Summer Nights at the Moonlight Hotel (30 page)

‘Brilliant television,’ he concludes.

‘It’s a great show,’ I nod, though all I’ve done is let my eyes roll in and out of focus as I battle with thoughts of Emily, Joe, the baby . . . and last night.

He peers at my glass. ‘Oh, I forgot – I bought some fizz for us,’ he says, picking up the bottle. Confusion simmers on his brow as he realises it’s empty. ‘I
must’ve spilled some. Sorry, Lauren.’

‘It’s absolutely fine,’ I reassure him.

He tuts. ‘Well, I’m annoyed with myself. I’d wanted everything to be perfect. I thought we’d do the
Bake Off
then chat about Singapore and . . . get to know each
other even better.’ He holds my gaze. ‘
Like the other night.’

‘Yes, about that . . . ’ But I can’t bring myself to go any further, even though I’d love to know what actually happened.

He leans in, gazing into my eyes, his mouth dropping as if lust and gravity are directly related. ‘Hmm.’ He focuses on my lips until he’s nearly cross-eyed.

‘I’ve been thinking about what happened,’ I cough. ‘Or what
might’ve
happened.’

‘I can show you if you like?’ he offers.

I freeze, engulfed by the certainty that I
do not
want to rediscover first-hand what happened with Edwin the other night.

It’s not even that my attraction to Edwin has diminished. It’s more than that. I am actively
un-attracted
to him. He is suddenly about as gorgeous as a fungal toenail
infection.

If you’d told me I’d ever feel like this six months ago, when my feelings for Edwin were passionate and overwhelming – I might have almost felt relieved at being unshackled
from these emotions. But I don’t. Instead, I feel terrible.

How can I
not
find Edwin attractive any more, just because I’ve slept with him, even if it was non-penetratively? What does this make me? A
toxic female
probably –
because if some bloke had come along and done this to one of my friends, I’d unquestionably say that he was a commitment-phobe who loved the thrill of the chase. That he was a sad, pathetic
cad who’d had his wicked way, then gone cold.

Well, here I am, doing exactly the same. And what’s worse, I can’t even remember the wicked way. All I know is that Edwin no longer sends me into fits of rapture when he looks into
my eyes. He just alarms me. The manifest problems that this unravelling situation presents is enough to make my head ache. It’s not just in his flat, here and now, with him going in for the
kill. It’s Singapore. It’s everything. It’s . . .

‘It’s all too much!’ I say aloud and he looks up, shocked.

‘What is?’

And although I can’t untangle the most pressing issue in my life right now, I can at least attempt to put things straight with Edwin. ‘Look, I’ve been attracted to you for
quite a long time,’ I confess.

He grins. ‘I know.’

‘And . . . well, I suppose deep down part of me thought something like this would never happen between us.’

‘Well, I’m all yours.’ At that he opens his arms wide and goes to lean back on the other end of the sofa, but instead falls directly off it – and plonks, bum first, on
the floor.

‘OHHH GODDD!’ he shrieks.

I scramble down to his side. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s my coccyx!’ he exclaims, and it takes a moment before I realise he’s not referring to the thing I apparently got to grips with last week. ‘It’s no end
of trouble,’ he continues, clutching his lower back as he winces in pain.

I try and help him up, feeling as if I’m in a nursing home and about to give him a bed-bath.

‘I’m afraid this might put paid to anything too physical this evening. I’m so sorry.’

‘What a shame,’ I exclaim.

He does a double-take. ‘Lauren, can I ask you something?’

I cough. ‘Of course.’

‘Have you gone off me?’

Oh my God. This is my get-out clause, but suddenly saying this directly to Edwin seems horribly harsh.

‘I’m extremely fond of you, and er . . .’

‘You’ve gone off me,’ he concludes sulkily. You could never accuse Edwin of being stupid.

‘Edwin, you’ll always be my friend . . .’

‘I don’t want to be your
friend
, Lauren,’ he hisses. ‘I don’t want pity. You’ve led me on for two years, you do realise?’

‘I wasn’t leading you on,’ I argue.

‘I dumped my girlfriend for you!

‘I didn’t have anything to do with that!’

‘You had
everything
to do with that,’ he fires back. ‘I would never have looked at another woman had you not come along fluttering your eyelashes every morning and
pretending you liked my mum’s baking.’

‘I wasn’t trying to lead you on. My feelings for you were real. I felt very strongly for you.’

‘
Felt
? Forgive me, Lauren, for noticing your use of the past participle. Come on, tell me: What have I done wrong?’

And as I sit, self-loathing once again sweeping over me, I’m not sure I can answer that question.

I try to avoid Edwin the following day, although to be honest, he is the least of my worries. All I can think about is Emily, with whom I exchange several texts throughout the
day – about how she’s feeling even sicker, is in turmoil about what to do and how I
mustn’t
tell anyone, words she can’t seem to repeat enough.

By the time the bell goes and I drive over to Cate’s, my head is pounding with it all.

I don’t bother giving Cate an update about Edwin when she asks, I just mumble something about not feeling the same about him any more. In other circumstances, she’d have me pinned
down on a chair, grilling me for information about this volte-face, but she has other things on her mind. Including wine.

I deliberately refused to bring something so she could self-medicate herself into a stupor, but now she wants a drink it doesn’t feel like the right time to deny her. The pub is out of the
question, so I suggest we go for a walk to the convenience shop. I suspect it’s the first time she’s been out – and not cowering in the back of the shop or her flat – since
the picture reappeared on Facebook on Tuesday.

It’s a sunny evening, but the air is heavy with moisture when we step out of her flat, and by the time we’re at the bottom of her road, the light drizzle has become heavy enough for
me to push up an umbrella. The glimmer of a rainbow appears on the horizon as we turn the corner. It hardly feels appropriate to our mood. We reach the shop and Cate slows outside the window as a
woman serving at the till, who looks to be in her early sixties and has blonde, bobbed hair, looks up at us. Her expression changes when she recognises Cate.

‘Here’s the money,’ Cate mutters, thrusting a ten-pound note in my hand. ‘You get the wine and I’ll wait outside?’

‘But don’t you want to get out of the rain?’

‘I’m fine with the umbrella,’ she insists. ‘And I’ve got my hood.’

I find a bottle of white on offer and wait in a lengthy queue before I’m served, though not by the woman who recognised my apparently infamous friend. When I emerge, Cate is itching to
return to the safety of her flat.

And as we walk through the streets, I realise why: people
are
looking at her. Not everyone, not even most people. But you can see the occasional sideways glances; the snatched looks.
Cate’s notoriety is no mere figment of her imagination.

‘You shouldn’t be intimidated about the idea of seeing people you know,’ I hear myself saying as we tramp back up the hill.

She frowns at me, looking suddenly hurt, as if I don’t understand.

‘I completely get it, why you feel like you do,’ I add hastily. ‘I’m simply saying that you mustn’t go into hiding. You haven’t done anything
wrong.’

‘I’ve come out tonight, haven’t I?’

‘If you count the Spar as “out”, I suppose so,’ I say gently.

‘And I saw Will this afternoon,’ she adds.

I stop in my tracks, shocked that she’s only just mentioning this. ‘Good. Great, in fact. So . . . how is everything?’

‘Fine,’ she shrugs, taking her keys out of her pocket as we approach the flat. ‘He came over. I made him a coffee. He went.’

‘Is that all?’ It strikes me that they had a significant amount of unaddressed business to catch up on, not just a coffee.

We plod up her stairs and she puts her key in the door, then her shoulders slump. ‘No, that wasn’t all,’ she says. ‘Come in.’

We get inside and the story tumbles out. Will came over and they talked about the pictures, despite how mortifying Cate found the entire conversation. He looked confused and pitying and angry
and sad. But they ended up kissing and for one sweet, fleeting moment Cate convinced herself that it was all going to be OK.

‘Then he went to the loo and a text arrived, from his mum.’ She lowers her head. ‘I didn’t even mean to see it, but it beeped and I just rolled over and instinctively
picked up the phone.’

‘What did it say?’

‘It said,
I feel awful about upsetting you earlier, but I promise I’m only thinking of you. You need to stay away from girls like that, Will. The whole thing will
come to no good. Give me a ring if you want a chat – love Mum xx.

‘Oh God.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, Will’s obviously heard what she thinks about you and decided he shouldn’t stay away.’

She sniffs. ‘He didn’t know I’d seen the text, but when he picked up his phone and read it, everything changed. He left shortly afterwards. I don’t blame him in the
slightest.’

‘What makes you say that everything changed? What did he say?’

‘It was nothing he said. I can just tell, Lauren,’ she says, dropping on to the sofa. ‘He hasn’t been in touch since then.’

‘It
was
only yesterday.’

‘I agree with his mum,’ she says defiantly. ‘He could have any girl he wants, not someone the whole of Twitter is calling a slut and who can’t walk round her own town any
more without knowing that every second person has seen that picture. His mum’s totally right: it can come to no good.’

I’m about to protest, when the bell rings. ‘Do you want me to get it?’ I offer.

She thinks for a moment, anguish etched in her forehead. ‘Don’t worry.’ She pushes herself up and heads into the hall. I can hear Will’s voice, even though I’m in
the next room and the door is shut. I turn on the TV to try and drown out their conversation and give them some privacy. But as the volume rises, it’s impossible to avoid hearing the entire
sorry saga unfold.

‘Cate, why are you pushing me away? I’ve come to try to get through to you, to tell you that I love you. To
show
you that I love you. What more do you want me to
do?’

‘Not raising your voice at me would help for a start,’ she fires back, apparently oblivious that she’s significantly louder than him. ‘I don’t need you swanning in
here, Will, having spent twenty-four hours clearly wondering what the right thing to do is. I can see this isn’t easy for you. But let me reassure you, I’m fine by myself.’

‘So I’m surplus to requirements now? There is absolutely nothing I can do – nothing at all – that is any use to you?’

‘Just don’t do
this
, Will . . . ’

‘Do
what
?’

‘You know what. Make a big thing of this. Don’t you think I’ve got enough going on in my life right now without you acting like this?’

‘When did
I
become the bad guy, Cate?’ He sounds incredulous. ‘Aren’t I the guy who’s standing here, in front of you, despite everything? Aren’t I
the guy who doesn’t give a fuck what photos there are of you out there? Aren’t I the guy who’s shown nothing but loyalty and determination to get through to you that I think
you’re the most amazing woman on earth? What more do you want from me?’

‘For you not to be standing on my doorstep yelling at me, for a start!’ she shrieks.

And, even before the next words are out of her mouth, I know what’s happening. I can see it coming: she is about to screw this up with Will. Irreversibly.

‘You seem to think you’re some sort of fucking hero, Will. Well, congratulations! You’re in the “great guy” club – you’ve got a girlfriend who’s a
slag and who everyone looks down on
but you don’t mind!
You’re not shallow enough to dump her . . . yet.’

His silence can only be explained by disbelief. And I’ll admit I’m with him on that one.

‘OK, I give up,’ he says finally. ‘You win, Cate. I’m out of your life.’

That night I am forced to think hard about an unavoidable and increasingly pressing issue: Singapore. There’s no escaping it. I might have handed in my notice at work,
convinced everyone around me that it’s where my destiny lies and even booked a bloody flight there. But one fact remains. It’s the last place on earth I want to be.

Ironically, I wish this wasn’t the case. The urge to get out of here – and away from Emily and Joe – is overwhelming. And that’s still got to happen. But it won’t
be to Singapore, where there is nothing for me, except a psychotic flatmate whom I’ve no desire to meet and Edwin, who hates me.

I set my alarm for half an hour earlier than usual so I can phone Ms Heng to break it to her that I won’t be coming to work at St Anne’s Primary School in Yishun any time soon.
It’s fair to say she’s not very pleased.

‘A series of very, very unfortunate personal circumstances have emerged that means I’m tragically unable to take up the position,’ I begin, hoping I sound suitably distressed
enough for her to not pry any further. ‘I’m terribly sorry to do this. But it’s completely unavoidable.’

‘Has somebody died?’ she demands.

‘No, not exactly – ’

‘Are they terminally ill?’

‘No. They’re really . . . family circumstances.’

‘A divorce?’

‘Well, no.’

‘So
you’re
ill?’

‘It’s not something I’d feel comfortable going into. I hope you understand,’ I reply, aiming to give this the impression that she’s hit the nail on the head but
it’s too sensitive for her to delve further.

‘Well, you’ve let us down with weeks to go. So I hope
you
understand why it’s fairly important I know what the issue is. So what is it?’