The hotel, the street outside – the whole of Pontefract, it seems – is silent. We stand, facing each other, surrounded by Love Hearts. And then I step towards him and I slide my arms around his waist and reach up and kiss his beautiful mouth.
Like that time in the derelict mill, among the flapping pigeons, and in my house that day with the crow. And one more time, when I’d sent Ravi out to buy beers in the guest house in Huddersfield. I’d hatched that plan, so that Shane and I could be alone together – even for a few minutes. I’d wanted him that much.
And I want him now as we kiss deeply. I am melting like sugar as he holds me close. We pull apart, and I wrangle my top off over my head, and he does likewise. Our clothes fall onto the carpet of the Love Heart Boudoir, and now, drunk on wine and sweet cocktails and three days together in a van, we are naked in the confectionery-patterned bed.
I don’t know how much time spins by. Hours, possibly, as we kiss and touch and hold each other in the dark. It’s as if we know there’s no need to rush. Unlike that mad scramble in Huddersfield, tonight we have all the time in the world. Then, finally, I can’t hold back any more and I’m on top of him. I don’t care that I’m so much older and differently shaped, and not how he might have remembered me. Because we’re the same people, me and him. He knows me – he doesn’t think I was born in 1937! – and I want him more than I have ever wanted anyone.
I lower myself to kiss his mouth, when he stops. ‘Is this okay?’ His gaze bores into me. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ I say. And then it happens and he is deep inside me, and every cell in my body is shimmeringly alive. I come with him, crying out. My face is wet with tears, and my head is filled with shooting stars – no fantasy needed, no flying fridge magnets or any of that.
My heart is thumping steadily as he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close. For a few moments we lie in silence together. And then Shane reads one of the Love Heart mottos aloud, and I do likewise. We do this, reading out every sweet on the wall, in between kissing and giggling until finally, wrapped up together, we tip over into sleep.
31
We sleep in a tangle, I think. I wake sporadically, aware of the warmth of him, and I breathe in the delicious scent of his skin. It’s so familiar to me, but thrilling too as I don’t know him like this. Shane, who’s lived a life and driven Doris for hundreds of miles and cared for me when I had a driving freak-out. I don’t know him at all, and yet I do, more than anyone. I want to wrap myself around him and never let go.
Then, rudely, daylight beams through the flimsy curtains, and just as I’m de-crusting my eyes, an unfamiliar ringtone fills the room. Shane peels away from me and reaches for his phone, then climbs out of bed. Still naked, he stands by the bathroom door, taking the call.
‘Hey, you okay? Oh, right!’ He grabs his boxers, jeans and T-shirt from the floor, as if caught out, and steps into the bathroom, leaving the door partly open. ‘Yeah, I get that… You remember I’m away, don’t you? I’ll be back soon. Oh, that sounds a bit shit… We can talk about it then? When I’m home?’ He clears his throat, and something falls over me like rain. The reality of what happened last night. How drunk we were, and whether that’s why it happened, and whether he regrets it now.
I sit up in bed, mentally slotting together the jigsaw pieces. Lloyd’s message. All those cocktails. The way I instigated this – launching myself at him like a missile. The way I climbed on top – oh God!
Still in the bathroom, Shane finishes the call. He reappears, looking a little sheepish with a bath towel wrapped around his waist. ‘Sorry about that,’ he says.
‘Everything okay?’ I ask, duvet pulled up to my chin.
‘Just Ryan. My son.’
‘Yes, I know.’ I know your kids’ names, is what I mean.
‘Stuff at home with his—well—with Paula’s partner.’
‘Oh?’
‘Nothing serious,’ he adds, then disappears into the bathroom again. This time he shuts the door. Perhaps he even locks it! Who knows? What I do know is that the mood has changed, and I feel lost and stranded and utterly foolish in this giant bed.
I hear the shower blasting, and then, what feels like moments later, Shane emerges, fully dressed. I blink at him, trying to figure out how he has managed to do this so swiftly while I’m still lying naked beneath the billowing duvet. And why this is more crushing to me than Lloyd’s missent message.
‘Shane… is something wrong?’ I ask.
‘Ryan’s just a bit upset.’
Anything you’d like to talk about? I want to ask him, but I don’t.
I watch him opening the curtains a chink, examining the complimentary biscuits, filling the kettle and switching it on. And then he stops, as if he has run out of things to do. Neither of us says anything. At the sound of footsteps in the corridor, my whole body tenses, as if the clamped-hairband receptionist/bartender is about to burst in on us. When that doesn’t happen – when nothing happens – I slide out of bed, feeling horribly naked, somehow more naked than I was when I was wrapped round him last night.
I dart to the bathroom and shut the door. I shower quickly, failing to be charmed by the sherbet gel, wrap myself tightly in a bath towel and come out.
Perched on the bed now, Shane looks at me and motions for me to sit beside him. I study his face, trying to read his expression, and sit a good metre away. He clears his throat, and this is how it starts, the joy swilling out of me like bathwater down the drain: ‘Josie… I just wanted to say I, um… I realise you were pretty upset last night.’
I stare at him. ‘I didn’t do it just because I was upset!’
‘It’s okay! You don’t have to explain it. You’re hurt, and he hasn’t been honest with you. And you thought?—’
‘Shane?’ I cut in.
‘Yeah?’ His eyes widen.
