Prior Engagements

by Sarah Goodwin

  Looking at the room, it was hard to disagree.

  “He’s going to ask you to move in with him,” Fifi said.

  “Is he?” I asked.

  “Hmm, he’s probably talking it over with our parents as we speak.”

  I didn’t know how to feel about this.

  “So who’s this other man then?” she asked.

  “My boss... he’s also my best friend.”

  “Or he was, until you met me,” she grinned, “God, how awkward.”

  “Mmm,” I said.

  “And do you wish you’d married him?”

  “God, no,” I said, imagining the Hell that would be Will and I, married.

  “Well, move in with my brother then,” said Fifi, as if this settled everything.

  Perhaps it did.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dorian did ask me to move in with him, but, like a shrewd investor, he waited for exactly the right moment to take the plunge. The hotel we were staying in that night was the Chalet de Les Kippers, (yeah, I have no idea who named it, but they must have had a serious hard-on for smoked fish) it was a boutique bed and breakfast, just over Pulteney Bridge and down a street of gorgeous sandstone houses. The perfect place to lure me into cohabitation.

  The Chalet stood at the end of the street, a three story building which stood out because of its steep slate roof and Victorian style. I’d only ever walked past it, when I was in the mood for a picnic in Henrietta Park, which was just opposite. (Henrietta Park was both beautiful and free, unlike the park opposite the Abbey, which you had to fork over four quid to a greasy little man in a deck chair just to get in to).

  I couldn’t really understand why we were staying in a hotel. Even if Dorian didn’t want to stay in a house that contained his brothers, my flat was only in Bristol, and we’d had to go there anyway in the morning.

  Still, as we entered the hotel, I had to admit that it was a damn sight nicer than my pokey flat. For a start it didn’t smell like my downstairs neighbour’s marijuana.

  There was a vase of white tulips on a table, and the white walls and honey toned antique furniture looked gorgeous together. The lights were all on dimmers, and it felt very warm and cosy. One wall was papered in a print of antique books, and a flight of softly carpeted stairs carried the promise of beds not too far away.

  Unexpectedly, nerves wriggled in my stomach. Dorian and I were going to have sex, for the first time since our uninterrupted weekend together. I was almost worried that it would be like we’d never done it before. I found myself frantically going through my inner CCTV footage.

  I blushed. Definitely enough memories to get by on.

  Dorian pushed a brass button that was set into the gleaming wood of the reception desk, a door to the right of the stairs opened, and a woman in a to-die-for silk dress stepped out, calling over her shoulder, “Laura, room ten would like their champagne now.”

  She turned a radient smile on us, “Hello, I’m Chloe (she pronounced it the way posh people always do – Clo-way) welcome to the Chalet de Les Kippers.”

  “Thank you,” Dorian presented a piece of printed paper and Chloe smiled and took a key from behind a tinted glass screen.

  “If you’d just like to follow me,” she said, going up the stairs. We followed, our small bags in tow. The hotel opened up before us, three floors of black banisters and antique pictures. It wasn’t as big as the Bellagio, or as grand, but it had squashy, deep grey and white carpet, shiny brass and a whole wall of gorgeous art which made it look comfortable as well as fancy.

  Our room was on the top floor, and Chloe unlocked the door and showed us inside. My eyes were held by the bed, a puffy white sheeted heaven of hospital corners, pristine throw and giant, feather pillows. I wanted to jump on it, but I sensed that this would ruin the classy atmosphere. Instead, I just nodded along as Dorian thanked Chloe, and as soon as she left, I sank on the end of the bed. It was like having my arse hugged by a cloud.

  (I wasn’t stupid enough to think that all this amazing decor and service had been achieved with smiles and niceties, I’d worked in a hotel for about five minutes in my first year of university, and that had been enough to show me that all hotels were run by bloodthirsty sociopaths who made tics look benevolent and selfless. If you can avoid working in a hotel, do so, even if you end up working as a hooker instead).

  Anyway,

  Dorian sat down beside me with a sigh.

  “Alone at last,” he said.

  “It seems like so long since we’ve seen each other.”

  “Because it has been,” Dorian replied, turning towards me. He kissed me, properly this time, his lips pressing firmly against mine, catching at my bottom lip with just the right amount of pressure.

  I ran my hand up his arm to his shoulder, pushing his jacket off.

  Strangely, I didn’t feel bad about jumping straight into bed with Dorian. We’d been emailing for two weeks, we were done with talking. I just wanted to make it feel real again, to close the gap between us and make us a couple.

  In the warmth of the cushy blue and white suite, with Dorian’s lips against mine, Will felt like a distant memory. A half-pissed, student union memory, full of fallen sequins, smudged lipstick and WKD. This was the real world.

  By the time Dorian’s shirt and trousers were crumpled next to my dress on the floor, I was giddy with anticipation.

  “I’ve missed you, so much,” Dorian said breathlessly.

  “Me too,” I said, wrapping my arms around him and kissing his temple as he lowered his mouth to my neck.

  I had missed him, I’d spent the last two weeks waiting to see him again. Still, a small part of me whispered that I’d missed Will more during the past week. But that proved nothing, it was only because I was used to seeing Will every day (like Eastenders, you only miss it when it’s not there on a Wednesday night).

  It took me a moment to realise that Dorian was no longer just passionately breathless, but was now downright wheezing.

  He sat up and I reached out, worried.

  “Have you,” he coughed, “have you been near... a cat?”

  I didn’t have time to reply, because at that moment he passed out on the bed.

  The staff were rather excellent about the whole thing. Chloe called an ambulance, Laura (a student part-timer who seemed to really be enjoying the crisis) brought glasses of water and the first aid box. After his brief fit of unconsciousness, Dorian woke up, and seemed much better, but when the ambulance arrived, and the paramedics had trooped up the stairs to discover they weren’t really needed, they decided to take him in to hospital anyway. Just to be sure.

  As they escorted Dorian (shrouded in one of the hotel’s luxurious bath robes) downstairs to the ambulance, he smiled weakly at me.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, I promise,” he said.

  “I’ll wash my neck,” I vowed.

  The paramedics looked incredibly confused by this.

  I followed them down to the entrance hall and, as Dorian slipped his shoes on, I squeezed his shoulder and kissed the top of his head. His hair was silky and rumpled, and I felt a sudden heart-clenching moment of sharp affection for him.

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  Dorian looked up at me, blue eyes widening in surprise. Yes, we’d married each other, and slept together and detailed our entire lives in texts and emails for the past two weeks. But neither one of us had used the “L” word yet.

  Dorian looked at me, and his pale face broke into a smile, as if I’d just given him the world, as opposed to almost asphyxiating him with my cat-neck.

  “Move in with me,” he said.

  I blinked, remembering what Fifi had told me about Dorian wanting me to live with him.

  “Yes,” I said, and Dorian stood up to kiss me. As he pulled away, he murmured, “I love you too”.

  I watched from the door as the ambulance drove away. Chloe came to stand by my side,

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked (in true Briti
sh fashion. I’ve often thought how terrible it would be to be confronted with a person in a crisis who was already holding a cup of tea, the only obvious next step being to find them a biscuit).

  Despite having had more cups of tea that day than I had ever drunk before, I felt the situation required I accept.

  Chloe provided me with tea and croissants, brought to the room on a tray by the pie-eyed Laura. I thanked her and, because I didn’t know if it was a tipping establishment but didn’t want to seem rude, I slipped her a five pound note. From the look on her face, it was clear that, no, this was not the kind of place where tips were required for every single thing. Still, she looked so happy, I was glad I’d done it. I consoled myself by thinking that the fiver I’d given away would be the last one I’d earn at BHS. I was moving to New York.

  I sat on the bed, munched a croissant, and planned how I’d call Neil tomorrow to tell him that, 1. I wasn’t coming in that day, and 2. I was never coming in again, and that he could suck my Teflon toes if he thought I gave a fuck about getting a reference.

  I was going to New York to be Dorian’s wife, and to find a new, more interesting job. One where I never had to talk about tog ratings again. Maybe I’d finally get to set up a glass blowing studio. There was no way I’d be able to do that in Bath or Bristol- property prices were too high and finding second hand equipment was impossible.

  In New York I’d finally be able to use my degree training, and turn out all kinds of gorgeous vases, sculptures and jewellery.

  And Dorian, Dorian would be there with me, gorgeous, sweet, perfect Dorian. My husband, the professional artist, with his pristine, incredible apartment.

  The only thing that darkened the bright image of my new life was thinking of Will, and his face when he found out that I was going. I wanted him to be happy for me, but I knew I couldn’t expect that. Leaving him was going to be horrible, not to mention painful. For both of us. But we had to move on, literally in my case.

  I finished my tea, took off my clothes (which I’d hastily recovered before leaping from the bedroom in search of aid), and got into my pyjamas (the same nightwear I’d taken to Vegas, I’d have to buy something less scummy if Dorian and I were going to be living together).

  I had to claw the duvet out from under the mattress, where it had been tucked with the ruthless strength of a Hun, but underneath, the mattress was so soft, and the pillows and duvet quickly snuggled me to sleep.

  The next morning, I awoke at the time my body always did on days when I hadn’t set an alarm, 8:52, on the dot. The sun was up outside, and a page in the hotel room guidebook (which I blearily clawed towards me) informed me that it was time for breakfast.

  I climbed out of bed and changed into a denim skirt and a blue and cream striped jumper (the time for washing was after breakfast, I was not about to unlearn that piece of childhood dogma now) then I brushed my hair and made my way downstairs, following the scent of bacon to the dining room.

  I walked in, stared at the stuffed deer head on the wall, and didn’t take in much else for a few seconds. A smiley waitress with the clearest skin I’d ever seen showed me to a table and bustled off to make me some tea. I looked around the almost empty room. Two elderly couples were eating fancy muesli and yoghurt at a table by the bay windows, and a single man munched his fried breakfast over the Sun as he tapped at his Blackberry.

  The table in front of me was set with gleaming silverware (though, happily not with reams of special knives and forks intended for the eating of quails brains and walrus tongues). There were, however, more sugar cubes, with silver tongs beside them. I really would have to stop seeing tiny bricks of sucrose as my natural enemy, but they always seemed to appear just to let me know that I was out of my depth.

  When the waitress returned, bearing a steaming pot of tea, I ordered eggs benedict (because secretly I’d always wanted to try it and this seemed like just the setting that would do it justice) and poured myself a cup of tea, gingerly added a sugar cube and a dash of milk from a jug that looked normal and friendly, until I realised that it was vintage bone china that probably dated from before the first World War.

  The quiet, rainy morning atmosphere (intensified by the Chopin on the radio on the fireplace) was broken by the arrival of some Americans.

  Working in Bath had made me into something of a xenophobe. Nine months out of the year the town was full of tourists, mostly Japanese or American, with the occasional crocodile formation of French school children for variety. I didn’t discriminate. I hated them all. Mostly this was because they crowded out the restaurants in the evenings, and during the day they always seemed to be walking slowly in front of me in a pac-a-mac shrouded huddle.

  American tourists however, held a special place in my blackened and cynical heart. Most of them were only generally annoying, but a few were loud, almost unutterably thick (for example, I once heard one enquire whether Jane Austen still lived in Bath, and whether he could get her autograph, because he loved the movies she’d written) and, as Will, ever the western fan, often said, they were ‘meaner than snake shit’.

  The two that walked into the dining room were perhaps sixty, smartly dressed, and obviously fell into the snake shit category. I could tell because, rather than sit at a fully laid table, they sat at the one next to it, which had no place setting, and then didn’t so much as look at the poor waitress as she transferred the whole lot over to their table.

  I watched, half amazed, half horrified, as the three act drama The Hapless Waitress Vs The Evil Americans unfolded before me.

  “With the full English,” began the husband, “you don’t get all of that?”

  (All of that was a sausage, an egg, three rashers of bacon and a grilled mix of tomatoes and mushrooms. You know, a full English breakfast).

  “Yes you do,” said the waitress, whose bright smile was growing rapidly more subdued.

  “Well I don’t eat red meat,” boomed the man sourly, as if it were somehow her fault, (was pork really red meat? I’d always put bacon in a league of its own).

  “So, the full English, with no red meat?” the poor girl asked, pen poised.

  As if sensing he hadn’t pushed far enough, he added, “no sausage. No bacon.”

  “That’s a yes then,” breezed the waitress, turning to his wife (ding ding, round two) “and for you madam?”

  “Scrambled egg.”

  “With toast?”

  The American woman looked personally affronted, as if she’d just been offered black tar heroin with a side of skewered puppy giblets.

  To her credit, the waitress didn’t roll her eyes, she just smiled, jotted down the order and looked up to speak again.

  “And would you like a complimentary glass of bucks fizz this morning?”

  “What’s that?” the husband asked suspiciously.

  Can open, worms spattered all over the place. If I were her I would have quit while I was ahead.

  Still, the waitress continued doggedly. “It’s champagne with fresh orange juice.”

  The two Americans chewed this over.

  “That’s a mimosa,” said the wife, curling her lip.

  “In England it’s a bucks fizz,” said the waitress with a kindly smile.

  The Americans glared at her with dull eyes, as if almost bored by their own grumpiness.

  “Black coffee.”

  The waitress slinked off to the kitchen, defeated.

  I glared at the Americans, who ignored me in favour of loudly disparaging the weather outside, the temperature inside, and the ‘ugly old English moose’ over the fireplace.

  The waitress brought out my eggs (which were heavenly – literally, an angel must have laid them) and I polished them off probably faster than was polite, then watched as the waitress returned in, Evil Americans 2 – The Breakfasts Cometh.

  “Would you like any sauces with that?” she asked, and was completely ignored, so she moved on to relaying the bare table beside the Americans, as if doing so would summon better guest
s (like the Hitlers, or the Wests). At that point the wife said, loudly, “she could have offered you some sauce”.

  The husband poked at his breakfast of egg, tomato and mushrooms on toast and, apparently decided that as his breakfast had neatly met with his specifications, he mustn’t have been difficult enough.

  “Miss,” he said, smiling a small, icy smile at the waitress, “is this toast gluten free?”

  Lord spare us from people with food intolerances. About ninety-percent of them always acted as if they’d been handed them at the sermon on the mount and presumed that the world (and its waiting staff) was out to get them, through the medium of muffins. The absolute worst were the self diagnosed celiac sufferers, who considered themselves intolerant of wheat just because white bread had made them constipated. Once.

  The waitress returned to the kitchen, presumably to hunt down some gluten free bread, wipe it on the floor under the cooker and then bung it into the toaster (I would have, but then, Raspberry Bs was hardly this classy).

  I watched in disbelief as the Americans ate their breakfasts (killer toast and all) before leaving the table, pinching a load of the breakfast pastries, and heading off upstairs to their room.

  Evil Americans 3 – Just When You Think They Can’t Sink Any Lower.

  Something glimmered on their table, and I couldn’t resist having a quick look. There, amongst the crumbs, splodges of butter and drips of coffee (how could two people create such havoc? Were they only recently equipped with badly made robotic hands?) was forty-five pence, in five pence pieces. A tip, I realised, disgusted.

  I sat back down just as the waitress reappeared with the sainted gluten free toast. I actually heard her growl when she saw the empty table.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the handful of change that lingered in the pockets of everything I owned (I jangled like a belly dancer every time I had to bolt for a bus, and the one time I’d waved my coat around my head in celebration, four people had been rushed to hospital after being pebble dashed with pennies). I fished three pounds out of the general shrapnel and pushed them under a saucer. We waitresses had to stick together in the face of bastards, whether domestic or imported.