‘Haha. I don’t want to be an enigma, said the man who spoke in code.’
‘I think what I really meant was: I don’t want to be an enigma to you.’
‘Why?’
We’re side by side on a bed and he’s looking down at me, steadily. I’m accosted by an urge to pull his t-shirt upwards. Wait wait wait … are we going to kiss … surely not? I’m very nervous, yet, I discover, receptive to this turn of events, looking at his outline in half light and being close enough to smell his shower gel. I lean in closer so our sides are touching, my right breast pressing against his arm. It’s as encouraging as I can be, using nerve endings, without seizing him. He’s still too intimidating for me to risk that.
‘I should go to bed,’ Fin says, pulling back and sitting up straighter, voice a notch louder.
‘… OK.’
Finlay pauses, swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up.
‘See you in the morning, Eve.’
He pads across the carpet and the door closes with a snap-click behind him. Well. That de-escalated quickly.
I turn the bedside light out and lie still, listening to the ambient, offstage noises of Edinburgh city centre, late at night.
What was that about? Lots of intense staring, photos of him as Don Draper, I don’t want to be an enigma to you, and then, gone.
Maybe he wanted to know he could have me if he wanted.
I remember our first kiss when we were kids, my asking: ‘Would you like to do it with me?’
I got a direct answer in the affirmative, back then.
How have my skills with men degraded in the intervening twenty-five years?
As I’m drifting off to sleep, I think: in the actual Waldorf, surely reception would’ve had a spare iPhone charger? Did he want to see me again, tonight? Was he heading down here with – surely not – any amorous intention, and then I burst into tears? If so, why just up and go, later? No. That’s the cocktails telling me flattering lies.
I imagine relaying what he said about a reconciliation never being off the cards, to Susie. I picture her picking at her sleeve, face in that set of grumpy consternation, except the pout and the frown this time not for comic effect. She’d resent being asked to feel something that wasn’t ire, I think. The hurt and sadness would make a fleeting appearance.
Believe it when I see it, Eve.
Then she’d change the subject.
33
The morning after the night before, and I’m apprehensive at seeing Finlay. Following any awkward encounter, nothing’s as hard as the second your eyes meet, before the hello, and you give away everything in the discomfort of your expression.
Will he get all ‘American therapist’ and discuss it? I hope not. I want the British version: squash it into the glove box, so to speak, and never mention it again. Finlay Hart dolefully explaining to me why I’m not someone he wants to kiss – even in glorious splendour, after smoked Old Fashioneds, with no strings, when someone else will be washing the sheets and we’ll be on different landmasses within a week – really isn’t a clarification I want or require.
Time ticks past in the lobby and my edginess increases: is he trying to make an alpha male point by keeping me waiting? When it’s almost half nine, I decide something is up and call his mobile. It rings out. I ask reception to contact him in the room.
‘I’m sorry, madam, I’m getting no reply,’ says the brightly lipsticked woman in the pussy-bow blouse.
I check my watch. 9.35 a.m.. Did I get the time wrong? That still doesn’t explain the lack of response. Did he get a tip on his missing father and rush out at dawn? But why not answer his mobile, if so? Or message me? I conclude there’s nothing left for it but to go up there myself, hammer on the door and see if he’s fallen asleep or something.
I cross the lobby, catch the lift empty. Seconds later, the doors slide open on the third floor with a ping, and I follow the arrows to the correct section of the rabbit warren of corridors to find 312.
I turn a corner and almost bark out loud at the sight confronting me. Which is Fin Hart, back against the door of his room, naked but for a scrap of towel being held taut across to his groin to protect his