Page 48 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

“Your wife has arrived, sir,” said the waiter.

Behind him stood a figure. It was not Osric’s wife, given that he did not have one. He did not have a significant other of any kind. He did have a significant irritant, however.

Fairhrim swept towards Osric. She leaned over him. She smelled good. Soapy. Fairhrimy. She pressed a soft kiss to his cheek.

She asked, insanely, “How are you, darling?”

Osric stared at her in mute astonishment.

The waiter helped Fairhrim into a chair. She asked for a coffee, black, and turned to Osric with a gentle smile, as though he was charmingly slow, which would explain why he was gaping at his wife like an idiot. The waiter, satisfied that he had ruined everything, left.

His wife? Hiswife? Fairhrim had a comic spirit Osric hadn’t known about.

“Apologies for my absence,” said Fairhrim.

“Not at all,” said Osric. “It was the best gift you could give me.”

Fairhrim was becomingly dressed in the fashion of the other promenaders: long white gloves, a hat with a veil and ribbons, a pale pink dress that rippled along her body, silky and cool. She was striking—lovely—a walking Monet, but Osric did not care, because she was, above all, a detestable Haelan who had put him in a wardrobe full of skeletons and thus ensured that Tristane would die.

As soon as the waiter was out of earshot, Fairhrim shed her sweet veneer. She looked upon Osric as a blot on the landscape, both moral and physical.

“There was a strange mix-up with my room reservations,” said Fairhrim, growing taut about the neck in that way she did when Osric had annoyed her especially.

Osric, who did not care about Fairhrim’s ineptitude when it came to admin, and did not understand why she was sharing this story with him, fished about in his drink for a cantaloupe ball.

“I had taken the suite at the top of the hotel,” continued Fairhrim.

Osric chewed upon the cantaloupe.

“But it appears someone bribed the front desk to take the rooms for himself,” said Fairhrim.

“Ah,” said Osric, who now understood why he was being involved in this tale.

“I asked if it happened to be a Mr. Hungwell who had taken the rooms. They said yes. I said, ‘Oh, that’s my husband. Silly man must have forgotten I had already made a reservation.’ I’ve asked them to take my things upstairs, toourroom.”

“I had wondered why I’d been promoted to husband,” said Osric. “May I ask why you’re dressed like an aunt?”

Fairhrim, crisp with indignation, replied, “This is how one dresses at the lakeside.”

“In a beekeeper’s hat?”

The waiter passed. Fairhrim cast her eyes demurely downwards, which lulled Osric into a false sense of security. As soon as the waiter was gone, however, she went on the offensive. “What’s that dangling from your back?”

“A capelet.”

“Mud flap. What colour do you call that suit?”

“Grey.”

“Rat colour. What is that stick?”

Osric, who had thought he had been sexing it up with his cane, was offended. “It’s a cane.”

“For mobility?”

“For fashion.”

Fairhrim conveyed her opinion with a moue. “And those gloves?”