The Time of Our Lives

by Jane Costello

  ‘Look, I’m just here for a relaxing holiday,’ I say, feeling the need to defend myself. ‘My first in as long as I can remember. Yet between the robbery, work and almost freezing to death in my shower, it’s been about as relaxing as having my toenails surgically removed. The last thing I want now is to add “Chasing a bloke” to that list. That’s not what I came here for.’

  ‘We just think you need to, you know . . . move on,’ Meredith says.

  ‘I hate that phrase,’ I reply.

  ‘I know, but I happen to think it’s true.’

  ‘He’s not my type,’ I repeat, clearly losing the argument.

  Nicola hesitates. ‘You mean he’s not Roberto.’

  I glare at her. ‘Well, no, he’s not. He’s just some bloke I bumped into in a police station.’

  I don’t even bother to mention the small matter that he’d never be interested in me and my M&S shorts in a million years.

  ‘You need to stop comparing people to Roberto,’ Nicola continues. I must admit, this is starting to irritate me a little now. ‘It’s not healthy, Imogen.’

  ‘What sort of idiot goes looking for a holiday romance? It’s pointless and it’s tacky,’ I argue, at the exact moment I realise Meredith is slinking to the bar to chat up one of The Wankers.

  Chapter 13

  Meredith has guaranteed no snoring tonight, a claim so bold I wonder how she can make it.

  ‘Pineapple?’ I repeat, as a waiter produces a plate piled so high you’d think he was serving the Man From Del Monte.

  We’ve dined on tapas again and, before we head out to sample Barcelona’s nightlife, Meredith is experimenting with ways to open up her airways naturally, that she read about on the Internet. ‘I’d usually have a Pot Noodle over a piece of fruit any day, but this is my sixth portion today,’ she announces, thrusting a piece into her mouth.

  ‘That isn’t a portion, that’s half the export trade of South East Asia,’ I point out.

  ‘It has an enzyme that suppresses unwanted goings-on in your nasal passages,’ she continues, not sounding overly scientific. ‘You wait. You’ll have the best sleep of your life tonight.’

  After dinner, we try out several establishments before ending up in a lively bar playing jazz funk to an eclectic crowd. For a brief few hours, as we perch on bar stools, reminiscing and shrieking with laughter, I feel a pang of nostalgia for the days when life was always like this; when holidays – even the awful ones – involved unshackling myself entirely from work and responsibility, something I seem entirely unable to do these days.

  As Meredith and Nicola excuse themselves and head to the Ladies’, I’m about to order the next round of drinks when I become aware of someone standing next to me.

  I look round and am confronted by a short, sweating man who, if it wasn’t for the polyester suit, would bear an uncanny resemblance to Barney Rubble. He’s a good fifteen years older than anyone else in here and is attempting, I think, to dance – his moves could easily be mistaken for the onset of a gastrointestinal emergency.

  ‘Hello!’ He grins, planting his elbow on the bar. At this point I feel slightly alarmed. Because while it’s a possibility that the movement is to stop him falling over – such is his level of intoxication – I’m concerned that he might have what my mother refers to as . . . ideas.

  ‘Hello,’ I reply uneasily, scanning the room for my friends.

  ‘You’re English, aren’t you?’ As he edges closer, I get a waft of stale perspiration so potent I’m momentarily convinced I will black out.

  ‘Um, yes,’ I mumble, shifting away.

  ‘MOI AUSSI!’ he announces energetically, as if this coincidence is akin to discovering we were born in adjacent hospital beds.

  I smile politely but say nothing, praying he will go away. Instead, he inches closer, so close that I can see each strand of hair protruding from his nostrils and the pools of sweat gathered in the wild tufts of his eyebrows.

  ‘How about a dance?’ he demands, grabbing me by the hand and forcing me to slip off my stool.

  ‘Er, no – thank you,’ I insist, disentangling myself. ‘I’m here with my friends. And I don’t dance.’

  ‘Oh, go on,’ he blusters. ‘Let’s face it . . . you and I aren’t going to pull anyone else in here, are we?’

  I open my mouth. ‘What?’

  ‘All these young whippersnappers . . . might as well accept that none of them is going to be interested in anyone our age.’

  ‘I . . . I’m twenty-nine,’ I protest.

  He steps back, tips back his head and scrutinises me as if he’s determining the freshness of a side of salmon. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes!’ I growl, as Meredith and Nicola arrive at my side.

  ‘Sorr-ee!’ he cringes, backing away. ‘I always thought I was good with ages, too.’

  We don’t stay long after that.

  ‘How bad was he, exactly? I didn’t get a proper look,’ Meredith says as we attempt to flag down a taxi. ‘I only ask because I’d never discount a man just for being ugly. Ugly men try harder and are more grateful.’

  ‘He was a slimeball,’ I reply. ‘Do I look middle aged?’

  ‘No,’ Nicola insists. There’s an ominous silence.

  ‘Although, you probably don’t dress with the same . . . joie de vivre you once did.’ This is Meredith’s best attempt at diplomacy.

  ‘Which is understandable, because you’ve got other priorities,’ Nicola adds, hastily. ‘Besides, you still look lovely. End of story.’

  ‘I can’t believe that he’s the best I could do,’ I say, dejectedly.

  ‘He’s not!’ Meredith protests. ‘He was just some pissed-up letch in a bar. You already know we think you could do better because we’ve attempted to set you up with dozens of men, all of whom were a significant improvement on him.’

  To be fair, this is true. And while I’ve only ever been out with one, once, to get them (temporarily) off my back – a good-looking but self-important cookery writer from one of Meredith’s magazines – I trust them enough to know that the others wouldn’t have been hideous either.

  ‘I should stress that I don’t actually want to pull while I’m here. I just hate the thought that, if I did, that’s the standard I should expect.’

  Nicola and Meredith dutifully continue to protest but, by the time we reach the hotel and I’m back in our room, I’ve ceased to care about how unfabulous I look. Largely because I’m utterly exhausted. And praying that Meredith’s efforts with the pineapple might have worked.

  As I crash into bed and open my book, Meredith has already plunged into a deep and, to my amazement, silent sleep.

  ‘Here is a small fact . . .’

  I roll over, idly reaching for my necklace, then freezing as one issue I’d managed to push to the back of my mind for a few hours swamps my thoughts.

  Oh God, Imogen. How could you have lost your necklace?

  Roberto gave me the necklace on one of the most unexpectedly romantic days of my life. ‘Unexpectedly’, because it was only three months after we’d met and the day until that point had been nothing less than disastrous.

  It wasn’t just the plumbing emergency I’d woken up to; the bank card that had been swallowed four hours earlier; or the fact that my mother had announced she was coming to stay for a week. We’d also been viewing our dream flat, a small but perfectly formed pad near Hampstead Heath. Our appointment was at ten thirty and we’d taken a picnic to eat in the park later. I’d assumed the area was beyond our budget, until an estate agent with whom I’d ingratiated myself (‘Call me Julie’) tipped me off that the flat was coming on the market.

  It was tiny; I can’t deny it – I’ve been in more spacious rooms while trying on jeans in Monsoon. But we fell in love with it. It was directly above one of those chic, quintessentially London cafés, the kind that serves artichoke teas, hangs dried chillies from the ceiling and has a sous-chef called Ollivander. I stood in the tiny bedroom, clutching Roberto’s hand as I breathed
in the scent of designer coffee wafting through the windows, and knew that this was The One.

  I’d expected to have serious competition. But Call Me Julie said it was ours if we wanted, and that she could have the paperwork done within the hour.

  So we sat in the chic little café, our heads swollen with dreams as we awaited her call. Only she didn’t call. Call Me Julie texted instead, clearly unable to summon sufficient levels of bottle to talk to us personally.

  Whoops! Sorry, Imogen – turns out the flat’s gone! Got a nice pad in Brixton you might like tho! J x

  I was fuming so hard as we walked across the heath that ducks were diving for cover. ‘That flat had our name on it. Only now someone else has got it. Someone else is going to be living in our flat!’

  ‘Imogen.’ Roberto gently took me by the arm and spun me round. He put his hand behind my neck and I relaxed into his kiss. Even now, thinking of his kisses, the soft pillows of his lips sinking into mine, warms my belly like hot chocolate on a cold day.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he breathed into my hair.

  ‘But it does. I could see us coming home after a hard day at work and snuggling up on the sofa in that gorgeous living room.’

  ‘That very small living room.’

  I opened my mouth to protest.

  ‘And don’t say “bijou”,’ he added. I managed a smile as he ran his fingertips across the skin of my jaw, lifting up my chin. ‘There will be other living rooms. You don’t need that one to snuggle up to me.’

  He was right (annoyingly, he often was) – after an extensive search, he ended up simply moving into my place in Clapham, where we were blissfully happy. But that afternoon, of course, I didn’t know this, so the fact that he lifted my mood so drastically, so quickly, is testament to the effect Roberto had on me in those days.

  That afternoon, we lay on our picnic blanket above the curves of the London skyline, exchanging slow kisses as we grazed on ripe peaches and Prosecco. It was close to perfection.

  Then we had our first conversation about having children.

  I have no idea who brought it up; it could well have been me, because there was nothing I couldn’t share with him, even that early on.

  And it didn’t surprise me that he was so determined that he never wanted a baby.

  His childhood, while not troubled in a way that would vex social services, had not been the source of fond nostalgia that mine had. My memories were dominated by lavish, sausages-on-sticks birthday parties organised by Mum (who still throws better parties than anyone I know), and wobbly bike rides along the prom with my dad.

  Roberto’s were all about the aching fear of a cold, unaffectionate mother and the near-permanent absence of his philandering father.

  So when he told me in no uncertain terms that babies would never be on the agenda, I reassured him: ‘That’s fine, because I have no desire to have kids, either.’

  It was the truth at the time. I was obsessively focused on my career and had never been gripped by the maternal twinges my cousins had (I’m a godmother five times over – my extended family could win Olympic medals in breeding).

  ‘Imogen, are you only saying that because you think it’s what I want to hear?’ he asked, clearly worried.

  ‘I’m saying it because I mean it.’

  His anxiety visibly slipped away. ‘When you’re this in love with someone, it’s hard to understand how there could be room for another person.’

  I was about to lean in and kiss him, when he reached into his pocket. ‘I have something for you.’

  My insides surged as he placed a small, blue box in my hand.

  ‘It’s not a ring,’ he said self-consciously, as I gently pulled on its ribbon. ‘Although one day I’d like to give you one of those, too.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it.’ And I did.

  Inside was the most exquisite piece of jewellery I’d ever seen: a delicate, blossom-shaped pendant with a slender, silver chain that glittered in the sunlight. It confirmed – as if I’d needed it – that he sometimes knew me better than I knew myself. Its gorgeousness was in its simplicity.

  ‘Roberto, you can’t give me this . . .’

  ‘Of course I can.’

  ‘How on earth did you afford it?’

  ‘A little light company embezzlement. You’ve got a yacht coming next week.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  He placed the chain around my neck and fumbled with the clasp until it was fastened. Then he brushed his lips gently against the back of my neck, making my entire body tingle. ‘Wear it for ever.’

  When I responded, it was with a giddy, half-blind certainty that nothing was ever going to go wrong.

  ‘I will,’ I told him. ‘I’ll never take it off.’

  My eyes spring open and I know I’ll never get to sleep now. The clock reads 3 a.m. and I’m wide awake.

  It takes at least another hour before I’ve calmed down enough to feel my eyelids flutter closed . . . and it’s just as I’m submitting to slumber that I am jolted awake by a sound vibrating through the room that almost convinces me that Meredith has rolled onto a whoopee cushion.

  ‘PWTTTHHHHHHHHHT!’

  I frown at her, stunned at the sheer volume, and seriously hoping that it’s a one-off.

  ‘PWTTTTTTTTTHHHHHHHHHHHHT!’

  And so I have my answer. Meredith’s pineapple might have cured her snoring, but it’s also produced the sort of wind power that could supply half the National Grid.

  Day Three

  Chapter 14

  I am woken at 7.04 a.m., after two and a half hours of sleep, by the piercing jangle of my phone.

  I vault out of bed, taking care not to launch anything untoward with the remote, be it the television, the curtains or the flush toilet on the International Space Station.

  ‘Is that my sodding phone?’ Meredith sits bolt upright, like Christopher Lee emerging from a coffin. ‘Or is that your sodding phone? Either way, ANSWER THE SODDING PHONE!’

  I am now prancing about the room like a decapitated chicken, but totally fail to locate it before the ring dies.

  Meredith flops down with an emphatic groan and buries her head under her quilt.

  ‘You’re not meant to lie on your back after the first trimester . . .’

  ‘PWTTHHHHT!’

  There’s not a lot I can say to that.

  The super-grade curtains on the windows allow absolutely no sunlight to sneak into the room, so I tiptoe around trying to find my phone with only the loo-roll light to illuminate my path.

  It proves an ineffective surveillance aid, however, as proved by my resulting trip on the hairdryer cord and dive, which could have kicked off an 800-metres swimming final. I just see the corner of the luggage rack in an all-too-impressive closeup before I make contact, landing with a sharp thud directly on my eye socket.

  My resulting shriek is loud enough to convince those working out in the basement gym that there is a wild boar being slaughtered on the sixth floor.

  ‘Ehh— Whaaa—’ Meredith manages, before instantly falling asleep again.

  I make great efforts to suppress my overwhelming desire to scream as pain throbs through my frontal cortex and down into my neck. I crawl on my hands and knees to the mirror and switch on the smallest, most modest light I can find, which only succeeds in floodlighting the entire room.

  ‘IMOGEN! WHAT IS GOING ON?’ Meredith cries, rearing up again as she shields her eyes.

  ‘Sorry! I’m sorry!’ I mumble, dimming the lights. She thuds down as I peer into the mirror to examine my left eye. I’m seeing triple, so there are three of them but, apart from that, it could be worse. It’s swollen and starting to go purplish, like a rotting beetroot that’s been boiled for several days. You know – exactly the sort of look you want on holiday.

  Meredith cocoons herself again in her duvet as I hear a beep from the bathroom, and discover my phone in the pocket of one of the two dressing gowns.

  David has left a
voice message.

  ‘Imogen!’ He sounds breathless and echoey, like he’s running inside a biscuit tin, and his voice has a quality that is rare in my boss: urgency. ‘I need to speak to you. It’s about this Daily Sun thing. We need to get rid of it, Imogen. Now. It could be catastrophic, not just for the merger, but the company per se. I’m still trying to track down the . . . the bottom wipe who got us into this mess. Although I’ve come to the conclusion that ultimately it doesn’t matter who it is – all that matters is that we stop this happening. Can you phone me asap? That’s ASAP. Thanks.’

  Attempting to quell my alarm, I phone him back. It goes to voicemail, but I want to speak to David directly, so I end the call and try again. And again. I reluctantly leave a message telling him, in the calmest voice I can muster, to phone me back so we can update each other. Which I realise gives the impression I have something to update him on, but never mind.

  Two hours later, as I wait to meet Nicola for breakfast, having left Meredith to lie in, I’ve heard nothing from him. And he’s not the only one. I’ve made three calls to the police station about my necklace, but managed only to connect with a non-English speaker who listened intently before putting down the phone on me.

  I sigh and adjust the sunglasses Meredith threw at me from her bedside table before I left the room. They are the size of two small dessert plates and dark enough to stop me walking in a straight line, but they’re an improvement on the black eye, I can’t deny it.

  Nicola arrives looking refreshed and relaxed. ‘Morning! So, did the pineapple work?’

  ‘Yes.’ Then, ‘No.’

  She laughs. ‘Eh?’

  I lift up my sunglasses to read the breakfast menu and she gasps. ‘Why do you look like Million Dollar Baby?’

  ‘Oh. Thanks. I had a fight with a luggage rack and lost.’ My morning’s struggles have left me hungry, and I look around eagerly. ‘Where’s our waiter? I’ve been here for twenty minutes and haven’t been approached yet.’ While whomever is serving us appears to have gone to Seville for their fag break, the rest of the staff are treating everyone else as though they have a Masters in sucking up.