The Extremes

n the morning Teresa went in search of breakfast and found the hotel owner and the woman she'd spoken to in the bar apparently waiting for her in the tiny office by the downstairs corridor. The man stepped out to greet her as soon as she reached the bottom step.

'Mrs Simons?' he said. 'Good morning. I'm sorry we didn't meet properly last night. I'm Nicholas Surtees. Amy didn't tell me we were expecting a guest until after you had checked in.'

'She looked after me OK.'

'Is the room satisfactory?'

'It's fine,' Teresa said, instantly suppressing the irritated and perverse thoughts she had had as she dressed. She was full of contradictions: she realized she had been expecting something British and eccentric, not the familiar modernity you found in business hotels anywhere in the world. At the same time, she liked having satellite TV with CNN, she liked the minibar, she was impressed with having fax facilities in the room, the bathroom was modem and beautifully equipped. She guessed that what she had really deepdown wanted was an antiquated broom closet with a bowl and a jug of cold water, a lumpy bed, and a bathroom two hundred yards down the corridor.

'Would you like breakfast this morning?'

'I guess.'

He was indicating the room at the end of the corridor. She noticed that Amy was still standing behind him,

watching and listening as this banal exchange took place. Teresa smiled politely, and walked past them both. She already felt uncomfortable. The great quietness that had descended on the building soon after she went to bed had convinced her she was the only guest in the place.

lt made her feel conspicuous, and she was already wishing she had paid a little more and found a larger, more impersonal hotel. Everything she did was going to be observed, remarked upon and perhaps questioned.

What she wanted . . . Well, she didn't know what she wanted here in Bulverton, except generally, and that general wish included a distinct need to be left alone. She wanted to keep A low profile, not look or act like whatever a typical American tourist looked like. Her dad would have been one of those, she guessed Dad was the sort of American who went all around the world without leaving home. But she knew if she was going to be prominent there was nothing she could do about it. There was no point in coming to Bulverton at all unless she slept and lived in the centre of the town.

The White Dragon was supposedly the best hotel in town. She had located it almost by accident: an evening of web browsing found her a list of hotels in the UK, and thence to those in East Sussex. The White Dragon was the only one listed for Bulverton, but was recommended. With some misgivings she had airmailed her booking the next day, but she was surprised and pleased when she received a faxed acknowledgement and receipt a couple of days later.

The dining room was cold, although a large open log fire was burning. A side buffet table had been laid with a spread of cold breakfast foods: cereals, fruit, milk, Juice. They seemed to be making an effort for her: if as she suspected she was the only guest, there was more food here than she could eat, and more choice than she wanted or needed. just like the restaurants at home, dedicated to the cause of maintaining obesity in the American public.

When she had taken a bowl of mixed citrus fruits, and some muesli, she chose a place by the window. There were six tables, and all of them had been laid for four people. Her table looked out on a main road where traffic ground by at a funereal pace. There were few pedestrians.

Amy came through to take her main order.

Then came a long wait, and solitude. She wished now she had gone out of the hotel first and bought a newspaper. She had assumed there would be a row of newspaper vending machines outside the building, but her discovery that there was not had discouraged her. Her inability to throw off American assumptions was adding to her selfconsciousness about being an intruder here. She hated being on her own. It was something she doubted she would ever get used to. Now there was just the Andyless void, the silence, the permanent absence. Much of the night had passed in that void: the aching for him never went away, and in her jetlagged wakefulness she could think only of what she had lost. She had listened to the town around her in the darkness: the immense silence, the uncanny quiet, and from this her imaginings had spread out, making her envision the whole place as a focus of grief She was not the only widow in Bulverton, but that didn't help. Not at all.

With no sign yet of the food arriving, Teresa left her table and walked back along the corridor to the office, where Nick Surtees was sitting at a PC.

'Is there a newspaper I can buy?' she said.

'Yes, of course. I'll get it brought in to you. Which one would you like?'

Momentary blankness, because it was the Washington Post she was used to at home and she hadn't thought beyond that.

'How about The Times?' she said, that being the first one that came to mind.

'All right. Would you like me to order it for you every day?'

'Thank you.'

When she returned to her table a silver pot of coffee had been put out for her, presumably by Amy, together with several triangular pieces of toast, steepled in a silver holder. She took one of them, still warm, and spread it with lowfat yellow stuff from a tiny sachet. She looked around for the jelly, then remembered again which country she was in. She spread the marmalade, and liked it so much she wanted to ask what brand it was and where she could buy some for herself.

An hour later, bathed and dressed in warmer clothes, Teresa went downstairs and again sought Nick Surtees in his office. Although she had only recently woken she was tired again, and as she dressed she had felt the distracting mental fluttening of an incipient migraine. She had left her medication at home. She had thought the migraine attacks were a thing of the past, but she should have known better. Maybe the flight had brought this one on. She dreaded having to find a doctor here, and being given drugs she didn't know.

Nick Surtees was not in his office, but the computer was on, the screen shimmering with the glittering random shapes of a screen-saver program. lt looked familiar, and it briefly amused her that the same software she saw being used all over the US was also popular here.