Summer Nights at the Moonlight Hotel (15 page)

We’ve arranged to meet at the Angel Inn, which is a landmark pub that sits right at the top of the hill, with panoramic views from its terraced gardens. I get a taxi into town and stop at
the bottom of the hill to get some cash – not because I need some but because I’m somehow three minutes early and if I marched into the pub now it would make a mockery of my ice-cool
façade.

The tumbling gardens at the front of the Angel Inn are largely empty this evening, aside from a few hardy souls wrapped in fleeces as they sip pints of bitter. We’ve arranged to meet in
the front room of the pub which, like the rest of the place, is cosy but newly-renovated, with a roaring fire, polished wooden floors and a grand chandelier above.

He’s there when I arrive, lounging on a sofa as he flicks through a copy of the
Westmorland Gazette
, a glass of red in front of him. In the small moment before he looks up, I
allow myself to imagine what it’d be like to walk over, hold his face in my hands and gently press my lips against his.

‘Lauren,’ he grins, looking up.

‘Hello, Edwin,’ I reply, as he stands to greet me. He takes me by the hands and gives me the briefest of kisses on my cheek, before letting go and handing me the drinks list. My
heart is in overdrive. I want his lips back on my cheek.

Instead, I manage to sit down in the seat next to him and focus on the list, scanning its contents.

‘Did you get a taxi?’ he asks.

I look up. ‘I did.’

‘Me too.’ He flashes me a conspiratorial smile. ‘What are you having?’

I look back at the list but I can’t really focus on it. ‘They’ve got quite a nice selection by the glass, haven’t they?’ I murmur.

‘Yes, I thought so. Although,’ I look up again, ‘seeing as we both got a taxi, we might as well get a bottle, don’t you think?’

‘But it’s a school night, Edwin.’

He leans in and whispers, ‘I won’t tell the Head if you don’t.’

The evening progresses way too fast. We talk a lot about Singapore, which in my head is increasingly becoming my own personal Garden of Eden – though I try not to linger
too long on thoughts of Edwin wearing a fig leaf as it just brings my neck out in blotches.

Edwin tells me that he’s got a flat lined up, sharing with a girl who he went to university with, that he’s run the idea past her of me bunking in and she was fine about it.
‘You’d love Georgie,’ he tells me.

‘It wouldn’t be awkward with the three of us? I wouldn’t want to get in the way of anything.’ I’d win no prizes for subtlety during these info-fishing sessions.

‘It’s a strictly platonic relationship,’ he reassures me. ‘She’s a great girl, but not my type, romantically speaking.’

I take a large mouthful of wine and consider for a second if I’ve got the guts to say the sentence that’s whizzing through my head. ‘So, who
is
your type, romantically
speaking?’

He looks at me with an expression I can only describe as intensely mischievous. ‘Let me see. I like brunettes.’

I feel slightly hotter.

‘Blue eyes,’ he adds.

My hands start to sweat.

‘Slim,’ he says.

I breathe in, reminding myself to log on to MyFitnessPal again in the morning.

‘And just . . . I suppose someone with a personality I can really click with. You know, someone I can sit and talk to, while away the hours without ever feeling bored or
uncomfortable.’

‘It is nice when you meet someone like that, isn’t it?’ I agree. I realise he’s looking at me. I also realise my eyelids have softened, my lips have parted slightly. Lust
is rushing through my body as if it’s been turned on like a tap.

‘Are you all right? You look a bit faint.’

I sit up straight. ‘I’m fine. Just a tad too much wine, I think.’

Actually, that’s not far from the truth. The wine went ages ago and we then moved on to Old Fashioneds, at Edwin’s suggestion.

‘Hey, I’ve got an idea,’ he continues.

‘Oh?’ I breathe, hoping it’s that we stumble home to his place, rip off our clothes and make passionate love until the morning sun reminds us it’s time to get up, go to
work and take assembly.

‘Why don’t we head to the Royal Inn?’

I try to hide my disappointment. ‘Great!’

‘It’s got a pool table.’

I lift up my eyebrows. ‘Fab!’

‘Are you any good at pool?’ he grins.

‘Well, it’s been a very long time since I’ve played,’ I prevaricate. It might be true that my last brush with a pool cue was in Butlins circa 2005, but I was absolutely
brilliant at it. Not that I’m going to say that, just in case I’ve lost the knack.

‘I might be slightly rusty,’ I add, erring on the side of humility.

A smile appears at the side of his mouth. ‘We’ll soon polish you up, Lauren.’

The cold air that hits my cheeks as we push open the door to the Angel Inn has the dramatic effect of making me feel approximately ten times drunker.

It strikes me that, on paper, now might be a good time to call a halt to the evening because it’s late and I’m smashed.
The Rules
would definitely advise it, and
what’s more, I have twenty-eight sets of parents coming in tomorrow to watch our assembly about ‘Seasons’ and I don’t relish the prospect of doing so while still swaying
from the previous night’s intoxication.

But then Edwin reaches out and takes me by the hand, clasping his fingers around mine as I buzz from his touch. I drift along next to him in a state of bliss, feeling the warmth from his skin
radiate through me.

As we arrive at the pub, he stops outside the door but doesn’t push it open. ‘Can I have my hand back, Lauren?’ he says teasingly.

‘Oh! Sorry,’ I blurt out, releasing him from my grip.

I hang about behind him attempting to stand up straight while he orders two more double somethings and gets a token for the pool table in the back. The place is reasonably busy but we’re
in luck because the table has just been vacated.

I slip off my cardigan sexily, revealing my newly-tanned shoulders and newly trim-ish stomach. Then, with a seductive cowgirl-style sashay, I saunter over to the pool cues and grab one while he
rolls up his sleeves. I watch, pouting, as he picks up the balls one by one, placing them in the triangle, before he stands back. ‘Would you like to break?’

‘Why not?’ I murmur, gliding to the table and bending over. I briefly consider feigning ignorance about the game and asking him to come and help with my positioning. Then I remember
that I’ve already given him the impression that I’m a knockout – albeit a modest one.

Besides, Edwin is not the kind of guy to go for the bimbo act. I instinctively know he wants a smart, sexy cookie who is on his level intellectually
and
can whip his ass at pool. I
close one eye to attempt to focus on the white, but it’s surprisingly blurry as I take the shot. Yet, I feel sure as I go to tap the ball that something magnificent is going to happen.

The sensation quickly dissolves as my cue slips and the white trundles along as if it’s run out of battery. When it finally touches the triangle of balls, it does not smash them across the
table as I’d rather hoped, but simply jiggles one or two about a bit.

‘Oh,’ I say, genuinely bewildered as I go to examine the end of my pool cue to see if there are any obvious reasons for my faux pas, and end up with it momentarily up my nose.
Fortunately, Edwin does not notice, for he’s already in position, walloping the triangle so hard that he manages to pot two stripes.

‘Well done,’ I say, grabbing the chalk and putting plenty of it on the end, feeling sure that this must have been the issue.

‘Oh – Lauren.’

‘Yes?’ I purr.

‘Your nostril is blue.’

Once I’ve rushed to the ladies to excavate the chalk from my nose, the game resumes.

It turns out that Edwin is embarrassingly good at pool.

It turns out that I am just plain embarrassing.

OK, so I’m drunk. But that still does not account for the number of times I pot the white (four). Or the number of times I hit precisely nothing (seven). Or the number of times I casually
pick up the chalk and start chalking up my cue, concentration deep in my eyes, before Edwin points out that I’m smothering blue stuff on the wrong end (one, which is quite enough).

I muster up my best
good loser
face, but frankly, I am struggling to deal with this. My performance is memorably humiliating; if Edwin isn’t telling this story over dinner-party
tables when he’s in his fifties I’ll be amazed.

The only thing that seems to help with combating my embarrassment is the vodka. And gin. And whatever else is in those drinks. The fact that it doesn’t have a particularly positive effect
on my performance is suddenly barely worth worrying about.

‘I really enjoyed that, Lauren,’ Edwin says, as he takes another perfect shot and trounces me for the third time. He puts down the cue.

‘Sorry I wasn’t much competishhion,’ I reply.

The landlord appears in the doorway and politely reminds us it’s time we were on our way, a point I concede when I look at my watch and realise that it appears to have developed six hands.
We call a taxi and wait outside. ‘Why don’t we share?’ Edwin suggests softly. ‘We could go to your place first and drop you off. You’re closest.’

The taxi pulls up, Edwin opens the door to let me in and, for some reason, I think it’s a good idea to negotiate entry by going in head-first. It’s only as I’m on my hands and
knees on the back seat, tugging down my skirt so Edwin can’t see up it, that it strikes me that this might not be the most ladylike approach; I’ve certainly never seen the Duchess of
Cambridge attempt it.

As the journey home begins I open the car window slightly and let the breeze hit my face, while the orange glow of streetlamps whizz past and I desperately try to sober myself up enough to hold
a conversation.

‘Lauren.’ He says my name in a slow, deep whisper that instinctively makes me realise he’s about to say something serious. I sit up in my seat slightly.

‘Yes?’

‘I’d
really
love you to come to Singapore,’ he tells me, with an intense, burning look. ‘I just want you to know that.’

A wobbly smile trembles to my lips. ‘Really?’

He nods and it strikes me that he’s completely serious. ‘And I also want you to know how much I’ve enjoyed tonight. So – thank you for asking me out. I appreciate
it.’

‘Oh, I’m glad you enjoyed it.’

‘Well, I was thinking:
I’ll
do the asking next time.’

My face breaks into an inane grin. ‘I’d love that.’

‘So watch this space,’ he winks.

The car pulls up in front of my house. I tell myself there and then that if he kisses me – and I think he just might – then I’ll invite him in for a coffee. By which I mean
sex, and lots of it.

For a long, gloriously tense moment we sit in the half-light, our faces moving closer together. It’s a moment so near to perfection I couldn’t have dreamed it better.

Unfortunately, at the exact moment when I’m convinced the kiss is about to happen, Edwin kind of . . . twitches. Only slightly – so slight I’m not sure a split second later if
I imagined it. But it’s enough to ignite a moment of panic, when I convince myself that he wants nothing more than a kiss on the cheek. So I throw myself forward and do just that, crashing my
face against his then darting away.

‘Bye, Edwin.’ I look up and register disappointment on his face.

It’s so obvious and all-consuming that I decide there and then that the only possible action open to me is to lean in decisively and snog his face off. Unfortunately, by now he’s got
his wallet out.

‘Don’t suppose you’ve got two pound fifty? Sorry to ask – this is really embarrassing – but I didn’t realise I hadn’t got enough on me for the whole
journey. I’ll pay you back in the morning.’

‘Of course!’ I say, scrabbling about before producing a tenner and thrusting it in his hands.

And as I get out of the car and stand under the streetlight, I watch the taillights of Edwin’s taxi wind up the road and over the hill. I touch my cheek where I collided with his and can
feel it tingling, my body aching with happiness and frustration.

I can genuinely say I have never had a hangover at work before. I’ve been a bit hazy on a couple of occasions, but nothing that matches this. I cannot tell you how hard
it is to stand on stage, leading sixty-odd under-sevens in a chorus of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, when all you want to do is run off and regurgitate your breakfast.

On the plus side, I catch Edwin’s eye from across the other side of the school hall, just as he’s leading out his class. He gives me a private, lingering smile, then mouths,
‘You OK?’ It makes my stomach flip, which isn’t as lovely as it sounds given the waves of nausea rising up my throat as I nod and return to my attempt to get 1P back into
something that resembles a straight line.

The following morning – Saturday – I wake up with a knot in my stomach, wondering when he’s going to ask me out, like he said. We barely saw each other yesterday and logic
tells me that no man, no matter how smitten, would follow up a first date by bursting through the staff-room door and taking me in his arms while Joyce chokes on her Swiss roll.

It’s probably for the best that he didn’t because, as I discovered throughout the course of the day, sudden movements had an alarming effect on my head.

Now though, it’s all I can think about. Emily and I go shopping in Carlisle before she goes on a night out with the gang at Windermere Adventures. She advises me to put the whole thing out
of my mind until Monday morning, when she’s betting he’ll ask. Which I know makes sense and is what I’d do if the shoe were on the other foot, at least I would if I could restrain
myself sufficiently. Problem is, I know he has my mobile number and that fact alone means it’s really quite hard not to wonder about whether he’ll text.

Then I spot the most perfect art deco hip-flask in the window of an antique shop and I know – I just know – Edwin will love it so, feeling slightly guilty and a bit of a saddo, I go
in and buy it for him, even though I’m not entirely sure there’ll ever be an appropriate time to give it to him.