!’ I yelled back. ‘I had no idea she could do this!’

  ‘She’s in love, isn’t she?’ He finished off his pint and put the glass on the bar. ‘Love makes everyone sing better. Now, how about it? You and me? What duets do you know?’

  ‘I don’t do karaoke.’

  ‘Come on, love, you can’t turn me down for a song.’ Geraint pretended to look sad. He wasn’t bad-looking, with thick dark hair and a cheeky smile, but he could have been Ryan Gosling and I still wouldn’t have got up there to sing.

  ‘I don’t do singing. And someone has to keep an eye on the bags,’ I pointed out. ‘Oh, look. They’re finishing!’ And I did lots of over-the-top clapping until Geraint and his mates were ‘persuaded’ to go up and sing ‘Flying Without Wings’.

  To prevent further song pressure, I asked the barman for a menu and started examining it hungrily.

  ‘Those lads are good, aren’t they?’ Joe observed while I weighed up the burgers. ‘They’re almost making it look … “fun”. Do you think you might be persuaded to have some … “fun”?’

  ‘Nope, not a chance,’ I said without looking up. ‘I’m happy to listen, but that’s as far as it goes.’

  ‘Well, listening’s an improvement on earlier.’ He paused, and after a second or two, I glanced up to see why he’d stopped. It was a trick that always worked on me. Joe was looking at me with a glint in his eyes.

  ‘What?’ I asked, annoyed that he’d got me to do exactly what he wanted.

  ‘I was just wondering where that birthmark on your forehead’s gone.’

  I touched my forehead self-consciously. ‘I don’t have a birthmark on my forehead.’

  ‘No, you don’t, I realize that now.’ He was gazing at my forehead so intensely that he might as well have been touching it, and I felt myself blush. ‘It’s just that normally there’s a crease there.’

  And then Joe did touch me, very softly, between the eyebrows. It made my face tingle, and I jerked backwards.

  Living together was very odd. I was much more aware of my personal space around Joe than I had been before December. I’d always noticed that he was a bit touchy-feely, but now every casual touchy-feely touch seemed more obvious.

  ‘And it’s not there now,’ he announced.

  ‘Is that a roundabout and rather patronizing way of telling me I’m relaxed?’

  ‘Ah, no, it’s back. Up till then, you were definitely looking more relaxed. You need to relax more.’

  I hated being told to relax. It was the most unrelaxing thing anyone could tell you, right up there with ‘Calm down’ and ‘Cheer up’.

  ‘I’m very relaxed,’ I said tightly.

  Joe nodded. ‘Maybe it’s because you haven’t mentioned anything to do with the hotel or weddings for over two hours now.’

  ‘I don’t always talk about—’ I started, but he was already shaking his head.

  ‘This is the longest I’ve seen you go without talking about the hotel. I wish I’d known all it would take to stop you talking about the bloody hotel was to ask you about James Bond films. Who knew you had so many opinions about Pierce Brosnan?’ He carried on looking at me in an amused way that made me feel, well, not uncomfortable exactly, but a bit unsettled.

  ‘He’s unfairly overlooked,’ I said, turning back to the menu. My cheeks felt hot, but then the pub was quite crowded now. ‘He had Moore’s sense of self-deprecation but Connery’s underlying mean streak. And he had the best hair.’

  ‘I never realized,’ Joe mused. ‘I must have missed the ones he was good in. I only saw the ones where Brosnan looks like he’s wandered in from an episode of Murder, She Wrote.’

  The way he said it made it impossible not to laugh, even though I didn’t want to. ‘GoldenEye is very underrated.’

  ‘This weekend then,’ said Joe, reaching for the menu. ‘I’ll download it. Actually, I think Dad’s got a complete set, probably on original video. You can talk me through it. Are you having something to eat? I think I saw a review of this place in a paper recently; food’s supposed to be good.’

  I flinched; I knew it wasn’t Dominic’s review because I was still tormenting myself by reading them, skimming for mentions of New Betty. There weren’t any so far, which kept me in a state of guilty hot mess. He hadn’t been in touch. But every morning, despite myself, I woke up and checked my phone hoping there’d be a ‘come back!’ message; luckily, by lunch Helen had normally reminded me why that would be the Worst Thing Ever.

  I pushed Dominic from my mind. I still hadn’t lost enough weight to stage a triumphant ‘Look at me now!’ chance meeting. Or got my promotion. ‘I’ll have a burger,’ I said.

  ‘Good choice. Still haven’t found a burger in London as good as—’

  ‘—the ones I had in the States. We know.’

  ‘Touché.’ Joe grinned, then caught the barman’s eye and gave our food order. As he was adding some ‘fries’ and ‘rings’, Helen shimmied up and clapped us both on the shoulders.

  ‘Do you want to order some food?’ I asked, although Helen looked so euphoric I wasn’t sure she’d ever need to eat again.

  ‘No, I’m fine, I was coming to say, it’s your turn!’ she said. ‘I bagged you a spot on the list! What do you want to sing?’

  ‘What? No, Helen—’

  ‘Oh, go on.’ She squeezed both our shoulders; clearly she was having the best time ever. ‘Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it! I can’t believe I let you put me off karaoke for so long!’

  ‘It’s great if you can sing, or you have no fear of public humiliation.’ The pub was busy, and my innards were shrivelling at the thought of people looking at me.r />
  ‘No one’s watching,’ she lied. ‘Go on. I’ll do it with you?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Joe, but I couldn’t, not even for Helen.

  ‘Let some other people have a turn,’ I suggested. ‘We have kind of been dominating it a bit.’

  We all looked over to Karaoke Corner, where a trio of mums were daring each other to have a go. People weren’t exactly queuing up, but then the Welsh Westlife was a hard act to follow.

  ‘Twenty minutes,’ said Joe. ‘We’ve just ordered some food, but after that?’

  Helen looked disappointed. ‘I’ll hold you to that. Order me a cheeseburger, would you? I’m going to see if Wynn’s okay.’

  ‘Wynn’s fine,’ Joe murmured as her blonde head bobbed back through the crowd. ‘Wynn looks like the happiest man in London.’

  ‘I know. He’s lucky. She’s lucky. I never thought I’d see her so happy. Kind of gives us all hope, eh?’

  Joe didn’t reply, but looked down at the menu again. I wanted to say something encouraging, but I wasn’t sure what.

  Geraint, Morgan, and Ellis sauntered over with Suzie and Michelle, the two dental nurses, and we went back into the snug to eat. After a while. when a few people had got up to go to the bar, Joe leaned over the table, and said, ‘So, how about it? Shall we go and surprise Helen with a song?’

  ‘And it was going so well,’ I said, trying to sound light. ‘No.’

  ‘Look, can I let you into a secret? People really aren’t taking as much notice of you as you think,’ said Joe. ‘This is London. You could get up there in a PVC catsuit and no one would even stop drinking. And so what if they are looking at you? You’ll never see them again. Whereas Helen’s your best mate, and she will remember tonight for the rest of your lives. Do it for her.’

  I stared at his irritating, earnest face and bit back a retort. In the back of my head, a little voice was telling me that he was right. Annoyingly.

  ‘And even if you don’t want to do it,’ he went on, keeping his eyes fixed on mine and his voice low so no one else could hear, ‘when you’ve got through the three mortifying minutes – ooh, all three of them – think how it’ll feel to have surprised yourself. Don’t you like surprising yourself?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, come on. Everyone likes to surprise themselves now and again. Don’t you ever wonder why I’ve got some of those shirts?’ The ghost of a smile flickered around the corner of Joe’s mouth.

  Something stirred in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was the way Joe was looking at me, or the atmosphere, or the nice supper, or what. But I felt a silvery flutter of excitement – maybe it was at the idea of surprising myself.

  ‘Okay, then what if we all sang together?’ He gestured over to Wynn’s mates, who were, I had to admit, much more fun than I’d assumed dentists would be. ‘We could do that other song from Grease, the one with the girls and the boys. I’m sure you’d be up for it, wouldn’t you?’ he added to them.

  ‘Yeah!’ they all said at once.

  And from that point, I didn’t really have a choice.

  *

  I think the rest of the pub found it amusing when twelve people of very different shapes and sizes crammed themselves onto the tiny stage and starting singing ‘Summer Nights’ around four microphones.

  Wynn and Helen took the main parts, obviously, but we took it in turns to do the others, and by the time it was my turn – the unimpressed Rizzo bit, obviously – I was actually enjoying it enough not to care if people were looking at us.

  Okay, maybe enjoying is a bit strong. But the nervous adrenaline mixed with that giddy sense of team spirit (not something I normally went for, to be honest) made it far more fun than I’d imagined it could be, and when Joe insisted that he and I do a duet, I was too revved up to say no.

  I recognized the oom-pah-pah introduction to ‘I Got You Babe’ immediately, and groaned, but Joe was already swinging along, a blissed-out expression on his face. I felt a bit sick. I didn’t know how high this song went. My armpits tingled with sweat.

  Then Joe turned to me and sang the opening lines in a solemn hippie voice, and I had to stop myself laughing out loud. He raised his eyebrows, prompting my line, and somehow the words came out, half-spoken, half-sung, but enough for him to carry on.

  My singing was a bit uptight, but after a verse suddenly I got what Joe was doing. We weren’t supposed to be amazing like Wynn and Helen, or even in tune like Wynn’s mates. He was being clownish so no one would laugh at me. So I wouldn’t be the one everyone was staring at.

  Then he opened his eyes, faded blue like old jeans, with those long sandy lashes, and gave me a conspiratorial wink, and for a moment I forgot how irritating he was in real life.

  We’d sung nearly the whole song, and Helen and Wynn were smiling up at me, their arms round each other, and I was beginning to think that actually Joe might have been right, when the whole evening stopped being fun, like a needle jerking across a record, when the second nasty surprise of the evening exploded on me.

  Dominic walked into the restaurant, with a New Betty on his arm.

  I saw his familiar bearded shape appear through the crowd while my mouth was still forming the climactic ‘I got yooooooooo,’ and my brain froze. My knuckles went white on the microphone.

  It took Joe a second to work out that something was wrong, because he was striking a pose, but when he realized my ‘yooooooooooo’ was going all wobbly, he looked where I was looking, swore under his breath, and without saying anything put his arm around me and started making me sway from side to side with him.

  ‘I got you, babe!’ Joe sang for both of us, and made the audience sing along, too. I heard Helen’s voice, Wynn’s voice, Geraint’s. Not mine. My throat had gone dry. And then my voice came back.

  I don’t know how I managed to get the lyrics on the screen to come out of my mouth, because my brain was sending the words He’s here to review it with her, who is she, is that the Swedish one, is it a new one, what is he thinking? across my brain like frantic subtitles. My stomach lurched, but somehow, with Joe’s rigid arm moving me like a puppet, I got through to the final ‘I got you’.

  And then, without warning, Joe bundled me up in a huge bear hug and lifted me up off the floor and turned my whole body so there was absolutely no way I could see Dominic even if I’d wanted to.

  Everyone clapped, Helen did her special wolf whistle, I could hear the Welsh boys bellowing; but most of all, I could hear my own heart thudding in my ears, pressed against Joe’s warm neck.

  Dominic’s going to think we’re a couple, I thought, and a funny sensation rippled through me.

  When Joe put me down, again with my back to the crowd, he whispered, ‘Did you surprise yourself?’

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything.

  I had.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Everyone at the Bonneville loved Valentine’s Day, and the week or so that led up to it. Everyone apart from me. And possibly Delphine, who claimed that making heart-shaped pastel macaroons was a sacrilegious waste of her Parisian pâtisserie training.

  Dino loved it, because the hotel bar was packed full of flirty couples ordering recklessly from his selection of classic cocktails and then leaving for dinner, so the next round of flirty post-dinner couples could sweep in and take their places for the nightcap menu.

  Helen loved it, because the restaurant was fully booked by the same flirty couples willing to splash out on a meal, and also married couples who wanted to go somewhere treaty and not talk to each other.

  Laurence loved it, because sometimes the flirty couples or married couples who could afford babysitters booked rooms after the meal and stayed for our Valentine’s breakfast.

  I suppose I half-loved it, because there was always someone who wanted to get married on Valentine’s Day; but I also half-hated it, because, on a personal level, it was always a crushing anticlimax. The adult equivalent of praying Santa will bring you a Sindy hors
e and carriage set, only to unwrap a Blue Peter annual and a tangerine. And then discovering all your friends not only got the Sindy horse, but the stables too.

  This year, I’d managed my expectations. Right at the start of February, I told Gemma and Joe I was doing the petty cash to keep them well away from my office, then poured myself a coffee and made a list of reasons my singleton Valentine’s Day would actually be better than those I’d spent with Dom.

  First, I had a wedding booked in for noon (second time round, small guest list, afternoon tea, then everyone leaving by five, on account of childcare logistics). In the days before Valentine’s Day, I’d be very busy finalizing arrangements, and then, on the day, ensuring that the bride’s sister didn’t try to steal her limelight by going into labour, as the bride feared might happen.

  Second, I wouldn’t have to waste time finding a witty but not overly romantic card to send to Dominic. It was impossible to find something that summed up our relationship in a non-passive-aggressive, non-overdoing-it way.

  I chewed my pen morosely. I should have seen the writing on the wall when all my Valentine’s Day cards to him featured New Yorker cartoons.

  Third, I wouldn’t have to drive myself to an ulcer watching the post and chasing every floral delivery in the hotel in case it was for me when it never was. Also, I wouldn’t run the risk of last year’s embarrassing moment when I snatched a bunch of flowers from Jean, head of housekeeping, thinking I saw Rosie on the card when it fact it just said Roses.

  Fourth …

  I got stuck at four. But three was enough. The main one was that I was already pretty miserable, and at least Dominic couldn’t make me more so, by giving me a meat tenderizer and a bar of Dairy Milk. I hadn’t seen him, or heard from him since the night in the pub, but I still hadn’t quite broken the habit of checking my phone for texts of wee-small-hours-regret first thing in the morning. None, of course, had ever come.

  *

  One less welcome side effect of Helen’s sudden conversion to easy relationships was that she’d developed an evangelical attitude to pairing the rest of us up. In the space of what felt like a few weeks, our secret coffee breaks on the fire escape had gone from mutual support sessions to remote speed-dating, especially now I’d met most of the contenders.