I dampen some more tissues and tell her to sit back, which she does, leaning against the tiles with her eyes closed. Carefully, I clean her face. Tissues aren’t the best and these arefancybut still, I don’t want to irritate her skin. Her skin brightens as I wipe away the grime and sick, and I even clean the ends of her hair which might have got splattered.
I’ve never been this close to her before without us kissing or something more. It feels somehow even more intimate.
‘You don’t need to do this, you know,’ Dolly murmurs.
‘I know. We’re on a truce, remember.’
Her eyes flutter open. ‘You wanted to keep away from me. You should want to leave me sitting in my own sick.’ Dolly’s smile curls at the corner.
‘It’s no fun to beat someone who is already down,’ I say, and she laughs softly.
‘You’re too much of a Girl Guide to leave me alone,’ she whispers.
I get back up to inspect a wicker basket of supplies you’d find in a nice hotel, which I guess tells me a lot about how posh this restaurant is, along with pads and mini-deodorants. Way beyond my pay grade. I unwrap a disposable cup wrapped in plastic, fill it with water and hand it to her.
Dolly goes to knock it back, but I lower the cup from her lips. ‘Slow sips.’
‘Yes, boss.’ I hate the little thrill that gives me. The thick way her voice makes thessound almost like ash. A whisper.
Her voice is different today, tarter. It’s a tone I heard when wehad sex, a familiar lilt that you sometimes hear at home in North Wales, but I just thought maybe that was… well… her sex voice. But it’s here now – higher, sing-song, bunching over consonants.
I’m enough of a fake to know when someone has been changing their voice on purpose, but I wonder why she’s been doing it.
I’m tempted to ask, but something rushes over her. Her jaw grits, and her body tightens up into a ball. As if in mimic, a balled fist slams onto her thigh.
‘Dolly?’ I want to grab her hand, I want to save her from this spasm of pain. ‘What’s going on, Dolly? Do I need to get an actual doctor?’
She shakes her head. ‘Just the little red pouch from my handbag.’
I notice it finally, hanging on the peg on the back of the door across the room.
‘That’s a daft place to leave it,’ I say as I hand it over.
‘I didn’t want it to go on the floor and get all gross,’ she insists. ‘Like me.’
The tiny sequinned bag is full of strips of pills. Unboxed of course because who needs identifying information or the leaflet about side effects? Not Dolly, apparently.
She snaps two little round pills out from one sheet, and a further two slightly larger ones from another, and necks them all back like they’re mints. To my horror, she dry swallows them all.
‘Dolly, please drink something – that was too disturbing,’ I say, thrusting a refilled cup of water at her.
‘Warren said the same.’ She complies, but then says, ‘The last few days, you’d have loved to see me choke.’
‘I don’t want you dead from dry pills lodged in your throat,’ I insist. ‘Just… mildly inconvenienced.’
I can’t help but laugh when she says, ‘Oh yeah, just a small choking. A chokelet, if you may.’
‘Well, you’re in my care now, and it could ruin my first aid accreditation if I purposefully let you die on national television.’
She sips at the water. ‘Itiseasier this way.’
‘I’m sure that’s what it says to do on the packet,’ I say tartly. ‘Now, what else do you need?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Should I get someone from production to get a medic?’
‘Absolutely not.’
