Page 94 of Me and Mr. Darcy

You know the ones: the horrible swollen peepers that you get when you combine crying + sleeping. Bloodshot slits with big puffy bags that refuse to respond to any of those age-old beauty tips involving tea bags, cold teaspoons and Preparation H, and leave you with no option but to hide them.

Which explains why I’m going down to breakfast wearing my sunglasses. In January.

Leaving my hotel room, I let the door fall closed behind me and hobble slowly along the patterned pink carpet. My ankle hurts and I’m still feeling a bit shaky. Last night I must have been suffering from shock. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that’s obviously why I burst into tears. It had nothing to do with anything Spike said – even though it might appear like that – no, it was definitely the shock of the fall.

Plus, of course, the concussion I got from hitting my head. I rub my forehead. The lump’s still there, but it’s shrunk quite a bit. I’ll probably end up with a nasty bruise as a souvenir from my trip.

I feel a twinge of self-pity. When I booked this trip I’d had visions of myself wafting around the English countryside in various colour coordinated outfits, my H&M spangly scarf thrown nonchalantly over my shoulder, a copy of Pride and Prejudice in my hand. I was going to be sexy, yet bookish. An American girl abroad, turning her back on the shallowness and disappointments of modern-day life and embracing a world steeped in history and literature. A world filled with quaint country pubs and roaring fires – in front of which I’d be curled with my book, sampling a local custom or two and making jovial banter with the villagers, most of whom would be wearing tweed.

I wasn’t supposed to be going around getting drunk and stoned, into huge arguments and knocked off horses and nearly killed.

As if to remind me, my head begins to throb naggingly.

I’m distracted by the faint burble of my phone, and digging it out of my bag, I look at the display. Stella. I feel a wave of relief. Boy, do I need a friend right now.

‘Hey, Happy New Year. Got the message,’ she says cheerily as I answer. ‘I wanted to find out how the ball was.’

‘Oh, it was great,’ I reply with forced cheeriness in an attempt to match hers. Reaching the staircase, I pause and sort of hover near the grandfather clock.

‘So tell me all about it.’

‘Well, it was in this amazing house, and there was a string quartet and dancing and champagne and . . .’ My eyes start watering again. ‘Oh, God, Stella, I had the most awful row,’ I blurt.

‘No way.’

‘Yeah, I did. And it was a really huge one . . .’ My voice goes all wobbly and high-pitched, and I start furiously blinking back tears.

‘Aww, Em, what did you go and do that for?’ she reprimands me teasingly, trying to make me laugh. ‘My fling went and flung himself at about twenty other women, so I need to live vicariously through yours.’

I don’t laugh, and hearing nothing but a faint sniffling on the other end of the line, she gets serious. ‘Come on, tell Auntie Stella, what did you and this Fitzwilliam guy argue about?’

Suddenly I realise she thinks I’m talking about Mr Darcy.

‘Oh, it wasn’t with him.’

‘It wasn’t? Well, who was it with?’ she asks, surprised.

‘Spike.’

‘Sorry, you’ve lost me, Em. Who on earth’s Spike?’

‘The asshole.’ I sniff.

‘Ahhhh, the cute asshole,’ says Stella. And there’s something in the way she says it that makes me feel defensive.

‘I never said he was cute,’ I protest.

‘You didn’t have to,’ she replies knowingly.

‘What are you, some kind of psychic?’ I snap, annoyed.

‘Oh, so he is cute.’

‘OK, OK, so he’s cute,’ I admit under pressure. ‘Now will you stop going on about it?’ I’m starting to feel very frustrated that this phone conversation is not going the way I wanted. You know, lots of female support, the ‘Yes, he is a dickhead; no, of course none of it’s your fault’ kind of thing.

Instead, I’m being badgered and insinuated at.

There’s a triumphant silence on the other end of the line.