a snow-covered mountain. Below, Tom has written, My Girls – My World.
33
‘He can’t be alive,’ says Alice out loud, still poleaxed on the bed. ‘He just can’t be.’
But then she remembers that this time last week, she’d also thought it was impossible for him to have loved another woman and fathered another child.
She shakes herself down. She can’t deal with this right now. She needs to find Nathan.
She moves around the room, picking up the clothes that had been carelessly discarded as their lovemaking had built in momentum. The lace knickers that had lent themselves perfectly to being peeled off by Nathan’s teeth now look sordid, the expensive black dress that he’d sexily unzipped, teasing her back with his fingertips as he did so, now makes her feel cheap as she slips it back on.
She squeezes her feet back into her three-inch heels in a desperate bid to get out of the confines of the room, where the air feels like it’s being sucked out. She doesn’t know whether she wants to find Nathan or kill Tom a second time as she walks unsteadily down the corridor, forcing a smile at the hotel employee in the lift.
If she knew where she was going, and what she was going to do when she got there, it would help, but right now, all she knows is that her paranoid fears about her husband having an affair have finally been proven, and she needs to decide what she’s going to do about it.
The bar is just as busy as when she’d sat there enjoying a bottle of champagne with Nathan before dinner. She’d felt excited then, finally buoyed by optimism for the future. Now, she has a lump in her chest and a sickening sensation swirling in her stomach.
Despite her trepidation, she strides in with her head held high, trying desperately hard not to look how she feels; panic-stricken. She surreptitiously takes in everyone there, not sure if she wants to see Nathan or not. If he’s here, she will need to go to him and ask what the hell is going on. If he’s not, she’s got an even bigger problem on her hands. Where is he? And who’s he with?
She thinks back to the earring and bouquet, and the bill from this very same hotel. She’d let Nathan convince her that the charges for cocktails, room service and a couples massage had been a mistake. He’d promised her that he’d never seen the earring before and that the florist delivering the bouquet was a million-to-one coincidence. How had she allowed herself to be played? Maybe because knowing the truth about Tom had made her look at Nathan in a whole new light. One in which she refused to believe that he was like her cheating first husband.
The realization that one man she loved would do that to her is hard enough to take. Now that she’s faced with the prospect that both of them have makes her question what she’s doing wrong. All she’s ever done is love them the best way she knows how. How could that not be enough?
She holds her breath as she looks around the bar, willing Nathan to be there, because right now, that is the lesser of the two evils. If he isn’t, she doesn’t want to go where her mind will undoubtedly take her. She doesn’t want to acknowledge that whoever just sent him that text might be in Japan.
Does she live here? Is this where he met her? Has she got something to do with the site? Is that why he’s so keen to do it, so that he can spend more time here, be with her, knowing that Alice wouldn’t be keen to travel? She wonders if her announcement that she was going to come had surprised him. He wouldn’t have been expecting it, that was for sure. Had she scuppered his plans? His chance to be with her? Perhaps not, because as she fruitlessly scours the faces in the bar, she’s hit by the realization that he’s gone to her anyway.
She orders a Baileys with ice – the first drink she can think of when the bartender asks. The man playing Sinatra on the piano looks over and gives a cheery nod. She smiles weakly and sips her liqueur, resisting the urge to knock it all back.
Despite being in a strange city, on the other side of the world, where Alice’s imagination could so easily concoct a horror story about what