know, once we’ve got settled into our rooms?”
“Yes…erm…good idea. I’m sure they must have a bar here somewhere.”
“The Avalon Bar, just to the left of the lifts,” the receptionist supplied helpfully.
“Thank you so much. Well, look, Carole, I’ll see you in…erm…half an hour, say?”
“That sounds fine, David.”
“And if you need to…erm…contact me – ” he fingered his keycard nervously “ – I’m in room number six one three.”
“Would it help if I were to see if I can put you in a room near Mr Seddon, Mrs Seddon?”
“No, it wouldn’t, thank you very much,” replied Carole, with perhaps a little too much vigour. After all, the girl had only been trying to help.
And yet, after David had gone up in the lift, while the girl was taking down her details, Carole found herself reacting strangely to his words. There had been a time in their marriage when arriving at a new hotel had had a definite aphrodisiac effect on them. The thought of anything like that now was of course ridiculous, and yet Carole found the memory both disturbing and faintly titillating.
The Avalon Bar was a good place for the person contemplating suicide to have that final, nerve-bracing drink. There was nothing in there to make him change his mind. Its decor, pastel and anodyne, was reminiscent of an inadequately endowed private hospital. The only atmosphere was provided by ambient music, in which standards by the Beatles, Abba and Stevie Wonder were filleted and garnished with swooping strings.
It was about half past five when Carole arrived in the bar. David was not yet there – no surprise. He had always been a strange mixture of meticulous planner and erratic timekeeper. Carole felt a seething within her, familiar from the many other bars and restaurants in which she had sat waiting for her husband.
At that time there wasn’t much business in the Avalon Bar. Three over-large and over-loud businessmen had just emerged from a day’s conference and were downing lagers. A young mother’s sour face tried to blackmail her husband into hurrying down his pint so that she could get their grizzling toddler to bed. A man who shouldn’t have been with a younger woman tried to look as if they had all the time in the world to finish their drinks before rushing off to the room he’d booked.
The anonymous blue-suited young man behind the bar took Carole’s order. She didn’t feel like tea or coffee, resisted the lure of the white wine she really wanted because she was pacing herself for the engagement party, and so ended up with a mineral water. Even that failed to sparkle much in the Avalon Bar.
David came in after she had been sitting for about five minutes. As ever, just late enough to be infuriating. She had rather hoped he might have brought something to change into for the party, but no, he was still in the beige suit, to which he had added an inappropriately bright, flowered tie. Carole was shocked how immediately and instinctively critical thoughts came to her mind in David’s presence, but then that attitude had had a long time to build up. They’d shared the mounting resentment of the years when their marriage was supposedly ‘all right’, then the petulant spats of the divorcing process. Since that time Carole had only avoided feelings of irritation by keeping an iron control over her thoughts and never letting them stray towards her ex-husband. She shouldn’t have been surprised that seeing him again opened up the floodgates of annoyance.
And, trying to be fair – not an activity that came naturally to her – she was in no position to carp at David’s sartorial shortcomings. She was wearing her inevitable Marks and Spencer’s ‘little black dress’ and, though she had deliberately bought something unfashionable in the hope that it would never go out of fashion, she knew the garment was showing its age. Carole felt a sudden access of gloom at the image of the two of them – a lacklustre middle-aged couple. The balloon of superiority over the Martins, which had been inflating slowly in her mind, was punctured. She and David looked at least as drab as Howard and Marie.
Still, the evening had to be got through. And the protocol of politeness had to be observed. “Can I get you a drink, David?”
“Erm…” He looked at his watch. “I’m not sure that I’ve got time. When exactly does the party start?”
“Six thirty. But we don’t want to arrive on the dot.” How many times before had she said that in the course of their marriage? Neither of them had instinctive social skills; both had got nervous before parties and needed to gear themselves up beforehand in different, and mutually irritating, ways.
“Erm…well…” David was still assessing the feasibility of a drink. “The fact is, I should be ordering a taxi.”
“Didn’t you come by car?”
“No, I came on the train and got a cab from the station.”
“Ah.”
“Why? Did you come by car?”
Carole knew what reply this should have cued, but she resisted the answer. The Renault was her haven of security. Alone within its shell, she could arrive at the party venue – another hotel – park some way away, and then go through the process of make-up-tweaking, deep breathing and general psyching-up that she needed before she faced company. Even more important, with the car parked outside, she would have her escape route. If the party got too boring, or too confrontational – if she got too exasperated by the presence of David – she always had the option of slipping away early. With him relying on a lift back to their hotel, her freedom was curtailed.
But, even as she had these thoughts, she knew her position was hopeless. She would have to bite the bullet.
“Yes. So you don’t need to get a taxi, David. I can give you a lift.”
“Oh, thank you, Carole. That’s…erm…very kind.”
He had another look at his watch. His ex-wife felt another tug of familiar vexation. How could someone who was always so aware of time be persistently late for everything?
“We don’t need to go yet. You’ve got time for a drink.”
“Yes, and of course, if you’re driving, I don’t have to worry about it.”
“You wouldn’t have had to worry if you’d got a taxi,” Carole pointed out.
“No, I suppose not.” Suddenly – and unexpectedly – decisive, he announced, “I’m going to have a large Scotch. Think I’ll need a bit of a stiffener for the evening ahead.”
For Carole, this was most unusual. During their marriage, David had never drunk spirits. While he was at the bar ordering, she wondered whether, in his second single life, he had turned to drink. Men, she recalled reading somewhere, were much worse at coping with divorce than women. Had David gone to pieces since they parted? Did he have a whisky bottle permanently on the go?
While these seemed unlikely conjectures, they did remind Carole how little she knew of her husband’s current domestic circumstances. She had a phone number she deliberately couldn’t remember, and indeed an address, but not one she had ever visited.
“So you have met the Martins, haven’t you?” she asked, once David was ensconced beside her with his uncharacteristic Scotch.
“Yes. Yes, I have.”
Carole probed, “And what did you think?”
“Well, they’re…erm…They seem a very pleasant – a very quiet couple.”
“And Gaby’s brother?”
“No.”
“Or the uncle they keep talking about. Uncle Robert, is it?”
“Yes, but I haven’t met him either.”
To Carole’s disappointment, David seemed content to let the conversation about the Martins end there. But she should have remembered from their marriage that David rarely volunteered his opinions of people. If she’d wanted to find out what he thought, she had always had to dig.
“I got the impression,” she began, “when I had lunch with them and Gaby, that Marie seemed rather… frightened of something.”
“Life,” said David ponderously, “is a rather frightening business.”
Carole tried again. “And don’t you think it’s odd that Stephen and Gaby haven’t put any announcement about the wedding in the paper?”
He shrugged. “I would have thought that was up to them.”
“Yes, but – ” Carole persisted – “it seemed to me that it’s Gaby and her mother who’re anti the announcement.”
