And then to her surprise, a drink is lifted tenderly to her lips, her head and neck is supported as she swallows, desperately trying to hydrate herself. She peers up into the patient face and weakly smiles her thanks before collapsing back onto the pillows, exhausted.
She tries to use her voice but the words emerge as a dry croak.
‘What the hell was I drinking last night?’
Marcus laughs, though he too looks and sounds very much worse for wear. He is sitting on the bed, pale and tired from the night before. He takes her hand and gives it a squeeze.
‘I don’t think it was just the alcohol. We ended up having quite the party last night, if you remember?’
She disentangles her hand from his and lifts it to her forehead, sitting up straighter now.
‘Oh my God,’ she wails. ‘I haven’t been high since I was in college. A very, very long time ago.’
‘Well you certainly rediscovered your wild side last night. I had to stage an intervention at one point. There was no stopping you. We both ended up passing out in the woods in the end.’
‘What? In the grounds of the hotel?’ she asks, appalled. ‘But anyone could have found us! What were you doing?’
‘Me? It was all your idea. You wanted to get back to nature. Spend the night together, sleeping under the stars. It all seemed like a good plan until I woke up this morning. My back is killing me and I’ll be picking pine needles out of my hair for days. Not to mention the insect bites,’ he adds, scratching absentmindedly.
Olivia covers her face in shame, drawing up the sheets around her. How is this possible? But then it all slowly comes back to her. She remembers meeting Marcus later on, once they had finished dinner and the kids had dispersed. She’d managed to give Tobias the slip very easily since he was already three sheets to the wind himself.
Watching the fireworks, just her and Marcus with a bottle of champagne, up on the cliff side. It had all felt very romantic, she thought at the time. And then she’d produced a pouch of tobacco and some papers – it had been so redolent of her student days, when she’d always smoked roll-ups, she’d felt like a young woman again. And the pièce de résistance had been the weed she’d purloined from one of the locals. It had been easy enough to track down. She’d just followed the smell. And they were so easy and generous with it. Everyone had seemed on some kind of high last night – alcohol, drugs, euphoria. People lining the streets of the town, the music thumping and banging, the air of exultation and release.
‘How?’ she asks. ‘How did I get back to the hotel? Did anyone see us, do you think? And where’s Tobias, the kids?’ she adds, looking around, her voice rising as these things occur to her.
‘Don’t worry,’ assures Marcus. ‘The staff is pretty discreet at this place and luckily everyone else was on a bit of a bender last night. I managed to get you upstairs and back to the door of your suite without anyone noticing.’ She nods slowly, trying to put all the pieces into place. ‘I went back to my room,’ he continues. ‘Had a shower, tried to sober up and get some rest but I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d pop back and check on you but there was no answer when I knocked. Good job I still had your key card.’
‘But where is everyone?’ she asks again, raising her legs, trying to get up. She must look such a state in front of Marcus and she desperately wants to take a shower and freshen up. In fact, she is a little freaked out by the fact that he sneaked in here while she was asleep, possibly even unconscious.
He shrugs, non-plussed.
‘Bella and Drew must have made their own fun last night, stayed out with friends? As for Tobias, who knows? He was well on the way to oblivion when I last saw him in the gardens. Maybe he slept it off there and then went straight to breakfast. I wouldn’t put it past him to be back on site today.’
‘What, on a Sunday? Surely not. We’re supposed to be heading back to London soon,’ she says. She gives a low moan at this thought and looks out of the window where the sky is a bright, unburdened blue just as it has been every day this week. ‘I don’t want to go,’ she says, the reality dawning on her as she speaks. ‘I want to stay down here. This is where I belong.’ And for the first time she knows this to be true, regardless of whether this man wants to be with her or not. In fact, she wishes him gone now, in more ways than one.
Marcus clears his throat and then stands up, busies himself. Is he distancing himself from her, this conversation, she wonders?She has the familiar sensation again that he is pulling back, that he is ultimately unknowable.
‘Look, I’d better go,’ he says. ‘I’d hate for Tobias or one of the kids to come back here and find us together. I could just about swing it earlier this morning as I was helping you back to your room, but …’
‘Sure,’ she says, nodding, feeling a familiar low tide of guilt and regret lapping at her.
‘I’ve left some paracetamol by the bed,’ he says. ‘Take two and rest up. I’m going to check on the renovation. See if I can’t ascertain what’s happened to everyone else.’
She nods obediently like a child in her sick bed, accepting the doctor’s diagnosis. She watches Marcus’s retreating back as he slips out of the bedroom, hears the soft click of the door as he lets himself out of the suite.
After a moment, she pulls herself together. She pops the pills, taking another swallow from the glass of water, then gets out of bed. The purifying sanctity of a shower, as hot as she can stand it, will cure her. On her way to the bathroom, she sees her phone, silent and dead on the table, and she plugs it in to charge it.
By the time she is standing in the shower, the roar of blisteringly hot water in her ears, she cannot hear the flurry of persistent bleeps from her mobile as the overdue messages from Tobias roll in.
50
Lottie is about to go to bed. Or rather back to bed. By the time they had returned from the police station, having answered questions and made brief, probably unhelpful statements, the morning had slipped away. They had also been forced to wait around for ages until some suitable accommodation had been found for them. The family liaison officer had said it would be advisable for them to stick around for the next twenty-four hours at least, until all immediate lines of inquiry had been followed through.
‘If this is a case of arson and one or both of those people who were pulled out of the property dies, this will be a murder investigation,’ Tim had said, clarifying all the nebulous fears that had been circling around Lottie’s head but which she hadn’t dared give voice to. Why must he always point out the obvious – instruct, educate – as though everyone else is hard of understanding, not in possession of the full facts.
The police had been nice enough, offering them the proverbial tea and sympathy. They had refused all food, apart from barely drinkable machine coffee and a carton of juice for Josh. Lottie couldn’t help feeling that they were somehow under suspicion, paranoia poisoning her thoughts. Every time they were asked the same question, differently phrased. When they were asked to give separate statements, each taking it in turn to mind Josh, she had felt like they were being tested, to see whether their stories were straight, matched up, corroborated.
But they had no new information to give. They could be of little assistance. They hadn’t seen anyone, or heard anything.As for Tim, she’s not sure what he believes. He is acting out of character, a little distant from her and closed off. But neither of them is sure how to behave anymore; it has been such a strange, traumatic few hours.
