The Last Resort (16 page)

After an eternity, midnight came, and I dutifully drank the glass of champagne that Jack practically chucked at me.

And after that, I quietly excused myself. I decided I would sleep in a guest room, to make things easier on both of us. I didn’t want to feel Jack’s resentful body next to me, or worse, have that awful, cold sex that we had when he was angry.

I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to Tam and Fenella leave, to Jack turning off the music and move off to the master bedroom.

I didn’t stay angry with him for long. I should never have married him—why had I thought I could make him happy? He needed someone competent, someone organised and efficient and brisk and bright. I was none of those things. Maybe I’d made him think I was, and that wasn’t his fault.

If only we could go back to the way things were
, I thought sadly, remembering the blaze of passion that had been Us Before The Wedding.

When I got up the next morning, he was out. He left a note, saying he’d been called back to Frankfurt at the last minute, and he would be back the next day. I stared at it numbly.

That was when I packed a suitcase. At first I thought I would just go and stay at Sharon’s. It was in the cab, on the way to her mum’s house, that I decided what I really needed was a holiday.

When we got back to the Hideaway, he still hadn’t rung. It was worse because I’d promised myself that if I didn’t check once the whole way home, he was certain to have rung. And he hadn’t.

That night was the first time I really felt depressed. I mean, depressed in the chemical, clinical sense, not just in the fleeting, emotional, I’ll-feel-better-after-a-tub-of-ice-cream sense. The combination of depression, denial, and holiday-making could mean only one thing. Hitting the bar. I took what I vowed would be the last look of the evening at my mobile, and folded it neatly under my pillow on my way out.

While I sat slumped over my sixth Bacardi Breezer of the evening, Peter and Randy marched over to me with looks of reproach on their faces.

“Ava,” Peter began, “why didn’t you tell us you were married?”

“Or why you’re getting divorced?” Randy added.

Fuck you, Sharon,
I thought bitterly.
And you, Tam. You too, for good measure.
“I’m not getting divorced,” I said mechanically, turning my attention back to the alcohol at hand—my only friend in this world, it would seem. “And I’ll thank you to leave the subject alone.”

Peter looked perplexed. “But why not just
mention
it? I thought we were friends,” he said sadly.

I felt a flash of irritation. “You’re annoyed that I didn’t tell you, having known you for, what? Two days?”

“Two and a half,” tutted Randy. “That’s forever when you’re a backpacker. C’mon—you can tell us about it,” he joshed good-naturedly.

Tears rose in my throat, but an appalling numbness overtook me and they quickly disappeared. “Tell you about what?” I asked, stalling.

“Why you’re here without your husband,” Peter said, with exquisite patience.

Where are you supposed to start, answering a question like that? I sighed. I looked at the ceiling of the bar. I looked out at the lawn. I pulled my fingers through my hair. I tried to gather the right information and put it down into a form that resembled the truth. This was much more difficult than I had first supposed.

Eventually I said, in a voice as dull and heavy as lead: “We got married very quickly. I made a shit wife. So now I’m here.” I took a deep swig from my bottle. My life was so depressing. Maybe we were going to have to get divorced. Maybe it was all over. If he hadn’t even rung to ask where I was in three days, was there really any hope for us? He must have known what I knew: that he was better off without me.

Sadness washed over my deadened heart. It was really such a pitiful, small story, when you really boiled it down. Girl meets boy. Girl makes a mess of it. Girl and boy split up. The end.

Because I was staring straight ahead, I didn’t have the luxury of seeing Peter and Randy react to my pithy little description. But when Declan bounded over, yowling “Drinks on me!”, they both turned on him and screamed in unison at him to shut up.

“What’s crawled up your arses an’ died?” he demanded, hurt.

Just as I said “Don’t”, Peter said “Ava’s getting divorced.”

And then Declan said, “She’s
married
?”

That’s torn it,
I thought. “Yes, I am MARRIED! Me, the ELEPHANT WOMAN. UNBELIEVABLE, yet TRUE.”

“Jaysus,” said Declan, “will ya fuckin’ calm down? It was just a question. Jaysus.”

But I was back to staring unblinkingly at the label of my Breezer.
Leave me alone,
I willed desperately.
Please, please, please go away.
But they wouldn’t. I ignored them studiously while they discussed what they should do next.

After some whispering, then some pushing and shoving as they decided amongst themselves who was going to make the dangerous approach, Declan tapped me on the arm.

“Come have a dance,” he said gruffly, still pissed off. “You’ll feel better.”

Things disintegrated from there.

~

You know how, after a proper bender, you often find that you sleep really badly and have weird dreams all night? Or the whole morning, as the case may be?

That’s what I thought was happening when I woke up with Peter in my bed.

This is a lovely dream, I thought. I’d developed a mild aesthetic crush on him; not a proper, Jack-like one, but still, a small, gosh-isn’t-he-a-sight-for-sore-eyes kind of fondness.

I lay there, snuggled up against his chest, thinking what a lovely dream this was, and wouldn’t it be lovely if it were real?

I tried to recall the details of the night before. Declan had graciously decided to squire me around the dance floor; that I remembered well. Although I was as surly as hell to him, he must have known how much better it made me feel to have a bit of platonic attention paid to me.

There had been tequila slammers, pints, punch made from all the Red Squares that were left in the basement fridge plus a bottle of vodka and some pineapple juice that was starting to go fizzy. I vaguely remembered a barbeque of some sort—someone had given me this revolting, fatty sausage to eat, telling me it was the regional speciality, and I’d spat it out into the Jacuzzi.

Ooh. I winced a bit at that. That wasn’t the kind of memory I liked to dredge up after a night out. Still, I was on holiday, I thought. No need to expect too much of myself.

Then there was more dancing. Abba, Las Ketchup, YMCA for the millionth time, some Alice Cooper, Vengaboys, an Aerosmith medley, and then I think I may have got sick in the garden. Things got significantly hazier from there. I do know, however, that at some point in the evening, possibly due to a particular song being played, I started bawling like a toddler.

I’d been having a lovely time, really I had. I was dancing around feeling gorgeous and tanned and thin, and a number of boys had tried chatting me up (it didn’t matter that I wasn’t interested, it was the thought that counted), and I was drunk, but not
ugly
drunk. Just pleasantly, happily drunk. Christmas lunch drunk, not New Year’s Eve drunk.

But suddenly I was a puddle of mawkish sentimentality, boo-hooing about how marriage meant nothing, and life was meaningless, and I’d tried so hard, and it was all for nothing, etc.

But you know... it probably had nothing to do with Jack. I’d probably actually drunk far, far too much, and it only hit me just as that song came on: a confluence of factors that led up to me becoming unreasonably distraught.

That was the first time I remembered Peter entering into the picture. I’d stumbled off somewhere near the koi pond, right at the back of the house. He must have been nearby, heard me howling at the moon, and taken pity on me in my drunken state.

Back in the present, I flexed my leg and arm muscles tentatively. No damage was immediately apparent. He must have put me to bed in a good enough state.
What a nice boy
, I smiled to myself in my half-sleep.

Now,
I continued in my head,
I must just lie very quietly here, and eventually, the hangover will pass. Whatever happens, I just mustn’t move.
Hangovers are, in my experience, a little like wild animals. If you remain very still, there’s a chance they won’t notice you and will leave you in peace.

But the light streaming in through the very thin curtains was getting hotter and hotter. I had to get to some water. I sat up, groggy, and immediately regretted it. The merest motion of my body sent waves of agony pounding into my cranium. A million little stars burst into my vision and a wave of nausea crashed onto me. I felt like I’d just been done over by the Inquisition.

When the stars subsided, I tried to focus on what was going on. I was still a little bit drunk, so it wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

I was awake, wasn’t I? I blinked hard (which made my head pound again).

It was then that I got the familiar hit of adrenalin that heralds an all-out cringe.

That
was
Peter in bed next to me. At that very moment, he was waking from what I dearly hoped was not a post-coital snooze. He smiled dreamily at me as he sat up, snaking his arm around me as he did.

“Hello,” he purred.

Oh, bollocks,
I thought hysterically. And I slapped him.

“What the hell did you do that for?” he roared, clutching his cheek. I leapt out of bed in horror, only to collide with Sharon as she came in with two paper plates of eggs and sausages.

Fresh howls ensued as we were both scalded by flying scrambled eggs. Peter had leapt out of the bottom bunk and wrapped the sheet around himself with an air of outraged martyrdom. I noted that I still had my clothes on; that was a good sign. Except it also meant I’d slept in my clothes. And that I probably smelled like punch, puke, and fag-ends.

“Did you see what she just did?” Peter bellowed at Sharon. “She slapped me!”

Sharon had started picking egg up off the floor. Every time I bent down to help her, I thought I might throw up or faint (or both). “I’m sorry,” I said stiffly, “I’m just a bit shocked, that’s all.”

“Shocked?” he said huffily. “What have you to be shocked about? You cry on my shoulder, ask me to keep you company, and when I oblige you return the favour by slapping me?”

“Oh,” I said, a bit taken aback, but still relieved that he hadn’t said ‘you ask me to have wild all-night sex with you, and you return the favour by slapping me’, because that would have been more than I could take.

“Oh?
Oh?
Look,” he squealed, catching sight of the mirror on the wall, “that’s going to bruise later.”

“Oh, stop being such a pansy,” Sharon muttered as she stalked out, prompting Peter to roll his eyes more theatrically than was necessary, I thought.

“Sorry, Peter,” I said, genuinely contrite.

“It’s alright,” he muttered after a few moments of glaring at me.

Then Randy burst athletically into the bunk room. “
Peter
and
Ava
, sitting in a
tree
, K-I-S-S-“

“Shut UP!” we bellowed in unison.

“Jeez,” Randy huffed, apparently crestfallen that his schoolyard taunts didn’t have the hipster-ironic edge he’d hoped for.

Then I remembered my mobile. Where was it? Not under my pillow anymore, apparently. I pushed Peter aside as he searched for his jeans, and began rummaging madly on the mess of clothes between the twin beds, desperate.
Maybe he’s rung,
I thought.
Maybe Murphy’s Law will work in my favour this time.

“I guess misery
doesn’t
like company,” Randy was continuing, sulkily.

“No, Randy, it doesn’t,” I shot back, more acidly than was necessary.

“Fine,” he snapped, turning his enormous bulk back towards the door. Then, just as I found the phone and was once again disappointed, I heard his shout through the window. “By the way, someone left a message with reception for you last night.”

A fireworks display of hope exploded in my chest. Jack. It was Jack. It had to be Jack. “Oh yes?” I shouted back, paralysed on the floor of the bedroom.

“Someone called Tam,” shouted his disembodied voice. “Stupid name for a guy if you ask me.”

~

Clara, the cleaning lady, had taken the message. It was pinned to the door of the room. I tore it off and chucked it in the bin.

The bloody cheek of him.

What the hell did he want, anyway? To gloat? To laugh at me and how my life was turning out? To say he was right?

I said as much to Peter, who by now had found his trousers and was busy doing up his fly. I tried not to think about the fact that I had slept next to him while he was only wearing underpants. Somehow, his yumminess had been drastically damaged by our bed-sharing.

“Ava,” he said reprovingly, “you’re very fond of making snap judgements. How do you know he’s got bad intentions?”