‘Just some woman offLove Island.’
‘Oh.’
Shelley smiles. ‘I’m guessing you’ve never watchedLove Island.’
‘Can’t say I have?—’
‘Okay, so what are your plans for today?’ she asks.
‘Well, I’m just going to come home,’ he replies, as if it’s obvious.
‘But aren’t you booked in at the hotel for two nights?’
‘Yes, but I don’t care about that…’
‘And what about your flight? Aren’t you meant to be flying home tomorrow?’
‘I’ll get another flight,’ he insists. ‘I’ll get one today if I can. If not I’ll take a train. Honestly, it’s the best thing. The way we left it…’ He coughs dryly. ‘It was a bit awkward. A bit, well… we both knew we wouldn’t be doing stuff together today.’
‘Yes,’ Shelley ventures, ‘but you could stilldostuff, couldn’t you?’
‘By myself, you mean?’ he asks in surprise.
‘Well, yes!’ She smiles. He really does sound like a fish out of water down there.
‘I don’t really know what kind of stuff,’ he admits.
‘Oh, Michael,’ she exclaims. ‘Come on. You might live in the wilds but you do still remember how to operate in a city, don’t you?’
‘Well, yes. Of course I do.’ She senses him frowning. ‘But I’m not in actual London. I’m at a Heathrow hotel and people don’t come here for fun, you know? They come for stopovers and layovers, or because they’re catching an early flight?—’
‘Yes, but you’re not incarcerated there, are you?’ she interrupts. ‘I mean, they will let you out?—’
‘Yeah, of course!’
‘So you could sit there in your hotel, where I bet there’s a kettle and a miserly selection of teabags and skinny Nescafé sachets and tiny cartons of UHT milk?—’
‘There is actually?—’
‘—And you could make a cup of tea and sit at the window, watching the planes…’
She breaks off as he laughs. ‘You make it sound so enticing.’
‘I do, don’t I?’ She grins. ‘Or, instead of that, you could treat it like a not-exactly-ideal hotel that you only booked because it’s cheap. Like when you were young and went away with your mates and didn’t care that the apartment was crappy and there was a single bare bulb and your mattress was so thin, it was like sleeping on a slice of bread?—’
‘I remember those places.’ Michael chuckles.
‘Me too. And didn’t you still have a brilliant time?’
‘Well, yeah. Of course.’
‘’Cause you just made the best of it,’ she continues. ‘So what you could do is, you could leave your miserable little room and take yourself into London for the day and do the kind of stuff you couldneverdo up here…’
‘Like… what?’
‘Oh, come on,’ she splutters. ‘It’s London! One of the greatest cities in the world! On the last Sunday before Christmas. It’ll beamazing.Just get on the train and get off somewhere central and walk around. Soak it all up like tourist?—’
‘But Iama tourist,’ he reminds her.
