She doesn’t finish but starts to scratch both her arms at the same time, surely hard enough to be sore. It’s as though she has insects crawling on her, the way she’s doing it, and my badly behaved imagination immediately throws a horrible image of maggots into my mind. Then I see that man, Jamie, with maggots coming out of his hollowed, sightless eye sockets and my mouth fills with saliva.
Oh dear, I must not be sick. I breathe slowly, in and out, in and out, until I have to focus on getting us onto that motorway again. Bertie is whining a bit now, which is very out of character for him. He must need to go again, and he isn’t the only one. Melissa may have been happy doing that in the woods but it’s not something I would ever contemplate.
I indicate right and turn down the slip road to the motorway. The traffic is quite heavy, even though it is so early, and I blink hard, forcing myself to be awake and be alert.
Thankfully, the services are only about half an hour away but I do feel every second of the journey. I cling to the slow lane as cars thunder by. At one point a lorry comes so close to our bumper in the side mirror that I am sure we will crash. But with a flash of lights and a rude blare of the horn, the lorry passes, and I can breathe again.
When the sign for the services appears it feels like a beacon of light on a dark night, even though it is, of course, a sunny morning now. But it is as if I have been holding my breath the entire time I have been on this road. I’m a little nervous about whether we are going to get away with booking a room as we pull into the car park of the Travelodge and I’m still fretting about the Bertie issue. But I don’t mind admitting that it’s just a tiny bit exciting too. I know it’s not, as Melissa put it, ‘the bloody Ritz’, but it’s still a hotel.
I must say, there is something pleasing about hotels. It’s the sensation of everything laid out specially just for your use, from the tiny soaps, to the chocolate on the pillows at the better establishments. I have quite a collection of shower caps and sewing kits at home.
And yes, if someone had said to me just thirty-six hours ago, ‘You and your old friend are going to book into a hotel together after having the most extraordinary day and night of your life,’ I probably would have told them they needed to lie down in a darkened room for a while.
I can add this one to the very long list of new experiences I have had since yesterday.
When we have parked, I realize I had better try to tidy myself up a little.
I would have expected Melissa to want to put some make-up on because she is usually immaculately turned out. But she doesn’t seem to have any interest in this until I point out that we ought to make the effort to look respectable.
Using the mirror in the sun visor, I try to tidy my hair. After a short pause, Melissa gets out her make-up bag and applies some foundation and eyeliner, listlessly gazing into a small mirror.
‘Want some of this?’ she says, offering the bag towards me, and I shake my head. I’ve never really known how to apply it, is the truth of the matter.
‘C’mere,’ she says and leans over to cup my chin in her hand, to my great surprise.
She starts to smudge foundation under my eyes. ‘Keep your eyes closed,’ she orders, and I obey as she slicks on some mascara.
When I’m allowed to open them, she regards me closely. ‘You should wear make-up, Hester,’ she says. ‘It suits you.’ Her admiration warms me like sunshine. ‘Let me sort your hair now.’
I close my eyes as she teases and smooths my hair. It’s all I can do not to sigh with pleasure. It reminds me of my mother’s touch, in some ways, but it’s different in ways I can’t explain. I feel a little bit tingly when she says, ‘There, you’ll do,’ in a tone of satisfaction and sits back in her seat.
I feel quite chipper as I get Bertie out for a quick widdle and then pop him back inside the van. He protests and barks, which is quite out of character, so I do hope he isn’t going to make this even more difficult. We walk slowly over to the entrance of the Travelodge.
It’s a low cream-coloured building with the distinctive black, white, and blue flag hanging over double doors. There are a couple of cars in the car park and, as we approach, a family come bustling out.
The mother is grossly overweight and has one of those faces that could mean she is anywhere between twenty and late fifty. She has a clinging vest top in bright pink with the words ‘Too Hot to Handle’; a football-like bust wobbles beneath.
The man is equally overweight – a great bull of a man – and yet two beautiful children of about four and six bounce along behind them. A boy and a girl, they both have blonde curls, cherubic faces with wide blue eyes, and skinny arms and legs.
They are perfect.
It never ceases to amaze me that human gargoyles can produce delightful offspring. It’s so terribly unfair. I start to wonder what would have happened if Terry and I had mixed our gene pools.
A terrible picture comes into my mind then: the waxy look of his skin as he lay in the water, eyes open and sightless.
Typical of him to try and make me feel guilty when I am feeling so tired and vulnerable. Sometimes my subconscious likes to play tricks.
I must get a grip of myself.
The woman catches my look as we pass. She stares at me in a vaguely belligerent way through unattractive red-framed glasses.
We walk over to the reception desk, where a girl of about twenty sits, quite obviously texting on her phone.
She has a small pinched face that is almost orange with thick pancake make-up. Her eyelashes are clogged with gloopy mascara and her eyes are slightly bloodshot. Coming to the end of the night shift, I imagine, which hopefully should mean she is more pliable. Her name badge says her name is Leanna.
Melissa had insisted that she ‘do the talking’ as she put it, so I simply smile at this Leanna as she casts her eyes over us both in a desultory fashion.
‘Hi,’ says Melissa in a low, friendly voice. ‘We need to book a twin room, please.’
Leanna taps a screen.
‘How long will you be staying with us,’ she says. There’s no question mark in this monotone voice.
We had already agreed that we would book for a day, as it was unlikely there would be a rate offered for anything less.
‘Just for one day, but we’ll be gone in a few hours,’ says Melissa, her voice warm treacle. ‘My friend and I just need a shower and a nap.’
She really does speak so nicely. And it feels good to be called her friend again.
Hearing her say these words, I really have no regrets about any of this either. None of it.
‘If I can take a credit card,’ says Leanna, who hasn’t made eye contact the entire time we have been here. If I were her boss, I would be sending her on a customer care course toute suite.
Melissa leans on the counter and bends toward Leanna in a conspiratorial way.
‘We’ll be paying in cash.’
‘Fine,’ says Leanna, stifling a yawn. ‘But I’ll need ID. If I can get something like a driving licence then I can book you in.’
We exchange brief glances. This is exactly what I feared would happen. It is a little typical of Melissa to be clueless about this sort of situation. She, no doubt, stays in such lovely hotels usually that she expects an establishment like this not to care. But it’s a chain, isn’t it? A successful one too, which will have its own practices.
Someone else has come into the reception area now. It’s a tall man in his forties, with a mop of reddish curly hair and a neat, pointed beard. He has a wheeled case and keeps yawning and rubbing his face.
Melissa clears her throat.
‘The thing is, Leanna, we both had our purses robbed last night in a pub. It’s lucky that I had some spare cash hidden in my bag. We’ve reported it and everything … the police said there’d been a spate of thefts like this in, er, where we were staying.’
Leanna looks up and meets Melissa’s eye directly for the first time. Her cheeks flush, and she blinks furiously.