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“You sound like my Dad,” I tell him. “He gets really annoyed with them, because the writing is so small he needs his glasses to read the labels. He’s always going on about how they should put different coloured liquids in them so, once you’ve read the labels, you can still work out which is which easily. Given the average age of the guests we’ve seen so far, I’m sure a good percentage of them have been washing their hair with bodywash and vice versa.”
“It’s probably the same stuff in both bottles anyway,” Toby remarks.
“You’re probably right,” I laugh. “Anyway, we’ve got an hour before we’re due in the restaurant. Do you mind if I crack on with this for a bit? Once the bathroom has cooled down, I’ll go and do my make-up and you can get dressed.”
Toby settles himself on the bed next to me, opens his own laptop and plugs the card from his camera into it. The pictures that he took while we were out exploring appear on the screen after a few seconds. I try very hard to focus on my article, but every so often I find myself pausing to watch him work. In one photo he carefully airbrushes out some skiers and it’s slightly mesmerising to observe them slowly vanish until it looks like they were never there. I’m distracted by a ping from my phone. It’s Charley, reporting in.
“The midwife lied,” she’s written. “Newborns aren’t easy – they cry. All the time. Ed has suggested that maybe she’s not quite done yet and we should go back to the hospital and see if they’ll put her back inside me!! She still isn’t feeding that well and we’re thinking of changing to bottle feeding to see if that helps, but feel guilty as everyone says breast is best. How’s the GBF?” There’s a picture of Amelia, red-faced and angry looking.
“Sod what other people say – do what works for you,” I type back. “Bottle fed babies in the adverts always look happy, don’t they? GBF OK. Slightly awkward sharing room though!”
I can see she’s typing. “Adverts aren’t real – but thanks. Room sharing was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“Ha ha. Reality rather different from the idea.” I get up from the bed and wander over to the window, taking a surreptitious photo of Toby on the bed in his dressing gown over my shoulder as I go, and sending it to her.
Her reply is instant.
“He’s HOT!”
“I think you should ask the doctor to look at your hormone levels. I’m worried about you.”
The restaurant is exactly as I imagined it. Like the lobby, the walls are all wood panelled and there are oil paintings in heavy frames dotted about, each with a little light mounted above it to illuminate the scene depicted. There’s a muted hum of conversation, and the clinking of knives and forks on expensive china. Waiters in dark suits and white gloves glide silently through the room. It’s the sort of place my parents would love, but I find unbearably pretentious.
“Is your Dad a travel writer too?” Toby asks, after we’ve been shown to our table and been given the menu.
“No, he works for Shell. Why?”
“Oh, it’s just the way you were talking about him and the bottles in the bathroom. I wondered if he was a travel writer and you’d followed in his footsteps.”
“No, it’s just he travels a lot for the company, so stays in a lot of hotels. He doesn’t really understand what I do and keeps asking when I’m either going to get a proper job or get married.”
We’re interrupted by the sommelier with a wine list the size of an encyclopaedia. We order a glass of house white each and he retreats, slightly disdainfully. I don’t hear him call us peasants, but I’m pretty sure he’s thinking it. Toby and I turn our attention to the menu, which is totally incomprehensible. The main part is all in French, but even the English translations don’t help much. In the end we order pretty much at random, hoping that we’ll be lucky. I sneak a few pictures of the food as it arrives on my iPhone, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, and Toby does the same.
“There’s a reason I’m a travel writer and not a food critic,” I tell him as we make our way back up to our room at the end of the meal. “I mean, it all tasted very nice, but I hate all the pomp and ceremony, with the synchronised lifting of the cloches, and the foams, and the little smears of stuff. It just makes me want to rush out and get a burger!”
“It was quite a weird atmosphere,” he replies. “Almost religious, in a way. I found it slightly intimidating.”
“Exactly!” I agree. “You shouldn’t be intimidated by a restaurant. Well, at least we’ve done it and we can eat somewhere else tomorrow.”
Once we’re back in the room, we take turns to use the bathroom to change and brush our teeth before climbing into bed. We lie there for a bit, as far apart as it’s possible to be without either of us falling out, and another uncomfortable silence descends.
“Shall I turn off the light?” Toby asks, eventually.
“Yes,” I tell him, as I roll onto my side with my back to him. “Goodnight, Toby.”
“Goodnight, Madison.”
