‘Yep. Thank you for suggesting it. I can’t imagine many more glorious settings for an evening run.’
‘Knew you would,’ she says smugly. She gesticulates with her hands as she speaks and I note that shedidin fact make use of her nail varnish; I’m sure her nails were pale pink before, and now they’re bright red. ‘I’ll go and wait in the hotel lobby while you shower.’
She’s managed to strew her stuff widely around the room already and when I get into the bathroom I see that she has a bewildering array of toiletries spread out on her half of the double basin top. Weirdly, because I very much favour minimalism in my living surroundings and actually just can’t understand why she doesn’t want to betidier, I don’t really mind it. I do feel odd about it though – it’s rare at our age to get such a glimpse into the personal routine of a near-stranger with whom you have no romantic involvement – so I purposely avoid looking at her stuff.
We’re having dinner in a local steak restaurant. I shower in record time and arrive in the lobby with a minute or two to spare, just in time to hear Judith tell Flavia that her partner (clearly she is referring to me) is adorable and is shesurethere’s nothing between us.
‘Nothing,’ Flavia confirms. ‘We’re just…’
‘Good friends?’ Charlotte finishes the sentence. ‘That’s so nice. Have you been this close for long?’
‘We really don’t know each other particularly well,’ Flavia says. ‘We grew up in the same village, but Dominic’s actually the same age as my brother, not me, so we’ve just never hung round together.’
‘Howcutethat the two of you are getting to know each other so well now,’ Charlotte says, her eyes swivelling backwards and forwards between us.
‘Especially sharing a room.’ Mike has popped up from nowhere.
‘Wow,’ says Charlotte. ‘How do youfeelabout that?’
‘For the record,’ Flavia says, ‘and I’m sure Dominic won’t mind me sharing this—’ she turns to look at me and I give her a slight headshake, alarmed about what she might be about to say ‘—we’ve been given a suite with a sitting room that has a sofa bed, so we effectively have two bedrooms, which is perfect, because in fact neither of uswasmassively happy to share a room, because obviously itdidfeel a little weird.’ She smiles around at the others, while I think ofcourseshe was never going to mention about our past. ‘But all good and it’s just so exciting to be here.’
Charlotte and Judith both begin to ask more questions, and I leap in.
‘The reason that we’re sharing a room is that we both took part in the village Christmas raffle and won this trip as a prize,’ I explain. ‘It was originally meant for a couple, and the booking wasn’t updated in time, so we have their room.’ I don’t want to mention anything about Flavia’s father; that is obviously not my information to share, and I imagine that she might well not wish to discuss his passing with a group of people she’s only just met.
‘You won this! That’s amazing!’ Charlotte’s exclamations are joined by a lot ofwowsandno waysfrom the others.
We agree that we’re incredibly lucky and this is an amazing trip, and I can’t quite remember why we didn’t just tell everyone in the first place how we came to be here together but not together. Maybe because initially things felt pretty awkward between us, and now we’ve got accustomed to being around each other.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re all seated in the steak house, yet again according to a seating plan designed by Maxim. Flavia and I have been placed next to each other again, but we have different opposite neighbours. This time we’re facing Charlotte and her husband, Kris.
‘It’s so great that the two of you are happy to share a room,’ Charlotte gushes over olive and bruschetta nibbles. ‘Imagine if you weren’t. This is the stuff that movies are made of.’
‘Charlotte’s a great matchmaker,’ Kris observes fondly.
I glance sideways at Flavia and see that she’s laughing. Clearly she has no romantic thoughts whatsoever about me, or she’d presumably be feeling a little self-conscious. AndclearlyI should not have any about her either. I don’t, actually.
‘Has anyone been on a safari before?’ Flavia asks.
I say, ‘Nice but very obvious deflection,’ into her ear as the others all answer her question, and she grins at me. I smile back, unable to take my eyes off her face. Ilovethat smile. It’s beautiful, it’s kind of innocent but cheeky, it’s a smile you’d never tire of seeing. And I have now lost all powers of speech because I’m drowning looking into her soft brown eyes.
Yeah, no, other people do have good smiles and nice eyes. I’ve gone a little mad. I shouldn’t be feeling like this when I look at her.
I make a big effort to snap out of the spell I feel I’ve fallen under, and switch my attention back to Kris, who’s talking about a trip he made to Kenya last year.
There’s no more mention of our room-sharing and actually it’s a very pleasant dinner with interesting people.
At home, I have a very busy life full of work, friends and family. I rarely nowadays meet and get to know over an extended period a disparate group of people brought together only by having signed up to the same New Year’s holiday, and I’d forgotten how nice (and also at times odd and enlightening) such interactions can be.
For example, during that one meal alone we all get to hear about the two years Kris spent as a professional tennis player, with a top-ever ranking of three hundred and two in the world, which is on the one hand truly amazing but on the other apparently incredibly soul-destroying and means a very difficult life on tour. We also hear about life as a florist, the inspiration behind someone doing a doctorate on the life of Adolphe Sax (inventor of the saxophone), and conceiving triplets via IVF. (The triplets are now twenty-seven years old.)
At the beginning of the trip, I really didn’t have any desire whatsoever to get to know any more new people. It’s hard to believe that we’ve only been here for one day: I’ve completely changed my mind and am actively enjoying myself far more than I expected. And in many ways that’s due to Flavia having drawn me into the group when I was basically doing my best to remain aloof. Like our pre-dinner run. I hadn’t been planning to volunteer to join the others, but it was really nice.
‘Wow,’ I say to her as we leave the restaurant after hearing about the highs and lows of bringing up the triplets, ‘I have to be honest, that was a lot more interesting than most of the work dinners I go to. And while I love my friends, they don’t surprise me that often.’
‘Same,’ Flavia agrees. ‘I wasn’t really expecting this. I love this group.’
When we arrive back at the hotel, someone suggests that we round the evening off in the bar, and – over a variety of nightcap choices from whisky through hot chocolate to a frothy yellow advocaat of the kind I vaguely remember my grandmother drinking on Christmas Day when I was little – we begin taking it in turns to ask everyone in the group questions.
