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I study his face. I think I might be falling in love with him, but I’m too scared to say it out loud. What I do know is that it feels like I’ve known him for a lot longer than just a few days. I rest my head on his shoulder. I don’t want this to end any more than he does, but I’m determined to be realistic. We live very different lives back in the UK, and the connection we’ve made in this little holiday bubble may not be strong enough to translate back home.
As the sun starts to dip in the sky, we head back to his room to make love, before separating to get ready for dinner. The evening follows its usual format; we meet Mum and Dad in the bar for a drink, then go to eat together. Tonight, as it’s Ed’s last night, Dad has booked the pan-Asian restaurant. I still think it’s incongruous in this setting, but there’s no doubting the deliciousness of the food. Ed’s mood seems to have recovered and he regales Mum and Dad with anonymised stories of some of his more outrageous clients. Every so often he catches my eye and smiles at me. I smile back.
I’m definitely falling in love with him.
19
We’re awoken the next morning by a pounding on the door. Ed sits bolt upright.
‘Oh, fuck!’ he exclaims. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ He leaps out of bed and starts throwing on clothes.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘It’s the bloody camera crew. They’ve come to do a final interview with me before I go home, and I completely forgot about it. If they see you, they’ll be all over you like a pack of hyenas. I don’t want that for you. I agreed to this. You didn’t.’
I can see him trying to work out what to do as he pulls on his trousers and slips his feet into his shoes. There’s another pounding on the door and he sticks his head out of the bedroom and shouts, ‘I’M COMING – GIVE ME FIVE MINUTES,’ at the main door.
‘This will take an hour at the most,’ he says. ‘Are you OK to stay in here while I do this interview and I’ll come and get you once they’re gone?’
I consider my options. My only escape route is out of the main door, which will put me straight in their path, so it seems I don’t really have a choice.
‘Yes, fine.’
He closes the bedroom door behind him, and I listen to him admitting the camera crew. There’s a guy called Dave, who seems to be in charge, and Jamie, who is obviously his sidekick. The bedroom door is not thick, and I can hear most of what they’re saying through it. There’s a certain amount of faffing about while they get their equipment set up and get the sound levels right, and then the interview commences.
‘So, Ed. In your own words, tell us what you’ve been doing since you got here?’ Dave asks, and Ed starts talking.
He’s good, I think, as I listen to him. He’s describing the activities that we did, but carefully leaving me out, so that it sounds like he did them on his own. I listen to him talking about the water-skiing, and how he’d done it as a child, then he starts to talk about the windsurfing and the massage. As he moves on to describe the jeep tour, I start to become aware that I need to wee.
They move on to discuss the wedding and how he feels about Sarah now. After a while I stop listening, as the need to wee is getting more and more urgent. I always need to go when I first wake up; I should have got him to hold them off for a few more minutes so I could go to the loo, but everything happened so fast. What am I going to do? I start scanning the room for some sort of suitable receptacle, but there’s nothing.
I pick up my watch from the bedside table. How long have they been in there? Maybe, if the hour is nearly done, I can just about hold out. I realise as I look at it that I have no idea what time they started, so I have no way to work out how far through they are. I focus on the conversation again, trying to get a clue. He’s talking about how he felt on the wedding day versus how he feels now. It certainly doesn’t sound like they’re wrapping up.
It's no good. I can’t wait any longer. I’m jiggling my legs to try to hold it in, but even that isn’t helping. Thankfully, as well as the doors out into the sitting room, there’s an interconnecting door from the bedroom into the bathroom, so I can at least get in there undetected. Silently, I slip out of bed, put on a dressing gown and tiptoe into the bathroom. The door from the bathroom into the sitting room is open. I’ll have to close it otherwise they’ll hear me weeing. Praying that it won’t squeak, I start to close it. I turn the handle so it won’t click when it engages with the post, and then very gently release it once the door is fully closed. The voices carry on, so I know I’m undetected.
I hurry over to the loo and sit down. I clench my pelvic muscles to try to keep the noise to a minimum, and the relief when I’m done is immense. I wipe myself, stand up and, without thinking about it, press the flusher.
As soon as I’ve pressed it, I realise my mistake. The cascade of water as the loo flushes feels like the loudest noise I’ve ever heard, and sure enough, once it subsides, I can tell that the conversation in the other room has stopped. I literally have no idea what to do, so I scamper back into the bedroom and jump into bed, pulling the bedclothes up around me.
‘What’s going on back there?’ Dave’s voice sounds suspicious, suddenly. ‘What are you hiding from us, Ed?’
I hear footsteps hurrying across the floor and, a couple of seconds later, the bedroom door is flung open and a very unattractive burly man is staring at me with a look of triumph on his face.
‘Well now, it looks like Ed’s been keeping secrets from us,’ he observes, and I recognise him as Dave from his voice. ‘Who might you be, darlin’?’
I open my mouth to reply, but before I can say anything, Ed appears.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he snarls at Dave. ‘Do you make a habit of barging into people’s bedrooms? This is private!’
‘I don’t think so, mate,’ Dave sneers as another man, presumably Jamie, appears behind him with a camera, which he instantly focuses on me. ‘The production company are paying for all this, aren’t they, so we’ve got “access to all areas”. If I want to come in here, I’m completely within my rights. Now, why don’t you introduce me to your friend and get out of the way so Jamie can get a decent shot?’
‘No.’ Ed manoeuvres himself so he’s blocking both Dave’s path and Jamie’s view.
‘Look,’ Dave begins, using the kind of patient tone that you’d use when trying to pacify a toddler, ‘this can play out one of two ways. I can call the production company and tell them you’re in breach of your contract, or we can sit down and have a chat with the little lady here.’ He sticks his head over Ed’s shoulder to address me. ‘The viewers are going to love you, darlin’. What a story you’ll make!’
‘For God’s sake, let her get dressed at least!’ Ed implores, trying to push them out of the door.
‘OK,’ Dave concedes. ‘We’ll wait out here for you. Don’t be long!’
