‘Yeah, well, I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘What are you doing now?’
‘Grabbing a sandwich, then heading back to work.’
‘You’re not eating a sandwich. You’re eating at the Bretagne. Chef’s running in the new menu before next week’s reopening, for a few specially invited guests. Come on, free lunch.’
‘There’s not time to get there and back …’
‘You forget, I drive a Porsche.’
She had laughed, but allowed him to pull her along by the hand. After an above-par lunch of fruits de mer, with a couple of glasses of champagne, in a pristine deserted dining room, Rob had insisted on wowing her with the new decor of the rooms before he ran her back into town.
As she had looked out at the rocks of St Clement’s Bay from the room she was in now, he had stood behind her and put his hands on her hips. She’d turned to ask him what he was doing, but the fact she didn’t remove his hands meant they had kissed, then fallen on to the bed in a near-frenzy. Rob confessed that the memory of their time together loomed larger than its limited duration should have allowed, and that he felt neither regret for what they had just done nor the desire for it to be unrepeated. He had joked about keeping the room free at all times in case they needed it. She wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not, and found herself hoping that he wasn’t.
Rob came back in, his biceps flexing as he towel-dried the back of his hair, which was longer than the front. A larger towel was wrapped low round his hips, showing off the almost-six-pack for which he’d never had to work. Colin always wore a towel higher up, nearly under his armpits, like a woman.
‘Did you tip?’ he said, gesturing at the trolley from which he picked up the Financial Times.
Emma gestured to the spray of her clothes on the floor. ‘I don’t know where my bag is.’
‘Tip well and they’ll keep schtum.’
‘None of the staff would say anything anyway. They’d lose their jobs.’
‘True. Maybe I just like the intrigue.’
‘You like having a fuck-pad in your own hotel.’
‘“Fuck-pad” … I like it. Did you come up with that?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘We should have it as a plaque on the door. And another up at Grosnez Castle.’
‘Why Grosnez Castle?’
‘You’ve forgotten!’ yelped Rob, whipping the smaller towel from round his neck and twirling it triumphantly, like a banner. ‘It’s where we first went all the way. Usually I’m the insensitive lunk who forgets significant moments in a relationship.’
‘We didn’t do it in the actual ruins. It was further down, on a ledge.’
‘Does it matter? I got the general area right.’
‘It matters! It was my first time,’ she murmured, stunned that she was feeling the same elation now that she had felt then.
‘Mine too … outdoors.’
‘You said it was your first time!’
‘It was, it was! I’m kidding! Not sure it’s been bettered …’ He leant down and kissed her. She pulled off his towel and reached for his crotch.
‘Sorry, no time for seconds.’ He straightened and moved to the wardrobe.
‘Hey, next weekend, if the weather’s good we could maybe take the boat out, pop over to Carteret.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, as he pulled on the two-tone burgundy Pierre Cardin shirt that earlier he had deftly hung on a hanger with one hand while removing her bra with the other.
‘Sally’s not around.’
‘That would break rule numero uno – not outside this room.’
‘Why did you say, “Whatever you fancy”, when I asked you what you were up to the weekend after this?’
‘I didn’t. I said, “Whatever I fancy.”’
‘You said, “Whatever you fancy.”’
‘You must have misheard. Wishful thinking. I’m flattered. And mildly freaked.’
Emma sat up in bed and turned away from him.
‘Em, come on, we can’t risk being found out. You’re scaring me.’
‘We could go on the boat, go to France. Who’s going to see us there?’
‘Getting out of the harbour unseen is like trying to get out of a prisoner-of-war camp. And Carteret and Saint-Malo are full of Islanders doing the weekend baguette run. That’s why we have the rules.’
‘I don’t like rules. It makes me feel you do this all the time.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. This hotel is full of my mistresses. That’s the only reason I run it.’
‘Don’t make fun of me.’
‘But you’re being …’ He trailed off.
‘What? Ridiculous? Crazy? Say it.’
‘Paranoid. And demanding. We should just enjoy what we have.’
‘I’m a little confused as to what that is right now. It feels like no-strings sex.’
‘Well, I don’t know what you’re complaining about. It was me adding strings that split us up the first time.’
Emma stood and headed wordlessly to the bathroom. She felt a slam rising through her arm as she reached for the side of the door, but knew instinctively that the same cold pseudo-normality she had used against Colin last night and earlier that morning would be more cutting, and so closed the door gently.
She began her second shower of the day, annoyed again with the man in the other room. This shower was powerful, enveloping: she could lose herself in it, unlike the electrically heated unit at home that whirred and buzzed to produce a trickle akin to that of an emptying watering-can. She always took long showers after sex with Rob. She supposed he might read guilt into this, that she was undertaking the kind of instinctive baptism people do when struggling with shame, but she felt none of that. She just liked the shower.
What was bugging her, though, was that Rob had been right. Their affair could only ever remain behind closed doors, and closed doors upon which no one was likely to come knocking other than room service. Everyone knew everyone else’s business in the Island. Wipe a tear from your eye on leaving a supermarket in a cold wind, and expect your partner to ask why you were seen sobbing in public when you made it home.
He was also right that she had ended their earlier coupling through fear of constriction. While they had seen themselves as being together for ever, in the endless love peculiar to teenagers, they envisaged it happening in different parts of the globe. Emma was a big and beautiful fish in a small pond: she had designs on larger waters. London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles, they would all fall to her charms, in what industry she wasn’t yet sure. She should be able to rise to the top of whichever pile she chose to climb: acting, music and fashion were all easy options for someone with her looks and instinctive knack for trailing broken hearts behind her, as evidenced by the legions of solitary doe-eyed boys pounding the beaches, pining for her, with ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’ on their Walkmans. Rob saw their future differently. It was to be Island-based. He would provide a large income and they would be the Island’s ‘It Couple’. They would live in a converted granite farmhouse with a pool, and a garage for as many cars as they wanted. Labradors, horses and, after a time, two children, one of each, named Hugo and Holly, who would go to the same schools as their