We picked up our bags and walked in, Renzo ducking his head as he passed under the low beams. To one side of us was a bar, the sounds of clinking glasses and muted conversation drifting out; to the other was a door to a lounge where I could see chintz-covered sofas and little spindly-legged tables. In front of us was a desk holding a computer, a visitors’ book and a brass bell.
I hesitated, but Renzo walked confidently forward and pressed the bell, and a few seconds later a woman with dyed red hair scraped back in a ponytail emerged from the bar.
‘How can I help?’
‘I’ve booked a room. Tansy Barlow.’
‘Let me see.’ The woman squeezed behind the desk and sat down, tapping the keyboard. ‘Barlow, for two nights, here you are. I’ll just take a credit card for any extras, if I may. You’re in room four, just up the stairs and to your right. Breakfast is served between seven and nine in the bar area. Enjoy your stay with us.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, accepting a key with a large wooden fob with a number 4 on it.
Renzo didn’t say anything, but he picked up our bags and I followed him up a narrow, squeaking staircase that smelled a bit of that morning’s breakfast and a bit of cat, and slotted the key into the door of room four.
Already, my heart was beginning to sink, and it sank still further when I opened the door. The room, which had looked small but comfortable in the pictures online, was tiny. There was just enough space to edge between the double bed and the wardrobe. A framed print of a cow hung above the bed, and thick net curtains covered the window. A small table held a television and a tray with a little kettle, sachets of teabags and instant coffee, and tubs of long-life milk. I glanced into the bathroom and saw a cramped shower, washbasin and loo. It was oppressively hot.
Neither of us said anything. I couldn’t bear to look at Renzo. Part of me wanted to pretend everything was okay; another part didn’t want him to think I didn’t know it wasn’t. Objectively, of course, it was fine: it was a perfectly comfortable room in a modest country hotel. When I went abroad for fashion weeks, I stayed in far, far worse places than this. If I’d come here with Dale, my boyfriend at university, we’d have thought this was quite the lap of luxury.
But I’d known as soon as I walked in that Renzo wouldn’t see it that way. The contrast between this and the enormous suite where we’d stayed in Paris couldn’t have been greater.
I didn’t just feel disappointed; I felt ashamed. This was my surprise, the romantic weekend I’d planned for us. And this was the best I could do.
Renzo went over to the window and tried to open it, but it was locked. I sat down on the bed, and a second later he joined me and put his arm around me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, feeling myself choking up like I was about to cry.
But he laughed, gave my shoulder a little squeeze and turned my face gently towards his. ‘Why would you be sorry? You don’t have to apologise for anything. Do you want to stay? Or would you rather find somewhere else?’
‘We can’t leave. I’ve paid for the room in advance.’
‘Sunk cost fallacy,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘It’s a thing in behavioural economics. The money’s gone and we’re not going to recover it by staying here if we don’t want to.’
He took out his phone, tapped the screen a few times and I saw the number for Colton Capital appear on the screen.
‘Yeah, it’s me,’ he said. ‘Get one of the EAs to book me a suite at Babington House, would you? If they haven’t got one, a superior double will do. And a table for two in the restaurant tonight, please. And they can throw in a few spa treatments, too, since it’s a late booking. Okay? Thank you. Ciao.’
‘What if they’re full?’
‘They won’t be full. Come on then, if we’re doing a runner, let’s do it fast. Shame you didn’t ask me to drive us up, but we’ll get the woman downstairs to ring for a cab.’
‘But what will we say to her?’
‘Whatever we want. It’s no skin off her back, she’s got the room paid for.’
We picked up our cases and went downstairs again. Renzo pinged the bell and the woman hurried through from the bar as she had before.
I handed back the key.
‘I’m awfully sorry, but there’s been a change of plan. We don’t need the room after all. Could you order a taxi for us, please?’
‘Back to the station? I hope everything’s all right.’
‘No, to Babington House,’ Renzo said, and I felt my face flame with embarrassment.
She looked hard at us. ‘I see.’
We spent that night in an enormous, air-conditioned room in a stunning converted barn, with a free-standing bath in the middle of the floor and a crystal chandelier hanging over the bed. We ate a delicious dinner in the restaurant, and Renzo ordered a two-hundred-pound bottle of claret to go with it. The next day I had a facial, a massage and a pedicure while he worked out in the gym, and then in the afternoon we explored the grounds together before going back to our suite and having exactly the sort of long, lazy shag I’d imagined, before showering, dressing and getting a taxi to a nearby restaurant that Renzo said was owned by a celebrity chef and had a Michelin star.
Our dinner there was even better – seven courses of small dishes that quite honestly looked like they’d been arranged on the plates by an artist. I had quail for the first time in my life, and ravioli that the waiter grated fresh truffle over at the table while I watched in awe. Renzo made me try one of his sweetbreads, which I thought was the most heavenly thing I’d ever tasted until he told me it was some unmentionable bit of a sheep. There was a bread waiter who kept coming round and pressing different kinds on us: bread with caraway seeds, bread with sundried tomatoes, bread with caramelised onion, and three different kinds of butter to have with them. There was even a pre-pudding that they brought before your actual pudding, so I was too full to have more than a tiny spoonful of my rich chocolate soufflé. And, best of all, I was having too much fun to worry about all the calories I was hoovering up.
In bed that night, after we’d had slightly wild, slightly drunken sex, Renzo held me in his arms and said, ‘You must let me pay for stuff, fragolina mia. I don’t mind. It’s cents on the dollar, it really is. I like doing cool things, and I love having you to share them with. Whatever you want us to do together, you must just tell me and I’ll sort it, or one of the girls in the office will. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I replied, resting my head drowsily on his shoulder. ‘Thank you so much for this. It’s been amazing.’
‘It’s my absolute pleasure. This was your idea, anyway. I should be thanking you.’
And as I drifted into sleep, I couldn’t help feeling sad that I hadn’t had the pleasure of treating him.
I knew he meant what he’d said: whatever I wanted to do, we could do. Whatever I wanted to have, I could have. He would casually take out his black American Express card and that would be that. He never needed to worry about it being declined, or feel guilty because he couldn’t afford extra groceries for the food bank that week, or go without stuff he wanted because his family needed his help.
As long as I was his girlfriend, I could live a life I’d only ever been able to dream of. But was I – could I ever be – good enough for him?
Eight
As it turned out, I didn’t contact Chelsea the following week because three things happened. Only one of them was good.
First of all, on Sunday, while I was lying in bed recovering from my hangover after Sally’s party, Mum called to tell me my sister had gone into labour. I spent the day glued to their WhatsApp updates, and by the evening I had a new nephew.
Meet Calum, Perdita texted under a picture of her beaming, tired face and the tiny bundle clutched to her chest, starfish hands poking into the yellow blanket Mum had crocheted for her newest grandchild. He weighs seven pounds four ounces and he can’t wait to meet his auntie Tansy. My foof is in tatters and I’m in love.
So
I went to work on Monday with an overnight bag packed and asked Lisa if I could take a couple of days’ holiday, which she could hardly refuse as I had loads owed to me. I got the evening train down to Cornwall, trying to read the new Vogue on the way but unable to concentrate, distracted by the excitement of seeing my sister, the new baby and my older niece and nephew, while fighting with resentment at knowing I’d have to see Dad, too, and hide my feelings about him so as not to upset Mum.
‘You’ll have to wait until the morning to meet Calum, love,’ Mum said firmly when she picked me up at the station. ‘A new baby’s disruptive enough for Arthur and Rosie without you turning up at nearly midnight and waking the whole house.’
I noticed how tired she looked after her double shift at work, and that her ancient hatchback had developed an ominous-sounding new rattle when she changed gear. But I didn’t say anything – I just let her chatter on about how adorable her new grandson was, how the neighbour whose dog she’d been walking was up and about again, and how I’d got much too thin and she hoped I wasn’t going to be getting that eating disorder thing again.
‘I’m fine, Mum,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ve just been busy at work. You know I lose weight when I’m stressed.’
‘And what about that boy you were seeing? The one with the Italian name.’
‘Renzo. We broke up before Christmas. It was, like, a mutual thing. I’m okay.’ I felt the familiar ache of loss, and wondered whether to tell her that it was only temporary, a lovers’ tiff, and we’d be back on track in no time. But I knew I didn’t believe that enough myself to convince her that it was true.
‘If you say so.’ She glanced at me, then swung the car into its parking space, expertly squeezing in between number eight’s Skoda and number twelve’s Peugeot.
Sometimes, when I was feeling particularly stressed about needing to help Mum out with money, I caught myself thinking, Why don’t you sell the bloody car? before remembering that not only was it the only way she could manage to work her irregular shifts, but it was the one thing in her life that made her feel independent and in control. And then I felt absolutely wretched with guilt for having had the idea in the first place.
I said, ‘Is Dad…?’
‘Asleep, I expect. He was up late last night.’
If I hadn’t already known what that meant, the grim set of her lips would have told me. But the house was silent and unlit, and we both went straight to bed. Mum asked me if I needed anything to eat but I lied and said I’d had a sandwich on the train, and took a glass of water upstairs.
As I lay in the darkness on the lumpy single mattress, I began to hear a faint, arrhythmic sound above the rush of the wind. It was so quiet I had to strain my ears to realise it was there at all, and then it became clearer and clearer. Click. Pause. Click, click. Pause. Click. Then a longer gap. Then, Click click click click click.
Dad. Jesus. The betting shops being closed didn’t stop him, Mum’s rage and despair hadn’t stopped him, the birth of his new grandson hadn’t stopped him. He was downstairs gambling on the computer while Mum slept. Gambling away the money I’d sent Mum just days before from the clothes I’d sold on eBay, sinking all of our lives deeper into peril. And I knew that nothing I could say or do would stop him, either.
Mum had done her best to shield me from the truth for as long as she could. But it was impossible not to realise that something serious was going on.
It wasn’t just the whispered (and sometimes shouted) rows, the expression on Mum’s face when bills came through the letterbox, the need to sell our cottage and move to the rented house. There were other things, too. The appointments Mum arranged with the GP, even though Dad assured us he wasn’t ill. The time Mum frogmarched him out of the door one evening, her expression as grim as his was sheepish, announcing that they were going to a meeting. Mum constantly having to hunt for things – her purse or the card reader for the online banking or the little slips of paper she wrote the password for the computer on every time she changed it – because either she’d forgotten where she’d hidden them or Dad had found them and hidden them somewhere else.
She’d tried, she really had. She’d tried everything, and nothing had made a difference. And there was no point me going and confronting Dad now, in the middle of the night. He might stop for half an hour, or until tomorrow morning, but he wouldn’t stop for good. I knew that for certain and I was sure Mum did, too.
So I lay there in the dark, my jaw clenching tighter and tighter and my eyes burning, until eventually I fell asleep.
Mum and I left early the next morning, before Dad was up, and she drove me to Perdita and Ryan’s, where I spent the next two days cuddling my adorable, squidgy new nephew, making cups of tea for Perdita and binge-watching Fireman Sam with Rosie and Arthur.
Oh, and changing nappies and cleaning up sick and wanting to stuff cotton wool in my ears as Rosie, who was understandably unsettled by her little brother’s arrival, acted out with yet another tantrum.
Sometimes, when I was jammed like a sweaty sardine on a Central Line Tube on a summer afternoon, or when Barri was in one of his moods, or when it was Saturday night and I had no money to go out and no one to go out with, I looked at my sister’s life with envy. She’d never been to university; she’d married her high school sweetheart, settled down in a little three-bedroom house with a garden and as soon as Arthur arrived, she’d given up her job in a call centre with evident relief and settled down to be a stay-at-home mum.
But, as I watched those two days go by in their unchanging rhythm: the morning feed, the older kids’ breakfast, the battle to get everyone wrapped up warm for a trip to the park, the nutritious lunch of cheese and tomato sandwiches rejected and thrown onto the floor, another battle over nap time and another over bath time and a truly epic one over bedtime, I thought that if I never met anyone I wanted to have kids with it wouldn’t actually be so bad.
And then I remembered Renzo and thought what an amazing dad he’d be, and found myself feeling broody all over again. I remembered the soppy expression he got on his face when he talked about his sisters’ kids, and the photos he’d shown me of him cuddling one of his nephews, who had ice cream smeared all over his face. I imagined him cuddling our baby and blowing raspberries on her tummy like Ryan did. I imagined him looking at me the way Ryan looked at Perdita when she was feeding Calum, like, My God, look at this amazing thing we’ve done together.
And then I remembered that my chances of ever having sex with Renzo again, never mind procreating with him, were non-existent, and I came back to earth with a bump – and not the baby kind.
So, to be honest, it was a relief when I got back to the office just before lunch on Thursday. The team had all signed a ‘Congratulations, Auntie!’ card for me, and tied three blue balloons to the back of my chair, which made me laugh and then almost cry. I’d pulled my chair towards my desk and was starting to work through my mountain of unread emails, when I heard Felicity’s voice behind me.
‘Hello!’ she cooed. ‘Lovely to have you back. We missed you. How was the baba?’
‘Adorable. But he thinks sleep is for the weak. I’m shattered.’
She laughed. ‘Fancy a bite to eat before you get stuck in here? We could try that new vegan place that’s opened round the corner.’
I thought about my carefully planned lunch budget, and then realised I’d forgotten to pick up a sandwich on my way in, and I was hungry.
‘Go on then.’
‘My treat,’ Felicity said.
‘But—’ I started to protest, and then I remembered the cost of my return train ticket, the gifts I’d taken for my sister and the baby (and the older children, so they wouldn’t feel left out). And anyway, Felicity had already got her coat on and was waiting impatiently for me, so I followed her to the lift and out into the street.
The café was just around the corner, as she’d promised – an ultra-feminine place with little curly-legged tables and chairs, the floor tiled in delica
te grey and white that must have been a nightmare to keep clean, and a counter painted in rainbow pastel stripes and piled with cupcakes on tall stands. It was crowded with women – I counted just two men, one bearded guy who looked like a true believer, and a bloke in a suit who looked like he’d been dragged there on sufferance by his female boss – but with her usual skill, Felicity spotted the only free table and nabbed it.
‘I have to say, vegan food isn’t normally my cup of tea,’ she remarked, studying the menu. ‘But it’s so on-trend right now, and you have to admit this place is fabulously Instagrammable.’
‘It’s lovely,’ I said. ‘Thanks for suggesting it. I feel a bit bad, given I’ve been out of the office for most of the week, but you’ve got to eat, right?’
Eat. Looking at the menu, I felt an old, familiar anxiety that I thought I’d put to bed years ago. With men, strangely, I was fine, but eating with women always freaked me out, like whatever I chose would mean a judgement: either, ‘No wonder she’s getting a bit podgy,’ or, ‘She was anorexic, you know, she’s obviously not over it,’ or anything at all in between.
A waitress came over with a carafe of water with cucumber slices floating in it, and an iPad. ‘What can I get for you ladies?’
I looked back down at the menu, panicking slightly.
‘I’d like a kale salad,’ I said. Kale, my old buddy. I knew where I was with kale. Not fighting the urge to ram my fingers down my throat as soon as I’d finished my lunch, is where.
‘The black bean and walnut burger, please,’ Felicity said. ‘With sweet potato fries – actually, no, make that regular fries. And extra chipotle mayo.’
How, I agonised. How the hell did she manage to give no fucks at all about what people thought of her, wear her self-assurance as easily as a leather biker jacket that went with everything and eat stuff because it was what she wanted, not what she thought other people would think it was okay for her to eat?
I sipped my water. ‘So what’s been going on in the office while I was away?’
It's Not You It's Him: An absolutely hilarious and feel-good romantic comedy Page 9
