He makes the booking and then we listen to music again, and sing, and Callum is indeed blatantly in an extremely tolerant mood, because he only mentions about five times, instead of about fifty, the fact that I do occasionally (all the time; I can’t remember the words of songs to save my life) singlaa lot.
It’ssonice. I love being in the van with him, bowling along the Italian motorway. It’s like we’re in a moving home, looking out on the rest of the world, just the two of us, bound together by proximity. (And love, at least in my case, but I don’t want to go there.)
We don’t talk a lot, we just sing and smile and occasionally comment vaguely on the scenery.
We stop once, and even a small service station with bad food and very smelly and not-very-clean loos seems like a lovely destination when I’m with Callum.
During the early evening, when we’re still on the motorway, there’s a brief but heavy rain shower.
‘Just turning my windscreen wipers on.’ I do it with a flourish.
‘Nicely done. You wouldn’t ever want to drive a wiper-less vehicle,’ Callum says.
I smile. I love that we now have mild in-jokes from this trip. In many ways it’s as though the last twelve years never happened – we’ve slipped so fast back into our old Callum-and-Emma, Emma-and-Callum relationship.
Actually, I don’t think we’ve slipped back into our old relationship; I think this could be abetterversion. Every single evening from a couple of months in after we first met, when I’d realised that the one-offs were not actually one-offs, I always used to be a little bit worried that any minute Callum was going to do something truly outrageous. I don’t have that fear now. He seems alotmore grown-up, in a very good way, and now obviously I do have the background fear that he’s going to stick to his ‘this is only for now’ thing, but in the moment I’m just loving being with him. Maybe… if something longer term happens… maybe the break could have been a good thing (if a little long); maybe it allowed us both space to grow.
Callum is actually very good at giving directions from Google Maps (which is genuinely harder than you’d think based on how shockingly bad at it Samira was when she joined me for a week in Austria) and we reach the hotel without making any wrong turnings.
‘Oh wow,’ I say, when the very smiley owner shows us our room.
Callum’s booked us a luxury suite, and there’s a heavy emphasis on theluxury. Our room has a very large and comfortable four-poster bed, and everything (the bed included) is decorated in sumptuous pale blue and green velvets and silky fabric, with a pattern of tiny flowers, which goes beautifully with the dark blue walls and cream woodwork. We also have a sitting room, painted cream, containing a dark blue velvet sofa of the ideal squishiness, and a huge TV. Our en-suite bathroom is Paris-Ritz-style opulent, and goes perfectly with the cosy grandness of the room. And the view from the windows (on three sides because we’re in a turrety bit of the building) is to die for: we can see the Alps stretching away into the distance, lots of grassy hillside with trees and bushes and the occasional village or hamlet dotted around.
‘I love this.’ I’m almost speechless with delight. ‘I want to move in permanently. It’s perfect.’ This would be the most idyllic honeymoon location. And, oops, I hope I’m not blushing when I realise that being here with Callum has sent my thoughts straight to weddings and honeymoons.
The owner beams at me. ‘I’m so pleased that you like it.’ She points to a side table in the sitting room and says, ‘We have champagne on ice for you. We can serve dinner downstairs in the dining room or we can do room service. Whichever you prefer?’
It’s always nice to dine in a restaurant and meet new people, but on this occasion I would infinitely prefer to stay in the room and make the most of it… and more importantly of Callum. But he booked the hotel, having insisted again that he should be the one to pay, so it should be his decision.
‘I think, perhaps, room service?’ He’s looking at me with his eyebrows raised in query. ‘If you like? I’m very happy to go down to the restaurant if you prefer.’
‘Room service would be perfect,’ I say quickly, cheering internally.
We didn’t have a lot to eat at the service station so we order starters, mains and dessert. We sit on our terrace and enjoy the view for the first two courses and we do actually eat them, but before we get to our dessert we’re trying out the bed.
It’s a good bed and we put it to excellent use.
Later, when we’re wrapped in sheets, eating strawberries and delectable little biscuits, Callum kisses me on the mouth and says, ‘I…’ Followed by what I would swear sounds like an ‘L’ sound.
I wait, with bated breath, because for a moment I had a really strong sense that he might be about to say he loved me. But he doesn’t say anything else; he kind of clamps his mouth shut. Which is fine. It’s too soon. Probably.
Maybe in fact he wasn’t about to say he loved me. The shape of his mouth, though, was definitely just like he was going to form the word ‘love’. And I can’t imagine he would have gone so weird in the moment if he’d been about to say a word that starts similarly.
I’m trying to think of sentences that he might feasibly have said that would start like that, like, ‘I lump things together,’ or ‘I lunge when I’m exercising,’ or… and then he takes both our bowls and kisses me really hard and hungrily, and I stop thinking about anything at all, including L words.
We wake up the next day having had an idyllic night in the idyllic surroundings we’re in.
We share an idyllic room-service breakfast.
The whole day – our morning walking round the hotel’s lovely gardens after we’ve got up very late, followed by a slowjourney up to Chamonix through stunning Alpine scenery and the end of the afternoon and early evening walking around the picturesque town – is perfect.
We’re very tactile the whole time, just as though we’re a regular, very loved-up, couple.
We talk but we don’ttalk. It’s all banter, little stories, some very naughty innuendos that make me go, ‘Callum,’ before trying to beat him with some of my own. There’s nothing deep and meaningful. Just like a solid, loved-up couple might be on holiday, because they know where they are with each other. And just like two people who are in a holiday fling might be because they know where they are too: nowhere.
We’re walking through a little square, hand in hand, and I suddenly say, ‘Oh my goodness, you’ve done no work all day. Will it not matter? Your job? Do you not have stuff youhaveto do?’ And then I continue with: ‘Whatdoyou actually do, in fact? In your law job?’ Which doesn’t feel like an intrusive question, because most people are perfectly happy to tell most other people what their jobs consist of. Like, for example, I must have collected (and mainly forgotten but that is not the point) details about at least twenty new acquaintances’ occupations during the course of this trip.
Callum hesitates for just a second, but I notice the hesitation, because it seems odd.
