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“I can go halves with you, if that helps?”
I sit on the bed and ponder our predicament. Toby sits in one of the chairs by the window.
“I don’t think it does,” I say, eventually. “We’re not sticking to the brief if we upgrade. The whole point is that we’re supposed to stay in standard accommodation to experience it as the majority of the public would. I doubt the hotel or Voyages Luxes would cover the extra cost either, because it’s not what they signed up to. I think we’re stuck with this room.”
“OK, well I can go for a walk up and down the corridors or somewhere while you’re showering or whatever, and then you can do the same when I am.”
“Yes, but what about getting up in the morning, or getting ready for bed? That means one of us is prowling around out there in our PJs, and I think that might raise an eyebrow or two with our fellow guests. Plus, what if I need to pee in the middle of the night? Am I supposed to wake you up and throw you out while I go? I can’t see that one working. God, what if one of us needs to poo? I really don’t think I could cope with listening to, let alone smelling your bowel movements, and I’d rather stick a cork up my arse than have you listening to mine.”
“Who on earth thought this was a good design?” Toby wonders out loud.
“I have seen it once before, actually,” I tell him. “The Park Inn in Alexanderplatz, Berlin. I remember thinking it a little odd at the time, but I was on my own, so the full implications didn’t really hit me.”
“So, what’s the plan?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Let me think.”
I try to work out every option that we have, but they all come to dead ends. We have no balcony, so we can’t wrap up warm and go out there. We can’t upgrade. We could pretend to have had a massive row and reserve a second room, but the cost would probably be even more prohibitive than upgrading. In the end there’s only one way I can think of to make this work, but it goes against everything that Toby and I signed up to, and it makes my palms sweat just thinking about it. Fiercely I wrack my brains one last time for a viable alternative, but nothing else comes. I decide to lead Toby up to it gently, buying myself extra time in the process, in case there’s something I’ve missed.
“I think the fundamental problem we have here,” I start, “is that the people who normally stay in these rooms are actual couples.”
Toby is looking at me earnestly. “Yes…” he says.
“So, for them, being undressed around each other wouldn’t be an issue.”
“No,” he agrees.
“So,” I pause, giving my frantic brain one last chance to come up with anything else before I press the nuclear button. “we either upgrade, which will hit me much harder in the wallet than I can stomach and also takes us off the brief, or…”
“Or what?”
“Or we have to learn to be comfortable being undressed around each other,” I say, trying to make it sound like the most natural thing in the world.
Toby’s face is a mask of horror. “You’re not suggesting what I think you are?”
“Have you got a better idea?” I ask him. “Believe me, this is not my idea of fun, and I’ve tried to think of an alternative, but I can’t see one.”
I can see him going through the same mental exercises that I’ve just been through, and drawing a similar blank. His voice, when he speaks, is barely above a whisper.
“So, how do we do this?”
I’ve been using his processing time to consider just this question, so I’m ready for it.
“When I was at university, one of the girls I shared a house with was studying Psychology,” I tell him. “Bear with me – there is a point to this. One evening we were talking about phobias, because I was terrified of spiders, and she explained to me that there were essentially two ways to confront them: systematic desensitisation and flooding.”
“Go on.” I think he realises I’m playing for time. I suspect he is, too.
“Systematic desensitisation works by building you up slowly. You might start by looking at pictures of spiders in books, then move on to maybe handling a Perspex cube with a dead spider inside it, then a cube with a live spider inside it. It’s a series of tiny steps; once your anxiety decreases enough at each step, you move to the next, until you’re able to have tarantulas wandering over your hands without even breaking a sweat.”
“I get that,” he says, “and the other one?”
“Flooding is the opposite. Have you ever seen I’m a Celebrity, get me out of here?”
“No, sorry.”
“OK, never mind, it was just a good illustration. Flooding is essentially ripping the band aid off. By forcing you to confront your phobia at an extreme level, dealing with it at a normal level seems like a walk in the park. So, with the spider example, instead of the slowly, slowly approach, you might be shut in a room with thousands of spiders of all shapes and sizes. Or, if you’re scared of heights, you might have to jump out of a plane. After that, assuming the stress hasn’t killed you, a single spider or a ladder doesn’t seem so scary. On the TV show the celebrities can win food and stuff by being locked in small spaces and having thousands of creepy-crawlies dumped on them, or rats crawling over them. That would definitely count as flooding if you’re phobic about creepy-crawlies.”
“How does that apply to us?”
