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41: Fliss
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Our Wedding Night 42
“Thanks.” I can’t help smiling at the compliment. Noah is bright. Although “well balanced” I’m not so sure about. Do well-balanced kids boast about their fictitious heart transplants?“He seems very happy.” Lorcan takes a handful of peanuts. “Was custody amicable?”At the word “custody,” my internal radar springs into action and I feel my heart automatically start to pound, ready for battle. My body is flooding with adrenaline. I’m fingering my memory stick nervously. I have speeches lined up in my head. Long, erudite, scathing speeches. Also: I want to punch someone.“Only, some of my friends have had fairly torrid times with custody battles,” Lorcan adds.“Right.” I’m trying to achieve composure. “Right. I bet.”Torrid? I want to exclaim. You want to hear about torrid?But at the same time Barnaby’s voice is ringing in my ears like the chime of a warning bell. You said whatever you did, you wouldn’t end up bitter.“But you haven’t suffered?” says Lorcan.“Not at all.” From nowhere,
Our Wedding Night 43
“Here we are.” A waitress appears, bearing a silver tray on which is an ice- cream sundae. “For the brave little soldier. You must be so proud,” she adds to me.Oh God. Not again. I smile back, my expression carefully vague, trying to hide my embarrassment. I have no idea where we’re heading with this. It could be heart transplant. It could be bone marrow. It could be new puppy.“Training for three hours a day!” She squeezes Noah’s shoulder. “I admire your dedication! Your son was telling me about his gymnastics,” she adds to me. “Thinking of the Olympics 2024, are you?”My smile freezes. His gymnastics? OK, I can’t put this off any longer. I’m having the Talk, right here, right now.“Thank you,” I manage. “Wonderful. Thank you so much.” As soon as the waitress has disappeared, I turn to Noah. “Darling. Listen to me. This is important. You know the difference between truth and lies, don’t you?”“Yes.” Noah nods confidently.“And you know that we mustn’t tell lies.”“Except to be polit
Our Wedding Night 44
“So,” says Lorcan at last, and a luscious anticipation starts to grow within meagain. I can feel an internal limbering-up, that little dance of muscles yearning to be used. I’m doing better than Lottie on the shag front flashes through my mind, giving me a pinch of guilt—but only a small one. It’s all for the best. She can have another honeymoon, another time.“Drink?” I say, not because I really want one but to prolong the moment. This suite is the perfect setting for a shag-fest, what with all the smoky, sexy mirrors and soft, sensual rugs and the (fake) open fire flickering in the grate. There are also several conveniently placed pieces of furniture, which I’ve already eyed up.When I’ve poured Lorcan a whiskey, I sit down with my own glass of wine on an amazing creation of a chair. It’s made of deep-purple velvet, with wide rolltop arms and a deep seat and an erotic swoop to its back. I’m hoping that I strike quite a figure as I lean provocatively on one of the arms and allow my
Our Wedding Night 45: Lottie
It was meant to be! This is my all-star, gold-plated, total dream scenario. Ben and me on a boat again. Skimming across the Aegean waves. On our way to total bliss.Thank God we’ve left the Amba. I know it’s luxurious and has five stars, but it’s not the real Ikonos. It’s not us. The moment we were dropped off for the day at the little bustling port, I felt something buried inside me come alive. This is what I remember of Ikonos. Old white houses with shutters, and shaded streets, and elderly women in black sitting on corners, and the dock for the ferry. The port was full of fishing boats and water taxis, and the overpowering smell of fish made my senses reel. I remember that smell. I remember all of it.The sky is a bright morning blue and the sun is dazzling my eyelids, just as it always did. I’m lying back in the water taxi, the way I did when I was eighteen. My feet are in Ben’s lap and he’s idly fiddling with my toes and there’s only one thing on both our minds.My skin has recove
Our Wedding Night 46: Fliss
The morning after is always hell.In Sofia, Bulgaria, after too many glasses of wine, an excruciating argument, and a night of sexual frustration, the morning after achieves fresh levels of hellishness.From Lorcan’s expression, he feels the same way. Noah ran joyfully to greet him as soon as we entered the dining room, which is why I’m sitting with him, not through choice. He’s savagely buttering a piece of toast, and I’m crumbling a croissant. From our desultory conversation we’ve established that we both slept terribly, that the coffee is abysmal, that there are 2.4 Bulgarian leva to the pound and that the flight to Ikonos today hasn’t been delayed, as far as we can glean from the airline website.Areas we haven’t touched on: Ben, Lottie, their marriage, their sexual conduct, Bulgarian politics, the state of the world economy, my attempts to sabotage my sister’s honeymoon and thus risk losing my relationship with her forever. Among others.The restaurant is adjacent to the bar we w
Our Wedding Night 47
NEW ADDRESSDaniel Phipps and Trudy Vanderveer 5406 Aubrey RoadBeverly Hills CA 90210I blink several times in bewilderment. Beverly Hills? What? I mean— What?“Just wait there a minute, Noah,” I say, in a voice which doesn’t sound like mine. I’m already speed-dialing Daniel and pushing back my chair.“Fliss,” he replies in his infuriating I’ve just been doing yoga, how about you?voice.“What’s all this about Beverly Hills?” My words are falling over one another. “You’re moving to Beverly Hills?”“Babe, calm down,” he says.Babe?“How can I calm down? Is it true?” “So, Noah told you.”My heart falls like a clanging thing. It’s true. He’s moving to L.A. and he didn’t even tell me.“It’s Trudy’s work,” he’s saying now. “You know she’s in media law? This great opportunity arose for her, and I have dual nationality anyway.…”His words carry on, but they fade to meaningless sounds. For some reason I’m remembering our wedding day. We had a very cool wedding. All ironic twists and fun deta
Our Wedding Night 48: Lottie
I don’t quite know how to react. Here we are. Back at the guest house. And it’s just as it was. Kind of.As soon as we descended from the water taxi, Ben took a call from Lorcan, which really annoyed me. I mean, this is our big, romantic, meaningful moment—and he takes a call. That’s like Humphrey Bogart saying, “We’ll always have— Sorry, love, just got to take this.”Anyway. Be positive, Lottie. Relish the moment. I’ve been thinking about this place for fifteen years. And here I am.I’m standing on the wooden jetty, waiting for waves of nostalgia and enlightenment to engulf me. I’m waiting to cry and maybe think of something poignant to say to Ben. But the weird thing is, I don’t really want to cry. I feel a bit blank.I can just glimpse the guest house, far above, from where I’m standing. I can see the familiar dusty ochre stone and a couple of windows. It’s smaller than I remember, and one of the shutters is drooping. My gaze lowers to the cliff. There are the steps cut into the
Our Wedding Night 49: Lottie
My mind is a whirl. I don’t know what to focus on. I don’t know where to start.First of all, there’s the guest house. How can it be so different from the way I remember? Everything is smaller and shabbier and kind of less iconic. We’re sitting on the veranda, which is far less impressive than I remember and has been painted in a quite revolting beige color that’s peeling away in strips. The olive grove is just a scrubby patch of ground with a few sparse trees. The view is good, but no different from any other Greek island view.And Arthur. How could I have been impressed by him? How could I have sat at his feet, lapping up his pearls of wisdom? He’s not wise. He’s not a sage. He’s a seventy-something alcoholic lech.He’s tried to grope me twice already.“Don’t come back,” he’s saying, waving his roll-up in the air. “I tell all you young people. Don’t revisit. Youth is still where you left it, and that’s where it should stay. What are you returning for? Anything that was worth taking o
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