It’s too late. The bedroom door flies open.
‘Lana, what the hell?’ Steve replies.
It’s Steve, wearing his green stripy PJs and a face like thunder.
I look to Ethan, just in case he’s managed to hide in time, but all he’s done is lie face down on the mattress – the mattress that is now on the floor.
‘Lana?’ he prompts me again.
‘Oh my God, I don’t know what happened, the bed just broke,’ I say with a faux innocence that he’s not buying.
‘Lana, this is so, so disrespectful,’ he replies. ‘I generously give you a place to stay and you have sex in my bed? You know the rules about having guests. What’s wrong with him?’
Oh, so it’s his bed? So he gets to say who can and can’t sleep in it? And Ethan is genuinely playing dead right now and, honestly, it’s an impressive tactic. Thankfully Steve doesn’t recognise him from work.
‘He’s sleeping. We had nowhere else to go,’ I begin, but he’s not having it.
‘I hear round the back of Wetherspoons is perfect for this sort of thing.’
I know, now isn’t the time to make a joke, but do I let a silly thing like that stop me? No. No, I do not.
‘Which Wetherspoons?’ I ask.
Ethan falters ever so slightly, his chest bouncing as he laughs. Luckily only I notice.
‘Lana, you have taken advantage of me for long enough,’ Steve barks, not seeing the funny side to this at all. ‘I want you out of here. I know you’re going to Australia tomorrow so, go, get your trip over with, and then when you come back I want your things gone. And I want him out of here, before I wake up. Clear?’
‘Clear,’ I repeat back to him.
Steve slams the door behind him, before heading back to bed. Safe in the knowledge that the coast is clear, Ethan rolls onto his back.
‘That’s—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re going to say,’ Ethan interrupts me. ‘That’s the universe, at it again. You take the floor with the mattress, I’ll take the floor without.’
Ethan grabs the extra throw from my bed, leaving me with the duvet.
See what I mean? The two of us create nothing but carnage. This can never happen again.
24
I’m homeless – yay.
Unlucky for me I have no other ex-boyfriends who are willing to put me up in exchange for the faint hope of getting back together, so I’m really up shit creek this time.
I can’t afford anywhere, not on my own, because it’s not just the bills, it’s the huge deposit everyone wants, the references, the good credit score – ironically, I’ve never had a problem with credit, other than no one wanting to give me any, so that’s why my score is so low. The bank of Dad has always been closed for withdrawals, even in emergencies, which only really leaves going to live at Saltburn itself. I could probably live there without anyone noticing, in one of the bedrooms no one goes in, but if Bea didn’t take me out with a shotgun then the commute to the office would probably kill me.
My phone vibrates on the bedside table. Of course, I forget that I’m on the floor, so when I reach out to get it I just punch the bottom drawer instead. God, that hurt.
I reach up this time, successfully grabbing it, noticing that it’s half ten so Steve must have gone to work. Presumably, he didn’tlook in here, to see if I – or my gentleman caller – had gone. Ethan is still flat-out asleep on the floor.
‘Hello?’ I say quietly, answering the call, because it’s Faye.
‘Hey, so we forgot you weren’t in today, and we’re dying to know – how did it go last night?’ she asks.
‘Oh, not good,’ I tell her. ‘The guy was a total creep.’
‘But don’t you fly later?’ she checks.
